Here’s something on the lighter side, with a side-order of sociology and relevance. At work, I sit near a couple of women who don’t have enough to do. They spend most of the day sharing the details of their middle-aged suburban lives with anyone within earshot, somewhat like bloggers without an Internet connection.

Today, one of them was describing the perils of her live-in boyfriend, who sustained a nasty cut to the head after a slip in the bathroom yesterday morning. He went to work but started bleeding profusely at dinner, so they shared a harrowing evening in the local emergency room. After being patched up and released from the hospital, my office mate drove her man home, grilling him along the way. “Why didn’t you get help earlier”, she asked. His reply: “No one wants to hear about my problems.” To which she rejoined: “Oh, shut up!”

OK, let me make it clear where I’m coming from here. I’m a guy and I understand what the wounded housemate was saying. I found his girlfriend’s reply to be mildly ironic and unintentionally humorous, of the “you can’t make this stuff up” genre. However, many of you female types out there probably understand and sympathize with the woman here. OK, that’s cool. But let’s drop back for a quick lesson in how men are socialized, and thus why we do stuff like that.

As children, boys are taught (in hundreds of little ways) that being tough and stoic is good. It’s one of those sociological things that you usually don’t notice until someone points it out. As you might have learned in Sociology 101, most sociological things have a reason behind them, and it doesn’t take a look much farther than the current headlines to figure out the reason for a man’s reticence in sharing his emotions. Obviously, since time immemorial, human society has seen the need for boys to prepare for war. And going to war requires that the biggest emotional crisis, i.e. the urge for self-preservation, be put on hold.

So, women of the world, next time you feel perplexed about your man’s emotional dryness, take a look at the evening news. You’ll see rather quickly why society brought him up to be that way. Regrettably, war is still a huge part of our daily lives.

P.S. Back around Christmas, a bunch of the ladies at work were marveling at a candle holder with a sound chip in it that played a jazzy, sultry saxiphone version of “Oh Danny Boy”. They were joking amidst themselves about the romantic moods that could be cast with this unique little gift. I was sitting at my desk, minding my own business, wondering if I were the only one to appreciate the irony that “Danny Boy” is a father’s lament at sending his son off to war.

ON THE EVE OF WAR: The thing about living in the United States is, sooner or later you start to believe all the superlatives about it, and you set a high standard of expectation regarding how it conducts its affairs. Sure, no nation in the world lives up to such lofty standards. But nonetheless, it’s still a disappointment when the good old U.S. of A. also fails to do so.

That pretty much sums up my feelings tonight about the upcoming invasion of Iraq. Sure, Saddam Hussein is a major bad guy who has killed many people and has violated all kinds of human rights. And yes, left to his own devices, he would continue to do a lot of harm. In an interdependent world such as we live in today, you can’t ignore such a man and hope he will go away. President Clinton probably ignored Iraq a bit too much; Clinton pretty much looked the other way when Iraq decided to terminate the UN inspection program. I’ll give George W. ultimate credit for giving the world a reality fix. Had we continued to ignore Saddam, he would have had some more nasty surprises up his sleeve for us.

But how you stop a nasty man of power also counts for something. Saddam Hussein is not simply a local phenomenon. What we do with Iraq and how we do it will influence our relations with all of the Islamic world. Iraq is an international problem, and requires an international solution. But international diplomacy is not one of President Bush’s strong points. (As the New York Times said in its March 18 editorial, “this war crowns a period of terrible diplomatic failure, Washington’s worst in at least a generation”.)

Gulf War II puts the US in a “might makes right” position. Instead of nurturing respect for our ideas about freedom and human rights and economic liberty, George W. Bush is now demanding world-wide respect at the point of a gun. I.e., we’re bigger and stronger than anyone else, so we’re gonna handle the situation our way.

Well, if this war works in the short run, it will work in the longer run. If the upcoming war in Iraq is over quickly, if there are no terrorist incidents at home, if oil prices calm down, if the federal deficit isn’t too badly inflated by the cost of the war, and more significantly, if Iraq can be put back together into a stable, self-governing nation, then the world will go along with us, however grudgingly. Nothing succeeds like success.

