9/11 ???

I didn't actually have much awareness of today being 9/11 today until I was talking to my mom, who is a little anxious, and when I told her I was hanging out on the roof, her immediate response was, "be careful."  Talk about over-reactive.  I live in a three flat.  Then, the only thing really on t.v. tonight was a thing on PBS about the new Freedom tower and how it and the memorial have been built.  Structural engineering is really interesting.

I feel strange about the whole 9/11 memorial thing.  Some people I think may be offended by my referral to 9/11 memorials as a "thing," but I feel like a memorial right now and so much emphasis on everything 9/11 related is a little premature- the world, politics, are still reactive to what happened on 9/11.  How can we have a memorial already when the lines of history are still unfolding in relation to this occurrence?  WWII memorials, to my knowledge, have only been erected in the past 10-20 years and that is at least 40 years after the end of WWII, the last time that the U.S. was actually suffered casualties by an outside force. 

I do think that construction around the site of where the towers fell is important but the perpetual awareness and 9/11 remembrance is too much.  I feel like we, as a nation, are dwelling too much on the past.  I appreciate construction as moving forward, and of a memorial, but the grandiose nature of the memorial being marketed is just too much.  I feel like 9/11 is what it is, a tragedy.  Maybe it is how culture has evolved with twitter, facebook, and other technological advances in that everyone and every little feeling is put out to the public that makes me feel over inundated with 9/11 coverage.

The press talks about "the public" experiencing "war fatigue."  I suppose that may be true to an extent.  I don't think "fatigue" may be the right expression for me.  I remember how I felt in the years following 9/11 (I was a highschool senior in the library when the second tower was hit and then in lit class when the towers fell) how patriotic I felt.  I remember telling a coworker at my summer job, this is after President Bush called us to war in Iraq, that I would be willing to be enlisted and go to war right then.  I had believed everything the president had told us in his national addresses at that time.  I supported our actions abroad. 

NOW, now, I don't feel that same patriotism that I once felt; if we were to go to war against Syria as world police force I would rally and protest against it.  I feel horrible because I feel like I am lacking that pride in my country.  I had hope when Obama was elected and I was in Grant Park that night and was so excited that this was a new chapter in American history where we would once again be recognized not for the size of our military but for the simple factors that make this nation great and some would debate it but I think Lady Liberty and the poet Emma Lazarus, says it best, "

 

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

  This is an excerpt from the poem that is on a tablet on the pedestal on which Lady Liberty stands.  We are a nation that is built by those searching for more and it is from there that we derive our strength.  We offer freedom, of religion, of speech, of arms, to a fair and speedy trial.  The unspoken basis upon which freedom resides is the basic respect of peoples no matter their condition. 

When we sully these freedoms, persecute the press, Guantanamo, when we build fences along our borders and enact protectionist legislation against immigration, I feel we fail as a country. 

Am I suffering from "war fatigue?"  I don't think so; if I felt like a conflict in which we as a nation were engaged in was just and appropriate action then I would completely support action.  Syria is not that type of engagement.  Iraq was sold to us on false terms and it sullied our reputation just as Vietnam did.  Entanglement in a civil war is not what the U.S. is built upon.  We must look to ourselves and uphold ourselves as a successful integration of cultures and ideals where people can live peacefully and flourish; in merely doing that we will succeed in seeing others "nations" striving to emulate that ideal system of freedom which the U.S. is supposed to represent.  In our talk, and attempts to be a "world power" we are actually lessening the stature of our nation.  It is the quiet, the large quiet entities that are to be the most respected.

Too much talk, too much twitter, too much 24/7, too much remembrance.  Let us strive to be free and to assist those by humanitarian efforts those who have similar desires- that is where we can be great.  Helping "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses."  We have the economic power to do that- invest there and not in the military and we will reap rewards and build far less resentment that inspires the al quidas of the world. 

I hope I'm not being too redundant. 

Musing on death/jail...and of course Syria

This is me tired and run down and watching the movie Pearl Harbor.   Yes, that's an old movie but I am feeling like I need a comfort movie and for whatever reason this movie is it for me.  Maybe I feel like watching it because it is the prelude to the entrance of the U.S. into WWII and with Syria still the hot topic I want to watch something that gave another generation pause before involvement into a war. 

I have written my congressional representatives as well as to President Obama voicing my opposition to any involvement in Syria without the support of the United Nations, NATO, and the United Arab Union.  I hope others are doing the same.  I have written my representatives in the past and I hope that my voice will be heard.  (kinda funny- I feel like I have the right to write the Iowa representatives as well as the Illinois because I think of them almost more as mine than I do Illinois.)

