Where am I?

After this I'm going to lay on my couch with a icepack on my knee and a hot pack on my lower back. Six weeks of being journeyman everything at my Mother's has denifitely taken its toll.

But I'm also finding myself in the place where I'm having to argue with East Coasters again. In AUG Proceedings a very bright man came up with the point that many of the ports(US and CAN) on the ATL are easily mineable and nautical mines are 'a dime a dozen', ergo the lions share of minehunting ships should be in NY. But do you East Coasters ever really wonder about what's west of the Mississippi? A in Portland, Or, Long Beach, CA, or Bangor, WA kills the economy just as dead.

If the question is do we have enough to adequately protect both then the answer is no. Do I think terrorists are about to use conventional nautical mines to disrupt shipping? No. But it sure is worth looking at. ANd it might just remind us how much Defence really costs.

So I'm sitting here, Al, wondering how the fook we got here and how the fook we're goona get outta here. Just like everybody else. ;)

I, oddly, am an optimist. I cross borders more than any of you. On average every six weeks. I am scanned, noted and questioned. It gives me a sense that things are being done. I also watch the slow solidification of military and civic forces nearby - whether at Trenton or Fort Drum - but look forward to their better use. I also look forward to the endgame in Iraq and the freeing up of resources ill-used for some time by panicky men now less and less in power. I wonder how long before training camps theoretically in Pakistan will be bombed.

The seriousness about emergency planning and various security issues is heartening. So is the heightened awareness of the potential threat of militant Islam. Unfortunately, this undermined by things like the CBC showing Fahrenheit 9/11 as some sort of epate tribute to the victims of 9/11, or those wacky, sensitive guys at Elections Canada saying, "Hey, wear a mask to vote."

OBL famously remarked "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." At the moment our horse is being nobbled by our own inability to actually say, "Yes, post Englighenment Western culture is a vastly superior entity compared to a culture stuck in the 7th century." Our sensitivity towards our Muslim populations has not borne much fruit but it is eroding our capacity to transmit our own, Western, Judeo-Christian rooted, Enlightenment burnished, culture to our children.

The underlying objective of 9/11 was not the destruction of the Twin Towers or a chunk of the Pentagon; rather it was to shatter what little was left of the Western world's confidence in its values, ethos and future. As it happened that objective was not met. But OBK, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, the Safalists, Hamas and the Iranian loonies, are not, strictly speaking, interested in quarterly results. They are engaged in a long war as are their enablers on the nastier end of the Western Left.

It is a war which needs be fought everywhere from Afghanistan and Iraq to your kids' classroom. About which more on my blog.

In partial rebut to and partial agreement with Jay, I would like to add the following:

It is not enough to say: "Yes, post Englighenment Western culture is a vastly superior entity compared to a culture stuck in the 7th century." Western culture is not just superior to Islamic Arab culture, it is superior to all other cultures.

Is it then ironic that it was Mulroney who said (in a clip on the CTV Mulroney profile last Sunday) the greatest virtue of a modern multicultural democracy is "tolerance"? And wasn't it during the Mulroney regime that the RCMP was forced to allow cadets to wear turbans instead of the stetson? Was this just pandering to votes on the left? Or have most of the elites (whether left right or centre) been lulled by the idea of tolerance which is now eroding the truest virtues of Western society? Of course, its easy for elites of any kind to preach tolerance when they have the protection of wealth power or ivory towers to avoid the conflicts that occur when different cultures interact.

What the "left" and movies like Fahrenheit/911 have done is pointed out, as much as leftist tolerance is being used to undermine the best parts of Western society, "rightist" meddling and dalliance with unsavory leaders and regimes has also helped lead to the impending problem. Adding the former to the latter is a troublesome combination.

Leftist toloerance is not the way out of the conundrum but drawing those lines isn't helpful either, I don't think.

Does any of this make any sense???

Sadly no.

[kidding]

I am home sick so my politics have shifted to the pure authoritarian. I want, I want, I want. But your point is valid. What is called left and right in North America is merely blame by dopes. Not much of a leader or decent policy to be found anywhere.

You know, Al, I understand your desire for that(going pell mel after where you believe terrorists to be(the tribal areas of W. Pakistan). But let's learn something from where we're at before doing.

Is that the smartest way to go? Look at the numbers required for said(aren't you of the opinion that Iraq-far denser by far that Pakistan- was undermanned?). Look at the issues of cultural ignorance by the men and women who have to walk the 'Beat'. This should be the last resort, when you can't get change any other way. This is a situation more akin to putting up with the Marcos' of the Phillipines(sp?) or Chaing Kai Check and the KMT of Taiwan before they reformed or even the Panamanian Thug. Don't reach for the hammer if you don't need to. I really don't trust Mushariff(and I doubt you do either) but he's still useful in trying to contain the big 'It'. He'll eventually leave, but continued use and pressuring of him brings the internal fight to the fore. Which makes things a little simpler in some senses for us while also providing he possibility of not needing to use the hammer as it may reform of itself. Doing it your way in Pakistan really just hands us another manpower intensive slog like Iraq that our gov'ts aren't going to budget adequately for in the first place. We need other means. Fall back on Lidell-Hart and the indirect strategy here, homey.

The second thing is, and I note this of many who disagree with the idea of invading Iraq, that you seem to be equating GWoT with one man or his closest confederates instead of seeing it as a system of systems that needs to be utterly dismantled. If one thinks that getting OBL ends the problem I think one is a bit off the mark. Anyone remember Abu Nidal? Anyone remember Lockerbie? One man or his nebulous alliance should not be the strategic goal, but instead ending the system that fuels it. Akin to, as Herr Flea has noted, the British in India and against the Thugee---and indirectly causing Hinduism to shift from a predominately warrior religion to the one we all now know of peaceful gurus and people with dots on their forheads and flowers at the airport---even if I gave him a hard time about it. You aren't going to get that by focusing on OBL at the expense of going network of networks wide. So simply going to the Hinterlands of Pakistan and bombing the snot out of it doesn't seem to do what you trully want(end the threat). Which is why I'am, reluctantly, BArnettian('shrink the gap', push economic reform of the region harder than pushing political reformation out the barrel of a gun).

And if you'd been following Chief Bill's commentary you'd know that there *is* quite a bit being done out there. Lots of warheads on foreheads stuff---just being done by people who speak Urdu as their primary dialect, just like the people they're fighting, and whose complexion is a wee bit darker than us N. American hockey lovers. It just isn't making the news out here. This war, unlike the others of similar scope, doesn't have the news agencies focused on *all* fronts of conflict. In Mother's time you could easily find news about the goings on in the Pacific as readily as what was going on in the Euro THeatre. Not so today. When we get the news away from the latest poptart's melt down or missing blonde girl we only see Iraq in the news, and then only rather superficially(this is not a complaint of 'they're not covering good news' but that 30 second news bites isn't going to tell you squat about what's going on.).

And I'm a bit fuzzy on what your point was in the fight with Dusty. Hard for you to get a fair shake there when some smell blood in the water. What I think you're saying is that the current Admin 'invested' in failure by throwing good after bad with a flawed plan. Yes? Beyond that I'm not sure what you wanted us to take home from that?