Category Archives: Politics

There is a reason for everything

Americana, Politics, War

Armored Car (1 of 1)

In the collapse of Mosul, we lost a lot of weapons, we lost 2,300 Humvees in Mosul alone. Iraq’s Prime Minister, Haider al-Abbadi.

“Iraqi forces left hundreds of U.S.-supplied vehicles behind when they “drove” out of Ramadi, but were not “driven out,” in the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey. And now most of them are melted hunks of metal. On Friday, U.S. Central Command announced that airstrikes near Ramadi destroyed “five ISIL armored vehicles, two ISIL tanks, two ISIL vehicles, an ISIL armored personnel carrier…five abandoned tanks, two abandoned armored personnel carriers and two abandoned armored vehicles.” Quite a haul, and note the emphasis on the word “abandoned.” Juan Cole at Informed Comment.

I don’t want to sound too cynical about this, but I can’t remember when we have been on the winning side of a Civil War. I guess we can say that we fought North Korea/China to a draw, but we were the clear losers in Vietnam and Nicaragua. Yemen is turning into a clusterfuck and now the Iraqi army we have been training for ten years isn’t ready to go out and die.

Every time we lose, all the players talk about how this time it was a special case. If only we hadn’t backed that catholic, Ngô Đình Diệm, to be president, or Hasan al-Malikii for Prime Minister, if only we had done this or hadn’t done that. There is always a special reason and the pattern gets lost in the ground clutter.

The people fighting in a Civil War have their reasons too, they aren’t just running around at random. Yeh, sure, we usually like one side better than the other, maybe it is closer to our version of morality like the Northern Alliance educating girls in Afghanistan, maybe it is more stable – short-term, at least – like the generals in Egypt and we think that because we like it, it is better, and, if it is better, the side we like will win. We are blind going in, we only know what people with a vested interest tell us, thinking we know what is happening is delusional.

Put it like this: If you was in the first grade and you bit somebody every week, they’d start to think of you as a biter. Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Art Mullen

Free Will vs. Compelled

Americana, Current Affairs, Family, Politics, Psychological Musings

Church-2678We had Easter at Michele’s familial home the weekend after the Indiana pizzeria said they wouldn’t cater a gay wedding. Sitting around, what I like to think of as the typical American family table, we had a couple of interesting conversations about politics that spilled over to religion (or religion that spilled over to politics). We were, very roughly, evenly split between Liberals and Conservatives and the Conservatives were spit between those who had gone to church that morning and those who hadn’t.

One thing we did agree on, surprisingly, is that people should have the right to be assholes, within limits, but that governments shouldn’t. To be clear, I wouldn’t say that we completely agreed, but we did come close to agreeing that there were differences between public acts in public spaces and private acts in private spaces. We all agreed that if a store is open for business, they have to serve everybody that walks in, but we differed on how restrictive they could be in the hypothetical catering of a wedding.

That conversation drew us into a – unexpected, for me – minefield. Maybe it shouldn’t have been unexpected, because I was the primary wanderer, owing to my fascination with religion’s special privileges. It is illegal for me to take peyote because I enjoy it, but, under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, I can take it if I am taking it as part of my religion. My question was Why should religion get special privileges? The only answer I got to this question was something along the lines of We are a Christian Nation, as if that would answer it. As the conversation staggered on, however, my question did get answered in a fashion.

To back up, when we are in Napa on a Sunday morning, or around a religious holiday like Christmas, Michele usually goes to church with her step-father, Jim (who was one of the church goers in the group, duh!). During the conversation, Michele’s stepfather said something, I don’t remember what, that led to Michele countering that she wasn’t raised as a Christian and wasn’t a Christian now. Jim was surprised, If you aren’t a Christian, why do you go to church with me? Michele said that she went because she enjoyed it. That was even more surprising to Jim.

Isn’t that why you go? asked Michele. No, I don’t go because I enjoy it, I go because, as a Christian, I have to go, Jim  said, laughing in a dismissive way as if that should be self-evident. In a way it was the answer that I had been looking for.

Still, not being a believer, Jim’s answer shocked me. Actually, I am a little reluctant to say Not being a believer, because I think of myself as a believer in A Divine that transcends what we know of the ordinary world. I don’t believe that science knows all the big answers and we are now only working on filling in the details, I don’t believe the world is all material and we are only a result of our DNA. I do believe that there is A Mystery, I’m just not a believer in any particular religious dogma (and I especially don’t believe that there is a personal God that cares how we act, that holds a grudge if we don’t go to church, that is interested in how we have sex or what we ate for lunch).

My life is not governed by a god telling me to live it a certain way. Not being a believer in that dogma means that I don’t get my morality from somebody’s interpretation of what God wants us to do. The church goers were pretty adamant that, without God telling us the rules or providing the moral guidelines, to say it in a little less dogmatic way, we would have no morality. Michele said that she is a Scientist and her morality is based on the scientific principle that acts have consequences. I sided with Michele and added that I liked the Buddhist Eightfold Path that includes don’t harm others and the Church goers looked at us like we must not have any moral principles at all, like maybe we were OK with serial killing.

