Dear Mr. Silajdzic,
I watched you on Richard Perle's paean to Neo-Conservatism. So far, you are the only public figure (I know of) who has stated the obvious: that one single country policing the entire world is inherently illegitimate. I say over and over again that the only institution which can WIN the war or Terror does not yet exist: an elected, representative, and sovereign United Nations.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Freedom Fries re-gurgitated
Dear Congressman Jones,
I watched you lecture Richard Perle, pleading for an apology for this misadventure in Iraq. While we're at it, how about an apology for Hans Blix? This Administration besmirched the integrity of Mr. Blix, suggesting he was a toady for Saddam. In the early 90's, this "toady of Saddam" uncovered evidence that Saddam was planning to produce lithium 6, which can only be used in H-bombs. This stimulated pressure to insert weapons inspectors into Iraq. Some toady! If we had listened to him, you would not be going to military funerals so often. You would not have had to write those 1300 letters. How about an apology for him? Blix was right!
Come to think of it, perhaps you should begin the apologies. You berated the French, setting in motion a wave of Francophobia. Have you apologized to them? Just because we jump off a cliff, sans parachute, into Iraq, does not mean the French must follow. Maybe if you apologize for your ignorant remarks, Mr. Perle and the other architects of this fiasco will follow your lead? How can you urge Mr. Perle to muster the decency to apologize, if you won't muster the decency to apologize for your error in judgment?
When you write that speech, keep this image in mind. When Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris, he was mobbed by Frenchmen inspired with his achievement. His two chief competitors were both French. Now that is Nobility of Spirit!
I watched you lecture Richard Perle, pleading for an apology for this misadventure in Iraq. While we're at it, how about an apology for Hans Blix? This Administration besmirched the integrity of Mr. Blix, suggesting he was a toady for Saddam. In the early 90's, this "toady of Saddam" uncovered evidence that Saddam was planning to produce lithium 6, which can only be used in H-bombs. This stimulated pressure to insert weapons inspectors into Iraq. Some toady! If we had listened to him, you would not be going to military funerals so often. You would not have had to write those 1300 letters. How about an apology for him? Blix was right!
Come to think of it, perhaps you should begin the apologies. You berated the French, setting in motion a wave of Francophobia. Have you apologized to them? Just because we jump off a cliff, sans parachute, into Iraq, does not mean the French must follow. Maybe if you apologize for your ignorant remarks, Mr. Perle and the other architects of this fiasco will follow your lead? How can you urge Mr. Perle to muster the decency to apologize, if you won't muster the decency to apologize for your error in judgment?
When you write that speech, keep this image in mind. When Charles Lindbergh landed in Paris, he was mobbed by Frenchmen inspired with his achievement. His two chief competitors were both French. Now that is Nobility of Spirit!
Monday, June 4, 2007
Walling Ourselves
In his masterful study of Sino-Western Relations, Dragon by the Tail, John Paton Davies describes the Great Wall, "stretching more than 1400 miles from the Jade Gate, on the frontier with Turkestan, to the sea: it protected the Chinese from unwelcome attention only when the Dynasty was bristling and alert. But when the human defenses were slack, it was no serious threat to invaders. It was really a monument in brick, stone, and mud to a usually static point of view."
Frederick Jackson Turner, in his seminal work on the importance of the frontier in shaping the American character, reminds us that the colonists in Massachusetts resisted a proposition of 1676 to build a defensive wall from the Charles River to Massachusetts Bay. "This project," wrote Turner, "of a kind of Roman Wall did not appeal to the frontiersmen of the time."
Walling away the outside world is un-American. Bin Laden's primary objective is to re-establish the Caliphate, walling the Islamic World off from the moral pollution of the West. Another way to obtain the objective would be for the United States to wall itself in.
Are we really going to wall ourselves in? Have we given over to a static point of view?
Frederick Jackson Turner, in his seminal work on the importance of the frontier in shaping the American character, reminds us that the colonists in Massachusetts resisted a proposition of 1676 to build a defensive wall from the Charles River to Massachusetts Bay. "This project," wrote Turner, "of a kind of Roman Wall did not appeal to the frontiersmen of the time."
Walling away the outside world is un-American. Bin Laden's primary objective is to re-establish the Caliphate, walling the Islamic World off from the moral pollution of the West. Another way to obtain the objective would be for the United States to wall itself in.
Are we really going to wall ourselves in? Have we given over to a static point of view?
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Children's Advocates
Several months ago, I filled out an online questionnaire expressing my principled indifference to gay marriage. Then, the American Family Association provided a link for sending a message to the President expressing, what I foolishly thought would be, my opinion.