That’s what Mr. Bush seems to be betting on tonight. Perhaps for now, it’s a reasonable bet. But in the long run, might is a fickle thing. Sure, the world is not a place where liberty and human idealism run the show — not anytime soon, not in a world of such harshness, inequality and misunderstanding. But you’d hope that we could at least move towards a paradigm of shared economic interest. War isn’t a good way of promoting business, and thus should not become a preferred foreign policy option. It’s sad that such a business-savvy President like George W. Bush doesn’t seem to appreciate that. And let’s not even get into Mr. Bush’s admiration for the words and acts of Jesus.

As an eternal student with a conscience, I’d prefer to “study war no more”. But that doesn’t seem possible tonight. I just hope that the world will somehow learn, sooner or later, that lone-wolf warfare — and warfare in general — is not the preferred method to settle its problems.

BLOG FAITH: I was thinking the other day about atheists and believers. At first, they seem as different as night and day. And yet, the most intense atheists and the most intense believers might have more in common than one would think. The path between them could be called the Bridge of Discomfort. Very often, believers who take their faith seriously go through deep periods of doubt and discomfort about God. And all but the most simple-minded atheists are uncomfortable too. Uncomfortable, certainly, with the notions of God as commonly expressed in our churches, but with the idea of an absolute nothingness also. Arguably, both groups are tending towards the grey zone of agnosticism, admitting that we just don’t know. But agnosticism is a cop out. Of course we don’t know; God isn’t a science. Perhaps the best thing to say is that we are uncomfortable. From discomfort comes response, from response comes movement, and from movement comes journey.

Personally, I’m looking for a church of the uncomfortable. I’d much rather hang out with an uncomfortable atheist than a comfortable Christian (or Jew or Moslem or Hindu or whatever). But personally, once again, I still find grounds for faith. Even if those grounds are not always very comfortable in this world of pain and trouble.

SIDENOTE: I recently looked at Everclear’s web site (www.everamericana.com) after hearing a catchy little tune that they recently put out, “Volvo Driving Soccer Mom“. At present, the site has a really neat video-like splash page showing the band in concert with the words to ‘Volvo Mom’ rolling across the screen. (For you non-rock and roll fans, ‘Volvo Mom’ is a young man’s lament that female porno film stars eventually turn into suburban soccer moms. I think this is a part of the current male trend towards neo-chauvinistic parody, exemplified by the Man Show on Comedy Central. Hey, I don’t have cable, I just read about it in the social trends column in Atlantic Monthly).

Anyway, when you get inside Everclear’s site, you see that they offer some MP3 downloads from their concerts. So I recently listened to a song called “Why I Don’t Believe In God“. Hmm, talk about discomfort. Before you even hear the lyrics, you know this wasn’t one of Everclear’s better efforts. Perhaps rock is a good vehicle for neo-male chauvinism (perhaps rock has always been a matter of male chauvinism, e.g. what would a band like the Crue be without it), but it hasn’t done so well with atheism yet. By contrast, on the side of faith, there’s Peter Gabriel’s “Salisbury Hill” and maybe Rod Stewart’s cover of “People Get Ready”. I could be wrong on this, being more of a scientist than an artist, but true artistic inspiration seems to live more easily with themes of faith than with non-belief. I can’t think of many great paintings or sculptures inspired by atheistic notions, whereby there are countless works that express at least a yearning for a greater power. I wouldn’t call that clear-cut evidence for the existence of God, but it is something to think about :^| in the midst of one’s discomfort.

It seems that Sylvester Stallone is going to make another Rocky movie (this one will be number 6). I remember being caught up in the magic of the first Rocky movie back in 1977. What a great concept: some ordinary slob on the fast track to permanent loser-dom suddenly gets a shot at the highest level of achievement in his field (i.e., Rocky Balboa gets to fight the heavyweight champion). His inner spirit suddenly comes to life, the fires within him burn bright once more, and he surprises everyone by showing that he can indeed fight the best.

