Is it really Muslims against the world?

The election season is beginning, and some battle lines are being drawn.  A conservative friend sent me a video of a speech by Newt Gingrich in Iowa.  I guess Newt is running, or at least wants to shape the debate.

Gingrich is a very articulate and persuasive speaker for his world view.  He says the we are losing the war on terror, our president and the State Department (meaning Hillary Clinton) won’t even tell the truth about who the terrorists are, it is a global war, and it is being waged by Muslims against the West. 

I understand this view, it is the view that I passionately held ten years ago.  I do not see it that way anymore.

I think we are doing a good job of keeping America safe from attack from the terrorist wing of the Muslim faith.  And the terrible flaw in the idea of ginning up hatred and fear of Muslim terrorists is that we lose the war against them by turning those that we need most in this war against us – Muslims themselves.  America is not going to defeat the Muslims.  America shouldn’t be waging war against the Muslims.  Muslims need to defeat the terrorists amongst them who are falsely claiming the mantle of Islam as they kill, maim, and terrorize us all – Westerners and Muslims alike. 

I do not believe this is a global war even though the terrorists strike against the U.S. and the West.  I believe we are peripheral to the real war, and that the real war is a civil and religious war between the Sunni and Shia Muslims.  We have no dog in that fight.  Both side include vicious, fanatical Muslim extremists.  It is up to Islam to sort this out.  My hope is that mainstream Islam will turn against the terrorist wing of Islam.  Fortunately, it looks like Jordan is going after the brutes of ISIL.  So are the Kurds.

But, most importantly, I believe we in the West need to refuse to take the bait of going after these monsters in their countries.  As soon as we do, ISIL and al Qaeda transform this war into the story they need to tell – it becomes the Christian and corrupt secular Crusader West against Islam.  And then what happens?  The ranks of ISIL and al Qaeda and other bloodthirsty fanatics fill with recruits from the one and a half billion Muslims around the word.  If we attack all we do is swell the ranks of the crazies, we play into their hands.  This was the goal of bin Laden, Bush fell for it, he attacked, and the Middle East exploded, creating more and more extremists, including the current terror – ISIL.

I think our job is to do two things- keep from getting killed by them, and stay out of their wars as best we can.

Muslims need to figure out what Islam is in the modern world.  Obama was right in his speech to the prayer breakfast last week – violent, puritanical extremism isn’t unique to Muslims.  Christians went through that stage a few hundred years back.  The United States was founded by Christian groups fleeing the attacks of the fanatical My-Christianity-or-the-Highway terrorists of their times. 

So, there are thee lessons we can take from history, our own Western Christian history:  first is that it is normal for extremist, puritanical fanatics to violently try to force the rest of the world to obey their fanatical views, and second is that religions split into factions and fight each other, and third that eventually they learn how to co-exist.  The Christians did it, and the Muslims will too. 

We just need for them to speed up this process, a lot.

Anti-vaxxer from the extremes on the right and the left

I get frustrated by the anti-vaxxers.  The notion that vaccination causes autism has long been disproven.  The idea was apparently proposed by a Doctor in 1998, Dr Andrew Wakefield.  But his study was false, he was disbarred, the paper was retracted.  What more do people need? 

I am old enough to have gotten measles when I was in the sixth grade.  It was a very difficult disease.  We had a president who was infected with polio - FDR.  The world had a much lower life expectancy rate before Dr Salk discovered the polio vaccine and proved the value of vaccinations.  Massive numbers of people have died from contagious air born diseases.  And now, some people have been convinced to refuse vaccinations for their children.  This is really a terrible idea. 

There seem to be two political extremes vulnerable to the anti-vaccination fad.  First are the hard right wingers who think that anything the government wants is bad, so they oppose it because the government says it is good, and they see the government as an oppressive enemy of freedom of choice.  Second are the food purity people on the left who think that if they just eat whole, nutritious foods no harm can come to them.  Apparently one of the centers of anti-vaxxers is liberal, wealthy Marin county, CA.  I've heard it claimed that if you want to find a lot of anti-vaxxers, just draw a circle around Whole Foods stores. 

Both groups, meet contagious disease!  It doesn’t matter what the government says or what foods you eat, you will get the measles, or polio, or…  Vaccination is one of the greatest benefits to humankind in the twentieth century, and some seem to be longing for the days when, for example, the native Americans were extinguished more by the contagious diseases brought by the Europeans to America than by the calvary.  I guess we forget the terrors of contagion since we don’t see it.

So, today we are treated to the spectacle of a Republican presidential hopeful, Jeb Bush, needing to be courageous when he says he thinks all parents should get their children vaccinated.  It's like thinking that it would be a courageous thing to say that their children should wear boots in the snow.  This is a strange bit of silliness, it seems to me.

Obama finds his voice

After watching the State of the Union address a couple of days ago, I conclude that it looks like Obama has finally found a sense of voice.  What I mean by that is that when some people speak, their words carry a certain weight, have an impact.  I think it comes from the person’s own sense of their substance, their gravitas.  For a long time, Obama seemed to have lost his voice, and seemed to be speaking as just another guy with an opinion, and all he could do was pretend to be significant but was really just hoping that others would agree.

But, now, he seems to have been freed of some self-imposed restriction, and seems to have found his voice, indeed perhaps has found himself.  I think by losing big in the 2014 elections, he has decided it was important to let people know that he was still important, still president, still a power to be reckoned with.  Plus, I think he finally has decided that he might as well be who he really is rather than try to find ways to twist himself into a pretzel trying to appease Republicans in order to get things done.  I believe he has used the veto pen remarkably seldom compared to other presidents. If he follows through on his new authenticity I expect that to change.

Very little of his proposals from the speech have any chance, but his proposals wasn’t what the speech was about. 

