:: Event Horizon ::

:: Thursday, June 05, 2003 ::

Just Say No
The AP is reporting that Attorney General John Ashcroft Wants broader anti-terror powers. We will win this war by taking the war to the enemy, not by eroding the basic liberties enjoyed for hundreds of years by the American people. America is not a police state, it was not designed to be a police state, and any attempt to make it a police state should be resisted. If we exchange basic liberty for the illusory promise of security, then the terrorists have won. They have succeeded in changing who we are and our perceptions of who we are. I don't want to see that happen. We are already withdrawing from Saudi Arabia, one of Osama bin Laden's war goals, I don't want to let them win any more victories. Take the war to the enemy, not to the American people.

:: Joel 4:11 PM [+] ::
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Where Are the WMDs?
The blogosphere seems to be in a tizzy about where the Iraqi WMD are, if they ever existed and if the Bush team lied about it. I'm with Thomas Friedman, "Bush did not need to find any W.M.D.'s to justify the war for me." One thing that I feel is being overlooked is that it was established some time ago that Iraq did have WMD materials, that this has been factually established because the U.S. provided these materials when Iraq was an ally of the U.S. (we seem to have selective memory about this). The question is not if Iraq had WMD materials (anthrax, missile tech, etc.), we know they did, but if these weapons programs continued and reached a point of deployment. It is one thing to have a weapons program, it is quite another to have the capability to deploy the weapons. Did Iraq have a WMD weapons program? Without a doubt. Could they deploy these weapons, say use a missile loaded with anthrax or other biological or chemical agents against the U.S.? No, they never had the missile capability to fire a missile from Iraq and hit the continental United States. Iraq simply could not do this. The threat to the security of the continental United States simply did not exist. One the other hand, Iraq was a very real threat to our allies in the Middle East and had already demonstrated hostility toward Israel and Kuwait. And left unchecked, a clandestine weapons program operating over decades would eventually have produced enough of a delivery capability to wreak havoc in the region. That, to me, is reason and justification enough for the war.

:: Joel 3:33 PM [+] ::
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What Did You Do During the African Holocaust?
There have been several reports in the news media lately about Africa, mostly in the context of the G8 Evian Summit. Some of the reports are highly critical of what they see as the failure of Western leaders to address issues of inequality and the debt crisis in Africa. The above report from the New York Times illustrates the sad fact that most of us here in West are oblivious to the humanitarian crisis that is again looming in Africa. This is an issue that I follow closely. If you will note the Times byline is from Asmara. I lived in Asmara in the early 1970s. Living there was a formative experience for me and one of the reasons I became interested in international affairs. It was a dramatic time, a time when Ethiopia was a client state of the U.S. in the Cold War and there was also a civil war raging as well. As part of the bilateral relationship, the U.S. provided foreign aid assistance, direct aid to the government of Emperor Haile Selassie and in exchange Ethiopia provided support for American and allied military personal operating out of that country. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement for both countries and I think that it helped make up in some small way for the shameful way Ethiopia was treated by the international community in the inter-war period. However, when Ethiopia's assistance was no longer required, the U.S. abruptly pulled out, leaving the Emperor vulnerable to Marxist forces who had been fighting a civil war. The Emperor was deposed and later executed (in a most undignified manner), the Marxists took over, initiating a bloody period of unprecedented human suffering as they forcibly relocated tribal villagers from their homelands to cities, destroying what little agriculture existed and causing massive famine. Worse, the new Marxist government manipulated international food aid, using it as a tool in the continuing civil war. Eventually, the Marxists fell, the civil war was resolved, and Ethiopia split into two states, with the new state of Eritrea formed in 1993. However, to this day, the threat of famine haunts both countries.

While I applaud recent efforts by the G8 and President Bush to put Africa on the international agenda, much more needs to be done. If we are to help the countries of Africa move away from despotism, thugism and kleptocracy, we need to do more than feed people, we need to actively reform and educate governments. Africans are not suffering from famine because of a lack of arable land, they are suffering because of bad government. A continent wide program to educate civil servants and future leaders is needed to inculcate the proper values needed to govern effectively. Until this happens, and political leaders can manage their resources and feed their own people, you can contribute to the many nongovernmental organizations working to help alleviate suffering right now, and play a small part in saving Africa.

:: Joel 3:05 PM [+] ::
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As you can see, I’ve not posted for a few days. I’ve been waiting to see if the BlogSpot situation would improve. Several times over the weekend I tried to check my page and received an error message and then other times the background came up, but not the actual blog page itself. So, needless to say, I’m a bit frustrated with BlogSpot. I’ve been reading about the new changes afoot at Blogger, and it does appear that they have bigger and better things planned but no indication of when the new and improved version will be available. Well, they say soon, but we all know that that means. I know many people are becoming BlogSpot refugees and migrating to other services. So, I can either stay with Blogger and hope for the best or follow their lead in becoming a blogergee (like that word, just made it up), and either sign up with another service or get my own domain name and host. I am reluctant to move at this point. I’ve put a lot of time into customizing this blog and would hate to start over somewhere new. Any thoughts and comments on this would be more than welcome.

:: Joel 2:47 PM [+] ::
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