[Adapted from my Applied Smart Power monthly hardcopy column, For Goodness' Sake, at Front Porch Magazine.]

Happy 2010! May your New Year be blessed with peace, joy, and prosperity.

May you have a home to live in every day of this coming year.

It’s not such a strange wish to offer these days, is it? Such difficult times. So many suffering, outside, at home and abroad. Take a moment and whisper a prayer…a prayer for their safety and shelter…or for yourself, if needed.

As I write in our cozy dining room, a warm cup of liquid inspiration (coffee) close at hand and a beautiful blanket of snow draping the house, my wife is sympathizing on the phone with a lady who will soon be officially homeless. My wife, a living saint who is incapable of turning her back on a stray, will be “plussing up” by three cats our current stock of sixteen canines, felines and assorted rodentia. This, so three beloved pets won’t go under the needle when this lady is evicted tomorrow, the day before Christmas Eve. (We write these pieces in advance of publication, of course.)

I pray that you will have a home to live in for the next 365 days.

Across Iraq and Afghanistan, my own alternate homes for a full fifteen out of the past twenty months, the vast majority of houses are built of brick and concrete. In most of the cities (outside the widespread slums housing the poor), dwellings are tidy, spare reflections of the generally barren landscape seen for miles around. Yet these austere buildings hold some of the warmest, most loving families to be found anywhere on earth.

Therefore it’s not “what” the home is, in my opinion, but “who”.

During a year living in the north of Turkey in the early 1990’s, I once visited the simple, brick-and-concrete house of my dear friend Hayri. His mother welcomed me as a new son, sparing no expense. (This is identical to the generosity I’ve received in the homes of Americans, Russians, Omanis, Afghans, Japanese, Iraqis, and a host of other good people worldwide.)

On this particular visit, I made the amateur mistake of admiring a simple, orange doily that Hayri’s mother had crocheted. In less than a minute I was the proud, if somewhat perplexed, owner of that same orange doily, neatly wrapped for transport. My resistance was futile, and Hayri later told me that I’m lucky I didn’t admire the furniture first.

The home can be a place of unexpected kindness or staggering cruelty. Don’t judge a structure by its cover.

The most civilized properties sometimes host the most unimaginable evil. Witness: The Austrian father who shackled, enslaved, raped, and seven times impregnated his own daughter over an uninterrupted, twenty-four year stay in his private basement dungeon. Researching this month’s column, I was stunned to learn that he even burnt up the corpse of one of his own infant children/grandchildren in an oven to hide his tracks.

Contrast this horror to the infinite sacrifice offered by countless parents in famine-stricken nations, who frequently perish themselves while sharing the tiniest fragments of food to save their children.

It ain’t what – it’s who.

In Powerful Peace you’ve often read about the importance of seeking out common ground in the great struggle to reduce conflict and violence. What more common ground can be found than the home itself? Whether snow-blanketed like mine, or shattered by war like those of many of my friends, this simple societal edifice (literally and rhetorically speaking) has commonality written on it from Santa’s workshop to the South Pole.

In millions of homes on every continent, husbands and wives celebrate their blissful union…and then discover things to fight about. Children of every complexion are born into homes in every inhabited terrain. Loved ones die, family cultures are renewed, and there’s almost never enough money to do everything we want.

Through it all, the calendar trudges faithfully along. Seasons come and go. Life in the home, ever dynamic, remains fundamentally and appreciably unchanged, forever.

Maybe we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Well, that’s it. I just finished deleting the last of my good friend’s articles from the pages of Powerful Peace. I feel queasy.

Why would I pull what I consider to be some of the most insightful work from one of the most advanced thinkers I know? Because he asked me to.

As advanced thinkers of all times have probably discovered throughout history, the most insightful observation can be uncomfortable for the masses. More specifically, it is probably uncomfortable especially for some in authority over the masses.

It can be threatening, I suppose. After all, wasn’t the invention of the printing press seen as a great problem to church leaders of the time? It wouldn’t do to provide too much insight to too many among the flock. Empowered people can be so hard to manage.

