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Iraq: Is it the end, or is it just the beginning?

One is tempted to say: “Mission accomplished!” Or President Gerald Ford’s line upon taking office after Nixon’s resignation: “Our long national nightmare is over.”

Except I am talking about Iraq here. The 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division left Iraq this week. It is the last “combat force” to leave where the U.S. fought during the past seven years. There are U.S. soldiers left behind. They are combat soldiers but they’re not.  About 50,000 American troops will stay behind to teach and assist the Iraqi forces including about 4,500 special operations soldiers.

Like it’s predecessor in 1990-91, this Gulf War was hardly a surprise. The first war seemed ill-advised and reeked of oil. The second war just reeked. We were already fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We still are. I wrote almost five years ago that I thought that the nation and its military had found itself boxed in by the Iraq War. It didn’t seem possible that we could get out of that country without somehow losing face among World powers. But somehow, at least for the moment, it seems we have “won.” At least in some artful use of spin and sleight of hand. Have we won though?

I fear we will be back to Iraq, and that region in particular, in spades sooner or later. I fear sooner.

However our military posture appears to our World partners and enemies now due to our “combat troops” leaving Iraq, I’m glad more of our U.S. troops — Navy, Army, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard, both men and women — are gone from that place that I feel we should never have been. I doubt the war is over for many of them because of Afghanistan. But maybe some will never have to live their young lives in what I feel was a war that, under different circumstances, might have caused the  president to be removed from office.

A lot of folks don’t see it that way. A lot of folks also want Islamic mosques wherever they feel they should be located rather than members of that religion. Go figure. Welcome home GIs.

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Getting one’s butt kicked in a battle with Mother Nature. Again.

Why, after all these years, do I think I know more than nature?

I failed to bring my umbrella with me when I returned to my office this afternoon after being out in the field. We have an average somewhere around 50 and 60 inches of rain each year and some of it comes this time of year when it’s hot and a lot of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico interacts with the heat. We get thunderstorms like yesterday, which started more like a dust storm.

The air was full of dirt and sand prior to the big thunderboomer yesterday. It wasn’t enough to hinder vision, but it nonetheless seemed odd. It was followed by a big moomba choomba. That idiotspeak for thunderstorm. The electricity was out when I got to the VA clinic yesterday afternoon. Many people had to reschedule their appointments. I don’t know if the people who work there had a difficult time today being backlogged. If so, I don’t envy them.

Yesterday’s storm was enough to tear off some signs and pieces of housing here and there.

It was not unexpected that we’d have another event this afternoon. The low pressure system that was once the tropical depression in the Gulf is somewhere near the “L” in Louisiana.

I just thought I could beat the storm this afternoon. I couldn’t I was “trapped” in my office until it passed, unable to work. I am not allowed to work when I am not on duty. Imagine that! Too bad, I could have finished some work and would have been ahead for tomorrow on which I will be working a tight deadline. But rules are rules.

Next time, I will bring my umbrella. That’s what I always tell myself.

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How close to Ground Zero is too close for Muslims?

A Mormon, a Baptist and  a Muslim goes into this bar. Wait! What’s wrong with that line?

Nothing really. People of such faiths aren’t generally known as the biggest drinkers of the religious world. That’s not to say they don’t drink, even if they may preach against liquor. The fact is that only their personal beliefs and their local laws are all that might prevent them from going into that bar where they may become the butt of some joke. It’s called “freedom.”

Freedom is bandied about and is talked of in grand and florid terms by politicians and all other of the Americans who feel, for whatever the hell reason, that their freedom is being taken away. I bet many of those would be really pissed off if steps were taken which restrict their Constitutional right to freely practice their religion.

Yet some of these who speak so grandly seem not to have any worries about restricting a church from being built a couple of blocks from the scene of the largest mass murder and terrorist attack in American history. It is the latter, they say, that supposedly compels them to demand the church built somewhere else. Muslims want a mosque — okay people are saying a community center, whatever — there. Granted, the Imam seems to have a shady past but some of our great religious leaders have also cried out: “I have sinned.”

President Obama made a remark and later clarified that remark saying he believes the mosque has a right to built wherever it is able to be built because of the religious freedom in this country. He isn’t the only politician to share that view. New York’s Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg agrees. Bloomberg’s fellow Republicans, though, have decided to seize upon this issue and use it to their advantage politically. When such a disagreement is used for nothing more than political gain, it seems to really lose meaning of the bigger picture.

