FALLOUT

I worry about the amount fear mongering in this election season. Rhetoric has been less about platform and strategy and more about how much the other candidate will impact your life and ruin the United States and the now ill-defined American dream. It is not so much for the voters that I worry but for the children who are inadvertently exposed to negative campaigning through television, news, and the internet. If voters cave to the pressures of fear mongering, then to an extent we get what we deserve, but children do not have the filters that come with age and experience to keep away the effects of potentially harmful words.
I have not investigated nor interviewed anyone to know if this worry is real or imagined. It is simply a feeling that has arisen from my own innocent youth and the irrational (but real enough to me) fears I had as a boy.
In the late sixties, I was on the downhill side of my formative single digit years. This country’s feelings toward the Vietnam War were just beginning to simmer and boil. For this conflict, the draft was still in force in the nation. The draft that mandatory instrument by which the armed services replenished itself. At the time, the draft was held by lottery. Birthdates were drawn at random, the sooner your birthday was picked, then the greater the chance of your receiving a draft notice.

The draft was a fearful thing, not just because there was a war, but because it was the first war to be covered on television. This was the first war the press could report what was happening to US troops as it occurred. This was the first war where the public could make up its mind based on information that was not purely government spun.
The fear generated by the horror of the Vietnam War for a child my age was more nebulous, more a sense in the gut. Adults can more easily attach concrete ideas to their worries, and therefore know better what they are afraid of. Still the idea of the war and what potentially fighting in it could mean scared me, particularly when adults or talking heads discussed it within earshot.
One night the family was watching television (on one of the only three networks which were available in that fog enshrouded era) the draft lottery was being broadcast. I new nothing about draft eligible age, I knew only that the sooner your birth date was picked, the sooner you would go off to war. I was also aware that war as seen on the news was not heroic and bloodless as war as on shown a television show like "The Rat Patrol."
The feeling in the den was somber, there was nothing jovial in watching the call to the service of one's nation. Silently we watched as the lottery drawing was made. The first date picked, then the second, then mine, then the fourth, and on down the line. I am sure my birthday being drawn third elicited some smart-aleck comment from one of my siblings followed by laughter, but I was struck ice cold.
At the time no one knew it, but I was afraid, and because my parents never made mention of what I felt to be my upcoming draft notice, I didn't feel I could talk to them. I had to appear as brave as I thought they obviously thought I was. For months (far beyond my normal child's attention span should have been good for), I was afraid that the mail was carrying a letter for me from a grateful president. I was afraid I would be going far from everything I knew to a violent world pictured in black and white on the other side of the television screen.
Of course I was never drafted, and the knot in my belly eventually left me, but the memory endures. It lives on in me as an example of how something that is uttered can scar the formative mind. Children are not always self-aware enough to question what adults say. We don't keep this in mind enough and this doubly true for politicians. They are far more interested in obtaining or maintaining power by scaring the electorate and degrading their rival, than making a case based solely on their strengths and positions.

The Mob Rules

Life is sometimes violent and incomprehensible.  Such has been the case since September 11, 2001 stripped Americans of their innocence, opening eyes to global realities, and opening hearts to fear and paranoia.  Now eleven years to the day in the midst of our mourning and remembrance, the US Consulate in Libya has been attacked leaving three embassy staff dead including our Ambassador.

The inevitable result of such an action by Islamic extremist has been a measured reaction by the government and second guessing and knee jerk reaction from without the executive branch.  It is the second guessing and gut reactions that worry me more than the attack.  Of course I am outraged and angered by the murder of our representatives abroad.  I also believe that such actions by enemies are taken not to make a point, but to derive specific responses that broaden their base and weaken the already shaky perceptions of the United States.

The immediate criticisms of the Executive Branch’s handling of this current act of terror is more politically than practically motivated.  The degree to which Governor Romney has attacked the Obama administration already shows a lack of geo-political vision for the larger picture by putting crass nationalism ahead of any substantive thought on the issue.  Today one of Governor Romney’s sons was interviewed in regards to this on 850 KOA radio out of Denver.  He said that his Father was just expressing his outrage over what he believed to be a demonstration of an incoherent international policy.  Outrage can be understood, but instant criticism before all the facts are out and understood is not how a global leader should respond, and at its worst seems an action of opportunism rather than a demonstration of capabilities.

Meanwhile, the gut response of some of some of the populace has been a call for a more dogged effort to hunt down and kill all Islamic extremists (a very good friend of mine made such a comment recently).  Even on its face and in the simplest terms this does not seem possible or practical.  Throughout the history of the world, oppression has only resulted in revolt and violence, and a more sustainable peace has been best achieved by inclusion rather than destruction of enemies.

Simply setting the special forces at our command loose for wholesale slaughter of a gorilla foe may result in a momentary weakening of that foe, but more critically would draw even more people to their cause by the martyrdom it would create.  By reacting with unrestrained vengeance, we play into the hands of the extremist instead of effectively combatting and negating them.

Both sides of our predominantly bipartisan political system share blame in current affairs.  Too often we react with short term goals in mind and insufficient thought given to long term consequences.  Policies of both Democrats and Republicans have resulted in failed nation building, and worse the deaths of American soldiers and citizens spanning more than a decade since we first adopted those policies to make us safer.

Show anger and indignation, but also take time to think.  I don’t have answers, but I am also not running out to kill Islamic extremist with an AR-15 and thousands of rounds of ammunition so easily obtained from gun shows and the internet.  That such atrocities are still being dealt to us only shows us that our policies over the past decade or longer are seriously flawed in some fashion.  If we do not search out and address these flaws, anger and violence will still be our true masters, and the cycle of terror and fear will continue.