The world cringed with the blaring news of the massacre of school children in Pakistan yesterday. Those of us with children and grand children could not have not been moved by such depraved atrocity. Last night while attending a Christmas program for my five year old grand daughter, Hopie, that is Ethiopian, the images of starvation, female manipulation and slavery flashed through my mind as tears welled in realizing how blessed we are to have her and for her to have us now as an American citizen with a whole life before her.
The link is from today's NY Times on this human tragedy and you can see that mothers are distraught in the midst of the bloodshed of innocent children at the hands of the Taliban. And then my mind whirls in realizing that Pakistan has been a strange, predictably unpredictable, dangerous and nuclearized nation that borders Afghanistan.
There are those, I am one, that believes Pakistan exists by playing all sides of the fence and was complicit in Bin Laden lasting as long as he did. Pakistan has been at the core of the loss of thousands of American lives so I have no particular compunction to support Pakistan's cause, place and certainly their leadership. I guess I believe they got what they pretty much deserved as a nation but still, the execution of 150 small children most of which were shot in the head at point blank range is horrifying at the thought.
But it, the massacre, forebodes now not what has happened but what will now happen. Today I have read a long article from Foreign Affairs Magazine interviewing a wide array of scholars both foreign and domestic on the US role in air strikes in Iraq and Syria asking the fundamental question, is America doing enough or too much in this ISIL war and yes, it is a war? The statistics indicate that there is no consensus on that question. About half feel air strikes alone are effective, yet they are predictably not, and the other half indicate American should and must play a heavier, more lethal role both in the air and on the ground in both Iraq and Syria for ISIL is growing and strengthening, in numbers and in financing and is certainly winning the media war.
America, as a nation, finds itself via the POTUS and his Administration and philosophy and stoked by the Reids and Pelosis and Hoyers on the Hill, in a time where America was in the early 1900s that ultimately led to World War I and our being sucked into that war unprepared. We went, we prevailed, we came home and we politically returned to a time of pulling the walls of the Atlantic and the Pacific up thus trying to ignore the reality of what was happening in Europe; especially with Germany led by Hitler as we know who the results of those events. As you know, I strongly believe history is the best predictor of future events and when I see America, war weary, yes, pulling those walls up trying to act like the Bogey man will go away and we will all be safer tomorrow.
See, I remember all too well getting stuck away from home on a business trip on 9/11 being 1,000 miles from my family and this strange, empty, crawling feeling that I needed to do something but was clueless as to what for I had to concept of what was really happening. When I finally got my wife on the phone all I knew to do was to tell her to to fill the car up with fuel and get five hundred dollars out of the bank and to stay home. That was like yesterday and in retrospect, what I hated most then and do now, was that sense of no control, no knowledge, no direction in a vortex of chaos and away from the people I was to protect. I hated that helplessness sensation.
I believe most Americans, today, are wrestling with that same sense of helplessness but then exacerbated by the poisoned political process that causes the weight of helplessness to quickly turn to disdain and anger. I am angry for I want my nation, my leadership to get something, anything, right for all I see is bungling, campaigning and Congressional chicken being played all the while our national credit card is over maxed now at over $18,000,000,000,000; yes count the zeros and much of that debt is owed by nations that does not like us and it is they that will determine our future for they hold our debt.
The massacre, is made more sickening by realizing that Sunnis are killing their own. That is dastardly and deserves capital response meaning annihilation of that threat for it is a metastasizing cancer. Wait, that is only the Taliban; let us not forget ISIL for the thought of late is that they are moving to unite instead of compete. The world is allowing that to happen via not creating a means to destroy. Yes, I am now convinced we, the world, has a global Islamic issue and not the small minority we have all been fed is the culprit. No, I believe the percentage of radical jihadists is much greater than we have been led to believe and we know from history the bloodletting religious wars elicit.
America is the ONLY nation of earth capable to blunting this cancer but still we watch the violins playing in Washington as the place burns which is a sick but applicable analogy. I sincerely do not see how this nation can exist another two years under this POTUS and his philosophies and now with the Republican majority in Congress, am quite disappointed with the initial initiative with the budget but hey, who should be surprised! But there is hope for I am looking to 2016 and who the Republican POTUS will be for that waiting line is pretty short right now.
What we, America, has been and have stood for and stood upon is no longer that America. That, for me, is the saddest epitaph of all. Is it recoverable? Too soon to call but certainly not under this stale, stagnant, inept leadership.
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