Xah Lee's Unixism

[Bulent Murtezaoglu]

Soo, another lisper cannot resist the temptation.  

>>>>> "GM" == Greg Menke <gregm-news at toadmail.com> writes:
[...]
    GM> They're pretty convinced of that already- after all Dubya
    GM> called this a crusade from day 1.  [...]

In all fairness I think that was plain dumbness in use of langauge.
He didn't mean a crusade in the historic sense.  Even if he thinks it,
that was nothing more than an unfortunate choice of words.  I am 99%
sure of this as I vividly remeber my jaw dropping when I saw him say
it in the window to the left of the one I was reading this very
newsgroup in.  The men in that family are not good public speakers 
and they seem to have trouble expressing themselves to reporters.  
I see no malice in that.

[...]
    GM> I'm not vastly fond of Dubya Sr., but I think he did the right
    GM> things in Iraq; he was a better president than his son in all
    GM> respects.

He was, but the Iraq thing wasn't done right back then either.  Of
course it is easy to say this with hindsight, but saving a shiekdom
and a kingdom while ending up in a position where you cross your
fingers that Saddam supresses uprisings w/o too much visible carnage
is not a good outcome.  Maintaining a state of embargo against, as it
turned out, the people of Iraq indefinitely was not a good option
either.

It is one of those cases where it's pretty clear that any obvious
option is not good, but it is not clear what the right thing to do is.
Had it been possible to leave the region alone after (or indeed
during) WW-I, some reasonably stable state of affairs might have
emerged.  Actually, this is not unlike the Balkans.  There, oil was
not in the equation but once Tito was gone, things that should have
happened between the Balkan wars and maybe 1950's ended up happening
in the 90s with much bloodshed and no clean ending (think Kosovo).

Presumably the people who get elected to positions of power are called
leaders because they are supposed to have better ideas and visions on
these things than us geeks do.  That has clearly not been the case so
far.

9/11 seems to have gotten rid of any chance of sane action by the US in 
the region, anyway.  So basically the problem is no longer how the 
civilized and reasonably free world will exert its influence in the 
middle east, but how the world can try to influence the lone superpower 
so it doesn't do too much damage to itself and the rest of the world.
Now that, I suspect, could have been prevented had the influential 
people in the states (be it the press, the congress, whatever) showed 
some backbone.

cheers,

BM