TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE ...

REGRETS ...

   I will soon complete my 66th orbit around the sun as a self-aware sentient being on this fragile planet of ours, so in technical terms, I have been an old geezer for a few years.   And my ancestors, if they could, and all those older than I who are still alive, would shake their heads with a knowing chuckle if they could hear me say the vivid memories of my boyhood companion, Kim the Collie, even how he smelled wet with rain, seem like they occurred only yesterday .... yes, it all does really seem like yesterday, but most of my yesterdays are now decades in the past.  I have accumulated sixty plus years of experiences and experience. There is a vast difference beyond the letter “s” in those two words, and those of you who are old enough with experience understand it.

     Like all those who have gone before me, I do have more than a few regrets.  The one which has come most often to mind lately is that I wish I had paid more attention to the things my Daddy and all my elders tried to tell me, too much of which  I ignored with the willful blindness of arrogant self-centered youth.  By the way, your "youth" lasts into your forties, so do not make the error of thinking the first gray hair means you have enough experience to be truly wise.  There is a great difference between knowledge and wisdom .... wisdom is the application of knowledge acquired with a life-overview, and is unlikely to be attained until the decades remaining in your life are far fewer than those decades already lived.  This is why it is a great compliment to be told one is "truly wise beyond your years."  

      I regret not fully taking advantage of the greatest treasure trove of wisdom available to me, all of us, and that is the wisdom of those with many years of life lived.  In our youth we crave experiences, doing things, seeing things, and are infatuated with the new and modern, whether it is cars, clothes, a love interest, music, or the latest technology.  And all too often we do not pay attention to the advice of our elders for no other reason than they do not like the latest fashions or appreciate the same music, and are therefore old-fashioned and do not understand the "real" world.  But in our youthful ignorance we are  totally unaware that the  fashions and music of our parents and grandparents were just as different from their elders as ours was from theirs, and that they too regretted not paying attention to those who tried to advise them about the real issues of life which are common to us all despite differences in politics, religion, or ethnicity.   Sadly, "Common Sense" is indeed uncommon, a rare gem seldom seen, that is why its value is beyond measure.  And when we ignore it, we impoverish ourselves and those we love.

     The best advice we receive in life is often that which we do not want to hear because it goes against our craving for certain experiences at that moment.  But when we do pay attention, incorporate it into the way we relate to our world, even trivial experiences can be transmuted into valuable experience about real life, and realizing the difference between the trivial and truly important is the foundation of wisdom.  I miss my Daddy, and I wish I had just one more opportunity to thank him for all he tried to teach me.  Had I listened, really listened, if only for a small part of the time, I would now be much the wiser for it.

So ...Listen up ..... here comes some of the best advice from an old geezer you will ever get:

........ PAY ATTENTION ... pay attention when someone older than you, especially someone who has nothing to personally gain, cares enough about you to try to tell you something about Life, and pay especially close attention to that advice if your first reaction is to disregard it ............ PAY ATTENTION .... chew on that advice for a while .... and if you do ingest it into your world view, your essential being may be nourished more than your imagination could have predicted.

(more articles for your entertainment or irritation available in BLOG ARCHIVE near top right of this page.)

     

CRITERIA ...... NO APOLOGIES, PERIOD

Over Six Decades of My Observations resulted in these CRITERIA 

American Heritage Dictionary: cri-te-ri-a (plural of criterion, Greek origin) Standards, rules, or tests on which  judgments or decisions can be based.

By application of the following criteria, I can quickly eliminate a person from consideration for public office, and often from me even attempting to engage them in a serious conversation.  At this stage of my life, my "they-are-not-worth-my-time-Radar" is pretty damn sensitive and accurate.  If a person is speaking or acting with their true voice, it often takes only a matter of seconds for some of these criteria to be applied.

Some are fairly obvious

RACISM ...  The vile racist is quickly detected by most of us.  But I also have a big problem with those who profess to personally not be racist, but also talk about racism being a thing of the past, that racism no longer requires any consideration in public policy.  If these people had to spend one week as a black person in America, they would rapidly be disabused of their ignorance.  Since there is virtually no real voter fraud, people voting as someone they are not, Voter suppression by ID statutes is essentially racist, a blatant attempt to hold down the African-American vote because it usually goes over 90% Democratic.

