Heading for higher ground...

Very promising developments for Lebanon and Israel...

Bush cautions on Lebanese cease-fire...Yahoo News/Associated Press...August 7, 2006...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060807/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_mideast

John Waterbury, the President of the American University in Beirut, writes a really incredible editorial for the Washington Post, this morning...it is amazing how crises can often bring out both the most irrational impulses in people and the most remarkable analyses of situations...and this crisis is no exception...

A Bad Status Quo...Washington Post...August 7, 2006...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/06/AR2006080600838.html

It is remarkable to me how when a bad status quo prevails, that so many people will advocate more of the same stupid bullshit that got them into the situation they are experiencing in the first place...

I read this really foolish response to a Jerusalem Post piece by David Horovitz, this morning, arguing that the most serious mistakes Israel had made in dealing with its threatening neighbors was peace agreements which had encouraged terrorists hostile to Israel...

Every time I read this nonsense, I think...outside of defensive operations, the only thing that has provided any real security to Israel in the region has been peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan and the reminents of a peace process with Palestine which has nurtured the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and splintered support for the likes of Hamas and more hardline, violent alternatives in Palestine...

What exactly did 18 years of occupation of Lebanon secure for Israel? Outside of defensive operations, what exactly has 80 years of violence between Israel and her Arab neighbors secured for Israel? A legacy of hostilities and violence that has claimed the lives of countless Israeli and Palestinian citizens, as much and more than military forces...

It's the most irrational and foolish thinking process to watch people engage in...

President Bush has been arguing for the need for America and Israel to get to root causes of the conflict in Lebanon to negotiate a sustainable peace...

That will only happen as the parties address those issues mutually and open-mindedly and open-heartedly in dialogue as a part of a peace process...there is no other way...military action in the region has proven to ignite hostilities that sometimes lead cooler heads to turn to peace discussions that begin to address such issues...but military action, except when it has been genuinely defensive, as in the case of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the 1967 Six-Day War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, has not produced a meaningful end to either the terrorism or the hostilities between Israeli and Arab populations which fuels it...

Though I must say that the arguments by conservatives and folks like Michael Oren, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and a reserve major in the Israeli Defense Forces, interviewed by Paul Gigot on the Journal Editorial Report, that peace-keeping forces must be able to engage offensively to disarm Hezbollah and not remain the incapacitated forces that they have often been in the past is a strong one and one that deserves our upmost attention, I think...

http://www.opinionjournal.com/jer/?id=110008758&mod=RSS_Opinion_Journal&ojrss=frontpage

Though any disarmament, no matter how well-designed, politically, for purposes of the international community, in the form of an international force with the backing of the United Nations, would still have to contend with an active and actively arming Hezbollah (with the help of Iran and Syria, presumably) as long as they remain committed to terrorism...and Hezbollah's reason for existence, in particular, is tied to an Israeli presence in Lebanon, so the most recent incursion emboldens them and anyone in the Arab world and international community sympathetic to Lebanon's desire to have Israel out of its sovereign territory...

And Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora made that crystal clear, today, rejecting the U.N. cease-fire proposal unless Israel pulls out of Lebanon immediately upon cessation of the fighting...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060808/ap_on_re_mi_ea/lebanon_israel

It is understandable that Israel, which has fought several defensive wars against the odds of multiple adversaries, expelled them, and even gained ground, would view their military strength as the source of their security...and it most certainly has been and continues to be an important source of security in the face of so many serious security threats, from Lebanon and Palestine, directly, and Syria and Iran, indirectly...

But it is foolhardy in the extreme, I think, to suppose that the current offensive in Israel -- even if it were to create the Litani River buffer zone that is being discussed in Israel currently -- will somehow end hostilities with Hezbollah and security threats to Israel and her citizens from the North...it flies in the face of 80 years of experience around this issue, and two decades of experience with Hezbollah, specifically...and it ignores the most successful experiences Israel has had, with Jordan and Egypt, through peace processes...

In fact, it is the commitment to peace that has been responsible for even the very small but significant amount of success that Israel has experienced with Palestine, with the most proactive commitment by a Palestinian leader to peace in Mahmoud Abbas that I have ever seen in my lifetime and likely in the history of the hostilities, largely through the peace efforts of folks like Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, President Bush, President Clinton and others who maintained the hope of peace in the Oslo Agreements and Camp David Accords which the respondent for that Jerusalem Post column blamed, foolishly, for the continuing security situation that Israel finds itself in and the current crisis in Lebanon...

I very much doubt that this situation will somehow permanently route Hezbollah, any more than Israeli firepower has resolved issues with past military incursions...a buffer from Hezbollah firepower would be desireable, obviously, but a military incursion -- rather than negotiation with the Lebanese government and the United Nations member countries over the composition of a peace-keeping effort (though Israel may have been very well correct that the United Nations and its member countries, which do seem to have something of an anti-Israel bent, may have ignored such a request; we will never know, though, because Israel foreclosed on multilateral options before it even engaged them) -- has boosted support for Hezbollah in Arab countries and killed and displaced many more people than might have been necessary than would have been the case had Israel negotiated with partners in good faith, up front...

And the lesson that Israel must learn is that the significant victories it has experienced in past offensive operations (distinct from Israeli defensive wars) -- the capture of land in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula, the occupation of Southern Lebanon, and the relocation of the Palestinian Liberation Organization to Tunis during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon -- have been Pyrrhic victories, at best, and political liabilities, at worst, in the case of the occupation of Palestinian and Lebanense populated terrorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and Southern Lebanon...

I very much care about the security of Israel and her citizens...I care deeply about the security and welfare of Palestinians and Lebanese in this conflict, but I do not see Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah on equal moral ground in these conflicts...Israel has shown a much stronger propensity to respect her neighbors and to promote workable peace plans, while Hamas and Hezbollah and other such terrorist groups not only target innocent civilians -- a quite significant departure from accidental civilian death during military operations -- but they have actively and by military means opposed peace plans, in the past, and show little indication of favoring peace currently...

Where hope for peace lies is in political groups in Palestine and Lebanon who are more reasonable peace partners...

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, is the most proactive and moderate leader of peace efforts that I am aware of in Palestine...ironically, as a founding member of Fatah, he has been the most proactive post-Barak of either Palestinian or Israeli leaders in brokering a sustainable peace...

Similarly, the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers by the Hezbollah military wing has been met with resentment by the political wing of Hezbollah in the Lebanese parliament, whose new democracy offers those political leaders both a means to address their grievances and to moderate their outlooks, as with Fatah in Palestine and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland (and we can only hope like the ETA Basque separatists in Spain who have announed a "permanent ceasefire" and will soon be working out a peace deal with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero)...

It is with the cooperation of these more good faith political actors that peace can be negotiated...and where the future of a peaceful Middle East are most likely to be found...

There will never be peace without such a commitment...and there will always be terrorism and violent hostilities without an active commitment to peace...

The Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation process following apartheid and their mutual foundations in democracy and peaceful transitions of power and a commitment to a free and peaceful future offer us the best hope for resolving many of the world's most serious conflicts and the bloodshed that stains them...

Military force, and force and power, generally, whether we like it or not, is limited in its capacity to resolve important problems...generally, because underlying issues remain unresolved and remain a source of conflict...

But the underlying principles of democracy have always pointed us in better directions...always...because, at their heart, democratic principles are committed to authentic resolution of humanity's most serious matters of conscience...and it is those matters that are at stake in the most serious conflicts in the world today and always...Israel and Lebanon being only the most recent flare-up...

Power, people, and the study of both are so important, I think, because the stakes are so high and often involve the most dangerous, difficult circumstances that humanity faces...

People often turn to power to resolve their problems, often because the halls of power are the only place where some problems can be resolved...no single Israeli or Lebanese can engage in foreign or international policy on their own...they rely on their governments to both engage in such diplomacy and to be responsible for security for their countries and their homes...

It is when peoples, governments, and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah decide that those security concerns must be mutually exclusive with the security concerns of neighbors that the kind of ugliness we witness today is borne...

I can only hope that Israel will win more than a Pyrrhic victory in this fight...while I, of course, sympathize with Lebanese citizens who are being killed and displaced for this fighting and with a Lebanese government only recently democratic concerned for its sovereign borders being overrun over the course of this conflict...

But I very much fear that this conflict, like so many before it, will only deepen resentments and enmities between Israel and her Arab and Middle Eastern neighbors...and sadly breathe new life into Hezbollah and Hamas and other terrorist groups committed to fighting Israel and committed to undermining peace efforts...

Underneath all of our cynicism, surely we must all hope that one day Israeli children and Lebanese children and Palestinian children and children all over the world can live and grow up in peace, as arrogance and bloodthirst and power-hunger give way to a greater respect for neighbors and for humanity...

This political moment needs an international community committed to that purpose more than any other...more than any ideology or political or military party...more than any cynicism...more than any animosity or mistrust...

