Thursday, July 07, 2005

I want to be inspired by America again

I was watching TV the other night, something about the tsunami victims, and a grand vision came to mind rather suddenly. Imagine, that in December, when it happened, that the President of the United States made a special address to Congress, and announced that we were going to war against the disaster... to save everyone there. We would send not just money, but people in the form of the United States military to help them pick up the pieces. Imagine that for a moment. Instead of sending money and forgetting about it, we'd spend money ourselves, hiring contractors and paying the military, bypassing the corruption, and truely help. Nobody would be bitch at Haliburton and Bechtel for sucking up funds in Iraq, since they'd be building new infrastructure to help disaster victims instead of rebuilding stuff that we bombed in a war. Even the corporate barons would love it, because they could get some footholds in the rebuilt disaster areas for new businesses in an emerging market.

I know such a thing is impossible when we have two wars going on (Afganistan and Iraq) simply from a financial and manpower perspective, but regardless of what you think about going to Iraq, it would be nice to see that kind of thing happen - to see the government step up and do something only they could do.

I don't know why I thought of that, maybe I'm just tired of hearing people bicker about Iraq, seeing the pictures of the tsunami again. Maybe is that for once, I would like the rest of the world to point at the United States and not be doing so because they're pissed at some foreign policy of ours. To some, that's probably not important, but maybe it is the first step at truely solving the intertwined problems of terrorism and poverty - fight the sources of such things, not symptoms. Finding actual targets in those two conflicts (terrorism/poverty) is so hard.

Of course, maybe it is just that I want to feel inspired by my country's government again, something that I haven't been for a long time. It did come close when Bush announced his new space travel extended plan, but that's so long term, and it was filled with empty promises and little funding. It is easy to promise things when he's not going to be the man in charge after a few years. Oh well, at least he's trying. Sometimes I think Bush's advisors control him a bit too much. I don't know if that's good or bad.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

So it turns out I can be lazy

So, I sort of changed my mind. For now, I'm just going to leave this journal here and keep posting to it it as I think of things. Meanwhile, if you guys want to send me interesting stuff, I've set up a gmail account at achronos@gmail.com that is only used for this blog. Please understand that I reserve the right to publish any comments you send there to here... including making fun of you. :)