#530 – Dick Bernard: The Nobel Peace Prize as a controversial issue

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Full disclosure: When Barack Obama was awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize I was pleased and not at all surprised. From the moment he took office, the tone of U.S. relations with the rest of the world began to change, and changed rapidly. I was a new blogger when he spoke in Egypt in June, 2009, and as blogs are something of a permanent record, here is what I said at the time he spoke in Egypt. Here, is my opinion when it was announced President Obama had received the Nobel Peace Prize in November, 2009.
I believe most of us who supported Mr. Obama’s election share my pleasure at his selection. But not all were happy, and they protest aggressively.
The issue was formally addressed at the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize Forum at Augsburg College.
*
On February 14, Valentine’s Day, I was one of those invited to a preview of the upcoming Nobel Peace Prize Forum. We were all given a 12-page single spaced copy of the agenda and workshops for the Forum. It was an extraordinary schedule, chock full of descriptors of the plenaries and workshops (there were 90 in all; I attended 16, the maximum possible).
At the time, I didn’t notice the session scheduled for 12:30 – 1:45 p.m. on the final day. “Controversial Nobel Peace Prizes: Successes or Failures?” with Dr. Geir Lundestad, for 22 years Director of the Nobel Institute in Oslo, the agency charged with the responsibility of selecting the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate each year.
Had I noticed the agenda item, it wouldn’t have surprised. In the history of the Nobel Peace Prize, there have been numerous controversial awards. In fact, in March, 2011, Dr. Lundestad, at Augsburg, had given a 5-minute talk to several hundred students and adults about the controversy swirling around the 2009 Award to President Barack Obama, then in his first year in office. Dr. Lundestad’s explanation, then, is here.
I viewed that talk in person.
On February 25, a week before this years Forum, I started receiving copies of a “petition” requesting an investigation of supposed “Betrayal of the Nobel Peace Prize”.
I received from three people an identical document, all coming from people who would probably self-identify as progressive left, all criticizing the Obama selection. I knew there was criticism but was surprised it came up almost on the eve of the Forum. I was wondering whether/if some protest would develop (to my knowledge, none did.)
As I typically do with my own mailing list, I sent the item on, even though I disagreed with its premise. People have rights to their own opinions.
But the agenda item, which I had paid no attention to at first, now became more interesting, and when faced with an array of choices for the post-lunch workshop, it was an easy decision to join well over 100 people in the College chapel to hear Dr. Lundestad explain Nobel, Nobel’s Will, and the history of the Nobel Peace Prize, especially a number of controversial awards, the final one, the President Obama controversy.
When it came to President Obama, Dr. Lundestad essentially repeated the position stated at the 2011 event at Augsburg (film linked above).
The Nobel Committee, appointed by the Norwegian Parliament as an independent entity, is mostly women, he said, and is accustomed to controversy from any or all, and is willing to stand on principle. There are very large numbers of nominees (all kept confidential, including the selection process, for a period of 50 years), and the debates inside the committee can be vigorous.
That didn’t appear to have been the case with the selection of President Obama. Far more than anyone else, he met the criteria.
Of course the Committees choice doesn’t satisfy the critics, who feel Obama should give up the prize.
The talk, with ensuing questions and answers, went on for the full hour and 15 minutes. Dr. Lundestad, a historian, dealt with most every type of concern that has been raised over the years.
It appeared that within the audience in the hall, the overwhelming majority saw no problem with how the Nobel Committee operates, but were interested in the conversation.
A great deal of information about the Nobel Peace Prize is accessible here.
Take a look.
(click on photos to enlarge them)

Dr. Geir Lundestad, March 3, 2012, Augsburg College, Minneapolis


Portion of audience at Geir Lundestad presentation March 3, 2012


The posts written about this years Nobel Festival appear at March 1, 2 and 3, and begin here.
See also a followup post on March 5, here.

#505 – Dick Bernard: The "State of the Union"?

