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War in Iraq, Time to Come Home I "supported" the war in Iraq at the outset for a simple reason. I thought Hussein was a tyrant and was killing the people of the area. His own people and the Kurds and the Iranians. I did not think at any time Hussein had so-called "weapons of mass destruction" or that if he did they would not be used.I have changed my mind. This has taken about a year or so. I now believe we should withdraw as best we can and perhaps bring to the West (the United States of America) those whose lives will be in danger when we leave.
We cannot support nor should we stay in war which will last for decades. Are we in a war like the 100 Years War? I think we are.
We have to find a way to support our energy needs. We should use the resources available to us to solve those problems. They are not going to be solved spending another 3 Trillion Dollars on war in the Middle-East.
I am still the humanitarian I was back in 2001 - 2002. But, I am more realistic about it. Massive deployment of troops to an area will not solve the problems. Maybe an independent international police force could help, but it seems, and sadly I think I have to admit this, we have to let the peoples of nations work out their frightening problems on their own.
But, there may be another way. But I shudder to say it. If we want the kind of "peace" I think we want the way to acheive it would be for us, the people of the West, to in physical fact move to these geographic areas in large numbers and actually become the dominant members of the culture.
We cannot do it from Washington with troops and proxy troops.
Some time ago, Aleksandr Solhenitsyn said Russia should embark upon a time of self-limitation and repentance. How true his words are today as applied to the United States of America.
Home Economics, The United States of America, Spring 2008Diesel $4.00 plus, gasoline $4.00 plus, home foreclosures everywhere, residential prices plummeting, major money lending institutions being bailed out, loan defaults looming everywhere, bankruptcy law firms gearing up, the Federal Reserve dropping its basic rates -- it goes on and on. Things may get much worse. In a way these events, this financial crisis, may bring my country, the United States of America to it's senses.
My fellow Americans and I have been on a long drunk. Maybe, we might sober up and begin to take care of ourselves, renew ourselves.
Maybe, we will take some time out from our world involvements and campaigns to come to a better understanding of how we should relate to our fellow world inhabitants.
Maybe, just maybe, we might try once again to be a "Good Country."
We might even use our significant talents to engage in a major world public works project. A project to deal with our burgeoning need for water, tillable soil, forest, non-carbon producing energy, population explosion. The trillions we have spent on war in the last five years would be a good start. The debate is no longer "guns and butter" it is "guns and world survival." I am afraid the guns are going to have to go.
I have hope. But, I am not going to go to Las Vegas or a local casino to think about it, I am not going to wander the aisles of the local Costco, I am not going to buy a new high definition television to watch a sporting event.
No, I am going to out to my back yard and rake, dig, smell, look across the river valley to work of a man from Denver who is reclaiming an old railroad yard from years of hazardous waste deposits. Then, I am going to go for a long walk along the Rimrock which overlooks my little community, the place where I have helped raise a family.
And, I am going to think about what to do about my country.
Kenya, January 28, 2008In the 1960's the African nation of Kenya was a subject of much interest of those with hopes of a free Africa. In Africa no longer under the control of colonial powers. Kenya seemed to be the brightest hope. Its primary leader was Jomo Kenyatta.
Now, 40 years later, Kenya is falling apart. It is breaking into tribal warfare. Perhaps looking back one can see the inevitability of what is happening in Kenya today.
Jomo Kenyatta was Kikuyu. The Mau Mau military group putting most of the pressure on the British who were in control of Kenya at the time were mostly, if not entirely Kikuyu. Indeed, to be a young Kikuyu tribesmen meant you were likely to become a member of the Mau Mau.
After liberation, Kenya was essentially ruled by Mr. Kenyatta and people of the Kikuyu tribe.
Now other tribes are coming to the fore and are doing so with political and military might. The battles beginning to take place are between the Kikuyu tribe against Luhya, Luos and Kalenjins tribesmen.
The ethnic breakdown of the Kenya is Kikuyu 22%, Luhya 14%, Luo 13%, Kalenjin 12%, Kamba 11%, Kisii 6%, Meru 6%, other African 15%, non-African (Asian, European, and Arab) 1% . CIA Fact Book.
No doubt there are other deep and intractable problems in Kenya. However these probably only serve to energize the greater problem. The greater problem is that the tribes remained tribes rather than melding and becoming a people with a nation.
Nationalism has not worked. It did not work because Kenya was based upon endogamy rather than exogamy – marriage inside the tribes rather than outside the tribes.
The nation will devolve into tribal warfare. One wonders what the members of the United Nations will do? Probably send troops to stand by and watch the violence and hope some international solution will magically present itself. See the experience of Canadian Romeo Dallaire.
I suspect the "solution" will simply be a product of a powerful group coming into power. A group which then finds itself tired from all of its butchery. The souls of boys and men and politicians -- of the butchers -- will eventually be sated, at least for a time.
And then, because nothing will have changed, a few generations hence, the cycle will begin over again as power shifts from one tribe to the next tribe or tribes.
The question the United Nations and its members must ask is :
Just what are we really going to do about this whole process which seems bound up in the genetics of the human animal?
