Get your own Free Home PageContrary to the rhetoric of the Clinton administration and the Beltway Babblers, terrorism is not a criminal act in the ordinary sense.
Terrorism is a political act, a response to U.S. foreign policy. It is an act of war waged by people too weak to have a conventional army or one large enough to take on the United States.
Therefore, capturing an individual terrorist does not even address the problem. People who execute terrorist actions are expendable, replaceable soldiers. Catch one, kill one, and two will take his place.
Because the terrorism is political, so, too, is the solution. One ends terrorism by ending the policies that create it.
Yes, I know, many Americans believe that we and our government are so good, so beneficent, so kind, so idealistic that it is an absolute mystery why anyone in the world would dislike us, much less hate us enough to kill.
The Clinton administration perpetuates this wrong evaluation of reality by implying that terrorists are evil and mad, like some demons, who, for no rational reason, strike out at the innocent. They like to say, as if they were heroic defenders en route to liberate France, ``We will not be deterred.'' Notice, however, that they never say what we will not be deterred from doing.
Maintaining cruel sanctions on Iraq that already have cost half a million innocent lives? Those sanctions alone are enough to spawn terrorism for the next 40 years. The sanctions are unjust, injuring and killing people who are innocent of any wrong doing. They are stupid, because they only strengthen Saddam Hussein's government. The sanctions have enraged not only Iraqis but also Arabs throughout the Middle East who are sick of the U.S. double standards, lies and hypocrisy.
For example, the United Nations nuclear inspectors recently gave Iraq a clean bill of health, certifying they have no nuclear weapons and no physical plants to produce them. They recommended closing the book on the nuclear issue. The United States said, ``No.'' So many U.S. officials have said publicly that the United States will not agree to lift the sanctions no matter what Iraq does that I don't know why they even maintain the pretense of looking for weapons.
Actual U.S. foreign policy is far from idealistic. We arbitrarily sided with former Nazi allies in the Balkan civil war and bombed Serbs who fought with us in two wars. We slapped sanctions on Sudan allegedly because someone in Washington doesn't like its internal human-rights policies that, you can be sure, are far more humane than China's or those of some of the African dictators we so ardently supported. I suspect the real reason is the current government won't cut a deal on the oil discovered in Sudan many years ago.
Why do Iranians hate Americans? We overthrew their government in the 1950s and installed a dictator whom we backed for decades while he executed and tortured his opponents. Why does anyone expect the survivors of a U.S.-imposed tyrant to like the United States?
The one-sided support of Israel, even when Israel is clearly an aggressor or an abuser of human rights, creates enemies. When your wife and children are killed with U.S. weapons wielded by a government backed by the United States and protected from U.N. sanctions by the United States, it doesn't sit too well.
What I hope people will get from this column is this: Foreign policy does affect your life. It can get you or your children killed. It can make it unsafe for you to travel. Don't tell the parents of those Americans who died on Pan Am Flight 103 that foreign policy has no effect on Americans.
A U.S. government that actually lived up to our ideals and treated people justly would eliminate terrorism.
All the security measures and macho rhetoric in the world can't and won't eliminate it.
Baby boomers who missed the Great Depression are going to be treated by fate to their very own, or so it looks to me.
Whether it will be as severe as the 1930s Depression, I don't know, but that's what is starting, slowly but surely. Production capacity now exceeds demand. Too many factories throughout the world are making more stuff than people want or can afford to buy.
It's that ``can afford'' element of demand that confuses people whose vision is blurred by greed. Gee, 1 billion Chinese customers. No, there's just more than 1 billion Chinese people, but considerably fewer who can afford to buy much of anything.
That's why people can starve while grain rots in storage bins. How can people starve when there's so much food in the world? Because they can't afford to buy it, that's why. That's also the fallacy of the don't-worry-about-population-increase crowd. Why, look at the statistics on food production. Well, look at them. But what counts is what people can afford to buy, not how much somebody 5,000 miles away can produce.
Let me pause and give you a great tip that will help you wade through the post-modern horse manure that is being mass manufacturered by special pleaders in this country.
Statistics count things and measure things. They do not and cannot prove anything. Furthermore, they are abstract mental concepts. They are not real. Wheat in Nebraska is real. A starving child in Sudan is real. Statistically, you can show that food production equals food needs, but that has nothing, and I mean nothing, to do with the wheat in Nebraska and a dying child in Sudan.
