The Years of Being

Day 4: Quintipotentiality

Jan 4th, 2009 by chuckpuckett

Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man

Everyone knows DaVinci’s “Vitruvian Man”. There is, at first glance, a sort of four-way symmetry in the drawing: The four limbs radiate generally in four directions. In fact, the human body is often thought of in this four-way deconstruction. But closer inspection reveals that we are actually five-way creatures. The head springs out of the trunk like the two arms and two legs. Five radial aspects. We’re all more closely related to starfish than we think.

In fact, all mammals (and a great deal of the animal kingdom) shares in this five-pointed symmetry. The insects and the arachnids got distracted somehow, but for the most of us, it’s some variation on the starfish. No wonder Pythagorus was so enamored of the number 5 (it was, I believe the most sacred number).

And so, now we come to quintipotentiality, or perhaps “5-valued logic”. Historically (and mathematically, and, well, logically), logic has been construed as binary: something is true or false. There’s been talk of quantum computers, where (I think) the truth state is somehow supervalued (or superimposed, or collapsible), but regardless of the Heisenbergian (initial) Uncertainty, it stll devolves into True or False. When the observer finally takes a look at Schroedinger’s Cat, it’s either (0) Alive or (1) Dead.

But quintipotentiality, that’s a different world. The five limbs spread into 5 little limbs (fingers, toes, and the ears/eyes/nose). So when we count off our possibilities on our fingers, there should be five. And there are:

It’s Just False. One is not Zero. A is not B.
It’s Just True. One is One. A is A. So far, binary logic.
It’s Unknown. Or more completely, it’s Unknowable.
It might (possibly, likely) be True. I think so. Looks like it to me. Qualified Truth.
It might (possibly, likely) be False. I doubt it. Smells wrong. Wouldn’t bet on it.

These are the real possibilities we deal with. In fact, (4) and (5) take up more of our planning and suspecting and what-iffing and wonder what’ll happen than (1) and (2) ever do. The certainties are pretty much reserved for mathematics and Euclidean geometry. And (3), the absence of knowability, also represents a fairly small universe, or at least that seems (4)-ish to me (likely to be true that completely unknowable doesn’t come up very often).

Pythagoreans therefore would see this in their magic numbers.

In the beginning is One (or Nothing, for the Big Bang enthusiasts; both are equally miraculous in their infinite encompassing).

Somewhere, the one splits into Two, and the Binary Worlds emerge. Polar opposites, each attracting or repelling, in any case exerting forces upon the Universe. The Universe becomes a Biverse.

And immediately, the Two resolves into Three. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. Least, Greatest, Average. North, South, Equator. Whenever the Two emerges, the Third has to appear in order to satisfy the polarities. The Third is the Balance between the Extremes.

And hence, Five: Two + Three. The important numbers are all primes. In naming them primes, perhaps we knew more than we were aware. The Binary together with the Triad that the Polarities create gives us the Pentad. Which presents us with the Golden Mean, derived from the pentagram and the pentagon.

(What of Four you ask? Not as perfect: The Poles can beget intermediate opposites. North/South begets East/West. And Four is the first square. But all in all, not as intriguing, nor as compelling as the first four primes.)

Quintipotentiality. The Logic we live by.

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Day 2: BCS Playoff

Jan 2nd, 2009 by chuckpuckett

Okay, here’s a weighty topic to troble the counsels of the Wise, to cause tongues to wag and heads to nod in the Halls of Power.

Not.

But, as I prepare to watch the Sugar Bowl matchup between the Crimson Tide of Alabama and the Whoever-They-Are from Utah (how did this “matchup” happen? Utah plays football?), I find myself cogitating on the topic once again.

First of all, they’re playing the Sugar Bowl on January 2. The Creator of the Universe intended the Sugar Bowl to be played on New Year’s night. Any other time is as unnatural as Vanderbilt ever leading the SEC East. In fact, there has been, long before any of us can remember, a ritual intended for all MANkind, a sequence instituted by those who went before, and it goes thusly:

Attend a New Year’s Eve party and indulge in embarrassing excess.
Wake up in a daze on New Year’s morning. Turn on the Cotton Bowl. Generally not so much to watch the particular game, but to establish a “groove”.
Watch more games.
Sometime between lunch and supper, have a meal of black-eyed peas (hog jowl or some other portion of the pig, optional), turnip greens and, in the Deep South, cornbread.
Watch more games.
Finish it off with the Sugar and the Orange bowl, one of which, more often than not, determines the national championship.