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This is posted BEFORE the actual State of the Union is presented by President Obama.
This [Tuesday] afternoon I sent my own mailing list a reminder of President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) address this evening. The subject line read: “What would you ask President Obama?”
A friend, who I think would answer to “Leftie”, shot back: “How do you [Obama] expect to regain all of the voters you have lost since 08, either by breaking promises (closing Guantanamo) or failing to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? (Yes, Iraq.)”
In response, I said “I’ll respond when you can give me the specifics of what Obama promised, and when. These have to be first person (his own specific quote) in context…you know what I mean.”
Volley: “No one I know saves his [Obama’s] quotes. That is a cop-out.”
Counter-volley: ” “Cop out”? You can do better than that. You’re the one who provided the allegation. Where’s the beef?”
Of course, this business of standing firmly on belief or assertion is not one-sided, not at all.
Yesterday, or was it the day before, a coffee friend related about the endless “forwards” his right-wing uncle dutifully sends him. A recent one was so obviously false that even the uncle said he’d checked Snopes, and yes, it was false. But it must have been one uncle really liked, so he sent it on anyway.
Uncle apparently liked the made up version of “truth”.
Earlier this afternoon I happened to be in my coffee shop sitting next to the editor of the local on-line Patch publication. Patch is a burgeoning national alternative media, a creation purchased by AOL in 2010 and developed by them.
About a year later, AOL and on-line publication Huffington Post merged.
The local Patch editor observed that he gets complaints (with no basis in fact) that Patch must be left-wing – that Arianna Huffington herself is setting editorial policy for the local on-line publication.
On the other ideological pole, when the Huffington-AOL merger happened, I can remember a flurry of communications from the left, complaining that Huffington had literally sold out to the right….
(NOTE: I didn’t know this history till I started to do this column.)
There is a caution in noting these alternative realities: we seem to be a nation full of manufactured realities – our own fantasies of what is ‘truth’. It makes no difference what side of ideological spectrum one occupies, or even in the middle, we seem satisfied to delude ourselves. For what I hope are obvious reasons, this delusion is very dangerous behavior.
I’ll watch SOTU with great interest tonight, and tomorrow there will be endless translations of it, according to individual points of view.
And I’m still interested in that exact quote of the President which begins this post….
Now to the State of the Union address.

#446 – Dick Bernard: 2012. What if the radicals win?

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A few days ago, at a political fundraiser in St. Paul, a 3-term Congressman told us that “Congress” as an entity has a 12% approval rating. That is about as close to zero as it is possible to get. I knew this number from earlier reports, and I’ve always observed that we Americans, who select Congress, after all, must really be fools.
At about the same time as the fundraiser, I read a fascinating column by Steve Benin in the Washington Monthly about the American Congress and the U.S. President in the year 1983. It is here. The nub of the article was this: 1983 was a productive year, as such things go in Washington. There was a Republican President; the House of Representatives was heavily Democrat; the U.S. Senate was majority Republican but well below the 60 vote threshold needed to avoid possible filibuster. (You can see makeup of U.S. Government in recent history here: Congress 1977-2011001
The government composition in 1983 was essentially the opposite of today…but government worked, because the representatives of the two parties respected each other and worked together. Sure, they fought. But it was genteel compared with today.
There was no single-minded determination to destroy the opposition, to make the President fail, or to win by refusing to compromise, as is true with today’s radical leadership.
It is no secret that today’s Republican Party is different from the long ago versions. The current version is a take no prisoners, win at all costs, just say no, bunch. This is true in states as well as at federal level. (On the other side of the aisle, consistent criticism of President Obama has been that he has persisted in trying to work with the opposition – a la 1983 – rather than fight fire with fire.)
As we speak, there are many efforts around the United States to reconfigure legislative and congressional districts, and make it more difficult for people to vote, to bring about Radical Religious Republican nirvana: a Permanent Republican Majority.
I recently wrote to my two Republican state legislators saying “your party’s strategy of making the Democrats a permanent minority seems to be working – state and national. The sole Republican programs are to defeat President Obama, and refuse to raise taxes or support any recovery initiatives that work – these will just help Obama, they reason.
People have no clue about consequences they face with Norquist/Rove as their model long term.”
Of course, the Republican long-term strategy won’t work…long-term.
Probably, it won’t work short-term, either, even if the evidence (Republican President, Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican Governors in all State Houses, and Republican legislatures universally, and de facto Republican Supreme Court majorities) come to be in 2012.
It doesn’t take a genius to compute that the new era will not be ushered in by strains of kumbaya.
“As you treated others, so will you be treated” is an axiom that comes to mind.
An accomplished radical Republican dream will be a nightmare for everyone.
Even if they prevail in 2012, their dream of permanent dominance likely will not happen. If it does, refresh yourself on the American Civil War, 1861-65.
At another source, in the last few days, I read that in 2010 only 41% of Americans even bothered to vote. That means, of course, that of every 100 voting age Americans you come in contact with in an average day, 59 did not even show up at their polling place in 2010. It was a recipe for national disaster in 2010: the angry voters prevailed.
(The Congressman we saw on Wednesday described well the unreasoning anger. It goes something like this:
“You people have to cut wasteful spending.” (Government as “them”, not “us”)
“Fine. What do you suggest we cut, specifically things you benefit from.”
(Silence.)
Here’s the difference between good things happening and (in my opinion) horrid.

Be informed. Find out the rules for registration in your state, and help people get registered, and help them become informed about what is at stake if even more of the same we’re now experiencing is the aftermath of 2012.
NOTE: I’ve written frequently about political behavior, most recently here on Sep. 29, and expect to continue this practice, perhaps once or twice a week. Scroll down in the right column of this blog, and there is a category titled “Politics” which archives what I’ve written (and will write) on the topic.

