Cowardice writ large

Why do we as a nation accept events like the Iraq war and possible conflict with Iran as necessary while sadly shaking our heads at events like the conflict in Darfur and other areas of Africa and accepting them as just the way life goes? Why do we shudder in horror at the prospect of paying $5 a gallon for gas while gladly paying $12 a gallon for water--a necessity of life that runs freely from our tap. Why are people so willing to believe any nonsense they hear about Obama and Muslims without finding out facts?

Fear.

Fear of what will happen when things change. Fear of the unknown. And I don't mean the good change; the change that is sold to us by professional marketers. Like the fact that all of our TVs are going to be obsolete in another 8 months. That kind of change is good--it's progress. It's something that will benefit powerful people and so they have a vested interest in making people excited for the change. But if you think that your life is going to be improved in any way because we all have to have a digital converter box for our TVs, well, enjoy your water.

Home of the Brave? Nope. We as a society have lost our collective faith in our ability to innovate, adapt, survive. And it is clear why. We are bombarded with messages everyday that tell us to be afraid of everything from the environment and our food, to lite-brite signs on the Boston highways and lipsticks on airline flights. We have become a nation of cowards, crippled at the prospect of having to face a life where our saftey is not guarenteed. And if our notion of security is not met 100%, then it cannot be the result of an accident--a series of events which result in an outcome beyond anyone's control--someone must be to blame.

We are afriad of changing the way we live to account for new information, new technologies, new paradigms.

If this fear only affected our personal lives that would merely be sad; it is unfortunate that the best of life is not yet to come but instead the future holds a fightening uncertainty. But this cowardice becomes sinful when it causes us to work and fight to preserve "foolish consistencies" at the expense of others.

Which is not to suggest that all change is good. Over the last 50 years we have exposed the world to a slew of manmade chemicals which are destroying us. We could not understand the consequences of our actions then, given the information we had. But at the same time, we need to stop living in fear. Ask yourself why you feel a thing is right or wrong and check to see that your reasons a grounded in fact, logic, reality.

And then, be brave.

When presented with a choice that may mean you will have to take a risk where the possible outcome might benefit a greater number of people, be brave. Be brave and make the right choice, whatever that is, because it is the right choice

When it comes time to vote for Universal Healthcare; be brave.
When it comes time to vote for energy policy that will mean smaller cars; be brave.
When it comes time to vote for tax policy that will ask those with more to do more (and don't bother with the beer analogy--it doesn't work); be brave.
And, when it comes time to vote for a person--man or woman--with different skin tone, who may have a unique name, who may have a different cultural background, who may even practice a different religion; be brave and make your choice the right one, not just the safe one.

What's our oil doing under their sand? Part 2--Ethics

James Cash, a retired general authored an opinion piece entitled "Middle East Imperative". In it he predicts the future of our energy supply:

Do you have any idea what will happen if the entire Middle East turns their support to Iran, which they will obviously do if we pull out? It is not the price of oil we will have to worry about. Oil WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE to this country at any price.
.....
The economy in this country will totally die if that Middle East supply is cut off right now. It will not be a recession. It will be a depression that will make 1929 look like the ‘good-old-days’.

He might very well be correct in this assertion, although it is quite a conclusion to jump to. He is assuming that the entire Middle East will turn its support to Iran, that the entire Middle East, including Iran, will completely cut off the oil supply to the single largest consumer of energy in the world (although we will be surpassed soon by China and/or India), and that because of these two occurrences our economy will come to a grinding halt. There can be no question about one thing, given our current dependence on Middle East oil, if all the nations in the Middle East decide to cut off supply to us, it will cripple our economy. However, it doesn't seem likely that the disparate nations will be able to coordinate their efforts to that end.

Cash's argument hinges on the above unlikely proposition because the solution he calls for needs a radical event to justify it:

The bottom line here is simple. If Iran is forced to fall in line, the fighting in Iraq will end over night, and the nightmare will be over.

One way or another, Iran must be forced to join modern times and the global community. It may mean a real war—if so, now is the time, before we face a nuclear Iran with the capacity to destroy Israel and begin a new ice age.

