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WHY TODAY IS EVEN BETTER THAN YESTERDAY
"I intend to end this war. My first day in office, I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission, and that is to end this war responsibly and deliberately but decisively."
--President Barack Obama, said repeatedly over the course of a two-year campaign
"I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is a cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and hardships borne."
--President Barack Obama, October 2002, at the outset of his campaign for U.S. Senate. (Taped across my computer monitor, where I see it every day.)
He said it from the very beginning.
Remember--to oppose the war in 2002, especially in a hard-fought campaign for the U.S. Senate dominated by a Republican majority--was to be assaulted as unpatriotic, as not supporting the troops, even--in some quarters--as being treasonous.
Remember, Max Cleland, who left half his body behind in Viet Nam, was defeated in his re-election campaign for the senate in 2002 by a chickenhawk right-winger who accused him of not being patriotic enough. Why? Because he opposed the war.
But after Barack Obama got elected to the Senate, and from the time he declared for the presidency in February of 2007, he kept saying it.
He said it when he was 30 points down and nobody--nobody--thought he had a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Clinton Machine.
He said it when they accused him of being not-quite-American, of being a radical extremist who coddled terrorists, of being too young and inexperienced and foolish to understand the ways of modern warfare.
He said it when they accused him of wanting to "cut and run," when they said he was a closet Muslim plotting to secretly overthrow the American government.
He said it when he was neck-and-neck in a race for the presidency with a war-hero who paraded his prisoner-of-war status as the single most important qualification for anyone running for commander-in-chief--a status slobberingly adored by an enamored media.
And then, when he got elected, they said that, NOW, now that he was getting the same daily Intelligence briefings as the president, why, he would GET that we just could not do what he kept saying we needed to do.
But he still said it. In fact, he said, (paraphrased), "I'm getting the same Intelligence briefings as the president does, every day, and so far I have not seen anything that tells me our plans need to change."
In his Inaugural address, he said it again.
And today, his first day in office, when all the pundits said he'd hit the ground running on domestic issues and the economy and nothing else, guess who he is meeting with?
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of Iraqi forces, Gen. David McKiernan, commander of Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, top military commander of the Middle East. (Odierno and McKiernan will videoconference but Petraeus is flying in for the meeting.)
He said he would do it.
He said it when everybody said he was crazy, but he said it.
And today, at long last, he IS doing it.
There are those who shrug and say, So what? The Iraqis themselves have put a limit on how long U.S. troops can remain in their country.
Yeah? And when did they work up the nerve to do THAT?
When it became clear that Barack Obama would most likely be the next president of the United States.
The Bush administration built a massive, behemoth, half-billion dollar American embassy in Baghdad--an obscene middle-finger to the Middle East. The largest embassy in the world, it was clear that the Imperial Presidency intended to leave not just a footprint in Iraq, but the whole foot.
Meanwhile they constructed numerous American military bases so enormous that they were the size of entire cities, with golf courses and malls.
They never intended to leave; in fact, I have long suspected that Donald Rumsfeld's famous shrug and retort, "Stuff happens," when the looting of Iraq began and the chaos and insurgencies had their birth--was deliberate.
If they could dismantle the Iraqi government and stand back while the nation melted down, their presence as a national police force and Big Brother shadow-government would be assured for decades to come, while in the meantime, Exxon-Mobile and their cronies made off with the black gold buried beneath the desert sands.
Cost in American blood and treasure was irrelevant to the bottom line: oil.
Six years later the American military is staggering and broken, half its materiel in need of serious repair and replacement, its personnel abused and exhausted by constant, repeated deployments. Divorce, suicide, child abuse, cases of PTSD--even less-measured statistics like the amount of troops who die in motorcyle accidents between deployments--have mounted to unprecedented levels as less than one-half of one-percent of the American population fights this Goundhog Day war over and over and over again.
And there's a whole other war going on in Afghanistan. Some get the privilege of fighting in BOTH wars. Repeatedly.
The truth is that Maliki would never have had the balls to send troops into Basra and otherwise put his stamp on bringing order into his country if he had thought we were going to be there forever. This is because their army and police force has been woefully inept, underfunded, undersupplied, undertrained, and corrupt.
They were only too happy to let the Americans do all the heavy lifting. Bodyguards for the Iraqi people.
