THE CURMUDGEON CHRONICLE ©
AN IRREVERENT VIEW
Time Line: September 22, 2007
Date Line: Flemington New Jersey
A friend asked what I thought of the Wall Street Journal Op Ed piece, “Jonah’s Dilemma (September 21, 2007). The article should be entitled “Jonah Leaves Iraq”. (If you can’t get a copy I will try to e-mail it to you.)
Several things come to mind when you consider Jonah: heroism, prophesy and the fall of the dice. No one can foretell how the dice will fall in a game where the dice are not loaded. But loaded dice are easy to discover in the hands of an inept shooter. We have learned that most recently with our present administration.
I believe prophesy and heroic leadership come into being in retrospect. The leader anointed, (whether by a Deity or men), has the special problem of being frail and human, but is expected to act in a super-human fashion. With the wind coming from another quarter, the Armada would have made mashed potatoes out of Drake and the British fleet. In retrospect he is a heroic figure; at the time he was just lucky.
The saying goes, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that is the way to bet them.” We should expand that to include “nor success from wise decisions”. That view is less mystical about outcomes than the thesis of the well written comment in the Journal, but given our country’s Middle East problems, we need pragmatism more than mysticism.
I can envision Jonah thinking that the sins of Nineveh must come to an end. I can feel his indecision as to the course to take in view of the risks to his life and family. Like most people, he tried a change of scenery to avoid the problem, only to find it had not gone away.
The whale that consumes Jonah but does not kill him is a superb delineation of the problem one does not face. Ultimately Jonah does something about Nineveh, as we all must do something about problems that face us: Jonah became a pragmatist.
One cannot prove that any course of action would change the world or that it would prevent some inchoate disaster. All such “what ifs” added together do not make a single fact. Thus, the comments of Oren and Gerson beg the question when they compare the possible outcome of problems we face to the “good fortune” of Jonah.
Parables are not the here and now. Jonah has the benefit of 6,000 years of mellowed memory to buffer his action’s effects. In addition he has the benefit of master story tellers glorifying a Deity whose works are being carried out by someone named Jonah.
Our leaders will not have those things in their corner in the denouement of Iraq. Our leaders are faced with problems having to do with the sins of greed and pride: Greed for gain from oil and the hubris of fools who believe their view should be yours, whatever the consequences.
If we withdraw from Iraq the world will not come to an end. While there are no guarantees, Viet Nam for us and China for Japan can serve as object lessons. The deaths of people will not be forgotten, but nations will live in a less contentious manner with former adversaries.
I have thought about the “nuclear threat” of the Middle East. Consider the lack of infrastructure, resources and scientific and manufacturing capabilities of the region. Consider the ring of existing nuclear weaponry that is trained on Iran, Syria, and the other threats in the region. Then consider whether our fears are over-reactive, Pavlovian responses taught by the same wonderful folk that ordered the invasion of Iraq. (Remember that the Iraqis alleged to have bought yellowcake from Nigeria, merely bought sponge cake from Drakes Bakery.)
Consider the fact that China and Russia are nuclear powers with delivery capacity to devastate the world. India, Pakistan, Israel, France, Italy and Japan (to name a few) either have nuclear know-how or capabilities that could do the same thing in short order. How about a nice “little” war to force them to destroy their capabilities and leave us as the only kid on the block with a slingshot?
Naturally I am uncomfortable with the thought that an enemy might have weapons that could destroy me and my friends. I am even more uncomfortable knowing that our armed forces are capable of winning World War II but not a police action in Afghanistan. Hopefully we will fix that in spite of the screams of the military/industrial complex that sells us billions of dollars of equipment unsuited to our needs for defense but didn’t put a lock on the door to the cockpit of the planes that hit the World Trade Center.
We will either have a heroic recovery or not, as the case may be. If our new leaders have a clear vision of our national best interests and do not squander our assets, a new American prophet may emerge.
If not, then we may become another Nineveh, Jonah, Oren, and Gerson notwithstanding.
Howard Stamer
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