The history of the twentieth century and the history of the world, really, is littered with peoples and governments foolishly believing that military force would resolve problems that it could not resolve...

Force, and military force, in particular, is needed, at times, obviously...for defensive purposes (though all people involved generally view their purposes as defensive, at some level, no matter how ugly and distorted that rationalization often is) and offensively to promote genuinely democratic and peaceful purposes that respect matters of self-determination, at individual, group, and state levels, as much as possible...

But the long history of humanity must surely tire of warfare and bloodshed and its accompanying rationalizations for the purposes of ideology or for advantage or to resolve conflicts where it perpetually offers no resolution...

Moderation, in this context, needs to be an affirmation of humanity over power and advantage...and power only in the genuine and fair-minded service of humanity...

We will surely still feel and genuinely need aggression, at times, to deal with conflicts...the least possible and necessary aggression we can muster, I can only hope...

I am not so foolish as to believe that this is how power will always actually be wielded in these early years of the 21st century...but neither am I so foolish as to abandon a vision for humanity that holds ourselves and our leaders to larger purposes for fear of being disappointed...

I'm quite sure that those advocating an end to imperialism and Nazism and Communism and all of the worst evils of the world in the our most recent history were afraid of disappointment...but their vision provided the hope and the context for those ideologies to face an end...

I am committed to a world where such issues most central to our humanity are resolved with as peaceful, persuasive, decent, and humane means as possible...where ideas and sharing of ourselves is the basis for our most serious discussions and resolutions of issues, as possible...and authentically peaceful and democratic world...where the least possible necessary aggression is used to resolve immediate conflict...and where underlying issues are more effectively resolved with changes in hearts and minds than by force, which is the case, today, even as we often fail to see or understand this fact of humanity, and recognize its converse...that force often undermines this more authentic change of hearts and minds, as it engenders resentment and alienation and all of our more destructive sentiments...

I am partisan for humanity only...every other cause seems so petty by comparison...especially given the useless and senseless destruction that partisanship for any group generally yields...

We do not have to live at the expense of one another...it is not a necessary condition of life...and it happens at the expense of our humanity and the humanity of those around us...

And all of the strongest analyses of the current situation in Lebanon and Israel point us in that general direction...

I am open and welcome to being wrong about that idea, now and always...but the current situation has not proven to be a persuasive counterargument, by my lights...

And there is much reason for me to believe that our highest ideals offer us to highest moral and strategic ground...and the most recent cease-fire efforts of the Administration, European leaders, the United Nations, and Lebanon all work very much in this direction...good reason to have faith in the power of moderate, peace-loving sensibilities to find solutions where others only see hostilty...

Love,
Ben

Now Playing: One...U2 (I've given U2 too much shit, I think...I still think Rattle and Hum is their best album and the gospel version of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For is their best song...but this song is an appropriate one for the moment)...

The heart of progress...

Jon Alterman, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes a really wonderful piece on the future of the Middle East in yesterday's Washington Post that I think gets to the heart of the current moment in Lebanon and Israel and how it figures in the larger vision of peace in the region...

Monumental Hope and Grinding Despair...The Washington Post...August 3, 2006

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/02/AR2006080200720.html

What becomes totally clear to me as I read this piece and as Melissa and I watched a Dateline NBC story on a remorseful murderer meeting the unforgiving sister of the man he murdered...

Is that forgiveness is the heart of progress...it defines it...it is a commitment to a brighter future...and a willingness to live in the moment, with the commitment to the future, and a coming to terms with the past...

Forgiveness is the heart of progress, democracy, freedom, humanity...all of our highest ideals...

Democracy, at its heart, is a classically liberal idea -- a governing idea based around individual freedom -- built on a foundation of forgiveness and looking forward to a brighter future...democracy never supposed that people would stop doing bad things to one another...democracy just assumes that people can resolve their issues with one another peacefully, with decency and humanity...in its' highest realization, all individuals, no matter who they are and no matter what they've done, are treated with decency and humanity and with a look toward their and our future...that is the long and proud tradition of democracies...a commitment to being more decent to all people, no matter how unpopular or unappreciated...it's ideals seem to forever leave its citizens disillusioned as we fail to realize them and we fail to come to terms with that perpetual reality of democracy and humanity...

But it is its ideals that animate it and keep its flame alive and efforts to realize them dynamic and thriving...and, as a consequence, the human spirit animated, alive, dynamic, and thriving...

And during this very dark time for democracies and non-democracies, alike, I become clearer about why I identify as a democrat and a classical liberal, drawing from the best ideas of liberals and conservatives to build a more thoughtful, constructive future built upon what is best of those ideas towards a future where the liberal democratic world only recognizes these partisan differences in the same way that it recognizes, today, the differences among religious partisans...different paths toward a better future built on universal values that can be better understood in the context of a broad commitment to a classically liberal democratic world...it is moderate in a classical sense...as Aeschylus wrote in Agamemnon:

"Zeus, who guided mortals to be wise,
has established his fixed law—
wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
so men against their will
learn to practice moderation.
Favours come to us from gods
seated on their solemn thrones—
such grace is harsh and violent"

Or as Bobby Kennedy paraphrased in his impromtu eulogy for the Reverend Martin Luther King...

"Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God... Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world."

What perpetually undermines progress in the Middle East and in the world, now and always, is people lost in the past...lost in history...lost in recrimination...

The reason why the greatest leaders in the world -- Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, King, Desmond Tutu, and others -- have all taught forgiveness...is because only with a heart of forgiveness can people come to terms with the past...including the awful and bloody pasts in the Middle East...and see clear to a future not blinded by their recrimination...by the beams in their own eyes, as Jesus would say...

The reason why forgiveness is central to morality and humanity and to a truth and reconciliation process which is the future of settling age old and even recent and often beyond tragic wounds is because it is the only way out...is is the essence of progress...the ability to see light when darkness looms...the ability to come to terms with past injustices, forgive them, and build futures from visions of a world based on a common and bright future rather than a divided and painful past...

And the saddest, most tragic legacy of all for us to forgive...is how our own choices to stay stuck in our pain and fear and hate and recrimination...leads to so many of the world's most awful injustices...

Genocide, terrorism, imperialism and wars of aggression, civil war, Holocaust, murder...

Our worst legacies are typically a function of hearts that could not forgive...

And oppression, repression, aggression, control and our other legacies to follow those terrible crimes against humanity, as Desmond Tutu and Pablo Freire write so eloquently about...are all functions of our failures to forgive...

The genocide and repression and murder of one group justifies the Holocaust and oppression and aggression of another...

If that cycle is to end...it can only end with forgiveness...and letting go of the pain...for real...

That kind of courage is the only real progress that humanity can experience...because it is the essence of progress...everything else is living in the pain of the past...

Love,
Ben

Brilliant analyses of Israel and Lebanon from the Middle East...

I am open and hoping that I am wrong that Israel's most recent offensive in Lebanon will not serve as the kind of effective deterrent to Hezbollah's future activities that they and I would like it to be...

And this morning I read several analyses of the situation from Middle Eastern sources...two of which I thought worthy of sharing since my own analyses is now and forever fallible and limited by my not being embedded, daily, in Middle Eastern politics as these sources are...

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary University, and editor of The Middle East Review of International Affairs, filed this fabulous analysis of the situation with the Lebanese Daily Star this morning, and is a brilliant analysis of the situation...

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=5&article_id=74393

I agree with Barry about almost everything he writes here except his second conclusion that this attack will likely serve as a deterence in practice against future Hezbollah attacks from the North...it is possible that this will occur and that Hezbollah will be sufficiently scared of superior Israeli firepower on the border that Hezbollah's presence will be more permanently removed from the area...but there is much, much history to suggest the opposite...that Hezbollah, at worst will find more creative ways to target Israelis and innocent civilians, and, at best, will return to the area outside of effective Israeli firepower...and will, regardless, remain a serious terrorist threat to Israeli civilians and military personell...

And Iranian author and journalist, Amir Taheri, contributes this analysis to the Jerusalem Post, this morning, that offers much hope that Hezbollah's overreach, here, as much if not more than Israel's reaction, will help to dillute Hezbollah's support in Lebanon...

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1153292052893&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The short term military advantage that Israel might claim, in this situation, as Barry Rubin argues, would be an important one, if it can be achieved...I doubt that it can be achieved, given a long history to the contrary, but we can always hope that Israel might dislodge one of its terrorist border threats by pushing them back and having them stay back...As Barry argues, an international force might contribute to staving off Hezbollah, and, as he argues, ideally Lebanon would put its armies at the border...the fear of civil war is the reason that the Lebanese government has not worked more dilligently to disarm the popular Hezbollah military forces, and a similar reasoning may be at work in Palestine...though it does leave Israel with few options other than the current one, absent a workable peace...