I won’t embarrass (or cause trouble for) my friend by going into detail on the material that we’ve removed tonight, but he was concerned it might cause professional difficulties for him. It is a shame for future readers of P2. It is a shame that our society shrinks from dealing with our inadequacies and hypocrisy. It would be so much more “powerful” if each claimed his faults in addition to his successes.

If you really miss my friend’s work, or if this humble tribute piques your interest sufficiently, please contact me at Jack@PowerfulPeace.net. My friend will probably permit me to send copies of his material, which has been very carefully archived!

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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[Adapted from my hardcopy monthly column, For Goodness' Sake, in Front Porch Magazine]

“I don’t think we understood the cultural, historic influences that pushed them into that position. It might have helped us ward the whole thing off if we had understood the deeper currents in the situation.”

The above quote is attributed to Stansfield Turner, CIA Director during the Carter administration. Recorded in 1995, in this comment he was reflecting back on the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (Invisible History – Afghanistan’s Untold Story exposes the mind-boggling complexity of Afghanistan’s internal and external influences over the century and a half preceding that invasion, which resulted in tremendous suffering and loss on many sides during a ten-year struggle.)

My current mission here is winding down. Anticipating what will likely be several more years of traveling into and out of this troubled nation, I have been studying more about the circumstances which led to today’s mess in Afghanistan.

The opening quote by Director Turner hit like an intellectual boot to the head. Regular readers of For Goodness’ Sake will recognize that cultural awareness is frequently highlighted in this column; this isn’t a nice-to-have component of effective war and peace planning, it’s an essential piece. In Powerful Peace, we constantly explore the value of understanding other ways of life – a very real matter of life or death.

The Soviet adventure in Afghanistan finally ended in bitter defeat, with the Soviets having met exactly the same fate as every other invader since Alexander the Great. Their experience is frequently compared to the American conflict in Vietnam.

I’d like to provide a much more personal and therefore recognizable anecdote to demonstrate the dangerous absurdity of conflict based on mutual misunderstanding:

Ali was a friend of mine during a year’s assignment in Turkey. We enjoyed spending time at a restaurant hangout down by the beach, so his unexpected hostility one fateful night came as a complete shock.

There was a Dutch tourist staying in our little coastal town, and it was no secret that Ali also had his eye on her. When I finally arranged a dinner date one night, I naturally felt like the winner of the Jack-Ali competition for female attention. It was probably a mistake to arrange that dinner date for the same club where we normally partied.

While she and I snacked on feta cheese and olives, I clumsily made small talk and the discussion – ridiculously – turned to astrology (as in, “what’s your sign?”) Unfortunately, this European had only a partial grasp of English, and I only knew two phrases in Dutch. Neither was appropriate for polite conversation.

When I said I’m a Taurus, it earned only a blank stare. The word “bull” fell flat next, and when “boy cow” failed I realized my attempt at a clever joke was rapidly careening off a social cliff. It was time for date-saving physical gestures.

Extending my index fingers, I placed them alongside my temples to depict a boy cow’s horns. That’s when all Turkish hell broke loose.

Within seconds, Ali was at my side and striking me in the shoulder. I hadn’t even known he was at the club that night! He shouted, “Did you do this to me???” and placed his fingers at his own temples.

I was baffled. My date was frightened. I rose to my feet and, in broken Turkish, told him I didn’t know what the blank he was talking about. This seemed to aggravate him further, but it ended peacefully. After a couple of tense minutes, Ali stalked away. The dinner was ruined.

As I had planned to stay on the beach that evening, it ended up being a one-eye-open, sleepless night. Angry Turkish knives can slice tent fabric as easily as a throat.

When I raised the matter with best friend Hayri the next day, he was aghast. After extensive explanation, I finally came to understand that the Turkish verb “to gore” (boynuzlemek) means, colloquially, “to cheat on your man”. In other words, if a fellow isn’t man enough to keep a girl happy, she will go off with another, leaving the first “gored”.

Ali thought we were talking about and laughing at him!

Of course, the potential for a fistfight is a weak comparison to the immeasurable pain endured during the ill-fated Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, but the dynamic is fundamentally the same. If you would make your own life easier, begin by considering your impact on others.

