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Obama's Own "Mission Accomplished" Fiasco in Iraq

The majority will agree that Bush's defining failure moment in his foreign policy was the "mission accomplished" staged fiasco. In some ways, Obama's signature foreign policy failure may also turn out to be the premature declaration of victory in Iraq.

As is already evident, this decision will cost Iraqi's lives. Ethnic and Religious violence is already claiming victims at an increased pace. Worst may well follow. It was obvious to most of the observers that Iraq was simply not yet ready for the American departure. Another year of simply being present on the ground would have gone a long way to help increase the chances of success. Unfortunately that year happens to be an election year and Obama obviously decided that his ability to claim that he delivered on his promise to end the war in Iraq trumped the reality of needing to finish the job.

This is not a left or right issue. If you did not agree with the war, you can't deny that we are in it, and that we sacrificed 5,000 American lives, $800 billion, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lives to get to a relative state of stability. All of the signs were pointing to a continued improvement of the situation and growing capacity of the Iraq to take care of its own security. All it required is our continued visible presence for a while longer. We were no longer taking on casualties, the price would likely have been gladly paid for by Iraq which is not receiving oil revenue. So why quit now? There is only one answer: politics.

When we elect leaders we shouldn't expect them to follow the general sentiment. We should expect them to lead. Leadership means doing the right thing for our country. It doesn't involve monitoring the polls, it involves having a vision and explaining it to the voters to bring them on board. On this issue, Obama has failed to lead, and we are likely to pay the price for this failure.

At the core of it

Having spent some time over the last few week in discourse about the Occupy movement, provided me with further evidence of that what ails us today. While confused on their grievances, wrong on the causes, and off the wall on the solutions, they intuitively "get" one thing right - Our Government, Representatives and the management of many companies are made up of corrupt, soulless people who lack moral compass.

Interestingly this can also be said of many Occupy participans themselves. They just happen to be further away from the trough. The same ailment undermines our jury-based judicial system: The "jury of our peers" seem to embrace the lowest common denominator, generating consecutive high profile stunning verdicts, sometime in total contradiction with the facts.

This has become the biggest "distorting" factor in our politics, corporate behavior, religion, justice, and race relations. The "left" and the "right" simply take ideological positions on the issues with "facts" and "statistics" that help back up their dogma. For every rational company that had to outsource certain jobs to keep afloat, one can site an example of the management ruthlessly slashing jobs which are strategy to gain more money and seemingly with the biggest aim of increasing personal compensation. It is also a significant contributor to our economic malaise. It's hard to unite in a strategy if most of the people are working only for their own personal gain. 

So, who are these selfish, morally corrupt, ignorant, and frequently illiterate people? A generation has the biggest impact on the society between the ages of 35 and 55. As the "greatest generation" is now dying off and the "baby boomers" are retiring, it is the children of the baby boomers who are starting to take controls of the levers of power in the society. It's the generation where the concept of education was turned upside down, the self esteem was put on the pedestal, spanking was frowned upon, moral relativity was prevalent, and whose parent's many interests and hobbies were put well ahead of child rearing. It is also generation that was raised in post-civil rights and post-feminism era, believing in an inalienable right to equality in everything from health to education to compensation, and even to "good fortune".  Within the education "norm" of this generation, it became possible to finish school without taking biology, or reading more than "curriculum minimum" of books required. As their parents became affluent, the former family ties and structures that supported family "networks" financially and linked them culturally across generations dissolved, leaving these kids rootless and without any cultural values that used to be passed from one generation to the next. They lack respect for older generation, humility, and knowledge which would make them humble about the amount of information they really lack.

Those are the folks who represent a large portion of our managers, bankers, voters, representatives, teachers, unemployed, Occupy protesters, judges, parents, garbage collectors, and CEOs.

We are paying the price today for the failed education practices of the last half of 20th century, our affluence and the related breakdown of the extended family structure, and misguided child rearing practices of the 60's , 70's and 80's. The social upheavals of those years left terrible scars and consequences that we have to deal with today.

There is no real cure for this affliction. The children of baby boomers will have to work their way through their life cycle and pass the mantle to their children before things will really change. The big question mark is - what does THAT generation look like? Considering certain amount of corrections that have been made in education and other spheres to reverse the obviously failed practices of before, one can hope that it will get better. Meanwhile, the biggest corrective factor will be a declining standard of living, which will, once again, force families closer together, strip some of the arrogance and belief in get rich quick schemes, and force people to get back to basics.

Best of time, Worst of times....

By any reasonable measure, the human race is better off now than ever. As recently as 100 years ago we lived till 50 (if lucky), died of wars, starvation, infections, a number of diseases, and primitive medical care. Overwhelming majority of people were born to their stations in life and remained there until the end. In short, the life of an average human beign was short, cruel, and violent. 

