Friday, December 15, 2006

Happy Birthday Betsy the Babe!!  

Interesting comments on What is Victory, below. 

I'm watching Scoble's interview with Mark Lucovsky at Google. I have to admit there was a point where my chin hit the floor. Guess where that is. Beyond that point, well, I don't really support the idea of a search engine where you can only find one brand of hotel. I believe in modeless software, search should always be search, nothing more nothing less. Perhaps the day of the "professional" developer is over. 

Scoble explains why no hard questions for Bill Gates.  

Remember the press room thing I wanted to do, why don't we organize one for big tech companies and the same kinds of bloggers that went to Microsoft's thing, except the bloggers pay their own way and the companies pay us to get 1/2 hour to present and then a few of their people can mingle throughout the day. We buy food, wifi, a big hotel suite (or small ballroom), level the playing field and let the ideas flow without worrying so much about social behavior. I figure we could do a first class job for about $25K for a day. 

Wired reviews MP3 tag editors for Windows, Mac & Linux. 

What is victory? 

On the lunch walk with Lance on Wednesday, we talked about the level of reality the MSM is willing to report, and how it lags behind discernable reality by a matter of weeks or months.

For example, it wasn't until after the election that they were willing to call the fighting in Iraq a civil war. Now the discussion has moved beyond that, and they're almost willing to say we're losing the war in Iraq, and that the President somehow wants a strategy to win the war. (They quote the incoming SecDef, heroically, for admitting that we're "not winning," which isn't exactly the same as losing.)

Going all the way back to the beginning of the war, the MSM didn't ask the obvious question -- given that there's no evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, why are we invading them now? Wouldn't it be more prudent to focus all our energy at rooting out and destroying the people who organized the attack? It seems we should have been talking about that, not just in hindsight, it seemed that way at the time, too.

But now, in late 2006, we seem to still be at least one step behind where we should be. When talking about winning and losing, how could we know, when we haven't got a way to measure success or failure? Simple, obvious point -- but, again, we're not looking at what's necessary and obvious, at our peril, really. It could get a lot worse. I don't think people are factoring that in. Or so it seems.

In World War II, victory in Europe was clear when Hitler was dead and the Allies occupied Berlin. The Pacific war was over and won when the Japanese surrendered and we occupied Tokyo. Even the Cold War had a clear outcome, amazingly. I suspect most people wouldn't have thought it would ever end, but it did. We won that war too.

I suppose we could spell out some formula for victory in Iraq, but until the President tells us what his definition is, there's no point. Whatever the goal, I certainly wouldn't support sacrificing any more American lives even to turn Iraq into a peaceful country. And from everything I've read, it seems this would take 10 or 20 years, if it could happen at all. But I think there's reason to believe that Iraq can't get on with finding peace until we leave, as long as the country is occupied, that will be the issue everyone talks about and fights over.

So maybe the MSM could help us by starting to make this the question of the day: What is victory, Mr President, while we're waiting for you to tell us how you're going to win?

Sincerely,

The People of the World