On the Contrary

As this year draws to a close and hopefully we are rid of the Bushies and all they stood for (lack of critical thinking), I was cataloging some of the more stupid things we do as a nation and a people that I would like to see end.  So, without further adieu, here they are:

• Our Cuba Policy – For forty years we have had a policy of isolation with Cuba and have pandered to the Cuban community in Florida that has resulted in nothing but failure.  Had we a more open policy to Cuba, Fidel might have been gone years ago.  Worse, remember the Elian Gonzalez fiasco?  That was when the courts ruled that Elian belong with his father (family law trumps international politics) and Janet Reno ordered his return to his father and Cuba.  This wonderful Cuban community voted in total for George Bush in the election of 2000 ensuring Florida’s close vote and enabling the disasters that have been fostered on us since.  So first and foremost quit listening to small thinkers and open up Cuba.
• Drug Wars – This approach to our drug problem has been so counter productive and destructive of human lives that it boggles the mind.  This approach to our drug problem of punishment has failed us miserably.  Our prisons are full of non-violent drug offenders.  Drugs are readily available anywhere you want to look.  If you have teenage kids, they can get you anything you might desire.  Maybe it is time to refocus this whole effort on the demand side instead of on the supply side.  Maybe we ought to spend our precious dollars on prevention and treatment instead of chasing around the bad guys in a game of cops and robbers.  When you read about one of those “great” marijuana seizures, wonder about the waste of resources that went into this and how they might have been more effectively employed.  It has no impact on the availability of weed.  Maybe we ought to learn how to live with it.
• Crime and Punishment – We have, in a similar fashion with the Drug Wars, taken a draconian approach to crime and punishment.  This has manifested itself in mandatory sentencing and three-strikes laws that are not effective as crime preventers and are filling our prisons to overflowing.  Worse, we forgot all about rehabilitation.  We became a nation that believes in Christian redemption but then denies it to our criminal element.  There are so many stories of injustice in prisons, that it is impossible to communicate them here.  We need to imprison the very bad and incorrigible, and rehabilitate the rest.  But we have too many people who still feel rehabilitation is coddling.  It is really working well isn’t it?
• The International Court – What is it about America that does not think they should be subject to international law?  If we ever catch Osama bin Laden which would you rather see him tried in, an international court where the full weight of the international community would judge his actions or an American court where  those who hate us will deny its legitimacy?  We, like everyone else, must live by international law
• Then there are the obvious domestic issues all of which revolve around the Religious Right/Catholic Church/Mormons wanting to enforce their religious beliefs on the rest of us:

1. Recognize gays are equal human beings and quit worrying about who marries whom.  If you don’t believe in gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person
2. We have a perfectly reasonable abortion law that restricts most abortions in the late term.  If you believe abortion is wrong, don’t get one
3. If someone makes an end of life decision, it is for no one else to judge.  Oregon has a perfectly rational approach to these decisions and why do others want to force people to live by their needs and desires?  Once again, make your own decision, but don’t make mine
4. Don’t pass laws or regulations that in effect prevent people from exercising their legal rights to access to abortions, birth control, and the morning after pill.  Bush’s latest regulation allows the Kmart checker the right to refuse to sell you birth control pills.  Who the hell do these people think they are? God? No they are tyrants who have no tolerance for tolerance.

• Finally on the Israeli/Hamas conflict, I am wondering if you finally get it.  Another cease-fire will just put off the inevitable.  It has to be decided and our actions to limit the damage are much like our actions to prevent forest fires.  It just delays what will finally be a monster firestorm.  There is fault on both sides, but the Israelis don’t launch missiles into Gaza to destroy anybody they can kill and they don’t deny the Palestinians right to exist.  And nobody in the Arab world gets upset about Israeli deaths.  Hamas is a radical Muslim group that has been arming themselves with ever more destructive weapons and needs to be destroyed.  Only when this true threat to peace has been removed, can the real grievances of the Palestinians be addressed and resolved.  Sadly had they taken the peaceful route after the Dayton Accords, they would be so much further along the road to a Palestinian State and would have the sympathy and support of the world.  Now they only have the sympathy of the Arab Street.  That would be a bunch of high testosterone men whose only aim is to riot, pillage, and institute a religious dictatorship that by holy decree makes women and the rest of us second class citizens.  They are great bunch.

I know I have said this many times, but doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of stupidity.