Author: Charley Reese

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

I suppose the one saving grace of the human race is that virtually all of our problems are self-inflicted. Theoretically at least, if we are the cause of the problems, we should be able to provide the cure or correction.

Hopefully, the Democratic Party will learn from this experience that it is not a good idea to award delegates on a proportional basis. If the primaries had been winner-take-all, the party would have had its nominee long ago and could be chopping on the Republican tree.

Instead, it is stuck with an exceedingly close race that apparently can only be settled by the so-called super delegates, who are appointed and not elected (another bad idea). This means that inevitably they will be seen as stealing the nomination from one of the two candidates. This will undoubtedly cause a rift in the party.

I used to make money betting that no matter how unlikely the Republican candidate was, the Democrats would scour the country to find somebody who could lose the race. It worked with Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore. In the interim, of course, the Republicans picked up the Democrat habit and nominated Bush the First for a second term and then dragged out the old relic, Bob Dole, so both could be mowed down by Bill Clinton.

Now the Republicans have found another old relic, John McCain, to go up against Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. What a great choice in the minds of many: an African American, a woman, or a geezer. Though they won’t tell it to the pollsters or say it on television, there are still blocs of Americans who will not vote for an African American or a woman. Racist and sexist? Of course. Who told you the American people had become civilized, urbane, and educated?

This was supposed to be a shoo-in year for the Democrats. The Republican president has disapproval ratings of historic proportions, has screwed up the economy, and has gotten us stuck in two wars. It should have been no contest, but the Democratic Party has managed, with its nutty rules, to make it a level playing field.

This means the geezer has a chance, provided he doesn’t topple over during the campaign. He doesn’t seem to be very much in touch with reality, but that will merely carry on the tradition of George W. Bush, who, as the Buddhists say, seems destined to have been born drunk and to die dreaming. They will just have to hire somebody to stay close and whisper in McCain’s ear who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. He seems confused.

Well, the world can’t blame us. We are only 300 million souls, which is a small field to choose from. Nor can we help it that reasonably honest people with reasonably good skills can make more money in the private sector than in public service, so that we are stuck largely with crooks, lazy people, and incompetents.

Another self-inflicted problem is that our whole society, like some wooden house in a swamp, is riddled with lawyers who most resemble termites. There is a truthful old saying that if a town has one lawyer, he will be poor, but if there are two, they will both prosper. That’s because lawyers are hired arguers, and it takes two to have a dispute. Lawyers have almost replaced car salesmen in local television advertising.

There is a lot of talk about the rising costs of health care, but I think that lags far behind the rising cost of legal services. Legal fees seem to run into the millions of dollars in the blink of an eye these days and not because there has been a burst of legal talent. They have their own monopoly and usually charge what the traffic will bear and then some.

But, as I said, most of our problems are self-inflicted. Let’s just hope we can avoid self-destruction.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Republicans waited too late to nominate Senator

John McCain. When he ran in 2000, he was bright and alert, but they chose George W. Bush, the pseudo good old boy and country-wrecker. Now

they want to hand the presidency to McCain, soon to be 72 years old. He’s not up to it.

The senator has made eight trips to Iraq. The Iraq war, he claims, is his specialty. He said he’s willing to keep American troops in that country for 100 years. Well, how can a guy who has been so focused on the war confuse al-Qaeda, which is a Sunni group, with Shiite extremists?

He did that three times on his last trip. Three times. That’s like confusing the New York Yankees with the Boston Red Sox. On another trip to Iraq, he came back to the U.S. and told people it was so safe he could stroll around a marketplace. He neglected to mention that he was surrounded by security forces, including helicopter gunships hovering overhead, during his walk until he was called on it by a journalist.

Forty years ago, McCain was a hero. It was a noble thing he did when he refused a North Vietnamese offer to be set free and chose to remain with the other POWs. He’s a patriot. He’s brave. He also finished near the bottom of his Naval Academy class. He’s never pretended to be a scholar. Now he’s nearly 72 years old, and if he ever did understand the Middle East, he obviously doesn’t now.

