Iraq Withdrawal Consequences

The President has recently drawn parallels between the withdrawal of forces from Viet Nam and the potential withdrawal of our forces from Iraq. His point seems to be that if we had stayed engaged in Southeast Asia that we might have averted the tragedy that took place there. It seems that he is suggesting that American forces should have continued to fight and defend the jungles of Cambodia and Viet Nam until a stable government emerged that would reconcile all parties there in peace. Although this is a very beautiful, idealistic and noble idea, it has a disconnection to the reality of that time as broad as the disconnect that he seems to have in regards to our own.
Withdrawing from Iraq will not be as easy as it was to leave Viet Nam. Although both conflicts share absurdities, they are also very different in scope and dynamic. The Viet Nam conflict was fought on the idea that the spread of communism needed to be halted through military intervention. The justification for waging war in the jungles was that China and the Soviets needed to know that we would fight their ideology where ever they tried to expand it; even in places that were otherwise inconsequential to us. On this front Viet Nam was a success. At least in the view that the spread of communism did not continue with great energy after we withdrew ourselves from Southeast Asia. The failure to install our hoped for government did not impact the United States in any significant way. However the withdrawal of American interest did have significant impact of those left behind.
When we withdrew from Viet Nam, thousands, millions of people died in the aftermath. Their deaths did not appear on YouTube. Their deaths did not appear anywhere in the consciousness of the American people until years later. Their loss did not affect the stock market or make Christmas more difficult to pay for and enjoy. Pictures of the missing line walls of Cambodian museums acknowledging the dead. Piles of bones and skulls stand witness to what transpired there. The after the fact postmortem of a tragedy will not be what faces the American public when our policy in Iraq bears the fruits of its failure. Mist shrouded jungles shielded the western world from the horrors of human purgings and their civil war so many years ago. Today we see and will continue to see the consequences of our actions recorded by every person with a cell phone capable of taking a picture.
It was easier then to turn our attention away from what was happening an ocean away. Easier to disregard the blight of people that had no impact on the lives we lived. Viet Nam was a purely political war. The fact that we had no national interest in the country made it much easier to engage and then remove our forces. There was nothing they had that we needed. No oil, natural resource or strategic position kept America fighting in those jungles for as long as we did. Iraq is far different in this regard. Outside of the debate of when to bring our troops home, troop levels and WMDs sits the fact that we need, have to have, oil from this region of the world. In order to maintain our economy and our extravagant way of life it is necessary for a steady stream of tanker ships to move back and forth from the desserts of the Middle East to the shores of the United States.
Chaos in Iraq means further likelihood of disruptions of oil from the region. This is the ugly truth that no one wants to think too much about. The Middle East matters because it sustains us. Viet Nam never contributed in the maintenance of our way of life. Today the same can be said of Darfur, Sudan and Indonesia. These places can burn with war and conflict and it doesn't affect my job, my future or vacation plans. Turkey is in conflict with the Iraqi Kurds in the north. Iran is pressing its influence into the country from the east while Syria pushes from the west. Saudi Arabia exerts its influence quietly from the south trying to keep its ports open to everyone while still maintaining its monarchy despite the discontent of its people. Under normal circumstances in relationship to any other part of the world, the American public would shrug and turn the channel away from such reports. After all, it is what I do whenever I see something on the issues facing any corner of Africa. There's nothing I can do about it anyway, I tell myself. More importantly, there is nothing it can do to me personally so why engage in futile compassion.
The United States military has worked hard and sacrificed much in the years spent in Iraq. They have done everything that this president has asked them to do. They deserve to be able to say that they accomplished the task they set out to do. Unfortunately the task was flawed from the beginning. The mission was as unrealistic as our president's world view. He and his neo-conservative advisers have failed our service men and women who have worked so hard to give him the world that was in his dreams. The tragedy of Iraq is not a fault of a military failure. The tragedy of Iraq is due to a lack of a pragmatic understanding of the world and implementation of our military. Now is the time to let our armed forces re-engage itself. Redeploy in a new way that might bring a real change to the world stage. Pulling out of Baghdad does not mean defeat of our will or of our troops. It only means that we've come to realize that there are other ways to help and engage in the world and its conflicts. Every person that has served in Iraq wants to believe that they made a positive impact with their presence and sacrifice. Those that have served this President and this country have worked very hard to give us what we need. We need leadership and policy that will allow all of that hard work and resource to be effective and worth the sacrifice. The President is right that we did make mistakes in the era of Viet Nam. Let us not simply let those errors of the past justify our continued errors of judgment in the present. We can't simple remove ourselves from the situation as we did in Viet Nam those many years ago. We can't expect that what happens in the region will not have an impact on the lives we are living here at home. However, we cannot continue to believe that a fairy-tale ending will emerge if we only continue to believe hard enough in the original vision of our President and his circle of true believers.

