Since I’m sure to get flamed for this, I’ll just dive right in and say what’s on my mind, rather than pussy-footing around.

I just don’t get the reaction to the killing of Mr. Berg. Yes, it was barbaric. Yes, it was unpleasant, horrible, and nasty. But an outrage? A violation of the rules of war? Well, I suppose so, but why would anyone expect anything different? These folks are 1) radical militant extremists, 2) in a state of war with us and 3) not the kind of guys you’d ask over to watch NASCAR.

Perhaps I have too much of a historical bent, but the idea that people should be nice to one another when they are at war is very odd to me. And when only one side agrees on what the rules of war are, it makes it a little hard to impose your world view on the other guys. No number of hearings or media frenzy is going to persuade these fruitcakes that they need to put a mint on the pillow of their prisoners.

And, while on the topic of treating prisoners nicely, there’s the stuff that “the good guys” did to their prisoners. I find the reactions to that to be odd too. Our soldiers have rules that they are to obey. They are, presumably, steeped in a code of honor from their first day on the job. These gutless cowardly savages broke those rules, and treated enemy combatants like animals. A hearing is not what is called for here. Congress can determine nothing in a hearing that is worthwhile, or advances us one whit towards what needs to be done. The US military has its own justice system, and it is there specifically for these kinds of events. These people broke the rules. They should be court martialed and punished according to the age-old traditions of the military, and they should be punished swiftly. Dragging this into Congress for hearings is inappropriate, wasteful, and gives the Iraqi people the message that there is a question as to whether what they did was wrong. There is, of course, no such question. These soldiers should be treated like the animals they are, and this should be done swiftly. The military is all about discipline, right?

Is this a double standard? You *BET* it’s a double standard. I expect the military of the United States of America to be people of honor. I do not expect that of radical militant islamic terrorists. That seems very clear-cut to me.

So, what should our reaction be to the killing of a non-combatant? Well, it was an act of war, and really not any different from any other act of war. Yes, we should hunt them down, but it’s a military operation, and however much of a frenzy the press tries to work itself up into, that doesn’t help, and only serves to provide political advantage to a group of old white guys in DC that don’t really understand the situation. Can we please leave the war to the warriors?

Ok, you can send me hate mail now. I’m done ranting.

Several important quotes related to Distillery Calendar Log: Learning to Face Problems.

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
“Which road do I take?” she asked.
“Where do you want to go?” was his response.
“I don’t know,” Alice answered.
“Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”
~ Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

It’s hard, this far into the revolution, to remember what you’re fighting for.
Bill Hall, Jr. (Jan 31, 2000)

And, I’m also reminded of my job. I frequently — no, usually — go into tech support situations utterly unprepared, because the problem that I am supposed to fix is so poorly articulated.

And then there’s the perennial problem in Open Source, where so many software projects are a solution eagerly searching for a problem.

I’m reading/listening to “Hearts in Atlantis” by Steven King. I didn’t see the movie, so I don’t know which of the 5 short stories the movie is about. I presume it’s about the title story.

The first story in the collection – “Low men in yellow coats” – is literature worthy of the best writers of the 20th century. As Steven King gets older, I am progressively more impressed with his writing. Each age has their few really great writers, and in our age, I think that King and Bradbury are certainly two of them. “Low men” is remarkable for its depths of literary allusion, as well as its gut-wrenching descriptions of how darned hard it is to be an 11-year-old. I gathered, right at the end, that there’s a strong tie-in to some other King books that I haven’t read yet, and this gave me renewed interest in reading them. Like my reading list needs to be any longer …

While I know that a lot of people hold King in scorn due to his early horror books, and so will never read anything he ever writes, I think that this is their loss. Yeah, I enjoyed Carrie and Salem’s Lot and It, but I recogize that they are not the same quality of literature as Bag of Bones and Hearts in Atlantis. Great writers are entitled to write a little bit of trash before they write their great stuff. I can only hope that some day I can write as well as King’s trash.

