Letter 72: Why invading Syria is a bad idea...

BLUF (bottom-line up-front): any prescribed policy in a conflict zone is nothing more than a smartly presented best-case scenario.

A (LAST) Chance Meeting. We had known each other for a few weeks from the common tent out behind the Embassy. But Antony was a great guy. Former red-coat on special duty in Ireland, he had a far better idea than I about these types of situations, in places like Belfast or Baghdad. What I also enjoyed was his intellect. Long before, various Brits had taught me that one need not go to college to be an incisive thinker.

Much like activated National Guardsmen from across ‘the pond’; Antony was more than a citizen-soldier: he was a thinking soldier. Two things I lamented in my friendship with him: that Lieutenant Cunningham – a brave and fair young lass in the U.S. Army – never reciprocated his fancy for her and, far worse, the day he told me that, after just six weeks in-country, he was fed up and heading home to England. 

“Why, Antony?” I asked already ruing the loss of a brief but meaningful acquaintance.

“Because, Ned, the way this is going, there will be regional war before it’s over…”

Marshalling up my splendidly articulate ignorance, I said rather flippantly, “Lighten up! It’s only Iraq…”

Antony winced and shook his head, not so much dismissively but in an unspoken message, “Trust me, you’ll get it soon enough…” And I did. Antony’s dark message has not come to pass, yet. Nevertheless, we have seen the emergence of the ‘Shi´ite crescent’ and the anxiety raised by Sunnis across the Middle East as President Bush’s surge narrowly averted a sectarian genocide…once.

Antony's Enduring Whisper. In recalling that conversation of eight and a half years ago, I am reminded again of why the hardest thing to do at times is nothing. We read every day that thousands upon thousands of Syrians have died at the hands of a dictator not yet gone but definitely gone rogue. This slow-motion slaughter has been unfolding for a year or more; chemical weapons (probably taken in from Saddam before his régime collapsed in 2003) may be next. We have done very little during this violence; there probably is not much we can do.

What the West is failing to understand is that the Arab Spring will have a violent dimension to it. Most revolutionary contagions do. Though I fear for the safety of Israël and, with her, democracy no matter how flawed, there are also so violent sectarian upheavals shaking the foundations of Islam itself.  Truth is, from the standpoint of theology, Judaism and Islam are closer together than either is with Christianity.

The emergence of Shi´ism and its veneration of certain prophets or great imams as Christ-like as well as its mythology of the hidden imam certain to return in glory to judge the quick and the dead, has catalyzed a centuries-long conflict.  This religious persecution and in-fighting has played out on the extremes of both theological dialects. 

Most Muslims, Sunni or Shi´ite, follow the prophet’s guidance of clean living, clear devotion and prayerful peace. Unfortunately, part of the Arab Spring is our having to watch, with pained passivity, a dangerously bloody revulsion on two levels:

• the over-reach and ultimate repudiation (probably violent) of extremist movements that tend to fare better in the shadows of secular totalitarianism than in the new light of freedom; as well as, 
• the popular, probably violent, overthrow of secular dictators using brutality to keep their money coming and their countries quiet.

After that revulsion is exhausted, ironically, it may well be Israel who will lead the way to peaceful relations through democracies predicated on faith yet dedicated to tolerance. Until then, sadly, it will be a bloody process. Let’s look at some of the antecedents to the current dilemmas of Syria facing the West.

Who the hell invited N.A.T.O.? From the parochially American point of view, what we are seeing is the fall-out from the intervention in Libya.  The N.A.T.O. mission was to take out the weapons of slaughter at a dictator’s disposal.  That noble end quickly morphed into an assassination campaign of that dictator himself. Now that ugly Qaddafi was one nasty dude, no doubt. Nevertheless, he had tried to clean up his act, at least to the world outside.

The crazy Colonel had not sponsored terrorism for two decades and foresworn development of weapons of mass-destruction seven years ago. In Libya, N.A.T.O. sent the wrong signal to other dictators, like the one in Syria: “You might as well fight it out to the death because we will kill you when we want to kill you whether you have ‘gone civilized’ or not…"
The European Hangover. Much of the current turmoil probably goes back for more than a millennium. Nonetheless, a lot of the problems into which N.A.T.O. currently inserts itself are forcing (more likely inviting) a traditionally anti-imperialist country, the United States, into participating in the clean-up of past European colonialism. 

Kiss the hard earned the U.S. reputation for credibility and fairness good-bye. If France and Italy or even the United Kingdom feel compelled to do something about Syria, Libya, Egypt etc., then let NATO intervene. As we did under President Eisenhower in 1956 with respect to Britain, France and Israël ganging up on Egypt, the U.S. should stake out an unambiguous position that it will not participate in military attacks in the case of Syria.

The United States should signal clearly that it is ready to use its assets only for humanitarian missions. In the interim, U.S. diplomats publicly lobby Islamic nations in more peaceful parts to supply peace-keepers. That will force the ex-colonialists to live with the choices they make today and resolve their miscues of yesterday.

Timing is everything. The late hour of all of this diplomatic dithering, curiously furious within weeks following the U.S. elections, casts the sincerity of U.S. intentions into doubt. Twice the number Mexicans have died due to drug wars – behind which the U.S.-based demand and the failed policy of the ‘War on Drugs’ remain the big drivers – than in Syria. No response to the 85,000 dead in Mexico.  

Our soldiers have been exploited shamelessly for eleven years, often to cover for failed policies. Many of our citizen soldiers have fought twice or thrice as long as did those of the greatest generation. Whoops. There is no direct and compelling national interest for the U.S. in attacking Syria. It poses no existential threat to the U.S. or, probably, to Israël. 

The blood-drunk anarchy that will engulf the land after a hopelessly under-resourced intervention will be far more ominous to the region’s only democracy, Israël. Details, details; sniff, sniff. These general critiques are damning enough to argue against the threatened intervention by invasion rumoured as being discussed in Paris and Washington.

The ‘Antony’ factor is the one that worries me most. It became obvious that the Iraqi Ministry of Interior was fast becoming the “Ministry of Death” in 2005 as Shi´ite militias thoroughly compromised the police force. Then along came the idea of partitioning Iraq into ethno-sectarian super-regions a year later with the constitution.

The worst case scenario emerged of a general Persian-Arab conflict fought out on Iraqi soil. That scenario leads me to say that I may well burn in Hell for supporting the invasion of Iraq, which I did and, on balance, still do. Now to explain the logic, that scenario assumed that Iraq would split up into regions and a sectarian civil war would break out.

