As I said above, eight marines were charged for the Hathida Killings. These killings occurred after a marine was killed by a bomb in Hathida, apparently causing those marines to massacre two dozen civilians there in response to the death of their friend. In their defense thier attorney’s said:

their clients were doing what they had been trained to do: responding to a perceived threat with legitimate force.

Now, I know that this looks like a horrible thing, that these marines killed all of those innocent civilians, but first of all, we don’t even know if the marines did indeed kill them or not, and there is also another big issue that we are forgetting here. It is nearly impossible to separate the friend from the enemy in Iraq. Because like in Vietnam, there is no set enemy, they are not wearing uniforms, carrying guns, and riding around in tanks. The enemy looks just like you and I, dressed in civilian clothes, going about thier business during the day, and killing our soldiers at night. So, in the defense of the soldiers, they were just doing their best to respond to that threat, which is so hard to do in this instancce because they did not know who they should have been responding to.

Here, take a look for yourself at this article. Included are some interesting pictures that go along with this story. It is definately worth looking at!

The situation in Iraq is almost a mirror image to the situation that was present in Vietnam only a few decades before and yet we have not learned from our mistakes.  Unlike during World War Two when we were actually fighting an opponant, the wars in both Vietnam and Iraq are being fought against ideas.

and I could not agree with her more! I still do not understand why the president has not taken the time to learn from his mistakes. I mean think about it. Thousands of soldiers died in the war in Vietnam. And now, the war in Iraq is dragging on longer than any of us are comfortable with. The war in vietnam lasted for almost a decade, a decade longer than it should have lasted. If the Government and the United States doesn’t do soemthing about this current situation in Iraq soon, we could end up with a momentous amount of casualties and horrible consequences.

Both administrations seem to favor the wealthier classes. In fact, they don’t seem like they do, these administrations DO support the wealthier classes, making the wealth gap grow bigger and bigger each day. According to the Boston Globe:

About 1.7 million more people fell below the poverty line last year, bringing the total number of poor in the country to 34.6 million. The poverty rate edged higher than 12 percent for the first time in five years, rising to 12.1 percent from 11.7 percent. It was the first time in a decade that the number of poor people has increased for two straight years. More broadly, median household income dropped 1.1 percent between 2001 and 2002, to $42,409.

That is crazy! I thought that the whole point of trickledown economics was to benefit all of the classes, but obviously it is not working if 1.7 million people have just fallen below the poverty line!

Another similarity between the two administrations, is thier policies on defense. Both Reagan and Bush are very supportive of the war effort, and offering funding to help the armed forces. Bush is spending so much on the war in Iraq that it is almost impossible to immagine!

Since he is following in Reagan’s footsteps, Bush thinks that the economy has become much better as a direct effect of his tax cuts, but as a result of the tax cuts and the big government spending on the war money is being drained from the federal budget, therefore less revenue is coming in making teriffic deficits. The deficit has skyrocketed during the Bush administration, therefore making the economy worse on the grand scale. One example is that the housing market is slowing, which effects other things. Just yesterday I heard something on the radio that really intrigued me. Fed Ex expects great revenue losses due to this decline in the housing market, because less people will be shipping things to their new houses. It is amazing to think that all of these effects upon the economy are effected by George Bush’s tax cut program, which he infact modeled after Reagan’s economic policy.

Using Reagan’s policies as a model, Bush has added on to them. A modern example of this is Bush’s policy on the Inheritance Tax, which he is trying very hard to phase out. Some people call this tax, the “death tax” because they are forced to pay taxes on the ususally enormous sums of money that they inherit.  I can understand why Bush would think that people should not have to pay taxes for the money that they inherit, but I mean come on, again he is helping the wealthies classes in the United States, and leaving the other classes behind in their wake. Think about this for a second. Who ususally inherits money? THE WEALTHY CLASS! Many, not all, but much of the wealthy classes come from “old money” or money that is inherited from their ancestors. Now, I am not saying that Bush’s reasoning is wrong. But he should really stop for a second and think about what his new policies could mean. Becasue if he really wants to follow in the footsteps of his economic idol, reagan, the wealth gap should get ready to be rocked and rattled, and stretched beyond belief.

This report was especially interesting to me because not only does it deal with the situation in Iraq, but it also sheds some light on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict going on in Israel right now, which directly effects the situation in Iraq. According to the New York Times, in a summary of the Baker Report,

The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability. There must be a renewed and sustained commitment by the United States to a comprehensive Arab Israeli peace on all fronts

I agree fully with this suggestion. I mean, this conflict has been going on for much longer than the Iraq war, this has lasted for years, even decades. Solving this conflict would be the key to fixing the situation in Iraq because if this conflict could be fixed, perhaps some of the anti-jewish and anti-american feelings that various extreme religious followers have could be wiped away, causing them to turn over a new leaf, making the situation in Iraq much more easy and pleasant to deal with.

