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About the time I graduated from high school, I met a very likable girl. A friend of mine had a crush on her but I did not know her that well. Most everyone liked her. She was interested in others and they appreciated that. She rarely talked about herself, but could find something to say to most anyone. I admired that and believed that she could be a negotiator and bring people together who would not come together on their own. Later, when I was in Blacksburg, my friend still had a crush on her, and I got to see first hand what she was really like. A couple of friends of hers had a relatively small disagreement and she was on both sides. She would not say anything that she thought would be less than positive, nor would she recuse herself. It seemed that she would rather be liked than helpful. She was not able to bring them together, even thought they did not seem that far apart. In the end, neither of her friends had any respect for her and she lost them both. I lost my respect for her as well, because she had no principle of her own, she simply told people they were right because she like being agreeable. Conversation with her was shallow and unfulfilling. Although this was not a deal breaker for my friend, I quickly lost interest. Until recently, I had not given her a second thought. I am surprised that I remember her at all.
Continue reading Position Wanted, Have Nuke, Not Willing to Travel
This is an old rant, posted here in support of what I think Mr. Shaw articulated in his post on Empire Building. – Shannon
Today it will finally happen. I am about to make you think that I have gone off the deep end. Half of you are going to think I’m a loon for what I’m about to say, the other half for my reasons. But, here goes.
We should surrender in Afghanistan and bring our people home.
Continue reading Surrender, Mr. President, and bring our troups home
After reading about President Obama’s strategy for conducting the war in Afghanistan I began wondering why we were even there. After all, George Washington warned us in his Farewell Address to “avoid foreign entanglements”. We have ignored his words.
Through the years our government has found many reasons to send our troops overseas and we are now [...]
I have a theory as to why there is no progress in the middle east, despite President Obama’s commitment to going to the negotiating table with the region’s leaders without precondition. Up till now, I have only known of two gross approaches, the proponents of each claiming their course to be diametrically opposed to the other. One, that the Arab fascists only understand the barrel end of a gun, only from a show of strength will they respect us. The other, of course they hate us when we continually attempt to bully them with the threat of more barrels of guns, we can only prevail by compromising our ideals to avoid pressuring them to compromise theirs. We have a long history of leaning toward the first. Recently, our new President chastised us for being so naive in doing so and promised to sit down with Ahmadinejad et. al. without precondition in pursuit of the latter.
Continue reading Been There, Got the Turban
President Obama, in addressing the shootings at Fort Hood cautioned us not to jump to any conclusions.
But, given what we do know, Major Nidal Malik Hasan,
Shot 54 U.S. soldiers while shouting Allah Akbar;
Tried to contact Al Qaeda twenty times via his spiritual mentor turned recruiter in Yemen;
Asked his mentor what he could do to help with [...]
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