My War to Bush to Why We Blog to AI

So I finished My War by Colby Buzzell. He’s the soldier who started a blog while stationed near Mosul and took some heat for it. It’s an excellent book and really gives an authentic view of at least one part of the Iraq war. But don’t go looking for any truth, any black and white facts about the war. It is right or is it wrong? Who the hell knows? From the book, it’s clear that some Iraqis are thrilled we’re there and some are not. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to determine objectively if that war was right or wrong.
Look at the facts:

Fact 1: We were told we were going there because Iraq had WMDs and it turned out there were no WMDs. That's a bad thing.

Fact 2: We removed Saddam Hussein who was clearly a criminal and caused much hardship and worse for the Iraqi people. So that’s a good thing.

It comes down to a “Do the ends justify the means?” question. Nothing ever ends, Adrian. (Name the reference and win a virtual prize. Or did I make a reference to this work before? No matter.)

What’s still undetermined is whether we’ll succeed in creating a democratic country in the Middle East and that will breed more democracy in that area of the world. That appears to be Bush’s plan. If it works, then Bush has got a chance of bring considered a great president. My opinion is that it won’t work because of one basic fact: you can’t force democracy. It has to happen naturally.

Anyway, back to the book. One of the more interesting parts of it is the idea that we should take control of the media ourselves. Dead Kennedys’ frontman Jello Biafra is Buzzell’s inspiration for this theory. In his book, Buzzell includes CNN’s version and the official army report of a particular engagement in Mosul where Buzzell was nearly killed. Then he writes the about it from his perspective in the middle of the firefight. He ends by asking if the media and the army are not telling the whole truth about what’s happening where he is in Mosul, what else are they not telling us about the war. Bloggers can do a good job of taking control of the media and it’s clear our impact is growing. I know that this little blog doesn’t reach that many people but I think it’s likely it’s had an impact on some of those who have read the posts. Perhaps those readers started a conversation with someone else because of something I’d written. I think that’s the goal really. Be the impetus for conversations. Get people talking about the things that I think are important.

And of course, the unimportant stuff too. Like Chris Daughtry. He was good again last night, huh? Of course, I would like to see him sing something a little outside of the rock and roll comfort zone.