Al-Qaeda people are Sunni Muslims of the Wahabi sect. That’s the equivalent of the American Puritans. They are very much fundamentalist. Iran is a Shiite country. Shiites and Sunnis are roughly comparable to the Catholics and Protestants when people in both religions took their beliefs extremely seriously. Think Northern Ireland 30 years ago.

So, unlike what McCain kept saying, Iran is not training or supplying al-Qaeda. When we decided to go to war against Afghanistan, the Iranians were helpful because both the Taliban and al-Qaeda are Sunni. The Iranians support Shiite militias and Hezbollah in Lebanon. There is no evidence that they support al-Qaeda. On one of his three misstatements, Senator Joe Lieberman whispered in his ear and corrected McCain, but McCain made the same mistake again on two later occasions during the same trip.

McCain’s handlers, of course, will try to confine him to prepared scripts. They don’t want him talking off the cuff, because he has a tendency to wander off the subject. Well-disciplined handlers, coupled with a lazy and inattentive press, could elect a near comatose person, and the public would never know it. McCain may have good genes and physically live to a ripe old age. I sincerely hope he does. But the organ you should be concerned about in a presidential race is the brain.

Bearing in mind that nobody ever accused McCain of being a brilliant thinker, even in his prime, you should be alert for signs of forgetfulness and confusion. Presidents don’t have to fight or run marathons. They have to absorb and assess a great deal of information, often conflicting information, and they have to form very sound judgments. Unless they are going to be helpless captives of their staff, they have to be well-read and continue to read and to seek information “outside the box.” Otherwise, they are just puppets and don’t know it. Presidents need sharp minds and almost boundless energy.

Shakespeare wrote, “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries … we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures.”

Senator John McCain’s flood tide was in 2000, and he missed it. It’s sad but true. He was qualified to be president then; he is not now. We can put it down as another of those missed opportunities that mark our lives as vividly as our successes. The old warrior no longer knows who the enemy is or where he is located.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years. He writes for King Features Syndicate.

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Opinion Viewpoint

We’re No Angels

Many Americans, it seems, don’t like to hear themselves and their country criticized. Some think it is unpatriotic. Others think it clashes with the image of a special country of special people especially blessed by God.

Well, at the risk of getting disapproval dumped on my head, let me say that reality doesn’t match the image. Our ancestors did not wrest this choice piece of real estate from the British, the French, the Spanish, and the Native Americans by being a jolly little band of goody-two-shoes. If modern Americans could meet some of their early ancestors, they might be scared of them, and with good reason, because some of them were a rough, brutal, and fierce lot of people.

There is a story about one of Kit Carson’s friends who set off by himself to catch two wanted bandits in order to collect the reward. He found their hideout and killed them in cold blood with his buffalo gun. Then, he decided that carrying the bodies back would be too much trouble, so he cut their heads off and stuffed the heads in his saddlebags.

He was invited to a celebration at the governor’s house and was presented with an engraved rifle. He took the rifle by the barrel and threw it over the wall. Then he said to the governor: “I didn’t kill them greasers for no [expletive] rifle. Where’s my money?”

An English traveler described visiting a frontier tavern after a brawl and said you could hardly walk without stepping on eyeballs and severed ears. Cage fighting today is child’s play compared with the way the American frontiersmen fought. Gouging out eyes and biting off ears and noses were acceptable tactics.

A hard environment and hard times make a hard people. The United States, for most of its existence, was a poor country. How would you like to dig coal in an unsafe mine with a pick and shovel you had to buy from the mine owner and get paid a few pennies a ton?

When modern Americans think back to the Indian Wars, they tend to get teary-eyed for the Indians and indignant about the whites and Mexicans who fought them. They forget that the Indians of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries were not the same as the Indians today. The Indians our ancestors fought were armed and free and just as brutal as the people they fought. You ought to look at some of the photographs of Geronimo. If you can find a hint of sympathy or compassion in that face, let me know. He was not a man at whose mercy you would want to be.