So what happens when demand falls is that the producers begin to cut prices. As they cut prices, bidding for the shrinking number of buyers, they have to start cutting expenses, which means layoffs. Some go bankrupt. More lost jobs. Every lost job is a reduction in demand because people out of work can't afford to buy much. That's a truth American corporations seem to have forgotten. They seem to long for the day when they can produce their product without any workers. They do not seem to understand that if they ever do, they will also be producing a product for which there are no customers.
And, as the supply of jobs shrinks relative to the number of people who need jobs, the price of labor is bid down so even when you get a job, you don't make as much. More reduction in demand. So many married women work today not because of feminism but because it's harder and harder for a single paycheck to maintain a decent standard of living.
Don't worry too much about the Dow Jones index. Heck, that's only 30 stocks of blue-chip companies. Watch how many stocks go down as opposed to how many go up. Watch commodity prices. They are way down. Oil, as of this writing, is about $11 a barrel. That's below what it costs an American oil producer to pump it. That tells you there isn't a great demand for oil right now.
Here's a told-you-so: Keep that $11 a barrel oil in mind and go back to 1976-77 when Jimmy Carter and his Central Intelligence Agency were telling the American people that the world was fast running out of oil and it would soon be unaffordable. The Independent Petroleum producers pointed out some years ago that American politicians have been proclaiming the imminent end of oil production periodically since the turn of the century. Kind of like those end-of-the-world guys.
Anyway, what you Baby Boomers will discover is that depression means the price of everything goes down -- both products and labor. The cycle won't start again until there is some balance between production and demand. Contrary to popular belief, Franklin Roosevelt didn't end the Great Depression. Adolf Hitler and World War II ended it. Maybe you'll get your own great war, too.
To put it plainly, Bill Clinton is a sociopath, a liar, a sexual predator, a man with recklessly bad judgment and a scofflaw.
Clinton has the classic symptoms of the sociopath. That is a defective human being unable to relate to or feel genuine empathy for another human being. Though often skilled at manipulating people, the true sociopath is 100 percent self-centered. Other human beings are just objects to be manipulated to achieve the sociopath's goals.
The sociopath has only two genuine emotions -- pleasure when he gets his way and anger when he's frustrated. Love? Compassion? Sympathy? The sociopath is incapable of experiencing any of these emotions, though he can simulate them for manipulation purposes. The sociopath is ruthless and incapable of feeling any sense of shame, guilt or remorse.
You will have noticed, of course, that Clinton blames the special prosecutor, not himself, for the inconvenience of having to admit the truth. That's the classic sociopathic reaction. It's always others. It's as if it weren't Clinton who took advantage of a 22-year-old intern, who lied about it, who encouraged her to lie about it, who ruthlessly used everyone around him to cover up his lies, who unleashed his junkyard character assassins on people who were telling the truth.
You may also have noticed that, after six years in office, Clinton shows no physical signs of stress. The office ages most presidents, but that's because they feel the tremendous responsibility of the office and worry that they are doing the right thing. Clinton feels no responsibility and worries about nothing except his immediate personal pleasure. He enjoys the office like a pig enjoys slop. What happens to anyone else, what happens to the country now or in the future is totally off his radar screen. He flat doesn't care.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The White House will have to be fumigated when the Clintons leave. There has never been a sleazier, sicker president than this man. When he was inaugurated, he should have applied for a cheap-motel franchise.
This affair, by the way, is not about sex, as the feeble-minded, glib-tongue set argues. It is about morals, honor and respect for the office, respect for the law and respect for the country. Clinton scores a minus-50 on every point.
It speaks ill of the American people that they think a good president is someone who occupies the White House while the Dow Jones index is high. It says such people don't have a clue as to how to evaluate public affairs and the presidency, don't know the difference between correlation and cause and effect, or know much about economics. As for people who don't care if Clinton stains the carpet in the Oval Office, they are just pronouncing themselves as sleazy and cynical as Clinton.
Clinton is counting on that cynicism while he uses the Hillary-forgave-me-so-you-should-too ploy yet again. Hillary's recommendation, however, is no recommendation. There is something peculiar about a woman who puts up with what she has. She apparently has her own agenda, and respect for Clinton isn't on it.
Whatever bizarre and quirky relationship they have is their business, but the disgracing and demeaning of the White House, the constant concentration on staying one step ahead of the law at the expense of presidential matters is our business.
