Capt. Bill also mourned
on windy tip of Cape Cod

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

I was genuinely saddened to read of old Captain Bill's passing.
 
I formed a unique, although I can't say close, bond with the old sailor because where I live, North Truro, Massachusetts, is where Captain Bill was born.
 
Over beers at sundry establishments in and around Parque Morazán, he would grill me about what was going on in town, and what changes were being made. Sometimes he would shake his head in disgust at what I told him. At other times he would grin like the Cheshire Cat when he learned many of the things he remembered of this place at the windy tip of old Cape Cod are still here.
 
He was glad to hear the Old Colony Tap, the one bar where the few remaining commercial fishermen on the Outer Cape still gather, has not yet given way to the gentrification craze that threatens so many cool places from North Truro to Puerto Viejo.
 
He was tickled pink when I told him Dutra's Market still stands, still Dutra family owned, in the center of North Truro. He was even happier to hear North Truro Center is still one of those places you could miss while driving through if you were to blink or sneeze.
 
Old George Dutra, the family patriarch, still works every day in the store and when I told him this morning of Capt. Bill's passing when I went to get my New York Times and morning coffee, he, rather sadly, regaled me with stories of how he and Capt. Bill terrorized this still tiny town when they were kids and teenagers together.
 
Old George hadn't seen or heard from Capt. Bill in more than 40 years, but it was very obvious he still held his old friend close in his heart. Living here at Land's End has a way of forging very strong friendships between people, especially among the old time townies.
 
I told old George about the gathering at the New York Bar and we decided that we, at that same time, would go out to the property that abuts old Highland Light, the property where Capt. Bill was born, and take a few minutes to quietly honor a native son of old Cape Cod who came to call Costa Rica home.

What goes around will
come around for U.S.

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

Jo Stuart's writing is often thoughtful and entertaining, but I strongly disagree with her recent comments about Iran. Along with the United States, Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Iran is one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

But the West has nobody to blame but themselves for what Iran has become, and for what's happening all over the region. For generations, the Western countries have meddled in the politics of Iran and the Middle East. They've overthrown governments that resisted the plunder of their oil wealth and supported brutal dictators like Reza Pahlavi, the former Shah of Iran who was a darling of the CIA but was overthrown by the followers of Ayatollah Khomeini in the Iranian revolution of 1979. So now we end up having to deal with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a sinister and cunning nut job who makes Hugo Chávez look like Mr. Rogers.

Muslims have VERY long memories. For many of them, the Crusades never ended. It's certainly not difficult to understand that mindset. No Western country would ever tolerate the kind of dark, political intrigue and open aggression which the West has visited upon Middle Eastern nations for generations.

All the while, Christian missionaries/evangelists of every stripe have been roaming the Middle East, trying to "convert" Muslims to Christianity. This religious mischief-making has only served to reinforce the feeling among hundreds of millions of Muslims that the West is trying to destroy Islam. Imagine how Christians would react if thousands of Muslim missionaries showed up in Western countries trying to turn people away from Jesus Christ and towards Allah.

And while it may sound commendable, even heroic to spread "democracy" in the Middle East, this is nothing more than a buzz-phrase, the covert translation of which is "secure the oil." Muslims aren't stupid. They KNOW this!

What's worse is that many Westerners don't understand that there is NO separation of church and state under strict Islamic law. To suggest that Islamic countries adopt Western style democracy is, in fact, blasphemy of the highest order in the minds of many Muslims, because no individual or group of individual has the right to oppose the tenets of the Koran, ballots be damned.

But you certainly don't see the U. S. leaning on the Saudi royal family, business buddies and bankrollers of the Bush family for 30 years, to schedule elections any time soon. They don't want to rock the tanker. What's good for the goose, (Iraq), should be good for the gander, (Saudi Arabia), right?

Wrong. We've bombed Iraq half way back to the Stone Age to "create democracy," but American foreign policy is 100 percent hands off when it comes to Saudi Arabia, the single biggest producer of oil and, coincidentally, the biggest financial supporter of Islamic terrorism on the planet and home to most of the 9/11 hijackers.

And what happened to that (alleged) democracy we went into Kuwait to protect/serve/cultivate in 1991? As always, it was about the oil, and about keeping Saddam Hussein from using the weapons the U. S. gave him to wage war on Iran to instead seize the Saudi Arabian oil fields. Now guess who signed and sealed the deal that delivered the weapons to Saddam in the first place? None other than Dapper Don Rumsfeld and Dick "Darth" Cheney, the architects of the worst military campaign since the Battle of Bull Run and the authors of biggest pack of lies about the justification for a war since the Gulf of Tonkin. The NeoCons giveth and the NeoCons taketh away.

And now, 1,000 years after the Crusades, the West is getting caught in the blowback of its own covert/not so covert mischief, machinations and transparent slogan mongering. The Jihad is a psychotic manifestation of one of the truly immutable laws of the Universe: "What goes around, comes around."

Sooner or later, Iran will have to be dealt with. How this plays out and who the players will be remains to be seen, but hopefully cooler heads than Bush, Cheney and Ahmadinejad will prevail.

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