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What They've Thought
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What They Thought August 13, 2006 Alan
Caruba Click here for columnist bios |
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“Before the Israeli attack, Lebanon no longer existed, it was no more than a hologram.” This is what the Lebanese journalist, Michael Behe, wrote on July 30. His commentary was posted on the website of the Metula News Agency in Beirut. To understand the Lebanese situation, it helps to know that, despite a history that dates back to biblical times, modern Lebanon was literally the invention of Western powers, England and France, after WWI in 1920. It became independent of France in the early 1940s. Then, in the 1970s, the Palestinians, driven out of Jordan and elsewhere, moved in. Doing what they do best, they started a civil war and, in 1978, after a Palestine Liberation Organization attack killed 37 Israeli civilians, Israel launched an offensive to drive them away from its northern border. In 1982, Israel again invaded in response to attacks. Christian Lebanese troops entered Palestinian refugee camps and massacred hundreds. The era of the Palestinians was over, but by the next decade its successor, Hezbollah, was routinely shelling Israel, provoking Israeli military responses. After a long occupation of southern Lebanon, in 2000 Israel decided to withdraw its troops. On February 14, 2005, Rafiq al-Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon, was assassinated in Beirut. His death points back to Damascus. He had become an outspoken opponent to the Syrian occupation of Lebanon that had begun 1976, a year after the outbreak of the civil war. In the years that followed, thousands of Lebanese were brutally imprisoned or killed by Syrian occupiers. By 1991, the domination of Lebanon by Syria had been formalized with a defense and security agreement. This was followed two years later by an economic agreement in which Lebanon’s true status as a colony of Syria was made official. Hariri’s assassination generated a rally in which the streets of Beirut filled with anti-Syrian Lebanese. It was dubbed the “Cedar Revolution” and lasted about five minutes. Days later, on March 8, 2005 Hezbollah was able to put over a million other Lebanese into the streets. This was followed by an election that was so gerrymandered only pro-Syrian candidates had any chance of being elected. Hezbollah had reinvented itself as a political party. Under intense international pressure, Syria prudently removed its troops from Lebanon after the Hariri assassination. An earlier 2004 United Nations Security Council resolution 1559 demanding this action had been ignored. The various elected governments of Lebanon had turned a blind eye to the growth of Hezbollah. Funded and trained by Iran and supplied through Syria, Hezbollah was in charge. As Behe noted, there were parts of Beirut where its own citizens, including its police and army, were forbidden access. “A square measuring a kilometer wide, a capital within the capital, permanently guarded by the (Hezbollah) army, possessing its own institution, its schools, its tribunals, its radio, its television and above all, its government.” It was precisely this part of Beirut the Israeli air force destroyed. The rest of the city, as of July 30, was left intact. The problem for Lebanon is the problem for the world. Muslims resist or are restrained from living in a modern, sovereign, secular nation. Iraq was secular because a dictator made it that way. Turkey was secular because its modern founder, Ataturk, turned it toward Europe in 1925 and away from Muslim traditions and governance. Modern Lebanon's problem is demography. In 1943 when its constitution was established, a “national pact” ensured representation by both Christians and Muslims with top offices being allocated to each group. Today, Muslims are the largest part of Lebanon’s population, easily 75% or more. The Lebanese government failed its citizens and the Lebanese who voted Hezbollah politicians into power betrayed their nation. Lebanon today is an imaginary nation. Destroyed by the Palestinians led by Yassir Arafat, occupied by Syria, Lebanon is now nothing more than the tool of Iranians who are busy preparing their own people for a war with the Israelis, the British, and the Americans. And how long are we going to wait around until they achieve that? How long was Israel supposed to wait while Lebanon/Hezbollah/Iran continued to kidnap its soldiers and shoot rockets into their homeland? The Palestinians of Hamas were enough of nuisance in their own right, but Hezbollah was a real army and one that has been trained and armed by the Iranians. In the last world war, America, Britain, and other allied nations expended years and thousands of lives to win against the dictatorships of Germany and Japan. In the end, we demanded and got "unconditional surrender." That is what we are going to need to do in the Middle East to free ourselves from the threat of the Islamic Jihad. |
