Finished building some shelving from scratch. While feeling fulfilled and accomplishment for doing it, it was nonetheless a labor-intensive task. And that’s how, while washing the sweat and dirt away in the shower, the (true) story of Jesus revealed itself to me…
As the story goes, Jesus was a carpenter. “Was” being the operative word. One day while in the shop, no doubt working on something for a father’s day gift, he was pouring all his sweat and time into a project. Stopping to take a drink of water, he whined, “Christ, walking on water would be easier than this!” And that’s when the telephone game began. Another carpenter in the shop, hearing Jesus, passed it onto his friend, who told another friend, so forth and so forth. Until the narrative became that Jesus, who was a carpenter, became Christ, who turned water into wine and walked on water.
Blasphemous? Probably. True story? I’ll let you decide.
Fine. Pakistan's outrage over the U.S.'s bin Laden raid was staged. An agreement no doubt meant to allow them to save face as a sovereign nation. That, however, does not explain away either their incompetence or complicity in the global manhunt for Osama bin Laden. Undoubtedly, there was a little, i.e. a lot, of both.
In related news, why does Pakistan keep exposing C.I.A. station chiefs? Allies are supposed to have each other's backs, not stabbing each other in it. Something to think about. After all, we are still prosecuting a War on Terrorism; it would be reprehensible if they turned out to be an enemy harboring terror suspects.
I am seriously beginning to believe that we indeed live in Bizarro world. Despite his reprehensible humanitarian record and abuses against the Catholic Church in his country, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who oddly is a Catholic, attends Pope John Paul II's beatification in Rome. Pope John Paul II must have turned over in his catacomb when the guest list was published. Meantime, N.A.T.O. has come under fire over allegations of targeting Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi during humanitarian/no-fly zone/non-intervention support operations in that country. Then there is the continual international coddling of menacing regimes like North Korea and Iran. When did the bad guys become the good guys?
There is a grain of solace: Osama bin Laden is dead, and at the hands of the U.S. military. Chalk one up for the good guys, whose credit is due for staying the course and tracking him down.
Even with bin Laden dead, must we remain as vigilant globally as the past decade? Probably evermore so. Critics of the Bush Administration argued that by invading Iraq we were distracting from the real mission, that capturing or killing bin Laden was the end game. Yet, it was the resolve of President Bush in pursuing terrorists and those, like Saddam Hussein, who would harbor them that ushered the inevitable day of reckoning for bin Laden under President Obama’s faithful continuation of that resolution. For ten years we have taken the fight to them; and while the head of the snake is gone, the body is still present. We can, and should celebrate, but with vigilant caution – killing one villain has not, and will not, stop the others existent in the world.
Where do we go from here? In the board game Risk, the only true way to win is by sweeping across the board and annihilating your opponents; fall short in Asia, and the person who has stockpiled a gazillion pieces in Australia will sweep back across and annihilate you. The real world is no different. We either sweep the globe of enemies to freedom and peace now, or we get swept by them later. Because while victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan, complacency has no children.
Now that President Obama has released his birth certificate in long form, can we now move beyond the controversy over his place of birth? Not a chance. Like any conspiracy, even when faithfully debunked, it will persist forever in the annals of U.S. history. Is he a foreign-born, and thereby an illegally-elected, president? Do his sympathies lay with a foreign nation? Is he a foreign agent positioned as part of a foreign plot to overthrow the United States? And so forth.
This recent controversy/conspiracy goes beyond the current president though. The concern, while legitimate, should not be whether President Obama was foreign born or at one point held foreign citizenship. There is the broader issue of presidential candidates’ birth certificates not being released publicly in the first place when running for the office. After all, American citizens – whose birth certificates must be presented in certain instances for even the mundane – essentially are electing the foremost citizen of the nation in the president. Should it not be a requirement that their “natural-born” citizenship, and that of every federal officeholder, is publicly verified before holding such a key position of power and authority?
