Happy Holidays from the Sunni Triangle

Everyone who is paid to talk or paid to write is talking about or writing about the war in Iraq. But other than from those folks, you won't hear talk about the most dishonest, deadly, and costly boondoggle in America's history being discussed around the water cooler or at holiday social gatherings.

After nearly four years of the fiasco in Iraq, the Bush extravaganza of death, destruction, and world-class ineptitude starring America's children, yet another holiday season has rolled around and local malls are again full of shoppers but the Mall in Washington remains strangely quiet. Curious.

More's the pity for Sgt. Tony S. who is on tour No. 3 in this "war on terror," a.k.a. this war of terror as Tony's mother calls it. Tony S. is stationed in the Sunni Triangle, and he's not told his mother his exact whereabouts so she won't worry as much. The few who know where he really is are worried sick. His mother just knows he's somewhere in Iraq, and when his family didn't hear from him for several weeks, those in the know wanted to puke every time the phone rang.

When he finally did contact home, he had lost five of his men since his last call. You undoubtedly didn't hear about it on the news. The Iraq Study Group found significant underreporting of the violence there, by as much as 1000 percent. The lives of Sgt. Tony's five men must have fallen into this intentional institutional information abyss.

Sgt. Tony is a career military man, if you can consider a twenty-something as having a "career." He's there because "he wants to be." Isn't that the argument used by the war-instigators, who have only started battles--never served in them, for why it's OK that he's there at all? How could someone ever know they didn't want a career in the Sunni Triangle until they'd had one?

Absent a general military draft, the holiday season for non-military families is not affected at all by this war of terror. Sure, some will make a trip or two to the post office with a few holiday cards and packages, but they will not be troubled by the forms and procedure required to send Christmas packages to an overseas FOB.

They will not worry nights that their packages won't arrive intact to a beloved family member, a son or a daughter, because there's an ever-present possibility that someone will shoot down the vessel carrying these precious missives of love and home, and they'll never reach their destination. They'll also never toss or turn all night worrying that the package makes it but the recipient doesn't.

The general population of America will mindlessly circulate at holiday parties this season exhibiting the usual amount of social anxiety. They will drink too much to cover it over and eat too much to cover that over. Thoughts of Sgt. Tony and his five dead men will probably not pass through even one besotted memory cell.

Christmas Day, Hanukkah, Kwanza, whatever one observes, will come and go with its individually-traditional melee while Sgt. Tony and his remaining men spend yet another holiday season in Hell on Earth, brought to you by America's military-industrial complex and sponsored by some of the same folks who messed up Vietnam.

Sgt. Tony's mother reported that when she finally received his call, he sounded "awful." And then she cried and cried until she ran out of tears. While she is ignorant of his exact location, the ignorance does not provide her with one shred of holiday bliss. She and her family struggle mightily just to feebly carry on with the holiday season. Everyone is jumpy, on-edge, and buying too much in an attempt to purchase a normality that cannot be found in the mall.

After four years, one would tend to think that Baby Boomers, with the winds of Vietnam blowing at the backs of their choir robes and Harley jackets alike, would finally rediscover their inner hippie and take to the streets to protest this dishonest and disastrous war before any more Sgt. Tony's or their men must sacrifice their lives to appease the whims of the Frat Brat-in-Chief. Apparently the most effective way to neutralize civil disobedience is for the government to have their corporate friends keep sending credit card offers to potential disobedients. That way they stay in their own malls and away from the government's Mall.

It seems to be working. The same people who thirty years ago thought nothing of sleeping stoned with someone they didn't know on a dirty matteress at someone's "pad," somewhere along the way morphed into the adults who would scream into school parking lots in large and shiny SUVs and enter the building looking to draw blood on the someone that gave their child a C on his science project. They became the parents who would mortgage all they own to see to it that their senior cheerleader got her rightful senior gift.

But this must be the outer limits of general Hippie/Yuppie concern for "America's" children. While some of them will march in the streets to make sure other people's babies aren't aborted, apparently concern for what happens to these children, or anyone else's children, once they arrive is a nonstarter.

So, Sgt. Tony is stuck in Iraq for another holiday season, but he says to tell everyone back home Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (from the Sunni Triangle. Ssshhh). He's a pretty selfless guy, and just because he's over there he wouldn't want anyone here to not enjoy themselves this Season.

