8/15

Will August 15th become another day associated with destruction, much as December 7th and 9/11? We could say, of course, that the earlier association of August 15th—the unconditional surrender of the Japanese at the end of WWII—is anything but destruction, having ended the war. Then again, we did effectively wipe out many key elements of Japanese culture and tradition with that act.

This year, of course, it is the deadline for the interim Iraqi government to deliver a draft constitution. I don't have a problem with deadlines, though my students sometimes do. I do, however, have a problem with the fact that the U.S. government's primary mouthpiece to the media, when this issue has come up over the last month, has been our Secretary of Defense.

I would have liked it if Bush had been doing this. Heck, even the Press Secretary is a better choice. Or the Veep. We need to ask ourselves, however, why the person who oversees our military as a whole is encouraging an interim government to get its job done on schedule—a schedule, I might add, that was put forth by the United States.

This is why diplomacy has been lacking in more than a few places of late. Then again, Rumsfeld has never served a day in his life, so he's not really a warrrior, is he?