Where is the Line?

This is an honest question. In the last 24 hours we have heard the President outline his plan to send more troops to Iraq. We have also heard many people call for various forms of resistance to that plan. John Edwards has called on Congress to refuse to fund the plan. Tom Vilsack has called on the Iowa legislature and city and state governments everywhere to pass resolutions opposed to escalating the war. I have also seen statements by Dennis Kucinich, Steve Kubby and Robert Milnes starkly opposing this move. All of these men are expected to be candidates for President in 2008, and I'm sure there are other potential candidates whose statements have not come to my attention.

Contrary to what some people may think if they have read my post, Divine Strake, and the comments that follow, my natural inclination is to support my leaders. I remember being uneasy when we started in Iraq, but I was not really opposed to the war until 2006.

This is what had lead me to this question. All those candidates have a much easier time than the President because they can make statements, but he has to make decisions. We will see the results of his decisions, unlike the results of their statements. I agree with their statements that increasing troop levels will not improve the situation in Iraq.

So while I disagree with out commander-in-chief I want to support him as much as possible. If there was a way to oppose him such that we could prevent him from executing this decision I think it would be better for our nation, on the other hand, if we openly oppose him but the decision is executed we risk making our global enemies more bold as they see that we do not all support our leaders.

What is the line between supporting and disagreeing with our leaders? There is a time for discussion and a time for solidarity. Which time is this? (and when does it switch to the other time?)

Comments on Do Not Call

I got some good comments from Jason and Denise after my post on the National Do Not Call Registry. I got permission to post some of the comment.

What happens if we follow the personal responsibility road a little further?

In the above example, personal responsibility has to be taken in order to get on the do-not-call registry. However, the program is still a government bureaucracy funded at taxpayer expense (unless of course fines for non-compliance fund the program).

To look further even than these avenues - if a large majority of individuals would refuse to do business with companies that engage in telemarketing (and spam, for that matter), their work would become less profitable, and they would find less intrusive ways to advertise. They only call and e-mail now because it's working. If they stop making money at it, they'll stop doing it.

I'm not exactly complaining about the do-not-call list - I'm on it myself. I like what it does. However, I do recognize that so much of what we, as Americans complain about (such as unwanted phone solicitation), need not be brought before our local or federal government. We are big kids and can handle these things on our own.

Much, if not most, of what government does these days can be handled by private citizens taking personal responsibility, by private organizations working to improve society, and by private entrepreneurial businesses seeking to make a buck by providing a wanted service for pay.

That sounds like the kind of small government that we really need. Let people take responsibility for themselves and their actions and not make everything an avenue for government involvement.

Title Game Follow-up

I thought I would follow up to my Title Game post.

Basically, the talk of a Ohio State/Michigan rematch for the title game is an embarrassment for the Big Ten Conference. Both of them lost their BCS bowl games. I think that rust was an issue in both games. Michigan got outclassed by USC but they would have made that a close game if they had not been off for over 6 weeks. After 7 weeks off, Ohio State had no business on the field with a well-rested Florida team. This really does not reflect the quality of football team that Ohio State had this year. The moral of the story is, any team that has any hope of playing for the national title should make sure to have a game scheduled after Thanksgiving. This is no problem for the champions of the SEC, ACC, or Big 12 with their Championship games, but the Big Ten, Pac 10, and Big East teams have to think about this issue as they schedule games.

This should also serve as a warning against any title game that only represents one conference.

My personal favorite story line for this title game is the Urban Meyer coaching career. he turned Bowling Green around in two years then moved to Utah in a better conference. Two years at Utah saw him crashing the BCS party and moving on to Florida in a better conference. Two years at Florida and he was in the National Championship game - which the Gators won by 27. This puts him among an elite group of coaches who have won a National Championship within two years of taking over a program - a group that includes Jim Tressel at Ohio State in 2002.

My final take on the season is this - Florida will be #1, USC might get a vote as #1 from someone - they are likely to be the pre-season #1 next season, and I think someone ought to throw a #1 vote to Boise since they are the only undefeated team left even though they did not have a schedule that would make them #1 - they had only one non-conference game with a non-BCS opponent, and that was Utah(8-5) - even Florida played a Div 1-AA team.

UPDATE: Thanks to Greg Archuleta of the Albuquerque Journal I got my wish. Boise State got a vote as #1. It's too bad the Coaches Poll had them as #6 because they are definitely a top 5 team.

