Evolution: seeing without the lens of war

US Army photo

We never asked to be the world's parental nest. We never asked. But we had the most money, the most successful populace with a laissez faire attitude about world affairs, and the biggest fist, the strongest hammer. Yet, as President Obama said at the West Point graduation, last week, "Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail."

"[T]o say that we have an interest in pursuing peace and freedom beyond our borders is not to say that every problem has a military solution."

There is difficulty in letting go of power, but there is greater difficulty in using it in unwelcome ways, like missile firing drones and monitored cellphones. If we want to have a relationship with the world, we must allow that relationship to evolve. Once we have stopped being the heavy hand with the rest of the planet, we can be the tender touch to nurture, from the strength of knowing how to get things done, what a free world creates.

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Peace withers when religion tramples the vine

President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton greet
caskets of four U.S. victims of Libyan violence, at
Andrews Air Force Base,
White House Photo, Pete Souza, 9/14/12

Faith requires so little - only the willingness to abandon what one knows to be true in family and society, in favor of something less certain, outside one's usual life experience. That is where a prophet of faith begins his (or her) personal journey. It is not until after others have also stepped forward, into the uncertain chaos of new belief, that system and structure begin to emerge, and what once was an exiled gathering of like minded individuals is re-absorbed into the larger community from whence it came. There, after derision, discrimination and death, the movement finally takes hold as a religion, as true to its adherents as fire, air and water.

The Arab Spring, that began in the winter of 2011, could not have happened without the tenacity to true faith that Islam has in the everyday lives of people in North Africa, the Middle East and East Asia. These were not revolutions for individual freedoms, as some in the West may think of them, inasmuch as they were populist actions to overthrow dictators and despots. They were revolutions for democracy, because the people did not feel their voices were being heard. We can harbor no illusion that they would suddenly become reasonable players on the world stage, since it was often those dictators and despots who would have helped keep things, like what happened this week in Cairo, Benghazi and Sanaa, from getting out of hand. (Well, maybe not so much in Libya. If Gaddafi were still around, he'd probably lead the assault.)

In the Arab and Muslim world, this week, it is not the brambled hedge of religion that is under attack. It is the thorny vine of budding peace, trying to wind its way around the stake planted during the Arab Spring, that is struggling.

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America in the Outhouse

A De Facto Empire under a De Facto Siege

America's transcendence to empire did not happen all at once - not when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 in the waning days of the Cold War, not with a mushroom cloud over Hiroshima in 1945, and not with the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill in 1898. Even in the case of the latter, "winning" Puerto Rico and the Philippines was at least as much a bullish attempt to consolidate power for ourselves in the world by exacting revenge on the Spanish as it was an exercise in expansionism and empire. Teddy's audacious actions were just a wink-and-a-nudge, the soft speech compared to the big stick approach to global assertiveness that our country takes in the world now. When is the last time that any rhetoric out of Washington was emblematic of the counsel to "speak softly" (other than the relatively meek reactions to General Musharraf's declaration of martial law last week)?

We spent the first fifty-five years after World War Two gorging on what we believed was the admiration of the planet, the illusions of banal nationalism. We swallowed it whole, and spent the last seven years squeezing out lump after stinky lump of stars-and-stripes shit that we offer back to the world as manna. Clearly there are those who are looking around because they can't believe the stink is ours. Our shit doesn't stink. To believe that it does would be un-American to Mr. Cheney and his minions, traitorous to Ms. Coulter and her ilk.

Why can't we get off the pot and create something more beneficial? Because we have made it a critical component of our foreign policy to turn assholes into allies. The sad thing is, if we were actually doing that, things might be going better. What we are doing instead is trying to turn assholes into Americans (though it's arguably easier to turn Americans into assholes) in some warped notion that if we could get them to think like Americans they wouldn't want to hurt us. Obviously we don't know ourselves very well.

We can't even pay them to think like us. They just don't want to. Despite that reality, and despite that our "verbal support" for Musharraf may be waning, John Negraponte says we will continue to give Pakistan millions of dollars, according to an article in yesterday's New York Times. But the money isn't helping. In America, power is just another commodity that we are trying to buy (at outsourced, bargain rates), which will be used to intimidate and strong arm and waterboard a culture passionate about living their own lives their own way, thank you very much.