Then Barack Obama, like a bolt of lightning, flashed into the scene, and everything changed.
The Iraqis realized that we really were going to pull out, in spite of the huge bases and the gigantic embassy, and the shock and awe of it pulled them up short, made them realize they'd better step up or there really would be a civil war when the Americans left.
This took place at the same time that the Sunnis got tired of al Qaeda raping their daughters and beheading their sheiks up in the Anbar province, and they decided to let the Marines help them regain control of their region.
All of this took place in the past two years, and although the media is damned and determined to give Bush's lame "surge" the credit, it is not the bottom-line reason for the changes in Iraq.
The changes in Iraq happened because the Iraqi people finally realized that they were going to have the opportunity to take their country back, and when they realized that, they stepped up.
There are many anti-war activists who will not be pleased with the steps Obama takes to end this war. They want him to load up 100% of the troops on supersonic jets and get them the hell out of there. NOW.
But it doesn't work that way.
For one thing, we can't leave all those tanks and munitions and arms behind. And it will take AT LEAST 16 months to get most of it out.
For another, when troops pull out of a war-torn country, they are at their gravest risk for attack. There need to be enough combat troops around to protect the support troops as they make the slow drive out of the country with all those armored personnel carriers and Humvees and artillery.
Also, we will be leaving some troops behind. I know many people who think we should get them all out, but the truth is that Iraq still needs our help in maintaining some level of peace and commerce in their streets. Bombings still occur every day, and their army is still at a loss without the support of American troops in the background, providing Intelligence, artillery, crucial medical help, advice, and so on.
They're getting better, but it's going to take some time.
And finally, although I opposed this war from the beginning, as did the president and many millions more people, the fact is that the blood of well over 4000 of our boys and girls has been spilled in that miserable country, and that is not counting the tens of thousands who left behind arms and legs and sanity, and thousands more who died in ways not counted by the military--like Humvee accidents, suicides, friendly fire incidents, illness, and so on.
Many of the troops who have had multiple deployments have gotten to know the Iraqi people better than they did in the early kick-down-doors days. They have come to care for them, and they don't want to suddenly pull out their support and leave them to more chaos. They would like to see them learn to stand on their own and be, well, what passes in the Middle East for a democracy. They are never going to be the Mini-Me that Bush and his cronies fantasized, but if they could be fairly stable and a reasonably strong ally, then the terrible sacrifices made by our soldiers and Marines will not have been in vain.
As Obama has repeatedly pointed out, his best military advisors have said that 16 months is a good timeframe for accomplishing most of those goals, and by the end of that 16 months, we will have been at war in Iraq for SEVEN YEARS. If they can't get it together by then, he basically said, then they're never going to get it together.
When the U.S. pulls out, as Thomas Ricks, my favorite Washington Post war correspondent and author of the seminal FIASCO, said, There will be consequences.
Whether we stay or leave, he said, it will be messy, and Americans have to be ready to deal with the consequences.
What Bush and his Brainless Trust never seemed to realize is that the entire Middle East is a tribal culture, ruled by warlords for centuries. Tyrants like Saddam Hussein can maintain control of them only by ruthless barbarism, and when you remove those tyrants, they will do what tribes do--go to war amongst themselves for power and control.
It's possible that there is enough of a fragile structure in Iraq now that the worst of this bloodshed will not occur when the U.S. finally leaves. We shall see. But we can't afford--not in treasure or manpower--to remain for the next 50 years, as Bush so famously suggested (backed by McCain)--to be their nannies.
As we saw in the former Yugoslavia, you can maintain brutal control over a country, as the Soviet Union did, for 50 years, but when you pull out, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. So we'd best get out now, and turn our attention where it's really needed, which is Pakistan and the Taliban and Afghanistan, where the REAL risk to our national security lies.
For me, a Marine mom who sent a son and nephews into the Iraq meat-grinder six times, today will be a far better day even than yesterday.
And yesterday was pretty damn good.
--President Barack Obama, said repeatedly over the course of a two-year campaign
"I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is a cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and hardships borne."
--President Barack Obama, October 2002, at the outset of his campaign for U.S. Senate. (Taped across my computer monitor, where I see it every day.)
He said it from the very beginning.
