When you send a frelling e-mail, use the damned subject line! I make extensive use of my e-mail store (both at home and at work), and I hate receiving blank-subject…
When you send a frelling e-mail, use the damned subject line!
I make extensive use of my e-mail store (both at home and at work), and I hate receiving blank-subject e-mails. What’s it about? Is it critical, or trivial? When I look for it in a week, or month, will I be able to find it? Especially in a business setting, the subject line is essential metadata.
(Mutter mutter mutter)
Okay, I’m better now. Carry on.
The most useful things I had on the trip, in no particular order. A pocket map of London, double-side and laminated, very simple. Came in very handy figuring things out….
The most useful things I had on the trip, in no particular order.
I can’t think of anything I wished I’d brought with me that I didn’t. Yay, us.
The first set of pics from our trip are up at my PictureTrail site. Arrival through the first few days in London. The rest of the London stay, with many…
The first set of pics from our trip are up at my PictureTrail site.
Arrival through the first few days in London.
The rest of the London stay, with many pictures from the British Museum.
Doyce has added a few pictures to his first vacation post, and has added another two posts of his version of the travelogue, too.
I’ll continue to cross-ref this stuff into my original posts in as timely a fashion as I can. I’ll also continue trying to get the rest of my digital shots up; the film shots come back from the developer Tuesday evening (with CD versions, so that should expedite things); I’m a bit worried, in that we inadvertently packed three of the seven rolls into the suitcases, and the current warnings about Heavy Duty X-Ray Machines fill me with dread.
Since my Britain posts are quickly dropping off the bottom of the main page, you should probably consider going here to view them in their glorious entirety.
I was going to declare this “No Iraq Posts Day,” since I kind of dove headlong back into those waters over the weekend, but this thought (in considering something Scott…
I was going to declare this “No Iraq Posts Day,” since I kind of dove headlong back into those waters over the weekend, but this thought (in considering something Scott commented upon about Howard Dean’s presidential candidacy today) struck me. It’s been said before, but I think it’s worth saying again.
What’s the value of a UN resolution on a war on Iraq?
Would a UNSC resolution giving a green light to an Iraq war make such a war suddenly morally sound? Or make it abruptly practical and advisable?
Would the anti-war protesters actually quiet down?
Is China, occupier of Tibet and crusher of internal dissent, be the arbiter of moral rectitude in international affairs?
Should Russia, that bastion of democracy and blood-slogger of Chechnya, be considered the people we should seek a blessing from?
Should France, host to Mugabe, unilateralist in its former Ivory Coast colony, and tester of above-ground nuclear weapons, be the folks who review and approve our foreign policy?
Would I prefer to see a strong, new UN resolution explicitly allowing force to disarm Iraq, fulfilling the dozens of other resolutions that it has passed, previously? Sure. It would be nice to think that others agree with us. My ego is not so big as to think that ours is the only opinion that matters. I like validation. But when seeking validation turns into shunning responsibility, that’s unhealthy. Believe me, I know.
Because, ultimately, the US has to be responsible for its own actions. It can’t depend on the UN to vet its foreign policy. It can’t abrogate its own interest and perceptions of the world to the UN Security Council’s own interests and perceptions.
Folks accuse the Bush administration of playing politics with lives, of thinking only of its own national interests. Does anyone think that Beijing is threatening a veto out of some sense of international compassion and bonhomme? Does anyone actually think that Russia is withholding support because of the moral complexities of armed conflict? Does anything really think that France’s stand is based on deep-seated principles and an abiding love of humanity?
Or is it just a conflation of self-interests that, at the moment, means those countries evaluate their own interests as being opposed to the US?
“But it will cause chaos,” you say. “It threatens the world political and economic order.”
How is that not a practical, pragmatic stand? How is that any more defensible a moral position than the (alleged) desire of the US to grab hold of some of that thar oil? If the Europeans are worried that the price of oil will go up, and are basing their stand on that self-interest, why should that self-interest trump our own?
You can argue, hypothetically, whether removal of the present regime in Baghdad, and its threat of WMDs and regional dominance, is better or worse than the disruption and destruction of a war now, but that’s an argument of pragmatism, not morality.
Why, then, is getting a UNSC resolution so important to some people?
Because they want someone else to tell us it’s okay? Not a very noble stand. Given the UN’s history of standing aside in the face of wholesale genocide (Yugoslavia, Rwanda), waiting for everyone there to tell us it’s okay seems a cowardly position to take. If it’s right, it’s right, right? It’s not only right if France says it’s right.
