Syria, 9-11 and Growth

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

“A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interests in the present.”

George Santayana
In our own national pride and belief in American Exceptionalism we refuse to look up from our narrow view of the world and realize that we just cannot fix the world. Oh, we can punish, maybe we can slow the problem for a moment, but create a long term solution, not with guns or rockets, troops or covert missions.

The problems of the Middle East have been brewing and stewing for hundreds, if not thousands, of years and the festering of what started as local issues has become a collection of cultural hatreds that can only be solved by the people involved.

Look at the aftermath of the Iraq war, peace is not really known there, Shia and Sunni are still fighting, cultural minorities are hardly safe and welcome in the country, was this the goal of all those years of blood on our hands as a nation, is Iraq better than it was before?

Now we have Syria. We are banging the war drums and it is beginning to look like the politicians may just give the go ahead, will it solve the issue?

Bashar al-Assad, presuming he authorized the chemical attacks, has shown that he is a desperate man and is not interested in any kind of justice. You can attempt to punish men like that but they just get more desperate, and desperate men are capable of atrocities that our minds cannot wrap themselves around.

Sadly, as much as I mourn the loss of life that has and is likely to come, if you hand power to someone else without them being actually ready and prepared, you have not solved the problem, at best you have put a Band-Aid on it. The problem will return in a cultural conflict, it cannot do otherwise.

It seems that if power is handed to someone, they are rarely aware of just what a potentially dangerous and deadly responsibility it truly is. Sadly it takes going through the crucible to burn away the lust for power and make one appreciate peace, not pretty, but true. By going through the crucible, the emergent leader(s) are in a much better place to know the value of what they do, their friends and comrades were sacrificed to "win" the goal so the power has an extremely personal value.

When countries like ours insert themselves into the conflicts of others, especially cultural ones, we create an illusion we like to call stability, but our history of cultural insertion has not shown that we make good choices. Our people who supposedly "know" what they are doing actually come off in the rear-view of history to appear something akin to gullible.

Just because someone supported us in fighting their battle, does not mean that they are the leader that needs to rise, or that they have any interest in following the path that we would want them to, not that I find that to be a particularly brilliant motivation. Look at our history of imposed leadership in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran (that turned out well), Saddam Hussein (another success).

We like to say that our involvement is over the support of Israel, and somewhat it is, but if we take an honest look, it is about money as oil. What is really sad, is that about a hundred years ago, the people of the region felt, 'Americans were seen as good people, untainted by the selfishness and duplicity associated with the Europeans'^[1] and now we have become the selfish and duplicitous.

I like to think that under all the greed for oil, that part of it is that as a nation we see a collection of our fellow humanity in pain and are just clueless how to help them, but instead of sitting back and figuring out the big picture and actually creating long-term solutions to the benefits of the residents, we see a place where we can charge in like General Custer and in our pride just make it worse.

Every time someone talks about the US entering some country's civil war, I think of an old "Doonsebury" cartoon from the Vietnam era. B.D., our pro Vietnam War Conservative has managed to get lost in the rice paddies of a foreign country and be taken prisoner by Phred, a Viet-Cong "terrorist". In the strip I am thinking of, they are discussing the early years of the war and B.D. just is not getting why Phred doesn't see American involvement into the war his way, so Phred asks him, what would he think if the Vietnamese had shown up in Gettysburg and started handing out chocolate and chewing gum?

Now we have Syria, as much as the questions being asked are about chemical warfare and the response that should be made, once again America is threatening to react instead of thinking. For sure the Military-Industrial Complex is lobbying hard for the war, war is BIG business. What frightens me the most is that being so close to the anniversary of September 11^th, can our slow minded politicians separate the two? I would love to be able to say that I am sure they will make the right decision, but now all I can do is hope.

What is that decision? That is the question. Do we really currently know enough about what we are getting into? Are we seeing, or can we see, the big picture? What happens if we take the path being placed before us and President Assad does it again, are we ready to go round two, or three or all out war?

Large chunks of the Middle East are going through amazing growth now, it is violent and painful to be part of and to watch. If we have any hope of lasting success in the area, I think we may just have to sit back and let them do it, on their own, without big-brother walking in and forcing solutions that they are not ready or willing to accept. Left to themselves, they will likely come to them on their own. Can we have the faith, that as human-beings, they will learn an extremely hard lesson on their own, as it should be.

Footnotes:

1. Fawcett, L. (2005) The International Relations of the Middle East UK: Oxford University Press p 285

A Constitutional Preamble for the 21st Century

Today is the 4^th of July, also known as Independence Day.

Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Wikipedia - Independence Day (United States)
Sadly, as the years have gone by and the dumbing-down of the masses has continued, Independence Day is quickly becoming the American equivalent to "Cinco de Mayo" with bar-b-ques and fireworks. Yes, I do know that Cinco de Mayo is not the Mexican Day of Independence, but in the U.S. it has become the Mexican equivalent St. Patrick's Day, basically a reason to get plastered, but since it is a federal holiday many get holiday pay for it.

As much as that is somewhat to be expected, what is actually much more sad is that the promise that many aspects of the foundation of the United States foretold, freedom, justice and this wonderful experiment in Representational Democracy, is in danger of falling to the wayside in the near future.

