Not that I deem these short essays precious, but hey: some drops of life have been brewed in, so:
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I am not french. And I'm not american. I am italian, actually.
There are a variety of things I thank God & France for: among them is the most beautiful literature of the world, and Montaigne and Montesquieu and Voltaire and Diderot and Rousseau and Tocqueville and for "L' etre et le neant" by J.P. Sartre.
I then thank God and the Anglo Saxon world for Hobbes and Hume and Locke and Thomas Paine and for "The federalist papers".
I then thank (in order of appearance!) England for the english revolution, America for the american revolution, France for the French revolution.
These are the things which shaped Democracy, so far and by far the more viable and wealthy political system known to men.
I'm not inclined to cry "VIVA L' ITALIA!": we have nothing special to be proud of and when I hear some of my countrymen talking of democracy at the face of the Usa I feel something is back to front for it is the Usa who teached (imposed? Yes, but to our own begrudge, not to Usa's) democracy to Italy, and not vice-versa; conversely, when I hear the marsigliese, I wish I could shout "VIVE LA FRANCE!" for I shiver with a shiver that partekes of something bigger than France, and I know I can't for I'm not french; and I suffer.
 

The issue with Chirac's stance is to my eyes another, and certainly it is not a war indeed nobody wants.
The issue is not to act within the UN or not to act within the UN: in fact in Kosovo we (meaning all Europe+USA: for what else NATO is but this?):

1. Acted completely out of the UN: no UN resolution approved the NATO action. Ever.
   France and Germany did not complain: on the contrary, they partecipated (actually Germany didn't physically simply lest being utterly unwelcome in a region still pretty mindful of the Nazi occupation).
2. Since the NATO intervention no more one gunshot is reported from the area where injuries by the hundreds had been reported for over a decade on a nearly daily basis, and all this whatever press flavour you resort to (unless you're among those who judge Le Figaro and the CNN less objective than, say, radicals.org: namely unless you regard the former radicals and the latter balanced). I don't call this a bad achievement...
   And of course we're not talking of political assassination, which as such has always been with mankind since Julius Caesar and which as such would mean nothing (Robert Kennedy was killed by a palestinian: no one on such basis is going to allege that was palestinian terrorism!), but we're talking of what has triggered the intervention in the first place and therefore what the intervention was meant to put an end to: mass casualties and hundreds of deaths a day by shells and snipers, over a full decade: not bank robbings.
3. Saddam is certainly more dangerous than Milosevic, if we compare their statures.

In Gulf War (1?) Saddam wasn't removed after the following deal: keep sheathed your chemical weapons and we won't march on Baghdad. G. Bush senior admittedly hoped (not entirely out of rationality) that a coup would have eventually ensued the iraqi military defeat, thus delivering the Usa from the diresome task of toppling he who would have used MDW not to be toppled. It is all reported in the by now famous book "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War" (Judith Miller, Stephen Engelberg, William J. Broad):
The book at Amazon.com
 
Now, what Chirac does?
He says that what has been done for Kosovo cannot be done for Iraq too.
Possibly. We can even concede it without arguing why it should not, out of mere "magnanimity": because it wouldn't change one comma.
 
In fact, the matter is that by assessing this he introduces a new factor: a split within the EU. And this is the issue.
It is not true that this split came after the "pro" USA document signed by the other 9 EU countries (see map): The French-German entente and stance was prior to that document, and was issued without any consultation whatsoever.
I understand that Germany and France feel themselves like the legitimate leaders of the community, and may take an initiative giving for assured that the Union cannot but follow suit (other countries accordingly to Chirac "must just shut up").
 

Chirac, the same man of the Mururoa atoll atomic blasts. Of course, it is argued by those who incense him now and incinerated him then that he "has now changed as a man, because men can (indeed or conveniently) change": how romantic; he passed from nuclear to verbal insolence, because as everybody knows attending the cloistered presidential palaces of the Elisee is a stairway to ecumenic conversions: the unexperienced candidate enters as a warmonger, the seasoned President exits as a saint.
 
Miracles do happen, and Presidents still retain the prerogative of the Kings who sat on the same throne: Chirac curing the scrofola dislodges Louis XIV as the "miracle worker".
 
But the fact is: in the fore mentioned fashions Chirac has now set the whole of the EU community and process in the biggest and unnecessary possible jeopardy.
If Iraq is defeated by the Usa, the EU as a project is defeated with Iraq, and both France and Germany can wave bye bye to any future role as the engine of the community.
Alternatively, and brilliantly enough, they can only hope to reap success and consequently found their gamble on the ashes of an American Tragedy, in the persuasion such ominous sign would be the harbinger of affluence, would herald kudos, and usher eurocentered worldwide stability.
Marginally and eventually, they can... "hope" that a devastating attack may dispatch them in the pulpit whose unique advantage is to retort like teenagers that "I told ya", and found this time their prestige on a position that, basically, traded allegiance (to the Usa) with gloating and grotesque collusion (to terrorists).
 
The only option that would put them half out of the lose or lose gamble is the one that sees no war breaking out, for whatever reason: exile, effective disarming, whatever; it doesn't matter whether nervine agents got "found" on march 2003 by the iraqis, as if they didn't remember in the previous months where they were (Blix: "It is hard to understand why a number of the measures, which are now being taken, could not have been initiated earlier. If they had been taken earlier, they might have borne fruit by now" [source]), namely only after months of pressure and although the november 2002 UN resolution demanded immediate full cooperation: it is still possible to profile this violation of the resolution as a success, ignore that the elapsed months are an objectively meaningful uncooperative sign, and disregard the presence of US military pressure as irrelevant whilst everyone sees it is crucial ("Ahtisaari says that without US pressure Saddam Hussein would not have agreed to cooperate as much as he has already" [source]), simply in order to contend in the face of such blunders that it all derived because of France.
This would set Chirac in the position of repugning that if war didn't break out it was because of their allegedly farsighted commitment, and reap the revenues of an hypocritical conclusion as the "soild" springboard from which enjoying the enticing fruits of an hypocritical euro-prestige: a platform of fake grandeur any statesman interested in real and lasting clout would wince from.
 
As a journalist wrote somewhere: "hypocrisy, the most famous french product after champagne". And as I said at the beginning, not that I believe the french are respectable because of champagne, in the same fashion italians are not famous just for spaghetti and the Americans are not famous because of hamburgers, as a few acid spinsters like propaganda from ingorant extremism of both sides at times "argument".
Extremism that are such insofar they're extreme exactly in ignorance.
 
