Matt, why don't you write about the war?

Why bother? For what reason? What will it accomplish? If you think merely voting and holding-up a sign every weekend is going to work, you're so hopelessly naive there's no talking or writing that's going to reach you. You're already paralyzed. There's a misconception throughout the "progressive" blogosphere that if we show enough moral disdain for this war that it will simply go-away. Wake me when that one actually works. Only the Iraqi people can decide this, by deciding the reality on the ground. Sorry, the Gandhi approach doesn't always work, and it took the Japanese military beating-down the British Empire to provide a real context for Indian statehood. This is what the absolute believers in non-violence are either ignorant of, or just wilfully ignore for their own agendas. Some of them might just be craven cowards, but that's for history to decide.

Life is a lot more complicated than the adherents of non-violence would have us all believe, and that's not an exhortation to violence, just an observation of fact: power concedes nothing without demands and at least the threat that violence is possible (as a warning) without genuine reforms. The Iraqi people are the real deciders in this pointless and illegal conflict, not that moron occupying the Oval Office like a Columbia University student, circa 1968. Yes, George W. missed-out on the 1960s, so he's doing some catch-up. The best-move is to kick his ass out of there the same way. Digest that one, Lyndon Larouche. Write? I'd enjoin our troops to desert, but that's illegal (like the war itself).

Still, if it was me, I'd desert and apply to the Swedish, German, French, Swiss, Italian, and Dutch embassies for political asylum. Getting there would be the hardest-part. This war is a joke, a crime, and is a pointless waste of lives and treasure. It has nothing to recommend it, and it's not a worthy cause. Note that the mainstream media NEVER challenges the legality of the conflict, nor hardly any politicians currently holding office right now. That should tell you everything you need to know about the current political generation: they have to go next year, all of them we can sink, and it should done in a way that is as ugly and contentious as possible. But it should be done within the law. Let the establishment do the crimes, it's what they do.