something else to say about the war: IT HASN'T HAPPENED. everyone's freaking out about it and our minds are getting pumped full of details about how devestating, horrible, atrocious, brutal, it will inevitably be, but it is still just a possibility (however probable). it's important to hold on to its not-yet-ness - there's still time, still hope ["for what?" you might ask - max c. sez: "no hope=no fear" - trungpa rinpoche stresses the "hopelessness" of enlightenment, etc.]. feel like Ginsberg declaring the Vietnam War over in "Wichita Vortex Sutra." but there is that utopian moment before something has happened, the utopia of "still not yet."

for what it's worth, doesn't the fact that we are willing to send troops into Iraq imply that we (notice the "we" - written like a true American - "our troops" "our president" "our country" - who were "we" again?) believe Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction? If they did, wouldn't they be using them?
the media coverage makes the whole buildup seem slow motion. we've been talking and thinking about this for months. the slow motion makes it all appear scripted. what will happen next? has the end been composed already? what if there's a surprise ending? what if the whole thing isn't about Iraq after all, but about, say, the UN? What if Bush is just building up to the US leaving the UN or asking them to move shop to Brussels? the war seems so real and pending to so many - what if it were neither?

and is this imperialism? the war on Iraq seems like imperialism in the traditional, Schumpeter sense - forcible extension of sovereignty over another national territory, and not just the plain old leninist capitalism=imperialism. that is, no longer a metaphor of indirect control but a real, physical control of another country.