A flurry of pacifists who are for peace without any articulated reasoning whatsoever behind the in itself quite respectful position, but that conversely are pacifists insofar many of them indeed rebounced from and belong to ex-communist or ex-fascists environments and ideologic streaks, still angry at those matters of their defeats in the WWII and in the Cold War: namely as Ignazio Silone brilliantly reported (in his essay included in "The God That Failed") what one day he said to the italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti:

"the final struggle won't be between the communists and the 'capitalists': it will be between the communists and the ex-communists".

Extremism that are perceived by politicians as electoral basins whose ignorance is to be soothed firstly and exploited secondly, instead of educating them: politicians who know perfectly what the real complexified issues are, who have all the cultural instruments and personal education and even intelligence to educate them, and whose educative commitment every leadership should be devoted to is regularly deserted and unattended; systematically and consistently unattended at times under the reasoning that education of these extremely unlearned positions would be close to stalinist reeducation, oblivious of the fact that if such would have been the case with the Usa, no one of them would be in a different place already but those Stalin invariably and without delay sent all dissidents to enjoy a lifelong vacation at, at the first sign not of disagreement but even of not sufficiently enthusiastic agreement.

"The peace march last Saturday really brought about a very dangerous misinformation. In Italy President Bush was compared to Hitler. In Italy Silvio Berlusconi was compared to Mussolini and the same somebody practically described Saddam Hussein as a good Moslem and Arab citizen, without any sort of fault, whereas entirely the opposite is true, and we must let the story of Saddam Hussein's regime be known and the nature of his power"
[Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi - source]

Let me stress: I'm not here arguing for war; I prefer no war like everyone else does. I'm here arguing on what France is doing and how.
Please, consider these implications, for I see there the real problem of Chirac and Schroeder's stance: they seem unaware of the implication they forged for themselves, the lose or lose game they crafted for themselves and for the whole of the future of that EU they have sticked in such game.
 
Eventually, any political identity which perceives itself like endangered, is a political identity which is at odds with itself and its own weakness, not with the escape it seeks to relieve its pangs with: stating or implicitly assuming that an European identity can stand out only insofar it detaches and foils itself on and against the Atlantic Alliance, tantamount to imply no such collective identity exists (yet?) because it can be defined only in terms of counter-dependency from the sound identity matured by another.
And this means no identity has been achieved at all, and the horizons profile none: it is the admission of a failure from the onset, of a rot from the root.
 
"We must not be servants of the United States", is the sentence whose grip is felt more strongly by those who unadmittedly understand they have no instruments to be other but servants, while they advocate they wish they could be otherwise, while the claim they are - not. Those who cry more strongly that they "are not servants" are those who are going to be servants of any tyrant would loom with enough determination to break their physical bones at the first whisper of dissent. And this is not the United States of America. This is the type of "independent" and "brave" men who are, who historically have always been even too ready to vote uncle Adolf just to be despiteful to some uncle Sam.
 
Let alone, then, the argument that goes: since Europe is closer to the ME, since Europe hosts more ME immigrants, since siding too overtly with the United States (as if somebody ever demanded to side overtly) would grant us attacks, because of all this we have to ponder more carefully -and probably reposition- even our most fruitful alliances.
As the AU Premier counter-argumented such statements: "this is moral bankruptcy", believing that a planetary danger can be (Un)dealt with by abstention, and that by force of cowardice and appeasements can be pursued and purchased immunity from the attacks of a gang of wilful assassins who elate themselves in murdering unarmed civilians -clerks secretaries doormen and mail boys- without remorse and not as the mischance of a smart bomb went awry stupid but as the deliberately elected, intentionally pinpointed target.
 
And what about the most popular, buzzword-like dialectic wielded to justify Euro politics in the face of American politics?
The euro-guy makes a mistake; as soon as it is made, he provides himself with what he believes a corresponding mistake by the Usa-guy, and encapsulates the euro mistake in this presumptive fortress: since the Usa did this, we can do that. Equivalence in errors ennobles yours, tears other's.
 
One typical example out of many: since the Usa helped the afghan guerrilla to cope with the soviet invasion, consequently they must not complain when the guerrilla thanks the Usa by attacking them as a sign of gratitude. Or: no gratitude is due at all, because the Usa furnished the guerrilla insofar they had an interest in forestalling the soviets: and any drop of interest would forever pollute and taint the intrinsic value of the help which positively has been lent.
 
Now, the dialectic is this: postulating that whatever position can recover dignity simply because the dignity conferred to a position of the counterpart derives from an analogous or symmetrical causative order of facts: thenceforth, all positions are equivalent insofar they're both mistakes, and thence the euro-guy draws the legitimacy of his position by the declared illegitimacy of the Usa-guy politics.
 
The disguised presupposition that nourishes these standpoints is that the Usa did not attain a leading role because they undertook painful and straightforward measures and politics in their history; the Usa did not attain a hegemonic position because they voluntary abdicated exactly those delaying tactics continuously hampering Europe; and the Usa did not emanicpate themselves by their own attended virtues; but conversely the Usa would have landed over there by chance, or perhaps by consideration of geographical magnitude (regardless of the fact countries as huge as Brasil never did, not even went close; and no matter if under leftist or rightist government and numberless constitutions); considerations, the latter, which are as much pathetic as the old fashioned political doctrines arguing a role of the climate and of the weather in the pursuit of glory: positions that David Landes in his Wealth and Poverty of Nations lampooned since the beginning:

«Huntington gave geography a bad name (...) He was so impressed by the connections between physical environment and human activity that he attributed more and more to [climate] (...) Hungtington taught at Yale University and not coincidentally thought New Haven had the world's most invigorating climate (...) demonstrate the effects of geography on the distribution of merit and wisdom (...) In our day the tables are sometimes reversed, Afro-American mythmakers contrast happy, creative 'sun people' with cold, inhuman 'ice people'. (...) Winter, then, in spite of what poets may say about it, is the great friend of humanity: the silent white killer, slayer of insects and parasites, cleanser of pests.»

Arguing the Usa become the Usa because they were big and inhumane is as much ridiculous as the excerpt you've just read.
 
The Usa did not become the Usa because of a lucky strike, or because of that extreme wickedness that never made such conspicuous fortunes but conversely always wasted them (and should have produced an exception just for them...).
The Usa become the Usa precisely because, starting like anyone else from a position of extreme weakness (you'd just have to think of the civil war, one of the most staggering human history ever recorded), renounced all those politics of wanton self-complacency and self-deception whose stubborn indulgence in is precisely what most characterizes the failed attempts to leap towards analogously prestigious thresholds by other nations. And Europe.
 
Now, what United States of Europe can be built on such shattered sands and with such leaders, but the ones doomed to perpetuate the failure so earnestly they whirl and attempt (and fail) to flee so desperately from (because they are plagued so intensely by)?
 
Am I so wrong, yes? Because you know: precision, far from producing what the french writer Vauvenargues optimistically thought it should have produced ("precision wreaths profound thoughts") rather makes you disagreeable to those who built their dwelling place on the sands of self(and foes)-appeasement.
In Europe they seem to be, at times, legion. A la Oscar Wilde, you can impose to Europe everything, except what bears consequences for Europe itself.

For you are free not insofar you must or insofar you do or insofar you shall: but insofar you mayest.
The dubious battle may be dubious, but not void. And words matter.
 
I must confess my impotence to scan the ranks of God, though St. Augustine in The City Of God proved excellence at this.
See, the Bible distinguishes between Cherubins and Seraphins.
These distinctions are far from being idle - provided we try to fathom a rational meaning in the legacy of the Bible, rational meaning we suppose must be there, concealed somewhere.
 

Heavenly Ranks

So, there are ranks in the Heavens.
 
There are angels, and there are those who are referred to not as angels, although angels are always referred as such: but in the ranks of God there are also some more mysterious "winged creatures"
Chronicles book 2, 3:7 "engraving the walls with great winged creatures".
It is remarkably funny that while reading by mistake Daniel instead of the Psalms, I found: Daniel, 3:53 onward (I wonder whether all bibles report these verses; mine does, others don't):
 

Marcel Duchamp: one door instead of two

"Blessed be your glorious and holy name (...)May you be blessed in the Temple
of your sacred glory.
(...)blessed on the Throne of your Kingdom
(...)blessed are you who fathom the Abyss
enthroned on the winged creatures [<--- badaboom!]
(...) blessed in the expanse of the heavens
(...) Bless the Lord all the Lord's creation:
(...) bless the Lord angels of the heavens
(...) Bless the Lord all the waters above the heavens
(...)Bless the Lord Powers of the Lord
(...) Bless the Lord Sun and Moon
(...) Bless the Lord stars of Heaven
(...)Bless the Lord rain and dew [a long string of physical
properties follows, then suddenly:]
(...)(...)(...) Bless the Lord, nights and days
(...)Bless the Lord light and Darkness [from now on only creatures
are mentioned, man and women are mentioned as LAST, like in the
creation rythm!]"
 
Seems we have lost, over time, a clear awareness or knowledge of these -mysteryous indeed- "winged creatures".
Daniel says: Waters above the heavens: "Bless the Lord all the waters above the heavens": again this story already reported in Genesis 1:2; and I can't understand it: it is sealed.
 
But what concerns us: angels are positively mentioned.
The winged creatures too, as a separate entity although they're not numbered (needless: after all Solomon did: he made a clear reference to 2 anyway).
I'm puzzled as well as you may be. We have discovered there exist at least two winged creatures in the bible, and they seem being more than "mere" angels. The Lord Himself is even enthroned on them.
The winged creatures face the same side, as to hint that they are not a binomial in a two faced Janus fashion whose two faces face opposite sides of the globe:

Androgine

they face the same side, as to mean that they are two, yes, but do the same thing despite their branched nature: the word that creates is not also the words that destroys, but both words do the same thing, they both create.
That's amazing.
But why I say the winged creatures have to do with the "word"?
 
Now: Name of God + Temple + Throne + Abyss + (2?)Winged Creatures+ Heavens+ Creation + Angels (of the heavens) + Waters(ABOVE the heavens)+ Powers +Sun and Moon+ Stars(of heavens)+ Physical properties+ Night and days+ light and darkness.
 
Something is broken in this algorithm, but until a certain verse it is not: let's compare it with Genesis:
 
1 In the beginning God created heaven, and earth.
2 And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face
of the deep; and the wind of God moved over the waters.
3 And God said: Be light made. And light was made.
4 And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light
from the darkness.
5 And he called the light Day, and the darkness Night; and there was
evening and morning one day.
6 And God said: Let there be a firmament made amidst the waters:
and let it divide the waters from the waters [divides by 2: TWO
halves]. 7 And God made a firmament, and divided the waters that were under
the firmament, from those that were above the firmament, and it was so.
8 And God called the firmament, Heaven; and the evening and morning were the second day.
 
One thing is immediately apparent to my eyes: the Winged Creatures match with the Wind. I have also this intuition: the winged creatures are the medium God moves throughout or by: the Chariots of God that He "uses" to move throughout the unfathomable "voidness". Note that if winged creatures=wind, then winged creatures are the immediate pre-verbal phase of the creation, mentioned as "wind" immediately before the "word" appears.
Why I suggest the wind=winged creatures?
Well: Genesis vs Daniel, point by point: God=God Heaven=Temple Earth=Throne (didn't the Gospels say, after all, that the earth is the footstool of God?) Deep=Abyss consequently, Wind=Winged Creatures
 
So the winged creatures are the breath that goes with the word, that carries and sustains and dispatches the word and delivers it.
 
The Winged Creatures may be equal to the wind upon the Abyss They hold the Throne. We can assume they are Chariots, namely wind that carries God, the Deacons of God.
They're amphibious (Waters=Heavens): they can go everywhere, up the Heaven and down the Abyss. Thence they are two, but serve the same purpose.
 
What is in hebraic the term by which God creates?
HAYAH: "Let there be".
Now, such word is one, and is two: in fact, note it is a palindrome, namely can be read in both directions (two) and yeilds still one meaning, the same.
 
This leads us to the a second famous biblical word: which yields surprisingly enough another palindrome (this idea of the palindrome is funny insofar the original idea we were searching for a palindrome was that the lost word should reflect a supposed "amphibious" nature drawn by the "winged creatures", and that they were the "wind", the "chariots" of God used to hover upon the "abyss" before uttering the first word God ever says: "hayah". This word must be able to travel anywhere, so a palindrome was a reasonable expectation. It may perhaps be interesting to locate words used in the bible that performed -if any- an immediate de-construction or destruction when uttered by God: the idea is they might be very similar to hayah).
 