I think the thing that bothers me most is commentary that since the U.S. and President Obama have taken a stance against the use of chemical weapons that we will look weak if we don't act.  I think that is the biggest bunch of bologna out there.  I applaud the Democrat Rep Alan Grayson who appeared on PBS World News from Florida who did a wonderful job of voicing opposition to U.S. involvement in Syria and correctly stated that the idea of a stand or a message is the wrong discussion to even be having.   I agree that we are stronger and the President looks better if he listens to what "we the people" have to say.  NO WAR!  Focus on humanitarian support and the name of the U.S. will go a lot farther.  Everyone knows we have power, but those who have the most, are the ones who refrain from using it. 

There is other news out there right now besides Syria.

In the Midwest there was this guy who kidnapped three girls and held them captive for years; the guy was sentenced and then apparently hung himself with his sheets.  What kills me (:-) is that some people are upset about the fact that this guy killed himself.  What's wrong with a person deciding to end his or her own life?  I know the Bible says somewhere that suicide is wrong but I really only remember that because of reading Dante's Inferno and suicide is reserved for something like the 11th circle of hell- particularly horrible.  Suicide in other cultures has been thought of as honorable.  I'm not saying that this guy did an honorable thing but he did save taxpayers thousands of dollars in jail costs and I don't think you can argue that after inflicting so much pain that this guy didn't deserve to die- especially since he chose it himself. 

I truly don't understand why so many people are preoccupied with keeping people who are in jail, who want to die, from killing themselves- especially those who are in jail for life without parole.  Why do we persist to force feed people who are starving themselves to death because they can't take prison anymore?  It costs the rest of the population way too much money to keep these people alive who were basically sentenced to death in jail.  Maybe my friend who is a pastor for a prison population in southern Illinois would feel differently- I'll have to ask. 

I suppose that that conversation transitions to the topic of death and if people have made their peace and are okay with death than who am I to question that decision?  I don't fear death but I guess that is because I have belief in a something else that I choose to call heaven (although I like the peaceful connotation the name Elation Fields brings to mind personally). 

Peace to all and to all a good night!   

Shuddering Syria

As a healthcare provider the recent coverage of the exposure to chemical weapons is atrocious.  I am appalled and can only wonder how I would feel if I were those people in that situation asking who can help?  I am also extremely disappointed in the media coverage, or rather, the lack of coverage of what is happening in Syria.  I feel like everything I hear from the major NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN news outlets is a lot of supposition and regurgitation of what one or two reporters for NPR or the BBC have documented.  For such astounding and outlandish actions being taken in Syria a 3 minute excerpt on the national news is ridiculous- they spend more time on the "human interest" stories at the end of half hour than on the actual news that can affect millions around the world depending on the decisions of a few at the top of the political spectrum.

Having said how horrible the situation in Syria has become I respect the action that British prime minister David Cameron took in calling parliament to a vote on whether or not to get involved in Syria.  I do believe the negative vote is a good one at the moment, for in the interest of that country that has not been attacked, they really has no reason to get involved.  I think the US, should take a similar vote in the house as to whether or not to allow action for we have not been harmed nor attacked and I don't think that our involvement would help the situation other than killing more people, likely innocents.

The US is not a guardian of the world, we have not been elected by the UN to enforce a chemical weapons ban.  That being said, I would like to see a UN that has the kind of power that is recognized by all countries.  Currently the UN, in my opinion, seems to act more as a figure head; I do think that it is an important arena to allow peaceful discourse between nations but I think it needs to have a little more strength in it's executive branch.  One can see UN peacekeeping troops in various countries but they withdraw almost as soon as any type of attack comes, to my knowledge there is no offensive mobility or even defensive unless serious endangerment of life is present.  What good is that?  How can one truly protect unarmed people if whoever the opposition is knows that they will withdraw?

The point I am trying to make here is that the US should not get involved unilaterally in Syria, and the UN entity that should be involved, has no power with which to become involved and force a change of action in the civil war. 

The US civil war was a horribly bloody affair in which thousands of thousands died.  However, unless my history is incorrect there was little to no foreign intervention, but rather an observance of action.  Yes, war is horrible and the innocent should not have to suffer, but in this day and age in absence of a strong supported global body to say, "you've gone to far" what can we do but cry out in opposition of senseless death and record the actions taken by both sides?  Anything else would be putting millions more around the world at risk due to allied nations forced to choose sides. 

In a nation as religiously divided as Syria this civil war may be the only way in which the country can learn how to coexist with one another.  I believe countries learn from their mistakes, the US learned from the Civil War and Martin Luther King showed the world how to change things with peaceful protests.  South Africa faced the Apartheid.  Rwanda is still struggling to move forward but the resolution to not allow such blatant hateful genocide is strong.  Europe has taken lessons from WWII and Germany and many eastern countries have emerged stronger.  There are still factions in all these places where hate resides but in resolution to create a better future and stop the killing all these countries have succeeded in increasing the ability of individual citizens to live and survive.