That is the downside to the current offensive, though...it makes a workable peace all the more out of reach...and it turns opinion in the Arab and Iranian world for Hezbollah and against Israel, which emboldens Hezbollah (and Hamas) and fortifies their will to persist, despite consistent military defeats...more precise and genuine efforts to arrest rather than assassinate leaders (obviously people will die if arrests result in threats on the lives of Israeli soldiers) and more genuine peace efforts might undermine that support which is the lifeblood of terrorist groups...

As Barry Rubin explains...

"That is why the kind of tactics that work well in conflicts elsewhere in the world do not function in the Middle East. The rules of the game are supposed to be like this: The side that loses recognizes that it is weaker and makes a deal involving concessions to avoid another costly conflict. The stronger side then gains deterrence, because recognition of its power stops the other side from going to war in the first place. Wanting to avoid war, all sides solve disputes by compromise, end the conflict forever, and move onto other things.

Instead, Hizbullah and Hamas thrive on fighting as an end in itself. Moreover, Hizbullah and its friends present themselves as absolute victors no matter what happens. And millions of Arabs and Muslims, given regime and media propaganda, believe them."

That, support for Hezbollah amongst a strong plurality of Lebanese, continued support for Hezbollah from Iran and Syria, and the fact of Hezbollah resources and forces being out of reach to Israelis and not likely to be engaged by the Lebanesse government who has more access, is why Barry argues, and I agree, that the current offensive is not likely to dismantle Hezbollah...and why I believe, and I would imagine Barry agrees at some level (only because I can see no other real options) that a peace process is the only realistic and fundamental solution to the current situation along Israel's borders...

Having said all of that, I an open to being wrong and to good coming from this offensive...though, regardless, I still think that it is questionable the potential good that comes from rerouting Hezbollah rather than eliminating them (which is very unlikely to happen here, I think) relative to the lives of more than 500 Lebanese, 50 Israelis, and the displacement of more than 800,000 in Lebanon, as well as certainly far more border attacks (190 rockets have landed in Israel, thusfar, this morning, the largest Hezbollah attack over the course of this war), when a peace process will likely be the only real and sustainable way out of this mess, in the first place...

I am very much open to suggestions for another way out other than a peace process, but I am far from convinced that military action -- after more than 80 years of fighting between Israel and her neighbors -- will, somehow, once and for all, eliminate the threat at Israel's borders...and it seems to me that, at some point, the burden needs to be met by those arguing for military solutions, when peace processes have clearly created results in Israel's relationships with Jordan and Egypt, and when efforts to negotiate peace with terrorist groups in Northern Ireland have clearly netted peaceful results...

And, particularly, when the one very clear result from military engagements up to this point is a sadly and stubbornly persistent terrorist presence and support for that cause in the region...

Amir Taheri gives us hope that support for Hezbollah may be waining after this most recent action on their part...and that Lebanese democracy and representation for Hezbollah, as with the Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland, is likely, in significant part, responsible for that weakening support...

Hezbollah military leader, Hassan Nasrallah, acted independently of Hezbollah's political leaders, after meeting independently with Iranian and Syrian leaders, and Hezbollah's political leadership makes no bones of its resentment of its activities...and Shiite support for Hezbollah in Lebanon is on the wain -- both because many Shiite look to the U.S. as an unexpected ally helping to create power sharing for fellow Shiites in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in Lebanon, itself and because of divides between Shiites looking to Lebanese Shiite leadership and those looking to Iranian religious leadership -- as well as schisms within Lebanese Hezbollah circles between traditional Hezbollah guerillas and "Lebanists" wanting to pull back from regional military engagements...

It is this political support for Hezbollah (and Hamas) that must be, ultimately, undermined if Hezbollah is going to ever embrace face-saving peace negotiations (it is very unlikely, I think, give their history, that Hezbollah or Hamas will ever admit defeat, no matter how heavy their losses)...and, tragically, the most recent incursion in Lebanon not only has killed and displaced many innocent Lebanese (being used as human shields by Hezbollah, to be fair to the Israeli leadership), but it has revived support in the Arab and Iranian worlds for Hezbollah and, I would imagine, Hamas...

I hope I'm wrong about all or most of that and that the most recent Israeli incursions will do final damage to Hezbollah that will finally demolish its ugly military apparatus or at least push them back far enough that they will not pose a threat to the Northern Israeli border and to Israel, generally...

But I doubt that the current skirmish will do enough damage to warrant the undermining of the larger political goals of weaking political support for terrorism on Israel's borders so that peace can be negotiated...

But I very much understand Israel's frustration with the situation...and I hope their gamble proves me wrong...even as I mourn the deaths and serious disruption of lives of innocent Lebanese as well as innocent Israelis...

Love,
Ben

The essence of morality and humanity...

Now Blogspot is giving me a hassle...for my most recent post, check out my Tripod blog (this is why I have two blogs:):)...

http://benfrankln.tripod.com/bensutherland/

Love,
Ben

The bottom line for humanity...

As I watch so many people foolishly arguing that the most recent attacks on Hezbollah will weaken Israeli's attacker from the North...a shortsighted notion that ignores the ways that Hezbollah has been politically emboldened through the killing and displacement of Lebanese civilians and an Arab world that is far more pro-Hezbollah and anti-Israel and anti-American, today, than when this whole situation started with the kidnapping of one Israeli soldier, then an Israeli offensive, then the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers...and an equally shortsighted notion that military victories can somehow trump serious political setbacks, that generally bring greater hostility and military response (the war in Iraq should have cured people of that notion, if they were open to learning the lesson)...

It is beginning to occur to me that the bottom line for humanity...for our progress...is whether and to the extent that we can recognize how our impatient, aggressive, less thoughtful, defensive ways can give way to more patient, less aggressive (least possible necessary aggression), more thoughtful, more responsive and proactive ways...

Put more simply...

The bottom line is how much we can face what dicks we can be...

And how much we can create room -- psychologically, emotionally, socially, politically, etc. -- for all of us to face that...

And to be more decent...

The truth is that we're doing a really shitty job of it, right now:):)...

Largely because not only are we being really serious dicks...to one another...and definitely in handling the most serious problems (dicks, here, used to distinguish stupid, macho, aggressive thinking and behavior from thoughtful, patient, proactive, practical, and responsive behavior)...

But much worse...

We keep pretending that somehow we are being better than we really are...

Part of that is a good thing, I think...meaning, part of that is because none of us wants to be attacked or have it laid on thick or to face ongoing recrimination over dickish behavior...

Mel Gibson's situation, right now, is the one of the better examples I can think of...

Mel definitely said some stupid shit the other day in a drunken stupor...which seemed to prove to many Jewish leaders and liberals, who were convinced but failed to convince me or the general public that Mel's wildly successful Passion of the Christ was anti-semitic, felt that they had found a smoking gun for Mel's anti-semitism...

But Mel's anti-semitic remarks were really pretty mild, especially in the context of a drunken stupor...and his anti-semitism was about as innocuous as the drunken racist or homophobic remarks I heard a million times from family and friends, growing up, which are generally a sign of some foolish bitterness held onto too long or a frustration with politically correct strangleholds on their free expression rather than something more dangerous or nepharious...

And the lack of class and recrimination coming from the Anti-Defamation League and other groups, saying -- laughably, really, from my standpoint -- that they won't accept Mel's apology and that his apology just isn't enough, really is the far more offensive thing being said, right now, as far as I'm concerned...

In a million years, I would rather spend time with a drunk, mildly anti-semitic Mel Gibson who made a really beautiful movie in the Passion of the Christ, if you haven't seen it, yet, than listen to all that self-righteous, recriminatory bullshit coming from Abraham Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League, these days (Foxman well on his way to becoming the Jesse Jackson of Jewish and religious causes)...

Is Mel Gibson an asshole for saying all kinds of anti-semitic nonsense in a drunken stupor? Obviously...but a forgivable asshole...an offense for which he immediately apologized for...

But who, in my mind, is the bigger asshole between the guy who makes the anti-semitic remark and the guy who won't let it go?

Definitely Abraham Foxman and self-righteous folks like him...
Because what keeps all this bullshit in place is the recrimination...it's what makes people afraid to talk about it or share it openly...it's what makes it so goddamn hard for people to apologize...it's what keeps all the ugliness swimming...

And the worst part of all is that it is a bunch of real assholes prouncing about the world acting as if they aren't really as big of assholes as they really are...

It's insanity, is what it really is...

And if people really believe that it is the smallness of the response of folks like Abraham Foxman and the millions of other unforgiving, rationalizing, foolish dickheads in the world that is going to move humanity forward (to create the illusion of logic to this position, most people who justify such recrimination don't believe that humanity can ever get better...because they've spent so many years being such dicks, I imagine...and because they're whole worldview is determined by a self-centered, victim notion of how badly they've been treated by the world, all the while ignoring what dicks they are)...

If people really believe that such obvious nonsense and bullshit is going to move humanity forward...

