April 8th, 2008
I’ve been watching C-Span coverage of Senate hearings on Iraq, featuring Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
I was hoping to hear a lot from the four-star general. Instead, I’m being treated to soliloquies from a collection of pompous senators, three of whom want to be president.
It’s not just this hearing, though. Every time I’ve looked in on a Senate hearing, I’ve just heard senators talking.
So, I propose we stop calling them “hearings.” I propose we call them “talkings,” because that’s what happens. Senators talk. Witnesses, who are there to answer questions, are reduced to nodding their heads and listening to the senators pontificate.
April 8th, 2008
I’m concerned that President Bush is so adamant that Ukraine and Georgia join NATO. By moving up to the Russian border, Bush seems eager to tweak the Russians by surrounding them with NATO nations. Thankfully, France and Germany are strongly protesting Bush’s plan.
Which brings up a bigger point. Why is the USA still in charge of European security, some 63 years after World War II and nearly two decades after the end of the USSR? Isn’t this a task the EU, with its strong currency and dynamic industrial might, could handle?
I think Bush, in his waning months, seeks to make Russia the West’s new bogeyman, because we don’t seem to know how to function without a bogeyman, and the “terrorists” aren’t getting the job done among the vast American electorate.
But why Russia? Russia isn’t bothering anyone, and doesn’t want to. Rather, she wants respect, is seeking to develop her infrastructure, reclaim the pride of her old and storied and beautfiul culture, and take her rightful place on the world stage.
We could help Russia, just as we helped rebuild Germany and Japan after WWII. Or we could draw a new Iron Curtain around Russia and continue to treat the Russians as conquered foes, the way we treated the Germans in the 1920s following World War I. We all know how successful that policy was.
