Thoughts and Observations-Part One

As we begin a brand new month on the calendar, full of the hopes and aspirations that come with a fresh page on the calendar and a brand new picture that will become engrained over the next 31 days, I thought the time was good to empty some of the random thoughts and observations that have been building up in my head recently. Hopefully May will be a productive month for The Grind, as I’m gearing up for a good summer of writing, picking up with some projects including my novel and some short story ideas I’ve had now that I will have a couple months to devote myself to putting my ideas down in print, and of course on the blog. I hope to use this forum as a way to get the creative juices flowing again, hopefully to the point where I won’t use lame clichés like creative juices anymore by the end of the month. Stay tuned, but for now, some reflections on a variety of topics.

Americans are a great people, the greatest civilization (arguably of course, but I would make the argument in the affirmative) in the long history of civilizations. We are the culmination of 2500 years of Western Civilization, which while it has seen its share of negative forces and consequences (see slavery, wars of religion, imperialism, and the Holocaust to name a few) has also contributed more to the betterment of humankind than any non-Western civilization. While there is much to learn from and admire in the Chinese, the Persians, the South Asians, the Arabs, or the Africans, their accomplishments simply are no match for those of the West. Western Civilization has left us a legacy of scientific advancements that have improved the quality of our lives, economic systems that have brought about higher standards of living, philosophical and religious tenets that aspire to the highest ideals of humanity, political systems that promote liberty and social systems that advocate respect for human rights and equality.

It is fashionable these days, especially among those on the left to criticize America and the West in general. While I do not subscribe in any fashion to the general view on the right that any criticism is a sign of weakness and treachery, I do think that sometimes we fail to recognize what we have accomplished when we lament on our numerous shortcomings. We can and ought to criticize our government, our society, and ourselves when we fall short of our ideals. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the great accomplishments of our past, if for no other reason than that this gives us the best motivation and inspiration to continue to strive for greatness in the future.

There is much in the news these days on the state of the economy, and on all of the negative aspects of the current recession. It is difficult to turn on the TV or open up a newspaper or magazine without hearing the latest story of an American who has lost his job, his house, his wife, and even his dog has run away. Which reminds me of the joke about what you get when you play a country music record backwards, but I digress. These stories are sad and I certainly feel for the people who are being impacted most by the recession, those who have lost their jobs and are being forced out of their homes. I feel fortunate that I have relative security on both counts, and truly empathize with those who don’t have that same sense of security and comfort. But the real tragedy is a story that is getting even less coverage today than it has in recent times, and it really hadn’t gotten much coverage even before the recession dominated the airwaves and papers.

I am referring to the Iraq war, that despite the fact it has been pushed to the back pages, if not off the radar entirely in favor of the latest sensational story about the swine flu, Susan Boyle, or the Octomom, continues to be waged and that means that American and Iraqi soldiers, not to mention scores of civilians continue to be killed on a weekly basis. We still have roughly 140,000 troops over in Iraq serving their country on a mission that is really not defined nor feasible.

We have been bamboozled time and again by our government, specifically the Bush administration with the complicity of the Congress, from WMD to instilling democracy, to the surge is working and we are winning, we have been fed a constant stream of deception at best and outright lies at worst. And the sad thing is that much of the American public seems to either be buying into the bull, or just doesn’t care. Because let’s be serious, most of us are neither directly impacted by the war, and more importantly don’t figure to be impacted by it at any point in the near future. We might lose our job at any time, but it is highly unlikely that we will be asked to serve and fight for our country.

We get slogans like defending our freedom and vague notions of supporting the troops. Well who doesn’t support the troops? I guess they are the same people that are pro-HIV and hate their moms, apple pie, and baseball. The troops are made up individuals, men and women who are doing a job that they never asked for under ridiculously difficult circumstances and with very little real recognition or appreciation on behalf of the general public. They will not return home to ticker tape parades down Main Street and the appreciation of a grateful nation, rather they most likely will return home, when they eventually do, to a mostly indifferent nation, to debt, a tenuous job market, to fractured families, and with the mental images of warfare that must stay with and haunt a person as long as they live.

Many will have time to reflect on their experience and on the reason why they went through it, and I have to believe that many will not be very happy when they reflect on the entire experience. George W. Bush and his administration committed the worst sin that any leader can, he sacrificed his own people, the members of our armed forces and their families, for personal and political advantage. These advantages have not been realized, and both he and his party have been exposed for the charlatans that they are, but this didn’t come soon enough to prevent much damage from being done, to the military and to the nation as a whole.

Barack Obama has inherited a mess in that there are no good options left on the table, and he will have to work diligently to extract our troops from Iraq without leaving a bad situation worse in the long run, knowing all the while that it almost assuredly will become much worse in the short run, and that he will be attacked by the mindless simpletons on the right who believe that the surge was working and we would have won the war (whatever that means) had we only given the strategy more time.

I had planned on getting more thoughts out of my head, but as I am trying not to get too lengthy on the word count (as if it’s not already too late for that realization) I will divide this column into a two-parter and continue on sometime soon. My current targets are the opposition party and why they are falling down on the job, and how that is hurting our democracy, and the notion of pragmatism over ideology. Until next time, this is your sometimes humble and always opinionated correspondent signing off.