Do Not Call Registry

After receiving yet another phone call from Dish Network, I have begun thinking about the National Do Not Call Registry. I have been on the registry for a year, and the calls definitely seemed to go down after I got on there, except for the calls from Dish Network - at least eight in the last year.

I even confirmed with the registry that my number was listed there. Then I filed a complaint against Dish Network. My wife asked about all the calls we get from companies where we have accounts, like the phone company. They are allowed to call us unless we specifically ask them not to. If we even make an inquiry with a company they can call us for three months after the inquiry.

I called the phone company and they agreed to take me off their call list. I still need to call the one credit card that pesters us with phone calls (the other credit card companies don't call us) but at least I know I can.

All of this led me to think about what it takes to make this registry work. Obviously it requires that people get themselves on the list. Their website even warns that if someone calls with an offer to get you on the registry for a fee it's a scam. Registry is free and is the responsibility of anyone who wants their number listed. The second thing that is required to make this work is that people need to report violations. This is easy to do at the donotcall.gov site. Just make sure that you have the name of the company, or the phone number they called from. Also, you must list the date they called. If the call is not within 31 days of your registration with the registry, and it is not from:

• a charity
• a political organization
• a poll (where they don't offer to sell anything)
• or a company where you are doing business

then it is a violation which will be investigated.

I guess it's like every other aspect of a representative government - how well it works depends entirely upon the participation of the citizens.

UPDATE 1/11/2007: I just got another call from Dish Network. I filed another complaint.

Divine Strake

I don't know how many people are aware of the Divine Strake event which is a test of the effectiveness of weapons against an underground tunnel complex. The event is supposed to be taking place in Nevada this year after being authorized by Congress in 2002. Back then it was a response to the unsuccessful efforts to go after Osama bin Laden in Bora Bora. Now I'm not sure why we are still pouring money into such a project.

Since 2002 we should have learned that our weapons are not our weak point in the kind of warfare we are likely to be engaging in now or in the future. If there is a military need, it is probably along the lines of increasing intelligence gathering operations and improving protective measures for our military personnel in the face of unpredictable enemies and unconventional tactics.

We should also know that we are not facing enemies who are going to be deterred no matter how effective our weapons are. Just as our soldiers would consider it to be an honor to die in the cause of preserving freedom, our enemies fight for ideologies in which death is an honor and not something to be avoided.

I think it's time for the government leave their cold-war thinking behind, and even their 2002 (early-in-the-war-on-terror) thinking behind and stop throwing money after projects such as this which do not, in fact, make us safer, or improve our military. If you feel the same way, write to your representative. You may also want to write to your senators. To make it easy, I have gathered the contact information for the senators in Utah (downwind from the test site) and Nevada (where the test site is located) since they would have the most vested interest in this.

Orrin Hatch(UT)

Harry Reid(NV)

Bob Bennett(UT)

John Ensign(NV)

Annual Family News

It's that time of year. Many people have probably already had at least one newsletter arrive in their mailbox from friends or family. Laura and I have talked about doing a newsletter many times over the years and every year we are moving/graduating/having a baby (pick one) and so it doesn't happen. This year we are again planning to start that tradition. For one thing, it would be a new kind of writing challenge for me in addition to all the other writing that I do (this blog is not half my writing every day).

Enter my brother's wife. Their son just had his first birthday - the day before Isaac passed the one month mark - and she used that as an excuse to give a family update in her blog - twice. She posted a nice little visual update and then she posted a written year in review.

While many of the newsletters I have seen over the years include pictures, I liked one thing she did differently. Her pictures spanned the year rather than just being recent photos. Unlike other newsletters, her written review was a snapshot of their family at the end of the year, not a summary of the year.

Title Game

Some people who think they know me well would be surprised that I am an avid sports fan. I love sports for their athleticism, and I love good sportsmanship. I appreciate a wide variety of sports and I follow a number of sports, each for different reasons. I follow baseball because of the complexity of the sport - a 162 game season makes it all the more interesting. I follow golf because I know how difficult it is to make the shots that the professionals hit all the time - I'm just happy on any hole which I shoot in par. I follow college football partly because, with 119 Division 1-A teams, there's a lot to look at.

