SOOOOOO sorry! I've Been Working!

And so I have not been blogging.  Yes, I know, for years.  But I've had major health problems too. Not that I have not been engaged in politics, mind you. If you are American, or follow news from America, you know we are entering our presidential election season and Americans have a critical choice to make on who will lead the country for the next four years.

As you might imagine, I support President Barack Obama. I will go so far as to say that, if he is not re-elected, there will be dire consequences for the world as well as the United States. In the States, our new and just-going-into-effect health care reform will be immediately repealed by the man who originated it as a governor, Mr. Romney. Women's reproductive rights will be curtailed, and here we are speaking of contraception, not just abortion (which Americans are queasy about but have reached a consensus regarding.) The social safety net, already the least generous in the industrialized world, will be ripped apart and Medicare will be turned into a voucher system throwing the elderly and disabled into the private insurance market, the rich will get yet another tax break but austerity will be imposed on Middle Class programs, education funding cut, and on and on. It would be a disaster for the American people. And yes, economically, if America collapses, as it probably would with Romney's vows to deregulate the financial markets and banks again, it would affect the rest of the world due to the size of our market and our inter-connectedness.

However, perhaps what concerns me most is foreign policy. First I'll revisit where we find ourselves at this critical juncture. We have finally (sort of) ended the war in Iraq. I say 'sort of' because we have left a veritable army of mercenaries there to police the biggest embassy in the world. The American people, intellectually lazy and with the attention span of a flea (unless you're talking about Paris Hilton) don't seem to realize it. They think it's all over even though we are paying the mercenaries big bucks but have no control over their behavior. Part of it is our media's fault (see above criticism regarding fleas). I can't remember the last time I saw a story on Iraq. I have to go looking for them in the international press. The use of mercenaries is common before the end of empires. It's a bad sign. Not that I want our army there either but that has the virtue of being honest at any rate.   

The war in Afghanistan, equally unwise (it's a photo finish with invading Iraq for worst dumb idea EVER) will drag on indefinitely, with a supposed 'end to combat operations' still two years away. The American people have long been tired of this, our longest war, which we were told was to get OBL and dismantle Al Qaeda after 9/11. Romney did not mention Afghanistan in his convention speech. Imagine that if you can: a presidential candidate fails to mention a war in which the country is engaged in a speech spending a good bit of time on foreign policy. When asked about it, he said he only talked about things that were important to him. Now imagine THAT if you can. Lately, the American casualties have all been coming from the forces of our involuntary hosts, the Afghans. Have you noticed we are kind of unwelcome? When your allies start shooting you, it's another bad sign.

Both of these wars, and ongoing operations by drones and other means, have all seemed to be against Muslim countries. Is it any wonder that Muslims view America as a negative force? Perhaps even an enemy? If it walks like a duck and quack likes a duck...

Now I'm not thrilled with President Obama's conduct of foreign policy which, with a few exceptions, seems to be almost Bush-like without the cowboy bluster. The exceptions are the suspension of torture (I'll come back to this) and a resistance to attacking Iran--which the GOP salivates over.  I do believe he hated the invasion of Iraq because, like me, he said so before it happened and feels trapped into the current situation. Early on, he wanted to double down in Afghanistan, and so he did, having a 'surge' of his own.  Did it work? Of course not. So there we are, with 98,000 unwelcome and exhausted American troops in harm's way along with the Afghan civilians, all of whom live in fear of both sides, and rightly so. For those of you who don't know, the suicide rate among returning American soldiers is exponentially higher than that of the general population and getting worse every day. 

Although President Obama banned torture on his first day in office, the Executive Order has no force to bind his successors, and Romney has already vowed he will reinstate all the Bush era policies regarding 'enhanced interrogation' (aka torturing people.) Liberals and those who value civil rights (and human decency) in America have decried that our Justice Department has declined to prosecute any of those crimes.  I am deeply ashamed and furious about it. I expect conservatives to act this way, the reactionary mind is a study unto itself, operating out of the 'fight-or-flight limbic system,' the lizard brain, but I expect better from liberals and moderates. I do understand that they did not want President Obama's first term to be sucked into this maw, but failing to punish people who commit war crimes is immoral (and against International Law.) There were two cases held out for possible prosecution, two victims everyone agreed were outright murdered while in US custody. The other day, the Justice Department passed the deadline for charging anyone with these murders and quietly closed those cases. They will go unpunished. Since no one, at any level, was brought to justice, the hold on torture is nothing but an executive order which can, and will, be rescinded by Romney on his own first day in office. God (and decent Americans) forbid he actually has one.

Further, Romney, who has no experience--or even any interest--in foreign policy, but has Bush neocon advisers, has said that he considers ending the Iraq War 'a tragedy' (not surprisingly, I consider the invasion itself a tragedy). Will he re-invade? He won't rule it out. He does say that he would leave at least 100,000 troops in Afghanistan indefinitely. And he will do something (we don't know what but we can guess) militarily to Iran, intervene in Syria (not that they don't need help but I think it should come from the Arab League, or UN, not the US), and threaten four or five more hot spots he outlined in his convention speech. I confess I had to stop listening because I started foaming at the mouth, but I"ll look up his list. He considers Russia our #1 geopolitical foe! He wants to increase the size of our already bloated military budget by a trillion dollars. Someone smart once observed, "If you buy a bicycle, you're going to ride it."

He is, despite being somewhat more articulate than W, not to put too fine a point on it, a blithering idiot. And a dangerous one at that. So everyone, world wide, has a lot to lose if he is elected.  As unsatisfactory as President Obama has been to liberals in this arena, Romney would be infinitely worse. Want to go back to the bad old days, arguably the worst set of policies in American history? Hope Romney wins. We'll get there so fast, it will make your head spin.

And that, dear friends, is why, despite my disappointment with aspects of his first term, I'm working as hard as I can to help re-elect President Barack Obama.  And I pray for peace and justice in all the world, God willing. It will be up to the people of the world--the peacemakers--evidently, not the politicians who have failed us, to help bring us there. Where are our Gandis and Mandelas? We need you.