Jacob Bohme, Teosophic wheel, 1682

Such new palindrome that before I never noticed was such, is precisely:
Ehiyeh
in the sentence:
Ehiyeh asher Ehiyeh : I am who I am.
You can read it in both directions.
Furhtermore:
Ehiyeh asher Ehiyeh
Is sort of a "double" palindrome, in the term Ehiyeh and in the reading of the whole sentence.
 
Therefore I suggest another of "my" typical jumps (I've never been able to be systemic, I just get carried away by concepts too easily and too quickly too far to keep track of what the hack I'm doing or even why I started - a depressing experience in the long run...). Ehiyeh = (somewhat) hayah
Or, in (latin) concepts: I am what I am= Let there be
 
God becomes the verb "to be", not "to have", and not even "can".
 
I don't understand anyway why the name of God Yahwhe:
Yod Hey Vav Hey
is judged the same by God himself (or a good equivalent, that is) as/to:
Ehiyeh
Isn't YHWH a completely different word than Ehiyeh?
That's confusing, for YHWH is NOT a palindrome, but Ehiyeh is indeed.
 
From a reading in italian: Salvatore Natoli, L'esperienza del dolore, press: Feltrinelli. I attempt to include a few scattered translations and be very forgiving with my english now!
About page 200:
"The dervish cry 'Ya-Hu' means 'Here he/it is!' '"
Indeed, YHWH and Ehiyeh appear as being the same thing then.
Exodus 34:14 "YHWH name is The Jealous One; he is a jealous God".
 
This complicates it all, for it has never been cleared enough what the original hebraic migyht mean by "jelous".
To let you see how widely the meaning of the term may vary, see what the russian writer Puskin wrote 2 centureis ago about Shakespeare 's Othello:
"Othello is not jealous: he is trustful"
which puts the whole shakespearian drama under a completely different -and indeed much more compelling- light: it is no longer the drama of some after all vile (and boring) jaelousy, but the drama of a person who believes, fully believes, and is betrayed.
 
So: what is jealousy accordingly to the Bible?
It has relevance to our research for it is said the "name" of God can mean that.
YHWH=Ehiyeh=be=jealousy (??)
 
Dictionary: meaning #2 for jealousy:
Zealous (steadfast??) vigilance
 
Now, Natoli:
"(...) Moses gets this answer: ehjeh asher ehjeh: I am who I am. (...) The meaning of the words do not imply either the abstract meaning of being, not even of a pure existence, but hint to something happening, to something becoming, to something undergoing, to something being and most of all being HERE."
 
That is: Natoli is saying this: I am who I am= I am he who happens= I am he who occurs= I am the event= I am the advent (strange christmas coincidence indeed!).
 
Now, Isaiah many times sepaks of a "cornerstone" where you can both stumble or base yourself upon ( a "palindrome", you see...). Which is definetely something that "occurs".
   Natoli goes on:
"God refuses the information (...) This is what happened to Jacob too after he fought with God: he asks for the name of the Angel and then God withholds the information again:'why you ask my name'? (...) (...) I will be there. I will be in that location. (...) it is interesting to stress what [some, my note] Von Rad says about the meaning of the haja in hebraic"
 
Jesus, is he referring precisely to hayah?
Yes, he is.
 
Let's go on:
"by haja you have to mean the fact of 'being present', of 'being vigilant' in the sense of 'being there'".
 
Lete there be light, in fact.
Is God parting/dispatching the light out of Himself?
 
Natoli: "it has the same value of saying 'I will be there', it is a date, it is pregnant with future, it is a promise".
So, is also the well known name of a well know and affirmed internet search engine http://www.YAHOO.com a name that derives by this very same sophisticated reasoning instead than by a mere and trivial onomatopoeic emulation of an enthusiasm cry as it is generally (and arguably wrongly) assumed?
Metaphysics on the internet, bud: because YAHOO is a search engine, and a search engine finds things: you say the input word, and it unleashes its chariots and it replies: here it is...
A shiver, bud?
 
So jealous means this, perhaps: not that God is jealous in the human sense, but in the sense you cannot isolate a segment of the reality where you won't find Him in.
 
So yes, probably the illation holds true: Ehiyeh=hayah for:
Here [I] am = there be [X].
Programming reasoning applied to the Torah can deliver something, at least.
 
The first commandment begins with the verb to be:
I AM
and the second with
YOU HAVE NOT
So religion is a matter of being, and not a matter of having this or that God whatever the Name. If there is something God always opposed in the Bible, is being called with a Name: every time he has been asked "what is your name", the answer has invariably been elusive.
 

Wheels

In the Qabbalah there is a set of wheels, wheels as chariots, each carrying a full alphabet: they are featured as 4 concentric wheels (by the name of YHWH whose only thing is it should be 4 letters: as for why 4 would be a long story I bet!) each wheel with 22 sectors to carry one different letter of the alphabet.
But if you rotate one wheel and then another in order to get into a column the name YHWH, you will see that all the other slots produced 22 more different names in all theo other columns: those are the synonims of G-d.
I presume the real reason the name of G-d should be abbreviated is that doesn't exist one name for ***.
 
And here finally along comes Charity.
 
Charity. It is a widely used word, of christian ascendant, rarely understood in its potential meaning: charity is, in fact, regarded as a synonym of giving money to the less fortunate.
It is much more than this.
 
Perhaps obviously:
1Cor:13:1: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
1Cor:13:2: And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
1Cor:13:3: AND THOUGH I BESTOW ALL MY GOODS TO FEED THE POOR, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
1Cor:13:9: For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
1Cor:13:10: But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
1Cor:13:11: When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
1Cor:13:12: For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1Cor:13:13: And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
 
St. Paul, the main reference when we speak of christian charity, declares charity is not charity:
1Cor:13:3: AND THOUGH I BESTOW ALL MY GOODS TO FEED THE POOR for he contends it exactly with that.
 