It may appear that Cash's radical event is the military threat posed to Israel and the resulting ice age (how he gets there is beyond me), but what he is really suggesting is that now is the time to force Iran to bend to our needs--including using a "real war" to force them(Seymour Hersh has reported the the U.S. military is conducting clandestine operations in Iran right now with the knowlege of the Democratic Leadership). "Our needs" in this case is our energy needs in order to avoid an economic depression.

Cash's bold assertion can be summed up in one sentence. People must die so we can continue to live according to the lifestyle we've become accustomed to.

Many times in our nation's history people have had to die to make way for the American way of life: whether it is the decimation of the indigenous tribes; the enslavement of African people; or just the incidental deaths on banana and sugar plantations as U.S. companies tried to maintain control over an unruly population who did not understand the niceties of capitalism and wished to maintain local control over local resources. But usually the majority agrees to a nice, antiseptic version of the real story, or will at least cling to that version until it is impossible to sustain (sometimes 200 years later). But Cash is willing to come right out and say it. Sure, like the Bush administration, he pays lip service to the notion that this is a moral imperative when invoking Israel, but it is only that. He stays focused on the true nature of our involvement in the Middle East.

It is unacceptable that in a nation that claims Christian morals and ethics, that claims the moral high ground when dealing with other nations, this would be considered acceptable. I can at least understand Cash's rationale for his statement: as a career military man whose first responsibility is to be victorious in the shortest amount of time, using the fewest resources, and at the least cost of U.S. life, I wouldn't blame Cash for advocating the most possible force in the shortest span of time. The postscript to Cash's piece reads:

‘I’ll tell you what war is all about; you’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.’ Gen. Curtis LeMay

But the rest of us need to be sure we are a tempering force to that impulse. At the very least, we should not force people like LeMay and Cash into situations where they place people at the end of a barrel for $40 a barrel. At the very least, we should not be asking the men and women of the military to risk their lives, their psyche, and their soul, and sacrifice time with their families so we can continue to build and hear 4000 sq. ft. homes, drive military grade vehicles on U.S. highways, watch thousands of channels on 60 in. flatscreen TVs.

IT. IS. WRONG!

We are not talking about being in danger, defending our friends, family, and homes. We are talking about living a decadent lifestyle that we cannot afford--not as individuals and not as a society. This is not a partisan issue. We should all be on the same page on this issue regardless of whether we are a liberal pacifist, a radical anti-capitalist, a conservative who regards family values and right-to-life as paramount, or pro-military who no longer wish to be used in the service of enriching the pockets of the wealthy only to be underfunded and understaffed.

If we can no long sustain our way of life given current and future energy costs, then WE need to change, not force others to change--and especially not through war.

What's our oil doing under their sand? Part 1--Logic

Jimmy L. Cash, Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret. His resume is long and impressive. He has held positions of responsibility that I would never accept. I would never get into an argument with him about strategy, tactics, or other matters of war. So when he states his case about why war with Iran is not only inevitable but also necessary, it may strike some as presumptuous that at 35 year old English teacher would contradict anything he has to say about foreign policy. So I will not. Instead I will stick to my realm of expertise and critique Gen. Cash's argument.

While he may not have written the subject line of the email I received--"War or Depression"--the contents of the email express the same sentiment. The last line of the opinion piece is:

HOWEVER, CONTROLLING IRAN AND DEMOCRATIZING THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE ONLY CHOICE IF WE ARE HELL-BENT ON DEPENDING ON THEM FOR OUR FUTURE ENERGY NEEDS. (Emphasis his)

Not only is this a logical fallacy, but it is also a morally unacceptable conclusion. This entry will deal only with the logical side.

When Cash suggests that we control Iran and Democratize the Middle East, he is suggesting several things to those who live in that region. Among the implied arguments are:

1. we have the answer
2. you will accept it regardless of what you would like--including by force

Neither of these sentiments can be sustained logically.

1. If we had all of the answers then we wouldn't need to rely so heavily on another's resources. Our ingenuity and our ability to solve problems would enable us to find another solution to this problem. Cash himself acknowledges this when he says:

I personally would vote for any presidential candidate who did what JFK did with the space program—declare a goal to bring this country to total energy independence in a decade.

