Some things just make you feel good

The Washington Post has a story about the injured daughter of an Iraqi interpreter being brought to the US military hospital after a car bomb. It is the sort of thing that makes you feel really good. But it also makes me wonder, if we spent more time saving the lives of Iraqi citizens, the everyday people caught up in a fight with the extremists, would we win the war for their hearts?

I cannot help thinking that in our past actions we have unsettled the region and harmed many people by destroying the social stability. We should be giving them a social structure that helps them - reliable electricity, water, and sewage; an education system; and decent health care.

When it rains

I am beginning to have some real sympathy for Job. Every time I think that the bad news must be done, I get another item to deal with. First my Dad gets cancer…

Then it was my job;, improve my performance in the only area not outstanding or get another job. That was a blow to the ego. Never mind that I have been working hard and I am doing lots of things very well, the one item I am not so hot at is what they need for the foreseeable future…

Then I lose an employee slot so I have to re-juggle everything around. That would not be so bad except that I hired the current staff with specific roles in mind and the person who will have to do the work for the lost person is NOT a good hire for the job. And since it is contract position, I cannot simply find someone else… Urgh!

Then another employee makes a mistake with the possibility of a significant financial loss (33% of the contract funds). And of course, I had specifically told her not to do what she did because I did not want it to be an issue. This is still up in the air while we wait to find out the consequences. She, of course, is claiming that I never told her not to do what she did.

Then my niece could not come to visit after all. I have been looking forward to it for months. It was going to be my big treat for the summer. But increased gas prices and airline prices combined with limited time meant that we cannot get her the 1200 miles between her place and mine.

Now, as if that is not enough for 6 weeks, I find out that the lay leader of my small group at church has been arrested for "illegal pornography." He admits it is there but says he was just doing research so he could help someone he counsels. Say what? how in the world does he think that would justify child pornography? Why would you need to see it in order to understand the person you are counseling? Personally, I feel betrayed and appalled and sickened.

Guess I should just hope that this doesn't last 7 years...

New Chapter - Dad gets Cancer

My Dad has cancer. There I have said it. But it really is a very inaccurate statement. Yes, my dad has just been diagnosed with anaplastic astrocytoma, but that really does not convey the full impact. You see, he was diagnosed with the disease, but in many ways the whole family got diagnosed with cancer.

My dad is the stable post around which my family revolves. Okay, so we have one of those picture book ideal patriarchal families. Two happily married parents, 2 children ( a boy and a girl); all, for the most part, happy and loving. Add one living grandparent, a spouse, and 2 grandkids, plus assorted pets, and you have my basic family.

The thing is, we always talk about cancer as if only the individual is affected. The reality is that all of us are affected. We worry about him but we also worry about what it will be like when he dies. Suddenly we just cannot ignore the fact that he has a vastly shortened life expectancy.

It is hard to live in the present. It is hard to remember that he is neither helpless or an invalid. It is hard not to be able to do something, anything, to change the realities or the uncertainties.

Three Cups of Tea

I have just read the most amazing story about a man who is conducting a mission towards peace in Central Asia. Finally, proof that I am not the only one who believes that Bush's policies are only leading to more terror, not less. And a way to do something about it. But that is for later, after you have read this book.

It takes place at the base of K2, when a man promises a school to the porter who saves his life. The man, an American, begins an odyssey that will lead to a career building schools and other small public health projects. In an area where the US is synonymous with horror, pain, and the disruption of life accompanied by lies about helping to build infrastructure, the small NGO created out of his promise to build a school, now proves that not all Americans are bad.

The book is a must read!

Do Not Call number for Avenue

What is it with companies deciding that you want to receive an automated phone call from them at any time of the day or night? Make the mistake of buying something from one and you then are deluged with spam phone calls. Bad enough that their spam fills your post box and your email inbox, now they have to clog up your phone line as well. And they pay no attention to your indication that you do not want to be contacted.

