AFGHANISTAN: No Lessons Learned

In August 1998, two weeks after a little-known terror outfit called al-Qaida announced itself to the world with bomb attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the US president, Bill Clinton, retaliated with missile strikes against a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. 

Central Khartoum was rocked in the middle of the night by the impact of a dozen Tomahawk missiles, which destroyed the plant, killing a night watchman and wounding 11 others. 

The US claimed that the factory – which was the largest provider of medicines in a country under sanctions – was secretly producing nerve agents on behalf of al-Qaida, but it didn’t take long for American officials to admit that the “evidence … was not as solid as first portrayed”.

The attack, in other words, was simply an act of retaliation against a random target, without any connection to the crime purportedly being avenged. 

I was a university student in Khartoum at the time. I can remember the confusion the day after the explosions, then visiting the shattered site of the factory with other students. 

What was suddenly clear to us then, standing in front of the ruins in a sleepy city that had supposedly become the centre of Islamic terrorism overnight, was the real logic of the “war on terror”: our lives were fodder for the production of bold headlines in American newspapers, saluting the strength, swift action and resolve of western leaders. 

We, on the sharp end of it all, would never be the protagonists. Those were the policy and opinion makers far, far away, for whom our experience was merely the resolution of an argument about themselves. The operation was chillingly, but appropriately, called Infinite Reach.  READ MORE

Going With The Flow

If I live 25 more years, then I have 9,131 more wake up calls before the Good Lord or someone else takes my body; if the years remaining are only 20, then my wake up calls reduce to 7,303; and if, for some reason my Maker or someone else decides that society only needs me for another 10, then my wake up considerably reduce to 3,652; however, I am not going to spend any of my morning marking any days off a calendar...  this is not the way this life was meant to be lived...  at least, not from my current perspective...

In my early years, I lived fast and loose, taking chances and risks that only not so smart idiots would take and for some reason survived them all...  but, learned no lessons...  after marriage and during middle age, I matured into the kind of person who made the kinds of decisions that always put work first instead of my family or any of my spiritual beliefs that I seemed to be leaving behind.  These years were tumultuous to say the least and again...  no lessons learned...

A funny thing happened to me along the age road and it smacked me hard in the face when I turned 60...  my healthy body that I had been treating perfectly with proper diets, no alcohol, no smoking, and exercise decided that it wanted to give into CANCER and to pour salt into the wound decided that it was necessary to have a severe heart attack.  Instead of killing me, my damn healthy body survived and decided that it was going to keep me above ground for a few more years...

This may be nothing new to those of you who like to read what I have to say, but what was new that was learned was my new perspective on life...  It seems that my entire life was spent trying to take my body in one direction, when my body fought me taking me into another direction...  that is to say, how I ended up and doing what I was doing at age 60 was NEVER PART of any of my PLANS of Action...  hard to believe but true...

My mind took me down one dirt road when my body took me down another.  I started out in light manufacturing, went into the arts, and then continuing education, took a detour into manufacturing again, catapulted into administration, and ended my career teaching...  which was not ever the last choice on my list, in fact, none of my jobs were jobs that I really wanted to do at all...  they all just sort of fell into my lap one day and there I was...

My heart's desire was threefold:  a modern dancer and/or a fine arts artist and if those did not work out, then an Architect.

Ain't it funny how life works out...  or maybe not funny at all, since I spent 42 years never doing anything that I really wanted to do...

After 12 years and into my 13th of cancer treatments...  I have had almost everything offered:

• Surgery
• Radiation
• Chemotherapy
• Immunotherapy

and...  this latest treatment protocols, combining radiation with immunotherapy seems to really be working which is why I believe that it is entirely possible that I might have another 20-25 years...  and, while this may be ambitious, I do not believe it is an exaggeration.

My life has NEVER BEEN MY OWN really and it took me 67 years to figure that out and while many people on this earth DO NOT believe in PREDESTINATION, both of my feet are firmly planted in that camp...

Why, you might ask?

Because... it all started with my birth actually...   and the fact that while my parents planted the seed, there was something more spiritual, more divine that caused ME to be born and no someone else.  You might say, it was the combo of my parents DNA, but that is too simplistic of an answer because it still does not explain why ME instead of my brother or my sister...  or, someone else...

I ended up where I did in life because that is exactly where I supposed to be and nowhere else...  not matter what I wanted or taking into the consideration the desire of someone else...

My purpose may yet to defined...  or, it may have already happened...  I do not know and will never know I suppose until I die...  but someone else or something else has already decided what, if anything, that I will contribute...  and that the purpose of my life just seems to be GOING WITH THE FLOW and nothing more.  What ever it is that I am suppose to do...  I will do...  or, have done already...  and, there is not a damn thing I can do about except just sit back and enjoy...

It is this awareness that has become my life's lesson...