Trivia-Mongering

Okay, I admit it, I love trivia. Especially trivia associated with the origins of phrases and words.

I also love Croissants, too. Quite some time ago, I ran across a tale about the origins of the croissant and I think it's a great story. It seems that in 1686, Austria and Turkey were at war and one of the central issues was the ruler-ship of Hungary. Austria had "liberated" Budapest from Turkish occupation and the Turks were anxious to retake it. In 17th century warfare, occupying the major cities was how you won a war. So the Turks set about tunneling underneath the city as a way of getting inside and surprising the Austrian troops.

As has been typical for centuries and is true today, bakers were hard at work in the early, early hours, preparing their goods so they would be fresh for their customer's breakfasts. While working on their baked goods, some of the bakers heard the Turks tunneling underneath their city and raised the alarm. The Austrian army quickly responded and repelled the Turkish invaders. The Turkish army's inability to retake Budapest was a key element in the Austrian victory in the war. To celebrate their victory, the Budapest bakers created pastries in the shape of the crescent found on the Turkish flag. And thus the croissant was born. Or so the story goes.

Variations on the theme: I have also seen this story related as happening at the siege of Vienna in 1683, with Austrian bakers supplanting the Hungarian bakers. I've also seen variations in which the bakers were ordered to bake the crescent-shaped pastries by the king or the general so the victors could desecrate the symbol of their opponents by eating it.

Whichever variation is true, or even if none are, it's still a cool story.

What are our priorities?

I read and hear all the time about how "everything changed" on 9/11 and "the world changed" on 9/11. I don't particularly agree with these statements. The world didn't change on 9/11; we, the people, were finally forced to open our eyes and view the reality that most of the rest of the world has been living for a long time.

Not everyone had their hands over their ears or were turning a blind eye to terrorists prior to 9/11. Many people were well aware of the terrorist threat long before 9/11. And many of us were questioning the use of our intelligence resources for the war on drugs while so many terrorist organizations are bound and determined to do us harm. They way we are now spending our intelligence and military resources in Iraq is pretty much doing the same thing we did before 9/11; expending the vast majority of our resources on a politically-motivated war on a word rather than protecting the American people.

I'm not opposed to fighting terrorism; my problem is that the war in Iraq is not fighting terrorism and is, in fact, making the fight against terrorism a lot harder. Fighting terrorism requires unity among the nations of the free world. The war in Iraq divided the free world, not united it. Fighting the terrorism of fanatics who claim to be Muslims requires us to earn the respect of the Arab and Muslim worlds. The war on Iraq has given the Arab and Muslim worlds many reasons to mistrust us and even to hate us. Alienating the very people we, the people, most need to help us in our fight is not the path to success.

Protecting Americans against terrorism requires the expenditure of funds here at home. The war in Iraq consumes billions of dollars while local agencies can't get the federal money they need to put simple protections in place. Fighting terrorism requires intelligence resources. The war in Iraq is consuming vast quantities of our intelligence resources. The war in Iraq is increasing America's risk of a terrorist attack, not decreasing it. Nothing that is happening in Iraq is doing anything to mitigate the risk of attack through our airports, our seaports, our railroads, our postal services, our highways, or our infrastructure.

It's all a matter of priorities and to this president, our illegal and unjustified attack and invasion of Iraq is much more important than protecting America from terrorist attack. Just like the war on drugs was more important to Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton than protecting Americans from terrorist attack. It's all a matter of priorities and it's long past time that we, the people, set the priorities for our national government instead of letting them lead us by the nose down the path they choose. Despite what some people seem to believe, we elect them to serve us, not the other way around.