Considerettes

UN Weapons Inspections: Day 70: Chemical warhead #17 was discovered by Blix and company today. Meanwhile, Hans is telling Iraq that the time on the countdown clock is “5 minutes to midnight”. He’s still pleading with Iraq to provide evidence of its weapons programs.

According to the UN resolution, the responsibility is on Iraq to produce the evidence, not the inspectors to hunt it down. Listen to what Blix is saying; he’s asking Hussein to demonstrate his cooperation by providing the evidence. The assumption is that it’s quite well-known in the intelligence community that Iraq does have weapons programs, and thus lack of evidence does not mean absence of programs. It means absence of cooperation. That’s a key point to consider.

I thought it interesting that the Iraqis credited Allah for the destruction of the Columbia; visiting retribution on the US for the war there, as well as revenge on astronaut Ilan Ramon, the Israeli who took out an Iraqi nuclear plant during his time in the Israeli military.

But that sword cuts both ways. I wonder if we can they’ll consider it Allah’s revenge for something or other if we go to war with them and summarily defeat them.

Probably not, eh?

UN Weapons Inspections: Day 69: Looks like things are breaking down around Saddam Hussein. A (former) senior bodyguard of his has fled to Israel with details of weapons caches, bunkers and assembly areas.

If this information turns out to be true, then weapons inspections should immediately cease and Saddam should be immediately removed from power. There would be no possible way for the anti-war crowd to press for “further inspections”, since that process would obviously be unreliable, relying solely on defectors to do what weapons inspectors can’t. If inspections themselves are proved pointless, there is no reason to push for more of the same. Of course, this is thus something the UN is likely to suggest, even if they find smoking guns, bomb and missiles, because that’s what all bureaucracies do; if something isn’t working, spend more time and money on it.

If these reports pan out, it should be over for Hussein. Anyone who would wish to give him more time at that point wouldn’t have a leg to stand on in trying to defend themselves against accusations of being pro-Hussein.

“Turn on channel 2.”

That was my first clue that something was happening this morning. I got a call from a family member, and from that point on I was either watching TV or roaming web sites to find out more about the shuttle Columbia disaster. A little over a year ago, there was another morning that sparked commercial-free full-court-press news coverage. While the events of September 11, 2001 were a couple of orders of magnitude worse than the events of February 1, 2003, and while the non-stop coverage lasted longer then, the tragedy is the same; the loss of human life in an unforeseen, instantaneous event that touches all Americans.

I don’t think I’ll necessarily be remembering where I was when I heard the news of the Columbia crash, like I did for 9/11 and the Challenger explosion. That may be a sign of the times, that we’re getting steeled a bit to this sort of tragedy. I may be mistaken, but during my lifetime I don’t recall 2 days within 17 months of each other that, had there been CNN or Fox News Channel back then, would have sparked the kind of coverage we saw today and on 9/11. Yes, we have had our share of historic loss and mourning, but they seem to be coming at a quicker pace now, much like the general pace of life in the 21st century. I hope this is not indicative of the years to come.

But if it is, America can weather it if they stand with the God that George W. Bush spoke of. Some are asking, “Was this God’s will?” “I Am Not A Theologian” (IANAT) but I believe that the only reliable answer to that would be, “You’ll have to leave that with Him.” For those wondering how a loving God could let this happen, you only have to remember that God’s will isn’t always done. Peter told us that God is “…not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9b) Not all do, so God’s will doesn’t always happen.

So how can we put our faith in a God that can’t always get His way? The answer is threefold. First, God never forces His will on anyone. He’s still soverign over everything, but free will is still part of the mix. Secondly, we need to put our faith in Him, and not in our circumstances or events, whether they’re happy or sad. God never promises complete freedom from tragedy. He does promise His presence in those circumstances. And in those circumstances that we can’t seem to understand, His strength will get us through, not our own. Thirdly, we can pray that His will gets done and then leave it in His hands.

Paul said, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) He didn’t say “all good things work together for good”, he said “all things”, regardless of what they are. The key is that they do so for those who love God.

That’s where the rubber meets the road. That’s where the strength of this nation in it’s infancy came from. Hopefully, it still does. If so, that is how we will meet the tragedies yet to come.

Wow. Odd. A couple hours after I sent some feed back to DemocratSpeak, the link to their feedback page disappeared, and a couple hours later, they’d moved completely, with no indication as to where. Hope it wasn’t something I said. 🙂

Probably not, but still….