As the Sunnis would likely be slaughtered by the Shi´ite militias supported by Iran, Sunni-Arab neighbors – like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey as well as, perhaps, more distant lands like Egypt and the Emirates – would intervene to aid the Iraqi Sunnis and to hip-check Iran. That would lead to an Iranian invasion of Southern Iraq to protect Shi’ites and, more importantly, to grab the oil so plentiful in that part of a great and beleaguered land.

The majority of Shi’ites not involved with the militias would side eventually with the Sunni countries as fellow Arabs. What would really happen is anybody’s guess. It would be ugly.  The analysis here may have many flaws; at least, it is based on one irrefutable premise: that the Middle East and Persian Gulf is taut with tension where a miscalculation can occur and cascade.

Now we come back to Syria. While that initial scenario did not involve Syria directly (presuming its neutrality until the minority régime would get a bloody boot from the majority Sunni Arabs), the current situation and a push toward an overtly American role in trying to 'fix' it, could easily spiral out of control. 

In 2005, such a scenario with Syria seemed  less likely, even with the Lebanese uprising. Yet in 2012, we are at the end-point of years of demonizing Iran, making the country’s twice-elected president some type of satanic monster. We willfully overlook the presence of a strong middle class and a long tradition of a cosmopolitan culture.

These forgotten or overlooked Iranians will eventually undo the theocratic tyranny that rules the country now. Like it or not, the issue about a nuclear Iran is a red herring meant to obscure the perceived U.S. interest in preventing Iran’s ascent as a regional hegemon. Iran has largely remained peaceful; it is we who have been aggressive.

Iran may well instigate Southern Iraq into establishing itself as a super-region under the country's American-crafted and stunningly out-of-touch 'Constitution'. Then Iran will try to seduce that region into becoming a subtle satellite flying an Iraqi flag that flutters toward Teheran. That translates into different tariffs and border policies favouring Iran over Iraq.

Relative to Syria, that is to say: in the wider context of the unrelenting, albeit largely non-lethal, aggression shown toward Iran for years, a U.S. intervention in Syria (and that is how Teheran would likely view a N.A.T.O. military action without an explicit and demonstrable U.S. absence) would entail relentless bombing, perhaps an invasion, followed by the likely assassination of a pro-Persian dictator. 

That train of events could threaten Iran (from her perspective, not ours).   The leadership in Teheran, increasingly insecure in Iran, could think that we are intent on breaking up what is a mythic crescent in the first place. That perception by Iran would elicit strong, though likely covert, responses. With the U.S. seen to be leading the charge, Israël would likely be blamed also for instigating the overthrow and the bloody civil war that has engulfed Syria.

The two allies would be viewed as trying to destroy Islam, whether or not that sentiment were true.  And that idea is probably not true. With small miscalculations, that could lead to a muscular Iranian response, through Iraq or Kurdistan, enough to precipitate a much larger conflict in which nobody wins but many, many lose their lives.

Letter-71: week-end in Puebla

My stay in Puebla with Mr Jajean Rose and his lovely better half, Ms Ana Hernandez-Balzac, was not only restful but quite a learning experience.  After a mood-settling bus ride, I arrived in Puebla about two hundred miles southeast of Querétaro.  Ana kindly met me at the bus station, which gave me a chance to catch up.  Before I launch into what may seem like a simple recounting of conversations that we all have every day, I want to say that these two Peace Corps volunteers are interesting people and are well worth the recount.

Ana filled me in on the imminent end for her and Jajean of their tours with the Peace Corps and some prospects emerging for them.  I have been keeping my fingers crossed that Jajean will enjoy an emerging opportunity to work for a land conservation organization in New England.  Ana is looking at applying concepts of living space management from Europe in the United States.

This would be an advancement in planning and reminiscent of the quip of many historians that Europe tends to trend a generation ahead of the United States.  We arrived to the office shared by Ana and her husband, Jajean, in the local office of the national environmental ministry, wherein Jajean filled me in on his current efforts.

Jajean has been a life-long birder and has given full reign to his two first loves: birding and his birding wife. He has put together, as a product of his own initiative, the first catalogue of local species of birds for the State of Puebla.  The Municipio of Puebla has three and the State six million people.  This job of re-writing, collating personal photographs and keeping the text accessible to non-birders is a far bigger effort than it sounds.

Why?  Later in the week-end, Jajean and Ana explained to me the unexpectedly vibrant intellectual world of birding.  Not a staid re-tweet from life at all.  You see, the same bird can have different names in different places – even in a small state like Puebla (i.e., roughly the size of Maryland) – owing to a lack of scientific knowledge compounded by the absence of a standard taxonomy in Spanish, traditional names assigned locally and the multiplicity of indigenous dialects.

Thus, it is quite likely that a group of people looking at the same heron will delight in identifying what sounds like three different birds.  Beyond this confusion, the grouping of different species is a moving – no, high-flying – target provoking often heated debates.  For example, Jajean and Ana explained to me – if I remember this discussion well – that falcons are more related to seagulls than to eagles (or inland predators). Tried though they did, this young couple could not ‘shore’ up this and other gaping chasms of my ignorance.

What it all said to me, however, was that this beautifully designed book of fifty pages represented the ´fine-point’ tip a very large iceberg of knowledge, research and professional judgements focused into a first-class product.  Jajean had also spent several months researching the flora and fauna; coordinating the efforts of local academics and birders; as well as composing in Spanish a technical proposal to make an area reservoir, Valsequillo, a ‘Ramsar’ site.

Being designated a 'Ramsar' site would make this reservoir a globally recognized wetlands area, and a site worth saving in México.  Most of us ‘al norte’ have not heard of this designation for two reasons: this 1971 wetlands convention was formalized in Iran and we are the bad boys of wetlands.   The odds were not in Jajean’s favor since the reservoir has been condemned to be a sewage and industrial waste dump.  Most locals (known as poblanos) had given up on Valsequillo as a lost cause.

Not Jajean Rose: his spirited efforts overcame probabilities and institutional resistance, not the least of which was that an ‘extranjero’ led the charge.  Nevertheless, the reservoir and its adjacent land were designated as a Ramsar site by the Mexican government earlier this year.  All this was on Jajean’s spare time while he did more mundane things (i.e., office-work) for the Environmental Ministry.  Ana has been doing outreach work on eco-education as well as protection in the use of Valsequillo, a biosphere nearly twice the size of Pittsburgh.

We closed the night talking about the re-election of President Obama and the trends my friends see in – as well as their beliefs about – American politics.  On Saturday morning, the three of us joined six other volunteers and about twenty-five poblanos, with a collective wing-span of three generations, in Puebla to go bird-watching for about five hours in the Valsequillo biosphere.

The great thing about bird-watching, for those who do it, is that it provides an opportunity for enjoying a shared interest, for healthy debate among experts (or at least those who know a hell of a lot more than I do) and for catching up among friends.  Since Jajean was actually leading the tour, I did not get to yammer with him too much during that stretch.  As I like to do with happy couples (being a ‘confined’ bachelor myself), I asked Ana how these two met.

