I agree deeply with all of this and am filled with rage and despair. But what really catches my eye is that you'd like to write about being an older/old woman! Yes, please. As a divorced grandmother, age of 70, I feel I inhabit a secret world our culture doesn't even recognise let alone talk about.
The US criticizing Israel re Gaza is really not on. A country that invades another for a made up reason, remember Iraq and WMD, has no basis to criticize a country for conducting a war against an enemy that wants to annihilate it.
Interesting but I don't think the WMD issue was made up. While they didn't find any WMD's Saddam kept saying he had them and was working toward a nuclear weapon. So he might have been the victim of his own hubris and propaganda. And this was the man who gassed 5000 kurds.
Other reports say he moved his program to Syria when Assad gave other Baathist members sanctuary during the war. (He probably thought he would escape there too but was caught)Remember the Israel's blew up a nuclear reactor in Syria, a country that had no history of trying to make a nuclear weapon. But it was suddenly there after the Iraqi Baathists arrived.
Not everything the news tells you about the Middle East is correct or even close to the truth. There was also alot of antiBush sentiment in the press when it came to Iraq, and no motivation for the press to dig further for the truth of anything.
Thank you for words straight from your heart. A strong and emotive post.
Twain: "What is the secret of his immortality?" May I suggest:
1. Deuteronomy 7:6 For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
2. Psalm 135:4 For the Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself,
Israel for His own possession.
3. Lastly from King David, 2 Samuel 7:22-24: 22 “How great you are, Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. 23 And who is like your people Israel—the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt? 24 You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, Lord, have become their God.
Made up might have been too flippant. They believed false intelligence because they wanted to believe it. The administration was sure that Iraq was a terrorist base and WMD was a good reason to ‘go get them’.
I am not going on ‘news’. I worked in Iraq and I worked with senior levels of the Iraqi army. The whole concept of Iraq, at that time, of possessing WMD was just bad reasoning. As for being a base for Islamic terrorist was quite frankly laughable. Such terrorists were as big a threat to Saddam’s regime as they were to the West. Saddam ran a very secular regime and fundamentalists were quickly crushed. Not to say they weren’t underground for they were and they were released by the US after the invasion when the US administration essentially shut down all Iraqi authority.
US Intelligence has also, for decades, painted the Russian military as a very formidable and frightening war machine. Don’t always believe the accuracy of intelligence.
The whole sad concept of the axis of evil of North Korea – Iran – Iraq was laughable. Iranians were and still are fanatical, Shia militants , and sworn enemies to the death of the secular Sunni Ba’ath in Iraq. Bush just wanted some pretext to show how great he was. While there may have been a soupçon of justification - in Bush’s words, “democracy is on the move,“ - there was never evidence of WMD. This was confirmed by Scott Ritter, who was in charge of the UN inspection team, prior to the invasion. It resulted in the emergence of ISIS and today’s unmitigated disaster of unleashed Iranian power.
As a member of a minority group that has benefited greatly from democracy, it pains me to say this, but not all societies are fit for democracy. Sometimes a strong man is needed to keep their even more fanatical subjects in check. Saddam Hussein Iraq is an unfortunate example, as was Tito in Yugoslavia. Sometimes, we just have to choose the dictators that we make our peace with in order to protect western society.
Having a fair amount to do with authoritarian regimes I totally agree with you. Some we should tolerate, others, such as Assad in Syria, need to go. The best would be a benevolent dictator dedicated to turn the country into a democracy. It would then take a generation of education and introduced experience to ready the population. To just tell people who have lived under an authoritarian regime their whole lives that they now live in a democracy is beyond foolish as they have no instincts for self government.
I agree deeply with all of this and am filled with rage and despair. But what really catches my eye is that you'd like to write about being an older/old woman! Yes, please. As a divorced grandmother, age of 70, I feel I inhabit a secret world our culture doesn't even recognise let alone talk about.
I have just started this substack. But I have other posts already here. I hope you read them and leave me a comment or 2. :)
Amen to everything ... to quote myself: I took Oct 7th personally ...! Wonderful Twain quote btw ...
