Rhode Islanders Go Off to War

Well, it looks like we are going to war. It's pretty horrific. The 48 hour "Get out of Dodge" ultimatum was...well, cartoonish. It's not so much that we are going to war (We've been to war before) but it's just that we are going to war so ineptly. If we are going to bomb the heck out of Iraq, and then rebuild a democracy there JUST as ineptly, why are we bothering?



I have almost begun to buy into the idea that war might be the lesser of evils (Winston Churchill's grandson, Winston S. Churchill, made a compelling argument that World War II might not have happened if the League of Nations had stepped in stronger on Adolph Hitler's flouting of their policies-- of course that assumes that Saddam=Hitler, which is not a proven fact at all. Of course Saddam is a bad guy, but whether or not he is the Hitler of our generation is not quite yet known.



The thing that has deterred me is Bush's speech to the nation. If our war is about stamping out terrorism, then why was Bush's first admonition to Hussein "Don't bomb your oil wells" It's about the money at least as much about anything else.


As part of the war effort, many of the reserves and National Guard units are getting called up to war. A friend of mine who is a captain in the National Guard expects to be called up. "If the war is on for any length of time, I'd expect everyone will be called up," he told me about a week ago.

Find out which Units have been called up (via the Providence Journal.)