A General Disgrace

That’s the way our generals have been behaving lately.  Petraeus apparently collapsing at a senate hearing - although I listened to the halting, mumbling, monotoneist questioning by John McCain myself and I too collapsed.  I think it was some kind of a hypnotic trance.

Now the Runaway General, McChrystal breaking though the no-no’s of  the military, actually the Know-No’s.  He certainly knows better than to do what he just did and if he didn’t know he should be shot.  Is he dumb?  Probably not.  He’s probably a pretty sharp guy who has come a long way by using his smarts and his puff.  So - did he have something in mind?

Well, the war is not going well.  Like most wars it is going somewhere else other than where it was supposed to go.  It has just recently become America’s longest war in its history.  Casualties are starting to soar.  Iraq is spinning in and out of “control?”.  Iran is smugly confident, and Israel is wild-eyed.  Something is going to happen soon.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party  is boiling and bubbling with excitement over the possibility of kicking Obama out of the White house in 2012.  They are trying to set up their new presidential guy.  They have a lot of good presidential timber to choose from - like, well, Mitch McConnel, Boehner, Kyle, Cantor, Palin, Romney, Barbour, Paul or Paul, Santorum, Perry (if he hasn’t succeeded by then), Gingrich, Jindal, Armey, Coburn, Ney,  or . . . hmmm Ensign?, or Sanford?, well . . . HEY, how about McChrystal! WOW.  Do you suppose?  And if Obama fires him then - then - then - the plot thickens, contrast happens, sides are drawn up, intelligence is implied, and . . . Sara Palin gets a new guy to run with - somebody who couldn’t finish his job either.

So.  McChrystal will probably offer his resignation when he meets Obama.  What if Obama accepts it, puts it in his shirt pocket, and sends McCrystal back to do his job? The drawdown (if it does happen) will run through 2011 and into 2012, and Obama will be the greater man to come out of this showdown.  Will this happen?  Stand by - breaking news is coming in now.  Obama’s pretty sharp too, so be prepared to be amazed.  

Israel's Latest Insult.

I wonder if Israel can do no wrong in American eyes.  We see the latest insult to world opinion being the boarding of Turkish ships in international waters as another understanding and acknowledgment that international laws do not apply to Israel.   Just as they are not bound by Palestine’s property on the West Bank - in short, Israel is telling the rest of the world that Israel can draw its own boundaries as it feel necessary to fit its wishes.  Israel is the only sovereign on this planet, and they need no friends.   That is, as long as they have the US backing them - in fact they seem willing to turn the rest of the world against not only them but against America too.  

Just as they have taken land from Palestinians on the West Bank by sending “settlers”  into Palestinian land.   then using the resulting conflict as rationale to send in army and construction crews and build walls for  “protection”  of the “settlers”, they seem to feel that international law is simply a minor inconvenience that Israel’s prior Covenant with Yahweh has already provided for.

The people in Gaza have been stranded for three years  And Israel  apparently is waiting for them to either die, or throw out their elected leaders, and put in pro-Israeli officials.  That isolation in Gaza led to this attempt to bring in ships with food and shelter items into Gaza -and that was the ship attacked by Israel on the high seas resulting in the deaths of nine people onboard the aid ship.  

The American government said that an investigation into the matter WAS needed.  BUT that Israel should lead the investigation.  All this following a week in which a diplomatic attempt to establish a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone was insultingly “vetoed” by Israel

It does seem strange that Jews have been so inordinately successful in world events since around 1950.  I wonder to what extent that is due to American Jews. More than 55% of American Jews have a college degree and 25% possess a graduate degree. Apparently  Jews comprise only about 2% of the American population yet  35% of the 50 richest people on the Forbes 400 list are Jewish, and Jews comprise about 40% of all US billionaires.    They also seem well represented in the newspaper, magazine and TV world, including the USA Today, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.  Thirteen American senators currently are Jewish as are 30 representatives. So American Jews apparently are well educated, have money, are aware of world events and have a potential to shape American public opinion.  

Why do they not display a similar skill in shaping world opinion?  Perhaps it is that if they can drag America along behind them then they just don’t care.  This makes it very difficult to talk meaningful peace in the middle east.  Israel has all the trump cards and we all play  by their rules.  America is the enabling force but it is controlled completely by Israel.