His speech was about presenting his vision of the future of the Democratic Party and liberalism – empower the middle class - which creates demand and grows the economy, help the poor, and stop bowing to the demands of the Oligarchy.  Pretty clear message.  Very different from the Republican vision of empower the wealthy and they will create jobs and prosperity.

This should be an interesting couple of years in D.C. 

Why do they do it?

Why do they do it?  The Islamic terrorists?

Is it religion?  Does their religion tell them to kill infidels, so that’s what they do?

Is it poverty and lack of opportunity?  Are there simply a bunch of young Muslim men that feel beaten down and hopeless, so they strike out at their perceived oppressors? 

Is it the brainwashing of the constant drumbeat of propaganda demonizing the West? and Jews? and Sunnis/Shia (depending on whether the young man in question is Shia/Sunni)?

Is it refusal to integrate into the new world?

I think all of the above play very important roles in creating young Muslim terrorists. But, I think there is a reason that makes more sense to me – they see themselves as defending their "countries."  This is the underlying reason, I believe, for all soldiers to fight wars. The ideologies, religions, and propagandas all add to the fervor and the justifications, but I think at the heart of battle is the love of country, or of community, or of tribe - the desire to protect what is perceived to be the homeland.  That’s why the Americans volunteer to fight, why the Europeans fought in their terrible wars, why the Vietnamese fought, ad infinitum.  And to the Muslims, the only kind of fighting that can have any effect is asymmetrical warfare, i.e. terrorism.

This reason dropped into place for me when reading an article by David Ignatius, whom I pay attention to when it comes to the Middle East.  He cites author Mark Sageman:

"The core question for Sageman is why people become radicalized in the first place. In a forthcoming book, “The Turn to Political Violence,” he argues that it’s partly because militants see themselves as soldiers defending their communities. That’s why brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi wore military outfits when they attacked the Charlie Hebdo weekly, according to Sageman. “They self-identified as soldiers and tried to play the part as they imagine soldiers act.”

The Charlie Hedbo killers thought of themselves as soldiers and carried out what they considered to be a professional, military type strike at the heart of those they saw as out to destroy their “country” – i.e. their culture, their Home.

All of the other influences create a situation of young men, and some women unfortunately, who feel alienated, shunned, outcast, adrift – people without a Home, people who don’t belong.  When they join a cause, the cause of fighting back against the terrors of change and Westernization of their cultures, lands, countries, religions, they finally find meaning for their lives, they belong to something grand and noble and larger than themselves.  They join what they believe to be a worldwide movement to spread their idea of the future across all the world.  They fight for their “country.”

This is something that I can understand. They are not so different from all soldiers across all of time.  Although they attract psychopathic brutes to join them, it makes sense to me that they are like soldiers everywhere, they are defending their "country" from invasion.

That is why I think that John McCain couldn't be more wrong when he wants to fight this with military troops in the Middle East.  Most Muslim terror strikes have been in retaliation to what the terrorists see as Western assault on their homeland.  Even Osama bin Laden said his complaint with America was the presence of America and the West in what he saw as the sacred Muslim lands - Saudi Arabia, Mecca, etc.  He wrote:

"The deployment throughout the Gulf states of U.S. forces, particularly in Saudi Arabia, he argued, is “the greatest of … aggressions incurred by the Muslims since the death of the prophet.”

So, if we don't go to the Middle East and fight there, what do we do?  We defend ourselves, of course, using our Intelligence Services, special forces, limited military support in assisting roles, but I think our main objective is to support the non-terrorist Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere. I hope that Obama can resist the drumbeat of the hawks to commit troops overseas.  All we do is create more terrorists than we can possibly kill.

The Islamic Inquisition

Last week's barbaric attack on a satirical magazine was a shock to France and all of the Western world - make that a shock to all of the civilized world.

It is easy to see the violent jihadist wings of Islam as evil and crazy, and to conclude that we must expand our commitment to bloody war in the middle east. But I think a little deeper thinking is required.

Very shortly after the 9/11 2001 attacks a dear friend of mine pointed out that the mighty Roman Empire was unable to stop Christianity. Even they were unable to suppress a religious movement. Indeed the slaughter of Christians only created martyrs, which strengthened the growth of the religion.

At the time I was totally in favor of our invasion of Afghanistan, and later, Iraq. Over time, however, I reluctantly grew to realize that our military effort in Iraq was only creating more terrorists than we were killing. So, I concluded that our invasion of Iraq had been a terrible mistake. I do not want to see us repeat that mistake against ISIL.

ISIL has been desperately trying to bait the United States and Europe into legitimizing and expanding their violent mission to establish a caliphate in Syria and Iraq. We must defend ourselves of course, but I believe the tools we should use should not include being drawn into their civil wars militarily.

Islam is not the only religion that kills infidels and blasphemers. Christians did the same thing for centuries not that long ago. Unfortunately, Islam is just a few centuries behind the rest of the world.

The Spanish Inquisition lasted over 300 years, I believe. It took a lot of time for competing Christian philosophies to learn to live in peace. I wish I knew what ended the Spanish Inquisition, because that is what is needed now in Islam. (Maybe God managed to sneak in the idea that God was love, not vengeance or righteous punishment and dogma. After all, the religious at least pretend to pray to God, and maybe some of them listen in return?  That is my vision.)

If seems to me that today's bloodshed is the result of a violent war between The Sunnis and the Shia. The West is essentially collateral damage in that war as each side targets us for as part of its war against the other.  It seems to me that the west cannot settle that conflict, we can't even pick sides. We have no dog in that hunt. Our demand to both parties is that they stop killing us and that they find a way to live with tolerance for each other and for everybody else.