I’m now at an age and a point in life where I’ve fallen into the miasma that Rocky Balboa seemed doomed to. Long ago I hoped that my intellectual talents would have allowed me to participate within the inner sanctums of national and international policy formation. OK, so I didn’t go to Harvard or Yale Law School (try Rutgers-Newark) and I only got a 1350 on my SATs. Once upon a time I believed that given the chance, I would respond like Rocky and come to think and act like Washington’s “best and brightest” (while holding on to that same gritty blue-collar charm that Stallone gave to Rocky).

Well, that chance never came. Life ain’t the movies. The people who make it to the top in just about every field, be it politics or academia or policy analysis or sports or music, are extremely good at what they do. And those that don’t make it usually aren’t as good (although they probably have other human virtues that our leaders often fail at, e.g. Bill Clinton and his inability to resist the lure of dizzy young female interns, or pro baseball players who become drunks and junkies). Still, you’ve got to believe that there are plenty of people out there who “could have been a contender” in their chosen field, had they been given the chance and the inspiration. Back in 1977, there were plenty of “Baby Boomers” like me who watched Rocky I and felt a thrill, a sense of hope that something like that could happen to us. Watching Rocky VI in 2003, we’ll feel the pang of melancholy in knowning that it probably won’t.

But then again, you never know. Hope springs eternal in the hearts of men (and women). I may not be packing my bags for Washington anytime soon, but there may yet come a chance to do some good and have some fun doing it. Maybe this blog has something to do with that. The best of both worlds could yet have its day.

I’ve just started reading “Disarmed and Dangerous”, a book about the Berrigan brothers. On first glance, the Berrigans seem so 60’s, so idealistic, so far out removed from the realities of daily life today in America. But then I read about the guy who got arrested the other day in a mall near Albany, NY for wearing a T-shirt (which he bought right there in the mall) saying “Give Peace A Chance”. Supposedly he wasn’t causing a disturbance; he was in the food court having a meal with his son. Security came over and told him to remove the shirt or get off the property. Being a lawyer, he said no to both. So he got arrested for trespassing, just like Daniel and Phillip Berrigan used to do as part of their anti-war protests.

I want to thank that guy for making a stand. I myself am not much on brave gestures like that, and I generally disfavor unlawful or even uncooperative activity of any sort. But the pendulum here in America has swung too far towards gestapo mentality these days. The Berrigans clearly didn’t have a legal defense in most of their protests, they were in it purely for the moral gesture. But in the mall incident, hopefully a judge will rule that a place of business can no more discriminate against a non-obtrusive, non-threatening expression of political opinion on the part of one of its customers under our civil rights laws than it can on grounds of race or sex or religious affiliation (ah, yes, the First Amendment and the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution). But if it can, well, you can always boycott the place. It’s called the Crossgates Mall, in case you live near there.

I’ve been reading the Koran a bit lately. Yes indeed, the holy book of Islam has all sorts of nasty stuff regarding women and violence, and it makes some negative comments about Jews and Christians. But most of the Koran consists of an exortation to faith, with rewards promised for fidelity and warnings of personal punishment for transgression. Towards the end of the Koran there are some personal stories, but most of it is a direct sales pitch for belief and personal righteousness. There’s also some ancient social regulation stuff in it similar to Mosaic Law in the Torah, e.g. don’t eat this, make sure that you clean yourself if you do that, etc. And here and there are some higher-level philosophic thoughts, even beautiful prayers. So, like the Hebrew Old Testament and the Christian New Testament, the Koran is a mixed bag. You can make of it what you will.

I just read an obscure passage in the OT Book of Nahum, i.e “a jealous and avenging God is the Lord, the Lord is avenging and wrathful, the Lord takes vengenance on his adversaries and rages against his enemies”. And then there are the “imprecatory petitions” in the Psalms, e.g. “Pour out your anger on the nations that do not know you, and on the kingdoms that do not call your name… let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants be known amoung the nations before our eyes” (Psalm 79), or “awake to punish all the nations; spare none of those who treacherously plot evil” (Psalm 59). And of course, women don’t do so well in certain parts of the Bible. So, the Judeo-Christian portrait of God isn’t always an enlightened, ‘turn the other cheek’ affair either. I could imagine a Jewish rabbi reading Nahum to a group of Israeli soldiers getting ready for an attack on a Palestinian stronghold, or a Christian priest in Bosnia fueling the ethnic hatreds of that torn land with the nasty Psalms.