And be very careful with hand gestures!

Copyright 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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[Taken directly from my hardcopy Applied Smart Power column, For Goodness' Sake, at Front Porch Magazine]

For Goodness’ Sake was born, nearly two years ago, as the result of a chance meeting of the minds. Your editor, Rob Grogan, and yours truly engaged in an email dialogue about the goodness of hometown living (as illustrated monthly in Front Porch Magazine), and one thing led to another. We discussed how much just-plain-good there is among all the people in the thirty-plus nations I visited for work during a busy SEAL career. We decided then, especially since I was heading back into Iraq for a year’s contract, that we would like to tell the American people about this.

From that casual beginning, eighteen For Goodness’ Sake installments have already unfolded. It’s hard to believe. I re-read all of them this evening, to get a feel for where it had been supposed to go…and where it actually went.

You know, this was only supposed to be simple anecdotes all along. I have written and spoken for years on Applied Smart Power (the balance of coercion and attraction) in my obsession to reduce conflict and unnecessary violence, but FGS started out to be no more than sweet stories about folks around the world – mere observations on how similar others’ lives and experiences really are to ours. FGS was supposed to be casual and simple.  That didn’t last long.

The seventh installment, for example, entitled “Charity”, addressed the needs of impoverished and famished Iraqi children. “Charity” spoke to how simple it is to meet their basic needs for food and medicine…and how wrong it is for our soldiers to provide that care through the chain link fence of our bases in Iraq. These kind young Americans desperately want to help the little ones, but doing so is forbidden by commanders, because it would attract more children, attract terrorist attackers to the gathering children and soldiers, and endanger the children in the end. This is just one example of the terrible complexity in dealing with violence and its consequences.

Last December, in “Community”, For Goodness’ Sake addressed the deliriously happy response locals in Baghdad were having to something we in the States take comfortably for granted – going to the zoo. That piece tried to reconcile our American assumptions about such an ordinary outing with the stark reality on the ground in Iraq.  Mothers and fathers, little brothers and sisters; all are fair game for the twisted beasts who target innocent families with massive improvised explosive devices. Thousands upon thousands of such pitiful victims have fallen to the madness of terrorist attacks.

While reviewing these past stories from our shared Front Porch journey, I found a theme repeating itself. Similar to the original intention of sweet similarities, but different in scale, that theme is “reflection”. Although we can discuss the common needs of food, shelter and security, often the ideas come best not through commonality but in contrast. Yes, there is a common human desire to enjoy a clear day at the park with loved ones…but in For Goodness’ Sake our focus settles on the contrast between frolicking in Fredericksburg and frolicking under fire.  We’re holding up a mirror image of the same event, reflected through local circumstances on both sides of the glass. The message is in the difference.

This is an exciting discovery, as the true power of Smart Power can be easily understood in the context of holding up mirrors. In what I call “Applied” Smart Power, we assume a personal obligation to pause in our assumptions about others – especially others in opposition to us – and consider what they see when they look at us. Negative behavior toward me is often a reaction to an unintended something about me.

Once I grasp this simple concept and begin to thoughtfully consider how I present myself to the world, I am amazed to discover that in some cases, I begin to guide others’ behavior as they relate back to me!

Copyright 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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[Adapted from my Smart Power column, For Goodness' Sake, in Front Porch Magazine]

“I. The 30th day of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country….”

So I was sitting at the Veterans’ Administration clinic while writing this piece. I’ve been deployed a great deal since retiring from the military a couple of years back, and finally strung together enough weeks at home in the U.S. to actually get my medical exams done.

This title, “Credit”, may seem an odd choice for a Powerful Peace theme. After all, isn’t this column usually about terrorism, or global security, or the urgent need for diversity and Smart Power? Especially now, when the economy is on everyone’s mind and the irresponsible use of credit was a major contributor to our financial mess, it might seem a touchy subject.

Let’s wander down a different path, then. We sometimes hear expressions like, “To his credit, he is one heck of a softball player,” or, “…the family dog was credited with alerting the residents to the deadly kitchen fire.”

Credit can be a good thing.