My Eastern Orthodox friends have a strange thing that they say when a loved one dies. May his memory be eternal. This made little or no sense the first few times I heard it, but seems to make a little more sense with passing time. While I would not presume to attempt to explain something that makes sense to the Orthodox, it seems to refer to one’s life having lasting import.

A few days ago, a friend and colleague reported in his blog that a loved relative had recently died, and he recalled time spent with her. In that way, her memory becomes eternal, because it has lasting impact on the life of someone who, in turn, has had a lasting impact on the life of others.

It seems that, when someone dies, the only comfort to be had is that their memory is lasting. The saddest thing is when someone passes, and nobody marks that passing. This is true tragedy. There is a tiny graveyard on the west side of Nicholasville Road, just before Regency Center, that most residents of Lexington aren’t even aware of. In it are broken, mostly illegible grave markers. Nobody seems to know who these people are, or what their stories were.

I think that one of my major motivating factors in many of the things that I do is that my memory be eternal. I’m still trying to decide if this is self-seeking or not. I want to do things that have lasting import. I think, sometimes, this is entirely about vanity, while other times it is about wanting to do things that matter, simply because they are important, and it feels good to be part of something that has lasting impact.

When my grandfather died, I was in a very wretched time of my life. In fact, I had been given divorce papers just days before Grandpere died. I was not able, at that time, to mourn his passing. It was nearly a year later when I was thinking about him, and wept at the enormous loss. And now it has been nearly two years.

My grandfather’s memory will indeed be eternal. The people he touched, and who benefited from knowing him, are countless. He wrote more letters in a year than most of us will write in our life time. Heck, he wrote more letters in a month than most of us will write in our life time.

And, in ways that I notice all the time, Grandpere is part of who I am. I notice tiny manerisms that I have, from time to time, that remind me of him. And other not-so-tiny things that I see in myself, and my father, and my brother.

Grandpere, I miss you, and your memory is eternal.

I have increasingly less patience with political correctness. (By way of Mr Hib Gib.)

A wise man once said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” I suppose that this sentiment no longer has any place in intelligent cultures. The mark of a civilized culture is now, apparently, where nobody ever says anything that anyone else can possibly take as offensive. I’m afraid I have come to take this attitude as an indication that the person(s) in question are simply incapable of having an intelligent debate, so they have to fall back on whining about how unfair it is that their oponent disagrees with them.

It would seem to me that only a child, an idiot, or a sheltered academian, could possibly look out at the world and take offense at people that disagree with them. Get over it folks. *Most* of the people in the world disagree with you on at least one major point, and you simply can’t spend your life getting offended at this.

People who get offended by words they don’t understand (“nigardly”, “uvula”, and “tar baby” are good examples to start with), are fair game for mocking. Except, of course, when courts and committees support their ignorance. Then the field for mocking is greatly widened.

People that get offended by people who disagree with them on religious views (critical readings of books like “The Bible” and “The Koran” are good examples) are simply burying their heads in the sand. Whoever you are, most of the world disagrees with you about religious views. Get over it.

People who get offended by nationalism are living in a dream world. For millenia, people have loved their nations, and have been willing to die for that love. And, for a very long time, when people have moved to a new nation, to become citizens of that nation, they have, in some sense, been willing to become part of the culture of that nation. I’m not sure when people started thinking that they can become part of a new nation, but not in they slightest measure integrate into the culture of that land. I suspect that this is a very new phenomenon. Now, granted, not all things old are good, but this strikes me as a very odd notion indeed.

People who get offended by being treated differently from citizens, when they are in a nation where they are not a citizen, clearly need to travel more.

People who get offended by satire need to read more. If writers across the ages had been as hung up on political correctness as we are today, some of the great works of literature would never have been penned.

And some people just need to get offended more – by things that really are offensive – so that they can distinguish between real offense and what is just something that they happen to not agree with, or, perhaps, simply don’t understand.

I just saw The Passion of the Christ. I don’t really have words to comment on it. I can’t really say I’m glad I saw it. It was truly a horror. But it is, I suppose, true to my understanding of the events of that day. It appears to be accurate in as much as the scripture gives details, and creative in those areas where scripture does not give details.

