Yesterday with horror I watched the Oklahoma City area hit with another terrorist attack...but this time the terrorist was Mother Nature.  TV coverage on MSNBC and CNN switched to local TV station  coverage and I watched the tornado develop, destroy, and pictures immediately transmitted by TV helicopters after the hit. I saw the disaster play out just as those in Oklahoma saw it.

 I grew up in Oklahoma's tornado alley and I understand the terror of it all.
After the Joplin tornado, I wrote a column with my memories of what it was like to live under the threat of the storms as a child, well before Doppler Radar, techniques to survive, and a warning system to take cover. I have reproduced that column here:

Reports of Woodward, OK being hit by a tornado shortly after midnight today, with at least 5 killed,  reminded me of a post on this blog in June 2011 shortly after the Joplin tornado.  Woodward figured prominently in that post, as well. Early reports indicate the tornado warning system failed this time;  in the past, there were no warning systems and the earlier tornado killed over 100. Excerpts from that 2011 post : "I was born and raised in tornado alley so spring was a time of terror for me. The pictures of Joplin, Mo., brought back some familiar pains in the pit of my stomach and memories.

My home town, Muskogee, Okla., is 125 miles south west of Joplin, and Joplin was on the way to grandmother's house in southwestern Missouri. My 1940s childhood memory of Joplin was a pit stop to fill up the gas tank.

When tornado season came I huddled in my bed on the second floor of our wood frame house, waiting for death to come. It never did, but I resolved never to live near tornado land again.

The Wizard of Oz story never had much credibility with me. I never thought I would wake up from a fantastic dream because I knew I would be sucked up and die in a funnel cloud.

Looking back on those times, I probably was realistic. There were no tornado sirens, no Doppler radar, and no storm shelters. The closest cellar was in a neighbor's home nearly a block away. All we were educated to do was to go to the southwest corner of the building. We knew no more than that. We were just sitting ducks waiting to be plucked up. The myth had always been that Muskogee was immune because it sat down in the Arkansas valley. One April day in 1945 the myth was blown away by a tornado that devastated the east side of the town. Two children were killed and my father, a telephone company executive, took me on a tour of the destruction, which only reinforced my terror of spring.

Two years later the Woodward tornado in the southwestern corner of the state killed more than 100 people. I remember the radio reports, newspaper's screaming headlines, and my parents talking about it. It was since that terrible episode that records began to be kept of death and destruction caused by tornadoes in the U.S. Joplin 2011 was the worst."

Benghazi hearings: making hash from the rehash

Remember the presidential campaigns last fall when Republicans   thought the issue that would sink  Obama  was the Benghazi  screw up  and an alleged cover up  on the scale of Watergate?  The US Ambassador to Libya and 3 other Americans were killed while visiting a dangerous  part of Libya. As an  issue,  It did not enter into the electorate’s psyche in 2012. The same fate is likely to meet  this current rehash    in 2016.

If we learned anything in 2012  foreign policy mess ups that are water under the bridge  rarely  become a  determining issue in a campaign    .The economy, debt, ,  tax policy class warfare, and  immigration issues drowned out the Benghazi tragedy as factors  determining the outcome and no doubt some of these issues and issues yet unknown will dominate 2016, too, if Hillary Clinton or anyone else is  standard bearers of the Democratic party..

 As much as some in the GOP hope it would be, Benghazi is no Watergate,  a cover up  which did impact future elections and  brought down Pres. Nixon.   Watergate covered up  a crime sparked by political dirty tricks, …a break in at the Democratic  headquarters.   At  worst,  the Benghazi talking points could indeed have been spun to some political purpose to protect the President’s posterior at the end of a re-election campaign . At best,  they  walked back  Pres. Obama earlier  attribution  of  terrorist involvement in the Benghazi attack before the actual identification of the perpetrators were known.   

 Those talking points , delivered  days after the event by UN Ambassador Susan Rice, positioned   the at  cause as part of wide spread demonstrations across the Muslim world   instead of an attack by militants. That is not the first time a high US diplomatic official  repeated  points spun by others . Secretary of State   Colin Powell  was  fed  bogus  “proof” of Iraq’s WMD which he repeated  at the UN. While it  did  gather international  support for conducting the longest war in US history,  it did not result in George W Bush’s election loss or in talk of  impeachment proceedings. The Benghazi  spin had  no comparable impact on shaping  US policy.

The  GOP controlled House of Representative committee  has almost exclusively focused on finding proof that  Benghazi was  a covered up  by  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.   This stinks to high heaven  as  a witch hunt concocted  to wound  Clinton enough  to keep her from being a winning candidate  for president  in 2016 .  If the House committee really cared about  preventing such  future tragedies, they should instead  be  examining whether all diplomats in instable areas need more security or an rescue squad  should be kept on call nearby  when diplomats  venture from their green zone,  whether the risk assessment was faulty,  or whether there was adequate funding for our diplomats’ security.