Or do some people cling to the need for (yet another) UNSC resolution because they don’t think it’s forthcoming, and thus it’s an easy way to stand against the war without having to defend Iraq? How many of those people, should the US actually manage to swing a resolution, will then say that the Security Council knuckled under to US pressure, and that the war is still wrong?
If you think the war is wrong, then it’s wrong whether the UN says it’s okay or not. If you think it’s right, then it’s right whether the UN says it’s okay or not. The UN is not Solomon, passing judgment on good and evil. It’s a place for folks to get together and hash out differences and agree on joint activities. That’s what it says in the charter. Nothing more (but, one would hope, nothing less).
Max Sawicky has been lauded for his post on How to be Pro-War Without Being a Hypocrite. Since being unhypocritical is important to me, let me make a few comments…
Max Sawicky has been lauded for his post on How to be Pro-War Without Being a Hypocrite. Since being unhypocritical is important to me, let me make a few comments on what he has to say.
First off, it should be noted that this is meant to be an analog to Glenn Reynolds’ article on how to be anti-war without being a hypocrite, which I myself lauded here. For some reason, Max seems to think this renders his items immune to criticism as to their logic. Unfortunately, he seems bound by the structure of Reynolds’ article, while trying to turn the content on its head; it doesn’t work very well, frankly.
[M]ost “pro-war” advocates seem reflexively pro-Bush and illiberal, rather than committed to the war aims they typically espouse. In other words, war is domestic politics by other means.
I have no great fondness for Bush’s domestic policies. I didn’t vote for him. I hope to God the Democrats can field someone in 2004 that I can vote for instead of him. I guess that makes me unlike most — though certainly I don’t get the impression that Reynolds (or the other member of the Horsemen, I read, Den Beste) is particularly pro-Bush domestically, or illiberal — depending, of course, on how you define that latter term.
1. Support the UN: Don’t preempt a democratic body’s deliberations by supporting declarations that its decisions will be ignored if they prove to be unsatisfactory. Such declarations are simple extortion and ill behoove a nation stiriving to spread democracy throughout the world.
The UN is a democracy? Since when? To paraphrase Monty Python, “I didn’t vote for them.”
Why, if we’re talking about a “democracy,” is the UN Security Council made up of five veto powers (with little specific relationship to representative world populations), plus an odd assortment of other rotating nations? Does that sound like a democracy? Heck, for all that so many folks criticized how the 2000 elections were decided, that process is a hell of a lot more democratic than the UNSC.
The way the UN is structured, there’s nothing the UNSC can do without negotiating away the threat of a US veto (which doesn’t sound particularly democratic, if that’s the ideal you’re looking for). If the UN doesn’t want to support US actions, frankly, I don’t see the big deal.
Instead of denigrating the role of inspectors — the chosen approach of the UN, adopted at the behest of the U.S. — and discounting their practical effectiveness, how about giving them additional support?
Because inspections under 1441 were not meant to disarm Iraq, but to prove that Iraq had in fact disarmed. It’s baldly obvious that they have not, and Iraq is not in the full, complete compliance with the inspection regime that 1441 demanded. Continuing to support inspections merely plays Hussein’s game, and accomplishes almost nothing.
2. Support the peoples of Iraq. Take note of announcements to the effect that military government, not democracy, will follow regime change in Iraq. Take note of the alarm of the Iraqi opposition, heretofore lauded as the hope for the nation, over their exclusion from post-war planning. Protest the evolving betrayal of the Kurdish people associated with the payoff of the Turkish government.
The anti-war folks have been deriding the Bush administration for failing to have a post-war plan. “You’re going to just abandon them! How can democracy flourish in such a divided country?” So a story is floated that the plan is to impose a military government, as in post-WWII Japan and Germany, to eliminate the Baathist regime, and build the foundations for a return to democracy. So now the anti-war folks are up in arms about that.
They were also up in arms that the Iraqi emigre opposition was being listened to so closely or given so much support. “Those folks are out of touch with the people of Iraq. They have no support there. They’ve got their own self-aggrandizing agendas. They’re not democractically elected.” So now that they’re not automatically being made the new rulers of Iraq, it’s considered a bad thing?
The Kurdish situation is different. Ideally, I wouldn’t mind seeing an independent Kurdistan. The world community, though, is generally loathe to see new countries carved out of old ones, and certainly Turkey, both one of our allies and a key to an Iraqi war, doesn’t want to see an independent Kurdistan.
