On 4/3/06, Eric <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Eric: Call me out on the attitudes--if they are > attitudes and not the projection your own personal > anxieties--and try to change my mind. You probably > don't even know what I believe. Quite true. Who knows what relation the avatars that appear online have to real selves, or even if real selves exist (that's for Peter Junger and a nod to the Buddhist notion that the self is another illusion). Communicating in writing and never meeting face-to-face we can only address the attitudes. > > If you deplore politicians who put our youth in > harm's way, you'll have a grudge with everyone > from Thomas Jefferson to Hillary Clinton. But I > will certainly cut you slack because you have > children in the military. > You appear to have forgotten the earlier message in which I said clearly that I am not opposed to military action per se or those, over the years, in which I have argued that a draft might be a good thing after all. But I hear what my Marine Corps son-in-law is saying when he compares his service in Iraq, bombing Fallujah, with his Marine Corps father's experience in the Pacific in World War II: "This isn't my father's war." It isn't a war declared in response to another sovereign state's attack on U.S. soil or even one justified by a clear and present danger. It is a preemptive war, sold on the basis of at best thinly grounded propaganda, thus, fundamentally no different from Hitler's invasions of France or Poland, and a badly managed clusterfuck to boot. But, turning to another topic, I am happy to read what you say about not owning a car. My wife and I are a very unusual American couple in that we have never owned a car since getting married in 1969. Cheers, John -- John McCreery The Word Works, Ltd. 55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku Yokohama 220-0006, JAPAN ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html