The New Conquistadores

Not having my own telephone connection at home…STILL..and not having a television set has really restricted my awareness of the world. I used to read the news online daily. Now I might connect every second or third day and I don’t have the news daily. Oddly enough the world seems to continue to evolve even as I am unaware of it. That’s reassuring, I suppose, but it would be even more reassuring if the world could find a better path here and there while I am unaware. The American insistence that it can “fix” places like Iraq and Afghanistan is mind-bogglingly naïve. Having nice boys from Ohio and Louisiana maintain order in places like these is rather like taking your Japanese made vacuum cleaner (complete with instructions in Japanese) to a Mack Truck repair station for an overhaul. The truck station probably has lots of great tools, but the staff haven’t the slightest idea how the vacuum cleaner works, nor can they read the manual. So all these nice boys from Ohio and Louisana and New York and Idaho are walking around a country where they can’t read a sign, write a note, pass the time of day with a local, ask directions, buy groceries, basically function in any normally human way, but they do carry some rather astounding weaponry and have the power of life and death. Bizarre concept. Conquest is such an awkward thing.