Who, what, when, where, why

Who am I?

WRITER AND TEACHER to be (albeit "only" of chess) in a family of writers, teachers, librarians and Shakespeare scholars, I grew up well-read and scientifically and historically oriented, and I grew up "political": When I think of "Sept. 11," I think not only of the World Trade Center, but also of a bowl of chili con carne with beans and a side of crackers.

That was my lunch on that same date in 1973, when I was informed that what I considered a fascinating and potentially inspiring experiment, the democratically elected Marxist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, had been aborted, brought to a premature end by sinister forces at the behest of my own government. And meanwhile, my nation's government also carried on with an unjust, costly and divisive war in Vietnam that common sense told me was akin to some European power's meddling in the U.S.' own Civil War a hundred and eight years before.

Even so, I love my country and what it stands for. A contradiction? Hardly.

The United States of America, upon its founding, represented a noble idea: that all men were indeed born equal, and endowed with certain rights. Notwithstanding that extreme hypocrisy was the rule from the start, the idea itself was the inspiration. Here was found the kernel of further human social evolution: the principle that each of us, under the law, is equal.

So, with the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs and the CIA's sponsorship of Augusto Pinochet now years in the past, and progress rampant on civil rights, I dared to hope that America might be back on track toward realizing her true role as a world leader by example. And, even with the 1978 passage of Proposition 13 and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, I felt lulled enough not only to join the Navy (in which I was a journalist), but to serve it well and honorably from 1984 to 1992.

And that was a fascinating experience, one that has taught me a great deal about our country, its history, its role in geopolitics, and its military itself. This is not the place, but I will return to the issue of military political culture in coming essays; it has more than a little bearing on the recent presidential candidacy of Gen. Wesley Clark.

Politics aside, I am today the proud and happy husband of the former Dion Gorino — whom I sometimes half-suspect of being some species of saint, perhaps the patron saint of fairness, benevolence and absence of prejudice — and the equally proud and happy father of Samantha Nicole Seymour, whom I love deeply in spite of her sometimes reminding me a bit of the preternatural children of "The Village of the Damned."

I am also a writer, editor, chess player/teacher and sometime aquarist, and if I am known for any one thing, it is probably my independence. Occasional forays into art are also among my idiosyncrasies, although the making of music remains beyond my ken so far. I suppose I'll just have to go on admiring the works of Prokofiev without hoping to emulate them.

What background do I bring to the site?

I am a journalist, as you may have suspected upon reading the title of this page.

Both within the Navy and without, I have always striven to deliver accuracy, fairness and clarity in all my writing, and have particularly emphasized the journalistic virtues of objectivity and scrupulous fact-checking in my reporting and editing of news. Before Rupert Murdoch and Clear Channel started buying up the media, these virtues set American reporting a step or two above its foreign counterpart, but today most reporters have been effectively corralled into writing what is wanted of them. I, however, have the liberating advantage that I'm answerable only to myself, my family and my conscience.

What all this means is that I am an experienced news writer, who has served in his country's armed forces and understands but is not subsumed by them, addressing political issues from a standpoint of total independence.

When did I get the idea for the site as it is today?

Squort.com, as I have said elsewhere, started in May 2002 as little more than a homepage on my former ISP's server, with a couple of pages of humor, a Kaleidoscope scheme — and a few political comments — essentially for the benefit of my family and friends.

I can't honestly say that there was a single breakthrough moment when I decided Squort.com would become primarily a political site; rather, it was an accumulation of moments. I had constitutional concerns about the role of the Supreme Court in selecting our "President." I remained unsatisfied that the immediate "official" explanation of Sept. 11, 2001, was the entire truth. I had misgivings about the political direction and overall mental-health status of the nation, given the potentially posttraumatic stress syndrome-inducing barrage of images fired at us by our television sets for weeks and months after the tragedy. I doubted the wisdom of invading Afghanistan, given the history of past invasions. And then came Iraq.

