What Are We Doing?

Okay, I’m back. After a series of technical problems, a visit to a high spot of the Midwest and to the Pacific Northwest I find myself back in good old New York City. I’m getting ready to go off to Madison Square Garden for the semi-finals of the National Invitational Basketball Tournament. Washington State University is playing against Wichita State University in one of the games. Interesting, they are both known as WSU. My son is an alumna of the Washington one and I think of myself as representing him even though I am a Husky through and through.

I’ve said enough about that already. A brief word about my visit to the Midwest is in order. It doesn’t matter much where I was because everything looked the same. Middle America is ugly, drab and colorless. It’s not New York, it’s not Miami. Instead it’s miles and miles of flat brown farmland that grows nothing in March. Periodically, along the freeways, there are towns that appear to be primarily a row of every fast food chain America ever created. No sidewalks because no-one walks. They drive to the fast food restaurants. The motel I occupied provided an un-obstructed view of the golden arches. Oh well, everyone to their own preferences.

Now to the mind-boggling event of the last week: Libya? What are we doing? What is our President thinking? Of course it is possible to build a rationale for anything we want to do but it is truly mind-boggling how this one was put together. We have a war in Iraq, we have a war in Afghanistan and now we want another one? I don’t care what anyone says, it’s not going to be easy to get out of these wars. Libya is now Obama’s war and he will have to stick with it one way or another until there is a positive outcome, whatever that might be, or suffer the political fallout. We have intervened in a foreign country and taken sides in a civil war. It will be a miracle if that turns out well. I hope I’m wrong.

The biggest mind-boggling part of this escapade to me is the backdrop at home. Meanwhile in the U.S. we have millions of Americans out of work, we have a country dangerously deep in debt that may have to shut down April 8^th, we have millions of families who have lost their homes or will lose their homes, many government workers are losing their jobs, essential services are being cut willy-nilly. And don’t forget my previous post regarding the enormous cuts in Mental Health Services that leave the mentally ill to find services in jails and hospitals. The question is, with our country and our people in such a state of disarray, how can we justify taking on a war? Maybe it’s easier to kill and destroy than to figure out solutions to difficult social and financial problems at home.

What about Japan? Mother Nature has massacred thousands there and it will take many years to re-build their country. In the long run, it might make more sense to help them re-build than to destroy Libya and then have to re-build that country. It’s all simply mind-boggling to me. But then what do I know? I’m just a life-long pacifist that believes there is always a better way than military intervention. We shall see what happens. What do you think? 

Stan the Man