30,000 more Troops for Afghanistan: Ok Mr. President, now what?

So last night, President Obama revealed the worst-kept secret in the world:  The United States will be increasing its troop presence in Afghanistan by a margin of 30,000 additional troops.  Unless you were delusionally hopeful that we would be leaving Afghanistan sometime next year, or just haven’t listened to any news source whatsoever in the last month and a half, this should have come as no surprise.  Nor indeed should we have been surprised by the immediate nay-saying that struck this strategy all-around.  On the one hand, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) vowed to vote against the funding of this escalation.  (In fairness, Senator Feingold we could expect no less from you, this is why you’re in the Senate, not the White House.)   On the other, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) had no problem with the troop increase, only with the 18-month timetable for their withdrawal after deployment.  (Escalation, it seems is just fine, so long as it is open-ended in nature.)

All snark aside, I recognize the merits in both Senator Feingold and Senator McCain’s arguments.  On the one hand, there is the question as to whether or not any more troops can salvage anything from the situation on the ground in Afghanistan.  On the other hand, there is the equally problematic question as to whether or not timetables do actually encourage one’s foes to “lay low” and wait for the eventual pullout.  Of course, all of this is highly dependent on the ability to build up a sufficient native military force in the designated time frame, which, in light of the Afghan Governments noted allergy to deadlines, is a dubious hope at best.

In the end we are faced with a devil’s bargain.  On the one hand, to embrace a full pullout, as Senator Feingold would seem to suggest, leaves more than Hamid Karzai and his corrupt regime twisting in the wind.  Indeed, it stands to reason that in the face of a resurgent Taliban, the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan would suffer the most.  But in retrospect, we haven’t been able to fully protect the rights of Afghan women even with the troops we currently have on the ground, so one wonders if this isn’t already a lost cause.  On the other hand, from the perspective of grand strategy,a “final throw of the dice” would seem to be in order for Afghanistan, a war that suffered from considerable neglect while our nation blundered through our recent, ongoing misadventure in Iraq.

Yet wars are far more than grand strategy, on the most personal, visceral level, wars are death.  They are American men and women coming home in flag-draped coffins to grieving loved ones and a nation already weary of war, after facing such scenes for more than a decade.  For members of my parent’s generation, this situation is all-too-familiar, a nation-building adventure, half way across the planet in hostile territory goes ill, and more troops have to be sent off in search of ephemeral victory.  The only difference this time is that this army is one of professionals, not draftees.  The question is, after nearly nine years of war in Afghanistan, are we willing to pay what will inevitably be a rising butcher’s bill for uncertain returns?

Finally there is the question of victory.  In a sense nauseatingly familiar to our other nation-building disasters throughout this past Century, clear-cut criteria for victory in Afghanistan seem sadly lacking.  Those expecting western-style Democracy for the Afghans may wait until Christ comes, the 12th Imam reveals himself, or Cthulthu rises from Ry’leh to devour mankind, neither the institutions, nor the desire is there.  Nor is the somewhat lesser goal of the creation of a “stable” Afghanistan all that much more realistic.  This is a state that has always been a collection of squabbling nations, petty warlords and a relatively weak central authority, given more lip-service and homage than actual obedience by the local powers that be.  The idea that millennia of such customs can simply be overridden by force and that a centralized state, even one organized along authoritarian lines, can be imposed on Afghanistan, seems unlikely.  Hence the question is not “how do we win in Afghanistan”, but “at what stage in the conflict do we pull out?”  President Obama, after much deliberation, has decided to stay in at least one more round.  Despite my own misgivings, here’s hoping that his gamble pays off in dividends greater than the outlay of blood and treasure needed to finance it.

Blood on Black Friday : 2009 Edition

Last Friday, I checked my Facebook page in an idle moment and came upon a status update from a friend.  She noted that she had almost gotten into a fist fight with another customer at Wal-Mart over some heavily discounted bicycles.  Now, I have no idea just how serious this situation is, my friend could be exaggerating in order to tell a good story (and certainly it made for one), but in light of the fatalities suffered last year at a Wal-Mart, I begin to wonder, and once again the nagging question arises, is anything really worth all this?