SEXISM ... The spate of sexist laws enacted by several state legislatures proves sexism is alive and well, infused with great political energy as the War on Women.  The Hobby Lobby SCOTUS decision is literally a supreme example.  Anyone who has political or religious beliefs which allow them to think women do not have the right of complete control over their own bodies and deserve equal pay is definitely too ignorant or mean-spirited to be in public office.

HOMOPHOBIA ...  In today's political climate, the most virulent, hateful public rhetoric is put forward on this issue, usually buttressed by a fundamentalist religious viewpoint.  These haters need to get over it.   Somewhere between 5-10% of all human beings have always been gay or bisexual. Gay people are buried in our veterans cemetery at Normandy, in every national cemetery, have been some of our greatest artists, scientists, philosophers, politicians ... EVERYTHING !!!
To deny gays any rights whatsoever which heterosexuals enjoy is the real abomination.

BIGOTRY ...  based on national origin, ethnicity, language, religious preference, etc.
The small-mindedness of these types of bigots is something which should only be a memory of our distant past, as should the three criteria above.  Religious bigotry is the persecution of those who profess a different belief system, often employing the apparatus of the state by law or use of arms, the latter responsible for millions of deaths throughout history down to the current day. ... essentially a brand of "racism" where religious beliefs are substituted for skin color.  I would point out that challenging a person's religious belief system on its philosophical, rational, or scientific merits is not bigotry any more than challenging their political beliefs.

HOSTILITY to REAL SCIENCE ...  A rejection of the conclusions of the overwhelming number of scientists about the true nature of the physical universe, and an appalling ignorance of the self-correcting methodology of genuine scientific disciplines.  The notions of literal Genesis style Creation or so-called Intelligent Design do NOT qualify as a valid descriptions of the physical universe, they are not science and are a disservice to the moral teachings of the scriptures cited.   They are purely religious viewpoints which I will defend the right of persons to hold as a matter of religious freedom, but they are not science upon which any public policy should be based, from which textbooks should be used to funding for scientific research.  The denial of human consumption of fossil fuels being a contributor to the Fact of climate change is an incredibly dangerous current hostility to real science.
       I find any person is too ignorant for public office who does not know that our Earth is not flat, the Earth is not the center of the universe, that our Earth is a 4 billion year old planet, a fragile blue marble in a cosmically sweet spot orbit around the Sun, which itself is a minor Star among at least 100 Billion other stars in the Galaxy we call the Milky Way, which  is only one of over 100 Billion other galaxies in the observable Universe detected by the technology currently available, that all these Galaxies are moving away from one another at tremendous speeds because all of this originated from a incredibly dense singularity which underwent a sudden, violent expansion, a Big Bang some 13.8 Billion years ago, and that life on our Earth arrived at its present state through the process of Evolution by natural selection over immense periods of time.  What existed before the Big Bang, science in its current state makes no assertions.

SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS ... anyone who adheres to this "trickle-down" theory of economics is living in a fantasy and not the real world of experience and observation since there is no evidence of it ever working.  The reality is it concentrates  more wealth in the hands of the top 5% ... and it does not trickle down which is a main reason for the increasing income inequality in our country.

GUN WORSHIP ... includes the ludicrous and erroneous notion that love of firearms is an expression of genuine patriotism and the implication that anyone who does not also worship at the altar of gun ownership is less patriotic (btw, I own guns).  Anyone who believes that our personal freedoms now, or throughout our history, have been achieved or preserved through personal decisions about the use of firearms is, in the most literal sense of the word, Ignorant.   Apparently, they do not, or refuse to understand basic English grammar and the meaning of conditional clauses.  The  2nd Amendment: 

Article [II]

