Busy Sunday

This has been a very busy Sunday. I got up about 5:00 after sleeping restlessly most of the night.

I went to Church School and Church and afterward Bob and I went with John and Leslie and Maia to El Pueblo for lunch.

Afterward Bob brought me home to do my letters. He went home to take a nap, I imagine.

I had forgotten to get paper for my printer so I went to the dollar store and bought some. While I was at it, I bought the things I needed for my shoebox for the Samaritan Child project. I had to put my new ink cartridges in to do the letters. I also needed to drop by Brahms to buy milk. I was nearly out.

This evening I will watch 60 Minutes. I don't know what else is on that I'm interested in checking out.

In watching 60 minutes this evening I cannot understand why we are still there. Years ago, Michael Scheuer, tried to tell the government exactly what the problem is in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He was chief of the Osama bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999.[12] He worked as Special Adviser to the Chief of the bin Laden Unit from September 2001 to November 2004. He is now known to have been the anonymous author of both the 2004 book Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and the earlier anonymous work, Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America.

After his anonymously-published books had been publicly associated with his name, he was mentioned in an Osama bin Laden statement of September 7, 2007. According to bin Laden, "If you want to understand what's going on and if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing the war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard."

After leaving the CIA in 2004, Scheuer worked as a news analyst for CBS News and a terrorism analyst for The Jamestown Foundation's online publication Global Terrorism Analysis. He also makes radio and television appearances and teaches a graduate-level course on Al-Qaeda at Georgetown University. He also participates in conferences on terrorism and national security issues, such as the New America Foundation's December 2004 conference, "Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11."

He laid out clearly what our problem is in dealing with Islamic countries. He says our problem with then is:

(1) US support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis thrall. (2) US and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula, (3) US occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, (their holy land is that peninsula) (4) US support for Russia, India and China against their Muslim militants, (5) US pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low, (6) US support for apostate, corrupt, and Tyrannical Muslim governments.

I have a Muslim friend and she is a wonderful person but she agrees these policies are the problem. Our arrogance and imperialistic tendencies are a great part of the problem. We just don't get it. And we continue to repeat old mistakes. We're wasting billions there and they are not going to be our friends...ever. Not as long as we are occupying their holy land and trying to control them constantly. Let us just ask ourselves how we would feel if the tables were turned and they were occupying our land under those circumstances.