So today I called Avenue and asked them to take me off all their spam lists. First, I had to spend about 15 minutes on hold. Then a nice woman named Adrian listened to my complaint, requested my information, and put me on hold while she did some research. She came back on line about 4 minutes later to tell me that she gave the information to her supervisor but that I should call their do-not-call list number (800.695.3198). Of course it will take about 30 days to take effect…

Maybe I won’t buy from them again… Still I need to get clothes some time.

Sympathy for Cho Seung Hui's Parents

The events of Monday at Virginia Tech were a horror that many of us will not recover from for many years. The media has painted a singular picture of the gunman, a young man with psychological problems. They have also painted a singular picture of the victims – the individuals who faced gunfire and their parents, families, and friends.

But the media has forgotten one set of victims – Cho’s family. His parents must be grief stricken by the loss of the son, just like any other parent. But they also have to bear the burden that their son was responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in the USA. I don’t know them, but all the parents I know spend a lot of time second guessing themselves when their children make bad choices. How much worse it must be when their child’s bad choice results in the death of others.

And so, I extend my sympathy to Cho’s family for the loss of their son.

Time for some rational choice making about health care

Today I read this article in the Washing Post on the Texas Futile-Treatment Law and how there is a fight to prevent hospitals from withdrawing “care when a patient's ongoing treatment is declared "medically futile." The patient in the case is described as “A 17-month-old deaf, blind and terminally ill child” who, as I calculate it, has been on life support in a pediatric ICU for about 100 days. An ethics review board decided that the case is hopeless and that it would be best to terminate life support if the mother could not find an alternative hospital to provide care for the child. The right-to-life people are all up in arms about turning off the ventilators and letting the child die the natural death that technology is preventing. They seem to believe that we need to keep everyone alive as long as technologically possible regardless of the costs. But it is about time that we thought about the very real costs of keeping infants alive at any expense:

1. This child is taking up valuable resources without any hope that he can be helped: bed space, doctors and nursing staff time and energy. What if there is another child who is denied a bed in the Pediatric ICU because there is not enough space, a child without a terminal condition?
2. What is the emotional cost to the staff? How debilitating it must be not to be able to relieve the child’s pain and suffering and even worse if they think the technology is only allowing them to make the child suffer more. According to the Post report, “doctors have declared that continuing treatment is potentially painful and is prolonging the child's suffering.”
3. Who is paying for this prolonged ICU stay? Extrapolating from Ampofo, et al (PEDIATRICS Vol. 118 No. 6 December 2006, pp. 2409-2417 (doi:10.1542/peds.2006-1475) (who estimated the cost for a child’s influenza hospitalization - only 29 of the 325 of whom were on respirators), the average hospital cost for a 6mo- 23mo childs stay, per day, was $1,397 and the average hospital charges were $2,006. That would result in a charge for this child’s care somewhere between $139,000 and $201,000 assuming that the charges are not any more than they were for the Ampofo et al study. More realistically, the costs are higher AND that does not include the physician charges and the costs of medicines. So let’s just guess that the daily cost for this child’s care is about $3,250 per day, before attorney fees. That means the outstanding hospital bill is $325,000 and climbing.
   Who is paying that bill? If you and I are really lucky, Mom and Dad are paying it out of their pocket. Second best, Mom and Dad have good health insurance and can pay their share. Worst case, Medicaid pays part and the hospital charges off the rest of it as charity care. Why is that the worst case for you and I? Because we pay for Medicaid with our tax money, the hospitals charge us more to cover that loss, and too many losses drive our hospitals out of business.

Every dollar we spend on this child cannot help another. For example, we could be ensuring that more children are vaccinated, including the vaccinations for influenza. By one estimate, “For every dollar spent on immunizations, as many as $29 can be saved in direct and indirect costs.” So, if you use the CDC’s cost estimator for vaccines, the daily $3,250 cost of keeping this terminal child alive would buy us:

• 2,387 pediatric vaccines for influenza (which, extrapolating again from Ampofo would prevent 239 cases of influenza, 48 hospitalizations (with an estimated average cost of $292, 411) and 14 deaths. Or we could have gotten
• 1,475 doses of DTAP vaccines or
• 269 doses Quadrivalent Human Papillomavirus Types 6, 11, 16 and 18 Recombinant Vaccines (which prevents cervical cancer)

If we spend our money on this terminally ill little boy, we cannot spend it to save the lives of other children who have a chance of surviving!