The main tool we have to defend ourselves is not military might, but rather modern philosophy. This is a war of ideas, not of savagery.The real war is the war of ideologies, and the West's best strategy is a powerful message of economic success coupled with emotional and spiritual fulfillment possible in the modern world.

How do we teach the intolerant to be tolerant? Demonstration is perhaps our strongest argument. We do manage to live with many religions in the West without endless bloodshed.  And we need to vigorously protect ourselves against their crazies out to slaughter infidels and blasphemers - us.

U.S. formalizes the obsolescence of the Cold War by establishing diplomatic relationships with Cuba

President Obama has re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba after extensive negotiations with them.  Makes sense to me.  

During the Cold War, Cuba was an advance thrust of Soviet Communism into American sphere of influence, and they were quite dangerous, as the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963 demonstrated.  The USSR planted nuclear missiles on Cuban territory aimed at the U.S.  Kennedy stared down Kruschev and had the missiles removed, and apparently Castro was furious, indeed his hatred of the U.S. was so extreme that he wanted to fire the missiles he had already in Cuba into the U.S. while he had the chance.  Fortunately, Kruschev wasn't that stupid.
But, with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Cuba has become a harmless and pathetic impoverished speck next to the U.S.  They are certainly no threat to the U.S. now that communism has died in the rest of the world. 

The notion that the best way to end a dictatorship is economic embargoes that only punish and weaken the populace has had a fifty plus year record of futility.  Indeed, the only way dictator police states lose power is by a growing power of the people, and that includes economic prosperity and growth for the common folks.  Economic sanctions can actually harm the power of the populace much more than it harms the tyrants in charge of the populace.  Eventually, they see their interests being thwarted by despotism and overthrow, peacefully or violently, can occur.  

So, I say good for Obama.  Church bells rang out in Havana as Obama and Raoul Castro made their simultaneous announcements of the return of diplomatic relationships. 

Also good for the Pope for his assistance in getting this done.  

Time to move on to the actual realities of today and stop fighting a Cold War that we won fifteen years ago.

Our enemies act without conscience - we must not

Do the ends justify the means?  Count me on the side that says no.  I side with John McCain and George Washington on this one.

Senator Diane Feinstein released the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA interrogation methods.  Too many of the techniques are straightforward torture: waterboarding, rectal feeding, extreme sleep deprivation, freezing, etc. 

Some of my conservative friends may say who cares?  We are dealing with depraved terrorists and we need to stop them and what we have to do is not fit for viewing by women and children but it is something that men do because they have to and thank goodness for hard men who can stomach doing such things as it makes us all safer.  

Indeed, I was one of them immediately after 9/11/2001 - who were al Qaeda? where were they? did they have nukes? chemical weapons? Just find out, soon, now!  

Some of my liberal friends, and some conservatives too by the way, think that we have been lied to in both the extent and the effectiveness of the “interrogation techniques’ and that indeed we tortured and got not very much in the way of good intelligence.

John McCain said it very clearly by saying that our torture was not unknown to the Arab world, just to the American people:

"...that doesn’t mean we will be telling the world something it will be shocked to learn. The entire world already knows that we water-boarded prisoners. It knows we subjected prisoners to various other types of degrading treatment. It knows we used black sites, secret prisons. Those practices haven’t been a secret for a decade.”

What is the result of torture?  Doesn’t it just give the terrorists a great recruiting tool? Doesn't it just produce more terrorists with more really good reasons to hate and kill, and torture?

The torture was more understandable in the beginning because our intelligence agencies had failed so totally, they new nothing, they used everything to find out what they could.  But...  Time passed.  And they ended up knowing more and more, and they didn't have to be desperate anymore.  But torture had become Standard Operating Procedure.  

That's the trouble with the idea that the ends justify the means, the ends go away but the means become Standard Operating Procedure.

Actually, another American who was quite experienced in the terrible arts of war had an opinion on that matter, George Washington.  

After a battle, Washington’s troops were going to force German Hessian mercenaries fighting on the side of the British through the brutal treatment of the gauntlet (multiple beatings by the victorious soldiers).  He stopped them and told them this:

 “Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands,’ he wrote. In all respects the prisoners were to be treated no worse than American soldiers; and in some respects, better. Through this approach, Washington sought to shame his British adversaries, and to demonstrate the moral superiority of the American cause.”

Apparently, his humanity toward his prisoners paid off as many of the Hessians switched sides, fought against the British, and stayed in America after it was all over. 

If we torture our prisoners all we do is say America is no longer an exceptional nation, no longer are we a Shining Light on a Hill, we are just another nation in a long line of nations with no real moral, ethical, ideological, or exalted purpose or meaning. We are just like others, indeed, we are just like our enemies whom we are fighting under a pretense that our enemies are bad and we are better.

I will close with John McCain again, as I can’t say it any more simply and powerfully:

"Our enemies act without conscience. We must not"

Another football suicide because of brain injury

Another suicide in football due to brain injury.  Kosta Karageorge of Ohio State committed suicide texting that “… these concussions have got my head all fucked up.”  He joins an ever growing list of football suicides as a result of brain injuries.

The culprit is CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy):

“Should CTE be found, Karageorge will join Andre Waters, Ray Easterling, Dave Duerson, Terry Long, Junior Seau, Paul Oliver, Shane Dronett, and Jovan Belcherin an ever-growing list of athletes with CTE who took their own lives and were wracked by memory loss, disorientation, cognitive issues, mood and personality changes, and crushing depression.

And yes, this is the point where we mention that even the NFL admits that nearly three in 10 former players will develop some form of debilitating brain injury in their lifetimes as a result of playing football.”

That’s worth repeating – the NFL itself admits that nearly 3 in 10 players will develop some form of debilitating brain injury in their lifetimes as a result of playing football.

