{"id":78679,"date":"2014-08-09T07:48:17","date_gmt":"2014-08-09T11:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=78679"},"modified":"2014-08-09T13:51:32","modified_gmt":"2014-08-09T17:51:32","slug":"plain-speech-and-tribal-drums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/plain-speech-and-tribal-drums\/","title":{"rendered":"Plain Speech and Tribal Drums"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

It’s interesting how many times I’ve read the word “big” this week, how many times the most serious buzzwords have taken center stage, attempting to redefine the old, recognize and respond to the new, their linkage still muddy but coming into focus. The fixity of our big energies in Leo and Scorpio, aided by the coming Aquarian Full Moon, give a sense of finality to the moment. The cardinal signs originate, the mutables communicate the process, and the fixed signs complete. There’s nothing new under the sun, of course, just wash, rinse, repeat, but these repeating cycles can plow new territory if we allow, inching us along. Will we simply repeat what is old this time around, or can we initiate something new?<\/p>\n

\"Political It was ‘big’ when The New York Times editorial board wrote a recent op\/ed endorsing the legalization of marijuana. NYT, known to many as the Grey Lady, is the most authoritative of America’s newspapers, even during a period when all news is suspect for being profit-driven and aligned with establishment politics. But it’s worth taking a look at the words we use in even the most renowned publications, because they define our ability to be truthful with ourselves.<\/p>\n

What’s in a word, you ask? Well, in advance of the release of CIA records requested by Diane Feinstein* — up in arms over\u00a0spying on legislators<\/a>, if not Americans in general — Obama admitted, a BIG admission, it turns out,\u00a0that the U.S. had “tortured some folks.” That prompted the Grey Lady to announce that from now on it would use the word “torture” when describing interrogation techniques used to purposefully inflict pain on a prisoner in order to get information. Up to this point it had refused to use the word. The words\u00a0preferred — like “brutal interrogation” — didn’t have quite the same\u00a0oomph<\/em>\u00a0that deliberately putting an adversary in torturous agony provides. Perhaps now AP and Reuters will follow. What’s in a word? Truth.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And truth is painful, these days. As I’ve scanned the news this week, followed wars and rumors of war, these two Course in Miracles<\/em> affirmations kept popping into my head: “If I defend myself I am attacked,” and “In my defenselessness my safety lies.” It requires a thorough personal housecleaning to accept that possibility, of course, which includes the baggage stored in our mental basement and the horrors stuffed under the eves in our emotional attic, hiding from the Light. It takes a bit of courage to sweep clean, but that’s what’s required to put our house in order, provide it unshakable stability in a world riding a chaotic roller-coaster. And, with old paradigm dynamics roaring and spitting, desperate to pull us all back into the fold of the easily manipulated, it requires a solid foundation of self-esteem and dedication to core values to rise above the din.<\/p>\n

In order to think outside the box, to respond with foresight and innovation, to gather as St. Paul\u00a0— NOT my favorite Biblical old timer —\u00a0urged his followers when he said, “Come, let us reason together,” we are required to allay our fears and withdraw from the ancient tribal absolutes that have kept us looping in attack and defense since Eve bit the apple (or not!). Yet, standing in the confidence of our own defenselessness we find that in a world that has seemingly gone mad with magnified fears and dark cynicism, there are times when we must surely respond to defend the innocent if we can.<\/p>\n

Citing religious oppression (convert or die) and children expiring from dehydration in the heat, Obama ordered a\u00a0humanitarian drop<\/a>\u00a0of food and water to thousands of Kurdish refugees fleeing soldiers of the Islamic State as they sweep across the semi-autonomous Kurdistan territory in Iraq. The U.N. reports that as many as 200,000 people representing minority religions (including Christians and Shiite Muslims) have evacuated their homes ahead of I.S. presence, who make the stringent Taliban look reasonable and are considered brutal fanatics by al Qaeda. (And a big fat raspberry to CNN for reporting the Christian refugees with little mention of\u00a0other religions, which include thousands of Zoroastrians, considered ‘devil worshipers’ and targeted for death.)<\/p>\n

The ‘big’ word used by the President, the U.N. and\u00a0Secretary of State John Kerry regarding this event? Genocide. The Kurds are no strangers to genocide, and if you aren’t aware of Saddam Hussein’s savaging of these non-Arab Iraqis, here’s a link to information about the\u00a0Al-Anfal Campaign<\/a>\u00a0that destroyed over 4,000 Kurdish villages in the mid-1980s, an attempt to ‘purify’ Iraq from unbelievers and seize oil-rich lands for the Sunnis. The peshmerga, fierce Kurdish fighters,\u00a0find themselves\u00a0outgunned now, since the Iraq army has all but collapsed, leaving behind its U.S.-provided weaponry for the taking.<\/p>\n

