idiocy!!!

every day i try to read a couple of different things to musa out loud... today it was an editorial in the Washington Post, written by a member of the sept. 11 commission. i am no scholar, either of Islam or of current events, but i had to at least react:

"One of the most deep-seated of these problems is the U.S. government's tendency to treat this war as a law enforcement issue," John Lehman says. "... As late as June of this year, Mark Mershon of the FBI testified that the bureau will not monitor or surveil any Islamist unless there is a "criminal predicate." Thus the large Islamist support infrastructure that the commission identified here in the United States is free to operate until its members actually commit a crime."

oh my God! they're not letting us imprison people on the basis of their professed beliefs even though they haven't actually done anything wrong!!! wait... we ARE doing that. what is this guy complaining about??

"Even in the United States, some 80 percent of Islamic mosques and schools are closely aligned with the Wahhabist sect and heavily dependent on Saudi funding. Five years after Sept. 11, nothing has been done to materially affect this root source of jihadism."

i am so sick of this recurring idiotic statistic. does anyone remember where it originated? i forget his name, but he's some sheikh-type dude who has repeatedly impugned his own community this way...

he also mentions the "jihadist regime in Iran" - i can understand the temptation to think this way, but does anyone else find it almost oxymoronic, if not just moronic, to coin such a phrase? this guy just seems to love the word "jihadist" and use it with joyous abandon to mean any Muslim he doesn't like.

"Thus Rumsfeld's question -- are we killing, capturing or deterring jihadists faster than they are being produced? -- must be answered with an emphatic no.

i think the "question" needs to be rephrased: "are we killing, capturing or deterring jihadists faster than we are creating them?" they aren't just popping out of the woodwork automatically, you know...

more "dumb book" reading, but first...

well, i guess this sort of touches on dumb book reading too... i meant to blog yesterday about an npr program i heard tuesday about guantanamo bay (click on Guantanamo library report)... specifically, about the library of books available to detainees there. the first three titles they mentioned in the program? lord of the rings, chronicles of narnia... and some danielle steele. (i'm sorry... can you picture some young bearded brother wasting away in this facility spending his free time reading danielle steele in pushto??)
now, i'd be the last one to knock LOTR or narnia - though i will note that i did an entire master's dissertation on how those are christian works - but come on!! and then the program also noted that one of the most popular sets of books are the harry potter books. i wonder how true that is... though again, i won't knock'em... but i imagine most of these guys would prefer to read some religious books, and i imagine their captors feel it is their duty to withhold just such books. the program mentioned that they do have works from some leading major scholars, but don't mention any by name... i can imagine how carefully vetted and censored they might be. (i imagine, i imagine, i imagine, because i can't know for sure, because it's all under a blackout...)
but what really pissed me off was the librarian, who, when questioned about the lack of law books, said, well, they don't need law books, because we have a right to be detaining them here... the nerve!!! such a library is the perfect opportunity to further cage the minds of people who have already endured over four years of being caged in body... well, the one thing they can't take away is the qur'an, whatever they might do to it.

anyway... my next book off the dumb shelves was a tami hoag thriller, and - i'll admit - the last book was a dean koontz thriller, and tami hoag is a muuuch better writer than dean koontz. anyway, the book is about a child abduction. MAN, this stuff hits home so much harder when you have a child. it felt as real as reading a newspaper article... more so because it actually entered into the minds of the parents whose child had been taken from them. part of me didn't even want to read it... but think about how many hundreds of thousands of kids go missing each year, how many parents actually do endure this nightmare. this link to the national center for missing and exploited children gives some statistics, information and links to more... the vast majority of the cases are runaways and family abductions (which tells us something about the state of the family) but there are still plenty left that fall in the category of "nonfamily" abductions - "only" about 100 of which include kids found murdered - may Allah protect all of us from every suffering this torment. tami hoag describes it as a dismemberment of the soul... i can only imagine, i don't want to imagine. i want my musa with me always, my precious, precious baby - i couldn't endure even a second of not knowing where he was, if he was scared, if he was being hurt. i am SO THANKFUL for the security of our lives each day. (God, "security" is such a loaded word these days...argh!)
anyway, just had to get that out... I LOVE MY MUSA!!!!
my musa is awake now and getting a little whiny. must figure out how to do laundry and keep him amused at the same time...

spending the whole day indoors...