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No column this week. R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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I can’t take it anymore. Enough with the whining. Stop it with the hypocrisy. A couple of weeks ago, Floyd Landis was an ex-Mennonite turned Tour de France hero. People were calling him the new face of sports bravery for winning the world’s toughest bike race in spite of needing a hip replacement. Today, he’s a cheater — a bona fide louse, a man who betrayed his sport and country — because he tested positive for unusually (read: suspiciously) high levels of testosterone. Now, instead of singing his praises, all I’m hearing from people is, “Say it ain’t so, Floyd.” All anyone wants to do is bitch and moan about “another” fallen hero taking a bite of that forbidden, albeit performance-enhancing, fruit called steroids. Just stop already. Honestly. Please. For the love of God. Just stop. Yes, the man was caught doping. No, that doesn’t mean he betrayed his sport or his country… or the three or four people who actually follow his sport in his country. Landis has denied any and all steroid allegations, but the truth is, whether he used or not, it doesn’t matter. Maybe officially, legally, in the context of rulebooks, it matters. But not in reality. In reality, steroids only matter because we’ve decided they matter. And we’ve only decided they matter because of some vain belief they “taint” this or “cheat us out of” that. In truth, steroids cheat us out of nothing. I know we all want to believe sports are “real,” and that steroids make the real “unreal” in some way or another. But that unreality is relative. A guy winning a race on steroids looks the same on TV as a guy winning a race without them. This is all that matters now that everyone in every sport seems to be juicing. If fairness were the issue here, every athlete could use steroids and no one would be arguing. Instead, every athlete seems to be using them, and we’re still trying to ban them anyway. This can only be because we believe steroids are somehow immoral. It can only be because we believe Landis’s victory somehow besmirches past Tour champions — or because we believe Barry Bonds somehow destroys the credibility of baseball’s homerun records. To believe these things is to believe there’s something immoral about human progress. Floyd Landis needs a new hip, and here he’s winning races. Barry Bonds is in his early 40s and until recently was hitting homeruns like a guy in his late 20s. If drugs are making these things possible, it would be more unnatural not to take those drugs. How many middle-aged men are taking Viagra or Cialis, for instance? And what are those, if not performance enhancers? How many people take allergy pills just to make it through work during allergy season? How many drink coffee just to make it through work every day of every season, all throughout the year? When faced with certain obstacles, human beings innovate. When they want it bad enough, they’ll find a way to match their will to win. If we’re going to accuse steroid-using athletes of cheating — if we’re going to say their achievements shouldn’t count — then how can we include Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Allen Poe in the pantheon of great American writers? Both men drank heavily. Alcohol was their performance enhancer. How was this fair to sober writers? Writers who didn’t drink couldn’t possibly compete. Much the same, is it fair for a short man wearing lifts in his shoes to compete for dates with short men who don’t wear them? Wearing lifts may be a little different than injecting something into your body. But at its heart, how’s it different than taking human growth hormone? How’s it different than drinking coffee or alcohol, or taking Cialis, or doing any of the other things people do to enhance their natural endowments? I’m not saying pro athletes necessarily should be on steroids. Nor am I saying pro sports leagues have no right to ban them. I understand performance-enhancing drugs can have negative long-term side effects. Ultimately, that may be a great reason not to use them. But the medications we take in our kitchens every morning can have negative long-term side effects, too. Sometimes we don’t even know how those medications will affect us in the long-term. But we take them anyway, because we believe the benefits outweigh the possible risks. Some athletes juice with the very same mindset. And not just to gain a competitive edge, either. Sometimes a pitcher using HGH does so to overcome the physical pains of what he’s being paid for. Yet we hold him to a much different standard. We don’t yell about the “credibility” of our personal health histories when we pop our pills each morning; we only yell about credibility when athletes are popping theirs. It’s not unusual for a society to project deep-rooted feelings onto its sports heroes. Deep down, maybe we fear our society’s overly medicated — and maybe that’s why we’ve dismissed performance enhancers categorically. In the end, though, I think the argument that steroids “send kids a bad message” tells us everything we need to know here. We think it’s immoral for science to help kids run faster, jump higher, or overcome the effects of time on their bodies. Yet drugs that sedate kids and make ‘em sit still in a classroom? Those, we have no qualms with. There’s a common thread throughout this discussion. The idea that we should make do with our lot in life is it. But that mentality is self-defeating. And considering the lengths we’ll go to just to look and feel better in this society, it also makes us a fat bunch of hypocrites. Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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In recent weeks I’ve written about how inflation is alive and well, especially when it comes to the cost of housing, energy, gas, and education. But perhaps the most worrisome type of inflation comes in the form of steadily rising property taxes. Property taxes keep going up for most Texans, and people living on fixed incomes are especially concerned. They often find their homes being reassessed every year at values far beyond what they originally paid. So an annual property tax bill that once was a manageable $500 or $700 might now be $1500 or $2000. Of course Texas tax laws are made in Austin, not Washington. Assessments are made at the county level. And the Texas legislature recently passed HB1, which does provide some real property tax relief over the next three years. But as a Texas taxpayer myself, I would like the state legislature to consider an additional proposal. Specifically, end the practice of annual assessments. Properties should be reassessed for tax purposes only when sold or ownership is otherwise transferred. The current system is terrifying for seniors forced to pay more and more each year, with no idea where they will find the money. And unlike other bills, property taxes must be paid or else one’s home can be taken away. My office hears from seniors who may have no choice but to leave Texas altogether because they cannot live with the uncertainty of arbitrary property tax increases. They literally fear losing their homes. At the federal level, Congress can act now to provide relief to those paying high property taxes. Although property taxes are deductible on your federal tax return, the current rules require taxpayers to itemize to take the deduction. Many people have a hard time paying $2,000 or $3,000 in property taxes, but they don’t have enough other itemized deductions to exceed the standard deduction. I introduced HR 5860 to address this problem. This legislation creates an “above the line deduction” on the first page of your 1040, meaning you can deduct every penny of your property taxes without itemizing and still enjoy the full value of your standard deduction. Even taxpayers using 1040A or 1040EZ forms can take the deduction. This means average and lower income taxpayers can take the same deduction for their property taxes that high-income taxpayers with complex deductions now enjoy. Property taxes are only one piece of the puzzle. Rep. Ron Paul Web Site Back to Top |
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This is a piece written for divorced parents. It needs to be written on behalf of the non-custodial parent; who wants a relationship with the kids, yet finds the relationship compromised by the other parent. All too often, the non custodial parent is written about as if he/she is deadbeat and has no interest in the children when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I am one such parent and the tears I have shed over this situation are far too many to count. Many partners entering into a marriage have a fantasy that there will be a “happily ever after.” Too many of us, however, have unresolved issues that bear intense self-evaluation before seriously considering tying the knot. Unfortunately, there are no pre-Cana programs for those who aren’t Catholic. Indeed, not everyone recognizes their own unresolved issues. This results in a large percentage of people entering into a marital contract for all the wrong reasons, or without a realistic idea of what marriage really entails. Let me clear up a few misconceptions. I recently learned about covenants and contracts during a class on the Constitution. The Constitution is a covenant between the people of this country, who have the power to dissolve the government, whose form is more like a contract. Those who hold office are supposed to uphold the covenant. They are contracted to do this. There is a huge difference between these two words. A contract implies that it can be broken if one or the other parties reneges on their obligations. On the other hand, a covenant is a promise to live your life by certain values and meeting certain obligations in order to be assured certain conditions. Breaking a covenant is a much larger ordeal — sort of like having a revolution instead of just changing a few laws or electing different representatives to office. A marriage should be thought of as a covenant not to be broken because of the exceptionally large cost which will be wreaked on all the family and friends related to the partners as a married couple. Marriage should not be entered into lightly. It takes a lifelong commitment. If that cannot be absolutely promised, it should not happen. A contract implies that there is an escape clause. Too many people think of marriage as a contract. That is why, in many cases, there are prenuptial agreements between partners in the event that something should go wrong. Unfortunately, I entered my first marriage for all the wrong reasons. I wanted to break the contract, however, the advice that I received from the counselor who I most trusted was to stay in the marriage. Her reasoning was that if his qualities were over 50% good, if he didn’t beat me, cheat, nurse an addiction, and brought home a decent wage, I was doing well. However, I eventually left the marriage because there was one important ingredient that was left out: I wasn’t devoted to him or in love with