Just three ways the US can best celebrate Thanksgiving

We all know the story of what we've come to agree was the first official 'Thanksgiving' celebration. The year is 1621, and Plymouth is now accompanied by fall's transitory embrace. For everyone, there's a reason to celebrate. The Wampanoag Indians, who have called this land home for centuries, are elated after being blessed with another plentiful harvest. The English Colonists, reaching land after a long seaward journey--confronted with the risk of infection, hunger and attack, a colonizer's is a pretty precarious existence--they certainly didn't lack their own laundry list of reasons for which to be thankful. So the stage was set: two peoples with plenty to be grateful for, but with painfully empty stomachs, have little better to do then shoot, prepare and then eat themselves some foul and venison in a feast to be recorded and remembered by generations to come. Certainly, its grand scale was something to be beaten--and something I hope to rival tomorrow at my American group's huge Thanksgiving bash. More importantly, it was unique in that it represented the coming-together of two, eventually warring sides, with goals that couldn't have been more different.

We all know what this beautiful display of compromise and tranquility led to next...the ruthless slaughter and relocation of millions of American Indians at the hands of those same men with whom they once shared their harvest's bounty. Sad, of course, but I guess not something so sad that our country would avoid repeating time and time again in the modern age. In fact, it has become a cornerstone of our foreign policy to go after those same people we once invited to the dinner table--or more accurately, to fight alongside us in a hopeless war. You don't have to dig much deeper than ten years into our nation's history to find a case in point: Iraq. While in the 1980's we found Saddam Hussein to be a reliable ally in the fight against Iran--that is, when we were fighting them and not fighting with them--we, at the expense of our own nation's economy, domestic welfare and international reputation, have spent the majority of this century tracking down and killing him and his country.

So the question remains: can we mimic the American Indians' and early colonists' ability to transcend their differences and together satisfy their hunger, without taking after the colonists' tradition of then wiping out their one-time pals? I'd have to think so. However, with being shown the cold shoulder of so many freshly-made enemies, we are now unfortunately presented with many opportunities with which we can test whether or not we are really up to the task that the colonists apparently were not. Here are just a few obvious examples (feel free to add to the list in the comments section).

Iran: As was already proven by the US-backed sanctions that brought Iraq to its knees in the 90's, isolation is not the way to go. By making the living conditions of the country just that much worse, believe it or not, the means to which the people resort in order to better their lives will also adopt a more extreme form. And I'm willing to bet they'll be more than happy to take their pent-up anger out on us, the inflicter of their nation's pain. Instead, let's seek out moderate voices in Iran's government (aka terrorist organization according to Hillary and the majority of Congress) and use them to drown out the more radical ones.

Cuba: Our total refusal to have anything to do with this country is, in my view, one of the goofiest displays of our hard-headed foreign policy. Ashamed of our failure to wipe out our backyard enemy back in the 1960's--OK, so the backyard is one of those big, 90 mile long, ocean-in-between ones--that, as a result, has allowed it to remain as basically the only somewhat functioning, full-fledged communist state in the world, we act as though Fidel and Cuba don't even exist. With Fidel, and eventually his brother, on their way out, the political ranks are likely to be filled by an up and coming new-guard. We can certainly continue in our stubborn ways and totally ignore this youthful political class, or, we can take advantage of Fidel's absence by developing a meaningful relationship based less on ideology and more on practicality.

The wall along the Mexican-US border: This one's a little different. As opposed to the others, here, I'm not asking our nation's leaders to sit down with Mexico's; they have already done plenty of that. Now, we've gotta move on to the second stage of compromise-making and actually heed the warnings of Mexican leaders to not construct a 700-mile long concrete wall to keep out Mexican immigrants that we've given little chance to become along the border. Our politicians' promises to 'enforce' security measures while simultaneously fostering dialogue between us and the Mexicans are as promising, as Mexicans here are always quick to point out, as the guarantees given by those who argued for the necessity of the Berlin wall--yes, the same one we had a proud hand in tearing down. The last thing we need if we are truly interested in getting to know better our southern neighbors is a big sculpture that seeks to prove to us that we're a lot further apart than our close proximity would lead us to believe.

However, as Obama has argued in the face of Hillary's calls to be toughest on those who hate us the most, we can only limit the frustration of our greatest enemies if we're willing to sit down and talk to them. Certainly a difficult thing, it's far from the most dangerous. In fact, if we don't change our course ASAP, we'll be setting ourselves up for being attacked on multiples fronts at once. We as a nation can, and desperately need, to refer back to the actions of our courageous, yet paranoid forefathers to learn that if we approach all with the same amount of sincerity and openness, we'll greatly reduce how many friends-turned-enemies we'll later feel obligated to savagely kill.