The Fisher House

Yesterday, we dedicated the Fisher House at the Miami VA Hospital. My wife and I contributed to its construction and worked to raise money, too. The Fisher House, there are fifty three of them around the US and Europe, like Ronald McDonald House, is a place for family of hospitalized vets to stay, at no charge, until their loved one is released. This is a splendid, good thing to be a part of! It’s named after the Fisher family and its Fisher House Foundation which matches money from the local community to build the house. For the beautifully appointed, twenty one room Miami Fisher House, the local community raised $2 million and the Fisher Foundation kicked in the rest.

I was proud to attend the dedication and proud of our support. Being there was a bitter sweet moment. Bitter, because as I said in previous posts, we’re squandering the priceless lives and talents of our military people and their families in almost pointless un-winnable wars. And sweet because, still having done that, some of us have the decency and compassion to repair, the almost un-repairable damage.

The ‘decider,’ the person who blew our quick victory in Afghanistan by invading Iraq, wasn’t there. He’s on a book tour, still seemingly without a clue. But other deciders were there and I pray that they are able to sort out the distinction between supporting our troops and fighting useless, immoral wars. I pray for that and write this for that hoping my fellow deciders will awaken and realize there’s a difference between supporting the troops and wasting them.

American Exceptionalism, 3

I’m a disabled Viet Vet, proud of my service and grateful for the care I’ve been receiving from the VA. I think Viet Nam was a colossal mistake, as have been almost everything we’ve done militarily since with the exception of Serbia and the first Gulf War, but I’m still proud to have served. Nor am I bitter over my service connected disabilities.

This month the, DAV – Disabled American Veterans, magazine said 18 veterans a day commit suicide. 18 a day commit suicide.

It also said that the latest diseases added to the presumptive list (those diseases which are automatically attributed to) Agent Orange and other herbicides used to defoliate the jungles in Viet, Laos and Cambodia will cost $42.6 billion – just the latest diseases added, not including the others already on the list. $42.6 billion and that does not include all the other VA costs.

When a decision is made to go to war and some kind of budget is drawn up, are the costs of fixing broken veterans factored in? The costs of ruined families, divorce, alcoholism, drug addiction, homelessness, broken and ruined children and suicide?

Oh sure, now-a-days, all our service people are volunteers, so tough shit, right, they knew what they were getting into, right, they knew what the risks were? I was a volunteer, too, and believe me, I had no idea - none. What about the fact that most of these ‘volunteers’ come from the poorest segments of our society with few opportunities so that military service is a step up for them. How many Wharton MBAs are in Iraq or Afghanistan as service people, not as contractors?

We should honor and take care of our veterans and war fighters, it’s truly a sacred obligation. Yet, we must be careful not to confuse honoring and caring for them with supporting misguided wars. The two are not the same. Supporting, honoring and caring for our war fighters is not the same as supporting misguided wars. Not. We do not honor our troops by sending them into harm’s way for no good reason. We support our troops by using them carefully in good causes.

We support our troops by voting intelligently so we get leaders who understand the horror of war, know it is not a video game and will use our military carefully in good causes; who will not lie to us about WMD and who attacked the World Trade Center. Vote for leaders who will not allow the current rampant corruption by the majority of military contractors; and who will seek to accomplish our good ends by means other than war and use war only as a last resort.

We support the troops by getting our heads out of our asses and not making the same foreign policy mistakes over and over – forcing democracy where it is not yet ready to succeed, backing weak and corrupt governments not trusted by their own people, bringing Western Judeo/Christian ideals to primitive, Islamic, tribal civilizations. We support our troops by innovating and finding ways to reduce our dependence on oil, foreign or domestic.

The way we use and support our troops is another example of the malfunction of American Exceptionalism. But please, wake and arise, it need not be this way!

American Exceptionalism, 2

The Truth shall set you free. Is this so even if the truth is ‘negative?’ Even if we don’t want to hear it, or see it, or face it? I think so mostly because if we face the truth we can move on whereas if we’re denying it, lying about it, deluding ourselves and covering it up we’re stuck. Not only stuck, but the energy that might go into moving on and making things better is being squandered on the lies and cover up. Enough!