Apparently, Blogger can’t handle the following two posts as a single entry (might be too long). Unfortunately, splitting it up means (the way I have my blog configured) the second part is above the first. Hopefully, it won’t be too confusing.

I find one of Karen’s posts (from DemocratSpeak) interesting. She notices the problems facing liberal America, and says this:

This is a period of great pain and introspection for many of us who have been on the left most of our lives. Feeling caught between disparate pov’s, having failed every attempt to pull said pov’s together, one can only watch the left sink lower into a factionalized abyss.

I don’t think she or most like her understand that the abyss is of the liberal’s own making. Whether it’s rich vs. poor, men vs. women, or white vs. anyone else, it’s been the liberals who’ve endeavored to split the country into factions, insisting that we focus on the differences rather than what unites us. A classic example would be Hillary Clinton’s speech recently where she first quoted Dr. Martin Luther King about wanting his children to be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character, and the turning it completely on its head by equating skin color with character. Dr. King’s quote de-emphasized race, but Clinton and her party want to accentuate it.

Thus, in appealing to factions, they empower those who seek to gain by factionalizing (for instance Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, with regards to race factionalization) and draw them to their party. Then they wonder why their party is factionalized.

(This is part 2 of a 2-part post, split due to (apparent) Blogger size limitations. The first part appears below this post, as they’re posted in reverse chronological order.)

The same could be said about Republicans vis-a-vis the Pat Robertson presidential bid some years back. The difference is, however, that views of the “religious right” happen to match up quite well with conservative values (protecting the life of the unborn, allowing people to keep more of the fruits of their labor, defending traditional marriage), whereas the views of the “religious left” (Jackson, Sharpton, et. al.), which seek to factionalize, don’t mesh well at all with the people they supposedly admire (e.g. King, as in the “race is character” quote from Clinton). The “religious right” doesn’t factionalize nearly as much as the “religious left” does. Both claim to come from a moral viewpoint, but the Robertsons and the Falwells mesh better within their chosen political party, even if they do have to be distanced on occasion.

That last point cannot be understated. When the Falwells and the Robertsons of the “religious right” start politicizing things that ought not to be, or make outlandish statements, no one is quicker to denounce them than conservatives. And that doesn’t just apply to the specifically religious element of the party, either. David Duke is not viable in the Republican party, not because of Democrat opposition, but Republican. Senator Bill Frist owes his new position as Senate Majority Leader to Republican votes. Dennis Hastert is Speaker of the House instead of Bob Livingston because Livingston stepped down over moral issues, something Bill Clinton wouldn’t do given worse offenses.

Both parties have internal disagreements. You can’t get around that with such a diverse population split among two major parties. The problem for the Democrats is that they’ve relied on the dynamics of those factions to keep folks feeling victimized, voting for Democrats so they can keep getting favorable treatment of one form or another. This has worked for Democrats for far too long, and it probably got them more votes than showing themselves to be the party of socialized medicine, equal outcome instead of equal opportunity (i.e. socialized results), wealth redistribution (i.e. socialized economics) and moral relativism (i.e. socialized values).

However, it appears that folks might be getting wise to that (at least that’s my optimistic view of the results of last November’s elections). If so, factionalization may be on the wane, which means that unity just might be making a comeback.

I did a little “vanity Googling” today to see if anyone else had picked up the UPI article on blogging, and I found two places:

• Ratboy’s Anvil – Not a big Bush fan.
• DemocratSpeak – Ditto.

Apparently Karen, of “DemocratSpeak” visited here as she made a small change to the article.

Doug Payton, a software engineer in Atlanta, has written a [right wing] “blog” called Considerettes since last April, using Blogger.com’s system.

Heh heh…apparently she had to make sure potential visitors were aware of what my leanings were, in case it wasn’t obvious or they wanted to avoid it altogether.

A great line from last night’s State of the Union address: After doing a rather lengthy yet only partial enumeration of weapons that Saddam has not accounted for (which would be “material breaches” all), W took aim directly at the anti-war-at-all-costs crowd and said

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option. The dictator who is assembling the world’s most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured.

Those words could have come from Churchill speaking of Hitler and his campaign against Jews. The parallel will no doubt be lost on those to whom those words were directed.

Saddam continues to sabotage the inspection process. Today, the NY Post is reporting that death certificates with the names of (currently living) Iraqi scientists are being sent to their families as a reminder of what happens to those who cooperate with the UN.

The proof continues to mount….