The Trouble with the Republican Brand

Conservatism in a Progressive Society

“In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change, which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines.”
-Benjamin Disraeli

"Looking back in anger"

Andrew Sullivan finally watches 'No End in Sight' and lets one slip.

Hallelujah!

Found while getting my Daily Dish fix...

New York Times to end paid Internet service - Reuters

It's about time!!!

Iraq: Killer Analogy From the World of Economics

Every once in a while, you come across a piece that just throws a wrench in the delicate gears of your reasoning and makes you realize you were fooling yourself, asking the wrong questions and pursuing the wrong answers because you failed to take into account an essential piece of the equation... I live for such moments...

And this is one of those pieces.

I was against the invasion of Iraq from the beginning... and was relieved Canada decided not to join such an ill-advised adventure. However, I'm far from a reflexive anti-war type... and once this war got started, though I watched in horror as things deteriorated beyond even what I had imagined, I was always hoping that somehow things might end with some semblance of stability... leaving America's reputation in some kind of shape that could still be salvaged (I actually think that's important)

In a recent post... I even expressed my increasing dismay at the growing withdraw all troops now drumbeat... The thing is, my bleeding heart looks at the disaster that would be left behind and cries out for the U.S. to stay and "finish the job!" (Ironic that it's my bleeding-heart liberal side that's pushing me towards the Bush camp - while it's the conservative in me that wants to impeach him!)

But just as I was mulling over the wording of a post to officially announce that I was changing sides and supporting the 'Petraeus Plan,' I came across this post on Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish* which cured me of my illusions and brought me back to something more approaching reality.

It is probably the best thing I've read yet about the war... and it isn't even really about the war:

Lessons on the surge from economics 101

September 12, 2007

By OLIVER R. GOODENOUGH

Economics professors have a standard game they use to demonstrate how apparently rational decisions can create a disastrous result. They call it a "dollar auction." The rules are simple. The professor offers a dollar for sale to the highest bidder, with only one wrinkle: the second-highest bidder has to pay up on their losing bid as well. Several students almost always get sucked in. The first bids a penny, looking to make 99 cents. The second bids 2 cents, the third 3 cents, and so on, each feeling they have a chance at something good on the cheap. The early stages are fun, and the bidders wonder what possessed the professor to be willing to lose some money.

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.

Theoretically, there is no stable outcome once the dynamic gets going. The only clear limit is the exhaustion of one of the player's total funds. In the classroom, the auction generally ends with the grudging decision of one player to "irrationally" accept the larger loss and get out of the terrible spiral. Economists call the dollar auction pattern an irrational escalation of commitment. We might also call it the war in Iraq.

America is long past the possibility of some kind of profitable outcome in Iraq. Neo-con dreams of a quick, cheap victory, delivering democracy and peace and self-financed from Iraq's own oil revenue, got us started on this misadventure. Like the students, the early bidding seemed like a fun adventure to the boys in the Bush administration. "Bring 'em on," the chief boy said about the other bidders. And like the economics class, suddenly we were in the thing up to our necks, with only bad choices available at an ever-escalating cost.

We can cut our losses now and take our lumps, or we can keep throwing good money after bad until maybe we wear the other side out, but in the process raising our own ultimate losses substantially. And in Iraq, the losses are already desperately high, on both sides, in blood, in money, and in the erosion of institutions like law and national cohesion.

In the bigger game of democratic politics, the dollar auction scenario has a particularly dangerous power. Politicians fear that voters will unfairly punish the realist who cuts off the escalation early, in the process also clearly "losing" the ever-diminishing prize. And maybe, just maybe, the appearance of a "win," even at an astounding price, will give some fig-leaf of coverage to the monumental stupidity of getting the United States of America mired in a this kind of situation to begin with.

The administration's goal is keeping the electorate pacified and the game in motion. Emphasize the cost already paid and the further cost of throwing in the towel. Promise that the other side is showing signs of exhaustion — remember Dick Cheney and the few "dead-enders?" Like the man riding the tiger, Bush and company believe they are OK so long as they don't fall off. If the regular dollar auction is irrationality in action, U.S. politics make our Iraq policy irrationality on steroids.

