Musings in Search of a Muse

Yes! All-day detention! I have my laptop & a good movie to watch ... but no headphones. Rats! All my work is done and the students are pretty quiet. This is the perfect time to watch a movie. Well, next time, I guess. And I am expecting some other students to come in so I can test their reading levels. For now I guess I'll just blog around a bit.

Strange how all these weapons Saddam has denied having for the last decade or so have suddenly popped up. Not that I'm for a war, mind you, but I cannot deny that this guy shouldn't be trusted. But is he a threat to our national security? Let's compare him to other threats:

1) North Korea: Maybe they can't attack the USA directly, but wiping out South Korea or severely damaging Japan would have wide-ranging consequences for our economy. Sure, our Vietnamese Nike Cross-Trainers would be safe, but what about our microwave ovens, TVs, VCRs, cars & car parts, cameras, computers, .... well, you get the idea. Plus, we have how many troops on the 38th parallel? About 37,000 according to CNN (http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/01/08/skorea.troops/). That's a lot of body bags.

2) Iran: Why didn't we do anything substantial when these people were caught making perfect counterfeit American hundred-dollar bills? When the last Shah was in power our government gave printing presses just like the ones in our treasury to his treasury. All that's needed is the ink, paper, and talent. All we did in response is to redesign our money. The money for terrorism has to come from somwhere. Why not Iran?

3) Africa. Yes, Africa. The AIDs crisis there can eventually bankrupt the world. The costs for care and treatment will be staggering compared to the mind-numbing level they are at now. How about more of a preemptive strike on AIDs? Europe should take the lead, actually, since they started the whole bloody mess with their "Scramble for Africa." What a bunch of idiots going into a place and carving out countries based on geological and geographical thinking while ignoring the social boundaries within which it was organized by it's inhabitants. Because of that there has been continual conflict between classes and ethnicities to the point that hardly anything gets done.

4) Ourselves. No kidding. Our dependence on petroleum (yes, I know we import less now than we used to import) for everything from fuel to plastics hurts us greatly. By now we should have had an Apollo-style program to develop alternative sources of fuel and raw materials. "We choose to ... develop fuel cells in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, ..." Gee, you can almost hear Kennedy, can't you? (Complete original speech at http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/ricetalk.htm) No, he probably wouldn't be for this idea. Democrats were very different back then.

In the long run, this idea would topple Saddam and other non-democratic oil-rich nations because then we wouldn't need them. There's no revenge as sweet as living well. Peace & Prayers.