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

"the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is NOT an absolute stand alone statement or completely independent clause.  It is CONDITIONED grammatically by our very literate Founders' intent through the  clauses "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State..."  What part of "well regulated Militia" do they not understand?  An accurate alternative phrasing of this language could be ..."BECAUSE a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State .." etc.  It does NOT say, nor did the founders intend it to mean "any bozo has an absolute right to have all the automatic, semi-automatic, mega-magazine capacity, rocket launchers, etc, that he can afford and to parade around with them in public as if today's society has devolved into the old Wild West."   The right of the people to keep and bear arms was for the purpose of citizens of being called up into a well regulated Militia to DEFEND the free State, not to take up arms AGAINST the state.  Today, this function for the states is by and large performed by the various state National Guard units, and our National Security against foreign enemies is guaranteed by the Federal Government's armed forces which are the best in the history of the world.   But at the time of the ratification of our Constitution, the Federal Government did not have the wherewithal to equip a large enough army and navy to defend the frontiers against foreign enemies, much less stock large arsenals in frontier regions which could be seized by an invading force.  Therefore, the well regulated Militia for the protection of a free state would be armed by the privately held weapons of the citizens.  The purpose of protecting the right of the people to keep and bear arms is clearly for the people to be able to serve in the well regulated Militia and NOT for some idiot to defy the legitimately constituted authority of our state and Federal Governments .... and to say otherwise is wrong, if not outright stupid.   And you do not want to live in a country where average citizens can defy the legitimate government, and if you do, move to  the regions of Africa or other Third World places where there really is no local civil order maintained by the government.

(more articles for your entertainment or irritation available in BLOG ARCHIVE near top right of this page.)

WHAT WOULD YOU DO for Our CHILDREN ?

WILL YOU HELP PROTECT OUR CHILDREN ???

     What would you do if ........I told you the American and Canadian Pediatric Societies report that your children and grandchildren 12 years old and younger who over-consume "Brand X"  are likely to have serious problems.

     Problems which independent researchers have identified "Brand X" causing such as decreased ability in decision-making, attention deficit, impaired learning, decreased self-control and increase in tantrums, obesity, sleep deprivation causing poor school performance, depression, decreased concentration and memory, behavioral problems, addiction, and aggression ?  Do any of the children in your family show evidence of these problems to any degree?

     And if "Brand X" were a certain kind of, say, cereal, would you continue to allow your children to consume as much of it as they wanted even though it may be permanently damaging their young developing brains?  Do you think it is responsible behavior for anyone to continue to allow their family's children 12 years old and younger unrestricted consumption of this product ?  

     Now, what are you going to do when I tell you "Brand X" is not drugs like meth, heroin, crack cocaine, alcohol, or pain pills, but actually the hand-held technology of smart phones, tablets, electronic games, and computer video games ?

     Readers of my articles in other forums know my long-held negative opinions about these devices.  But now, there is more and more scientific research confirming much of what I have previously written.  And YES, I am cashing in a big "I-told-you-so," but I can take no real satisfaction in doing so because the consequences for our children are so dire.

     If you think I am just full of it, take the time to google/bing:

 "huffingtonpost.com/cris-rowan/10-reasons"  ... read for yourself and check out the source documentation for the article.   I am sure as more time passes and there are more and more children who are overexposed to this technology at young ages, there will be many more scientific studies coming to many of the same conclusions....  these devices are literally dumbing-down our youngsters and contributing to their behavior problems and poor school performance. 

     WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT ???   You CAN do something about it because your youngsters cannot overexpose themselves to these risks without YOU allowing it to happen because YOU are paying for it.  Would you buy your children as much meth, heroin, cocaine, crack, or alcohol as they can consume ???  Of course not.   Then, why would you provide them with the unfettered opportunity to overexpose themselves to something that is permanently damaging their young brains in their development and learning capability ???   

And frankly, I don't give a damn if I have made some of you feel guilty or resentful of me preaching at you.   Every generation's children are literally our future, and there is no greater parental or moral responsibility than to not expose our children to unnecessary dangers we can prevent, and to willingly pay for that exposure to such dangers is ridiculous, irresponsible, and immoral.  We have seen the downside for society from part of three generations who have become addicted to welfare ... what do you think our society is going to be like when we have three generations with less than normal brain development ???   And it is not some misguided or abused government program causing the latter, it is we as individuals, and many of us are willingly paying for it to happen.

(more articles for your entertainment or irritation available in BLOG ARCHIVE near top right of this page.)

