Disappointment...

I've got a million things to do, today...I'm still exhausted, even though I tried to get to sleep early last night to make up for lost sleep...I'll be playing catch up again this Saturday and then hopefully I can more regularly get sleep thereafter...

Last night I had a paper to work on...but I couldn't really get much done...just feeling disappointed with Brandi, right now...
It's one thing to screw up and to take responsibility for it...it's a whole other thing to take the weak/lame route, altogether, and to consistently avoid facing up...

Brandi's been taking the weak route for quite a while, now...I'm much clearer about that, now...yesterday was just the first time that she shared it so openly...

And I'm just feeling disappointed because I expected so much more out of her, I suppose...

We all have choices to make in our lives...sometimes we take the high road...sometimes we take the low...all of us...the trick is that with the important stuff, do we get in the habit of taking the low road and avoiding the challenge to be better...or do we face up to our weaker natures and become stronger from the experience...

Nothing wrong with taking the low road for awhile, even on the important things...as long as it's part of a journey that involves facing up to that and digging deep for strength...

The problem is when we start lying to ourselves...telling ourselves that we're doing better than we really are...or that people should listen to us or follow our example more than we really deserve because we just can't find it in ourselves to live a better example...

It's a common problem...it's also a serious one, at some point, around most of the most important issues that humanity faces...

In this situation, it just leaves me disappointed, right now...not really hurt...I think I've experienced plenty of that...just disappointed...that Brandi has so thoroughly taken up the lame route...

And that this particular lame route involves cutting me out so that she can maintain whatever weakness that drives her around it...

It's just a very different Brandi than my best friend in college aspired to be...it's like watching Mike Coupland leave his friends so he can go chase popularity...it doesn't offer him the happiness he was hoping for, of course...but it's sad losing friends as they chase illusive dreams...

I doubt the money or the seclusion will offer Brandi what she thinks it will...but it's her life to make choices with...

I'm just sad that a person who has been such quality for much of her life has chosen a weaker road...

And this morning I'm just dealing with the disappointment...

Love,
Ben

Closure...

I finally received an email back from Brandi, today...

She said she didn't want a friendship, anymore...she'd put it behind her...

I think I finally lost all respect for Ms. Fisher...her loyalty to friendship was her best quality...and without it, she just doesn't have that much to offer...

It doesn't even really hurt...it's just seriously disappointing...there's just not much to Brandi without loyalty to friendship...without it, everything else just seems kind of pointless...

You ever had a friend who left you for popularity or money or something else that they wanted?

I did...in 9th grade...you know why he eventually comes back and apologizes, I think?...because his life becomes such a mess that he wants some reassurance that there is one person in the world who loves him, no matter what...and I do...

Brandi will be back...when she returns, I've got some apologies due...

In the meantime, this is the best closure that I could have possibly have found...

Because there's not much to her friendship, at this point, to want to hold onto...not until she comes to terms with what a jerk she's been...

I think I lost all respect for Ms. Fisher, today...

And all of a sudden it's not such a bad thing to be have my life...

Because a life like the one Brandi's chosen just seems so completely bankrupt in every way that matters...

Love,
Ben

Commitments that I owe my teachers...

After an exhausting then exhilaratingly productive day...and after recognizing all the various commitments that my teachers made to me throughout the years...I decided on the way home that I have some commitments that I owe some of my teachers...

I'm leaning heavily in favor of a Ph.D. in policy, right now, given a couple of my commitments...

Mr. Perry, my junior year trigonometry teacher, gave me a 1-on-1 tutorial in trigonometry in what I can only imagine was his planning hour...I ended up dropping Calculus second semester my senior year, which is the reason why he gave me the tutorial...so I figure I owe it to Mr. Perry to finish at least one semester of Calculus and finish up the sucker...

Which will support very nicely my other very important reason to do a Ph.D. in policy, which is to seriously brush up on statistics (which, after a long and exciting conversation with two math students at a party Saturday night) to be much more prepared for more serious social scientific research and more serious interpretation of statistical data and prepare the strongest possible empirical research (and experiments, when appropriate)...

For my book, I think I'll need between now and writing that book I will need to do serious depth study in both international policy and counterterrorism, to prepare and deal with the strongest case against my ideas in international policy and counterterrorism, and criminology, to prepare and deal with the strongest case against my ideas in crime and domestic policy (I will need the help of Carson, Bond, Brian White, Brian, John, and that smart-as-shit debater from UNI and now Illinois State from the ISU camp, Chris Leland, and other folks to help me build the strongest countercases, and to test arguments in favor of limits on power, free will and morality discussions as a function of realist policy discussions, and my theoretical work around least possible necessary aggression, if they might help me out)...

So a Ph.D. in policy might come in handy:):)...

I plan on writing articles/chapters ahead of applying for Ph.D. programs so that I can guarantee entry into a program of my choice and to hopefully substantially beef up my preparedness for grad school...

I owe all of this and to finish my senior Honors' thesis from my undergrad at Wichita State -- as a publishable article in political history on the first Federal education legislation touching schools below the college-grade, the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 -- to Dr. David Ericson, my favorite prof from undergrad and someone who has been waiting to read a finished copy of that thesis for almost 10 years now (ok, I have a feeling it hasn't been keeping him up at nights:):)...

