WHO SAYS THERE'S NO PLAN?

Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times (7/31/06) that Pakistan is building a plutonium reactor that will produce enough fuel to make 40 or 50 nuc. weapons per
year. The U. S. has made a deal with India in which we help them reach a similar capacity. (Although we have 12,000 nuc. warheads, we insist that we should control who can and can't have any.)
Pakistan is ruled by a secular Muslim military dictator supported by us, and by a secular minority from its military, and its educated business and professional class. But it's an uneasy situation. The majority of its 170 million are highly religious Sunnis, and favor a fully Islamic government, as do most of the 30 million Shia. (The latter, by the way, would leap to Iran's aid, should we attack it, as would the 16 million Shia in Iraq). The anti-U. S. pressure which is already mounting in Pakistan would reach a boiling point, and possibly result in either an overthrow of that government, or a civil war similar to the one in Iraq. This was no doubt a part of Pres. Musharraf's warning to Mr. Bush that overthrowing Saddam would destabilize the whole region.
Tom Ricks, the Washington Post reporter on Iraq who has now written the definitive post mortem on that fiasco (titled Fiasco) stated in an interview with Amazon.com: "I think the Bush administration doesn't really like "stability" in the Middle East. In its view, "stability" has been the goal of previous administrations, but pursuing it has led to 9/11, so it's not the goal, it's the target." (As Condi Rice said recently, we are witnessing the "birth pangs" of a new Middle East.) "So they are rolling the dice," Ricks continued, "both in Iraq and in Lebanon. I think the big worry
is those wars spilling over borders. Fasten your seat belts."
All of a sudden the lightbulb came on (for me): What if the Bushies never wanted order and stability in Iraq? Is it possible that Mr. B. is, as he claims, a strategic thinker? Maybe he really has always had a plan for Iraq: chaos. Maybe the real plan was not to create a genuine democracy, which wasn't possible anyway, but a fake one like we have made in Afghanistan: a dependency that will require our permanent presence there to prop it up and protect it. (Hold on now, let me finish).
Here is some evidence that I'm not completely loony, and that this is what they've been planning all along:
a. We are building large, permanent military bases for ourselves in Iraq, complete with Pizza Huts, Colonel Sanders' and car dealerships.
b. We are building there the largest U. S. embassy in the world! It is, in fact, a small city, heavily fortified, and will employ in excess of 3,000 people. Ask yourself: why would an underdeveloped country of 26 million require an embassy bigger than the ones we have in India, with a billion people, or China with a billion and a half? We must be planning to make it the power center to control that whole region! How do we bring this about? By creating chaos in the region that only we can quell! As the chaos we have brought to Iraq sucks in surrounding countries, they will finally ask us to stop it, and keep it stopped. They'll have to. We'll have to: it's about oil. Has been all along.
It wasn't incompetence, but by plan that we sent too few troops to stop the looting and seal the borders when Saddam fell. Those necessities are taught in Occupation 101 at West Point. Gen. Shinseki told us what it would take to do that and he was ridiculed out ot the service. It wasn't stupidity that caused us to disband the Iraqi army and police and send them home armed and unemployed and bitter.
No one is that stupid! It was guaranteed to bring on insurrection!
Both Mubarak (in Egypt) and Musharraf warned the chaos created in Iraq would draw and train terrorists. Bush said, "bring 'em on." He relished the thought. We'll fight 'em there instead of here! But as the Spanish say, "the devil always over-reaches." Saddam did, and now Bush has as well. When asked for a date for with-drawing out troops, he clearly stated his intention to stay on indefinitely: he said that decision would be up to a future president. Connect the dots: he has a plan. It's spelled o-i-l, and it's right on schedule. Of course, it has gotten out of hand! Can you say fiasco?