...sucks!!!
all i've done today is read a stupid book, which i plucked off my "dumb books" shelves downstairs so that i would have something to read while nursing, because generally i like to read something nice and brainless while nursing. but it's a sort of page-turner mystery so i kept reading it.
well, i've also managed to give musa a bath, feed him regularly, take a shower myself, clean up the clutter in the bedroom and partially clean the kitchen and throw away some junk mail... but such weighty accomplishments still do not manage to stave off the depression that waxes while the sun wanes... it's so DEPRESSING to still be home when the sky is darkening and not have accomplished anything!!
well, i also applied for a part-time job... ooh, aah. okay musa is yelling at me, must go report for duty. much of the time i've spent with him today i've also been nearly moved to tears at how much i love him...
oh yes, and my brother turned 30 today! i guess we're really grown-ups now...

solitude?

watched a documentary a few days ago, grizzly man, that stirred some unexpected memories. timothy treadwell spent 13 years living on and off in the wild with grizzly bears... i was surprised by the first few minutes of his footage on the film; he seemed so earnest but immature, not like your usual wildlife documentary presenters... he was a sort of typical troubled young man who drank too much, and of all the things that could have saved him, it was his encounters with grizzly bears, of which he came to see himself as the lone protector, the "kind warrior". his love for the bears and the world they lived in was childlike in its profoundness (profundity?) - over and over in his footage he said, i love these animals, i love these animals, i love these animals, i live for them, i would die for them. he was overflowing with gratefulness - to God? - for having the opportunity to do all that he was doing, to be of service to the bears.
but, as director warner herzog says, he crossed a line in somehow believing he was actually of them... and in the end, though once he said, "lord, i don't want to be hurt by a bear," he was killed by a bear, brutally torn to pieces by what he loved more than anything else. herzog makes his documentary into a story about a man who was so disillusioned with the darkness he encountered in humanity that he tried to make his own humanity disappear into the wilds... but in doing so he crossed a line he shouldn't have, and paid the ultimate price.
his desire to sort of be devoured (no pun intended, but irony sort of intended) by the wilderness he lived in reminded me of a similar but much milder sentiment i held waaaaay back in high school. i was very sheltered, very young, very attracted to things like the sierra club and explorers club and outdoors stuff without really understanding them (or maybe i did in a certain way). i wrote this in my journal at the time (please remember i was only 14 at the time and very artsy-fartsy and into medieval and fantasy stuff, etc etc):

9:45 p.m. friday sept. 25 1992 (excerpt):... too far i have drifted away, too long i have traveled the roads and paths upon which no foot has before tread. i laugh, even as i languish, i laugh grimly at the greatness of the irony, that the pain of the vast loneliness inflicted upon me by the wild expanse of nature is less than, nay, sweeter than, even, the agony inflicted upon my soul by the silent coldness of my fellow humans! their icy stares, though cold as the stars, brand like hot irons scars upon my soul, searing the heart and very essence of my existence! ...i would take the long pathways, dipping through the deep valleys and carving the hillsides and marking the fields; rather than endure the ignorance and prejudice of those familiar to me, i choose the wild! fain would i be nearer the heart of the earth than the hearts of the peoples, which are as dark and empty voids. mine own soul shall be filled with the songs of birds, the scent of dawn and dusk, the blue of sky and the sparkling white of the snow, the endless green of the fields, dusted gently with golden buttercups and scarlet poppies, and the deep and lasting silence that fills my senses as does the peace of the darkness of night! while the light of the fire at the hearth betrays me, the sweet flames flickering in the darkness outside welcomes me, and this blessed darkness beckons me! for there i shall at last come to love, what no other can give me, but God's gentle and innocent creations shall accept me, for i am of them.
...the tale of a misanthrope, truly...

yes, i used the word "fain." tres cheesy... if i recall correctly, i had sort of taken a thought and written it out in extreme form, just for the sake of writing something... i didn't actually feel this way, betrayed by humanity, but i liked very much the idea of being alone "out there." it's funny - "gentle and innocent creations" - that is exactly where herzog said treadwell made his biggest mistake, in seeing all of nature as gentle and innocent, even the grizzlies. others in the film saw the beauty of the bears' world, but understood it was one that humans could not safely enter, and herzog himself commented that he saw nature as "indifferent" and brutal. i can't entirely agree with that, being someone who believes "nature" is both a gift from and a sign of God, but i do clearly see the line that treadwell crossed. as much as a part of me still wishes to be someone who could brave the elements, survive in the wild, blah blah blah... i need my air conditioning :) an experience here and there (well, a little more than that) is enough to keep my awe of this world and the power behind it alive... despite his foolishness, i am still moved by how completely treadwell gave himself over to the world he wanted to belong to. it is something like faith, and i admire a little bit about anyone who has such purity somewhere in their hearts - it is something i am searching for myself, even if it will always be tempered by my american sense of questioning...