So, what is charity?
By chance I was reading today Gregorius Magno (dunno the translation of his name in english), and I try to translate this wonderful passage from The Homelies on Hezekiel : "Our old foe [The 'Devil', my note] fears not our chastity, if we lack of charity, for he himself is not subject to the temptations of the flesh and he cannot yield to lecherousness [he is a Spirit, my note]. He fears not abstinence, for he himself eats not in fact he is not made subject to the needs of the flesh. He fears not the allocation of the earthly provisions, for he himself needs not the means that riches can offer. But he fears indeed true charity, in us: namely love [, because this is spiritual - my note]".
Beautiful, ins't it?
 
So, charity is love: and indeed some english translations of that excerpt by st. Paul carry "love" instead of "charity".
Now, what is Love?
 
Earthly love? Compassion? So, is it something so scarcely demanding that we can so easily and conveniently sport or pretend its presence even if it is nowhere to be really and honestly seen?
No, this in my opinion cannot be the biblical sense of love.
 
I was considering today that strange thing in the ten commandments.
We find them sharp. We find them, at times, as sort of a harsh negation on our freedom, because they reiterate so many times the word: "not not not".
But this is preciesly what is curious.
The commandments never say what you must do: they only say what you must not do. And what you mayest, perhaps.
Ever noticed? I wonder because I never noticed until today...
we "humans" are really dumb!
 
It bears a remarkable consequence: they are far from being harsh. If they would have said what you must do, it would have undoubtedly (let me stress: undoubtedly) implied you can do only those things: if you say what you can, all which is not mentioned surely belongs to what you can not. But if you mention only what you can not, all that is not mentioned is surely allowed.
 
So, the commandments say nothing about what you must do, they limit themselves to declare what you must not. So st. Augustine was right: "Love, and then DO WHATEVER YOU WANT". We have freedom, an incredible amount of freedom. Our "Creator" could have imposed duties on us, and he choose to impose only 10 things we should not do.
 
Now, let's consider only the 1st commandement. let's remove from it the word G-D for the name(s) fo G-D are prescribed as something we should not pronounce.
See what is the remains.
 
I AM
yours.
YOU HAVE NO(T)
other
but
I [recursion!!]
 
Jesus Christ, now it sounds powerful!
I AM - and do not believe "you" have. For you have nothing.
Except... "Me". Here I am - Let there be.
And if you meditate on that:
I AM
yours. (full stop in the original)
it may move you to tears.
Isn't it the words of a Lover, the Song of Songs?
 
That's a God within, namely enthusiasm as Blaise Pascal defined it: "enthusiasm means an inner God: en-telos": "en" stands from "inside" in ancient greek, and "telos" means "force that moves towards", which pulls.
So, what is a Love within?
Dt:4:24: For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. (KJV)
Heb:12:29:
For our God is a consuming fire. (KJV)
 
Love is a fire within.
I AM
yours.
YOU HAVE NOT
other
but
I
 
So love is that thing that we feel in those rare instances in our times when we suddenly feel the burning sparkle of this tangle that connects us to God.
For God is not in the s
ky. Our God is NOT in the sky.
God is NOT in the sky.
This Lord is NOT in the sky.
Quit raising your eyes to the sky.
Skies are empty.
Dt:30:11: For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off.
Dt:30:12: IT IS NOT IN HEAVEN, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go UP FOR US TO HEAVEN, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it?
 
And, even more powerful:
Is:45:15: Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour.
Is:45:18: For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else.
Is:45:19: I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in chaos.
 
What could conceal God, if not the creature? For: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me amidst chaos.
"have not charity, I am become as sounding brass": namely I sound... "empty".
 
I AM GOD, and I AM yours, and NOTHING is more powerful in the heavens or in the skies or on earth than Me when you man or woman remember that I AM and I AM WITH YOU INSIDE YOU and if you're nothing as long as you forget this, as soon as you feel I AM WITH-IN YOU, you could move the Mountains.
 
This is the Fire, this is the Charity, and this is the Love.
And the reason we remember this only with so great difficulties is that Heb:10:31:
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (KJV)
 
It shatters you.
It is not an experience you can make with impunity. It transfigures you. You would hardly believe it. Your jaw would drop, you'd mumble "this cannot be true...".
 
"Hold exactly THAT for true": this means Love within.
 
You have to remember it. In fact there is ONLY one commandement that doesn't start with NOT. It is the 3rd:
it starts with... it revolves around...:
REMEMBER.
 
I strongly believe this is exactly the most proper sense of "Charity/Love" as it should be embodied and cultivated in the Encampments of Mankinde: "Hold exactly THAT for true".
 
Ez:1:24:
And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an Encampment: when they stood, they let down their wings. (KJV)
Ez:3:13: I heard also the noise of the wings of the living creatures that touched one another, and the noise of the wheels over against them, and a noise of a great rushing.

[The following essay refers to the anti-american propaganda referenced in the box at bottom of the essay itself. I chose to put such reference at bottom instead than at top, as it would have been logically more convincing, for mere technical reasons]

How should data be presented? Should we say that USSR is some millions of squared miles wide, or should we say it is as big as 1/5th of the globe?
What is more fit to be lent to a propagandistic purpose?
 
Analogously, should we say the Usa spend the 50% of the world expenditure in weapons (like the propaganda example argues), or should we state it like this:
 
GNP percentage spent in aramaments on 1999:
USA: 4%
Russia: 11%
Iraq 18%
France: 3.5%
Morocco: 4%
Mexico: 1%
Norway: 3%
Syria: 8%
Israel: 8%
South Korea: 4%
North Korea: 26%
 
So who is more to be considered now unfair: the Usa spending the money it can afford to spend, or the country that spends the money it cannot afford at the price of starving its own population?
I don't know these things, but the way data are presented is a well know (and actually old: dates from Vance Packard and the early 50s at least).
 
Should we say that if a country owns wealth, it is unfair? Of course we could: It is enough to present the data as if it were, regardless of the fact the country that has some wealth has it because it managed to develop a social and economic system that can put to work a reasonable amount of the population (and the presence of some mild unemployement rate is physiological even accordingly to Keynes, who was a "leftist"), has a system that allows men capitalize savings (it is useless to talk of provisions, as Amartya Sen and Ralph Dahrendorf teach if we forget to talk of the entitlements that allow a population to access the wealth that there could be), and has a system that can reward jobs with meaningful salaries (in Milosevic Yugoslavia the avergae salary was of a few dollars a month, because that is the price man's job is evalued in such places).
 
So, how should we present the data?
Apparently, your mind has been impressed by this long list. But please, do not be impressed. Presenting data in a misleading way is a well affirmed way to gain consensus, and of course never forget that the rumour doesn't make the majority: because since the dawn of the ages, minorities have been noisy, and majorities tipically silent.
 