Sure, getting into a fist fight in order to purchase a bicycle for Christmas makes for a great story in later years, something that never fails to get a chuckle out of one’s audience, but is a bike really worth the violence?  Is it worth the risk of lasting injury, and the possibility of imprisonment?  I realize that times are hard, and that in our zeal to bring joy to the hearts of our loved ones, particularly our children, we find ourselves going to even greater lengths in order to still provide those deeply anticipated gifts, albeit with budgets that are feeling the strains of an ongoing recession.  These strains can lead to desperate acts, to a fear that should we lose the opportunity of getting the cherished item when it is on sale, we will lose that item forever, and have to come up shamefacedly empty-handed on Christmas Day.

Nevertheless, one begins to wonder when local news agencies find it noteworthy to report that there were “no black Friday deaths” as if Christmas Shopping were akin to scaling Everest, or driving on icy roads.  A trip to the mall ought not be of such a perilous nature that one need put one’s affairs in order before departing, yet once again we read of a woman in Tennessee this year, who was trampled by her fellow shoppers intent on taking advantage of “doorbuster” savings at a local Toys ‘r Us.  While the woman survived, the question remains, how much of a bargain is it, if you had to kill someone to get it?

When I observe the darker side of Christmas retail, it begins to appear more and more as if those engaged in messes like this have become like gladiatorial combatants, who are allowed to make their purchases only after they have satisfied the whims of some malevolent observer, who stages little tragedies such as these for their own amusement.

Such behavior is indeed a grim mockery of the man whose birth this whole festival of consumption is supposed to commemorate, and has instead supplanted.  In our celebrations of the birth of the Prince of Peace, who taught that what one owns is nowhere near as important as the content of one’s character, we set off in heedless and frenzied pursuit of goods which moth and rust will inevitably corrupt, and which thieves all too often break through and steal.  Might we not remember instead, in these difficult days, the words of the Man of Galilee, who counseled us to lay up for ourselves “treasures in heaven” which will persist long after our stuff has lost its luster and the infatuations of the moment have passed away?  For indeed, if where we place our treasure is where our hearts lie also, might it not be wise to treasure that which gives our hearts the greatest contentment?

A Meditation on Thanksgiving

So tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  A great American holiday (and one of my favorites I’ll admit) whose purpose is to give thanks and meditate on the many, all too often unappriciated, blessings which enrich our lives.  It is indeed also a day of marathon turkey-eating, football, and a day in which a number of people will be injured from improperly-thawed Turkeys exploding while they are being deep-fried, but I digress…

In light of all this, I found this short piece entitled A Thanksgiving Prayer doubtless it is modeled on the far older Prayer of St. Francis but in any case, I appriciate the sentiments offered by the author, one Samuel F. Pugh:

A Thanksgiving Prayer

by Samuel F. Pugh

O God, when I have food,

help me to remember the hungry;

When I have work,

help me to remember the jobless;

When I have a home,

help me to remember those who have no home at all;

When I am without pain,

help me to remember those who suffer,

And remembering,

help me to destroy my complacency;

bestir my compassion,

and be concerned enough to help;

By word and deed,

those who cry out for what we take for granted.

Amen.

May we each remember in this time of thanks to have gratitude for that which we have and compassion for those who are in need, for in doing so we give thanks in deed.

The Editorial Board of The Loadstone Rock wishes all its readers a Happy Thanksgiving!

Motherhood, Malthusianism and Misanthropy

Oh to be an angry Malthusian on the Internet.  To sit at my keyboard and haunt the various sites trolling for discussions on motherhood, child-rearing or similar topics to enter and vent my misanthropic disgust:

Disgust, you ask, how could anyone be disgusted by a mother and her child?  Well, I’ll tell you my friends, there is nothing more disgusting, more distasteful, more annoying and vile than some stupid cow-eyed breeder lugging her mewling brats across town in their gargantuan strollers or equally noxiously huge SUV’s or unsightly minivans, reeking of entitlement. “Look at me,” they seem to shout, I managed to do what any other fertile mammal can do, and push out live spawn from my birth canal without dying in the process, AREN’T I SPECIAL? All the while they generate more garbage, consume more resources and squeeze more and more tax dollars from me, while they get write-offs for their “little bundles of joy.”  Bundles of Joy, screaming noxious putrescent little incubators for disease more likely!  I can’t even finish a decent meal in public without one of those disgusting little ankle-biters disturbing my sang-froid!  There ought to be a law, and a maximum number of births…

While I wasn’t directly quoting from anyone there, I’d say it was a fair amalgamation of the general tone one finds in the comment sections of various articles on overpopulation, issues regarding motherhood, or child-rearing, such as a recent article in Slate.  In this article author Lynn Harris notes the surprising amount of vitriol and disrespect directed toward young mothers in her native New York City.  While Ms. Harris comes to the conclusion in her article that such behavior stems from a combination of class envy (the mothers in question here are suburban, white and middle class) and misogyny, a quick perusal of the comments section suggests that she might be mistaken. It would appear that class or gender issues do not play a role in the resentment of young mothers by many of the readers of Ms. Harris’ article.  These people apparently detest young mothers because a) they exist, and b) they have brought a pestilential nuisance (children) into the world.

