Every two weeks I write a column for Lagniappe. I usually pick a topic and start composing the column in my head about a week before the deadline. I haven’t written about family matters for a while, so a week ago I thought I might write about Cathy and my plans to sell our house since we now had an “empty nest”… at least that’s what we thought. It has now become the Kurth Hotel, the temporary residence of various children and grandchildren.
Then FBI Director James Comey held a press conference in which he detailed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s crimes and misdemeanors handling government emails — actions for which lesser persons have been prosecuted and, according to Comey, should be prosecuted in the future. But he did not recommend prosecuting Clinton. What? Why Hillary is “special” Comey didn’t say. Is it because she is a former first lady, or maybe because she is the first woman ever nominated by a major party as their presidential candidate (lots of women have run for president on minor party tickets; they just didn’t get many votes). Surely, I thought, this is more important to readers than my house.
I began composing an article in my head about how Lagniappe readers might become “special” and obtain their own “Get out of Jail Free” card, but then some nut-job in Dallas killed 5 police officers and wounded 9 others. A year ago when another nut-job killed five blacks in a South Carolina church, they took down the Confederate flag from the capitol building in Columbia. Demands were made to tear down Confederate monuments across the South because they might inspire racial violence. Is it possible the “Black Lives Matter” movement inspires hatred towards police and maybe they should tone down their rhetoric and change their name? Surely, I thought, the racial divide in American is a more important topic than Hillary’s most recent escape from justice. But whatever I write, somebody is going to get mad at me.
With the national political conventions fast approaching, I briefly considered writing about the presidential campaign … again. But I’m getting tired of writing about which candidate would be worse for our country and I suspect most people are getting tired of reading about it. At this point they just want to bury their heads in the sand and say, “Go away!” The next presidential election should be limited to 60 days; that’s longer than most people take to make important decisions in their lives that they can actually affect, like buying a new house, switching jobs, or replying to a marriage proposal. I feel like I’ve been tied to a chair and forced to watch every movie Julia Roberts was ever in, something I imagine to be worse than waterboarding.
Then came news of the horrific slaughter of nearly 100 people attending the Bastille Day festivities in Nice, France. OK, this trumps the presidential campaign (no pun intended) but should I write about Islamic terrorism one more time? I began writing about the rise of radical Islam back in 1998 when I opposed Bill Clinton’s air war against Serbia in support of the Islamic rebels in Kosovo. I pointed out there were guerilla wars and terrorist attacks taking place all around the fringes of the Islamic world —Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Kashmir in India, Somalia, Nigeria and Madrid, Spain — and criticized Clinton and his Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, for failing to connect the dots and recognizing that something much larger than Kosovo was developing.
That column survived less than 24 hours in my head as reports of a military coup in Turkey started to scroll across the TV screen. “Now that’s significant!” Turkey is a modern country with a secular government that occupies a strategic position straddling Europe and Asia. It is also a member of NATO. Two years ago Recep Erdoğan was elected president of Turkey with just under 52 percent of the vote. He has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and has made it clear he wants to re-write Turkey’s constitution to concentrate more power in the hands of the president (him), so he can pursue his goal of the Islamization of Turkey. The coup failed, but it was reminiscent of the military coup in Egypt that stopped Mohammed Morsi, another affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, from pushing the Islamization of that country.
In the early stages of the coup, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry rushed to Erdoğan’s defense urging all parties to “support the democratically elected government of Turkey.” Is America’s foreign policy to defend all democratically elected governments regardless of the implication for U.S. foreign interests? If you believe that, I would remind you Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party were democratically elected, then quickly moved to suspend the German constitution and consolidate all power into their hands. Being democratically elected should not be the criteria for U.S. support; rather it should be compatibility with our values and our long-term strategic interests.
There, I’ve covered all the news stories this past week. But wait! There’s more! I woke up this morning to learn that three police officers had been killed and three wounded just 100 miles down the highway in Baton Rouge. It’s too early to tell if this is another case of a nut-job with an assault rifle, or if there was some political motive behind the shooting. But I would like to take this opportunity to commend our local law enforcement agencies for the excellent job they have done promoting good community relations. We have come a long way in the pursuit of equality for all our citizens, but we still have a way to go. We can only get there, however, through cooperation and understanding. Angry confrontation is like slapping your girlfriend to make her love you.
OK, now I can sit back and watch the Republican convention in Cleveland. I’m sure that will be uneventful and mundane. Maybe I can get around to writing about my house.
Comments are closed.