Blame & Run or Blame & Escalate?

Dear Editors,

 “I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam if it’s carried out.” -Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb.

The fact is, the American effort in Iraq is essentially a colonial effort. We’re waging a colonial war. We live in the post-colonial era. This war cannot be won because it is simply out of sync with historical times. -Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Carter

You could see the veins bulging out in Senator Hagel’s neck when Secretary of State Rice was basically suggesting to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that the president could attack Syria and Iran without congressional approval. Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam combat veteran, was thinking Cambodia. 

Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski further explained why our congresspersons were frothing at the mouth: in the “absence of an imminent threat (and the Iranians are at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If undertaken without a formal congressional declaration of war, an attack would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the president. Similarly, if undertaken without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council, either alone by the United States or in complicity with Israel, it would stamp the perpetrator(s) as an international outlaw(s).”

Serious stuff. The surge is not the story. It appears that the Bush Administration is laying the ground work for a blame-and-run strategy that turns into a blame-and-escalate strategy.

Edward Luttwak’s critique of the new counterinsurgency strategy in the February issue of Harper’s is another reminder of why we don’t do counterinsurgency warfare. To win, we need to use the same tactics as previous empires like the Ottomans or Romans used – out—terrorize the insurgents. Or we can occupy and govern the area for several decades. Neither4approach is compatible with our values or our interests, and no administration official has outlined the costs, risks or unintended consequences of such an approach.

It gets worse. There are many indicators that this president wants to widen the war –continue to increase the size of the military, increase the defense budget and now posture to attack Syria and Iran. McCain is nicely positioning himself to step in and run the wider war. Save the village by burning it, and now stop the war by widening it. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Odom and Sen. Jim Webb have it right. The civil war is over when someone wins it, and there will be no peace in the Middle East until we leave. That means we will not be the winner. Why is that so hard to understand?

Of course, there is another exit strategy. Former diplomat under Reagan and Bush and current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, wrote in the Nov./Dec. issue of Foreign Affairs that the American era in the Middle East is over, and that “the Middle East’s next era promises to be one in which outside actors have a relatively modest impact and local forces enjoy the upper hand.” Iran is the natural hegemon in that neighborhood, and the Arabs will figure out how to get along. They will continue to sell oil. The Arabs may do a better job in creating a stable and prosperous Middle East than we did. Call it the new Pan-Arabism.

Israel has a security problem. We can help them, but only on our terms. The best long-term solution for them is a NATO seaport in Israel and a NATO airfield in Palestine.  NATO forces can provide the nuclear deterrent, the shield and the forces for strategic control zones to contain and control threats in the region – limited ends that we can achieve.

We must end the attrition war, cancel that $5 billion-a-year bill for 90,000 extra troops and spend the money on a Marshall plan for alternative energy. Add maybe $3 million for Jeff Berman’s bio-diesel project in Dove Creek.

President Bush’s strategy in Iraq required an occupation that set the conditions for civil war. Everybody in the world knows that. We are the guilty party. We broke it, we own it, and now we are paying for it. And we can leave. We just have to say we’re sorry and that we won’t do it again. Our credibility will go up immediately.

– Jim Callard, via e-mail

The balloon that ruined Christmas

Dear Editors,

It’s Christmas Eve, another fun evening down at 3 Rivers Brewery, and a balloon, given free to our smaller customers, flies up into our grease vent in the kitchen. Our staff responds swiftly, not knowing what is causing the smoke, and calls the Fire Department.  Even before the FFD arrives, kitchen staff discovers the culprit and announces to the Fire marshal “It was just a false alarm. Sorry for the confusion.” But does this satisfy the marshal? NO.

At this point, and in a fashion I consider an egregious abuse of power, my staff and I proceed to be given the Riot Act regarding the condition of our grease vent, citing too much grease build-up, and on a Christmas Eve, were threatened to be shut down until we got the vent cleaned. Did it matter to him that we have our vent cleaned at regular intervals, have done so since opening in 1997, and that as a matter of fact, said vent would be cleaned merely one day AFTER Christmas? No. And does it really concern him that requiring our business to call in an Emergency Cleaning will cost us DOUBLE the normal price? Again, a resounding no.

At the marshal’s request, and wishing to avoid his further wrath, we had our vent cleaned.  But my question is this: if we’ve always respected code, were indeed actively respecting code, where is the fair treatment? When do those in authority recognize we are all “real people” trying to make an honest living in a town we all love? And where was the marshal’s Christmas spirit, and why does he lord around with his precious badge?  Evidently, the Scrooge needed to feel important.

– John Silva, Three Rivers Eatery and Brew House, Farmington

Where did the open space dollars go?

Dear Editors,

This letter is in response to Scott Graham’s op-ed piece regarding Open Space in the Sun., Jan. 21, Durango Herald. As a former Open Space Advisory Board member, I’d first like to thank Mr. Graham for his tireless dedication to the preservation of open space in our community and urge the Durango City Council to renew his term of service on the board. Secondly, I’d like to remind the constituents of Durango who voted in favor of the 2005 Open Space, Library & Safety referendum that the City estimated that an average of $2.4 million per year would be available for open space protection. By protecting open space, we extend habitat for wildlife, interconnect trails, and provide easier access within the city for hikers and bikers. That all sounded good to the voters back in 2005.