The depictions of Evil (as a personification) was very disturbing. Which was, I presume, the goal.

I think that, by the end, I was becoming numb to the severe brutality, and was filtering it out somewhat. Perhaps folks that go see gory movies every weekend could deal with this better than I.

I don’t know whether to recommend that folks go see this. It seems to accurately portray things, according to John, but I just don’t know that this level of graphic violence is really necessary.

But, much has been written, and much more will be written, so that’s about all I’m going to say about it.

There are few greater pleasures in life than a good meal with a good friend. I had ethiopian food last night, at the Addis, with a good friend. It was indeed a good evening.

Tonight I’m going to try to find an Indian restaurant that someone told me about. That should be good, too.

I’m simply amazed at how much stuff I throw away. No matter how hard I try to conserve, reuse, recycle, reduce, I still find myself throwing away at least one large garbage bag of stuff every week. I’m not entirely sure what it all is.

There seems to be a lot of stuff in there that exists solely to be discarded. Things like those annoying stickers that come on CD cases that exist only to throw away. Or plastic wrappers that come around things that I buy. It seems that the packaging of products is insanely wasteful. Electronics things appear to be the worst offenders here, with small trinkets coming in elephantine boxes full of foam, fluff, and flyers.

Then, of course, there’s junk mail. After being at this address for nearly two years, I’m starting to get a lot more junk mail, so more than half my mail I discard immediately upon reciept.

The reason that this all comes to mind now actually has to do with a bath. I ran a bath for my daughter on Sunday, and, when it was full, realized that it was cold. Having just been thinking a lot about Haiti, I was struck by the enormous wealth that I have. Here was a bath full of clean, cold water. I don’t know how many gallons that is. But 50 miles off the coast of Miami are thousands of people who will use dirty, probably disease infested water to cook, give to their kids to drink, and perhaps wash. So here I was with this bath full of water that I could not use, which I could do nothing about but allow to run down the drain.

One of these days, we’ll be called to account for our eggregious wastefulness, while millions of people a stone’s throw away are suffering in poverty that most of us can’t even get our minds around.

A little earlier today I posted a quote by John Donne. It is frequently misquoted as “Ask not for whom the bell tolls”. And the phrase “For whom the bell tolls” is, of course, the title of a book that you should read if you have not done so already.

I posted this quote because recent events (like, in the last 10 years or so) have repeatedly brought up the question of what the US role should be in foreign conflict that doesn’t directly concern us. And, more recently, (like, in the last 2 weeks) in Haiti, we’re asking that question again.

There are the easy answers, which are things like “it’s not our concern” and “it would make a great base for terrorist operations, and so we have to restore stability” but the larger question still remains.

During the period between WWI and WWII, we stuck to a policy of isolationism. This is, in at least some part, responsible for the extent with which Hitler was able to get away with the stuff that he did. After all, it wasn’t our concern. In much the same way, the activities of Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, and the rebels in Haiti and Uganda, just to pick a few places, are not our concern. So why should we get involved?

Traditionally, there have been at least three possible answers to this question, none of them strictly true, and certainly none of them comprehensive. One is that we have some financial interest in doing so. Another is that we have citizens who live there, who we need to protect. Another is that it is the Right Thing To Do, and that we need to Make The World Safe For Democracy, and other such high-sounding and humanitarian phrases.

In the last 3 years, this last reason has mutated, to some extent, into the all-purpose excuse that we need to intervene in certain conflicts because a failure to do so will strengthen the position of terrorist organizations. This excuse has been used very selectively, as have they all, in order to pick the conflicts that we think that we can win, and the conflicts that generate the best political results.

