Wednesday, August 13, 2008

GEORGIA ON MY MIND

"Georgia, Georgia, the road leads back to you".

Russia is taking that line from the Georgia state song to heart and pushing back against the nation of Georgia for their unwarranted and unprovoked attack on the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Russia has raised Georgia's ante considerably for the hundreds of dead Ossetians including ten Russian peacekeepers who have been safeguarding South Ossetia since the nominal independence it achieved in 1991. Back then the Russian aligned Ossetians rebelled against Georgia for banning regional parties from Georgian elections, achieved a measure of independence and have been skirmishing with Georgia ever since, The animosity between the two cultures has been brewing for centuries with no end in sight.

But to read and listen to the mainstream media parroting the administration and neocon party line, the Russian rulers woke up one day and said, "Hey, let's invade Georgia, restart the Cold War and re-create the Soviet empire."

Hogwash! There is enough thuggery in Russia, Georgia and South Ossetia to provide plenty of needless bloodshed without the benefit of America's annual 650 billion dollar military powerhouse being added to this violent mixture. It's possible the US knew full well about Georgia's invasion plans as we are courting this energy rich land with military support and possible NATO membership.

"Other arms reach out to me....Other eyes smile tenderly".

Instead, America should become an honest peace broker in this most ominous new conflict and reject the seductive words from the aforementioned song that so fittingly reflect the debackal awaiting us if we succomb to their lure.

Originally published in Glen Ellyn News, August 13, 2008

CHANGE THE CHANNEL

I ponder, sometimes, whether Barack Obama is campaigning for War Criminal In Chief.

On his tour of Afghanistan he told reporter Lara Logan that we must move a couple of brigades from Iraq to Afghanistan to finish the job. We all know the Afghan war is going badly with coalition casualties now exceeding those in a more peaceful Iraq. Of course, we don't measure Afghan casualties, in part because we refuse to confront the truth of our blasting untold thousands to kingdom come to complete our takeover of a nation that has refused to be conquered for as long as memory can measure. When Logan correctly asked him what if those token brigades don't get the job done, our intrepid change agent responded, "Well, then we'll keep at it till we do".

That sounds suspiciously like the failed war policies of Democrat Lyndon Johnson regarding Vietnam and Republican President Bush regarding Iraq. The change we really need next January is to end senseless, criminal wars that are destroying our economy as surely as destroying our soul, focus our military like a laser beam on real terrorist plots, and use that trillion dollars or more to rebuild our crumbling economy.

And some advice to future President Obama: Stop channeling failed war criminal presidents.

Originally published in Daily Herald, August 13, 2008

Sunday, August 10, 2008

LICENSE TO KILL

Two pilots, John McCain and George Bush, have both tasted blood, lots of blood.

McCain did so forty years ago dropping bombs on men, women and children from five miles high on twenty-three missions as a bomber pilot during the Vietnam War.

McCain will never know how many perished at his hand in a senseless and unnecessary war that claimed over a million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans.

Bush could have served in the same capacity as McCain but instead used his vast family political clout to evade combat in a war he now argues we cut and ran from instead of achieving glorious victory.

Instead, he waited over thirty years to wage senseless and unnecessary war on Iraq as President which has also claimed over a million lives including four thousand Americans. Having made up for lost time, his bloodlust seems unquenchable both in Iraq and Afghanistan, and possibly also in Iran before his eight years of murder and mayhem are mercifully ended.

We now are engaged in a presidential campaign between the battle tested McCain and a relative neophyte, Barack Obama. To the best of our knowledge Obama has not caused a single human sole to expire but should he be elected that will surely change. One privilege that goes with the keys to the Oval Office should give pause to anyone so weighed down by its burden – a license to kill.

President Bush embraced that privilege with a relish that should turn the stomach of any decent human being. McCain has shown not a whit of regret for the deaths he caused in a war he still glorifies. He has been taped singing “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to a familiar Beach Boys ode, told us “there will be more wars my friends,” and said “make it a hundred” when asked to comment on the President’s statement that we might be in Iraq for fifty years.

If past conduct is a clue, a President Obama will approach the awesome power of life and death with great trepidation. Using the same yardstick to measure McCain, one can only shudder and ask: “Who will take away his license to kill?”