Israel has also found a crack in the Christian religion that provides a privileged access to the Christian far right.  That comes through a combination of what the Christians call the “Old Testament” and the last chapter of its own “New Testament”  which is named “Revelation”, a mystical forecast of how God will end the world phrased in terms of Biblical mythology and allegedly end the world "soon".  So now there are radical American Christians who are enthusiastically allied with  Jews simply because of the reference in the Jewish bible about Jews being God’s Chosen People.  Since those references are also in the  Bible that these Christians believe in, it has assumed the proportion of a-priori knowledge.  Now tie this in with some of the stirring words found in “Revelation” like the “Antichrist”, Armageddon, the end of the world, fire from heaven, horsemen, apocalypse  - all terms that are poorly understood in Christian mythology, and they become spun into a nebula of innuendo in which those magic phrases snap and crackle like God’s own lightning.  Now if such an inarticulate mass could be led by extremely well educated, literate, and united people, this great mass would have no choice but to wobble in the general direction of permissibility, begging forgiveness for being late as they are driven along.

The only force that could possibly be brought against this great tide is reason - but then “reason”  becomes a trick of the antichrist.  You can’t reason anymore, that is un-Christian - all knowledge is in the bible - anything else is sinful and needs to be purged and destroyed.

Does Israel have any hint of what they are playing around with?

Open Letter to Maurene Dowd

Hey gal, I love you!  Well, not really YOU - you know, I mean not THAT way, but I do love the way you write.  Usually.  But I gotta talk with you about your column on May 29, 2010, about how Barack Obama needs to get emotional to show us that he is really worthy of leading our country.  

Think about it.  Look at the problems now pouring down on our country.   1) There’s the immigration issue - Texas is apparently still trying to succeed from the the union, while Arizona may be the first state to get kicked out.  Meanwhile, American businesses continue to undercut Mexican corporations and entice their former workers to come north.  2) Korea is in a state of accelerated crises again as “Dear Leader”  wobbles around, dribbling and shooting baskets with the War-ball  3)  The world’s financial structure was short-circuited under the last administration and SOMEBODY has still got to fix it - still.  4) Israel apparently thinks God actually did give all of the land in the mid-eastern part of the world to them, and they can ignore all other laws passed by any other country.  5)  The supreme court has a vacancy-pending, and there will be raucous cries from republicans during that process.  6)  Iran is poised to go nuclear - like as in war - maybe - unless Israel hits them first .  How would you like to reason with Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad?  7)  We’re still trying to begin to recover from the greatest recession since the 1930’s, and the republicans still say “NO!” and the democrats say “eh - well, yeah, maybe?”.  8)  Elections are coming up - soon, and 9)  oh yeah, the gulf spill, and 10) a few incidentals (* see footnote).

Not the time for our own Dear Leader to go emotional on us.  If you have a major leak in your house you don’t want a plumber to show up and cry.  If a tree falls on your house you don’t want an arborist to come by and wring his hands.  If your car won’t run right you don’t want a mechanic to raise the hood and say “Oh,  I can’t believe this!”    You don’t want your dentist to look in your mouth and say “uh-oh”, or  your doctor to look at you, shake his head and say  “Oh my God, I feel so sorry for you”.  No.  Times of crises are times for leadership.   Leadership means an ability to examine the symptoms we all can see, determine what the problems really are and identify the causes of those problems.  And then by selecting options, developing criteria and evaluating the whole mess to build a pathway into a new world.   And here we are now, figuratively taking on water, with a tree on the house, and a car that won’t run, a tooth that hurts, and a pain in the ass - or at least the body politick.  

What we need in these times is a leader who can preside over a group of experts.  In this case over groups of experts.  Now is the time for leadership from the top and also from those panels of “experts”.  Is Obama the man for this job?  Well this is where we find out.  The question I’m asking, is he sliding back into  America’s Tea Party past or is he leading us into the new world which lies ahead?  We will find out soon.  And no crying please.

(* Reference is to minor wars (in alphabetical order) in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and other assorted places)