On the wall of the VA clinic was a small poster that testified to the importance of that organization’s mission. A simple photo, spanning from just the collar to the breastbone of a very old man standing in a suit, showed his ancient, gnarled hands…and a Congressional Medal of Honor around his neck. The caption said, “Serving those who served.”

As a veteran, that image chokes me up. During one World War II commemoration when I was an active duty SEAL, some WWII “frogman” vets came to visit our Team. They were wobbly, bent, and quiet… and I knew that they were some of the greatest heroes this – or any – country had ever seen. While today we tote around millions of dollars’ worth of high-tech gear and reap the benefits of near-unlimited training budgets, they quite literally faced hails of gunfire wearing only shorts and a knife.

[The frogmen, or “UDTs” for Underwater Demolition Teams, were first established to eliminate enemy obstacles placed to keep our landing craft away from key beaches. They would tow explosive satchels while surface swimming toward a controlled shoreline and blow up these underwater obstacles – a mission set we continue to practice today. When the waters were truly frigid, they simply applied an insulating layer of grease to their exposed bodies and carried on.]

One of these vets approached me and told me how much he admires our generation for all that today’s SEALs can accomplish. I laughed and told him we see it exactly opposite; they paid the price to build a legacy of sacrifice and service that we merely try to carry on in their honor.

We are only the “Sons of UDT”.

The opening quote, about decorating the graves of slain comrades, is an early directive regarding Memorial Day, celebrated to remember our military members who have paid the ultimate price. Credit and commemoration, however, should not be limited to only those who have fallen, or even to only those in the military.

Credit should be extended to those who patiently waited (and patiently wait today) for their loved ones to return from war. A stable home for the children is a priceless gift to the deployed member, and invaluable to society itself…both today and tomorrow. I and many of my career warfighter colleagues, in fact, credit more heroism to the constant, powerful courage of those who carry the burdens at home alone.

Credit is due to those who serve us in the marketplace. The cleaning man who smiles kindly while going about his duty deserves our appreciation. Librarians, too. And what about the un-(or under-)paid public servants, those local officials we elect but barely compensate to take on the headache of governing the generally uninvolved and perpetually ungrateful mass of the rest of us?

While we’re at it, let’s give credit to one another for doing something right. “Atta Boys” cost nothing to the giver, but provide encouragement for the receiver.

Most importantly, are you giving enough credit in your own home? 

How’s your human credit score?

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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Norman Rockwell's great image entitled, "Freedom from Fear" Notice the paper's headline: "Bombings..Horror"

Wow, it’s been a long time. I haven’t written in Powerful Peace since “redeploying” (coming home) from that year in Iraq this April. There is a phenomenal amount of just plain stuff to get done upon return; business as usual around home base is very different from those long months in Baghdad, Balad, and Basrah.

Thank you to everyone who encouraged me to get back in the saddle. The demands of corporate and government life have drained every surplus ounce of energy for this whole summer, but I can’t stand to let conflict reduction and Smart Power go unwritten. It really is a life-or-death matter.

To prime the pump, the following is an article adapted from my hardcopy column in Front Porch Magazine. Please look back in periodically for new material from now on.

For Goodness’ Sake – “Comfort”

A year ago in April I first drafted For Goodness’ Sake from the heart of war; more specifically, from a little espresso bar on a base in the Middle East. Twelve months later, back in Northern Virginia, I’m once again enjoying a cup of coffee emblazoned with the “S-word”…. (Oh, what the heck, I’ll say it: Starbucks! Maybe it’ll get me a free cup some time.)

In other words, I’ve finally returned home after fifty-four weeks in Iraq and I’m sipping in my own town where I belong. It’s good to see our capitol again.

Many would ask (have asked), “What could possess a retired SEAL to voluntarily leave his loved ones again and ship off to the hottest conflict zone on earth for over a year?” They assume it’s for money. Well, there are in fact contractors over there who are in it for the money. Unfortunately, this mercenary reputation stains all the rest of us consultants and contractors – even those who believe in the mission.

There’s another reason that you may not have expected, however: Comfort.