Remember--to oppose the war in 2002, especially in a hard-fought campaign for the U.S. Senate dominated by a Republican majority--was to be assaulted as unpatriotic, as not supporting the troops, even--in some quarters--as being treasonous.
Remember, Max Cleland, who left half his body behind in Viet Nam, was defeated in his re-election campaign for the senate in 2002 by a chickenhawk right-winger who accused him of not being patriotic enough. Why? Because he opposed the war.
But after Barack Obama got elected to the Senate, and from the time he declared for the presidency in February of 2007, he kept saying it.
He said it when he was 30 points down and nobody--nobody--thought he had a snowball's chance in hell of beating the Clinton Machine.
He said it when they accused him of being not-quite-American, of being a radical extremist who coddled terrorists, of being too young and inexperienced and foolish to understand the ways of modern warfare.
He said it when they accused him of wanting to "cut and run," when they said he was a closet Muslim plotting to secretly overthrow the American government.
He said it when he was neck-and-neck in a race for the presidency with a war-hero who paraded his prisoner-of-war status as the single most important qualification for anyone running for commander-in-chief--a status slobberingly adored by an enamored media.
And then, when he got elected, they said that, NOW, now that he was getting the same daily Intelligence briefings as the president, why, he would GET that we just could not do what he kept saying we needed to do.
But he still said it. In fact, he said, (paraphrased), "I'm getting the same Intelligence briefings as the president does, every day, and so far I have not seen anything that tells me our plans need to change."
In his Inaugural address, he said it again.
And today, his first day in office, when all the pundits said he'd hit the ground running on domestic issues and the economy and nothing else, guess who he is meeting with?
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of Iraqi forces, Gen. David McKiernan, commander of Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, top military commander of the Middle East. (Odierno and McKiernan will videoconference but Petraeus is flying in for the meeting.)
He said he would do it.
He said it when everybody said he was crazy, but he said it.
And today, at long last, he IS doing it.
There are those who shrug and say, So what? The Iraqis themselves have put a limit on how long U.S. troops can remain in their country.
Yeah? And when did they work up the nerve to do THAT?
When it became clear that Barack Obama would most likely be the next president of the United States.
The Bush administration built a massive, behemoth, half-billion dollar American embassy in Baghdad--an obscene middle-finger to the Middle East. The largest embassy in the world, it was clear that the Imperial Presidency intended to leave not just a footprint in Iraq, but the whole foot.
Meanwhile they constructed numerous American military bases so enormous that they were the size of entire cities, with golf courses and malls.
They never intended to leave; in fact, I have long suspected that Donald Rumsfeld's famous shrug and retort, "Stuff happens," when the looting of Iraq began and the chaos and insurgencies had their birth--was deliberate.
If they could dismantle the Iraqi government and stand back while the nation melted down, their presence as a national police force and Big Brother shadow-government would be assured for decades to come, while in the meantime, Exxon-Mobile and their cronies made off with the black gold buried beneath the desert sands.
Cost in American blood and treasure was irrelevant to the bottom line: oil.
Six years later the American military is staggering and broken, half its materiel in need of serious repair and replacement, its personnel abused and exhausted by constant, repeated deployments. Divorce, suicide, child abuse, cases of PTSD--even less-measured statistics like the amount of troops who die in motorcyle accidents between deployments--have mounted to unprecedented levels as less than one-half of one-percent of the American population fights this Goundhog Day war over and over and over again.
And there's a whole other war going on in Afghanistan. Some get the privilege of fighting in BOTH wars. Repeatedly.
The truth is that Maliki would never have had the balls to send troops into Basra and otherwise put his stamp on bringing order into his country if he had thought we were going to be there forever. This is because their army and police force has been woefully inept, underfunded, undersupplied, undertrained, and corrupt.
They were only too happy to let the Americans do all the heavy lifting. Bodyguards for the Iraqi people.
Then Barack Obama, like a bolt of lightning, flashed into the scene, and everything changed.
The Iraqis realized that we really were going to pull out, in spite of the huge bases and the gigantic embassy, and the shock and awe of it pulled them up short, made them realize they'd better step up or there really would be a civil war when the Americans left.
This took place at the same time that the Sunnis got tired of al Qaeda raping their daughters and beheading their sheiks up in the Anbar province, and they decided to let the Marines help them regain control of their region.