Nowadays, New Year’s day is merely the beginning.

The BCS was invented to address the concerns of those who felt that the arbitrary match-up of the traditional bowls on a few occasions left the decision of who really was the national collegiate champion unsettled. But in fact, since its inception, it seems that BCS outcomes have only intensified the arguments and increased the ambiguity.

Here’s a potential solution, one that I first heard articulated yesterday by Todd Blackledge (during a bowl game). Todd is the ABC/ESPN commentator and former Penn State quarterback who also does the popular “Todd’s Taste of the Town” segment during the weekly game. He actually visited the Waysider in Tuscaloosa this year (THE best biscuits in the universe), for which act I personally absolve him for being a Penn State player. Anyway, the idea Todd promoted was this:

Extend the BCS one addtional week.
On New Year’s Day, four (maybe five) “granddaddy” bowl games would pit the top 8 (or 10) teams in the nation, as determined by the last polling.
Using some mechanism similar to however rankings are done now, from the top 4 (or 5) winners choose 2 teams that would compete for the National Championship a week later.

It’s simple, and it preserves the Ancient Ritual described above. New Year’s Day is condensed, important games are played that day, and all of them now are imbued with added significance. By extending the decision a single extra week, we avoid the “endless” playoff that seems to be anathema to so many. The bowls are preserved; the National Championship is not one of the traditional bowls (okay, you want to call it a bowl, call it the NCAA National Championship Bowl).

Yes, there is still some potential ambiguity in the selection of the final two from a field of 4 or 5. But the benefits of reclaiming New Year’s Day, as well as avoiding the playoff series, more than offsets that. In any case, the top teams do get a last chance to prove their case, and that is infinitely preferable to the current situation.

So. I’m all for it. Question is: how do we convince those who make such decisions? Where can I write or call? What web site would track it? Who can I email? What petition to sign.

Because I’m ready. In fact, I wish it were already true, before Bama tees it up against what’s-their-names from Utah.

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Day 1: The Revels Past

Jan 1st, 2009 by chuckpuckett

The signal fires are dark, the fireworks are all spent, the noisemakers are quiet and shouting is all over. Once again, we have triumphed against the Long Dark, winter has turned her frigid corner, and, imperceptibly, but inexorably, the days will in fact lengthen. The annual battle against the Frost Giants is again won, the solstice has spun on the axis of the world, and the year is safely turned back toward the warming time.

Christmas and New Year’s are over.

As my theatre friend Sandi said the other day, time to “strike Christmas”. Now January waits, all hollowed out with cold rain. Time to make the Resolves. These are not just empty gestures, mind you, regardless of how they do or do not fare as actual life modifications. It’s important to make the statements, to get them down on paper, even if it’s virtual, digitial paper. The act of resolving implies that we have not completely ceded everything to entropy, that we are willing to at least pretend to oppose that thermodynamic Ragnarok.

Anyway, here is my list.

To say what I mean, not what I think others want to hear. Circumlocution is an easy trap that avoids confrontation.
To say what I mean, but in my own special manner of speaking. Circumlocution is, after all, part of my DNA.

(1) and (2) are summarized in a lyric of the Bimini Road tune “Hopefully Paranoia“:

Do it with a flair or it’s forgotten
Do it with a flair and it’s a lie

To tell Carol I love her as often as possible.
To continue a proscription I adopted a couple of months ago, after hearing that my friend Richard had started it. That is, to just stop drinking during the week. (Okay, the last couple of weeks have been revelrous, and indulgent, and I ignored the denial. Although I must say I had a better New Year’s Eve than I’ve had in years, mainly by virtue of limiting myself to 3-4 beers. I even managed to stay up and bid farewell to all the guests. At least all the adult guests). The daily glass or two of wine is perfidious and sneaky. Ultimately, it reduces focus.
To continue another regimen change begun last fall: Heavy emphasis on vegetables, especially fresh and whole. Fish, yes, and occasionally a bit of chicken. But no beef nor pork. This has had beneficial effects, and makes sense to continue. Oh, I’m no fool: We just ate the magical New Year’s feast, which consists of blacked-eyed peas, turnip greens, cornbread and pork chops (pork loin this year). I will not spit in the face of the annual propitiation for Good Fortune. Yes, I know it’s usually black-eyed peas and hog jowl (or some other unpalatable part of the pig), but we Pucketts long ago supplanted jowl with chop, and have not been disappointed.
Closely associated with the previous resolve, I resolve to lose fifty pounds by mid-year. No, really, I mean it this time. And yes, I said fifty. Got to happen.
To write in this blog regularly. No, really, I mean it this time.
To create something new every day. A poem, a song, a scene in a play, a chapter in a book. God forbid, a piece of software. Something.