The  House hearing  so far has disclosed substantially   little more than we had learned running up to the 2012 election  or a subsequent investigative report .  As Ambassador Thomas Pickering,  who chaired the independent investigative report,  commented on Candy Crowley’s CNN show Sunday , he found that Clinton did not make decisions on the actual events and that the military commanders responsible confirmed that  logistics made  rescue  impossible. Pickering further commented that he saw nothing new coming from the committee hearings regarding conduct of the actual Benghazi event.

New information that  did emerge  so far concerns  post attack  actions.   A committee of government agencies, including representatives of the CIA,  White House and State Department,  revised  Rice’s  talking points twelve times .    The State Department reassigned the second in command of the Libyan embassy  for blowing the whistle without a minder  present contrary to personnel policy .    That action  did not contribute to proving  cover up since the cat was already out of the bag.

For more, visit  www.Mufticforumespanol.blogspot.com

(This is a version of my column that will appear in the Sky Hi Daily News this week)

Syria...the Balkan experience points a way

Below is a reposting of a column I wrote regarding Syria and what could be best endgame of a US intervention in their civil war.   It is as pertinent now, over a month later, but the mechanism for some political settlement has been set up.  It appears that Russia, who agreed to the political mechanism for negotiation, has continued to supply Syria with heavy weight armaments and the momentum in the war has swung to  the Assad side.   Pres. Obama, bitten by not so good outcomes in Libya and Iraq, has procrastinated in his decision until now, and hopefully it will not be too late.  He received a push from former Pres. Bill Clinton, urging humanitarian intervention, n which might give him some domestic cover to protect him from the ire of the liberal wing of the Democratic party.

The irony of Clinton's statement is that Clinton's reluctance to take action in the Bosnia conflict resulted in 100,000 killed and 2 million refugees and the coining of the phrase of "ethnic cleansing" while he dawdled.  It took enormous bi-partisan effort to get him off his dime and finally working with NATO, a no fly zone was created that equalized the power of those fighting the Serbian attempt to carve out greater Serbia from Bosnia.  The result is that ultimately there was a political settlement in the Dayton Accord that resulted in the end of fighting and killing.  There was also a mechanism set up to bring to justice the perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing campaign in the war crimes trials in the Hague, which is still on going. 
 
A version of the following post  appeared  in the Sky Hi Daily News during the week of May 8, 2013.:

 Syria’s civil war  is emerging as a  US foreign policy crisis  and there is a gnawing feeling   of “been there, done that in Iraq and Afghanistan”.  While it was probably a  mistake, last year Pres. Obama drew a red line that would trigger greater US involvement if  Syrian Pres. Assad’s used  chemical weapons. There is some evidence Assad did.  

Empty threats risk future threats not being taken seriously and the president has been under pressure to make good on his threat. At least Obama is right in being cautious now. All of his options carry risks. Ethnic  civil wars like the one in Syria are the tar sands of  outsider intervention; easy to get into and  difficult  to get out of , and risk  spreading conflicts beyond borders.

The New York Times reported Israel  wiped out Syria’s main chemical weapons facility and long range missile storehouses last week.   While the strikes served Israel’s purpose to take out Syria’s arming  Hezbollah in Lebanon, it  may  also have made the chemical weapons redline  issue  moot.     No  one is claiming Israel’s strikes were a proxy for making good on a US threat, but  it served that purpose, too.

Military aid to the rebels and no fly zones should still be on the table because they  promote an end that serves our national interests. . Israel’s airstrikes demonstrated the weakness of Syria’s air defense and the feasibility of enforcing no fly zones. Boots on the ground have wisely  been ruled out by about everyone in the US. We learned some hard lessons  in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The situation on the ground has changed since last year,  with Al Qaeda- like  organizations  hijacking many of the rebel groups and with few  moderate  forces left to arm.     Our weapons could fall  into the wrong hands, making the situation more dangerous. We can only hope our intelligence assessments are accurate.

 Giving military aid  and enforcing no fly zones could   be the catalyst to get  Russia to force Assad to step down, since  military aid to the rebels could tip the stalemated conflict against Assad. The final outcome is still mostly in Russia’s hands. Assad is their client.   Russia’s reluctance to force Assad out is understandable. The fall of Assad could put Al Qaeda like rebels in charge,  closer to their borders.

Russia may be gambling that our  reluctance to get involved  will not change. Beware.  We found ourselves eventually caught up in the Balkan Wars in the 1990’s as the former Yugoslavia broke up.   Media coverage of  ethnic cleansing , fleeing refugees, and the shelling of Dubrovnik  and Sarajevo  turned  US public opinion around  to support  intervention.  Western countries also   feared Bosnia could become a stronghold for Al Qaeda Europe.  

During  the Balkan conflict NATO put only peacekeeper boots on the ground, but they enforced   no fly zones and  bombed Serbia  during the Kosovo  conflict.  Military aid flowed freely to all parties, with Russia supplying Serbia and the West backing Croatia.  