As a nation, there is what appears to be a very dangerous formula in the works and the outcome would be the destruction of the shining beacon that is the potential for a nation.

I was recently re-reading Baird T. Spalding's "Life and Teaching of the Masters of the Far East" and I was touched by how one of his guides on the trip was so enamored with the United States and its promise to the world for the future.

In recent years though, we have been witness to a fundamental shift in how America runs and the goals for which it appears to be pursuing, sadly from my perspective, they are as "Un-American" as anything Joseph McCarthy would have come up with.

I could go into detail on where we stopped being President Lincoln's vision of a "government of the people, by the people, for the people," and his belief that it "shall not perish from the earth." We have allowed ourselves to become a government of the Rich, by the Powerful Media Conglomerates and for profits at all costs without even thinking about the consequences of these changes.

So I have decided that the Preamble to the US Constitution, which was ratified nearly 12 years after the Declaration of Independence and is the highest law of the land, should be modified to address the view of those who have been given the country on a silver platter as follows:

We the [Rich and Powerful] People [and Corporations] of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union [for the protection of our profit margins], establish Justice [based on Christian Sharia], insure domestic Tranquility [through mind-numbing mass media], provide for the common defense [against the proletariat], promote the general Welfare [when we absolutely must or their labor is needed], and secure the Blessings of  Liberty  [Profitability] to ourselves and our Posterity [only], do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America[, Inc.].

"The 65" and the true power in the USA

"The 99" are the people that have been left behind by the few with all the money and power in our country, though I suspect it has become a cancer throughout our modern world.

Sadly, there are a third who have drunk so much of the Kool-Aid that they will never be willing or able to see that they are slaves in the deepest of bondage. In the days of African slavery in this country, there was the expression of the "House Nigger" who believed they had the best their life could offer, maybe they did for the world and time they lived in, but they were so tied to this belief they would never be willing to act against their bondage.

This third will listen to their Corporate Masters and do as they are told for a collection of reasons that will mainly be nothing but justifications of their fear of rocking the boat, their belief that they do have some life and their fear that it could be worse. It very well may be that they are eternally lost; that their belief in what has happened to them is truly just, they are to be pitied and held up as examples of what the 1% has done, do not hate them for they are lambs that have succumb to the indoctrination they are for slaughter on the alters of greed and power.

"The 65" can change the nation!

The 1% may hold the money and power to flood the market with their message, "The 65" still carry the majority where it truly counts, the ability to actually cast a vote. This is why the 1% are trying so hard to exclude people from being able to exercise their right to cast that vote.

It will require taking a chance for electing people who care about you, even if they do not share all your beliefs and opinions. The media is owned and operated by the Masters and that small percentage that is not, lives under the tyranny of having their advertising revenues cut by the other side of the same Board Rooms that own the rest of the Media. It truly is a leviathan that we have allowed to grow on Wall St and in Washington, amongst other places.

The simple fact is that in the long run, this is a war of attrition, they cannot win this battle unless "The 65" or "The 99" let them.

"In 1917 Gandhi said that the people's victory against the British was a mathematical certainty. "100,000 English cannot control 35 million Indians who choose to disobey." Two years later, in April 1919, after the British proposed new laws which would deny Indians basic civil liberties, Gandhi demonstrated this power of disobedience by calling for a "national day of prayer and fasting" which had the effect of a national strike. He understood the power of right and the power of non-cooperation, and used them successfully for the first time."

"Mohandas Gandhi: The Art of Nonviolence"
by Peter N. Herndon
This simple idea brought the British Empire to its knees, the very same principle will throw our attempted Masters into a tailspin, for the 1% is only three-million people, of which I suspect the actual brokers are far less than that, but before you think that is so much and impossible, "The 65" are around 200,000,000.

Calling "The 65" to take action...

I call on "The 65" to unify under the banner of reclaiming our Nation, removing the Masters and what they have been allowed to become through our negligence as a nation. Some will be Christian, others will not be, some will support the right of a woman to choose while others will not, some will support Love in whatever its form and celebrate it with all the rights and privileges, responsibilities and obligations of marriage and yet others will not. These are the illusions used to control you for if you truly believe in American Freedom, it cannot be just yours alone, but the freedom for others to choose differently; without this, it is not freedom, but hypocrisy.

Throw off the chains of your Masters and use that large mass of grey matter that your God or evolution put there for a reason, not just to keep our heads from imploding.

You want an idea of just how simple it is to have a bloodless-coup? If "The 65" can get together and vote for the big picture and not get lost in the divisiveness that will be used to manipulate and control them, in as little as six years the entire system can be overthrown without a single act of violence. It should actually be much faster than that, this is actually a worst case scenario. In reality, a single election in 2012 with a united voice will change enough of the current structure to force them to change on their own.

"The 65" and the NEW Revolution

Changing this country does not require a Revolution of Blood in the traditional sense, the blood that counts is not red, but in America it is the blood of the green; that is the second way you bring them into control, their bottom lines, but that is for another day and another time.

Think about where the power of "The 65" can be applied, work with your fellow countrymen, they may not agree in all things, but they do agree with you on the big issue reclaiming the United States from the 1% minority, that is where the war really is.