I've finished the first draft of my first novel in 32 years. I'm sure the people at Knopf will be relieved.

Here's a map to the French Consulate in Los Angeles. Pay them a visit why not? Let the French know what you think of their myopic policy of cowardly greed. Or just call them at:
(310) 235-3200
Later.
Yahoo! Yellow Pages - Consulate General De France (310) 235-3200

I understand the lure of the peace march: You get to go outside and look cool, if you are lucky you will be in the rain and then you'll have the wet look that goes so well with indignant rage; You get to express your indignant rage; You get to tell the ladies how big your indignant rage is; there isn't a single aspect of the peace march that doesn't just kick ass. The peace march is the best chance you have on that particularly day of getting some.

Hell, I marched in all sorts of demonstrations during the first Gulf War. I really and truly felt the indignant rage course through me. "War for oil" and all that. I really and truly believed it was a stupid war, that all war was stupid and evil and destructive. Of course in the back of my mind I was wondering if any of these honeys I was marching next to wanted to "do it for peace," as it were. None did.

Yeah, I thought "this is one big evil," and then I read about the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. I then realized that what I should have been marching against was the U.S. support of Saddam. The war against Iraq, then, was the first good policy towards Iraq we had in a decade. The commitment to disarming Iraq and removing Saddam is the best policy regarding Iraq that we've had in another decade.

Anti-war demonstrators are pleading to give the inspectors more time, it's one of their slogans for God's sake. But there seems to be some misunderstanding about what the inspector's are doing. The main purpose of their inspections is to take an accounting of the disarmament program of Iraq, or lack thereof. This isn't some James Bond film where Hans Blix is going to enter a presidential palace and twist the nose on a statue to reveal a secret elevator to an underground fortress where Saddam sits atop a laser cannon and says, "So Blix, you have found my secret lair. It's too bad you won't live to tell the world." To which Blix replies, "Not on my watch, Saddam," the music rises and they fight until it looks like Saddam has won, until he's destroyed by his own twisted plan in a moment of delicious irony.

The major purpose of the inspectors is to find out the fate of Iraq's public arsenal of weapons. It's all rather boring really. Not only that, but Iraq is already in violation of the U.N. resolution. Let's say, as an example, that you purchase 500 tons of wheat. But when you go to pick it up it's not there. Now, you've already paid for it and you need the wheat but when you ask for an explanation and either the wheat or the money you paid for it, you are given a fourteen thousand page explanation that says that the wheat does exist and you already picked it up. Also, you and twelve people are invited to search for it anywhere in Texas you'd like. How much time do you need to understand that they're screwing you?

Okay, let's say that even with all the evidence that's been compiled for twenty years that the Saddam regime is dangerous on a worldwide scale, that war is still too abhorrent to contemplate and that containment is the policy of choice. Who pays for that containment? The world knows of the grave humanitarian situation in Iraq, yet where are the marches to demonstrate against these injustices? Isn't the systematic repression, execution, and torture of a civilian population worthy of a march? I guess not. The rhetoric of the anti war movement is based upon the philosophy: out of sight, out of mind.

Perhaps the most indicative exclusion within the movement is the complete lack of debate about the motivations behind peace. Why is it France is so adamantly committed against war and for containment? There is perhaps no country as committed to self-interest as France. Chirac runs a close second to Saddam himself as the person with the most vested interest in seeing that there is no regime change within Iraq. When antiwar protesters accuse Bush and the U.S. of wanting to go to war for oil, they should take a long look at who gets the oil if there's peace. France is more dedicated to cheese for the sake of cheese than they are peace for the sake of peace. Iraq has no more staunch ally than French greed.

Unless you count the anti war demonstrators' collective ignorance. There's nothing wrong with being anti war as a general philosophy. The problem is that any absolute philosophy includes a significant price tag. Anti war appeasement was the decisive factor that let loose World War II. I won't quote Edmund Burke, but his essay Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents bears prescience.

The anti war protests are not an act of cowardice, but neither are they an act of courage; they are simply an act of conviction. If the protestors really were resolute, profoundly so, to stop the coming war they should travel en masse to Iraq in peaceful protest. Fighting for peace from the safety of a fortified democracy ruled by law is neither especially difficult nor effective. If they truly believed that the war is not the solution but that the terror that is Iraq must cease as a state, then march on Baghdad, not Washington, not London, not Paris. And if they are not willing to do that, if they are not willing to put themselves in harm's way for a cause in which they supposedly believe, then what implication does that have for the peace movement?

Hey, it's v day. Which means Tommy gets his stitches out today. Goooooo Tommy.

I got these from Rachel Lucas's site. Though they were created by someone else.

Distribute this with permission of creator (though maybe not Creator)
This one as well.

Here's a white feather you can send to France: