OFFENSIVE ART

Several years ago the world recoiled in disgust when the Taliban blew up the statues of Buddha carved into an Afghan mountainside. More recently the press bemoaned the fact that ISIS was engaging in the systematic destruction of ancient artwork and architecture in Iraq and Syria. When vandals destroyed the piece of “art” known as “Piss Christ,” (a crucifix submerged in urine), the act was decried in the press. In our enlightened age we cannot tolerate those intolerant souls who want to do away with artwork that they find offensive—except when the enlightened and tolerant are offended by the artwork. Then it is okay to tear it down. For years now the enlightened and tolerant have been militantly seeking to eradicate crosses, Nativity scenes, and displays of the Ten Commandments. In Gainesville right now, there is a move afoot to tear down “Old Joe,” the 112-year-old statute of a Confederate enlisted man. “Old Joe” is probably not on a par with the mountainside Buddhas for artistic merit, but he’s miles ahead of “Piss Christ.”

Ironically, “Old Joe” is looked upon as a symbol of slavery, when he symbolizes men who were secondary victims of slavery. What do I mean by that? The majority of the rank-and-file enlisted men of the Confederate Army were not slave owners but were poor dirt farmers fighting a war to preserve an institution that kept them in poverty just as surely as it kept Blacks in chains. Anyone familiar with Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America knows that he saw the antebellum South as an impoverished backwater compared to the North. What was the root cause of such poverty in the South? Slavery. The South was like Rome at the time of Julius Caesar. All the good land was gobbled up in the Latifundia, huge plantations worked by gangs of slaves, and the Latifundia reduced the free peasant farmers to abject poverty.  That was the first way that “Old Joe” was a victim of slavery.

The moneybags who owned the plantations started the war to preserve slavery, and then they called on “Old Joe” to fight it. So thousands of “Old Joes” marched off to war and died in order that the plantation owners could maintain the status quo—which meant “Old Joe” was fighting to keep himself near the bottom of the social pyramid. If it wasn’t clear at the beginning of the war, it was clear at the end, when the Confederacy instituted a draft and granted exemptions to anyone who owned 20 or more slaves. I’ve been doing some reading in the 70+ volume compilation of the records of the Union and Confederate Armies, and I’ve noticed that after the Confederate draft was inaugurated, desertions from the Confederate Army skyrocketed.

 “Old Joe” can’t seem to catch a break from anyone. Before the Civil War he was kept in poverty by slavery. During the Civil War he was exploited as cannon fodder by the slave-owning class. Today he is reviled by the enlightened and tolerant because he “symbolizes” slavery, an institution that victimized him. You may ask, “Well, if he didn’t intend to defend slavery, why did he fight?” In the PBS documentary Ken Burns’ Civil War, Shelby Foote gives one “Old Joe’s” explanation. A bedraggled Confederate who had been captured by Union soldiers, was asked by his captors, “You’re not rich. You don’t own any slaves.  Why are you fighting us?” he replied, “Because you’re down here.” Probably not the most profound analysis, but very few “Old Joe’s” were well-educated.

MISSING THE POINT IN ORLANDO

President Obama’s speech on the tragedy in Orlando included the following statement: “And I’ve directed [the FBI] that we must spare no effort to determine what -- if any -- inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups.”[1] I propose to save the FBI a tremendous amount of effort by pointing out the obvious:

[A]. ISIS has called for lone wolf terror attacks on the US during Ramadan.[2]

[B]. June 5, 2016 to July 5, 2016 is Ramadan.

[C]. Omar Mateen called 911 and pledged allegiance to ISIS before shooting up the Pulse Club. 

Points [A], [B], and [C] lead inescapably to the conclusion:

[D]. Omar Mateen was inspired by ISIS to commit this terrorist act.

Not once during his speech did President Obama mention ISIS or its call for lone wolf attacks during Ramadan. Instead he focused on gun control. Is he blind? The problem with people like Omar Mateen is not gun control, it’s radical control. 

Omar Mateen was obviously dedicated to the proposition that he was going to take out as many people as he could, and he didn’t care if he died in the process. He didn’t need a gun. How, you might ask, could he have killed so many people if he had no guns? HINT: Timothy McVeigh didn’t need a gun. Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev didn’t need guns. Countless numbers of Middle Eastern suicide bombers haven’t needed guns. 

Our Federal government has displayed a remarkable ability to spend untold billions of dollars implementing the wrong solutions for various problems, and I believe that running willy-nilly around the landscape disarming people is the wrong solution for people like Omar Mateen, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Eliminating ISIS would be a good start on solving the problem, and for most of the folks in the Middle East, that would be a welcome solution. But first we have to recognize that groups like ISIS are the problem.

POSTSCRIPT: The President did say one thing that I fully agree with. "[A]ttacks on any American -- regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation -- is an attack on all of us and on the fundamental values of equality and dignity that define us as a country."

DOWN THE DRAIN WITH DONALD AND BARAK

If we ever needed evidence that politics in America is taking us down the drain to the everlasting septic tank, it is the latest from the Donald and the White House. Trump proclaims that he's going to ban all Muslims from coming to this country, and the White House says he's a terrible person for saying that, and besides--he has fake hair.

I can't even begin to describe how out of touch with the requirements of law the Donald's statement is. One of the founding principles of the American republic was and is--freedom of religion. I shudder to think what might happen to this country if someone with as little grasp of the requirements of law as the Donald seems to have ever gets to be president.

As for the White House. Why don't they stop name-calling, talking about people's personal appearance, filling out their March Madness brackets, trying to bully NFL teams into changing their names, shooting off their mouths about breaking news before they have all the facts, etc., etc., and try to look out for the best interests of the country for a change?

