Puffs of Smoke

Since I last posted there has been a war on the other side of the world, won or lost depending on your standpoint. For us, isolated here in Australia, the turmoil is distant, little more than puffs of smoke on television screens. But each of those puffs of smoke represent mangled bodies, dreams, the beauties of loved ones smashed to smithereens. It's hard to do anything but look on in astonishment from afar. I have a new phone, and now, with the technology, it's possible to sit in a cafe and watch the bombing in Beirut while sipping a latte. It's the cruelty of modernity, that thousands, millions of experiences are reduced to pixels on a screen, to abstraction.

I've had the past week off sick after a kidney, urinary tract infection gone haywire. It hasn't been much fun and the antibiotics make me sick and vague. But it's been very nice to be away from work for awhile, to just live a normal life instead of being run ragged on a daily basis. I'm 54 years old with two teenage kids to care for and I'm at work at 7.30am most mornings. Anyone who dares to complain about their lives or how hard it is to cope with the kids gets short shrift from me. This country's full of taxpayer funded bludgers, a situation which has only got worse under the Howard government, and not being one of them wears you out. I got a brief insight, or window, into what it was like to just potter around on the dole.

Although I took a week off with holiday pay, it was nice that the dishes were done, that the laundry was roughly up to date, the housework done. Normally I just never have time to get everything done. Burnt out; is how I feel a lot of the time. My ex is back in town, and from this I feel nothing but exasperation. She is talking about taking the kids back so they spend half the time with hert; that woman can never leave anything alone for five seconds. The kids are happy, settled and doing well at school and all she wants to do is create chaos for her own selfish purposes. To fill the gaping black hole which can never be filled, to make herself feel better. It drives me mad. I want to be free. I am so glad I have bought my cottage in the country, somewhere to escape to. I fell off the real estate ladder during separation, and her eternal chaos, and haven't been able to get back into the hyper-inflated Sydney market. We could have been rich, but she would never have stopped until she had got every last cent; so in one way it's probably for the better. And now, head lifted high, radio show back on track and working hard, we are back in the stream of public display.

NEWS:

New York Times:

Editorial:

As everyone with a television is aware, Lebanon has just suffered through a terrible month, with more than 1,000 people killed, most of them innocent civilians. But Iraq has suffered through an even worse month. Since June, more than 3,000 Iraqis have been killed each month, and the rate continues to rise. While Lebanon is now trying to pick up the pieces, Iraq is falling apart at an accelerating pace.
As Americans debate where to go from here on Iraq, one thing should be clear. Staying the course until President Bush leaves office 29 months from now is not an option. It is no longer even clear just what course America is on. Most of what Washington now claims to be doing cannot withstand the most elementary reality test.
Just this week, Mr. Bush defined America’s purpose as supporting an inclusive national unity government. Every day, it becomes increasingly clear that there is no such unity government, that there never has been and that the various branches of the Iraqi leadership are not trying to create one. ....

The other key element of Mr. Bush’s policy is his promise that as Iraqi forces stand up, American forces will stand down. Even on the rare occasions that Iraqi forces have stood up, they have often been unreliable and ineffective. In June, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced a drive by Iraqi and American troops to secure Baghdad. Baghdad became even less secure, and more American troops had to be called in to do a job they were supposed to be phasing out of. More Iraqis were killed in July than in any other month of the war.
And the mayhem in Baghdad continues unabated. Local policing is, in fact, a job that only Iraqis can do successfully. But almost three and a half years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, there is still no Iraqi force capable of taking this on. And it is hard to see how the present Iraqi government will ever field such a force, so long as its power depends on armed sectarian militias that fuel the Baghdad violence.
Things in Iraq are not going to get better by themselves. The answer is not blind perseverance in staying a course that has demonstrably failed.