It is a wonderful story.  Jajean had finished his undergraduate work at the University of Buffalo – quite the under-rated school smack-center in the burr-zone of Northern New York State – while Ana had studied at a University in Puerto Rico (where her French ancestors had settled as migrating Communards in the 1870s).  Ana and Jajean met at the University of Buffalo in the same graduate program in (I believe) urban planning.  Ana had been a birder since high-school.

When they happened upon lunch together, Jajean apparently asked Ana about her interests.  Now as young students, I suspect that more than a few of us agonized over what to disclose, lest something come across as quirky…Not Ana.  As she told me (in effect), “I really don’t know but I just decided to be who I was…and so I said I like bird-watching…”  I can see in my mind´s eye twenty-five or so poblanos who were very glad that Ana made that decision several years ago.

Jajean apparently did a double-take…”¿¡bird-watching!?”  And the rest is a history that ably affirms the aphorism that birds of a feather do indeed flock together.  I also had a chance to meet three new environmental volunteers who had just moved out to their centers after plus catch up with an acquaintance stationed in the area for over a year.  Finally, I got to spend some time with another great Peace Corps couple just as they were heading home to the United States.

One of the newbettes teased me mercilessly about my bird-brain or lack thereof, we both got a good laugh out of it.  The irony is that, if a guy had said these things, I might well have taken umbrage and raised a fuss. Yet, when such ribbing comes from a fair lass, I feel perversely praised...  The couple that is leaving is looking to create a business that would enable public schools to out-source the teaching of a religion course without getting snared in Church-State issues .

First, there would be a degree of separation so the public school is not directly promoting a religion or the concept of religion in general. Additionally, the idea does not represent a traditional religion course in the sense of comparing and contrasting faiths but a course in pursuing a spiritual dimension through authentic American voices like those of Martin Luther King, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jonathan Edwards, Martin Buber, etc.

These ideas enliven me and that is why I always enjoy listening to the visions of these and other extraordinary young people.  The course-work would also include spiritual practices like meditation, yoga, etc. to give children a base on which to anchor their future lives in a spirit based on values from America past and present. What  a pity (for me) that I did not meet this couple, the wife of which was a spitting image – more by temperament – of one of my favorite cousines, Katy Koppanyi.

Now bird-watching itself has always been a subject of curiosity for me, never fulfilled due to my lack of patience and discipline to learn at every opportunity.  Anyways, I learned many things in those five hours. The most important was why I had admired so much two teachers under whom I had been lucky enough to flounder as a fifteen year old.

Long after these mentors had won my lifelong respect (i.e., within a couple of weeks), I found out that they shared one thing in common: bird-watching.  One had been a Rhodes Scholar and the other had been one of a very few who booked on Milgram after the third switch.

That morning, with half a dozen Peace Corps types and two dozen poblanos, I learned the reason why bird-watching made those two teachers so special, as it does these two friends four decades later.  It is an activity – though often punctuated by little, almost reticent, movements – that requires a patience that few people have.  Beyond that and good eyesight, it requires the ability focus one’s kinetic and intellectual energies minutely to dis-embed frequently camouflaged birds from subtly hued backgrounds.

Like Zen masters, then, bird-watchers have that ability to harness their humanly fragmented minds into a focus that, with time, becomes a beam of conscience.  Bird-watchers not only know their species, they know their birds. Even a 'lard-carrying' member of the "booboisie" like me understands how timid the great majority of birds really are.

To approach these beautiful beings requires time, patience, a little stealth in silence.  Beyond the absence of sudden movements apt to startle a bird into flight, I sensed that the really good birders could almost connect with the objects of their commitment and costly cameras.  This rare ability to focus one’s being in the here-and-now, not to mention an uncommon ability to connect on some level with an animal, are traditional signs of an elevated conscience.

The last thing I learned was that there is great humor in all of this heady stuff.  For example, catching a bird in the act on camera is almost impossible to do by design, but those ‘poopoorazzis’ lucky enough to catch the fecal flight-line have set up a site to document forever their moments of shutter-clicking shame.  It seems that the private world of birding has its own exclusive club of bathroom humor.

Afterward, we took two hour naps, which benefitted me a great deal and then out for a night on the town. Those who know me well know that I am ‘rather sedate’ (i.e., dull), especially as I do not like alcohol. Fortunately, this preference against pursuing the spirits worked for my far more interesting hosts, too.  We had an elegant dinner and I had some of the best mole (pronounced moe-lay) ever with delicious chicken.

Yummy.

For two or three hours we walked around the ‘Centro’ (the old town) and I got to see first-hand just what a beautiful city Puebla really is.  Americans are indirectly familiar with Puebla because it was here, one hundred fifty years ago, that the Mexicans defeated the French on the ‘cinco de mayo’ 1862 to curtail any further sustained hegemony from outside powers.

In truth, Corona Beer has managed to make ‘el cinco de mayo’ a larger figment of American culture than fixture in the Mexican.   One reason why this holiday may be less important than others in Mexico – so I have heard – is that poblanos are snooty and think they are better than everybody else.  Well, permit me to report that poblanos are not at all conceited.  Truthfully, I found the people to be friendly and cosmopolitan. They reflect their city.  Puebla is truly an international city.

As we roamed those streets, I would find that some blocks would remind me of Paris – complete with a grand bistro parisien – while others were more like Madrid and still others like Italy.  Another interesting facet of this city, which makes it worthwhile to visit, is the ‘story of the block’.  It seemed that every block in the core part of the Centro had a building with an interesting history, either an old art-school (with representations of different types) converted into museums.

My favorite story involved the frieze around the door of a grand old home that related a relatively recent legend of a man who (I believe) had lost a son to some nasty serpent from a nearby river (paved into the history books some sixty years ago) that came slithering to shore every night.  In any case, the grieving father let it be known that whoever felled the serpent by his own hand would win the hand of his daughter.  Well, this campesino, who was an Arthurian type (i.e., from modest means but innately patrician), did away with that serpent, married rich and learned to love.

Proved to this paragon of downward mobility (i.e., me) that upward mobility is still alive and well…yeah!

Letter #70: on the road in México

The only criticism that sticks is self-criticism.  Not that criticism from others does not matter; it often does.  Nevertheless, one has to open himself to at least the possibility of that external criticism’s validity.  At that point, the mere ‘mulling over’ of the criticism, if short of outright admission, appropriates it into one’s conscience.  Then the salutary effect of self-criticism begins its drill.  A colleague of mine chastised me recently for having no sense of Mexican culture.

