Monthly Archives: December 2014

International news

U.S. must not rely on torture

An upcoming release of a CIA report on whether American officials tortured al-Qaeda suspects to gain “actionable intelligence” to use in the war on terror is bound to reignite a long-standing debate.

Are we better than that? Does the United States of America need to rely on barbaric procedures to gain the upper hand against the enemy?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/torture-report-dick-cheney-110306.html?ml=po#.VIbXKVJ0yt9

My own mind is made up on that matter.

I do not believe the United State should torture enemy captives.

We’ll hear from those who say, “Big deal. They do it to us. An eye for an eye. Give them a taste of what they deliver to our own captives.” I can hear it from some of my very own friends on the subject and they’ll respond that way when they read these words.

I’ll stand by my assertion that this country is supposed to stand for grander ideals than the enemy we are fighting. We proclaim it all the time, don’t we?

Whether the tactics employed right after the 9/11 attacks — as lined out in the report — produced the kind of information that enabled us to find and kill Osama bin Laden also will be open to debate. Some say it did. Other say it didn’t.

Then we’ll hear the debate over how to define “torture.” Does the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” actually become a euphemism for the “t” word?

It’ll be a complicated debate. For the sake of our country’s stated belief in a higher ideal, though, I do hope we can declare once again, with emphasis, that torture is wrong and will not be tolerated.

 

International news

Syria, Iran criticize Israel? Well, duh

Who knew? Syria and Iran have criticized Israel for reportedly launching an air strike near Damascus.

The Israelis aren’t confirming the strike, but some reports indicate the Israelis were striking Hezbollah targets in the strife-ravaged country.

And to think such an attack would anger the Syrians … and the Iranians.

http://news.yahoo.com/syria-iran-accuse-israel-air-strike-arms-hezbollah-141644919.html

Why, the nerve of those Israelis. I’m tellin’ ya.

Do the Israelis have some “skin” in the Syrian conflict? Yes they do. Hezbollah has been a key player in that struggle. Hezbollah also is up to its eyeballs in running government affairs in Lebanon, which borders Israel on the north — and which also is committed, along with Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran, of eradicating Israel.

This is precisely the kind of threat the Israelis face every single day. All day. Year round. For centuries.

Does anyone expect the Israelis to stand still while a notorious terrorist organization plots their destruction? How foolish can one be to think such a thing?

Israel is facing some internal political strife of its own. Elections will take place soon to elect a new Knesset and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure might be coming to an end.

Are the air strikes a “distraction?” I have no clue.

I do know that Israel spares no effort — nor should it — in protecting itself from enemies who are breathing down its neck.

 

State news

Abbott staying neutral in '16 GOP primary

Nice try, Chuck Todd.

The moderator of “Meet the Press” tried to lure Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott into endorsing someone for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Abbott didn’t take the bait, saying he is “staying out of” the primary activity. Translation: I ain’t endorsing anyone, but I’ll support whoever the party nominates.

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/12/abbott-staying-out-of-2016-gop-presidential-primary/

But then the thought occurred to me: The ’16 presidential field well could be chock full of current and former Texas politicians, and perhaps the son of a former Texas politician.

Look at the Lone Star lineup.

* Lame-duck Texas Gov. Rick Perry is making all kinds of racket about running once again for his party’s presidential nomination.

* Freshman U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz also is acting like a candidate in the making, delivering speeches to fundraising giants and making a nuisance of himself by showing up in front of TV cameras at any opportunity.

* Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who grew up in Texas, is a possible — some say “probable” — candidate.

* U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is the son of a former Texas member of Congress, Ron Paul, who has run unsuccessfully already for his party’s nomination.

Am I missing anyone?

Count ’em. That’s four leading politicians with Texas ties looking (possibly?) to run for president of the United States.

Yes, the GOP is mighty strong in Texas.

 

International news

Torture report to cause some grief

A controversial report is due out Tuesday. It’s going to raise some hackles here and likely over there — meaning the Middle East.

It’s going to detail how the U.S. government used “enhanced interrogation” techniques on terror suspects immediately after the 9/11 attacks. It’s also likely to report that military officials gained little, if any, actionable intelligence from the techniques that included sleep deprivation and waterboarding.

How will the Middle East react? Probably badly, some folks fear.

Well, let them gnash their teeth.

I’ll await the release of the report before commenting in too much detail on it.

However, I do want to refer to comments made by a U.S. senator who knows a thing or two about torture.

Republican John McCain was held captive in North Vietnam for more than five years during the Vietnam War. The enemy subjected him to unimaginable pain through torture.

McCain once said the United States shouldn’t torture captives. He knows of what he speaks. He also believes the U.S. employed torture techniques on al-Qaeda terror suspects.

He condemned the action.

The world awaits this CIA report.

