Violence... The story so far

CONGRATULATIONS AMERICAN VOTERS

Your message is loud and clear. THANK YOU

• War in Iraq was and is a mistake. We want to withdraw.
• Corruption is a no no.
• Mr. Bush has led us in the wrong direction; it is time to change.

Elsewhere on this website we have lamented the power Mr. Bush has to keep us enthralled as he pursues divisive policies, alienates allies and enemies alike, depletes the treasury, mistakes power for wisdom. Thanks again, body politic of America. We now have a chance to be as united as the name of our great nation implies.

Thanks also to the Democratic party leadership for encouraging voters to vote. Let us hope you can:

• Find the way out of Iraq, create and pursue legislation that requires the administration to follow that path. We are most worried about this one. Except for Mr McGovern, we have seen no explicit plans from you that are any better than what Mr. Bush has been pursuing.
• Call the administration to account for past sins but not to the point of paralyzing governance;
• Reach out to the moderate Republicans in forging a new conciliatory America concerned as much for the world as for itself;
• Look for and address the roots of problems; avoid the band-aids that passed for solutions, even made things worse, in recent history;
• Look in the mirror each morning. Are you clean? If not, Middle America will find ways to speak to you, too. Hubris is an all-too-human frailty. The age-old adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely applies to everyone, not just to Republicans;
• Above all, remember:
  
  

  Ultimately, deceit deceives only the deceiver.

Thanks also to you, too, Mr. Bush. With your earth-shaking mistakes, you have repeated some history lessons we Americans have learned from. We can only hope you have too.

Finally, Mr and Ms America (and others too for that matter), please do take this history lesson to heart. We are now in an age where a few can effectively threaten life as we know it on earth. Military confrontations, however exquisite in execution, do not win the wars against extremism; they only exacerbate them. This is perhaps the single most important lesson from Iraq. If we ignore it henceforth,shame on us.

Extremism is the root problem of our day. It has root causes, many. It affects the right and the left, all shades of religion, business, interpersonal and international relations. Only by addressing their many root causes will humanity rise above the laws of the jungle and savanna. To get started on that one, we must take the basic lesson to heart and remove ourselves from Iraq in an orderly but expeditious manner. After acknowledging that fact we need to look at how our withdrawal will influence societies, cultures, economics, and political alignments in the region and adjust our actions to minimize further damage to Iraq.

In the longer term, deep insights into humanity itself are needed. With those in hand, roads to peace become decernable. The time is ripe.

In all the rhetoric on 8 Nov 2006, Mr. Bush was steadfast that America must stay the course. Mr. Bush also promised to work-across-the-aisle. He came across as believable in the euphoria of the moment. More sober consideration has it that although Rumsfield is gone, and Cheney is apparently sidelined, Mr. Bush is still Mr. Bush, the consummate Authoritarian. An authoritarian can clothe himself in endless promises that are not kept, but he is still an authoritarian. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid would do well to read what John Dean has to say about the crowd that was just kicked out of power. They were part of a larger group that includes some Democrats who were well on the way to turning the US into a dictatorship in effect when the American voters woke up and exercised their rights in the most dramatic mid-term election ever. Many of those authoritarians are still around, ready to pounce on any mis-step. Never mind their own incompetence.