So, why is it enjoyable to watch people inflict brain injuries on each other?  On the rare occasion when I glance at a TV with a game on I wonder which 30 percent of the players will end up with brain disease?  Which will commit suicide?  

Ferguson - a tale of two truths

I believe there are two truths that are at odds in Ferguson, resulting in unfortunate violence and injustice.

The first truth is reflected in the Grand Jury decision not to indict the officer who shot and killed Michael Brown.  In this truth, we are a nation of laws, the Grand Jury spent a lot of time, listened to about 60 eye witnesses, was presented the forensic evidence, listened to extensive testimony by the officer involved, and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to cause this to go to trial.  That is, when everything was heard and evaluated, it was believed that the officer acted in self-defense.  I think it is good to remember that almost all big news events have big mistakes in the initial reporting, especially in today’s 24 hour news cycles where TV and social media feel the need to jump in with instant opinions. So a lot of what was initially thought to be fact was probably discredited upon examination of the Grand Jury.

The second truth is reflected in the outrage of the black community in Ferguson, Oakland, and other black communities across the country.  In this truth, inner city blacks and browns live in a police state.  I believe this is because of our unfortunate and deeply failed War on Drugs.  The inner cities have been turned into armed camps of warring factions - drug gangs on one side and the police force on the other.  In the cross fire is a trapped by poverty populace, ever at risk from criminals on one side, and the suspicions, surveillance, and mistakes of the police on the other side.

In the first truth, the officer reacted as he was trained and protected his life.  Justice was done.

In the second truth, a man was killed for an act of petty theft, and injustice was done.

I don’t have wonderful solutions to this.  I note that the black community sees racism and oppression at play every day, in ways that I am blind to.  I note that the police see crime and danger to society and themselves every day in ways I am blind to.

I guess my question to my liberal and black friends would be this – if you had been on this Grand Jury, with an open mind, for three months, seeing all the facts, witness statements, forensic evidence, and had sort out fact from fiction, wouldn’t you have most likely come to the same conclusion that this Grand Jury came to? Might they not have simply been making judgments based upon the evidence rather than demonstrating some kind of racist animus?

And I guess my question to my conservative and white friends would be this – if you were black or brown and lived in an inner black or brown city, might not you think you were living in a police state where an over-militarized police force could kill unarmed boys and men with impunity?  And wouldn’t you want to burn things down yourself in response?

My hope is that our nation can grow as a result of this terrible incident, and that the police can find better ways to interact positively with inner cities, and that inner city citizens can find better ways to interact with the police – that both sides can find partnership with each other rather than both sides feeling that they are living in a war zone.  I don’t have an answer about what to do about the disastrous War on Drugs, but it is pretty clear that the consequences are terrible for people trapped in the middle of that war.

Good substance, bad precedent

If I understand it correctly, in order to qualify for Obama’s offer not to deport illegal immigrants (for two years while he is still in office) they would have to voluntarily turn themselves in to Immigration and Customs and apply for status.  Why would they do that?  What one president can grant by executive mandate another can certainly take away, and in the process of taking it away that next  president would have all the info needed to deport all of those who signed up for Obama’s deal.

Sounds like a very big risk to me.  The only way illegals would rationally become visible should be to get a change in legal status, i.e. a path to citizenship, which this Obama offer does not present, if I understand correctly.  That requires Congress to pass a law which does that, and apparently Obama’s very public executive action has guaranteed that Congress will not be able to negotiate a deal out of fierce Republican reaction to what they see as an abuse of Presidential authority.  Of course, the chances of the Republicans every successfully negotiating a deal on immigration has always been pretty close to zero, so…

So, Obama’s big immigration move, designed to be compassionate to immigrants, could actually put them at much greater risk than they already are in.  Of course, it would be a very big incentive for the Hispanic community to vote Democratic in the next presidential election, to keep a Ted Cruz type anti-immigrant Republican from rounding up all those who exposed themselves, but does this mean that Obama’s compassion is really little more than a way to use these people to elect the next president? 

Speaking of political motives, is Obama putting out bait to draw the Obama-haters into a stupid attempt to impeach him in hopes that it would so damage the Republican brand that the Democrats will ascend in 2016? 

Not sure I would recommend anyone signing up and exposing themselves for a two year exemption from deportation that could be overturned by the next president - then, adios amigo.

By the way, if Obama can do this on what he considers to be a very important thing, which he cannot get Congress to act on, doesn’t that open the door for a Republican president doing the same thing on abortion, or on access to abortion clinics, or open carry gun laws, or school prayer, or privatization of public schools, or whatever? 

I think the chances of a Republican president in 2016 are very low (it take more than white men to elect a president), but I’m still not sure I like this action by this president. 

I agree with the substance of what he is doing but I think it needs to be the Congress that makes immigration law.  This looks like a bad precedent to me.

The twisted image of manhood of the NFL

Nearly everyone loves football, it's the American way, it's so ingrained in our culture that it is hard to  imagine the United States without weekend football to get excited about.  Except, for me, I don't enjoy watching it anymore, for a number of reasons, and the latest headline to point out one of them is about the DEA pulling a surprise inspection on some traveling teams this weekend looking for illegal administration of drugs to the players.

These raids are in response to a class action lawsuit from 1300 former NFL players, including Chicago Bears superstar, Jim McMahon.  He played 14 years in the NFL and received thousands of pills to put them out on the field hurt:

"The DEA’s investigative interest in the NFL is partly based on the agency’s conviction that lackadaisical prescribing practices creates addicts. McMahon, who played from 1982 to 1996, said in the lawsuit that he received “hundreds, if not thousands” of injections and pills from NFL doctors and trainers, including Percocet, Toradol, Novocaine, amphetamines, sleeping pills and muscle relaxers. He said he became so hooked on pain meds that at one point he took 100 Percocets a month."