One small example of things left undone while the March Madness bracket gets filled out: If the White House had been paying attention about a year ago and done what was necessary to stamp out ISIS when it was a nascent organization [read "put boots on the ground"], instead of creating a power vacuum which Russia happily stepped in to fill, then we wouldn't be having the domestic terror problem we've got now and ISIS would be a distant memory. I guess it's more fun to talk about the Donald's hairpiece than to do something productive to provide for the common defense.

UNINTENDED AND UNANTICIPATED CONSEQUENCES IN IRAQ

When George W. Bush began talking about taking military action against Saddam Hussein, I thought it was not a good idea, but not for any of the reasons I typically hear bandied about by those who criticize the decision. Saddam was not a nice man, but he maintained stability in the region. By toppling him we would destabilize the region, and we would have to make a long-term, South Korea-esque  commitment to keeping stability. We change leadership every four years, and I doubted the stick-to-it-iveness of subsequent administrations.

Every action has unintended and unanticipated consequences, and toppling Hussein was no exception. The unanticipated consequence was the complete collapse of the Iraqi government. With Hussein gone, the government just vanished and there was no centralized leadership to deal with—we were confronted with the unappealing prospect of trying to oversee the building of a new government out of chaos and anarchy. In many ways the situation we confronted was like the situation confronted by the Romans in Iberia after the Second Punic War. When the Romans destroyed the Carthaginian government in Iberia they created a power vacuum that it took 40 years and gallons of Roman blood to fill. The early Romans, however, never lacked stick-to-it-iveness and they ultimately prevailed. In Iraq we never intended to create a power vacuum, never expected to have to pay the bill in time and blood to fill it, and not even the Bush Administration was willing to voice a commitment to seeing the job through to the end.

The unintended consequence was the increasing militancy of Iran. Look at a map. Iraq is to the west of Iran, and Afghanistan is to the east. After the invasion of Iraq the U.S. Military occupied both countries. Put yourself in the shoes of the Iranian theocracy. America has taken down a dictatorship to your immediate west and a theocracy to your immediate east. Do you feel threatened? What are the two classic responses to threats? Flight or fight. Flight is impossible, so what is left? The Iranian government begins to [1] figuratively pound its chest and threaten the threatener (us) and [2] work to undermine our increasingly feeble efforts at reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I didn’t see either of these consequences coming. All I foresaw was the need to invest years and years of effort into the reconstruction of Iraq and the basic unwillingness of subsequent administrations to make that investment.  I, like everyone else, am better at hindsight than foresight. You don’t, however, need 20/20 hindsight to see that if we had maintained an adequate troop commitment to Iraq that ISIS would never have blossomed and grown.

Bush sowed the seeds of anarchy by invading Iraq, and Obama cultivated them by allowing the rise of ISIS. Bush’s mistake was to create a situation which required a commitment so lengthy and costly that subsequent administrations would be unwilling to follow through. We had a pretty good handle on things when Bush left office, but we would lose it if troops were withdrawn on the unrealistic timetable the Bush administration had set. Obama’s mistake was sticking to the unrealistic timetable. Somebody somewhere had to be telling him that if we did, things would go to Hell in short order. He had two options [1] stick to the unrealistic timetable and blame Bush for the resulting chaos, or [2] step up to the plate and stay the course. We have ISIS terror cells in the USA today because Obama took Option [1].

BULLIES

When I was in grade school I was fat, unathletic, studious, and a smart-mouth. All I needed to be the perfect nerd was a pair of glasses and a pocket protector. We all know what happens to unathletic, smart-mouthed nerds. They get bullied. I got bullied. I was completely aware of the conventional wisdom that bullies are cowards, but I didn’t see how it made any difference. Whether the bully was brave or cowardly, the fact that he was bullying me was a pretty good sign that he could beat me up. In the wild even the most courageous predators will go after the weak because they are easy targets. The same can be said for bullies.

A number of things happened to end the bullying. I stopped shooting my mouth off; I went out for football; and I got bigger and stronger. I don’t know how things are now, but back in the 1960’s high school football was a wonderful game. You didn’t have to be athletic to play the line. You just had to be big and strong. Although fat, unathletic smart-mouth nerds make prime targets for bullies; big, strong, taciturn football linemen do not.

Having had so much firsthand experience with bullies, I can readily recognize a bully when I see one. Barack Obama is a bully. That fact became evident early in his first term when we were about to go over the fiscal cliff. The Republicans came to him seeking a budget compromise, and he told them "It's my way or the highway." He was in a win/win situation. If the Republicans caved in, he would win. If we went over the fiscal cliff the press would blame the Republicans and he would win. He won and our credit rating took a hit. I won’t catalog all the examples of his bullying tactics, but I will mention one of the latest. He said the Washington Redskins ought to change their name. They refused, and he had their trademark rescinded.

 

On the domestic front Obama is a formidable bully. But remember the conventional wisdom? Bullies are supposed to be cowards. Obama lives up to the conventional wisdom in foreign affairs. Although he bullies Israel because he sees them as dependent on the U.S., he knuckles under to other bullies like Vladimir Putin. As ISIS grew into a formidable threat he bullied al-Maliki into resigning as prime minister of Iraq by withholding aid to the Iraqis. Now that ISIS has matured into a serious threat, he can’t seem to decide upon a strategy for dealing with them.

What we need in the White House now is a courageous leader, not a bully. I sincerely hope that we can survive relatively unscathed for the next two years, and I will welcome the next president whoever he or she may be. If we are lucky (or wise) our next president will be courageous enough to confront and defeat our foreign enemies.