Yes, I feel sorry for his mother. But keeping a terminally ill child on a respirator indefinitely because his mother is not ready to lose her child is insane. We could be saving lives with that money. Instead the courts will hold a hearing on the injunction in another 7 days (That is another $22750 or 1671 cases of influenza we won’t prevent, 334 hospitalizations with a cost of $2 million we won’t prevent and 100 pediatric deaths from influenza we won’t prevent).

Today I read an article in the Washington Post about a man injured at Guantanamo. One quote really struck me. His mother asked, "What did the Americans do to him?" It struck me as a huge part of the problem. She sees Americans as this undifferentiated group who are complicit in maiming her son. Americans see all Arabic people as Muslims who want to destroy the USA.

I did not do anything to her son. I deplore what I know about Guantanamo. Its very existance and police state/secret police identity are not endorsed like Americans like me. Yet how can the people of each nation know about the people of another nation? How could she know about people like me - who abhor what our government is doing, who keep telling their political leaders that the current policy is unacceptable, who want a different way of dealing with issues. How can I know about the Muslims who practice the Quran in unmilitaristic ways?

Right now, the media are busy capitalizing on the differences, the sensational. They don't focus on every day people who disagree with the policy makers. They don't make waves by letting us understand the people of another nation, particularly ones in a nation where we are at "war". The media has no reason to work toward an understanding of the people of Iraq in terms other than terrorists and victims. We hear about Sunnis and Shites, but only when one group visits atrocities on the other.

Principle 2: Justice

I am a Unitarian Universalist. I find that it generally fits my philosophy/religious views, in part because it allows for a wide range of beliefs. Lately I have spent some time considering what the principles to which I am covenanted mean. The principles are:

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Today’s topic is principle 2: Justice, equity and compassion in human relations.

I find "Justice" to be a kind of muddy concept. It has no clear bright lines of it is and is not. So what is justice? Okay, I am going to take a first stab at this. I reserve the right to retract any and all of it on further reflection.

Justice is state of being for groups and communities achieved by balancing personal freedoms with freedom from harm caused by others. It embodies both the legal and the emotional by recognizing that the situation defines the balance point. Example, if one stole an ice cream cone from me, it would be a minor harm and there would be little cry for justice. If one stole a ice cream cone from a child, there is a greater cry for justice because children have less power (and presumably less ability to replace the ice cream). If that child was starving, justice demands even more of a response, because we are getting into the ability to stay alive.

Not sure I have a better explanation for what I know when I see.
For more on the Unitarian Universalists, you can go to the church's national website:
http://www.uua.org/

Personal DNA

A friend introduced me to this fun site on personality style. It goes beyond the 4 quadrant system and has multiple dimensions. I decided to add it to my blog because I thought it was so interesting. ‘Course I am interested in personality and communication styles any way so it was sure to interest me. Hope you find it fun.

This is not Soviet Union

Just in case you thought that your government was about freedom and democracy, the Bush administration is doing everything in its power to ensure it gets the powers appropriate to a secret police. The Washington Post reported on Saturday, November 4, 2006 (Page A01) that “The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk. The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage."

And not only that, if prisoners are allowed to tell the world what the CIA did to them, we might know what kinds of torture the CIA and the Bush administration are indulging in. Tell the Bush and the World that human rights are more important than his power to do whatever he wants.

From Chapter 49 of the Tao Te Ching

He is good to those who are good;
He is also good to those who are not good,
Thereby he is good.
He trusts those who are trustworthy;
He also trusts those who are not trustworthy,
Thereby he is trustworthy.

Halloween Fun

For the first time in years I was home for the trick or treat crowd. New neighborhood with lots of kids but I was not sure how many would actually be around. Turns out there were a lot - I had "treats" for about 70 and there is only about 15 items left.