Of course this is no surprise to anyone. In 1997 there was a movie "On Any Given Sunday" with Al Pacino and Jamie Foxx that showed blatant abuse of the players by pumping them full of pain killers and pushing them out on the field.  Jamie Williams, former tight end of the S.F. 49ers was a consultant.

So, I used to say so what? it's a violent game, all the players are there by choice, they can become very wealthy, they are stars, they take their risks, it's a free country.  But...

I stopped watching after the Joe Montana/Jerry Rice years.  In part because of the influence of the other kinds of drugs that were obviously distorting the game by distorting the players - steroids, human growth hormones, and whatever other magic pills that made people bigger, faster, less human and more uber-human.  I remember the Jim Brown, Gale Sayers, Dick Butkus days where linemen were 250 pounds, but they became 300 and now 325 pounds.  It's like watching factory assembled robots play against each other rather than highly trained superb athletes.  The game became too distorted for me to enjoy the way I used to.

Then, I became aware that brain damage was in integral part of the game, not just the knockout concussions, but every block, tackle, bounce off the turf produces sub-concussions - many times every game - and that produced permanent brain damage that alters personalities, destroys mental functions, and leads often to early death.  What fun is there in watching that?  To me, not much fun at all.

And how voluntary is it?  

"In the Post survey, nine in 10 former players said they played hurt during their careers, and more than two in three said they felt they had no choice."

The teams force the players to become bigger and stronger (drugs needed), and to play hurt (drugs needed).  Who forces the teams? Isn't it the fans?  

Which brings my to a more troubling aspect of football for me.  I stopped being a fan quite a while ago, so I'm not hypnotized by it.  And what I see is a strange idea of what it is to be a Real Man - one who crushes opposition, a dominator, one who intimidates and terrifies others, one who is impervious to pain, impervious to any feeling at all, one who thinks all that counts is winning, one who thinks the ends justify the means, one who has stopped being a human being with feelings, doubts, questions, choices, one who stops being a human, one who stops being a ... man.  It's kind of a young adolescent boy's guess at what it is to become the man that he fantasizes becoming, an unrealistic projection beyond human achievement.

Maybe all of these characteristics are needed in actual war on actual battlefields.  Maybe one has to cut off all feeling and turn oneself into a terrifying crusher of foes in real war.  But football actually is not war, it is actually a game, and one shouldn't have to stop being human, at least to some degree, in order to play a game, I don't care how much money or fame is at stake.

I am in a lifelong inquiry to uncover what it really means to be a man, and I think that there is more to being a man than being a warrior - being tough and scary.  How about qualities like courage (not just physical courage but moral courage), nobility, gallantry, service, humility, character, honesty, responsibility, and most of all HONOR?  How about the ancient masculine virtues of chivalry?  Aren't these better measures of manhood than domination, violence, and intimidation?

My ultimate vision is that fathers will stop allowing their sons to become football players because it will be obvious that if even Hall of Famers like Mike Webster and Junior Seau die young and in mental and emotional agony due to their diseased brains, it can and may happen to their sons as well.  

And, who knows, maybe the American sports fans will lose some of their taste for violence.

Personally, I'm a big fan of golf.  Love it, nobody gets brain damage.

Veterans' Day - 100 years later

11/11/1918 - Armistice Day and the end of World War I, the "war to end all wars."  It started 100 years ago.  

It was horrible beyond imagining:  16 million dead, 20 million wounded.  There had never been such slaughter.  As logical as it was at the time that such inhumanity would shock the world into a state of mind that such a thing would never happen again, it happened again, only more so.

It spawned World War II, it went beyond the imagination again:  over 60 million deaths.  And the world war continued as well into the Cold War between the United States and NATO against Russia's USSR.  

The Cold War had proxy wars between the capitalist democracies and the communists, but the slaughters never approached WWI and WWII.  Thank goodness, and perhaps thank the most horrible weapon every devised, the nuclear bomb, for really making total war something unthinkable.

And now we have the religious wars of the Muslim faiths that the United States and the rest of the world are trying to protect itself from and stay out of as best as possible.  

So, to me, Veterans' Day, which started out as Armistice Day when I was a boy, is certainly a time to honor those who have fought under the United States flag for the last hundred years, and beyond.  

But more to the point for me, it is about honoring their sacrifices by honoring the dreams that were in their hearts, and I can't believe that their hearts had any longing more profound than the longing for the end of war, for peace.

So, for me, Veterans' Day is a day of hoping for and envisioning peace.  Actual peace amongst the multitude of religions, ideologies, tribes, and peoples.  As a troubled man once said, "Can we all get along?"

Will Republicans govern?

So, the Republicans have swept the House and Senate in yesterday’s elections.  I guess congratulations are in order for my conservative friends, and condolences to my liberal friends. 

My deepest hope is that the Republicans show up as mature adults committed to running the government rather than dismantling it.  My next deepest hope is that they don’t waste the world’s time with show trials about Benghazi, the IRS, or whatever in an attempt to impeach the President. 

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of hope for positive governance from the party that has Ted Cruz waiting in the wings like Godzilla ready to go on a rampage to control it as part of his campaign to become president. 

Bigotry today

I suppose we have always been cursed with bigotry.  Bigotry is pre-judging people, prejudice, based upon how they are in a different grouping than we are.  There is racial bigotry, of course, and although it is still with us, it is definitely less than it was 50 years ago, I know because I was there 50 years ago.

But, there is a newly very powerful bigotry in America today – political bigotry.  A recent study measured how people’s view of others is tainted.  They found residual racial bigotry, but were surprised to discover that “partyism”, prejudice based upon party identification , to have risen radically over the last 50 years. 

