In a world full of perceptions and point of view, there are no clear delineations of good and evil, right and wrong. Lines may be drawn for taking sides but in war, there is no winning side or losing side. We all lose. We all suffer. We all believe in what we're fighting for and we all have reasons for believing the way we do. These are just people. We're all just people. People just trying to make it day by day, the only way we know how. It's too bad the effects of war aren't more tangible in our own waking lives. Maybe we'd think more about the ultimate costs of heavy artillery in countries far, far away in which the majority of our own tax paying (and war funding) populace can't find on a map. Or maybe we'd realize the fragility of life and appreciate the simple details within.
With that said, from my own standpoint, it doesn't mean I support the Taliban or accept their ultra-conservative and often violent traditions. Anything but. Their 12th century approach to religion and culture is mindblowing. Burqas and stoning, music is forbidden, girls cannot go to school, and yet they can assimilate technology enough to fly planes into buildings... Yes, it is backwards, hypocritical, and morally wrong. But how many things in our own culture can that be said about? Disagree? Argue with me. However, regardless of how you view anyone's culture, bombing it to smithereens doesn't teach them anyone about democracy or human rights. Instead, it reinforces their hatred and their misconceptions about the 'good' side of American culture. Without education and a little bit of compassion, there is no breaching the barrier of miscommunication, distrust, and a lot of bad history. There must be a new line drawn. We either continue to play these war games of avenging the cycle of atrocities, (to which our 21st century approach is no different than our own 12th century, now just revamped with titanium and computer chips), or we stop playing these ridiculous games (anyone ever realize the irony of the card game 'War'?) and take to a new level of existence.
Everyone knows the quote about 'An eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind' but how many of us actually believe in it? Pretty soon, we'll all just be stumbling around in the dark together, punching and screaming at each other, not realizing we just added yet another stark similarity between us. I don't know what the answer is. I know we've made promises, and we're breaking them. Seems like it's a losin' either way. We got ourselves in this mess and now we can't get out. Anyone notice the recent mile marker that this is the longest American war yet? I mean, I know the majority of us on Facebook weren't alive during Vietnam, but shit, we're going for the long haul in the Middle East and we aint even protesting anymore. No one cares so long as it doesn't interfere with our own precious pointless lives. Even with this massive federal deficit...
The DOD requires $708 billion dollars to operate in 2011. And I guess a job is a job, even when you're getting shot down and blown up. Does OSHA know about this? The Peace Corps got $400 million in 2010. The federal budget for our failing education system is $ 78 billion. The states are on their own. So how does our world work where America, the land of the free and the brave, spends more money on blowing up the world than it does fixing its own problems? Check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures Make your own conclusions. I find it odd that we can't find more constructive ways of spending tax dollars. You know, like... convincing people we're really not that bad.
I know we have schools and hospitals to rebuild in both Afghanistan and Iraq since we're the ones who tore em down. We have a new government to build (is that odd or is that just me?). We're training the new non-Taliban military. The women and children are taking back their lives. Villages of people enjoying music and dance again. But I also know we're not winning the 'war'. What does war mean anyway? There aint no front-lines anymore. There's drones and ambushes. Faceless no-name bodies, and its just another casualty of what? What are we fighting for again? Opium is at its highest level of production and usage in Afghanistan. New recruits and supplies are steadily flowing over the border from so-called allies. Bodybags with our sons and daughters are still being shipped back to our hometowns. We let the parents mourn while we send freshies back over. We throw tax money at GM to reward them for fucking up and yet we can't get decent armor shields to protect the Hummers from IEDs. We're compromising on the very things we told them we wouldn't, because it's exactly why we went to Afghanistan in the first place.
Time Magazine put out an article in mid August about what happens if we leave Afghanistan, putting the emphasis mostly on what happens to the women if we leave. Interesting article if you get a chance to read. It's one of the reasons I half-heartedly supported our efforts there when we began in 2001. I mean, you know you're going in, you try to make the best of a really bad situation. That was one of the few things. There's plenty of debate about the role of democracy and women's rights. Women and girls have made major strides in gaining freedoms otherwise never granted like girls going to school or women being seen in public. Or is that true? Does it work and how long will it last? Unfortunately, as we get distracted by other wars (Iraq? Iran? Pakistan? North Korea? Libya? Sudan? Who's next?) and (as expected) lose interest in things we started and don't want to finish, details are becoming obscured. The reasons not so clear. Read!! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelle-chen/emtimeem-pictures-afghan_b_669862.html Even if we stuck around to help the women out, I have to ask, are we actually doing more good than bad by being there? Can we force democracy on a people who are not ready for it yet? Certainly, can we force rather than teach? Can we make them see women as equals? Can we subject a culture to our ideals when we can't uphold them ourselves? Equality? Freedom? Democracy? I'm not sure we can say we truly value those yet either.