As our commitment to this war once again comes up for public deliberation, listen to the arguments being made for staying in the game.

"We must honor our dead." By putting more up to be killed?

"The other side is giving up the fight." Is this for real or is it another piece of what we might charitably call wishful thinking?

"We can't afford to lose." But can we afford to win even less? Remember the dynamic of the dollar auction, and think carefully when such plausible and emotionally appealing short-term logic is used to justify putting another whopping bid on the table.

Oh yes, there is one other way out of the spiral — in the classroom, if you allow some kind of negotiated settlement between the two sides, they can sometimes agree to split the dollar and halt the contest. Should we pursue this kind of thing in the Middle East? Of course not, we are told. That would involve talking to the enemy, and we all know that such dialogue would only serve to reward their evil actions. Victory is the only acceptable result. Back to the auction. Let the surge continue.

Oliver R. Goodenough is a professor of law at Vermont Law School and a faculty fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

All right, I'm sold. Time to cut our losses.

[Note] The other reason this piece 'blew my mind' is that what it describes is a pattern I tend to fall into in managing my own life... And I need to give that some serious thought. ...but that's another post for another section of My Brain... One of these days...

*Yes, I know this place is often nothing more than an echo chamber for The Dish... What can I say? Mr. Sullivan provides the finest grade product for my particular kind of information addiction

"I don't know, actually"

The most damning clip I've seen to illustrate the lack of rationale behind this war.

Senator John Warner, Republican-VA, asks Gen. Petraeus, in charge of operations in Iraq, whether his strategy is making America safer...

The General is incapable of giving an affirmative answer to the question.



Now that's professional honesty if I ever saw it.

I wonder how the administration is going to spin this one...

[Update: A more complete version of the General's answer can be seen here. Like I said, professional honesty... and in my opinion, devastating for the administration.]

I say they're ALL secretly gay

That's it! From now on, I am assuming that every single gay-bashing public figure is actually overcompensating to hide the fact that they're secretly gay.


Larry Craig, the renowned anti-gay rights Republican senator from Idaho managed to keep his arrest (and GUILTY PLEA!) for "lewd conduct" under wraps for all of two weeks (not bad in this day in age) before it came out...

Here's the (very detailed) police report... it is a gem.

Killer quote:

At 1215 hour, the male in the stall to the left of me flushed the toilet and exited the stall. Craig entered the stall and placed his roller bag against the front of the stall door. My experience has shown that individuals engaging in lewd conduct use their bag to block the view from the front of their stall. From my seated position, I could observe the shoes and ankles of Craig seated to the left of me. He was wearing dress pants with black dress shoes. At 1216 hours, Craig tapped his right foot. I recognized this as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in luwd conduct. Craig tapped his toes several times and moved his foot closer to my foot. I moved my foot up and down slowly. While this was occurring, the male in the stall to my right was still present. I could hear several unknown persons in the restroom that appeared to use the restroom for its intended use. The presence of others did not seem to deter Craig as he moved his right foot so that it touched the side of my left foot which was within my stall area.

At 1217 hours, I saw Craig swipe his hand under the stall divider for a few seconds.

'nuff said.

Well it would be...

Except that, when the story breaks, (along with the fact that he PLEADED GUILTY!!!) He goes ahead and does this:

note the unfortunate ;) opening sentence


So now it's loud(er than it had to be) and it's going to stay loud until his own party forces him to resign... which means it won't take them long.

I was glad to see the hypocrisy exposed in the Haggard and Foley affairs, but I have to admit this one is giving me sheer joy & pleasure (on an purely entertainment level) ...I mean, if satirists tried to make this stuff up, we'd find it implausible!

Oh, and here's the proverbial cherry on top:

Here he is on Meet the Press in 1999, talking about congress bringing a censure motion against Bill Clinton for the Lewinsky affair.


I always suspected that the worst homophobes were that way to hide or deny their own homosexual desires.

Now I know.