him. I couldn’t reconcile spending my life with a person I couldn’t put ahead of myself. I eventually remarried and that is when most of the problems ensued. I moved out of my ex’s hometown to another suburb. I was devoted to my new spouse, who needed to live in the area where we settled. Because this meant it would be nearly impossible to see my children every day, I opted to have them on alternate weekends and see them in their neighborhood twice a week, plus summers. That sounds reasonable enough…if an ex understands the importance of children having two parents. Unfortunately, my ex-husband does not. He made it clear to them that time spent at my house meant being away from their friends and the activities in which they could be involved in what he considered their “real” home. And because he involves himself in their every activity (he is their Scout leader, their soccer coach, is a member of where they worship), this has made it nearly impossible for me to take the lead in anything where they live. If I am to see them, I must see him as well. I must navigate those who are his friends, who do not reach out to me. I am intensely alone when I am in his neighborhood, “his town.” The result is that my children have learned not to see me as an authority or as a parent with equal investment in them. I’ve become an accessory, an obligation, an annoyance, depending on the day. For the most part, my ex has left nothing for me to do with them alone except go to dinner. He even interrupts them when I’m at the house (sometimes doing homework with one or the other) to tell them what they must do (all of a sudden, laundry becomes very important, arguments ensue about whether the TV is on) right in front of me, as if I’m a babysitter and am incapable of making decisions about how I spend my time with my own children). It doesn’t help that schools are not required to call both parents about situations that arise. It doesn’t matter that the divorce decree states that I have an equal voice about their medical care and treatment; their attending doctors simply listen to my ex-husband and don’t feel the need to consult with me when he brings them to their offices. The caregivers understand that he will do whatever he deems necessary and that the children are old enough to go along with his decisions. My kids have been conditioned not to see me as a primary caregiver, whose opinion about their lives should be taken seriously. Their father knowingly undermines the minimal time I have with my children (I’ve given up on weekends at my house) by telling them that I’m the one who made life so inconvenient by moving 45 minutes away (only in traffic), that I’m the one who wants to schedule two nights a week with them, which will interfere with sport practices now that they’re in high school. I freely admit I do want them on a weekend or part of the summer. What loving parent wouldn’t? And I do understand that it might interfere with camping or seeing friends where they live. While it is true that I could see them all the time if I’d never moved and tried to have a life apart from my ex-husband, wanting to see my children shouldn’t require the continuation of a dissolved marriage. He has taught my children to refuse to move beyond what are now circumstances that cannot be easily changed. He has taught them limitation. He’s taught them there is no need to respect me, that I’ve divorced them as well as him, and that I’m selfish for having a life without them. He treats my relationship with them as a contract, not a covenant. Oddly, that is the same message I received from my own mother about my father when I was a child and they divorced. To this day, I do not have a relationship with my father though I often cry about that void in my life. I don’t want that to happen with my own children but I fear I am beginning to see the writing on the wall. Most incredibly, I have an ex who has taught our children that time spent with their mom has no value, that it isn’t important to know their mother. When they see me, there is always something that must be sacrificed. Instead of learning to accept reality by making the best of an otherwise difficult situation, they have been taught to limit their capacity for positive thinking and to dwell on what might have been, building up a resentment toward me that is of late becoming an extremely heavy cross to bear. I’m sure there are deadbeat parents, parents who think little of spending time with their children, or find dedicating time to them a burden. But there are more parents who have gotten divorced from their spouses and are mortified to find that their kids have become entities included in the divorce settlement rather than living, loving human beings to be cared for and nurtured. This is a tragedy for the children and an exploitation of the non-custodial parent. I could take my ex to court, but my children are teenagers and having been literally brainwashed would look at a judge and say they don’t want to leave their “real” home. They would tell a judge that they don’t want to be taken away from their friends and activities, a notion cultivated by the narcissism of their father. They would look at a judge and say, "She’s the one who left." Nancy
Salvato
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©2004-2006 by their respective authors. Reprinted by permission. |
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