DEATH ROW in TENNESSEE

Originally pubished in the Nashville City Paper     12/6/00   Comments Welcomed 

A VISIT TO TENNESSEE’S DEATH ROW

I have seen Tennessee’s Death Row.  It was very clean, stark - an almost sterile,
lifeless environment.  So it was a surprise to see children’s toys and books on a shelf in
the visitors’ room.  I was told they had been donated for the children of the condemned
men when they visited.  Telling children one of their parents has been murdered must be a horrible experience.  But I have no idea how I would tell a child its father is to be kept in this foreboding place until he is ritually killed by the government.  (I purposely use the word “kill” because I believe “execute,” “put to death,” and “capital punishment” are government-ese for “killing a citizen.”)

On that particular day, I was at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution to interview the
warden and two condemned prisoners for talk radio.   I declined the warden’s invitation
to view Old Sparky, Tennessee’s electric chair, but not because of any liberal
sensitivity.  I declined because I knew the company of Boston-based Fred Leuchter had
been paid tens of thousands of tax dollars for refurbishing that killing device.  His
company would also have built the state a gallows or gas chamber.  I hope he had
nothing to do with our state’s new lethal injection apparatus.  I have no objection to
anyone being paid for legitimate services rendered, but I refuse to see any of
Leuchter’s handiwork.  I was embarrassed that my state had done business with
Leuchter and his ilk.

Leuchter is a self-professed expert on efficient methods for state-sanctioned killing, and
as such, he has testified in a Canadian court that the magnitude of the Holocaust has
been exaggerated, that killing millions of people would have been a logistical
impossibility even for the Nazis, and because of his distortions of history, the German government will not allow him to come inside its borders.  He was once the darling of the ultra-rightwing lecture circuit.  Refusing to observe Leuchter’s work was my silent protest on behalf of the six million people murdered by the Third Reich, people whose deaths Leuchter and neo-Nazi revisionists diminish by their Holocaust-denying propaganda. Perhaps states that want to skillfully kill in the name of justice must employ the likes of Leuchter, but I prefer no association with them and I repudiate their bigoted agenda.

I learned several things from my visit to Death Row.  For example, the staff considers
Building Two (they do not call it Death Row) to be some of the best duty in the prison. 
They told me it was safer for them because the security was so intense and the
condemned men were the best-behaved inmates in the entire facility.  All the staff I met
were very professional and polite, not at all like the stereotypical brutes in the movies.

Although I had been warned about being “conned,” I still found the two inmates I
interviewed to be particularly charming.  Of course, they were putting on their best faces
since it was an unusual privilege for them to be out of their cells at an unscheduled
time.  Nevertheless, I had to remind myself they were convicted murderers.  I am sure
years of solitary confinement had mellowed them, but they did not appear unusual ...
except for the web of clinking chains and handcuffs they wore.   But the awareness that these men were waiting to be killed never left me; I was speaking with “dead men.” Since that day, one of them won a new trial and had his sentence changed to life.  He now teaches prison GED courses.

When I interviewed the warden, I was shocked by some of his responses.  This man was no bleeding heart; he was ready to pull the switch on the electric chair.  I asked him what would he do with an extra million dollars in his budget.  His immediate response was “more education and job training programs.”  I suggested most taxpayers would resent criminals being given such freebies.  The warden replied that more than 90 percent of his inmates would eventually be released, and if they had no job skills, they would quickly return to a life of crime and create more victims in the free world.  Since his job was to protect society by incarcerating criminals, he thought it better for society that when he released them they would less of a threat than when they came to him.  I realized that if he succeeded with only 10% of the convicts, that would mean many fewer crime victims each year.   My family, or yours, might be one of those spared.  When I asked him if I had a magic wand to wave over the state legislature what from his perspective would he like that magic to achieve.  His quick response was to eliminate the mandatory no-parole provision for drug convictions, especially marijuana.  He explained that a prison at maximum capacity requires that some people must be paroled to make room for new inmates.   With the no-parole provision for marijuana, he pointed out that armed robbers, habitual burglars, rapists, etc. are being released back into society rather than some college kid caught with his backpack full of pot.  Society is not best served this way, and he said those in prison for marijuana infractions are not learning to be better citizens.  The warden was insistent that society is not better served by this situation either in the risk to society by parolees or the use of his prison's resources to house marijuana offenders.

