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| Oh, hey. I'm at college now.
This semester looks like it's going to be really busy.
Posting forecast: sparse
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| That's right, I'm gonna talk politics.
The other day, I was in the break room at work and the TV was showing clips of the recent Democratic Debate. I was tired at the time and wasn't paying much attention, but one reply by Barack Obama caught my attention. The question was over the current situation in Iraq, and Obama replied that there had been poor planning on behalf of both Democrats and Republicans going into the war and that once he was president he would never send our troops into battle without making sure it was based on sound intelligence and without having a solid exit strategy. This all sounded well and good until I realized that he had never answered the question about the current situation in Iraq. Talking about hypothetical wars in the future may sound nice, but what are we going to do about the one we are currently in the middle of?
At this point I started paying more attention to what was being said. The TV program turned out to be a review of the debate through the perspective of a democratic focus group that marked their approval or disapproval of each candidate in real time as the debates went on. The person presenting the data remarked that Obama was the leader from the "first tier" of democratic candidates because people liked his style of talking and overall presentation. The leader from the "second tier" had done well because his responses had good content, but this wasn't enough to compete with Obama's way with words. I thought this was particularly noteworthy; that people would care more about presentation and public speaking than the actual content of what is being said. This is not good. An extreme example of an excellent public speaker with a bad message would be Adolf Hitler, and people followed him because they did not think about what his message was really saying. Please note that I am NOT comparing Obama to Hitler. I am simply pointing out an extreme example of what happens when people care more about style than content. This is more a critique on the general populace than any one candidate.
A little while later I started thinking about the term "exit strategy" itself and what it really means. I started to wonder if it is actually a good thing to focus on when debating whether or not to enter a war. It almost seemed like asking "Is there an easy way to get out of doing this if I don't like it?" before deciding to take on a certain task, which sounds rather wimpy. I then started to think about previous wars that the United States has been in. "Exit strategy" is a relatively new term; what would it have meant in those situations? My conclusion is that, in war, there are two basic categories for exit strategies: win or retreat. The United States is fortunate in that we are separated from most of the rest of the world by two great oceans and that retreat is even a possibility. For most other countries the options are: win or be occupied by the enemy. However; this separation also means that, unless we want to start setting up colonies again, winning does not mean taking over the other country. This does not mean that the only objective for winning is to get rid of whatever hostile power was controlling the country. In the long run, it also means replacing that power with another one that is not hostile to the U.S. or will not become so. It means teaching the conquered people that, even though we were their enemies, we are not evil or bloodthirsty. If that is not accomplished, the ideologies of the previous political power still live on and we have not won. We learned this the hard way after WWI, and tried to change things in our actions after WWII. It is what we are currently trying (or should be trying) to do in Iraq, and our men on the ground know it.
Apart from winning, the other option is retreating, and I have not forgotten it. In war and in battles, it is always wise to have an escape plan. Sometimes retreat is not possible, but most of the time it is and should be considered as part of the planning. However; I would say that this planning is primarily logistical: can we get our men out if we have to? I would say that, in Iraq, the answer to this question is yes. But that is not what should be done. That would not be winning. I still believe that winning, in all of its aspects, is still possible and that we're working on it. But the process is a political one, and such things take time.
I believe that in all modern warfare, the situation we are currently in of "rehabilitating" the conquered country is inevitable and should be considered when deciding to go to war. If that is what people mean when they say "exit strategy," they are right. But to pull out before the task is accomplished is to invite more problems down the road. The root of terrorism is the hate that other people have toward the United States. Shouldn't we work on fixing that in the countries in which we have influence? Wouldn't pulling out of Iraq right now leave their currently unstable government and police force open to attack and overthrow from terrorist organizations? Wouldn't that put us right back where we started? I have heard a lot of people on the "left" talking about the current refugee situation in Iraq and how "it is against American principles to abandon our allies." To pull out of Iraq prematurely would be doing just that.