Responding to the emergency, the President also authorized limited airstrikes on I.S. convoys moving toward the city of Irbil, where the U.S. maintains a consulate. ISIS, which stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, was a group of Sunni insurgent groups that joined together during the Syrian civil war, disenfranchised by Maliki’s predominantly Shiia government. These are violent insurgents, vanguard of the religious extremism that has (hubristically) established itself as a caliphate, or religious authority, over all of the Muslim world. They’ve continued to change their name as their power grows, dropping ISIS for ISIL — Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — but now simply referring to themselves as the Islamic State.<\/p>\n

If you want a peek at these characters,\u00a0open this YouTube<\/a>\u00a0[reposition the black box with your cursor]. I don’t want to minimize their threat, but I’d surely like to point out their limitations. Modernity and education could patch this wound; little else is capable. (I won’t be referencing them as IS, by the way, which offends my metaphysical understanding. I consider these bad actors a manifestation of simple-minded, theocratic and authoritarian brutality that has no place in 21st century civilization.)<\/p>\n

The White House had very recently come out for the repeal of the Iraq War Authorization, even as the Islamic State had revealed itself a thorn in the side of the Middle East. This attempt to downgrade the War on Terror to a less combustible,\u00a0not to mention\u00a0legal, military-option put the Republicans on high alert and created a shriek of horror from national security hawks everywhere. Security advisor Susan Rice sent a letter to John Boehner prior to the vote on a resolution opposing military intervention in Iraq, which included this paragraph:<\/p>\n

\u201cWith American combat troops having completed their withdrawal from Iraq on December 18, 2011, the Iraq AUMF is no longer used for any U.S. government activities and the administration fully supports its repeal. Such a repeal would go much further in giving the American people confidence that ground forces will not be sent into combat in Iraq.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Obama continues to assure the public that no American troops will put boots on the ground as intervention in what can only be called an expected and predictable religious war, but he has also made it plain that he will not hesitate to use drones to protect the remaining Americans in Iraq. Given the arrogance of the Islamic State, they had better hope that’s all he has in mind. Goaded by the use of air strikes on Friday, the Islamic State responded by telephone to Reuters that the air strikes would not have any impact. “The planes attack positions they think are strategic, but this is not how we operate. We are trained for guerrilla street war. God is with us and our promise is heaven. When we are promised heaven, do you think death will stop us?”<\/p>\n

This kind of nihilistic extremism is hardly new and very worrisome, but we’ve seen this kind of hubris before. The Islamic State had previously\u00a0issued a message that began “I say to America that the Islamic-state has been established …,” bragged that it had previously humiliated U.S. soldiers that, if they were men would meet them now, face-to-face, on the battlefield, and ended, “We will humiliate them everywhere, and God willing, we will raise our flag in the White House.” I can only assume that Republicans everywhere fainted in joy that their worst projections had been realized, that the War on Terror that assured the eventual return of Jesus to Jerusalem was still hot, and that war authorization was unlikely to change anytime soon.<\/p>\n

Bush the Younger’s ‘preventative war’ prevented very little, it seems. Besides striking a match to the already volatile Mid-Eastern oil fields,\u00a0ten years out and war over, we’re left six trillion dollars in debt and dogged by a well-earned echo of Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn theory. It would seem that we are, as we learned in the old classic, The Little Prince<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, “responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” And so, to prevent genocide, Obama ordered air attacks, successfully slowing the advance of the Islamic State, at least for the moment.\u00a0Yet it rankles,\u00a0this occurrence of preventing genocide — extremists targeting a population including women and children trapped on a mountain side with no recourse for escape — when Palestinians receive the same treatment. Why didn’t their survival have the same punch with the American public, the same moral imperative for this American president?<\/p>\n

Almost 2,000 people have died in Gaza,\u00a0caught between the sea and borders they can’t cross. Hamas, which is extreme and belligerent, is also the elected government in this region and refuses to honor the current cease fire agreement, although it can just as easily be said that Israel not only provokes but welcomes further hostility. American attempts to bring these long-lost cousins together for a family reunion have failed miserably, and — OMG! — wouldn’t it be helpful if the U.S. kicked Israel off its welfare roles, including the $225 million Obama signed over last week to beef up the Iron Dome missile defense system and the millions of dollars worth of weapons and airplane parts we send regularly? We can’t have it both ways. And while nobody can cozy up with Hamas, coldly surrendering its own people to slaughter, you get the feeling that Netanyahu would gladly push Obama over into the Strip and lock the\u00a0border behind him if he could, as well as all others who thwart him.\u00a0Another important matter:\u00a0surely, looking at the best-armed insurgency in the world rolling across Iraq in American Hummer’s, passing weapons around seems to often mean finding them aimed, eventually, at us.<\/p>\n