Justifications don’t mean a rat’s toenail. Everybody who fights and ever has fought always believes he is justified. In the Indian Wars, Indians were disadvantaged by their tribalism and our numbers. We might find ourselves in the same fix one day if a half-billion Chinese decide they would rather live in North America.

And we haven’t changed. We fight modern wars with the same savagery and ruthlessness as our ancestors. When we finished with Japan and Germany in World War II, there were hardly two bricks on top of each other in either country, and we had slaughtered millions of civilians. Yes, we kill innocent civilians. Americans have always operated under the rule that if it’s a question of our death or your death, let’s make it your death.

As for angry African Americans, those who lived through the last days of segregation have a right to be angry. People of both races who were born after the civil rights movement have no idea of the indignities, humiliation, and, yes, beatings and murders that were inflicted on blacks.

Still, Americans have no reason to be ashamed of our past. Every country in the world has its own dismal record. The world is as it is. People, including us, are as they are. Let’s just not delude ourselves that we are angels.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years. He writes for King Features Syndicate.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Well, it should be two strikes and you’re out for the foam-at-the-mouth warmongers. It should come as no surprise that the same people who ranted and raved for war with Iraq are also ranting and raving for war with Iran.

Their much-touted weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were nonexistent, and now we know that Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, the latest subject of their rants, is nonexistent, according to a consensus of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.

It also turns out that Mohamed El Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who bravely tried to tell the American people the truth, was right. He was right about Iraq. He is right about Iran. Yet this faithful public servant was brutally maligned and attacked by the warmongers. The Bush administration reportedly tapped his telephones and tried to prevent him from being reelected to his post. Fortunately, the Bushies failed.

I cannot think of lower, more despicable human beings than people who try to frighten their country into a war they are all too old to fight — in this case by printing and broadcasting false information fed to them by the worst political administration since Ulysses Grant. They added to their sins by attacking honest people for speaking the truth.

These so-called foreign-policy experts are a contemptible lot. If they were honorable people, they would confess their error and apologize to the people they tried to discredit, but of course they are not honorable people.

The worst of the lot are those who pose as journalists but who really are water-carriers for the administration, the Republican Party, the neoconservative clique, or, in some cases, Israel. They deserve to have their foreheads tattooed with the word “whore.” Then when people see them on television pontificating, they will know that those journalists are a bought bunch.

A real journalist has loyalty to only one group — his readers or listeners. He has an obligation to tell them the truth as best as he can determine it and not to pass on propaganda from someone behind the scenes.

The Founding Fathers wrote protection for the free press into the Constitution because they realized that only a well-informed public can govern itself. Misinforming the public is a direct attack on a free society. It is a direct attempt to subvert the democratic process. It is as much a crime against freedom as rigging an election.

The warmongers have blood on their hands. They bear almost equal responsibility with the government for the dead and wounded of the Iraq war. Thank God that this time the intelligence analysts stood firm against the administration’s pressure to politicize the results of their work, or these miserable warmongers would have had even more blood on their hands.

And don’t expect them to let up on trying to paint Iran as an imminent danger to the world. The truth is, there are only two countries in the world that could threaten America or Europe. Those are Russia and China. When you are assessing threats, you have to look at capabilities, not at rhetoric or intentions. Only China and Russia have the capability to attack the U.S.

Given this fact, you would think the administration would pay more attention to relations with these countries than to getting its drawers in a tizzy over Third World countries that lack the capability of harming us in any meaningful way.

The future grows dark for the United States. We have a bad administration that is corrupt, secretive, incompetent, and disdainful of liberty. We have a press that for the most part cannot distinguish news from celebrity gossip. We have an education system that is manufacturing functional illiterates. We have a public that seemingly believes the only things worthwhile in life are entertainment and consumption.

The public debt is $9.1 trillion, and interest increases that debt by $1.4 billion per day. That alone will do us in if we fail to confront it. As for war, we can’t even afford the two we are in.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

I’m reading a collection of short stories by Rudyard Kipling. Some of them are set in Afghanistan, where the British were fighting the Afghans in the 1800s. Funny how in 2008, the British are back in Afghanistan fighting the Afghans.

