Why not Half Full?

Because it was already taken. Apparently there are lots of optimists out there. So pessimists don't blog?

Anyway, why am I doing this? Maybe it is so I can cybervent.

So here goes:

I want to go on record that I am anti-war and have been since I was of draft age. Yes, a pessimist pacifist. It's a special new kind of pacifism though. Being Anti-War in the "old days" meant that you objected to taking of human life for whatever reason. Now, I think it means being against a War of Choice. I want to see a paradigm shift take place in the United States. We should be a nation that goes to war when we have no choice, when all alternatives have been exhausted. Only then should we put our soldiers in harm's way.

I really think that it speaks volumes to the world that US public opinion on the war in Iraq has shifted radically since just early this year. What drives a shift like that? Realization that Americans have been misled? Casualties? Government misconduct and mismanagement? Probably all of that and more. Amazing isn't it? It took a decade for Americans to start to come around and realize that the Vietnam War was illegal and immoral (and unwinnable besides). In my pessimistic fashion, I credited the turn of the tide back then to the fact that there was a draft and people were more concerned about self preservation (or that of their sons), than the fact that the Vietnam War was a War of Choice that was forced on people who were unschooled in the issues. In my pessimistic fashion, I thought that it would take a reactivation of the draft to get people in this country off the dime. Not so, not so.

So in a quite uncharacteristic optimistic fashion, I now have some hope that we can bring this foul and immoral war to a swift conclusion.

We have opened a Pandora's Box over there, and unleashed some demons who were held at bay by Saddam's repressive regime. These demons were there before America invaded, and will be there for the forseeable future. But we added to the pile - America created another demon. Anyone who has spent any time in a Muslim culture knows this is true: our mere presence in that country is the catalyst that stirs up the demons. You need to look at it from their point of view: Americans are infidels, you see? Iraqis are a proud and (sometimes) religious people who have been disgraced and defiled by the continued presence of an infidel invader.

US out of Iraq, now.