#442 – Dick Bernard: The Week that included the International Day of Peace September 18-24, 2011

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When I posted #441 on September 21, I was unsure whether or not the International Day of Peace would be of consequence or even noted.
Looking back a few days, there was a great plenty of notice about the Day of Peace, some very positive, some very negative, all very public.
The Thursday Minneapolis Star Tribune had a front page article on the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia…on the International Day of Peace. The entirety of page three of the paper related to President Obama’s address to the United Nations.
Former President George W. Bush was in St. Louis Park for a fundraiser on Peace Day, and a full third of page B3 of the newspaper – essentially the only coverage of the event – was of a protest against the Bush administrations sanction of torture.
In the “is the glass half full or half empty” analogy, I would give Peace a very strong showing this week, even though there is plenty of negative to emphasize.
The Presidents address to the UN was measured and instructive: taking the world as it is, and strongly encouraging, for example, direct negotiations between Palestine and Israel on long-term Peace. As such highly public events work, no doubt both Israeli and Palestinian leaders knew in advance what the President was going to say: this is the nature of diplomacy. Peace cannot be imposed on societies, as we’ve learned over and over again. Societies need to come to their own conclusion. We cannot impose, only facilitate or interfere with, agreement.
As to the tragic Troy Davis decision, I tried to articulate my position in a proposed letter to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, submitted today. I said:
“Regardless of Charles Lanes opinion on the correctness of Troy Davis’ execution on Sep 21, (ironically the International Day of Peace), state sanctioned punishment by death is a dying proposition…and it will be a well deserved death when it comes.
I am reminded of the distinction between two words: decide and choose. When one decides something, all other options are removed. The root for decide is shared with words like suicide, homicide, fratricide, and on and on. There is no turning back from a terminal decision, like a sentence to death. It feels good for awhile (our prisons are full of murderers); but does it help society to be a murderer itself?
Choice at least has room for redemption or correction.
Back in 1991, shortly before the famed Halloween Blizzard, I read about and attended a commemorative service in a Duluth church cemetery. Three black men with a carnival had been lynched in Duluth in 1920 for the alleged rape of a white woman. There was no corroborating evidence.
The men were buried in unmarked graves and on that late October day in ’91, a group of us gathered at their discovered graves to recognize their untimely and unjust end.
At the time of their lynching, one youngster in the lynching crowd in downtown Duluth apparently justified the action: “they was just niggers”.
We’ve advanced, but the primitive instinct of that youngster is alive and well and in our society.”
We’re a complicated world, and there were/are doubtless endless examples of good and evil on Wednesday, September 21, 2011, as on every other day of the week and every week preceding and to follow.
For the long haul, Gandhi said it best: “we must be the change we wish to see in the world”.
Gandhi, assassinated in 1948, never succeeded in his quest, but his messages are before us, every day. We MUST be the change….
Peace is a destination; the Road to Peace is one we must travel each day.
Think Peace, and work for it.

#440 – Dick Bernard: "Class War" and "the American Dream"

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Sometime in 1987, well into President Ronald Reagan’s second term, I was in San Benito TX visiting my father.
One evening, he and I went out to dinner with his good friends, also retirees in San Benito. It was just a night out. I knew them both from previous visits. He was a retired locksmith, and she a homemaker, both originally from Minnesota.
Sometime during the dinner, the talk turned serious. They were telling Dad and I a tragic story. They had just lost their entire life savings – I remember it as $170,000 – in a bank collapse in their community.
This was a time of de-regulation and they had moved their savings from an insured account into an uninsured account that promised much larger returns. The bankers scheme didn’t turn out and they lost everything except their social security, and whatever small property they owned (a trailer home in San Benito, and who knows what ‘up north’).
I’ve watched assorted schemes and scams as they’ve taken place since then, most all of them involving money and greed as twins.
It was called “trickle down” economics in the Reagan years.
George H.W. Bush got in trouble for referring to it as “voodoo”.
In the late 90s there were feverish and successful attempts to regulate regulations of banking out of existence, to ‘let the free market do its thing and bring riches to us all’.
Then came the folly of big (and foolish) tax cuts and huge un-funded Medicare benefit increases (great politics) twinned with big war in the first decade of the 21st century. Three years ago this month, it almost came completely undone with the bank collapse, and the real estate collapse which remains an unmitigated disaster.
But, oh was it fun while it lasted! That’s how it is, living on the credit card.
And here we are, same story, some of the same actors, but some new ones as well. Same insane message.
The Big Lie of the anti-government Norquist generation of lawmakers, state and federal, will bring disaster, but probably won’t be noticed until disaster actually strikes. That’s the way it seems to work in our casual society, where paying attention to policy, and who makes it, is boring to most who are affected by that same policy.
Big Business is run by Wall Street; Wall Street is run by Quarterly Results (the numbers); Wall Streets business is to make money now, not to build a stable economy long into the future.
I muse often about whether there is ANYBODY in those corporate structures or Wall Street Towers who are really paying attention to the implications of destroying the Middle Class. The Middle Class is, after all, the source of their wealth. Their market for their goods.
The Middle Class can turn this around – we are massive in numbers – but far too many of us are shills for the wealthy who, by and large, have no interest in us except what we can do to destroy ourselves.
I’ll do what I can. Each of us has to do what we can….
At minimum, don’t believe the shills who proclaim that there’s “class war against the rich”.
It’s the other way around.
Just look at the long term results.
(The best succinct graphic I’ve seen about the national debt and how and why it happened can be watched here. It is succinct and powerful.)