In contrast, today billions of people have been lifted out of poverty, have access to some sort fo medical care, able to advance the lives of their children beyond the levels of their own, and can occupy themselves with more than just worrying about where their next meal is coming from. The average life expectancy has risen to over 60 (and over 80 in the developed nations), and majority of mass0killing diseases have been conquered. This doesn't apply to everyone, but to a larger percentage than ever before. 

So, why all of the discontent about the economic issues? Everywhere you look, people are protesting their plight and looking for someone to blame. Why is it that when things are at the their best for the human race, we seem to be as unhappy as ever?

A closer look at the situation reveals some of the root causes. You will note that most of the discontent is being expressed in the developed countries. With the developing countries finally reaching the economic maturity, they have been attracting the investment that used to stay in the developed countries. In, short, they have been offering the same skills for less money. This has resulted in wealth re-distribution from the wealthy countries to the poorer ones. Good for the human race, not so good for the guy who used to make $35 per hour on the ford assembly line in Detroit. This is not a simple issue and will take many years to rectify, but many will be impacted in the meanwhile. 

In the US, when we faced similar shift in the past, I think we did it with much stronger and resilient populace. Today, I fear we can't be as certain. Baby Boomers did it again - they smoked and protested in the 60s, they destroyed the education system that gave THEM the best education, they raised kids who never heard a "no" and believed they are god's gift to earth, they piled up entitlements for themselves and for their kids without paying for them, they are retiring and their children with $100k worthless degrees and without any skills are now demanding something they think is owed to them. 

You take these two trends together, and it more than explains what we are witnessing today. I think it will take a while. 

 

Protesting as a hobby

No matter where you look these days, people are out protesting. I just spent a month in Europe. Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Brits, are all out protesting. Here, we have people protesting in NYC, DC, and other cities. I find myself a bit perplexed as to the causes and , more importantly, solutions that these folks are proposing. I really haven't seen anything other than a lot of clever (and no so clever) slogans and demands. One thing that gets me (and many other people who are employed or are actively looking for employment) is this: where DO they get the time? I know I don't have time to read a book, much less go protest for a day, or a week.... These issues that are being protested  (when they are actually stated) are typically large, systemic faults which are not solved quickly or easily. Many are a result of decades of damaging behavior by our societies. Most are solved by fairly puritanical prescriptions: work hard, save for rainy day, don't gamble, etc. etc. They are certainly NOT solved by a bunch of people sitting around holding up signs. Protesting what? We are all guilty of the mess. We all rode the borrowed gravy train. If these folks don't like where we are, look in the mirror. One doesn't have to go protest for that. The media is straining hard to explain on the behalf of the protesters what "they relay mean". Rubbish. There is only one advice that is appropriate for them: Get to work!!

Norway Massacre - Also the fruits of radical Islam

No question that Andres Brevik is not a well man. No one who is well does what he did. However, how his tortured brain got to the point that it did has a lot do with a real problem - a set of explosive trends that are running together: 1) Islamization of Europe 2) Radicalization of Islam and 3) Failure of "diversity" approach to assimilate moslems into western societies. Anyone who has been coming to Europe regularly over the last twenty years can clearly see how much the influx of moslems have changed the major urban centers of Europe. You can't deny what you see, no matter how it's "packaged" by the liberal governments of Europe. This is what set off Brevik. And while he is a true and radcialized element of the response, there is a growing wave of much saner folks who have had just about enough. Brevik is an insane canary in the european cultural mine.

And so, in my book, this is also the direct effect of the worldwide radicalization of islam and the concurrent islamization of the western world. While Europe "leads" the way, these trends are also building in the US. We have failed to see that THIS wave of immigrants is fundamentally different from all the prior ones. They are not here to assimilate into American culture. They are its biggest critics and believe that theirs will replace the one in place. This sets up an inevitable push-back. First from the extremists like Brevik, but later from the mainstream as well. If the politicians won't face it and will continue with the "diversity" drivel, it will only be a much more violent response rather than if it is politically managed and controlled.  Time will tell.

 

Paying the price

As the case of Casey Anthony (the murderous mom) clearly shows, our justice system is in shambles. It's original strength - the jury system - has become its undoing. A 5 year old with any common sense would understand that what she has admitted to (30 days delay in reporting a missing child, lies, etc. etc.) deserves a severe punishment. As is, she is close to walking out free. Why??

I believe that there are several core reasons in play here. First, the juries of ones'peers has become to mean 12 people well versed in reality TV, Jerry Springer Show, and other "wonderful" cultural fare. Certainly these are folks who have been educated through the "moral relativism" of the public education of the last 40 years. So, anything can be "ok" under certain circumstances.

