Well, it’s confirmed. I have no self-discipline whatsoever. My plan was to add to this blog on a daily basis, and here it is 5 days later. Oops. Anyway, I’m back. I am facing the usual problem of having too much to write about and not knowing where to start. I guess that is the point of the exercise. Just write whatever comes to mind and don’t stop until 15 minutes are up. OK, just before this I was reading a New York Times column by Paul Krugman. (One of my favorite internet pasttimes is to check out the “most e-mailed” news stories from Yahoo news and the New York Times. It is the source of many interesting anecdotes and factual tidbits.) In any event, today’s Krugman column is currently at the top of the NY Times list. He is talking about “willful ignorance” as it relates to the “war on terrorism”. I think that calling it a “war on terrorism” is just about as stupid as declaring a “war on drugs”. We’ve got enough real wars in the world without trying to turn law enforcement efforts into battles. In my opinion, the “war on terrorism” is being handled in the worst possible way. The effort was supposed to be to obtain justice for the victims of the 9/11 attacks and to prevent future terrorist attacks. Those are law enforcement functions not military functions. The “evildoers” are not soldiers; they are political radicals committing crimes. I have yet to see a battle between Al Qaeda operatives and some other army. They sneak in, kill people, and run away. They don’t attempt to obtain a victory or maintain a conquest. By turning the search for justice into a war, you are forcing the world’s muslims to choose up sides. They can choose to side with other muslims with whom they share a number of political views about Israel and Saudi Arabia as well as a religion, or they can choose to side with the United States whose main interest in muslim countries seems to be to exploit them for their natural resources and who have tended to prop up dictatorships. Then trying to drag Saddam Hussein into the “war on terrorism” when he doesn’t have anything to do with it other than being an Arab, you only make it worse. I have a lot more to say on the subject, but my 15 minutes is up.