So that’s my list. And here’s my creation for the day.

The Beckoning Darkness

Nothing holds our attention like the shadow once seen
Before our notice revealed it
It could have touched us on the shoulder
And quickly turned away on our turning to
And we’d have known nothing.
What a trickster, what impish fienditry.

But the one time it moves too slow
And, lo! We catch it first just beyond
The eye’s glimpse. Now we know
There is something there, some ungrippable
Mist, wavering at first, but solid if we stand
As still as night and peer closer and gaze
Deeply and face squarely.

Is that a bony finger, pointing where?
Is that a gloamy eye, glaring across dark fields?
Indistinct, does it say come, or warn to flee?
The strength is knowing it exists.
What it desires is pointless,
Where it points has no desire.

Wait, and then walk where you will.
Once revealed, there is no fear greater
Than the knowledge found in still water.

Chuck Puckett, 1 January, 2009

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The Hopes and Fears

Dec 29th, 2008 by chuckpuckett

On Christmas Eve, St. Johns (Episcopal) Church in Decatur had its Christmas Eve midnight service. The choir and the strings performed a wonderful musical prelude, and then we celebrated a Christmas eve service appropriate to the Episcopal church. The rector (Richard Lawson) preached on the lyrics of “O Little Town Of Bethlehem”, in particular the line: “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight”.

And a long-time stirring came to me, prompted by that lyric. I recalled that it has always affected me in a mysterious way. As I wrote on my service leaflet (the place I write all my thoughts during sermons), “these lines have always given me, even when I was a young child, a sense of glory dimly perceived.”

During this sermon, I thought of reasons that these lines have always produced this discomfiture in me. And Christmas Eve night, I think I finally articulated, for myself at least, why. In the selfsame moment that the King has arrived in the world, all things that are now filled with an impending and now possible salvation are also fraught with the possibility that salvation may not be forthcoming. That the Divine, now in human form, might stray, as humans can, from what should be an ordained final conclusion. The human doubt that rises in Gesthemane might actually overrule the purposes of the Incarnate Deity.

God has risked everything on the essence of being Human, a state of being that is capable of sublime greatness, but also wretched horror. It’s now possible. God has rolled the dice in making himself human. And that fear, the fear that this plan might fail, is equal in stature to the hope of its success. And the attendant glory. All is risked, and it is a true risk, a cosmic risk, a risk for the integrity of the Universal Fabric. But a risk also for the Greatest Hope.

This realization has required years of experience, reading and contemplation to form. It doesn’t seem likely that these fairly complicated thoughts underpinned my childhood reaction to the carol. Except perhaps in the possibility that images and thoughts that come to us in the fullness of life can somehow reverberate back and forth along the enitirety of our life’s worldline. That we are formed (and informed) not only by what we have done, but what we will do.

In any case, I do know that Christmas has always affected me deeply. I can never come to the season, with all its ancient and mythic overtones of loud revels bravely beating back the solstice darkness, without at the same time knowing that in this beginning lies the full flowering of the story’s end. That innocence and birth and Hosannahs in the sky are etched in juxtaposition against the horror of Golgotha, a scene that cannot avoid being a spectral backdrop to the Nativity.

But all of it, the encompassed Whole, contains a deeper glory and the possibility of deeper joy and hope. Indeed, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

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Barackabee Huckabama in Iowa

Jan 3rd, 2008 by chuckpuckett

Just a quick note in the wake of the Iowa caucus results. Even though I stand by my previous posting, with its claim that Iowa and New Hampshire should not be interpreted as political weathervanes, I really am impressed with two aspects of the Iowa outcome.