But how does $100,000/year of a $48.1 million dollar tax increase sound now? Were the voters duped? I urge the City Council to re-instate open space funding to the City budget. Lastly, let’s continue to work together to develop innovative opportunities for creating additional open space in our community. Durango’s landscape is part of why we appreciate living here. Let’s commit to protecting open space because it is an investment in a higher quality of life for ourselves and future generations.

– Jenny Newcomer, Durango

Shredding the atmosphere

Dear Editors, I would like to counter Roger Cohen’s exercise in misdirection regarding the basis for climate concerns with the following. Look up into that beautiful sky overhead and consider its substance, dynamics and might for a moment. Our atmosphere is a tenuous veil of gases that lays upon the surface of our earth, thin as the finest silk upon your skin. This veil has a most interesting structure, one that’s worth considering.

Our atmosphere is composed almost totally of nitrogen and oxygen. Interwoven into this medium is a gossamer thin admixture of everything else: thousands of compounds that can be grouped into almost 200 distinct families. Combined, these compounds make up less than 1 percent of our atmosphere’s volume. Most of this volume is made up of inert compounds and noble gases, so called because they don’t react with their surroundings very much, if at all. Within this matrix of nonreactive molecules is another, yet thinner community of reactive compounds. By volume, these reactive components total less than 500 parts per million parts of atmosphere. This is where the action is. These chemicals are always reacting with each other: they combine, split up, mutate, effect neighboring molecules, change characteristics – and they do this at nonstop hypervelocities. This is the scaffolding over which energy, moisture and heat perform their weather ballet. What’s new is that, over the past 200 years or so, humanity has been injecting a third category of ingredients: human-generated and human-made. By volume, this new genre consists mainly of substances already present in the atmosphere, only now they are being added to in unfathomable quantities – and they belong to the reactive families. Then, there are the “exotics”: creations of science and industry that make up a small, but usually highly reactive, percentage. All told, society has been injecting millions upon billions of tons of gases and particulates into our atmosphere at ever-increasing rates. So much so that the very composition of our atmosphere – the weave of our atmospheric veil – has been significantly and verifiably altered.

This is cause for concern because our atmosphere is in actuality a heat engine. Its matrix of moisture, gaseous and particulate components are the valves and pistons. This engine is powered by the sun’s energetic rays, and the result is our weather: the global distribution of energy, heat and moisture. Now, consider that each compound that society has added to the fabric of our earth’s atmospheric weave interacts with the sun’s energy according to its own unique thermo-hygroscopic-chemical profile. Doesn’t it reason that recent weather fluctuations are little more than a reflection of our atmosphere’s composition?

Scientists have been discovering and recording these changes since the end of World War II. For more than 40 years now, satellites have been visually recording the stains, rips and acid burns we have inflicted and will continue to inflict upon the veil of our atmosphere. The increasingly sophisticated information they gather continues to have ominous implications for the future as well as the present.

While the corporate media discusses global changes in terms of global averages, keep this in mind: there is no “average” patch of ground or water on this planet. Pollutants are not added as amorphous averages. They are injected into the fabric of our atmosphere as ribbons of varying concentrations and volumes. It’s true that today scientists have evidence that some global areas are experiencing a warming trend, while others are experiencing some cooling. There is nothing reassuring about this.

Think about our atmosphere as the heat engine whose role it is to seek a globally balanced distribution of energy, heat and moisture. This engine has evolved to a delicate state of dynamic equilibrium. Remember, it is the profile of temperature gradients and barometric differentials that provide the throttle behind this engine’s drive to maintain its equilibrium. Inject extremes and it will react in kind – it makes no difference to the engine. It does, however, make a difference to humans and the biosphere as we know, love and need it.

Science has consistently shown that nature is always vastly more complex, interwoven and unpredictable than the human intellect is capable of imagining. Why won’t we allow this lesson to sink in? Why be surprised when weather continues to become more chaotic?

Admittedly, no one can accurately predict how weather will change, but who can deny that it will continue to change, and at an accelerated rate? We can kid ourselves, but we can’t fool Mother Nature.

– Sincerely, Peter Miesler, via e-mail

Ode to Bill

For William Stafford

Often times he would pause and make you

Think about the line he had just read. He did this deliberately and slowly so you had to savor each word.

He had a reserved quality

And a quiet tone.

His poems made you want to settle down and

Promise something to yourself. We met at Ohio Wesleyan

Some thirty plus years ago. He gave a reading there and afterwards

We went to the local watering hole known as “Holly’s.” We found a booth and

Talked somewhat about metaphors with Bob Flanagan. As the afternoon passed, images of Kansas returned to his thoughts. He had that bushy brow appearance of

A man who worked the words right out of the land, as if hands could dig to the root of meaning.

He taught me that words had their place and that you just had to find that unique spot where they would feel at home. On occasion, when I am alone and walking near a snow covered field at twilight, I’ll notice a clump of grasses in seed, bending to the east, and I will remember the prairie of his eyes and the places where words, justly belong.

– Burt Baldwin, Ignacio