http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080821/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq
After years of screeching that a timeline on pulling out of Iraq would be dangerous ... Bush has negotiated a timeline on pulling out of Iraq.
I recall immediately after 9-11 telling people no, of course the Bush Administration had nothing to do with it. These days, the weight of my own cynicism threatens to turn me into a black hole -- they don't have to worry about turning on the collider at CERN, Dan Moran is the actual threat to the survival of the planet.
I still believe the Bush Administration had nothing to do with 9/11: they're not nearly competent enough to have pulled off something like that. But with an election coming, and McCain close enough to Obama to at least stem the tide of blood Republicans are expecting in this election ... wow, gas prices start to drop. Timelines abruptly aren't treasonous, but simple good policy that takes the issue off of McCain's shoulders. Sorry about all the dead and maimed soldiers.
~~~
In a deeply weird coincidence, I wrote this post last night before going to bed. This morning, got to the office -- and found an email from BBC Radio asking to interview me ... about the turning on of the CERN collider.
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The reason this timeline is acceptable is because we're not pulling out of Iraq -- we're trading long-term bases for Iraq autonomy.
Nothing's said this yet, but the wording has very carefully said that the US will pull out of Iraqi cities.
There's been a thought I've been trying to vocalize lately; you can probably do it better: when you were young, you conceived of the Unification, which was a pretty evil government, which arose out of some pretty desperate times. But it was contrasted starkly with the United States of America. (And, good job, by the way, I still think the description of the Unification in tLD is masterful.) But how close are we to that now?
Not well articulated, but I offer it to you to make of what you will.
What did he say (Dan) at one point - as he aged he sympathized with Vance more?
We age... our viewpoint... shifts.
The demons in our twenties are often the allies of our fifties.
- dann
I see this as a very risky action if it's really that calculated.
Obama's people are smart enough that they can probably pull off this ad well: A picture of McCain with "He wanted to stay indefinitely, when the American people, the Iraqi people, and now even the White House agree that we should leave. Where else is John McCain's vision for the future wrong?"
So, are you going to do the interview?
There is a big difference between pulling out when things are on the precipice as they were over two years ago. With the strides that have been achieved by the surge, you can start to set these types of timelines.
If we were to leave before the surge it would have been a humanitarian crises, much more so that we ever saw. With the security situation much better in Iraq, creating a timeline where the Iraq's actually take control, versus us leaving them in the lurch as we would have done if we left any sooner makes sense.
I don't see any duplicity or hypocricy here.
My 2 cents.
Congratulations on the BBC interview! If you decide to do it, you'll have to let us know when it'll air!
If I can be interviewed by bobafett.com, I'm not too proud to be interviewed by the BBC. I said yes. :-)
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There's a phrase that used to be in more common use -- it was "captive agency." It meant a government agency that had been subverted by the people or industries it was supposed to monitor, and rather than acting as a check on those interests, acted as a tool for them.
This is the entire federal government of the United States, today. When Jimmy Carter was president, there were 100 or so registered lobbyists in Washington. Today there are 40,000.
40,000.
Forty thousand.
The corporations flat-out own our government. A Democratic administration won't be good in this regard, though at this point I'll very happily settle for "less bad." We live in a country that's being run for the benefit of the corporations -- where we get lucky, when we do, it's because the corporations have differing agendas, in some areas. That's what's left of American freedom: the gap where corporate interests don't align.
As to the gap between the Unification and the United States -- we're certainly better than the later Unification, though probably worse than the early Unification.
I won't compare us to the United States that used to exist in the real world. Too depressing.
Bush = Fag
Cern Supercollider = waaaaaaaay Cool.
Dan said re: 9/11:
"I still believe the Bush Administration had nothing to do with 9/11: they're not nearly competent enough to have pulled off something like that."
Do you think they were competent enough to allow it to happen if they knew it was coming and knew they could use the aftermath for their own purposes? (similar things have been said about Pearl Harbor)
re: interviews
If I might ask a question about your stories: why do you think time travel played a big role in your creation of the Continuing Time? What was it about time travel that grabbed your attention instead of just writing a huge epic without adding time travel to it?
re: corporate interests
How do you reconcile the difference between "corporate" interests and the fact that corporations are made up of people whose own interests are being eroded by corporations? Do you think the people in charge of corporations are blind, stupid, too rich to care or something else?
jas, the second rule of life is: people are stupid.
You've been kinda quiet about the recent political goings-on, Dan'l. No opinion on McCain-Palin?
I'm guessing you saw this?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94575902&ft=1&f=1001
I love how the price of gas keeps going down, too.
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