RCRS Email Update 7/14/2003

Personal Opinion 

If we hold ourselves to a democratic standard and yet subsidize regimes opposite
to that, our house is divided, our thought is divided, our will is divided, we are
as individuals divided.

A house divided cannot stand. 

This is a legitimate basis for individual conscientious objection to a national policy based on
such unjustness. 

We say we are a nation of liberty and justice for all, but if another nation in which these same
ideals are not paramount or who in fact debase these ideals controls any of our actions, we are
debased also, we are not free, and the phrase "justice for all" is a lie.  This is what the Saudi Arabian
Sheiks are doing for us, and who are the basis of our hypocrisy.

At the heart of our current crisis is this hypocrisy guiding our actions by supporting a repressive
regime in Saudi Arabia because of our so-called dependency on oil.

We are Americans. We do not bow and scrape before despots. 

We are our own best natural resource.  Our freedom has been and always will be the true source
of our inventiveness.  Our needs, within the scope our own land comprises, the people's needs
within that land, the mother of our industriousness and our inventiveness.  As the song says,
From Sea to Shining Sea.

Outside oil dependency is a betrayal of this spirit.  We have over the years seen inventions
appear in the U.S. Patent Office that, had they been implemented, would have made the Saudi Oil
fields of no account to us.  And lives have been oppressed or debased by being bought or cruelly
threatened, and even taken, because of the threat their inventions have posed to an industry based
on oil and foreign oil dependency. Haven't you seen your perfectly good concrete streets asphalted
left and right? Asphalt is a by-product of the oil industry.  Have you ever seen trolley cars destroyed
and replaced by buses?  That is thanks to the oil industry.

We are not just talking about outside oil dependency, but internal oil interests and marriage to the
internal combustion engine, as if it were the only motive force of any regard in the scope of the
inventor's creativity to make vehicles move.  Still, I personally think the horse, mule and ox are
perfectly acceptable alternatives. 

The American oil industry and Arabian oil Sheiks are nothing other than pushers and dealers,
respectively,  with terrorist tactics of their own that have held Americans and the entire democratic
world hostage with no regard to principles of national, political or religious idealism. This is perfectly
evident to anyone who knows about the history of the Rockefellers and Standard Oil.

If we truly believe in and love the ideals of freedom and justice for all, it is incumbent upon us to
live these ideals in thought, word and deed or act without contradiction.  We must be internally
consistent, or our world comes crashing down. "A tree is know by its fruit".

We cannot trespass on the national, political or religious ideals of any other country without doing
injury to ourselves and our HAND or POWER to effect positive or meaningful change.

Neither can we have hand or power in influencing other's positive changes, congruent with our
idealism, if we subsidize opponents to such, or aid or abet them if they are un-American in their
internal system of life. 

There are four steps to diplomacy: 

Negotiation or arbitration, bribery, embargo-boycott, and only then: war. 

There has never been any serious effort by the United States to negotiate or arbitrate with Middle
Eastern interests.  It is the first step of diplomacy, and it has never been utilized.

And even the second step has no definite place in the current record of public availability.

We only know two steps in recent history:  embargo and war.

That is the same as saying a siege and starvation of the so-called "offender" is a form of violence
just a little less than all-out "war".

Then we wage war, which is the same as saying "obliteration" of what went before.

Those who protest by violence neglecting the ancient protocols of diplomacy are misguided and
are defeating their own purpose.

Amongst us Americans, we have long lived by THE RULE OF LAW; as opposed to the rule of a
monarch or arbitrary power wielders, whether they be oligarchies, cabals, cadres, Juntas, or Cartels.

All Law in modern [American and British] society is based on the Ten Commandments and The
Golden Rule. 

We need not speculate on this point: Black's Law dictionary says that Equity Law is based on the
simple axiom: Do unto others as you would prefer they do unto you.

All protests and objectives are effectively silenced by violence when performed outside the rule of
law, including Diplomacy.

Perhaps the oldest chronicle of War is the Mahabharata, the ancient Hindu Saga from which comes
the popular chapter called Bhagavad Gita, the modern primmer of how to conduct War. 

The Bharatan Tradition antedates even Summerian texts.  In Mahabharata, so greatly admired by
Patton, we find the delineations of Diplomacy Law as the basis of international relations, and the
only proper foundation for when to wage WAR.

There are some angry with The United States of America with cause; but those who vent that anger
through violence, through terrorist acts are mistaken and wrong when they do so outside the definitions
of Diplomacy.  Their violence itself shows internal contradiction because they attack the pushers but
not the dealers. Usama Bin Laden didn't look at the Sheiks as targets because he called them
"brothers", because they too were followers of Mohammed, despite the fact that Saudi Arabia has
invited inhabitation by military forces from the United States. 

But such inhabitation in Saudi Arabia by any portion of the USA, whether by commercial interests,
or the military, is against our Constitution and principle of our Government.

For any small, highly impoverished nation, they may feel diplomacy has no great effect, is impotent
to effect change.  For this reason, as a great nation, WE must side with small countries if a union of
spirits is desired.  Obviously we cannot join in a union of spirits with a despot, with tyrants, or even
with monarchies that have no democratic voice.

Rather than invoke principles of threat to accomplish ends of "self defense", how about looking at the
legitimate objections of the People of foreign lands?

No nation can negotiate with mere "factions" inside another democracy. 

Such factions may object to American presence in their "Holy Land".  This is a point of negotiation
according to the principles of diplomacy.  Did the USA do this? No.  There was never any intimation
of an inclination to consider that military presence in Arabia near Holy sites, was an abrogation of
consideration of the rights of the culture of Islam.  A Nation cannot really negotiate with a culture.
If a faction within a tyrannical or despotic nation has objections, that faction has no real voice. This
is wrong. This should be recognized by the USA, and no business should be done in that nation, nor,
certainly, should there be any US military presence in such a place.  And yet, we have such a
presence in just such a nation.  This is wrong and against the Law of our Land. Period.

In going to war with Iraq, we are wrong.  We cannot compel anyone to accept principles of a republic
of democracy.  This is a usurpation of the rights of a people foreign to ourselves.

WE CANNOT COMPEL THE WORLD TO BE DEMOCRATIC without sacrificing our own principles.

Anyone who does this, who is in a position of elective power has abrogated the rights of the electors.

It is illegal, and all justifications proffered are merely extensions of a lie. Period.

My opinion. RSC.