The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq

I was strongly against this war to begin with. I still think it to be the biggest wish-upon-a-star-while-you-shoot-yourself-repeatedly-in-the-foot geo-political strategic blunder it was ever given to me to witness. The proper fight was always in Afghanistan and it wasn't over (it still isn't)... I still have trouble understanding how folks who are obviously smart enough to climb to the highest peaks of influence in the world's most powerful nation really believed (as it appears they did) that all they had to do was "topple the regime" with as little troops as that took and then things would just ...take care of themselves. That and the tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of innocent civilian deaths that resulted from such tragically blind hubris is, on some level, quite simply unforgivable... no matter how much sympathy I have for the inherent tragic nature of the situation that those who hold power inevitably find themselves in.

But more and more, I find the it's-time-to-get-out-now-and-if-you're-still-supporting-this-war-you're-crazy narrative to be suffering from the same sin of pie-in-the-sky shortsightedness (a common sin with our neighbors to the south it seems) as the we-must-invade-Iraq-because-of-9/11-and-if-you-don't-get-that-you're-a-moonbat drumbeat did in the lead-up to this war.

Hopefully voices of reason like this are being heard in the right places.

This man, Anthony H. Cordesman, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies injects some much needed wisdom (in my opinion) in the debate and makes the case for a (very) slow, patient withdrawal that isn't just blindly focused on getting troops out but also doesn't ignore or squander what progress might emerge on the ground in the way of long-term stability.

Which, I believe, is in everyone's interest... at least more than just letting the place fall into (worse) chaos (than it already is).

Here he is on the Charlie Rose show
(no, that's not him on the thumbnail)

'08, The Race So Far

Like I said before, I'd be perfectly fine with a Clinton presidency... heck, after 8 years of this, almost anything would do.


The only thing I fear right now (and the more it seems possible the more my stomach churns) is that Giuliani might actually make it to the White House. My sense is that this would be the worst of all possible outcomes... I believe it would not only continue but accelerate the disfigurement, initiated by this current bunch, of a country I (and much of the world) so admire(d).


If it absolutely has to be a Republican, (and I hope it doesn't) the truth is I'd be fine with Romney... having someone who'll say and do whatever it takes (and flip... and flop...) to remain high in the polls would, at this juncture, be a welcome relief after this period of arrogant, stubborn and ideologically driven let future historians be the judge brand of hubris.


Mike Huckabee has also had a strange inexplicable appeal to me since the beginning of this marathon... for a religious guy who doesn't believe in evolution!!! ...I really hope he does manage to become the standard-bearer for the evangelical / social conservative wing of his party and maybe secure second billing on the ticket. (as it seems he may be on his way to achieving since this weekend's Iowa straw poll.) I find his brand of "I’m a conservative — but I’m not mad at anybody over it" rhetoric to be frankly refreshing (and much healthier) than the vitriol we've been accustomed to from that end of the spectrum for the last two decades. Here's an interesting nyt piece about him


But let's hope the GOP gets banished to the wilderness for a while... it needs to find itself ...or re-invent itself. My hope would be that it re-emerges as an updated, 21st century version of the hopelessly anachronistic brand of liberty based politics currently represented by Ron Paul. (I really like him, he appeals to my libertarian sensibilities. And he is reminding Republicans what they used to be about... but come on, the man wants to go back to the gold standard for Pete's sake!!!)

But we can all feel it, can't we? The near future belongs to the Dems, this next contest is truly the theirs to lose. And the real question on the minds of most Americans right now (the ones paying attention) is: Clinton or Obama?



In a Washington Post interview published this morning, Obama reminds me why, as a French-Canadian observer of American and world affairs who cares about where things are headed, I have such hope that he ends up in the White House:

He then challenged Clinton for accusing him of being "irresponsible and frankly naive" after he said he was willing to meet with leaders of nations such as Iran, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela without preconditions.

"Senator Clinton apparently disagrees with me on this issue of preconditions," he said. "I think she's wrong on that because if we continue to set preconditions for discussions that are hostile to us, I think that's what loses the PR battle worldwide because it implies the United States is the superior power and other states have to give in to our demands before we even deign to meet with them. And that reinforces the sense of the arrogance of U.S. power around the world, which is a source of great damage -- and makes us less safe."

