Update no.263

Update from the Heartland

No.263

18.12.06 – 24.12.06

Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

To all,
Merry Christmas to our friends of the Christian faith.
Someday, may we know peace on Earth and truly good will toward all people.
May God bless you all.

At 07:00 EST, Thursday, 21.December, Raytheon CEO Bill Swanson and Raytheon Aircraft CEO Jim Schuster made the public announcement that Raytheon “intends to sell Raytheon Aircraft Company to Hawker Beechcraft Corporation, a new company formed by Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, an affiliate of Goldman Sachs, and Onex Partners.” The following day, the Wichita Eagle’s front page, banner headline was “Beechcraft is Back.” The sale price was US$3.3B. The deal should be closed and final in the first half of 2007 – regulatory wickets and all – and will take the company private. The current executive management team will remain and report to a separate board established by the partnership. Goldman Sachs was a major investor in Adams Aircraft – the new start-up company – and, Onex, a Canadian capital investment company, is in a partnership that bought Qantas Airlines, and they bought the Boeing Wichita Commercial Division, now known as Spirit Aviation. So far, this looks like a pretty good deal. The next six months to a year should tell the story.

The last four months have been rather nightmarish. The best description for this nightmare seems to be a T-shirt caption:
FAA Charter –
We're not happy,
until you're not happy.
As such, the FAA must be ecstatic. Any good, competent, engineering organization bases their decisions on facts, not on emotion, hunches and feelings. While a powerful urge exists to write a book about adolescent incompetence, such an exposé in the present situation is inappropriate. I shall resist the urge. As is so often the case, we must suffer in silence and endure this ridiculous trial. This too shall pass.

Al-Qaeda deputy chief of radical propaganda Ayman al-Zawahiri released another video tape message this week. He makes the usual threats against the United States and our allies as well as those trying to help find a peaceful solution in the Middle East. This tape is hardly noteworthy among all the other video and audio messages. However, one phrase did strike me as particularly illuminating as the mindset of these animals. Al-Zawahiri said, “The only path to freedom is holy war, and not by elections.” He went on to say, “Those who are trying to liberate the Islamic territories through elections based on secular constitutions, or on decisions to hand over Palestine to the Jews, will not liberate one grain of sand of Palestine.” It seems al-Qaeda is quite angry with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas because of the leader’s call for early elections to resolve the confrontation with the militant and obstructionist Hamas party as well as Abbas’ effort to find peace with his neighbor Israel. After all, peace between Israel and the Palestinians would eliminate one of the principle irrational justifications for war on the West. They do love blaming everyone else except themselves – sounds kind of adolescent doesn’t it?

Apparently President Bush is listening. He has begun talking about increasing troop strength in Iraq by 30,000 and increasing the size of the military, specifically the Army and Marine Corps. A day late and a dollar short, but hey, at least reality appears to be creeping into the mix. I do agree with the Joint Chiefs . . . a modest increase in deployed troops in Iraq will not alter the situation. My opinion: the mission must be changed and the troop strength substantially increased. If we are going to fight a war, let’s fight the damn war, and forget this freakin’ war on the cheap. About the only positive I can see in the current public disclosures might be a signal that the United States is not backing down or giving up on Iraq. In addition, refreshing signs in the Press began to sprout; a Tuesday Washington Post editorial titled “The Army We Need” presented a glimmer of optimism regarding efforts to raise the Army we need to fight the War on Islamic Fascism. Hope springs eternal.

On Friday, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1737 implementing sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, after two months of protracted debate, haggling and diplomacy during which Russia managed to strip off the serious provisions. I am not a proponent of sanctions for a host of reasons, and I seriously doubt sanctions will have any positive effect in this case. However, if they help the world feel better about the probable consequence, then so be it. I find it quite interesting that Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin chose to remind the world that the resolution was passed under Article 41 of the UN Charter. Article 41 involves measures not including military force and comes from Chapter VII of the Charter -- Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression. I am always fascinated by the optimism of Neville Chamberlain at times such as these.

Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas – covetous presidential candidate – decided to remove his senatorial block on the nomination of Judge Janet Neff to the Federal District Court. You may recall his ill-advised and yet enormously illuminating action to block the entire list of judicial nominations upon which Judge Neff was listed simply because she attended a private affirmation ceremony for the daughter of her long-time neighbor and family friend. [254] Even more egregious at the hands of dear ol’ Sam, he sought a blood-oath from Neff to recuse herself from any future homosexual related cases including same-gender marriage in trade for his allowing her nomination to proceed. Dear ol’ Sam apparently acquiesced when his colleagues convinced him he was way-out on a new precedent limb that could not be supported. The persistent question that keeps coming back to me is, what more proof do we need to establish his way-beyond uber-Right status and unworthiness for public office . . . set aside the presidency?