Thanks. I took Oct 7 personally as well. I think the overwhelming majority of Jews around the world did too.
The US criticizing Israel re Gaza is really not on. A country that invades another for a made up reason, remember Iraq and WMD, has no basis to criticize a country for conducting a war against an enemy that wants to annihilate it.
Interesting but I don't think the WMD issue was made up. While they didn't find any WMD's Saddam kept saying he had them and was working toward a nuclear weapon. So he might have been the victim of his own hubris and propaganda. And this was the man who gassed 5000 kurds.
Other reports say he moved his program to Syria when Assad gave other Baathist members sanctuary during the war. (He probably thought he would escape there too but was caught)Remember the Israel's blew up a nuclear reactor in Syria, a country that had no history of trying to make a nuclear weapon. But it was suddenly there after the Iraqi Baathists arrived.
Not everything the news tells you about the Middle East is correct or even close to the truth. There was also alot of antiBush sentiment in the press when it came to Iraq, and no motivation for the press to dig further for the truth of anything.
Thank you for words straight from your heart. A strong and emotive post.
Twain: "What is the secret of his immortality?" May I suggest:
1. Deuteronomy 7:6 For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.
2. Psalm 135:4 For the Lord has chosen Jacob for Himself,
Israel for His own possession.
3. Lastly from King David, 2 Samuel 7:22-24: 22 “How great you are, Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. 23 And who is like your people Israel—the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt? 24 You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, Lord, have become their God.
Perhaps?
Well right now we could use his help with getting back those hostages still alive, before Hamas- those evil garbage- murders them too.
In my prayers for sure.
❤️
Beautifully Said.
there was a piece in LA Times that states very much the same ideas (minus menopause). I wonder if you write for LA Times?
Oh no. I am not a professional journalist of any kind. I have written award winning blogs (in another life). But this is me from Times of Israel https://www.timesofisrael.com/search/?q=elise+ronan&submit=Search
Are you Elise Ronan?
That is my pen name
Made up might have been too flippant. They believed false intelligence because they wanted to believe it. The administration was sure that Iraq was a terrorist base and WMD was a good reason to ‘go get them’.
I am not going on ‘news’. I worked in Iraq and I worked with senior levels of the Iraqi army. The whole concept of Iraq, at that time, of possessing WMD was just bad reasoning. As for being a base for Islamic terrorist was quite frankly laughable. Such terrorists were as big a threat to Saddam’s regime as they were to the West. Saddam ran a very secular regime and fundamentalists were quickly crushed. Not to say they weren’t underground for they were and they were released by the US after the invasion when the US administration essentially shut down all Iraqi authority.
US Intelligence has also, for decades, painted the Russian military as a very formidable and frightening war machine. Don’t always believe the accuracy of intelligence.
I don't trust the intelligence departments at all. Not anymore.
The whole sad concept of the axis of evil of North Korea – Iran – Iraq was laughable. Iranians were and still are fanatical, Shia militants , and sworn enemies to the death of the secular Sunni Ba’ath in Iraq. Bush just wanted some pretext to show how great he was. While there may have been a soupçon of justification - in Bush’s words, “democracy is on the move,“ - there was never evidence of WMD. This was confirmed by Scott Ritter, who was in charge of the UN inspection team, prior to the invasion. It resulted in the emergence of ISIS and today’s unmitigated disaster of unleashed Iranian power.
As a member of a minority group that has benefited greatly from democracy, it pains me to say this, but not all societies are fit for democracy. Sometimes a strong man is needed to keep their even more fanatical subjects in check. Saddam Hussein Iraq is an unfortunate example, as was Tito in Yugoslavia. Sometimes, we just have to choose the dictators that we make our peace with in order to protect western society.
Having a fair amount to do with authoritarian regimes I totally agree with you. Some we should tolerate, others, such as Assad in Syria, need to go. The best would be a benevolent dictator dedicated to turn the country into a democracy. It would then take a generation of education and introduced experience to ready the population. To just tell people who have lived under an authoritarian regime their whole lives that they now live in a democracy is beyond foolish as they have no instincts for self government.