Judge Richard Posner, January 27, 2008.Judge Richard Posner. The legal community has been lionizing Mr. Posner for many years now. He has a large output (he publishes a lot), has a nice smile and seems to be a bit of an intellectual snob who is supported by a lifetime appointment to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. He reminds me very much of the people I have known who have worked as clerks for justices of the United States Supreme Court – all very self-confident, very bright and who seemed not only to know it, but presumed, everyone around them shared in a high opinion of themselves. They were interesting and in their way, likeable, as only a lawyer could like another lawyer.
I have been reading a lot of Posner lately. He is interesting and he writes well (who am I to judge!). He is also well read. I like that.
I have this problem with him though. It’s not really a problem. It’s just that what “I think” he is saying is true but I would like to think it would be otherwise. Posner is a “pragmatist.” That’s for sure. He thinks, as best I can tell, that judges decide cases on things other than the rule of law and that they should do a better job of making their decisions sound rational, that is, tied to the rule of law. He’s saying its all right to be irrational, just convince the “people” your decision looks like it is rational, that it follows the rule of law. To me he is saying “make your irrationality more convincing.”
Now understand I could be getting Judge Posner all wrong. In any case, my comments are expressed in a good spirit. How can you dislike a guy who points his butt to the security card reader in the elevator in his courthouse (he learned he did not have to take his card out of his billfold for the reader to read it) to get to his office floor? And he has a wife who sounds like a saint, very much like Mrs. Sigmund Freud in her devotion to the satisfactions and contentment of her husband so that he could direct his libido to sublimations of a rather sublime if not esoteric object cathexis.
Justice William O. Douglas is said to have said:
“At the constitutional level where we work, 90 percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections.”
Really, Chief Justice Hughes said that to Justice Douglas, according to Justice Douglas’ memoirs.
I think Judge Posner would agree with the statement (even though he has little respect for Justice Douglas).
So where are we? I know judges make decisions on emotion. They make their decisions based upon their own irrationality. Sometimes they are really corrupt in the process. They rewrite the facts, misstate the issues, fail to address the issues, misread the law, and so on. All so their decisions seem to follow the rule of law. In essence, judges make decisions based upon how they think the power of the state should be used. They dispense the favors of the power of the state. Does not sound too good to me. Maybe that is why I have concerns about Judge Posner.
Posner would say it is ok for judges to decide cases on bases other than the rule of law. He would just have them do a better job of being convincing the people of the correctness of their decisions. As if to say, its all right to decide on the emotional level just make sure you do a better job of making your emotional effusions sound reasonable.
In the final analysis, he seems to be an apologist for the judgment of power. Not a good thing as far as I am concerned. Yet, the rule of law would provide a bit of a leavening influence if judges would just be honest. I think Judge Posner is an honest man, or least so it appears to me. So maybe the rule of law would not necessarily be forgotten.
"Our Economy is Fundamentally Sound" [sic]This morning the President of the United States said that the economy of the country was "fundamentally sound." An economy based so much on (1) infusions of borrowed money (2) spending on unnecessary consumer goods and services and (3) a rapidly wasting natural resource (especially a resource which will never be replaced which, at present, is located mostly in another continent and in countries controlled mostly by tribal groups excited about their religion) can hardly be called an economy which is "fundamentally sound."
To be truthful it should be called an An Economy of Illusion.
[Posted January 24, 2008]
A Real EconomyDo we have a real economy? Do we have an economy which is based upon the manufacture, distribution, and purchase and sale of "real" goods and services? By real I mean goods and services which are generally useful and necessary.
We do not. Much of our economic activity is unnecessary. Indeed, much of it is frivolous.
The United States is pursuing a disasterous economic policy.
Our economic policy is driven not so much by earned income but rather by debt. The consumption our policy requires is driven by debt. Simply, it is driven by the expenditure of money we do not have.
Also, our economic policy is further based on many externalities to the economic transactions which take place moment by moment at an ever increasing rate. The externalities are the costs built into the economic transactions which are borne by those who are not a part of the transactions -- those who are air pollution, water use, carbon dioxide emissions, the list is endless.
And, our economy is rapacious.
It makes no real difference upon which political system an economy such as ours is based whether it be capitalist, socialist, religious or tribal. Its abiding principle is that of illusion that something can be gotten for nothing.
It is time to build real economies. The Bush Tax Cut is not the way.
[Posted January 22, 2008]
The Bush Tax Cut, 2008To those who still have some sense, or might otherwise be interested:
After 9/11 the President of the United States advised us to take a single specific action in the face of the threat of "Al-Qaeda." He said "Go Shopping." He did, I remember it very clearly. He did not say go out and save rubber, tin, aluminum. silk, make a sacrifice, give up something, he said go out and indulge, spend, spend, make sure you tell those bad people that we can still spend, that we still have "confidence."
Now, in the face of the disaster brought about by the same mentality which brought us Penn Square, the Savings and Loan Mess, and the dot.com / Enron debacles, President Bush wants a tax cut equal to more than $145 billion. For what you may be curious to know? So we -- you, me, the aficionados of the gambling halls springing up all over America, women, children, bus riders -- will go shopping. So we can go shopping!!!
Does the malignant enormity of this philosophy trouble you? We live in a world governed by children.
I suspect "Armageddon" or some greater mess than we have, is not far off.
By the way, I do not think the Democrats are any more "adult" than President Bush.
[Posted Janaury 20, 2008]
Thought/Legal