You would think that three wars with the Afghans would be enough, but apparently the imperial impulse dies hard, even after the original British Empire has left Great Britain a third-rate country whose leaders seem to think they have no choice but to play tag-along behind the Americans.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has no reason to exist, let alone be in Afghanistan. It is a relic of the Cold War that should have been disbanded when the Russians disbanded the Warsaw Pact. The American establishment, however, seems to think it is a handy way to drag the Europeans into our own imperial schemes.

Nevertheless, American forces have been in Afghanistan for five years now, and American officials keep saying the Afghan army is not ready to defend the country. They say the same thing about the Iraq army. Funny, we can take a kid out of high school, give him 16 weeks of training, and ship him off to combat, where he gives a pretty good account of himself. Why has it taken five years to field an army in Iraq and Afghanistan? I’ve never been able to get an intelligent answer to that question. I suspect the real answer is that the American government does not plan to leave either country for a very long time.

There is a lot of oil in one country and a route for a pipeline in the other. The U.S. seems to have decided to replay the “Great Game” with Russia over the Caspian Sea petroleum resources, just as the British Empire once played it with the Russian Empire when both had their eyes on India.

As most of you know, I would prefer that we abandon our empire, for it is, like every other empire in history, bleeding us of treasure and blood. We don’t need to have troops in South Korea, Japan, Germany, the Balkans, and the Middle East. None of those countries is a threat to us, and all of them are capable of defending themselves. We have many domestic problems that need both the attention and the resources of our government.

Of course, journalists have as much influence on national and international affairs as a fan sitting in the bleachers has on the management of a professional baseball team. We can only observe and cheer or jeer. Voters are the only plain people who can influence foreign policy, but they can only do it if they choose intelligently which politicians to retain in office and which ones to dump.

The American establishment, by and large, excludes the people from any discussion of foreign policy. Other than as a recipient of propaganda, we have no part to play in setting the policy of our own government. We should object to that on principle, but most Americans have little interest in foreign affairs.

Perhaps when the traditional population has been replaced (or should I say displaced) by new immigrants, which shouldn’t take that long at the present rate, the newly arrived citizens will be more interested in foreign affairs. By then, we should be multilingual as well as multicultural. We might even get a president who can read a foreign newspaper.

I am, at least, preparing for the future by developing a taste for Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Arab, Hungarian, French, Persian, and Slovakian cuisine. All are easily available in the middle-class American city where I live. That in itself ought to tell you something.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

It’s Secular

The office of the president is a secular office in a secular government. There is not a word in the Constitution that authorizes the president or anyone else in the federal government to make a religious decision.

Why then are both voters and candidates wasting their time talking about religion? The personal religious beliefs of the candidates should be considered irrelevant. Furthermore, people should not forget that there are a lot more professors of religion than practitioners. What a person claims to believe and how that person leads his or her life are often quite different.

Laws are, in the final analysis, words on paper. They cannot and do not control human behavior. If they could, there would be no crimes. Americans, especially politicians, have developed the bad habit of thinking that there ought to be a law to cover every conceivable human action. Consequently, there are so many laws today that no human being can possibly know what they all are. This defeats one of the useful purposes of laws, which is to educate the public.

As for religion, people should recognize that all the world’s religions have failed to eliminate sin, and therefore no one should expect the government to do that. Christianity in particular is based on the twin concepts of sin and forgiveness. Governments are better at finding sin than at forgiving.

Religion has a legitimate role in our society. George Washington said religion is the best way known to instill virtue in masses of people. That is job enough for religion, and religion should stay out of politics as an organization. Religious individuals, of course, have the same rights and duties as any other citizen.

Religion itself has enough problems to solve. Christian Zionists, for example, are a heretical cult without any biblical foundation and with a political agenda. Other Christians have perverted the religion into a weekly course on how to be rich and happy. Christianity, in fact, teaches that it is easier to pass a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Militant Christianity is a contradiction in terms.

If you are trying to find someone actually practicing Christianity, whom would you choose — a preacher with a six-figure salary, a limousine, and a private jet or, say, an actor like Brad Pitt, who has committed $5 million of his own money to build homes for people in New Orleans’ 9th Ward?

