Quality over quanity

Sorry for the long break folks. But I've amended the command sequence for this blog. I've realized that ramblings don't really count as writing. Hell, that's what Facebook and Twitter are for. So I'd rather take my time with this shit and make quality posts for ya'll to read. In short, one post a day isn't worth the the stress, so I'm changing it to three posts a week. Three good ones, not just "Russell watches the news." But don't rule that out, depending on the news week (like last week was a doozy).

But I'd like to get personal if I may. For Sarah and I, Sunday was our anniversary. 7 years (off and on). That's a loooong time. But when I took the day to look back, it sure didn't feel long.

Sarah and I have come miles from when we were young. She has at least. I'm still measuring my retrospect but I'm sure some progress has been made. That's the thing about literally growing up together. You get to reach those all-important "life lessons" at roughly the same time. Luckily for us, she's got a steep learning curve.

Anyway, I'm done boring you with my half-baked romantic ramblings of my relationship. But it was worth mentioning because it's important to me. Anyone who knows anything about knows how devoted I am to Sarah. And I'm lucky to have made it this far with her. Here's for seven more years. I love you.


Props to my friend Chris for this picture.

Now, lets talk about Libya.

I hate to break it to you folks, but the drums of war are beating. This time, we're not the ones beating it but nonetheless we're required to dance to it. In all of the mainstream news the question is: Is it in US interest to intervene in Libya? The answer has to be yes in some form or fashion. Doing nothing is not an option with Qaddafi. Christopher Hitchens in a recent Slate piece said it best: "'neutrality' will only benefit the side with the biggest arsenal." We're seeing his style of vengeance that he's taking and once he does fall that style will become more nightmarish.

The problem with 9/11, our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, and our unusually committed alliance with the continuously stubborn and expansionist Israeli administration is that we have painted ourselves as the "savior of the middle east." That's what we sold the world on after 9/11 to go into Iraq. Whether you agree with our presence in the middle east at this point is almost irrelevant. We've made it so it will be decades before we're able to leave, but now it appears we might have to be more mobile in our forces. It should bare no surprise that Qaddafi is calling his rebels "al-Qaida." A lot of these despots (Mubarak included) were counting on military funding for helping America fight al-Qaida. The reason why we suck at most things like foreign policy and military intelligence is that we let the despots in some cases define who is al-Qaida, which leads to megalomaniacs jailing and torturing people who they don't like and just justifying it by calling them terrorists. Sound familiar?

So the way I see it, if doing nothing is not an option, and I truly believe that it isn't. If you disagree with me, I suggest you brush up on Bosnia and Rwanda to show the results of inaction.

If action must be taken then the next question is what kind of action. Well, there's all sorts of talk of a no-fly zone. That seems almost inevitable to me at this point if Qaddafi keeps up his bombings, but I don't think that's going to deter him from continuing his assault from the ground. In fact, count on that.

So we're left with two options in the way I see it (which should be taken with huge grain of salt). Either a) Arm and support the rebels (Bad idea, more on that below) or b) NATO intervenes (Worse idea).

The reason why arming and supporting the rebels might eventually bite us in the ass is because EVERY TIME WE DO, IT DOES. Dig into the Wikileaks Cables a little bit and you'll find that some of our sub-contracts in Pakistan being funneled accidentally to none other than the Taliban (who are not being very quiet these days). And after all, Qaddafi is hated by al-Queda and Iran as well. How long do you think it's going to take for these mad men to infiltrate the rebels to steal themselves some guns that our own forces are shipping in? You think it's going to take long for either side to be looking at those oil fields to goat the trigger happy US into another fight?

The problem with Libya is that nothing good is going to come from this except for Qaddafi leaving. Which is great, but I wonder how many people he's going to take with him. Either way, the United is looking into the horizon of a future third world war that we didn't ask for but got anyway. It's front line won't be Libya, but it's a conflict like Libya that tests our foresight and moral fortitude. When every outcome sucks, what do we do?

Sweet dreams.

PS: RIP Mike Starr from Alice in Chains.

Command Image: Mike Starr's Killer Riff Command