For those who follow college football, the story of tonight is that Ohio State beat Michigan to finish their season unbeaten. Being unbeaten is not the amazing thing - it is possible the Boise State and Rutgers will also finish unbeaten. The amazing thing is that this is the second time this year that Ohio State has beaten the number 2 team in the country. Michigan was ranked second to Ohio State going into the game, and Texas was ranked second to Ohio State when Ohio State went in and trounced them back in September. Now Ohio State will have to face the second ranked team in the nation for the title game on January 8th. I doubt that any team has ever beaten the second ranked team three times in a season, but right now there is no reason to think that Ohio State will not beat whoever they end up playing.

That brings me to my point in posting. Michigan may be that team. Mike Lopresti, a sports columnist for USA Today, says that a rematch would diminish the value of tonights game and that it would be unfair to Ohio State. I have to agree. I don't think any team could rightly be asked to defeat Michigan twice this year - except maybe the Indianapolis Colts (unbeaten in the NFL so far). On the other hand, it may be that no other team has a better claim to the number 2 spot than Michigan - their only defeat was on the road at Ohio State by 3 points.

I have concluded that if the title game does end up being a rematch and Michigan wins then we should have co-national champions - unless Michigan wins by more than 10 points. Whoever wins the title game will be voted #1 by the USA Today/Coaches poll (they are contractually obligated to vote that team #1) but if Ohio State loses a close game to Michigan the Associated Press poll should vote Ohio State #1 to create a split title since they will have split their games.

Just my 2 cents.

UPDATE 11/19: After considering my proposal, I have decided that it would not be fair to send Michigan to the title game. Under the conditions I have proposed they would have no chance for an undisputed title. If all they can get is a split-title or no title, the game is not a fare shake for them. I call that another reason to avoid a rematch. Michigan is too good to deserve such a poor fate. Send them to the Rose Bowl and let the voters choose whether to give them a share of the title if they win and Ohio State loses.

Reasons to Avoid War

Most people would think that reasons to avoid war would be obvious to anyone, but I think this reason is very damning to our current war efforts. The New York Times had an article about various murder cases related to the war in Iraq.

Later in the article it discusses a case where an Iraqi civilian was killed by American military personnel. This doesn't sound strange considering it is a war, but this is what caught my eye:

As part of the plea agreement, Private Jodka testified that he participated in a plan formed by the squad leader, Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins, to kidnap and kill a known insurgent. In the dark, the squad kidnapped and killed the wrong man.

This is a perfect example of military personnel doing something wrong which they justify as being right in the name of war. I am not talking about the mistake of getting the wrong man in the dark. I am talking about the plot to abduct and kill a terrorist. If it had been a legitimate operation they would have been planning to capture and interrogate the terrorist. In that case, getting the wrong man would have meant that they could free him.

Why this is a good reason not to go to war is that anytime we go to war we set the stage for these kinds of "operations" orchestrated by men like Sgt. Hutchins (who appears to deserve the bulk of the blame here).

First Day

Well, today was much like most first days - filled with more administrative concerns than most days will be. I enjoyed working with my co-workers - those who were there. It was a hectic day as we had some technical hitches at the office this morning in addition to the natural chaos that comes with a new person starting at a company as small as this one.

I started walking home tonight so that Laura would not have to come all the way to Main Street, where the traffic is the worst, to pick me up. Just that short walk towards home in the crisp, chill November air was enough to assure me that I am going to enjoy being this close to home. Cutting out 7 to 10 hours of commuting each week (which I would have if I were working much farther from home) might give me that time so that I can settle down the way I would like to.

All in all, I am very optimistic about working outside my house for the first time.

Partisan Playground

Three days after the elections I get an email calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. It sounded a lot like playground politics. "You impeached our president so now that we are in control of congress we will impeach yours." I thought it was typical of staunch partisans that they would exaggerate their position from the outset. The email started with:

"On Election Day, the American people voted overwhelmingly for change." (emphasis mine)

I wonder about the threshold they use for "overwhelming." The fact is that if every race that remains undecided were to fall to the Democrats there would be 42 seats that changed hands in the House and the Senate combined. That is only 8% of the 535 seats in Congress. Only 6% of the Senate changed and 10% of the House. That sounds like a vote for change, but not an overwhelming vote for change. In fact, 25% of the seats that changed were still in doubt after 24 hours. (All the numbers I am using assume that every seat still in doubt goes blue.) To make this vote less overwhelming, the talk now is how the incoming Democrat representative are pragmatic and populist more than liberal. We really don't know what to expect from this new Democrat controlled congress. See Update

I visited the forum where the email originated and found more level-headed thought being expressed. Things along the lines of, "President Bush deserves to be impeached, but it won't accomplish anything positive in the country, so don't bother."