With regard to criticizing the Koran, I think that Christians should stick to Jesus’ philosophy: i.e., let those who are without sin throw the first stones, and let those who aren’t hold their fire. Perhaps that idea should also apply to sharp words, and to knives, and to guns, and to rifles, and to howitzers, and to M-1 tanks, and to stealth bombers, and to Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, and …

Tribute to The Ace: I was thinking the other day about what it would take to make me feel that my life was pretty much OK, despite all the apparent failures and let-downs. After a while, I concluded that if you can find your own style and inner-most visions, even if they are not terribly popular, even if they never made you rich or famous or important, you will feel OK about life if you stick with them.

This reminded me of the following quote: “First be true to yourself, then you cannot be untrue to anyone else”. Admittedly, this is a paraphrase of the original Shakespeare line. But you get the idea. The first half of the quote sounds like a typical 1990s free-enterprise slogan, right up there with “the one with the most toys wins”. But the second part puts it into context. This isn’t about greed. It’s about personal authenticity. All of us are unique creatures living in a very socially oriented environment, and we all have to decide to what degree we are going to follow our own inner callings and to what degree we are going to follow the crowd. We can’t just do as each and every one of us would please. But still, if a person decides to base all of her or his major life decisions upon the judgement of others, they lose something very precious, i.e. their authenticity.

I could be wrong about this, but authenticity seems in short supply these days. There seems to be so much pressure, however unspoken, to go along with the crowd. On the surface, there seems to be enormous diversity in opinion, fashion, lifestyle, career tracks, religious belief, etc. here in America. And yet, when you look closer, diversity becomes mostly a function of novelty. Thus, it’s refreshing when you meet someone who over time learns to live life on their own most authentic terms, even if it hurts.

I had an uncle like that. My Uncle Bruno. He died about four years ago, and I helped to clean out his apartment and did the paperwork to settle his estate. It was while I was looking through one of his scrapbooks that I discovered the Shakespeare quote about being true to one’s self. I guess it was something he felt worth remembering, as he wrote it in bold letters on the inside cover page.

Uncle Bruno was a bachelor who grew up as the fourth child in a Polish immigrant family in a cold water flat in Dundee, an industrial section of Passaic, NJ. His parents (my grandparents) worked all their lives in the knitting mills and dyeing factories (with some interruption for layoffs and strikes during the Great Depression). Uncle Bruno was blessed with a good brain and a strong body, and after serving in the Merchant Marines and in the US Navy during WW2 he went to college on the GI Bill, the first member of my family to do so. He graduated with an electrical engineering degree and joined the world of education and cutting-edge technology (for the 50s and 60s, anyway). And he became something of a bon vivant, although a manly one. He used after-shave and smoked Luckys and lit them with a steel Zippo lighter. He drove a Pontiac, and vacationed annually in Florida. His friends called him “the Ace”. He had girlfriends and would hardly let a Friday or Saturday night pass without a visit to a nice restaurant and perhaps a dance club. He lifted weights and read books. Relative to the rest of my family he was on the cutting edge, a true man about town, the most worldly and sophisticated guy we had ever seen.

As kids, we admired Uncle Bruno’s coolness, and yet were a little afraid of him. He wasn’t always amused by our childishness. He would sometimes give us lectures about getting ourselves together, about the opportunities out there in the world for guys who learn a bit of sophistication and polish (Polish polish?). We would sometimes see him with his friends, total strangers to us.

Uncle Bruno was following his inner callings, and at the time they were being amply acknowledged and rewarded by the world. He was well received by everyone, including us kids (even if we had some reservations about him, we were bought off by his thoughtful Christmas gifts and birthday presents). You could tell that down inside, despite the worldliness and air of success, he was a sentimental guy. He still lived at home with his parents, and still went to mass at the same Catholic parish where his mother and father went after coming to the US around 1915 (from the “Oster Reich”, as western Poland was known under German occupation). He seldom missed the various Christmas gatherings and Communion parties and birthday celebrations that brought the family together.