No, there’s no military solution to this problem, nor is it inherently religious at this point. It is tribal, deeply nationalistic, and reminds me of the old\u00a0Star Trek<\/em> episode<\/strong><\/a>* that featured two people from a warring planet, one half-black on the right side, white on the other. His nemesis was, naturally, half-black on the left, white on the other. Polarity personified, their differences were clear only to each other. As I recall, that episode didn’t end well, nor does it appear that there will be an easy truce established in the Holy Land. Meanwhile, here on planet Terra, the world is looking on at powerful, unyielding Israel and zealous, bitter Hamas, wondering what can possibly bring them to a permanent peace table, while even Israel’s most\u00a0faithful supporters<\/a>\u00a0have begun to question its motives on the world stage.<\/p>\n

Looking on at all this, I — like you, I suppose — find myself sorrowing for the loss of life and searching for some option that would change what we see around us, yet I spoke of\u00a0it earlier: the realization that attack is twin to defense, that the tribal imperative cares only for the win, the triumph, the revenge, and not for the peace process or the welfare of all involved. I am heartened, however, that we are now hearing from other quarters, willing to listen to voices other than the ones we’ve seldom questioned. I hear Palestinian points of view on television now, and as we wrangle with this new Iraqi threat, we’re getting a tutorial on the Kurds, who were outliers in BushWar II (and a critical element in Joe Biden’s assessment that Iraq should be divided into three parts, giving Sunnis, Shiias and Kurds each an autonomous territory under a larger governmental umbrella — who’s an embarrassing buffoon now, huh?).<\/p>\n

If we go back to the concept of putting aside our differences and coming to the peace table without a fiery attack or a hasty defense, how might that look? What if Dubya hadn’t decided to push democracy on a region that had no cultural experience, political background or desire for it? What if we’d learned a bit about the Iraqi culture before we stomped all over their country, disbanded the Baathist who had the expertise to assist in reformation, and pretended we knew what we were doing as we waived cash around?<\/p>\n

And close enough to have the same concerns, what if the United States hadn’t had a national hemorrhage over Hamas winning the election in Gaza and the West Bank in 2006, refusing to deal with them as an honest broker. We will never know if they could have risen to the occasion, finding the challenge to govern a steep but evolutionary climb from being a jihadist militia to a provider for a secure Palestinian territory, perhaps even autonomous country.<\/p>\n

What might the world at large — and even our own little spot in the pond — look like, if we came to detente open-handed, willing to forgive in order to start over, having banished the baggage in the basement and the dark memories from the attic? We know where to go, don’t we? We even know how to get there. We just have to keep knocking down those fearful tribal walls that keep us from taking hands over the table. These are\u00a0important questions to ask ourselves as\u00a0the full moon in Aquarius brightens our intellect and whispers of a new era of brother\/sisterhood and\u00a0 — God\/dess willing — peace.<\/p>\n

* Feinstein, by the way, has joined John McCain and his pal, Lindsey Graham, in pushing for boots on the ground. Confront now or later is their mantra. This kicks up all the dust that had finally begun to settle from Dubya’s War on Terror.<\/p>\n

**As a devoted Trekker with every episode on tape (not DVDs, more’s the pity) I find that most every moral\/ethical question we face was addressed by Roddenberry during\u00a0Trek’s<\/em>\u00a0brief tenure on the tube in the 1960s. This does NOT help my impatience with the world in general, given that we already know what has to be done in order for humanity to overcome what is narrow, small-minded and self-defeating. From offering us the first inter-racial kiss to introducing the Prime Directive of non-interference (which is probably why the Space Brothers are dragging their feet on introducing themselves) and\u00a0which I see as a techy version of “Do No Harm,”\u00a0Star Trek <\/em>gave us the template for a peaceful, productive future.<\/p>\n

To conclude,\u00a0may we ALL live long and prosper!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves It’s interesting how many times I’ve read the word “big” this week, how many times the most serious buzzwords have taken center stage, attempting to redefine the old, recognize and respond to the new, their linkage still muddy but coming into focus. The fixity of our big energies in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}