I don’t understand why the McCain Amendment was even necessary. Who are we becoming that we don’t hold it self-evident that it’s wrong to torture somebody? Aren’t we The Good Guys?

Today is Pearl Harbor day, and I’m reminded that after that event America woke like “a sleeping giant,” and rose up and fought back, and fought clean. I don’t mean perfectly, but proudly. (OK, there was the internment of Japanese Americans, which was pure disgusting sweaty fear, and I acknowledge that.)

There’s a distinct difference these days; we’re fighting out of panic. The Sky is Falling; Damage Report to Follow. Flailing blindly against an enemy that we can barely find and only occasionally kill. I suppose that’s because we’re fighting an emotion – hate – and not a state such as Germany or Japan. We can’t beat them, because an idea, no matter how stupid, can’t surrender and lay down its weapons. There’s nobody to sign an armistice on behalf of Death to America.

I think the only way to stop this wildfire that Bush calls terr’rism is to take away its fuel. We can’t change the people who hate us, so we have to change ourselves. We have: we’ve become a nation terrorized. So they’re winning hands down so far, and it’s not like they’re going to run out of troops and give up. The longer this goes on, the more guys will sign up against us. No, I mean we have to change what they hate about us.

The reason that evil scum like Bin Laden are able to get people to hate us and fight us is that basically what they say about America is true. Our foreign policy is arrogant and thoughtless. We project a shallow greedy, self-interest image to the rest of the world, at the same time we’re sending out shiploads of food and help. Which begs the question: Since we are generous and kind at heart, why do we have a leadership that extends one hand open and keeps the other clinched in a fist? Why did we elect Bush/Cheney, twice?

Because we’re afraid, and we think we need gunfighters to protect us. What we need is to learn compassion. They will know we are good people by our love, when we find leaders who convey love, instead of bald, stupid selfishness. Then there’s no way someone like Bin Laden could raise up an army.

3 And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.
4 Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
5 doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil;
6 rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth;
7 beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
8 Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall be done away; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall be done away.
–1st Corinthians, 13.