THE LONG WAR?

General Anthony Zinni is now talking and writing about the "war on terrorism" as "the long war." Other people are talking about it as World War III. We need to do some re-numbering here. Several historians consider World Wars I and II to be mere installments of a single war (with a 20-year intermission, from 1919 to 1939.) And, on the other hand, we've already had World War III--otherwise known as the Cold War. It lasted fifty years (from 1945 to 1995.) Does Zinni think the current war will last longer than that?

What disturbs me about both World War III and the current World War IV is that, unlike I and II, they were arbitrarily declared by American leaders. The Cold War was kept going for fifty years largely, one suspects, because it gave our leaders an excuse to do pretty much anything they wanted. Anybody who pays serious attention to history knows that the best way for any ruler to seize dictatorial powers is to start a war. The word "dictator" comes from a Roman title for a general given absolute power in order to pursue a defensive war. So are we looking at another Fifty Years' War, used as a pretext for even more blatant seizure of power?

A LABOR DAY PROPOSAL

Well, here it is. The one day in the year on which we actually commemorate and celebrate working people, instead of ignoring and crapping on them. And how do we celebrate them? The same way we celebrate all our holidays now--we have sales. And how do we manage that? We have sales "associates" working all day, that's how. And most of them, like most sales "associates" anywhere anytime, are part-timers, so they don't get overtime, they just get their usual pittance per hour.

It's time for some brave politician to change that. Let's make Labor Day a real holiday for real laborers. We can't shut down the malls and the sales, of course. That would be unAmerican. But we can legally require anybody who works on Labor Day to be paid four times his or her usual hourly wage. Probably the result would be lots of middle managers hogging the overtime for themselves. But at least the ordinary salesclerks would be able to stay home and picnic with the family.