The whole deception lies in this: the list is meant to protrait the Usa as the perpretators of the grwatest evils on earth.
Are these persons aware of what really cruel regimes do? perhaps to appreciate fully the difference between a theorically perceived despotism and a physically experienced one, some just need to get a vacation in Hitler's Berlin, or in current Russia, or in Stalin's USSR, or in China, or a season in Teheran.
That would fix it all.
 
I'd like to emphasize another aspect of the issue, if there is an issue at all in that propaganda: the lofty adjective: "estimated".
 
A long string of Questions (posed in the right propagandistic way) followed by a long string of Answers (by whom?), invariably "estimated".
 
"Estimated": a word that says nothing about the evaluators, and none the less entirely founds its presumptive authority on the Anonymous Expert Incorporated, the unknown "backdoor guys" that because of the very same fact they're apparently engaged in making estimations presumably on an alleged professional basis, must also be competent and proficient at it.
"Estimated" is a word that while conceals the doubt it should have immediately raised (if I "estimate", I implicitly acknowledge I cannot assess; therefore instead of the facts I must have been resorting to a set of criteria, preconceptions and allegations or guesswork of my own about which nothing is revealed), simultaneously raises the certainty it should have not raised: that the "estimation", being such, is also esteemed.
 
For instance: how many iraqis have been tortured in 20 years by Saddam Hussein? The esitmated figure is 450,000.
Who estimated that?
Me, now.
 
Last but not least, such "estimations" draw some raw data which is already moot insofar it is "estimated", and append to it a conclusion:
estimated number X - as a consequence of Y.
Indeed, that's a wealth of estimations, for each of them is double edged: includes 2!
 
On such basis, pundits of ignorance build political theories, sociological doctrines, and all encompassing conclusions (ending up, in the case in point with a quotation by ML King:... an american, not a japanese...): the immense and admirable castle within which they make a fool of themselves and bother us at their own exclusive discretion.
 
With leaders like them, the leaders they opposite have secured their jobs forever: I wouldn't trade one of those unappeasing Bushes with a whole Politburo of esteemed gentlemen like them.
 
And eventually, a cause that to make proselytes is bound to serve itself with such daily fixes of self-deception and produces dishonest intellectual fruits which should be called by their proper name (fraud), is a cause that no one should support, for it admits it cannot produce either prosperity or equality - in fact: equality or prosperity in fraud?
 
If one has a sound faith in the correctness of one's fantasy, why should one long so much for fabricated facts to uphold it with?
It makes me suspect Antoine Lavoisier (the french chemist, quoted by Michael White in his book: Rivals - conflict as the fuel of science) was right: "we become in some measure interested in deceiving ourselves".
 
The fundamental truth with the Usa (and I'm not american) is not that they have been fundamentally evil, but that they have been fundamentally good both in time and space.
No nation is immune by big mistakes, and Vietnam certainly was (although when the Usa went away from Cambodia, the alternative project of Pol Pot set in); the less you're immune when you share great responsibilities.
But when I see countries with much less responsibilites produce almost exclusively errors, I can't help but think that if I put toghether Russia, China, all the Middle East with Iran Talibans and Iraq in, North Korea and also France, all toghether still do not amount to anything as good as the United States of America.
 
Analogously it has been argued by the above mentioned types of estimations, that the Usa would produce more riches than other countries because and only inasmuch as they would have been stealing their own affluence by the latter, draining and stripping these other countries of their own wealth, therefore describing a process lacking whose dis-allocation those latter countries would have been as wealthy as the Usa or nearly so (Usa which, with our bewilderment, we are to discover pretty soon that are much less wealthy than we are so eager to assume when we invariably cast them into the foil of all the rest).
The last embodiment of such line of reasoning has been recently bestowed upon Finland as well, for it has been revealed that Finland produces more richness than the whole of the Middle East although having only 5.5 millions of inhabitants: which immediately ushers us into Alice in wonderland's political economy, not insofar it is not true that Finland does -it does-, but insomuch as it is true and thenceforth the above mentioned conclusions that some drew are all invariably and blatantly false: how many nations are stealing the same wealth?
 
  In fact, if the proportion some draw their conclusions from about the unfairness of the Usa wealth, is the proportion between the produced wealth and the amount of inhabitants, well that's called National Product pro capita ratio, so let's quit wishful mathematics and let's do the real reckoning.
 
MIDDLE EAST's COUNTRIES NP/INHABITANTS in year 1996:
1,250 Iraq (GNP: 24000 mill.)
2,680 Iran (GNP: 161136)
7,040 Saudi Arabia (GNP: 133540)
1,120 Syria (GNP: 15780)
1,510 Jordan (GNP: 6354)
17,390 Kuwait (GNP: 28941)
17,400 United Arab Emirates (GNP: 42806)
11,600 Qatar (GNP: 7448)
7,840 Bahrain (GNP: 4525)
4,820 Oman (GNP: 10578)
260 Yemen (GNP: 4044)
2,660 Lebanon (GNP: 10673)
______________
75,570 (GNP: 449825)
divided by 12 gives:
6297
 
Let's now include also Africa:
AFRICA's COUNTRIES NP/INHABITANTS in year 1996:
790 Egypt
6510 Libya
1600 Algeria
1110 Morocco
1820 Tunisia
460 Mauritania
250 Mali
220 Niger
180 Chad
310 Sudan
100 Ethiopia
150 Somalia
600 Senegal
320 Gambia
550+250+380=1180 Guineas
180 Sierra
390 Liberia
660 Ivory Coast
390 Ghana
230 Burkina
310 Togo
370 Benin
260 Nigeria
650 Cameroon
340 Republic of Central Africa
240 Uganda
280 Kenya
120+680=800 Congos
3490 Gabon
410 Angola
400 Zambia
120 Tanzania
80 Mozambique
540 Zimbabwe
3020 Botswana
2000 Namibia
230 Madagascar
2270 Leshoto
1170 Swaziland
3160 South Africa
______________
37,590
divided by 50 is
751
 
Well, Finland's number pro capita is: 20580, well above the whole of Africa: is Finland stealing from Africa or from Middle East?
And if Finland is stealing from Middle East, is then Middle East stealing from Africa to compensate for the much bigger wealth it produces with an half Africa's population?
And what's France or Belgium doing?
 
