Saturday, January 13, 2007

Alas: What Goes Around ...

Today is Saturday, 13 January 2007.

Gloriosky, Sandy: Blogger unexpectedly works for me at this moment!

Make hay while the sun is down, as my grandfather liked to say.

Here in Tulsa, OKLA, it's 23 degrees at 4.28 am CST as I begin, with perhaps an inch of sleet and frozen rain on the ground. (From actual observation: the cocker needed to go out.) No reports yet of widespread power outages, so children can awaken to the fun of frozen water resting like grace upon the ground.

(One might look up Pasternak's great poem, "Winter Night", and the image of the candle burning, at this juncture.)

The orchid Ms. HH bought in November is about to shed a final peach-tinged bloom, but another dozen buds are coming on. It resides in the window above/over over/above [I can't decide which word; feel free to weigh in] the kitchen sink.

Okay. That's our homage to the Princess of the Far and Farm Realms, and others who like it when HH talks about happy things.

Now: To business.

The Bush-Cheney Junta has recently attacked, through the American military, Iranian diplomats and diplomatic posts in Iraq. Why is this a problem?

What goes around, comes around.

For centuries, by custom, tradition, treaty, and international law, diplomats have been held to have immunity from every kind of assault by foreign governments, so as to be able to conduct, with some sense of assurance, the affairs of nations. The conduct of the affairs of nations are seldom pretty, but, at their best, avert such less pretty things as war and death.

When the lone superpower in the world, as so poorly represented by the Bush-Cheney Junta, declares open season on the diplomats of another nation, it says, in effect, to all the world: it's hunting season on everyone's diplomats. It's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre time: "We don't need no stinkin' badges": we are the law unto ourselves. Which grants everyone license to think and act: Okay, we're the law unto ourselves as well.

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

All civility, between individuals and nations, rests on a fragile covenant of mutual self-interest, trust, and, on occasion, affection. When a bully, such as the Bush-Cheney Junta, tears asunder that delicate fabric ... well, my fellow Americans, it means the Bush-Cheney Junta has torn down even more rules, and declared open season on American diplomats (and, come to think of it, why not tourists as well).

(Yes, yes, this delicate fabric has been torn asunder countless times. But who can argue that tearing such a large gap, in something already so fragile, is helpful?)

Alas, why should the Junta not? Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove, etc., travel in armored bubbles, insulated from the cares of commoners like thee and me. The safety of "the little people" is once again forfeit to the mad schemes of the powerful.

Alas, what goes around, comes around.

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