Leonard Pitts, nationally syndicated columnist with the Miami Herald, recently wrote an article titled, "My freedom linked to others -- including gays." <http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/leonard_pitts/16243773.htm>
He wrote, "I have yet to learn how to segregate my moral concerns. It seems to me if I abhor intolerance, discrimination and hatred when they affect people who look like me, I must also abhor them when they affect people who do not. For that matter, I must abhor them even when they benefit me. Otherwise, what I claim as moral authority is really just self-interest in disguise." Well said, Leonard. We can all take away a lesson from his words. Labels are for folks who cannot respect people as they are and need to place folks into nice, little, discreet bins so that they can be ignored or worse, discriminated against or violated in some strange infantile self-gratification process. As long as we do not act upon our bigotry to interfere with or impose upon another person’s equal rights to freedom, I can accept that bigotry; I don’t like it and I wish it was not so, but I can tolerate it – the price of freedom for each of us. The bottom line, respect others as we wish to be respected, and we will all get along fine.

Nine parishes of the Episcopal Church of the United States, in Virginia, decided they could no longer tolerate the liberal leanings of the church leadership, so they decided to secede and affiliate themselves with Archbishop Peter Akinola of the Episcopal Church of Nigeria. While this action is indeed within the rights and privileges of those parishioners, the event is nonetheless sad and only highlights an equally sad reality. These parishes of a church born of the American Revolution and based on all men being equal decided in their frame of reference that noble principle is not true. Making the sad event even worse, they chose to align themselves with a rabid homophobe and theocrat. As good Americans, they are entitled to their bigotry as long as they do not seek to impose their beliefs on other American citizens – as Akinola would seek to do.

Comments and contributions from Update no.262:
“As Marines, we should be the last to lose our nerve.”
My reply:
Indeed! Semper Fidelis.
My opinions are as a citizen, not as a Marine. If this Grand Republic needs me to bleed as a Marine, I shall do my duty in service to the Nation.

Another contribution:
“Why not allow two brothers, or any siblings, to marry and enjoy the benefits? The problem, you see, is in having granted married couples unequal protection in violation of the constitution. Instead of arguing about who may marry, we should eliminate all discriminatory treatment of unmarried citizen as compared to married. (Or was there some valid public policy for favoring classic marriage, such as for the proliferation of citizens, which may have been constitutional after all? But then, same sex marriage would not qualify, would it, unless it were for the purpose of adopting foreign children...) Just some old thoughts that began to form long before the homosexuals stole the beautiful word "gay" and insisted on rights that I didn't realize existed.”
My response:
Yes, I do see unequal protection in violation of not only the Constitution but the very principles of unalienable Rights upon which this Grand Republic was founded. While my advocacy for equal protection, equal rights and respect for a citizen’s fundamental right to privacy may suggest an unbounded condition, there are limits to even my liberal social opinions. My lines are derived from the public good and the boundary of the public domain. There are several elements of marriage that cross the boundary and thus are appropriate for public interest and concern – free, willing and informed choice; public health; and child welfare. The State has a proper, legitimate and just interest in those areas. Since marriage is predominately a private contract between consenting adults, the State must ensure that the participants are beyond the age of consent (or with the consent of parents), and that the participants are healthy, id est, not suffering from communicable diseases that could affect the spouse or children. The common law in most states provides for demonstrated commitment by cohabitation; I think the specified duration of that demonstration is too long in most cases. Intra-familial relationships present a multitude of potential public domain concerns from abuse of power to genetic in-breeding consequences, and thus warrant State intrusion. However, beyond those specific elements of public interest, the vast majority of inter-personal relationship factors is well beyond the proper public interest and should be excluded from public law.
The welfare of potential progeny presents the most difficult challenge as I have written numerous times. [161-4, 217, 260] Children have little protection from an abusive parent. The State’s intervention usually occurs or should occur when signs or indications of abuse present in the public domain. Where these arguments break down is the selective application, which then raises the equal protection concerns. I am and have been an outspoken advocate for children, and as a result, I am enormously intolerant of those parent(s) who abuse, neglect or fail to fulfill their societal responsibilities. My opinions go to the extreme to protecting children and prohibiting the procreative ability of any incompetent parent. Concomitantly, I cannot accept the equal protection violation when we have shown so little willingness to protect child and eliminate irresponsible parents. Let us truly protect the children first, and then we can talk about regulating private relationship contracts. Further, while I do accept the hereditary biological basis of procreation, I cannot support that model as the only acceptable family model when we have so many bad examples. There are simply just too many homosexual couples who have clearly demonstrated their exemplary performance as parents; we cannot and must not ignore that reality. In fact, I have yet to hear of any homosexual (or polygamous for that matter) couples producing criminals, serial killers or child abusers. There are certainly many heterosexual bad examples.
My point in all this is, let us allow people to live their lives as they see fit and judge individuals, couples and families by their public performance rather than against some arbitrary, notional, preconceived, pro forma metric.

