Suicide of Col Ted Westhusing

"I cannot support a msn [mission] that leads to corruption, human right abuses and liars. I am sullied -- no more. I didn't volunteer to support corrupt, money grubbing contractors, nor work for commanders only interested in themselves."

Via Alternet.

We are the Romans

Canada.com ("Does America Need a Foreign Legion?") points out that at a comparable stage in their development, the Romans had to pay armies to fight for them. The local population had gotten too used to a "welfare state."

The Romans, a warlike culture, had their famously cynical slogan "bread and circuses" -- meaning that was the way to keep the population docile, and we've certainly got our share of circuses. Reality TV, celebrity gossip. If the economy keeps spiralling downward, we have to ask if it's not part of the strategy to keep the poor enlisting, not to mention an eventual result of enriching the defense industries, thereby completing a very vicious circle.

Fortunately for us, ground troops are really not necessary any more, and if people get used to eating, that's a good thing. Diplomatic and economic strategies are very effective, even if they don't redistribute money from the taxpayers to the defense industries owned by the president's friends.

More links: The Nation tells more of Lt. Watada's story, how he reached his conclusion that he couldn't support this war. Also see the link to Petty Officer Pablo Paredes' web site DefendPablo.org, for information about the navy man who refused to board his Iraq-bound ship.

Zen of War: Commissioned Officer Refuses Iraq Deployment

"I think that when we take an oath we, as soldiers and officers, swear to protect the constitution — with our lives as necessary — and those constitutional values and laws that make us free and make us a democracy. And when we have one branch of government that intentionally deceives another branch of government in order to authorize war, and intentionally deceives the people in order to gain that public support, that is a grave breach of our constitutional values, our laws, our checks and balances, and separation of power." -- First Lieutenant Ehren Watada

Read the article.

Zen of Editing

Form is nothingness: think of your written work as having been written by a cosmic thread, or a can of silly string (see uses of silly string, below), that just happened to land in the shapes of letters that added up to words, a story, a book. Then, editing is like taking the end of the string, lifting and giving it a shake. Presto: nothingness again. This is why editing is scary. After all the hard work, you could wind up with nothing again. Or, you could draw replacement words, paragraphs from nothingness, edit them back into nothingness and continue ad infinitum.

If this is you, you really have been thinking too much. Each form the story takes is both indelible and changeable. You just have to pick the one you want to label "finished."

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Uses of Silly String
In Iraq