Somewhere just past his mid-point in life, the sands of fortune changed for Uncle Bruno. His parents (my grandparents) got sick and needed a lot of care. Meanwhile, the aerospace firm where he was moving up the ranks had lost most of its defense and space contracts, due to the 1968 election of Richard Nixon (the firm was tied too closely to the Johnson Democrats). So, Uncle Bruno was soon unemployed and living off of his savings, taking care of his weakening parents full-time. The man who was at home ordering up a whiskey sour on a 707 flight to Miami was now a home care attendant, changing soiled undergarments and other such unpleasantries. Uncle Bruno was just not going to let his parents go to a nursing home, despite the 7 or 8 years of continuing sickness and weakness that they went through. His sentimental nature overcome his attractive worldly side, and he paid the price.

Because of Uncle Bruno, my grandparents died at home with a fair amount of dignity. But after it was over, there was no going back to the days of glory. Uncle Bruno was diagnosed with diabetes, and his body never regained its youthful vigor and strength. He got back into the working world thanks to an opening in the State Transportation Department, but it was not on the level of importance and responsibility as before, being mostly testing and technical work (versus engineering design). His days of travel and fashionable socializing were coming to an end. He took up with a woman from a troubled family, and offered himself as a resource and mentor to them, especially to her children and grandchildren. His nurturing side, the side we only glimpsed at when I was a child, became the dominating theme in his life.

Uncle Bruno died at age 72, alone in a cold-water flat just a mile or so from where he grew up. Despite the wide range of social contacts that he once had, only about 12 people attended his funeral on a cold and snowy January morning (yes, at that same church in Passaic). That’s what his life was leading him toward, and that’s where he went without any sign of complaint. When he was young, strong and successful, he had lots of friends. When he was older, weaker and mostly devoted to a small family of ne’er do wells, people that I myself wrote off as a bunch of losers, he didn’t attract all that much interest anymore. I guess that’s the way life goes.

I saw Uncle Bruno around most of my life, and usually knew what he was up to, but was never all that close to him. I can’t say we ever had a heart-to-heart conversation, or even a personal conversation lasting more than a few sentences. I was able to help him with some legal problems in his last few years, and that was nice. But we never really connected. It was only after he died, when I had to go through his apartment and sift through his life’s accumulations, when I really got to know “Uncle Ace”. I saw his pictures, his camera equipment, his books, his records, his hobby stuff (guitars, model trains, electrical stuff, painting sets, etc.), his bills and his memories (he had kept every Christmas and birthday card he received since the early 1960s). I think that my brother and I managed to distribute his small estate (not quite worth $60,000) fairly, as he would have liked. He didn’t write a will, so I guess that he just trusted that we would wrap up his affairs in a neat and orderly fashion, as we mostly did.

Unto thine own self first be true. My uncle clearly stayed true to himself right up to the end. And in doing so, a lot of people were the better for it. Including myself, although ironically it was only after his death when Uncle Bruno got through to me. I remember during the clean-up noticing that Uncle Bruno had kept a traditional Catholic crucifix up above all the rubble in his apartment, high in a corner of the kitchen. I suppose that meant that he gave some regard to Christian notion of life after death. And why not. Perhaps the man who is most true to his real self need not let death get in the way.

I just read some reviews of a new book called “A Box of Matches” by Nicholson Baker. In a way, the book is a lot like most blogs — basically a lot of rambling about nothing, just the details of daily life with some occasional insights thrown in. As with most things on the Internet, however, the blogs belong mainly to the younger generation, while “Box of Matches” is the voice of an aging Baby Boomer. The major book reviewers (in the New York Times, Atlantic Magazine, Washington Post, Salon, etc.) have taken “BOM” quite seriously despite its lightweight content, e.g., a pet duck named Gertrude, a piece of lint found in narrator Emmitt’s navel, changes over the years in the patterns used on paper towels, etc. Some of the reviewers even seem a bit haunted by the book. And I think I know why, given that I’m in the same boat, the S.S. Mid-Life Crisis.