Another contribution in a thread that began in Update no.261:
"To take exception, in this season of good will, I don't believe the 'American People have lost the will to win.' Rather, the strategy of the Bush administration in the war against Islamic fascism has always been questionable. Throwing increasing numbers of American troops into harm's way in an occupied country that has dissolved into anarchy, largely because of the American presence, guarantees the increasing escalation of internecine, inter-tribal, inter-religious rivalries within an emergent state (see Samuel Huntington) and a convulsive region.
"This is NOT a conventional war. We cannot defeat Osama and his ilk by dedicating massive manpower or equipment to an area of the world that holds such a special place for the three revealed religions--Judaism, Christianity and Islam. You cannot fight faith with bullets. Bullets create martyrs and martyrs inspire fanatics. And our military volunteers should not be asked to be ineffective sacrifices for a religious and ideological war that does not have the urgency of the principle players. Shiites against Sunnis. Shiites and Sunnis against the Jews."Americans already won this war in Iraq as it was defined initially. We steamrolled the Republican Guard, occupied the major cities, and captured Saddam in a miserable hole in the ground. And we verified there were no weapons of mass destruction. We ensured the Iraqi people their first opportunity in 50 years to elect a reasonably representative government--not effective, mind you, but representative.
"My take? Redeploy and initiate a serious war against terrorism. Return to Afghanistan as part of the NATO effort to eradicate the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Step up our efforts to cut off all support to the Wahabists and all groups and nations who embrace a resurrection of a medieval view of Islam and an Islamic caliphate. Demonstrate by word and action that the United States of America has solutions other than armed might to problems of global crises. Institute a Marshall Plan for all nations impacted by international terrorism and demonstrate an alternative. This country cannot counter the rigid and intractable views of Al Qaeda with rigid and intractable views. The greatest strength of America has always been openness and innovation."Let's hope the New Year will give us more hope."
My response:
As always, you offer some exceptional points for debate. We have borne witness to the failure of the current tactics in Iraq and to an extent Afghanistan, largely due to an ill-conceived notion of the leaner-is-better hypothesis of the former SecDef. The sectarian divisions within Iraq (indeed within virtually all the Middle Eastern nations) are certainly not new. The British experienced the reality nearly a century ago. Our failure lies in the gross underestimation of those divisions and overestimation of the power of freedom with people so encumbered by theocracy. So many of those tribes, sects, neighborhoods and such have no concept of what freedom means, and thus turn to the bravado machismo of their men folk for safety and security. The addition of modern munitions makes the consequent bloodletting all the more graphic and indiscriminate. Winning the peace in such an environment is predominately political, not military, in character, however, the political action has no hope of success without security on the ground. The control of each street, market, building and bridge must be maintained for the political to succeed, thus the requirement for a powerful, overwhelming military force. Playing musical hotspots with seriously limited combat forces was a tactic destined to failure . . . and this is not hindsight, but many of us predicted the consequence of Rummie’s misbegotten ideology. Such is life and death on the battlefield.
Again, as is so often the case, your thinking is clear, crisp and direct. Yes, indeedie, we are NOT in a conventional war, and bullets will not resolve a conflict of religion. I find myself largely in agreement with your hypothesis with one significant exception. The Marshall Plan worked because the Allies controlled the ground and the indigenous people wanted peace. I doubt the Marshall Plan could have or would have been successful without both. Maslow’s often-maligned hierarchy correctly suggests safety and security are just above the fundamental physiological needs -- without them, higher order social interaction becomes virtually impossible. We have few basic choices:
1. Commit overwhelming force to secure the ground to allow a political solution,
2. Fracture Iraq to establish sectarian aligned tribal regions or perhaps even separate nations, or
3. Abandon the region to let the chips fall where they may.
I like the Marshall Plan approach for a host of reasons. However, just as our choices are in order of our involvement, so to is the order of potential for success of a Marshall Plan solution. Regardless, we must penetrate the veneer of machismo to deal with the true root cause -- children being taught to hate, and clerics who encourage and foster that hatred. I do not imply a simplistic path, just a clear vision. We cannot reach the hearts & minds of peaceful people until we engage, neutralize or eliminate those intent upon evil.

My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)