I presented the warden with a hypothetical dilemma: He must free all the inmates from
one of his four maximum-security units.  Which would it be?  Again he answered
without hesitation: “Building Two.”  While I was picking my jaw up off the floor, he
explained that murderers were the least likely to repeat their crime.  An equal number of
rapists, armed robbers, and child molesters would create dozens of new victims within days of being released.  Statistically, he said, it would be safer for society if the
condemned on Death Row were released. (note: the truly criminally insane are not housed at his facility)

The warden deferred to my listeners’ consciences and to their legislators when I asked
what it says about a society that would be safer if it freed those it had decided to kill
rather than another group of maximum security inmates.  The warden also said that it
was not his responsibility to consider whether state killing is a deterrent to murder, or
even to consider the guilt or innocence of those convicted of murder.  Rather, he said
his job was only to keep those convicted of capital murder locked up and to carry out their death sentences at the times determined by the courts and governor ....... all in our name.

(more articles for your entertainment or irritation available in BLOG ARCHIVE near top right of this page.)

HISTORY is NOT a CLOCK to be RESET

HISTORY is NOT a CLOCK to be RESET

Spring forward, fall back ... the easy way to remember the changes for daylight savings time. I much prefer the fall back change. I enjoy the illusion of having an hour to live over again. 'Tis a shame I must give it back every spring because I like the way we pass the time in the Nashville area. Compared to other places I have been, we are more relaxed here, and if I may indulge in a bit of hometown conceit, much more gracious.

But no matter how we manipulate our timepieces, the days go by as rapidly as ever, their inexorable changes upon our bodies confirmed by the faces in our mirrors.

Change is the fundamental principle of the universe: nothing is permanent.

All living things die, mountains erode, and eventually the sun will expand into a red giant star until it incinerates our Earth. And the irrevocable fact is once something has fundamentally changed, no amount of longing for it as it once was can reverse the march of time.

We should strive to preserve the best of what survives. But we cannot bring back that whose time has passed.

Yet, throughout recorded time, many strident conservatives have failed to realize history is not a clock that can be reset to accommodate their ideology. Much of history is a violent chronicle of the failures of reactionary conservatives. The greater their efforts have been to resist change, the greater the diminishment of what they sought to preserve. I know of no conservative institutional retrenchment effort which has succeeded in the long run.

Consider only a few of many historical examples:

*** If you are a Protestant here on the buckle of the Bible Belt, you are living proof of the failure of conservative reaction. The pagan Roman Empire tried to eradicate Christianity because the new cult was a threat to the established regime whose emperor was proclaimed to be divine, a divinity the Christians denied, such denial constituting the highest of treasons. End result: The Empire's capitol city became the center of the Catholic Church which would define Western Civilization for a thousand years.

But the Church of Rome's own subsequent conservative reaction to calls for internal reform eventually cost it half of Christendom via the Protestant Reformation. Christianity as a whole and Protestantism in particular exist today despite conservative attempts of the old regimes to suppress them.

*** The creation of the United States was the direct result of the failure of the British government's conservative colonial policy. Had the British Parliament been more liberal and open-minded to the petitions of its American colonies, we might still be loyal subjects of the British Crown.

The very language of the Declaration of Independence reveals it to be a lament of the last resort.

*** The Confederacy was a catastrophic failure of conservatism. The South still reaps the bitter fruits of its seduction by a doctrine of States Rights and Secession that promised relief from Federal intervention upon its slavery-based agricultural economic system. But secession delivered only the destruction of the very way of life it sought to preserve.

The conservative philosophy of States Rights and Secession was also the primary cause of increased concentration of power in the Federal government, the very antithesis of states rights doctrine. Without the need to coordinate a massive war effort to preserve the Union, the central government would have not introduced the first income tax nor so rapidly acquired the ability to direct the entire nation's focus and expenditure of its treasure.

The Confederacy failed on all counts at the cost of a half million American lives and the decimation of the Southern states. Only the individual acts of valor and courage from the Civil War deserve our reverence and respect, and certainly no reverence or romantic nostalgia should be extended to the memory of "The Cause" which included keeping millions of human beings in brutal slavery.


