Today I posted an article I had written earlier, because someone who had read it elsewhere requested it.  I am very bad at maintaining this site, but I will get better.  However, today, reading the headlines in the New York Times, I was sickened and compelled.  Those two driving forces help get me back to Afghanistan.  Please write your representatives.    

Afghanistan is Coming to You

“O,” our great hope of change has turned the corner into the same.  As far as I am concerned, mark this day, less than a month after his inauguration, President Obama has done our nation wrong.   Yesterday, Tuesday, February 18^th, he voted to send 17,000 troops to Afghanistan this Spring and early summer.  This, I warn you, is only the beginning.

At 47 years old, though older than me, perhaps he was not raised protesting the Vietnam War.  Perhaps he does not remember the countless soldiers killed, the countless soldiers maimed, the countless soldiers who lost their mind or became addicted to drugs.  Perhaps he does not remember that there was no way to “win” that war.  Perhaps he only remembers that Kennedy got us deep into that war and Kennedy is a hero who Obama aspires to simulate (just listen to their speeches).  Perhaps President Obama only remembers that he promised those who elected him that he would get out of Iraq, and he forgets that the people who elected him want peace.  Not war.

I admit, I heard President Obama utter about securing Afghanistan and fighting the terrorists there.  I also heard President Obama preach Diplomacy.  If diplomacy won’t work for Afghanistan, then neither will a military invasion.  This is a country that has never been won over by foreign invaders, a country with diverse and unknown terrain, a country whose people must be behind any military invasion or we will, surely, be in something we can only say will resemble the war with Vietnam… only worse. 

Now that our president has the excuse of the Taliban making amends with the government of Pakistan (perhaps we might have done that first) and that we must somehow protect Afghanistan from its infiltration (I have news for him that the Taliban has already infiltrated Afghanistan), perhaps we should look at some more rudimentary issues.  Though I am not a Harvard Grad, I have my own brand of street smarts and common sense.  So, let’s look at, at least, what we learned from Vietnam and Iraq.

1.     What is the Plan?  What is the EXIT STRATEGY?

2.     How do we plan to WIN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE PEOPLE.  These people have suffered greatly by U.S. and NATO bombings.  How do we plan to win the hearts and minds of a nation that has lost approximately ten thousand civilians who have been killed directly because of this war – at least 7,760 – 10,557 as tallied from different sources (Wikipedia). How do we plan to win the hearts and minds of a nation that has lost approximately 30, 000 civilians due to “indirect” causes of the war (displacement, starvation, and disease) .  The population of Afghanistan is approximately 29 million.  Three and a half times the population of New York City.  There were 2,974 people killed in the World Trade Center on 9.11, and everyone in New York City knew a story of someone who had been killed.  So, proportionally, the people of Afghanistan are each close to a victim of the war.

3.     Terrorist recruitment.  There was Guantanamo, and the other prisons in which we tortured people.  There was the war in Iraq.  And now there is Afghanistan, where we will give the people of that country a reason to fight against us, since we are not getting their solidarity before we begin. 

Then, of course, there is the cost.

Thousands of lives lost. 

To date already an estimated 3 TRILLION dollars for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which started with an estimate of 50 billion.  As we send more troops to Afghanistan, we will have to send more still, and the 3 trillion will grow.

Next to torture, the failing economy worldwide is the greatest enabler of Terrorism.

So, for National Security, we are spending money we do not have, on a war for which there is no exit strategy, at a time when our economy is on the brink of collapse.  Oh, and while using brutal military force in a terrain we do not know, we will repeatedly bomb the civilians while running out the Taliban.   And   Al Qaeda is there somewhere.  Perhaps moving into the towns that we run the Taliban out of.

“O,” our great hope for change has done us wrong.  This is the same, the same, the same.  It is even worse because we, still, have not learned from our mistakes.

“O,” Operation Enduring Freedom, we continue with strength, courage, and, worse, this time, without ignorance.

So, get ready for Afghanistan in your neighborhood soon.  War spreads terrorism.  Poverty breeds terrorism.  An unstable world economy breeds unrest.  Unrest breeds terrorism.  The cycle continues.  The debt gets worse.  And so on. 

But I did not graduate from Harvard.  I am only going on common sense and the history books.  Who am I to criticize, “O,” the great hope for change.

 

ld Napier

 

 

From Patriotism to Poverty, a letter to my Country

“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

-       Hermann Goering (advisor to Hitler)

For a brief moment in time, on Tuesday night, November 4^th, 2008, at about 10:40pm EST, I was transformed, yes, for those who know me this will be hard to believe, into a Patriot.

Actually, it felt good.  I was a Patriot not because my government had convinced me that we were under attack and, so, I needed to follow them to war, but, rather, because the new President-elect had vowed to get us out of the war, help the poor, work on diplomacy with previously named “enemy nations,” and make this country, again, a nation reigned not from a place of fear but from compassion. 

I have been the “pacifist,” scorned by the government and the masses for my lack of patriotism because I did not want to strike pre-emptively a country when there was no reason to do so, much less a country in which more than fifty percent of the population were children under eighteen years of age.  That would be Iraq after the Gulf war.

But in that moment on November 4^th, it felt good to be a Patriot with a president-elect who said he wanted to help the “middle class,” the “lower-income” earners, and the children.   He wanted to help the people. 

I carried that around for a few days, openly declaring my happiness and newfound Patriotism.  Wow.  Is this what it feels like to be happy?  To have hope?  How odd.  How wonderful.

For that brief moment, I believed that If I publicly claimed my Patriotism, it would be truth, beyond, even, my own virginal excitement at using the P word to describe myself, 40 and holding, and never, ever, before broken of (ironically they came together) the cynicism and hope that my country, The United States of America, could be more. I am, yes, an eternal optimist. I have been called a happy cynic.  I believe in a prosperous nation that has equal and free education and very affordable healthcare for all. 