Now, my personality is one sensitive to slights with a propensity to fights.  That leaves little room for an open mind, unless that person who makes that criticism does something to prove his character (i.e., something beneficial to me that shows the ability of the other to rise above a contest of wills).  No need for details here as it became clear, on even cursory examination, that my colleague was on-the-mark.  Her good-will not only displayed her enlightenment, it inspired a little more in me.

Hopefully, and God-willing (given my lazy ass), I will take better advantage of what Mexico has to offer in the time remaining to me here.  This week-end, I got off to a marvelous start.  There are seven volunteers in my class whom I have admired greatly.  They really are worth my emulation, not of behavior (for that is Emersonian suicide), but of refinement, conscience and vision.  I had wanted to visit all seven. 

This week-end, I visited numbers four and five in Puebla.  The two out west I will never get to, and what regret I have for rationalizing my leaden posterior.  To be sure, they were quite open and even suggestive of a week-end visit.  Simply said, I lost an opportunity of a life-time; perhaps not a critical opportunity, but one that shall not come my way again.  The bus ride from Puebla is four hours long, often a deterrent in itself.  The week-end was charmed right from the bus ride.

It is two weeks since Día de Muertos here in México.  It is, as I wrote recently, a holy day not to be summarily dismissed as a pleasant uniqueness worth chatting about when discussing Frida Kahlo or the symbology of the Grateful Dead to prove my sophistication (even though I am thirty years late in these inferences).  It goes far deeper than my worldly images within, and the other-worldly images around, me that are made all the more so by a profusion of colors lighting up scattered skulls.  Well, that haunting image of the verdancy and verity of death in our everyday life did not happen on the bus ride.

What did happen is that the sun set, not in the opalescent sky of Fitzgerald (which I have yet to see on any of the five continents in which I have travelled).  The sky was cloudy, hinting of a rain yet but never to come.  It was melancholy, to which I am more accustomed as it splits the middle of the Mexican life-and-death paradox.  The colors blended various shades of sulfur and grey into a sublime, subdued majesty.  I was listening to music that was heavy 'moog' but not heavy 'boge' (for once); it, too, had a certain sweet sadness. 

The skyline, sinking into night and losing itself on the high peaks of the central highlands, swished by, displaying the silhouettes of the squat trees of Mexico atop some hill, with slopes of nopales (cactuses that look like a Kalderesque agglomeration of green, prickly basset hound ears), emptying into harvested fields, that looked wasted by drought, with the refuse swept into witches’ broom bottoms.  It was not hard to get that there was something silently extraordinary about this random collision of sight and sound.  I had last seen it more than thirty years before driving in the early winter back to Washington after a week-end in Pittsburgh with parents who loved me so. 

The trees, in the grey, almost nocturnal, February sky, bereft of life as they had been for months, still reached into high, whispering something I could not quite hear.  In truth, I felt it first shortly after arriving to high school, when I crept desperately alone into the least popular place on campus (i.e., the chapel) to read and later sing privately, hymn 507 (1940 Hymnal).  Ten years later – after the death of my erstwhile sweet-heart, the suicide of two close friends and many opportunities already forfeited – I had decided that life goes on and it was time to fill in and pave over the piss-puddle and move on.  That felt like the right thing to do.

Only now, thirty years after making that decision, on a bus in the middle of Mexico, was I willing to open that door again; or, more properly said, was I given the chance to open that door again.  This time, I had some reference of time and a preference of place.  Mexico’s forever mystical culture girded me on that bus.  Beyond, the simple matter of my own mortality, I began to feel a deeper presence of God, one that I had not felt for thirty years, save for the death of my parents, my uncle and my brother-in-law’s father.  Those came out of necessity of blood-ties severed and the departure of a great man whom I’d like to be. 

It was also fitting because I was on that bus out of a choice to visit two of the best Peace Corps volunteers, both bird watchers (explanation forthcoming in the next essay).  As I listened to that synthetic melancholy paired with the sublime sadness of the dying horizon, I realized that paving over the cesspool perhaps had not been meet and right so to do.  Nonetheless, I could not – and still can not – imagine what would happen were I surrender my life to wandering between slices of the past ricocheting through my future while standing arrested in the present, undoing, enveloped by the chaos so truly at the core of our universe.  Life is better left to others to figure out. 

That Mexican culture of death in life brings to focus the strength of her mysticism: the necessity of focusing on fun today, on children today, on celebrating the quiet ascendancy of indigenous beliefs to bring Catholicism back to life.  There is a humility in this alien culture that may defeat its becoming another Silicon Valley of innovation, as I so often argue, as this country's destiny.  Yet that grand vision, as well and intellectually argued it may or may not be, implies that Silicon Valley is something to which all BRICS and TMIMBIs alike ought properly to aspire to.  Mexican culture, often so backward to my untrained and culturally vacuous eye, offers so much more. 

In actuality, I still do not know what that 'more' is, but I keep trying to find out, one day at a time.  Truth is, I will know that gold standard when first I see its gleam.  Hopefully, I will get more into the deep-water swing of things Mexican to pass along better information.

Letter-68: another ridiculous exercise in self-importance

Now that the election is thankfully over, I have a confession to make before I return to normal. After watching, from afar, the performance of President Obama during Hurricane Sandy, I have come to believe that I would have voted for him, changing over from voting for Governor Romney on election day. As it is, I was content with my third-party vote because I sense that many of the things percolating through these ‘fringe’ elements today will be the mainstay of our discourse tomorrow. And we need fresh discourse.

There are other reasons, besides being a Pisces, why I would have so brazenly undecided my way into the Democrats. (Get a clue, Ned, no one cares.) As a conservative and as a Republican, two elements of this election were offensive to me. And they came from my own party. First, I cannot recall an election in my lifetime, at least one that I followed, where an anti-democratic élite tried so brazenly to finance an outcome. It made me shudder.

This second ‘doozie’ may have occurred at some other time and I was simply too out-to-lunch to get it. Nevertheless, I found the concerted effort to intimidate and disenfranchise minorities to be, well, disgusting. It was something beneath the dignity of our people. What perhaps frightened me the most was how quickly I acclimated myself to this racism.

For example, in the third debate (during the one intemperate moment that I recall the President displaying through months of grueling work and astounding pressure), I found myself thinking, “Well aren’t you uppity?” Trust me when I say that, had Vice President Biden or Governor Romney or Representative Ryan said the same, I might have been irate but not thinking he was uppity. Strange thing is that I do not recall feeling that ever in 2008.

Race was an issue, at least for me, I regret to admit.

Since his election the first time, President Obama has impressed me as among the best America can produce. His policies? Way, way different story. You all know well that I am unsure of many things and often insecure these days. Yet President Obama – unimaginative and dangerous as some of his policies are – remains one of the finest people we have elected to the Presidency.

