Natural Consequences

I believe in natural consequences. They are akin to Newton's Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction

When Daniel, our son, was little, we employed natural consequences. We told him what would happen if he disobeyed. He could choose to disobey and take a punishment - or not disobey. It was pretty easy, and we tried to make the consequences fair and 'organic.' They evolved directly from whatever he was doing. And sometimes the consequence, my reaction if you will, was that he made his father angry and his father shouted at him.

Today I live with natural consequences for a lot of the things I do. If I chose not to pay my income taxes I would get a fine, probably have to pay the taxes anyway, and get a jail term. If I failed to pay my property taxes, my house could be sold out from under me. If I didn't pay my mortgage I would eventually lose my house and perhaps be homeless. All these are natural consequences of a personal level.

We experience consequences in larger areas of life, too.

For instance, Joe Wilson, Republican congressperson from S.C. yelled, "You lie" at President Obama during his speech to a join session of Congress. One of the consequences for Wilson was that Wilson's constituency reacted. His Democratic opponent for Congress, former Marine Rob Miller, raised over $100,000 in the two days following Wilson's outburst. That could well put Miller in office although the race is not over for a couple of months and lots can happen. But the money Miller's campaign raised is Wilson's loss, and a good example of natural consequences.

On a more somber note, eight years ago today, Al Qaeda, financed largely by Saudi Arabians who somehow remain our tight buddies, flew three airplanes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center twin towers. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania, due largely to the bravery of the passengers who refused to let the hijackers take total control.

We have seen some of the consequences of September eleventh, 2001, but they aren't necessarily the consequences that we would prefer.

We sent troops to Afghanistan to find and bring to justice (whatever that means) the members of Al Qaeda, particularly Osama bin Laden hiding there. In that we have pretty much failed. We got sidetracked with the War on Terror in Iraq and seemed to forget about bin Laden.

However, natural consequences prevail. Unfortunately so does the Law of Unintended Consequences. We got bogged down in Iraq and remain there. For a while we sent in a Surge of troops and things got better, but as we have started to withdraw troops, more and more, anarchy prevails and the civil war between the Sunnis and the Shiites has started up again.

Afghanistan is another question entirely. Between twenty and thirty years ago, approximately, it was Russia's metaphoric Viet Nam, a war the Soviets fought and had trouble extricating themselves from; a war they became bogged down in, just as we had in Viet Nam. We financed the Taliban to defeat the Soviets. Then we allowed the Taliban to take over and they encouraged Al Qaeda to set up shop, with consequences we are still facing - and faced on September 11th , 2001.

One of the consequences of our involvement in the affairs of other nations is that we unfortunately seem to choose the wrong side. For instance, we led a coup against the Marxist, socialist, democratically elected president Salvador Allende in Chile and installed in his place a military junta led by Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet soon became dictator and over 80,000 people were killed or imprisoned.

This is not the kind of record the United States necessarily wants, but it is the one we have because we seem not to consider all aspects - and consequences - of our actions.

Be that as it may, one of the consequences of September eleventh is that we commemorate it each year. If we thought about it long enough, we could probably discover that it was an unintended consequence of a different action, one we had no idea would follow. But at this point that doesn't matter as long as we aren't condemned to repeat that history. Today we remember the victims.

The people who died and were injured on that date faced consequences far beyond their ken. That does not make them any less significant, however.

We need to remember them today. And I think it's a good idea to remember them when it's not the anniversary of this horrible, tragic event. Each time we make a decision, we need to weigh its consequences, and think about the Law of Unintended Consequences. Perhaps we can do that more easily if we think about Newton's Third Law.