Not our own comfort, but the desperately needed comfort of others. We’re talking the comfort of this coffee; the comfort of this hometown, in which you and I don’t worry about unstoppable death squads knocking on the door in the night; the comfort of knowing that emergency rooms can’t turn away any legitimate emergency.

I’ll never forget running into an Iraqi dentist last year in Baghdad. He seemed too young to have been certified pre-2003, so I assumed he’d been trained abroad. When I asked where he’d studied, he told me “Baghdad University.” It turns out the school was disrupted for some time after the initial conflict began, but quickly got going again with a few intrepid students like my friend. Unlike our students, he had to manage the constant threat of being killed in a terrorist attack on campus between study sessions over pizza. Context is important. Completing one’s professional degree in a combat zone or navigating a “sniper alley” to put bread on the family table puts our ordinary American struggles to shame.

America is the taproot of liberty and democracy in the modern world. I was reminded of that as I stepped off the plane in DC and took a vacation to New York City, only to find Lady Liberty maintaining her vigil with resolute dignity in the harbor. Her courageous determination to stand and welcome the victims of foreign oppression is awe-inspiring. More of us should go and contemplate this important symbol. Many, many non-Americans still see great promise in the American dream.

This appeal for All Things Elvis is the true key to Smart Power and influencing without violence. (Or, rather, it would be better stated as influencing with the least amount of necessary violence. It is and always will be necessary to maintain our capability to wield the Hard side of Smart Power; sometimes talk will only get innocents killed.)

It can be easy to lose sight of how much we have to offer and how much we are admired in the world when constantly confronted by both domestic and foreign voices howling over U.S. injustices. The fact is, these howls are enabled only by the actual justice hard-wired into our system. We don’t hear about too many public protests within the North Korean regime!

While too much comfort can be detrimental (think “couch potato”), some is necessary in order to have any real quality of life and growth. Children need to take their security for granted if they are to develop the self-confidence to tackle adulthood. Adults need to trust that they will eat tonight if they would hope to function around the office today.

As I was shopping at the bazaar in preparation to return home, I enjoyed a serious conversation with a local vendor. He looked me in the eye and said, “Why are the Americans leaving? We’re not ready.”

It’s for him and his children that we need to step forward and help where we can. Their comfort will one day translate into our own.

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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[adapted from my monthly column, For Goodness' Sake, in Front Porch Magazine]

Farewell

This April marks a bittersweet homecoming.  I’ve written Powerful Peace from the mixed-up belly of war in Iraq for a year, now.  Odd as it may sound, leaving war and returning to the comforts of home and loved ones bring strange feelings to a guy like me.  If you’ve been blessed to come home from war, you understand.

In these final weeks and days, my counsel may still inspire a commander to take a slightly different course; that change might still result in one American life saved or one Iraqi child unharmed by a terrorist attack…. In the States, I have no such immediate influence on the fight - the potential loss weighs heavy.  To bring just one more young husband home would be worth the cost of my entire career.  I suspect you’d feel the same, if you’d ever thought about it.

I leave good friends who will carry on in the effort for peace and stability for months to follow.  As a consultant, I choose when and where I go.  As service members, they go when and where Uncle Sam so dictates. They will continue to strive here long past my return to the land of Starbucks.

Back in “the world”, I’ll go about business as usual, see friends and family regularly, and get pretty regular sleep. I probably won’t need to lie in the dust by the side of the road because “indirect fire” has exploded a hundred yards from me, as happened last week…again.

This most recent attack was only a handful of rockets, but the one closest to me killed a man…again.

In war, I can look into the eyes of the leader who must craft a response to such attacks. I can suggest a variance on the constant impulse for violent action and hear the commander say, “I never thought about it that way.”  I can see results unfold over months of societal development, the unwelcome state a stabilized community represents to terrorists,  and the corresponding reduction of threat to our forces – and innocent citizens.

Back in the world, I won’t have my eyes, hands and ideas on the problem set so well. I’ll lose the ground truth insight that comes from being, well, on the ground. The palpable hates, hopes and hungers that saturate the very air of Iraq are missing back in Washington. We imagine we grasp what’s going on 10,000 miles away – we don’t. It’s comfortable, back home, and I think this war has taken on a status somewhat akin to scenery for the real show: the American economy.

In 2005, several of my SEAL friends were killed in Afghanistan. You may have read about it in Marcus Luttrell’s book, Lone Survivor. Although this was before my Navy retirement, I had left the active teams and begun my work in DC, so I heard about it on the news like everybody else. Unlike everybody else, these were guys with whom I had fought, trained, and laughed. The sense of having abandoned them was intense, as was the conviction that if only I had been with that special reconnaissance squad, there may have been a different outcome.

Leaving comrades is a difficult thing, even if the destination is delightful. Every veteran has experienced it. Home is calling; the thought of family and picnics and safety pulls at the soldier… yet looking at those who stay behind brings a certain reluctance to go. Remember Charlie Sheen flying away in Platoon, smiling sadly back at his brothers on the ground.

This tug-of-war occurs with even short trips away. The duty to one’s fellows, developed through shared urgency, is strong. On Christmas Eve of 2008 I wrote a poem called “R&R” (link here) in Powerful Peace. If you’ve gone on R&R from war, I think you’ll appreciate it.  If you’ve never served, I think you’ll appreciate this rare glimpse into the personal experience of your military friends.

So that’s it. Parting is, in fact, such sweet sorrow.

Goodbye, Iraq.

…I’ll see you soon.

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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[adapted from my monthly column, For Goodness' Sake, in Front Porch Magazine]

Thank God for emergencies. Sometimes that’s the only way we humans can stand to be nice to each other.

In the 1960’s comedy classic, “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!“, a handful of Soviet submariners is forced ashore on a tiny New England island. One hilarity leads to another as they sneak around, trying to make their way back to the Motherland. Before long, little old ladies are wailing about waves of invading Russian parachutists while the sheriff struggles to restore order. (Jonathan Winters is priceless as the blustering deputy who shouts to “organize” amid the mayhem.)

While I won’t ruin the film by telling all the good bits or the ending, I’ll say that this movie illustrates the unifying power of crisis. Many guns are pointed at many people, and we see ordinarily adversarial relationships healed by moments of need.

It’s a shame, but sometimes we need such an urgent, common cause to get out of our own heads.

We read that the Titanic tragedy was another example of the finer qualities of humanity shining forth, when men unanimously assisted women and children onto the limited number of rafts in the sure knowledge that they themselves would perish. (Well, unanimously except for that one sleazy weasel, or sleazel, who was trying to get Leonardo’s girlfriend – but we all saw that coming!)

The massive recovery effort for September 11th involved thousands of dissimilar individuals. We didn’t hear of people refusing to pull a broken survivor from the rubble because he was of the wrong complexion, faith, or political party. When billions of global citizens and their leaders stood to condemn the monstrous evil of those attacks, there was a pause in rivalries…a pause in mindless self interest.

Wouldn’t we like to feel that again, but without the senseless loss of innocent life? Wouldn’t it be nice to rise above our perpetual squabbling over stale bread crusts and focus instead on cooperatively making truckloads of fresh loaves?

I have criticized Congress for its divisive diversions in running this country. Granted, it’s an easy target, but isn’t this justifiably so? After all, don’t those lofty seats exist not as the privileged rulers of a nation of subjects, but as the first servants of all others in this great experiment of democracy?

The partisan Senate vote is a pitiful sight. Such vast power spent opposing the other and protecting political territory. Could not that tremendous energy be harnessed to press forward, instead of sideways?

I’ll continue to challenge our legislators when they don’t serve us – at least until I become a member myself…at which point I’ll dig deep for the courage to be still more critical of Congress and all national leaders, for the benefit of all.

I write For Goodness’ Sake and PowerfulPeace.net because I believe it is possible to work together without crisis. In fact, I’ve watched it happen - and helped it happen - in dozens of countries around the world.

We have the capacity to look beneath the surface of another, whether from our point of view he has too many earrings or not enough, and discover that person’s unique potential. In practice, however, it is much more common to judge the book by its cover.

Here’s the punch line! I am the first victim of my contempting another. I discard a person who might otherwise be able to help me at some point. Is this casual contempt based on his appearance, or some affiliation?

