Honolulu Lite
Charles Memminger
Legislature’s
Iraq resolution
is embarrassingHawaii legislators -- taking time from their busy schedule of deciding whether they should raise, lower or leave the cost of a fireworks permits the same, allow or not allow Segway computerized scooters on Honolulu sidewalks, and let or not let male poultry fight to the death -- managed to squeeze out a resolution urging that the war in Iraq should be ended by peaceful means, using the spirit of aloha.
It takes a certain amount of versatility to jump from contemplating firecrackers, scooters and cockfighting to issuing suggestions to the U.S. Congress and the president of the United States on how to contain a madman head of state with weapons of mass destruction. Although, considering the legislature's inability to come to agreement on the regulation of firecrackers, it seems a tad presumptuous to lecture world leaders on the regulation of chemical and biological weapons.
Look, the State House resolution urging a "nonviolent" solution to the war in Iraq by demonstrating a commitment to the aloha spirit is just silly. I can't even get upset about it. It's that stupid. Yes, we all try to keep the aloha spirit in our hearts and we do it a little better than King Kamehameha did when he united the islands using an extreme version of the opposite of nonviolence. I don't think Hawaiians being chased off the Pali cliffs were sensing a whole lot of aloha.
THAT THE House would pass such a goofy resolution should scare the aloha out of rank-and-file Democratic Party members. It shows that higher ups in the party not only did NOT get the message during the last election -- which put a Republican in the Governor's Office -- that Hawaii residents have had enough of the status quo, but that they don't understand that they were put in there to solve Hawaii problems, not because they are international war strategists.
Where's the Democratic leadership? Where's the call from Dan Inouye to House Speaker Calvin Say saying, "With all due respect, Cal, U.S. tanks are rolling through Baghdad, I don't think Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld wants to chat about the power of aloha and nonviolent meditation."
I'm told there is a famous book that says something like to every thing, there is a season; a time to build up, a time to break down, a time to win, a time to lose, a time to bring in the laundry, a time to put out the cat, a time to gather stones together and then hurl them with great force at the guys with the other pile of stones. If there was a time for the use of intercontinental ballistic aloha, it ended when one of Saddam Hussein's suicide maniacs blew up a jeep that happened to contain Sgt. Eugene Williams, a soldier from Hawaii.
Aside from being an embarrassment to the state, this "aloha" resolution is an insult to Williams, his wife and children. The legislators who voted for this nutty resolution should meditate on that.
Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com