Change is American

The picture of a Hispanic man standing on a street corner looking for work is an over used caricature. The immigrant from Mexico or Latin America has been the topic of much discussion in our local communities. The image of a farm worker covered in the dirt from his labors, standing around in a gas station parking lot is familiar to most Americans. This has become the default image in many minds as to what Latino immigrants represent. It is not fair to ourselves, the immigrants or the truth of the issue to allow prejudice and stereotypes to become the first thought in our mind when approaching the issue of foreign workers. With the new pressures of a global and mobile economic world, immigration plays an important role in keeping America prosperous. These workers coming from the south are an indispensable part of Americas modern landscape.
The Hispanic worker cannot steal jobs from hardworking Americans and be a lazy drain on the economy simultaneously. There is too much growth in the economy of America for Latinos coming to this country to stand around for very long. Farm work, factory work, construction and service work still have vacancies of labor despite the supposed epidemic of immigrant labor coming across our borders. American business owners are hiring these people because they work hard for low wages. These low wages keep costs down for housing, food and services. No one would travel hundreds of miles to the north of their home to stand on a corner. They come here because the jobs are here. They are hired by local companies because these workers are willing and able to do them. The fact that the government can't keep up with the changing world and find ways to legalize these workers should be of little surprise. Can we resign these common workers to criminal status simply because the government is unable to regulate the workforce needs of the nation with efficiency? We rarely accuse the government of being efficient when doing anything else.
Much of the money immigrants make goes back to the local economy as they too must house, feed and entertain themselves. Again the stereotype immigrants taking from the community without giving anything back is absurd. Some of the money they receive goes back to the places they came from. Families left behind by these workers are sent what money they can give. To do this, many of these workers live frugal lives. Is this something they should be criticized for? Have we become so commercialized and materialistic as a culture, that we can't appreciate hard work and simple living for the sake of ones family? The Florida immigrant is more appreciated in North Carolina. Retirees buy summer homes and tracks of land. They vacation twice a year eating in restaurants and buying antiques. When it comes time to sell their property however, the money travels back to Florida with them. The growth of the local economy is a direct result of money flowing in from our southern neighbors. The ability for local communities to keep up with this growth is made possible by workers immigrating from the south as well. In order to maintain continued economic growth, we need to maintain both populations of immigrants. Americans are mobile people and our local communities have benefited from this mobility. Can we really expect the rest of the world to keep in its place and not cross borders in search of opportunities?
Immigrants suppress wages. They are willing to work more for less money. Everyone that works in construction makes less money because of workers willing to work for less. Everyone except the business owner of course. The local contractor makes more money on the houses he builds thanks to lower wages for workers. The buyer of the house saves money as well. More labor means more houses can be built faster as well. Thanks to cheap labor more people from Florida can buy summer homes here in the mountains. More Florida home owners means more money for the area.
When I worked for Rabun Apparel many of those that labored next to me were immigrants from Mexico. Did they suppress the wages I received for the job I did? Probably. However, the factory left this area and moved overseas because wages there were even less. Without the immigrants keeping wages in check how much sooner would those jobs have disappeared completely?
Life in the mountains is changing as rapidly as the rest of the country. The population is becoming more diverse and there is nothing anyone can do about it. The fact remains that our communities have a great deal of work that needs doing. Latino immigrants, legal or otherwise, are here to help fill the gap. Immigration law and the system that enforces it certainly needs reform. More importantly, what needs reforming more is our attitude towards the changing world. We can't plug our ears and close our eyes and hope that our communities go back to the way they once were.

