The Floodgates Will Close

“The floodgates will close,” he said. It was the morning of May 26, 2009. And that was a prison guard reacting to a prisoner’s hopes that the climate had changed; that the floodgates will soon open for many Michigan prisoners to go home.

These “hopes” seemed to bring the guard’s temperature to a boil. He blurted out: “There’s a prisoner getting out on parole. When he gets out, he’s going to kill his brother. Then the floodgates will close.”

He spoke with a certitude that was chilling. He wasn’t finished. “Until then, I have stocked up on ammo, and dug a big hole in my back yard.”

Sociopathic designs aside, how could an employee of the state hope a prisoner of the state gets out and wreaks havoc on the state? Job security? Of course. But at what point does “job security” cross the line and become complicity in a heinous crime?

Then an officer is privy to such information—and speaks with certitude of its inevitability—must raise some concerns about him, and any other MDOC employee who may be involved—directly or indirectly—in the grisly prospect. Is it not his responsibility to help prevent such a deadly act rather than withhold information in order to perpetuate it?

This prison guard imagines his deliberate inaction will reverse the climate that demands prison reform in Michigan. And he is perfectly willing to be an accessory to fratricide to see it through.

"This is no Kassam"

Under international law, a naval blockade is an act of war. Israel maintains a land, sea, and air blockade of Gaza. The Gazans respond by firing Kassam rockets into Israel.

The Kassam rocket—cartoonish in its simplicity—is a primitive (but scary) exaggeration of the rockets with which Americans celebrate Independence Day. Anywhere from 4-6 feet in length, it has a range of 30-50 miles. A direct hit can put a big hole in the average roof, or disable a car. After over 1,000 launches, they have actually killed a couple of people.

There is little use for coordinates when firing the Kassam. The Gazans simply position it in an orchard, point it toward the nearest Israeli town, and light the fuse.

The Israelis call the Kassam a “weapon of terror”. I suppose it is that. The Gazans call it “fighting back.”

Now Israel is contemplating air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. They have done it before—bombed the Osiris nuclear plant in Iraq, and again a site in Syria.

To give Israel pause, Iran has tested a surface-to-surface missile—one with a range of 1200 to 1500 miles. The test went well. Iran’s president, Ahmadinejad, declared to the Iranian people, “We hit the target.” U.S. defense secretary, Robert Gates, called it “a success.”

The BBC summed up it report by saying, "Iran sent a message to the world community." No, the message was straight to Israel. It simply said, "It's no Kassam."

Don't Look Now, But Your Face Is Swelling

George W. Bush brought about the deaths of over 100,000 Iraqis; he displaced four million more besides. In the end, they hanged Saddam Hussein and gave Bush $100 million to build a library.

That happens when one man is seen to win a war, and the other is deposed. Winners of wars, no matter how criminal they may be, are rarely called “criminals”, and are never prosecuted for the crimes. Only the losers are rounded up, tried and punished.

But for winners—those who lorded over places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo—history has its own store, replete with shelves full of crimes that never go away. There, the courts that legislate executions are silent. People do the talking; children learn of atrocities committed by their leaders. And the stigma of “war criminal” attaches itself unshakably to those who thought they had gotten away.

The other day, a group of college students cornered Condoleeza Rice and grilled her about the Bush administrations penchant for torture. Even as she struggled to defend herself, her face literally swelled—a sure sign her punishment had begun.

This past week, even as Afghanistan’s President Karzai sat in Washington D.C. with our Obama, American planes were raining bombs on Afghan civilians. According to Karzai, over 125 men, women, and children were killed. “This must stop!” he said to Obama. “Regrettable” is one of the words Obama sounded in response.

A man as careful as President Obama is always on guard against the appearance of impropriety. Yet, he commands these atrocities as though no one can see. Does he truly believe it is enough to say, “We had ‘actionable intelligence’ that there were militants in that hut.”? So you blow up a family of ten to kill two “possible” militants?

Any man—including our president—should spend 100 years in jail for each child he blows to bits; if not “in jail”, then certainly in hell. Those must be the stakes.

There is no law on Earth that can protect a man against the murder of a child…none. If this is the best our president can, then it is time he scrapped his AFPAK policy and come home (before he sorely wishes he had.)

One day, Barack Obama’s face will swell at the mention of his crimes, and he will plead futilely against the weight of history. Inevitably, his cries and his legacy will be drowned in his acts.

The Lemonade Stand

People think the decisions President Obama must make are difficult. They are not nearly so difficult as he makes them. Part of the problem is his advisers—he has a slew of them, but they have little to show for their grand appointments besides big paychecks and more George Bush.

Bush was a lemon, and Obama wants to make lemonade. He takes Bush policies—on Afghanistan, wiretaps, abuse photos, military tribunals—and sprinkles them with sugar. He hopes to sell it as change; it is not. It is the same product Bush sold, only sweetened. These policies serve another purpose, however. For Obama, they are his first line of defense against Republican attacks. He uses Bush policies to protect he right flank, and to shield against the uncertainties of change.

People say, “It is not easy to change.” I say, “It is not that difficult, either.” Just do it. You want to close Guantanamo. Close it. And if you must, bring the detainees to the States. For those who say, “We don’t want terrorists in America,” remind them the terrorists are already here. They are ensconced in cities across this land—running crack houses, doing drive-by shootings, and stealing America blind.

Close Guantanamo. What to do with the inmates? Find nations willing to assume some of the responsibility—not because we pay them, but because they want to do their part. If no one steps forward, remember that, and then house the detainees here.

