I was just at a remarkably unfortunate dinner event, attended by professionals, at the end of which I called a man a "coward." What could possibly have been the provocation?

We live in a time of unparalleled uncertainty: War, recession, soaring energy and food prices, global warming, and global terrorism all lie under our beds at night, making even the most rational adult afraid to look underneath for fear of seeing what may be evilly grinning back.   This is not post-traumatic stress. No. We are all suffering one way or the other from current events stress.

All around America, heated discussions are going on over dinner tables, in cars, on the street, in shops, almost anywhere where more than one person congregates. And when people are alone, no doubt many find their heads hurt in fear and worry about what's to come next.

In such uncertain, dangerous times, people can provoke, lash out, and angrily seek answers.   This is natural.   However, what cannot be tolerated is when they do so under the guise of supposed intellectual inquiry, but without showing any personal accountability. It is tantamount to throwing a spoken hand grenade into the midst of a discussion and then running away. Bleeding words and wounded sentiments are the tattered remnants of, hey, don't blame me rants.

The above dinner guest made a series of emphatic, uninformed political comments, which are probably a microcosm of what's being said around the country.   Like his remark, "No one knew Saddam did not have weapons of mass destruction."   This simply was not true, as some news organizations, like McClatchy did a lengthy series of investigative articles and interviews that clearly showed the run up to war was not inevitable. Many people interviewed by McClatchy in the DOD, intelligence services, and government did not believe there was any evidence of WMD's in Iraq.  

But no one quotes McClatchy.   Instead you heard quoted the New York Times and its flawed and irresponsible reporting, part of a massive media echo chamber comprised of collectively cowed print, TV and radio newsrooms across the US; all of whose operations were further stifled by rabid conservative talk and TV shows that brooked no anti-war dissent.

On the other hand, for Israelis and Jewry worldwide, and for anyone who cared about the welfare of that small Mid-East nation, Iraq's Saddam Hussein was a true here and now threat, as he actively rewarded and funded terrorism in Israel. But strategically, the elimination of Hussein may prove to be a disaster for Israel as well as for other countries in the region, including one of our prime sources of oil, Saudi Arabia. With Saddam gone, new and much more dangerous actors have appeared.

Iran, now unchecked by Hussein, has emerged as the dominant power in the region, and will perhaps soon be a nuclear power. Iran also actively funds Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of Israel. And Iran's leaders routinely call for the obliteration of Israel. Syria also feels unbound by constraints with Hussein gone, and aggressively meddles (and allegedly murders) in Lebanon, another critical security neighbor of Israel's.

The Iraq conflict has, to date, cost almost 4,000 American lives with at least ten times that number seriously wounded, both physically and psychically, for life.   And many more thousands of Iraqi's are dead and wounded, with more than a million living as refugees.

The final Iraqi bill for the ever increasingly foreclosed US taxpayer is said to be at least one trillion dollars, and maybe several times that. So at what point does the American public realize that having a roof over your head, a car that you can afford to drive, and a family you can afford to feed is more important than a war started on a malicious myth, continued in vain hope, and with a conclusion no one has yet to concretely define.

Then, of course, Obama came up during this disastrous dinner affair.   In truth, neither this man, nor Clinton and McCain would have been my first choices.   Personally, I liked Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who has stared down and negotiated tough concessions from some of the nastiest despots in the world; and who, as the country's only Hispanic governor of a state, which also borders Mexico, knows first hand the issues and culture of immigration; and also who, as a US Representative and Ambassador to the UN, understands the workings of Washington and International government; and finally, who, as a former US Secretary of Energy, knows something about this $100+ a barrel subject. Of course, Richardson has now endorsed Obama.

This nettlesome dinner guest kept on asking me. "He (Obama) keeps on talking about change.   What is he going to change?"   The huge irony to his question, of course, is that just by running as the first black man in America for president, he is change.   His very existence as a candidate has wrought seismic shocks across the American political and cultural landscape, and is also registering worldwide. His remarkable speech on race in America has produced a sea change in public discourse on the subject.

Most white American's don't get what Reverend Jeremiah White was saying because racism is so baked into the American fabric that it's insidiously invisible.   When blacks in American said they believed that crack cocaine was a CIA plot to destroy the African American community, CIA Director John Deutch (under Bill Clinton) actually flew out to Los Angeles in 1996 and gave a speech saying it wasn't so. To white America, this was a crackpot concept, but not to the deeply suffering black community.

So when Reverend White goes on a tear against white America, he stands in a long tradition of deeply felt fear and anger among African Americans. The only thing that's new is that, for perhaps the first time, many white Americans are now hearing and paying attention to the black community's long simmering, out of view feelings. This is change. This is pure Obama.

And when, at the end of this long and often heated dinner, I asked this querulous man where he stood on the presidential election and whom he was going to vote for, he told me it was none of my business.

He dominated and disrupted a dinner conversation with his non-factual statements about Iraq, didn't have a clue what Obama was about, and then said, oh, excuse me, what I really believe and do doesn't matter. And that's when I called him a coward.

You should to, when next you meet and talk to his brethren legions across the country. Too much is at stake to leave our collective fate to those who refuse to accept responsibility.

And so, who am I voting for? Obama.

March 21, 2008