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Sometimes there are so many wars going on that it's hard
to keep track of them all, especially when the wars have
the same name, as with War on the West.
In recent
years that phrase has appeared in locutions like Radical
Islam's War on the West,
where the West means Western
Civilization in general. But before that, going back at
least 30 years, the West that was allegedly under attack
was the dry side of the 100th Meridian in the United States
-- our part of the world.
In that context, the phrase has appeared in some recent
commentary about the citation of Sen. Larry Craig, an Idaho
Republican, for his behavior in a lavatory at
Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. Some say he was soliciting a
homosexual encounter, while others say the airport police
were way too zealous. But the American Land Rights
Association, based in Battle Ground, Wash., says that
Craig's misadventures were actually just another salvo in
the War on the West.
As the ALRA explained in an email to members: By
ambushing Senator Larry Craig, the Minneapolis St. Paul
Airport Police have effectively declared war on the West.
They are primarily responsible for greatly weakening
private property rights and Federal land use advocates in
the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and in
Congress. We are urging you to make all your flight
arrangements avoiding the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport for
at least the next year and probably longer. We'll keep you
posted as the boycott develops.
The more you think about this, the weirder it gets. Minneapolis is the site of the 2008 Republican National Convention, scheduled for Sept. 1-4, 2008 -- that is, less than a year from now, and thus within the proposed time-frame of the ALRA boycott. Any Republican delegate passing through the city airport, by ALRA logic, will be part of the War on the West. We Westerners will thus know who our enemies are, but I don't think that's what the ALRA had in mind..
Then you have to wonder about the airport police. To
believe the ALRA spin here, you'd have to believe that an
airport vice cop saw Sen. Craig, and thought I care
about salmon and clean air and surface property rights, and
this guy is against my position on all those things, so
I'll frame him and embarrass him.
That's putting a lot of extraneous thought into a vice cop's mind, and besides, what of the other 39 men arrested there on similar charges in the preceding three months? Were they all staunch advocates of more dammed rivers, cyanide heap-leach gold mining and the extermination of prairie dogs?
But let's assume that the airport cop really did want to
assist the War on the West
by putting Sen. Craig in
an embarrassing position where he would lose his Senate
committee assignments and get pushed to resign.
But what happens after he leaves office? The governor of
Idaho, C.L. Butch
Otter, a Republican, would appoint
someone to fill out the rest of Craig's term, which ends in
January, 2009.
Does anybody think Otter would appoint Al Gore or even
Cecil Andrus to replace Craig? Or would the appointment be
someone who generally shares Craig's views and would
continue Craig's valiant defense of the strip miners,
clear-cutters, overgrazers, real-estate developers,
Canadian gas drillers, domestic highway contractors,
cyanide spillers, subsidized irrigators, coyote killers and
trophy-house builders against the War on the
West.
No matter how you try to understand the ALRA
explanation, it makes no sense. For that matter, neither
does most of this War on the West
rhetoric.
When Canadian natural-gas drillers poison water on our
Western Slope, the War on the West
crowd is silent.
When yet another coal-fired power plant would spew out
mercury into our Western skies, that's not a War on the
West.
When a rural subdivision is approved to raise our
taxes and diminish our quality of life, the War on the
West
people do not rush to our defense. In other words,
when there's an actual threat to our West, our defenders
are nowhere to be found.
But perhaps there really was a plot to hurt the West. That Minneapolis men's room has become a tourist attraction. People will go there to spend their money, instead of coming to our mountains and rivers. Every dollar spent there is a dollar that won't be spent here. Our economy will suffer. They're out to get us again.
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