Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label terrorism. Show all posts
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong. ~ Richard Armour, American author and poet
When will the intelligent among us wake up and realize the archaic two-party system which runs our country is in a shambles? We can’t even have a civil debate on the issues anymore because as soon as an idea is labeled “Democrat” or “Republican,” half the political-minded population stops listening. This further enables the career politician since they no longer have to actually address the issues with an eye to making the world better for us all. In order to hold office, they are required to simply toe the party line, pay lip service to “change” and pocket the obscene amounts of cash flowing from lobbyists and big business, all seeking to secure their positions of power at the expense of the common good. And a vote for any of the potentially forward-thinking third-party candidates is, as we are regularly reminded by the Big Two, a throw-away vote for the “other” party. Someday, I would like to be able to vote for a candidate who actually has a decent chance of being elected, not against one, and not simply have to choose between the lesser of two evils.
I freely admit I broke down in 2008 and registered as a Democrat – my first party affiliation in more than a dozen years, although I have voted in every election since high school. My turning-point issue was the war in Iraq and I (naively?) believed Obama when he promised to bring the troops home. Unfortunately, I didn’t read the fine print: those troops would then be sent to Afghanistan to further the misguided “war on terror” as we destroy yet another country and its culture.
The economy is in the tank, thanks in large part to Republican tax cuts for their big business cronies, but with more than a little help from the Democrat’s entitlement mandates that, while imposed with the best of intentions, have little basis in fiscal reality. Personal greed has become a virtue and all the hand-wringing over shrinking retirement accounts and Wall Street losses are laughable to those of us who can barely pay the rent and for whom retirement is a fairy tale.
Incessant union demands for ever-higher wages and benefits, never mind the shrinking industrial base, have urged along the collapse of many a business, not just the stuck-in-the-fifties automakers. Too many lax workers are propped up by union protections that encourage their entitlement mentality while corporate greed concentrates on shareholder return, not living wages or quality product that does not decimate the environment.
Healthcare reform, the debate du jour, will never be possible as long as the insurance industry and big pharmaceuticals continue to feed the coffers of both parties. Rumor and fear-mongering from both sides will see to that. But it looks good in the campaign to point out one’s support or opposition to any one of the latest alternative plans tossed into the mix. It shows a candidate cares…about whom is never specified. And as I have noted in earlier posts, universal insurance does not equate to universal healthcare.
Public schools are floundering, trying to be all things to students whose parents have taught them they can do no wrong, and little else. Education – true learning of critical thinking skills, not just how to land a high-paying job – has taken a back seat to nutrition, basic healthcare, sexual mores, character building and college résumé padding as parents abdicate more and more of their duties to a system they refuse to support financially.
Personal responsibility has become anathema as individuals look for someone outside themselves to blame for any inconvenience or harm, be it hair loss, high blood pressure or vanishing jobs. A society that measures its worth in the “stuff” it consumes is not long for this world, as the United States is just now learning, painfully. Self-discipline, moderation and compassion are as out-moded as the Model T.
In ancient Rome, emperors used community food give-aways and gladiator competitions to distract the populous from the corruption which plagued the government. Today, our “cakes and circuses” are the bombardment of celebrity “news,” the latest titillating political sex scandal, never-ending sports seasons by increasingly drug-enhanced teams, and what color the inane terror alert system has reached for today. Fear mongering is the modus operandi of both Republicans and Democrats; a people on edge, filled with ceaseless dread, are more easily swayed to follow someone, anyone, who can relieve such anxiety.
Of course these are all generalizations. There are good people, kind people, those who look to better community first rather than self, but I fear they are becoming fewer and more isolated. We don’t scream loudly enough to be heard above the raucous din which passes for public discourse. And where does that leave those of us who can see the chaos for what it is? Hopeless, in despair, ready to crawl into a cave and pull the boulder over the entrance…I’ve considered it, often, and if I could find a way to escape, I would.