Am I not then perpetuating partisan thinking?

Besides the obvious abandonment of that person’s potential positive contribution in my life, I also invite negative feedback/retaliation from anyone that I disregard or mistreat.

How stupid can one person be? And yet we do it…by the billions.

I propose that we practice Smart Power at the individual level. Let’s open our minds, look for the value in those unlike ourselves, and discover how alike we are. This is “smart power to the people”.

We can work together without depending on crisis for motivation. At some point, this cooperation even averts some crisis.

And finally, there is just one more thing: get a copy of “The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming!” Seriously. You could use a good laugh.

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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This AIG scandal is an awesome spectacle with many moving parts, many culpable parties on all sides – corporate, government, and public - and many innocent victims of wrongdoing…including among these, some AIG executives themselves!

We, the people, ought to take a deep breath and let it out, stop shrieking for the blood of (only) corporate executives, and take stock. We ought to put this in perspective.

A great shell gamer will draw your eyes away from what you really want to see; in this case, we need to see the whole truth. Did AIG executives mastermind a national disaster in isolation from federal regulation? Were private citizens who accepted crazy loans completely without blame? Was every one of AIG’s executives, at every level, complicit in maliciously plundering the rest of us, in fleecing a great, innocent flock?

Or is our attention away being drawn away from the whole truth about ourselves with a single, tiny, sparkly object (the righteously indignant super-tax on executive bonuses)?

Here’s some context: imagine working as a manager at the local supermarket for $57,000 annually, and looking forward all year to your promised merit-based Christmas bonus of $3,500. Imagine finding out on December 15th that some high executives in your company fiddled the books and the local town council arbitrarily judged that now your bonus will be taxed at 90% because you make well over the average of stockers and checkers.

Here’s your $350. Merry Christmas!

Would the previous scenario be fair? If not, then why is this knee-jerk reaction against AIG fair? Can no one remember how alarming it was that politicians threw hundreds of billions into the bailout in just one weekend?

Maybe we’re seeing ripples of those rash decisions with taxpayer dollars, and now more reactions are being substituted for a prudent response.

This is undoubtedly a quandary for many low-level executives in the finance industry: $250,000 is a chicken feed salary for senior management, but everyone who earns above that line will now be penalized by a sweeping Congressional decision to get that bonus money back. Taxed at 90%. 90% of just $170M in bonuses, out of approximately $170B in bailout money? This has to be a crisis based on principle, not real numbers, because we’re talking about the reallocation of one tenth of one percent of AIG’s dough. We’re making an example of the executives, not managing the money, and attacking every single one among them is as juvenile as teenagers singing, “Eat the Rich!”

It’s difficult to imagine that every executive pulling in $300,000 had his hand on the wheel in driving the US economy into the canal.

(Please let me also point out that one reason American democracy has proven so successful is because of limits to abuses including arbitrary and extreme taxation, which was one spark for the American Revolution. Ordinarily Americans believe taxes should not be punitive, but fairly applied to share the burden of the cost of government. Yet here we are, in 21st Century America, standing with torches in the streets, screaming “Burn AIG! Burn ‘em!!!”)

So why is Congress so enthusiastically savaging every executive from the lowest up, anyway? Well, perhaps it’s because the mobs are frothing at the mouth. More specifically, American voters are frothing at the mouth. In this riot control atmosphere, if the great mass of voters doesn’t see some showboating on the part of its sitting Congressman, some participation in the “outrage” (that has certainly become a popular word this week), it will find him a replacement quick, fast and in a hurry.

Why do I call the political dance “showboating”? Because SOME of our finance-savvy political leaders must have been able to see these circumstances unfolding for many weeks and months. Are these bonuses a genuine outrage? Then why did the bailout drafters – some of whom have received a lot of political money directly from AIG – deliberately write in that bailout money COULD be used for bonuses?

According to interviews this week, it was done “to save the bill”. According to interviews, the bailout was drafted by Congress, at the urging of the administration, to permit using bailout money for bonuses.

It doesn’t sound like that now, with Congress publicly frothing at the mouth in “outrage”.