At the risk of insulting my husband, I will say that the feelings I had at the moment Obama was elected were almost exactly like what I felt the day I got married.  It was a high so fine.  I did not want that brief history in time to turn into a past that I could not recollect, even with memory, a keen olfactory sense, or photos. I could not look at my wedding pictures for six months, so afraid I was that I would weep from longing, from the dream of that pure moment in hope, when it all seemed possible.  Not that it isn’t possible.  It is.  It is just possibility falls on the outside of the rare bliss that can never be borne again.

It has been three weeks since the unadulterated moment of my Obama ecstasy, and I am touching down. Politics, by its nature, must be a jarring and grounding component in one’s life, if not as fantastical as love.  And it is sad to remember that, after that historic flash of rapture, we must, again, defend our Patriotism.

I read about Obama’s Chief of Staff and Cabinet choices, and I am shuttled back into the harsh realities of a conservative state that might be tempted to breach its contract with the people in the name of Patriotism.  As I mumble my own fear and disappointment over my morning coffee, I know that it is time, again, to mobilize the courage to speak out, be unpopular, and retract my unconditional love of country, my Patriotism, in exchange for the accountability to the people in the land that we love.

For, like love of a partner, if love of a country, Patriotism, is unrequited from the nation back to the people, it will, eventually become a liability contained by indolence and complacency.  It is not enough to say,  “I love my country,  and we are so much better off,” or we will find our bright and hopeful eyes blinded by our own neglect of what it takes to maintain a deep and mature love.

Goethe, who wrote two of my favorite characters, Dr. Faust and dear Mephisto said, “Patriotism ruins History.”  

I agree with Goethe because in the name of Patriotism it is easy to become nearsighted and forget the future, which, inevitably, is history.   When we feel so blissful, we rarely look at the long road ahead. 

But we must. We must look to the things that have gotten out of hand, out of our hand, the peoples’ hands and take ownership of them so that we may change.  I believe Obama means that he wants change.  And I believe that the people mean that they want change.  There is just so much to change now that we, the people, are going to have to be diligent in defending our Patriotism and standing behind our ideals as the great nation we can be.  We have no excuses anymore.  We have a government whose platform was “Change you can believe in.”  Obama has vowed to get out of Iraq in two and a half years, so now we must not make the same mistake in Afghanistan.  And we must be the guardians and fervently scrutinize:

The Patriot Act,

Torture and Guantanamo,

Healthcare,

Poverty,

Let us begin with The Patriot Act, a perfect example of , what I shall name, “The Goering Factor.”  It is the most unpatriotic piece of legislation masked in an assumed name.  Still, when I mention to people that this act MUST be repealed, I get those same looks projected unto me that I am irresponsible and unpatriotic.  These are, after all, times of Terror. 

I then need to remind people, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they would not have accepted the Patriot Act without having researched it, that the 1978 law allowed the National Security Agency to wiretap for 72 hours while waiting for its papers of approval.  The new law, under the Patriot Act, gives the NSA a week but still allows the NSA to use the information even if the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) rules that the wiretap is unlawful.  There in lies the difference.  The NSA can tap your phone for one thing (i.e. terrorism), and use the information in an arrest for something else (say, selling pot or committing adultery – yes, adultery is a crime in New York State). 

The Patriot Act is, in fact, an infringement upon our civil rights.  Obama, who holds our hope, voted for an extension of the Patriot Act as recently as 2006.  It is we who need to remind him of the danger to a country that loses its civil rights.  In the words of Thomas Jefferson, “ Those who sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither.”

For all of us to be responsible Patriots, we must remind our president-elect other places where our rights are at risk.

For instance…  Torture and Guantanamo.

“Our Nation faces, in conjunction with the torture of war prisoners, excessive numbers of uncharged detainees (over four-hundred still uncharged detainees at Guantanamo, at least a hundred in secretive CIA locales, and at least thirteen hundred people in prison in Iraq), and our very own freedom being taken from us in the name of fighting for freedom…” (from “With Liberty.  And Justice.  For All.”  ld Napier, 2007)

So how does our Nation break the cycle? 

Wouldn’t a civilized nation uphold the Geneva Conventions and call an immediate stop to the oppression of unjust disadvantage.

Then there is healthcare.

In 2007, there were 47.5 million people in the U.S. who did not have health insurance (Wikipedia), a projected 80% of which are native or naturalized citizens. And 8 out of 10 of the uninsured persons come from working families.  As of 2006 11.7% of all children in the U.S. were without health insurance.

And, then, yes, the epidemic of poverty and the truly hardworking poor in the U.S.A. 

In 2007  “Although the U.S. is one of the most powerful nations, American children suffer the worst among 21 developed nations in health, safety and relative poverty.”  (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)

 

Percentage of children living in poverty who have at least one parent working full-time and year-round: 55%*

10% of all white children and 33.7% of all Black children in the U.S. live in Poverty  (National Poverty Center, University of Michigan)

The federal poverty guidelines defines poverty for a family of four as $21,200.

 Yearly earnings of a single parent of two young children working full-time in a minimum wage job: $10,712.  Imagine how difficult it would be to live on that.

Percentage of the homeless population who are employed: 44%

It is a fact that if a person works full-time at a minimum wage job he or she can not bring themselves out of poverty.

Wouldn’t a civilized nation help all its citizens break from the oppression of unjust disadvantage. “With Liberty and Justice for all,” isn’t that what the United States is all about?

I am calling all Patriots, old and newfound, to redefine Patriotism, not as an ideology obligatory to a state under siege, but as supporting a standard of living, with human rights and dignity for all the People.

ld Napier

*(2007 census)