And if Finland is stealing from Africa and the Usa too, what makes us believe that Africa has to produce a wealth of 47560 (Finland + Usa) namely 1.7 times the Usa with a population that is slightly double than the Usa? And how to account then for Canada whose pro capita is 19380 namely just a bit less than the Usa? Who's stealing Canada from, with a population of just 30 millions?
And how to account for Japan whose pro capita is 39640 (and a GNP of 4963587) namely bigger than all Africa and all Middle East once again, and much bigger than the Usa and Europe although with much less population (125 millions)? Whom is Japan "stealing" from?
 
Well, let's reckon Europe:
 
EUROPE's COUNTRIES NP/INHABITANTS in year 1996:
20580 Finland (GNL 105174 mill.)
31250 Norway (GNL 136077)
23750 Sweden (GNL 209720)
20580 Finland (GNL 105174)
24950 Iceland (GNL 6686)
14710 Ireland (GNL 52765)
1510 Jugoslavia (GNL 15910)
18700 United Kingdom (GNL 1094734)
9740 Portugal (GNL 96689)
13580 Spain (GNL 532347)
24990 France (GNL 1451051)
27510 Germany (GNL 2252343)
24710 Belgium (GNL 250710)
24000 Holland (GNL 371039)
41210 Luxembourg (GNL 16876)
33510 Lichteinstein (GNL 978)
26890 Austria (GNL 216547)
19020 Italy (GNL 1088085)
40630 Switzerland (GNL 286014)
3870 Czech Republic (GNL 39990)
2950 Slovakia (GNL 15848)
2790 Poland (GNL 107829)
4120 Hungary (GNL 42129)
1480 Romania (GNL 33488)
1330 Bulgaria (GNL 11225)
8210 Greece (GNL 85885)
1500 Bosnia (GNL 5900)
3250 Croatia (GNL 15508)
8200 Slovenia (GNL 16382)
670 Albania (GNL 2199)
26470 Monaco (GNL 847)
29890 Denmark (GNL 156027)
16310 Andorra (GNL 1034)
______________
552,860 (GNP: 8,823,210)
divided by 49 is 14175
 
which is 18 times what is produced pro capita in Africa, 2.2 times what is produced in the Middle East, and still more than 2 times what they produce together; and if we'd subtract from europe a few states that account for nothing but none the less gets divided as well by the eventual result thus shrinking it without really accounting for the produced wealth, Europe produces more than what the Usa pro capita is: in fact nominally Europe pro capita is as many as 20.4 times the Usa pro capita, but dividing by the amount of countries and taking in only the really productive west of Europe (that is, discarding countries whose GNP is below 107,000) it is 29890 pro capita against 26980 of the Usa. The Usa population in the 90s was 267 millions, Europe's was 703 millions, but if we take in only the 14 countries we considered for the 29890 figure, then Europe's population is 280 millions: it has namely a proportion of 2.6 against the 703 millions and nearly 1 to 1 (1.04) against the most developed Europe: namely west Europe is wealthier pro capita than the Usa.
But now, if so: how many Middle Easts and Africas are there to be allegedly raided so lavishly by so many who stand on a paritetical basis?
 
Russia's pro capita is 2240, its GNP is 331948: are perhaps european nations stealing from Russia too? But how would it be possible, considering that half of Europe was in Russian hands until a few decades ago? Wasn't Russia predating on them?
And if China's pro capita is as little as 620, should we argue that a if cloistered country like China that still lives in a basically communist environment despite its huge population (the bigger in the world, with a soil rich of any type of resources, stretching for a wide compass) produces less than Albania, is therefore in this condition because Albania is someway, somewhat stealing some portion of its wealth too?
The United States with 40 states in them have a pro capita of 26980, less than Germany alone, less than Denmark alone, less than Austria alone, less than Japan alone, which have all much less population. Is perhaps Germany stealing a tad from the United States?
And what obviously matters is how much is produced pro capita, otherwise you could never compare in a proportionate way smaller countries with bigger ones.
Now, what accounts for the differences is therefore the way the social contract is arranged and how a man's work is evaluated and what chances a man has to find a valuable job in his/her own country; it seems that Europe has comely benefited by being "invaded" by the american model after it attempted the fascist and nazifascist one when on its own. Who's right, Amartya Sen or the Anonymous -and ungrateful?- Experts Inc.?
 
That the estimations of the Anonymous Experts Inc. were flawed, we already sensed: because if the equation that predicates the wealth of one is feasible only out of the impoverishment of the other would have ever been a true equation, or even a slightly plausible one, then we should have been living in another Universe, where 5 planet earths would be available to make such foul equation finally square.
Leave these guys implement a policy whatever, and you're to see what ensues.
Love for a thesis is more profound than any ideology, and persuades us into the blindest of the blunders; truth has never been our concern, not even the welfare of the world or equity in the allocation of resources have ever been; what we really cherish are just our prejudices insofar they're functional to the safeguard of our neurosis, and the symbolism behind which we conceal it to ourselves: and then the world can go to hell with our finest prescriptions, for what else matters once we have established a fantasy able of securing and saving our manias from our critical faculties threatening of insisting on ourselves instead than on - the "Usa"?
 
PS One word should be spent for the "children" issue, regardless of how repulsive talking about this may be: we are forced to do insofar this propaganda doesn't hesistate one second to do so.
The list argues also, among many other things, that 50% (still this magic number) of the civilain victims of gulf war 1991 were children.
Now, how comes there are so many children and they would have all been infallibly in the fire line? Curious, to say the least.
And how comes UN (UN, not US - with good peace of those who use these arguments whilst at the same time ask for UN and not US interventions) sanctions are infallibly reported as killing millions of "children"?
While the propaganda unfolds its "estimated" figures, no one notices the sheer absurdity of them.
In fact, and regardless of lavish palaces built by the Iraqi regime amidst famine and the collections of crimson Rolls Royces, what is out there that would allegedly be so smart in famine to pinpoint kids and kill them so wantonly, while it spares adults? Conversely, if there is a UN sanctioned famine there and it affects kids and adults, what is out there that makes the adults invariably unfit to appear in the numbers they're never reported with?