I wrote a brief paragraph, best summarized as a "people should mind their own business" theme and sent it along to the White House. AFA thanked me for my participation and sent an auto-reply with the text of my message. Lo and behold, my simple paragraph was sandwiched between two paragraphs urging a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. So, I was manipulated into throwing my name in with millions of AFA sheep bleating for Government meddling into the private lives of American citizens. I resent it.
I bet those liars at the AFA are getting a good belly laugh at my expense. That's a pretty rotten thing to do to a poor school bus driver. The bedrock of my success with kids is my credibility. They know down to the bones that I tell the truth (which they reciprocate by telling me the truth). Too bad I can't say the same thing about the AFA. Too bad we have serial liars claiming they stand up for children. I wonder how the children will reciprocate their lies?
I wrote a brief paragraph, best summarized as a "people should mind their own business" theme and sent it along to the White House. AFA thanked me for my participation and sent an auto-reply with the text of my message. Lo and behold, my simple paragraph was sandwiched between two paragraphs urging a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. So, I was manipulated into throwing my name in with millions of AFA sheep bleating for Government meddling into the private lives of American citizens. I resent it.
I bet those liars at the AFA are getting a good belly laugh at my expense. That's a pretty rotten thing to do to a poor school bus driver. The bedrock of my success with kids is my credibility. They know down to the bones that I tell the truth (which they reciprocate by telling me the truth). Too bad I can't say the same thing about the AFA. Too bad we have serial liars claiming they stand up for children. I wonder how the children will reciprocate their lies?
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Meddlesome Apparatchiks
In Peter Shaffer's AMADEUS, there is a scene where Constanza shows up at Maestro Salieri's palace conservatory bearing a sheaf of original Mozart compositions purloined from her husband's papers. The scene is narrated by the aging, institutionalized Salieri: "Astounding! Beyond belief! He had simply written down music that was already finished in his head. And finished as no music is ever finished." The aged Salieri elaborates on that perfection: "Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall."
The aged Salieri's reflections came to mind, painfully, when I learned how a few arrogant Latino pressure groups mobilized meddlesome apparatchiks to strongarm Ken Burns into editing his World War II documentary to suit themselves. Shamefully, they succeeded. This does not bode well for free expression in our country. Tell me, Juan Gonzalez and all you self-appointed political commissars: How does your manhandling of Ken Burns differ from the meddling Mozart endured from the Emperor's advisers? How does it differ from the insufferable Soviet meddling in the work of Prokofiev and Shostakovich? Your blind pursuit of a narrow political agenda - pluralism run riot - has pushed the country a giant stride toward cultural sterility.
Why couldn't you simply produce your own documentary? Why meddle with Ken Burns? Could you not tell your own story better than he could? Or, perhaps - like the Emperor and the Soviets - you share Salieri's lament at Divine Fate: "He gave me that longing, then made me mute."
The aged Salieri's reflections came to mind, painfully, when I learned how a few arrogant Latino pressure groups mobilized meddlesome apparatchiks to strongarm Ken Burns into editing his World War II documentary to suit themselves. Shamefully, they succeeded. This does not bode well for free expression in our country. Tell me, Juan Gonzalez and all you self-appointed political commissars: How does your manhandling of Ken Burns differ from the meddling Mozart endured from the Emperor's advisers? How does it differ from the insufferable Soviet meddling in the work of Prokofiev and Shostakovich? Your blind pursuit of a narrow political agenda - pluralism run riot - has pushed the country a giant stride toward cultural sterility.
Why couldn't you simply produce your own documentary? Why meddle with Ken Burns? Could you not tell your own story better than he could? Or, perhaps - like the Emperor and the Soviets - you share Salieri's lament at Divine Fate: "He gave me that longing, then made me mute."
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The Reagan Legacy
The Electoral College travesty in 2000 has proven tragic to the Legacy of Ronald Reagan. How much better for his memory had Al Gore assumed the Presidency after his victory at the Polls! President Gore would have erased the ill effects of President Reagan's most glaring errors, namely:
1) $1.7 TRILLION added to the national debt
2) arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, thus empowering the Taliban
3) the cut and run from Beirut
4) the arms for hostages policy
If Al Gore had taken office after his electoral victory (and continued President Clinton's conservative fiscal policy), we would now be on the verge of retiring the national debt. Instead, the Bush/Cheney junta drew the conclusion that "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." True to their word, they opened the floodgates, raising the debt limit to $9 TRILLION! What happens if the Russians and Iranians denominate petroleum sales in anything other than the dollar and all those unwanted reserve dollars fly back home?