As I said to a Peace Corp bud, President Obama – from my Republican view – is a great, great man with terrible policies. Unfortunately, though I felt sorry for the savagery of political attacks against him since many seemed to be based on his being very wealthy, Governor Romney lost my vote for certain things he said or did that led me question his fitness for the oval office.

First and by far foremost, he politicized the Libya murders and the protests in Cairo from Day-1. Governor Romney and Representative Ryan showed two unsavory elements of their personalities. Namely, these guys were willing to say anything or disregard the grievous loss of anybody to get elected. They vastly under-estimated the common sense of the people they had asked to vote for them. Most Americans instinctively knew that, frustrating and outrageous as this terror attack was, it was unfair to blame the president for it.

Second, both Governor Romney and Representative Ryan never answered questions transparently asked on how they could balance the budget and cut tax-rates when eliminated deductions could not close the budget-breach likely to ensue. To re-name that old rock song from the Chicago Transit Authority (‘25 or 6 to 4’), this was 59 or five to zero.

Third, Governor Romney’s incessant opposition to defense cuts under sequestration and to ObamaCare indicated to me that he would rather sustain an over-extended military force on a war-time procurement footing than strive to secure the right to at least minimal health care. The latter is a thorny question and I dislike health-care reform as it currently stands because I do not think we can afford it. Nevertheless, when intelligent analysis demonstrates that the mandatory defense cuts under sequestration amount to levels seen in past post-war demobilizations, this rhetoric displays a deeply ingrained preference of guns over butter.

http://www.csbaonline.org/publications/2012/08/analysis-of-the-fy2013-defense-budget-and-sequestration/  

So, much as I prefer not to see Republicans lose, there are reasons why I am happy with the vote a week ago for proving, at least for now, the following precarious principles:

1. An election can not be bought.
2. Poor voters can not be disenfranchised or intimidated.
3. Fear and anger need not dominate the national discourse.
4. A political party can not undermine a President and get away with it..

We do not need to attack Iran or anybody else.
I am sure I will have my problems with the President over the next four years (like anybody really cares) but these things I have mentioned were attacks on values that mean a lot to me. The Republicans are defending other important values, as I have written. Sadly, I was so focussed on finding things wrong with President Obama that I overlooked equally corrosive, if not more subversive, thinking from my side.

Día de Muertos; Night and day

Well, I have voted for Governor Gary Johnson and the Libertarians while President Obama is headed toward re-election by six to twelve percentage points; that is to say that I am done with politics for now. To be sure, if I were given a dinner to dine with the President, I would step back and let Representative Ron Paul to take my place and talk some sense to a good man about why the Constitution matters. Representative Paul is brave enough to say what needs to be said, and the President is big enough to listen.

In any case, other parts of life are important besides politics. One of those is sometimes cluing into the Mexican culture. November the 2nd is the day to do it. El Día de Muertos is an important holiday, likely the second or third most important of the festival calendar that Mexico follows. In Mexico, you see, it is about process, about the journey. In some ways this idea may reach back not only to Spain but to the Muslim influence of a wandering worship, never quite settled anywhere.

Halloween is the closest day – both in spirit and in imagination – that we Americans have got to Día de Muertos. And it is not so close. For most of us up North, Halloween is that one night when otherwise demure women dress in tight-fitting witch’s outfits. For this one night, at least, these women get to flout everything that keeps them proper. The men are no better, running around in tights trying to entice the witches in rhe same way they already find themselves seduced.

With this frame of reference, I assumed that my Mexican counterparts, far more elaborate with the make-up, were after something else than the chill of an autumn’s breath that so often brought the moistened lips together, together enough to cover up the moon the for others in the back-seat. All this is to say, I qualify as an unashamed cultural dunderhead, becoming curious as to what the Mexicans actually do with all of this ‘dead’ stuff anyway.

So what do dunderheads do on the afternoon of this obviously important day? They go out to check out the Día de Muertos to find where their alienated minds can dissolve, at least momentarily, into the muffled, rumbling energy of the trickling crowd. This they cannot do alone as foreigners, since such heavy-tipping guttural beings would not last in the activities, extended beyond normal times through soft gaits and averted eyes. So they get a guide, usually a local friend, who understands dead people.

At the suggestion of a dear and dearly Mexican friend, I went into Querétaro this evening. This city, where I serve in the Peace Corps, is steeped in history; over-packed with legend; teeming with old-looking churches that create a sense of proper Catholic gloom. As I approached the chore, I recalled some forgotten elements of the past to right-size this mysterious dimension that remains so very confusing to me.

Years ago, I went to a Halloween Party where the men were dressed for success and women to excess. Before going to what I suspected might just be a wild party, I pulled down from the book-shelf a heavily hi-lited and disgustingly dog-eared Golden Bough by Malcolm Fraser (I think his name was) and tried to track down the family roots of Halloween. As usual, the day or night had been a pagan ritual in Europe, complete with bonfires, which the Roman Church had integrated into its body of belief. I read on. The witch’s and ugly monster costumes were worn to scare off the real witches, goblins and evil spirits.

In other parts of Europe, others dressed up in the clothes reminiscent of certain dearly departed relatives to try to reach back and invite their ghosts back to the home for just one more family dinner…like Eurydice’s humid whisper and then be gone. Still other Europeans dressed like people of whom they knew and from whom they needed help from beyond. That one doesn’t work; that I know. For several years I went as Jimmy Hoffa and my pension is still underwater.

My friend and I visited three altars before dinner. She explained to me what the Día de Muertos meant. I figured it was all about what Fraser said so long ago, but properly British anthropology for once was only tangentially related. The costumes, I think, represent the dead coming back, not by posing as a ‘fabric’-ated invitation for the departed, but to act in the stead of the dead themselves. Funny, it’s the Muertos who are desperate to return, if only for a moment – at least on that night (though, again like Islam or Judaism, after sun-down of All Saints Day).

During the day itself, much time is spent at the cemetery praising the family and openly mourning the dust-to-dust crowd. Happily, I have witnessed these truly moving rituals – which represent, after all, a wise and lovely integration of death into the continuity of life. Little brat that I was in college, I still marvel at the accidental wisdom of one of my favorite lines from those days: you have to understand death to live life.  Yet, the darker, questioning and hissy-fit side of me wonders how few of my loved ones will show up at my grave, ever.

We did see three altars. The native art, for which I have little abiding fondness (I am a Luddite in process), is amazingly precise. On a temporary mural, there were many ‘concheros’ (native dancers with percussion shells wrapped around the lower legs to make a lot of rhythm) and other 'indígenas' hunting, dancing and maybe even looking for an Oxxo (i.e., the Mexican equivalent of a 7-11). The interesting thing was none of these otherwise admirably painted figures had eyes. 