So with all that... I don't know what is left to be said. We're in a rut? I mean, as civilized as we'd like to call ourselves, conscious beings of religious basis (God's chosen species right?), we sure have a shit load of problems to deal with. Our egos, to say the least. With all our technological advances, our ability to communicate, all our cultures and moral doctrine, we've got the world falling in on our heads with nowhere to begin. What exactly is the root of our problems? Our very nature? America has been a world power for a couple centuries now, but it can't last unless we can change. We've simply lost focus. Maybe the change needs to come from within. Power in itself... why exactly do we need to dominate and crush? Neo-colonialism has gotten us nowhere but instability with a few wealthy folks in power. The rest of us weep and sow... It's time to stop putting things in little categories, to stop taking these ridiculous sides, to stop looking for enemies within ourselves. It's time to accept that we're all in this together on this tiny speck of nothing floating in space. This is all there is and this is all we have...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
Source: http://conceptualperception.blogspot.com/2010/08/your-war-is-next.html
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Your War Is Next
Monday, August 23, 2010
"Three years of intense protest activity at the University of Wisconsin reached terrible superlatives on August 24th of this year."
An explosion so powerful it broke windows six blocks away, and so loud it woke up citizens over six miles from campus reduced the side of the new addition to Sterling Hall to a shambles. The wall disappeared, and steel-reinforced concrete dangled as if it were limp spaghetti.
Across Lathrop Drive, the Old Chemistry building sat windowless, and up the hill, Birge Hall was a mass of shattered lab equipment and glass. Days later, the dislodged ceiling in B-10 Commerce fell in on a group of bankers attending a seminar.
The blast killed UW research assistant Robert Fassnacht, leaving a wife and three children without their father....
Years of research were destroyed in the blast. Though the bomb was aimed at the Math research Center, it takes up only three floors of the building. The physics department occupied the basement and other offices in the new wing, and the astronomy department used the top floor and roof. The explosion reduced to tiny fragments the carefully ground mirrors in the two telescopes on the roof of Sterling Hall.
Heavily damaged was a particle accelerator operated by the Physics Department in the basement of the building. Only about 15 labs in the United States possess the kind of accelerator and associated computer system as the one that was in Sterling Hall.
Ironically, while physics and astronomy research was set back as much as 12 or 15 years in some cases, the Math research Center was back in operation the day after the blast.
Serious doubts have entered into the minds of many scientists working at the University of Wisconsin. The despair which accompanies seeing decades of work go up in smoke runs deep now, especially since there is every reason to believe that it could just as easily happen again.
“Clearly, you can’t just let the rubble lie, because then they’ve won hands down. But on the other hand if you get all blown up again in a year, it’s really futile,” said Professor Robert Borchers, as he surveyed the bombed-out shell of what used to be his nuclear physics laboratory.
Will the effect of such despair be severe? It could well be. According to Borchers, “lots of people have simply talked about getting out of academic life. I think that’s a very real possibility.”
Source: http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/08/three-years-of-intense-protest-activity.html
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Islam Under Obama: 'Bitter clingers' revisited
By Michael Berry
© 2010
President Obama endorsing the building of a mosque near Ground Zero last week came as no surprise to anyone who has watched his opinions and actions regarding religion – make that, his opinion and action regarding one religion: Islam.
Barack Obama's views on freedom of religion appear to depend on which religion is under attack. Americans were shocked when, during his first and very symbolic foreign trip as president, he told an overseas audience of Muslims: "I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear." A review of his famously lengthy list of political promises yields no such promise when he was on the campaign trail, and there was no precedent from prior presidents to make such a claim. That he first chose to visit not nations, but followers of a religion, is telling. He frequently refers to outreach, tolerance and commitment to people based on their religion, rather than their nationality. There is no such thing as a "Muslim world," but rather a world made up of nations. Singling out followers of a religion as some sort of international coalition is odd, and troubling.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden, on a trip to the Middle East to mark the first anniversary of Obama's pledge above, was asked why he was visiting the Middle East. He coughed up a guard-down gem, which embarrassed the administration terribly, by saying, "When I became the NASA administrator, or before I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things: ... [T]hird and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering." Nations are thereby identified by Obama as important based on having Muslim majorities, and space exploration has been supplanted by Muslim confidence-building. America, we have a problem.