In judging human affairs, always look for actions, not words. What a person says tells you nothing reliable; what a person does gives you a better clue as to what kind of a person he or she is. At the same time, don’t forget the dual nature of human beings.

One can find faults with all religions. One should not forget, however, that the same can be said of all secular philosophies, ideologies, and institutions. Nothing human is or ever will be perfect.

As for the presidential candidates, people should be asking not what these people claim to believe about God, but what have they actually done? How do their lives measure up to their speeches? Do they demonstrate a belief in and a concern for the Constitution? Do they have a wide knowledge of the world as it truly is? Are they catering to special interests? Are they independent thinkers or followers?

The presidential race is, after all, a search for a secular leader, not for a pope or ayatollah. The United States is in deep trouble politically, financially, and economically. It will take a smart, sane, and courageous person to get us out. Opportunists and people who sell their souls for campaign contributions may well preside over our national collapse.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

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News News Feature

Think Locally

One Supreme Court justice, 1,500 lawyers, and a disgraced former prime minister out of a population of nearly 150 million people hardly constitute great opposition to President Pervez Musharraf, who has declared a state of emergency in Pakistan.

For Americans to prattle about a “return” to democracy is both silly and hypocritical. Musharraf was a dictator when we asked for his help after 9/11, has been a dictator ever since, and very likely will remain a dictator unless some assassin gets lucky.

Furthermore, democracy in Pakistan has a sorry history of corruption, coups, and assassinations. The best and smartest thing we can do is simply keep our mouths shut and let the Pakistanis work it out for themselves. In a country where Osama bin Laden is more popular than George W. Bush, our influence is virtually nil anyway. As long as President Bush wants to keep troops in Afghanistan, he needs Musharraf more than Musharraf needs him.

Unfortunately, too many of the baby-boomer generation are blathermouths. They have this insane notion that they have to “make a statement” on everything in the world, not realizing that words won’t even ruffle the wing of a gnat. To make matters worse, we’ve developed an industry of chatterers on radio and television, hardly one of whom is the least bit knowledgeable of the topics he beats his gums about.

No American who hasn’t spent years in Pakistan is qualified to talk about the situation there. It takes that long to learn who the players are and where the power structure lies. Looking at fleeting images of crowds on television doesn’t tell you anything except that there are crowds in a very crowded country. Ignorance is best served by silence, lest it spread.

Besides, we have only a limited and narrow legitimate interest in Pakistan. It’s not our country. It’s not on our borders. Our only interest is, will Pakistan assist us in the war against terrorism (to use the bad metaphor of the Bush administration)? If the answer is yes, it doesn’t matter to us who is in charge of the country. As the ancient saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Right now would be a good time to turn off the television sets in America. The writers are on strike, and soon there will be nothing but reruns of reruns. Apparently, none of the late-night comedians is able to write his own material. The news shows are a joke. If you get lonesome for a talking image, play a DVD or a tape.

In the meantime, your local newspaper will keep you informed, though keep in mind much of what we journalists classify as news is really irrelevant to our readers. If you live on the East Coast, you might have some idle curiosity about wildfires in California, but you can easily do without the information. Random crimes and accidents outside of your local community are likewise irrelevant and useless. It is not a good idea to clutter up one’s mind with useless and irrelevant information.

For years, Americans have been propagandized to “think globally” when we should be thinking locally, which is the only place where we have any influence. I know there are busybodies who desire to save the world and actually think they are doing it if they buy a sack of organic coffee or send a check to some self-proclaimed charity.

But the world is a pitiless place, where power rules. If you have no power, you have no influence. Sometimes even if you have power you have no influence, because most people in the world are not cowards. Palestinians, for example, have been defying Israeli power for more than 60 years.

Think and act locally. It’s our only chance at making a difference. And forget about Pakistan’s internal politics.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Time To Get Out

The pro-war crowd has been emphasizing the recent drop in American casualties in Iraq, measured by the month, but the fact remains that 2007 has been the most lethal year of war for Americans, and it’s not over yet.

