Some Observations.

Someday we may be all rounded up if we don't stand for our convictions. What really terrifies me is that we on the left tend to be too nice and not want to play the gutter snipe. We like to think of ourselves as better than that. What we end up being is perceived as weak and not standing up for our convictions. We are just as right or even more so than they are. We have our convictions and need to stand up for them. We can't let those people win or else our rights and liberties that our forefathers fought for will die a slow miserable death.

There has been a slow erosion of our civil liberties in the name of Homeland Security of late and that is not what we need. We need to think of Osama bin Laden as the criminal he is rather than an enemy to be dealt with militarily. We cannot face him entirely on the battlefield. We have to deal with him with the same tactics of guile and subterfuge that he uses. During the Cold War, these were the tactics we used in combatinb terrorism to moderate success and they worked.

The military has already taken the "War on Terror" as a term and is now calling it "The Long War" which has lasted (and continuse to last) longer than any conflict the US has ever faced. The military knows what its capabilities are and as of this time they are being overtaxed and our leaders just can't seem to realize it. The kind of change we need is not another version of Bush (McCain = "Bush lite") but a real change in the strategy of dealing with al Queda as a movement. All that our efforts in dealing with al Queda on the battlefield has doing is undermined the conflict itself. With every civilian we accidentally kill, we are creating more martyrs for the cause and swelling the ranks with fresh recruits filled with the resolve that comes with the death of a loved one. It undermines itself with every ally we alienate. Also, as our military is taxed, it weakens our ability to deal with other growing powers like China and a resurgent Russia.

What Bush has done is the same thing that let the Soviets run rampant in the 70's because Vietnam had weakened and taxed our military to death. Reagan took what Carter's DOD had planed and ran with it, expanding our military and spending furiously. What eventually killed the Soviet Union was not Regan, although his administration kept up the policies that did. What killed them as a nation was that they couldn't exist as a society because technological advancement had caught up with them. You can't have computers and have a censored, secretive society. Not when any computer can become a copier and disseminate information in a city, province, or the world. Even the Chinese are discovering this. You can't have advancement without a free exchange of information. When censorship exists in art, music, science and so forth, advancement is stilted and chaotic. The Chinese are experimenting with a censored internet. Its an ongoing expriment that probably will not succede because without that free exchange of ideas, society will become stagnent and the advancement that the Chinese economy has experienced will eventually slow. However, I could be wrong. In that case, this does not bode well for our future and if the Chinese are successful, then we face a dark future in which information will be supressed for the convienence of political and economic expeciency.