I don’t have any answers. I wish I did.
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. ~Plato
Friday, March 20, 2009
Arrogance
Empire building, greed, thirst for oil, misplaced media-stoked fear of those who are different, Western superiority complex – whatever the true motivation, one can only look with wonder on an individual, or a nation, which exerts the kind of arrogance displayed by the United States in such historical proportion since the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The country’s collective, “How dare they?!” launched itself against first Afghanistan and then Iraq in a blinding fury that overlooked not only any reasonable justification for such action, but any discernable goal as well. The bogey of terrorism and the oft-trumpeted weapons of mass destruction were effective smokescreens which allowed the U.S. military machine to invade sovereign nations in a supposedly defensive posture. The saying, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter,” variously attributed to people from Samuel Adams to Ronald Reagan, holds true; it all depends on which side of the battle one stands. Rather than admitting that the 9/11 attackers may have reasonable grievances against Western nations, President Bush grouped their alleged homelands in a tenuous “axis of evil” that we needed to destroy. This makes about as much sense as attacking the state of New York after the Oklahoma bombings because Timothy McVeigh was born there, yet such illogical reasoning has served the White House well for eight years.
Now we are mired in Iraq, in a nation devastated economically, structurally and politically by our sadly misguided efforts to save them from themselves, and to impose democracy. Western interests have consistently ignored the lessons of history showing that democracy cannot be asserted from the top down, it must grow from the people up to their chosen form of government. In Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, the reconstruction effort’s senior advisor for higher education, John Agresto, states:
Saddam Hussein was no better, and no worse, than countless other autocrats throughout the world. Under his rule, Iraqis had food, jobs, education, electricity, and healthcare. In a review of a draft report “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” to be issued by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, New York Times columnists James Glanze and T. Christian Miller note that:
“How can we care about democracy now when we don’t even have electricity?” an unemployed oil engineer asks Chandrasekaran (174). But as the author points out, sadly and eloquently, in his depressing indictment of the occupation of Iraq, what the people of the country wanted and needed was not the measuring stick of progress. The ruling Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and D.C.-appointed Viceroy L. Paul Bremer were more concerned with sending favorable reports back to the White House, particularly during the campaign years, than with any tangible improvements in the lives of the people they were supposed to help. From the beginning, the rebuilding teams (rebuilding what we bombed and destroyed, in large part), lived in almost total isolation from the neighboring city. Saddam’s Republican Palace and the gated riverfront Green Zone became a “Little America,” where the staff lived in a “bubble” which allowed them to continue to believe their efforts were necessary, accurate and productive while the “real Baghdad,” full of decay and debris and the lingering odor of explosives, was just beyond the Hesco barriers and concrete slabs which protected the conclave.
How could such arrogance prevail in the face of dissonant reality for so long? Political pressure from home was intense. In a statement eerily reminiscent of Bush’s 2003 “Mission Accomplished” banner, on June 28, 2004, the CPA announced the end of American occupation of Iraq and theoretically ceded authority to the fledgling Iraqi government. The reconstruction forces held a celebratory wrap-party and departed, confident in their success. They left behind a devastated country in the throes of an unacknowledged (in the West) civil and religious war which is still blamed on an isolated insurgency.
The money spent on the CPA’s less than effective work is staggering. According to Glanze and Miller, “By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money” (1). Chandrasekaran and “Hard Lessons” both cite the lack of organized preparation for the vast undertaking needed to complete the reconstruction efforts, as well as continued ignorance – intentional or simply misguided – of the needs of the Iraqi people. The CPA and Western forces repeatedly “missed opportunities” and “neglected the big picture” in favor of glowing reports for the White House and the U.S. media (Chandrasekaran 278, 314; Glanze 2).