While endless invocations of Malthus and his theories of overpopulation and the ecological damage inherent in human overpopulation are offered as justification of these arguments, in the end it just boils down to good old-fashioned misanthropy.  Some people just can’t stand their fellow man.  In public we mask this behavior as much as possible, because as callous and apathetic as our society is, out and out cruelty to pregnant women or small children is still considered disgusting, or at the very least, distasteful.  Yet masked behind the anonymity of the Internet, all things are permitted, particularly misanthropy, and how better to vent one’s hatred of one’s fellow man than to unleash one’s venom against those most vulnerable, the pregnant and the very young.  Those who do so, much like the militant Atheists who believe that the most effective way to attack fundamentalism is through attacks on religious moderates (the logic underpinning this argument continues to elude me) seem to think that by leveling their most withering attacks against those least able, or inclined to defend themselves, they somehow establish a form of credibility through ruthlessness.

However, also much like said militant Atheists, PETA activists or other such groups, misanthropes masquerading as Malthusians do the arguments themselves little credit.  As with the others they take a movement, a set of ideals or an otherwise valid or logical viewpoint, and turn it into the domain of angry, crude and vicious individuals whose sense of empathy or understanding never extends beyond their own narcissistic desires and annoyances.

There is also a fundamental hypocrisy inherent in such arguments, as they are likely to come from the same individuals who would most loudly proclaim the need for abortion rights or unfettered access to birth control.  What these individuals either fail to understand, or willfully deny, is that reproductive freedom is a two-way street.  The right to refrain from having children without interference is balanced by the equal right to have as many children as one can adequately care for.  (In my own personal opinion, having a brood of children and then financing an extravagant lifestyle through a TLC reality show does not fall under the realm of “adequate care,” but I don’t get a say on that either.)  If we’re going to demand that the powers that be refrain from any interference on the goings-on between two consenting adults in our bedrooms (something I generally agree with) then that includes the conception of children.

Finally, for all of those who are deeply concerned about the impact of human overpopulation on the planet, relax.  The Earth has a highly effective method of dealing with any species which oversteps its carrying capacity, it’s called extinction.  The world will endure, whether or not we do as well depends largely on how we learn to treat each other, and the degree of mutual respect, and respect for our home that we develop.  Judging from the misanthropic Malthusians among us, I’d say our outlook is not all that promising.

What Exactly Did You Think Was Going to Happen?

A number of recent events has led me to believe that either people are more naive than I previously thought, or most people are better at hiding their cynicism than I am.  As a case in point, I would refer to the recent act by the UC Regents to raise student tuition by 32% and the subsequent outcry from students and staff.  The day after the vote UCR Chancellor Timothy White sent out a letter to Students, Faculty and Staff (As he does every Friday, a personal touch that I frankly greatly appreciate.) in which he expressed frustration and a degree of irritation at the actions and reasoning of those who protested on site at UCLA, as well as those protesters at UCSC and Berkeley who engaged in acts of civil disobedience.  In light of such comments, I was first moved to consider the question which gives this post its title, What exactly did you think was going to happen Chancellor White?

The students of the University of California get one vote on the Board of Regents, (who dutifully, though ineffectively voted against the fee raise) we are most directly affected by the decisions of this body, but the best we get from them is a single token vote, a bone thrown a student body to which the Regents are not accountable, and against which they can take no meaningful action.  In essence we are at the mercy of the Regents, who, even if they mean well, (and one may argue that at least some members of that body have the best of intentions) find the input of the student body neither moving, nor particularly welcome.  Couple that with a compelling (though difficult to verify unless you’re a CPA or an economist) narrative by the UC unions that the University has plenty of discretionary funds that they are choosing not to use while making use of a convenient fiscal disaster to bolster profit margins, and you have a ready-made atmosphere for student anger fueled by resentments and a sense of both desperation and impotence.  If anything Chancellor White, the UC ought to count itself fortunate.  While the acts of civil disobedience on campus last week were disruptive, they caused no lasting damage, and there were no serious injuries or extreme acts of violence, four decades ago, such a confrontation would not have been as restrained.

