The City Drops Into The Night - The here and now is fucked up. Self loathing doesn't stop the war, make it right, or fix the here and now. Neither do jingoism, gung-ho mentality, apathy, or a host of other things. Killing more people doesn't "fix things" but it is a way of moving on. The way through the Gordian Neighborhood is, apparently, to blow it up first. That's what we're looking at in the here and now. So, what happens next? What will we do in Iraq? Will we hand control over to people who will rule it like Saudi Arabia? Turkey? Pakistan? A new version of Saddam? If we don't point to past administrations, and the ghosts who have risen again to haunt the current one, how do we have any hope of avoiding just starting over again? Same Git, Different Decade. Is "democracy" just something we say as long as the democracy makes decisions we like? If you're an Iraqi daisy about to be cut, what's your feeling about the democracy that built the bomb, and the pumping fists and surging popularity numbers riding that bomb like a skeletal Slim Pickens? How, exactly do I learn to stop worrying? Is it easier to be killed by a few madmen with a plane and a mandate from god, or by someone with who feels he has a mandate from the voters? A war about our safety in a world where it's not nations who are our worst enemies, it may be that perception is an important battlefield. I guess there are a lot of questions in the air.