Saturday, September 02, 2006

America

I went to middle America this week... Chicago, Iowa, and Kansas City. You can still pay 65$ for a decent hotel in Des Moines. KC barbecue is a fabulous lunch but how do I eat that much every day... Those who read this already know I love Chicago.

The only bad part of my trip was on plane from Toronto to Chicago. I sat with a guy who obviously had a management job with a steel company.. Well dressed working on his laptop, blackberry toting 40ish management guy.

We started talking about the economy and the strength of it I made the point that I thought Alan Greenspan (former federal reserve chairman) was the most important american of the last 15 years. I just think that he managed to keep the world out of a deep recession and keep real wages rising.

The guy agreed with me that Greenspan had done a good job but then he launched into how great a job George Bush had done by cutting taxes. That cutting taxes was leading to prosperity. I don't understand that. He said that the deficit was manageable.. I said but look how much money you would have to make people's lives better if there was no war in Iraq.
This he did not like. He said that its a lot better to have the war over there than to have it over here.

he didn't like it when I asked him if he thought that the war was creating a whole generation of new terrorists like the soviet afghan war had created the last generation....

nope he didn't think so... "we " are showing them... nope..he did not beleive that there were no ties between Al Queda and Iraq.

I firmly believe these things... I think the war in terror in Iraq will create an exponential number of terrorists.... If I blamed america for the death of my parents and I am 16 --I would be a terrorist. I think that these kind of wars create arms in the wrong places.

I think that taking the war to Afghanistan was absolutely correct... you can't have camps to train people to come and attack us and get away with it.. you can' harbor a man who publicly claims to have sponsored a campaign of terror. But the war in Iraq? Nope I think George's administrator was still harboured emotions from Desert storm and lived the dream to the cost of many lives and billions of dollars.

The point is that there are many different view points. I am not sure how we get that way. Do we read different material... are our neighbors different? am I just a Canadian pacifist clouded by Canadian Media... .. I left thinking that the guy was just along for the ride and not using his mind to help the world-- but this is just the man in me talking...wanting to best him , or slash him..

This is the world.. many views, not enough judges to make decisions on what in really right, let alone what historically was right

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