#437 – Dick Bernard: Sykeston vs Goodrich, 1957; Us vs Us, 2011: How are you on the field, or not?

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Soon after 9-11-11 I received a “real” (with postage stamp) letter from a great and long-time friend: “Enough 9/11 already. [My son] contends that if we put the same energy into remembering victims of battering and child abuse, it would be well served. I am not unsympathetic, but where is the energy for other injustices? Am I being a cynic I wonder.”
Fair enough. In fact, I agree. My 9-11-11 post is titled “The first day of the rest of our life as a people“. My comment on 9-11-01 itself is titled “Have we learned anything these last ten years?”
The letter caused me to reflect on a long ago event and how it applies (I feel) to today’s world.
In 1957 we moved back to Sykeston ND. It was my senior year in high school, and we’d been elsewhere for the previous six years.
For the only time in my life I was in a school having enough boys for a football team, though only six-man.

Sykeston Football 1957


As the photo shows (I can remember almost all of the team members, I’m in front row, third from left) we did not look terribly impressive. The yearbook says we only played two games, winning the first against Goodrich, 26-0, and the second against Cathay, 40-2. The other two games were “postponements”. At any rate, when we played we apparently did all right. I had one touchdown, the yearbook says.
Ah, Kenny Chesney’s “The Boys of Fall”. Undefeated.
I remember vividly something during the Goodrich game (we were the visitors). At some point in the game I found myself running towards a big horse of a kid running towards me down the field. All I remember is that he was BIG, and I hit him head-on, and it hurt bad.
Nothing broken, or even bruised, but I knew he and I had met. At minimum I stopped him cold.
That was the Goodrich game: 26-0, Sykeston. It was no Kenny Chesney moment, but it was a moment.
But how about “Us vs Us, 2011”?
I know there are readers of this blog who don’t like football, and that’s okay.
But the U.S. body politic is very seriously fighting against itself these days, and just like that big horse of a guy and me in 1957, either you’re on the field, or you’re on the sidelines, in the stands, maybe not even showing up to support the team, but only being a “Monday morning quarterback”. Absence from action is dangerous for us all.
We’re a Nation of One’s and we’re at risk. It’s the rare person I talk to who doesn’t have his or her sole first and primary priority for this country, and bases his or her judgments on this single priority. All too often, deliberately, problems are cast as President Obama’s fault.
It’s not President Obama’s game to win or lose, it’s ours as a society.
And the function we can serve in the winner-take-all fight that faces us is to be on the field, getting bruised up.
If we’re on the sidelines, or not at the game at all, the opposition has free rein, and we’ll all suffer, including the people who think they’re winning.
Here I am, 54 years from 1957.
In that long-ago game, I met the bruiser head on and we won 26-0. Sure, that’s meaningless…or is it?
Where will Kenny Chesney’s “Boys of Summer” be 54 years from now?

Directly related posts: Sep. 9(Reflecting on Sep. 11, 2001, and the ten following years); Sep. 11 (39 comments to date about the Sep. 9 post); Sep. 14 (Vietnam Vet Barry Riesch); Sep. 15 (But/And); and Sep. 16 (Political models).