A jaw-dropping expose on the six-month undercover operation that revealed the true terror-supporting nature of CAIR: "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America." It's also available in electronic form at reduced price through Scribd.
Contrast that with his views toward Christians. During his presidential campaign, a hidden microphone captured candidate Obama deriding heartland voters who didn't embrace his hope and change message as bitter Christians clinging to "guns and God." Might that have been an apt description of many of the Muslims worldwide to whom he spent so much time apologizing? In recent memory, terrorism around the world seems to have been conducted in the name of Islam more than any other religion. That Muslim fatwas are still issued, that cartoonists cannot ply their stock in trade, humor, regarding Muhammad or Islam, that Israel and America are threatened daily in the name of Islam, these are not even surprising any longer. Any religion that uses such uncivil methods to quiet criticism doesn't win much sympathy. Calling for an end to such aggressive measures would go far to "fight against negative stereotypes wherever they appear."
News that mosques have been used as staging grounds for al-Qaida and prep courses for violent fundamentalists calls into question whether guns and religion aren't mixing in some places of worship here in America. Americans shuddered when, on American soil, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan killed 13 and wounded 32 more, having become a radicalized Muslim in the months prior to the attack. He was in continuous contact with Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, whose sermons were also attended by three of the 9/11 hijackers. The Christmas Day bomber met with al-Awlaki and later told the FBI under questioning that the imam was one of his al-Qaida trainers. An imam. Operating out of a mosque. In the name of Islam. Instigating terrorism. On American soil. Negative stereotype toward Islam, no?
In November of last year, four mosques were raided, along with a Muslim "charity," for serving as fronts for the Iranian government.
On May 7, 2009, the first National Day of Prayer of his administration, President Obama broke with tradition by failing to hold a White House ceremony to honor the day. Earlier this year he marked the second National Day of Prayer of his administration with the same inaction. The president did, though, hold an Iftar dinner for Muslims, the feast breaking the daily fast during Ramadan, the holy month of Islam. He invited ambassadors from Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia to celebrate the Muslim event.
It was at this event that he expressed his support for the mosque near the site of where the Twin Towers were taken down by Muslim terrorists. While his press secretary declined to state the president's position on the issue earlier last week, calling it a question for "local decision-making," for some reason the president broke his silence during Ramadan observance and spoke out. Such off-teleprompter bombs have caused his press team headaches in the past, but they suggest Obama's unscripted, core beliefs and expose a rare – if ugly – honesty in his calculated public positions.
Referring to rather reasonable police behavior as "acting stupidly" without knowledge of what exactly happened, he showed his true colors on issues of race and law enforcement. A beer summit won't likely soothe feelings on his mosque comments, nor boost his failing ratings.
The bigger issue remains President Obama's apparent antipathy toward Christians and their traditions and his steadfast defense of all things Islamic. To quote President Obama: "It's not surprising, then, that they get bitter, and they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant." Truer words were never spoken, but not about Americans. Perhaps President Obama should take this message to the parts of the world where they apply by revisiting the site of his Muslim world speeches. Ramadan might be a perfect time to do so.
Obama's supposed standing among Muslims of the world and his title as the president of the nation hurt by the Muslim terrorist attacks give him a unique platform to call on Muslim leaders to abandon the mosque. It would be a moment of real leadership for Obama. Accepting his call would be a strong statement to Americans that Muslims have considered the feelings of the families of 9/11 victims and seek peace, understanding and healing. Such a gesture would go a long way toward that. If the $100 million slated for the mosque were donated by Muslims to the victims of 9/11, a Nobel Prize for Peace might be in order for the president. This one would have been earned.
One Republican congressman dismissed Obama's support for the mosque as simply "caving to political correctness." With 68 percent of Americans opposed to building the mosque, and the families of victims growing more vocal in their opposition, such a move may cost more Democrats their seats in November, when a political election decides who gets to make policies. Expect many Democrats to be booted out of office over this issue alone. Maybe then we can stop calling moves that are opposed by a majority of Americans "politically correct," because they are not.
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Michael Berry is the host of the "Michael Berry Show," a daily radio talk show in Houston. You can read his blog or his Facebook fan page.
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Source: http://bayouperspective.blogspot.com/2010/08/islam-under-obama-bitter-clingers.html