December 30, 2006 by lonbud

It’s A Wrap

As the Year of the Fire Dog prepares to trot off, wagging its oblivious tail and bearing its friendly, sloppy grin for another twelve year jaunt through the cosmos, I am making a note to leave 2018 open. Should I be graced with life the next time a Year of the Dog comes bounding into view, I believe I’ll find it far more bearable with nothing too important on the schedule, as opposed to this waning year, when I’ve been stymied at every turn. So, goodbye Dog, and good luck.

On February 17 we welcome the Fire Pig. And, according to my favorite astrologer, the Pig wants to party.

2006 will go down as the worst year in my memory. I think back to the last Dog year, 1994, and recall certain difficulties; it was, after all, the year the Republican party took control of Congress. And the Dog year prior to that was 1982, when the madness ushered in by Ronald Reagan was just picking up steam.

But this past year has been a horrible one for me personally and, I daresay, for my country and my planet as well.

History will remember this as the year the Commander in Chief of the United States could not recall — or decide — his course in the prosecution of the so-called War on Terror; the year in which the Executive branch of government openly proclaimed its refusal to adhere to laws regarding warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens, in which the centuries-old right of habeas corpus was repudiated, in which science, and the environment, and truth were stifled, ignored, and manipulated — to the benefit of wealthy industrial interests who carted off billions in ill-gotten gains, laughing all the way to the bank.

We’ll remember 2006 as the year a “blue ribbon” panel of dignified civil servants declared the situation in Iraq “grave and deteriorating,” an assessment received by the President as a call for the commitment of additional U.S. fighting forces to the fray.

And, as of 6:00 a.m. Baghdad time on Dec. 30, we’ll recall the final act in the brutal life of Saddam Hussein.

Perhaps historians will one day ponder the bitter ironies of Saddam’s swift, quiet execution. A man reviled the world over as one of the most vicious tyrants to ever walk the earth, a catalyst for the expenditure of countless billions of dollars and the wasting of uncounted thousands of lives by the U.S. government, was hanged for the killing of 148 people who were detained after an attempt to assassinate him in the northern Iraqi city of Dujail in 1982. No trial or conviction on the allegations of his having gassed Iraqi Kurds, no execution on a conviction of his having been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of his countrymen.

Such an airing of Saddam’s atrocities would have proved far too embarrassing to the Americans who made, and in the end, broke him.

As the Middle East scholar Juan Cole notes in a poignant analysis, Saddam — funded and protected by the United States when it served our leaders’ interests — has thus been transformed from villain to martyr, and he may well serve as a symbol for increasing sectarian violence in the devolving chaos that now engulfs the land once known as the Cradle of Civilization.

Things could be worse.

The American electorate could have failed to wrest control of Congress from the Republican party in November’s elections. A much larger piece of the Arctic Shelf could have come undone from Ellesmere Island in the north of Canada. Osama bin Laden could still be at large. Oh, wait. He is still at large. But it could still be worse: it could matter.

Despite personal trials and tribulations this year, I’m grateful for much. Most importantly, I reversed a nearly two-year slide into torpor and poor diet, and I am now six months into a rigorous routine of kickboxing; I’ve begun to renew my meditation practice; and I’m playing and writing music again. My wife and my son are both healthy and joyful, and our family is loving and close-knit. I have a small circle of supportive and generous friends, and I feel no matter how dark things may seem in the world or how desperate, I have hope and confidence in better days to come.

Happy New Year.