But first, a brief rant:

NPR treated me this morning to a quote from our lovely not-VP, something to the effect of, "This is a war on terror, and we have learned that if we're going to win, we need a commander-in-chief, not a lawyer."

EXCUSE ME?
Am I the only person who's noticed the number of large powers fighting small guerrilla-type forces over the course of history? NO ONE wins those wars. We didn't win the American Revolution, not really. Britain got fed up and left, leaving us in a right fiscal mess with a grumpy army, and ConCon leaves me amazed that we got a country out of it.
It's even less likely that the main power wins. I can't think of a single example in which it has. Maybe parts of the Spanish Civil War. But I don't think we want to resort to that kind of shoot-anyone-who-might-be-a-red and everyone-report-their-neighbors-as-republican-sympathizers kind of control, even if we could manage to create it. And the continued presence of ETA could be seen as evidence that Franco never really "won," anyway.

If this is a war on terror - and I find that terminology problematic for all sorts of reasons - then I find myself returning to George Fox and an early description of the Quakers, "you can't kill the devil with a gun or a sword." If terror is what we're fighting, let's use tools that counteract terror. And me, I think the best one is happiness. Happy people don't blow things up. Happy, occupied, well-fed people don't leave their homes, businesses and families to join terrorist training groups.

Okay, back to homework.

Whoot.

That's all. I can go back to worrying about my midterm in another few minutes.



Also, I'm going to consider this a victory in Miriam vs. PA bureaucracy. Even if they never did send me a proper ballot.