wasted

(I know I said I wasn't going to blog for a while...but I've put in two unusually productive days of writing and editing, and I'm more or less on schedule now. Besides, this came easy.)


Unlike Gino, I don't entertain any strong feelings about Barak Obama. I simply view him to be a blank-slate candidate, a charismatic guy with nice hair (the last bald man elected president commanded D-Day, and prior to that was well before television), and someone with little enough baggage that voters simply tend to project their hopes onto him. Which is to say, his top qualifications in 2008 are "not a Republican" and "not Hillary".

The fact that he benefits from a significant proportion of the population who want to vote for a black man just to prove how Not Racist they are is really just icing on the cake. In fact, I'd say his next-most-important qualifications are "not Al Sharpton", "not Jesse Jackson", and "not Alan Keyes"--a truly unfortunate set of candidates, when you consider that the least kooky among them is Al Sharpton. (I'm saying this having voted for Keyes once, myself.)

The one thing I really do (or at least, did) like about Obama was the fact that he has been pretty consistent in his opposition to the Iraq war clusterfuck.

"We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should never been waged, and on which we have now spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted."

So I am rather disappointed that he has backed off of this statement that the lives of American troops have been “wasted” in Iraq.

Because in a word--they have.

Every American (and Iraqi) blown up in the cradle of civilization is one less person that could otherwise be living, working, falling in love, raising children, helping their neighbors out, coaching little league, supporting their church, starting a business, watching the sunset, taking vacations, having a beer on a Saturday afternoon, walking their dog, and doing whatever it is that they would do with the little bit of life that they have under even the best of circumstances. And to my mind, the fact that they won’t, and for no discernable benefit whatsoever, is the very definition of “waste”.

Maybe I’m just as guilty of projection here, but I think that this is exactly what Mr. Obama had in mind when he said what he said, his subsequent revisions notwithstanding. Because it isn’t exactly a radically pacifist idea that soldiers sent off to die ought to at least be fighting for something.

The incessant need to be all things to all people in this quadrennial beauty contest we put on to determine our leader has a real way of grinding any actual convictions to dust. As a result, we usually end up the leaders we deserve.