All of this took place in the past two years, and although the media is damned and determined to give Bush's lame "surge" the credit, it is not the bottom-line reason for the changes in Iraq.
The changes in Iraq happened because the Iraqi people finally realized that they were going to have the opportunity to take their country back, and when they realized that, they stepped up.
There are many anti-war activists who will not be pleased with the steps Obama takes to end this war. They want him to load up 100% of the troops on supersonic jets and get them the hell out of there. NOW.
But it doesn't work that way.
For one thing, we can't leave all those tanks and munitions and arms behind. And it will take AT LEAST 16 months to get most of it out.
For another, when troops pull out of a war-torn country, they are at their gravest risk for attack. There need to be enough combat troops around to protect the support troops as they make the slow drive out of the country with all those armored personnel carriers and Humvees and artillery.
Also, we will be leaving some troops behind. I know many people who think we should get them all out, but the truth is that Iraq still needs our help in maintaining some level of peace and commerce in their streets. Bombings still occur every day, and their army is still at a loss without the support of American troops in the background, providing Intelligence, artillery, crucial medical help, advice, and so on.
They're getting better, but it's going to take some time.
And finally, although I opposed this war from the beginning, as did the president and many millions more people, the fact is that the blood of well over 4000 of our boys and girls has been spilled in that miserable country, and that is not counting the tens of thousands who left behind arms and legs and sanity, and thousands more who died in ways not counted by the military--like Humvee accidents, suicides, friendly fire incidents, illness, and so on.
Many of the troops who have had multiple deployments have gotten to know the Iraqi people better than they did in the early kick-down-doors days. They have come to care for them, and they don't want to suddenly pull out their support and leave them to more chaos. They would like to see them learn to stand on their own and be, well, what passes in the Middle East for a democracy. They are never going to be the Mini-Me that Bush and his cronies fantasized, but if they could be fairly stable and a reasonably strong ally, then the terrible sacrifices made by our soldiers and Marines will not have been in vain.
As Obama has repeatedly pointed out, his best military advisors have said that 16 months is a good timeframe for accomplishing most of those goals, and by the end of that 16 months, we will have been at war in Iraq for SEVEN YEARS. If they can't get it together by then, he basically said, then they're never going to get it together.
When the U.S. pulls out, as Thomas Ricks, my favorite Washington Post war correspondent and author of the seminal FIASCO, said, There will be consequences.
Whether we stay or leave, he said, it will be messy, and Americans have to be ready to deal with the consequences.
What Bush and his Brainless Trust never seemed to realize is that the entire Middle East is a tribal culture, ruled by warlords for centuries. Tyrants like Saddam Hussein can maintain control of them only by ruthless barbarism, and when you remove those tyrants, they will do what tribes do--go to war amongst themselves for power and control.
It's possible that there is enough of a fragile structure in Iraq now that the worst of this bloodshed will not occur when the U.S. finally leaves. We shall see. But we can't afford--not in treasure or manpower--to remain for the next 50 years, as Bush so famously suggested (backed by McCain)--to be their nannies.
As we saw in the former Yugoslavia, you can maintain brutal control over a country, as the Soviet Union did, for 50 years, but when you pull out, they're gonna do what they're gonna do. So we'd best get out now, and turn our attention where it's really needed, which is Pakistan and the Taliban and Afghanistan, where the REAL risk to our national security lies.
For me, a Marine mom who sent a son and nephews into the Iraq meat-grinder six times, today will be a far better day even than yesterday.
And yesterday was pretty damn good.
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Amen Deanie!
January 21, 2009 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I say Amen as well!
January 21, 2009 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
OT: TheraP, if you examine this post you will notice anomalies that if pieced together build an address :-)
January 21, 2009 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I loved your creativity there, but unfortunately I made an error and missed one "dot" - and that made all the difference! You software geeks are maybe more into "code" than I am! And kudos for that! :)
January 22, 2009 6:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Deanie, I enjoy reading everything you write, just because you are such a good writer, but this was particularly appealing. I love the way you connect all the dots.
I am so excited about this presidency I can hardly stand it. Every time I hear him speak he says something that reaffirms my confidence in him.