After all, there’s no political advantage in intervening in Zimbabwe. Perhaps 15% of americans have heard of Zimbabwe. We’d be fighting Robert Mugabe, who, although he’s a slimy tyrant, also was one of the key players in wresting control of the colony away from England (ok, so that’s slightly revisionist history, but it’s the one that we’d see in the news in the event of a hypothetical intervention). So there’s two political counts against it. I expect that Jesse Jackson and/or Louis Farrakhan would say something in support of Mugabe (if he hasn’t done so already). And the president that sent troops there would be painted as a racist, trying to restore land to the Rhodesian pigs. And, so, the fact that Mr Mugabe is a tyrannical despot, at least as evil as Ian Smith, who he replaced, doesn’t really matter in the “Right Thing To Do” sense, because there’s no political profit in doing it.

Similarly, Haiti is a sticky situation. Here’s an impovrished island 50 miles off the coast of Florida, whose political situation is entirely our doing. Should we intervene to help them? I honestly don’t know what I think is the Right Thing To Do in this situation.

I don’t like the fact that the USA wants to be the world’s policemen. But, at the same time, I look at the gross injustice in the world, and thing that maybe we could leverage our disproportionate wealth to address some of that injustice. Yet, it seems, that each time we do so, it is too little, or too late, or in the wrong places.

Our “intervention” in Liberia, for example, was laughable. We sent troops to sit on a boat off shore and do nothing for several weeks. Then, when we finally did send men onshore, it was an insultingly small number, and they didn’t actually do anything.

And so many of our interventions of late seem to be cleanups from botched interventions in the past. Panama (Noriega was our man), Afghanistan (our funding and training made the situation possible), Haiti (we sent in troops to put an unpopular man back in office, and then supported a clearly fraudulent election), Iraq (we opted not to finish what we started 13 years ago, and so we have to finish it now) and the list goes on. I suppose I could put North Korea on that list, but I have to admit that I’m woefully ignorant about the war in Korea.

This is not a simple question. When Moose asked “What is in it for us” in response to my earlier posting about Haiti, it struck me as a hugely complicated question. We can’t tell what the next 20 years will bring to Haiti, although it’s not likely to look much different from the last 20 years. However, politically unstable countries within missile range of our coast has been considered a fairly serious threat in the past. And, now that it is within jetliner range too, it might be considered an even more serious threat, if one chooses to believe that Al Quaeda is still planning 9-11 style attacks against major US cities. Port Au Prince is just a few minutes away from Miami.

So, what’s in it for us? Well, there’s the simple security question. It is in our national interests to keep bordering (and otherwise neighboring) countries under stable governments. There’s the matter or protection of citizens. There’s the matter of protecting our significant financial interests in Haiti – large numbers of factories employing Haitians at salaries that are so far below US poverty levels as to be considered slave labor by some activits, but a living wage there.

But I keep returning to the words of John Donne. Every man’s death diminishes me. As a citizen of the world, I should be concerned about conflicts in other parts of the world. But that’s overwhelming. There are dozens of wars going on in the world right now. The person most aware of current events is likely to be unaware of a handful of them. That that’s not even counting inter-personal warfare resulting in injuries and deaths, every minute. Just logistically speaking, how can I care about that? And, pragmatically, how can any nation assume the role of peacekeeper for even a small percentage of those conflicts? Obviously, it’s not possible. And multinational organizations like the UN have failed at this too.

I think I could probably write another 10 pages on this, so I’ll quit. But perhaps this gives at least a glimpse at why these things bother me, and why I’m so torn about our (USA) role in international affairs, as compared to our stated role, as compared to our historical role. It’s not quite as easy as some folks want it to be.

After 11 days, the rebellion in Haiti is finally arriving in the US media. Seems that France might send in troops. The USA seems to be intent on not stating its position, which is probably just as well, given that the USA is primarily responsible for the mess that the country is in. After destroying the vestiges of an economy with the embargo, and putting a disliked man back in office with military force in 1994, it seems that the best position for the US to take would be to admit that we don’t know what’s best for the country. Sort of the least of the available evils that we can commit.

Meanwhile, Boston.com paints the leader of the rebellion as a drunken fool who is not really sure how he rose to this position. It really doesn’t seem like there’s any good solution to the problem.