I also think that I owe Mr. Jestmore, my high school forensics, debate, and drama teacher, and EMU theater, here in Lawrence, to which I belong, to go ahead and work on the writing workshop next summer and to write (and maybe act in) at least one really quality publishable play/screenplay for production/filming...Mr. Jestmore always wanted me to be an actor and was really disappointed when I told him that I had decided to do forensics in college rather than drama, for which he secured me a scholarship when I was an undergrad...so I figure I owe him some substantial contribution to the theater world in return for his countless hours of devotion to my learning and growth and development as a young man and as an actor...

I also think I owe it, over the course of my lifetime, to write (and maybe sing) at least one really quality song to Mrs. Johns, my 7th and 8th grade music teacher who so thoroughly believed in my singing/musical abilities, and Doris Prater, my 9th grade music teacher, who turned our rag-tag, low-income Truesdell Junior High School choir into a powerhouse Worlds of Fun competition sensation and a hell of a stage choir...

Finally, I think I owe it to Tom and my education profs at KU, my teachers throughout my life, including and especially Conrad Jestmore -- whose commitment to libertarian/classical liberal virtues have had an indelible impact on my life -- and Dave Ericson, the smartest professor I've ever worked with, and to my principal Dr. Ogburn, my other favorite principal in my life, Keith Wilson, and all of the people who have dedicated time to helping me to become the outstanding teacher that I have become and am becoming to both write abundantly, for the rest of my life, about the significance of education in a liberal democracy in an authentically and classically liberal democratic tradition that I hope will rival my other favorite education scholar, John Dewey...and to teach in the most inclusive, open, free thinking, free expressing, and freedom-supporting university and department that I can find...where I can work with the broad range of students that I work with now and where, as much as possible, everything else always takes a back seat to the ever developing ideals of a free and democratic education...

And I owe it to Jim Henson, Roald Dahl, Mark Twain and the million of other great childrens' authors/film directors/entertainers to several brilliant stories and books for children, since this may be the legacy that counts the most, anyway...

I owe it to all my teachers to take full advantage to the quality education they afforded me for free and at affordable prices at all of the quality public schools and universities (and the private prep school I attended the first three years of my grammar school) to do only the biggest and best things with my education...with everything they dedicated to and sacraficed for my education...

And I owe it to myself...to take full advantage of all of the opportunities that they and life has afforded me...
So much for taking it easy as a teacher, huh?:):):)...

Yeah...setting the bar high for teachers -- as much as for thinkers or just average folks -- won't be a bad legacy to leave, either:):)...

I better get some sleep if any of these dreams are to become reality...

Have a great week, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

A long day and a discussion about redemption...

It's been a really fuckin' long day...kids were out of control, today...teachers were already talking about kicking some kids out into more restrictive school settings...and I'm really exhausted by the whole thing...

Today was my most confrontational with students...I have one student, in particular, whose been testing all sorts of limits and I decided, today, that I was tired of the games and students playing like they didn't hear or they just don't understand how to do things like be quiet during a computerized district assessment or to follow instructions after the hundredth of time of mouthing off about nothing in particular except to prove that they don't have to do anything a teacher says...

So today, I was my most direct...

What do you need to do when I say be quiet? Be quiet...

What do you need to do when I give you an instruction? Do it...

And when kids couldn't follow those instructions, I made clear that they were not going to find their way back into my room until I am confident that they can accept that though I do everything in my power not to lord authority over kids...that if they can't accept my authority, then they won't get back into my class until they are clear about who's the boss, when push comes to shove...

And that if they can't make it in a room where they are given as much room as I give them -- which is a lot -- then they can go try to make it in other rooms, if teachers will let them in, which, in many of their cases, may not be possible...

I have three students, right now (I have a fourth in the wings, but who is laying low right now) who are all either going to get clear very soon that I am the boss and if they have a problem with that they are going to have a tough time in my class (I don't lord this over students, at all, but these three boys are all way out of control with their behavior and with their disrespect...of me and of other students)...

Actually, my more serious concern is that they figure out that they have pissed off every other teacher...two of them teachers are talking about shipping them off, somewhere, while I speak on behalf of their lame, no-responsibility-taking asses and as they perpetually take it and me and the rest of their teachers for granted...as it should be, to some degree...they are kids, after all...but they each need to wise up, quick, because I'm losing my patience with them...there is always a well from which I can perpetually draw from on patience...but that doesn't mean that we aren't going to have some confrontation, in the meantime...

As I told one kid, today...he better wise up quick...because I'm his best friend in the school, right now, and teachers often go against my advice to stick with kids...and he keeps taking my advocacy for him for granted, he's going to find himself in an after-school program, a self-contained situation, or a more restrictive school very quickly...and there's not much I'm going to be able to do for him...

I have nothing to do with those kinds of recommendations...I don't believe in them, as a general but very committed rule in my professional practice...shipping kids off means you failed...and I don't like to fail...so I keep them with me as much as possible, often as much because I know that I will stick by kids and by high expectations for them long after others will give up on them...

Why some kids are so goddamned stupid I will never know, sometimes...

But what this kid hasn't figured out, yet, is that there is only way forward...and if he can't take that way, then his world is going to be full of trouble, from me and from others, until he gets his shit together...