Nancy Pelosi, likely the next Speaker of the House, has indicated that she will not pursue impeachment. Level-headed people from across the political spectrum will agree with her that impeachment is not a good course of action for the country at this time. The partisan impeachment proceedings against President Clinton should serve as proof of why we should not go down that road right now. At least when the Republican congress impeached Clinton they could be forgiven for having no memory of the last time we had an impeachment. This Democratic congress has no such excuse.

I looked around the forum site and they had a poll for people to vote on what they would like to see happen in the first 100 days of the new congress. They categorized the various suggestions. I discovered an interesting trend as I read the options. I found that I agreed or disagreed with them on a category by category basis.

• Constitution & Courts
• I disagree heartily with almost every option
  
• I especially disagree with the constitutional amendments they propose
  
• Economy, Business, Labor
• I agree with some of the options
  
• I am undecided on some of the options
• I disagree with a couple of the options
• Elections
• I agree with almost all the options
• I disagree with one option and think a couple of options are redundant
  
• Energy & Environment
• I am undecided on the majority of the options
  
• Foreign & Military Policy
• Many of the options sound like vague ideals rather than solid plans
• I agree with their positions on torture
  
• Government & Congress
• I agree with most of the options
  
• Investigations
• Lots of redundancy related to the Iraq war
• Many of the options sound like they are living in the past
  
• Media
• Sounds like a bunch of ways to expand government
  
• Social Policy
• Sounds exactly like the Democratic party line
  

This got me wondering what kind of people were running the forum. The answer came in a different poll they had. This one asked who they would vote for in 2008 for president. The answer was overwhelmingly Al Gore. He got more than 1/3 of the votes with 13 candidates in the poll. Hilary Clinton (supposedly the front runner) was not even in second place on this poll, she got less than 1/8 of the votes. So these are Gore Democrats. This is nothing against Al Gore, he merely represents one faction of the Democratic party. The question is, what do the Pelosi Democrats think, or what do the Dean Democrats (the official party leadership) think? Lest anyone see this as bias, Republican factions include the McCain Republicans, Frist Republicans, and Mehlman Republicans.

UPDATE 11/14: I just found confirmation of what I had said about how overwhelming this vote for change was.

The scale of this loss was on par with the post-war average for such elections: close to 30 House seats versus the average of 32, and likely six Senate seats compared to the average of eight.

In elections during which the president’s popularity was low because of war, scandal or recession, however, the average is 47 House seats and eight Senate seats.

This "overwhelming vote for change" was about average, if not a little below average for the current situation.

Getting Answers to Old Questions

I just remembered something I wrote back in September. Tuesday made it possible to answer some questions I asked clear back then. I had said that "between the presidency and the two houses of congress each of the major parties should be in control of at least one of the bodies - thus forcing the various governmental bodies to compromise in order to make things happen." We now have Republicans in control of the White House and Democrats in control of the House and the Senate.

I had asked, "would this administration be better if their party did not control both houses of congress?" An early analysis of that question came in the New York Times today. From the article:

“You’re seeing the George Bush who has always been adept at playing the hand he is dealt,” said Charlie Black, a Republican strategist with close ties to the White House.

Vin Weber, a Republican former congressman and lobbyist, put it this way: “I’ve never thought that George Bush was a rigid ideologue; I’ve never thought that he was a hardened partisan. He is a businessman first, and in business you don’t spend a lot of time crying about changed circumstances. You figure out quickly how to adapt, and that’s what he’s doing.”

Certainly this does not answer whether this "M.B.A. president" can make things work with a Democratic congress, but we'll find out.

I also said that "those in the House have some incentive to do something because they will face re-election in another two years." The New York Times article adds another incentive for Democrats to work with Bush:

“Their whole theme has been the do-nothing Congress,” Mr. Black, the Republican strategist, said. “Now, if they get in there and make themselves vulnerable to that charge, it hurts them in ’08. He knows that they have an incentive to get things done, and he’s going to take advantage of that.”

If anything is to happen, the president must move toward the center. I still hope, as I said in September, that this will force the Republican Party to come back toward the center. Having lost the House and the Senate, I hope they will have the motivation to do so. They can hardly pretend that this was just some small setback.