#431 – Dick Bernard: Ed Asner as FDR

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Early this week my wife heard on public radio that Ed Asner, co-star of the Mary Tyler Moore show, would be doing a one-man show the evening of September 9. She was interested in going and for me that was a non-controversial recommendation. I went down to get tickets in person, and by that time, on Wednesday, the only seats left, except a few with obstructed vision, were in the very last row of the top balcony of the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul.
Friday night, in that last row, high above the stage, we saw a phenomenal nearly two-hour show, where Ed Asner replayed 24 years of Roosevelt’s career, from Polio in 1921 through his last trip and death in Warm Springs GA in April, 1945. There is no replay of the show, at least in the Twin Cities. It was a single performance. At the beginning of the performance the announcer said that an interview is archived on Minnesota Public Radio. The entire fascinating interview – nearly an hour – is accessible here.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt is much too large a character for this blog space, as well as for a one hour forty minute program of excerpts performed by Asner. But if you hear Ed Asner as FDR is coming to your town, make it a point to attend.
Roosevelt was viewed as a “Traitor to his Class“, one of the book titles on sale at the theater.
Neither was he universally adored by the people whose future he worked to preserve. People then, like people today, often do not have a long view of their own best interests and are easily exploited. As a family historian, I can tell stories about my own relatives, who were of the farming and labor class. They all had their own reasons….
Roosevelt suffered under all of the differences of opinions and constraints that hem in all U.S. Presidents in what is at one and the same time the most powerful and the most problematic position in the world.
He was attacked and obstructed by his opposition.
He demonstrated, however, how a President does help set a national tone, whether with or without party support.
Twenty-four hours earlier we had watched President Obama speaking to a frankly hostile Congress about crucial issues facing the United States now.
As I sat watching Mr. Asner speak from and around the very simple set dominated by a Presidential desk in the Oval Office, I thought about President Obama, the current occupant of the oval office.
Mr. Roosevelt was patrician, perhaps even considered above the job of President, and most particularly traitorous to some in his upper class kin, as the book title suggests.
Mr. Obama, on the other hand, comes from the opposite pole in our society: the first African-American President, and one who basically grew up in a single-parent family.
I noticed, when Mr. Obama was talking to Congress (and particularly the nation) he was firm but not dramatic, as Roosevelt might have been.
I believe that President Obama’s somewhat nuanced address was intentional and necessary to fit the circumstances of this time in our history. We are not post-racial. We may never be post-racial….
Oh, if the presidency was as easy as we all would like to pretend.
Thankfully there are people like President Roosevelt and President Obama who stepped up to the plate to serve.
UPDATE Sep 11, 2011:
After writing this post I happened upon a two hour History Channel special on the death of Osama bin Laden in May, 2011. It was a fascinating two hours. Distilled to its essence, President Obama’s advisors gave odds of maybe 40 to 50% that bin Laden was the mysterious man in the compound at Abbottabad. All decisions ultimately were the Presidents. Had something gone wrong, or the quarry been other than bin Laden, it would have been the Presidents fault (as President Carter accepted full responsibility for the disastrous attempt to free the hostages in Teheran in 1979). On the other hand, success does not necessarily bring kudos. Second-guessing what was done, and how, or taking credit for the success are also common. Politics is never completely clear and above board.

#430 – Dick Bernard: 9-11-01 to 9-11-11. Have we learned anything these last ten years?

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UPDATE September 12, 2011: There have been a large number of comments on this post. They are in a separate post for September 11, 2011, here. Additional comments will be added to this post, as received.
September 9, 2011
Dear Family and Friends:
One of the indelible memories of my life came on my 60th birthday, May 4, 2000. We spent the entire day at the horrific Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. Entering one of the first buildings with the awful artifacts of the final solution – hair, shoes, suitcases… – was a sign with this quotation:
“Those who
cannot remember the past,
are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
We Americans – every one of us – have created what became the ten years after 9-11. We are well advised to remember Santayana’s admonition as our future begins with President Obama’s address to Congress a few hours ago.
Everyone has their own perspective.
Here’s how I remember the last ten years, and how I hope we work for a better future.
*
Here are two snapshots I took of the as-yet incomplete twin towers of the World Trade Center 39 years ago, in late June, 1972. (click to enlarge). (The Statue of Liberty photos later in this post were taken the same day.) This was my first and to date only visit to New York City. I remember the day vividly.

Twin Towers nearing completion late June, 1972 (see construction equipment on top of one of the towers)


New York City skyline from ferry enroute to Statue of Liberty late June, 1972


I also remember vividly 9-11-01: The death toll that day was approximately 3,000. Each of those people died tragically and needlessly. This doesn’t make them unusual. Thousands of others die tragically and needlessly every day, everywhere. How we have elected to hang onto the circumstances of the death of these 3000, and what it has done to us as a nation, is what makes this ten year commemoration unusual. (See NOTE FROM MADELINE SIMON at the end of this post).
The ten years since 9-11-01 are ten years we should all also remember vividly:
– We’ve been in two wars, now ten years old, with no end in sight;
the price of 9-11 has been dreadful;
over 100,000 dead in Iraq, 25,000 in Afghanistan; – hundreds of thousands of people displaced; plenty of anger against the United States by these people;
– over 6,000 U.S. dead in these wars;
– Over 3 trillion of our dollars ($3,000,000,000,000) spent, not counting huge and certain future costs even if the wars were to stop today;
– incalculable ruin to our national reputation – a reservoir of ill-will which will not be forgotten.
And the War continues….
In my opinion it need not have been this way:
Here’s my personal recollection written a few days after 9-11: September 17 and 24, 2001, a letter to family and friends reflecting on 9-11-01. (Entire letter here Post 9-11-01001.)
9-11-01 was my second day on the job as a volunteer on a Habitat for Humanity house in south Minneapolis. A large crew of us from Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis volunteered for one or more days during our two week commitment. Per previous plans, Cathy, my wife, and son-in-law John also joined that crew the week of 9-11. I was there the first week.