Today was me at my toughest and most direct...either you get straight that you're behavior's going to turn around in my room...or you may find yourself trying to make it with teachers or employers who are going to show you about a 1000th of the patience that I'm going to show for you...

But knowing what I know about the world outside of school...how often we fail to support and challenge such kids and parallel adults from changing their thinking and their behavior and what a major fuckin' pain in the ass this is for the world, at large...I just can't give up on kids very easily, knowing that I can have an important impact on them, now, that could do a lot to promote safer and more productive communities and people living in them later on...

I've been listening, a lot, to the discussions about punishment and redemption on NPR and other news channels and reading about it in other news media, lately...

And the whole time I keep thinking...

"Is anyone going to take responsibility for Martin Andersen's death?"

And when we get clearer about how all the talk about forcing behavior on people had everything to do with Martin's death...
What punishment would be appropriate for our society? How long should we hold out on redemption until we can take responsibility for our role in that 14-year-old kid's death?

My talk and my willingness to confront disrepectful behavior was all that was tough, today...and I'm completely clear that it is the only thing that has much of a chance of getting through with the kids I deal with...kids like Martin...except for the love and connection and genuine concern that undergirds that tough talk...

But it's pretty damned clear to me that the reason why the folks like Martin's boot-camp guards can't take responsibility for his death is because they are scared of the consequences...jail can keep us safe...but I'm pretty clear that jail as a form of retribution does very little to help anyone...and if you doubt that, I suggest you spend more time in the inner city where an awful lot of folks have been to jail, but very rarely do any of them report jail pricking their conscience which is what has to change if their behavior is going to change...

Most people just debate this issue too much in the abstract, with very little real reference point for how people related to jail and prison sentences and what actually changes behavior, I think...and God knows that if the inner city is not evidence that jail does not change behavior (it can be a source for pricking the conscience, but, more often than not, it just makes people defensive about taking responsibility...though jail is often necessary to protect people) then I do begin to wonder if and when people might ever reconsider whether this is the best path to social reform...

I have a feeling I'll be waiting a long time for an apology for Martin...

Because we are a society that is far better at preaching responsibility than taking it...

And that is the hard truth about us that is so hard for so many of us to face about ourselves...

So I guess it shouldn't surprise me that my students struggle with it...because so does the whole goddamned world, for goodness sakes...

So I guess I have a lot of work to do to help make that responsibility easier for everyone to take...

I'm working on it...

Love,
Ben

It's No Use...

I was wrong...

This was a failed experiment...

Trying to let Brandi go...

Not having Brandi around as a friend leaves me feeling raw and hurt, inside...

But trying to ignore those feelings doesn't leave me feeling any better...it just leaves me feeling more raw...

I cried about it to Melissa...

And I felt a million times better...

Life's gonna be ok...I hope Brandi's doing well...

Louis Armstrong, by the way, is a great balm for heartache...

Love, Ben

Letting go...

I've been listening to Keith Urban and You'll Think of Me all morning...

Letting go of Brandi as a friend has been almost as painful as letting go of her as a girlfriend...ideally, I'd love to say that losing her friendship was harder than letting go of the relationship, but the reality is that the break-up was just more painful...which is exactly what makes the whole situation so complicated, I'm fully aware...

But I'm just tired of the games...I'm tired of the pretending like things are better than they are...I'm tired of acting like Brandi is being more of a friend than she really is...

I have zero expectations for Brandi, anymore...I'm sure her life is just fine...and letting go of someone who has been your very best friend is no mean feat...but I just can't pretend, anymore, that she's really being a better friend than she is...at best, she's a casual acquaintance, at this point, that I just happen to have a lot of history with...

I've never let go of a friend like this before...I've never had reason to...I've never been as close as Brandi and I were, worked as hard at the relationship, and then abruptly had no contact...in the past, either I've had mutual falling outs, sometimes having others afraid that we had fallen out more than we actually had, and retouched base years later or I've worked hard and just decided to put the friendship aside until I could trust that the friends involved were in good faith with me...

When I lost my first best friend, Mike Coupland, to his insecurities about being popular and being as successful as me in speech, a fight where I got my ass kicked, and a two-year hiatus before we were debate partners my senior year of high school (Mike and I would lose touch at the end of debate season when he backed out of Regionals at the last minute until he called me from Alaska where he was stationed with the Air Force and when he returned to Wichita with a wife and a daughter when I was still at Wichita State University)...

When I lost my first closest friend...it was hard...

Mike and I spent all of our time together in junior high and high school...multiple sleep-overs, even on weeknights, our parents were so enamoured with our friendship...we got caught together my freshman year in Haysville joyriding in my dad's car...Mike got grounded...I got no punishment and one of best conversations I had with my dad during my teens...

Mike and I would stay up late making crass jokes about hairlips and wood-eyes, what everyone we knew must say when they woke up in the morning, eating potato chips and drinking milk, and just talk about everything under the sun that could possibly spark the curiosity of two 14-year-old boys...

Mike was the first person I ever developed that close a bond with...
And when we lost that, it hurt but I never felt anything like this...
I don't want to feel this...I don't want to feel like my happiness is so dependent on the choices of another person...