Maybe war is necessary?

And the only thing we can do is send as much humanitarian aid as we can to help those who want to survive peacefully live; maybe that kind of action would go further in bolstering support for democracy and peace than in bombing for peace.  Maybe we are training too many snipers and technicians in our armies and together we should be training more medical, more structural engineers, more carpenters- people who can take up a hammer or a scalpel as easily as a gun if attacked (different from the peace corps).  Talk about a new direction.  A different army.  I wonder if that would get any different media coverage? 

It's human interest. 

WWIII- talk about a revolution

 

I’m curious if anyone else is looking at the civil war in Syria as the possible prelude to world war III?  I look at Syria, and I don’t think it can get any more complicated (my statement of the obvious); you have a Sunni versus Shia, rich versus poor, chemical weapons and an international theater that is slowly aligning itself to various sides.  Currently I see Russia, China, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon together versus tentative Turkey, Israel, France, England, and the United States.  Where the rest of the middle East and Europe would fall would comes down to alliances.  

The United Arab nations and the United Nations are both being slow to react and contrary to what some of our own politicians are saying, the United States is being extremely cautious as well.  We have yet to hear directly from President Obama declaring involvement in Syria, all we have definitively heard is that our military is prepared.   I like to think that we are still the “sleeping giant” that one doesn’t want to wake; however, following our entrance and success in WWII we have since over-extended ourselves in various conflicts: Vietnam, Korea, Iraq/Afghanistan.  We are still a world power that if we were to invoke the draft, and with our technology and past and current defense spending, we could still win a war with relatively few casualties.  The argument that I have heard some say that since we drew “a red line” means we will look weak if we don’t do anything I find completely unfounded.  I think that our strength lies in our ability to assess a situation correctly, which unlike some predecessors, I believe that Obama does extremely well.  I had to laugh the other day when I heard that house speaker John Boehner cautioned the president against quick action when the president has been, in my opinion, one of the most notably cautious in responding to the growing evidence of chemical weapons use in Syria (with France and England being the first to condemn/accuse the Syrian Assad).    

So when do we determine action should be taken?  We were the last to get involved in WWII and only once provoked by Japan bombing us.  The crimes committed then and now were and are heinous and absurd, but what part of war isn’t?  What part of killing each other by snipers, missals, shrapnel, bombs, etcetera, is humane?  Is gas that much more horrible of a death?  Haven’t women and children already been killed?  I know I feel like I am playing the devil’s advocate here but I’m just trying to work this out myself because I would rather not see WWIII and I think that if we were to take any type of unilateral action against the Syrian government just because we drew a “red line” that should not be crossed the result would be a disastrous war.  It’s like measuring the lesser of two evils; people dying in civil war, or people dying in world war? 

WWII we asked congress for permission to go to war, I think we will have to do so again and unfortunately unless there is a direct attack against us I don't think we should go to war.  That being said, I think we should step up the pressure on the UN and the other Arab nations to recognize and condemn the chemical weapon use that has taken place.  Again, I'm trying to work out my own thoughts on this issue-with an audience, and hypothetically say we (as part of a United task force) take out Assad- who will replace the power structure of government?  That is the conundrum... what does history show us? 

What happened to Germany following WWII?  I think the key is support for rebuilding (or in the case of the middle east updating) infrastructure and providing jobs.  I remember seeing in class pictures and documentaries of people, all people, put to work removing rubble and rebuilding across Europe but most notably in Germany- I don't remember seeing this following the fall of Iraq and Afghanistan; that type of massive invocation of community to rebuild community with exemption only for the very young/old and sick.  I remember only seeing US attempts to build various necessary buildings but not community collaboration- only attempts by various suicide bombers to obstruct leaving more warped metal and stone.  I know this is only a partial viewpoint and that many people on both sides that have been working together to form new city markets, grids, etcetera but I would like to see more mass agreement on the need for basic foundations.  I'm being overly idealistic here and this idea of infrastructure is one that I will revisit in the future because even in my current city of Chicago there are massive problems and I can hear readers saying, "you must take the stick out of your own eye before you can take the stick out of your neighbors." 

Therefore, at risk of making this too long, it probably is already, I'll just go ahead and stop for today because this type of conversation can go on in one form or another perpetually and there are so many ideas just put forward here that otherwise I can just jump topic to topic-even this one isn't even fleshed out.  OH WELL.  CIAO.