On the other hand, as I was seated in a class on Friday, one of the on-campus activists who took part in the protests noted her disappointment with the Regent’s decision, saying she was frustrated with “how things turned out.”  While I understand and echo her frustration, I have to wonder once again, what exactly did she think was going to happen? The Regents are products of a corporate culture that long ago adopted the principle that all things must be sacrificed to the all-mighty bottom line, and that the last thing that gets the ax, are the salaries of the powers that be.  Hence while key new positions were created in administration this year resulting in pay raises, the rest of us bear the brunt of the cuts, because corporations (which the UC emulate) are the modern version of absolutist monarchies, in which our higher level admins are our aristocracy, who will bear no taxation themselves, but pass on the bloated costs of their own system to those of us least able to bear it.  As products of such a culture the UC Regents could not help from doing exactly what they did in the face of a financial disaster, quite frankly this is the only way that they have been educated and trained to face it.  Any other response from the Regents would have been shocking.

A final side note comes by way of last night’s American Music Awards in which Adam Lambert put on a rather racy performance that was censored for viewers here on the west coast.  Lambert expressed exasperation with the fact that people were uncomfortable with his on stage antics.  Once again I wonder, what exactly did he think was going to happen? This is network television he’s on, the same people who were put through the mill when Janet Jackson showed us all a nipple piercing at 300 yards away during the Super Bowl.  While his lengthy on-screen kiss with a member of the same-sex certainly revealed less flesh, it was certain to press just as many buttons, leading the networks to, in their eternally risk-averse manner to attempt the best form of damage control they could offer, and present to those who viewed the performance in the Pacific Time Zone with a somewhat less explicit performance.  Whether you see such an act as squeamishness or good judgment depends on where you fall in the culture wars, but really, should anyone be shocked by such behavior?

The sad and simple reality is that no one alters the status quo without resistance.  If major change were easy, it would happen daily without any friction or unrest.  But such is not the case, and in a world riddled with mistrust, frustration and unease, even the best-intentioned action is liable to raise its fair share of detractors.  As such is the case, how much more should those whose actions involve a degree of controversy expect their fair share of difficulty.  One wonders sometimes what kind of world people have constructed for themselves to live in.  A world in which students acquiesce without a word to the dramatic increase of their financial burdens, or in which the privileged and powerful give in to the demands of the masses just because they ask for it, or in which network TV broadcasts potentially offensive material regardless of the risks of lawsuit or FCC interference.  It must be a lovely world, and perhaps even one in which I would like to live, but it doesn’t resemble at all the world that I find myself living in.

When all you have is a Hammer…

We’ve all seen the quote:  “Except for ending slavery, fascism, Nazism and Communism, war has never solved anything.”  As a piece of snarky criticism it has the value of being backhandedly clever, and is an easy resort to those who feel that any criticism of a belligerent foreign policy means an immediate falling back to either pacifism or appeasement.  And yet, as a student of those very wars that supposedly “solved things” by “ending” the aforementioned undesirable systems, I have to shake my head at such reasoning.  War is a tool certainly, and it can indeed get the job done, but it is not a precision tool, to say the least.  Much like a sledgehammer, war is really only effective for large-scale simple jobs, and just like a demo job, the “solutions” offered by war are only as good as whatever is built in the aftermath.

Consider for a moment the wars alluded to in this statement (Which I have to imagine are the American Civil War, World War Two and Korea, as Vietnam certainly didn’t end Communism by any stretch of the imagination.)  Yes, as a result of the Civil War, slavery finally came to an end in the American South.  That said, it would be another century before African-Americans would gain the same legal rights as their white counterparts, and the devastation and lingering bad feelings from that conflict maintain divisions that persist today, nearly a century and a half afterwards.  As for the Second World War, it birthed a great number of the conflicts we see today, from the ongoing strife between India and Pakistan, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Vietnam, and of course Korea, which I will address in a moment.  The Second World War gave us the Cold War, the arms race, the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction, the Middle-East crisis, centering on the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and so forth and so on.  Finally, Korea can hardly be said to have “ended” Communism, at best it halted the advance of Communism on the Korean peninsula, resulting in a stalemate that persists to this day, more than 50 years later.  So does war “solve” problems?  Sure.  Unfortunately, it also creates at least as many problems as it solves, so it is an unwieldy tool to be handled judiciously and with great care.  One ought to remember that Carl von Clausewitz referred to war as the “continuation of politics by other means” not its replacement.