I've lived through enough pain and tears for one person to last a lifetime...

You would think it would serve as a deterrent to risking it again...
But that hasn't at all been the case...the irony is that this is the time in my life when I've had the most attention from the opposite sex...the time when I've been most open to love...but it's also been the time when I just haven't been able to find love...no matter how hard I've tried...

And I'm just holding out for something true...

I don't ask girls to date...because my figuring is that if I can't find a friend who I care about as much and more than Brandi and make a relationship with that person, then it really won't ever be love...it will always live in the shadow of what I had with Brandi, as every relationship I've had since that time has lived in my heart...
But that hasn't been because I dated Brandi...I've dated plenty of people and not felt the feelings of loss I've felt the last 5 years...
It's because Brandi's and my friendship was the closest connection I've ever felt with another person...

So letting go of that is hardly an easy thing...

But I just can't live like this anymore...

And I just have to come to terms with the fact that Brandi's choices, for better or for worse, are not only her own...but that she's just not interested in my friendship, anymore...she thought at one point that she could be friends no matter what happened, no matter who we ended up dating or marrying...and she just discovered that it wasn't a promise she felt like she could keep...

And that the only end to this road of constant pain and heartache is just letting go completely...

And hoping I never see her again...because the superficiality in that encounter, absent some kind of substantial resolution of the heartache between us, would just be one more painful reminder of just how little I matter in her life, anymore...

And no matter how painful that is to face...I just don't need that in my life, anymore...

Melissa just had a reporter from the University Daily Kansan call about the 10-minute play festival that we're doing with EMU here at the Lawrence Arts Center (my performances have sucked in a serious way, by the way:)...and she was so sweet...she was just like, "If she wants to call me back, that would be fine. And if she doesn't want to call me back, that would fine too."

And that's how I feel about Brandi...I'm tired of the superficial contact...and I'm heartbroken by no contact, at all...but I just don't need the heartache in my life, anymore...

It's just so true...if you love something, you've got to learn to let it go...
If you love someone and you can't let them go, they'll never be their own...

And I don't want to own anyone...ever...

Love,
Ben

The problem with getting old...

We just got out of a meeting with some teachers...

It's so funny how generational issues impact the way that people look at things...

We have one teacher on the team who is really upset about grills, the metal carvings that some people (and some kids) wear on their teeth...

I have a ton of friends who have them...I think they're silly...and definitely way more expense than they are worth...but I just figure it's up to people to figure out how they want to look (I'm not a big fan of our school dress code, but I encourage kids to follow it since, of course, I think the education is more important than how we dress)...and I figure if you want to look foolish or shocking, then that's up to you...you deal with the consequences of that and I don't give a shit either way...

But teachers are up in arms...as are most older people about so much in youth culture that they often just don't understand is exactly what motivates such behavior...

Kids do this stuff for self-expression...but they as often do it to get just such a reaction...especially from their parents and teachers, who they, generally, want off their backs...so when they don't get one, then you and they can get focussed on the stuff that really matters in life...

It's so funny...because people don't take the time to think about how their reactions fuel many of the very things that they are so upset about (my friendship with Brandi comes to mind for me, here, though I think I've just kind of given up on being friends with Brandi, at this point, since I just don't have time for the games, anymore), they reinforce the very behavior that they're trying to deal with...

Hillary Clinton, quite the stuffy mom, doesn't realize that her desire to regulate video games like Grand Theft Auto is exactly what motivates the creation and consumption of such video games...the more taboo she makes it, the more popular it becomes...

And so it goes and so it always has gone and so it always will go until people get a clue and stop fueling the very shit they're so concerned about...

In the meantime...I felt resolved, coming out of this meeting...to not become old...

Obviously, I have to age...but I no interest in sounding like such an old nag...

Kids and adults, now and forever, will always make their own choices...it's far more effective to appeal to peoples' reason and conscience, generally, especially in the long term, than to try to regulate their behavior...the latter always being in the moment and as long as there is someone around to enforce regulation, and eventually often wearing off, absent a matter of conscience or reason at stake, and then still wearing off, often, even then...and still more often creating resistance, rebellion, and fueling the very behaviors that regulators are trying to address...

It's the best thing about being young and having a young spirit...letting people be who they want to be...which is exactly what they're going to do, anyway, whether you like it or not...it's just that they are more likely, by far, in my experience, to be closer to better expectations for themselves, the less we regulate them and the more we appeal to their consciences...

What we currently do clearly doesn't work, if our concern is that we don't want to change ships midstream...

And perhaps we're more concerned with self-righteous stands than tangible results...

If so, we should just get used to self-righteous stands that yield no or worse results (better results if we appeal to conscience)...

But just for me, personally...I just can't imagine being that stuffy...and being so concerned with the splinters in other peoples' eyes, as my homie Jesus of Nazareth used to say, than with the beams in our own...

Love,
Ben

The most important and credible challenges to the thesis of my work...