I should clarify that I don't give candy. I fill a big bowl with party treats appropriate for the age 3-10 crowd, plus pens, crayons, and glitter glue. This year there were a small paint set, football stickers, clear plastic rulers with stencils on the inside, heart shaped bracelets, whistles, and dinosaurs.

Each child gets to choose one item. The teenagers are not much interested (they take a pen with a bored look) but the little kids get really excited. The parents also seem to appreciate the items. I think that mostly they are grateful that it is not more candy.

Having to choose is a real challenge for some of children. But they are not very greedy about it either. I am always impressed at how they organize themselves and let each individual choose. And only one 2-3 year old was reluctant to let it go at only 1 item. I think if she could have had the ruler she wanted (her mom vetoed it) even she would have been okay with the one item rule.

The kids are so cute that I always get a real kick out of the process. My favorites this year were the little boy, probably 5 or 6, who got the paint set. He was pretty overwhelmed about having to choose only one item so he and I went through the bowl pointing out the options. I would pick up an item, show it to him, and then put it on the other side of the bowl. This meant that older items got covered by the newer items. After about 5 items we came to the paint set. I set it down and showed him a ruler and then put the ruler on top of the paint set. All of a sudden, his eyes light up and he frantically pushes everything away from the paint set. “I want the paints!” His mom, from about 5 feet away says, “What do you say?” He turns around with this huge smile and runs toward her. “Look, mom, look what I got?” No sooner does she get a peek at it than he takes off, tearing down the drive way, yelling, at the top of his little lungs, “look dad, look at what I got!”

Another very enjoyable was the young lady who came by with her mom and younger sisters (2). She carefully shepherded them up to the door and helped them choose before taking a fancy pen for herself. As I turned to go back in the house, I heard her say to her mom, “That’s not something you see every Halloween in Omaha.” This, coming out of the mouth of 9 or 10 year old dressed as a witch, made me howl with laughter, though I did manage to get the door closed first.

Visiting with Grandma

My grandmother, who is 92, flew in to visit me this week. She came for my birthday, which is the best present I could possibly have had. Being single and living a long way from my family, I really have not had a birthday party in years. Yes, my friends have gone out to dinner with me, but always when schedules permitted, not on my birthday unless it was convenient. And no one made a cake or much of a fuss. I knew that I missed the fuss but I hadn’t realized how much until suddenly I could have family here to celebrate. Somebody is going to take the time to make me a cake and celebrate on my birthday.

There is a lesson here, both personally and societally. We have become way to busy getting things done to pay attention to the little rituals that matter. From now on I am going to remember that very little is more important than making time to celebrate the birthday or anniversary on the day of and to make cakes for others. And I can plan a party at my house for my birthdays, even it Grandma cannot come again. But I hope she can...

Sometimes I wish

I wish there was some way to make the abusive partners of the world suffer the way their partners suffer. My ex was abusive and it has taken 15 years to repair the damage to my self-esteem and self-image. Tonight I had drinks with a friend and her SIL (a new friend). I could so see the traces in her that I have been trying so hard to erase. I don’t often wish ill for others, but I so wish that those men could truly understand what they had done and feel the level of remorse appropriate for the injuries they have caused… And on a bad days, I wish that someone would do to them what they do to others. Then I remember that they probably already feel awful about themselves so I don’t know what good it would do.

The Framers of the Constitution Must be Rolling In Their Graves!

Congress has lost its collective mind.

Okay, so I am not politically conservative. But when Congress decided that Habeus Corpus is not important, they threw out one of the most important protections of our freedoms. Never mind, they tell us, it is just for terrorists, after all.

Yeah right. As I read the language, any one of us can be classified by the president and his band of thugs as a terrorist sympathizer and then thrown into one of their secret jails. Remind you of anyone? (Hint, we started a war in another country so we could get rid of him.) Okay, so calling the homeland security people thugs is a little extreme but not by any where near as much as I would like.

What is happening to our country that we don’t care about civil liberties any more? How can it be okay to have secret wire taps and secret jails and to throw people in prison because they might be terrorists? We sound more and more like Germany in Hitler’s rise to power or like we are a member of the so called “axis of evil.”

