OK, I'm back but I don't know for how long.

Tomorrow's blog today - how forward looking! By the way, found a good blog: seeresvelvet. I'd tell her that but she's friends-only.

There are some blogs which I classify as political blogs. They talk about politics almost exclusively and are generally rants. As I've mentioned before, I feel that if you can't rant on your own blog, where can you rant? Have fun, but keep the noise down, please. I have my own deep-held feelings like everyone else, but I try not to enter into this areas because I've found it to be counter-productive.

When you rant about such things you're preaching to the choir. Most people who come back to your blog have very similar beliefs. So, you're just blowing off steam, not really convincing anyone of anything. But, then, maybe that's your goal. You're welcome to it. Just for the record, though, I'd like to talk about how useless most of it is for any other purpose than that.

Unfortunately, when you discuss political issues you can't help but discuss to some extent the events which are being discussed. I'm going to try to do that with a recent, hot, topic, hopefully without causing major blow-ups among the different factions. And that topic is, of course, the war.

First, you can be on one side or the other about the war for countless reasons. Most of these reasons brook no argument and it is the height of futility to argue against such reasons.

If you believe that war (any war) is wrong, then that is a belief. There can be no argument about beliefs, because, by definition, a belief has no logical reason and therefore there is no reason against the belief. Note that this is different from mere opinions. No matter what "evidence" you bring against a belief it makes no difference, because one's beliefs are not based on evidence but by emotion.

If you believe the war should have occurred in a different way, for example, through the UN, one can argue endlessly about what should or should not have happened, but it's all opinion on both sides. Which is right? What your opinion is about that depends a whole lot on what seat you're occupying.

I'm reminded of what my boss told me once when I was explaining why we should do a project a certain way (the right way as far as I was concerned). He said, "But you don't know all the facts. You don't know the financial position of the company right now. It not only matters what's the right way to do it, it also matters what's feasible considering that."

I learned from this that it's a lot easier to make "right" decisions when you don't know all the facts, and when you do know them, you find you have a lot fewer options than you might have thought or wished. And there does come a time when you have to choose one of those options, or rather SOMEONE does.

You have to ask yourself WHY you think it would have been better done going through the UN. Do you believe the UN has some "super power" that allows it to invade countries with impunity? Do you think of the UN as a world government? If you do, there are some facts you're missing such as the charter of the UN, the way in which representatives are selected for the organization, and its history.

The UN was set up as a debating society, a place for countries to come and "argue" out their differences rather than fighting them out. As we well know, sometimes this doesn't work, sometimes words are not enough. We might want it to be otherwise, but the real world isn't always the way we want it. So, to be of any real use in controlling belligerent nations, they would have to have power, REAL power, an army of power.

But they don't. When UN "peacekeepers" go in they go in literally as shields. When true troops go in, they are from the member nations' armed forces and the auspices of the UN is really immaterial in those cases. So, if we'd gotten "approval" from the UN to go into Iraq, the reality of the situation would be that we could then point our finger at the organization and say, "They agreed, don't blame us." Maybe it would have soothed our conscience a bit, maybe not. And if this was the only reason we had for going through the UN (and I can't think of another), it's a pretty poor reason.

And of all the reasons posed by naysayers against the war in Iraq, the worst is the rhetoric of some ulterior motive or some attibute of Bush. "He was stupid, he did it for the money, he hated them for trying to assassinate his father, etc." Do you know what every one of these arguments has in common? They all deal in "facts" that nobody can prove, one way or the other.

They are slanderous, pointing to personal motives that no one can disprove. When there is nothing but opinion, eventually it will turn, on one side or the other, to name calling. And that's when discussion ceases. Because respect has ended.

I believe that Bush's "drug of choice" HAS been, like all Presidents, power. Actually, I'll say it more emphatically: it's POWER. There are millions of dollars awaiting him from countless sources whenever he wants them. Consider the amount of money that will be spent to re-elect him, what is he attempting to "buy" with it? What is more important to him than money? Power, of course. To believe that somehow his motive for going to war was monetary is simply asinine.

BUT, when he becomes former President Bush, he will be trading his power for...what? For his place in history. That's what lies beyond power. That's what all true politicians' final goal is. So, do you think he would risk his place in history, whatever it might be, for a war that might not go well, that might be lost, that could cost him everything? That a lot of people didn't want?

Only for a good reason. Not for money, he has plenty and can get more. Not for power, he's already the most powerful man on earth. No, his stated purpose in going to war was to remove Saddam, to liberate the Iraqi people, and to bring more peace and stability to our country as well as the rest of the world.

And that's exactly what he's done. As far as his motives, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt until I see some proof otherwise, just as I'd give any person the benefit of the doubt who's having to make such tough decisions.

I'd like to add about his recent proclamation concerning illegal aliens that I don't agree with him. So, you see, I don't believe he is perfect. I think he is a politician as much as any other, and I believe this is a political action, taken to get votes. And IN MY OPINION, this action would create more harm than good. But it's just my opinion and I can't really (although I'd like to believe I can) see the future. And I'm not in the elected position to make the decision, others will have to decide on this issue.

Finally, I'd like to say something about an entry on another blog, a very popular blog. As I've said, your blog is your place to rant. And my real rant today is against stupidity. You're welcome to your beliefs, even your opinions, and insults to the President may be just the work of crass wankers (to borrow a term from our British friends), but some things insult my intelligence by asking me to believe statements which consistently show a lack of understanding.

In this blog were the words: "It seems to me that our president is spending our money in places that are further and further away from our country. ...Iraq wasn't
far enough, so we are going to shuttle our money into space." I have this vision of all this cash being loaded into a big box, stuck on top of a rocket, and a gleeful NASA technician lighting the fuse to the engine.

Hey, I have an idea! Give me the cash and I'll give you a check in replacement, as long as you're just going to shoot it into space.

Later in the blog we find: "Perhaps if our country was prospering with a budget surplus and jobs galore, this would be a good way to waste the resources we already have." So, where does this person think this money is going to go? Apparently into that box. A moment's reflection should make one realize that it goes to companies here on earth for materials, to pay the new employees they hire for this new push into space, to pay the engineers to design the rockets, to pay the workers who manufacture the fuel tanks and the fuel, etc.

The BEST way to make sure that there are "jobs galore" is to "create" more jobs, not by helping the unemployed to find the few jobs there are. It's money better spent, I think, on an uplifting enterprise, that some of our unproductive vehicles of charity.

Just my opinion.