I've said in earlier posts that the most significant challenge to my thesis of least possible necessary aggression and the way I interpret that for domestic policy -- namely, that a more libertarian domestic policy on issues like guns and drugs would both better deal with concerns around both of these issues, sponsoring more responsible gun ownership, drug use, and facilitate citizens' abilities to deal constructively with more serious problems in both arenas and local, state, and federal government's ability to both diminish violence associated with both trades and diminish support for dangerous groups associated with both drugs and guns, as just two examples of the promise that domestic policies committed to more individual freedom offer to our ability to deal with domestic problems -- is found among criminologists who attribute lower violent crime rates (up until 2005, that is) to creative policing and the ability of law enforcement to use drug laws, gun laws, and the death penalty to provide deterence and succesful prosecution of violent crime...

It's the strongest counter-argument I've identified to my general thesis of least possible necessary aggression in domestic policy...and an argument that I will need to spend much time dealing with and thinking about and soul-searching on (if I'm wrong about my thesis, it's better to abandon it than to keep defending a poor thesis, if I'm intellectually honest, that is, and not just self-righteously defending a thesis that I've invested some stake in)...

Tonight, I think I encountered the strongest counterargument to the thesis of least possible necessary aggression in international policy and counterterrorism efforts, where I have been focussing and honing the thesis most seriously in the last few years...

Daniel Byman is a Brookings scholar, an associate professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University -- the most reputed international policy program in the country -- who wrote a November/December 2003 article for Foreign Affairs that I happened to run across, tonight, that argues for a political offensive against Hezbollah three years before Israel's military offensive against the Lebanese terrorist group...

http://www.brookings.edu/views/articles/byman20031101.pdf

I don't agree with Byman's thesis that pressuring Syria would successfully dismantle Hezbollah, but I think it is the strongest argument for the use of the political or military pressure for counter-terrorism efforts -- distinct from efforts to delegitimize Hezbollah and to wean political support for its militant wing through political representation and moderation of its political wing in the Lebanese parliament; to confront it with multilateral and internationally credible military and law enforcment efforts to arrest militant leaders when possible and kill when necessary; or to engage in peace processes that would seek to disarm Hezbollah either forcibly or voluntarily through a legimated political process between Israel and Lebanon and within the Lebanese democratic government -- to resolve this issue, with Iran and Syria, and with the war on terrorism, generally...

The reason why I think this is the strongest counter-argument is because pressuring Syria has been associated with the most promising results in Middle Eastern democratic efforts...Iran has largely resisted American and European pressure to end its nuclear program...as has North Korea, even after successful negotiations correlated with U.S. pressure during earlier Six-Party talks (though I believe more accurately correlated with South Korean diplomacy to bring North Korea back to the table)...Iraq is a terrible mess of insurgency against the new democratic government and the American presence and sectarian violence that many analysts are concerned may be devolving into civil war...Syria and Iran have responded to implicit threats to invade with support and prompting for Hezbollah's most recent killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers (while Hezbollah's political wing was unaware of its militant wing's plans to engage Israel, Iran and Syria were helping to coordinate its efforts)...

But the one ray of hope in the Middle East when it comes to the use of political or military pressure was in the correlation between Washington's pressure on Syria in 2005 to exit Lebanon, and Syria's subsequent withdrawal and the room for the current Lebanese democratic goverment...

Now...I don't agree that Washington's pressure is what prompted Syria to leave...I think, more likely, grass-roots citizen protests of a Syrian military and political presence precipitated a Syrian withdrawal -- as with the fall of Eastern European and Soviet communist regimes -- but, then again, I'm just a naive idealist:):)...

There is no doubt that Washington was pressuring Syria around the time that it pulled out and that many Lebanese see the United States as an unlikely ally because of their support for a Syrian withdrawal...

What is in doubt is whether American pressure caused the pull-out...and Daniel Byman makes a really brilliant case, in this article, for why American pressure can exercise much leverage with Syria, and, he believes, how the Administration can use that leverage to finally underrmine Hezbollah (a case that is easier to make, today, given how Hezbollah has undermined its own political support in Lebanon with its most recent adventures in Israel and the subsequent response they sparked)...

The reason why I don't agree with Byman's case even as I think he is a seriously brilliant mother-fucker -- you gotta read this article to get a feel for why I feel so stupid next to this guy; largely because he clearly knows so much more about this region and terrorism, generally, than I do and I should probably feel ashamed to even dare to doubt the wisdom of someone so much more clearly qualified to have this discussion than I am; my case is a more general one that isn't based out of counter-terrorism expertise, but Byman makes the case, for me at least, for why I should quickly develop one if I want to have anything credible to say on this subject -- is because the use of pressure has just been such a miserable failure in most of the cases where it has been applied, by any objective measure, by my lights...

Iran, North Korea, and Iraq (the axis of evil, itself) being the most obvious to me, though not to most international policy scholars I've read, so perhaps I really just don't know what the fuck I'm talking about...though most scholars don't seem to take Joe's ideas around soft power seriously in their articles, either, and I'm quite clear of the necessity and utility of soft power, and somehow I doubt that a lot of lesser known intellects have somehow outhunk their way around Joe because they have discovered the wisdom of more conventional pressure politics...

Where I see failure, David sees the need to remain patient..."Patient with how much failure?" is my question...but Daniel makes a brilliant case for this kind of patience, I must admit, and clearly knows so much about the region that it makes me blush that I even dare to have the conversation with the guy...