January 21, 2009 2:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds real fine to me Deanie.
January 21, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Uncle. Uncle! UNCLE!! We give! No more... please no more!
We get it already. Obama's amazing! You love him. Great! So how many more times and how many different ways and with how many more words are you going to say it?
Aaaaggh!
;^}
January 21, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry you're tired of it, loki, but many of us are shellshocked from the last eight years.
Remember the scene in Moscow on the Hudson, when Robin Williams' character was so overwhelmed at the selection of coffee in the grocery store that he almost passed out? He'd gone from a life of lines for food and a scarcity of goods to a land of plenty and choices.
The way I see it, we've just come out of eight years of secrecy, selfish agendas, lies, and inhumanity to the first day of an administration that's already demonstrating openness, actions for the greater good, truth, and humane actions. It's a lot to take in. Consider it as a slow recovery from the PTSD of the Bush Administration (though, as with PTSD, I'm not sure some of us will ever get over it).
I'm glad to read what Deanie and others have to say, and if I don't want to read something, I don't have to. And neither do you.
I know, you made the little wry face at the end, but you're clearly impatient with what, at least in my case, is a (temporary) happy disbelief is being able to believe.
January 21, 2009 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh don't be trite. Of course we don't have to read this or that. I read her 4 part series thinking she might have something interesting to say. I discovered that not to be the case. (and that was an awful lot to get through to find that out!) I then decided to let her know about it. That's what these forums are all about. Now to bookend your triteness here's a little from me... You don't want to see disagreement? Move along.
January 21, 2009 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dammit! Another missed opportunity for triteness... unless we can just pile on.
January 21, 2009 11:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Facilitatrix, well said. Besides Deanie puts it so nicely as you do. We had to hear 'Twin Towers' & 9/11 every single day for seven years. A Terrible Calamity; all those people dead; devils at work.
And we saw our pols use a tragedy to pursue their own political aims.
Lest we not forget. Keep it up Deanie and you too, Facil. And I will take my opportunity to bore Loki also.
January 22, 2009 12:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Terrific writing! A cery clear, balanced perspective clearly spoken.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
January 21, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Everything you said was great, but can I just nitpick a tiny bit? This is a personal hate of mine.
Viet Nam is the name of a region. Vietnam is the name of a country. They are pronounced with different inflections in vietnamese, although the name 'Vietnam' comes from 'Viet Nam'. 'Viet Nam' means "South of Nam" (Nam being an ancient chinese province). And the region is considered to also incorporate much of cambodia and laos.
While the war extended into Cambodia, so I guess Viet Nam might be appropriate, I find it irritating when people put the space in for what really should be called "Vietnam", seeing as that was the only territory that was actually in dispute.
January 21, 2009 2:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Huh... no kidding? What I find irritating is pedantic assholes who are irritated by and nitpick insignificant little things like Viet Nam and Vietnam. But, you know, that's just a personal hate of mine.
January 21, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seriously? I would bet money Laos thought they were in dispute, what with the tons of munitions dumped on them. I think the Ho Chi Minh trail was in dispute and it went through the region, Viet Nam, as well as the country, Vietnam.
Seriously, trying to get Vietnamese or any other language crammed into our alphabet is an absurdity in the first place. Let it go.
January 21, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for that info, Kamatsu. Not that the fact will stick in my mind - so correct me too down the road when I forget which is which!
January 22, 2009 6:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you for that, kamatsu. My husband, brother, and father all fought in Vietnam and that is usually the way I spell it. I'm not sure why I separated it this time, but now that I know there is indeed a difference, I'll remember it.
One of my pet peeves is people who pronounce it Viet NAM--like, oh, CAMera, rather than Viet NAHM.
Loki, you must be having a particularly bad day today. Kamatsu meant well and I appreciated learning the difference.
As far as hero-worshipping Obama, I have supported him because of his stance on the war for many years now. For me, it was not about politics. It was about protecting my family. I could see my loved ones being shipped back there ad infinitum, into the hazy distancem until one or more of them died, if someone somewhere did not stop it. In fact, my son was "blown up," as the troops say, and was injured.
Every time you send a loved one over for a repeat deployment, you are playing Russian Roulette that it will be the last time.
Obama was the only one who had the balls to speak out to end the war, stick to it, and stand by his words. I'm very grateful for that; you can't imagine.