They are far more deluded than I have ever imagined:):):)...

I'll take Mel Gibson's mild and drunken anti-semitism and his apology...along with his real gift for making good films (Mel Gibson's Hamlet is still the finest version of that movie/play that I've ever seen) as well as some fun, crazy ones (the Lethal Weapon series were funny as shit)...over the self-righteous posturing of Abraham Foxman and Mel's critics anyday...

Though I would certainly prefer if Mel Gibson and Abraham Foxman and everyone could maybe sit down together and have a beer and just kind of face up to what dicks they've been (to Mel Gibson's credit, he has...which is why, I suppose, I'm so pissed at Abraham Foxman...because Abraham still hasn't faced up to what a dick he's been...and uses his self-righteousness as a defense against having the face up)...

Here's the bottomline for humanity...

Either we give up the act and start acknowledging what dicks we are, much of the time...which we only create the space for when we offer forgiveness freely and unconditionally...and honestly...

Or we don't move forward...

That's it...

That's the bottom line...

So as much as people have been weaseling their way around the whole forgiveness question for the last 6 years or so (at least)...

There's no fuckin' way out of this one until we face up...

We can continue to weasel...

And things will both stay as bad as ever...and/or get worse...

Or we take forgiveness seriously...

Prime Minister Olmert can either acknowledge that a realistic peace process is the only way out of the situation in Lebanon and Palestine right now (and in dealing with Syria and Iran)...or his country can continue to be terrorized by Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all their supporters in perpetuity, until the cows come home...

There is no other way out of this situation...

There is no military campaign that will somehow do what 18 years of occupation of Lebanon could not accomplish...there is no incursions or more aggressive occupation in Palestine that will somehow stop decades of terrorism...

Either we get to a realistic peace process where Israel and her neighbors commit to a world looking forward and leaving behind recriminations about the past and become more committed to a peaceful and vibrant future for their children and their families or they continue to be dicks (but slightly less dicks than Hamas and Hezbollah, as Israel is perpetually reminding us) and live with all the bloodshed and violence and terror in their country and in the region from here until perpetuity...

Choose, I guess is what I would tell Prime Minister Olmert if I were to speak to him, today...

And it's not just Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iran, and the rest...

It's much larger than all of that, of course...

It's on most political issues that humanity faces today...internationally, not just in America...

Either we face up to what self-righteous, recriminatory dicks we can be...give ourselves and one another the space to face up to that legacy among our many dickish legacies...

Or we live with the consequences of our dickishness from here until eternity:):):)...

That's it...that's the bottom-line:):)...

Steroids, Mel Gibson, Israel and Lebanon, North Korea, Iran, resolving the bloody mess in Iraq that we've all gotten a little reprieve from in the news media, lately...

...welfare reform, education reform, universal access to health care, environmental concerns, gay rights...

Generally...whatever issue we face...

The larger issue is...that we can all be such fuckin' dicks...

And if we want those issues to get some resolution...

We're all going to have to stop being such fuckin' dicks...

And start treating each other and each others' freedom to express their humanity better...and treat more seriously the thoughtful conversations that are needed, from here until eternity to continue to proactively and responsively and patiently and thoughtfully work collaboratively to resolve such issues...

And when we must act more aggressively...because there really are no other options...because we've thought, seriously, about how to avoid aggression and considered alternative routes...and we've talked with one another about it...and debated with one another...and discussed the matter with one another...and we've listened to one another...and we've worked, genuinely collaboratively to create constructive alternatives to more aggressive action...

Then we should use the least possible necessary aggression...so that we can avoid the pitfalls of thinking that those who are even bigger dicks than us will somehow give up their recriminatory ways because we've beat the shit out of them, enough, rather than out of our generosity...

For all of the World War II analogies that have been used in Israel and Lebanon, Iraq, and a million other situations...

The one lesson of World War II...which was the most important...that just never seems to register for so many of us, these days...

Was what the broke the cycle of imperial ambitions and aggressive nationalism was not the punishment of the Versailles treaty in vanquishing our enemies...it was the generosity of the Marshall plan...and taking seriously the self-determined interests of those that so many Americans hated, openly or not-so-openly (my grandmother articulated some of that hate in a drunken stupor much similar to Mel Gibson's when I was younger that helped me understand how such awful legacies as Japanese internment occurred...but which also helped me understand just how human those feelings really were...like Abraham Foxman's feelings and the feelings of Mel Gibson's critics, as well, I guess...and I'm closer to her, today, for being so human in my presence)...

After the Versailles treaty and World War I...we took the dick route...we punished our enemies...and that punishment only humiliated and emboldened them to build a bigger, nastier war machine...the German people, humiliated and hopeless, popularized the ugly, imperial, enslaving, and genuinely anti-semitic ambitions of Adolph Hitler...

The Marshall Plan, on the other hand, was America at her best...generously supporting the rebuilding of Germany and Japan and making them allies rather than foolishly punishing them as enemies...

It's amazing to me that so many people who constantly sing the refrain of the Greatest Generation would forget the most important lesson they had to offer...

Being a dick has consequences...one of the more serious consequences in the 20th Century was Adolph Hitler and the rise of Nazism...

Being decent, on the other hand, also had consequences...notably, the rebuilding of Germany and Japan and the building a coalition of partners that America and her allies completely take for granted as a consequences of more decent efforts from her World War II history...

And the bottom line for humanity, today, is that either we dig deep and learn that bigger lesson...the generosity, the forgiveness, the commitment to peace and democracy and freedom...for real...to support others' self-determined interests and not just our own...

Or we deal with the legacy of being dicks...

Matt Stone and Trey Parker were right in Team America...

Pussies do hate dicks because dicks fuck pussies...

And, as Matt and Trey with all the class and decorum they can muster point out...

Dicks also fuck assholes...

All true...

Hitler...definitely an asshole...Hezbollah...definitely assholes...Hamas...definitely assholes...

But being a dick has consequences...

And in the real world of politics, as the war in Iraq should make eminently clear, for anyone whose been watching the last few years or so...

One of those consequences is that it emboldens and antagonizes all of the folks in the world who support the assholes...

To complete Matt and Trey's beautiful analogy...

The reason why dicks can't always be fuckin' assholes because as the brilliant and beautiful Tenacious D explains...

Sometimes you gotta fuck her gently...

Meaning, making love is a much better way to sustain a real relationship than fucking your neighbor, all the time...

Or at the very least, you gotta make some peace and learn to live with one another in a way that resolves underlying issues but puts priority on the peace rather than on winning the battle...

Ehud Olmert and Hezbollah leaders may not be ready to make love just quite yet (hope springs eternal:)...

But, while an interesting theory of changing the face of Middle East relations, military incursions have created most of the enmity that stands in the way of the peace process, today, rather than resolving it...not likely that one more battle is going to do what 20, 40 years of otherwise battling have not resolved...

If you watched two or three of your neighbors attacking one another like Hezbollah, Hamas and Israel are going after one another, right now...

Hopefully, you'd think...

"It really sucks that Israel keeps getting fucked by these assholes who keep intentionally killing innocents, even as Israel does all the real legwork to promote a genuine peace and sometimes kills innocents inadvertantly in their efforts to end this nonsense...

But goddamn...enough all-fuckin-ready...

Find a room...or make some peace...but God knows that this shit isn't getting resolved with more fuckin' bloodshed"...

And that would about sum up the situation in the Middle East, right now...

No setback to Hezbollah's military apparatus could compare, really, to the political springboard that Israel is creating for them, right now...the killing of 500+ innocents in Lebanon and the displacement of 800,000 leaves Arabs in the region and around the world seeing Hezbollah (and Hamas) as the freedom fighters they claim to be, and providing support for their murderous ways...even as Hezbollah and Hamas have made no real initiation of any commitment to real peace, freedom or democracy in either Lebanon or Palestine and have remained serious and persistent obstacles to peace, freedom and democracy in both, as well as in Israel...

Military setbacks are a dime a dozen in the decades long war between Israel and her terrorist enemies...

The real money, so to speak, is in political victories that provide support for military actions which are the oxygen and lifeblood of terrorist movements...

Alan Keyes makes an intelligent but ultimately unrealistic and foolhardy argument for the idea of military offensives for rooting out terrorism and threats from Middle Eastern autocrats in this July 28, 2006 column for World Net Daily...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=51276

There are many interesting permutations to the arguments of hawks like Keyes who oppose peace efforts...the softness of liberal democracies deluded into the quest for peace in a world that requires war is my personal favorite...thank goodness for warmongers like Alan Keyes I always think to myself, every time I hear that line that I've heard a hundred times, from rescuing us from peace agreements like the Belfast Agreement in Nothern Ireland and all the soft, pansy delusion that it threaten to lull us into...

But the essence of Keyes' argument and the argument of hawks like him comes down to his concluding paragraphs...