My friend, a sweet Mexican lady, felt a little creeped out by the no-eyes thing.  Always the Prince Charmless, I pointed out that they had no eyes because the mural went up in a day and did not permit time for a detailed and time consuming task like painting eyes. Her big Mexican eyes, brown like the soil that gives her kin life, took one hell of a long time, in her case, to go around in a fool circle. Wupps…soy norteamericano; I know, I know…presumed ugly until proven dead.

The other side of the altar had elaborate flower arrangements, two shaped like doves. I wondered if these ‘florid’ displays were patches of Heaven. Then it also occurred to me that the Muslim influence was at work again.  Mexican women I know remind very much of the women I have met across Arabia; that is, exquisite, sombrously sensual, quick and hinting of something else…too refined for my more mundane or simply secular tastes. 

Of course, this was not an altar, nor a garden in the human sense, not even Heaven, or at least as I might bother to conceive it.  This altar broings to life those riveting descriptions of the gardens of Eden in The Holy Qur’an, flowing with colors, drenched in fruit, served by the dark, mysterious women who excite ideas and intuitions of things eternal and divine, even in the dullest of dullards. No wonder I fall in love every week.

We went to the altar in the government building. It had more of a traditional Mexican feel with its ponderous, if colorful, geometry. As we walked around that altar, each of the four sides celebrated the life of a Queretanos worthy of respect, worthy of a visit this one night through a historically simulated, town-sponsored memory that beckons emulation by lesser mortals (e.g., me).

One was a British lady who had emigrated to Mexico at an advanced age as a botanist who always had preferred planting to bantering. She lived until the age of ninety, being recognized by her gracious hosts, not only as one with Queretaro but one for Queretaro, too.  The others featured were social activists in education, fighting poverty and journalism. Queretaro is rather political in its down-time.

The neat part was that these four were honoured under the view of the founding fathers – and mother – painted larger than life on a permanent mural as if to remind all of us that these people, not so famous as those who fought for the Independencia, were worthy of the same veneration, at least this one day, this 2nd day of November.

The last altar was a makeshift remembrance of the great crime of our time, as the altar would have it, of some 85,000 people killed by the narco-violence. For every sign that called out President Calderon (whom I admire deeply) as a mass-murderer for trying to restore a rule of law, there were others reminding people that the soon to be inaugurated president, , would be dishonest dictator, a madman, a homicidal homosexual, or matinee idol in beach movies.

Worst of all, this President Peña-Nieto would be a mere political plaything for, and puppet of a former President from the 1990s who, amazingly, remains a power-player notwithstanding his small problem of bankrupting the country as he vied for the Presidency of the W.T.O. That number of 85,000 right above the Guy Fawkes mask (like the one from the movie ‘V’) shows that, while the many children who died were unknown, unnamed, unimportant, ‘Anonymous’ was anything but and was not about to let that any shroud of cold indifference snuff out their tragically truncated relevance.

The evening closed with a pleasant dinner at an inexpensive but yummy family restaurant. We talked about the Day of the Dead and what it meant. Then my friend remembered how a plant she had from her ex-boyfriend had died when he had left her. She had put the plant aside to keep it out of her sight because it reminded her of him; nonetheless, she was diligent in taking care of the plant. Yet it died.

My friend went on to say she felt like she had withdrawn her affection from the plant and that is what it made it die. And every day she waters that plant, trying to talk to it, coax it back to life; alas, to no effect. Then and there I realized that, once again, God has blessed me with special friends, not because they think I am great but because I know how great they are.

We went onto talk about the Dead who return on this November 2nd. I was curious, as a typically flabby-assed agnostic (one class of Zumba-hasta-la-Tumba, notwithstanding). So do they come back because we miss them or they miss us or both? Particularly, those who were and are important to us. Do these people return to mend us so we can put one-foot-in-front-of-the-other? In this day of defiance and death, are we celebrating that quality of life that is even unhindered by death? Of course, I do not know.

Well one thing led to another and, with our clothes still on, we started talking about angels and guardian angels that just flutter around happily, far out of the very limited world of my mind, though some 70% of Americans surveyed believe in angels; I think they are idiots who confuse drones with angels. That begged the question about the after-life.

Mexicans love talking about the after-life, in general because this is a naturally mystical people.  They also do it with me more to probe the depth of my faith or the degree of apostasy. My standard answer is, “Is there an after-life? I will be sure to sne da post-card when I get there…” My friend, a devout Catholic, turned serious about this. So my question to her is my question to you this day of the dead.

If we are created in God’s image and we evolve to His perfection upon our death, how do we ever hook-up with anyone in Heaven? It is our imperfections that make us different from (and place us firmly below) God, at least in this vale of tears. Flaws make us different from each other; hell, they make us distinctive so we recognize each other as separate. Once we get to heaven, and the dark sides of our loved ones are now removed as they participate in the pure light of God’s love, how can we hope to distinguish one from another?

That being of pure light – yes that one over there – that might be dad; shoot, turns out to be Mr Waverly, the prick who cut me from the track team. Hmmm. Since I am stuck here, I really no longer have to worry about the customary scorn of the politically correct when I say, “Jeez, which one is dad? You all look the same to me….”

My friend, however, had an even-tempered response, beyond, “Oh, you gringos…” to reflect that maybe it did not matter. After all, would we be selfish enough to desire the pain of our loved ones of being separated from perfection so that we could recognize them? Well my dad still owes me twenty bucks from when I was a kid.

Perhaps that was the lesson of the Día de Muertos for me today: that bereavement of knowing that I may never be able to make the apologies owed to certain friends died young for things I did or failed to say. With grief taken to such an unchanging, eternal level, perhaps a day dedicated to these ‘honoured dead’ can be that critical half-measure that makes us closer to whole….

Letter #67 to friends and familiares: why I went third-party this year

Like most people, I suspect, I am counting the minutes until the day after the election, when FaceBook returns to normality. In truth, I have voted and cast my ballot for Governor Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party. Had I been in a contested state – and with a 60%-to-36% lead for President Obama in Maryland, I am not – I would likely have voted for Governor Romney.

That admitted, I do not hold the President in contempt; he is one of the finest men to occupy the White House. Even the best of people have their flaws. Both men are essentially decent and subject to extraordinary pressures; the President more so as the incumbent.

Nevertheless, President Obama’s usurpation of Constitutional powers at our expense and in the name of security as well as his arrogation of decision-making to pick out assassination targets leave me bewildered. His economic policies have proven to be as unsustainable as they are unimaginative. Finally, the President has at times resorted to demagoguery, plainly playing on the politics of envy.

