A Most Disingenuous Use of Words

Mourning the death of 40 of victims shot down over Ukraine.

The early efforts by Washington-on-the-Potomac to tone down the gravity of the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East by using language that minimizes the nature of those conflicts is one more clue as to the tepid leadership of this nation’s executive branch.

Words matter.  Several in particular which were in vogue until recently have completely mischaracterized violent events taking place in those two areas of the world.

The first term appeared on U.S. TV screens by some talking heads and reporters who initially called Ukrainian separatists in the pro-Russian stronghold of Donetsk “thugs.”

Christie Still Fund-Raising, Still Dodging Bullets

As New Jersey Governor Chris Christie keeps up his out-of-state fund-raising efforts on behalf of the Republican Governors Association, his state-wide political critics in New Jersey, together with the editorial page writers of the region’s largest daily newspaper continue to batter his record.

However, outside of New Jersey it’s a different story.  Despite all of the heavily negative reporting about the so-called Bridgegate incident, no evidence has yet surfaced showing that Christie had direct or indirect participation in its planning and execution.

Millions have been spent on investigating what amounts to a two-lane, four-day closure of certain access lanes to the George Washington Bridge.  So far, if the purpose was to nail Christie, it has failed.

The Matriarch of Supermodels

The last place that I thought to find inspiration for a post is on the obituary pages of a newspaper, to wit, The Star-Ledger.  I don’t often read obituaries, usually flipping over those pages onto other stuff.

Who wants to read about death, especially in the middle of summer when the weather prompts us towards other interests?  However, life precedes death and, in a way, an obituary – if carefully written – is, through words, a celebration of a person’s life.

The obit that I stumbled across yesterday heralds the life of a person who was so full of uniqueness, so rich in character, and who appeared to have been so resolute in not giving up the high ground in her search for success and in her attainment of it, that it deserves a close read – even a second pass in order to savor her accomplishments,

Iraq: We Broke It. We Owned It . . .

. . . . and we walked away from it after thousands of American lives were lost and tens of thousands of American souls returned to our shores with severe physical injuries or the psychological consequences of PTSD.  To what end?

 

Old Glory at the Bridgewater Municipal Complex

That is the disgraceful result of what is today’s Iraq.  It soon is to be our fate in Afghanistan, unless the hapless policies which have emanated from Washington during the last two administrations change and align themselves with the realities that rule The Middle East.

The biggest policy mistake of Washington was to not have recognized and acknowledged what dominates the core of governance in the Arab nations of The Middle East and in Persian Iran:

Religion, and its influence upon every facet of life in that region, particularly the intertwined bond that glues it to the area’s political structures.

When George W. Bush invaded Iraq and naïvely thought that the U.S. could establish an enduring democracy through the electoral process in that country, he made perhaps the worst foreign policy calculation of his career.

When Barack Obama declared that the war on terrorism was over shortly after the killing of Osama bin Laden, he compounded Bush’s mistake by pulling out all U.S. troops too soon, one of the worst foreign policy calculations of that career.