"Rather than pressing for a cease-fire in any form, people who really want to see an end to war in the Middle East should press for the total defeat and elimination of the forces who now represent the settled determination to do battle. Though Israel's short-term security may be served by a result that merely pushes Hezbollah away from the Israeli border, regional peace can only be served by the effectual elimination of its war-making capability. The same is true of Hamas, and in the long run of Iran.

It should be the clear and unyielding policy of the United States and all who truly desire peace in the region to insist that no peace talks of any kind can take place until, by word and deed, the leaders and regimes who have declared their settled inclination to do battle renounce that inclination. All support for and involvement in terrorist activities in any form must end. All unprovoked attacks must end; all declarations of holy war, battle and struggle must cease and be vigorously disavowed. Leaders who have declared their irrevocable commitment to such things must step down or be removed. Absent these steps, taken and confirmed beyond doubt, the United States and any others determined to make real peace possible should hold firm in the determination to prosecute the war these others insist upon until either their means or their will to make war are eliminated. "

It sounds a lot like what you hear coming from the far right, taken all together, these days, doesn't it?

The way to bring peace and democracy in the Middle East and in the world is to war on every country, every terrorist group, every enemy of America that does not know the fruits of peace and prosperity until they end their enmities with America and the international community...

80 odd years of warfare in the Middle East (and millenia of warfare before then) are just a sign of just how weak and soft Westerners are, Alan opines...

As with those on the far left...and as with terrorists...and as with all extremists of every stripe (and Alan Keyes, for all his self-righteous self-delusion is most definitely an extremist...not a violent one, thankfully...but definitely far right)...

No amount of fighting or force or power struggle will ever satisfy their bloodthirst or desire for a fight...no amount of people dead or hurt or sacraficed will ever satisfy their quest for final victory...

And, most frustrating for me...

No amount of success with efforts like the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland will ever convince people like Alan Keyes that peace is possible...

Because Alan isn't accountable to reality and its limitations the way that those of moderate sensibilities are...

Alan is right in one very important respect...

If people who romanticize war and force to solve problems they cannot solve, like Alan Keyes, like Ehud Olmert, right now, and like Hamas and Hezbollah...

If such folks will not commit themselves to a peace process...the process clearly will not work...obvious to any lunkhead observing the insanity in the Middle East right now...

As today's New York Times indicates, lots of folks share Alan's desire for some kind of military confrontation:

"But there is a feeling among some political analysts that the events in Lebanon will, at least for now, strengthen the hand of those who, like Iran’s president, have equated democracy with tyranny and international integration with surrender.

'It seems that the law is the law of the jungle and such acts strengthen the position of those countries which favor violence,' said Hermidas Davoud Bavand, a political scientist at Tehran University. 'It gives a free hand to radical governments to say that they will not be attacked if they have powerful military capability to act as a deterrent force for them.'”

That doesn't mean that peace isn't possible...

It just means that until the lunkheads involved with the insanity in the Middle East right now and the lunkheads that egg them on commit themselves to a peace process...

The bloodshed and displacement and terror that we see right now is the only result we can ever hope for...

This is not a war that will be won by vanguishing the enemy...because the enemy is forever emboldened by the very military and other defeats that such warfare inflicts upon them...

Very much like Germany post-Versailles...

And the only hope for an end to that perpetual, seemingly neverending self-fulfilling prophecy...

Is for the dicks and assholes involved to get committed to peace...

Where oh where is General George C. Marshall when you need him, I'm asking myself today?

Hopefully he lives somewhere deep in the hearts of Israelis and Americans, alike, I can only hope...

Because there is no end to this insanity without his spirit animating our political decisions in the Middle East and in much of the international community...

Humanity inches forward as we begin to face what dicks we all are...all of us...it cannot move forward without us recognizing it...and it cannot inch forward without us genuinely committed to accepting and forgiving our own flawed humanity...

And that is the bottom-line...

Everything else is bullshit...

Have a great week, everyone...

Love,
Ben

The moral underpinnings of a liberal democracy that we all take for granted...

The BBC tells the very sad tale of a 16-year-old girl, Atefah Sahaaleh, in Iran executed for removing her veil in an Islamic court...

Execution of a Teenage Girl...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/5217424.stm

Documents filed with Iran's Supreme Court of Appeal reported her as 22 and guilty of "crimes against chastity"...

There are many girls like Atefah in the United States and the world over...

Atefah's mother died when Atefah was 4 or 5...her father, subsequently, became addicted to drugs, from grief, presumably...Atefah was sent to live with her grandparents who were reported to have shown her no affection...Atefah became noticed for wandering the streets of her small, traditional town of Neka, and after run-ins with, lashings and jail time from police for being found in the presence of a boy, Atefah became involved with an abusive man three times her age...

When she was arrested a fourth time after a local petition described her as a "source of immorality" and a "terrible influence on local schoolgirls," Atefah reported her relationship with her older suiter as sexually abusive...when she believed her case was hopeless, she tore off her veil in outrage...

Her judge, Haji Rezai, sentenced her to execution by hanging...

The sad tragedy of more traditional, theocratic societies like Iran is not that they do not suffer similar problems of the West, as many both in those countries and in Western societies who romanticize theocracies would have us believe...

The sad tragedy is that those problems do exist...and that they are just far less honest about the moral consequences of their inhumanity, so concerned are they with proving their moral worth, despite their harsher more barbaric treatment of girls like Atefah...

For all of the open faults in liberal democracies, the moral underpinnings of a liberal democracy that soften and moderate such ugliness are the clearest indication of what we take for granted in the democratic West...as much as we perpetually underestimate and undervalue the freedom and the thoughtfulness and the compassion and the wisdom that make this so...

And it is that softness and moderation that allows us to take responsibility for our injustices and inhumanities as we begin to feel less defensive and face more honestly our complicity in injustice...

It is liberal democracy that is the basis for our highest ideals of justice and decency...we just forget...

Until we see just how bad the world can be without such moral underpinnings...

Love,
Ben

Humanity limps ahead...

After a discussion I had with a leftist debater in Illinois who says that she might be voting for John McCain, my roommate and I have been talking a lot about different candidates for the 2008 election...

And I have to say that I am feeling more than a little underwhelmed by the various political candidates...

After John Kerry's failure to articulate ideas (other than a good but predictably safe idea of involving NATO in the effort in Iraq) to improve international policy, particularly in Iraq, I've kind of given up on the foolish notion that I can vote for a candidate who will at least oppose a bad policy without a more constructive solution...my worst protest vote was for Ralph Nader in 2000 (in a state where Al Gore could not win), who would have been a terrible President, really, even as I was frustrated with how money and power were wielded brazenly by the Democratic Leadership Council and the Democratic National Committee...

And while I believe in accepting the limitations of leaders and voting for a leader who offers the best option...I have to say that I'm more than a little underwhelmed, right now, by the various people being bandied about...

Like my debater friend, Hillary Clinton is kind of scary to me...she's the schoolmarm I don't need...her desire to regulate the video game industry and her complaining that the most educated younger generation in American history are lazy are just kind of indicative of a larger nanny complex of Ms. Clinton that I find really distasteful...I've got two moms...I don't need another one...and her "leadership" during Hurricane Katrina -- which consisted of investigating the FEMA effort rather than contributing to that effort from a very powerful and influential Senate position -- just kind of reflected for me what kind of leadership she has to offer...meaning a recriminatory leadership rather than a constructive one...we have plenty of recrimination in America...an overabundance, really...and I'm just not interested in recrimination being the centerpost of American policy...

John McCain does seem a better option, by comparison, at times...the fact that he cheated on his wife and knows what its like to be forgiven is a big plus for me, ironically...his favoring of legislation to relax obstacles for illegal aliens to live in the country with peace of mind is something that endears me to him...I don't believe in hard and fast rules on torture, after discussions about the issue with military friends who are concerned that such rules make military people subject to political prosecutions when even relatively humane interrogation practices are unpopular...and I agree with George Will that campaign finance regulation is a cure that is no cure for the problems of money and power and an infringement on free speech that has been abused, as it was by Common Cause in Russ Feingold's reelection in Wisconsin, and will be abused in the future...but I understand McCain's concern for these issues and share them...

The truth is that I know that both Hillary Clinton and John McCain have their hearts in the right places...as a long-time liberal, I'm just used to rooting for the Democrat and against the Republican, and this last round of radicalism on the left has just kind of absolved me of that feeling altogether...

Barak Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, as many of my Democratic friends promised, was a nice indicator of the kind of unifying leadership that Barak might provide, even as with the other candidates, I have differences with Barak about the direction of the country...

I guess what I want in a President and in a political leader is someone who is smart and has creative ideas about how to deal with problems like North Korea, Iran, Israel, Lebanon and the rest (if one candidate would talk in any depth about soft power, I think I would be impressed)...who might have creative ideas about how to transcend our various domestic divides in ways that get us to results and not just leave us mired in good intentions...

