Conversations with my brother 

Iraq. War. George and Saddam. U.S. terrorism. Marriage and relationships. A few of the subjects of a very long conversation with my brother today. It was an amazing couple of hours and I think we both have a better appreciation of where the other is in life. Our conversation meandered to the topic of having kids and I suggested that having children might be a kind of child abuse. A child does not ask to be given life. It seems to me that given the fucked up state of the world it’s not unreasonable to suggest that life may not be a gift, but a punishment.

Perhaps that’s really twisted Denny logic, I don’t know. I do know that I do not plan on having children. I couldn’t bring a child into this world and feel that it was a good thing.

06/03/2003 
The results of the Iraq “War”? 

Ted Rall at Alternet describes The Rise of a Bigger, Better Taliban:

We warned the Bush Administration that invading Iraq would destabilize the Middle East and spread radical anti-American Islamism. We told the American people that taking out Saddam Hussein without a viable government to replace him would open a vacuum for anarchy, civil war and a power grab by radical Iranian-backed Shiite clerics. Now the antiwar movement’s doomsday scenarios have been fulfilled so completely that military history scarcely mentions a more thoroughly botched endeavor Ð and we’ll be living with the fallout for years. 

When we argued that Donald Rumsfeld’s low-budget occupation of Iraq would turn out as disastrously as it had in Afghanistan, right-wing Republicans called us stupid and un-American. Now that we’ve been proven correct on every count, is it too much to expect an apology? Maybe so. Given George W. Bush’s performance on the economy and the war on terrorism (where’s Osama? Saddam? the WMDs? the surplus?), betting against him hardly makes one a prophet. And no one is less pleased with the speed and totality of the Iraqi catastrophe than those of us who called it in advance.