Non-Sequiter

I stumbled on to another example of blind loyalty by our senior senator. In character for the man who said that the alternative to attacking Iraq was, "we could have attacked North Korea, Iran, or Syria instead," Senator Hatch said that, "you'd have to tarnish every young American who served over there," for Donald Rumsfeld's legacy to be marred by mistakes in Iraq. This suggests that there is no difference of position between the soldiers on the ground and the men that give them their orders.

Just as it is possible for commanders to give good orders which are poorly executed by the men on the ground, so in this case we have had a series of mistakes from those at the top which have generally been well executed by the soldiers on the ground. Thus there is distinctly a difference between the soldiers on the ground and those that give them orders.

If Senator Hatch meant to suggest that making mistakes in Iraq does not prove that Donald Rumsfeld is evil, then I have to agree with him. What he does not acknowledge is that even a good leader may be tarnished by mistakes without becoming a bad leader. For example, the legacy of Robert E. Lee was tarnished by the actions at Gettysburg. Pickett's charge was well executed by George Pickett and his men, but it was a colossal mistake by General Lee. None of this makes General Lee a poor general. Similarly, the mistakes made in Iraq will surely tarnish the legacy of Donald Rumsfeld without reflecting poorly on the soldiers who served there (not including Abu Ghraib participants). While this tarnish is in fresh view, it should be remembered that the perspective of history will determine whether Donald Rumsfeld was good or not. Either way, we can safely say that Secretary Rumsfeld is no General Lee.

Ideal Politics

Now that election day is over - here are some things I would like to see (ideally) in politics:

1. Two candidates running against each other who canvas together, advertise together, and publicly seek to achieve 100% voting in the area covered by the office they are seeking.
• I could just imagine two candidates who have different views coming before the voters and saying "Vote for me, or vote for him, just vote."
• I could imagine mailings and flyers where one side presented the views of one candidate and the other side presented the views of the other candidate. The bottom would read "Paid for by the committee to elect the next representative of State House District #21"
  
2. No negative campaigning - that would be necessary for #1 to work

If those things were to happen I think we could have real political dialog happening, and we could hardly fail to get good people elected - I can imagine that only good people would engage in such a campaign.

I know this is extremely idealistic. I would be very surprised to ever see such a thing.

Now for some results of yesterdays elections.

Nationally, NPR has a story on how the base of the GOP failed on election day. I think they got the story backwards. It would be more accurate to say that the GOP failed the voters before election day. Thus the results at the polls.

I also saw that Donald Rumsfeld is resigning as Secretary of Defense. This is good news, but a few years later than it should have been.

Voters chose not to retain Judge Leslie Lewis. This means that voters were getting the information being presented about her. To put this result in context - 54% of voters voted not to retain her. All other judges were retained, receiving between 88.32% and 76.55% support for retention. In other words Judge Lewis received 30 percentage points less support from voters than any other judge in this election. Now the question is - does it require the kind of negative publicity that Judge Lewis received to make voters drop a sitting judge? While I believe that the majority of judges do a good job, I still believe that voters suffer from a dearth of information on their judges so it is difficult to make meaningful choices with our ballots where judges are concerned.

The opinion question that I felt was under-publicized passed with over 66% support. I don't think that indicates a good campaign for the issue since every ballot issue on my local ballot passed with similarly high margins. Some of them probably should not have passed - at least not that easily.

Reactions to Voting

First, an issue I have long thought about. I think that the option to cast a straight party ballot should be removed. Voters should be voting for candidates, not parties. I have no objections to a voter going down the ballot and voting only for the candidates from a single party, but they should be required to go down the ballot, not just cast a straight party ticket.

On to my reactions.

I have never used the electronic voting machines before and I was pleasantly surprised by one feature - I got to read the printout of my ballot before it was officially cast. I thought that was great. Assuming that the very paper I read (but could not touch since it was behind a window in the voting machine) is the same paper that would be read in the event of a manual recount, or an audit of the votes (which I believe/hope is mandatory) then I am confident that there is no way, short of collusion, to manipulate actual votes cast.

This means that the machines cannot be responsible for any problems related to the results of an election where they are used. Admittedly this only applies to this model of voting machine. I can't speak for any other model. This also says nothing about efforts which discourage voters from casting votes or efforts which seek to disenfranchise specific portions of the electorate. Those are separate problems.

