Women's Crossroads

A dreary, rainy New Year’s morning it is, and it suits my mood this year just fine. I was unable to celebrate last night, just had dinner with my family and went to bed, remembering back glumly to so many other years when champagne was uncorked at midnight, when laughter and lights warmed the dark winter night.

Not this year, not for me. Although I remind myself that there were some things to celebrate in 2006—for example, the return of the American Congress to Democratic control, the election of women leaders like Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Michelle Bachelet, and many women at lower levels of governance—still, 2006 has basically left a bad taste in my mouth, and I don’t expect much from 2007 either.

Global warming marches on. It still hasn’t snowed this winter in the Northeast, while the Rockies are being battered with record-breaking blizzards: isn’t that exactly the kind of erratic, extreme weather shifts that the scientists have been predicting to result from global warming? But our leaders are apparently still blind to the urgency of this issue, and lack the politcal will to tackle the problem head-on.

They’re too busy mopping up after the disastrous adventure in Iraq, which was, after all, designed to give the US another 25 years or so of carefree oil dependency, and further enrich all the contractors and military supplies manufacturers who were afraid, in the absence of the Cold War, that they might not have enough to do.

How fitting it is, in a somber, nightmarish way, that the 3,000^th American soldier to die in Iraq should die on the very last day of 2006. Let’s all clink our glasses to that brave young man, age 22, who died defending truth, justice, and the American way of life…or was that some other movie?

Dustin Donica, the 3,000^th American casualty in Iraq, died because of the shortsighted greed and reckless machismo of our political leaders. He died because his fellow and sister Americans were too busy worrying about our own small concerns to stand up and demand, in no uncertain terms, that this foolish war be stopped before any more young people have to die.

Then there was the lovely, fitting triple-death scene to send out 2006: James Brown, Gerald Ford, and Saddam Hussein. You could just see the media scrambling to try to distract American audiences from the grisly death of Saddam by focusing on the vacuous pomposity of Ford’s official funeral, and the glamorous legacy of James Brown.

By the last day of 2006, though, all attempts at diversion failed—it was impossible to keep Americans from witnessing the last horrific moments of Saddam’s life, as he was led to the gallows in the middle of the night and hanged to taunts and mockery.

Just imagine if every political leader in the world with blood on his hands were actually brought to “an eye for an eye” justice in this way! Bush and Cheney would be among the first to go.

But would it make the world a better place? Has the unceremonious hanging of Saddam Hussein made Iraq any less violent, any more humane? Is violence ever a wise response to violence?

It’s these sorts of thoughts that keep circling in my mind on this New Year’s Day, and keep me from my usual energetic, positive look ahead at the year to come. I don’t even feel like making any New Year’s resolutions, other than to just keep on keeping on.

But here’s a piece of news for my readers: I am going to close the book on my Women’s Crossroads blog, and start a new blog for 2007.

You can find me at The Glocal this year, where I’ll be commenting on what I’ve realized is my strongest interest: the interconnections between the local and the global, between what is happening here in my own little life and immediate surroundings, and what is happening on the big world stage—for women, of course, but also for all of the inhabitants of our struggling planet.

Happy New Year.