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An American Officer came to the home of an Iraqi family. American soldiers had killed the family's young son by mistake. The boy was taking his mattress to the roof to sweat out the hot Baghdad night when a nervous American on patrol mistook him for a sniper. "How much compensation would you accept?" the officer asked. "Ten dead Americans," the father replied. Maybe that anecdote will give you some idea of what we've stepped into. It might not be a quagmire. I understand that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld doesn't like that word. OK, then let's call it a...

Quagmire Or Expensive Mud An American officer came to the home of an Iraqi family. American soldiers had killed the family's young son by mistake. The boy was taking his mattress to the roof to sweat out the hot Baghdad night when a nervous American on patrol mistook him for a sniper. "How much compensation would you accept?" the officer asked. "Ten dead Americans," the father replied. Maybe that anecdote will give you some idea of what we've stepped into. It might not be a quagmire. I understand that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld doesn't like that word. OK, then...

Present Is Where The Danger Is If you've escaped the past alive, then nothing in the past can kill you. But if you waste your time trying to live in the past, you'll find that there is plenty in the present that can do bad things to you if you don't pay attention. All of our danger and all of our opportunity exist in the present. It's often said, usually by professional historians, that we can learn from the past. I'm not sure that's true. Circumstances of the past are as foreign to us as the landscape of Mars. We...

Good Things In August There are two good things to look forward to in the dog days of August. The Little League World Series will be running through Aug. 24, and a lot of it will be broadcast on ESPN or ESPN2. The other good thing is a Kevin Costner Western. I haven't seen the movie, "Open Range," yet, but I have faith in Costner. I have really liked all of the movies he's had control over — "Dances With Wolves," "Waterworld" and "The Postman." I especially liked "The Postman." And he's directing, as well as starring in, his new...

Sanctified Sodomy The confirmation by the Episcopal Church of a practicing homosexual as bishop of New Hampshire is just one more example of the deconstruction of Christianity by people determined to have the benefits of both sin and salvation. The scriptural condemnation of homosexual behavior is explicit and unavoidable. The fact that the Rev. Gene Robinson paraded around the convention with his partner on his arm says about everything you would want to know about liberal Episcopalians. The problem causing the demise of Christianity is wider than these liberal Episcopalians. The basic cause is what I call cafeteria Christians. They...

King Features Syndicate, Inc.Charley Reese 08/11/2003 Bizarre Politics I can't recall ever having written a commentary on California politics. That's because, from afar, politics in California seem to be as complex, byzantine and sometimes downright weird as those in the Middle East. And I've had more experience in the Middle East than in California. Nevertheless, I can say this: Arnold Schwarzenegger is perfectly qualified to be a governor. Whether he will be elected or not is another question, and I don't have a clue. I can't think of anything more uncertain to bet on than the outcome of a California...

Idle Thoughts On The Road To Understanding Here are a few random thoughts that might help you to figure out the world in which we are currently living: The U.S. dollar is backed up by nothing and is convertible to nothing. It is a medium of exchange, and compared with the Euro, the currency of the European Union, it has lost 30 percent of its value since 2001. This is bad news for those of us whose investments, savings and life insurance are denominated in dollars. These dollars are exchangeable for less and less in goods and services. If the...

Open-Air Nuthouse I've said before that our poor country sometimes resembles an open-air insane asylum. Alas, here are two more pieces of evidence to support that assertion: 1. New York City has decided to fund a high school strictly for homosexuals. 2. The Pentagon planned to set up a "futures market" in which investors could speculate on such things as terrorist acts, assassinations and the overthrow of governments. As Jack Paar used to say, "I kid you not." Fortunately, enough people in Congress were outraged by this latest wacky idea from the Pentagon that the fearless bureaucrats have backed off....

Strange Reactions All of the "experts" who rushed to say that killing Saddam Hussein's two sons would discourage American attackers were immediately refuted when two more ambushes killed two more Americans the day after the raid. I support the troops, but I'm continually appalled by the unrealistic assessments and reactions of the top brass and politicos in Washington. They seem cut adrift from reality. If three men and a boy can fight off 200 American soldiers backed by helicopters and TOW missiles for six hours, I wouldn't brag about it being a successful operation. According to Central Command, the three...

Strange Reactions All of the "experts" who rushed to say that killing Saddam Hussein's two sons would discourage American attackers were immediately refuted when two more ambushes killed two more Americans the day after the raid. I support the troops, but I'm continually appalled by the unrealistic assessments and reactions of the top brass and politicos in Washington. They seem cut adrift from reality. If three men and a boy can fight off 200 American soldiers backed by helicopters and TOW missiles for six hours, I wouldn't brag about it being a successful operation. According to Central Command, the three...