But have the conversation I must, obviously, because plenty of counterterrorism expertise has not either captured Osama Bin Laden or seriously weakened Al Queda, dismantled Hezbollah, weakened Hamas (which came to power in Palestine post-Iraq war and with the advent of the War on Terrorism, rather than being weakened) nor decreased international terrorism, unless there is some objective index that I am not aware of that indicates a reduction in terrorism that neither I or the most recent survey of terrorism experts conducted by the international policy journal Foreign Policy, which generally found that most terrorism and international policy experts believe that our vulnerability to terrorism has become more substantial rather than less, post-Iraq war and in the wake of the War on Terrorism (as well as the 2003/04 Global Terrorism Index by the World Markets Research Centre, of course, which found an increase in terrorism after the initiation of the Iraq war)...

As with President Bush's call for patience rather than rethinking strategy, I find David's and the President's desire for patience as naive and ignoring the consequences of a failing and failed policy...

But one very serious thing that David Byman has over George W. Bush and me is that he knows Middle East politics and history, and the recent history of Middle East terrorism very well...and that should certainly give someone like me pause...

And more importantly, he really does seem to understand the dynamics of terrorism and its political support in ways that I think are important if we are to develop more effective counterterrorism policy...

David's arguments and this line of reasoning, generally -- that effective pressure, political pressure with implicit pressure from threats of military action is the most likely scenario for undermining Hezbollah, and I would imagine similar scenarios that David might argue for stopping Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions and pressuring for a sustainable democratic government in Iraq -- are the strongest counter-arguments to my thesis of least possible necessary aggression and all of its correlates in democratic theory and principle that I think I've encountered, thus far...

As I write this book, I don't want to take on strawmen, which is useless and intellectually dishonest...if I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and if it is made more clear for me I will be the first to admit it (or at least I will try to admit it as quickly and honestly as I see it)...

I want to wrestle with the strongest counterarguments and develop good ideas, not validate ones I've just associated myself with...the latter is not only intellectually dishonest, it's foolish because stubbornly sticking by a bad idea doesn't make it any better...and certainly doesn't help anyone...

I guess you could say that instead of making an extended speech that fits my biases, that this book needs to be the most challenging debate that I can offer around this thesis...I need to consider the argument open-endedly and all of its weaknesses as well as its strengths and deal with people and arguments that have the most chance of both making and being stronger arguments as well as educating and enlarging my own thinking...

I have to say that this dude offers me significant opportunities to educate my argument...because I feel kind of dumb in the presence of his arguments...

Lots of work to do...

Ben

The practical consequences of self-righteousness for morality and politics...

I worked on a post on this topic for hours on Saturday and lost a big hunk of it...I saved most of it and will complete it ASAP...

In the meantime...

A bit of one of my favorite authors, Mark Twain, from his novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to get me and you started on my first day of a brand new school year:)...

"Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn't stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, "Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry;" and "Don't scrunch up like that, Huckleberry—set up straight;" and pretty soon she would say, "Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry—why don't you try to behave?" Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good."

Have a great day, everyone:):)...

Love,
Ben

It's lonely, sometimes, caring about people...

I'm feeling like shit, this morning...so be warned...this is a vent...

I have three ex-girlfriends that I've written or called in the last year who have gotten married and are not returning communication...I have a couple of friends that I just got in touch with in the last few months who have not written back...

I think I've given up on a friendship with Brandi...which is breaking my heart, right now, because she was the best friend I ever had and we promised after we broke up that we would not stop talking with each other just because we met other people and now, for the first time since we broke up, I'm not sure if I'll ever hear from her again...

I would rather live with my heart open and breaking occasionally than with my heart closed for fear of having it break...

But that last one is quite the heartbreak...

I hate this world, sometimes...with all its pettiness and its defensiveness and its jealousy and its possessiveness and its bitterness and all the ways that we fuck up our own lives and the lives of people around us...

But I hate this one most of all...because Brandi really wasn't just my girlfriend...she really was the best friend I had ever had...

When we broke up, it took a long time, but I finally made my peace that we wouldn't be together, again, as a couple...but Brandi promised that we wouldn't lose our friendship...and now that seems to be gone, for all practical purposes, too...

What a fucked up world we've created, here...this world where we pretend that we've resolved problems and situations that we clearly haven't...where we pretend that we've found solutions to problems that aren't solved...where we pretend like the way that we do things makes them better when they don't...

I wish I could say I felt safe sharing this stuff with someone in my life...I share it with Melissa, but I don't think she really cares, frankly...Brandi was the person I shared this sort of stuff with...but I can't anymore, for all practical purposes...

I just sit and listen to Hootie for comfort, because I don't trust anyone else to provide it...

I guess for Brandi I was just some cute guy to spend some time with and maybe date, at some point...

But Brandi never was that to me...I didn't even think about dating her when I first met her...she was really just my best friend for a year who I didn't think about, romantically...

And had I known that this would be the consequence, I don't know if I would have dated her...I would have missed out on so much had I not...but I'm missing out on so much, now, that I did...

All I know is that any marriage or relationship that needs distance from ex's is on weak ground...I don't plan on doing that with Brandi or Jenny or Kathleen -- the three ex-girlfriends who haven't written or called back -- or any of my ex-girlfriends, in the future...and I don't care what my girlfriend or wife has to say about the matter...I don't sell out friends for love...I don't sell out friends for anything and I don't sell out anything for love or anything else, for that matter...