Who has the heart to tell him he doesn't need to worry about that? From the looks of things, Americans are doing their best to accommodate his wishes.

There's a Big Difference Between Hanging in There . . . and Hanging

Some years ago I lived in a community that had been in existence a long time, turned out to be utterly inbred, and was quite set in its ways--even if its ways led to disaster. I didn't know all this of course as I, as a fresh-faced newbie, set about getting involved in helping the local school district with various projects like PTA fundraisers and passing levies.

This devotion to education eventually led to my holding a seat on a citizens' advisory committe, followed by my being selected to fill a vacancy on the school board--a spot left open by a member who, unbeknownst to me at the time, had finally had enough and decided to get out of Dodge.

Looking back on it now, I guess I can pat myself on the back that I made it as far up the closed pecking order as I did before I, too, realized I was wasting my young life trying to garner a team to move the immoveable forward. The district, the community, liked things as they were, as they had always been.

That the illogical "principles" upon which their actions or inactions were predicated did little or nothing to advance the district or the community was of no concern to them. It was status quo all the way. The district's employee roster was so chockablock with friends and relatives, and friends of relatives, and relatives of relatives, and friends of friends that nothing, save the set-in-stone, ever got accomplished. And the set-in-stone had all the excitement, energy, and effectiveness of a mud brick.

Though this community sat squarely on a state route adjacent to a big city, an outsider living there could come to believe she had somehow stumbled into a mountain holler at the turn of the 20th century. All that was needed from central casting were some Hatfields, McCoys, and a still, and I've never been sure there weren't some of all three around somewhere.

My increasingly frustrated efforts in this esteemed position on the board of education finally included a decision to step on some toes to see if there was any life in the feet. I found life in the feet alright in the form of a resulting swift kick to my head if I dared to disturb someone's long-held domain. It was like trying to maneuver around a den full of hibernating bears who would not fully rouse if disturbed but would take a swipe at your vitals, claws extended, while rolling over to continue the nap.

No, nothing ever changed. . . except me. I slowly but surely morphed into a different person after months of turning over every rock and peeking under every foundation in search of a workable, modern idea that would fly and not cause someone's Cousin Roger to loudly proclaim his nose out of joint.

It all sounds harmlessly stagnant, but I learned from holding this position that if you attempt to operate honestly enough, word will get around. Eventually you will find yourself up to your neck in Deep Throats, all who would like to see things improve but can't risk openly exposing that Aunt Tilley might be pocketing some of the money from the football tickets she sells or that best friend from high school, Bill, never took any actual bids for the new furnace at the high school.

Ahhh, the dark side of public service. Which got a lot darker, black actually, when I learned through one of these self-styled 007's that the defunct landfill in the middle of the district was tainting the water at three of our schools. Where my children attended. Houston, we have a big, hairy, major problem.

Attempts to get involved, rile the community to action, wore me out physically, mentally, emotionally, and not only produced little result, but actually placed me and the few who would join me in a very precarious and, dare I say, dangerous position. Months passed. There were veiled threats made. And there were whispers of brain tumors and odd cancers in the allotment closest the landfill.

The people living in the district knew they had a water problem and either years ago knuckled under to pressure to stay quiet or chose to live with it by ignoring it. After all, if you know you have a problem, you're expected to do something about it. And that was not the modus operandi of the community fathers. I would wonder later if there was an organic connection between the water quality and this line of thinking.

So my husband and I did the only sensible thing we could. We cut and run. It's a decision we have never regretted. As a matter of fact, it's one of the best decisions we have made together in over a quarter century as a couple.

We followed my predecessor on the board and beat it out of Dodge, realizing as we turned out the lights it had been a mistake to settle there in the first place. All the red flags had been out, waving in our faces. We had only seen what we wanted to see. True, we had all our resources and thirteen years of our lives invested there.

I probably could have withdrawn from public life and the two of us could have continued on as we were, but it wasn't worth risking the health of our children. Enough was enough. Greener pastures existed elsewhere. Chalk it up to lessons learned, dust ourselves off, and choose a new location with more care and wisdom than we had chosen the old.

Yes, there is a big difference between hanging in there and just hanging. Especially when it's your children swinging from the noose.