In 1960 about 5% of people said they would be “displeased” if a child were to marry someone of the opposite party.  Today, one third of Democrats and one half of Republicans would be displeased if a child married a member of the opposite party.  Kind of shocking.

It reflects the terrible partisan divides in the country today, and it reflects how the Congress cannot find compromises when it comes to running the country.  It reflects a fundamental problem in the country, good old fashioned bigotry, the refusal to see those unlike yourself to be respectable human beings.

This is especially sad to me because in my many years on the planet I have been both a left wing and right wing true believer, and I was wrong both times, and I was a good person both times.  Wrong because the world of the true believer is one that knows all the answers to all the problems, just apply the orthodox ideology to all situations and oppose anyone who doesn’t agree, and viola… life is simple, it’s the good people against the bad people.  But, of course, that is nonsense.

It’s really about tribalism.  Wanting to belong to the right tribe.  Racism is obvious, our tribe against your tribe.  Partyism is the same thing, our tribe against your tribe.

It is certainly no accident that more right wingers are bigoted than left wingers – right wingers are under the spell of hate radio and hate news.  All day every day they are bombarded with the evils of liberalism.  They are propagandized into a level of distrust that reaches into paranoia.  It is a very toxic environment that we live in today, and we are seeing the fruits of that toxicity in dysfunctional government.

Sad indeed.  My hope is for passionate and moderate voices in both parties, but especially in the Republican Party, to emerge.  It is not happening in this election, but it has a chance to emerge in 2016.  Shoot, Carter ran on a post partisan platform, as did W (a uniter not a divider) , and did Obama (we aren’t a red nation or a blue nation but we are one nation). 

The moderation pitch appeals to us, elects presidents, but the war drums in the right wing media pound away, dividing, dividing.

To paraphrase a great man… I have a dream:  that we live in a nation where people are judged by the content of their character, not the …political tribe they belong to.

Fear mongering

I find the elections to be pretty depressing.  We are in full campaign mode and the country is being forced into artificial panics as part of campaign strategies.

The chances of getting Ebola for the general population about the same as getting hit by a meteor, but the Republicans have escalated the fear in this country to ridiculous proportions as a way to attack a Democratic president and get out the vote. 

And the media escalates the fear, of course, because the more afraid we all are of dying, the more we will breathlessly watch the latest minutes of fear mongering on TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, etc.  Depressing to me.

Islamist extremists know that the best way to gain credibility amongst bloody minded jihadists is to compete amongst themselves to be the most brutal jihadists.  Plus, their strategy is to bait the U.S. into invading Muslim countries.  That’s what bin Laden did, and it’s what ISIL is doing.  It makes them seem important, and does wonders for recruitment into their religious wars.  I’m sure we have to respond to some degree, but the knee jerk Republican critique of anything the administration does is not helpful.  I’m old enough to remember when the political rule in the country was that politics stopped at the border, meaning the country had one voice, as much as was humanly possible, when it came to overseas military issues.  Wanting to drag the country into the civil and religious wars in the Middle East seems to be a very bad idea to me.  But, it’s election time so attack, attack, attack.

I will be glad when this election is over, but, oh yes, there is another election “right around the corner” so, fear monger, fear monger, fear monger...raise campaign contributions, get out the vote, demonize the opposition, keep the country in a continual state of agitation…depressing.

I think I may just ignore the media, even more than I have recently, until the election is over. 

Good strategy, but...?

President Obama gave a good speech last night about going after ISIL.  I am glad he refused to call them the Islamic State, because I agree with him that they are not representing Islam.  

I think there are four strands within ISIL: psychopaths who seek brutality for its own debased pleasure, young men without a future who are drawn by the allure of a purpose and a community, true believer religious fanatics who see themselves carrying out the will of God by claiming the world for Islam, and cynical and disaffected Sunnis who are joining this Sunni extremist group as a way to fight back against the Shiite tyrannies of Iraq's Maliki and Syria's Assad.  Fortunately Maliki is out of power, so this group may be able to be lured away from ISIL going forward.

So, ISIL is barbarous and needs to be stopped.  But, I repeat what I have been writing about for some time, this is a civil and religious war within Islam, it is their war.  We need to defend ourselves against future attacks on our country and against the West.  But if we become the big military force, air power and boots on the ground, against ISIL all that will happen is that ISIL will have lured the US into fighting them and creating massive flooding of Islamist Jihadis joining with ISIL to fight against a foreign power trying to stop the spread of Islam.  A direct US invasion to fight ISIL would become a massive recruitment of Muslims to fight against the West.

Instead, Obama is trying to do a tricky thing: support others in the region to fight against ISIL.  Try to help a reformed Iraqi government (we hope) to defend Iraq against the Sunni extremists of ISIL.  Try to help the more moderate Sunni fighters in Syria to fight against the ISIL fanatics in Syria.  Training, supplies, air support, intelligence, diplomacy, economic and political support - the many levers of power that the US superpower has at its fingers.  Oddly enough, our mighty military becomes ineffective if used directly because it only helps the bloody Islamic opposition rally to their cause.

So, strategically and tactically, I think Obama is making some good choices, ones that I have been hoping for.  

What I wrote of earlier is that there is no Voice that the world can rally around and be led by in this effort.  What I mean by that might be explained by comparing our fight against terrorism to our fight against Communism.

Communism had a clear vision:  the government was to overthrow exploitive and greedy capitalists and empower the people who would become free of the exploitation and become the naturally giving and sharing people that was their fundamental natures once they were no longer under the thrall of the false consciousness of exploitive capitalism.  It was understood around the world what this vision and Voice of Communism was.  The voice was Marx and Lenin, followed by communist leaders like Castro and Mao, etc.

