Remember when we were going to invade Afghanistan a couple of years ago? We had to capture, or kill, Osama bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist who was the alleged "mastermind" behind the World Trade Center (WTC) demolition of Sept. 11, 2001.
Newspapering in Hawaii back then, I wrote a column supporting our incursion. If bin Laden was hiding behind the puritanical skirts of the Taliban, Afghanistan's anti-woman, anti-freedom religious mafia, well then, what were we waiting for? They weren't Communists, but close enough. Go get 'em, G.I.s!
Two years later, we still haven't found bin Laden. Some experts say he's dead. Other experts say he's alive.
The Taliban is making a comeback, attacking American soldiers and the Afghanis who support us every day now.
You could make the case that the Taliban is on the rise again because all the American soldiers who should be in Afghanistan, a country directly tied to the World Trade Center murders, are in Iraq, a country only geographically connected to the terrorists who destroyed the WTC.
And there, in Iraq, two to three American soldiers are dying every day in bombings, shootings, sniper attacks and other dastardly deeds.
We still haven't found Saddam Hussein, either, bin Laden's alleged successor as greatest threat to freedom in the Middle East.
Funny, Mr. Bush and his posse never mention the Saudis, the country that spawned 15 of the 19 WTC terrorists and Mr. bin Laden.
But much worse news (to me as a veteran) is coming out of Washington.
According to last week's Village Voice, the Bush administration, in concert with the Pentagon, is lobbying to reduce the amount of funding for military families while our boys and girls are overseas risking their lives for that alleged freedom for Iraqis.
In addition, the administration wants to cut combat pay for the mostly boys who are risking their lives every day in Iraq.
Unless Congress extends them, the $75 extra per month for frontline troops will have been quashed, along with the $150 extra monthly family allowance, by the time you read this.
Tough times call for tough measures, I guess, unless you are one of America's struggling billionaires, or if you are doing something in the oil business; then it's a growth economy.
The federal Energy Information Administration allowed recently that retail gas prices had risen 33 percent in the last year. The average cost of a gallon of regular nationwide is up to $1.75.
As you've read over and over in this space, more than 40 million Americans now are without health insurance; some experts place the number closer to 75 million Americans, which would be one in four of us instead of one in seven.
At the same time, the Bush administration, in a cost-cutting move, of course, has recently changed the rules governing emergency-room management.
What this means to you, if you are one of the 41 million to 75 million free Americans who can't afford health insurance, is you might start being turned away if you can't pay. A new American freedom: freedom to die if you are poor.
Of course, if you're doing good, you can get Botox treatments. A God-given American right, looking younger than you are by shooting up toxins.
Locally, unemployment is up slightly and wages are down slightly, according to the latest stats out of Olympia. Some recovery.
Closer to home, voters expressed their will the only way left to them, since they have no say in national policies nowadays. Seattle voters said no to the latte tax, 10 cents a cup, which was scheduled to help better educate our children. Voters also said yes to de-emphasizing the pursuit of marijuana users by local law enforcement.
I'm one and one on these issues.
I'm in agreement that marijuana is a lot less destructive to families than alcohol - not to mention cocaine, meth and heroin. I'd rather see our drug-enforcement people go after the drug dealers who have a product that kills.
I was sorry to see the latte tax fail, though. It didn't seem like totally well-thought-out legislation, but I'm a sucker for anything that helps our kids.
In other news, our libraries recently closed again for a week. A budget-saving cut, of course.
I'm also against closing our libraries four weeks a year and claiming there isn't enough money to keep them open.
Let's tax whiskey, beer and wine by the shot and glass, and give that to the libraries.
And let's do an audit and see where most of the library funding goes.
Do you wanna bet it isn't going to grunt-level library personnel, or even to the purchase of new materials?
My guess is that administrative costs are chewing up the allegedly diminishing funds.
Every week now in the Land of the Free, nationally, and here at home in the Northwest, there are more and more signs that we are two countries instead of one.
There's the 5 percent of folks who are doing better and better, owning companies, chairing stock exchanges, playing hoops and flinging the pigskin, and then there's the rest of us, involved in the struggle, at one level or another, to stay almost even with our parents.
Although if you read The Seattle Times recently, you've already learned that even with two jobs, today's families are behind our parents in terms of real dollars and what our money buys.
Think about that along with your next untaxed latte.
Freelance writer Dennis Wilken can be reached via e-mail at needitor@nwlink.com