Instead of hiring Neanderthal mercenary organizations like Blackwater to muscle them into submission, we should be investing in programs like CARE, the Peace Corps, Doctors Without Borders and organizations with experience in conflict resolution, like the Carter Center.

All the saber rattling engenders nothing except louder protests which brings more saber rattling. "My way or the highway" is a signpost on the road to hell. Let's flush the holier-than-thou threats, elect a sane government and have some movement toward meaningful dialogue.

-PBG

Dimples and Craters: Acheiving MAXIMUM IMPACT

"I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where..."

From "The Arrow and the Song"
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I find the term "meteoric rise" to be somewhat oxymoronic. After all, meteors don't rise. Well in space they might, if there is an "up" up there.

The term references a brilliant, streaking light in the night sky that comes out of nowhere and bounces with a fiery glow across the edge of our atmosphere before fading into nothingness. In that sense, "meteoric rise" is a metaphor for an individual whose soaring achievement similarly comes out of nowhere, but burns so brightly that it attracts everyone's attention and is hard to miss. And, unfortunately, like their namesakes, this moment of personal glory burns to a fizzle and is quickly gone.

But streaking meteors aren't actually rising. They are hurtling at tremendous speeds towards the earth. Where the metaphor falls apart is, well, where the meteor falls apart - on re-entry - and that's just the climax of its journey. It's still around until -

KABLOOEY!! It slams into the ground! What impact is left in it's wake? It depends on the size of the meteor. Arizona's Meteor Crater is a huge impact site, 4,000 feet across, 550 feet deep! They dug a 1,400 lb. meteorite out of that crater. OMG, as the kids say.

What if the meteor's impact were just a dimple, a pockmark on the planet, neither bigger nor more impressive than the hole left behind when when you pull a skipping stone from the clay? If it were your brilliance hurtling towards the earth, what would be its maximum impact?

"I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where..."
Ibid, 2nd verse

So I guess not all impacts are from arrows. Some are indeed from beautiful songs. Either way, I think Longfellow would agree that whatever we issue to the world, be it through fisticuffs or Facebook, bombs or Brahms, Bush or Buddha, they land with an impact that has more permanence than we realize. As for me, I hope that my impact is, as the people gathered on the mountaintop for the soda commercial sang (or would have sung, had they not been selling soda pop): "a song of peace that echoes on and never goes away."

"Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend."
Ibid, 3rd verse

I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing-The Shaw Brothers
-PBG

Dialog for Peace

Thank you, Nancy Pelosi, for being forward thinking and courageous in visiting Damascus.

Political solutions are not properly presented on a dingy platter of empty diplomacy, especially when a reluctant administration only presents a pissed-on tray covered with the paper doily of dogmatic idealism.

It is true the al-Assad is more bitter enemy than best friend, and not undeservingly so. His interests and ours nearly always diverge. Yet Syria must be engaged in dialog, not in spite of its roles in Lebanon and Iraq, but because of them. This is not some banana republic-like "rogue" regime. The Assads have run Syria for decades. You'd have to be smoking some pretty cosmic Lebanese hash to think they are going anywhere.

Any diplomatic engagement must be viewed as a positive step. It's "a more practical approach," Ziad Haider, a Lebanese journalist, told the New York Times. Practical, he says, because it represents change, the prospect of a US foreign policy not "based on demands and ideology."

So thank you, Ms. Pelosi. It is a shame that the 2008 presidential candidates appear to be afraid to take the stand that you have taken here. I hope that in twenty months, when - God willing - we get back in the White House, we will be presenting attractive options to all the players in this seemingly intractable region.

Those who advocate the current paradigm of the silent treatment think that other countries quake to find themselves on our shit list. It's obvious to me that this policy prolongs distrust and potentially breeds more anger and resentment toward the United States, when we should be looking for ways to mitigate their powerful hatred. But more than resentment, I think they and the rest of the world are disappointed in the misguided policies we have allowed our government to pursue in our name. I know I am.

It is time to clean the idealistic crud from the diplomatic tray. I don't know what morsels of the diplomacy we proffer to the Syrians or Iranians they will find to their liking. What I do understand is that our commitment will be much better demonstrated by offers presented respectfully, on a gleaming silver tray, than by Bush's ridiculously parental tone in threatening to use the platter as a blunt object on our enemies' backsides. That's no offer at all.

If your cause is peace, your dogma must be dialog.

-PBG