All of this makes the obsession with war by neo-con intellectuals all the more baffling to me.  Despite the fact any study of virtually any war for which we have records will show that, in the aftermath, said war caused as many problems as it solved, one need never look very far to find an op-ed written by someone with a self-professed appreciation of history, if not an actual degree (and indeed, I would argue that all you need to understand the issues I outlined above is such an appreciation) whose arguments could be pithily summed up as, “all you need is war, war is all you need.”

Problems with Iran?  Bomb them.  North Korea?  Bomb them too.  China?  Well, don’t bomb them… yet.  Nor can this be considered a new phenomenon among the punditocracy, as evidenced by a recent article in The New Republic by Marty Peretz, who notes his own advocacy for military action against the Soviets at the time of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising.  Peretz, who was a 17-year-old student at Brandeis University at that time, continues to this day to lambast President Eisenhower for his decision to not enter into a military conflict against the Soviet Union in order to liberate the valiantly resisting Hungarians.  He then goes on to lambast President Obama, for failing to take a similarly belligerent line against Iran in the present-day.  It would seem that for Mr. Peretz and his colleagues, in foreign policy the only tool one needs is a hammer, and if it doesn’t work get a bigger hammer.

What struck me the most about Mr. Peretz’ youthful advocacy was where it took place.   Was he speaking out from a fox-hole in Korea, or from his barracks in Berlin, where the first allied troops to bear the brunt of a hypothetical Soviet offensive were stationed?  No, young Marty Peretz was safe and comfortable at Brandeis University, far from the geopolitical flashpoints he would have had triggered, much like the older Marty Peretz is far from the troops we have stationed in both Iraq and Afghanistan, troops who would bear the first shock of any reprisals against the strikes against Iran he so vehemently demands.

Contrast this position with that of President Eisenhower, who, broken up as he doubtless was by the situation in Hungary, did not choose war.  As Supreme Allied Commander in Europe a decade before, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was more than familiar with the horrors and grisly cost of conflict, as well as the inconclusive nature of war.  Could it be, that he did not  take the sacrifice of lives and futures inherent in such an adventure quite as lightly as Mr. Peretz and his cohorts?

And yet, throughout the entire Cold War and beyond, we have had an endless parade of men of similar mindsets, who repeat endlessly their dogmatic mantra:  Get a bigger hammer, get a bigger hammer. It seems ironic to me that those who most forcefully and articulately make the case for war, are those who, all too often, never have experienced combat themselves.  Perhaps Mr. Peretz would not be so quick to reach for the hammer, if he had ever been on its receiving end.

Hammers and wars are both tools.  They both have their uses, and when used correctly they do exactly what they are designed to do.  But just as hammers are singularly ill-fit for wiring houses, clearing drains or changing oil, (indeed using them for such could not only be dangerous, but needlessly destructive) war is hardly the solution for all geopolitical problems, indeed it is a specialized tool, that is overused as is.

Friday Humor 11/20/09

Better than a Flu Shot!

Miss Beatrice, the church organist, was in her eighties and had never been married. She was admired for her sweetness and kindness to all.  One afternoon the pastor came to call on her and she showed him into her quaint sitting room.  She invited him to have a seat while she prepared tea…

As he sat facing her old  Hammond  organ, the young minister noticed a cut glass bowl sitting on top of it.  The bowl was filled with water, and in the water floated, of all things, a condom!

When she returned with tea and scones, they began to chat.  The pastor tried to stifle his curiosity about the bowl of water and its strange floater, but soon it got the better of him and he could no longer resist. “Miss Beatrice,” he said, “I wonder if you would tell me about this?” Pointing to the bowl.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “Isn’t it wonderful? I was walking through the Park a few months ago and I found this little package on the ground.  The directions said to place it on the organ, keep it wet and that it would prevent the spread of disease. Do you know I haven’t had the flu all winter!”

Lou Dobbs Considers Run for Senate, Presidency (He does know Latinos can vote, right?)

