No time for the faint-hearted

U.S. Consulate Buildings Burn in Libia

I know many Muslims are peace-loving people who just want to get on with their own lives. But, and this is a very big “but”, there is obviously a fairly large population of Muslims who believe in the jihadist philosophy of attacking innocents for the perceived crimes of a few. These minorities form a dangerous and easily led core of radicals who pose a threat to the peace of many places in the world if not the entire world.

I have preached tolerance for a long time, but am coming around to the position that many of the governments who tolerate these minorities and their hatred are unfit partners for the free world to court. Further, I think that the world has probably passed another tipping point where the radical Islamists are uncontrollable in the short run and quite probably in the long run as well. So where does that leave us? In a very dangerous world where allies must be chosen carefully, and supported strongly. In a world where none of us would wish to be, but we are forced to be in it anyway. In a world where Islamic nations increasingly hate the “west” (whatever that means) and work for our fall.

I don’t have a proposal on how to navigate this world, but it scares me almost to death. This latest round of riots, lootings and killings are just one more reason to be seriously worried about what the more radical elements of the Islamic world are up to and how far they will go to achieve their goals. We are in serious trouble here people. No time for the faint-hearted.

 http://www.mole.my/sites/default/files/images/120912113709-us-embassy-attack-01-horizontal-gallery.storyimage.jpg

Where Were You When JFK Died?

I was just finishing up the leek and potato soup, having a sit and listening to a retrospective of 9/11, and someone was asked where he was when it happened. I stopped reading and thought "I know exactly where I was". Then thought hmmm, how many other events can I say that about? I came up with three: The assassination of JFK, the first moon landing and 9/11. Sure, there are others that are burned in memory, but mostly they are multi-events like the end of the Vietnam War or the invasion of Iraq.

            The assassination of JFK: I was in a class on fungi in the old botany building at the University of Miami. Someone from the lab came in and said "Kennedy has been shot in Texas. Don't know if he's dead" and left. We all went after him, prof too, and spent the next several hours listening to the lab radio and talking quietly.

            Friday July 20th, 1969, three something in the afternoon. All the grad students from the trailer park got together in my trailer complete with many quart bottles of Bud and lots of Charles Chips and watched the landing. We sweated and cheered. We waited for the moonwalk watched for 2+ hours while they walked and bounced around on the moon. The next day they lifted off safely and eventually landed safely. Wow!

            Tuesday September 1th, 2001 I was driving to Thomasville, listening to NPR, when they interrupted the programing to announce that a plane had hit one of the Twin Towers in New York. I was just outside of Beachton and hauled ass to campus. Faculty, staff and students were already gathered in the student lounge in front of the big screen TV. We watched as the second plane hit the second tower. And then we watched as each in turn came down. We stayed for hours, welded into a single grieving community. And then for days we watched the reruns of both of those hits.

            Some things you can never forget. Some good things and some bad things. And you know what? You better not EVER forget. Yet. Yet. I have students that look at me like I have two heads when I stop for a moment on December 7th. And many think the Vietnam War is in the dim past. They see the black wall as an artefact. I suppose someday 9/11 will be an artefact. But not in my brain, as long as it lasts.

 

Image: http://www.black-and-right.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/WTC-9-11.jpg

Was 9/11 Really Necessary?

 

Let’s get this straight from the get-go: the people who died, or were injured or were the heroes that worked the sites should forever be remembered and respected for their sacrifices.

But a larger question looms over the disaster of 9/11: could it have been prevented? Evidence is growing that it could have been prevented and that the White House knew the threat was imminent and chose to believe a different scenario. The battle was between the CIA and the neocons like Wolfowitz and Pearl and their ilk. Below is a small quote from a piece by Kurt Eichenwald (1) that begins to unravel the past. And it puts then President Bush and his crowd in a very bad light.

“The direct warnings to Bush, he writes, date back to the spring of 2001. On May 1, the CIA told the White House that there was “a group presently in the United States” that was planning an attack. On June 22, a daily briefing described the attack as eminent. Administration officials, however, dismissed the warnings, saying that Osama bin Laden was merely feigning an attack to distract the U.S. from efforts against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

“Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day,” Eichenwald wrote. “In response, the CIA prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real.” (1)

So here we see direct evidence that the White House ignored the CIA in favor of the neocon perspective. One that turned out to be disastrously wrong. Mistakes are made in all presidencies, and some have disastrous consequences. Playing the “blame game” goes nowhere, but uncovering the truth and learning from it is very valuable. Current conservatives will probably cry foul asserting that blaming Bush for 9/11 is a ploy to distract. I disagree. Truth should never be considered a distraction; rather it should be viewed as a clear example. Yesterday I wrote about the road not taken, and in the months before 9/11 just such a divergence of paths were approached, one taken, the other not. There is no benefit in whining and gnashing teeth over the one not taken, but for heaven’s sake, can’t we at least agree to learn from it?

1. http://news.yahoo.com/report-documents-disclose-9-11-warnings-081156564--politics.html

Image: http://media.wnyc.org/media/photologue/images/e7/cache/9.11_Memorial_pools_storyslide_image.jpg

The Road Not Taken

 

I had a chance this morning to reread “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost (1). A small poem full of promise and words to make us wonder: Which roads did I not take, and where might they have gone?

Well, the answer that came to mind was this: too many to count and no point wondering. Every single choice for the last 60 or so years ago, maybe a few more, had alternatives. Thousands of choices. I have no idea which ones I didn’t take. I do know this: some that I took were bad choices. And where might the ones not taken gone? Who knows. And if I am truthful about it, who cares either?

We are all the sum total of the roads we took. Change one and everything shifts. For better or worse there are none not taken I would want to travel if I could, for fear of where I might be now. Consider the last stanza:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

I really don’t know if I took any that were less traveled by, but I do know that the ones I took made all the difference.

Image: http://miracleworker84.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/tworoads.jpg

1. The Poem read by the author: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie2Mspukx14