And I guess, most importantly, I just want political leaders who can both accept peoples' humanity, better...and stay out of mine and everyone elses' lives, so much...

I want political leaders who can respect the principle of self-governance in a democracy...of self-determination in international matters...of the need for individuals and sovereign jurisdictions and self-identifying groups to lead their lives and their communities without overweaning power limiting their self-governance...

I want political leaders who take freedom and democratic discussion seriously, and not just rhetoric to be manipulated for various individuals and groups to just get what they want...

I want political leaders who hold the very basic political notion that seems fundamental to a democracy to me, which is skepticism of power and a respect for the freedoms that are fundamental to a authentically democratic people...

Much of our problem in dealing with North Korea and Iran and the Middle East and much of the world, right now, in my view, is due to our failure to respect principles of self-determination and to convince North Koreans and Iranians and most of the world that we are genuinely fair brokers in international affairs who are not looking after our own interests at the expense of theirs...which of course we are doing, often, which is exactly why so many in the Middle East are suspicious of us, as the New York Times and International Herald Tribune led with today and that Marc Sirios of Lebanon's Daily Star makes clear in his brilliant editorial...

http://www.dailystar.com.lb//article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=74278

The truth is, I'm discovering these last 6 years, is that everyone hates the other guys' autocrat...but people all want their own strong man to make the world right by their own eyes...

Republicans hate Hillary Clinton's nanny state tendencies, but they'll jump for joy for President Bush's tough stances against international allies...Democrats hate President Bush's incursions on their civil liberties, but they want revolutionary action on nationalized health care...Americans hate Vladmir Putin's curbs on a free press and savvy Americans grow weary of Putin's ongoing military efforts to keep Chechnya from breaking away from Russian rule...and those same Americans want a President who will put Russia and China in their place, both in their domestic dealings and on the international stage...Russians hate American hubris in its belief that it can persistently bully the world around international issues...but they love their homegrown autocrat who they think is taking on an out of control free press and keeping order in Russia...Iranians may express disgust with Western liberties and elect Ahmadinejad to maintain conservative Islamic values, but they are forever infuriated with what they believe is the tyranny of American and Western governments meddling in their internal affairs...

We all love freedom for ourselves...but want control over others...it's the famous libertarian refrain except that such a refrain lacks a constructive message about what we do to intervene in situations that are dangerous or more seriously problematic...

The nature of my work around least possible necessary aggression is to resolve that issue...

To argue that all people should have as much freedom as possible to promote greater self-governance in the world...a world where people are genuinely good because they choose to be, not because they are scared to be otherwise...

And yet still provide us with a responsible and intelligent way to engage and intervene to promote more responsible behavior...aggression should be avoided as much as possible...we should respect peoples' freedoms and the responsibility that they better demonstrate the more free and authentically democratic we are -- meaning in our relationships with one another far more important than in our governing -- and we should engage with one another in ways that are as least aggressive as possible and only when situations are violent or dangerous to others...drugs and guns always come to mind when I consider domestic issues that need more responsibility which comes with more respect for freedom around these issues, not less...

In international policy, we should respect matters of sovereignty and self-determination...principles that the U.S. and Israel clearly have selective respect for depending on how badly they want an outcome...invasion of a democratic country and occupation of a democratic authority on the part of Israel, and bullying with whatever means necessary to stop Iran and North Korea from pursuing weapons that they have clearly pursued more ambitiously the more they believed that a military attack post-Iraq from the U.S. was eminent to more objective observers not caught up in defending U.S. policy...

It's so funny and ironic...this is the time in my life when I am most convinced of the good intentions of all political candidates, for the most part, even as I am aware of all of their more potentially cynical motivations...and it is also the time when I am the most underwhelmed by the choices I have in front of me, as of now...

It's not just my more DeToquevillian libertarian tendencies these days that has me underwhelmed...domestic issues are one place where citizens can and do an awful lot of work very, though often not wholly, independent of government and political leaders...health care and education and other domestic efforts are ones that citizens can and do already have much impact on completely independent of the political process...in schools and non-profits and hospitals and charitable giving and churches and the thousand points of light that President George H.W. Bush referred to during this Presidency...

Drug legalization and gun rights would promote more openness, less violence, less organized crime and terrorism, and greater responsibility around both of these issues, I am wholly convinced, in ways that our lifting of alcohol prohibition have already demonstrated ("How many people kill each other over a Budweiser?" is my favorite question on this issue...a lot, was the answer when alcohol was illegal and was run by the mafia and organized crime...hardly at all since it has been legalized)...

But this is the not the place where I am most underwhelmed by our political leadership...

Where I am most underwhelmed is where is counts most...around the very serious situations in places like Lebanon, North Korea, Iran, Palestine and other hot spots in the world where Administration policy seems to have brought us no closer to solutions...but where noone, including Democratic leaders, seem to be thinking outside the box to get to better ideas and solutions...

Republicans fumble and Democrats carp...

And all the while they preach to the rest of the world that they should take responsibility...even as they all fail so miserably to do the same for themselves...

I think a lot about Martin Anderson, these days...that 14-year-old kid who died on the first day of his custody in that Talahassee, Florida bootcamp...

I think about how sad and tragic and ironic it is that he was sent to that boot camp to take responsibility for his life...

And when he died, noone took responsibility for his death...

How convinced we have become that we can force responsibility...

And how much we will deny the clear and plain reality that it does not work...

How we will deny it so much that when a 14-year-old kid dies in an institution we created to teach him that very lesson...

Noone can demonstrate that they've learned it...

Because the truth is...many if not most of us often haven't...

Because taking responsibility always involves the one thing that most people can just never often bring themselves to do...

To admit failure...

It is the reason that I hold the Economist in such high regard, these days, as an honest international news source...

Though the Economist and I often disagree about solutions to problems...the one thing I can always count on the Economist to do honestly is to acknowledge failure...

"Bad to worse" is the theme in the most recent Economist...
And they are right...

And as dark clouds circle, all I can do is hope for the dawn...

Three Brookings Institutions scholars I listened to on C-SPAN today all seemed completely convinced of the power of force to make the world safer, even as the world is clearly less safe and more threatened by terrorism and paranoid autocrats pursuing weapons of mass destruction, today, post-Iraq war, by any fair measure of that notion...

And that, I am discovering, is the way power corrupts...

People get close to it...they fall in love with the short term gains they can make from it...they wield it like the mafia Don's gun to get what they want when they want it...and they ignore all evidence that it undermines confidence in those who wield it...

Just once, as mid-term elections approach, I would love to hear one politician take Lord Acton's wisdom that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely seriously...maybe even quote it...

And this is the clearest lesson I have ever gotten in how the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Can anyone think of any issue on which they would not think that power could be used to enforce their good intentions?

And there is the rub...

The final domestic political campaign of Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov before he died in 1984 was to curb alcoholism and improve work discipline...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andropov

It will always remain in my mind of one of the most brilliant examples of good intentions gone bad...of how much people will rationalize power and the use of force to promote favored ends, no matter how foolish and counterproductive...

And the last 6 years have been of a world, democratic and otherwise, engaged in that same poor reasoning for the sake of a million causes in search of a strongman or strongwoman to finally make the world whole...

And as the discussions of the upcoming elections and the Presidential primaries that will be upon us soon enough begin to take place...

I just wish that I could hear one Presidential candidate say that they have fresh and innovative ideas to deal with the most serious problems that government uniquely can handle, like international policy...and that they are committed to using the power that government offers as sparingly as possible, trusting Americans and the self-governing citizens of the world to care for themselves and one another as the only and necessary foundation for a genuinely democratic society...where progress happens first and foremost among people within in a free and democratic culture rather than by permission of any head of state or any parliamentary body...

For now, I have Hillary Clinton and John McCain and Al Gore and Rudy Guliani and a whole host of others to settle for...

I'm confident that will not always be so...because I'm confident that values of liberal democracy are more deeply rooted than any political leader...

But just once I wouldn't mind hearing a political leader say something to the effect of, "I am committed to using the power I am granted as little as is possibly necessary and no less"...

Not because we shouldn't follow through on good intentions...

But because the history of the world is littered with the hubris of good people who believed that they could forge good intentions into effective policy, by means of social, economic, political, legal, military and other repression...by force rather than by good ideas and free and humble efforts...

Force is necessary, at times...but it is broadly interpreted by nearly everyone as being far more necessary than it actually is and certainly far more constructive than it turns out to be...

And sadly, that same history is littered with death and destruction in the name of ideologies that promise to force submission upon those who might prefer a route of freedom to the common destination of a good and decent world...

Why free peoples persistently undervalue their freedom...why decent peoples persistently undervalue their decency...why humane peoples persistently undervalue their humanity...I will never know...

But somehow humanity always limps ahead...

Largely because things often get so bad, I imagine...that there is no other option but to change course...

We may be hypocrites, fools, and knaves...but we are generally hypocrites, fools, and knaves who want life to get better, no matter how bad things might get...

So this coming Presidential election will be my first to both genuinely respect all of the leading candidates...completely clear that none of them will offer any magic elixirs for our national and international problems (save better ideas, which would be a novel introduction, indeed)...

And completely convinced that my destiny will be decided largely by me...

And not by some large, omnipresent forces beyond me...

Including the American President and any and all elected officials...as important a role as these people play in our lives...

I can say that because I'm not Martin Andersen...

Like Martin, I too took a joyride in a relative's car at the age of 14...Martin took his grandmother's car...I took my father's car and was caught by the Haysville police, just south of our home in Wichita, Kansas, at 2 in the morning...

But there but for the grace of my father go I...

Martin's parents sent him to a boot camp...where he died his first day there...on the notion that the guards could force Martin to accept their authority...

My father talked with me...I cried to him about how people thought of me as a nerd...and how not being cool left me feeling left out...

He never punished me for it...and I never took his car or anyone else's ever again...

Two different teenagers...two different destinies...

And choices that can shape us forever...at least in the case of Martin...

Have a great weekend, everyone...

Love,
Ben

The last time I experienced real beauty...

Now playing: Diana Krall...I Get Along Without You Very Well...

I'm listening to Diana Krall, this morning, as I work on some papers/cleaning/errands and it all of a sudden occurred to me why I feel so nostalgic for my time with Brandi, especially our summer in D.C., even though in most substantial ways my life has gotten better since that time...

It's because, today, I have more freedom, more maturity and wisdom, better relationships with people, generally, a more substantial future in front of me -- personally, professionally, financially, and otherwise -- and a far stronger handle on life, generally...

But the one thing that I have less of in my life is what Diana's music is fully imbued with: beauty...

If you've really been in love, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about and what Diana is singing about...

It never ceases to amaze me how many people never take that kind of love seriously and, consequently, never experience one of lifes purest joys...

And it is that kind of sweet, soft joy that is the essence of Diana's music...

And I've only really experienced that particular kind of joy one time in my life...

I experienced it some during my time with Jenny and with other girls that I've dated...

But I've never quite felt it as fully as I did with Brandi...

That feeling of un-self-consciously living in the glow of someone else's life...being dedicated to someone else's joy as much as to your own...loving someone completely...for their faults more than despite them...where a smile or a laugh hangs more in the memory than a place or an activity, because it's that smile or that laugh that you live for...

It's so funny...so many of the things that Brandi and I used to hate about our relationship -- we fought endlessly in private, in public, and without shame, sadly and comically:):) -- are often the very things that I remember fondly, today...not because I want to fight, obviously...but because Brandi was the only other person I had met in my life who was like me in this respect...she fought openly, got angry openly, and was otherwise unashamed of her feelings, even as she worked to be as loving and respectful and decent to others as possible...

I don't think I've ever had that particular kind of relationship with anyone else, other than family...even close friends...

Brandi was just like family, I suppose...Brandi was family...

Which made the connection all the closer...and my nostalgia for it all the stronger...

I've learned in my short time here on this planet that our experience is life is often determined by the people we spend it with...

People like Diana Krall and Harry Connick Jr...

...and Brandi Fisher...make that time a very special one...

They make it an experience of beauty that really can't be found in a book or a class or a movie or a story...

Thank you, Fisher, for giving me that experience...

Love,
Ben

Feeling shitty...

I just got back from the Illinois State speech camp...had a great time, for the most part...it's a great team...competitive...smart...ballsy...nice and supportive as all hell...just a great group of folks...

I was something of an anomaly, I guess, since I was one of the very rare non-Big-L-liberals at the gathering...I'm a small-l liberal...meaning I believe that democracy and freedom are the foundations for everything that we value in modern societies...small-l liberalism is big tent liberalism that has plenty of room for conservatives and liberals, alike...my whole life has been liberal -- both Big-L and small-l -- in all functional respects...my family, and my father and I at the forefront, were peace activists and poverty activists...

I got into special education and education as a part of my commitments to poverty efforts and inner city school reform...I'm a vegitarian and eat organic, as much as possible, for health reasons, primarily, but also for non-self-righteous moral reasons...I've been gay-friendly and environmentally aware and committed for an awful long time...much of my study in grad school was of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. and Ghandi's Independence Movement in India...I have this really soft spot in my heart for outsiders, the downtrodden, and others that it is all too easy to exclude or hate or hurt or repress...I generally have a much stronger commitment to keeping people together on a team or in a group or in a family or a world than most people do...I genuinely care about people from all backgrounds, even people who it is very easy to not care about or to hate...

In all personal and social ways, people would probably recognize me as a liberal...

Except one really important caveat...I don't think that liberals have all the right answers...and on many very important questions, I think conservatives, particularly more libertarian conservatives -- the Economist may just be the smartest periodical in the world as far as I am concerned -- have better answers...and I'm not shy about saying so...Which is kind of awkward, sometimes, when you are in social gatherings where liberals dominate, I have to say...

Now, I would far prefer to deal with that kind of awkwardness with so many friends than somehow align myself with the nasty, vengeful, punitive, controlling sort of conservativism that characterizes, say, the Chicago Sun that I read for a bit while we were visiting Chicago...and I'm definitely not socially conservative, though I do very much understand the concerns of social conservatives...I just think a moral society is best achieved with more freedom and thought than with more control and punishment and conversion...and like Mark Twain, I just think the whole world would be a lot better off if it just wasn't so obsessed with morality and controlling one another in all kinds of unhealthy ways, even as I think moral concerns are important and valuable concerns in a free society...

But I seriously digress...It was a great time, in most respects...but also an awkward one, at times, because I'm just not a radical...and I felt like my liberal friends were being somewhat unfair to conservative ideas and thought while we talked politics...I also though folks could be a little obsessed with forensics success, at times...I was surrounded by national champions:):)...but that's for another day:):)...

Anyway...we talked about Israel and Lebanon, health care and education, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and a whole lot of forensics...

And I guess the biggest thing I took back with me is that I'm just kind of tired of all the fighting, I guess...

Brian and Bond, my fellow extemp leaders, were right and I was dead wrong, as it turned out, in our conversation about Martin Luther King...they were saying that King got more radical as the civil rights movement progressed...I was convinced that King's later years were the ones where he got more focussed on love and compassion and changing hearts and minds...And I was wrong, as it turned out...King did get more radical over the years, it seems...he advocated a poverty Bill of Rights and for racial reparations, and social democratic programs and politics...none of which I would advocate, today -- and just think those same concerns are better cared for in the civil society than by the government -- but none of which are serious concerns for me...

The big concern for me was King's support for the various left-wing revolutions of the 60's...that advocacy -- of revolutions that killed so many and destroyed so much over the the course of the 20th Century which so many liberal and Marxists, like conservatives who rationalize the means of Nazis and Fascists, never seem to be able to face up to and take responsibilty for and which is the basis of support for so many terrorist groups, today -- is the one most seriously dissappointing quality in King's legacy, as far as I'm concerned...his cheating was human and not something that seriously concerned me in the same way that this kind of ill-considered advocacy of revolutionary activity that has so undermined so much progress in so many areas of the world and killed and maimed many people and their futures in the process...And as someone who spent so much time studying Martin Luther King in grad school -- civil rights and poverty issues are at the heart of the reason why I wanted to teach in inner city schools -- I was just kind of embarrassed to find out that I didn't know about King's advocacy for left-wing revolutions (King argued, foolishly, that America was on the wrong side of such revolutions)...

Apparently King not only seriously underestimated his own and Mahatma Ghandi's non-violent legacies, he was unaware that it was left-wing revolutionaries that would go on to kidnap the 11 Israeli athletes killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics...and left-wing revolutionaries who would slaughter millions of Vietnamese after the U.S. abandoned its military engagements there...and left-wing revolutionaries who sponsor terrorist groups including the Irish Republican Army, the armed ETA Basque separatists in Spain, the FMLN in El Salvador, the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, and several other bloody left wing terrorist and revolutionary groups in the latter half of the 20th Century...not to mention the Bolshevik, Maoist, and Communist revolutions in Cuba and North Korea...and certainly not to mention the domestic left wing terrorism in the United States...the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers (though, to King's credit, he was also very critical of violent and radical civil rights organizations like the Panthers and the later ironically-titled Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)...

Plenty of right wing radical activity that was bloody and ugly in the 20th century...Nazis in Germany, Fascists in Italy and Spain, radical Islam in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Palestine and much of the Middle East...Al Queda and the Muslim Brotherhood...dictators like Augusto Pinochet of Chile and Major General Park Chung Hee of South Korea, the KKK and militia groups including the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the late 90's...

