Shockin' Odd!

So I'm taking this test called the "16 PF" in preparation for my 25th anniversary visit to the Center for Career Development & Ministry in a couple of months, and I come to this question along the lines of: "If you worked for a newspaper, would your rather write: a) movie or book reviews b) ? c) articles about sports or politics." So I'm all ready to check option "a" (and thinking "what a no-brainer") until it occurs to me that if I'm so keen on writing book and movie reviews, what am I doing blogging about sports and politics, both of which I write about routinely in the guise of blogging about religion?

Believe it or not, this sudden and unexpected moment of insight cast a lot of light on an earlier question too, which asked whether I would rather get my physical exercise by: a) fencing or dancing b) ? c) wrestling or baseball. Had to go with option "b" there -- since I think at age 50 I would much rather dance than wrestle (not that I'm much of a dancer); but would also prefer to play baseball instead of fencing...although it would be cool to fence too if I actually knew what I was doing, and of course by baseball I really mean softball, since there's no way I could hit real pitching any more. Couldn't really hit it that well when I was 16 either....

But what the heck is this question all about anyway? Perhaps whether I would REALLY rather be: a) some sort of 19th-century Victorian gentleman b) ? c) a red-blooded, all-American boy from the 1950's....

The most truly enlightening question of the day was #111. True or False: "Sometimes I get so lost in my thoughts that, unless I watch out, I misplace things, have small mishaps, or lose track of time...."

HELLO! Sometimes? This is my LIFESTYLE....

So now I have to wait until August to find out from my career counselor what kind of professional vocation is most appropriate for the perennially absent-minded: parish ministry, traditional academia, or perhaps something completely different I haven't really thought that much about yet (like writing a syndicated newspaper column reviewing books and movies about sports and politics)....

In the meantime, while I'm still waiting (and lost in thought), can you BELIEVE what's been going on around here lately?

First of all, God Save this (thank God) still Honorable Supreme Court, which decided 5-3 today that Baby Bush's hip pocket kangaroo military tribunals were basically illegal under whatever legal standard foreign or domestic one might choose to compare them to. The shocking part is that there were four justices (including Chief Justice John Roberts, who recused himself because he had already written an opinion on this case as an Appeals Court judge) who saw things the other way. Under the guise of playing Commander in Chief, Dubya has assumed for himself sweeping "executive" powers which mock the Constitution, and pose a far greater threat to our traditional liberties than anything some ragged terrorist huddling in a cave might possibly dream of.

I just pray that the President's God-given sense of divine right and destiny doesn't tempt him at some point simply to ignore the decision of the Court and do whatever he goddamned pleases anyway. After all, this isn't just a war -- it's a Crusade. And how can you have a decent Crusade without an Inquisition?

Which brings me to the acrimonious partisan political debate over "Cut and Run." There were some of us who thought at the time that this whole idea of "Operation Iraqi Freedom" was a bad idea [check out my April 13, 2003 sermon "A Busted Flush?" at http://eclectic-cleric-ack.blogspot.com to begin with], but we don't have the luxury now of dealing with "what might have been." Instead we have to make decisions based on the reality of "right now."

Still, it doesn't hurt to look back at how we got into this mess in the first place. After initially ridiculing the previous administration for its feeble attempts at "nation building" and declaring "I'm not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt," Bush then ignored an August 6th, 2001 CIA briefing warning him "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." Only one month later we were all horribly surprised when Al-Qaida launched just such a devastating attack on September 11th.

Knowing he'd been caught with his pants down (and wanting to keep that fact a secret from the rest of us), Bush vowed "to bring the terrorists to justice, or bring justice to the terrorists." But already he was scheming to take advantage of our national anger over 9/11 to settle lingering old scores with Saddam Hussein left over from his Daddy's administration, and to snatch the Iraqi oil fields for his Petroleum Club cronies in the process. And so we were all subjected to "sexed-up" intelligence about "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as the Young Pretender whipped up as much righteous patriotic anger as he could in order to mislead our nation into an unnecessary (and frankly, unjustified) war.

This is not revisionist history. This is just another "inconvenient truth" based on embarrassing facts which the Bushies would just as soon we all ignore or forgot.

In any event, our soldiers won a stunning military victory in the desert, only to see the avaricious arrogance of politicians, mercenaries, and war profiteers pervert our soldiers' triumph into the mess we have now. The President put on his costume and landed on an aircraft carrier to declare "mission accomplished," but three years later Osama bin Laden is still at large, and our army still occupies two foreign countries, where the casualties keep mounting: more than 2500 killed, perhaps ten times that number wounded, plus tens of thousands more "psychological casualties" and hundreds of billions of dollars squandered. Blood and Treasure -- the currency of warfare never really changes.

But what do we have to show for the sacrifice of our brave troops?

And where is the PLAN, at least, to bring them home again?

There's more. Our nation ostensibly invaded Iraq in order to protect ourselves from "WMDs" -- Atomic, Biological, and Chemical weapons capable of killing thousands of people in a single stroke. The United States, of course, possesses vast arsenals of all three, and essentially spends more money on "defense" than the rest of the world combined. Saddam's WMDs turned out to be little more than mere fantasy (just like the UN Weapons Inspectors said they were), yet daily now our soldiers instead fall victim to "IEDs" -- "improvised explosive devices" more commonly known as "booby traps." Rather than "fighting the terrorists there so that we don't have to fight them here," the President has in effect simply provided our enemies with convenient targets right in their own back yards, so that they no longer need worry about how to come here in order to kill us.

Incapable of distinguishing soldier from civilian (or even friend from foe), our government has created the new categories of "Enemy Combatant" and "Detainee." Yet in effect what we have really done is declare open-season on "MAMs" -- "Military Aged Males" or young men of the wrong religion and the wrong complexion who have the misfortune of being discovered in the wrong place (their own neighborhood) at the wrong time (after dark, or in the vicinity of an IED). We profile them because we don't like the way they dress or the color of their skin, and then either shoot them down right there in the street or lock them up and throw away the key. Just like we do here at home...

And then finally we are told that it would be a national disgrace to "cut and run" -- that American credibility and American honor are at stake in Iraq, and to leave without victory would be a betrayal of our troops. Yet we have repeatedly dishonored ourselves in this war: from standing by while looters destroyed the Iraqi National Museum, to "Camp X-Ray" at Guantanamo Bay and the torture at Abu Graib, the unspeakable practice of "rendition" and massacres of civilians still coming to light. Not to mention the domestic spying and the assault on due process and habeus corpus. We have lost the respect of the world community, and become instead a sad parody of the proud ideals and principles we so vocally claim to defend.

The real question isn't whether or not we should get out of Iraq. The real question is whether or not we are going to continue to follow a policy that has already failed, or instead will make the effort to think of something better. And the only real decision we have to make is whether to trust the same idiots who got us into this war to get us out, or to look instead to someone smarter to lead us in a different direction, so that America might recover the honor we have already lost.