Why We Fight (& More)

Lots of things are going on in my thoughts these days. Today they foiled another major terrorist plot aimed at the airlines. Yesterday the SF Chronicle had an article entitled "The Myth Of The Lone Gunman" (click title for whole article) wherein Cinnamon Stillwell (great name) argued that we have had many terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11/2001--the news media has simply not called them terrorist attacks for various reasons. She mentions the 2002 "Beltway Snipers" as a prime example. As she says, Lee Boyd Malvo "repeatedly emphasized jihad against America." Today we had this major attempt with 21 arrested already. Unfortunately, this will play into the hands of the Bush Administration, who are always looking for excuses to add more funding to the Pentagon's huge budget that is ever expanding since Bush/Cheney/Rummy took office. I watched the excellent documentary "Why We Fight" directed by Eugene Jarecki (which won the Grand Jury Prize for a documentary at the 2005 Sundance Festival) earlier this week and found it to be very compelling. Eisenhower was right! Watch out for the "military-industrial-congressional complex." (In the film, they edited out the scene explaining that Ike originally included Congress in his equation of the "military-industrial complex," but I watched all of the extras on the DVD.) This film came out in 2005 and should be mandatory viewing for all thinking Americans, yet even in the liberal bastion of the Bay Area, most people I talk to have never heard of it. Even that seems eerily consistent with the way things are going these days in the U.S. I was happy to hear comedian Robin Williams mention the film on NPR last week--he obviously found it to be very powerful, too. Maybe that's why he started drinking again (fortunately, he's now back in rehab). It is depressing because the world seems so bleak right now. Nobody is really working for peace or listening with interest to the other side. We are more dependent on OIL than ever before, even when we know how finite and damaging to the environment it really is. And the cost keeps rising and we keep paying it. I have been noticing more and more hybrids on the highways, but for me they are too expensive. The oil companies are getting filthy, filthy rich, and the average American is struggling to stay afloat. God forbid anything serious happens in your area like Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi. I don't know what the solution is or what I should be doing to help make things better.

I'm glad to see that Joseph Lieberman's constituents in Connecticut are showing him they no longer want to see status quo behavior, especially out of their Democratic leaders! Something needs to change big in America and elsewhere. There is a stunning moment in "Why We Fight" which shows the senior Senator from West Virginia Robert C. Byrd standing on the Senate floor giving a speech right before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and he is asking his fellow senators, "Where is the democratic debate on this issue? Why are we not arguing the pros and cons of whether or not we should be doing this? Look at how quiet it is in here, you could hear a pin drop!" The camera pans out and we realize nobody is even in the Senate chambers to listen to him. That seems to speak volumes--Congress has been absent since Bush took office. Somebody needs to stand up to the Bush Administration, and fast.

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