The saddest part of that “big picture” is the number of lives, American coalition and Iraqi, which have been ruined by this ill-fated effort at empire building. U.S. headlines are just beginning to report on the long-term issues faced by returning soldiers, from physical challenges due to combat injuries, to mental and emotional trauma. The loss of life on both sides is nearly incalculable, as the numbers depend on who is doing the reporting. CBS News reports the number of U.S. Iraqi war dead surpassed the number of lives lost in the 9/11 attacks (2,973, with some 6,200 injured) on September 2, 2006, while a Department of Defense count of American casualties in Iraq stands at 4,200 confirmed dead and 30,871 wounded as of December 6, 2008. Documented Iraqi civilian deaths have reached 98,000; the number of wounded does not appear to be available.
As Chandrasekaran points out, many of the Iraqi youth are driven to join the insurgency out of anger at Western occupation, dire economic straits, and fear. It would seem we are adding to the number of “terrorists” as quickly as we are killing them. But the arrogance continues and Washington continues to insist we are winning…something.
Our Western show of superiority and strength in the Middle East has done nothing to quell the stealthy work of terrorists, however they may be defined. We continue to profile airline passengers and strangers on the street; we dutifully take off our shoes to board a plane; we cede more and more civil rights to a Department of Homeland Security that is not even secure in its own operations. As Jean Baudrillard notes in his essay “The Spirit of Terrorism,” the Other must change the rules in order to win against overwhelming military might, and they have done so. In our arrogance, we just refuse to admit it.
It seems the only hope that remains of escaping from Iraq, or any other formless “war on terror,” is as expressed in Daniel Alacón’s Lost City Radio: “What does the end of a war mean if not that one side ran out of men willing to die?” he asks. “When enough of them died, it was finished” (40, 155). If only the arrogance could die with them.
December 15, 2008
Empire building, greed, thirst for oil, misplaced media-stoked fear of those who are different, Western superiority complex – whatever the true motivation, one can only look with wonder on an individual, or a nation, which exerts the kind of arrogance displayed by the United States in such historical proportion since the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The country’s collective, “How dare they?!” launched itself against first Afghanistan and then Iraq in a blinding fury that overlooked not only any reasonable justification for such action, but any discernable goal as well. The bogey of terrorism and the oft-trumpeted weapons of mass destruction were effective smokescreens which allowed the U.S. military machine to invade sovereign nations in a supposedly defensive posture. The saying, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter,” variously attributed to people from Samuel Adams to Ronald Reagan, holds true; it all depends on which side of the battle one stands. Rather than admitting that the 9/11 attackers may have reasonable grievances against Western nations, President Bush grouped their alleged homelands in a tenuous “axis of evil” that we needed to destroy. This makes about as much sense as attacking the state of New York after the Oklahoma bombings because Timothy McVeigh was born there, yet such illogical reasoning has served the White House well for eight years.
Now we are mired in Iraq, in a nation devastated economically, structurally and politically by our sadly misguided efforts to save them from themselves, and to impose democracy. Western interests have consistently ignored the lessons of history showing that democracy cannot be asserted from the top down, it must grow from the people up to their chosen form of government. In Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone, the reconstruction effort’s senior advisor for higher education, John Agresto, states:
Freedom, democracy and rights are not magic words. The transfer of sovereignty will bring about some form of ‘democracy.’ But a liberal democracy, with real notions of liberty and equality and open opportunity – without strongmen,, or
sectarian or sectional opposition – well, I think that’s doubtful (321)
Saddam Hussein was no better, and no worse, than countless other autocrats throughout the world. Under his rule, Iraqis had food, jobs, education, electricity, and healthcare. In a review of a draft report “Hard Lessons: The Iraq Reconstruction Experience,” to be issued by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, New York Times columnists James Glanze and T. Christian Miller note that:
And by the time of the security improvements in 2007 and 2008, electricity output had, at best, a precarious 10 percent lead on its levels under Saddam Hussein; oil production was still below prewar levels; and access to potable
water had increased by about 30 percent, although with Iraq’s ruined piping
system it was unclear how much reached people’s homes uncontaminated. (4)
“How can we care about democracy now when we don’t even have electricity?” an unemployed oil engineer asks Chandrasekaran (174). But as the author points out, sadly and eloquently, in his depressing indictment of the occupation of Iraq, what the people of the country wanted and needed was not the measuring stick of progress. The ruling Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and D.C.-appointed Viceroy L. Paul Bremer were more concerned with sending favorable reports back to the White House, particularly during the campaign years, than with any tangible improvements in the lives of the people they were supposed to help. From the beginning, the rebuilding teams (rebuilding what we bombed and destroyed, in large part), lived in almost total isolation from the neighboring city. Saddam’s Republican Palace and the gated riverfront Green Zone became a “Little America,” where the staff lived in a “bubble” which allowed them to continue to believe their efforts were necessary, accurate and productive while the “real Baghdad,” full of decay and debris and the lingering odor of explosives, was just beyond the Hesco barriers and concrete slabs which protected the conclave.