When Brandi and I were dating, I didn't even think twice about going to spend time with Jenny to comfort her after her divorce...and I just won't live like so many people do, scared of themselves, scared of their feelings...its weak and cowardly and I won't live like that...I don't need or want to protect myself from my feelings...or to protect anyone else from their feelings...if I'm dating someone who needs her feelings protected, she is definitely the wrong girl for me...

I guess that is the major way that I am different from a lot of people...I have no interest in living my life scared...scared of every little feeling or consequence or thought or influence or whatever that I just don't think I can handle or that I'm afraid might challenge me or that I've just convinced myself that I have to isolate myself from...

I'm just not a coward like so many people are...and I refuse to live my life like that...

Hiding behind ideology or marriage or religion or ethnicity or gender or intelligence or money or rock star status or gang affiliation or being a bad-ass or all of the million ways that people hide themselves in corners so that they don't have to reach beyond themselves and connect with people is cowardly and weak...and I have no interest in being cowardly and weak in that way...or in any way, frankly...and I have no interest in hearing peoples' excuses for why they do...why when the world gets polarized, they just give in rather than hoping and working for something bigger and better...

I'm no coward...and I don't give a shit how many people are...

Figuring out which group you belong to and who doesn't belong in your group takes no courage, at all...it is the essence of cowardice, really...and it is the polarizing tendency that has taken hold of the country and the world in the last 6 years or so...a brilliant and proud way to welcome in the 21st century, don't you think?

It's lonely and painful keeping your heart open like that, sometimes...we just had a very nice conversation about that at our school this last Friday...about how hard it is to keep saying hi to kids or teachers when they don't say hi back...how hard it is to keep your heart open to kids and people who shut their heart down...

And I just think Brandi's shut her's down to me, even though she promised she wouldn't do that...

It's so amazing to me how much courage so many adults have when they're young...how much more open their hearts are, often...and then shut them down as they get older...some people open their hearts up, more...but a lot of people just get lost in their cowardice...

But there is no progress without courage...as individuals...and as a culture...

And I'm not so tied to any friend or family member or ex-girlfriend to hang up my own learning and growth until they learn to take up more courage to promote their own learning and growth...

I'm learning that this is how all of the most serious foolishness and injustices in the world remain in our midst for so long...because, as Bobby Kennedy said...true moral courage is rare...most people will never dare to risk the rejection or approbation of their peers to demonstrate it...that's why we always look back on our ancestors and shake our heads...because courage is rare...and most people are too scared to shake loose of even the most terrible legacies for fear of looking bad to their peers...and most people are too scared to look honestly at themselves to face up to that personal legacy...

And, right now, you have cowards leading cowards...people too afraid to think for themselves following people too afraid to imagine something better...

With Brandi, I had a friend to imagine things better with...someone who believed, at one time...

And now, I'm afraid, I don't have that or much of anything with her...

Why does the world have to be so full of so much senseless tragedy?

I've dealt with a lot of it in my lifetime, like everyone else, I imagine...

But this one is taking the cake, right now...

Why do so many people grow up only to shut their hearts down?...Why do we pretend that this is what being a grown up involves?...

And most importantly...why do we think anyone, nevertheless our children, should follow our lead when we do so with such cowardice?

Maybe that's why we insist...because deep down we're afraid that maybe our lead isn't worth following...perhaps we don't deserve it...but we insist on it anyway...that may or may not fair...but working with people to be responsible for their own lives is not only a more sustainable way to supporting the learning and growth and progress of a culture...it is the way that involves more courage, because it means learning to trust people to make judgments on their own, rather than with some sense of omniscience on our or other peoples' parts...

Well, I don't insist that Brandi be my friend...if she doesn't want to be my friend, then fuck her...

I don't insist that anyone be my friend...or that anyone listen to a goddamn thing I say...

It wholly possible that I'm just completely or even substantially full of shit...

But if people don't listen because they want to be small and petty and weak, then so be it...I just don't want anyone to insist that I follow their small and petty and weak asses if they don't have the courage to be bigger...
And when people do insist...which they inevitably do...I just want them to know that they will never have my heart or mind until they live an example or have an idea worthy of following...

I don't give a shit how many times Brandi sells me out...I'll never sell her out...or any of my friends...ever...it's not in me...my door is always open...

I guess that I'm just aware, now, that I am out on this limb completely on my own, at this point...and so be it...
True friendship is extremely rare, I'm learning...perhaps it is always just beyond reach...because we are all such fuckin' cowards...

But what a lonely world it would be if there was no hope for something better...

Love,
Ben

Self-righteousness is a poor substitute for morality...

After reading Ruth Marcus' self-righteous editorial about how "soft" Hollywood has been on Mel Gibson (what I love about moralists and absolutists of every stripe is that no fear, pain, or the power to inflict it is ever enough to satiate their vindictiveness)....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/08/AR2006080800940.html

I have to say that if moralists make me choose between the the humble and moderate morality of a Mark Twain...or the never-satiated vengeance and self-righteousness of a Ruth Marcus or a Joe Lieberman or a Cynthia McKinney...