America is more deeply divided than ever. Even in the heart of the heartland, you could not find two candidates whose views are more diametrically opposed, and who so completely represent opposite constituencies, than you find in Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama.
And yet, at the same time, like the rocket’s red glare arching aross the firmament, you could not find clearer proof that politics in this country has taken a careening twist off the beaten path, a twist for the better. Because as different as these two men are from each other, they are both infinitely more different than their competitors in their respective parties. And that distinction, that radical departure from the norm, is, I think, much more important than the difference that divides the two winners. Because it implies, to the extent that it holds in subsequent primaries, a deep need on the part of the American electorate for something not only different, but something truly hopeful and uplifting. In their own individual, and vastly different approaches, both of these men offer that.

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Michael Moore likes Edwards

Jan 2nd, 2008 by chuckpuckett

Just received an email letter from Michael Moore, presenting his take on the Democratic candidates here on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. As usual, Moore pretty much lays out the issues in comprehensive and comprehendable terms. He compares the three front-runners (Clinton, Obama and Edwards), apologetically dismissing Hillary as too much for the war, and not able to get behind Obama, as a candiate not having enough substance. He implicitly endorses Edwards as the candidate who has firmly established his campaign as an all-out attack on Big Business and the Industrial-Politico-Military Complex. The norm for an American politico is to run in lockstep with these entities. As Moore points out, it is only someone willing to buck these oppressively powerful forces who can ever hope to overcome the stranglehold they possess on our lives.

As Carol and I have said so many times, “God bless Mike Moore”.

I myself like Richardson, and for many of the same reasons Moore implicitly touts Edwards. But I admit, Edwards is also high on my list. And I’m sorry: I just don’t trust Hillary. I’ll vote for her against anyone the Republicans throw up (my choice of words is quite specifically made in this case), because I don’t trust Giuliani either (besides obviously not being able to spell his name), or Romney, and that’s it for any even potentially moderate Republican. Huckabee is at least from Arkansas, he ought to run on that premise: “From the same state as the last good president”. But come on. Having Jesus as your running mate puts him so far out that he should be frightening even to Republicans.

So many of these guys, on both sides, are frightening. Frightening for what they say, and in many cases, even more frightening for what they do not. The latter is mainly a characteristic of Democrats, who, as a class of humanity, have repeatedly chosen to NOT say important things, for fear of… what? Being less of a man (or less of a woman) than the Republicans? Dont they understand that, finally, by God, that’s what a majority of Americans want?

But Edwards and Richardson are not frightening. They make sense, they present reasonable plans of action to at least start us on the long road out of the Bush quagmire. I wouldn’t mind an Edwards/Richardson ticket (or reverse it).

In any case, the question will not be decided in Iowa, nor even New Hampshire, really. The first real test will be South Carolina, and to see how that Southern strategy plays (and where, let’s face it, Edwards should be fairly strong, at least among Democrats). And then it’s California and Texas and Florida, the ones who have the votes, and where the real decisions will be made.

No, I don’t think Iowa and NH really count for much, they are in many ways purely symbolic. Especially this time around, it’s such a national referendum, and both of those states represent such specialized (and small) populaces, they just don’t have that “finger on the pulse” importance. And I don’t think “momentum” counts for much either, at least not from these places.

No, this time around it’s the War and the Economy (which indirectly implicates and involves Health Care). And all three are gonna snowball into… something. Something significant. But what that something is ultimately defeats my prognostication abilities to describe. Other than the its one huge, overwhelming, most important characteristic:

It’s NOT George W.

Counting down, baby. And thanking God.

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New Year’s Day, 2008

Jan 1st, 2008 by chuckpuckett

Ah, the bleak midwinter. It’s cold and blustery and austere and dark… finally! The time has been so long out of joint, I had despaired of cursed sprites to ever set it right again. It is good to have these Ragnarokian times, these bleak and severe days. How else to appreciate the warmth and fragrance when they (inevitably) return? Like Kahlil Gibran, whose book of poetry “The Prophet” so captured the imagination of many people in my generation, I understand that it is the polarities of nature, and of the human spirit, that make it possible to gauge what we do, and what is done to us. How we feel, and how we make others feel.

