even when on holiday...

my meandering took me past wolfman's work, and he joined me in my little mission to mike's place - i'd gotten the idea of fish 'n chips and a guinness stuck in my head.

what the hell? you may very well ask.
you were complaining about being ill, and you went drinking in the middle of the day?

okay, the second guinness was NOT smart. but i did have a fascinating conversation with an ex-contractor just out of iraq. i was armed with a fair amount of knowledge gleaned from war made new and licensed to kill, and more opinions than you could shake a stick at.

once again, for anyone not paying attention:
war is brutal: you can't win a war by playing nice, and if you go in apologizing you've already lost. the psychological effects of war are far more important than the physical punishment meted out, and the simplest definition of a "beaten nation" is a nation that is no longer prepared to fight. you tell me that the iraqis and afhgans were defeated, or the vietnamese for that matter...
the arab world (at large) is at war with the rest of us: their religious doctrine and lack of uncorrupt leadership combines to make the western world at large their enemy, and they don't share our ethical qualms concerning truth and humanitarianism.
the fact that those of us in the "civilized" world can debate war's ethical implications is a freedom that we will no longer have if our advanced nations are ever defeated^*. unfortunately, in addition to the fact that the best defence is a good offense, we're going to need to become uncivilized if we're to defend our soft, academic lives from people who cannot understand what they're attacking or why.
freedom of the press is a good thing, but irresponsible free press should be gathered up and executed as war criminals: the big media outlets have an enormous impact on the world today - especially in countries where the public opinion is taken seriously (strangely enough, the countries which receive the most criticism).
the amount of damage the media does with sensationalism and going after sob-stories with minimal fact-checking and even less care is unbelievable. getting both sides of the story is one thing, but making a point of going after the "other" side of the story in a completely biased fashion really should be punishable by death.

it's easy to forget that we're all human; and it's even easier to forget just how all-inclusive the word "human" can be.

^* okay, it's hard enough to write a statement like this without wondering what it means, let alone read it and take it seriously. there are many david and goliath stories in our recent history, but the fact of the matter is that most of our history is made up of humans achieving the impossible, the unthinkable, and as long as there are people trying, there is a chance of it happening.