*** In 1919, conservative activists did manage to change the Constitution. But they could not turn back the clock to eliminate a personal choice that the people had long claimed as theirs alone. Prohibition's 18th Amendment was an utter failure. It also fertilized the seeds of organized crime via the bootlegging industry.

Remember this if you think the established practice of a woman's control over her body's reproductive capability can simply be legislated away.

*** The onus for the decline of neighborhood schools clearly falls upon the conservative opposition to simple desegregation. Rather than simply allow all students in the existing zones to attend the same schools, the tired old doctrine of States Rights was trotted out again to defend the morally bankrupt policy of state mandated racial segregation.

All those years of conservative legal arena resistance to desegregation were the catalysts that caused court-mandated busing as an imposed solution in the face of conservative persistent non-compliance with Brown v. Topeka Board of Education.

Conservative reaction to change once again failed to maintain the staus quo, offered no viable alternative, and caused busing of students with its ensuing huge impersonal comprehensive high schools which have no connection to any particular community.

In conclusion, it may be more comfortable to look into the past rather than forward into the unknown. But we do have some measure of control over the future if we act wisely in the present with our vision focused beyond the next earnings reports from Wall Street and not distorted by a sanitized rememberance of the way things used to be.  Contemporary conservative efforts, often buttressed by a fundamentalist Christian theology, seek to deny established scientific facts about the origin of the universe and the evolution of life on our planet, they seek to suppress women as individuals with full rights from control of their own bodies to receiving equal pay for equal work, they seek to deny the full rights of personhood to LGBT people, they are perverting the right to keep and bear arms into what is essentially a cult of gun worship, and many adhere to an ecomonic philosophy, supply side trickle down, which has never been proven to work and has amassed immense increases in public debt ,,, these are  basically the positions of the Fox News propaganda machine.  The most dangerous trend threatening American exceptionalism is these conservatives' blatant disrespect of science and its experts, the fact of climate change being the most notable and perilous for all our futures.    Although they have succeeded in the short term stagnation of the Federal Congress and hurling many state legislatures back into the 19th century, history shows these conservative attempts will fail in the long term just as have all conservative attempts to revise the facts of history and to turn back the clock of progress.

(more articles for your entertainment or irritation available in BLOG ARCHIVE near top right of this page.)

NOTE on the Post immediately below this

it may be important for the reader of "I Told You So ...." to be aware of the timeline of the post, AND its reference to the content being originally published in the old Nashville City Paper in 2003 ... that is two-thousand-THREE, when the text in black was originally published in the NCP .... and this post was actually made in 2006 on another blog I can no longer access, which is 8 years ago... so I am giving myself some credit for predicting better than even I imagined in 2003.

I TOLD YOU SO !!! THE FACTS AND 31% PREZ PROVE I WAS RIGHT !!!

I TOLD YOU SO !!! THE FACTS AND 31% PREZ PROVE I WAS RIGHT !!!

The following text in black was written and published in a daily newspaper BEFORE "Operation Iraqi Freedom" began. Like many other dissenting voices at that time, the facts have proven my concerns to have been CORRECT and the neocon "patriots" WRONG. Text in Red are inserts to remind readers of the original date and additions at the time of this publication.
********************************************

originally published in Spring of 2003 BEFORE Bush invaded Iraq:

In the 1950s, I grew up watching John Wayne (and others) WWII action genre movies on local TV. Those films made during the war were clearly patriotic propaganda for the home-front, and properly so, and many films of that genre made after the war were homages to the sacrifices by my parents' generation. There was never any doubt about who were the "good guys" and "bad guys." America and its allies were clearly justified in prosecuting an officially delcared war against brutal imperialistic and totalitarian aggression.

Our world today is no less brutal and there is certainly no shortage of "bad guys" of which Saddam Hussein is the current poster-boy. But the complexity of today's world is ironically evident since Saddam was not long ago a "good guy" when he used weapons of mass destruction (acquired with the help of the western powers) against the Iranian soldiers of Ayatollah Khomeini(remember the hostages ?) who was then the poster-boy of evil's menace to the world.