If Al Gore had taken office after his electoral victory, our military energy would have remained focused on Afghanistan after 9/11. With the support of our European allies, we would be fully engaged in the useful work of nation building, following the successful Kosovo model. This would have wiped out the foul taste of the expedient Reagan/Bush policy of abandoning the women of Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the Taliban (after the Soviet withdrawal). Karzai would be secure in Kabul and his country, not secular Iraq, would be the Islamic laboratory for democracy. Imagine the impact of that success on the secular youth of Iran!
We should have selected Afghanistan for the neo-con experiment in democracy. Anchored there with our allies, we would be spared the extreme pressure to cut and run from Iraq. We could happily forget how Reagan invented the cut and run after the Marine barracks were blown up in Beirut in February 1983.
Iran/Contra, of course, would still tarnish the Reagan Legacy. He went a long way toward cleaning that up by apologizing to the American people. Al Gore could not - and should not - clean up that part of Reagan's statue. It was Reagan's own nonsense, and a healthy reminder of Republican wishful thinking in foreign affairs.
1) $1.7 TRILLION added to the national debt
2) arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, thus empowering the Taliban
3) the cut and run from Beirut
4) the arms for hostages policy
If Al Gore had taken office after his electoral victory (and continued President Clinton's conservative fiscal policy), we would now be on the verge of retiring the national debt. Instead, the Bush/Cheney junta drew the conclusion that "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." True to their word, they opened the floodgates, raising the debt limit to $9 TRILLION! What happens if the Russians and Iranians denominate petroleum sales in anything other than the dollar and all those unwanted reserve dollars fly back home?
If Al Gore had taken office after his electoral victory, our military energy would have remained focused on Afghanistan after 9/11. With the support of our European allies, we would be fully engaged in the useful work of nation building, following the successful Kosovo model. This would have wiped out the foul taste of the expedient Reagan/Bush policy of abandoning the women of Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the Taliban (after the Soviet withdrawal). Karzai would be secure in Kabul and his country, not secular Iraq, would be the Islamic laboratory for democracy. Imagine the impact of that success on the secular youth of Iran!
We should have selected Afghanistan for the neo-con experiment in democracy. Anchored there with our allies, we would be spared the extreme pressure to cut and run from Iraq. We could happily forget how Reagan invented the cut and run after the Marine barracks were blown up in Beirut in February 1983.
Iran/Contra, of course, would still tarnish the Reagan Legacy. He went a long way toward cleaning that up by apologizing to the American people. Al Gore could not - and should not - clean up that part of Reagan's statue. It was Reagan's own nonsense, and a healthy reminder of Republican wishful thinking in foreign affairs.
Pop Sociology with Mr. Kristol
Dear Mr. Kristol,
Your conversation with Brian Lamb on Q&A left the impression that our escapade in Iraq is a giant stride Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy. A perusal of the transcript confirms that impression. How curious! As I recall, President Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad over Christmas in 1983 with a $500,000,000 stocking stuffer, tangible evidence of a tilt toward Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War. Our object, apparently, was to keep Iran in a box. Iran is twice the size of Iraq. The mullahs of Iran are the spiritual leaders of the Shi'a world. Iraq's Shi'a majority is concentrated in the oil-rich south. Saudi Arabia's Shi'a minority is concentrated in the oil-rich northeast. Iran exports Terror through Hezbollah. These sobering reflections urged the distasteful necessity of tilting toward Saddam, even though he was using chemical weapons in that vicious war.
Im March 2003, the containment of Iran was no less a necessity that two decades earlier. The invasion of Iraq repudiates the Reagan policy. Only someone self-deluded enough to discount 1300 years of Sunni-Shi'a hostility as "pop sociology" could praise this misadventure as Neo-Reaganite.
Your conversation with Brian Lamb on Q&A left the impression that our escapade in Iraq is a giant stride Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy. A perusal of the transcript confirms that impression. How curious! As I recall, President Reagan dispatched Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad over Christmas in 1983 with a $500,000,000 stocking stuffer, tangible evidence of a tilt toward Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War. Our object, apparently, was to keep Iran in a box. Iran is twice the size of Iraq. The mullahs of Iran are the spiritual leaders of the Shi'a world. Iraq's Shi'a majority is concentrated in the oil-rich south. Saudi Arabia's Shi'a minority is concentrated in the oil-rich northeast. Iran exports Terror through Hezbollah. These sobering reflections urged the distasteful necessity of tilting toward Saddam, even though he was using chemical weapons in that vicious war.
Im March 2003, the containment of Iran was no less a necessity that two decades earlier. The invasion of Iraq repudiates the Reagan policy. Only someone self-deluded enough to discount 1300 years of Sunni-Shi'a hostility as "pop sociology" could praise this misadventure as Neo-Reaganite.
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