Op-Ed

There are lies of omission as well as commission, and the statues in Charlottesville, Va. -- typical of other towns -- do both. We have statues of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, a generic Confederate soldier, George Rogers Clark, Lewis and Clark (with Sacagawea kneeling like their dog), and on City Hall a triptych with Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. We have a monument to the War on Vietnam. And that's it.

To fight our insane wars, we’re wrecking our soldiers’ ability to live with themselves and function in society, then regulating what’s left of them with chemicals, which often make things immeasurably worse.

In the pursuit of order, could we possibly be creating more chaos, not simply externally — in the shattered countries we’re leaving in our wake — but internally, in the minds of those soldiers?

The Los Angeles Times noted that Air Force pilot Patrick Burke was recently acquitted in a court-marital hearing on charges of auto theft, drunk driving and two counts of assault — due to “polysubstance-induced delirium.” This was, the Times explained, a turning point: the first official acknowledgement, by military psychiatrists and a court-martial judge, that the drugs that have become a routine part of military service — in Burke’s case, the prescribed amphetamine Dexedrine (“go pills”) — can contribute to temporary insanity.

Better living through chemistry!

Judge expresses sympathy with criticism of government, imposes minimum sentence.
Retired Naval Commander Leah Bolger pled guilty to the charge of Unlawful Conduct -- Disruption of Congress at a hearing before Judge Stuart Nash in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Thursday, April 12th 2012. Bolger, who is a peace activist and the President of Veterans For Peace, interrupted a public hearing of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, commonly known as the Super Committee on October 26th, 2011 http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/JointDef.

In her statement to the Judge, Bolger said, "I have come to understand what millions of Americans already know—that the actual majority will of the people is of little concern to those in power. We can demonstrate and petition and write letters until we are blue in the face, but those actions are virtually worthless, as we can't compete. Our voice is drowned out by the power of the money coming from the lobbyists and corporate interests. Money equals speech."

One of the speakers at the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) conference in Stamford, Ct., was Leila Zand, Program Director, Middle East & Civilian Diplomacy, Fellowship Of Reconciliation. She said that rather than sharing her own views on the dangers of a war on Iran, she had asked friends in Iran what they would say. She read the following message that they sent her:
To all the wonderful peacemakers in national peace conference

To all of our brothers and sisters in the beautiful world

We are sending you the message of peace and friendship from Iran, the land of love and poetry, friendship and roses. Iran, a country that has not initiated any violence on another nation in the past 200 years, but unfortunately has been the subject of such violations many times in her recent history.

The Coalition Against NATO/G8 War & Poverty Agenda has nothing on its website about using nonviolence, supporting nonviolence, or opposing violence.

The G8 and NATO Protest also has nothing like that, but does have this:

"As we plan our actions and tactics, we will take care to maintain appropriate separations of time and space btween divergent tactics."

A month ago I blogged that I would not endorse Occupy the RNC or DNC because both groups were refusing to state that they opposed violence.

Occupy the RNC has now put this on its website:

"We are not organizing actions, especially violent ones. That would just be stupid. We exist to provide information and facilitate logistics for people resisting the RNC."

Not how I would have put it. Nor would I have added:

"Don't fuck with us. We'll sue you."

But foreswearing violence and calling it stupid is enough for me. I wish Occupy DNC could bring itself to do as much. Better yet, just add "We oppose violence and will not use it."

That would be ideal, smart, strategic, and beneficial to the movement.

In the latest nail in the coffin of American liberty the people’s court of “last resort,” the U.S. Supreme Court, has confirmed that law abiding American Citizens (that means YOU, YOUR WIFE, and YOUR CHILDREN) traveling along any highway, breaking no law can now be arrested, handcuffed, hauled off to jail, mug shot, striped naked, and have your private parts gawked at or fondled by chuckling prison guards for the “crime” of -get this -a seven year old traffic ticket, that it turns out had been paid in full.

And this kind of treatment goes for old granny’s too -just keep your eyes wide open at the airports.

Now fellow Americans, if the thought of your wife or kids or grandma being treated like this does not get your blood pressure rising, then I can’t imagine what would.

And this president, who got himself elected on the promise of “Change” recently proved himself as phony as the last one by re-signing The Patriot Act into law -even though all President’s swear to “uphold and defend” the constitution. This doesn’t sound like change to me. But it’s all the proof anybody should need that they’re ALL a bunch of two faced liars.

A sad irony accompanied President Obama on his recent visit to Columbus.. Mr. Obama, possibly the most charismatic President since President Kennedy, visited Columbus on the same day that Reverend Al Sharpton, reprising the role that Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King played as JFK’s nemesis, visited Sanford, Florida. Without Dr. King’s efforts, Mr. Obama probably would not have been elected President, and the shooting of Trayvon Martin would surely have been forgotten by now. Therein lies the sad irony.

The lessons of history can be learned only through difficult and usually painful self-reflection, and can be forgotten only at great peril. I call on Columbusoids of all stripes, colors, flavors, and beliefs to help President Obama help all Americans to do the difficult work, to rise above this irony to a healing that we all so desperately need. After all, who knows who the next Trayvon might be? We are all Trayvon now. And history will judge us accordingly.

Robert A. Letcher (PhD, Cornell, 1994)

In recent years, many government officials seem to have developed a “reverse Midas touch”. You know: everything they touch seems to turn brown and stinky.

I’d like to think that elected people at all levels would respond by working “full time”, learning how to respond constructively to charges like the one my Mother levels against them: “they don’t care about the country, only their party’s and their own personal interests”. SHE IS DISGUSTED!

Instead, in Ohio (but more generally as well), Republicans have resorted to cheating legally. It’s called gerrymandering, and it means “the winning party gets to redraw election districts so it can keep winning, without caring about the country, just their party’s and their own interest”, much as Mom had charged!

No surprise! That’s what parties do. But, if we persuade them how mad my Mom and so many others really are: they might do differently. Two ways to persuade them to try:

• negotiate some variant of philosopher John Rawls’ “veil of ignorance”, according to which neither party would know which group of redistricted districts they would end up with;

Recently, Vice-President Biden came to Ohio in support of President Obama's efforts to make college tuition more affordable. Mr. Biden's visit a couple months back was reported in the January 13, 2012 issue of The Columbus Dispatch, in an article written by Joe Vardon, and headlined "Biden hits hot-button subject: college costs."

Having been an academic most of my life, I have had several experiences that bear upon Mr.Biden's "button."

Let me begin with a twist on an old saying, "no one ever won a horse race without a good horse." A small twist on that saying applies to global economic races: no one ever wins economic races without a well-educated workforce. And with this country's students ranking only 16th among industrialized nations, it's clear that we as a country have to work on more hot-button issues than just Mr. Biden's "cost."

What would you do if someone had a button that could destroy the earth and they were walking across the room to push it? Would you stand in the way? Would you talk them out of it? Would you sit by and watch, maybe make a sarcastic remark or two? What if the button might destroy the earth or might just destroy part of it? What if it might leave most of the earth intact but kill millions of people, but what if you had no way of being sure how far the destruction would spread?

Here is an animation made by the Union of Concerned Scientists on the damage a strike on Iran would likely cause, including the death of three million people.

Here is a New York Times article on what would likely happen next, including a war at least regional in scope and involving the United States.