Let me know what you think: jgoodwin004@centuryTel.net

SMALL GAINS vs. THE BIG PICTURE

There are 1 billion, 300 million Muslims in the world. Their help is essential to fight
terrorism successfully. In other words, without substantial cooperation in the Muslim world,
terrorism will continue to spread like cancer. As with cancer, the "cures" will become as bad as the disease, in destruction of quality of life (personal freedoms). Our own population, by the way, is nearing 300 million, while Muslim population is growing about three times as fast as ours.
The good news: the Muslim world is still pretty much up for grabs (according to the Pew
Global Attitudes Report). Even after Fallujah, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib, we are getting major help from Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and others (on the Q. T.) The killing of Zarqawi involved intel from Sunni Muslims, probably from Jordan. Uncovering the plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic was aided by Pakistani intelligence. But it is increasingly difficult for friendlies like Jordan's King Abdullah, Pres. Mubarak of Egypt, and Pakistan's Pres. Musharraf to openly side with us. All three have survived repeated attempts on their lives.
Musharraf cannot go to Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, for fear of his life. All three face majorities in their countries sympathetic, if not outright supportive, of the Islamists. So all three are in political trouble. Democracy in their countries (actual majority rule) would sweep them away and install Islamic rule under Shariah, as it did in Iran, and will in Iraq (with Iran's help) once we are gone. And by the way, not all Islamists advocate violence as a legitimate
means of political change. They are divided on that issue.
Apart from justice and morality, both of which are big deals with Muslims, policies of ours that result in widespread prisoner abuse and frequent non-combatant deaths are short-sighted and self-defeating. They are continuously run on TV in Muslim countries and cost tons of good will lost for every ounce of possibly useful intel gained. Not a smart exchange! (It's a Cheney kind of deal.) We say it's a battle for hearts and minds, but we don't act like
it in Iraq or Afghanistan or Guantanamo (which Pres. Bush says he wants to close, but is actually building on to.)
Is there a way to bridge the growing divide between Muslims and the West? Of course there is, but the hour is late, and there's a danger that we'll become locked in to an all-out struggle that is irreversible. Our hope for reconciliation lies in whether indeed the pen is mightier than the sword. The pen has given us common Scriptures and universal values (like the Golden Rule) that we can (and must) all embrace. This was expressed again, eloquently
by Jordan's Prince El Hassan bin Talal (the King's uncle) in a graduation ceremony at Brandeis U. "I believe," he said, "we must think of globalization not just as the spread of capitalism or deeper economic and political ties, but as the emergence of a universal consciousness, whereby 'an injury to one is an injury to all' (to quote the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa). This is what I call an ethic of human solidarity. We are in the process of creating a global community, and the cornerstones of our vision are values which from time immemorial have been part of the collective consciousness of the human species, which ensured their survival, and which stood the test of time: Respect for life, responsibility toward future generations, protection of the human habitat, altruism nurtured by a sense of mutual interest, recognition of human dignity and worth." Amen to the Prince's wise words.
The "universal consciousness" he spoke of was affirmed by Socrates, Gandhi, Jesus, Muhammed, the Buddha, and Confucius, who said, "the great man is universally minded, and no partisan." Socrates said, "I am neither an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a citizen of the world." That's the big picture! Both the Old and New Testaments tell us to love our neighbors. Jesus extended that to "love your enemies." We ignore that at great peril.
As Mr. Bush likes to repeat, the contest really is between good and evil. But he seems confused sometimes about which he wants to be. "When the trumpet (call to battle) is uncertain, who will want to follow it?" At the moment, not many. (The last quote is from the O. T.)

Let me know what you think! jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

A Right to Health?

Michael Barton denies (Albany Democrat-Herald) that affordable and effective health care is a "fundamental right" for every Oregonian. He is right of course, it is not. It's just a need. That doesn't concern him. What concerns him is "paid for by whom?"
As long as we keep it an argument over "rights," nothing will be done. That would be wrong. Harry Truman used to say that it took the Republicans 150 years to find the word "welfare" in the Constitution. (And then, they didn't like it!) But it's there alright (in the Preamble), as in "promote the general welfare" (common good).
That's one of the purposes of government that Mr. Barton forgot to 'mention. Or perhaps he has just forgotten it, period.
Another purpose of government (in the Preamble) is to "establish justice." We are strong in this country on retributive justice (with 2,000,000 people incarcerated),
and sorely lacking in distributive justice. (Say what? Many people don't even know what that means!) It has to do with allocating both the burdens and the benefits in a society. The burdens of military service, for instance, fall disproportionately on young, healthy males. The financial benefits of war-making accrue mainly to large stockholders and executives in war industries. The burdens of tedious and exhausting labor at low pay are widely distributed among the disadvantaged. Most of them also lack health insurance, with little prospect of getting it as things now stand.
The high costs of medical care benefit stockholders in insurance, pharmaceuticals and related industries, along with private hospitals usually built with tax monies and donated funds. The "privatization" of publically funded hospitals is an instance of colossal thievery aided and abetted by politicians and accomplished by the substantial work of lobbyists (all paid handsomely for their work.
It's true that many pensioners benefit from their pension funds' investments in the stock market. The benefits are widely distributed. So are the burdens on the poor and the uninsured. It's an old-fashioned idea, and we don't hear a lot about it, but there's a common good that benefits everone. Affordable and effective health care is such a good. Nations with a tenth of our wealth (and less) have had it for years. Why can't we?