Justice and Voter Caging

The controversy sparked by the firing of 9 US attorneys is full of characters, half truths and hidden knowledge based on claims of national security. How it all fits together can't be captured in a 60 second news clip or in short articles like this one. What is at stake can't be measured without understanding what is motivating the players involved. Today there is a political storm brewing in Washington. It is imperative that we ask from where and why these political winds are blowing. At stake is the integrity of the electoral process. What we could lose is the fair participation of the people in the choosing of our government.
The party that wins an election and is put into a position of power, it claims the right to appoint like minded people to positions in the justice department. The appointment of two Supreme Court Justices by the president is the most obvious example of this. It is little wonder that the general public has not found itself to be greatly outraged that the Bush administration conspired to fire 9 attorneys at the department of justice. The administration had the power to hire and to fire. The fact that the removal of these attorneys was politically motivated is embarrassing but not illegal. The fact that the Alberto Gonzales lied to cover up the impropriety doesn't surprise many people either. The party and ideology that wins the election wins the right to influence public policy and the direction of the nation. To some extent, this is the point of the democratic process. This nation will be influenced by the Justices that President Bush installed onto the Supreme Court for years to come. He won the right to influence our society in such a way when he won the 2004 election. However, what happens when the election process is tampered with by those in power? By what right can a President govern when the process of his election comes into question?
As the people of the United States of America, we give our elected officials a great deal of power over our lives when we vote them into office. Public officials at all levels of government make decisions on our behalf in our absence and disinterest. This system works because our voice can be heard every time we have the opportunity to vote. At the heart of Justice Department controversy may lie a subversion of the free and fair electoral process. If this proves to be true, then all the power that this administration has claimed would be fraudulent.
In 2004 the Republican Party engaged in an activity of “Voter Caging.” Please look this term up. The term describes a process of systematically challenging thousands of voters based on the likelihood they would vote against a particular candidate. David Iglesias was one of the attorneys fired by the Justice Department. He had been asked to make investigating voter fraud a priority in his work. He created a task force to investigate possible invalid new voter registrations. His efforts produced not one case worthy of prosecuting. Mr. Iglesias believes strongly that he was fired because of the lack of results from his investigation. In 2004 the Republican party challenged 35,000 voter registrations using “voter caging.” They targeted students, deployed military, and predominantly black neighborhoods to challenge their voter status based on a question of address. The Party doesn't deny this. They claim that it isn't illegal and not at all improper. At the heart of the scandal within the Justice Department is whether or not this is true. Loyal Republicans and Administration appointees such as Monica Goodling, FBI Director Robert Mueller, former acting Attorney General James Comey and the 9 fired Justice department attorneys are starting to put the integrity of nation over loyalty to party. They have come to understand that no political gain is worth the degradation of electoral process.
Partisanship and bias are a part of the system under which the United States functions. To deny this would be blind to human nature. However, when those we trust to conduct and protect elections begin to believe that they can subvert the process to their own gain, we start to lose what has made this country so great. If these tactics are allowed to stand, unprosecuted and without pubic outrage, then such tactics will be used in 2008, likely by both parties. In the end, the voice of the people will be diminished and democracy will only be a term used by those that can best cheat the system. The public needs to start paying attention and participating in this issue at the Department of Justice or we might be cut out of the process of governing all together.