As for the ballot itself - I was disappointed with the number of offices in which there was no Democratic candidate. It is a sad statement when one of the major parties fails to even field a candidate. The worst section of the ballot was where I got to "vote" for county officials. Almost without exception, at the county level there was a Republican candidate running unopposed. I don't mean no to say there was no Democratic challenger, I mean no challenger at all. If it were not for the fact that we could put challengers on the ballot it would be like voting for Saddam Hussein when he was in power in Iraq - no challenger means that he won between 95% and 100% of the vote - it's not an election.

Choose Your Words Carefully

As I was driving around today between the hospital and various other places I noticed a number of news articles about the verdict in the Saddam Hussein trial. Their titles got me thinking about the power of words.

One paper titled their article "Dictator gets Death." Another talked about the "deposed Iraqi leader." A story on NPR referred to the "former Iraqi leader." Other news outlets talked about "Saddam Hussein," "Saddam," or "Hussein." The thing that I began pondering was how those different references to the same event and the same person can elicit different reactions from the audience.

"Dictator gets Death" was probably chose for it's use of alliteration (it would have been better for that purpose as "Deposed Dictator gets Death") but it has the potential to make the reader think less of the defendant than a story about the "former leader." The author may have intended to illicit that reaction or may not have intended any special reaction. Using words such as dictator and tyrant, which have subjective definitions and vivid connotations, can sway the audience to a particular side of the debate even when the facts are weak.

I have learned to be aware of the use of manipulative verbiage - even when I agree with the position - in order that I might avoid being swayed by an emotional reaction to the particular words rather than a logical reaction to the facts of a debate. I also try to avoid using terminology which will manipulate an audience when I am discussing an issue. I believe it is counter-productive to be clever with our words unless we are very careful that our cleverness does not interfere with our meaning.

This is not a complaint against any title. It is a reminder to me that there may be a million ways to say what appears to be the same thing but if we dig deeper we can discern that each of those million ways can throw is into a different mindset through which we filter the information we are receiving.

Judging Judges

Last week someone pointed me to www.firejudgelewis.com and asked me what I knew about the court she serves in. I think the name of the site makes their position obvious. I went back to my voters guide to see if it had anything about the judge. It appears that Judge Lewis has the lowest ratings of any judge in the voters guide - based on surveys from attorneys who have argued in her court.

I have long thought that our system of voting to retain judges was flawed based on voters not having sufficient information on the judges in question. I have been thinking about this ever since I wrote about ballot measures. When I opened this story today I found myself sadly unsurprised that the judge in the story was none other than Leslie Lewis.

This has me thinking that I have an opportunity this week to find out if I was right about the system lacking information. It seems that we have lots of information on Judge Lewis and on Tuesday we will discover if that information is getting through to the voting public.

Update 11/8/2006: The results of the elections are in. The results on retaining judges are telling

Good News on Frontrunner

I was excited to read this news. Now if only we could get to the point where they ran the same story with one little tweak. I would like it to read that "Frontrunner Commuter rail line in Utah County is 50% complete." That will take a while.

Voters in the areas covered by the Frontrunner line in the report approved money for Frontrunner 6 years ago. They expect to be up and running in less than 2 more years. In Utah county we have the chance next week to approve money for the southern portion of Frontrunner which will run through our county. If it is developed at the same pace we could have commuter rail by 2014. First things first, the voters in Utah County need to approve the Opinion Question on the ballot next week which would provide money for Frontrunner. That is why I was lamenting that there seemed to be so little publicity about the issue.

Good News From Iraq

The report that the Iraqi Prime Minister called for the removal of American military checkpoints in Baghdad was the best news I have heard from Iraq in a long time. The reason it was good news is because we removed the checkpoints. I'm sure some would argue that the fact that violence escalated in Baghdad afterwards means it was a bad move. I disagree.

One message that needs to be sent loud and clear to the Iraqi government, the insurgents, Iraqi citizens in general, American citizens, and the world is that Iraq is a sovereign nation. That means that the duly elected Iraqi government is in charge of that country If they ask something of the American military in Iraq, we should do as they request. This is a clear case where that happened. Too many people think that we can make Iraq stable. The fact is, we can't. We can help them, but they are the ones who make it stable or not. The citizens of Iraq are the ones who determine is this experiment in democracy works.

