February 10th 2007

The first part of this, I'm writing about some bushes we were planting. The homeowners association where I live were very specific about how many bushes you had to have in front of your house. They seem less draconian about that these days.

The rest of this, I'm writing about my thoughts (at the time) on the Second Gulf War. Looking back, I suppose there is still some of this I agree with and some of it I don't.

We planted some rose bushes today. We planted three to replace four that we planted last year that didn't quite survive. The homeowner's association finally started complaining about us not having the right number of bushes.

Thoughts on the current war in Iraq:

It seems many (most?) people are now opposed to the U.S. being in Iraq. The reasons vary but I think it mostly comes down to the slow progress being made. Many argue that the U.S. is there illegally or under false pretenses. The way I see it, there are many legal and mor justifications for being there. Firs, there are the many violations of UN resolutions and treaty that ended the 1st gulf war (no-fly zone violations, shoot at coalition aircraft, etc.). Also, whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion is certainly in doubt, the fact remains he never verifiably destroyed weapons he was known to have as required by the conditions ending the first gulf war. One should also not forget that Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who took power

by force, killed many of his own people, and had no real legal or moral authority to rule to begin with.

So the real issue in my mind isn't whether or not invasion can be justified but was it worth it? The cost in lives is tragic and the cost in money tremendous. The gains in security and regional stability are questionable, particularly when one considers what could have been done with the money spent. If the same effort had been put into eliminating foreign dependency on energy (oil), we could have potentially been much better off. Forcing a change to electric, ethanol and/or hydrogen fuel cell cars alone probably could make a tremendous difference.