Humbled?

Perhaps we, and our allies, have been humbled into reason by the horror of Iraq.

the highway scribe attended opening day of the Los Angeles Angels baseball club on Monday night.

A loyal fan of the Halo’s, the scribe has long held his nose at certain patriotic tics associated with the fact the team plays in Orange County, (r)epublican stronghold and birthplace of the John Birch Society.

One such tic is the dramatic use of fighter jets during the national anthem on opening day. This overpriced and unnecessary display of military might usually terrifies and annoys the scribe who tries to shrug it off and keep his mind on the team and its name, which is anything but warlike.

Like the scribe, they are Angels.

Anyway, this year, the club forewent the fighter jets. And that was odd.

Earlier that day, as the Britain/Iran crisis simmered, a poll was released demonstrating a clear reticence on the part of the British people to resolve the thing militarily, with just seven percent in favor of loading up and blasting hells bells into Iran.

And that was odd, too.

Of course, the scribe knew he might be connecting dots of his own invention and reading into things that weren’t really there.

Until he read a piece entitled “The Public’s Foreign Policy,” by Daniel Yankelovich, published in the “San Diego Union-Tribune.”

The author cooked up the poll, “Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index” 30 years ago.

Of the most recent edition he noted that, “[W]hen public frustration reaches a tipping point, as it now has, the public starts to develop its own foreign policy – largely in opposition to existing policy. At that point, public opinion counts a great deal and can no longer be ignored. This is one of those times.”

highwayscribery is concerned, above all else, with good and interesting writing (scribery), so we will not wade through a laundry list of poll data. Here are a few high points:

- 60 percent have concluded that being in Iraq has nothing to do with our safety from terrorism;
- 51 percent think the troops should be home within a year and 19 percent say immediately;
- 64 percent “worries a lot” that there are too many casualties associated with the war;
- 70 percent said the U.S. is “too quick to go to war.”

You get the idea. It’s the same idea that got into the scribe’s head when the Angels chose to honor their old reliever Troy Percival instead of terrorize children with roaring F-16s seemingly hurtling toward the upper deck of the stadium.

Apropos of everything said above, there is an international group called Avaaz, which has taken up cudgels in the effort to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

If you read highwayscribery with any regularity, you know we hate Camp Gitmo and the torturing and denial of essential human rights that is standard policy there.

Anyway, sign their petition if you agree with us and them.

In the “liberal blogger” category, Algore.com is looking to hold a bunch of events nationwide on April 16 with an eye to generating pressure for action on global warming. Read about Gore’s effort here.

Although the presidential sweepstakes train has clearly left the station with frontrunners raising bazillions of dollars in the first quarter of this year, a recent poll of California voters demonstrates that were Gore to enter the race, the current pecking of order of Clinton (41 percent) Obama (28 percent) would be altered markedly to Clinton (31) percent, Gore (25) percent and Obama (21) percent.

And that’s not so odd.