Habitat Home Stevens Ave S Minneapolis MN Sep 11, 2001


After 9-11 we were overrun with unexpected volunteers coming off the street to help – their way of dealing with grief, I suppose.
This urge to do something positive was a very normal immediate outcome of the shock of 9-11, as it is a normal response after any tragedy.
For many years I have kept a handout from a long-ago workshop I attended which explains the normal human response to crisis very well (click to enlarge). Note: the time period to recovery is described in months, not years:

OUR RESPONSE POST-9-11-01
Rather than normal and positive resolution of grief, and closure, after 9-11-01 we in the U.S. chose to go to war. It was and is a disastrous decision.
We Americans* almost unanimously supported war as a remedy. Afghanistan Oct 7 2001001
One wonders what would have happened had we chosen to respond as Norway did in the wake of their July 22, 2011, terrorist attack.

After 9-11 we were largely kept in the dark about specifics of war plans. Five months after 9-11, a column (2002001) I wrote for the Minneapolis Star Tribune (published April 20, 2002), does not even mention the word “Iraq”. Iraq was not on my radar screen then, and I was an engaged citizen then.
In April, 2002, the official roll-out of the Iraq War was nearly a year away.
But we now know the Bush administration focus had almost instantly shifted to Iraq after 9-11, even though Iraq, and no Iraqis, were involved in 9-11. We took the deadly fork in the national road which we still live with today.
At the same time we launched this war, we were encouraged to get on with life, to go shopping, and we happily obliged during the decade. Vice-President Richard Cheney famously noted that “deficits don’t matter….” (see 18th para beginning “In his own account…”).
War almost instantly became an opportunity to implement the dreams of the Project for a New American Century. Its principles are worth rereading, as are the names of its signatories. Most of its signatories likely still believe its false premise: America once and forever King of the World. Too many of us still have visions of a permanent American empire. (My opinion: We could not effectively conquer Iraq, a place similar in size and population to California. Our vision of world dominance was false then, and still is. It is rapidly killing us.)
In October, 2002, Congress issued what turned out to be a blank check to wage war on the national credit card. (You can see how the political parties voted on that resolution in 2002 at the preceding link.)
We, the people approved that action; indeed, it can fairly be said that we insisted on war. It was politically very dangerous for a politician to be against this War on “terrorists”. We the people bought the idea of war, and thus we own its consequences.
We’re still at war in Afghanistan, the place we attacked first, 10 years ago. Much of our national debt flows from war, not only unpaid for by any national sacrifice when it happened, but accompanied by huge and continuing tax cuts for everybody; and unfunded, large and politically popular Medicare improvements. To this day, we refuse to pay for that credit card debt of ours. As a nation we are still very deep in denial.
We effectively demand even more tax cuts and to slash our government (our state and national infrastructure) even further, rather than using our still great national wealth to work on reducing our debt. Going broke is a deliberate political strategy of the many current government leaders who follow Grover Norquist, whose anti-tax mantra has long been to starve government “until it can be drowned in the bathtub”. There is no negotiating with such an ideology.
We didn’t know it 9-11-01, but 2001-2011 became a highly radical Republican decade all the way up to the present moment where the avowed and very public aim of the Republican leadership is to make certain that President Obama fails to generate jobs for national recovery. “Give us another chance”, they seem to say. “See him fail.” The same characters in charge will bring the same results as in the past, I say. Watch their real response to the Presidents request last night over the next months to discern their priorities.
The Republican leadership of the last 20 or so years is not cut from the same Republican cloth as my father’s or grandfather’s generation, nor my own. The current Republican leadership bunch worships power and control for its own sake. (For a dozen years my own political “best friend” was a former Republican Governor until he passed away several years ago. He would not be welcome in today’s Republican party.)
Today’s Republican strategy is led by amoral radicals** whose sole interest is permanent majority and raw power, rather than the long-term health of this country.

Ten years after 9-11, we’re still at it even though, for all intents and purposes, our country went bankrupt “going shopping” for everything we desired, getting big tax breaks and unpaid for benefit increases, and making war on credit***.
Now the narrative that I hear from the political radical right about our current national malaise is: “It’s all Obama’s fault, just give us another chance….”
This is insane.
So, what does this all mean? I removed from the title of this post these words: “A squandered decade.” But that is exactly what 2001-2011 has been: a squandered decade. And we continue the waste.
When will we Americans get a grip on reality?
Ten years ago we were caught unawares, and our emotions were easily manipulated and used.
Will the coming ten years be more of the same?
We are still “going shopping”.
Ten years from now, where will we be?
Are we going to continue down the same destructive road which has all but destroyed us; or will we commit to positive change? It is we citizens who will decide the future of our children and the generations to follow.
It is we as individuals who will be determining the answer to that question.

