Henri Reynard Speaks Out

War On ???

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"Sail on, sail on, thou Ship of State_____" yeah, and another thing we can no longer afford is the fuel for a ship that costs two point two trillion dollars a year to run. Can't we power it with a nuclear generator, instead of burning through all of that cash? It seems to a lot of us like we are burning the cash in the engine and none of the benefits are trickling this far down. Now I am not yet a candidate for a poverty grant from the Federal Government, luckily since we are no longer engaged in nation building here at home. My income has not been as good during the last two years but whose has? We, my wife and I are operating on the level of a good upper middle class income even in the doldrums that our economy seems to be stuck in now. Of course friends of the administration are doing a lot better, It looks like Haliburton, Mr. Cheney's favorite oil company, has been selected to run the Iraq oil fields after the war. No surprise there, you wouldn't want anyone you didn't trust absolutely in such a position to enrich them selves.

What is really clear is that there will be no help from Washington related to the remnants of the war on poverty. Those remnants have been funded by the states since Mr. Reagan declared war on poverty in the defense industry. The states are all broke, busted and mostly disgusted, except Florida, which is just plain disgusting. Nor will there be any trickling down to the classrooms of the nation this year, unless it is from their leaking ceilings. We still have the war on drugs since the administration has, at least for now, given up on moving that franchise into the war on terror. The war on terror is appearing more effective this week but that has been after quite a few weeks without news and it came at a time when we were distracted by the new war on Iraq. We have been in a state of war with Iraq to some degree for the last ten years but the battle for Baghdad, (Doesn't that sound like a World Wrestling Federation title?) is about to start.

California is carrying its war on energy trading companies out to the bitter end. There are signs that the FERC commanders are beginning to switch sides due to bad press. Given the fact that they have appeared to be more interested in preserving the rights of the trading companies to keep trading information secret than the rights of Californians to a fair trial of any culprits that is a substantial surprise. Of course it may not make any difference since they kept the stone wall up until the statutes of limitations ran out. It is no surprise when the good old boys from Texas are in power if California gets short shrift. Especially when it is the good old boys from the oil industry running things. They don't like the way California has kept them from drilling offshore among other things.

Of course the end of the game is not in sight in California, even with the economy of Silicon Valley grinding to a halt there is still hope in the State of booms and busts. The Plastic surgery industry is booming and the busts are rising and blooming like nowhere else. The war on wrinkles is doing well but the wrinkles and sags will still eventually prevail. The war on pollution in California is grinding to a temporary halt due to a lack of money, the deficits here are greater than the budgets of most of the other states in the Union. California will eventually recover but it may take a while. The hangover is gargantuan in San Francisco where real estate is coming down substantially. The dot com bomb was more effective than any other except possibly a nuclear one at destroying property values. It will probably be a while before we can even count the devastation in real property costs, the loss in stock values already is counted in the trillions of dollars. When California has a bust it does it in a big way.

But among all of this there are pockets of tranquility and peace. Hopefully they won't discover that in Washington where the legislators and members of the administration are so scared that they might yet declare war on peace. Maybe that can be the real title of the great American novel, "War on Peace", it has a great American ring to it. Naw, there are still huge numbers of people in this country that aren't afraid of anything, even if the government can't figure that out. There are still people of conscience who understand that we can only wage war justly if we expect to lead the world toward the light of freedom. Jimmy Carter is one of those people, God bless him for his honesty and uncommon decency. He wrote an editorial piece in the New York Times on why the war on Iraq does not meet the criteria for a just war, going point by point through the reasons. I recommend it for those who think war is the answer to every crisis. Even George W. might learn something from those calm and decent words, written by a calm and decent man. He could use some advisors who have not been panicked by 9/11 into the need to dominate the world by force instead of depending on the moral authority that has served us so well in the past.