Colin, we hardly knew ya!
Happy Sunday! Check out this Times article, a great editorial on Colin Powell's departure from State (registration req. - just do it), which includes this gem:
As I watched images from Mr. Powell's life flicker past, and as the fruits of the American victory became clear - a ravaged city; an elusive enemy, most of whom had escaped; a countrywide counterattack in which insurgents seized parts of Mosul - I felt a ghostly echo of words I could not quite grasp. Two days later, watching an American general declare that in Falluja our forces had "broken the back of the insurgency," I felt the sentences I'd struggled to recall suddenly take shape; I reached for Mr. Powell's memoir and found these bitter lines:
"Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand."
Sure... Mark Danner with the biting analysis.
Today we're walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, always a treat. We'll be lunching at Pho Na Trang, the best Vietnamese I've ever had. To say that I feel shame when I eat in restaurants of cultures that the US has wronged is to understate the facts. I wonder if that's why the coasts and the urban area voted predominently against the status quo? Because we interact with people from other countries and cultures, and have that sounding board for how terrible this country's policies can be across the sea.
Two terms that everyone needs to have on their lips:
Birth Tax - the $40 k or so of debt that each child born today in the US inherits due to rampant spending
Credit Card Congress, or the Charge and Spend Republicans - no definition needed.
As I watched images from Mr. Powell's life flicker past, and as the fruits of the American victory became clear - a ravaged city; an elusive enemy, most of whom had escaped; a countrywide counterattack in which insurgents seized parts of Mosul - I felt a ghostly echo of words I could not quite grasp. Two days later, watching an American general declare that in Falluja our forces had "broken the back of the insurgency," I felt the sentences I'd struggled to recall suddenly take shape; I reached for Mr. Powell's memoir and found these bitter lines:
"Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand."
Sure... Mark Danner with the biting analysis.
Today we're walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, always a treat. We'll be lunching at Pho Na Trang, the best Vietnamese I've ever had. To say that I feel shame when I eat in restaurants of cultures that the US has wronged is to understate the facts. I wonder if that's why the coasts and the urban area voted predominently against the status quo? Because we interact with people from other countries and cultures, and have that sounding board for how terrible this country's policies can be across the sea.
Two terms that everyone needs to have on their lips:
Birth Tax - the $40 k or so of debt that each child born today in the US inherits due to rampant spending
Credit Card Congress, or the Charge and Spend Republicans - no definition needed.
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