Earth calling Paul…

Earth calling Paul Castro. Come in. Is your receiver on, Paul? Over…

Does Paul Castro’s “fagaga-lated” tripe deserve a response? Probably not, but offering one more editorial bone for the sake of the dialogue seems innocuous.

Paul Castro’s unbalanced biases and frequent unmeasured radical pronouncements are the subjects of some amusement among his peers. It’s not difficult to understand why in the current environment of polarized political views concerning the U.S. exercising its prerogatives in the CNMI, that he’s an ardent indigenous apologist. I sympathize with his angst. I’d be scared, too, if I were losing my grip on my self-control. I, on the other hand, am an admitted idealist, but not an unswerving apologist for the United States or for anyone else. The men who fought and won World War II, including my father, saved the world, literally, from fascism and the “Japanese peril.” That’s not to say no atrocities were committed. That’s not to say the world was perfected by the WWII American and Allied victory. War of anyone’s making is always an atrocity-generating phenomenon for fighters on all sides. Men of all persuasions are placed in untenable threatening environments in which friend and foe alike are often indistinguishable. In WWII many indigenous Marianas citizens, for understandable reasons, were Japanese collaborators. What I’ve said in previous writings stands in spite of the fact that realistic history notes that American policy sometimes errs. American democratic idealism, however, remains a noble set of notions.

I meet former U.S. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey on July 4, 1976 in Minnesota. I asked him about the inequities in American social compact. He said, and I paraphrase, “The Constitution of the United States is noble promise made to the American people. It has yet to be entirely fulfilled, but we’re working on it.” I abide by the ideals of that document, realizing that Mr. Humphrey was correct in his assessment and in his projection.

Furthermore, no responsible historian equates the illegitimacy of the current war in Iraq with the imperative of fighting and winning World War II. Mr. Castro has lost his balance. He exaggerates, distorts and perverts the legitimate points I make by embellishing his myopic interpretation of history with hyperbolic histrionics.

Furthermore, uncomfortable for some as the facts may be, the marriage between the Northern Marianas and the United States was agreed some time ago. And for better or for worse, the Americans are coming to visit the family, and they will likely stay for a while, imperfect though they may be.