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What I should have been doing today, on what is
my next-to-last day of leave before I return to the spice mines, was making
Important Observations on the statements of outraged Scottish politicians like
Jeff did, here.
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Muslims who resent the British way
of life should leave the UK, regardless of whether they are citizens or not, a
senior Conservative said last night in comments that have heightened already
tense community relations.
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Or, speaking of Scottish politicians, I could have
sharpened my knives on the truly odious George Galloway, like Harry did here.
If sunshine truly does disinfect, then this character needs ultraviolet
spotlights on him 24/7.
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Two of your beautiful daughters are
in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to
your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab
world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two
beautiful Arab daughters. Why? Because they are too weak and too corrupt to do
anything about it.
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Or, I could have noted the murder of an American
blogger in Basra, apparently for opposing the emerging theocratic
mafia taking charge there, like Smash did. Here's a guy who was willing to light
a candle, rather than just curse the darkness. Improve peoples lives. And he
gets snuffed for it. It wears away at you, all of this.
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Like the news of 21
dead Marines in two days in Al Anbar does. Even if you suspect,
because you know the Marine Corps, that there will be a reckoning, that even now
the storm clouds are gathering. Because you know that won't bring them back, and
it wears away at you and you wonder how much more? How much longer? And you shut
down the little voice from the least respectable part of your conscience that
keeps suggesting, "Step aside, let them have their little nasty civil war. We
can come back when it's over, if we don't like the gang that claws its way to
the top of the corpse heap, and break them up in a stand-up fight." You shut it
down because you realize the human costs that would entail, the frightful loss
of innocent life, the end of all pretense to morality in the world. But still,
you are tempted.
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So what I did instead was look at farms
and houses back in old Virginia, trying to imagine a different life, a
slower pace. A place where the rest of the world can't come in. A place where no
one's son has to go off and die for a people you are beginning to secretly
suspect are not worthy of the sacrifice.
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But I don't think there's anyplace like that
anymore. And the only hope we have of ever finding a place like that again is to
keep pushing through. So it's back to work on Friday.
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"All
causes shall give way: I am in blood

Stepp'd in so far
that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as
tedious as go
o'er"
- William Shakespeare,
MacBeth
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