Edit:
After writing this post, I had to leave for work, and it was only then I realized that in all my discussion on why we shouldn't pull out of Iraq now, I had failed to set standards for when we should leave. This seemed a little bit hypocritical of me, so I thought about it all day and have come to this conclusion: We can and should leave Iraq when it is under the control of a stable and non-hostile government with an independant police force and army capable of dealing with the various problems of the country. Our soldiers are warriors, and should remain where there is still a war zone. Once an area is stable and under independant control, they should move on. When it is safe for our soldiers to walk the streets, those are streets they no longer need to patrol. The image that keeps getting displayed on the news is quite different, so I think that, for now, our soldiers are needed where they are.
I would also like to state that my comments on the Democratic debate were based on clips of the debate and may not reflect all of what was said. I have not seen anything since that would cause me to change what I have said, but if there was a more complete version that I missed and would affect my statements, let me know and I will re-think my words.
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| "There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
-C.S. Lewis
That Hideous Strength
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| I'm not dead yet!
In addition, it seems that the doom I have previously spoken of has been averted. The dynamics presentation itself went very well, and I continued to do well in the rest of the class. Official grades don't come out until tomorrow, but I think I had a very good semester in that respect (except for Materials Engineering. I slept in class almost every day, so I didn't do as well as I would like).
By the way, I am back home now and somewhat unpacked. I start work today.
Of interest in recent events is my encounter with the "evil eye." The week before finals, my eyes started to itch a little bit and produced more tears than normal. It wasn't very irritating, so I didn't think much of it. Then, on the afternoon of the Saturday before finals, someone told me that my left eye looked a little bit yellow. I still didn't think much of it. That evening, I looked in the mirror and the white of my left eye was orange. Not only that, but one side had swollen up to the point that if I looked to my left, the pressure from my eyelid would cause the white of my eye to fold over on itself. It didn't hurt at all, but I was still a bit concerned. Some friends took me to the emergency room. The doctor looked at my eye and said, "Wow. That's bizzare." Very comforting. He called in another doctor, and they discussed how the coloration might be explained by an advanced form of pinkeye, but that would lead to more irritation than I had. The swelling was something they had only seen in the elderly who had been drinking for 40 years. They had never heard of the two combined. They brought in a special lamp that looked like the thing they have at the eye-doctor, but after looking at my eye some more they still didn't know what it was. They told me that I was the bizzare case of the week, took a picture of the eye to show their doctor friends, gave me some eye drops, and referred me to an optomologist saying that I should get an appointment before Wednesday.
The next morning, the swelling had gone down slightly and the color was dimming. By Monday it was almost all gone. I called the optomologist, and the secretary told me that he would be out of state until Friday. I figured that I may as well wait until I came home. By the time finals were over, the orange color and swelling were completely gone, and now there isn't even an itch.
No one seems to have any idea what it was, how I got it, or how it went away.
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| DOOM!!!!!!!!
Classes are now in full swing here at LeTourneau, and it looks like I may have a few interesting ones. The one that is currently my favorite is Modern Physics (relativity is very interesting). Biblical Literature is a lot of reading, but is very informative. Materials Engineering has, thus far, been rather boring. It doesn't help that it's a long class in the morning. Computer Science should start getting better once the professor stops talking so much (he spent the first 55-minute class period expounding upon how software is everywhere. Enough, already; let me start working!!). He also seems to think that Mechanical Engineers have trouble grasping computer code. I plan to prove him wrong.
And then there's Dynamics.
Dynamics is often regarded as the death-class for engineers: you will either learn your material well or you will be ground to a fine powder. And from the stories, the professor is out to eat your soul. Apparently he enjoys finding the points of reasoning that students aren't sure of and letting them know about it. In front of the class. In a very humiliating manner.
However, I don't know first-hand if these stories are true. The professor has been out of the country with an engineering project for the first week and tomorrow will be the first day he will be in class. Up until this point it has been taught by a student aid.
Another "interesting" aspect of Dynamics is the presentation the each student is required to give. The student is assigned a section, chooses a problem from that homework set, makes it harder in some way, and solves it in front of the class. After the student is done, the professor grills them on their method.
Oh, and guess who's been assigned to give the first presentation of the year?
That's right: I will be instructing the class on problem solving method tomorrow under the scrutiny of the professor on his first day back. I have seen no presentations before and I have no personal experience with the professor. I can only do my best to make sure my method is logical and impervious.
It all happens tomorrow...
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