Surge on Mexico

Lately we've been hearing from the administration about how the Surge in Iraq worked. They say it kept violence down in the areas it was active, but others point out that it exposed the weaknesses of the Iraqi government and showed that they are not making progress towards self-rule. The surge originally was supposed to buy the government time to get organized and get control so we would not be the ones providing all the security for the country.

I heard an argument for staying in Iraq voiced as, "Do you want $4 per gallon Gasoline? We can't pull out!" Oil production in Iraq hasn't been that great lately, anyway. If it was, we would expect them to pay for their own defense. I believe that our presence and the disruption of being invaded and occupied is part of what helps keep prices high, as well as promoting instability in the region. To say that we are there to provide stability seems quite a stretch to me. The problem with Iraq maturing to the point of self-government is that after the Saddam years, there is no one of any power or capability left to govern. Saddam made sure that anyone of any ability was "suppressed" (usually killed, but also exiled). Today, corruption and mismanagement is the rule. To expect a leader with a stabilizing influence that is not just trying to enrich himself or promote his own agenda is probably hoping for too much.

As I was thinking about all these issues with Iraq, it occurred to me that much of the same can be said about Mexico.

The problems with Mexico are similar in that corruption and mismanagement is causing a poor economy. In Mexico's case, the lack of opportunity this creates causes people to migrate north in search of better opportunities. Immigration resulting from a corrupt system is thought by many to be a big problem, a threat to us. So Mexican corruption causes us security concerns.

Therefore, we are equally justified in invading Mexico. We can liberate them from their crappy government and fix their dysfunctional system and make them more prosperous and less of a threat to us here. As they say about Iraq, we have to take care of their problem there so they won't follow us home. I believe an invasion and surge into Mexico is a valid response to this international crisis.

Mexico's oil wealth is an added bonus. The revenues from oil will make the war fund itself. The Mexican people are so downtrodden, they will surely hail us as liberators. As soon as a free democratic government can be put into power, we can leave them as a strong and stable ally.

Of course that's absurd. However, the line of reasoning is very similar to what we have been told about Iraq. You can hear the steady drumbeat of concerns about immigration being repeated by the same types of people that thought the Iraq War was and is a good idea, so it's not that crazy to expect the propaganda on immigration to morph into more extreme solutions and more intense rhetoric. Just brace yourself for more lunacy, that's all I'm saying.

Many decried the Bush Doctrine of preemptive strikes on countries as a horrible idea. Bad governments are allowed to continue all the time all over the world. When is it right or when do we have an obligation to go in and take over? If a country is exterminating a minority or can't provide for their people, is that enough to take over? We can't afford to run around the world trying to right all the wrongs, but at what point do we pass some threshold where it starts to seem like the right thing to do? And why can we not, as Americans, come anywhere close to consensus on this issue?

Justifications

Originally written 8/25/05:

Jon Stewart’s guest last night, Christopher Hitchens(promoting his latest book, Thomas Jefferson: Author of America - ISBN 0-06-059896-4) made some good arguments in favor of going to Iraq. In fact, he came closer than anyone ever has to convincing me that what we are doing is the right thing.

Hitchens laid out 4 reasons why we should invade a country. He said it’s justified when a leader (or country) 1) invades its neighbors 2) uses weapons of mass destruction 3) commits genocide or 4) harbors terrorists. He concluded that Saddam Hussein had done all of these at one time or another. The counter-argument that the time to respond and take him out was after the Kuwait invasion, he conceded.

Jon Stewart’s counter-argument was that he just doesn’t like the way Bush talks to us. He doesn’t like the way that Bush belittles and sneers at his opponents.

I found myself both agreeing with him and terribly disappointed in his answer. You don’t want to hear the champion of your cause (or maybe just your views) expose the utter weakness of one of your core beliefs.

It’s not easy to look in the mirror and see someone that is behaving exactly as the very people you spent 8 years in the Clinton years despising. The Clinton haters rarely could come up with a better argument than “I don’t like the way he looks and I don’t like the way he talks.”

OK, now the shoe is one the other foot. But let’s review some of the reasons for disliking the way the country has been run the last 5 years and some of the contrasts to the previous 8.

The economy is in stark contrast. The past 5 years have certainly been the most dismal economic time in my life. I wasn’t alive during the Great Depression, so I can’t compare, but I’m sure some of the benchmarks surpass those times. The only good thing you can say is that there wasn’t a total collapse, and we seem to be pulling out of it shakily.

We have no plan for cutting our dependence on foreign oil, and I discount more drilling in ANWAR, as it will have little impact (in supply) and will take too long to develop to help – it does not address the root cause or move us boldly into the future.

We are suppressing scientific development. Rather than using government to prod or encourage science and continue to keep our lead in technology, we have the glaring example of opposition to stem cell research. I’ll even concede that the development of new technologies needs ethical guidelines and moral oversight, but just slamming the door shut is not good enough. First, it totally removes government from the game, actually inviting abuses. Second, it ignores reality. The promise of the technology is too strong to expect that it will wait or go away. If we don’t do it, someone else will, and if the government doesn’t take a hand in it, we will lose control of the direction the technology goes and where it will take us. I could go into the question of genetically engineered humans or the whole way that patenting and tightly held intellectual property drives the cost of those innovations up and beyond the means of the average person or how pharmaceutical solutions tend to create “addictions” to medical technology rather than curing root causes, but those are other issues.