American democratic capitalism had a clear vision as well: capitalism was a natural expression of free peoples in search of better lives for themselves and it created a vibrant and growing economy that raised the standard of living and the quality of life for the vast majority of people, raising far more people out of poverty than any centrally controlled government ever could, and this system by its very nature fostered personal freedom which demanded and created political freedom of a democratic and prosperous society.  The voice was Teddy Roosevelt, JFK, Reagan, and a slew of business leaders, etc.  It was understood around the world what the vision and Voice of Democratic Capitalism was.

In today's ideological struggle for the ear of the world, the vision and voice of Islamist extremist is pretty clear: western society is an immoral cesspool of licentiousness and greed and betrayal, which puts riches, corporeal pleasures,  and greed above all else, and has lost any connection to God, spirituality, and cleanliness of mind and body.  It is being voiced by Islamic leaders around the world and is being responded to by young, angry, lonely, and desperate men with revenge in their hearts.  It is a vision and voice understood around the Islamic world.

So, what is the ideology and voice of the West? of the Muslims who want to be part of the modern world?  Bush said it was about freedom.  But, that was just kind of repeating the old Cold War vision and trying to apply it to the Islamic religious war against the West and western influence in Islamic lands.  

Obama said something about freedom and dignity, and those are good, but what is the story? the vision? the clarion call against the Islamist dream?  It is fine to point out how the Islamist vision is false and it is just being used as an excuse for brutality and revenge.  And that is being voiced very well by Obama and the rest of the West.   But it is not a countering dream that can call away the young Islamists into a dream of joining the modern world that exists in peace with the Muslim world.

I don't have a clear vision to state right now myself that opposes the Islamist view of the West as deeply corrupt, debauched, and spiritually vacant.  What is needed is a vision that exalts the human spirit, a sense of purpose beyond momentary satisfactions, and a spiritual connection with the world and its people, and to connect that to building a prosperous and abundant life for yourself, your loved ones, and the people of the world.  

Obama had one of the most compelling political voices in American history when he successfully ran for president in 2008, but once elected his voice collapsed and most of what he said since then has had little real effect.  He lost his Voice.  But, if he could find the inspiration, vision, and creativity in creating a clear and inspiring modern vision to offset the fundamentalist Islamist allure, he could provide what is missing, what is needed beyond good strategic choices, a dream of a world coming together against a false spiritual vision of fanatical, bloody Islamism, a world of healthy, prosperous, free, giving, caring, men and women of all stripes creating an abundant and loving world.

Has America lost its voice?

Obama's decision to postpone military action in Syria against the Islamic State might not be a terrible idea, but it seems to be a product of indecision and lack of vision rather than an expression of international leadership. If he has a world view that he is intending to implement, he needs to be able to clearly and inspiringly give voice to his vision and strategy rather than just be the pawn of his own advisors' internal battles and inability to come to a consensus. Is that what leadership is, to wait until everyone agrees and then do what they recommend?

And what of Putin's invasion of Ukraine?  Obama says that Putin shouldn't do such nasty things, but is he really voicing a clear and powerfully led western opposition to Putin? Some people attack just because there is no one there to stop them. Looks like that describes Putin. Where is the leadership in the pushback?  I understand that Obama is coordinating sanctions, but it all seems to be behind the scenes, on the quiet, some rhetoric but without a sense of command.

I am noticing that for this coming off-year election there doesn't seem to be a leader of the Democratic Party. No Democratic politicians are asking the president to come campaign with them. This is not unusual because presidents are often unpopular enough that they are not seen as a valuable campaign asset during off-year elections. But this year it seems like nobody is speaks for the Democratic Party in this election, and the country doesn't seem to have a real voice on the world stage either. 

It's the same for the Republicans, of course, there is no national spokesman that the Republicans rally around, but that is the normal state of the party that doesn't hold the Whitehouse. Unless there is an unusually charismatic and articulate opposing party spokesperson various wannabes offer different paths and visions and there is no real center to the opposition. 

So, there seems to be a vacuum in the world, and that vacuum is being filled by an opportunistically warlike Russian Putin, and by the fanatically savage Islamic State. Europe is almost completely missing on the world stage, in part I think because of their decision after the ravages of WWI and WWII to almost totally disarm. They were able to focus on social issues and leave defense to their muscular and willing military ally, America. But now America is much less willing to be the western world's military, and is trying to find a more subtle role.  And at least for the interim it seems like America is just backing away and taking as small a role as possible. 

I am all for an American leadership that is not overly reliant on military interventions. It would just be a little reassuring to me, and perhaps to a muddled world, if America would have a clearer voice with a firmer sense of leadership in a comprehensive, worldwide, collaborative approach. 

The world needs a powerful voice to lead it in its grappling with the savage aggressions happening today, to lead it in ways that give the opposition to the barbarity a vision, method, and purpose - a vision that is much more than just troops on the ground.

I think it would help calm the world down a bit.

Dealing with today's Nazis

The Islamic State (I.S.I.S/I.S.I.L) has to be dealt with.  The worst way to deal with it, it seems to me, is to try to find someone in the West to blame for its emergence.  Conservatives want to blame Obama, liberals want to blame W.  But, it's the extremist jihadists who are Islamic State.  No one forced them to saw off the heads of those they despise.  No one forced them to wage a religious war in the Middle East and declare an Islamist caliphate.  They are who they are because of who they are, not because someone else is to blame for who they are.