At this writing, 853 Americans have died in 2007, which tops the previous record of 849 in 2004. Altogether, 3,858 Americans have lost their lives in Iraq. The sad thing is that they are dying for nothing, because the cowardly Congress refuses to stop the war by cutting off the funds.

The administration defines “winning” as a stable, democratic Iraq able to defend itself. That’s really a definition of a no-win war. The only way to establish stability with Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites at each other’s throats is to find another dictator ruthless enough to force stability at the point of a gun. In other words, you can have stability with no democracy or democracy with no stability. Take your choice.

Either way, it is not worth the life of a single American.

It’s time for the American people to face the question, “What’s in it for us?” That’s not being selfish. It’s our blood and our treasure, so surely the American people have a right to expect some gain for this sacrifice. So what is it?

The answer is nothing. The corporate friends of the Bush-Cheney gang have gained plenty of profits, but they haven’t shared them with the dead soldiers — or with the American people, for that matter. Whether Iraq has a new dictator or becomes an Islamic republic aligned with Iran, Americans will have no friends in a country we wrecked while killing at least 100,000 Iraqis and displacing 2 million more. It will be a long time before any nonsuicidal Americans put Iraq on their places-to-visit list.

The Bush administration has been the most secretive and deceptive bunch to occupy the White House in history. The truth is, nobody knows for sure what the motive for going to war against Iraq really was. I read one theory that the neocons, the chief proponents and pushers of the war, envisioned the convicted embezzler and exile Ahmad Chalabi running the country and making peace with Israel. If it’s true, it was a pipe dream based on ignorance. Nobody in Iraq who had suffered through Saddam Hussein’s rule was going to turn the country over to some corrupt exile who had been living the high life in London and Washington.

Regardless of why we went in, it’s past time for us to get out. The Iraqi people don’t want us. As long as we stay, we will be looked upon as occupiers, and the insurgents will keep whittling away at our forces. Occupation cannot be sustained in a hostile environment, and bribery won’t change the way the Iraqis feel. We have done the people of Iraq way too much harm for them to forgive us.

There is no reasoning with President Bush. He’s as likely to attack Iran as he is to withdraw troops from Iraq. The only answer is to pressure Congress to find the nerve to cut the purse strings. There will be enough money in the pipeline to safely withdraw the troops. Keeping young Americans in harm’s way when their lives and limbs will be lost for no gains is not by any stretch supporting the troops. You support the troops by getting them out of harm’s way, just as Ronald Reagan did after we lost the Marines in Lebanon.

Iraq may or may not have a bloody war after we leave. That’s up to the Iraqis. It’s no skin off our nose whether they reconcile or draw their knives. It’s their country. Let them fight over it if that’s what they want to do. The Bush administration has not done one single thing right in the Middle East, and the situation in the whole area is worse and more dangerous because of these blunders.

America’s withdrawal would be a blessing to everyone concerned.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast, File)

Some African Americans have raised the question about Barack Obama, “Is he black enough?” But the young senator also may have a problem in that he is not white enough for a lot of Americans who I think are not ready to accept a man of color as president. This is sad. If Obama got the Democratic presidential nomination, I would gladly vote for him rather than any of those no-good Republicans.

I may be wrong, and I hope I am, but white racism has been driven underground. Few white people today will voice even a legitimate criticism of an African American lest they lose their job or get crucified by the press and be branded a racist. But just because people keep silent or even maintain a facade of tolerance doesn’t mean that prejudice has been extinguished. We would be far better off if white people felt free to express their true opinions. Then, at least, we would know where everybody stands.

There is no genuine debate in America on the subject of race. Like the state of Israel, the subject is forbidden if it involves criticism or dissent from the politically correct views. This is not good. Hidden prejudice is difficult to combat.

Thomas Jefferson said words to the effect that lies or errors are not to be feared as long as people are free to debate them. Prejudice of any kind is, after all, an error in thinking. These days it is equated with hate, but that, too, is an error. A person can be prejudiced but not hate what he’s prejudiced against. People can hate without being prejudiced. The point is that errors in thinking can be corrected if people are free to discuss them. Hate, which is an emotion, is another problem altogether. Haters generally hate everybody, often including themselves.

