Under the Crescent Moon
Happy Friday, ladies and gentlemen! I hope everyone's had a good week, and that everyone has something excellent planned for this weekend. On the surface, my week has been somewhat mundane, but the good thing about it is that I'm not sick anymore, in more ways than one, so I was able to do mundane things - like go in for an eye exam, which I hadn't done in five years. Cue sheepish grinning.
Okay, so I'm listening to Medved at the moment, and he cited a column by Gail Collins from the New York Times (I'm linking the IHT reprint because I hate the New York Times). Collins is on the left, but according to Medved, she writes entertainingly. I agree, and I've taken the best two paragraphs from her article as quoted by Medved. Have a look.
President Obama claimed during the election that we needed to abandon the Iraq War and focus our efforts on Afghanistan, which he asserted to be the real war that we needed to win. He's been in office for about two months, and he's already talking about an exit strategy (Guardian, AFP, Times). An exit strategy? The generals, who are the experts in how to conduct wars (despite sometimes having to implement the incorrect policies of a sitting administration - see Iraq, 2004-2006) say that it could take fifteen to twenty years to fully consolidate. An exit strategy? Now? The unfortunate truth is that if President Obama cuts and runs in Afghanistan now, it will turn into the next Iraq: a future president will have to go in and clean it up again. In that way, I guess that Afghanistan was probably Iraq back in the 1980's, before Iraq was Iraq. There's an interesting article that discusses the situation, and I'll be writing an article myself within the next week or so.
Meanwhile, Secretary Clinton, having called our Israeli allies' actions "unhelpful" and North Korea's approaching missile launch "provocative" (understatement of the year?), has now claimed that the United States is a source of weapons for Mexican drug cartels. Mrs. Clinton, if I may? Mexican drug lords don't want our weapons, they have better weapons, automatic weapons. If anything, we should be nervous about Mexican weapons getting into this country - if we were worried about weapons. I think we're actually more worried about weapons than we ought to be. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I should be fact-checking our officials' speeches before they give them.
On the more entertaining topic of the Iranian media, there's a funny piece that was posted by Michael Totten on "The Persian Version" - basically, how Iran's Press TV has to lie to people in order to get them to come and appear on TV shows that aren't even transmitted in Iran. It's worth the five minutes to read, mainly for the entertainment value.
U2 has been on Letterman a few times over the past few weeks, and they did a Top Ten List. Very funny stuff, particularly The Edge's ad lib.
That's it for today, and for this week. Have a fantastic weekend, folks. Check in next week for more.
Okay, so I'm listening to Medved at the moment, and he cited a column by Gail Collins from the New York Times (I'm linking the IHT reprint because I hate the New York Times). Collins is on the left, but according to Medved, she writes entertainingly. I agree, and I've taken the best two paragraphs from her article as quoted by Medved. Have a look.
Barack Obama — Kinda boring. Did you see the news conference? Same thing over and over again. Not that we mind. In these troubled times, we like stability. Thank God we didn't elect somebody who was all charisma and exciting speeches.
[...]
In summary, there appears to be only two constants in our ever-changing world. One is that Barack Obama is going to be on television every day forever. No venue is too strange. Soon, he'll be on "Dancing With the Stars" ("And now, doing the Health Care, Energy and Education tango ...") or delivering the weather report. ("Here we see a wave of systemic change, moving across the nation ...")
President Obama claimed during the election that we needed to abandon the Iraq War and focus our efforts on Afghanistan, which he asserted to be the real war that we needed to win. He's been in office for about two months, and he's already talking about an exit strategy (Guardian, AFP, Times). An exit strategy? The generals, who are the experts in how to conduct wars (despite sometimes having to implement the incorrect policies of a sitting administration - see Iraq, 2004-2006) say that it could take fifteen to twenty years to fully consolidate. An exit strategy? Now? The unfortunate truth is that if President Obama cuts and runs in Afghanistan now, it will turn into the next Iraq: a future president will have to go in and clean it up again. In that way, I guess that Afghanistan was probably Iraq back in the 1980's, before Iraq was Iraq. There's an interesting article that discusses the situation, and I'll be writing an article myself within the next week or so.
Meanwhile, Secretary Clinton, having called our Israeli allies' actions "unhelpful" and North Korea's approaching missile launch "provocative" (understatement of the year?), has now claimed that the United States is a source of weapons for Mexican drug cartels. Mrs. Clinton, if I may? Mexican drug lords don't want our weapons, they have better weapons, automatic weapons. If anything, we should be nervous about Mexican weapons getting into this country - if we were worried about weapons. I think we're actually more worried about weapons than we ought to be. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I should be fact-checking our officials' speeches before they give them.
On the more entertaining topic of the Iranian media, there's a funny piece that was posted by Michael Totten on "The Persian Version" - basically, how Iran's Press TV has to lie to people in order to get them to come and appear on TV shows that aren't even transmitted in Iran. It's worth the five minutes to read, mainly for the entertainment value.
U2 has been on Letterman a few times over the past few weeks, and they did a Top Ten List. Very funny stuff, particularly The Edge's ad lib.
That's it for today, and for this week. Have a fantastic weekend, folks. Check in next week for more.
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