Clinton should resign, but, not caring anything about the country, he won't. Therefore, Congress should quit playing partisan games and impeach him. Otherwise, he will continue to bring the same recklessly bad judgment to matters of state.
I have a real scoop for you. I'm going to tell you about one of the greatest and least-known environmental problems facing the country.
It is gullible urban Yankees.
If you want to know the real scourge of Florida wetlands, it's all the gullible urban Yankees who have bought them. In politically incorrect days, wetlands were called swamps. People in Florida have been selling swamp lots to Yankees since the turn of the century.
The lower peninsula of Florida, except for a sandy ridge running down the middle a ways, is a wetland. Most of it has now been subdivided and sold to Northerners who feel so superior to Southerners. In fact, Florida today is practically a Yankee state, at least those parts of it that are not Latin American or rightfully belong to Georgia and Alabama.
I once spoke to a homeowners association in such a development and told its members that when the current dry cycle ended (Florida goes through about 20-year cycles of unusually dry or unusually wet weather), they would discover why they had cypress trees growing in their front yards. They never invited me back.
But gullible urban Yankees are not only devouring wetlands, they are causing problems in the West. Westerners, seeing how successful Floridians were at selling swamps, decided to sell deserts. They peddle lots that are not only not under water, they are 100 miles from any water in any direction up, down or sideways. It's an interesting intellectual exercise to ponder who is the more gullible -- somebody who buys a lot in a swamp or somebody who buys one in a desert.
All swamps and deserts should, of course, be preserved for wild critters because they aren't fit places for humans to live in. Gullible urban Yankees are the primary cause of the decrease in the population of water moccasins and rattlesnakes. That's awful.
Notice that I have singled out the urban Yankee. Yankees who live in the country and small towns are as smart as anybody else. It's the huge cities that cause people to lose touch with reality. People who live in Atlanta, Ga., today are about as goofy as people who live in New York or Los Angeles. Too many folks, too many cars, too much asphalt and concrete mess up a person's head.
I have always held that if you can't walk out on the back porch (or, if you don't have a back porch) and see no humans, you're living in the wrong place.
That's why I'm ardently against immigration. It's not that I'm against folks from other places. I'm just against too many folks from anywhere in any place where I happen to live.
I used to get upset about Yankees stereotyping Southerners. Some academic, for example, not long ago stated that he had proved in a study that Southerners are more homicidal than other Americans. That's not really true, but please spread the rumor. Tell everybody you know, ``You better not move down South, 'cause them folks'll kill you.''
Tell them we are a bunch of wild, violent barbarians who love fighting and shooting about as much as we love barbecue, grits and football. Tell them that even Southern college professors and ministers drive pickup trucks with gun racks. Tell them that Southern children use pistols as teething rings and that knife fighting is part of the Southern Head Start programs. Tell them that in the South gun control means hitting the person you are shooting at. Tell them that even Southerners who can't spell it are xenophobic as heck. Tell them they had better stay in New York City or Detroit or Philadelphia, where it is safe and civilized.
Tell them all that, and Southerners, water moccasins and rattlesnakes will be forever grateful.
A better gauge of the mood of the country than a public-opinion poll or the Dow Jones industrial average is the food-court test.
You can take the food-court test by visiting any shopping mall that has one, buying a cup of coffee or a Coke, and observing the faces of the people around you.
If the sea of faces is darkened with fear, anger, wariness, anxiety or sadness, then you know, that regardless of what the experts or the statistical indices say, not all is right in Camelot. If Americans, of all people, cannot be happy in the midst of an opulent market while they eat, then something is seriously wrong. The last few times I checked the food court, the sea was definitely troubled.
It's a common saying now that America has a crisis of the spirit, and, like a lot of common sayings, that's true. The four main ideas of the 20th century that were offered in lieu of religious faith were materialism, skepticism, the cult of the will and subjectivism. All collapsed.
Materialism, which is the pursuit of stuff, turns out to be empty. After one has gotten stuff, stored it, moved it, maintained it, insured it, one gets to the final stuff, a cemetery lot and headstone, where all the stuff has to be abandoned. I don't remember the declensions of nouns or the conjugation of verbs from my Latin classes, but I do remember what a Roman said about stuff. A man becomes a slave to his possessions.
Americans bought into the industrial model that is based on the myth of perpetual growth. Inevitably that led to the idea of disposable stuff, such as cheap furniture and appliances that one buys, uses for a while and then dumps in order to buy more. It has led to the drug culture. It's no wonder Americans consume drugs because the whole idea of health care in America is fundamentally created by the pharmaceutical industry.