Senator Obama was lionized at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He has become a celebrity and draws nice crowds at his personal appearances. But he remains far behind Hillary Clinton in the polls despite the fact that he is twice as intelligent and thoughtful, and, no doubt about it, he would make a far better president.

True, he is jug-eared and sounds often too professorial, and many Americans today are looking for stars rather than leaders. But I believe the hidden wall is simply prejudice against the idea of an African American as president.

Right up through and long after the War Between the States, the belief that African Americans were inferior was universal. The North was as prejudiced as the South. Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer, noted of America that “the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the states which have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known.” Even Abe Lincoln expressed his belief that African Americans were inferior and could never live as equals among whites.

Such deeply ingrained beliefs are difficult to get rid of, especially if, as we have done, we have created a situation where everyone feels compelled to hide them.

As I said, I sincerely hope that I am wrong about this. Obama would clearly be superior to Hillary Clinton or to any of the Republicans, with the exception of Ron Paul. Nevertheless, I fear the senator is too white for some blacks and too black for some whites.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Fruitcake Trade

I had been thinking recently that I might start a business that would export fruitcakes to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. That was the most appropriate export I could think of. But the president has put the kibosh on that idea with his tough new sanctions.

Sanctions imposed by President Bush or Congress are always described as tough, but they only apply to Americans. Anybody in any other country who might like to sell fruitcakes to the Iranians is free to do so.

My point is that sanctions are generally stupid, since they affect only American businesses. As much as the president and Congress might wish otherwise, U.S. laws apply only in the U.S. American businesses can be barred from doing business with a country that displeases American politicians, but the ban doesn’t apply anywhere else.

And it does seem to me that I have at least heard rumors that today there is something called a global economy. Americans can’t invest in Cuba or in any of the other countries on the politicians’ scat list, but Europeans, Asians, and others can and do.

Other than substituting empty gestures for real action and appeasing domestic lobbies, I really don’t see what good sanctions do. It’s no longer 1945. We are not the only surviving industrial power. No matter what product you desire, you can find it in lots of other countries.

This empty gesture is just part of the buildup to attacking Iran militarily. As some noted expert recently said, you have to be living on a different planet to imagine that Iran is or ever would be a threat to the world.

Unfortunately, the president and Vice President Cheney apparently do live on another planet, because after a number of lies, they attacked two countries that were even less of a threat than Iran could ever hope to be.

Never mind that the Israeli foreign minister just said publicly that Israel would not be threatened by a nuclear Iran. Never mind that Iran says it wishes only to enrich uranium enough to fuel its reactors for generating electricity. Never mind that Iran does not have the capability of attacking either us or Israel.

I’d bet a dog that the president has convinced himself that we can stage another “shock and awe” show that will take out Iran’s nuclear facilities and its military assets in one easy surgical strike. Strategic bombing has been overrated ever since World War II. The president might know a lot about baseball, but he knows practically nothing about war.

Ask an American veteran who sat on an invasion fleet for days while naval guns and airplanes blasted some small Pacific island to smithereens. He will tell you that when he went ashore, the Japanese were still there ready to fight.

Our bombing campaign against Serbia no doubt killed Serb and Albanian civilians, but when it was over, the Serb army forces came out of Kosovo virtually intact. The famous shock-and-awe show made for good television but missed its intended target: Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants.

If you hope that bombing can take out Iran’s nuclear facilities and its military assets, you are hoping for something that only a magic fairy can deliver. And please, to talk about a “surgical” strike with bombs is like saying a sawed-off shotgun can be fired with pinpoint accuracy. You cannot bomb any urban area without killing innocent civilians.

Nobody can know for sure what will happen if our Great Leader decides to attack Iran, but anybody will tell you that it won’t be good. Come to think of it, maybe we all should send fruitcakes to the fruitcakes in the White House, if we can find the address of the planet they are living on.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.