Meeting a friend for lunch

Our park picnic was rained out, but we settled for one of the UN restaurants to catch up. He and I began our friendship 9/11 when I ran into his office after seeing CNN when the first plane struck. We could no longer connect to CNN so he logged onto El Païs, which was reporting it. He speaks four languages, giving us more choices. I ran home and phoned back news as it happened.

He is better read than I am, but we can debate the merits of editorial policy on a number of European, Mid Eastern and Asian papers. Our discussions, like so many American, worried about the future of the country went quickly into politics.

Today our topics were –

1. Why is America even debating torture? Excluding the morality issue, becoming the new Spanish Inquisition doesn’t mean that truth is gathered. Victims say anything to stop the pain. Torture doesn't work and only creates more enemies.
   
2. How come we are so anti Iran for threatening to destroy Israel when they have not attacked a country for decades whereas the US has destroyed Iraq and aided in the destruction in the Lebanon through its supply of weapons and rejection of resolutions and feet-dragging?
3. The new intelligence report saying that the Iraq has only increased terrorism. Therefore “staying the course” so our soldiers didn’t die in vane makes even less sense. Our soldiers not only died in vane, they made the situation worse for the people they wanted to protect. If America reacted so violently to less than a day of isolated attacks, how could we expect a people to react after three and a half years of living under terror? Wanting to get us back.
   
4. “We must be thought of as paranoid," we said, as we related we wouldn’t return to the US until after the election. We were only reassured of our sanity by the large number of ex-pats who worry about being able to get in and out of the US. We share every mention of the conditions that would necessitate martial law when spoken by people like Tommy Frank, the president and others. We try hard not to think of Blackhawk mercenaries shooting our citizens in protecting property not people in New Orleans.
5. The national debt. How long can the US continue to borrow? How much further can people go into debt before it all comes crashing down, we ask ourselves.”
6. The Swiss elections: For once the roesti curtain (The French and Germans almost always vote differently. The name comes from the potato dish typical of Swiss Germans ) didn’t hold when it came to tighter asylum laws. The Canton of Geneva also voted that pupils in grade school would be graded 1-6 beginning next year ending several years of no grades. The teachers seem happy.
7. The film Jesus Camp. There is a trailer http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486358/ Seeing a little boy rock back and forth is too reminiscent of the children in the madras schools rocking back and forth as the read the Koran. We agree it borders of child abuse and crossed over into brain washing.

All in all when we meet there is a great feeling of sadness and despair when we look back to from where we came. We want the America of our civics classes where there is truth and justice and hope not what exists today. Even if we choose to live outside the borders, even if we choose the nationality of the country we now live in what America does has an impact on the world. We want to be proud, not ashamed of our origins. It just plain hurts to see what is happening.

His time was limited, and I was due to meet a friend at the Café du Soleil. We mentioned meeting after work in the not to distance future joined by his wife as we walked off in different directions physically. Mentally I wished he could have proven me wrong in what I was thinking.