![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
News of Frances and news of war
Mar. 21st, 2003 06:06 pmAr. I was stuck playing solitaire but I figured it'd be better to write. I haven't done so much of that recently. Mom has book club tonight, and I haven't been over to Dad's too recently. So I'll go over, check out just what Davis said. I need to get back to Berkeley. Ray may go out with Lauren if she's here. And I'll rest up tonight. Writeoffs tomorrow. I need pen and paper. I don't know how I'll do. Livia will probably do better. I'm writing opinion because I think it's what I know how to do best, at least right now.
English was ok. The quote test was annoying. There was one that I couldn't place. And I would have been happy to write that essay. It was a really neat topic, about how it was a happy ending even though Absalom was going to die. I could have done so much with the whole "journey" theme. And it would have been fun to write. But no, we had a quote test and an outline. XP Oh well.
So life's going. It really is deadline next week, and I have to do my chem homework (a change), I have plenty of Spanish (reading and questions, though mostly due Tuesday), no English (I already did Heart of Darkness), and (I don't think) not much journalism. Except for considering war angles.
Which brings me to a question that I've been sort of trying to avoid. The war. The fact that we're in there, really. It hasn't sunk in yet. The paper arrives and I read the online articles, and I still feel suck a sense of disconnection, as though this was some textbook exercise, that I could consider at my leisure and discuss in terms of tactics (which I know nothing about). And at the same time there's a numb shock that it's real, that U.S. (and U.K. and other) soldiers are in there right now, bombing and invading on land, and that my opinion doesn't matter one bit to those in charge. I'm not even supposedly represented by these people--at least I don't have a say in whether I am, I'm too young--and it is so alien from my normal life that it seems unreal. It almost seemed realer when we were just discussing the possibility, and the role of the UN, and other stuff. Now we've gone in (it seems very, very rushed) and we have to figure out what to do now. I don't think that we should be in there at this stage.
If it's weapons of mass destruction, inspections seem to have been working. If it's the threat of terrorism, I think we exacerbated that when the first missile landed. If it's the human rights abuses (and yes, they exist), then half the world's on our next target list. But frankly, it appears that that is last on the list of reasons for going in there unless it pleases the media people to put that particular spin on it to convince the soft-hearted of the immediate necessity to go in and bomb them into democracy. So I don't think we should be in there right now.
But we are. And the question is where do we go from here? And I don't know. The most obvious plan is to keep bombing, get Hussein out, and try not to screw up the reconstruction too much. Or pull out, right now. I don't know what the consequences of that would be. I know that Hussein would be even more reluctant to show any semblance of cooperation with the international community afterwards. So I don't know. I wish that the UN hadn't been deemed "irrelevant" the moment it decided not to be the U.S.'s rubber stamp. This war confuses me. I don't think we should be there, at least right now--but I have no idea what we should do now that we are.
Happier stuff. Chemistry. I need to do my o-chem hw and study my general, since I had the local exam and realized just how little I remembered. Enough for the test, but not much more. I really need to consider whether I even want to go to chem camp this year.
English was ok. The quote test was annoying. There was one that I couldn't place. And I would have been happy to write that essay. It was a really neat topic, about how it was a happy ending even though Absalom was going to die. I could have done so much with the whole "journey" theme. And it would have been fun to write. But no, we had a quote test and an outline. XP Oh well.
So life's going. It really is deadline next week, and I have to do my chem homework (a change), I have plenty of Spanish (reading and questions, though mostly due Tuesday), no English (I already did Heart of Darkness), and (I don't think) not much journalism. Except for considering war angles.
Which brings me to a question that I've been sort of trying to avoid. The war. The fact that we're in there, really. It hasn't sunk in yet. The paper arrives and I read the online articles, and I still feel suck a sense of disconnection, as though this was some textbook exercise, that I could consider at my leisure and discuss in terms of tactics (which I know nothing about). And at the same time there's a numb shock that it's real, that U.S. (and U.K. and other) soldiers are in there right now, bombing and invading on land, and that my opinion doesn't matter one bit to those in charge. I'm not even supposedly represented by these people--at least I don't have a say in whether I am, I'm too young--and it is so alien from my normal life that it seems unreal. It almost seemed realer when we were just discussing the possibility, and the role of the UN, and other stuff. Now we've gone in (it seems very, very rushed) and we have to figure out what to do now. I don't think that we should be in there at this stage.
If it's weapons of mass destruction, inspections seem to have been working. If it's the threat of terrorism, I think we exacerbated that when the first missile landed. If it's the human rights abuses (and yes, they exist), then half the world's on our next target list. But frankly, it appears that that is last on the list of reasons for going in there unless it pleases the media people to put that particular spin on it to convince the soft-hearted of the immediate necessity to go in and bomb them into democracy. So I don't think we should be in there right now.
But we are. And the question is where do we go from here? And I don't know. The most obvious plan is to keep bombing, get Hussein out, and try not to screw up the reconstruction too much. Or pull out, right now. I don't know what the consequences of that would be. I know that Hussein would be even more reluctant to show any semblance of cooperation with the international community afterwards. So I don't know. I wish that the UN hadn't been deemed "irrelevant" the moment it decided not to be the U.S.'s rubber stamp. This war confuses me. I don't think we should be there, at least right now--but I have no idea what we should do now that we are.
Happier stuff. Chemistry. I need to do my o-chem hw and study my general, since I had the local exam and realized just how little I remembered. Enough for the test, but not much more. I really need to consider whether I even want to go to chem camp this year.
