Yeah, I’ve got my opinions.
But, by the time I get a break in the work/kids/life action, events have moved way, way on. Which is good. I don’t want this blasted war to bog down. Not that it will. Roll baby, roll on English-speaking Blitzkrieg, win this thing fast. Then, scrape Saddam’s dead meat out of your tank treads, and come on home.
This war is not over yet, but things will settle down again soon. Then even people who don’t have inside dope, like the teeming millions in Blogistan, will be able to work on a more level playing field and speculate to their hearts’ content. But not yet. For now, better to pay attention, accumulate facts, and stay alert to what is happening.
It is a waste to do too much theorizing right now, or at least for me to. The arguments and “analysis” are not coming out of word processors but off of bomb racks and out of the muzzles of tank cannons.
We are at one of those moments of discontinuity, the dividing point between the “punctuated equilibria” the evolutionary biologists talk about.
OK, I can’t resist. I’ll make one prediction. This short war is a major turning point in history. Not as big as August 1914 or September 1939, probably. But big. Just below that level. The configuration of world politics is changing rapidly and this is the hinge moment.
Let’s agree to reconvene in ten years and see if Lex was right … .
Meanwhile, I have devoted some time to not-the-war. On the highbrow level, I may buy this brand new 5 cd set of Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Vienna Philharmonic playing nine Beethoven symphonies. They are playing it on the radio today. Beautiful stuff. It is apparently not in the stores yet. It is Civilization, it is the West. It is the greatness of the West. It is what we are fighting for.
On the more lowbrow level, I have just been introduced to the incredible Puffy – totally cool Japanese girl pop madness! It is fun, it is silly, it is a high quality product of late Capitalism, it is American happiness being successfully pursued in weird foreign idioms, it is girls being creative, it is a world open and free with money in its pocket. It is Globalization. It is what we are fighting for.
Perhaps I should be more dour in wartime. Naaaah.
Pray for victory. Pray for the dead and their families. Pray for a just and free society to emerge in Iraq which will be a light to the whole Muslim world.
Forward the Anglosphere!
God bless America.
Update: Check out the incredible 6x! (Scroll down to the MP3s and listen to the absolutely perfect song “What Can I Do?”)