Random thoughts on the Giant Chicken Hawk War and other Current Events

**Ace Reporter Joe Scarborough…someone has taken Mr. Scarborough to the woodshed recently and explained to him that he doesn’t work for Fox News. They have explained that people who watch MSNBC do not enjoy their own {albeit partisan} network anchors constantly belittling the President and prefacing remarks with the equivalent of: When did you stop beating your wife? One example of Scarborough’s line of questioning always ended up sounding something like this: Why do you think President Obama will be remembered as the worst President in History?...

 The Giant Chicken Hawk War: One of my pet peeves is the network/Cable News TV fascination with the same neo-cons who bravely volunteered our soldiers to fight a never-ending war in Iraq & Afghanistan, and now complain that they should go back to fight more mindless wars in the Middle East. John McCain has earned the right to pontificate about war.  But he doesn’t get a pass for the petty and partisan small-minded remarks he constantly feels the need to make to justify his loss to Obama. His slogan, “Country First” sort of lost its luster when he gifted the country with Sarah Palin.

 

As for the rest of the Giant Chicken Hawks who can’t wait to send our men and women into harm’s way, all I can say is that we’ve been there-done that. The latest line is that it is inevitable that we will send ground troops in to fight. My question is still: “Where is NATO in this argument? Why doesn’t Turkey defend its own border?” I hear all of the arguments as to why they don’t defend a town located almost on their border with Syria. But the next question is: “If Turkey isn't willing to fight ISIS, why should we?”

 

What do you Expect? We couldn’t even pass background checks in Congress after a classroom full of 6-year old children were massacred by a gun-crazed mentally deranged person. When we see shootings in movie theatres, or people using the Stand-your-Ground/King of the Castle argument after they pull their guns in public and kill people, we should not be surprised. More people will die needlessly from Gun Violence in this country than from any attack of Ebola or ISIS. What else did you expect?

 

On Changing Parties: The Great God of the GOP-Ronald Reagan himself changed parties. He began his political life as a Democrat, and moved to the Republican Party in 1964. Condoleezza Rice was a registered Democrat until the Reagan Revolution. In 1984, she joined the GOP. Bob Martinez, Mayor of Tampa, ran for Governor as a Republican during the Reagan years, and won.

Other notable party switchers include Senator Arlen Specter and Senator Strom Thurmond. So Charlie Crist is in distinguished company as a party-switcher. Although in recent years, more politicians have switched from Blue to Red than from Red to Blue!

 

Will she or won’t she? The odds are on the yea side that Hillary will run for the highest office. We must wait till early 2015, after the mid-term election results are in and the furor has died down. Then the media will be looking for another story, and the Clintons have been obliging us for at least 20 years

*Homeland: Chris Matthews is upset over the use of the word “Homeland”. I would be more upset if someone used the term Fatherland. Homeland seems innocuous enough, it’s just one of those generic terms we’ve coined to guarantee that the phrase Homeland Security is rendered completely meaningless. Does anyone feel safer after hearing that phrase? I don’t think so.

*Definition of Success in the Middle East = What are we aiming for here? Is it: Peace in our Time-or is it-Containment in our Time?  I think the latter. The idea of Peace in the regions of the Middle East looks more like a pipe dream at this point.

 *Are we Safer now than on 9/11?-Yes, of course we are. We have screening systems in place at airports,  and we cover our public spaces with cameras. We fight over Privacy issues from Government agencies spying on us. We often feel that Big Brother is monitoring all aspects of our lives. We are not completely secure, and we never will be. But we are safer from terrorist threats than we were before 9/11. It’s a trade-off. Our privacy diminishes as our security level expands.

 

 

 *We can’t “win”it…One of the problems manifest in this fight with terrorists is that it’s not winnable. George W was not known for his candid answers. But during the 2004 election cycle, he told a reporter, “It’s not something you can’win’. You can’t 'win'

it”….He immediately re-tracted the statement, of course. But there it was. It’s not like WWII. We are not going to sign a lasting peace treaty with terrorist organizations bent on our destruction. We can’t have a conventional war with conventional warfare. Therefore, the winning of it will not feel like V-Day. It will come with a whimper, not a bang.

*What we can expect-Post 9/11: All we can expect is to live our lives and go about our daily business without living in constant fear. Terror is the name of the game for terrorists. If we are constantly fearful, they have already won.