 

political news, State news

Abbott turns focus on public education

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott just cannot stand the fact that California — and not Texas — is home to five of the nation’s top 10 public universities.

That’s what he said today at his first news conference since being elected governor.

Thus, he vowed to make public education the top priority of his administration.

To which I say, “Very good, Gov. Abbott.”

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/12/08/governor-education-will-be-abbotts-top-priority/

Now comes the obvious question: How is it that California’s public universities rate so much better than Texas’s public institutions of higher learning?

Here’s a guess: Because our fellow countrymen way out west invest in their public institutions, rather than gut them.

The past two legislative sessions have seen dramatic cuts in public education at many levels. The state’s been short of money, so it takes aim at one of the bedrocks of its future: public education.

At no level at all does that make sense. Yes, conservatives — led by the TEA party movement among Republicans — keep saying you can’t “buy a good education.” Well, actually you can.

You can spend more to hire quality faculty and administrative staff; you can invest on physical infrastructure at our major university systems. Both of those things can — and do — attract top-quality students, who then boost academic performance measurements and, therefore, create a public educational system that becomes the envy of other states.

California has done that, even as it, too, has struggled to recover from the economic collapse of late 2008.

Texas public officials are fond of ridiculing California. Yes, we do a lot of things right in Texas. They also do some things correctly in California.

Developing a first-rate public university system is a strategy worth emulating.

 

 

 

Sports news

College football playoffs work against sportsmanship

Baylor University head football coach Art Briles speaks the truth about one troubling aspect of the NCAA college football playoff system.

It “changes the way you approach football games,” Briles said. Coaches and players become concerned with what’s called euphemistically as “style points,” resulting in teams running up the score on their opponents.

http://agntv.amarillo.com/sports/coachspeak-college-footballs-final-four

OK, Briles’s ox has been gored here. The Baylor Bears were thought to be one of the teams that would be included in college football’s version of the Final Four. They were bounced out by Ohio State, which scored a lot of “style points” by pummeling Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big 10 championship game over the weekend.

The Final Four comprises Alabama, Oregon, Florida State and the Buckeyes.

Allow me this disclosure: I am pulling with all the force I can for Oregon, which plays FSU in the Rose Bowl. I am a native Oregonian and my heart belongs to the Ducks. The other game — ‘Bama vs. Ohio State — will take place in the Sugar Bowl … yawwwwn.

I do get Briles’s concern about this selection system. It relies on human subjectivity, just as the old system did when the final polls helped select the national college football champion. The playoff teams are chosen by a committee of experts: coaches, ex-coaches, athletic directors, players.

This panel looks at the “style points” run up by teams and award them accordingly. This bothers Briles, who said coaches have to decide late in the game, if their teams are leading big, whether to “take a knee” and run out the clock or push for yet another score and risk embarrassing the other coach — who is likely a good friend — and the opposing players.

Is this system perfect? No. Did the playoff committee get it right with the selections it made? Probably.

I agree with Coach Briles about the concern over running up “style points.” That does not do a single thing, though, to diminish my joy at watching the Ducks trample Arizona in the Pac 12 championship game this past Friday.

Go Ducks!

 

national news

John Lennon helped raise a generation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6zcRPp8zVg

Allow me this admission: I was one of relatively few Americans who did not hear the tragic news on this day 34 years ago from Howard Cosell during a “Monday Night Football” telecast.

Nope, I heard it on NBC News, which cut into one of its programs to tell me that John Lennon had been shot to death outside his New York apartment.

How does one describe the feeling of hearing such news? I cannot recall precisely how I felt. It might be that shock set in and with it a form of amnesia.

Time magazine’s cover the next week had the headline “When the Music Died.” And for me, it truly did die that night in front of the Dakota Building, where John lived with his wife, Yoko, and their young son, Sean.

I’ve said it many times over many years to many people: John Lennon and the fellows with whom he played some damn good music, The Beatles, helped raise me. Indeed, music was one of the defining characteristics of the period when millions of us came of age. It was in the 1960s. OK, maybe it was music and war — two curiously juxtaposed features of a time of profound change in this country.

John’s music will stand forever, as will the music he made with Paul, George and Ringo. It was difficult back then to explain this phenomenon to our parents. My own mother and father didn’t quite get it, although Mom later would appreciate The Beatles’ music performed by, say, a symphonic orchestra. Dad? He was a “big band” guy all the way.

The really cool and enduring part of that era’s music — exemplified by The Beatles — is that it’s easier now to explain to the generations that have come along in the years since that time. My own sons get it. It just knocks me out to see teenagers traipsing around Amarillo wearing shirts with “The Beatles” emblazoned on them, or with pictures of The Boys.

All of that — not to mention his active commitment to world peace — must be John Lennon’s enduring legacy to this very day.