Let me know what you think: jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

SUPPRESSING RADICALS

From time to time pundits express disappointment with Arab leaders friendly to the West who fail to "fully suppress Islamic radicals in their midst. They then admit that said leaders' "Arab street" supports Hisbullah's attacks on Israel. (As do most Iraqis, by the way.) Why is that? Could that hostility toward Israel have anything to do with the latter's brutal occupation and destruction of life and livelihood in the West Bank and Gaza for the past 39 years? (For a factual, unbiased report on this brutality and destruction, see Tanya Reinhart's Israel/Palestine [Seven Stories Press/New York], or check www.tau.ca.il/~reinhart. She is a professor at Tel Aviv Univ. and a columnist in Israel's largest daily paper.) Reinhart writes: "The Israeli army that defends our homeland behaves brutally, uses torture, fires upon innocent civilians. What justifies the behaviour of this army? We call it self defense but this is, I suggest, only the surface of our justification. (We think) our history of suffering, as a people, entitles us to the violence of our current behaviour."
Prof. Reinhart also points out: "During the period between October 2000 and December 2001, a clear picture -- beyond the countless details of daily brutality and cruelty -- of a systematic Israeli effort to break Palestinian society and destroy its infrastructures. A painfully
precise summary was offered by Taher Masri -- a Jordanian statesman of Palestinian descent --
in an interview with Newsweek in December 2001. Masri explained that Israel had been working on three levels: The first level 'is to destroy the economic infrastructure of the Palestinian territories, which are largely agricultural and, formerly, touristic. During the Israeli incursions into Bethlehem earlier this year, for instance, troops systematically trashed newly built tourist hotels.' As part of this strategy, in large areas olive and citrus trees have been cut down or bulldozed." Reinhart says, further on, that the number of olive trees destroyed exceeds 112,900, and the area of cultivated land destroyed land destroyed was 3,669,000 square meters. This is criminal behavour by anyone's definition.
And remember, in the Muslim world, we are joined at the hip with Israel. In fact, in Iraq, our troops are referred to as "the Jews." We have staunchly supported Israel in all its criminal behaviour, occasionally offering feeble pro forma protests that mean nothing to anyone. Israel
has now repeated its program of infrastructure destruction in Lebanon. And again we are defending these war crimes as perfectly okay. This is indefensible nonsense. We can't stand for justice in the world as long as we sponser and promote the glaring, grievous misjustice that has
continued for years in Palestine. (And now in Lebanon.) Terrorism doesn't just happen in a vacuum. It comes from rage and hopelessness. We need to understand and address the real causes.

Let me hear what you think! jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

STAYING THE WRONG COURSE

The majority of us now understand that the Iraq venture was a bad mistake. People do stupid things out of fear. And it was fear aided by misinformation that got us into Iraq. Just as it was fear (of communism) that got us bogged down in Viet Nam. Communism doesn't work, can't work, and is evolving into something else every-where it has reigned. Our fear of it ignored that basic fact.
Islam is also evolving, and will, eventually, move toward more personal freedom and representative government. Education does that. (Trust me on this, I have a Ph. D. in world religions). There are one billion, three hundred million Muslims, and as many differences among them as there are within any other religion. Our greatest danger is not terrorism, but that the fear of terrorism will continue to make us do stupid things that alienate ever larger numbers of Muslims. We need the help of that world, and cooperation with it, if we are to successfully deal with terrorism. We saw that in Pakistan's part in uncovering the plot in England to blow up American airliners over the Atlantic. Successful world-wide intelligence sharing is the only way terrorism can be stopped!
To work effectively with the Muslim world, we must seek continuously to understand it, it's divisions and concerns. We have to read a lot and learn to listen.
Most Muslims are secular in outlook, as are most Christians. Both religions however
include sizeable factions that are devout and zealous about their faith. These people are frequently "fundamentalists," meaning they tend to interpret their holy Scriptures
literally. That means if it says adulterers are to be stoned, they want to go out and do it (usually only to women, however).
For Muslim literalists, the preferred form of government is theocracy. That's what Muhammad established in his day, and is the ideal system, they believe. After all, if God has given us a perfect law, why would we want to substitute man-made laws? (By the way, there are growing numbers of Christians in the U. S. that think that way too.)

The folks who want to establish theocratic rule in Muslim countries are called Islamists. That, however, does not include all Moslems, or even the majority of them. But it is a growing number, and probably a majority in key (and critical) countries like Pakistan and Egypt (both ruled by military dictators friendly to the U.S.) Now, not all Islamists advocate or support violence in pursuing their theocratic goals. Many, in fact, are opposed to violent means of achieving political change. We need to support and encourage those folks, while opposing intelligently the increase in numbers of the violent ones. More on this later.

What do you think? Let me know at:
jgoodwin004@centuryTel.net