Friday, January 12, 2007

Rusty

I haven't been writing, not out of a lack of thought, but out of a lack of effort. I've had a million things about which I could write and gush and rant and study and bemoan and et cetera. But I haven't. And that speaks volumes about my own self, not about my subjects.

I've visited Thailand, which (in a laundry-list and very unromantic fashion) included riding elephants, seeing snakes, eating food, buying clothes, tossing coins, drinking wine, sitting on planes, and generally taking advantage of vacation time. But yet I haven't felt any compulsion to jot down a single word about all that. Years ago, my head was packed to the brim with thoughts and ideas and every thing I wrote down felt like a sad attempt to recapture some of the dizzying parade stomping through my mind. Maybe it's just a phase. Maybe.

DiggIt!Add to del.icio.usAdd to Technorati Faves

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Just thinking...

Waging a war and fighting a war are two vastly different things. It is the men in the suits, in the offices, pushing paper and writing up legislation that wage war. It is the men in the fatigues, in the insurgent-filled cities, dodging bullets and avoiding IEDs that fight war. Ann Coulter's now infamous remark about the mothers who lost their sons to the war in Iraq just seems to highlight this difference in my mind:

Her argument is their protests are antithetical to the ideals and goals of the United States. But those mothers never said a word against how the war was being fought. No sane person would say that our boys overseas are not fighting as best as they can. Instead, they were angry with how the war was being and continues to be waged. This is not merely rhetorical sematics; this is moral and philsophical semantics that call into question the very nature of our democracy.

DiggIt!Add to del.icio.usAdd to Technorati Faves