So we're getting ready to go back to Sue and Chuck's place on the lake this weekend. It'll be the first time we've been there since the weekend of the wedding.

My back feels much better and so, I'm left to conclude, beer is the cure-all that the world of medicine has been waiting for.

Searing

pain

in

chest

back

and

arm.


I'm either having a heart attack or I've done something pretty painful to my left-body.

More booze should do the trick...

The DVD of the USA's World Cup adventure arrived today and I'm really looking forward to seeing it - Jen didn't get to see any of the games and has only seen one of the goals so it'll all be new to her.

I think everyone who'd be reading this will know that the USA did surprisingly well in the 2002 World Cup - beating Portugal 3-2 and only losing out to some dodgy refereeing against Germany in the quarter final.

I was really sad about it at the time because they'd played some really good football and were actually beginning to spark interest in the sport back home - maybe next time. If their younger players are anything to judge from they're certainties to do at least as well in Germany 2006.

And as for promising stars who might find their way to European football...

• Taylor Twellman
  
• Damarcus Beasley
  
• Ben Olsen
  
• Clint Mathis
  
• Tim Howard
  
• Nick Rimando
  

...and that's not even mentioing that six (count 'em) USA first team players (Brad Friedel, Kasey Keller, Joe-Max Moore, Claudio Reyna, Brian McBride, Jovan Kirovski) played in England this year - not bad for a nation that doesn't take this sport seriously, and I haven't even begun with the players from the squad currently employed in Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Holland.

No, employed as professional footballers.

Idiot.

Okay, does anyone else think this is a little odd...?

From news.bbc.co.uk:

0427: Pentagon confirms that Iraqi state television is off the air after the station was hit by precision-guided bomb and cruise missile. Denies reports that new, so-called "e-bomb" was used.

0719: UK Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon tells the BBC no direct attempt has been made to take Iraqi television off the air. He says the aim of overnight attacks had been to target Iraq's command and control facilities in Baghdad.

Pentagon says it used precision bombing to take the Iraqi state TV off the air, while the UK say that *no attempt* was made to do that very thing.

So, either the US precision bombs have no real kind of precision, in which case the argument that civilian casuialties will be minimal falls over because if the bombs don't hit what we aim at we can't possibly make that promise; or the USA and UK people are actually not in such good contact after all, and in that event how can we be sure that the correct locations of troops and their movements is being communicated so that we neutralise the risk of "friendly fire" incidents?

It's all very confusing.

On the positive side of things, at least the aid convoy into Iraq from the south has begun. Hopefully it will be allowed to get to where it's needed before the Allied Forces have a chance to mistake it for a column of enemy tanks and turn it into a barbecue.

From JFK's inaugural address:

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty. "

It's both hard to believe, and heartening to know, that those words came from a Democrat.

In the last few months the Democrats have taken a beating (not least, the disastrous November elections which saw the Republicans assume control of the Congress *and* the Senate) and while there are dissenters to the war in both camps, it tends to be Democrats that are most eloquently vocal in their objections, and therefore most visible in the media.

The other thing, though, is that Kennedy came into office in a USA recovering from a world war, a conflict in Korea and had some UN work in-progress in a small southeast Asian country called Vietnam.

The current administration arrived in office in a USA which was economically buoyant, a leading UN player with mutually beneficial relationships with EU nations, had not born the many burdens of war alone since Vietnam, and was engaging in talks to reduce the levels of environmental damage being done by the worlds largest polluters, itself included.

Still, you can't have everything, right...?

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Today GWB put his request for a $75bn "loan" in to the Congress. This is three times the annual revenue Iraq gets from the sale of its oil, and includes only $3bn in aid, rebuilding and humanitarian relief for Iraq and Afghanistan to share.

However, Jordan and Egypt get a cool $1bn each to help their economies in these troubled times; while Israel gets the same along with $9bn in loans.

While it's commendable, and I mean that sincerely, that the government making the effort to raise the money to make that part of the world a better place for its inhabitants; and is giving *any* consideration to the cost of maintaining what will be a fledgling democracy in a free Iraq, I can't help but feel like the poor, put upon Iraqi in the street is being given a raw deal again.

In Egypt you can expect to live to 66, Israel and Jordan give you 78 and 70 years respectively...in Iraq the life expectancy comes in at 58.
The infant mortality rate in Iraq is 20 times higher than in Israel, 3 times that of Jordan and 2.5 times more than Egypt.

Despite Iraqis dying younger, and dying in infancy at much higher rates, the Population Reference Bureau project that Iraq's population will *treble* in the next fifty years while Israel and Jordan will just about double - Egypt's population won't even increase by that ratio.

