A Case of the Meh's Attacked Me.

Or at any rate, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
Sooooo....
What's new, what's interesting? Nothing and nothing. For all that one sometimes hears about living in interesting times, I find most of these proceedings damn dull. I can't even watch TV anymore. 500 channels, and it's all the same self-referential, too-hip post-modern gruel. Utter noise.

But the great thing about free will and living in a society with a fairly broad sphere to exercise it is that I can absent myself from all of this. I can tell the cable company to get stuffed, and use the TV for watching movies (last night I grabbed a copy of Shaun of the Dead, which I can thoroughly enjoy without being familiar with any of George Romero's films, because it's not just a cheap parody). I can read Bass Guitar magazine instead of Spin, and spend my evenings learning to play "Immigrant Song" instead of wondering whether I would ever buy a Kanye West album. And that's if I feel like being lazy. A few carpentry books and I can make my own instrument, stick a police whistle in my mouth, and annoy the neighbors all night. With a modicum of creativity I can make my own mini-culture, and nobody on earth can compell me otherwise. Tell me that's not something worth preserving.


Now, onto the Issues of the Day. I haven't had more than minor interest in the Cindy Sheehan and Barnum and Bailey business, at least not enough to get emotionally charged on the subject. She's mad about her dead kid, whoopty-crap. She's not a criminal and she's well within her rights to picket Bush's house until the Second Coming to make known her views.

The only thing that made me roll her eyes was that the media hacks never bothered to tell us much about the young man for whom Camp Casey was named. Didja know he was awarded the Bronze Star posthumously for volunteering for the mission that led to his death? Didja know this was his second tour in-country, for which he re-enlisted, after Baghdad had fallen? Didja know that he had his own opinion on the war that took his life?

For this and other startlers, read Mark Steyn's piece on the subject, which is as merciless as ever. Most noteworthy is the fact that the President did meet with the Sheehan family, a year ago, when Casey died. Gee, the kid dies a year ago, the mom starts having a fit now. One has to wonder.


In Other News, the Iraqi Constitution. I have no idea whether this one will stick or be another piece of legalese wallpapering the palaces of a failed state. And neither does anybody else. Having read Belmont Club's take, I could go either way. But even if the referendum fails and Iraq splits three ways, I can see value coming out of it. For one thing, neither Kurdistan nor Sunni Mesopotamia are likely to become the regional trouble-makers or terror swamps that Saddam's Iraq was, and the Sunni Triangle, cut off from the oil fields and possibly from Baghdad, is at best going to be a mini-Syria and at worst a Syrian protectorate.

But let's say that Allah's Hell does indeed break loose, as Wretchard almost suggests, and the whole order of the Middle East as it's been since WW1 shatters like a champagne flute. Jolly good, says I. This is a region of the world that desperately needs to take a long hard look at itself. They've tried reactionary theocracy (Iran, Saudi Arabia), they've tried Stalin-lite Tyranny (Iraq, Syria), they've tried banditry (Palestine) and bureacratic scleroticism (Egypt). They've been repaid with poverty, butchery, and a political culture reminiscent of the Montagues and Capulets. If anyone wants to discuss the morality of chickens coming home to roost, that's a perfect place to start.
Besides, continuing chaos may wake up the rest of the world to the fact that we can't wish bloodthirsty exremism away with grave concerns and Roadmaps for Peace. I've been saying for a long time that fighting terror doesn't end with Afghanistan or Iraq. It doesn't even, truth be told, end with the Middle East. It begins to end on the day that the most left-wing Nader-voting Euro-pacifist says "You know what? I'm not gonna offer myself or anybody in my homeland as a sacrifice for your hatred, my jihad-spouting friend. I'm not gonna explain away your motives. Bush may be a retard with a gun, but you, sir, are a fucking demon, the enemy of everything decent, and I'm not gonna rest until your ass is in a deep, dark place."

This, of course, will take years, if not decades. So welcome to the new Cold War. I hope that my grandkids will enjoy its end as much as I enjoyed seeing the Berlin Wall come down.