Insanity

Today - which would have been my mother's 92 birthday, though she died at 68 - someone in the Defense (Offense?) Department said of the three men who commited suicide in the prison camp at Guantanamo where they had been held for nearly four years without being charged or given a hearing, that he considered their suicides an act of asymetrical warfare against the United States and its allies.

We have now gone far beyond George Orwell and Doublespeak.

I am tempted to believe that the tanking of the money markets the past month - a month in which, historically, the markets rise - is because of the loss of confidence that those who are at the highest levels of our government have lost touch with reality.

He said this shows that they have no regard for life, ours or theirs.

As if it is nothing that we have held these people under the most inhumane, inhuman, degrading, destabilizing conditions, with no hope of it ever ending.

If ever there was proof that the purposes of those whom we call terrorists had succeeded in terrorizing us to the point at which we lost all touch with those things we historically have held sacred, by which we defined our role in the world, this was it.

For shame.

Al Zarqawi

The insanity of war - not only our war in Iraq, but all war - has been reinforced by the news today that the leader of the insurgents in Iraq who come from outisde the country (Jordan in this case) has been killed. Since we have associated him, at least in reports by our government, with the worst of the danger we face there, you might think there would be rejoicing over his death. In fact Defense Secretary Rumsfeld (who reports say President Bush's father tried unsuccessfully to unseat last year in an attempt to rescue his family and the nation from further embarrassment) warned that this was likely to stir up more violence in retribution.

The price of oil rose on world markets for fear of much the same thing.

So, one might ask, what success might we have on the battlefield that would move forward our stated goal of a lasting peace in that tortured region?

I daresay what we have stupidly acheived is to move ther clock back to pre WWI days when the various groups now fighting against each other were tribal groups with different interests who had no intention or expectation of coming together as a single nation. Western powers created Iraq out of disparate groups because it suited our interests. And by means of military force - first British, then ruthless dictators like our then ally Saddam Hussein - the country remained a country.

When we removed Hussein the door was open for the groups who have waited all these years to return to their battle against each other.

We are a stiff-necked, short-sighted nation.

Iran

What must it be like to be President of the Unites States and read that fewer than 30% of the citizens approve of the job you are doing?

I am a consistent and sharp critic of this president and the troglodytes who surround him. But it seems more clear than ever that we have a fatally flawed system of electing presidents and we are paying a huge price for that as a people. As we have been saying for a couple of years, in a parliamentary system, with numbers this low, this administration would have long ago been forced to submit its Iraq policy - along with its economic policies - to a vote of confidence and would surely have lost, requiring an election. Because we have put so much power into the office of president, presidents are tempted to take drastic action - particularly if they are a lame duck president - without regard for the views of the electorate.

Having said all that, it now seems clear that the administration's about face on Iran and Iran's nuclear activity, is a direct result of having spent its political capital on Iraq and now must temper its wish to impose a military solution.

Frances Fukuyama said, after the fall of the Soviet Union, that history had come to its conclusion and now free market capitalism and democracy would hold sway for the duration. That lasted only very brief time. There will always be those, waiting in the wings for the opportunity to challenge those who have held sway, and Iran is only one.

If this is the end of history it will not be because the American dream has gone international. It will be because the genie we let out of the bottle on August 6, 1945 has made its final mischief.

And still we see a long line of those eager to name 1600 Pennsylviania Avenue as their address.

Sacre blue!

Approval

Last Wednesday night at my writing group I wrote a piece that was as satisfying and - if I may boast - as good as anything I have written there previously. I am seriously considering using it as the basis of my Zone Note next week, the piece of writing I send out most weeks to an audience that has grown to something over 550 readers.

Here's the issue: it is not only revealing but it has some salty language, liberal use of what we now refer to as the F word.

But it works. The F word belongs in the piece and the revelations are hardly prurient, just, well, revealing.

My most recent book - God Knows; It's Not About Us - is far more revealing really. But there is something about a book that provides more distance than a piece of writing that goes straight into people's mail boxes when I press the send button. When I travel around hawking the book, I am sometimes asked about the parts that are somewhat raw - mentioning body parts and feelings about them and people in general. I take the fiction option. The book is a novel, I say. And it is, because even though much of the book - not all by a large measure - is taken from my own life and would be recognized by those who know me, I felt free to take that experience and do with it as I please. Thus creating that genre - the fiction memoir - that annoys so many who feel writing should stick to the proven categories and not cross boundaries.

But the piece I am considering sending out with the press of a button next week has many dimensions that give me pause. I already get bounce messages from some systems that refuse mail that goes to more than some fixed number of recipients. And maybe the F word will clog many more filters.

But the worst part is wondering what readers will think of me. Probably a third of those who receive these notes are people I don't know. People write and ask me to put their friend or relative on, someone to whom they have been forwarding them and who would like to receive them directly. But I feel more safe distance from them than from those I do know.

You see I used to be a parish pastor. My role saved me from being seen clearly for who I am. I am no more profane or sensationalist now than I was in my 30 years as a pastor, bt I no longer have that heavy role through which people filtered me in their own minds. Because they assumed I must be pious, they heard what I said and read what I wrote as pious.

I never once used the F word in a sermon.

Maybe that's why the past 10 years, writing as the spirit moves me rather than as I think a congregation can tolerate, has felt like such freedom.

Look for the Zone Note.