Pot times July 15, 2005

What Are the True Goals and Beliefs of

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1116/a03.html
Newshawk: Virginians Against Drug Violence www.drugsense.org/dpfva
 

Pubdate: Thu, 14 Jul 2005
Source: Collegiate Times (VA Tech, Edu)
Copyright: 2005 Collegiate Times
Contact: opinions@collegiatetimes.com
Website: http://www.collegiatetimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/699
Author: Michael Krawitz
Note: Michael Krawitz is a regular columnist for the Collegiate Times
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

WHAT ARE THE TRUE GOALS AND BELIEFS OF THIS COUNTRY?

When, via live network news, I saw an airplane fly smack into the World Trade Center in New York City on September eleventh two thousand one I was dumbstruck and fundamentally changed.  Now, these years later, the devastation of that day comes more into focus.  I grew up very near those massive structures.  A few miles from my house, on a clear day, you could see the trade centers.  Being a seventies kid, I watched as the buildings edged past each other in turn in a race to touch the sky.  I would look in awe at the photos of crewman on cranes installing girder after girder.  I miss those buildings.  They were mine, darnit.  I grew up with them.  The people who carried out the attack were the subject of the greatest manhunt that has ever been conducted and the men and women who perpetrated the act brought to swift justice or at least that is the way it should have happened.

Now it is on the trailing edge of 2005 and my daughter is outside lighting fireworks, celebrating our nations independence, as I write.  Our military overseas looks haggard and tired.  Our manhunt has become just another perpetual war not unlike the war on drugs or the war on communism or my favorite, a Clinton classic, the war on teen violence.  Where the heck is Osama Bin Laden?? The guy is a sickly old man with a tether to a dialysis machine but our best of the best of the best can't find him?? With the money we taxpayers have thrown at this I would have thought they would have crafted an Osama copy out of Soy Beans, for the press, by now.  Einstein said you could make anything from Soy Beans.

Before you fire up your power labeler and call me a pacifist be forewarned that my job in the US Air Force was Electronic Warfare and I would bring Osama to justice myself if given the chance.  But what of this "war"?? Afghanistan is caught between a rock and a hard place since there economy is tied to Poppy to support all those little baggies of brown powder hidden in US-SUV door panels.  Iraq was beaten down near death by 10 years of sanctions imposed by us before we attacked them in the guise of a "war on terror" and it is no surprise at all that they see us through broken rosy spectacles.  I offer no solution here, email your US Senator and advise them on what to do and Cc me so I'll then I'll know to.  All I can say is end the wars as quickly as possible, bring our beloved men and women in uniform home as quickly as possible and start treating people with the respect we would expect for us and our own and it would be a good start.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about words these days.  I know, disabled vets have too much time on their hands, ha ha.  No, really, words can have a big impact especially once they are written down.  Consider these words from the Pledge of Allegiance that I recited every day of my youth, " I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  " Did you know this was written by a Baptist minister from New York that got in trouble with his church for his Socialist agenda? Don't feel bad, I didn't know either, the Internet makes it easy to look up such things.  We didn't have the Internet when I was little but we did have Led Zeppelin..  So, is the Pledge of Allegiance part of a Socialist agenda? Who knows? I like what it says and I have lived by it but now words come in the way.  Words like "homeland security".

What is my beef with the words "homeland security"? Let's take it apart, first "homeland".  A quick search on the Internet reveals the word "homeland" most closely resembles the word "Heimatland" which is a general purpose German patriotic word.  But that's not all, Merriam Websters dictionary lists "homeland" as meaning: "1 : native land : ( http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=fatherland ) FATHERLAND 2 : a state or area set aside to be a state for a people of a particular national, cultural, or racial origin.".  "fatherland"? We now live in a "fatherland"?? This isn't good.  We now have an office of "fatherland security"?? We now have a "fatherland security czar"??

My grade school leaned pretty hard on teaching the United States Constitution and about our founding fathers.  I came away from this experience feeling that no matter where the good people of the United States of America lived we would be ok because we are a nation under god and our country was set up, in part, to enforce the notion that all people were created equal and that we were indivisible with liberty and justice for all.  I don't live in a "fatherland".  If you want to start talking that way ok but start the proceedings to give this "fatherland" back to the natives who lived here first because it is only through the ideals of our fore fathers that we have any moral justification to set up our nation in the "homeland" of the American Indians.