[Sosfbay-discuss] Our Children's Children's War

[Wes Rolley]

I would like to call attention to the special on the Discovery Channel 
tonight, entitled Our Children's Children's War.  This is a Ted Koppel 
(ex. Nightline on ABC) special.  Koppel was on Meet the Press this AM 
plugging the show and offering some unusual commentary.  In his view, 
the Iraq War will be the major issue for the Democratic President in 
2009.  It will still be going on as part of the war on terror... and the 
Democrats have little idea about what to do.  Even if we were to pull 
out in 2007, the war will still be going on.  It will be changed, but it 
still will continue.

Should the Democrats success in cutting funding for additional forces in 
Iraq, they would carry the responsibility for the results of that 
action.  I do not think that they want that responsibility prior to the 
2008 election.  It is much easier to run against someone else's failures.

Koppel's most insightful generalization: "There is a lot of wishful 
thinking in Washington."  We must remember that political pronouncements 
are designed to have a political effect, not to change policy.  There is 
a reality that we have not begun to meet the challenges of the 21st 
Century and that we, as a nation, may not be the fittest to survive.

It is my personal observation that you can not change people's heart 
with a gun to their head.  The ideologues in Washington (leader: Dick 
Cheney) have yet to understand that fact.  You win the battle of 
ideologies by living your ideology to the fullest.  You are what you do, 
not what you say. 

As we go forward, I believe that the Green Party needs to divorce itself 
from the cheer leading sloganizing and to start going forward with 
alternative solutions.  I have never believed that it is enough to say 
"Stop!!!".  We must begin to say "Do this instead of that."   That may 
mean that we redefine the problems of American into questions that lead 
to Green solutions.

Along with saying "Impeach" we should provide a Green analysis of the 
consequences of Impeachment.  There is no doubt that Bush / Cheney have 
acted in a manner that at odds with Americans' beliefs about ourselves 
and the laws that enshrine those beliefs.  But, along with the 
impeachment slogans, we have to anticipate those consequences:

- a paralysis in the decision making processes of government. 
-- anyone wishing to act against this country will take advantage of 
that. Therefore....(I don't have the answer, but I am thinking about it.)

- a gain in world confidence about the American people and a loss in 
world confidence about the American Government.

- establishment of a level of expectation that may be difficult for a 
new government to meet.

Now is the time that the Green Party needs to put forward it's plans and 
they have to be stated in a positive manner, not just negatives.  As 
noted above, the Democrats will want to run against the failures of the 
Bush Administration without bearing any responsibility for any of those 
failures.  Do we Greens have the cojones (to borrow a phrase from 
Madeline Albright) to define the alternatives?

-- 

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; 
We must do. –Leonardo DaVinci
Wesley C. Rolley
17211 Quail Court
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
(408)778-3024 - http://cagreening.blogspot.com