I’ve gone way beyond appalled at what my government is doing. Now I am just plain scared. G.W Bush sounds and acts like a dictator in the making. I have begun to wonder if he will attempt to stay in office after the next election. Is it possible that he will pull it off? Can I escape this country if he does? I no longer have any faith that Congress will try to prevent him. They will just ratify it as another necessary step to fighting terror…

Foley scandal

The Foley case leaves me a little sad but not terribly surprised. What does worry me is that Congress seems to have adopted a position that no matter what one of our own do, it doesn’t matter. They seem to believe that money and power are adequate excuses for any behavior. I cannot say I am surprised but I am disgusted. I am also disgusted at Foley’s excuses: alcoholism and a personal history of abuse do NOT justify his actions. There are loads of gay men out there who do not abuse their positions and who do not solicit underage men.

I keep wondering if the minors in questions were female, would it even have made the news? In the grand scheme of things, I am guessing not. And Foley almost certainly would not have had to resign - or maybe the IM content would have done him in anyway, but I doubt it.

What bothers me is that Congress doesn’t seem to be able to police itself. I can see where those in power might not have been sure on the basis of just the one email. I read the original email and think that it was perhaps a little more friendly than one might expect from a very powerful man. But I could also read it as avuncular – and that would be okay. Those of us without children of our own often have more interest in the kids of others simply because we have the time and energy to do so. We also will leave our legacies to other people’s children. So that was not so troubling to me.

But surely, when someone complained, they should have investigated. They should already have had some system so that questionable behavior, regardless of the gender of the page, is investigated. Any half-way competent investigator who asked the basic question “are there any members about whom the pages warn each other?” should have gotten to the bottom of the matter in a hurry. It makes you wonder about who else has such a reputation with either the male or female pages.

I frankly don’t know what to think about the IM texts. They are very graphic and obviously an attempt to engage in cyber sex. The questions I have are if the young man was of the age of consent at the time and if there was any sense of pressure to cooperate or Foley would harm his future career etc. Frankly, in some ways the transcript reads as if the young man were a willing participant. It is only at the end that one has to wonder.

But if the young man is legally an adult, then what is the difference between him and Monica Lewinski? Both engage in sexual behavior with much older men. 50 year old men get 20 something trophy wives/mistresses all the time. Why shouldn’t a 50+ year old gay man get a trophy boy? Since the young man no longer worked for Congress, I don’t see the problem if he is of age and consented. It would not be the first time that sex was willingly traded for opportunities and power. We certainly shouldn't be holding a gay man to a different standard than we hold the strait man to. Maybe we should insist on all congressional members maintaining some ethical standards....

Cancer is hard on all of us

My friend has cancer. At first it was this horrid overwhelming fact. I was terrified for her and in mourning for the relationship that we had.

Today, her cancer is just a fact. I haven’t forgotten it; that diagnosis sits there on the sidelines of all my thoughts about her, still wearing that horrid fluorescent pus colored sweat-shirt, waving a sign, and yelling “She’s Got Cancer!” But I have mostly learned to tune it out.

And our relationship has taken a different path. We are closer in some ways and oh so much more remote in others. Part of me still mourns the loss of my hopes and dreams for our friendship. What I mourn most is that I don’t expect her to have the energy to spend time with me. The rest of me is thankful for the friendship and hopes that as time passes she will regain the energy to spend time doing things together.

There are a few other changes. I read Larry Sievers’ blog daily. Today’s was about how it bothered him when people tell him about someone who beat the odds. For the first time I was totally unsympathetic. My response to him read:

As insensitive as this sounds, maybe it is not about you. I can see why it bothers you. I will probably try hard not to make those statements ever again.

But maybe they are not saying it to give you hope, maybe they are saying it to give themselves 1)hope and 2)something to say as they try desperately to process this horrid piece of news. No matter how well or how casually the individual knows you, when you tell them you have cancer, you are forcing them to reassess both your relationship and their perceptions of what will be. And you bring mortality back to the forefront - no longer can it be an unwelcome guest banished to the very edge of their consciousness. It is invited in to sit next to them.