How could such arrogance prevail in the face of dissonant reality for so long? Political pressure from home was intense. In a statement eerily reminiscent of Bush’s 2003 “Mission Accomplished” banner, on June 28, 2004, the CPA announced the end of American occupation of Iraq and theoretically ceded authority to the fledgling Iraqi government. The reconstruction forces held a celebratory wrap-party and departed, confident in their success. They left behind a devastated country in the throes of an unacknowledged (in the West) civil and religious war which is still blamed on an isolated insurgency.
The money spent on the CPA’s less than effective work is staggering. According to Glanze and Miller, “By mid-2008, the history says, $117 billion had been spent on the reconstruction of Iraq, including some $50 billion in United States taxpayer money” (1). Chandrasekaran and “Hard Lessons” both cite the lack of organized preparation for the vast undertaking needed to complete the reconstruction efforts, as well as continued ignorance – intentional or simply misguided – of the needs of the Iraqi people. The CPA and Western forces repeatedly “missed opportunities” and “neglected the big picture” in favor of glowing reports for the White House and the U.S. media (Chandrasekaran 278, 314; Glanze 2).
The saddest part of that “big picture” is the number of lives, American coalition and Iraqi, which have been ruined by this ill-fated effort at empire building. U.S. headlines are just beginning to report on the long-term issues faced by returning soldiers, from physical challenges due to combat injuries, to mental and emotional trauma. The loss of life on both sides is nearly incalculable, as the numbers depend on who is doing the reporting. CBS News reports the number of U.S. Iraqi war dead surpassed the number of lives lost in the 9/11 attacks (2,973, with some 6,200 injured) on September 2, 2006, while a Department of Defense count of American casualties in Iraq stands at 4,200 confirmed dead and 30,871 wounded as of December 6, 2008. Documented Iraqi civilian deaths have reached 98,000; the number of wounded does not appear to be available.
As Chandrasekaran points out, many of the Iraqi youth are driven to join the insurgency out of anger at Western occupation, dire economic straits, and fear. It would seem we are adding to the number of “terrorists” as quickly as we are killing them. But the arrogance continues and Washington continues to insist we are winning…something.
Our Western show of superiority and strength in the Middle East has done nothing to quell the stealthy work of terrorists, however they may be defined. We continue to profile airline passengers and strangers on the street; we dutifully take off our shoes to board a plane; we cede more and more civil rights to a Department of Homeland Security that is not even secure in its own operations. As Jean Baudrillard notes in his essay “The Spirit of Terrorism,” the Other must change the rules in order to win against overwhelming military might, and they have done so. In our arrogance, we just refuse to admit it.
It seems the only hope that remains of escaping from Iraq, or any other formless “war on terror,” is as expressed in Daniel Alacón’s Lost City Radio: “What does the end of a war mean if not that one side ran out of men willing to die?” he asks. “When enough of them died, it was finished” (40, 155). If only the arrogance could die with them.
December 15, 2008
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