Looking across the table, I could almost understand that somebody could believe that they weren’t homophobic, but their God is and they have no choice but to follow along. That gulf between our beliefs, between our belief structures,  seems much bigger than I had imagined.

They are not the only bad guys

Americana, Politics

Farmer's MarketIn about 1968 my best friend came back from Seattle. I remember him showing up at our flat in – what was known as – Lower Piedmont after being gone about a year. There are two things I remember about that first visit, he brought the first joint I had every seen and he kept saying It takes two to tangle. I was reminded of that a couple of days ago, when I friend posted a online petition to the Republicans in Congress.

The petition may have been telling – asking? – the Republicans not to invite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress, or may have been on Tom Cotton’s stupid letter. I don’t remember. But I do remember thinking that a Democrat, in a Blue State, signing a petition to the Republicans was a waste of time. It got me thinking why would someone put out a petition like that.

Often, the email or linked website wants you to send some money after signing the petition, so I think the petitions are often a pretext to raise money. That does not diminish their outrage, however. Sometimes they are just for the outrage, usually the outrage they want us to get. Usually over some stupid thing the Republicans did. Don’t get me wrong, at this point my disdain for the Republicans is almost boundless. But sometimes I get a email that is just a sky-is-falling scream. Oh my God! look what some sheriff in Texas did to some poor black woman.

Today, a got a petition for the Koch Brothers. Really! It said Our Message to The Koch Brothers. Your reckless spending is doing nothing for our country – in fact it is hurting our democracy. Now, the Koch Brothers are not going to look at that and say, Oh my God, Steve Stern is against us, let’s change our behavior, even if there were five million Steve Sterns. This is really a message for Steve Stern, Let’s make him afraid so he will stay on board.

Fear is the ultimate motivator and, every day, I get messages trying to scare me. Every day, I get a mailbox full of anti-rightwing propaganda saying be very afraid of bigots, be afraid of gun loving killers, be afraid of rich tax cheats. Everyday, they are telling me how bad the other side is, They are lairs. They are not Liberal and Fair and Open to diversity like we are. They are not kind and gentle like us. They are Bad, maybe even Evil. Dislike them, More!

I like to think that it is just the Right that campaigns on fear, but my side is just as virulent. Apparently, It does take two to tangle.

Reading about Tom Cotton

Americana, Politics

e9f5c0b7f

In reading about Tom Cotton, the unhinged Senator who authored the truly wacko letter to Iran inferring that the Obama Administration couldn’t negotiate a permanent deal, I realized that what most disturbed me was that he had been an officer in the Army.

I was in the Army and know, first hand, that the Army is chock full of idiots, so being bothered about Lieutenant Tom Cotton surprised me. I was  was disturbed that a person so lacking in common sense, would be charged with leading troops into the meat grinder but I hadn’t been disturbed that he was a Senator. That’s what surprised me, my low standards for a Senator, my lack of surprise that a person of such low common sense would be a Senator.

That is more than a little sad.

 

ISIS and “Islamic-terrorists”

Politics

ISIS-6591

My first inclination is to agree with President Obama when he leaves Islamic out while talking about ISIS. After all, some Republicans have had taken this to mean that Obama is an apologist for radical Islamic terrorists which is such a simplistic overkill that I automatically default to Oh, shut up you stupid shit, Obama is right, it is not Islam that is the problem, it is these particular wackos. Still, as I think about it, I am starting to think Obama is wrong.

Let me quickly say that I like Obama – alot – and don’t think he is too soft on ISIS. I do understand that Obama wants to be clear that the United States is not in a war on Islam, itself, however, ISIS think they are Muslims. I think that Obama – and probably alot of people who haven’t thought about it  – is confusing any one Muslim or group of Muslims or Violent Islamic Fundamentalists with All Muslims. Of course they are not. They only represent themselves. But that doesn’t mean that they aren’t Muslim.

As an aside, the whole thing of labeling somebody we don’t like as a Terrorists is lazy and mis-informative. Why are they terrorists? because they behead people? The Saudis beheaded 79 people in 2013 alone, publicly in a square, in downtown Riyadh. Is it because they behead people and made a tape of it to terrorize potential future targets? If killing people to terrorize the survivors, almost everybody at war is a terrorist. The whole point of our Shock and Awe campaign in Iraq was to scare the survivors. That is why we publish videos of our smart bombs, accurately, killing people; to terrorize. So, when I use Terrorist here, it is just because it is the conventional tag and I am too lazy to come up with a more accurate name. End aside.

But being Muslim isn’t what makes  ISIS Islamic Terrorists. Doing what they are doing in the name of Islam, because of their Islam – granted, it is only their Islam – is what makes them Islamic Terrorists. Timothy McVeigh is a Christian but he is not a Christian Terrorist because he didn’t blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in the name of his Christianity. Paul Hill, the Army of God killer who killed Dr. John Britton and James Barrett at their abortion clinic, is a Christian Terrorist because he killed as a result of his idea of Christianity and he killed in the name of Jesus.