The Apollo Alliance did just this, back in early 2000, after the attacks in NYC raised awareness about the dangers of over reliance on foreign nations for our energy supply. From their website:

The Apollo Alliance was launched by the Center on Wisconsin Strategy and the Institute for America's Future in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy to unify a broad-based constituency behind a bold plan of investment in clean energy technology and sustainable infrastructure that would reduce our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and create millions of good jobs in America’s clean energy economy.

Harkening back to President Kennedy’s visionary call to meet the challenge of the Sputnik launch with an aggressive national commitment to landing the first man on the Moon within the decade, the Apollo Alliance spoke – and continues to speak -- directly to the core values we share as Americans: our can-do spirit, our inherent optimism, and the pride we feel (or want to feel) about our country’s place in the world. The subtext is clear: we did it before, we can do it again. This is America, the richest, most technologically advanced and industrious country in the world. If anyone can do it, we can do it. And we will.

The fact of the matter is that instead of looking forward, identifying the root of the problem, and working to solve the problem, our leaders instead looked to spend their time and energy posturing about being tough, attacked the symptoms (some not even related to the problem, as Cash also acknowledges), and simultaneously worked to undermine any possible advances toward energy independence by not calling for more conservation in all levels of society and instead called for more short-term solutions such as drilling in ANWAR which would not come close to meeting our demand according to most research not funded by oil companies. Vice President Dick Cheney held secret closed door meetings where energy companies wrote public policy that ignore the realities of our energy dependence and instead benefit the companies all in the name of economic stimulus. To this day, the participants of those meetings are not known; the amount of influence they had over policy is not known; and Cheney has not been held accountable. The secrecy has been preserved in the name of executive privilege regardless of the impact to this nation. The legislation that came from these meetings were passed by both republicans and democrats. Neither party has demonstrated the leadership to act as a check and a balance to this power-grab. The people have not forced a movement toward accountability. If this is the democracy that we are looking to export, I am embarrassed.

On the contrary, I know that as soon as it becomes an economic fact that alternative and sustainable sources of energy need to be found and need to be made commercially viable, then there will be no shortage of research, labor, employment opportunities, etc. made available for solving the problem. Already I see the commercial campaigns presenting the oil and car companies as falling over each other to demonstrate who is the greenest and who has been the most environmentally conscious the longest. I just wish that we as a society would have been able to make this work before now.

2. Cash, possibility inadvertently, points out the folly of the law of unintended consequences:

I watched Iran and Iraq shoot missiles at each other every day, and all day long, for months. They killed hundreds of thousands of their people. Know why? They were fighting for control of the Middle East and that enormous oil supply.

At that time, they were preoccupied with their internal problems and could care less about toppling the west. Oil prices were fairly stable and we could not see an immediate threat.

Well, the worst part of what we have done as a nation in Iraq is to do away with the military capability of one of those nations. Now, Iran has a clear field to dominate the Middle East, since Iraq is no longer a threat to them.

By trying to solve our problems by force we only create new problems. You can look to the history of west-middle east relations to demonstrate this point. Cash says that radical, fundamentalist Islam has been trying to destroy the west since the 7th century, but it certainly is not that one-sided. Looking carefully at history there will certainly be moments of Islamic aggression, but no more than the attempts of various kings and popes who wished to consolidate power or who wished to distract their people from real problems by engaging in the crusades. And it would be naive for anyone to say there is no link between the pre-WWII western imperialism and the current situation. Our long history of trying to manipulate the local leaders for our overconsumptive habits has not produced security, let alone energy stability. To think that now, this time, it will work seems to mirror the faith of a zealot rather than a strategist.