Here’s the point: one op-ed this week declared, “Findings of fraud on the part of an employee would certainly also excuse A.I.G.’s duty to pay. This isn’t to say that any A.I.G. employee engaged in such activity. But…it’s worth investigating.”

Well, of course it’s worth investigating suspected wrongdoing! But what we have instead of reasoned investigation is a kangaroo court of assumption, by Congress as judge and jury (with the cooperation of the citizens of the United States), of guilt on the part of each and every executive among the hundreds in these bailout companies.

We’re being snowed by political leaders who want to throw business leaders under the bus to avoid the scrutiny due their political leadership as we sailed into this economic hurricane.

How many Congressmen will have money taken from their own bank accounts when all this is said and done?

Here’s the punchline: for everyone unwilling to take part in the great moralistic orgy of outrage, for those with a business-minded perspective, this should be a great time to buy AIG stock at just over a buck. According to every source, the company is now “80% owned by the American taxpayer”, and “too big to be permitted to fail”. So…WHEN it recovers, not if, and when your shares exceed $20 each, you’ll be very glad you took the calm view of a good personal investment – and you’ll begin rebuilding the financial industry in a well-managed direction at the same time!

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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We want to tell our children that monsters don’t exist - and mean it. As long as we keep a mental picture of Frankenstein’s fictional lab project or a nice, tidy Dracula, this is the truth. Unfortunately, Bela Lugosi’s famously overpainted vampire face is only a popular reflection of a man who really lived long ago, who really did very bad things to people.

Vlad the Impaler was known for his gruesome treatment of enemies, slaves, and innocent passers-by, and it’s partly his history that informs the movie monsters of today. Just think: somebody in the world was his nearest neighbor. (If a news crew had come to the neighbor’s door, you know what you’d hear: “Vlad was always a quiet man; kept to himself.”)

Jeffrey Dahmer had a next-door neighbor, and so did every other cannibalistic, necrophiliac serial killer who ever lived.

Today Austria locked up a man from a nice neighborhood who had locked up his pretty, teenaged daughter…locked her up at the age of 18 in a slave quarters in the basement of the home he shared with his unwitting wife…locked her up for twenty-four years…so he could rape her…3,000 times…fathering seven children from his own child…and ultimately, murdering one of his infant sons/grandsons through depriving medical care when the boy experienced respiratory distress.

This man went so far as to adopt three of his children/grandchildren with his wife, as a “concerned family member” of his “runaway” daughter…the other three children never once saw the light of the sun all the years of their pitiful lives, until last year’s rescue.

As I’ve said many times, Powerful Peace is not about peace, love and harmony on a fantastical Utopian plane. It is about the hard, cold reality that we never have and never will all get along – but that biting back our biting words and holding back our eager fists is the only true way to open a little space that can permit us to break the cycle of violence. When I react to provocation I invite retaliation; retaliation, which harms my loved ones and myself…. The pattern is ridiculously obvious, yet we foolish humans leap repeatedly, willingly into tit-for-tat office squabbles and international bloodbaths.

The key lesson, as always, is that Smart Power is composed of a balance of hard (or forceful), and soft (or attractive) powers. Again, as you’ve read here extensively, the flaw of ordinary peace movements is in believing that love and tolerance can solve every conflict. These ideals are absolutely the higher way, and must be pursued with all our energy – but they won’t stop the sweating, summertime-parka-wearing young man with desperate eyes as he walks briskly toward your checkpoint. A bullet is required to stop a suicide bomber.

There are very bad things in the world, and bad things are required to deal with some of them. There are suicide attackers who cannot be stopped with dialogue or even threats – after all, what would constitute an effective threat against a man who plans to take his own life within a few seconds?

The bad things include people we will never fully understand. Denying their reality would be to wander away from the courageous stance of Powerful Peace - which faces reality on reality’s terms.

Be a little more mindful of strangers, and hug your children a little tighter than usual this evening.

And for God’s sake, please - please - preserve their fleeting, fragile innocence…keep telling them that monsters aren’t real.

Copyright © 2009 by Jack Oatmon. All rights reserved.

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