The inevitable list of resolves is also part of this dark teatime of the soul: health, creativity, interpersonal give and take. I will not enumerate them in this forum, and besides, they don’t change that much. Perhaps if I were better at attaining a few of them, I could add some new ones. But until that glorious day, the old resolves will serve me well. They are like old friends, or rather, old clothing, well-known and well-understood.

I wrote these lines the other day, in another context, but I’ll repeat them here. And also make at least one new resolve: to pick back up the gauntlet of the daily blog. It is more a matter of will and application, and less of needing something to say. The latter I never lack, the former are things I lack more than not. Ah well. Writing and January: they go well together, as long as the writing remains stark.

The poem.

Midwinter Muse

There is something primal and ancient in all this.
Something reminiscent of forces larger
And surer than those we consciously admit.
Life itself withdraws, and only the barest flicker is left
To give evidence it still exists. But the Solstice is past,
And we will now bravely revel against the Darkness,
A shivaree whose volume and sheer audacity
Eternally guarantees that the flicker shall quicken again,
Dormant now beneath the frost, but eternally returning.
The evergreens are sure sign of an ages-old contract.

Deep Magic presses against a cold windowpane and whispers
“I know… and I have not forgotten.”

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Day 102: A Hell of Heaven

Sep 13th, 2007 by chuckpuckett

I do not believe in Hell, which is a shame.

[Any fundamentalist Christian who reads this would readily agree. “It’s a shame, all right,” they’d say. “Otherwise you’d be making some effort to avoid damnation, but you’re not, so off to Hell with you.” But then, I don’t think any Christian fundamentalists will ever read this; ergo, no reason to be concerned.]

I set out on the road to not believing in Hell in junior high or thereabouts. Actually, I started out on the road to eternal damnation by not believing in eternal damnation. I never could understand how a finite amount of sin could justify an infinite amount of punishment. Seemed a bit petty for a Being chalked up with Creating the Entire Universe. Pulling out that brick eventually resulted in the whole Christian edifice, as it was described in the Methodist church in mid-20th century Alabama, collapsing into utter ruin, at least in my mind. As it fell, other bricks were jettisoned: Hell, bodily resurrection, virgin birth, original sin, and a whole host of easy targets tumbled onto the desert sands.

I’ve since reconstructed my own form of christianity, but it still lacks a Hell. Atheism was never an option, and agnosticism is ultimately so unsatisfying. If you wait for proof of divinity, if you require the Godhead to satisfy your personal curiosity with a demonstration… well, eternal damnation may not make sense, but some things can still seem to take an infinite amount of time.

So, given this theological prologue, why should I consider my unbelief in the fiery pit a shame? Simply put, I think that is the only place George W. Bush (and Cheney, and Rumsfeld, etc.) would ever have been made to serve time (not eternal!) for the grievous and manifold sins they have perpetrated on the American people, the Iraqi people, and the World in general.

I have been accused (in these pages, actually) of being a water boy for the DNC, which is a little silly. I am not a registered Democratic, I vote in every election for the person, as I understand him (or her), who most nearly coincides with my world view. And there have been many elections where that overlap has been decidedly minimal; still, between (or among) candidates, it has always been at least discernible. I have voted independent (Anderson in ‘80), and even Republican (Governor Riley in Alabama’s last election: I think he’s done a decent job, is fiscally responsible, and sees no need to legislate morality, at least not too obtrusively). I imagine that’s more “cross-voting” than many Republicans will have done.

The point of my lack of party affiliaiton? Far from being a DNC water boy, I am chagrined and appalled at the lack of political backbone in the Democrat Party. There will almost certainly never be any form of censure, much less the impeachment, conviction and imprisonment, that BushCheneyRumsfeld so overwhelmingly deserve. The Democratics just won’t stand up and do the right thing. For every Feingold or Obama, there are far too many Conyers and Reids and Kerrys.

The fact that Bill Clinton was actually impeached, and brought to trial in the Senate, for what was essentially a dalliance and simple lies about his behavior, while W. Bush will never even be reprimanded, that is also a “shame”. Like Bob Dylan said, in another context,

“I’m ashamed
To live in a land
Where justice is a game.”