Here we were, a nation still shaking off the effects of an horrific attack that took over 3,000 lives, having overrun the nation whence the attackers' sponsors directed their activities, and now we were being told that Iraq — which common sense clearly indicated had nothing to do with that attack or terrorism — was to be our next target. I knew this would mean tens of thousands of deaths in a weak and impoverished nation whose citizens were mostly children ... and for what cause?

The "official" reason, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction constituting such a clear and present danger to the United States that United Nations inspectors could not be allowed an additional three weeks to look for them, failed to stand logical scrutiny at the time, and has now begun to be publicly refuted in a manner most embarrassing to the Bush cabal. Nor was this invasion committed for humanitarian reasons: If removing odious, murdering dictators were our concern, we would certainly have removed Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan, by now, if only to discourage his unpleasant habit of having his political opponents boiled alive; instead, our leaders, from Bush to Rumsfeld to Powell, can't seem to get enough of shaking Karimov's blood-stained hands.

Many were the skeptics in this war who said simply, "It's about the oil." They were partly correct: Oil surely must play a certain part in motivating a president and vice-president who both cut their teeth in the Texas oil industry and retain many friends and associates in that industry today. But there is more to it than that: This is all part of a long-planned neoconservative offensive designed to promote an American geopolitical hegemony, in which Iraq is to serve as a regional geostrategic salient to divide, weaken and menace one significant potential rival in the post-Cold War world ... Islam.

This is not merely morally repugnant; it is suicidal. The Muslim religion is now embraced by over one point two billion people, on every continent of the globe, most of whom have no grudge against America — yet. But if our "leaders" are determined to launch a latter-day version of the Crusades, and there are some indications that they may be contemplating something much like that with their doctrine of "pre-emption," we may soon find ourselves at war everywhere at once. And no matter how powerful we are, no matter the edge technology gives us, no matter the vast geopolitical paramountcy that distinguishes us from all our historical predecessors, a ubiquitous war is one we cannot win.

Nor did the misdeeds of Bush and his cadre stop within the borders of Iraq. Everywhere I looked, I saw an administration that bleated about the glory of freedom and democracy doing things like imposing gag orders on international health service providers to prevent their even talking to malnourished, HIV-infected pregnant women about the possibility of abortion. I saw that administration give billions of dollars to its cronies for contracts in Iraq and elsewhere that came out of a national budget already crippled by ill-conceived tax cuts, while the states, facing their own economic crisis after Sept. 11., 2001, were in essence told, "Sorry. We're broke." I saw California consumers forced to pay double and triple normal rates for electricity, while Enron and other companies complicit in this grand gouge helped Dick Cheney write the nation's energy policy. And I seethed.

Ultimately, without my planning it so at all, the site gradually evolved into the Squort.com you see today.

Where do I expect to go from here?

Much as the site has gradually evolved into its present, unexpected form, I can only now expect that it will continue in that vein. I hope to see it expand and take on new functions over the coming months — ideas include a separate site branching off for the Solidarity Alliance (now being built), a forum, a chat channel (perhaps only for Alliance members), and many reciprocal links to other progressive sites and organizations — but experience suggests that what I predict for it today may not be what develops next year. However, I do envision Squort.com as taking its place in a growing chorus demanding the removal of Bush and cronies and the restoration of progress toward evolving a genuinely just and democratic society.

Why me?

Why am I so concerned with our nation approaching such a distant and difficult goal? I am not by nature a great "people person" or self-sacrificing altruist. I could well just bury myself in work and play, gleefully gather my expensive "toys" and plunge into my senses-drowning "entertainment." And perhaps I would, were it not for a certain Samantha Nicole Seymour. As a father, I cannot in good conscience let what Bush and his confederates are doing, to our cities, our states, our nation and our world, continue to pass unremarked.

Gaius Popillius Laenas, a Roman magistrate, once drew a line in the sand at the feet of a powerful and aggressive monarch, whom he commanded not to cross the line save to return to his kingdom.

Squort.com is my line in the sand, and when Bush and cohort cross it, they will be on their way to political impotence, poverty, ignominy and well-deserved prison time.

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