Frankly, the Kurds will be better off with a free and united Iraq than they are now (where they are “free” only because of the US interdiction of Iraqi air power over the north). And there’s always time for autonomy discussions in the future.
Demand that serious reconstruction efforts begin in Afghanistan, along with planning for more of the same for a post-Saddam Iraq. Demand that the fruits of exploitation of Iraq’s petroleum riches be reserved for the people of Iraq, not foreign oil companies.
I have no problem with that.
In a similar vein, why not get serious about U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s flagrant violations of fundamental constitutional rights? If we are for democracy and liberty in Iraq, why not in the U.S.A.? Let’s face it, your overcooked-noodle criticism of the Administration in this context gives milquetoast a bad name.
Well, it’s a bit off-topic, but, sure, I’m not happy with the sorts of things that the DoJ has been doing, or floating. Technically it’s only unconstitutional if it’s so ruled by a court, but anyone can throw the label around, I suppose. Certainly, though, Reynolds has been no friend of Ashcroft, and calling it a limp criticism is sorely unfair. It is possible to support a war on Iraq and be opposed to aspects of homeland security in the US.
3. Support democracy: Saddam is a dictator. (Some Republican senators’ prior statements to the contrary notwithstanding). You can bet that, if Saddam was not overthrown, a lot of people who currently support that overthrow would demand democratic elections for Iraq. But if it’s good to demand them now, surely it’s right to demand guarantees for them afterwards, rather than settle for a U.S. colonial administration or some new autocrat. Right?
See #2.
Is Germany a democracy? Is Japan? If you’re concerned that the US is not going to be dedicated to serious, long-term reconstruction efforts in Iraq, what makes you think the US is going to have some sort of long-term “colonial administration” there instead?
If those are the three best suggestions Max can come up with (even setting aside his casual ad hominems of how “the pro-war movement” looks like “a gaggle of armchair, video-game playing jingoists”), I’m not particularly impressed. Nor do I see any place where I, for one, am being hypocritical.
The Hogwarts Express steam train, being filmed for the next Harry Potter flick, has started a fire in the Scottish heather. Sparks flying from the wheels of the train or…
The Hogwarts Express steam train, being filmed for the next Harry Potter flick, has started a fire in the Scottish heather.
Sparks flying from the wheels of the train or from its funnel are believed to have ignited tinder-dry undergrowth as the train completed a run over the 90ft-high viaduct towards Glenfinnan station. Unusually for February, the area has not had any rain for 10 days.
Not an uncommon occurance, back in the days of the steam train.
Here’s an interesting, even, dare I say it, insightful article by Robert Fisk about the polarization of thought in the US over the impending war with Iraq. It was a…
Here’s an interesting, even, dare I say it, insightful article by Robert Fisk about the polarization of thought in the US over the impending war with Iraq.
It was a telling moment, a symbol of the vast gulf of reason between the pro- and anti-war movement in America. They don’t talk to each other. And if they do, neither comprehends the other. Like the endless chat programmes on Pacifica Radio and all the smaller liberal talk shows from Boston to LA that serve up inedible dollops of anti-Bush, anti-Republican rant, there is simply no contact between the intellectual “elite” of the left and the less privileged Americans who work with their hands and join the military to gain a free education and end up fighting America’s foreign wars.
Fisk does a lot of good writing here about how the anti-war intelligencia simply don’t understand the common rabble out there that are behind George Bush — and, in fact, patronizingly prefer to leave them out of the whole debate.
The people with whom these liberal academics should be building bridges are the truck-drivers and bell-hops and Amtrak crews, the poor blacks and the cops whose families provide the cannon fodder for America’s overseas military adventures. But that, of course, would force intellectuals to emerge from the sheltered, tenured world of seminars and sit-ins and deal directly with those whose opinions they wish to change.
When I made this very point at Harvard and several other universities, I was told, rather patronisingly, that these people – the phrase was almost identical – had “so little information” or are “not very informed”. This is, in fact, untrue. I have heard as much sense about the Middle East from a train crew en route from Washington to Georgia and from a waiter in a St Louis diner as I have from the good folks of North Carolina.
Unfortunately, he proceeds to lend unintentional irony to the whole article by painting actual pro-war folks as coarse, pugnacious, full of “hatred and venom” in their support of “George Bush’s war.” If only, he clearly thinks, those poor folks were reached out to, they would see the error of their hayseed ways and, even though just hard working stiffs, come to see how they are being duped by The Man into exchanging their blood and lives in return for GI Bill educations.