At that moment they may need to have hope for you. As a friend, colleague, or family member, they need a way to give themselves hope that they are not going to lose you. As another living individual, they need to stave off their own fears about death. And often they need to do that while simultaneously holding a conversation with you.

And most of us find frank discussions about death, particularly our own fears about death, an unacceptable topic. Particularly here in the USA, most of us have been able to avoid confronting our own mortality. So rather than discuss your possible death or their fears, they tell you the story of someone who made it, trying to give both of you some hope.

As I wrote that, I realized that we do indeed have taboos about illness and cancer that I had never recognized. Maybe we need more conversations like those that Larry Sievers has started…

Bliss

(Note: I belong to a UU discussion group which has recently been discussing what it means to follow your bliss. This is a combination of some of my thoughts from there and where they have taken me.)

Is bliss is really separate from suffering? We have been assuming that bliss is the absence of suffering. But is it really? As a woman in the midst of a new love, I am not sure that I would say following my bliss means an absence of suffering. Maybe following your bliss simply means to following your heart, despite the suffering.
And even if we define bliss as a state of joy or happiness, then doesn't it follow that to follow your bliss means to pursue a state of joy or happiness. But that doesn't mean that selfish indulgences are inevitable. Rather, it could mean that you learn to see life in a different way. I am not saying this very well. there is page on consciousness that says it better http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/understanding-consciousness/ .

he says, in part, "...non-stop pervasive feeling of happiness. Perhaps a better word for it would be bliss. If you've done a lot of meditation, you've probably experienced this feeling of total oneness at some point. .... If you've read The Power of Now, I think Eckhart Tolle describes this state as a feeling of being totally in the present moment. I didn't fully understand that state when I first read the book. Now I do. This level of happiness is unconditional, not rooted in circumstances, ...”

I think the page is well worth the read. I am beginning to really feel that being present is perhaps the most spiritual and difficult thing we do. It requires that we not worry about what happened in the past or what might happen in the future. Instead we have to be right here right now. And I wonder if that is not how we find bliss – by being rooted firmly in the here and now, do we not enjoy the moment without the worries of past and future?

---

Still doing a lot of thinking about what constitutes bliss. And how is bliss really different from ecstasy?

The online dictionaries have interesting definitions:

Bliss =

the highest degree of happiness; blessedness; exalted felicity; heavenly joy. http://www.selfknowledge.com/10515.htm

Or

1. Extreme happiness; ecstasy. 2. The ecstasy of salvation; spiritual joy. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bliss and http://www.bartleby.com/61/59/B0325900.html

Or

1. complete happiness: perfect happiness 2. spiritual joy: a state of spiritual joy http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_1861591181/bliss.html

Or

1 : complete happiness 2 : PARADISE, HEAVEN http://www2.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/mwdictsn?va=bliss

I was struck by how bliss has come to mean, based on these definitions, a spiritual/religous joy. But perhaps it is more than the emotion itself. Perhaps bliss is really a state of being rather than the emotion that goes with it. Perhaps following your bliss is really about pursuing a state of spiritual wellness...

Someone recently asked me what dream I most wanted to come true. I was totally stymied. I really don't have any dreams that I am not currently chasing. I live a life that is mostly what I want. I am content in myself, for the most part - and working hard at being the best person I can be. Yes, I would like to have someone to share my life who didn’t walk on 4 legs and have fur. But I don't need someone to make my life whole or perfect, it would just be nice. Does that mean that I have achieved some level of bliss?

---

Still cannot define bliss but since I value the path as much as the destination, I suppose that in a way I am following my bliss. One of my biggest life lessons has been to try and learn to live in the here and now. There are so many things we can wish for and so many things we can wish were not true. But I haven't found any real power to change anything but myself. And changing me has been an intense, slow process. It is also occasionally very painful and I cannot claim to have obtained a state of persistent happiness.

I sometimes envy those with the conviction that they can really change the world. I never have felt that powerful. I might add that I am not truly sure I want to be that powerful. With great power comes great responsibility and often I am all I can cope with.

Losing time

When I started this, I thought that I would be writing daily. Who knew that though I have lots of thoughts, I would get lost when I tried to write them all down in a way that made sense. so many ideas, so little time, and oh so little organization. I promise to do better.

Iraq - not yet time to pull out

The Iraq War was not something I thought we should do but now that we are there, we are obligated to stay until we can leave them in better shape than when we arrived. What I have a hard time with is the whole politics of the thing.

At the time we were discussing going to war, I was against it. My first objection was the underlying premise: We think Saddam has weapons of mass destruction so we should remove him. That statement is like saying someone is capable of committing a crime so we should arrest them and put them in prison. Granted that in this case, the individual has a known tendency to use violence. That does not validate the argument. Preemptive wars simply prove which party is most prone to use violence.

My second objection has to do with state’s autonomy – we do not have a general right to invade another country because we don’t like their government. I do not want to live my life subject to the laws of Iran or Iraq. I do not want them to have the right to decide that I need to change the laws I live under because those laws do not match what their holy law. But if we set a precedent of overthrowing governments that we don’t like, we really don’t have much to protest if someday they decide to overthrow our government.

And that leads me to my third object – if the concepts we are using to justify the Iraq war were applied to the US, could someone justify invading us? The answer is yes. We are a nation with weapons of mass destruction and the only nation to use a nuclear weapon. We have a demonstrated aggressive government that has been known to make preemptive strikes. And we have now demonstrated that we believe one country has the right to remake the political system of another country.

My unrelated objection was that I could not see how this war would help us in the long run. People do not like having outsiders dictate to them. There is a natural resentment that results from being forced to do it the way someone else wants. Thus I expected an increase in resentment/hatred of Americans. I also felt that there was too much religious language in use, making us Christians and them Muslims. Religion is so personal that it amps up the emotional impact of everything else. And when you add in the clearly defined US as the outsider them, then there is a focus for all the rage, anger and fear. I could not help but believe that our invasion in Iraq would lead to an increase in anti-American hostility and a subsequent increase in the number of individuals willing to become “terrorists.” (and I am not even going to go into the whole issue of what is a terrorist this entry).

My expectation was always that this would be a long war. My fear was that it would become another Vietnam. I could not see how we could possibly get out in any short term (under 4 years). I could potentially envision us getting out in 10 years. But my fear was that this was really a 15-20 year project.

But President Bush and his cabinet ignored these issues and pushed us into the war. I doubt we will ever know the truth, but I believe that the decision was made in advance and Bush just looked for the facts that would support his decision. He does not welcome dissenting opinions and seems to prefer a group-think process to any intellectual rigor. My personal take on it is that George W is trying to prove that he is better than his father and so wanted to do internationally the one thing his father did not do. The problem is that he is taking the rest of us along with us (nothing more dangerous than a man with ego-problems and some power).

So now we are in this war and everyone has decided that it is time for us to pull-out. Not because we have accomplished something, but because they are beginning to realize how costly a war can be. The US public apparently believed that one can invade another country, change the government, and then walk away in a couple of months! All, of course, without any opposition or deaths. How naïve can they get?! It doesn’t really take all that much brains to figure out that it takes time and money, that when you fight a war people die. Yes, your people can die when you invade some other country. Perhaps they forgot the Korean and Vietnam wars?

Which brings me to my current struggle with the whole politics of what we do next. If we don’t want to make it worse, we have to stay and ensure a stable, democratic government is installed with adequate police and military to prevent ethnic cleansing and/or the reversion to a brutal dictatorship. We need to ensure that there is better infrastructure when we leave than when we arrived.

But I fear that once again I am going to be a minority voice. As a nation, we want instant gratification without paying for it. I am hearing more and more rumblings that the war is too costly and it is time to pull out. What we need now is someone willing to point out that the cost of pulling out too soon will be worse.

If we don’t accomplish better and more stable conditions, we will desperately wish that we had. Leaving to soon will do nothing more than create a crucible in which anti-US terrorists will breed and multiply. We will create a world condition worse than what we started with and, eventually, it will be our own citizens who die as a result.

©scrapsnthread