It’s funny, I remember back when I was a boy, Lou Dobbs was the host of a rather dull and uninteresting (well, to a teenage boy with no investments at least) business show on CNN.  Who would have thought back in those days that he would have become one of the wildest demagogues vying for the crown of the late, unlamented Father Coughlin.  Dobbs’ frequent harping (to the point of outright obsession) on the topic of illegal immigration, coupled with his outright embrace of the “birther” movement earlier this year would indeed make him the darling of the populist “death panel” and “Kenyan Birth Certificate” crowd, that’s for sure.

But how exactly does Dobbs think he’s going to carry California?  Or any state with a sizeable Latino population for that matter?  As the recent experience of the post Prop-187 California GOP has shown, Latino voters have long memories, and while they don’t necessarily like illegal immigration any more than anyone else, they know that the invocation of this issue is all too often used as a fig-leaf to cover a pronounced bias against Americans whose roots lie south of the border.

Furthermore, while Dobbs’ embrace of the birthers this summer may have just been a ploy for ratings, (in a world where Glenn Beck is busy digging up Bolsheviks in every possible piece of public art, and Michelle Bachmann is invoking resistance toward census takers, everyone has to have a gimmick) he certainly hasn’t backed away from their position in the intervening months.  While I have no doubt that a fair number of these people vote, you will forgive me if I fail to believe that Mr. Dobbs will ride all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave on the coattails of people whose only political position is that our current President is a Muslim/Socialist/Fascist/Communist/Foreigner.  Indeed, if Mr. Dobbs is truly serious about running on a national ticket, might I suggest he look into resurrecting the moribund Anti-Masonic or Know-Nothing parties, his blend of anti-immigrant and conspiracy theory fueled rhetoric would have fit in well with either of these third-party footnotes of the early 19th century.

Mr. Dobbs, let’s all be honest for a moment.  We all know what you’re going to do.  There are no inaugurations or Mr. Smith goes to Washington moments in your future.  Just like Mr. Beck and Mr. Stossel before you, you will eventually go to the only media outlet left that will be willing to broadcast your rantings.  The only question is what time Fox News will be airing your new show.

Khaled Sheikh Mohammad and The Rule of Law

It amazes me the degree of hysteria engendered by the decision by the Attorney General, Eric Holder, to try a number of the Prisoners at Guantanamo in New York for their complicity in the 9/11 attacks.  To hear Holder’s most vehement detractors talk, one would imagine that the ideals of trial by Jury and equal protection under the law were some wishy-washy European invention which we enlightened Americans long ago gave up on in favor of concentration camps and lynch mobs.  Now I clearly realize that 9/11 is a lingering wound on the American psyche, and that the legal ambiguities (and outright violations) that have occurred through the prosecution of the Global War on Terror in the last decade have muddied the waters considerably in regards to the Guantanamo prisoners.  We have debated viciously as to their status, whether or not they were Prisoners of War, if “Enemy Combatants” are covered under the Geneva Conventions, and how “enhanced” must “enhanced interrogation techniques” be before they are just outright torture.  The problem is, that instead of coming to any worthwhile and workable conclusions, we essentially remain at an impasse in this discussion, with one side arguing that the legal tenets and safeguards of the Constitution are not to be lightly thrown aside, while the other continues to justify past and current practice by referring to the extraordinary measures demanded during wartime.

Yet even the best intentioned arguments of those who see any legal procedure involving Guantanamo detainees to be inadvisable during wartime are somewhat disingenuous, and certainly corrosive to the ideas of civil liberties.  To argue that it is somehow weak or naive to grant the “rights” of a civilian trial to terrorists, is to argue that those “rights” are not rights at all, but privileges to be granted and revoked at the pleasure of the powers that be.  The rights to trial by jury, counsel, appeal, and so forth are not mere niceties to which we perform lip-service because it embellishes our civilization, they are the foundations of our democracy, the understanding that, as all are equal under the law (even the most despicable among us) all may exercise their freedoms without fear of arbitrary persecution.

Such freedom comes with many costs.  Some are easier to measure than others, they are the names etched in stone on countless memorials across this nation, a reminder that freedoms are not merely proclaimed, but quite often have to be wrenched from the clutches of tyranny through blood, sweat, toil and loss.  Some however are less evident, for they are not etched in stone tablets or stitched in our banners, but reside in the ideals which we hold within ourselves, and in the realization that freedom means risk.  It means being exposed to ideas and points of view that we disagree with, and even vehemently despise in order to secure our own right to speak.  It includes the obligation to abide by the laws we make, even when the circumstances render them inconvenient, or annoying.  It is the understanding that in a free nation, just as no men may be elevated above the dictates of the law, none may be thrust beneath its protections either.  As disgusting and repulsive as the serial killer, the child molester, the rapist and yes even the Terrorist are, in a free society we deal with them through the law, not the mob, the rope and the gun.