Yeah, there’s plenty of patronizing going on, all right …
(also via Andrea)
Okay, speaking purely as myself and not, say, as a parent, there may be some value in this current British experiment to teach teens about different levels of sexual intimacy….
Okay, speaking purely as myself and not, say, as a parent, there may be some value in this current British experiment to teach teens about different levels of sexual intimacy.
The big flashy headlines are, of course, all about teaching children about oral sex, but the basic premise behind the A Pause program is that teens today are taught that it’s All or Nothing — either you merely hold hands, or you go all the way. Too many kids seem to be going all the way, leading to a teen pregnancy problem in the UK.
So if, for example, you can teach kids that they can get intimate at a less potentially-catastrophic level — be it oral sex, or petting, or, yes, just a lot of kissing and holding hands — is that a bad thing?
Well, it depends on whether you think that even whispering the word “sex” at kids makes them likely to rip off their clothes and have at it like randy weasels. (Like they need any encouragement to do so.) Or if you think that any sort of physical intimacy is a slippery slope to full-out coitus.
I think there are a lot of potentially good ideas here. On the other hand, I trust myself, as a parent, to try to teach some of those lessons to Katherine myself. (Or, rather, let Margie do so. Heh.) I’d hate to see someone with the teaching skills and intelligence of some of the teachers I’ve known trying to tackle anything more than the basics, which this definitely seems to entail. On the other hand again, given that some parents seem to do a piss-poor job of doing this sort of education themselves, maybe it’s just what we need.
I dunno. Ask me in another seven or eight years.
(via Andrea)
Some interesting analysis here about Saddam Hussein, his WMD programs, and the “popular wisdom” that he’s a crafty guy who’d never do anything that would actually threaten him. Finally, we…
Some interesting analysis here about Saddam Hussein, his WMD programs, and the “popular wisdom” that he’s a crafty guy who’d never do anything that would actually threaten him.
Finally, we cannot forget that all evidence has shown Saddam Hussein to be an incorrigible optimist who willfully ignores signs of danger. Consider that on at least five occasions over the last three decades, he has embarked on foreign policy adventures that nearly destroyed him: his attack on Iraq’s Kurds in 1974 (which might have ended in an Iranian assault on Baghdad if the shah of Iran had not unexpectedly decided to double-cross the Kurds instead); his invasion of Iran in 1980; his invasion of Kuwait in 1990; his assassination attempt against former President Bush in 1993; and his threatened attack on Kuwait in 1994. In each case, he took a course of action that we know even his closest advisers considered extremely dangerous.
This is the problem with Saddam Hussein. The assertion that he is not intentionally suicidal may be true, but it is irrelevant. In the end, he has frequently proven inadvertently suicidal.
And he seems to be doing it again. With more than 150,000 American soldiers taking positions on his borders he continues to run the international inspectors in circles, foolishly confident that his minor concessions will stave off an invasion. Is there any other person on earth who wouldn’t turn his country inside out to prove that he did not have more weapons of mass destruction? Once again, he seems to be betting his life that the game is not as dangerous as everyone else thinks it is.
And not just his life.
(via Volokh)
The little island of Nauru, until recently doing pretty well becasue of phosphate reserves, has effectively collapsed pretty much every way but physically. It’s resources are gone, unemployment is 100%,…
The little island of Nauru, until recently doing pretty well becasue of phosphate reserves, has effectively collapsed pretty much every way but physically. It’s resources are gone, unemployment is 100%, phone and radio contact has been lost since last month, and nobody knows who the president is any more (which is okay, because the presidential residence was recently burned down).
Yeesh.
There’s a good soc paper brewing here. Or else a thriller novel or a game scenario.
(via BoingBoing)
Lileks comments on a videotaped viewing of a Moslem sermon in Iraq: I just saw a video of one of the sermons, carried on prime-time TV in Iraq. Same old…
Lileks comments on a videotaped viewing of a Moslem sermon in Iraq:
I just saw a video of one of the sermons, carried on prime-time TV in Iraq. Same old same old, with a twist: Usually the text says that the very trees will cry out there is a Jew behind me, kill him. This video had a new version: even the stone will say “a Jew is hiding behind me. Come and cut off his head.”
And then the mullah pulled out a sword. That’s the detail you don’t get in the transcripts: these men of God are packing heat – granted, it’s medieval-style slicy heat, but heat nonetheless.
“And we shall cut off his head!” he shouted, waving the sword. “By Allah, we shall cut it off! Oh Jews! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Jihad for the sake of Allah! Jihad for the sake of Allah!”
