Two Nonidentical Parties

In case you missed it, yesterday the House of Representatives fell a few votes short of ending the war in Afghanistan. Democrats voted against the war by a margin of 178 to 8. The Republicans voted for the war 207 to 26.

Palestine and Israel

Two unrelated thoughts. . . .

1. President Obama ventured into the 3,000 year war between Israel and the Palestinians this week, suggesting that peace talks should begin with a discussion of the 1967 borders (with land concessions from both sides) and that the Palestinians not take this to the United Nations (why not?). He tried to give something to both sides and took a tiny half-step in the Palestinian direction. As a consequence he is under attack by both sides with the Republicans promoting comments somewhere to the right of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The conflict remains, for now, intractable. Hamas, elected by the Palestinians, is still devoted to the complete destruction of Israel, while Israel. with its elected leaders, is still devoted to a humiliating apartheid repression of the Palestinians. But adults don't give up on peace. Obama deserves credit for attempting to move things along. In the end peace can come only from the Palestinians and Israelis, and my unorthodox view, approved of by few, is that this is one more war the United States should withdraw from.

2. Dan Walters, a conservative columnist for the Sacramento Bee, not often a favorite of mine, has published a piece on California's two-tiered economy. When he pointed out that Asian women in California have a life expectancy of 18 years more than Black males, it reinforced the truth that the rich live longer than the poor. If you value life, that's something to keep in mind. The two-tiered economy is not new, of course. The New Yorker recently noted that in 1887 the top one percent of Americans owned fifty-one per cent of the nation's wealth. That's worse than today, and it was the ideal Wall Street Republican nation, composed of the Rich and the wage slaves. Who needs a middle class?

Manifest Destiny

I hope we don't forget that the first time the United States took Monterey, California, from the Latinos occurred on October 18, 1842. The frigate UNITED STATES, led by Thomas Jones, arrived off Monterey. Commodore Jones, under the mistaken impression that Mexico and the United States were at war, came ashore and announced that he was taking possession of the port in the name of his government. The stunned locals, under the guns of several American ships, signed the document that Jones produced. What followed was an unpleasant ceremony in which the Mexican flag was pulled down and replaced by the stars and stripes.

You might wonder why the name Jones is not as famous as the names of Fremont, Kearny, Sloat and Stockton. Here's the problem. The day after Jones captured Monterey, news arrived that Mexico and the United States were not at war. Jones took down the American flag and sailed away. The next try for California would come four years later when Fremont's forces, the famous Bear Flag volunteers, conquered the undefended town of Sonoma and arrested Mariano Vallejo, after he had fed them a delicious supper.

The Shores of Tripoli

The oldest military monument in the United States is the Tripoli Monument, now on site at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. It's there to remind us of the First Barbary War (1801-5), our original foreign war, fought under President Thomas Jefferson. Arab pirates along the Barbary Coast, seeking ransom and tribute, had been attacking our merchant ships and holding them for ransom. The USS Enterprise helped put an end to all that.

Piracy was, after all, a government sponsored business, and after some sharp battles, a business arrangement (treaty) was signed in 1805.

More recently Osama Bin Laden, mass-murderer, founder and leader of al-Qaida, was shot to death by American Navy Seals in his hideout in Pakistan. The Seals had been instructed to take Osama prisoner if he managed to surrender, and a team of experts had been assembled to question him. As it turned out, the Seals killed Bin Laden, leaving roughly 11% of Americans to mourn his passing. As someone asked recently, "Who are these people?"

I am not one of the 11%, mostly because Bin Laden was intent on murdering me. I understand how self-centered that sounds, but there you have it. I feel safer with Osama buried at sea.

It's not unusual, in a war, for one side to target the other side's leader (check out the fate of Admiral Yamamoto in World War Two). As Osama has discovered, wars are hell, and he should not have started one.

an assassin dies

I'm opposed to the death penalty and not for sentimental reasons. We all die. Good people die. I just don't want the state holding people down and killing them because it sets a bad example for the other psychopaths.

Like most people I was glad to see Osama bin Laden dead. In my view Osama was a descendent of the Hashshashin , the Nizari branch of the Ismā'īlī Shia founded by the Persian Hassan aṣ-Ṣabbaḥ during the Middle Ages. They were active in the castle of Masyaf in Syria, which is where they came to our attention. The group murdered members of the Muslim Abbasid, Seljuq, and Christian religions for political and religious reasons. This was where we got the term "assassin." Osama was an assassin killed while resisting arrest. Well done.