How? America is the greatest jailer on earth. Figure it out. We lock up 2,000,000 of our own people—more than any other nation. Now, suddenly, we forget how to lock up 240 more?

Set up a secure facility—a super-super max, if you will, then deal with them. If we haven’t the guts to house “terrorists,” then we shouldn’t pretend to wage a war against them—certainly not one where we take prisoners.

Besides, we talk about these Guantanamo detainees as though they were not human at all, but diseased vermin who will contaminate entire communities if brought to America. (Is it only American communities that they can contaminate, or are we willing to contaminate our allies, but not ourselves?)

Let’s be real. These men are human beings. Some are dangerous, but none more so than men already sitting in prisons from Maine to California. And it is not like the president is going to bring them to America and set them loose on the public. There are many safeguards within our prison system.

Time to make a new stand, Mr. Obama, out of the Bush shadow. And a bit of advice from an armchair advisor: Don’t try to please everybody; don’t try to please anybody. (Leave the “pleasing” to itself.) You will get more done, and you will do it better.

Not Quite Einstein's "Theory of Relativity"

If “Knowledge is relative to the limited nature of the mind,” as Webster states, then pain is relative to what we have experienced, and to what we can imagine.

Such thoughts might cross a persons mind when he is about to have a tooth pulled without anesthetics. It happened to me.

After five days of excruciating (night) pain, I finally got the dentist’s call. He gave me the customary shot of Novocain, and ten minutes later, he went to work on my tooth.

He soon had to stop when it became apparent the anesthetic hadn’t taken. He gave me another shot; that didn’t take either. So he gave another and another, until he had given me six doses. The entire left side of my face should have felt like a bowling ball. Instead, except for the pain, it felt as normal as my right side.

Dentist and nurse were equally speechless. (Funny, how their looks of wonder, doubled my anxiety.) Finally, he said, “I can’t give you any more Novocain; neither can I stop pulling the tooth.” The nurse simply said, “Good luck.”

That is when I descended into a world of impossible pain. I suppose women know of it—they call it “childbirth.” But childbirth is worthy of such pain, and women prove it over and over by how they crave, then, exhilarate in the moment. This was pain on the far end of the spectrum. It produces nothing, but a glimpse of death.

We Don't Get It (We just dish it out)

Central Asia is a tinderbox, and no nation in the region is as volatile as the nuclear-armed Pakistan. So, what does America do? America brings Pakistan the last thing Pakistan needs—money.

Of all places to pour money, America pours it on a country already afire—at a clip of six-million-dollars-a-day. Money. It is America’s answer to all peoples’ problems—money (and guns.) Yes, the guns follow the money, (or precede); it does not matter. Both are an offering desperate people cannot refuse.

What’s wrong with money? It complicates. And the last thing the people of Pakistan need is more complications. For one thing, money divides people (even more so than they are already divided), especially when it is free. The people who get the money are not just resented because they get it and others don’t. That they get it at all means they probably did ( or will do) something that the people who did not get it would not do.

Those who get the money in Pakistan were distrusted before. Now that they have taken money from “the Great Satan,” they are trusted even less.

We are raising the temperature in the hottest spot on Earth; we do it with our money and our guns. We can sure dish it out. We just don’t get it.

Punish Them All, Or Let Them All Go

The Obama administration continues to struggle in its search for a coherent law enforcement policy. Case and point: Attorney General Eric Holder recently dropped all charges against Ted Stevens, (ranking crook, and former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.) Holder claims he does not have the evidence to continue the prosecution against the former senator.

How is that? The man had already been convicted, found guilty of corruption. He was awaiting sentencing at the time Holder dropped the charges. Not enough evidence to sentence? (Sentence him already!) Not enough evidence to sustain an appeal? If he is held to the same standard that two million other incarcerated Americans are held to, then that conviction would be rubber-stamped on appeal, and Stevens would serve out his sentence like everyone else.

Holder claims there was prosecutor misconduct in Stevens’ trial. So….? There is prosecutor misconduct everyday, in trials across this country. Is Holder prepared to start dropping many of those charges too? And while he’s at it, how about getting righteous over the ineffective assistance of counsel hundreds of thousands of indigent Americans receive daily in America’s courts?

Now Mr. Obama (and his attorney general) wants to forgive acts of torture committed by the Bush administration. He says, “We do not want to look back.” In that case, why ever mention “9-11” again? And why pursue “terrorists” across the mountains of Afghanistan for something that happened eight years ago?

Simply “looking forward,” Mr. President, is not an option. To prosecute any crime, you must do some “looking back.” But seeing that you are in a forgiving mood—willing to let Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the gang off the hook—how about relieving America’s overcrowded prisons of poor souls who committed their crimes 20, 30, and 40 years ago?

We can’t have it both ways. We can’t pursue Osama bin Laden for his past acts, then look the other way when the past acts of high-ranking Americans catch up with them.

One Obama official said: “The CIA agents (who committed those acts) are good men who were simply following orders.” So were Hitler’s henchmen. Another contends that those operatives cannot be prosecuted because the acts they committed “were not illegal at the time they committed them.” Wrong. Torture is never legal.

A word of advice, Mr. President: if it is good enough for the average citizen, then it should be good enough for everybody. When you tailor policy to conform to individuals, you inevitably stretch the law, (which is like stretching the truth.) It will break. Then, suddenly, you, too, will be under investigation. Don’t do it. Keep it simple. When they break the law—no matter who they are – punish them. Either that, or let them all go free.