I really don't like Lieberman, by the way. He's about as far away as one can get from my ideal democrat.

Anyway, Leven's amendment was pretty interesting. It was basically giving Bush exactly what he says he wants. Which is entirely different than what the white house/lieberman amendment wants. It says, we're authorized to use multilateral force. We're authorized to use force in accordance with a U.N. recognized failure of Iraq to meet resolutions. And if the President feels the U.N. is moving too slow, it allows for the President to come back at that time and call the Congress together on very short notice to attempt to approve unilateral force at that time.

Which is exactly what Bush said he wanted in his speech to the public. Something about the need to be able to use force if Iraq does not comply with demands the US is crafting through the U.N.

What the white house bill is requesting is the ability to use unilateral force now, to ignore the U.N. if the president decides he wants to (and until further notice - no sunset).

Now, this isn't speaking to my own personal beliefs of what should be done. I'm way too confused to be able to put that into words. But I like the Leven amendment just as a technique to clear away the manipulative murkiness that Bush is trying to pull and say, "This is what you are trying to convince the public you want. Go ahead and take it."

So what'll really happen? This'll be derided as not having enough teeth, or of getting in the way of the president, or he'll be called a terrorist-lover, or whatever. And of course, I didn't see one word written about this tonight in the evening press.

What do I think should happen? I have no idea, and frankly don't have patience for the peaceniks that think that what should be done is to "not go to war!". The question is what to do, not what to not do. I mean, I agree that we just should not be in a time and place right now where we need to go to war, and I also believe that if there actually is a legitimate need for us to "solve this problem", it's largely our own damn fault.

But what's maddening is that I firmly believe that before we start doing the right things, we have to first stop doing the wrong things. And I don't know what the hell they are, and we never find out until years after they happen.

Since we're all theorizing, I'll just throw ideas out there that expose my lack of foreign policy knowledge. I think we should reduce our dependence on foreign oil. That's the only power they have over us. Then we could stop seeing them as adversaries. Concurrently, we should scale back and eventually eliminate all the occupying we are doing over there. That's the whole problem that Osama had with us. Having a presence in another region should be for the purposes of communication and cultural presence, not control.

Then we stop sanctions. I don't understand sanctions. They're good at hurting a disorganized country, but organized countries just find ways around it. And sanctions then reduce whatever positive influence we have over these countries by making american stuff (thought, ideals, democracy) even less accessible to them. The way to encourage goodness is to be good in a visible manner, isn't it? When we sanction, don't we just cut ourselves off from them?

Then just spend all this money that we'd be spending on war, spend it on aid. Aid that isn't funneled through corrupt governments, aid that is instead funneled through independent and, I guess, U.N. recognized aid organizations. Use the money to make friends on the ground.

After a while the only folks that would hate us would be the true freaks, and not the people actually sort of have a point when they say we are the global bullies that need to be resisted. Spend money on infrastructure that can't be controlled by their governments. Give their people more ability to act like a democracy in a way that their governments can't stop. Give them decentralized communications technology for them to use if they want, relax immigration standards so they can come to America. Pass stricter anti-trust laws in America at the same time as passing more incentives for small and mid-sized businesses, and then encourage the smaller and mid-sized companies in America to be able to invest in these other countries, expanding in an interdependent but NOT monopolistic manner.

Start culture exchange programs. Import films and art exhibits. Fund public television to advertise an understanding of other cultures. Allow them to invest in our companies.

I guess where I'm going this is that I believe countries are about culture, not resources. I don't care about protecting our country's GDP or whatever, the point is the world's GDP and our ability to share resources. It's not about building profit at the expense of someone else, it's about increasing efficiency everywhere, and protecting the cultural diversity at the same time. There's a difference between integration and homogenization.