(published early Spring 2003)
President Bush now preaches it is Saddam who is so evil immediate military action is necessary, and W's supporters are constantly on TV seeking to rally a "Coalition of the Willing," true believers in the need for a first strike invasion of Iraq. Their message increasingly has the tone of religious zeal, a call to the faithful to mount a crusade ... the "willing" who proclaim a moral certitude so profound it supercedes any consideration of the cost of blood, treasure, and long-term consequences of an invasion and occupation of Iraq. ( 31% Prez rating PROVES how correct I was)The NeoCon hawks often deride opponents of immediate war as appeasers and morally too weak to take action against the evil Saddam. Apparently even conservative Pope John Paul II (R.I.P.)lacks such moral courage.

The debate is ever more being presented ("spun" by W's minions)as between those who believe in the necessary righteousness of the proposed war and those who are against the efforts of the righteous.
But any implication by the war zealots that opposition to the immediate invasion of Iraq is unpatriotic, weak-willed, and unconcerned about the safety of Americans is jingoism of the worst kind and creative of an unnecessary bitterness within our body politic.

The crusaders constantly assure us the vast oil reserves in Iraq have nothing to do with their desire to replace Saddam with a regime more friendly to American interests. The President says the oil wealth of Iraq will be used to build a model democracy in the Middle East. (this is really working out well, isn't it ???) But just who is going to buy and then resell the black gold beneath the sands of Iraq? Could it be American and British oil companies? And which of this administration's corporate supporters will land the huge contracts to rebuild what our militray destroys in Iraq?? (I was more correct than could be expected on this one, with VP Cheney's old company, Halliburton, reaping the lion's share ... and sadly, the Iraqi oil STILL is NOT flowing, current gasoline prices are soaring, and our serivce people are still dying and the taxpayers still paying)

But forget the oil ! We are told this war is about WMDs and Saddam's evil willingness to have them used against Americans by terrorists. If this is true, is the best strategy to protect Americans from Saddam's WMDs the deployment of hundreds of thousands of Americans closer to them? (actually far less than that, and now generally conceded as one of the reasons for the current mess) Is there any doubt Saddam would use WMDs at his disposal against an invading army intending to depose his regime ? But if Saddam does NOT use WMDs against our troops, where is the justification for invasion of Iraq ? (of course, we now know for sure there NEVER were any WMDs as the UN weapons inspectors asserted at the time, and the administration's hand-picked inspector, Mr Kay, came to the same conclusion. And the ultimate irony is the Director of CIA (Tenet) who confirmed false information to W was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his incompetance.)
And, will this Bush Administration, its Pentagon and Veterans Adminstration guarantee long-term care to our veterans from a war involving WMDs ?

Let us hope an internal coup against Saddam will make ground action unnecessary for our military personnel and that the new regime will comply with destruction of whatever WMDs (repeat, NONE) exist. In such a case, the saber rattling will have served a useful purpose.

But if oil and handing out huge construction contracts are not reasons for our military presence in Iraq, there would no need for occupation forces which would be prime targets for terrorists and a recruitment tool for new terrorists by those who hate the West. The battle may be short, but the aftermath may drag on for years and billions of taxpayer dollars and thousands of American lives.(how more correct could I have been on the last sentence???????)

Surely this administration does not have greater hubris than the Roman Empire which thought its destiny was to bring a higher level of civilization to the Middle East through military conquest. Are we that arrogant ? (obviously the neocon ideologues and W are) Are we willing for our troops to endure terrorist snipers and bombers as a consequence? (Insurgency, anyone ... if this dog-loving good ol' boy in Tennessee could foresee this possibilty, how stupid is this crowd now running the show ???) Do we really want a budding American Gestapo in the name of Homeland Security designed to thwart highly motivated terrorists which our current foreign policy of invading the Middle East will surely increase in numbers, and yes, increase their own sense of righteous zeal ?

Please remember the black text was written and published BEFORE the Invasion of Iraq.

(more articles for your entertainment or irritation available in BLOG ARCHIVE near top right of this page.)

A SOLUTION for W's IRAQ BOONDOGGLE

MONDAY, MAY 29, 2006

A SOLUTION for W's IRAQ BOONDOGGLE

W's idiotic, neocon rightwing-Christian ideologically-driven boondoggle in Iraq will be left to his successor to clean up ......... W said so, himself.