For comparison:

UK
Life Expectancy - 78
Infant Mortality - comparable to Israel
Population Growth - Increase of 1/12 of current population in 50 years

USA
Life Expectancy - 77
Infant Mortality - negligibly higher than Israel
Population Growth - Increase of 1/2 of current population in 50 years

So ask yourself this...which nation *really* needs that money?

So this blogging thing seems to be the thing to do.

Yes, I'm slow taking it up, but it takes time for me to be bothered to do anything so don't expect this to be updated with any regularity.

For now I'd like to start with a couple of things - firstly a few things about the nature of patriotism and secondly some of Fulbright's Arrogance of Power which, while it talks about the Vietnam conflict, could have been written this week.

thoreau - a true patriot would resist a tyrannical majority

chesterton - to say "my country, right or wrong" is to say "my mother, drunk or sober"

paine - the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country

samuel johnson - patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel

shaw - patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy

fulbright – to criticize one’s country is to do it a service…criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism – a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals of national adulation

mill - war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse

...make of that tasty little lot what you will...

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The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission. The dilemmas involved are preeminently American dilemmas, not because America has weaknesses that others do not have but because America is powerful as no nation has ever been before and the discrepancy between its power and the power of others appears to be increasing....

We are now engaged in a war to "defend freedom" in South Vietnam. Unlike the Republic of Korea, South Vietnam has an army which [is] without notable success and a weak, dictatorial government which does not command the loyalty of the South Vietnamese people. The official war aims of the United States Government, as I understand them, are to defeat what is regarded as North Vietnamese aggression, to demonstrate the futility of what the communists call "wars of national liberation," and to create conditions under which the South Vietnamese people will be able freely to determine their own future. I have not the slightest doubt of the sincerity of the President and the Vice President and the Secretaries of State and Defense in propounding these aims. What I do doubt *and doubt very much* is the ability of the United States to achieve these aims by the means being used. I do not question the power of our weapons and the efficiency of our logistics; I cannot say these things delight me as they seem to delight some of our officials, but they are certainly impressive. What I do question is the ability of the United States, or France or any other Western nation, to go into a small, alien, undeveloped Asian nation and create stability where there is chaos, the will to fight where there is defeatism, democracy racy where there is no tradition of it and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life. Our handicap is well expressed in the pungent Chinese proverb: "In shallow waters dragons become the sport of shrimps."

Early last month demonstrators in Saigon burned American jeeps, tried to assault American soldiers, and marched through the streets shouting "Down with the American imperialists," while one of the Buddhist leaders made a speech equating the United States with the communists as a threat to South Vietnamese independence. Most Americans are understandably shocked ant angered to encounter such hostility from people who by now would be under the rule of the Viet Cong but for the sacrifice of American lives and money. Why, we may ask, are they so shockingly ungrateful? Surely they must know that their very right to parade and protest and demonstrate depends on the Americans who are defending them.

The answer, I think, is that "fatal impact" of the rich and strong on the poor and weak. Dependent on it though the Vietnamese are, our very strength is a reproach to their weakness, our wealth a mockery of their poverty, our success a reminder of their failures. What they resent is the disruptive effect of our strong culture upon their fragile one, an effect which we can no more avoid than a man can help being bigger than a child. What they fear, I think rightly, is that traditional Vietnamese society cannot survive the American economic and cultural impact....

The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends. We are still acting like boy scouts dragging reluctant old ladies across the streets they do not want to cross. We are trying to remake Vietnamese society, a task which certainly cannot be accomplished by force and which probably cannot be accomplished by any means available to outsiders. The objective may b e desirable, but it is not feasible....

If America has a service to perform in the world *and I believe it has* it is in large part the service of its own example. In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest. This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said "Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other." . . .

There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world. We have the opportunity to set an example of generous understanding in our relations with China, of practical cooperation for peace in our relations with Russia, of reliable and respectful partnership in our relations with Western Europe, of material helpfulness without moral presumption in our relations with the developing nations, of abstention from the temptations of hegemony in our relations with Latin America, and of the all-around advantages of minding one's own business in our relations with everybody. Most of all, we have the opportunity to serve as an example o f democracy to the world by the way in which we run our own society; America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, should be "the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all" but "the champion and vindicator only of her own." . . .

If we can bring ourselves so to act, we will have overcome the dangers of the arrogance of power. It will involve, no doubt, the loss of certain glories, but that seems a price worth paying for the probable rewards, which are the happiness of America and the peace of the world.

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