It Feels Like War

There was something about this morning that made me feel wary. Today is the first day we've had of real fall weather, it's cool and rainy, and the falling leaves stick to your shoes when you enter the house. I love the leaves, I've been looking forward to some crisp weather since September, but it has been as hot and humid as any August. Last night when the weather finally broke, I crawled in bed in my flannel pajamas with a new book and a cup of hot chocolate. I felt warm, and safe. This morning, the feeling was gone.

Maybe it was the press conference on CNN, Condi Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen announcing new sanctions against Iran. I remember the run-up to the war in Iraq, when President Bush told us that sanctions don't work. There was something very familiar in the shiver that ran up my spine as I watched the real life drama on my TV, and caught some repetitious buzzwords, sponsors of terror, nuclear proliferation, weapons of mass destruction....I felt as if I had seen the press conference before, back in 2002, in fact, maybe I've been seeing the same press conference over and over again for the last 5 years. It could have even been that the Bush people dug up some old speech from 2002, and had only had to change one letter in the name of the country, to make it apply to the current crisis. I feel like I did in 2002, helpless to stop our country from making a massive mistake, seeing a train wreck about to happen. I felt cold.

And more frightening to me are the presidential candidates who support these sanctions. Senator Clinton voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that designates the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Barak Obama did not even oppose this designation. It's almost like that tricky bill authorizing the President to use force against Iraq, and as we already know, the President and his war-hawks will read into any piece of legislation, any sort of authorization that they can. If you can argue that the Constitution grants the President the powers to detain people indefinitely, or to eavesdrop on US citizens, then don't be surprised if the President decides to go to war with Iran and uses the Kyl-Leiberman amendment as justification.

I can feel the winter coming on. It's going to be a bad one.

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