Any viable solution to the W-caused destabilization of Iraq MUST include the awareness of a major reality which has so far been ignored by the Western powers:

THERE IS NO SUCH NATION AS IRAQ in any meaningful historical perspective. Try to find it on a map created before WWI.

Iraq (Mesopotamia) was a creation of the European powers following the demise of the Ottoman Empire (the Turks who controlled much of the Middle East for centuries) after WWI because the OE sided with Germany and the losing side in the Great War. The Europeans in WWI encouraged an Arab Nationalism (remember Lawrence of Arabia???) to join them in fighting the Turkish Ottomans which had replaced the Arab Caliphate successors of the Prophet Mohammed's Islamic Empire. The Turks were the "occupiers" of Arab regions from which the Europeans promised deliverance.

Instead, the Europeans messed up the Middle East (just like they did Africa) by establishing borders for their creations, colonies and mandates which suited the European interests, and had little or nothing to do with the allegiances and any nascent sense of nationhood of the peoples who live in these regions.

Ethnic, religious, and language groups who have been mortal enemies for centuries found themselves grouped together within political boundaries which make no sense regarding the sane formation of a modern nation-state.

Iraq is a prime example of the European notion of its own cultural and religious superiority, a notion today dominant in the NeoCon Project for a New American Century(PNAC) which infuses the W administration with its hubris.

Iraq has three mutually hostile main groups: The Sunni Arab Muslims in the central and western regions, The Shia Arab Muslims in the east who are theologically aligned with the Iranians (Persians who speak farsi, not Arabic) and the poor Kurds ( the MOST sympathetic group to the West) who have found themselves divided up in parts of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran and equally hated by all three, and who are a distinct ethnic group with their own language.

The theological divide between the Sunni and Shia is older and more bitter than the Catholic-Protestant schism which engendered so many wars in Europe. The Sunni-Shia schism centers around different claims for the "true" lineage of the Prophet Mohammed's rightful successors.

Just imagine in the Christian world to ask Protestants to accept a government dominated by radical papists, or Catholics to accept a government dominated by Protestants who profess that the Holy Father is the AntiChrist. This should give you a greater appreciation of our system of separation of church and state. A secular government in the Christian world has proven to be a successful model, but in the Islamic world, there is no such thing ...... The government MUST be Islamic to be legitimate, and the Sunni-Shia divide over what is the true heritage of Islam is irreconcilable.

For W and his ignoramus crew to think a nation-state in which one of these Islamic groups is a significant minority could ever be stable by western terms is an idiocy beyond measure. The Sunni are the minority in Iraq, but wielded power under Saddam. The Shia are going to have their payback, no matter how long it takes. The Kurds want to be left alone and harbor desires to have their own country ........ And the USA will double-cross them again because Turkey has a huge Kurdish minority which would proclaim itself part of any independent Kurdistan, and the Turks are our needed allies.

SOLUTION to get Americans soldiers out of there and leave behind some semblance of stability:
Abandon W's foolish notion of an effective national government for all of Iraq, because the minority in it will be in a constant state of insurgency against the majority.

The only type of effective central government over regions with different religions, customs and languages is a TOTALITARIAN REGIME ......... There was a relative stability in Iraq under Saddam.

The former USSR kept order by a repressive regime ...... And when it collapsed the result was a fragmentation into so many different "republics" with strange names I defy you to name them all. And the multi-ethnic genocide in the former Yugoslavia began after the totalitarian regime collapsed. W's war has destabilized Iraq and placed our soldiers in harm's way between religious-political factions who are mortal enemies.

CREATE a CONFEDERATION of three Autonomous Regions ....... Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia .... Within which they have virtual total power over internal and cultural affairs. The Central Government ........ say under a UN mandate (of course dominated by USA interests) ....... will be in charge of Foreign Relations and the marketing of the country's oil resources and distributing the proceeds to the three regions.

The western powers should train up security forces that must remain in their own regions and whose primary function is the protection of the minorities in their regions and the guarantee of safe travel for individuals and secure transport for commerce. Western powers will guarantee no foreign invasions of Iraq or the incursion of one autonomous region into another.

The Western powers should also fund the relocation of minority populations in the three regions if any want to move (this will be cheaper by far than the current misguided course).

(more articles for your entertainment or irritation available in BLOG ARCHIVE near top right of this page.)