So hard to understand

Eight-year-olds like Martin Richard know that "no more hurting people" is where morality starts. Somewhere along the way, adults forget that.

Enough to remember

Is it enough to remember those who have given their lives in service?  Is that enough?

How many new war dead before Memorial Day 2012 do we need to accomplish our geopolitical goals?  Do we have enough to remember?

The completion of a decade at war is coming in September or in March, depending how you date the beginning. Is memory enough, or should someone in power be bringing peace?

Andrew Bacevich asks...

Making a living instead of a dying

Could attacks on unpatched vulnerabilities of Internet Explorer include good news?

Microsoft noted the upswing in attacks on the company's Malware Protection Center blog late Saturday. "The trend for now is going upwards," said researchers Ziv Mador and Tareq Saadecom on the blog. "We saw a huge increase in the number of reports today compared to yesterday."

Jew and Arab working together on security. (O.K., I'm guessing from their names, but it's a plausible guess.) It's their job, nothing more noble.

It's not a coincidence that peace took root in Northern Ireland at a time when the economy was booming on the whole island. For a change, there was plenty to go around, so anti-Catholic job discrimination no longer appeared to make even short-run sense. Much of the demand was from overseas, and we didn't give a damn which side of the wall that lilting Irish broque lived on. Most of us couldn't even tell the quite distinct accents apart.

Duhbya and the neocons tried a broad-strokes military solution to the Middle East. It didn't work.

The solution I'd like to see tried in Israel and Palestine is bottom-up, start-small economics. People who have worked hard and have a lot to lose don't blow each other up. They're also sleeping at night for the next day's work instead of conspiring.

The radical Palestinians know this. That's why their people remain in refugee camps after sixty years.

The Israeli security forces know this. They cut off border crossing during security crises, in part to squeeze the working Palestinians. I don't blame them for securing their borders, but we all need to find a way to help the Palestinians make a living, instead of making a dying.

Want some wahhabi with that?

Is it just me, or does the idea of the House of Saud bringing "peace" to Afghanistan give anyone else the willies? Is anyone out there not named Bush actually convinced that the Saudis are an ally of anything more than ephemeral convenience?

Legacy fluffing didn't work

Duh! Everyone with two brain cells to rub together knew that Duhbya's Israel/Palestine peace plan had zero chance from the moment it was announced.

Of course, Obama was just there, wasn't he? It must be his fault! Yeah, that's the ticket.