Falling Trees
First off, forgive me if you feel that this post belongs in comments.
I think that there is certainly value to keeping abreast of the details of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To be honest, until I started reading Cyetain’s posts I generally went out of my way to ignore the micro-facts on the ground aspect of the war. I think that Daniel fails to acknowledge the potential importance of simply recognizing the fact that these things are happening. Now, he seems to believe that Cyetain is either skewing the facts or getting his information from bad sources, and that may or not be the case, I don’t know.
However, I think that Daniel points the way to a fair criticism of Cyetain’s posts in that, beyond the most basic “if a tree falls” value, its unclear where Cyetain is trying to take us, “us” being readers and “us” being a nation that is, for better or worse, at war.
I am interested in the first question because I want to see this blog develop into a place where ideas are born and cultivated, and so I think it is fair to challenge each other to reach for more depth in posts. Now, my thinking about this has changed over the blog’s short lifespan. Originally I had thought of the site as a place to dump interesting ideas. Now I am thinking of it more as a sort of online magazine, where I hope we might move more towards slightly longer form “think pieces,” for lack of a better term.
I am interested in the second question, what is Cyetain saying to us as a nation about the situation in Iraq, because I think it points to a crucial problem for those of us who oppose the administration in its approach to terror and beyond. It is hardly enough, at this late date, to continue to point up their failures. I think that there was a time for that during the election cycle. What I find much more interesting and timely now is a focus on where those of us who oppose the administration would take the country. This is an issue that I hope to post on in depth sometime soon.
