If You See Something, Say Something

Do they really mean it? 'Cause I've been seeing a lot of things, speaking out on all of them, and just about nobody cares to hear it.

The Interminable War in Afghanistan

For one, this interminable war that's scheduled to go on for another year, and maybe we'll leave soldiers there even after. My church reads the names of military personnel who have lost their lives in the war over the last week. Though the numbers have dwindled down to three or four each week now, I cannot imagine the grief and frustration of parents who learn of their sons' and daughters' deaths, which make less and less sense (as if anything in this war ever made sense) as the war draws to what can only be described as an arbitrary end. John or Barbara might still be alive if the war had ended one month, or one week, or one day sooner.

It comes as no shock to anyone (except the military) that history will record we lost this war long ago. When you lose, you leave. No, for some political rationale, we stay and trickle a few sacrificial bodies of blood to save someone's face.

But advocate for a merciful retreat and you're labelled a quitter at best and a traitor at worst. Support your troops, dammit! Besides they're cooking up a batch of wars throughout Africa once this one ends. Aren't there some wars which are not ours to fight?

Negotiating with Iran

We are finally talking directly to a nation with whom we have an inimical relationship. For years we have been imposing economic sanctions because we believe--despite their repeated denials--they are developing the same sort of weapons we have aplenty, our allies have aplenty, and most countries see as necessary to be regarded as equals in a world where imperial powers contend.

No matter. They have stated that this present window of negotiating opportunity will slam shut if we threaten increased sanctions. Does that serve to stop the war hawks from temporarily suspending their insanity on the possibility that this new effort toward peace might in some way work? You kidding me?

Maybe those politicians have to assuage the AIPAC lobbyists whose base they fear losing if they don't toe the line. So they take a dangerous stance rather than a moral one. They'd rather risk continuing a path toward another war in the Middle East. I still have ringing in my ears the words of a British pol reputedly close to the Bush administration before the second war on Iraq who chanted, "Everybody wants to go to Bagdad; real men want too go to Tehran."

The Surveillance State

For a president who promised increased protection for whistleblowers Obama has done a complete backflip. More whistleblowers have been prosecuted or threatened with prosecution under Obama than under Bush. Chelsea Manning is still in prison when in my view she should have been given a medal of honor for revealing to the people as a whole exactly how our military is conducting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Edward Snowden has to take refuge in a country whose record on human rights and surveillance of its citizenry is deplorable at best. Yet he is freer there than he would be here. As would Greenwald, Poitras, and others who have taken to shining a light on this country's murkier and illegal activities. For a constitutional scholar President Obama knows very well how to shred the fourth amendment.

On my last flight west I remarked to others standing near me in the TAS shoeless-screening line that for a government who can record every phone call I make, where it originates, whom I call, when I call, and when I hang up, wouncha think they could remember they had checked me out only seven days previously? The lines would be a lot shorter if the NSA were to provide the TSA with a list of just which few of us they have to check out.

Several studies, both independent panels and those of the government itself, have concluded the telephone metadata stockpiles have not proven useful in stopping any terrorist attacks, yet the president indicates in his latest address on the issue he will neither stop the collection nor place limits on how long it will be stored.

If these NSA guys were physically there in our houses asking us about each call and timing them, or beside us on the street looking over our shoulders to record every keystroke, there would be no question of the unreasonable search aspect. People would again be in arms to resist such practices. But because the same thing can be accomplished easily and without our awareness, the citizens are not incensed.

"Trust us," he asks. Nope, not when every other instance of government surveillance has been abused if even just to check on the boyfriends or girlfriends of the NSA staff.

Drones,  Income Inequality, etc.

Don't get me started.