I will choose Mark Twain's decency, compassion, humor, and love for humanity any fuckin' day of the week over the self-righteous rants of any moralist or absolutist offerred up...

Moralism and absolutism are forms of power...moralists know this...that's why they hold on so tight to it...

Having humble and forgiving criticism of movies or music or politics or whatever is one thing...

Exploiting a moment of weakness from Mel Gibson and not being able to move on just makes you an asshole...

And I don't care what church or temple you go to...

Do people like Ruth Marcus really believe that they're pettiness could ever make humanity bigger?

I'll take my grandma's and my family's humanity, anyday, over the self-righteous bullshit of people like Ruth Marcus...I'll take their racism and their homophobia and their humble efforts to take responsibility and learn about people around them any day over the self-righteous bullshit that parades as morality these days...

And if moralists and absolutists don't like that...they can fuck off...

Apparently, if Cynthia McKinney and Joe Lieberman are any evidence, they also lose elections, these days...not something I'm crying over...

I like both Cynthia and Joe...but I don't like either of their self-righteousness, which is largely what got both of them in trouble, I think...

What American politics needs more of, these days, is the humble non-partisan leadership of people like Kathleen Sebelius, Democratic Governor of Kansas, and Bill Graves, Republican immediately-former-Governor of Kansas, who reflect everything that's right in my little state of Kansas...humble leadership dedicated more to service than to listening to yourself speak, which was the obsession of both Cynthia McKinney and Joe Lieberman...

And definitely more of the politics and wisdom from our neighbor from Hannibal, Missouri...Mark Twain...

How ironic that so many people were so offended by Mel Gibson's self-righteous, sectarian Catholicism only to kick him in the gut when he shows the least bit of humanity, even when it's not so pretty...

How in the fuck could anyone look at that bullshit and call it morality, I will never know...

All I know is that if that is what morality is, I want nothing to do with it...

Luckily, it is only a very shiny counterfeit...

To think otherwise demeans morality...

Because there is no way in hell that the moralism of Ruth Marcus and anyone like her is leading us to higher ground...

That kind of higher ground only comes with forgiveness...which, when we're not bullshitting ourselves, is the essence of morality...if we could ever get over ourselves, that is...

If morality were what Ruth Marcus and Joe Lieberman and Bill Bennett and a whole host of others portend it to be, it wouldn't be worth a bucket of spit...or, at least, a bucket of spit is the most that I would give for it...

Luckily, a more sincere morality is committed to loving people for their humanity, not kicking them in the guts when they demonstrate some of its less attractive side...

If humanity was always on the up and up, we wouldn't need to dig deeper...our superficial commitment to morality would be just fine...but morality isn't about looking good for the pews...its about doing the right thing, even when its difficult...and forgiveness is not only the heart of everything right in the world...it is only necessary in a world full of sinners aspiring to be better...and if anyone sells you any other snake oil, make sure to keep your receipt...

And if moralists want to control that question by kicking the shit out of those of us who take a more humble tack to moral questions, then so be it...they can have control...I just don't want anything to do with it or them, in that case...

But real morality isn't about control...it's about love and decency and kindness and loyalty and respecting people, even when you disagree with their words or their actions...

And the kind of morality and absolutism that has asserted itself around control and power has been the bane of human existence since the dawn of humanity...Naziism, Communism, theocracy, Fascism, marxism and socialism, liberal and conservative self-righteousness and power-hunger...

It is this obsession with power that has fucked up humanity for so long...

And yet someone has got to exercise authority responsibly...

I just never tire of my revulsion against the kind of bullshit belief that any one idea or person or group or ideology somehow has all the right answers or is somehow better than everyone else...

Genuine morality isn't about being better than everyone else...genuine morality wants everyone to be able to live in its glow...

Jesus wasn't a great man because he hated fags, as Reverend Phelps reassures us...nor because he kicked the money-changers out of the temple...

Jesus was a great man because he was the guy who stood up for the prostitute when she was about to be stoned...

If Jesus' primary legacy would have been kicking the money-changers out of the temple, I wouldn't have been very impressed...

But saving the prostitute takes some courage...

And that's the guy I admire...

And his example was to stand up for people like Mel Gibson when the whole world seems to want to kick him in the stomach and say, "Enough"...

And I'm goddamned proud of that Jesus...I couldn't give two shits if moralists like that or not, to be frank...

Because if the contrary were true...morality would be such a petty, small-minded thing that it wouldn't really be worth much any more...

World's gone crazy, lately, thinking that we can somehow improve the world by polarizing it and trying to prove who is better and who is just unredeemable...

There's nothing righteous about picking on people when they're down or polarizing the world to cleanse it...that's not morality...it's self-righteousness...

And self-righteousness is a poor substitute for a more genuine, humble morality...

So much so that I'm surprised that so many people can go so long bullshitting themselves, otherwise...

All I know is that, in a hundred years, I'd rather hang with Mel Gibson and even listen to his bullshit homophobia and anti-semitism and Catholic sectarianism than I listen to someone go on and on about how they still gotta get Mel Gibson...

Because the latter is not any decent impulse...it's just hate and snottiness and vindictiveness parading as something more noble than they actually are...

And surely humanity has got to be better than that...

Love,
Ben

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