STEM CELL LANGUAGE ERRORS

A lady recently wrote to the local paper arguing
that stem cell research involves killing a child.
This is a widely held view, with neither truth nor
logic in its corner. Clearly, a cluster of cells that
can be frozen for years and stored cryogenically
without harm is not a baby. You can't do that
with a baby. So they are not the same, by any
stretch of the wild imagination!

The confusion comes in using the word "human"
in different and misleading ways. It is often used
as an adjective to describe tissue as human. It
can also be used as a noun to refer to a person as
a human. Mixing the terms leads to this logical
error: an embryo is living; an embryo is human,
ergo an embryo is a living human being!

No, you could do the same thing with an appen-
dix, or any other human part. It's called the fal-
lacy of composition. Here's another example:
That dog is mine. That dog is a mother. Ergo:
that dog is my mother!

The reason you can freeze embryos is because
they don't breathe. They have no lungs, or heart,
or blood or brains. In fact, there's a lot of essen-
tial human stuff they don't have. So they aren't
fully humans! How could you be, without any of
that human stuff?

An embryo is a fragmented, or partial human:
the DNA part. Otherwise, it's a cluster of cells
with a lot of potential. What dies in stem-cell
research is that particular potential. But it gives
birth to further potential for saving other lives
that are already fully functioning, but without
the research will die. It's a trade-off, isn't it?
With no easy answers of simple definitions. Be-
ware of simplicities: they may lead us astray.

Note: I'm only defending the use for stem cell
research of embryos that would otherwise be
discarded and thrown away.

jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

PHONY "SOCIALIST" SCARE

We thought it was silly last fall when
candidates Mc Cain and Palen took up
the "socialist" claim against Obama. Now
it has gotten ridiculous, with senators,
congressmen, and assorted ditto heads
along with most of the nitwits at Fox Noise
parroting this nonsense. Michael Lind
writes (Salon 3/7/09): "Once upon a time
in the United States, public goods -- from
retirement security and energy research to
public roads -- were provided by the govern-
ment and paid for by taxes. As late as the
Nixon administration, the provision of
public goods by government was consid-
ered perfectly compatible with a robust
market economy by so-called Modern Re-
publicans like Eisenhower and Nixon as
well as New Deal Democrats like Roose-
velt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson. In
the intervening 40 years, however, free
market fundamentalists of the Chicago
School have managed to change the de-
bate, redefining "socialism" to mean not
only public ownership of the means of
production (the historical meaning), but
also public provision of public goods."

Which redefinition, of course, makes ex-
actly no sense at all. (Paul Krugman, James
K. Galbraith and George Soros are a few of
the foremost economists who have written
recent books soundly refuting the whole
free market liturgy, and Alan Greenspan
(long one of its most devout apostles), has
recently admitted that his faith was mis-
placed.

The truth is that our government has been
spending tax money to advance the public
good from our earliest days. In 1803 Tho-
mas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase,
acquiring in one visionary stroke what is now
about one-third of our land. Abe Lincoln
not only gave away millions of acres of that
land through the Homestead Act, and mill-
ions more to the states for land-grant col-
leges, but also millions of acres to railroads
along with multi-million dollar loans to
build a transcontinental railroad. These
were all public programs that supported
private enterprises without the slightest
harm to capitalism. They used public funds
to promote the public good.

Also in the early days, the state of New York
built the 300 mile long Erie Canal to connect
the Great Lakes with New York City, making
the latter the biggest and richest city in the
country. Under Teddy Roosevelt, the U. S.
government built the Panama Canal, con-
necting the two great oceans. Previously,
corporations had attempted that difficult
feat, and failed. That is a great story, and
is told brilliantly in a new book by Felix Ro-
hatyn entitled: Bold Endeavors: How Our
Government Built America, and Why It
Must Rebuild Now. This book gives a fasci-
nating history of leadership required, and
the political obstacles overcome to get these
and other programs, like F. D. R.'s reforms
accomplished during the Great Depression.
I'll plan to go into these more later.

