Still Pushing for War on Iran. The Bush Administration, not content with having two disastrous wars in the Middle East, is making noises about Iran infiltrating Improvised Explosive Devices into Iraq, claiming, indeed, that the most destructive IED's are made in Iran! Tony Snow, the White House's mouthpiece to media, claims that the perception that the Bush Administration is trying to prepare the American people for another war, against Iran, is an "urban legend".
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But there is no other interpretation possible for anyone with so much as half a brain.
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"For now ... U.S. troops will stop at the Iran border", said Andrea Mitchell of NBC News today. But what about airplanes? Cruise missiles? Other forms of military attack? Would a "Shock and Awe" campaign against Iran be acceptable to the American people who just voted to withdraw from the Middle East as soon as possible? Or do we have to have riots in the streets to stop this runaway-train of an Administration?
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"Vietnam" is more and more heard across the Nation, and the U.S. was forced out of Vietnam not by Ho Chi Minh and General Giap but by literal riots in the streets across the United States. I guess the Bushies don't believe Americans today are capable of organizing mass demonstrations and even riots to stop the neocon bulldozer now crushing the life out of American democracy.
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I sure hope they're wrong.

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I have been severely overstretched of late, so have been unable to post to this blog as often as I'd like. Besides, I get greater satisfaction from my other blog, which I update daily. It's a fotoblog about my rebounding city, Newark, New Jersey, on which I post at least one foto for every day, and often many more. In my job (for money), I deal with words and word processing. In my blogs and the websites for which I serve as webmaster* I deal mainly with words and word processing. Too much of the same.
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My fotoblog affords me a different creative outlet, and I enjoy it more. The topic, the revitalization of the entire Newark metropolitan area (over 2 million people), is also more upbeat than the things this blog needs to deal with. And I get much more feedback from readers. I have actually met four or five readers in person and received encouraging and appreciative emails from others. So I feel I have an impact in some minor measure. By contrast, so much is so wrong with the national and world matters I address here, and so few people pay attention to or do anything with the ideas I present, that it seems nearly pointless to write.
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But as Walt Whitman observed:

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,
All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches;
Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green,
And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself;
But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there, without its friend, its lover near—for I knew I could not;
And I broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss,
And brought it away—and I have placed it in sight in my room;
It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends,
(For I believe lately I think of little else than of them;)
Yet it remains to me a curious token—it makes me think of manly love;
For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space,
Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near,
I know very well I could not.

As a tree cannot but issue leaves, I cannot but try to affect events. A solitary tree can't accomplish much. But a forest can transform a region. The live-oak issues not just leaves, but seeds. Many of its acorns provide sustenance to forest animals. Most of the rest rot on the ground. But they also serve that nourish the soil. A few, however, — so very, very few — become new live-oaks. And the seeds of one, actually planted with care, not just left to fall to the ground and germinate or rot as ever happens, can indeed produce a forest.
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* The websites, as distinct from blogs, that I manage include Simpler Spelling Word of the Day (updated daily), Resurgence City: Newark USA, Expansionist Party of the United States, United States International, Fanetik (reformed spelling at least for teaching), and Mr. Gay Pride.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 3,017 — for Israel.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:37 PM