Americans are bombarded with drug advertisements. Got a headache? Take a pill. A muscle ache? Take a pill. Whatever, take a pill -- preferably one that the manufacturers have marked up 1,200 percent. As one observer once put it, if a doctor can't drug it or cut it, he doesn't know what in the heck to do.
It's odd that we Americans, blessed with an ample and fertile country our ancestors were politically incorrect enough to take from the people who lived in it, blessed with wealth beyond the dream of ancient kings, nevertheless seem to be increasingly neurotic, grumpy, irritable and unhappy.
I agree with C.S. Lewis that when you find you've taken the wrong road, going ahead isn't progress. Progress is going back until you find the right road that takes you where you want to go.
We took the wrong road when we abandoned property-based capitalism built around self-sufficient farms and small towns and took the road toward giant industrialism and finance capitalism. We took another wrong turn away from a life grounded in faith toward a false utopia run by science. We took yet another wrong turn when we left the belief in mysteries for the belief in something even more preposterous -- reason. We got further lost when we abandoned a federal republic of sovereign states and chose instead the European model of the centralized state.
Seems to me it's time to do what the post-modern pointy-heads say can't be done -- turn back the clock and retrace our steps. If we stay on the current path, we will end up in a hell of our own creation. Instead of a shining city on a hill, it will be a nightmarish Gotham run by Big Brother and his goon squads.
A good society is where people smile not smirk and laugh with joy rather than with mockery and embarrassment. A good society values people more than stuff, honor more than fame, beauty more than luxury, morality more than wealth.
Well, President Clinton has answered the question: What has his sex life got to do with his job as president?
If you think that the bombing of four targets in Afghanistan and a factory in Khartoum, Sudan, have nothing to do with Clinton's sex life, then you probably still believe that he did not have sexual relations with that woman.
And what will the bombings accomplish, aside from distracting the public and the press from the Clinton scandal?
They will get more Americans killed. Rather than deter terrorist acts, they will increase those attacks. They have shown the world once again that the U.S. government has no respect for international law. They will intensify the hatred of the United States.
It is stupid for the Clinton people to talk about terrorists being cowards. What is more cowardly than a superpower launching surprise aerial attacks on two Third World countries with which we are not at war?
And, assuming that the four targets in Afghanistan really were terrorist training camps, what was accomplished there? Well, we blew up some latrines, some tents and some rifle targets. Whoopee. Spending multimillion-dollar missiles to blow up some scrap wood, oil barrels and worn-out canvas. That's really a brilliant military stroke.
The only evidence we have that they were terrorist training camps is the word of an administration famous for lying. As for the chemical plant, which the Clinton folks hinted but did not say was producing chemical weapons, just remember that most modern pesticides are derived from nerve-gas research done by the Third Reich. In other words, practically every insecticide plant in the United States and Europe has chemicals ``which are precursors'' to chemical weapons.
I would say it is an even bet that the plant was what the Sudanese said it was -- a pharmaceutical plant that has nothing to do with terrorism. And very likely we will have killed some innocent civilians.
Finally, the bombing raids are a reprisal, which in international law is a war crime. When somebody kills some of your people and you go and kill other people, that's a reprisal. It's the same as taking hostages and lining them up against the wall and shooting them with rifles.
Staging reprisal raids has been the standard tactic of Israel for 50 years, and for 50 years it has failed to deter terrorists and, in fact, manufactured them. It's one of those stupid acts that appeals to machismo and ego but, in fact, is counterproductive.
Pick any human disaster in history and if you look at how it happened, it was constructed by foolish decisions made by men who failed to foresee the long-range consequences of what they were deciding to do.
It is already borderline impossible for an Arab leader to be an ally of the United States, and this will aggravate that situation. That will no doubt make the Israeli lobby happy, but it is certainly not in the national interest of the United States to alienate the entire Muslim world. The majority of the Muslims in the world do not support terrorism any more than we do, but nobody likes having his or her country bombed whenever a whim strikes a superpower.
We have, in fact, committed an act of war against the nations of Sudan and Afghanistan. Neither, of course, has the power to declare war on us, but they will both find ways to retaliate. They will gain a lot of sympathy.
We have a great country, and the collapse of the Soviet Union presented a great opportunity to build a peaceful world. Unfortunately, thanks to our corrupt political system, we are destroying our own country and throwing the opportunity for peace into the trash heap of history.
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