Playwright Harold Pinter, speaking at last weekend’s rally, said “The US is a nation out of control,” and “unless we stop it, it will bring barbarism to the entire world.” He said America was “a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics with Tony Blair as a hired Christian thug.”
When Blair shows up in the pulpit cleaving the air with a scimitar, let me know. When US television broadcasts a speech with Billy Graham hosting an Excalibur replica from the Franklin Mint Collection, demanding the decapitation of Muslims, let me know. When George Bush grips the podium and beseeches American rock formations to give up the location of non-Christians so we can slit their throats, and it’s carried live on national TV by presidential order, drop me a line.
I haven’t been, and remain not, someone who considers the Islamic world, per se, the Enemy. I know perfectly peaceful Moslems, and I’ve read plenty of translated passages from the Koran that make it clear that it’s no more intrinsically violent a religion than, say, Christianity.
But there are strains of Islam that clearly are dangerous to non-believers. And the comparison here is worth noting, and it puts folks like Pinter and his ilk in a particularly bad (and deservedly so) light.
Is it that Pinter doesn’t believe that these folks are dangerous? How patronizing. Is it that he doesn’t believe in the power of language? How ironic. Or is it that he believes in what they say? How … well, I’ll let you come up with an adjective.
Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, and his wife, Grace, left their five-star Paris hotel last night at the end of the France-Africa summit, praising French hospitality and President Jacques Chirac’s role…
Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, and his wife, Grace, left their five-star Paris hotel last night at the end of the France-Africa summit, praising French hospitality and President Jacques Chirac’s role in “uniting the world.
“We’ve had tremendous hospitality, we felt at home,” said Mr Mugabe, who woke up yesterday, his 79th birthday, in the palatial Plaza Athénée hotel. “We leave with very good impressions about France.”
(via InstaPundit)
It occured to me this morning that I hadn’t talked much about driving while in the UK. It is, however, the Number One Most Common Question One is Asked (“How…
It occured to me this morning that I hadn’t talked much about driving while in the UK. It is, however, the Number One Most Common Question One is Asked (“How did you like driving on the wrong side of the road?”)
(The Number Two Question is “Did you see any shows while in London?”)
The answer (to the Number One Question) is, “It’s just like driving at home, only on the other side of the road.”
Which is more or less true. The biggest problem in driving on the left side of the road is not the driving part of it, but the turning/pulling out/pulling in part of it. You have to actually think about where you are going, rather than just “knowing” how to move.
One thing which simplied matters for us slightly was that we ended up with automatic transmissions. I’ve driven manual (much more common on car rentals in the UK) over there twice, and it’s not bad, just a matter of shifting with the left hand, rather than the right. But it is one more thing to chew up processing cycles with, to be sure, and aside from a few cruises along country roads when it would have been handy, I didn’t miss the manual transmission all that much.
There are two other aspects of driving in the UK that set it apart from the US. One is also frequently asked about or commented upon: roundabouts (traffic circles). These are used frequently in lieu of traffic signalled intersections or, in the case of highways, over/underpasses. In most cases, they perform their job admirably. If you’re on the main road, it’s rare that you have to do more than slightly slow, whereas if you are on a smaller cross-road, it’s rare you have to wait very long for a gap.
Where roundabouts have problems are (a) they take a fair amount of real estate, especially in cities, and (b) where traffic gets too heavy, it does become difficult for cross-traffic to get through. At which point they add traffic signals to the roundabout, and it actually becomes slower than a normal signalled intersection.
There’s also sort of a vagueness of lanes in most roundabouts, whereby one stays toward the center while the preferred exit is a ways away, then drifts over as it approaches. When lanes get added, it becomes more complex.
Still, for 90% of the cases where I encountered them in the UK, I thought roundabouts worked fine. And navigating them with the help of a friend (“Okay, you’ll be exiting at two o’clock”) is really simple. If you miss the exit you need, you just go around again …
Navigation is the other complexity. Because there are so many roadways, and they wander from town to town, rarely do you see something labeled as “north” or “west” or the like. There is excellent signage, but it is always in terms of the highway name the road is on (or leads to), and the next town that it’s headed toward. (An exception to this is the Motorways.)
That means you really need to be tracking along where you are headed toward on a map, if you are not familiar with the route. That makes having a navigator in the passenger seat nearly a requirement. I’ve driven solo on the UK and Ireland, and it’s almost a guarantee that you’re going to make mistakes. A good navigator (Margie is, I must say, excellent) makes all the difference in the world.
