Writing has suffered this week. I've been trying to stay informed on the word events. That has come a some price. I did start another blog this week. Largely dedicated to discussion of contemporary issues. This way, I can focus more on writing and literary matters here on this blog.
I wonder how many others in the writing communities are finding the war distraction...and how they are dealing with it. I'd like to hear from some other writers about this...
I listened last night. One more time. I listened, but I did not hear anything that was persuasive enough to buy the argument that the Bush 48 - hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was a necessary or even desirable foreign policy venture.
I’ve never been comfortable with Saddam Hussein, and it has always been a source of great consternation that our nation played a role in his prominence in the region. That said, there are plenty of other world leaders I don’t care for, but I don’t believe it makes good foreign policy to attempt leadership changes for other countries.
I’ve considered the risks that Saddam poses to the world. Certainly when he occupied neighboring Kuwait, intervention made perfect sense to me. We did and were successful. It also seemed perfectly reasonable for the United Nations to consider the possible threat this nation might pose if it were still harboring weapons of mass destruction. To that end, the UN has undertaken a series of steps to determine to what extent Iraq has complied with disarmament. Until this week, UN weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq, searching for violations and providing oversight of weapons destruction. This appeared to me to be a positive course of action. Certainly, as long as inspectors were on the ground and floating about within Iraq, little if anything could be done to escalate deployment by Saddam.
The President and Prime Minister Tony Blair were nothing if they were not relentless to send us to war with Iraq. Efforts to demonstrate concern for their cause have not been helped by vague and even worse, badly faked documents suggesting Iraq had purchased tons of uranium—presumably for nuclear weapons from Niger. These documents were so badly done that names and time frames were grossly inaccurate.
With miss-information and little else on their sides, Bush and Blair have made this their personal crusade. In doing so, they have failed to convince a large portion of the free world of the dangers. Instead, they have attempted to twist arms, leverage deals with offers of loans, grants and debt forgiveness to other nations, and then… failing to get what they want out of the United Nations, have chosen to go-it-alone.
If this is really about the weapons, why is the administration willing to stave off military action if Saddam and his sons were to go into exile within the allotted 48 hours? Would the weapons not still be an issue?
What the President now risks is the loss of many Iraqi civilians, many of our own finest men and women, greater hatred and isolation from the Arab world, and the improved relationships with Russian and Chinese governments and other long time European allies. To say nothing of the economic crisis at home, the cost of a war, and rebuilding a nation that will only hate us more in the end. Ah, the dangers of mass miss-information.
Two days of gorgeous weather breaks into the month. Great weekend for being outside. My fifteen year old daughter offered to play catch this afternoon and the gesture she extended was much to tempting to pass up. I'm told we are in for some more cold weather and who knows how many weeks till we have temperatures in the upper 70's again.
The ball park across the street had been calling my name yesterday. I would hear it intermittently between bird chirps, barking dogs and passing cars.
Meghan has outgrown her own glove... I let her use my good glove and used my old raggedy one. Her face beamed as she slid her hand into the good glove.
We played catch, I hit her some practice shots, she did the same for me and then we moved to the infield and backstop once it was available and I pitched to her for a while. She had some great cuts.
She insists I had one play for the highlight reel ... my diving catch where I landed on my face but came up with the ball. Ok, maybe on a slow night it could have made the reel, or maybe funniest home videos.
We both thanked each other for the experience. I could tell she was sincere. I know I was. Moments like these are special.
My middle daughter, Shannon made a wonderful weight-watcher blackberry-cobbler. Since I am the main "blackberry" person in the family, I especially felt this Sunday was a very special day.
In my week ahead, I will focus on my Candlestick Project ... both writing and some administrative work, some poetry critiques, a little new poetry writing and some essay ideas I have. I need to get a couple items off to publishers as well. I'm looking forward with great hope and anticipation to an exceptionally good week for writing related activities.