George W. Bush has lied, not only to Congress, but to the country and to the world, about the reasons for his Iraq war; has mismanaged the war with an ineptitude that is criminal; has ignored the Constitution with impunity and undermined our rights as citizens; has illegally wire-tapped his own countrymen; has issued more than 500 signing statements to laws that he disagrees with, flouting his obligation to enforce the law, thumbing his nose at Republican and Democrat Congresses alike. Clinton was impeached for having oral sex in the Oval office, and then covering it up. W. Bush will get a complete pass for trampling the Bill of Rights, reversing the intent of the Freedom Of Information Act, sucking up the budget surplus left him by Clinton and driving us into the deepest debt the country has ever known.

No, Bush will not be punished, not ever in this lifetime, not even by any self-inflicted dark tea-time of the soul. The moral capacity that might eventully catch up with and cause self-torment in most men and women, given the enormity of such transgressions, is simply missing in the man. The ethical imperative will fall like water off a duck in the case of G.W. Bush: he simply does not have the moral or ethical or critical discernment to realize where his actions have placed him on the scale of offenses waged against humanity. I mean, the fool thinks he’s getting all these ideas from God, for chrissake!

No, he will walk out of the White House, and amble back to Crawford, fencing and chain-sawing and driving his pickup, oblivious to the disasters he has left in his wake. There will be no punishment, although I’m willing to bet that his Secret Service contingent will be a lot larger than his fellow ex-Presidents. There are people who will desire justice in the temporal plane, belated or not, and Crawford looks to be wide-open territory. Best to see to your fences, and with a will!

As for me… well, it’s just a shame that I don’t believe in Hell, that’s all.

But you know, it would be interesting to see how George W. Bush and Osama Bin Laden reacted when they finally met each other there.

Posted in Politics, Into the Mystic | 7 Comments »

Day 101: Autumn Reverie

Sep 12th, 2007 by chuckpuckett

Early Autumn in clear glory
With a touch of heat
Just outside the shade of still green trees.
Sky, unadorned by cloud,
A single high contrail
Fleets across the zenith,
Then fades back into the perfect blue.

Around the edges of leaves,
In the poplars and the persimmons and the rosebuds,
The faintest ghost of arid color
Tinges the future florid Autumn.

For now, it’s the rampant green Autumn,
The clear, perfectly hot
Southern Alabama Autumn,
Composed of equal parts
Clarity and warmth
And the haunting expectation
Of the coming coolness.

These lines came to me while having lunch, al fresco, at a nearby cafe that sits beside the train tracks. This is definitely my favorite time of the year, or at least the beginning of it. I wonder if everyone who lives in their Years of Being 56 find appealing the inherent background melancholy of autumn. The season, at least in the South, refuses to completely let go of summer, but it carries within itself the seeds of the coming winter. Best of all are the years when the summer has been unforgivingly and mercilessly hot, and the winter is bleakly bitter. In those years, this season, little more than an interlude, magnifies all experience into focused intensities, crystalline heartbreaks that encompass the passion we have just lived, and encase it the freezing eternity that the death of winter signifies. In the long shadow of an autumn afternoon, here we are, standing at the stove, canning apples and beans, saving them up to relish when the long dark steals across the fields.

But I’ve always loved autumn best. Perhaps it was some kind of foreknowledge, but even as a child, and then as a young man, autumn air moved me, not quite producing a lump in the throat, but making me sense that the possibility was always there. It is the season of sharp, acrid smells. Spring’s aromas are riotous, jumbled, almost cloying in their sensuality. Summer kills the scent with heat, winter just kills. Autumn is the concave lens of scent: finally, there is clear air to bear the fragrances, and burning leaves and logs to etch their outlines.

If April is the cruellest month, September is the clearest.

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Day 100: An Accounting

Sep 11th, 2007 by chuckpuckett

Today marks the 100th day of “The Year of Being 56″. Not, I am a little ashamed to say, my 100th posting; I have not been nearly that faithful. Rather, the 100th day in my personal year of being 56.

Now, 100 days into a new presidential administration has become a de facto milestone, the moment when the new president is assessed and graded, generally by the press. I guess, therefore, I should do some assessing and grading. Since it is me doing the assessing, and this is my forum, I choose, however, not to assess myself. Why not go ahead and assess, oh, I don’t know… How about the President. And his Surge.