Roger Cohen did a good job of summarizing the mistakes of the U.S.:

"The list of American errors is long: Bush’s ill-conceived and bungled war in Iraq; a failure to deal with the fact that two allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, have been major sources and funders of violent Sunni extremism; an inability to seize opportunity in Egypt, home to nearly a quarter of the world’s Arabs, and so demonstrate that Arab societies can evolve out of the radicalizing confrontation of dictatorship and Islamism; a prolonged spate of dithering over the Syrian war during which Obama declared three years ago that “the time has come for President Assad to step aside” without having any plan to achieve that; a lack of resolve in Syria that saw Obama set a red line on the use of chemical weapons only to back away from military force when chemical weapons were used; an inability to see that no one loves an Arab vacuum like jihadi extremists, and a bloody vacuum was precisely what Obama allowed Syria to become; and inattention, until it was too late, to festering sectarian conflict in a broken Iraqi society left to its fate by a complete American withdrawal."

So what?  It is the religious fanatics who are acting fanatically.  They are simply taking advantage of a situation where they think that there centuries long grandiose dreams can be made real, world domination for their religion and for themselves to be Great Rulers of the world.  Ego coupled with pious rhetoric.

I believe Richard Cohen makes a key point as well when he says that any attempt to explain who else is to blame is a way of making their savagery and evil acceptable.  They are no more acceptable in today's world than the Nazi's were acceptable in the 20th century.  His summary:

"The Islamic State, in whose name Foley was beheaded, murders with abandon. It seems to love death the way the fascists once did. It is Sunni, so it massacres Shiites. It is radical Sunni, so it eliminates apostates. It is Muslim, so it kills Yazidis, a minority with a religion of its own, and takes as plunder their women as concubines. Men are shot in graves of their own making.

The Nazis are back — differently dressed, speaking a different language and murdering ostensibly for different reasons but actually for the same: intolerance, hatred, excitement and just because they can."

So, what do we do with today's Nazis? I really hate the idea of getting the U.S. involved in the Religious and Civil Wars of the Middle East, but we have to apply U.S. power to the region.  I hope Obama, and Europe, use as much financial, diplomatic, economic, military training and weapons for the least radical Muslims on the ground, maybe some air power support, intelligence support, selected special forces missions, etc etc.  And I hope we don't put ground troops into that briar patch.  

But I don't see how we can remain aloof and removed as we watch this al Qaeda offshoot, more vicious, better organized, better funded jihadist savages continue to rampage.  We are definitely on their target list.

Maliki steps down in Iraq

The good news is that Maliki has resigned as Prime Minister of Iraq. I believe the biggest culprit in the emergence of the Islamic State has been Maliki and his backers - Iran. He ruled as a tyrant who was becoming a Shiite version of the previous Sunni tyrant, Saddam Hussein. He suppressed and tyrannized the Sunnis in Iraq, and joined with the Iranians in sending Shiite jihadists into Syria.

The result was a Sunni revolt in both Syria and Iraq. Unfortunately, that Sunni revolt grew into I.S.I.S. which later named itself the Islamic State. 

Now, the Islamic State has to be stopped, both for the sake of a livable Middle East and for the sake of safety in the West and the United States.  Fortunately, a lot of the Arab world agrees that they must be stopped and, if I understand it correctly, they are against them. 

The U.S. is slowly and reluctantly using force against them, but Obama's hope all along seems to have been that Iraq would oust Maliki and move to win over the more moderate Sunnis to join in the opposition to the Islamic State.  My most desired outcome is that this is what happens, and that with U.S. assistance (and little if any American boots on the ground), Iraq can pull together more moderate Shia and Sunni forces to strengthen Iraq and drive out the Islamic State. 

I want the Muslim world to reject and renounce the Islamic State. Perhaps Maliki's resignation is a step in that direction. 

The "Muddle East"explodes

The Islamic State, formerly known as I.S.I.L., is truly terrifying and dangerous. They are so bad that what is happening in Israel and Ukraine pale by comparison. These men are religious fanatics in the worst possible sense. They literally are killing people for not being Muslims. And to say that they are killing them is to understate their treatment of their victims. 

Why?  

First, we can look to the man in charge of Iraq, Maliki. He was chosen by Bush and supported by Obama as the one Shiite who could reach out to Shia, Sunni, and Kurds alike and govern over a more or less unified Iraq. Instead, he became a Shiite dictator aligned with the Shiite Iran, suppressing and terrorizing the Sunnis.  Not surprisingly, the Sunnis are rising up against this oppression. 

Second, we can look at Maliki again, and the force behind him, Iran. They sent radical Islamist Shia into Syria and the outcome was an even larger Sunnu uprising, the battle hardened al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State of the Levant, I.S.I.L, declared itself the new caliphate to fight in Syria and, oh by the way, take over northern Iraq. 

We now have a legitimate threat of genocidal slaughter of a small religious group in Iraq, the Yazidi, and an assault on the Kurds, who have been our allies in Iraq since our invasion. 

So what?  Why do we care?

Certainly there are very legitimate humanitarian reasons to stop the Islamic State. But, perhaps more to the point, our national interests are at stake. Islamic State is in the process of taking over vast oil fields and thus becoming enormously wealthy.  And with that wealth their abilities to attach the West and America multiply exponentially. We tried to walk away from the religious Middle Eastern wars, but it looks like we can't. Imagine Osama bin Laden in charge of billions of dollars and millions of Islamist fanatics, and that is the potential future of the Islamic State.  Except the Islamic state is so extreme that even al Qaeda can't stand them. 

So, air strikes against the Islamic State on the march in order to protect the Yazidis seems necessary to me. I don't know how we stop these zealots with drones and aircraft. I think the key to it is probably in Iran and Saudi Arabia, which I think are the centers of the Shia and Sunni movements. 

Which takes us back to the start of it all, in the modern age at least, the Ayatollah Khomeini Islamist revolution in Iran. If some key Shia and Sunni religious leaders could reach out to each other and call off the dogs, things might settle down and the "Muddle East" might become less of a nightmarish muddle and be able to move toward civilization and peace. 

This is the resolution that I envision and pray for.