Friday, March 12, 2010

The long haul

This link, and this, sent to me by my buddy Kyle, author of Metaphor, inter alia, tell me that we're not likely to stop spending billions (and concomitant lives) in Afghanistan very soon. And, no doubt, these expenditures likely are dwarfed by our involvement in Iraq, regardless of Obama's pledge to remove all of our "combat troops" from Iraq in a while.

We're "nation building" these two distant nations while our own crumbles. But there is one saving grace, which can be said of our massive military presence throughout the world: At least it's a job program, and it's directed specifically toward folks who need the money.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Should I be freaking out?

I mean, Merlin Olsen--age 69, which is my age--dies of cancer. Can I be far behind? Okay, Jack Nicklaus and Paul McCartney, who're also my age, are still alive and "kicking," so maybe I should shut up. But Merlin Olsen, the bigger-than-life good guy from Little House on the Prairie? Ouch.

A new dimension of warfare

Now our drones are killing people in Pakistan (on which country we've never declared war--indeed, it's supposedly our ally) who are in the process of rescuing fellow Pakistanis from the rubble of buildings destroyed by a previous drone. This post--this blog--isn't going to change anything, and I wonder if by writing this I'm simply dispelling (or is it diffusing or defusing?) the rage I feel at our military and its commander-in-chief. This madness must stop, but I feel powerless to do anything but gripe, particularly since our congressperson, Lois Capps, yesterday voted against Dennis Kucinich's House resolution calling for quick withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan.