Iraq talk is in the air so here is some more

Can an Asperger's person have anything useful to say about things that are intensely social in nature?

Maybe not. And yet, a being who does not live in the water, maybe able to speak of life in the seawater from a more detached, maybe useful viewpoint. And so also an Asperger's person who has social awareness dysfunction, may have something to say from a useful viewpoint to those who are a bit overwhelmed in the sea of social stuff.

To me, one such sea of social stuff is Americans in Iraq currently. There are probably those who think things are going just fine as planned in that sea of turmoil, and others who think it is a disaster in slow motion. We cannot go back and start over; it is like the bell that cannot be un-rung.

We wake up in the morning to the situation here and now, must deal with it, while maybe also learning the right lessons to avoid such a mess in the future. At present it is not like the old story of the radio announcer saying "Good morning Vietnam, wake up and smell of roses and ... napalm?!" yet still is a major problem. Anybody aware that it is their pocket that is part of what is forking out 10 billion dollars a month for the war, with nothing possible to show for it? The numbers are too big for ordinary people to comprehend so it just goes right past, as a ship in the night. Other costs are also too terrible to think about too much, the goings on over in the country of Iraq. We took the bait, stepped in it, and here we are, glued like Uncle Remus' Br'er Rabbit stuck to the Tar Baby. No nightmare from which to awake tomorrow morning. Sky is not falling here yet, so war over there must be working to prevent it, right?

So we cannot walk away from the mess we made. Although actually, we are on somebody else's turf and were not invited there. We seem to have wrecked the place, what do we do, just walk away? Don't we have a responsibility for what we have done? What would people say?s

Why can't those people get along over there? We did it here in America, so they ought to be able to do so over there, right? Well, no; in America we strted with a dominant settler faction, and generally added in the other minorities bit by bit, a melting pot that took on only small bits for new melt. Apparently in Iraq it is like loosing a bunch of tigers, lions, wolverines, foxes, vultures, deer, rabbits, cats, dogs, all in the Colosseum confinement, and let 'er rip. Not the same at all. Ethnic groups each defined by membership in some grouping, hanging onto the identity as if to lose it would lose life's identity itself. Some have fundamentalist religion as the uniting factor, each one declaring it is to be the only survivor in an all out drag down melee someday, like bulls fighting to father all teh next generation, utterly determined and facing an imagined foe who is equally utterly determined, may the best man win, of course "we" will win.

Aargh, what a massive perversion of the great human spirit. Well, here we are, and have to make the best of it. Or, we can pretend it does not exist, just change the news channel, happy day.

The vision of the "happy day" may be different for the people most in the thick of things, over in Iraq especially. How about getting ech and every one of them to provide a detailed personal vision of their desired life? Us making guesses won't cut it. The people actually involved are the ones that need to provide the true answers.

And sure, there will big inconsistencies among them, and would be heavily laced with the weight of just getting free from the mire existing. And if things were actually beginning to weave together into a functional whole again, the priorities would become different, continuously changing. And at least at present there are likely to continue those who crave to call down Armeggedon ASAP to get the "inevitable" over with, who will still make horrid messes here and there that look like somebody else did it, got to keep the fire burning.

So here we Americans are, like neighbors who have gone over to hold fighting brothers apart, while they calm down. And realizing that the brothers might stop fighting among themselves to turn on the neighbors first, before going back to the endless game of who is better than whom, best men get best girls, and that is all-important; those who have doubted that are long extinct. We have got the tiger by the tail.

So what if the neighbors do get the bunch of brothers to stop fighting each other for a moment, and keep the brothers from turning on the neighbors for a moment too? Let's see... the tiger ... nice, pussy cat ... Sweat.
How about getting them to fight it out on the sports field? Make football teams and whoever wins gets to claim another block of baghdad as their territory, and all agree to abide by the result? But there are those who have been executing each other on and on, maybe those need to do a gladiator duel to the death in front of spectators? What if they went through that stage until they realized the utter depravity of it, but in meantime have gotten the kill-urge out in the open, a bit under control. Begin to move from the present anarchistic free-for-all toward acceptable arenas for disputes, away from the women and children and men who have ability to re-build their civilization, let them get back to work.

Right now per the news they seem to be in total freak-out, controllable only by fumigating the whole place with tranquilizer. Well, we could do that, put some of that big time war money into Big Pharma; but what a precedent ... remember the A-bomb. Do we want to loose such a thing, that surely won't stop there? Does the picture of gassing the city to change them from total freak-out-frenzy into vacant-eyed drooling things ... then what do you do with them? What do you do with a tranqualized tiger? Keep it doped forever? The female ones are as bad or worse than the males, too, same teeth and claws and reactions.

Anybody remember that those people are in their country, it is their soil, their heritage, their future. We Americans are the ones out of place there. So we went there for wrong reasons, but now the reasons have been drawn in, the game is now thus as was claimed originally, sort of.

Let's ignore for the moment, the relatively few on each side who crave Armeggedon's final glorious battle ASAP; and concern ourselves with the vast majority of ordinary folk who just want to get on with life, get a job, own a home, raise a family and go on vacation once in a while. The Armeggedon folks would no doubt continue to make spectacular messes here and there, but if they are ignored, the ruckus will have been for nothing, and so likely would fade away lacking desired results. Here in America we have some of those folks too and yet they mostly lead productive lives, productive and peaceful members, even if coveting raging glory in which they will win, someday. So also maybe their opposite number over in Iraq could be integrated into a functioning peaceful interesting life style for all. Spectacular admirable works can be in other forms besides just making sudden big attention-getting messes. The attention they crave can be supplied in lots better ways, surely. And, their coping with the remembered horrors they did in righteous glory, needs to find expiation in some way besides justifying through more mess-making in the endless "they started it."

Whatever means are used to bring "peace" there will need to be lived-with similarly, too. "The end justifying the means" is well known as to its fallacy. And "stirring things up to make it lively around here" needs to be agreed to by most of those to be involved, and the rest need to have adequate compensation for the insults.

Well, this Asperger's person has rambled on and on once again. Surely something useful was formed in places along the way. The only sure thing is that non-Asperger people will disdain the Asperger's words and efforts, just like always. Ignoring it all is like fiddling while Rome burns? Not unless one is Nero; and besides, what were his options, to play a bit of harmony music into the pandemonium, or else to go carry a few buckets of water into the inferno ... rulership's power had already evaporated for it to be happening; the wrong turns long already made. The bell could not be un-rung.

Maybe this should get the Delete Key treatment. More likely, true to Asperger's type, the naive belief that people will all behave fine given a chance, will ring the bell anyway. Ding!