An example of anti-american propaganda:

The trade off between the two main forces substantiating a State, bureaucracy and charismatic leadership (not merely cosmetic executive power, that is), date from Max Weber; but Europe has not learned by him despite he was a german son.
When charismatic leadership is balanced by bureaucracy and bureaucracy is counterweighted byt charismatic leadership, both forestall and trammel each other and the equilibrium that ensues ought be called paralysis not balance.
In such a stalemate what would benefit more is the bureaucracy, because bureaucracy has a flair for thirving on status quo and standstills.
 
Henceforth a nation has to have both bureaucracy and charismatic leadership, but with a sensible penchant for the latter. This is the Usa, whereas conversely a bureaucracy with a penchant for itself is the European Union, for it has no charismatic executive power whatsoever, and the sullen nature of the formal presidency of the Commission is something everybody senses without efforts.
The recipe of the EU is: a non existant leadership, an Euro Parliament staunchly quarrelling on the evisceration of chickens and the slipperiness of bananas, widespread heavy bureaucracy pried as a faith, and sudden sparks form the executive leaderships of the constituting countries that actually seem on the verge of jeopardizing the EU organization with an inherent menace of anarchy flowing from the Tops.
 
A League of nations that still ill fits together, is still a sour balance of (ex) powers whose each outcome is bound to be tainted by the worst of the errors any true geopolitical thrust dies by: inconclusiveness.
The main virtue of the Usa eventually lies in this: conclusiveness.
 
Firends, Romans, Americans, Countrymen!
It has been said of the United States that we're a country that commits evils like no other, and that we're therefore undeservedly powerful and wealthy since we would have stolen our bread from the mouths of the widows.
 
But the years when we knew our biggest leaps forward were the years between 1865 and 1890, under the Monroe doctrine shield heydays: no committment abroad whatsoever!
Our army amounted then to less than 25,000 men, our navy was composed of two vessels and lagged behind Chile and Bulgaria of those times. We didn't partecipate to any international conference. And when a foreign country wanted to cut expenses, more than a time chose to close its embassy in Washington as a measure.
None the less, exactly in those years we were boosting our coal production by 800%, steel raised by 523%, railway track mileage jumped by 567%, wheat production by 256%, and immigration doubled our population: because our country started with immigration, grew on immigration and still today is open to any immigrant and is composed of roots that are all roots of immigrants.
 
Usa power is entirely a consequence of american virtues; and if lacking them I would indulge myself into begrudge, all I would have achieved and proved would have been not only that I lack them, but that probably I lack them because I never deserved them; as you know and as Tocqueville wrote "the principal reason men lose power is that they were no longer worthy of wielding it".
We have learned on our skins, and we have applied to ourself relentlessly the awareness that the worst enemy to a country struggling for welfare is self deception into self lenience, and that this foe within a country alone prevents any country from attaining its legitimate hopes.
So USA riches are not a consequence of its power: it is exactly vice versa.
 
How do you believe alliances are forged?
We have to deal on a daily basis with a whole world inhabited by extremisms of every hue, thugs, dictators, sultans and tyrants, and amidst such darkness not every dawn we can make the brightest choice with the dismay rounds at hand: some options, and some Middle Classes, at times simply aren't in the cards.
 
Like every other nation in the world, we retain a right to misplay a hand, and leave in place a dictator to forestall a by far worse possibility; some realpolitick necessities have not been either a prerogative or an invention of the United States. But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders sowing democracy, and rebuilding from scratch those very same mortal enemies that other nations and other stories would have taught to us should have been destined to what every defeated nation was destined to until the Unites States of America entered the gruesome scene: pillaging, raping, plundering, ravaging, torturing, burning, and taxing.
But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders freeing a whole globe from a both hemispheres raging fascism. But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders to have granted unprecedented affluence, shared wealth, and permanent peace to a whole continent and populations that for nearly 2,000 years knew none of these things. But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders preventing the real socialist program from overtaking the whole of the continents and from destroying in the senseless clutches of their doctrines and tanks all those nations that under our umbrella spared themselves such experience. But it most certainly has been a prerogative that lies square on American Shoulders to guarantee all of this day after day until to-day.
And if we have not granted all of this to all of the quarters of the world, it has been because it doesn't exist an analogously encompassing american solution capable of enacting the same miracle at once and everywhere in all those quarters of a wide world where grievances cry to the Lord.
 
Other alliances were to change over time. If my ally allies with my enemy, he is no longer my ally and it cannot be the Usa who is to be considered liable for the shift of a course, meanwhile it would be criminal not to shift our course in the face of factual circumstances that disavowed the alliance.
 
Henry Kissinger once wrote:

«The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically; history teaches by analogy, shedding light on the likely consequences of comparable situations. But each generation must determine for itself which circumstances are in fact comparable. (...) there is a vast difference between the perspective of an analyst and that of a statesman. The analyst can choose which problem he wishes to study, whereas the statesman's problems are imposed on him. The analyst can allow whatever time is necessary to come to a clear conclusion; the overhwelming challenge to the statesman is the pressure of time. The analyst runs no risk. If his conclusions prove wrong, he can write another treatise. The statesman is permitted only one guess; his mistakes are irretrievable.»

We're not to wait for the clouds to end clustering before arguing it is to rain. And a danger perceived as a danger which is not to come about, is a danger that by this very same fact instantaneously multiplies its chances to occur anyway.
This is not even a surefire recipe for avoiding a catastrophe like 9/11, so the more it is necessary. The fear that never came about in its most malignant predicted form is not a danger that had no basis, but a danger effectively dealt with, with the humanly possible foresight and the american determination we've proved ourselves capable of.
 
If the best we can do is to argue each other respectfully that we disagree or that we reciprocally consider each other's approaches wrong, what we're actually being left with is abdicating a solution handing over to the brute force of the facts the task of solving our impasse with the blasts of errors or consequences in whose fireworks both of us, wrong or right whatever we might have been, will eventually perish.
 
This is why, whilst reproaching each other, it is unacceptable to let that facts would unfurl by their own in order to prove who was wrong and who was right. Being right and dead is of no consolation, a living dog is not braver than a dead lion, and being wrong and prey of those wolverines we were so unable to perceive as an actual and present danger, is no longer a lesson to ponder around.
This is why we are allies. Forever.
 
So the question is not why we are allies: the question is why some seem to contend or act as if we're no longer, or as if we should no longer be such.
In a time of peace we can pursue our goals as we please, but in a time of war we're still bound either to raise or to fall together; and who thinks or -God forbid- hopes otherwise is doomed for the fall.