confusion

What to do about the abuse? Bush says it was “terrible” and “here will be a full investigation.” But who should carry out the investigation and who should punish the guilty? If America carries out American justice then those who already see America as the aggressors and the “evil empire” will accuse America of show trials, victors justice, etc, etc, etc. The Iraqis won’t be happy, the rest of the world will not be happy. So what to do? Can’t really hold the Americans to Iraqi justice—they don’t have a valid system yet, and you can’t use the old system. I do have a suggestion—why else would I be writing this entry? The ICC [ icc-cpi.int ]. The International Criminal Court. I don’t know exactly what falls under their jurisdiction but I don’t see any other judicial body that could carry out an investigation, trials and hand down sentences to the guilty. And while some people will never be satisfied but not only would a great many people outside the Middle East be happier if the investigation was done by the ICC but it would give legitimacy to the ICC and heal some of the wounds opened when the US refused to put it’s soldiers under the jurisdiction of the ICC when it was founded. Anyway, it’s for people who are smarter than me to figure out.

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday on the right of the government to hold American citizens as ‘enemy combatants’ without due process. I hope the court strikes it down, by unanimous decision. And I hope they go even further and uphold the idea, even if it’s not spelled out in the Constitution but rather in the Declaration—that ‘all men are created equal.’ [ archives.gov ] Which to me would imply that no matter where they were captured it they are to be tried by the United States they should be tried by the same laws we use to determine guilt among our own citizens. It just seem ‘self evident’ to me that if we truly believe the words of the Declaration we have no other choice and no man—not even the President of the United States should be able to deny any of the rights granted in the constitution to any other human being, unless via a process described in the Constitution (i.e. via due process of our laws.) Now maybe I’m just a bleeding heart liberal or something but…

“Yea, you know it’s been a long week. And it’s only Tuesday,” I laughed.

“Beggs, it’s Monday,” Came my boss’s reply.

“Oh…” Thud. My head hit the table.

I really thought it was Tuesday. I should have known it was not Tuesday, as I have a dentist appointment Tuesday. But my mind kept telling me it was Tuesday.

My work week starts on Sunday morning and ends on Saturday afternoon. I don’t really like that, but that’s the way it is right now. I have more responsibility via the project I am, and have been, working on than someone my age with my experience should reasonably expect to have. My boss acknowledges that some of the other guys and I work too many hours. He says that when the projects we are working on are complete we will all go back to ‘normal’ hours.

Anyway, I’ve been so busy since I got back to work that I have not had a chance to even go though all my pictures form Japan yet. I’ve looked at them but not really gone through them. There are a few good ones but most of all I did not have the experience with the camera to get the killer shots I wanted. C’est la vie—I’ve got the memories and that’s what matters.

Sitting in my car driving home my inner monologue wrote this long journal entry about my work schedule and responsibility and blah, blah, blah. And I promptly forgot it all between parking my car and turning my laptop on. Typical.

But speaking of my car… I have one. Yea! I kinda wanted another truck, the four wheel drive has come in handy the past couple of winters but I don’t do any 4x4ing anymore and a nice truck cost too much—even a used ‘mid-sized SUV‘ (there should be no such thing as a mid-sized SUV. Who the hell needs a car that f’ing big? You should have to have a CDL to drive those big ass’ed trucks!) So, SUV too expensive, I thought next a VW Passat would be nice, but could not find one with a manual transmission that was in my price range. In the end I did find a really nice car—a Honda Accord ’02, with only 22K miles. Nice! It smells like strawberry’s—I’ve got to fix that, but it’s clean and drives nice. Does not have the zoom of Thilo’s BMW but what are you going to do? I’ll keep dreaming about the BMW for a few years.

One of the things I was thinking about in my car was my lack of entries here recently. It’s not just here but I have made no entry in my personal journal since before I left for Japan. And for a while I haven’t been making many entries in my personal journal. I’ve been keeping that journal longer than this online one but seem to have lost interest in it. Guess it’s just the end of one stage of life but as it has become a chore to write in the journal I will not miss it. I might miss the record of my daily thoughts that I can go back an read, but I can’t be bothered to write in it. As for this journal. I don’t know, I read once that too many online journal were just collections of self indulgent whining and I think that mine has at times fallen into that category. Hopefully it won’t fall into that too often, I do plan to keep on writing here.

OK. Nothing else going on in my life right now so… Before it is Tuesday for real I’m going to go to bed.

I have not had time to organize my thoughts on The Great Japan Trip of 2004. Work is hectic—disorder and chaos. When I get a chance to catch my breath and collect my thoughts I will attempt to distill two weeks of Gai-jin fumbling into a coherent narrative. Or maybe I’ll just try to make it interesting rather than dull and lifeless. Yes that’s what I’ll do. I’ll attempt to entertain rather than just report. Maybe it’ll never happen. I may start and never finish—like most things in this journal. But you will have to check back regularly to see. Ah, variable conditioning—the strongest form of conditioning. Like a whisker-less rat swimming with hope. So wait with antici……pation, and maybe I’ll even spell check it. Ooh. Aha. Oh what’s that? It’s Shiny!