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Cziltang wanders the trackless wastes in search of truth, beauty and personal enlightenment. He had tried to be self-sufficient, growing his own ideas, but they withered and died in the great intellectual drought that gripped the land in his youth. One day, as he gazed at the parched landscape around him, he realized that somewhere there must be ideas growing. Somewhere, rational discourse must still survive. Since that day, he has searched for a mythical land of fields and forests of living ideas. Now and again he finds a thought or two in the rubble of an occasional deserted outpost of civilization. Its a hard way to live and its not much of a life, but that's just how it is, out here in the Ratlands |
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New Link
link I am not an enthusiastic linker. You won't see dozens of links in my sidebar, because I am selective about what I recommend to others. But, I have added a new link on the left. It is to a website called Front Line Voices and it may be the most important link I have. FLV is a web site that consists of letters from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is important. Read these letters (especially this one) and tell me we didn't do the right thing.by Cziltang Posted: Saturday, October 04 2003 09:51:27 PM
The Iraq not seen on TV
link Things have gotten weird (or rather, weirder than usual). I've been thinking about a follow-up to my essay on why I was in favor of the war in Iraq. Generally, it deals with why I still think it was the right thing to do (I'm actually more convinced of that than ever) and why we need to stay in Iraq and resist those who want us to leave post haste. Unfortunately, it is still in bits and pieces in my head, so it won't be showing up here in the immediate future. In retrospect, I realize that the original essay was kind of weak, as essays go. It's not that the points aren't still valid, its just that it could have been much more forceful and pointed. I also realize that this is a feature of where my thought process was at that time. I was in the middle of something akin to Thomas Kuhn's paradigm shift then and it was the best I could do while struggling with the realization that I was no longer a member of the political left. I still hold on to some of what I thought being a liberal was all about when I was younger, but it is increasingly apparent that those values are no longer in fashion on the left. In spite of what I say when I'm joking with friends, I am not a Republican so I'm still in the process of sorting it out. However, sometimes things are just too good to wait for. This article by Johann Hari via USS Clueless (Den Beste's comments are worth the time to read) and Grotto11's Peeve Farm (whose comments are also worth a read) say more about why the invasion was right and why staying in Iraq is right than any lame, half-intellectual argument I could ever advance. It's not that what I think isn't valid, it's just that compared to the comments made by these individuals, they just seem less significant. What I do think is significant is my belief that we should all be paying more attention to people like this and a whole lot less to comments from the French government and leftists in our country and around the world who have a vested interest in seeing things go badly for us, and pretty much all of the mainstream media whose focus appears to be that disaster and failure is good TV and sells papers.by Cziltang Posted: Tuesday, September 30 2003 11:05:50 PM |
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