I mean really. You can't imagine.
We're all feeling, collectively, fairly peaceful today and relatively happy, considering. There's no need to be so angry right now, is there?
January 21, 2009 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
loki is not having a bad day. loki does not like Obama and he is sick of hearing from those of us who do. loki will not be happy until he either 1) comes to see that we were right about Obama, or 2) Obama is out of office. So, yes, he needs to be angry.
January 21, 2009 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
It really was eternal, an eternity at war. Vietnam. And we, Americans, voted a war mongerer into office. The first time he straight out lied to us. But 2004 was inexcusable. Anybody that did not see him a a liar then....
Six Goddamnable years and w leaves office apologizing that they found no WMDs. Oh it has all been said before, but we have to keep saying it from time to time lest we forget.
January 21, 2009 3:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, that's not anger at all Deanie. It's just snarky exasperation at people who seem incapable of thinking clearly when it comes to Obama. Your massive four part hagiography was nice and all, but seriously you don't see that some might see it as a little over the top? It was redundant, obvious and a little too worshipful for me.
Really, though, I was just having a little fun with you.
Kamatsu's comment was not being helpful. It was being pedantic and self serving. Being helpful looks a lot different.
Stillidealistic thinks I do not like Obama. She should know better... that she doesn't tells me she isn't really paying attention; that she reads and sees only that which pleases her. Her first comment in this thread says much about where she's coming from.
January 21, 2009 3:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
loki, I humbly stand corrected. I misspoke, and I apologize...I SHOULD have known better. I do not know why I filed you under "Obama disliker" in my brain and have no excuse for it. Thank you for calling me on it.
January 21, 2009 4:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
loki, the four-part series was a direct answer to many commenters to my previous post, "Be Cool, My Bebbes," who begged and demanded links. I told them I had PLENTY of links but no time to put them all in, since my family was only just coming in for Christmas that second weekend in January.
So after everybody had left and I was here alone again, I decided to put it all out there--everything I'd been collecting over the past months. I've published eleven books, and I researched this the same way I did my books--with voluminous files and much reading.
My intention was that you could read one or all parts. You could check out this link or that one or none at all. While Part I was admittedly a recap of the campaign, I did indeed provide quite a bit of new information in Parts II and IV. In Part III, I examined how Obama will most likely govern, which is very important after having had eight years of observing someone who had no clue and eight years before that watching someone have to go into pitched battle with congress over every single little thing.
There are many young voters out there who came of age in the 80's and 90's and who have no example whatsoever of what a functioning government looks like. And Obama is going to change that in ways streamlined and modernized for a world they GET--the wired world. I wanted to show them how.
The piece was that long because I'd collected that much information that the vast majority of people who check into a blog do NOT have time to plow through but may perhaps be glad to find a summary with links they can peruse when they have time.
You are very well informed indeed if you thought I provided nothing new and interesting. Most people really don't have time but would like to know the things I wrote about, and this is what I was trying to do.
I appreciate your taking the time to read through it though, and welcome debate anytime.
No need to be snarky though--and that goes for all of us, I think.
I think we really do need to help our new president usher in a new era where we learn to cooperate, as a people, to confront our problems, as opposed to hurling insults at those who disagree with us. (Not that you were hurling. I'm just saying, generally speaking.)
January 21, 2009 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Deanie, I absolutely love your posts. If you wander through Loki's profile and comments you'll notice that almost everyone's posts make him an unhappy camper. It is very rare that there is any kind of comment from Loki that is not disparaging.
I am usually just accept Loki's less than sunny personality, but to attack your posts and writing is too much.
Let that jerk send his/her own children off to become target practice. Then he can bitch about it.
So to Loki: Shut the hell up. Deanie is a true patriot using her God given talents to impart true American spirit. We are amazingly honored to have her writing here. Go bitch up someone else's post, but have some respect for those who have really sacrificed.
January 22, 2009 12:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Shut up? Heh! Fuck you.
And by the way... we had 8 years of "true patriots"... people unwilling to challenge, unable to see the horrors of unchecked power, people all too willing to paint nothing but pretty pictures of their leader. I think I'll pass on that.
January 22, 2009 2:53 PM | Reply | Permalink