Though I tend to agree with what he's saying, conventional wisdom suggests that, in American politics at least, this is a very risky, if not suicidal, position to take. It can be defended as a sound strategic position (and Obama is doing a decent job of that) but I find it a hard sell, seems to me it's not self-evident to most people. And he's opening himself up to all kinds of easy accusations of being a naive lefty paecenik... and enables Clinton to position herself (as she brilliantly seems to be doing) as the "safe" steady conventional (almost conservative) choice...

But then again, I have a growing sense that conventional wisdom is fast becoming an obsolete commodity... the landscape is changing... and not just in the U.S. Everywhere I look these days (including here at home) it seems like traditional constituencies are up for grabs like I've never seen in the 20 years I've been following politics. Almost every recent election in a western country these last couple of years has been one with a strong component of change... often defying the formulas and predictions of pollsters and pundits relying on the past to analyse the present. (That goes for me too)

Obama is betting that the 'center' in American politics has moved and that, humbled by the lessons of Iraq, it is now in sync with his views on questions of war and diplomacy. A bold assumption, I find. But my sense of things comes from the filter of MSM talking heads and 'beltway-centric' bloggers. I don't really have a good sense of actual feelings on the ground.

My hope is that Mr. Obama does.

How disapointing...

Now, I really like Barack Obama... I bought his last book... I think he's really smart... my kind of pol... In fact, I'm really hoping he wins... I'd be very comfortable with Hillary too... but I'm rooting for Barack...

Here he is delivering standard boilerplate union-friendly shtick about NAFTA at yesterday's AFL-CIO Presidential Forum.

But please... Barack... say it ain't so... surely you know we don't have a president up here!

Maybe he meant the Queen...

;)

Playing to your ennemies...

All right, I guess I'm becoming a big fan of this guy Reza Aslan... I suppose it comforts me to hear someone who obviously knows more than I do about all this stuff validate exactly the conclusions my feeble mind intuits...

Here he is reviewing the latest collection of al-Qaida "writings" for Slate.

The Al Qaeda Reader. - By Reza Aslan - Slate Magazine

His main point concerning most of al-Qaeda's pointed rants about the west (and more specifically the U.S.) is that...

They are a means of weaving local and global resentments into a single anti-American narrative, the overarching aim of which is to form a collective identity across borders and nationalities, and to convince the world that it is locked in a cosmic contest between the forces of Truth and Falsehood, Belief and Unbelief, Good and Evil, Us and Them.

...and the incisive conclusion:

In the end, this is the most important lesson to be learned from these writings. Because, if we are truly locked in an ideological war, as the president keeps reminding us, then our greatest weapons are our words. And thus far, instead of fighting this war on our terms, we have been fighting it on al-Qaida's.

Don't believe me? Ask Bin Laden:

Bush left no room for doubts or media opinion. He stated clearly that this war is a Crusader war. He said this in front of the whole world so as to emphasize this fact. … When Bush says that, they try to cover up for him, then he said he didn't mean it. He said, 'crusade.' Bush divided the world into two: 'either with us or with terrorism' … The odd thing about this is that he has taken the words right out of our mouths.

Odd, indeed.

Tom Freedman's Addicted to Oil

...retired this from the 'Things I Feel Like Promoting' section of my myspace page... but I still wanted to keep a link to it.

It remains one of the important propadocs of our time.
[ ftr: I think just coined the term ;) ]



watch parts 2, 3, 4 and 5

democraticSPACE.com

Since they've been at it, these guys claim to have a 94% success rate in seat predictions.

I know their numbers aren't there yet... but the trends (as of March 17) are undeniable.

I stand by my prediction... it's beggining to look more and more like a PQ minority.

A PQ Minority?

This is interesting... and I don't hear any of the talking heads in the Québec MSM mentioning it but if we take the results of the latest major poll...

	Parti Libéral	33%
	Parti Québécois	29%
	Action Démocratique	26%
	Québec Solidaire	06%
	Parti Vert	06%

...and feed them to the most sophisticated seat projector out there, this is the result we get:

Total seats in the Québec legislature: 125

	Parti Libéral	46 seats
	Parti Québécois	53 seats
	Action Démocratique	26 seats

The Sovereigntist PQ gets to form the government!

I actually find this very interesting for a few reasons:

First, it shows once again the skewering inherent in our system where the liberals (overly concentrated in Montreal) can win the popular vote and still lose the election. We actually have a long history of this.

