Back again.
I've been trying for the couple of days that I've been back to find anything worthy of a rant, but I've been in a near news-blackout for a month so it's taking a bit of time to get back up to speed on the world.
You may have noticed (or not) that I installed a counter on this thing, as I wanted to have some idea how much traffic I get. It seems that I don't get a lot, but that's a lot better than none, so whomever you all are, congratulations, you're giving me enough of a reason to try to make it worth your while to stop in here occasionally.
One thing that is of course of ongoing interest/importance to me is the fight in Afghanistan, and that continues in its' own way. This whole topic points to one of the challenges that I face when trying to come up with content for this.
I have a lot of things I'd like to say about things that would make my life a bit awkward were my identity attached to this. My objectives on this are to keep things as just MY TAKE on stuff, with no profits (hence no ads or other crap) and no reason for anyone to complain about copyright infringement should I mis-step and engage in some (attributed) theft.
That stuff can be managed, since I see a lot of other blogs that are a lot more high-traffic than mine that manage to keep afloat despite some serious muck-raking with large media outlets and special-interest groups. As long as RIAA and Metallica aren't after me, I figure I'm OK...
So, back to Afghanistan. I was talking to my grandmother last night, and she told me that she doesn't see why we're there. This is a woman who survived WW2 (and she was in southern England, so "survived" is an accurate word) and has no illusions about the need for armed force in some circumstances. I did make a case for us being in there, but I realized I could not honestly say that I think we'll stick with it until the job is done. Whether the job is do-able is a separate issue, and I think I've addressed that elsewhere.
The point is that if I can't convince my octogenarian, realist, conservative (to put it mildly) grandmother that our troops getting shot at and blown up in Afghanistan is in our National Interest, it's not because she and I aren't on the same wavelength. She is most certainly NOT a "moonbat", but I am struggling with the deployment, mainly because I know we won't go the distance.
So, if people like my grandmother, and more importantly me, are losing faith in the idea of being there, I'm surprised there's any support left for us being there. This does not mean I think we should pull out, but since I know we haven't got the ruthlessness to to the job properly, ("we" means NATO) I'm a bit discouraged.
I think that my next post will be about where the West is and where we're going. This will not be too original, but I think that this blurb is headed in that direction. Hell, I might even try to impose a bit of structure on the next one, since I think it's important.