Unlike Emmett the narrator, I’m not married (divorced), don’t have a house, don’t have kids, don’t have a duck, and never saw lint in my navel. And yet, as with Emmett, I have an education, an unexciting semi-professional job, and a life that is more than half gone with nothing all that much to show for it. Emmett tries to focus on the little things and keeps on telling us how nice they are, but you know it’s mostly bogus because he also admits to suicidal fantasies and a lingering feeling that life is just passing him by. The book is divided into 33 chapters based upon the contents of a matchbox, one match for each morning when Emmett gets up early and starts the fireplace in his living room. And then the matches run out and the book just ends, without any hint of resolution. Talk about life as quiet desperation. One day it’s just over.

(SIDENOTE: With the wintertime blues and the Orange Alert, I was getting up myself around 3 am every day for about 30 days, ruminating in the dark over the meaning and meaninglessness of life. Wonder if I could write a book about it?)

Ten or twenty years ago, BOM wouldn’t have made it much farther then the junior manuscript editor’s REJECT stamp. And ten years from now it will probably be forgotten. But right now, there’s an opportunity to hit the nerves of the many graying Baby Boomers who are getting a little scared. What happened to the great expectations of our youth? What happened to all the campus protests and the Age of Aquarius and the song lyrics by Crosby, Stills and Nash, i.e. “we can change the world, rearrange the world”? Did we really think that we could put an end to war, that Vietnam would be the last? How many wars have we been involved in since then? (Looks like the next big one in Iraq is just about to get going).

Ah, we were a generation that dared to dream big in our youth. And thus we’re now getting disappointed big time in our old age. We thought that greatness was everyone’s birthright. But once the dust settled, we found out that only maybe one in ten were going to do something really interesting and engrossing, like being an astronaut or a major league baseball player or a senator or a movie producer or the founder of a high-tech company or an astrophysicist who helped to discover dark energy and the universe’s acceleration. To some degree, those who did make it were the best and the brightest, but to a larger degree they were just plain lucky. The rest of us have to make our peace with getting by, with bringing up kids and keeping our flower gardens and listening to our primary care physicians and seeing a movie during the weekend and changing our socks when they get holes in them (one of Emmett’s major themes). And reading books that describe boxes of matches.

Most of the reviewers of BOM just don’t seem honest. They just don’t say what I think we really want to say in response to it. Which is this: “rage, rage against the dying of the light; do not go gentle into that good night” (Dylan Thomas, of course, who died in the year I was born).

I’ve decided that it’s time to learn more about al Qaeda. A lot of people made a similar decision on September 12, 2001; so I’m a little slow. But better late than never, let’s hope.

Al Qaeda is definitely a scary thing, even scarier than what we’ve seen so far, i.e. a foreign organization able to destroy prime American real estate. It’s right up there with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in terms of threat to the well being of our nation and the world as a whole. But the worst thing is that it’s not at all like the enemies of old. Al Qaeda (“the base”) is a thoroughly modern enemy, something from left field, something that’s taken us by surprise. In our nation’s 225 year history, we’ve encountered many nation-states that didn’t like us, and crossed paths with various terrorist / revolutionary cults that have brought us trouble. Nation-states generally possess much more artillery and economic resources than the typical liberation army, but they have to play by certain rules. The revolutionaries play without rules, but up to now haven’t had all that much firepower and support.

Osama Bin Laden, however, has recognized an opportunity to change all that. Bin Laden has seemingly found a way to harvest the winds of anti-American resentment that are blowing through the Islamic lands, and combine that with seed money drawn ironically from western trade (especially from the sale of oil), and then bind it all together with fundamentalist Islamic religious sentiments. His rhetoric emphasizes historic oppression from the west (starting from the Crusades and working its way to economic exploitation in the 19th and 20th centuries) and the extremist interpretation of jihad from the Koran, in order to germinate a movement that could overtake the entire strategic alleyway extending from the nose of Africa through Eastern and Southern Asia on down to Timor.