I still miss him.

 

 

 

national news, political news, State news

LBJ had it right about the South

Wherever he is, Lyndon Baines Johnson is likely nodding and saying, “Yep, I told ya so.”

What he told the country came true long ago, which was that signing the Voting Rights Act in the 1960s likely would cost the Democratic Party its strength in the states of the Old Confederacy.

Over the weekend, the final Democratic statewide officeholder in Dixie — U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana — went down to a resounding defeat by Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/bill-cassidy-mary-landrieu-2014-louisiana-senate-elections-results-113367.html?ml=po

The 36th president of the United States signed the Voting Rights Act knowing full well what it might do to the Democratic coalition in the South. It would splinter it. The new law, of course, removed all forms of taxation meant to keep minorities from voting. It guaranteed equal access to the election process for all Americans regardless of race.

Texas used to be a Democratic stronghold. Even in the Panhandle of Texas — where conservative Republicans first gained a foothold in Texas — one could find Democrats occupying political offices.

That’s all changed. Republicans now stand far and wide across the Southern landscape.

Landrieu didn’t just lose her Senate seat, she lost it badly, by more than a dozen percentage points.

How do Democrats get back their Southern mojo? Well, that remains one of the most monumental tasks facing modern political thinkers. They certainly cannot forsake their commitment to the Voting Rights Act that the late Democratic president — LBJ — staked out for the nation.

It well might be that Democrats cannot win back the South. It also well could mean a furthering fracturing of the nation into regional political interests.

Whatever the future holds, Republicans are the kings and queens of the political empire in Dixie.

Ol’ Lyndon would not be a happy man.

 

 

International news, military news, national news

Where have you gone, Sgt. Bergdahl?

Bowe Bergdahl has disappeared, more or less, from the public’s sights.

You might remember the name. He is the U.S. Army sergeant who had been held captive for a couple of years by the Taliban. Then he got released in exchange for five prisoners who were being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — or more specifically, at the U.S. Navy detention center set up there.

Some of the former prisoners reportedly returned to the war against the United States and one of them is believed to be a leader in the Islamic State terrorist group that has been beheading captives.

Bergdahl’s release became the subject of much discussion by Americans. Why were we negotiating with terrorists? Was the price too great to pay for a single U.S. soldier? Did Bergdahl give away too many secrets to his captors? Did he abandon his post and, in effect, desert the Army?

It’s the final question that seemed to cause the most angst among Americans who thought the government paid too much to gain the release of a soldier who they believe wasn’t worth bringing home.

Well, he was returned to U.S. hands, went into seclusion, then went home to Idaho to be with his friends and family and has returned to active duty.

The Army brass said it would investigate the entire sequence of events and determine whether Bergdahl did what the critics said he did.

I’m still waiting.

Meanwhile, the nation’s attention has been pulled in so many directions, I cannot keep track.

Crises erupt here, there — and everywhere.

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s story still hasn’t been told. If it meant so much at the time of his release to learn all the details of his captivity and his return to freedom, then it still ought to matter.

national news

One final trip to Arizona Memorial

Four men ventured to Hawaii this week to pay tribute to more than 1,000 of their shipmates.

They went to the USS Arizona Memorial, which sits proudly in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

They are the last survivors of the crew that was hit on Dec. 7, 1941 by Japanese warplanes. The men who perished on the Arizona are still entombed in the water below the memorial. These four comrades say they won’t go back for future services marking, in President Roosevelt’s words, “the date, which will live in infamy.”

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/survivors-gather-remember-pearl-harbor-attack-27427171

But they came this weekend to honor those who died on the terrible day 73 years ago.

They’re old men now. In their 90s. They’re frail, but as an article noted about their return, it’s as if in their minds that time has stood still since that horrific Sunday morning. Of course, time hasn’t stood still for anyone.

***

The coverage of today’s event reminds me of a story told to me by a good friend here in Amarillo about a visit he made recently to the memorial. The shortened version is as follows.

My friend, Roy, watched an elderly gentleman struggle to get off the water taxi that ferries visitors from the island to the Arizona memorial. The gentleman finally got off the craft and shuffled toward the exhibit inside the memorial.

It was then that he noticed the gentleman was of Asian descent. A Coast Guardsman on duty at the time told my friend that the fellow was one of the Japanese pilots who inflicted such grievous damage on the U.S. Pacific Fleet that day, and he was coming back to Hawaii to pray for the souls who died that day and to seek forgiveness.

It’s instructive to hear these stories, if only to remind us that the “enemy” comprised young men who were doing their duty, just as our young men — and women — were doing theirs.

Those pilots are now old men. Their ranks are dwindling. Soon they’ll all be gone.

Let us not forget that emotional pain is universal. It follows no ideology. It’s as real to those who fought on the other side as it to our side.