Then there is the problem of democracy at gunpoint. The postscript of Cash's piece reads as follows:

‘I’ll tell you what war is all about; you’ve got to kill people, and when you’ve killed enough they stop fighting.’ Gen. Curtis LeMay

Again, I do not know if Cash included this postscript himself, many times as things are circulated on the internet they acquire additional comments which may not be original, but since it is present in the document I will address it without attributing it to Cash. I can assure you that if someone offered any rational, thinking person this form of democratization, it would not only be rejected but scorned and hated. After this sort of war, what form of democracy would exist? Certainly not a political institution that arose from the people (demos). Rather, the current war in Iraq not only destroyed any nascent moderate movement in Iraq (much of the population--especially the women--feel they had more freedom and a better quality of life under Saddam. Whether that is objectively true or just the zeitgeist of a wartorn people--it does suggest something about our attempts at democratization), but it also gave the fundamentalists in Iran a platform to consolidate power just as there was a movement towards secularization. Our work in Afghanistan is for nothing. Even the overtures toward democracy in Russia, which conservatives like to point out as Regan's victory, are falling to the wayside.

Any attempts to force a people to bow to your will causes resentment. If what we have is so good, why do we need to force it on others by the point of a knife?

Tomorrow: Part 2--Morals

Where you at?

The current political division seems to center around one particular view of the world. There may be other important issues, but this issue seems to have the most mass and will influence all other decisions. Simply it is this: what is the role of the U.S. in world affairs.

There are two major perspectives from which there are myriad combinations--either you believe that the U.S. is in a unique position to guide world events and therefore it is our responsibility to take that leadership role; or you see the U.S. as one of hundreds of nations which has much to offer in the way of resources and ideas, but is no better suited to guide world affairs than any number of a dozen nations. Both of these are broad generalizations and both worldviews have merits and can be argued for.

Due to it's unique combination of diverse and plentiful resources, it's desire for openness and independence, and the benefit of remaining relativly untouched by the ravages of war, the U.S. has been able to accomplish things that no other nation has been able to accomplish. Some see this as a blessing from god, others the blessing of democracy, still others the blessing of capitalism, or some combination, and feel that this is worth sharing with others and work to help others attain the lifestyle we have.

As a teacher, I can empathize with the desire to share a good thing. But I began to question the ability of any one person or group of people to identify what is good for all a long time ago. This questioning evolved into critique and has over the last 10 years accelerated into cynical mistrust. While, I believe that the U.S. has much to offer the world, our government and our society, when presented with major decisions that have widespread impact, has taken the option that would most benefit us above all others.

I write this because over the next few days I'm going to begin looking at and responding to an email that I received some weeks ago which suggests that we as a society have a decision to make. The subject line presents the following choices to us: war or [economic] depression.

Welcome

I belong to many email lists--some by choice--which span the entire political spectrum. Some of the stuff I read makes sense, some is entertaining, some is misguided, some I don't agree with, and some is so riddled with inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and logical fallacies that I'm amazed that people get paid to write this stuff.

In the past, when confronted with the latter, I was willing to hit delete and let people think & believe what they will. What harm could a dumb idea cause?

It turns out that some ideas are so bad they are dangerous.

We are currently in the 5th year of a war which has cost this nation trillions of dollars, has damaged our economy with crippling debt, in which over 4000 US soldiers are dead, an estimated 30,000 US soldiers wounded in action, countless others who will suffer from psychological & emotional trauma for the rest of their lives (and this does not even attempt to account for the cost to Iraqis, other nationals in the "Coalition of the Willing", and so-called contractors) with no end in sight. McCain has suggested that it could be another 100 years before this is finished (granted, I think he regrets the estimate). All because of a bad idea.

We now know that the rationale for going to war was fabricated, hyped, packaged and sold to the American people by our leaders who knew the truth and led us to believe otherwise (in kindergarten speak it's called lying), by ideologues who were presented with two sets of facts--one accurate and one inaccurate--and chose to bolster the inaccurate point, and by a society that was reeling from the shock that they were, like every other nation, vulnerable and wanted to feel powerful, secure, and dominant again.

Rather than holding these different factions accountable, they are still given the opportunity to act as "experts" and are still allowed access to power.

Regardless of what you feel is the best course of action now, the fact is that we should not be in this situation and if ideas were weighed solely on their merits we would not be. It is my hope that at this crucial time in our country's history that we will begin a dialogue where we can compare ideas and weigh them on their merits. It is my hope that people of all backgrounds and beliefs will contribute to this dialogue.