Americans need to recognize that no amount of military might will enable us to dictate the way things will work in another country. We can disrupt the existing system, but when it comes to setting up a new system we can only suggest - we cannot force. We have Americans saying that women should have the right to vote, and that the majority cannot trample the rights of the a minority. The fact is that Iraqis can reverse those decisions the minute we leave the country - no matter how long we stay. They are the only ones who can make lasting decisions.

We should also recognize that there is no way to forcibly end the insurgency so long as the perception remains that the government in Baghdad is under American control. If jihadists view the government of Iraq as autonomous from America they will not support the insurgency unless their goal is to fight Iraq. Until then, they will come make trouble in Iraq as a fight against America. Our goal is not to stop the fight against Iraq, only the Iraqis can do that. Our goal is to help the Iraqis and stop the fight against America.

The only way to stop people from fighting against America is to treat people with respect. We need to treat them with respect when we visit their countries and we need to treat them with respect when they visit our country. That responsibility does not rest solely with the government. That responsibility also lies with the military, it lies with each corporation, and it lies with all Americans.

If we respect Iraq and Iraqis we must be there to support and help, not to dictate. If we do not respect Iraq and Iraqis we will never be able to help and we should cut our losses because we cannot change them. We must respect them for who they are or else we have no business there.

Campaigning for Ballot Measures

As we approach elections next week there is a ballot measure which has been severely underexposed in my opinion. In Utah County it is on the ballot as an "Opinion Question". In Salt Lake County it is "Proposition 3". I have no idea how it has been publicized in Salt Lake County, but here we are one week before election day and I have not heard nearly enough about it here in Utah County. I saw a brief article about it at KSL.com yesterday (less than 125 words long) but besides that I have only seen a couple of signs and I got a letter from my mayor on Saturday about the issue.

The subject of the opinion question is funding to expand the commuter rail system in Salt Lake County into Utah County. I am happy to see that everything so far has been in favor of the question. What disappoints me is that so little has been said. I would not be very surprised to learn that the letter from the mayor was the first thing many people had heard about this issue. I even signed up to post a yard sign in favor of the issue, but I have yet to receive a response. We need to find a way to get more information to the voters early enough for people to make informed decisions at the ballot box.

Update 11/8/2006: Here are the results of the elections. The Opinion Question passed but maybe not for the right reasons.

Senator Hatch

I found it interesting while listening to Senator Hatch's interview on RadioWest that he uses the very same arguments as to why Senator Moss should be replaced back in 1976 as I have been using to argue that Senator Hatch should be replaced in 2006. He said that Senator Moss was not representing Utah. I have said that Senator Hatch represents the GOP more than he represents Utah.

When asked about Iraq he quoted the White House line about how this was the reason that we had not had another terrorist attack since 2001. I think the only affect this has had regarding terrorist attacks is that the terrorists have another target to hit. They can attack the green zone in Baghdad and it is an attack against the US. The only thing he said about Iraq that I agree with is that he praised the men and women who have served there. The war was a mistake and we need leaders who can admit that and look for the best way forward. We do not need leaders who doggedly insist that the war was necessary but not perfect. Senator Hatch implies that the only alternative to attacking Iraq would have been to attack North Korea, Iran, or possibly Syria in place of Iraq. Apparently we desperately needed to go to war and Iraq was the target of choice.

I thought that the Senator was off base when he implied that those who criticize the war are just people who are critical of everything. ("I think that the critics are just doing what critics always do.") He fails to recognize that many of those criticizing the war are people who are generally supportive of their leaders, but who refuse to be blinded by the party line. He claims that "the liberal media criticized World War II during Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge." I'd like to see evidence of that, even though he did rattle off the names of a dozen newspapers when asked about it. If I ever do see proof of that statement, I'll compare the criticism from the 1940's with the criticism of this war - I'll bet that the criticism of the current war is much more specific and well founded - not to mention more widespread.

When I wrote about Pete Ashdown I had intended to cover the Orrin Hatch interview from a neutral perspective. After listening to the interview I no longer wish to do so. Senator Hatch seems more and more to represent the GOP rather than Utah. He doesn't even talk about the concerns of our state - he talks about the concerns of conservatives. I recognize that Utah is a conservative state, but when coupled with statements like, "we didn't have to attack Iraq, we could have attacked North Korea, Iran, or Syria instead," I find it impossible to overlook the fact that we have a conservative senator or a Republican senator rather than a Utah senator. I'm voting for Pete. I think he'll represent Utah instead of representing a party.