Is it true that people have to hit bottom before they’ll face the truth? Well, maybe not a complete ‘bottom,’ a total breakdown or bankruptcy, but a bottom somewhere, perhaps in their willingness to lie, keep their heads in the sand, cling to their illusions and ignorance, deny and cover up. They have to hit bottom with that, say Enough! to that, give that up, realize that doesn’t work [if it ever did]. They have to bottom out on the bull shit, say I’ve had enough and am not going to take it anymore, then choose to separate what does work from what doesn’t. It’s not all bad, just as its not all good. Actually, its mostly neutral and we’re the ones that label it good or bad. But we want to keep the baby, we do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

That’s what I’m trying to help myself and you, my readers, do with this discussion of American Exceptionalism, keep the baby, face the truth, and say enough to the ‘we’re #1 bullshit.’ The truth is [to me] that what we’ve been doing as a nation, perhaps for the last thirty years ever since greed became good, hasn’t worked real well, except for a few.
We’ve got to face that truth, free ourselves from the bullshit about why and how it’s not true - that our shit doesn’t stink, and move on. Just stop doing what’s not working and start doing what will work.

Don’t kid yourself; we know the difference, we do know what to stop doing and start doing. No cover-ups, no political games, no winners and losers, just Americans taking responsibility for their decisions and pulling together to build a world that works for everyone and everything. If the world we’re building only works for Americans, both rich and poor [which it clearly doesn’t], destroys flora and fauna and the planet, creates problems in Mexico and other countries, we’re not facing the truth, we’re clinging to our ignorance and illusions and insisting our shit doesn’t stink.

American Exceptionalism

Continuing with the ‘bad’ news of yesterday, the Christian Science Monitor is the latest media outlet to report in its 11/8 issue that Iraq may be preparing a request to retain our troops ‘a bit’ longer. Alright! Wow, we’re #1! Nothing succeeds like success. We’re the best hired gun in town. And why not? These countries don’t have to do anything to get our blood and treasure; we’re just there for them, in a way we’re not just there for our own people. We’re happy to give and sacrifice because they are so appreciative. They need do nothing, just fuck things up and count on us to go in there and bail them out.

My god, you’d think they were American banks, Wall Street, or corporations! There’s no free lunch for you and me, and especially the poor people who need it, too bad for them and us it’s their own fault, after all as John Calvin pointed out, if they were good, god would smile on them. But the biggest banks, corporations, industries, well, alright, they get whatever they need, obviously they’re good and god smiles on them. After all, we have the best government money can buy. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, too, right? I mean after all, if the rich and powerful can’t get what they want, the rest of us be damned, in this the greatest capitalist democracy in the world, what are things coming to?

Shit, I wish that rant made me feel better. It did in a way. But my heart breaks when I see our noble experiment, the US of A, becoming, no being, the very things we really don’t want to be, the very things we wanted to shun when our country was founded and the noble experiment begun. It hurts when I think of us as just another empire doomed to sink beneath the tides of history. I thought we were better than that. Obviously we’re not. Our shit does stink. I’d like us to acknowledge that, that our shit does stink; that we’re just another failed and failing nation state if - if we keep on as we have as if our shit doesn’t stink.

Come on, folks, smell it; rub your face in it; if it looks like shit, smells like shit and makes you want to flush it down, it is shit! But everything that lives shits, so why not us? It’s OK to take a crap, but please, let’s not pretend it isn’t crap or that our crap is golden. As I said two days ago, we can do better. But first we have to quit deluding ourselves and see our shit as shit.

From the Ynetnews in Tel Aviv as reported in the Monitor, “The tens of thousands of documents exposed by Wikileaks portray an awful picture of a brutal American thug,” writes Eitan Haber. “America is under attack [and justifiably so, until we face our shit and start living up to our ideals]. It’s being blasted from every direction. This is the same America that was aiming to teach us a lesson; the same America that failed to understand (and will continue to fail) that war does not work in line with the noble vision of our Biblical prophets…. So what shall happen now? America is America – the world’s lone superpower [tho China and Russia are closing the gap]. Hence, it will continue to slam us, while carrying the banner of morality, justice, and model behavior.”