Same former Habitat house in South Minneapolis Sep 11, 2010. It continues to look the same in September, 2011, and to my knowledge remains occupied by the same Somali family for whom it was built ten years ago.


Statue of Liberty New York City harbor late June, 1972


Joni and Tom Bernard at Statue of Liberty, late June, 1972


NOTE FROM MADELINE SIMON received on August 8 prior to publication of this post, and included with her permission. Madeline is a long-time good friend, very active in Justice and social concerns issues with her Church. I met her through my involvement with the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers. She sent this item to persons she knows:
Last night, I happened to catch part of [PBS] Frontline, titled “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero.” [NOTE: this is can be watched online here] Representatives, particularly clergy, from the three major religions all talked about the very real, scary dark side of religious zeal, equally lethal in their respective religions. One, who shared the podium at a 9/11 memorial service with clergy from other religious traditions became the receiver of hate mail from members of his own clergy. They were incensed that he would give any degree of validity to another religion and its followers, and he was asked to resign as a minister of their absolute truth faith.
One woman related that in an interview with Putin, he said that to the 9/11 hijackers, the people in the towers were “just dust.” In the Nazi era, Jews were considered less than human by some supposed Christians; in the U.S. pre-civil rights era, some Christians considered blacks less than human; and some Israeli Jews treat Palestinians similarly. Much evil has been done throughout history in the name of God, and it continues today.
No doubt that the extreme religious right in our country is dangerous, used and exceedingly well-funded by greedy corporate America who demand laissez faire–no government-by-the-people regulation of their excesses, and they should not be allowed to control government at any level. Our government, federal and local, are already dysfunctional, preferring to be insanely destructive rather than lose power in the interest of the common good.
We have much important work to do before the next election, none being so important as reminding the country of our common humanity, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and our interdependence, on each other and the well-being of our small planet. As Unitarian Universalists and a 501(c)(3) religious organization, we can’t advocate for or against candidates, but issues are fair game!!!
FOOTNOTES:
* – This commentary is written to “we, the people”. We are a society that likes to blame somebody else for our problems. The collective credit or blame lies with everyone of us, so long as we are fortunate enough to have a democracy (that is at risk).
** – “ends justify the means, politics is war, winning is all that matters” seems the dominant ethic. It is amazing, and very discouraging, to see the kind of racist, false and malicious information that is passed along, computer to computer, these days. Media advertising is as bad. It is far worse on the Republican side than on the Democrat. A recently retired 30-year GOP staff member in Washington recently wrote very candidly about this problem. You can read it here.
*** – even considering today’s relatively high unemployment, America is an immensely wealthy nation with far more than sufficient resources to recover from a problem we never should have gotten into. But to do so requires our political will, and the congressional leadership feels the problem is more beneficial to their interests than a solution.
There are many directly related posts, if you wish, beginning with June 27, 2011:
I will write a followup to this post, most likely on Monday, September 12, 2011
June 27, 2011: Killing the President, and many posts in the weeks that followed.
July 23, 2009: International Peace Garden

#428 – Dick Bernard: A Mutiny aboard the Ship of State

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I hear all sorts of opinions in the course of an average day, from all sorts of people. Part of this is due to being retired, and thus having more varied opportunities. A larger part is a desire to hear, and engage with, more points of view than one gets as a ‘bird of a feather’ in some special interest constituency or other.
While I’m a hopeful optimistic kind of guy, things look hopeless in this country into which I was born, have lived my entire life, and will likely die. It seems that we’re all involved in a collective mutiny on the ship of state; we want what we want; and we’re rapidly killing ourselves in the process.
Just in the last few hours we were at a political fund raiser for a Congressional candidate, a Minnesota Democrat, and a small group of us were in quite a passionate discussion of what will happen in 2012, and why. Before leaving for that fundraiser, came an e-mail from a good friend on the political left, who said about the President: “I think his brand of politics doesn’t inspire confidence. I’m not confident in him. In fact I’m leery and distrust him, but will vote for him because a Republican would be worse.” What he was saying is that President Obama isn’t progressive enough and ‘don’t expect much help from me to help reelect him’. And this friend is moderate as left-wingers go.
I ask folks like my friend, “so, what is the viable alternative?” There is never an answer to this question. The hard word is “viable”.
The strategists for the polar right, the opposite of the progressive left, and the Republican strategists in particular, understand the left-wing animus towards Obama, and expertly manipulate it.
The issue is winning, after all, not our country surviving: “Divide and conquer.”
Early this morning came a New York Times column about a moderate Congressman, long in Congress. It’s excellent and a tiny piece of hope. If you’re not into reading columns, at least consider reading the last three or four paragraphs of this one which convey a little hope. The rest of the column reminded me of our own visit to the U.S. House of Representative gallery Halloween night in 2000.
Politically, we are a very odd and self-destructive bunch as we enter into the political warfare of the next 14 months.
Many of us despise our system. Can it get much worse? It will get worse, unless we collectively get a grip.
It is not unusual to despise a leader, especially one who has to lead warring factions who despise each other.
For 30 years I’ve done family history, and among many others, I’ve recorded the stories about what some influential family members – all of them common folk – thought about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At the same time FDR was about the business of saving the country from itself, he was loathed by some of the very people he was helping save, often for emotional and not rational reasons. And my family was likely very typical back in the hard times of the 1930s.
What was the viable alternative then? I submit that the FDR haters wouldn’t have liked the alternative, and our country would not have survived to be what it is today had their loathing become reality….
What is the viable alternative now? If by some awful chance the mutiny succeeds, and we throw the bums out and start over, there will be no captain of the ship, and we passengers on this mutinous craft, along with the misfits who pulled off the mutiny, will collectively sink.
Do we want this? I hope not.

