Boston Massacre

As I write, three people are dead and 130 are injured.  Those numbers are sure to rise.  Many of the casualties are children.  The bombs were laced with ball bearings to insure catastrophic damage to victims.  There are numerous stories of legs and arms severed by the blast.  Meanwhile, grim-faced politicians give press conferences devoid of information - little more than displays of determination and the need to say "We are here, and we are in control."  And then there is the obligatory pledge to "bring the perpetrators to justice."

Unfortunately, terrorism cannot be fought with search warrants, and courts, and judges.  The agents involved are both too expendable and too replaceable.  Even if you find them and put them in prison, the political damage inflicted is far more severe than the retribution obtained.  To fight terrorism, you must identity the cause of the terrorist and attack that cause.  You must attack it extra-judicially.  You must make the cost to the terrorist cause greater than the benefit it obtains from attacking you.  That's not an easy fact of life for those of us in the West to face.  We want nice clean divisions between guilt and innocence.  Unless we are willing to see repeats of body parts blown across the street, we aren't going to get that luxury.

Reagan's bombing of Gadaffi's compound in 1986 was an amazingly effective response.  It told Gadaffi that the US was willing to kill him and his family in retaliation for his actions.  He got the message.  Wait.  "Kill his family?"  Yes.  The bombs dropped that night could not discriminate.  The US was willing to kill his family over Lockerbie.  But if that's what it takes to keep airliners from being destroyed in mid-air, then that is what you do.  Better his family dies than the people in the next plane.  That is the necessary strategy.  It's hard and it's cold.  But terrorism is hard and cold.  And it's generally secure from the reach of law enforcement.  So you have to deal with it the old-fashioned way.

Do we have the stomach for it?  Well, one thing is for sure.  If bombs keep going off, we will develop the stomach for it.

Let me be Restored

You might have noticed that Tiger Woods has been actively trying to rehabilitate his reputation.  He used to be an advertising money-machine, but that was before he became the marketing equivalent of radio-active waste.  Even so, lots of people have a vested financial interest in Tiger Woods.  The PGA wants to market him again - since he is the only media-relevant golfer on the Tour.  Advertisers remember the market footprint that Tiger once possessed.  But his negatives are extraordinary.  What is Tiger to do?

To begin with, he presents himself in a stable relationship with a new girlfriend in a carefully staged media campaign.  Call this the campaign to recapture female trust.  No more bad Tiger chasing anything with female genitalia.  He has learned the lesson of faithfulness.  Or so the story goes.  This is interesting in itself because there are two contradictory thoughts about the ongoing consequences of the scandal that are commonly expressed by Tiger's self-proclaimed apologists.  "He has suffered enough" quickly followed by "It's a private matter."

But mostly we are supposed to see Tiger winning - under the theory that "Winning takes care of everything."  This is the "Forget the Sex scandal and focus on how great I am" campaign.  This allows Tiger to change the subject.  Instead of talking about his latest golf failure and the causal relationship of that failure to Tiger's sex scandal, we can talk about his latest 30-foot putt for Birdie to win.  That was supposed to be the case tonight.  We were supposed to be hearing claims that "Tiger is back!"  But he lost at Augusta.  Good.  I hope he keeps losing.

The problem with Tiger's rehabilitation is that it is intended to address only the consequences that he himself suffered.  His exposure.  His humiliation.  His damaged reputation.  His financial loss.  More than anything, his collapsed golf game.  It's more an exercise in reclamation than rehabilitation.  But it doesn't address the cost he inflicted on those whom he betrayed and humiliated - his ex-wife and children.  What is he doing to provide restitution to them?  He inflicted permanent cost by virtue of his behavior.  He is attempting to escape permanent consequence by saying "Enough time has passed.  Let me be restored."  If it's only about him, then it is nothing but a self-interested attempt to restore himself to his previous position.

Tiger has become the self-proclaimed poster boy for the trivialization of adultery and sexual betrayal.  It's supposed to be a private matter now.  People are just supposed to 'get over it.'  And if you tell this to one of Tiger's apologists, he will quickly point out that Tiger's ex-wife is doing quite well, thank you.  But not everyone who is so betrayed is so fortunate.  Many are humiliated and abandoned and remaindered to a life of loneliness and isolation and financial deprivation.  They have no advocate.  They have no court of justice.  There is no one to vindicate the wrong that has been inflicted upon them.  It's a private matter now.  They are just told to 'get over it.'  Every woman so treated looks at Tiger as the icon of the man who betrayed her.  And they want him to suffer as they have suffered.  But now we are poised to re-admit him to the world of responsible money-making adulthood.  We are poised to bury the betrayal in an unmarked grave.  And what does that say to the betrayed?

Anyways, he won't be re-admitted tonight.  He lost again.

Open Casket

I went to a funeral today.  The deceased was a relative of my wife - the son of a cousin of my father-in-law.  I didn't know the man, and in fact I could not place him beyond his name when my wife told me of his death.  We had to the best of my knowledge never conversed.  One attends such funerals for the sake of family obligation. Even so, a funeral is always an opportunity to confront the reality of death, and the awful velocity of life's passage.  It is common to see a slide show of pictures that displays the events of a man's life.  Decades are compressed into five minutes, and thus make manifest the speed at which the grains of golden sand slip through our fingers.

This funeral was unique for me in that my life intersected with his at only two occasions - his wedding and his funeral.  It's odd to see bookends to a story with no connection between the two.  He married after me.  He died before me.  In between he lived a shortened life that was totally invisible.  I clearly remember the wedding, and so my last image before the funeral is of the promise of beginning.  You turn away, and look back again.  The beginning has become the end in the blink of an eye.  The wedding dress is exchanged for a widow's veil, and there is nothing to mediate the difference.

The funeral itself was empty.  There was a random collection of Bible verses tied together by no particular theme.  There was a little talk by a minister that consisted mostly of memories laced here and there with religious happy-speak.  There was the unfortunate invitation for people to get up and 'say a few words' about the dead.  Two songs of a religious nature, and a recessional to a rock song I had never heard before.  That was it.  There was no mention of sin.  There was no mention of redemption.  There was no mention of the Cross.  No mention of the Gospel at all.  The assembly was not confronted with the reality of death.  The funeral wasn't about God at all.  It was about us - or rather those who knew the dead man.

There was one particular moment however that will remain in my memory.  The body was displayed in an open casket in front of the chapel prior to the funeral.  Perhaps 15 minutes before the start of the funeral, the family went to view the body before the casket was closed.  And I saw this man's 14 year-old daughter stand before his open casket to behold the face of her father for the very last time.  I have daughters, you see.  A man with daughters will notice daughters.  I wondered what she was thinking in those minutes.   I wondered what my daughters would think.  A few minutes, and it was time.  The family departed the front of the chapel.  Two members of the funeral home came forward, and closed the casket.   He would never be seen again in this world.

Mike died of a rare infection.  No one quite understands how he contracted it.  Two days before his death, he thought he was past the point of danger.  So he didn't get to say good bye.  He was 45.  He leaves behind a daughter soon to start High School.  He leaves behind a wife of not even 20 years.  He leaves behind bitter tears of hopes and expectations unfulfilled.  Man who is born of woman is short-lived and full of turmoil.  Job 14.1