My main argument in this essay has nothing to do with whether you think we were right or wrong to go into Iraq; it has nothing to do with the Dodgy Dossier digging-and-dodging doggerel happening in London now. The War on Terror is undeniably real, and one unsettling consequence of this and many other issues (global warming, free trade, public health) is a blurring of the traditional divide between domestic and foreign affairs, and thus between the civilian sector and the military. Now of all times we have to keep our heads, and think very clearly, and not fall into a sump of overdone or cloudy invective.

Here are three ways, as examples to support the larger argument, of how Mr. Bush has been drawing flak that isn’t entirely justified:

1. President Traps on Carrier: On May 2, 2003, instead of using a helicopter the President of the United States rode a Navy S-3B Viking aircraft over the waters near San Diego, to “trap” onto the flight deck of a nuclear powered supercarrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln, and some 6,000 men and women who served aboard her, were returning from a grueling mission to the Persian Gulf, one which set a record as the longest continuous deployment of a U.S. Navy carrier since Vietnam. The White House and the public have heard no end of complaints about the expense of the president’s “joyride” and his “grandstanding.” Missed or omitted by many, though, is a very important aspect: By trapping on that carrier, the most dangerous evolution the ship can perform outside a warzone, and then mingling with her people up close, George W. showed he understood and cared about the risks they’d taken and the sacrifices they’d made. Deployments that go months beyond their original schedule -- as the Abraham Lincoln’s did -- are infamous for harming subsequent reenlistment rates. Invaluable seasoned talent, and irreplaceable job experience, flee from the Navy in droves. To have to train new people, and cope with weakened preparedness as tyros take over from experts around the vessel represent monumental hidden costs to the taxpayers. A high-kinetic-energy personal visit by POTUS thus pays massive “hidden” dividends, with a positive ripple effect to every other Navy person on every other ship. Furthermore, by flying on and off the carrier at sea, instead of boarding her on foot when she’d reached the pier, the eagerly waiting families of all those sailors and aviators -- spouses, kids, other loved ones in teeming and beaming multitudes -- were spared annoyance and delays that would have elsewise been forced on them by Secret Service precautions. Other writers on Military.com have already said how important it is to keep the families of people in uniform happy: They’re often big deciders in whether Mommy or Daddy re-ups or not.

2. The Dubbya-Shaped Recession: Economists seem to disagree on how well our economy is recovering; some even argue over whether the wobbly rebound is really “jobless” or not. Since the recession occurred on George W. Bush’s watch, it’s natural that he’d take heat. Wherever the U.S. economy goes next -- and no one really knows -- this fray over unemployment and imbalanced tax cuts will surely increase in partisan quarters. Less vocalized, though, are some of the reasons behind the recession to begin with. It’s the nature of capitalism to have cyclical ups and downs. We enjoyed a big “up” in the latter part of the 1990s, which some folks have labeled the Clinton boom. What feels missing to me is much comment on an important connection between some of the heavy hiring and heady stock market of those “good” years, and some ugly practices that snowballed behind the scenes at the very same time. Only recently have there come to light instances of accounting fraud, and Wall Street conflicts of interest, some of which ran unchecked into billions of dollars before Inauguration Day 2001. Suddenly, the SEC and the New York District Attorney’s office and others began to unmask culprit after culprit. As a result we’ve seen the biggest corporate bankruptcies in history, far beyond the dot-com mess. All this is enough to hurt anybody’s confidence in the whole investing “system.” And so, now, the always-emotional stock market is limping, and it’s hard for the average Joe or Jane to find jobs. Who’s at genuine fault? How much of the boom was a bubble? The point is hardly moot, since armed forces household savings and spousal income have felt the impact, and the future of adequate military spending could be in serious doubt.

3. The Big Blackout: This past Thursday at 4:15ish East Coast time, my wife and I and about fifty million other people in the U.S. and Canada lost our electrical power. It was at the height of the air conditioner usage season, and warnings that the national electric grid was overstretched have been sounded by key people in the utilities industry for years. So it wasn’t a surprise that we had a blackout, so much as how huge and prolonged a blackout we actually had. President Bush held a TV press conference, to express his support for everyone who was badly inconvenienced -- or worse -- by the power outage, and to reassure America that this was a technical problem and not a terrorist act. Almost at once, Mr. Bush began to draw fire for taking an eternity (four hours, in fact) to get himself on television. This, you see, is supposed to show he doesn’t really care; a related accusation is that he can only react for the long-term, but can’t plan long-term enough -- a seeming self-contradiction out of the mouth of the accuser. Less publicized is that our commander in chief was in the middle of meeting Marines in California when he first learned of the power failure, so he did have other duty at the time. Also ignored by the complainers is how difficult it was for authorities to pin down exactly what did make the blackout occur. (As I write this, that investigation continues, and might still take a while to reach definitive answers.) More criticism is being cast at the president, implying he’s solely to blame for a decade-plus era of general neglect, inadequate new investment, and cost-skimping deferred maintenance to our vital coast-to-coast electric distribution network. Perhaps no one is wholly innocent on this, but how someone could be culpable for things before he even took office baffles me. Worse, there’s an insinuation here that we’re a nation of ‘fraidy-cats and cowering ninnies, who need our president as a nice big parent figure to rush to reassure us each time something not-nice happens. Where do we, and a correctly comported president, draw the line about having to tuck us all in safe and snug in bed every night? Should we really even be needing to ask this question?

I’d like to also include an addendum to my previous essay, “Is Paris Melting?” There I raised some issues about Global Warming and the relevance of the Kyoto Accords as a cure. Since then, scientists have announced discovering a strong connection between Global Warming and yet another factor which is beyond any human fault or control: fluctuations in cosmic-ray bombardment from outer space. The science team involved specifically calls into question the Kyoto Accords.

The moral of all this is simple: Too much political slant, and not enough plain common sense, risk taking our country down a dangerous path. The military, the economy, energy and the ecology, and our dealings with other nations and cultures all tie into each other, and they have to be dealt with rationally. If we let America get mired in a tar pit of back-biting and he-said-she-said games, we’ve had it.

JoeBuff.Com / Joe Buff Inc. Joe Buff, President Dutchess County, New York E-Mail readermail@JoeBuff.Com