0656 - Fiasco

Cherished and Loyal Readers, we apologize again. For several weeks we have promised you a soothing report on the changes and non-changes on Anguilla. Yet, world events have cast our Staff into deep gloom, and has them wandering around muttering. A new book has the crisp title "Fiasco" -- it's ordered but hasn't arrived. Of course it is about the Bush/Cheney/Rummy mess. [We like Fiasco instead of what we have called the Iraq Big Botch, or mess – or morass]. The recent blood flowing in Lebanon and Israel adds to our despair. We ask questions to which there are no answers. How can any religion or sub-sect thereof approve the blowing up of a hundred innocents of another sub-sect whose crime is shopping in a Baghdad market? What blindness convinces the hapless and impotent Gaza dwellers that their salvation lies in lobbing homemade bombs into Israel? What careful calculation convinces Israel that blowing up the oil storage at the Beirut airport will bring down Hezbollah (or Hisbollah – why can't it even learn to spell its name)? What incites that unshaven Iranian teenager to say there was no Holocaust? Did the head of the Iraqi parliament really just say that the Jews were the ones who beheaded the captured innocents in Iraq? Is he crazy?

Our Staff Ethicist is in the worst funk here. Nowhere, nowhere, is there a bright light of sanity, mercy, or even the plainest of common sense. There is still much prattle about the virtues of democracy in the White House, but the evidence from the Middle East, let alone DC, is that bigots and crazies can be and are regularly elected. And, the evidence from the White House is that the Prez doesn't give a democratic (small d) damn what most people want, like stem cell research.

As usual, we wish to submit to you a few thoughts about this bloody stupidity all about us. First, it is plain that lot of people have been taught that they and only they have the blessing of God, no matter what atrocities they commit. Most of the blood in the wars between sects, sub-sects, and religions comes from the bearded ones who profess to know the eternal verities. Logic and ethics have little to do with their teachings. Evil is flowing from the Mullahs. Second, the instinct to hit back is so strong in all mankind that they will, for example, invade Iraq as a punishment for the 9/11 attacks, although Iraq plainly had nothing to do with 9/11. Third, stupidity, particularly in Washington, has seized the helm of the Ship of State and the 11th Commandment ("Thou shalt be stubborn though dead wrong dumb") is now leading the other ten. And fourth, modern manipulative politics now teaches greed and outright lies as the road to election. This seems to be true everywhere from miserable Africa to Tom DeLay's Texas.

Back in the cradle of Civilization – we mean Europe – they seem to have learned, at least temporarily, to have stopped invading each other. They also seem to appreciate the virtues of acting as a group, even if not all members of the group – say Russia – are ideal role models in their daily lives. We do not want to seem captive to old folk legends, but we think the day of the permanent UN Standing Army is coming. After the past few years no one trusts the good intentions (or good sense) of the U.S. as Chief Policeman, and so here we are again talking of UN forces patrolling the Lebanese border. Of course, this will require some changes in Washington, but they may well be on the way. The next American UN Ambassador will not be (and should not be) another cartoon figure with a loud mouth. There is far too much to do.

Meanwhile, all polls in the U.S. show more isolationist sentiment. This may be a good thing – we mean, compared to what?

Next time: (maybe?) Changes [OO #657]

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