The lists of terrorist and violent groups who have killed and maimed and threatened and bullied in the name of ideology is really far too long for me to list them all...And the point really is that everyone thinks they're right...and everyone seems to be willing to go to some pretty gruesome extremes to prove just how right they are...And this weekend, I just got really tired of listening to people rationalize and excuse all that bullshit...like somehow it was/is really more noble than it really was/is...

I'm tired of fighting about it...but I'm more tired of people acting like its no big deal...like murdering people in the name of a cause is really ok...like the only thing that matters is winning, no matter who gets hurt...

I have to say that the reason why I don't identify as a Big-L liberal anymore...is because I am just so goddamned tired of listening to this bullshit like it should taken more seriously than it really should...It is kind of interesting to me how the debaters I meet -- the far more aggressive competition between speech and debate I think most of my debate friends would agree -- have tended to be far more moderate than many of my forensics friends...crazy, huh?...I had this really long, great talk with this CEDA debate champ from University of Northern Iowa about truth and reconcilation, which happens to be central to a lot of my political thinking and was the case that she ran in the final round the year she won the national championship...she was thinking of working on John McCain's campaign because she, like I, was terrified of Hillary Clinton as President and because she thought McCain would swing the country left (the latter reason I doubt, but I imagine that she, like I, is beginning to see beyond the blinders of ideology)...

I also met some really smart, bitchy, ambitious liberal women this weekend, that totally reinforced my feeling that I am much more interested in someone nice and decent and smart for a wife/life partner much more than someone smart and ambitious, alone...the latter can also mean heartless, I'm learning -- my concern about Hillary Clinton, really -- and I just want no part of that for my daily life...I met a girl this week who reminded me very much of my first really serious girlfriend, Jenny Burrington, who was and is a doll, really, and it totally reinforced for me that I would, in a heartbeat, rather date someone nice and decent than brilliant and bitchy, any day of the week...though I must say that Illinois State is largely a team of really wonderful girls and guys...

I guess I'm just weary of the fighting...and mostly, of all the rationalizations of all the people we kill in the name of the "right" ideology...which doesn't exist...never has existed...never will exist...I feel very much like Thomas Hobbes in 17th Century Great Britain trying to make sense of all of the religioius warfare of his time, watching the foolish divisions among Catholics and Protestants rationalize warfare that would take so much life for so little reason...and beginning to understand the first and foremost responsibility of government is to protect people from that kind of violence...though much more squarely with John Locke, Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill that such protection must be democratic and protect freedom as fundamental...

As I watch the Bush Administration and the Olmert government in Israel rationalize an ugly incursion in Lebanon and longer term warfare that has clearly not ended hostilities in the Middle East and never will...ever...absent a realistic peace process...

I am sad as I watch so many of my friends line up on sides...rooting on the killing and the death...in the name of ideology...I just want it all to end...And the excuses for it that make it all possible, most of all...The world has just taken this really ugly path the last 6 years or so...conservatives...liberals...even many moderates...it's been a period of coercion and force rationalized as if they really can solve problems if we would just give force a chance (John Lennon must be rolling in his grave)...

That 14-year-old kid in Talahassee died on the altar of all of our hubris...

And I just want it all to end...

Do people really believe that the Soviet Union could have made the independence efforts in Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia go away by rolling in tanks?...do people really believe that China and Cuba and North Korea and Vietnam really will be the last remaining bullwark of a socialist utopia? Do people really believe that democracy, at its heart, is really no different from Nazism or Fascism or Communism or theocracy, even as all of these ideologies can be accomodated in a democracy? Do people really believe that murder and political blackmail and violence are really no different from democratic engagement and discourse to resolve important problems that humanity faces?...Do people really believe that we can make terrorism in Palestine, Lebanon, and Afghanistan, Communism in North Korea, China, and Cuba, the nuclear ambitions of a theocratic democracy like Iran, or any of the other most important problems of the world go away with military force?...Are we that completely blind to the power of ideology and politics and the universal aspirations of freedom and equity?

I'm just tired of all the pointless, destructive fighting...I'm tired of so many people being killed for absolutely no good goddamn reason at all...and certainly no reason that has ever ended any of the hostilities...

That's why Louis Armstrong's 1970 version of What a Wonderful World was always Brandi's and my song...

As Louis says,

"Some of you young folks have been sayin' to me, 'Hey pops, what you mean what a wonderful world? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? They ain't so wonderful either.' Well how about listening to old pops for a minute? Seems to me, it ain't the world that's so bad, but what we're doing to it. And all I'm sayin' is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That's the secret. Yeah. If lot's more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And man, this world would be Odessa."

I just want all this stupidity to end, is the truth...

I'm realistic...but I also know that its the only way through this mess...it's like a peace process in the Middle East...I'm realistic that the Administration, the Israeli Government, and Hezbollah and Hamas are not going to take up a formal peace process, right now, for whatever stupid, foolish, destructive reasons...but I'm also realistic about the long term enough to know that there is no way out of that mess without a mutual commitment to a peace process...no side will ever admit defeat...they will go on fighting until they finally exhaust their foolish rationalizations and save some face through a peace process that they, like Gerry Adams in Northern Ireland, develop something of a genuine commitment to that peace...

But what I'm most frustrated with...is the 6 billion or so people throughout the world who just can't seem to find it in themselves to think for themselves and to stop encouraging this ugly nonsense and find the courage to speak in favor of a world where they can be independent thinkers and not have to root on this ugliness as if one side or the other is ever going to win in any meaningful way...

Our children and grandchildren, I'm convinced, will look back on all of this foolishness and shake their heads as we do, today, at Catholics and Protestants fighting for dominance in 17th and 18th century European governance and imperial ambitions...

So much destruction...so little reason...

And I just want it all to end...

And it'd be nice to surrounded by more folks who also want it to end and aren't interested in rooting on the various groups around the world who murder in the name of ideology and being right...

The Economist did this really great piece in their recent Kim Jong Il Rocketman edition celebrating the political accomplishment of the Socialist Prime Minister of Spain Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in brokering a deal with the ETA, the militant wing of Basque separatism in Spain which is responsible for the deaths of approximately 800 people, and criticizing Spain's conservative leaders for opposing the deal...the conservative editors of the Economist surely recognize the proven success of the Belfast Agreement in their home country of Great Britain in ending terrorist violence in Northern Ireland with the approval of the Clinton and Blair governments and the significance of conservatives in Britain supporting that agreement...

And that's what democratic engagement should look like...looking a reality square in the face and doing the right thing and being willing to criticize even those you identify with if it means moving the world ahead several paces...The consistent theme in so many Economist articles, these days, is "bad to worse"...that's how so much of the world has moved in the recent weeks...bad to worse...and there's nothing that good faith observers can do but watch it, note it, and hope for an end to all of the senseless tragedy...

I just want it all to end...and I especially want for average people to stop rationalizing it like it's somehow all better than it really is...

Martin Luther King was mistaken when he excused left wing revolutions for the sake of social democratic ends...supporting democratic revolutions is one thing and certainly justifiable when there is no way to peacefully usher in a democracy, as was the case with the American revolution...a democratic revolution, not an ideological revolution, largely...but justifying perpetual violence and revolution for the sake of an ideology, any ideology, except to usher in a democratic government where people can peacefully and freely decide these questions together is wrong...and so are everyone who rationalize it today...it has caused and causes today so much death, destruction, violence, and power gambles that are arrogant and fail to face their own terrible legacy...

King's far stronger legacy was his legacy of non-violence and his commitment to peace and democracy and love and compassion and forgiveness and the more authentic justice that comes out of those impulses and values...it is that legacy that is the basis for the truth and reconciliation processes in South Africa, East Timor, Chile, and around the world...and the only hope for escaping the cycle that Desmond Tutu and Pablo Friere and Martin Luther King and Mohatma Ghandi and Henry David Thoreau and The Buddha and Jesus of Nazareth have so eloquently cautioned us against of groups exacting revenge one another into perpetuity...and the practical justification for a world of love and compassion and decency...

And I just want all the violence and bloodshed in the name of ideology and certainly in King's name to end...

We will never resolve our various political concerns until this fundamental respect for one another is taken more seriously...and as often as humanity seems wont to prove that it is unworthy of such faith, it not only stumbles forward in this direction, consistently...this direction is the only direction that it can stumble forward into lest be stuck in cycles of violence and power and destruction and control and inequality that humanity is forever trying to escape...

And as the Economist recognizes...this is just a really bad time for humanity, right now..."bad to worse"...has been for a while, truth be told...

Darkest before the dawn, I can only hope?

All I know is that it has to end...Including the moral support that we all provide to this ugliness...

"Seems to me, it ain't the world that's so bad, but what we're doing to it. And all I'm sayin' is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That's the secret. Yeah. If lot's more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And man, this world would be Odessa."

That's the secret...he's right about that...whether we find the courage to dig deep and move in that direction or not, at this moment...

Love,
Ben