stfw?

[sisyphusshrugged]

I am an optimist by nature, and last week in Tel Aviv an Israeli friend told me he knew why. He said it was because I was short - and short people tend to be optimists because they can only see the part of the glass that is half full, not half empty.

These days, though, even someone at my eye level is having a hard time seeing the part of the glass in Iraq that is half full. I am still an optimist on Iraq, but a "worried optimist." My optimism is based on one big thing that has happened - and my worrying is based on two smaller things that have not.

The big thing that has happened in Iraq, which you can really feel when you're there, is that there is a 100 percent correlation of interests between America's aspirations for Iraq and the aspirations of Iraq's silent majority. We both want the same thing for Iraq - that it not become Iran, that it not become Saddam, but that it become a decent, modern-looking Iraqi alternative. This overlap of aspirations is hugely important. This is not Vietnam...


The Nixon circle is now closed.

I have to say, in the increasingly crowded arena of special pleading on behalf of this war, this is the first appearance I'm aware of for the delusional short person lobby.

Comments

James R MacLean

[(Anonymous)]

email (email:jamesrmaclean@hotmail.com) | website (www.jamesrmaclean.com) This is really funny. I'm regarded in my circles as super short--could dangle my feet off a NAND gate, yada yada yada. I have this dear friend from Poland, a professor of economics, who was quite tall; we had this big debate via email re: the invasion of Iraq, which I was deadset against. He regarded Saddam as being sufficiently terrible to validate the invasion regardless. After a lengthy rant of mine, in which I explained in particularly purple prose how much dread I had about the thing, he wrote back:

James: You are a pessimist. You see the glass as half empty..."

Actually, I see a glass with fifty bullet holes in it.