Like it or not, Governor Romney’s proposed budget numbers do not add up; his condemnation of sequestration leading to cuts in defense spending, together with his curiously furious attack of Obama-Care (apparently modeled after his plan in Massachusetts) make clear his preference for empire over welfare (not the policy but the commonweal).

On the positive side, President Obama has kept us from widening the conflict in the Middle East with an attack on Iran and has, apparently, been able to persuade restraint on the part of Israel. Governor Romney has shown a lot more courage by not retracting the ‘47%’ comment, which he wishes he had better articulated (and likely would have if someone had not taped a private conversation without the Governor’s consent).

Not retracting this remark took a great deal of courage because Governor Romney had stumbled onto the REAL third-rail of American politics: a growing underclass and a culture of conditioned response to poverty strengthening over several generations. Ironically, only President Clinton, a Democrat, had been willing to take on this issue. Pretending this under-class does not exist condemns millions to lives of welfare.

In other times, I would not be sympathetic with the views of many Republicans of minimizing resources to the poor. Distributive justice will always have its proper place in my heart – it is the consequences of the actual policies that count; whether resources redistributed foster human dignity (i.e., working, focusing on a family unit, etc.) or reinforce a behavior of dependence through generations of it. Of course now, the question is becoming moot with our country’s impending insolvency.

Normally, I would have gutted it all out and voted for Governor Romney based on some overlap of politics or, perhaps, President Obama based on the overwhelming decency of the man himself. For many years, I have believed in our two party system because it does a better job of providing stability of leadership in times of crisis.

Under the parliamentary systems in Europe, political parties depend upon coalitions, which means consensus, which often is exactly what is (and, perhaps, should be) absent in times of crisis. Thus cabinets fall right when the cabinets ought to be strong, except in those rare cases where humanity is blessed with a statesman for all time (e.g., Prime Minister Churchill).

In the United States, on the other hand, coalitions largely depend on the political parties. That invites but does not require consensus. That means the same leadership is in place even if a certain voting bloc in the coalition is displeased; we call these coalition members ‘constituencies’. In times of national perplexity – like 1856 and 1860 – the two party system falls apart and realignments (i.e., new pre-election coalitions) come into place, amid widespread anomy, conflict and/or political turbulence.

My vote manifests my belief that the United States is in or damn near to another time of national perplexity, when old beliefs seem hollow, traditional allegiances obsolete. Running to the middle is what people did in the 1850s and eventually there was no middle left to woo, at least in the terms of the time. That is why we are seeing these days what seems like a clearer choice that seems to evoke more poison than passion.

My essay is not to show inventiveness of my thinking but the simplicity of my voting. Governor Johnson is neither as bright as President Obama nor as enormously successful as Governor Romney. Governor Johnson has something the other two lack: a certain humility to place principles ahead of personalities or popularity. 

The Libertarian Party, for of all its ‘lunatic fringe-binge’ associations, is the only group to address seriously what I sense are the key questions facing the Republic that, like slavery, do not lend themselves to enduring compromise:

1. a disturbing drift toward tyranny;
2. a brutalization of American culture; as well as,
3. an unsustainable fiscal, defense procurement and monetary policy.

Beyond the stasis of craziness in which we drift in dread, there is something far more important going on in this election. It is a pervasive climate of fear and increasing despair. At home the middle class wonders who hijacked their dreams; overseas, Pax Americana is nearing its end.

Our citizen soldiers have been ground down and, all too often, out; they have been on battlefields two-to-three times more than their grandfathers of the greatest generation were. In what seems like a menacing world, we see potential adversaries – many of our own making – everywhere, delighting in the coming end of the American Century. In short, fear is making people do and say ugly things.

An uneasy sense that the American Century is not only concluding but is already history is, for now, more damaging than the more obvious political toxins of excess monies from the wealthy in political action committees, voter restrictions devised and applied as well as partisan vitriol that erases distinctions between ethics and tactics, between inspiration and innuendo.

Certainly, near term poisons require redress and yet, I suspect, this larger perplexity will not leave us. Only Governor Johnson (that I know of, since I have not looked at the Green Party or the Constitutional Party or others) gets it.

We are in a time of profound change and our beloved America is acting like the kid at the top, in that childhood game of ‘King of the Mountain’, kicking, pulling hair, punching, resorting to almost anything to remain on top. That guarantees a harsher fall. So, as a people, I submit that we are perplexed. Pax Americana is no longer sustainable. Simply said, we lack not will but the infinite resources to keep 5% of the world in the driver’s seat.

Our growing pains are not unique. Other empires have had their difficulties adjusting to their post-peak worlds. Most empires adjust either because they lose a war aimed at keeping their position intact; win a pyrrhic victory and limp away from world war, exhausted; or, implode due to internal convulsion. Perhaps we are perplexed because we are exhausted from trying to control outcomes we cannot and failing to restrict our behavior to where we can, within the limits set by our rule of law (i.e., a contemporary way of saying an “empire of laws, not men”).

As such, the two leading candidates really are not schnooks here. They are all of us writ large. Again, Governor Johnson ‘gets’ this and so does Representative Ron Paul. Besides ‘King of the Mountain’, I am reminded of another struggle, reading E.F. Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed. Someday I will read the original by Maimonides. I would refer me and other perplexed Americans to a third 'Guide for the Perplexed', one the proceeded the great rabbi by seven centuries and preceded the great economist by two.

That is the U.S. Constitution. Without the Bill of Rights, the Constitution is just another contract that can – and is being – manipulated into tyranny. Without the Constitution, the Bill of Rights is a recipe for anarchy for man is truly “neither angel nor brute…and he who would act the one becomes the other….” Together, however, they create a living, breathing document, one that can adapt to changing times and deserves our respect and allegiance.

Even the most successful of many imperial presidents, President James K. Polk, did all that he did with Texas, Oregon and Northwestern Mexico while conforming to the Constitution. It was such a pain in the neck that President Polk likely met his early grave at least in part because of it. Yet he understood the necessity we no longer seem to. (A great book that Charlie Goldsmith, former Peace Corps bud, gave me describes that ‘near-great’ president well, A Country of Vast Designs; thank you Charlie!)

The reason I revere the Constitution is not because it is larger than life, but its entire body of obligations, limits and rights that capture human life so wisely. The contractual part was an instrument born of the folly of too much human power or too little. It was designed to curb man’s inhumanity to man. The Bill of Rights celebrated the dignity of man’s community with man. If we follow the Constitution closely during this time of apparent national decline, I firmly believe that we will have the inner fortitude to grow through this painful transition, this necessary loss.

Our emergence need not be into the chronic grief of an imperial 'has-been' but with a far more fulfilling – a far more exceptionally American – role in the kindly courage that long underlay the idea of America as the land for the free, the home of the brave and a haven for hard-working immigrants from the world over. Ironically, we will return to the greatness of character and national aspiration that ‘winning above all else’ has seduced away from us.