#423 – Dick Bernard: Talking war (and peace)

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Monday was Senior Citizen day at the Minnesota State Fair and I made my way over to fulfill my annual ritual, now stretching back to the mid-1960s when I first arrived in the Twin Cities.
This year found me less engaged than in the past – no particular reason. Maybe next year I won’t be back. But…next year there will be that deep-fried cheese curd gene that will kick in, and I’ll be back for my annual fix. One basket of those critters is a great plenty. Thankfully, they haven’t raised the price, which means they’ve reduced the portion size. At my age I don’t need even a single small basket. But so it goes.
One of my ritual stops is at the Leinie Lodge Band Shell, and when I stopped there on Monday, the 34th Infantry (Red Bull) Division Band was about to conclude its gig before a full house, and they were just about to begin a medley of the anthems of the various branches of military service. The announcer asked that vets of those branches rise to be recognized when their anthem was played. First, a few Marines; then Navy; then Air Force; then Coast Guard; then my branch, the Army. Lots of folks stood up, mostly men, mostly old. It was a rather stirring and emotional time, recognizing the vets, one of which was me. (click on photo to enlarge)

Vets rising to be recognized at the State Fair August 29, 2011


I walked towards the exit to the encore: John Phillips Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever”.
On the bus back to the east ‘burbs, I struck up a conversation with an old guy who’s an Army vet, WWII. “Pacific or European Theater?”, I asked. “Pacific”, he responded. His unit had spent two weeks in Japan immediately after the Atom bombs had fallen in August, 1945. “Terrible there”, he said, and that was about it. I told him about Uncle Frank and the Arizona at Pearl Harbor, and about a whole family of military veterans, including me.
Today, President Obama was at the national American Legion Convention in Minneapolis. I’m a peace advocate who’s a long-time member of the American Legion. Stubbornness I guess. I also am a strong supporter of President Obama, doing all he can in a dismal political environment.
So it goes in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”. It’s hard to deny that “War is the Force that Gives Us Meaning” as so well articulated by Christopher Hedges in his book of the same name (the link is to a talk he gave at the University of California Santa Barbara a few years ago).
Peace hardly has a place at the table in the national conversation even though it has always been an underground topic of the human conversation. I just completed reading an outstanding book which was not about war and peace, but an amazing amount of conversation in this autobiographical love story* of photographer Alfred Stieglitz and artist Georgia O’Keefe was about feelings about World War I, the war raging when they met. But these were private conversations. The public conversation then was reverencing War and Soldiers and Right and Might in that spectacularly misnamed “war to end all wars”.
Indeed, there is hardly any place for public conversation about the virtues of peace. I have found that peace people, while representing the dominant feeling of people yearning peace, are marginalized and isolated. If your ethic is peace, it is impossible to intellectually engage with someone whose investment is in war.
I am part of a group seeking a monument to Peace in the city of War Monuments, Washington D.C. It is very slow going…though in the end, it will either be Peace or Perpetual War and Death.
Why not Peace? I have a theory.

Recently, as anyone watches the news is aware, there has been an overthrow of the Qadaffi government in Libya. There has not been, to my knowledge, a single American life lost in that war.
There are many pieces of conversation about whether that War is right or wrong, but I have particularly noticed the position, delivered through Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain, that the Libya campaign has been a “failure” for President Obama and the United States. No one says this out loud, but I think the reason such a war is deemed to be a failure is that there were no deaths to, in a perverse way, celebrate our fallen American heroes and stir up patriotism.
A foolish theory? I think not. To each their own opinion.
Talk Peace.
* – My Faraway One, edited by Sarah Greenough