Is there more than a grain of truth in this? Or should we fall back on the idea that they’re jealous and hate us for our freedoms? American Exceptionalism. That’s the name of the concept. We can use it to build a world that works for everyone and everything, or we can use it to continue as we are building a world that soon will work for no one, not even the rich.

Afghan

So here we go, the deadline for the Afghan pullout is now more ‘flexible.’ The part of me that is a war fighter knows that this is the correct, most effective way to go. You can’t beat an ‘enemy’ especially the kind we’re fighting in the Afghan, if they know you’re outta there on a date certain. All they have to do is hold on ‘till we’re gone, which we will be eventually. But just as an aside, the British had an open-ended commitment there and that didn’t work out.

But the peace loving part, or, not so much the ‘peace loving’ part, but the ‘realistic’ part says given Karzai, the nature of the Taliban and the Afghan people, the nature of our own people, the debt crisis here, our inability to deal with the clearly documented corruption in our own military contracting and aid systems, we haven’t got much of a chance of ‘winning’ which by the way, has not yet been defined.

The conventional wisdom says we can’t just leave, that’ll give us a credibility problem [How about if we stay and don’t get anywhere. Will that give us a credibility problem too?] and need to save face, so if this ‘flexible’ exit date is a bargaining position, all well and good. But if it’s for real and I fear that it is, the best thing we can do is define victory, declare it soon, save lives, take our money back and spend it here on education, infrastructure and clean energy industries. Unfortunately, much as I favor a both/and approach, winning and taking care of things here, the Afghan situation seems to be an either/or situation. Either we spend our blood and treasure there or here.

Burning Bodies to Save Souls

Now in all this writing about intentions, I’ve been thinking and talking about ‘good’ intentions, not ‘evil’ ones. A person can have the intention of winning no matter what; Hitler and Stalin come to mind. Yet, ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ the intention setting process is the same. Some people can look at the deaths of millions, the destruction and perversion of dreams and ideals, and calmly accept them as necessary and congruent. The Inquisition burned bodies to save souls. In Viet Nam we burned villages to save villagers. Two examples of an ‘evil’ intention in which means and ends are perfectly congruent – fighting fire with fire we like to say as we “man up.” Jesus said, “the Lord makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.’

But I can’t just leave it that way and I don’t think Jesus wanted to either. We can make better choices. We’ve learned to stop burning bodies to save souls, but we’re still burning villages to save villagers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and soon will be in Yemen or Iran. Maybe we can also learn to have our intention to bring peace, prosperity and democracy to the world more congruent and use peace, prosperity and democracy to build peace, prosperity and democracy, instead of using war. I’ll bet we could, I really think we could.

Intentions & Goals

The difference between intentions and goals is similar to the difference between process and product. Intentions are process, they emphasize the journey more than the destination, while goals are products, more concerned with bottom line results than how those results are achieved. Means/ends is a similar distinction. Both are important; obviously one can’t have a journey without a destination or ends without means. They must be congruent; one can’t actually achieve ‘good’ ends by ‘evil’ means, tho it often appears as if the world works this way.

Yet, the difference between intentions and goals is less clear and more subtle than the difference between process and product. I perceive intentions as goals more broadly conceived and held in an inclusive, holistic, metaphysical context, with preferences for process, means and journey included. Means and ends, journey and destination, product and process are not artificially separated with intentions. With these aspects more or less aligned in intentions, one experiences less conflict. In fact setting intentions involves taking means and ends, journey and destination, product and process into consideration, integrating them and making them congruent.

This is the both/and approach I’ve posted about before. It’s not either profit or the environment, but both profit and the environment. They need not be traded off against one another, need not be mutually exclusionary. That they so often are, points to areas of opportunity. Mutually beneficial outcomes, a world that works for everyone and everything, is possible. Either/or thinking is of the ego, the thinking of a lonely frightened entity, cut off from Source. Both/and thinking embodies connectedness and the possibility of mutually beneficial outcomes. Setting intentions embodies that kind of thinking and connectedness.