Excuses, Excuses...

During the first week, Erik made the post: Could It Be For The Money? One of the points that he addressed in this post was about an alternate motive for the entrance to this war – oil. If oil truly was the real reason that our country entered this war, then the Bartleby Effect on the notion of excuses comes into play.

In the story, the narrator expresses that he feels sympathy towards Bartleby – he has nowhere to go, he has no money, he has no friends…etc. And in, what I would assume to be a sign of “compassion”, the narrator allows Bartleby to stay at the office to sleep and doesn’t “overwork” him. And why should the narrator make Bartleby work just as hard as the other workers in the business? The narrator’s passive personality type is just an excuse to avoid the potential conflict of having to deal with Bartleby. The narrator also comes up with a philosophical excuse for not finding out any other options for helping Bartleby – the problem “exists within his soul”. The claim that the soul cannot be reached by a person outside of its domain is yet another excuse.

Excuses are the essence of this war. If the claim is that "we are in Iraq as a way to rid the terrorists of weapons of mass destruction and seek out revenge of our country’s loss on September 11th", then the concept of retrieving oil as the “sub-motive” is really the excuse to go in the first place. And on the contrary, if the claim is that “we are in need of oil”, then the concept of “fighting for our country” is an excuse for fighting in the war. There seems to be a pattern here: whatever the main motive is, for the war’s cause, the alternative byproduct, the “what’s behind door number two” scenario, seems to be the excuse for going.

Looks like our country might be being lied to…