Jgoodwin004@centurytel.net

NO, HE'S STUCK

Can Obama Avoid a Quagmire in Afghani-
stan? That is the title of a good article in Time
(Mar. 5, '09) by Joe Klein. Joe doesn't say it in
so many words, but he lays out clearly many of
the reasons why the answer is "no." It's the law
of diminishing returns: the more violence, the
more resistance. An increase in our troops there
means an increase in violence, as in Vietnam.

This is not Iraq. Iraq is flat terrain, and acces-
sible from the sea. It has been conquered re-
peately over the centuries. Afghanistan is "the
graveyard of empires." Alexander the Great
gave up there without subduing the country.
Ditto for Genghis Khan. Both had been succes-
ful everywhere else. The British army at the
height of empire in the 19th century was badly
beaten there, and had to retreat in the dead
of winter. Of the 15,000 troops that left Kabul,
one soldier made it out alive to Islamabad. They
let him live to tell the sad tale.

We all know what happened to the Soviet army
there. They had 160,000 troops involved at the
end. We'll have 50,00 of ours there when the
additional 17,000 arrive. It's not nearly enough.
Will it ever be enough! The more wedding par-
ties our drones wipe out by mistake, the more
doors we bust down in the middle of the night
and drag men out and throw them in the pig-sty
at Bagram (Gitmo East), the more support grows
for the Taliban. At some point the people are
going to rise up and say "enough -- get out!"

The Afghanis don't like foreigners. Never have.
Especially when they are not Muslims. In fact,
their religion demands that they throw non-
Muslim invaders out. And they are very religious.
And excellent fighters. Some of the best in the
world. They enjoy it. And the terrain there is
the worst in the world to fight in. It heavily fa-
vors the home team.

Yes, it's a quagmire all right. And yes, Pres. O.
is stuck there, just like L. B. J. was in Viet Nam,
and for similar political reasons. Obama felt he
had to talk tough during the campaign in regard
to Afghanistan because he was getting out of Iraq.
He couldn't sound soft on terrorism. So now the
proper course there, distasteful as it is, is to make
some kind of deal. Something like Pakistan has
done in the Swat valley. But that isn't politically
feasible. So we'll soldier on. We can't be defeated
tactically. We already have been strategically. My
reason for saying that was given by Fareed Zaka-
ria recently in Newsweek (2/9/09): " If the pro-
blems with Pakistan cannot be solved, the war in
Afghanistan cannot be won." It's as simple as that.
And P. S.: Our problems with Pakistan cannot be
solved as long as we take India's side in the Kash-
mir dispute. India refuses to let a free vote in
Kashmir decide whether it's part of India or part
of Pakistan. We support India in that refusal.
Our position, of course, is a repudiation of the
democracy we piously preach all over the world.
And it's also a denial of basic justice for the Mus-
lim majority in Kashmir. So as long as we're
wrong there, we're wrong everywhere in the
Muslim world. And Pakistan's main enemy will
always be India. A Taliban victory in Afghani-
stan is in Pakistan's interest because it's against
India's. That's why we can't get the Pakistan
army excited about fighting the Taliban. They
(the P. army, that is) are basically independent
of any political control, anyway. They allowed
Benazir Bhutto to be murdered. They could have
protected her if they wanted to. But she would
have attempted civilian control of the army, had
she been elected. They didn't want that!

Joe Klein (in the article cited above) ably reviews
some of the outstanding complications in our re-
lationship with Pakistan. He writes: "Our pri-
mary goal has to be to shut down the al-Qaeda
and Taliban safe havens on the Pak. side of the
border. If that can be managed, then the insur-
gency in Afghanistan becomes manageable." (Em-
phasis mine) Well, it isn't and won't be. And, as
Fareed said, if that's the case, then the war in
Afghanistan can't be won. That's the sad truth.
Until the President understands and accepts
that, we'll continue kill and be killed for no good
purpose. We're stuck there.

Jgoodwin004@centurytel.net