Tuesday, January 14, 2020

What's in a sign?

We were out enjoying the warm Sunday afternoon, just taking a back road to get to our grocery store.
I didn't see the sign at first, but Howard did.
Wonder what that means, he muttered.
 We both read it again:

It still wasn't clear. Was the signmaker saying the president had done something wrong?
But then, somehow that wrong something turned out to be right?
We agree that any president might be wise to seek the guidance of a higher power, given the stresses and the gravity of the job.
Even if that president so often acts in opposition to the express commands of the higher power.
Even if that president openly defies the tenets of the religion he claims to espouse.
But let's give this president the benefit of wishing a blessing on him.
So the second line is understandable, I suppose.
But the first?
What has this president done recently that is widely seen as wrong?
That is surely a subject for debate, since half of the country sees his actions one way, while the other half views them differently.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say this sign creator believes kicking a hornet's nest in Iran by killing its top military leader wasn't a
     wise move. Wrong, even.
How, then, could it have been the right thing to do?
Look at the Middle East after the killing.
Where there was, certainly not peace, but an uncertain quiet three years ago.
Then the US blew up the Iran nuclear deal.
Then the US pulled out of Syria, leaving our allies the Kurds to fend for themselves against sure massacre.
Then the US attacked military sites in Iraq and Syria to illustrate our displeasure with the killing of an American contractor.
Then Iraq brought our embassy under seige, threatening the lives of our ambassador and embassy staff.
Then this president, activating an action he apparently authorized seven months ago, ordered the drone strike that killed Iranian General
       Quassem Soleimani and Iraqi commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
Then Iran launched a dozen or so missiles in the direction of an Iraqi airbase where US forces are housed.

For a country with fairly precise strike capability to aim missiles so far off any human targets seemed a fairly nominal retaliatory measure. But anyway, now we have anxious populations in Iran and the US, tensions having been racheted as high as possible short of all-out war.

So how does that wrong equal a right?
Only the sign maker can answer that, but it made us stop, read the sign and wonder.
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