Reading this morning’s New York Times, I feel as bleak as the weather. From the Editorial, “War in the Ruins of Diplomacy“:
“Once the fighting begins, every American will be thinking primarily of the safety of our troops, the success of their mission and the minimization of Iraqi civilian casualties. It will not feel like the right time for complaints about how America got to this point. Today is the right time.”
The editorial goes on, powerfully and well, and you think they’ve said it all, until you check out Paul Krugman’s “Things to Come” and discover there’s more:
“So now the administration knows that it can make unsubstantiated claims, without paying a price when those claims prove false, and that saber rattling gains it votes and silences opposition. Maybe it will honorably refuse to act on this dangerous knowledge. But I can’t help worrying that in domestic politics, as in foreign policy, this war will turn out to have been the shape of things to come.”
Yesterday was such a beautiful day for walking around in Boston–sunny, balmy, full of the promise of spring. Today, a chill wind is moving across the melting heaps of disappearing snow, and the sky is gray. Dave Winer claimed he was bringing warm weather across the country from California. Yo, Dave, if yesterday’s weather meant you got here at last–did you decide to leave again sometime after Bush’s speech?
A rant worth raving about–and very funny–from Steve at OnePotMeal, starting with:
“Blogs are like fanfiction we write about ourselves.
Wars are like fanfiction politicians write about themselves.
If only politicians all got blogs they could show each other how cool and great they are instead of bombing the fuck out of the people who happen to be standing between their palaces.”
Betsy’s quote of the day:
“…with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.”
Thomas Jefferson, Second Inaugural Address