Me?

Using the model of Nation As Family, and extending it for int'l relations to Nations As Family Members, an immediate cease-fire is obviously necessary. Some conservative arguments are partly appealing, but violence is not ok. Not warfare-style violence, ok?, not when when there are children present.* And in warfare-style violence, there are always children present.

If negotiations are not working it is only because we are not negotiating appropriately . That is the only possible reason. I can no more explain exactly what the national leaders should do or say than I can speak for any set of Battlin' Dicks and ImPOSSible Janes when I am not in conversation with them.

I believe that, in conversation, I can paint a prettier picture to yearn for than we have now. Let's say, oh, I don't know, pointing to a direction away from the cartridge and Arash rocket, and towards the goddamn table. Breathe. The only legitimate violence is police-style violence. Breathe. And that's no peach, either, for a nation or a family member. (And there is always a nation, or a family member, or a child, present for it, too.)

Most importantly, appropriately, I point away from the cross and the crescent, but still directly onto knees.

The family on knees together breathes together.

---

* From today's NYTimes:

"At least 56 people were killed, most of them children, The Associated Press reported.

"Rescue workers and neighbors worked frantically Sunday morning to find survivors among the wreckage of a house, where two large extended families were hiding in a garage. Six small children, their mouths open and full of dirt, were brought out and laid on stretchers.

"'I felt as if I was turning around, and the earth was going up, and I was going into the earth,'" said [...] a father of five who was thrown into a doorway and managed to escape. All five of his children, including a 2-year-old child, were killed. His wife, sister and aunt were also killed.

"Neighbors said they ran to the house after the first strike, around 1 a.m., and that they heard screams and tried to reach people trapped inside, but the strikes persisted and they could not reach them. Rescue workers pulled bodies of 22 people out of the rubble Sunday morning, but neighbors said more bodies were inside."


UPDATE: This account is in great dispute. The death toll has been revised down, by about half, I think. There's the whole Green Helmet Guy thing. Doesn't change my mind on the matter. Like the other side doesn't have a much greater propaganda machine. The media critique, if valid, is, uh, valid.

These Fires

(Sounds like "cease fire.")

I recently read about a scientific study into hurt and causation and memory and vengeance. Subjects did simple excercises that yielded patterns of behavior. "Zap her as much as she zapped you." Like that. Subjects inevitably escalated, and blamed the other one for it. Similiarly, eye-witnesses have been proven often to suck. Similiarly, I try not to use the details or dynamics of some prior conversation as zinging evidence during a current argument with the girlfriend.
I don't trust Condi Rice. I do depend on her to be my Secretary of State, because she is that. (Lucky me!) So I am not sure what to make of news analysis such as I read in the Times today. It's funny, giving the benefit of the doubt to an extremely distasteful politician. Unfortunately, the account of the meeting in Europe was not nearly vivid enough for me to cheer anyone. The debate there cannot presently be judged by me. Neither can I take it as encouraging. (Lucky, again!)

It's not hard to believe that the Europeans preaching cease-fire are being too status quo. Even easier to think the current administration is being fatally unrealistic. But you knew all that.

There was another half to this post, but then I read some more news reports and decided what I had written was inaccurate and unhelpful. Deleted it without prejudice.

Wow, blogging politics is hard.

Diplomatic Punch

The foremost purpose on here, as with my other typing, is to find a substantive voice. Then to deploy it with authority to create writing about my experience of politics. By this, to explore the ethics of civil publication. By that, to find the heartbeat of civics.

Ah, sweet civics. A favorite word, and you might call it the beat around here. Civics. I plan to write more about that. But not yet, because it would be just terrible, terrible stuff made from truisms and un-assimilated half-bakes, per usual. (There are other words I like, and I may explicate those in the meanwhile. Let's hope they don't include "explicate.")

But back to the topic, and I mean heck, people, I am no way the only one to be both fascinated and frustrated by the current situation - - how the Earth is currently seeming to be rippling with events which people experience, as ever, as stories, which can overflow with information yet offer only the weakest, generally dubious and onerous, threads of wisdom for the masses of people, a.k.a., me/you, to follow on out of the woods of these imagined worlds of reflected reality...? I mean, come on!!

What sort of blasted fabric is that to make our societies of?

Sometimes I think I can do better.