On Aug 1, 2007, at 8:41 PM, jon louis mann wrote: > i met obama on a flight to chicago last december. he seemed very > young, idealistic, and inexperienced, but a charming fellow, > nonetheless. > he has definitely alienated his supporters on the daily kos.
Huh. I don't read Kos and it's not on my blogroll. That is neither a boast nor a confession, but I thought it was worth mentioning. > remember what happened to mcgovern in 72, despite the fact that america > was against the war. i think the electorate wants the us out of iraq, > but they want to finish the job in afghanistan. Both are probably valid, yeah. Afghanistan was rational and sensible; I've commented often (here and in my blog) on the stupidity behind Iraq when we damned well could have helped Afghanistan rebuild and become a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, sort of like how we helped Japan and Germany after WWII. I have yet to meet even the most staunch defender of Bush who can come up with a good reason *WHY* we didn't just Stay The Course with Afghanistan and leave the rest of the ME alone. > if it means going into > the mountains bordering pakistan, and putting an end to the resurgence > of the taliban, americans want to get osama. Maybe. I'm not so sure. For one thing, the Taliban are not OBL; they're a separate group of Islamic extremists. Left only to themselves, I think the Taliban and the Qaeda would quickly kill one another in violent internecine conflict. It was conflation of the Taliban with the Qaeda that allowed Americans to be lulled and lied into a pointless war on two fronts. Further, I'm not sure at all that the US wants Osama so bad we'd be willing to invade yet another nation -- this one nuclear-capable. The pro-peace groundswell is mounting fast, and I think a lot of politicians have lost sight of just how tired the US is of war, and I think that a man or woman who stood up and said we'd rather have peace and end it, and get Osama quietly, would do pretty damn well. And -- here's the clincher -- even if it meant Osama would escape. If we ignore the figurehead and instead gut out the reasons for the Qaeda to exist, isn't that a hell of a fine turn-around? What good is OBL if he's left doddering in his caves and rambling insanely to no one, left without a stage on which to declaim any longer, bereft of followers? If that was the trade for ending the stupidity of al-Qaeda, I'd take it. Osama is one man. He is not the one who actually flew airplanes into anything; he is not the one who planted bombs in Madrid or London. If we remove the food, the organism dies; why seek the superfluous heart when we can starve the irreplaceable belly? Fifteen years ago I got into casual debates with very insightful friends about the then-burgeoning threat of China. (It was a much simpler time.) I proposed a solution: Give them the Internet. Let them play in the freedom of cyberspace, let them become dependent on the flow of information-rich sources such as Europe and the US. Not on the governmental level; saturate the *people* with this free exchange of Forbidden Ideas, and see how long China actually remains a threat to the Rest of the World™. Huh. And now we want to attack Iran, and we're babbling about Pakistan? Hmm. How much would it actually cost to wire everyone there to the net? Unfortunately we haven't had a chance to see what the reaction would be; no prominent politician seems to be willing to trust the US people enough to actually give voice to what so many of us so obviously want. They'd rather drape and drip in the blood of the flag; they'd rather cant "left" in their speeches, when the "left" they're touting was the "right" just three decades ago. Patriotism appears indeed to be the last refuge of scoundrels. Obama's off my list. I'm waiting for others, Dem, Repub and cetera, to remove themselves similarly. > obama may make it on the ticket with hillary, or biden (if hillary > stumbles, which i doubt). dark horse richardson could conceivably gain > momentum and pass edwards. i like kucinich's platform, but he is too > far to the left to win the nomination, and a bit of a dweeb (his wife > is hot, though). Here's my dream ticket. Gore and Kucinich. Think about that for a while. -- Warren Ockrassa Blog | http://indigestible.nightwares.com/ Books | http://books.nightwares.com/ Web | http://www.nightwares.com/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