It might make a good name for a band. The President and The Surge, sounds almost like Bruce Hornsby (sorry, Bruce, no insult intended).

So… Howsabout them Surge??

You know, it seems to me that the only judgment that fits is the same one we have consistently and universally been able to apply to each and every one of our glorious Iraqi endeavors.

Abject Failure.

Now, I want to stop right here for a minute and perform an obligtory task. I have sworn an oath, and I must abide by it: “No mention of the Irag War can be made unless somebody states the Obvious Truths.” Truths that we have likely tired of hearing, possibly to the point of boredom or even irritation. Nevertheless, they are so critical, so vitally important, that, like 9/11 itself, we must NEVER forget them. They should be applied, like warning labels on cigarette packages, to every editorial, every news story and every conversation that deals with the war in Iraq.

The Obvious Truths are these:

Iraq had no part in the attack of 9/11, and no Al Qaeda connection.
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Not only was there not even any vaguely reasonable evidence for an Al Qaeda connection or for WMD, but the Bush Administration repeatedly made distorted and inflammatory statements that were intended to make America and the world believe such an Al Qaeda connection existed, and that WMD were hidden in Iraq.
Dictator or not, despicable or not, we simply invaded a sovereign nation. With no more provocation than that provided by Hitler for invading Czechoslovakia or Poland.
Although not perhaps an undeniable “truth”, only a fool would deny the Obvious Implication: that we did all of this for oil.
Oh yeah, one more Obvious Truth: by essentially breaking off from Afghanistan and the hunt for bin Laden, we failed to capture or kill the man actually responsible for the deaths of 9/11. Not to mention the 1000’s of American deaths and untold Iraqi deaths that the war in Iraq has caused. The totally unnecessary, essentially illegal (read the constitution), completely misguided, and insanely and even criminally mismanaged war.

Don’t let the war come up in conversation unless you state the Obvious Truths. In any discussion that deals with “freedom on the march” or “sectarian violence” or “Iraq is a hotbed of terrorism” or “if we leave, the country will dissolve into chaos”, the Obvious Truths put everything into the proper contextual framework:

We caused all this crap.

Or, to be more precise, CheneyBushRumsfeld caused it (started it, then immediately bungled the war they couldn’t wait to have). Every atom, every iota of the unholy mess has its source in the actions of those criminals. We must never forget this. And even though we, as a nation, must admit to a gross sin of omission by allowing ourselves to be blinded by the simplest forms of fear-mongering combined with jingoistic flag-waving, their sins of commission are almost astronomical in comparison. To knowingly feed your countrymen a diet of fear and misinformation, and then to feed your youngsters to a meat-grinding insanity like Iraq, those are the acts of demons.

So… Howsabout them Surge??

Petraeus has said that, if things go well, we might be able to get down to “pre-Surge” numbers by next summer. As near as I can tell, that’s the best they’re offering.

Listen, I know we have short memories in this country. That’s why I insist on the Obvious Truths. When (to quote a Stan Rogers song) the “smiling bastards lying to you/ everywhere you go” lovely folk of the Administration can, simply by repeating it over and over again, convince simple folk that Saddam was behind 9/11, and that he bloody well did have WMD, well, we’ll eventually believe everything. Donald Rumsfeld’d into submission.

But please recall what this Surge was supposed to do. We’re were supposed to ramp it up about 30,000 soldiers, then secure neighborhoods and then cities and then maybe provinces. Everybody, Right and Left, was completely ready to bail on W’s war, but, no, give us until September, please? See, we have this list of milestones! Just give us until September, then you can judge the results. Oh, please don’t pull us outta that briar patch yet, just give us until September, then you’ll see. Then you can make a decision.

Now it’s September. The Iraqi-Maliki governmental express has accomplished almost exactly none of the milestones, unless you count “continue to have a government until September”. Violence is up, pretty much proportional to the American troop level in country, there is no police, no Iraqi army, no nothing.

And especially no end in sight.

But PetraeusBushCheney claim phantom successes, and ask us to “give them just a little more time/and freedom will surely grow”.

Sorry. The 100 Day mark is here, and there does not exist a letter grade low enough to grade The Surge.

Ain’t it the truth? I mean, obviously.

Posted in The War | 5 Comments »

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