Now I have no doubt that there are many who will read these words and write me off as just “another naive Liberal” who doesn’t understand the nature of the enemy we fight, or the fact that these men expected to face justice through the protections of our system, and as such, dealing with them in such a fashion merely rewards them with protections that their crimes testify they don’t deserve.  To such I would respond that if we are to destroy the protections of law and civil liberty in order protect ourselves against such men, then in forging the weapons to defeat terrorism, we have forged our own shackles.  In embracing the tools of tyranny (arbitrary arrest, show trials, summary execution and torture) we deprive ourselves of the surest bulwarks against the deprivation of our own liberties.  We essentially become the architects of our own captivities.

So, do we dare take the risk of trying Khaled Sheikh Mohammad in a civilian court?  Absolutely.  Freedom is risk.  It is the holding fast to our ideals in a world that would have us throw all our principles to the wind and embrace an ideology of brutal pragmatism which would arbitrarily rain terror on whomever the enemy du jour might be determined to be.  Such a morally bankrupt set of values are not what my forefathers and relatives spent their blood and lives for, on battlefields from the Revolution to Vietnam, nor do they represent the high principles and values to which the Founding Fathers aspired.  Such men did not abandon their ideals and better judgment in the face of terror and danger, why should we?  And if indeed we do give in to terror and relinquish all that made us who we are, and rely instead on the rule of brutality and intimidation as the primary bulwarks of our society, who then have we become?

Since when is feeding one’s child a salacious act?

Some people in this country really need to grow up.  This week a group of mothers staged a nurse-in at Grant Park in Chicago, in response to local harassment they have faced while attempting to breastfeed their children.  While I have to admit that the whole idea of a “nurse-in” seems a little silly to me, the issue they are addressing is real, and a nagging reminder of how ridiculously prurient we can be in this nation.  In the State of Illinois, where these women reside, they have a right to breastfeed their children anywhere, yet each has faced public scoldings in which they have been either demanded to desist the act of feeding their children immediately, or to do so out of the public eye, as if providing nourishment to an infant is somehow a shameful act.

What is even more bizarre is the fact that the right to breastfeed has to be protected by statute.  That such a common-sense activity has to be legislated in order to make it “acceptable” is truly mind-boggling.  What a pathetic nation of nattering nannies we’ve become if the only reason a woman can breastfeed her children safely, without fear of attacks from people who really ought to have better things to do with their time is through a law directly stipulating their right to do so.

The bizarre nature of this whole situation is only exacerbated by the hypocrisy inherent therein.  Breastfeeding, which women have done since time immemorial is somehow obscene, yet any quick perusal of a magazine rack at your local supermarket will reveal no lack of surgically enhanced cleavage being offered as examples of physical perfection.  One almost wonders if some of the offense taken toward the act of breastfeeding stems not so much from the removal of clothing as from the removal of illusions regarding the use and actual appearance of the female breast.

Now, I accept that, as a nation we tend to have more issues about public physicality than some of our neighbors.  I am not suggesting here that Americans need to adopt the attitudes toward the body embraced by the Brazilians for example (who find samba dancers shimmying down main street in nothing but body paint passe) but we might all just learn to relax about a simple truth:  Women have breasts.  It’s not like this is news to anyone.  Half the population has them, and the rest of us were birthed (and quite possibly fed) by some one who did.  There is nothing inherently scandalous, bizarre or even salacious about breastfeeding, indeed as Mrs. Carton once pointedly remarked to me, “That’s what they’re for.”

Furthermore, it’s not like there’s anything particularly immodest about the manner in which a majority of North American women breastfeed.  Usually there is a towel or blanket involved, as much for reasons of modesty as personal comfort (staying warm).  And even if this is not the case, no one who fears the effects of a passing glance at an areola or nipple need worry all that much, after all there’s an infant’s head in the way!  Hence, I find the vehement responses of those opposed to public breastfeeding so truly incomprehensible.  It’s not like they’ve set up a pole and are soliciting tips from passers-by, they’re just feeding their kids.  Frankly folks, if this bothers you, don’t look, and if it arouses feelings in you best left unaroused, go seek help.  But leave these poor women alone, likely the last thing on their minds at that moment is lasciviousness.