Now, there are internal problems to be fixed within Iraq in addition to the problems I talked about above. One problem that the study group touched upon was that in a way we are “babying” the iraquis too much. We should sit back and let them set up their country for themselves. There is no need for us to stay in there, metaphorically holding their hands, while they establish a new government. The Iraquis should take control of themselves and realize that they are their own responsibilities, not ours. If the Iraquis really got involved, created more army batalions, they would have their own protection, and the United States could effectively pull out their troops from the middle east.

The baker report offeres good suggestions for what to do with the situation in iraq, which is obviously not getting any better at this point. George Bush should take some initiative to listen to what the Iraq Study Group has to say within the Baker Report, becuase it could really help improve the situation we have going on right now in Iraq.

• That Political Blog
• National Review Online
• Soldier’s Point of View - My personal favorite

Happy Blogging!

 This act is absurdly hypocritical in many different ways. For one thing, the act gives monetary support to those schools with students who score highly on those standardized tests. But where does that leave those other schools with students with lower schools? they are left behind in the dust! Why are we wasting our time with this act, which is supposed to be benefitting us, when it is actually harming those students in need of educational and financial aid? Also, No Child Gets Left behind, is taking valuable school time away from teachers and students, because it requires schools to teach seminars to ameliorate standardized test scores. For instance, here at the high school, there are C.A.P.T. seminars offered for students that have failed the C.A.P.T. testing the first time around. These seminars take time away from actual classroom learning time, therefore imposing upon our grades in school.

 People all around the United States do not support this act becuse the way Bush runs it is not efficient

A small but growing number of school systems around the country are beginning to resist the demands of President Bush’s signature education law, saying its efforts to raise student achievement are too costly and too cumbersome.” New York Times, 1/2/04

 If we really want to help our children, the act should be abolished! because right now, it is not helping anyone, it is hurting our children.

Actually, today, do you know what the first thing that popped onto my web page was? An article comparing the war in Iraq to Vietnam, entitled “The Next Step? Think Vietnam.” In the article, the author states

Iraq is not Vietnam. But America’s predicament in Iraq is becoming increasingly similar to the one it faced in Southeast Asia more than 30 years ago. Henry Kissinger’s negotiations to end the Vietnam War have been criticized from both the left and right. One side thought he moved too slowly to get us out, the other that he gave up too much. But looking at our circumstances in Iraq should give us some appreciation for the difficulty of his task. With a losing hand and deteriorating conditions on the ground, Kissinger maneuvered to extricate the United States from a situation in which it could not achieve its objectives, while at the same time limiting the damage, shoring up regional allies and maintaining some measure of American credibility. A version of such a strategy is the only one that has any chance of success in Iraq today. - Newsweek

I find it very interesting that this would be the first thing I saw as I was signing on to the internet to do this assignment. To me, this really demonstrates that not only is this issue on the minds of Mr. O and the kids in this class, but it is really a deepseated issue that affects the hearts and minds of many Americans and others people from all over the world.

My own opinion regarding this issue is somewhat divided. I can not actually chose whether I think that Iraq is the new Vietnam or not. Because while I can see some similiarities, there are also a number of differences which separate each of the wars from each other and make them unique and different. Some similarites I see are the fact that we are in a foreign country fighting against people who are not a distinct army. Unlike World War II the soldiers in Vietnam and Iraq are not infact typical soldiers, but militiamen wearing normal clothes and pretending to be civilians, sometimes even using their own children to help them in the fighting process. This military practice makes it almost impossible to pick out the enemy from the friends. Another parllel that I see is the reasons why we are in the wars to begin with. When the United States got involved in Vietnam, we were there in order to stop the spread of communism, because our leaders believed strongly in the “domino effect” and if one country fell to communism, soon enough all of the bordering countries would as well. Now, we are fighting in the war on terror, against terrorism and its spread. It is almost as though we still believe strongly in the “domino effect” and if we do not prevent the spread of terrorism now, it will dominate the world.

I believe that Bush should slow down and allow himself to think for a minute and truly soak up the lesson of what occured in vietnam and how he can prevent history from repeating its self, becuase obviously he hasn’t done that yet. In a recent arabic news article from www.watchingamerica.com Bush was quoted as saying,

History has a long march to it… we tend to want there to be instant success in the world and the task in Iraq is going to take a while. Therefore we’ll succeed… unless we quit. - Saad Mehio

He should really take the time to learn his lesson from the presidents that came before him, because it doesn’t really seem like the situation in Iraq is getting any better at the moment, so staying there until we succeed could take a while.

This is a HORRIBLE idea, which would make the wealth gap even larger. I know that Bush caters to the wealthy, but as president and a part of the US government, he should be trying his hardest to promote the general welfare of all the people, not just one particular group. The redlining laws are great because they exploit equality of opertunity

Before the law, many banks engaged in discriminatory redlining practices by choosing not to make mortgage and business loans to people in poor and predominantly minority neighborhoods. After the law, banks were held accountable to a higher and tougher standard, forcing them to actively pursue lending, investment and other activities in poor areas. David W. Chen, New York Times

In order to fix the existing wealth gap, we should be strengthening these laws, not weakening them. As the article states, by strengthening the laws, it helped give funding to neighborhoods specifically where minorities lived. So taking away these laws would mean that we would regress back to the times when redlining was a prominent practice, increasing the wealth gap, and we CAN’T have that, becasue we want the gap to shrink, not grow, regardless of what Bush may want.