Think about what is at stake: the western entrance to the Mediterranean and its entire southern coast; the Suez Canal; Israel; the northern shore of the Indian Ocean; and the world’s primary sources of crude oil. These were and still are some of the world’s busiest trade routes. Incredible flows of world commerce pass through or along the shores of the Moslem world each and every day. However, the people within that world have not been able to capitalize on the vast sums of wealth that pass over their seas or through their villages. Nor have their vast oil resources been used to foster widespread economic development; only a small handful of royal family members in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the like have reaped the benefits of America’s insatiable thirst for the sacred black liquid.

America has not been content to reflect on all of this from the safety of its own purple mountains and fruited plains. The United States has had an active presence in the Moslem world for over 50 years now, sending businessmen, diplomats, soldiers and warships to these lands in order to make sure that the trade routes and oilfields stay open and that the U.S. keeps its share of the action.

And then of course, there’s Israel. Within the past century, a savvy people from Europe came back to the land of their ancestors, retook it from Moslem hands, and make that land bloom. These industrious people prospered while their Islamic neighbors remain poor — but not without huge amounts of continuing U.S. aid. You’ve got to believe that after a while, the average peasants of Egypt or Pakistan start feeling a certain amount of resentment when seeing all of the economic wealth that passes by their doors, escorted by America and its friends, while they continue to live in conditions of desperate poverty and backwardness.

Within the past two decades, various attempts have been made in the Islamic world to exploit that resentment. The 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran was a key event. However, even though it inspired Islamic rule in a few other nations, it was mostly a local event. But now comes Osama Bin Laden, a high-tech 21st Century man connected to the world with laptops and cell phones and satellite dishes, a graduate of a successful effort to build a pan-Islamic resistance movement (in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion of 1978), a man who recognizes the common threads of abject poverty dwelling within sight of tremendous wealth, insensitive American involvements meant to exploit those assets, and the ferverent nature of Islamic tradition and worship (a religion still in a relatively young, activist stage of its history) that run through Algeria, Sudan, Egypt, Syria, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen, Oman, Kuwait, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Indonesia. He has figured out a way to weave these threads into a plan for his own aggrandizement and immortalization (which is basically the plan of all political figures; every politico, even the town dog-catcher, sub-consciously wants to be remembered as the next earth-shaker in the same league with Alexander the Great or Napoleon or Julius Caesar).

If Bin Laden carries out his plan, there will be an “Islamic Union” living under fundamentalist rule stretching from western Africa to the Java Sea, a union which will control the bulk of the world’s oil reserves, oversee the most strategic waterways and trade routes, and have deliverable nuclear weapons (thanks to Pakistan). This union will surround Israel and at the very least make the situation even more uncomfortable there (i.e., constant bombings and terror attacks). But the ultimate aim is to put America over a barrel; Bin Laden’s grand vision intends to improve the economic lot of Moslems at the direct expense of the United States (e.g., oil at $120 a barrel, $5 a gallon gasoline). As with all geopolitical issues, in the end, after all the cultural and religious detritus has settled, it’s the economy that matters.

Bin Laden’s economic program is basically the same as Robin Hood’s. What’s really scary is that this guy is smart and seemingly has a chance to pull it off. The governments in most of the Moslem nations have condemned al Qaeda, but the masses in Cairo and Amman and Tunis and Karachi and Basra are giving him an awful lot of credence. He proved his power to them on September 11th, thanks in large part to the vigorous coverage of the western media (and now, of course, there’s al Jazeera). The anawim are starting to believe that this guy really can deliver them from their plight and improve their lives and their economic conditions.