Besides, life will be easier without the crushing responsibility that keeps us in a torpor of unaccountability excused as national security and humanity cheapened to hit-lists and baseball cards. Let a Pax de China keep the emerging super power super busy.  We have some re-tooling to do, right here, right now. We can live and prosper in peace without such burdens, contributing to the harmonious progress of the planet toward a better life, as we have in the past. 

And so I close with Vince Lombardi’s famous quote: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Were that Iron Horseman alive today, I am sure he would shake his head wistfully and say to me, “Listen, son, I was talking about something like fifty or sixty fellows, fighting over an acre and change of land for two or three hours on a Sunday afternoon…Get some perspective!”

Route-66 to friends & familiares; The you-tube fuss & Benghazi

This letter home responds to an interesting article that I encountered on FaceBook and an interesting e-mail I received a month ago from a friend of almost five decades. In that e-mail, my friend said, eloquently:

In all the coverage and noise surrounding the tragedy in Benghazi, I haven't heard an answer to one question. I'd like to ask you, as someone with personal experience in Islamic nations. (I know Iraq isn't exactly close to Libya, but you're my expert.) Do people in countries like Libya and Iraq understand that (a), the government can't stop Americans from publishing anything, including hateful crap, and (b), that the idiots who created this mess haven't broken the law in the U.S.?

The article, from a lovely F.B. friend, living in the Middle East, is sympathetic to the Muslim view.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/22092012-freedom-of-speech-insults-incitement-and-islam-oped/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29
In this note, I would rather focus on the dis-connect between the U.S. right to free speech and the seeming disregard that these protests imply for that freedom. Now that we know that the attack was a pre-meditated murder does not change the heart of this thought.    

This discussion is difficult to keep concise since these initial questions raise other, deeper topics. Please excuse the superficial treatment of these answers. Justifying every point I make would take a series of books – one for each topic. Lastly, I am surely no expert and my perspective is that of a U.S. citizen angered by the murder of an unusually gifted diplomat and, more painful, four fine human beings. The ‘you-tube’ video, thought to have sparked this crime, was repugnant.

The Middle East is a misnomer for an ‘Islamic belt’ that stretches from Morocco across to Pakistan, up to Turkey and down to Somalia (as Michael B. Oren hints in Power, Faith and Fantasy). While differences – often murderous ones – exist between peoples within this expanse of different ethnicities or variants of Islam, there are certain concepts that Islam instills in each of its faithful. These tenets, as I perceive them, answer the dis-connect perceived by my friend.

Nevertheless, at the very least, educated people from this ‘belt’ understand this distinction of secular freedom and religious belief since either they or relatives have travelled to, or lived in, the West (i.e., much of the Americas and Europe plus parts of Africa and Oceana) and are exposed to these concepts underlying human rights and, as detailed in the article, codified globally.

Additionally, with the diffusion of Western film and television (principally from the United States) and inter-net connectivity throughout the world as well as the profusion of satellite dishes everywhere, I have difficulty believing that less cosmopolitan Muslims are completely unaware of these concepts. With the evidence of assassination, not mob violence, being central to the murders of Benghazi, one can view these demonstrations across all Islam as spontaneous expressions of that right for free expression and speech.

The problem is that Muslims, at least in a large part of that Islamic belt, do not buy that separation of church and state. Derived from the Holy Qur’an and the recorded thoughts of the Prophet, Sharia Law makes no such distinction as Western democracies do. In fact, the article linked to this essay, though penned by an Englishman, displays that Islamic cultural tension between reason and obedience.

Starting out with a logical argument about international law and human rights, the author seems to revert to type by articulating standard grievances and apologies of frustrated Muslims. Here is my take on why the distinction between legally permitted versus personally approved forms of speech may not work among many Muslims, educated and unschooled, good and malicious alike.

The worst, literally mortal, sin among Muslims is apostasy, as most frequently expressed through blasphemy.  Sharia Law makes no distinction between secular and canon law.

Taking this doctrine to a rigid extreme, one can argue that tolerance of a blasphemer is a tacit form of apostasy; thus, the Western societies are not perceived merely as anti-Islam but also rejecting faith in, and obedience to, God.

Most Muslims obviously do not believe in mass killings of Westerners for this asserted collective, tacit apostasy. Yet a very few extremists (as few as 5,000 around the world) do practice this rigid application that makes their ‘jihad’ a ‘just war’.

Sharia Law, while apparently simple is actually unclear since Islam has had no central religious authority after the Mongols shattered a civilization seven centuries ago by trashing the caliphate of Baghdad.

That decentralization ends up creating a thousand different divergent versions of Sharia Law. Put starkly: if our parish priest, local rabbi or lay deacon instructed us to kill Muslims for whatever theologically explained reason, would we do it? No.

Then again, we have not grown up in, and cannot grasp, this truly alien culture. Trying to “think” like a Muslim only goes so far and, when done by Western policy-makers, often leads to duplicity, disaster or both.

The Arab Spring has been here for seven years and will persist for another generation or two. In this case, liberty is being taken to heart by violent peoples long suppressed by cultures of power. The transition will not be easy but should prove, in the end, to be worth the effort. We are not engaged in a clash of civilizations but one of values, with an unfortunate license to kill.

What the West needs to do, especially as we now know that Ambassador Stevens was assassinated by Al Qaeda or some other cell with easy access to very lethal weaponry, is to empower moderate Muslims. These people are as decent, perhaps better, than most of us outside the faithful. While they understand the complaints animating the militants in their midst, there is no reason to believe that they endorse any and all means.

America started the Arab Spring, which was the right thing to do after 9-11 and will, with time, prove to be of enormous benefit to all peoples. With time. Until then, try as the West might, these moderate Muslims will have to make the first step toward outright repudiation of these bullies. That repudiation, as one can imagine, will not be easy to do and will require great courage. So progress will be incremental.

Which brings us right back to the demonstrations and tragedy in Benghazi. There are signs of hope that such a consensus is beginning to enter the minds of our higher-minded counterparts across the Islamic belt. Widespread demonstrations in Libya against these attacks may plant the seed for similar acts of courage by other Muslims to repudiate terror and the murderers who practice it. Only time and, perhaps, more Western blood will tell.

Until then, a policy of aggressively pursuing energy independence and progressive detachment from the region may induce these moderates to reach out to us. During that time, I would recommend that the U.S. appeal to the core of any of these societies: the women. That appeal would complement a mixture of our absence from meddling with a steady stream of information asking women if they have buried enough sons, brothers and fathers and if they are ready to make their own empowerment a catalyst of the Arab Spring across Islamic countries.