The Healthy Habits restaurant on Colorado Blvd. went out of business a while back. It’s now the Colorado Liquor Mart….
The Healthy Habits restaurant on Colorado Blvd. went out of business a while back. It’s now the Colorado Liquor Mart.
I don’t know if it’s Post-two-weeks-with-the-grandparents Syndrome, or just the Terrible Twos making themselves known in the last few months of that age range, but, boy, has Katherine been a…
I don’t know if it’s Post-two-weeks-with-the-grandparents Syndrome, or just the Terrible Twos making themselves known in the last few months of that age range, but, boy, has Katherine been a whiny little piaga the last few days. Cute, articulate, sociable, but also whiny, demanding, intransigent, and prone to running away or rejecting every option to a situation that you provide her.
Rrg.
On the other hand, I hear from Margie that both sets of grandparents demand (that is the word used) that we do some sort of extended vacation with Katherine in their custody as an annual event.
Maybe not England, but there are plenty of other places we could go. And maybe not two weeks, but …
Hmmm. I wonder how soon “annual” means?
An aerial survey and analysis of protesters in San Francisco last Sunday has come up with a number significantly smaller than either police or organizer estimates, 65k instead of 200k….
An aerial survey and analysis of protesters in San Francisco last Sunday has come up with a number significantly smaller than either police or organizer estimates, 65k instead of 200k.
The results? The police and the organizers both agree that the analysis is goofy. Not that they have any particular methodology they can point to for their own numbers, just that the picture proof (which is actually in line with BART estimates) “feels” too small.
And damned if I can figure out how anyone would take offense at them. (via Andrea)…
And damned if I can figure out how anyone would take offense at them.
(via Andrea)
Here’s a great article this morning on the difficulties that movie producers have in making comic book costumes work. In the real world, head-to-toe spandex would make a star look…
Here’s a great article this morning on the difficulties that movie producers have in making comic book costumes work.
In the real world, head-to-toe spandex would make a star look at best like a speed skater and at worst like David Lee Roth circa 1986.
One of the drawbacks of an art form that uses “heroic” stature in its depiction of humans. Not to mention size 44M cups for women and 42″ chests for men.
A few years ago, the clad-in-tights “X-Men” also got the leather cat-suit treatment. Last year, “Spider-Man” was outfitted with a raised crisscross pattern that made parts of his costume look like an ice-cube tray. And rumors abound that this summer, a computer-generated version of the Hulk will be ravaging the streets in nothing but the buff green skin his momma gave him.
Well, that’s better than purple pants, I suppose.
Actually, that’s a fine, even sensible idea for the Hulk. You couldn’t do it in comics (at least those read by kids), since you’re talking about dozens of pages of pictures each issue, 12 issues a year, etc., and presuming you don’t want the Incredible Schlong hanging out there in front of Little Jimmy, it’s easier to finesse in a movie than on the printed page.
Fun stuff.
(via Margie, who spotted the article in print)
Wow, I’ve been back in the States a couple of days now, and I haven’t posted anything on Iraq. To be honest, having taken an enforce break from it, I…
Wow, I’ve been back in the States a couple of days now, and I haven’t posted anything on Iraq.
To be honest, having taken an enforce break from it, I was kind of hesitant to pick up that banner again. It’s such a tiring effort in the face of what feels like short-sighted, misguided, or (on occasion) plain evil blather, over and over and over again. The same things have been said, back and forth, so frequently, to so little effect, that I’d rather just let events take their course and t’hell with it.
Well, fortunately, some folks don’t feel the same way, so I feel obliged to post this article which, I think, sums up the present case as well as anything else.
The answer is that it’s about all of those things together. What makes Iraq unique is not that it’s a brutal dictatorship, that it has terrorist ties, that it sits on gobs of oil, that it’s invaded its neighbors, or that it’s used weapons of mass destruction to wipe out people whenever it saw fit — no, what makes it unique is that all these things apply.
It’s called the big picture — and picking apart just one part of it, even if possible, does little to dismiss the whole. To some degree, this as been abetted by the Bush administration not talking about the big picture side of it, either because it keeps getting dragged back into the particulars, as though each one must suffice for war, or because it raises some implications (discussed in the comments to the article) that would themselves raise some irrelevant but difficult arguments.
It’s time to get on with it, and shift the argument to how best to clean up the mess afterwards.
Pictures will follow, have no fear….
Pictures will follow, have no fear.