Bush Could Make A Deadly Blunder Regardless of how bad a regime North Korea has, its demands of the United States are reasonable. They are four: one-on-one talks, a nonaggression treaty, economic aid and normal diplomatic relations. The Bush administration's obstinate refusal to consider these could prove to be one of the deadliest blunders in the history of stupid diplomacy. First, talks are always cheaper than wars. Why shouldn't the United States and North Korea hold one-on-one talks? There is no reason not to. We held one-on-one talks with the Soviet Union and with Communist China during the Cold War....

Regardless of how bad a regime North Korea has, its demands of the United States are reasonable. They are four: one-on-one talks, a nonaggression treaty, economic aid and normal diplomatic relations. The Bush administration's obstinate refusal to consider these could prove to be one of the deadliest blunders in the history of stupid diplomacy.

LanguagePoliticians and the media are perpetually corrupting the language. I was reminded of that yet again when the New York City mayor, understandably excited, described the shooting of a city councilman as an "attack on democracy." No it wasn't. The councilman, God rest his soul, was killed by some guy who apparently had a grudge against him. It was private murder that just happened to occur in a public place. It was not an attack against the institution or even the City Council itself, much less against democracy.So many people play loose with the language that it is being...

Eden's Long Gone Some folks used to believe the Bible's Garden of Eden was located near the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in the heart of what today we call Iraq. If it was ever there, it has been long gone. Right now, the temperature in Iraq is in triple digits. If the wind blows at all, it blows hot like a blast furnace. Electricity and air conditioners go on and off. The water goes on and off. The flies are out. The sewage stinks. American youth who thought the "road home" led through Baghdad have discovered that Baghdad is going...

The large amount of attention many newspapers and television anchors gave to a recent Supreme Court decision knocking down an old law against sodomy frankly startled me. What's the big deal? It was an old law that many states had already repealed and that no state was making any effort to enforce as long as homosexuals stayed in their bedrooms. In all my years on the cop beat, I never saw or heard of any law-enforcement agency arresting homosexuals, except when they took their sex to public parks and public restrooms. Cops and prosecutors have many more important things to...

Road Map To Nowhere The president's "road map to peace," which is blowing up in his face even as I write this, was riddled with defects to begin with. It does not recognize the basic facts of the conflict. It ignores the rule of law. It turns normal human behavior upside down. The basic facts of the conflict are that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip is illegal. Israel was ordered to withdraw from those territories by the United Nations Security Council in 1967, when Israeli forces in the Six-Day War captured them....

Charley ReeseKing Features Syndicate, Inc.06/16/2003 Tragic Conflict One of the saddest things about conflict is that the deaths of most of the people on both sides have no effect at all on the outcome. Most of the people killed in a conflict are in no position to resolve it one way or the other. They are like extras in a movie. Their deaths change nothing. It can be said, naturally, that collectively the lives lost in a war have an effect on the outcome. Without the thousands who died storming the beaches at Normandy in World War II, the Germans...

King Features Syndicate, Inc 6/6/2003 Charley Reese What Is Patriotism? What with all the flag-waving, pro-war and anti-war rallies, Memorial Day observances and so forth, it seems to be a good time to consider exactly what patriotism is and what it isn't. The best definition I've run across is "love of the land and its people." Most of us who live in an urban environment might not have the same feelings about land that our more agrarian ancestors felt, but we still become attached to places. Familiarity in this case breeds affection. Who doesn't feel affection for the areas where...

Big Wind Over No Big Deal The press seems to be going nuts over the idea of a lady golfer competing in a men's golf tournament. It's just the kind of silly man-bites-dog story that many journalists love almost as much as celebrity murder trials. I say it's no big deal. I'm assuming that the reason there is a Ladies Professional Golf Association is because your average lady golfer lacks the upper-body strength to play competitively against men. If, however, a lady comes along who has sufficient upper-body strength to play competitively with the boys, then why shouldn't she? Annika...

No Big Difference There is a lot of talk about Democrats not offering any leadership, and that's true. What alternatives they do propose are simply variations of what the Republicans have proposed. That's because both parties agree on the same basic premise: There must be a strong, central government with an imperialist foreign policy. The true alternative to both parties is to return to the constitutional republic the Founding Fathers created. That would mean getting the federal government entirely out of such areas as welfare, education and medical care. It would mean disbanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and abrogating...