The picture: Religious freedom and freedom in general. First, one wonders how far away the Muslims, who are only being targeted because some of their own who have perverted their religion perpetrated the 9/11 attacks, have to move? Two blocks, four blocks, six blocks, a dollar, every one who thinks Muslims should not have their mosques within a 50-mile radius of the World Trade Center stand up and holler!

Just which religions can have their churches within a few blocks of this hallowed site? Baptists? No, not them. They dunk children into the water. Mormons, like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is facing an election against a real nut job and so he has decided to part ways with Obama on this one? Some say they are really a cult. Jews? My God, look at what they do to little baby boys!

Do you see how ridiculous this whole argument over restricting one church’s religious freedom in the United States of America is? I hesitate to say it, and that in itself seems wrong, but it does make you wonder just what would Jesus do? Well, I guess that all depends whether you are Old Testament, New Testament or No Testament. Or whether you read the Koran, Talmud, The Book of Mormon or none of the above for that matter.

The greatest point about the freedom to worship in this country is that you can or you don’t and you can worship whomever you want or not worship anyone or any faith at all. If you can find anything in the U.S. Constitution that says this nation was meant to be a theocracy then please let me know because I must have missed it.

So, we will listen to the people raise their voices in disgust — aided and abetted of course by the mighty Republican propaganda machine — and we have another ridiculous argument to distract discussion on real issues and real problems in this country. Tell me, Mr. GOP politician, what would you do to ensure the Muslims or any other religion offensive to you don’t build two blocks or four blocks from the World Trade Center? What’s that? Nothing, you say? That’s kind of what I thought.

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David Stockman says his GOP sunk the nation’s economy into the Deep Doo Doo Sea

Just a little while ago I stumbled across this article on MarketWatch.com. I had to stumble upon it because I never read it unless I see a potentially interesting story linked to the site from Google News. Perhaps I should bookmark it or even add it to my blogroll because it has more than once produced great articles about some aspect of the economy or the other.

Rather than my blathering I think it best you read for yourself the story by Paul B. Farrell on how Reagan administration budget wonder boy David Stockman now says the Republican Party has wrecked the economy for the last 40 years. To better grasp what he is saying, first link to and read the rather simple definitions of some essential economic theories in the event they are not familiar: (Go on, it won’t hurt. I promise you.)

Laissez Faire, Keynesian and Supply-Side.

If you happened to read the article first, then I suppose there is no hope for you. Seriously, some economists — especially those who have seen the harm done by their own hands — sometime see only the darkest of the dark.

Secondly, Stockman  touches upon the mega-defense budgets of which President and General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower saw as part of a “military-industrial complex” that should be kept in check and which is described by the former budget director for Reagan as “war-mongering.”

While Stockman’s description may be apt for some in said complex it certainly shouldn’t be writ large for either the military or the defense industry. Who was it said that “Only fools want to go war?” I don’t know. I did. Just now.

It has been out of necessity and, perhaps at times spurred by a  lack of vision, that the nation has seen its defense posture ebb and flow. It certainly built up for major wars the country fought and then cut back to bare bones. Reagan did advocate the buildup of defense in the post-Vietnam United States, his “600-ship Navy” making more sense to most folks than did “Star Wars.” However, the Navy buildup was not all “build” as ships were kept in commission for a longer life and others were sailed out of mothball such as the battleships Iowa, New Jersey, Missouri and Wisconsin. As for the latter, if you were a sailor and found ships kind of cool as I do you couldn’t help but be glad to see the old battlewagons back at sea.

But the ebb and flow of the nation’s defense seems often too much ebb and not enough flow or vice versa. The balance never seems to be enough. If only there was a way to make that equilibrium a reality, and there might be as I have just been talking out of my a**,  then perhaps we could at least solve the one problem David Stockman (remember him?) says has shot our economy all to hell. Batten down the hatches, full speed ahead and you may fire when you are ready, Gridley! Sweepers, sweepers man your brooms, give the ship a clean sweep down fore and aft. Yeah, something like that!

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Fame is when the JumboTron goes viral

One might think of Andy Warhol as a prophet or at least a good guesser when considering his statement that “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

A couple at a Houston Astros game the other night stands as the latest example of a vote for  Warhol’s vision (or guesswork) after it appeared that Bo “The Bailer”  Wyble dived to avoid a foul ball that ended up whacking his girlfriend, Sara “Not so Smiling” Saco-Vertiz on the arm. They later announced on morning TV that they had broken up, though supposedly not because of the errant fly.

It is kind of ironic that Warhol himself may be as famous, if not more famous, for his quote about the future state of fame than his art including his most famous soup cans.