But mainly, It's going to sabotage Stephen Harper's plans... but possibly not enough to completely derail them. It's going to be interesting for fans of the game (like myself) to see how this bold strategist will handle the new political landscape.

The other thing I like is that though the sovereigntists would form the government, a minority ensures the other parties can prevent them from shoving a sovereignty referendum (which almost no one here wants) down our throats during their term... they just get to govern.

The thing most outsiders don't understand about why we Québécois keep putting separatists in power even though we don't really want to seperate from Canada is that, "political instability" notwithstanding, these guys tend to give us pretty darn good government ...and responsible to boot! The reason for that is simply that they're desperate to convince us that they could manage the country of Québec and in the process they end up managing the province pretty competently... for idealists!

;)

Guess I'm Voting Green

Here's a cool little site (in french only) to help undecided Québec residents choose who to vote for in the upcoming provincial election. It asks you a bunch of questions and then tells you which party's program most corresponds to what matters to you. Turns out the green party is the best fit for me... (but only by 45%!) good thing I guess, since I had already decided I would vote for them...

Not that it matters, I live in one of the most consistently Liberal riding in the province. Their guy is going to win with over 2/3 of the vote. Makes voting here not much fun.

Vos résultats : Le pourcentage indique dans quelle proportion le programme du parti propose, selon votre opinion, la meilleure option pour le Québec.

45 42 33 17 9

N'oubliez pas d'envoyer le questionnaire à tous vos amis! http://www.vivrelequebec.net/monchoix/

Presented without commentary

Outgames Montréal 2006

No I'm not gay.
But this really makes feel like
a proud Montrealer, un fier Québécois
and a proud Canadian.





The Déclaration of Montréal is adopted
Version française
English Version
Versión española

How screwed is the world today?

How screwed is the world today?
Citigroup's Geo-Political Risk calculator has the answer!

Very interesting little titbit from Slate magazine. The cold calculating (almost cynical) ways of the financial world continue to fascinate me.

The Hell-in-a-Handbasket Index By Daniel Gross

Eject: Iraqi Konfused Kollege Kid

I've been wanting to post something about this for a while now. This guy is becoming one of my heroes. I think he should sell someone the rights for a movie based on his life and his postings.


The Kid

He's a 21 year old computer engeneering student living in Baghdad. He's a fan of science fiction and an aspiring (heavy metal) guitarist who started a blog in July 2005 called Eject: Iraqi Konfused Kollege Kid. Somehow, he got the attention of the New York Times who asked him to write posts for their TimesSelect blog called Day to Day in Iraq in which he and other Iraqi bloggers participated. It's there that I came across this post from him which really moved me as it shocked me to discover how much this guy thinks like I did at his age... This was the first post that led me to explore the Iraqi blogosphere which I posted about a while ago here and here.

Unfortunately, TimesSelect is the pay portion of the New York Times web site... and I really want to share this story... so I'm probably breaking a few copyright laws by doing this but here are a few of his posts from the Times Day to Day in Iraq feature. In my defence, I strongly urge you to take a subscription with TimesSelect. ...c'mon! It's only eight bucks a month! ...or fifty bucks for a whole year! And it's worth every penny!

February 1, 2006 - Cartoons, Bombs and Ancient Anger

May 19, 2006 - Sectarian Tendencies in C++ Programming and Elsewhere in The New Free Democratic Iraq ™ (This was the first I read)

May 26, 2006 - Maliki Announces Government, Zarqawi Announces Dress Code

June 5, 2006 - Figuring It All Out: BiSK/BiSHK

June 21, 2006 - A Goat’s Rhetoric

June 29, 2006 - Last Words from the Wreckage (His final New York Times post)


The Kid continues to post on his own blog.

PodFisked!

Not being gay, or married, gay marriage is not an issue I feel particularly passionate about. My own beliefs on individual freedom simply make it a non-issue to me. But with all the noise our neighbor to the south has been making as their senate takes a break from reality to discuss the issue, I couldn't help but overhear.

Now I want to be respectful of all views and give everyone a fair hearing. And though I might disagree on the fundamentals, I generally consider myself to be sensitive to the concerns of those who take an opposing view from mine, especially when I sense that it comes from deeply held beliefs. But everything I've heard in the last few days from opponents of gay marriage just sounds absurd to me.

So gay marriage constitutes "an attack on the institution of marriage" ... I wish someone could explain to me how allowing one group to live their life in the same way as the majority threatens that same majority's ability to live that way.

Then I realize why none of what they're saying registers with me, they're not arguing from their hearts.

They're not against gay marriage, they're against homosexuality period. Only they're not saying it. When those same people argue against abortion, they're honest about the beliefs behind their opposition; they believe (quite strongly) that life begins at conception. It is very easy to understand how someone with that deeply held belief could be so passionate about the issue. It is also easy to mount a coherent argument against abortion based on that belief. After all who can be against the taking of innocent life? But on gay marriage, none (or very few) of them will actually admit that they oppose it because they believe homosexuality is a sin and a perversion that in and of itself should not be tolerated. And so they mount bizarre arguments about family, freedom (that's a strange one to throw into the mix) and institutions under threat. Of course, if they actually admitted the profound convictions behind their position, their initiative would be even more doomed to failure than it already is.

But at least they'd be honest.


Essayist & blogger extraordinaire Andrew Sullivan describes what I think of the issue much more eloquently than I ever could in what appears to be the Internet's first ever "PodFisk". Don't know what that is? Check it out

Iraq & Football

I can't sleep. Been spending a lot of time on the Iraq Blogs again. My heart goes out to all the bloggers dealing with daily life over there. If I was a praying man, I would send them my prayers too (and in my way, I do).

I came accross this picture posted by Morbid Smile and it was too much for me.

It goes well with another post I read earlier on Riverbend's Baghdad Burning.

She translates a fatwa against soccer by Muqtada Al Sadr...

Crazy s*%#t!

Some (Slim?) Hope for American Politics?

Unity08.com




I came across this while watching PBS' Newshour this evening (though there's nothing about it on their web site). Apparently some professionals (former staffers and consultants) from both parties and others have gotten together to try and launch a "Unity Ticket" in '08 in the hopes of nudging American politics away from its current (and sad) polarized state and back to the center.

And this doesn't appear to the be anything like the Ralph Nader/Green Party fringe stuff, these guys are actually talking about taking on the issues that matter.

Global terrorism, our national debt, our dependence on foreign oil, the emergence of India and China as strategic competitors and/or allies, nuclear proliferation, global climate change, [...] the education of our young, the health care of all...

When someone talks seriously about dealing with most of Tom Friedman's main talking points, I pay attention.

Plus, they plan to take advantage of new technology and hold their nominating convention entirely online, letting all registered voters regardless of party affiliation vote for the nominee. Risky, but it has the merit of never having been done.

I know, I know... No third candidate has ever really succeeded at anything except being a spoiler. (The last third party candidate to win was Abe Lincoln! It's true, back then, the Republicans were the third party. Look it up.) But remember Ross Perot? At least he got the main parties to deal seriously with his main issue of the federal deficit (for a while anyways). And here in Canada where we've more or less institutionalized the idea of a third party that will never take power (the NDP), it can be said that about everything they ever ran on was later implemented by successive LPC and even PC governments.

Anyways, I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high, this is still embryonic. But I'll be watching.
...

Here are some other links to what little noise this has generated so far. (thx Google)

Newsweek - A New Open-Source Politics
Ambivablog - "Politics is at its most invigorating when it's cacophonous and chaotic."
Lullaby Pit - Unity08 launch targets the American mainstream
Lullaby Pit - Notes from May 30 Unity08 conference call
My Left Wing - Let The Third Party Begin!!! Unity08
CommonDreams Newswire
The Moderate Voice
Donklephant

Day to Day in Iraq

I discovered this last week while browsing through the portion of the New York Times Online that is only available to paying members and it completely blew me away! It's worth taking a subscription just to get this part.

Day to Day in Iraq - TimesSelect - New York Times Blog

This led me to discover the Iraqi blogging community. Forget what you hear on tv or read in the newspapers... If you want to really understand the impact of this war, get it from the people who are living through it every day.

Warning! If you have illusions you don't want to lose, then don't go there. It made me lose a lot of mine.