On the Verge of Peace

America seems always to be walking nervously, on shaky legs, along the ledge of war. Wherever we turn as a nation there are, at any given time, the possibilities of war.
by Charlie Leck

What say you about Egypt? Syria? Shall we involve our troops? [Troop is such an impersonal noun isn’t it? It is a man – that troop – or perhaps just a boy or a young woman.]

There seems always the temptation to get involved. Some presidents – perhaps most of them – have been unable to avoid the entanglements of war. When I look at my life time alone, no president has been free of its draw; not Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

Does that not seem remarkable to you? Incredible, perhaps? Throughout my life-time the nation has been almost constantly at war (even when we tried calling them other things, like police actions). There have only been some short periods of lull when it seemed our nation was not engaged in war. And even in those years there was the constant, tense and formidable threat of war.

The fool says...
...the United Nations has certainly done no good in the matter. The wise man counters that it would have been immensely worse – these last hundred years – without the U.N. to broker peace.

Let the United Nations make decisions about Syria and Egypt! We should not be unilaterally deciding to send weapons and/or troops into any of these engagements or places of disruption. These are not decisions for Senator John McCain to make – nor for President Obama, for that matter. Let the nations of the world decide what is right and just amongst nations and within nations.

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Ruled by Uncertainty

So the young revolutionists in Egypt wanted a democracy! So, where is it?
by Charlie Leck

So, what’s happening in Egypt? Do any of you also wonder about this question? A revolution supposedly took place.

Where’s the constitutional convention to write a new people’s democratic constitution for Egypt?

Where are the announcements about free and open elections?

Many of the revolutionists are now calling for executions of former government leaders – without, mind you, fair trials. Is that different than than it was before?

Where is the international press on this? Why do we suddenly get no more information about Egypt? They’ve moved on to the next hot spot – to those places where there is violence and mayhem – because these new places make for better stories.

They Egyptians are now finding out that democracies don’t just happen. They must be built by hard, pain-staking and intelligent work.

Many times here, I’ve touted OPEN CULTURE as one of the best and most helpful and educational web sites on the entire Internet. I go to it regularly to seek information that I can’t find in the traditional media. Recently they featured some mighty fine video and information about Egypt’s struggles with creating a democracy and the dangers that it will recede into just another dictatorship that this time will be controlled by the military. I suggest you spend time with this information about Egypt on OPEN CULTURE (Phoenix Still Rising: Egypt after the Revolution).

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Why not become a follower?
If you read my blog regularly, why not become a follower? All you have to do is click in the upper right hand corner and establish a simple means of communication. Then you'll be informed every time a new blog is posted here. If all that's confusing, here's Google's explanation of how to do it! If you don’t want to post comments on the blog, but would like to communicate with me about it, send me an email if you’d like.