So what does America do in response to such a serious threat to its economy and overall strength? Well, if we had lots of time, the answer would be to change our ways, to be more sensitive to the plight of the poor, to admit our past sins in the Moslem world and offer it significantly more developmental aid and assistance worldwide (while at the same time breaking free of our addiction to oil). But we do not appear to have the luxury of a long-term context in which to work in. As Thomas Friedman says in his NY Times column, there is an immediate need for a reform movement in the Moslem lands, one that veers away from clericism, anti-intellectualism, female oppression and closed economies, one that opens itself to enlightenment, fair investment, distribution of natural resource wealth and opportunity for all to participate within the modern world economy. Otherwise, per Friedman, there is going to be a “civilizational war” with the U.S., one that will send all of us back quite a few decades (maybe even centuries) in terms of economic and social progress. If al Qaeda somehow achieves its version of an Islamic Union, I don’t think that cataclysmic war with America would be long in coming. (The only thing that buys us time is the famous propensity for internal division amidst the Moslem peoples; al Qaeda is a Sunni-affiliated movement, and may not gain the support of the Shi’a factions, nor of the wary ethnic / tribal movements amidst the Kurds, Pashtuns, etc.).

Friedman sees Iraq as an opportunity to start an emergency-turn maneuver in the Islamic world. If President Bush could somehow inspire Europe, China and Russia into a united front, then perhaps we could replace Saddam Hussein with a model republic that, together with Turkey, Egypt and the new Afghanistan (tenuous examples of “modern Islamic nations” under construction), might inspire reform throughout the Arab and Islamic world. And you know what? If our President had the boldness and audacity to turn this war from a defensive action into something with a cause, akin to what Abraham Lincoln did with the War of the States, maybe we’d have a shot. If we could somehow convert Iraq into a model nation that combines democracy, peace and progress within the context of its Islamic heritage and culture, where the lives of poor families get better over time because of their participation in the world economy (a la China) and not through economic plunder (a la al Qaeda), then George W. Bush would indeed go down as the Abraham Lincoln of the 21st Century. But as Friedman points out, so far Mr. Bush just doesn’t seem to get it.

If President Bush did see the light and if he could somehow convince the world that a government change in Iraq provides us with the last and best hope to prevent the Moslem lands from falling like dominos into an al Qaeda black hole, then we might have a flag to unite under. Osama Bin Laden’s vision is being taken very seriously in those lands, and thus represents a vision that threatens the well-being of all nations of the world due to its ultimate economic stupidity. Whether or not al Qaeda presents some grains of truth in its litany of Islamic suffering at the hands of powerful western interests and its reference to American social decadence, its economic vision is ultimately that of the parasite. Parasites weaken and eventually kill their hosts after coming to depend upon them; they thus end up dying themselves. This is the ultimate triumph of stupidity. Our western economic models leave a lot to be desired in terms of social justice and long-term sustainability, but at least they base their premises upon the creation of new wealth, and not upon the stealing of old wealth. (Even though the avoidance of national plundering has often been honored in the breach, as the former colonies of Western powers can testify — the same form of Western economic exploitation caused much of our current unpopularity within the Moslem lands).

But as with the American Civil War, a war with a cause in Iraq would not resemble the low-casualty surgical action that Mr. Bush currently envisions (and that our populace would tolerate). We’d be in for years of bloody battles and lost American lives, possibly spreading out beyond the borders of Iraq (given that al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists are going to get in on the action, and that Israel would be a natural target for their rabble-rousing). And who knows if and when we’d be able to capture the “hearts and minds” of the average Moslem family living in Casablanca or Jakarta or anywhere in between. Could we yet convince enough of them that the U.S. is leading a worldwide rally for the good of all concerned? Or will they see it as just another Crusade of the infidels, thus speeding the realization of al Qaeda’s unfortunate version of Moslem unity?

The only way to convince the masses of the Islamic crescent would be to offer tangible proof of a nation of Islamic heritage where lives are getting better, where people are living longer, where children are gaining more education and having more opportunity for work, where health care, personal freedom and self-respect are widely available. Can we deliver that in time to thwart the al Qaeda infection? Or has the infection spread so far that we can no longer avoid the fever, such that Mr. Bush’s currently planned Iraqi campaign will only make it worse? This is the debate we must now have in our country. Because the real enemy is not Saddam Hussein, who has almost no support left in the Moslem world and who will eventually self-destruct with or without our intervention. The real enemy is the perverted economic ideology of al Qaeda and the powerful religious and social sentiments that it exploits in order to forward that threatening ideology. Let us not take our eyes off the real enemy.