Thursday, June 21, 2007

School Daze

Did you hear the one about the community college students in the San Francisco area who paid people to change the grades on their transcripts, so that they could get into better 4-year institutions when the time came to complete their undergraduate degrees?

Seriously, did you hear about it? The only thing that shocks me about it is that anyone else is shocked by it. In its own small way, this scandal reveals the true dangers of an unregulated free market economy and the attitudes is creates. The unspoken foundation of the unregulated free market is that everything can be had for the right price. It makes everything into a commodity to be bought, sold, traded, or trashed and replaced as the whim strikes and as the pocketbook permits.

And that is just plain wrong. Humans, as social beings living in societies, have a community of purpose (often spiritual) that in its best manifestations rises above mundane money-grubbing. Societies exist because no person can do everything he needs to survive, let alone to thrive, all by himself. We are all in this together, and if we all give a little bit to help each other, we all are better off in the long run. But the free market teaches "I'll get mine any way I can, and you can go to Hell."

This is why I am still surprised that so many fundamentalist Christians are such fervent supporters of an unregulated free market economy. It seems to contradict the most basic of Christ's teachings. But then again, I was raised Catholic, where being poor and suffering too often is considered a positive good (as long as it's someone else, someone you can help, and not you, yourself who is suffering too much). I simply cannot wrap my head around the Church of Protestant Prosperity.

Geography 101

The only thing worse than saying something when one has nothing to say is being unable to say something when one DOES have something to say. Thank you, Oscar Wilde.

Anyway, I have been trying to get this posted for over a week, so I apologize if it no longer seems to be timely news.

I heard a report on NPR well over a week ago which hasn't attracted any other attention that I have found--which shocks me--and which ought to make us all scratch our heads in collective confusion. The report is that the latest military brilliance from the Dubya administration is to convert the war in Iraq to a situation "akin to that in Korea."

This has to be one of the all-time great "things that make you go wha?!?" The report was all about how many in the highest US military echelons now support the notion that if we draw down US troop levels and deploy them similarly to the way we deploy our troops in South Korea, we can establish and keep the peace.

Has no one at the Pentagon looked at a map lately? The dividing line on the Korean peninsula is nice, neat, fairly straight and short--and is anchored on both ends by large bodies of salt water. How could we deploy a reduced number of troops in Iraq in a similar fashion? Given what has been alleged about Iran supplying arms to Iraqi insurgents, I suppose that would mean a line along the Iran/Iraq border . . . which is much longer and harder to maintain than Korea's . . . and which is much easier than Korea's to circumvent, literally, by going around the ends. (Think Germany going through Belgium to avoid the Maginot Line and invade France.) Besides, I don't think it would win us any friends or influence people in Iraq or Iran.

We could deploy our reduced troop levels in a ring around Baghdad . . . around the parts of Baghdad we want to protect, anyway. But that means allowing ourselves to be surrounded by the enemy. (Think West Berlin during the Cold War.) That could be very exciting. West Berlin, with all its palpable intrigue and danger, was a really cool place to visit when it was behind the Iron Curtain. But the rest of Iraq, along with the rest of the Middle East, is not like western Europe in the 40s-90s. Somehow, I am not sure we could (1) establish and maintain lines of supply; (2) establish and maintain safe access road corridors; (3) establish and maintain stable governments for both Baghdad and the rest of Iraq.

Besides, if we could do that in Iraq, wouldn't we have done it already? Isn't that what we've been trying to do since the mission was allegedly accomplished way back in 2003? What in the world makes us think that by adopting a "Korean model" we suddenly have a solution for the quagmire in which Dubya has stuck us?

This "Korean model" is neither a good nor appropriate one for Iraq. The physical geography of the Middle East alone makes it impossible. Though I can see how Dubya would be attracted to the notion of the parallels between North Korea and Iran, seeing as how those two states were prominent in his "Axis of Evil" State of the Union address. And THEY both have WMDs. Maybe, if we were going to "make the world safe for democracy," we should have invaded one of those places instead of getting revenge on Saddam Hussein, who dissed Dubya's daddy.