"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see"

I.am.so.sick.of.hearing.about.JonBenet.and.the.potential.killer. Not only do I have the extreme pleasure of hearing about it on the network news (9 minutes. They spent 9 minutes the other night on that story. The NSA case? Less that 30 seconds.) I'm also fortunate to live about 3 1/2 hours away from Mr. Ramsey so my 1 1/2 hours of local news covers it as well. Thankfully not all news organizations have lost their minds. NewsHour buried it around the 8th story in the news summary the other night. ENOUGH ALREADY. There's nothing more to report until after DNA tests come back so can we please hear about anything else?!?

Like, I don't know, that Israel mostly likely broke the terms of the ceasefire agreement? Israel is saying that it didn't really break it because the operation was aimed at disrupting the transfer of weapons from Syria and Iran to Hezbollah which-if indeed that was what was going on-violates the cease fire agreement. Lebanon is saying that Israel violated the agreement. All of this finger-pointing and you-started-it essentially demonstrates just how ineffective and weak the U.N. agreement is to begin with. That was some top notch diplomatic maneuvering on behalf of Condi and Co.

Last night the War on Terror (I really like to capitalize it. It gives it so much more legitimacy) was compared to the War on Drugs. Funny because the NYT has a really interesting article on the U.S.'s latest operation: Plan Columbia. I'm not even kidding. That's what it's called.

"The latest chapter in America's long war on drugs, a six-year, $4.7 billion effort to slash Colombia's coca crop, has left the price, quality and availability of cocaine on American streets virtually unchanged."

That's the first sentence of a 4 page article that's really worth reading. There are estimates from drug policy analysts that the drug war has cost American taxpayers upwards of 40 billion dollars annually in recent years. 40 billion dollars and things have remained virtually unchanged. Why? Because the War on Drugs is a war on "...[an] open-ended war against an elusive and ill-defined enemy." (taken from the article)

Now doesn't that sound familiar? I know of people who are more than willing to temporarily give up some of their civil liberties and freedoms in order to keep America safe during this War on Terror. The problem is that it's an open-ended war against an elusive and ill-defined enemy. It will not end. What are the objectives? What is the battle plan? Who gets to decide who's a terrorist and who is not? Because I'd bet some people in Lebanon view Hezbollah as freedom fighters defending their country from the aggression of Israel just as I'm sure there are people in Iraq who view the U.S. as terrorists.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines terrorism as: "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."

Isn't that kinda what we did in Iraq? We violated international law by opting for a preemptive strike against a sovereign nation that posed no immediate threat to us. And we did it to coerce a government for ideological and political reasons.

It's so complicated. So unbelievably complicated. I wish it was as easy as doing whatever it takes to keep America safe. I wish that we could eliminate terror from the world. But until we come up with a way to rid the world of terror that doesn't involve using terror to win methinks we're in for a long and ultimately losing battle.

Good thing we can all afford and easily obtain cocaine to keep our spirits up.