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Gaffer Variety:
More Notes For Hillary 007:
By Willie Gaffer:
September 26, 2005:
In my last essay, I began outlining the issues. Now it is time to give some flesh to the most important issues. Terrorism and how we can deal with it must be at the top of the list. We cannot hide from this threat or ignore it. Ignoring it is what we are currently doing, but it will not go away. We give it lip service and appoint politicians to positions in ineffective organizations. We spend billions of dollars, but we do nothing substantial to change the threat. If we continue to ignore the threat it will grow stronger and the enemies of civilization will eventually destroy us. To prevent that, we must destroy them.
To deal effectively with this means we must have a coherent plan that looks at the long and short term. We cannot go off half cocked, shooting from the hip, and spreading troops around the globe without reason. I have harped on this many times and will continue to do so. The most important long term thing we can do to defeat terrorism is not to kill Arabs, but to give hope where there is now despair. We must give these people a reason to believe they can have a piece of the pie. We must take away the arguments used by the madmen to recruit these kids to commit suicide.
Exporting democracy is the way we can do that, but not through the barrel of a gun as we are attempting to do it in Iraq. We are stuck there now and we must do the best we can, but that is not a short term deal. If we bail out now we will leave a power vacuum that will be promptly exploited by our enemies. We must stay the course and we must put in enough resources to make it stick. That is a bitter pill and it should not have been necessary, but it is now. If we bail out too soon a lot of our kids will have died for nothing. If we stay, we could eventually have a viable democracy that will set an example for that area similar to the one set by Germany after WWII.
Of course, we must do the same thing in Afghanistan. We must do that and stay the course. You must make it clear to the people that we are stuck in a long term effort. Take a look and see what we had to do in Japan and Germany to get a sense of the magnitude of the effort required. While we are about that, we cannot forget about the madmen who lead this monstrous effort. We must seek out and destroy Bin Laden and all of those like him. We must give them no place to hide and we must make enemies of those who harbor them. You should make no mistakes here. The friends and supporters of terrorists are our enemies, even when they are relatives of the Saudi Prince. To deal with these madmen we will need overwhelming troop strength where they are hiding out.
About our strength, we do not have enough military capability. We must increase our troop strength and invest a great deal in their training and equipment. If we cannot get enough volunteers we will need to institute a draft. That is an unfortunate result of going off half cocked without adequate planning. We are spread way to thin. We have a huge shortage of qualified people and our kids are getting killed because of it. To prevent that, we need an overwhelming presence it Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to have enough people there to make it safe for the local people to cooperate with us.
I will get to the Katrina disaster in Another essay later. Beyond terrorism and the effects of Katrina, the most important crises we face is the huge energy shortfall. With China and many third world countries trying to come onto the international stage, this problem will only increase. China especially will quickly become the world leading consumer of crude oil and they will outbid us. In addition, our own appetite for oil is growing exponentially. The fact is, production will not be able to keep up even if we rape our Alaskan wilderness. The is just not enough capacity.
There is only one real solution to this problem. We must have an energy alternative to oil. To get that, we must turn our scientists loose on the problem. Real research is needed into alternative energy sources. At this time, the most promising avenue of development seems to be nuclear fusion. That may not be the case, but it looks best now. The point is, we need to put big research bucks into finding out. We need to find an alternative before disaster strikes. We are already way behind where we should be. We must get started immediately.
The next three issues are so interwoven that we must look at them together. These are education, crime, and the economy. The last two, crime and our economic situation, are in a great part a result of how we do education. The quality of our citizenry and their penchant for success and failure result directly from how they approach life. That in turn is a result of how they have been nurtured and educated as children. If you concentrate on talking about education, the others will fall out in the discussion. Essentially, we must change from a mind numbing curriculum driven educational system to a mind expanding interest driven system. That is the essence of the needed change. We must liberate our kids minds.
To make sure our kids get equal educational opportunity we must have dependable funding, We really need a no strings attached federal level funding program for primary education. I believe that should take the form of a federal income tax, somewhat like social security. I have spelled this out in my book, "Will-Yam in the Land of Giants." The main points are, the tax should be sufficient to fully fund primary education in America, and the monies should be distributed based on enrollment and nothing else.
Presently too much of the funding for education from the state and local levels comes in the form of bribes and blackmail. That must change. It is unconscionable for the federal or state governments to usurp the responsibility and control of the local community. These kids are not government property. The are citizens within a local community where they should have all the rights and responsibilities that are claimed by everyone else in that community.
Beyond education restoring the rule of law must be a top priority. Of course, that is about crime at all levels. Crime in America has three major sources. Ignorance is the primary cause. The second is lack of direction. Corporate and bureaucratic greed is the third. As to the economy, the economy will heal itself when we eliminate ignorance, give direction to our citizens, and bring the corporate and government monsters to heal. We eliminate ignorance through education. We give direction through ethical leadership. We deal with greed by enforcing the law equally and making new laws as necessary.
Now, I have more notes to offer wherein I will address Katrina,
outline the nature of a good campaign and specify the organization
needed to support it. I will also discuss some of the minor issues.
These are issues you must have answers for, but you cannot allow
them too take you away from concentrating on the top issues.
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