[Think] our difficult situation

[Fen Labalme]

A friend of mine recently suggested to me that the U.S. needs to create
and maintain peace in the Middle East for "as long as it takes, possibly
two generations."

This troubles me, as any time a third party steps into an argument, it will
often appear to be siding with one side or the other.  We have been siding
with Israel for so long that even fair solutions we might suggest would most
likely appear to them as pro-Palestine.

Further, our hands are so dirty in our dealings with the UN and NATO (in
that we have gone along with them when they supported our views and ignored
them when they didn't) that it will take some time to clean up our mess
there, too.  They can and should be strong allies here, but I fear we have
weakened them in world view by our past actions.

It troubles me to be bringing our child into such an unstable world.  I have
great hope for the future, though, as I feel that 9.11 may have a silver
lining as a wake-up call to start playing more fairly in the world.

Of course, as world peace begins at home, we need to simultaneously look
long and hard at our nation's gross over-consumption of natural resources,
though with Cheney and other energy magnates in the cabinet, I fear such
introspection is doomed - at least within this administration.

And we need to be especially careful that our government doesn't finish the
terrorist's work by taking away the freedoms and liberties this country was
founded upon.  (See links at <http://www.activism.net/think/#think>.)

My friend continued saying:
> Any terrorism emerging after the fact of a free and Independent
> Palestinian state may require military intervention.

As long as we are the most powerful nation on the planet, we will continue
to be a target for terrorism by any country/faction that feels oppressed by
us.  There certainly is zero play in waging a conventional war against us.
Remember that we won our revolutionary war against England using guerilla
warfare techniques, shooting at their neat lines of soldiers from behind
stumps and fences.  Such "terrorist" tactical methods had never been seen
before and enabled us to win despite being out-gunned and under-trained.

I have been very pleasantly surprised at the care and thought that Bush has
been placing in this difficult time, but he still misses a key point.  He
said, during his speech after the bombing began, that 'any nation that kills
innocent civilians is our enemy' (paraphrased).  This is one of the key
issues that Bin Laden has been upset about - the killing of hundreds of
thousands of innocent lives, mostly children, by our continued bombing and
economic sanctions against Iraq.  It doesn't help that Bush (and our
government and media) don't call those "human lives" - we dehumanize them
further by calling it "collateral damage."

We're in difficult times, and the U.S. is not squeaky clean.  I hope that it
goes without saying that the perpetrators of the 9.11 attack must be found
and brought to justice, and that this may realistically include pieces of a
substantial network.  But as I said above, world peace begins at home.
We've got some house-cleaning to do, and "the American way" of having our
way in the world may just have to change.

Feel.  Think.  Respond.

Fen

PS: San Francisco Voters: Vote YES on B and H.  See
http://www.cleanenergynow.org/

"Those willing to give up a little liberty for a little security deserve
neither security nor liberty."
        -- Benjamin Franklin

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that enough good men do
nothing."
        -- Edmund Burke