© Merle Harton, Jr. | About | XML/RSS

We don't do nothing wrong.  Today Peter Lem at the American Friends Service Commission alerted me that 92,000 military service members received letters this week announcing that they will soon "rotate" into Iraq next year, as the Bushevik administration plods along with its "stay the course" policy. The AFSC has also updated its Wage Peace Movie.

At the same time, this is the first anniversary of the swift destruction of the city of Fallujah and the US faces renewed accusations that it used chemical weapons against the civilian population during the November 2004 bombardment there. On Tuesday Democracy Now! broadcast a searing debate on the use of white phosphorus as a chemical weapon in the attack on Fallujah, although that charge was made a year ago by witnesses.¹ On Wednesday they followed that with a devastating interview with Robert Fisk on the growing reputation of the US as a nation of gruesome torturers, from which we are entitled to infer that our president ("We do not torture")² is either a liar or an idiot ... um, well, take your pick.

1.  Asia Times, November 20, 2004. For a horrifying look at this issue in an investigative film documentary, you should view Sigfrido Ranucci's film Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre available in podcast at truthout.org.
2.  AP, ABC News, November 7, 2005.

Dieter's woes.  Pity my German friend Dieter (pronounced dee-ter). He just can't get a break. He's a writer who specializes in cookbooks and travel manuals, but his main literary gems can't seem to capture their main audience. First there was Dieter's Travel Guide, which took the reader to exotic and hard-to-reach travel destinations, complete with photographs that were almost erotic in their visual appeal. And then he wrote his most excellent culinary sampler, Dieter's Cookbook, a volume of international specialty dishes served up with frequent excesses of sultry, expensive spices. But in each case the only people buying the books were readers who also happened to be interested in diets. Poor Dieter.

You can't get to the narrow gate by the middle road.  At the college on Friday we held our annual program advisory committee meeting, which involved having a select group of industry professionals meet with our students to answer their questions about career availability, job-search suggestions, etc., and then having them meet with us over lunch to talk about likely improvements to our courses, course selections, degree program offerings, and so forth. During lunch we chatted about this and that and then, at my table, as the chatter moved to corporations and their impact on jobs in upstate New York, one of the men started complaining about outsourcing and how it's affected jobs and taxes in the region. I said that all large, public, shareholder-owned corporations are whores, and what else did you expect from them? (It's so nice not working any longer in higher-ed administration: being on the faculty allows me the luxury of saying things like this.) And everyone around the table, without batting any eyelashes, all nodded approvingly—and then we just went on to some other topic. It's a tough issue to tackle, but I'll bet that they all went home and sneaked a peek at their investment portfolios, oblivious to the connection between corporate governance in the US and how everybody's 401(k) plan keeps this whole system going and going. Instead of working to grow more small businesses, we watch with nervous glee as big business vacuums up resources in our neighborhoods, and then moves along to the next.

But this isn't about big business, public stock ownership, or even about curriculum advisors. It's about how we make the compromises we do, and how we keep on making them, even after we see ourselves soiled by the consequences of our choices. As Christians, the effect of these ongoing compromises is the decimation of a culture of compassion, love, and good works and its reconstruction into a culture of greed, hatred, and dark deeds. After the waters parted in New Orleans and the hidden poor were exposed for the world to see, I suppose we are left to watch, much like voyeurs, as our representative government votes to take from our underprivileged and give it over to those who have much already.

On Thursday night, the US Senate voted to reduce the federal deficit by $35 billion. This is good, yes? Well, okay, but it does this by cutting federal spending on prescription drugs, agriculture, students loans, and tightens Medicaid programs—oh, and it also opens up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The House version of this deficit-reduction effort is perhaps more ambitious, saving $54 billion by cutting Medicaid, food stamps, student loans, subsidies for agriculture, and child support enforcement; in addition to Medicaid cuts, it would permit states to require premiums and co-pays from the recipients.¹

Instead of moving to stem the blood flow in Iraq, as that hopeless conflict takes down the US economy and what's left of honor in Western Civilization, our government prefers to take the smooth, middle road, in a limousine driven by big business.²

1.  Washington Post, Friday, November 4, 2005, A01.
2.  And it does this even at the expense of the very military force it needs to keep in the Middle East. While National Guard supplies are below full strength nationwide, Guard units in Illinois and Missouri are badly underequipped, with losses of critical vehicles, radios, and night-vision devices, putting these states in vulnerable positions in the event of natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Units in these states are also missing equipment necessary for training. Illinois has only 4 percent of the medium trucks required by military standards; Missouri has only 28 percent. Most of the Guard equipment (64,000 items) is still in Iraq. See the St Louis Post-Dispatch, November 2, 2005.