Second, just like in the OJ case, the actual facts of the case are ignored for a greater political "cause". In OJ's case it had everything to with the racial "payback" and in this case the philosophical opposition to a death penalty was front and center. The defense attorney said as much in his statement after the verdict.

The result is a grotesque miscarriage of justice. The kind of outcome which damages everyone's belief in the "fairness" of the system. Which is the core prerequisite for it working. In the end we are paying the price for our educational and cultural mistakes of the last 50 years. We reap what we sow.

 

 

It's time to break with the middle ages

I am not an atheist per se. I am an agnostic or a "possibilian". I don't believe that there are books and rules and special houses to interact with higher power (if it in fact exists). There are close to 2000 "religions" in the world. Every one of them has its own history and absolute faith based conviction in it being "the" correct religion for the rest of humanity. And there is the rub. People have spent most of their history killing each over deviations (sometimes very minute ones) in their set of religious beliefs. Even today, at the dawn of 21st century, majority of us are willing to perform acts in the range from quaint to bizzar, all in the name of some set of centuries old beliefs. Which would be ok, if in many cases it didn't come at the expense of other groups of people who happened to believe in a different set of books. And so , as has been so powerfully demonstrated by Al Quaeda, we continue to be willing to be brainwashed to reduce the stature of non-believers to the point where it becomes trivial to do anything to them. Including killing them.

I think we are fast approaching the point where we, as humanity, will have to make a break with organized religions of the past. When I say "fast", I don't mean next year, or even next decade. But if generations of today can finally start loosening the medieval yoke of organized religions, and begin by simply accepting the fact that others beliefs may have merit and most certainly don't equate them to maggots, we will be well under way. From there it is not difficult to imagine the future where religions, as we know them, will be confined to  history books  and cause surprise and disbelief in the future high school pupils the way historic fact of slavery does today. I think this century maybe the one that can truly lead us to enlightenment. 

 

Travel Better

 

So after thirty years of traveling, I relaized that my travel habits evolved as I learned how to maximize the positive and minimize the negative. So my contribution to travelers are these points of advice:

- Do not fly redeye

- Arrive to the airport 1.5 hours before departure

- Don't drink alcohol on the plane, or before. Drink water. But not too much.

- Earplugs, Headphones

- Pack light just enough for carry on. Leave extra clothes in the hotel where you stay frquently

- Dress loosely, in layers, shoes you can kick off and slip on

- Get 8 hours of sleep

- Dont eat airplane food. Either wait till destination, eat before, or bring a to go bag

- Across the ocean: Arrive one day early, stay one day on the end.When you arrive "stay up" , stay outside until the evening

- Pick a hotel. Stick to it. If you dont have a special rate, look up a big business nearby and "piggy back"

- Do something other than work on every trip. Take a walk, Shoot some photos, Visit a landmark

- Invest time in fidning locally owned, quality, well reviewed restaurants (Zagat, Yelp), stick to them

- Be "map aware" , there may be great places to visit or see whitin easy driving distance

- Be airport aware - there is more than one way to get there (follow discounters hubs)

- In the economy class: Book aisle seats with middle seat next to you empty even if at the very back of the plane

- In business class: use the time to work and sleep. Forget eating.

- Don't buy business class within europe - not worth it

- Across the ocean upgrade using miles whenever you can going eastbound - sleep better

- If mom with an infant traveling next to you, help with the baby - you will get more quiet time and earn karma points

- When boarding board as soon as possible, when deplaning wait for the stampede to pass

- Be nice to flight attendatds, drivers, waiters, etc. - get better service = less stress

That's it !! Try it, you'll like it.

Live Flesh

Don't know how I missed this movie when it came out. Pedro Almodovar, is at his best here. One of those movies that leaves an impression and stays with you for days. A sure sign of quality. The movie achieves that rare "real life texture" feel and leaves you feeling engaged with the story. A jewel.

Poem by Rita Vizitei. We miss you every day mom...

Болею. Вспомнилась душа

Давно,давно живем розно

И нужен час тревожный, грозный

Чтоб к ней притти, едва дыша

 

А по-другому не бывает,

Ни времени, ни места ей

И где оне никто не знает

И не заботится о ней

 

А по-другому все прекрасно

Обходится и без нее

Не тратя времени напрасно

Вершится наше бытие

 

И знают руки, что им делать

Язык когда что говорить

И дело следует за делом

И это наываем жизнь

 

И все-же здесь закон нарушен

О сохраненьи вещества

Когда из нас из'яты души

То мы уже не существа

 

Мы нечто полое, иное

И верно надо заболеть

Иль может просто умереть

Чтобы успеть понять

Что мы такое