What’s more important, getting back to Iraq, is what we were told about why we were going into Iraq. I’ve often thought that if Bush had just said, “He’s a bad man, it’s time to take him out,” he’d be better off right now. As it stands, he justified the war saying there were weapons of mass destruction, which there were not. Then he said they had the ability to make them, which they did not. Then he said that they were planning to make them, which is ridiculous. Then he tried to make it seem that Saddam was involved in 9/11, which is easy for many people to accept, regardless of the fact that there is no proof or evidence of any connection. Then he started to say that the world and Iraq is better off without Hussein. Unfortunately, that’s not really clear. You could argue that the heavy hand of an oppressive dictator kept the lid on the current pre-civil war explosive situation. Saddam could keep the oil flowing to the world and kept the electricity flowing to his people. This argument doesn’t excuse Saddam to the outside world, but it gives the insurgents something to rally around and it prevents the average citizen over there from having confidence in our presence. Don’t even get me started on “We will be greeted as liberators”.

The other major problem is the planning and execution of the war. We certainly had Halliburton ready and primed in order to keep the oil flowing, which it turned out wasn’t necessary. What we didn’t have was enough troops, enough armor, enough local authorities, any appreciation of the growing insurgency or any semblance of a coherent plan.

The major thing that fills me with dismay when I look at the current administration is the feeling that things are getting much worse. We are supposed to relinquish personal freedoms because of a threat of terrorism. We are not supposed to question how people connected with the administration or those of already comfortable means are in a position to profit wildly at a time when the rest of the country watches their standard of living slipping away. We are not trying to solve any long term problems, medical care, the environment, or the future of our energy supply.

And the thing I fear the most is the death of truth and the total annihilation of civility. It started during the campaigns, when winning an election was so important that it justified trying to trash the reputation of a respected war veteran (twice! once with McCain before Kerry). It’s nothing new for people seeking power to play with the truth in order to get support. But those are the people that ended up on the trash heap of history (Joe McCarthy was quite popular for a while, but you don’t ever hear people singing his praises now).

I think the thing that angers me is that any student of history would measure Bush as one of the worst presidents this country has ever had. The problem is that people that live in the current day often can’t see how things are likely to end up. I see the Bush era as a time that future people will look back on as a dark time with an incompetent leader. But the guy in the parking lot with the W sticker on his SUV thinks people that think like me are anti-American. In their eyes, those of us that can really see how it is, we are the problem.

Iraq Veterans and PTSD

Letter sent to Senator Bond 12/14/2006 6:50 AM

Thank you for your recent request for the Department of Defense to look into the denial of treatment for soldiers that may have PTSD. This is an important issue that cuts across party lines.

A year ago I sent you a letter, disappointed with your stance on torture. I felt that this position could only be blind support for the President in defiance of what is right or wrong (I still do). What politicians do not understand is that there are stances on issues that are right or wrong independent of party affiliation or who supported a candidate to get elected. Most Americans have a pretty good sense of these issues and when politicians' actions seem to be dictated by political expedience rather than what that politician values, the people are sorely disappointed in their leaders.

Whether a citizen agrees with the war or not, the tools we use to fight this war are flesh and blood people, and this country owes its highest debt to those that risk harm in order to serve for the good of the country. The thought that we would ever do anything less than honor and support them is a wrong that must be eradicated immediately.

The sad truth is that war uses people up. The things we require soldiers to do in combat situations harm the soldiers' psychological well-being. This is not a weakness or anything to be ashamed of, it's a fact that we ignore at great peril. PTSD counseling should be mandatory for all returning troops, and command imperatives should be crafted to remove the stigma from this condition. We do so well crafting our service members into a "Band of Brothers" when we send them off to war, and we honor the bonds they form through their trials. Why should these brothers, our nation's brothers, not be treated as true brothers in their time of need? They need our help and understanding to restore their minds and souls after the sacrifice they make for our country.


Please continue this good effort and see it through. It is far too important to ignore.

Trivial Trifecta

From a while back, to a friend:

I've been reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is pretty interesting - how people domesticated plants and animals, and why some "tribes" got more advanced than others. Human development history. I just finished a couple of audiobooks from the library on religion. Actually, they are Teaching Company courses, one on the history of Islam and the other on early Christianity.

Also, there was a really interesting Science Friday program on Neural Plasticity. This lady wrote a book about the Dali Lama's interest in current brain science, and all the new ways of rehabilitating brain injuries. It's at http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/1998/Jan/hour2_013098.html, but I downloaded it on my ipod. It's really interesting.

They tried to get me to run for city council in (censored city name) again, so I could help with our (political issue). It's sort of like the Iraq war: we were told a bunch of lies, we voted for a course of action based on those lies, the leadership proceeded to prove that they were wrong and didn't know what they were doing, and now we're stuck. The only difference is there's no bombs involved with our intractable situation.