Dalton Conley writes, in his book Being Black: Living in the Red:

If I could cite one statistic that inspired this book, it would be the following: in 1994, the median white family held assets worth more than seven times those of the median nonwhite family.

That statistic is shocking. One of the key parts that makes up the United States is the basis of equality, and equality of oppertunity. Where is this equality if there is such a striking difference in the amount of money that whites have, compared to minorities? Well… lets see.

First of all, history has a lot to do with it. Some white families who have been here since the first settlers arrived from England, still have money left over from their ancestors who arrived here. Assuming that those early settlers’ families stayed in America, it can be presumed that many of them went on to be wealthy slave owning families, and if not, they had the time while they were living in America, to accumulate money. If we compare these white Anglo-Saxon families to black families, or families of other minorities, the case is not the same. Up until and during the 19th century most of the blacks living in the United States had come over from Africa and various other places in order to become slaves. Then, when slavery was outlawed at the finish of the Civil war in 1865, and were free to go, they had to start to earn money, becasue at that time they had nothing, since they hadn’t been paid to do their labor. Then, other minorities, tended to immigrate to the United States later on, and when they came over they were given the lowest paying jobs, so it took them longer to generate money. So, this history has a lot to do with the current wealth gap because white families tended to have a longer time to generate money than their black or minority counterparts.

yet another reason which accouts for the prevelent wealth gap, is the rascism and segregation which was the norm up until the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. Up until that time, whites had been paid more and got better jobs than blacks and other minorities, which explains part of the reason why there is such a large gap. There was also the problem of steering, which was when realtors wouldn’t show blacks or minorities the nicer houses in the better neighborhoods by “steering” them away (though today i’m pretty sure that steering is illegal.) Therefore, white families would usually live in nicer neighborhoods, with better schools and low crime rates, as opposed to the minorities who would live where there was a high crime rate, bad schools, and bad areas of town.

Since the minorities often lived in the worse parts of town, the banks would ofted be predjudiced against them. Often “redlining” would occur. Red lining is when the banks would specify a “bad” part of town (sometimes by marking its boarder with a redmarker ) and refuse to give out loans to any person living with in that part of town. Today, however, this practice is completely illegal, but some banks tend to do it anyway.

Steering and redlining put blacks and other minorities in a bad position. First of all, it meant that those who had been affected by those practices would not live in good safe neighborhoods, and secondly, it was setting them up for poverty because they did not have the bank on their side, and backing them up. To me, these practices are sickening, there is no reason why people of different races should be able to live in the same communities, or belong to the same bank. It seems as though there is such a wide wealth gap because we made it this way. By steering and redlining, minorities were not given equality of oppertunity, instead they were cheated into taking only what racists believed that they deserved.

The students do, however, have one debt that they must pay off, which is that in return for their free education, they must serve four years in the armed services following their graduation from school. According to the United States Military Acadamy:

You must serve at least five years of active duty and three years in a Reserve Component, a total of eight years, after you graduate. The active duty obligation is the nation’s return on a West Point graduate’s fully-funded, four-year college education that is valued in excess of $225,000

Two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars thats a lot of money! I never realized just how much money college tuitions cost. The US, however, doesn’t give this money out to just anyone, applicants to these schools go through a rigorous examination to make sure that they are right for the school. Some of the physical and educationial requirements to be accepted to USMA include but are not limited to:

• Participate in vigorous competitive team sports.
• Participate in individual sports that require sustained physical effort.
• Perform distance running regularly; two miles are recommended.
• Perform strenuous conditioning exercises - push-ups, pull-ups, and sit-ups.
• The best way to prepare is by starting off slowly and building on your physical accomplishments. Start with a two-mile run, alternating between running, walking, and gradually increase the amount of running. If you start early, you will be prepared to deal with the physical aspects of the West Point challenge.
• Four years of English, with a strong emphasis on composition, grammar, literature, and speech.
• Four years of math: algebra, plane geometry, intermediate algebra, and trigonometry.
• Two years of a foreign language.
• Two years of a laboratory science such as chemistry, biology or physics.
• One year of U.S. history, courses in geography, government, and economics will be helpful as well. If your school includes a course in precalculus and calculus in its curriculum, along with a basic computing course, we suggest you consider taking those courses because they will be helpful during your first year at West Point. - Usma.edu

These requirements put a lot of pressure upon the applicants to do their best to get into these schools, it must be hard, but imagine getting a free ride through college (well almost a free ride) when you otherwise would be paying upwards of two hundred thousand dollars in tuition fees. I would enlist and apply, what would you do?