The conflict  in the Balkans  was ultimately  resolved by diplomats and the agreements   contain models that could benefit both Russia and the West in Syria.   Croatia and Serbia were carved from   the former Yugoslavia.  These new nations  were left with even fewer ethnic minorities  though these were already   areas with  historical cohesiveness.   Croatia joins the European Union this July  and last month Serbia agreed to enter in negotiations to resolve Kosovo’s status.

 Bosnia, still balanced  demographically  between Muslims, Croatian Catholics, and Serbs,  is a less successful result of the settlement. Ethnic factions are hunkered down in cohesive geographic sectors,  barely working together cooperatively on a national level.   At least the shooting, ethnic cleansing  and threat to Europe was  stopped. 

 Syria  also has  some  religious cohesive regions . A Balkanized solution just might  work for Russia and the US.   

For Felicia Muftic’s  Balkan background, visit www.mufticforum.com
Column translated into Croatian is also posted at www.mufticforum.com

Footnote:  The New York Times today reports that Secretary of State John Kerry will be in Russia today meeting with their President and high ranking officials to discuss a negotiated settlement.  It appears that either the threat of US military aid to the rebels or a switch in the view of what Russia believes to be in their self interest has  changed.  Whether the Israeli strike figured into the equation is not known, but it did demonstrate the fear that the Syrian civil war would spread which would not be in the interest of either Russia or the US.

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Why mass shootings and home grown terrorism and what more we can do.

Why the Boston Marathon bombing? Why Newtown? Why Aurora? Why Virginia Tech? Why Tucson? Why Columbine or Oklahoma City? Even if we understand why there may be a few solutions that fall within our ethics, practices, and laws as western democracies, but it is worth our effort to keep pursuing avenues while respecting the limits we place on ourselves. That is the dilemma and search for the right balance we now face.

The alternative is to become so paralyzed by unacceptable solutions that we become tacitly willing to accept these acts of terror and mass murder as the price we pay to freely pursue our happiness. It appears we are inadvertently reacting like the character in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-five , accepting every horror of violence and tragedy with the mantra “… so it goes.” We slap down any proposed solutions that fall short of a cure-all, or we claim any solution is not worth the price in dollars and restriction of our democratic rights.

Pinning blame to answer the question “why” is the easy part. Immediately after Boston we looked for those to blame... the FBI, the CIA, Russian intelligence for not giving us more information. We know motivation of other perpetrators: anti government paranoia, festering anger at childhood difficulties, parental mal practice, social alienation, inability to assimilate, mental health disease, a twisted Muslim or Christian preacher, perverting religious beliefs to rationalize the killing of innocents and doctors, and reaction to drone attacks and US invasions and occupations. There is no one cure any more than there is one event or one cause that motivates terrorists and mass killers.

There is one common thread that describes the bombers and the shooters. They are young males. However, so long as we subscribe to our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, we cannot put all angry young males in shackles. We cannot assume that every young man, Muslim, anarchist, or Neo Nazi, is a threat and preemptively deny them rights without any proof they have concrete plans to act out their aspirations.

Modern media brings unprecedented attention to the horrific deeds and political and religious causes. Media coverage serves as the gasoline fueling the perpetrators’ bonfires. We cannot ban media coverage. But we can continue to insist that victims stories’, bravery of the responders, and a Boston Strong’s resolve not to succumb to fear get equal time. It is the best way to send a message that acts of violence are futile and counterproductive tools to advance causes or to gain glory.

We cannot ban every weapon young men can access or ingredients for bombs cooked up in their mom’s kitchen . . But we can reduce the number of the incidents. We can make existing barriers of access to weapons administratively more effective while still honoring the second amendment. Failing in the Senate was an amendment to provide greater access to mental health services and early identification and intervention of potentially violent children and individuals. That proposal should be revived.

We need to resist the temptation to exploit the immigration debate by advocating banning all Muslims from entry to the US. By perpetuating hatred and fear, we only incite more home grown terrorists already here. We pride ourselves as being a melting pot nation and it is in our national security interest to resurrect those values. Case in point: the good relations Canadian police had with the Muslim community resulted in tipping police, who thwarted a train bombing last week.

Some solutions are indeed limited by Constitutional constraints or by how some narrowly construe those constraints. Expect acts of violence in the future. . and ‘so it goes’. Nonetheless, other solutions are still worthy to pursue to limit the carnage and the number of incidents.

The above is my column in the Sky Hi Daily News today

FOOTNOTE:  The proposal by Colorado's Governor John Hickenlooper to beef up mental health centers and set up a hot line, one approach that would help identify and help with early identification and treatment of potential mass killers, is still wending its way in the state legislature (HB 1306). With Democrats controlling both houses, the chances are it will pass.   However, even this approach has unified opposition from  the GOP, with their voting against it at every opportunity. Their reasoning is  that such legislation that would restrict guns to those with a mental health issue could discourage those people from seeking counseling, per the newspaper, The Colorado Statesman, April 26, 2013. 
That is a lame argument if there ever was one since the bill would give greater chances for family members and friends to get potential mass killers into treatment.  The alternative: "so it goes"...more Auroras and more Columbines than would otherwise would happen if the legislation passes.