Belated “Thank You”

One of Canadians’ apparent points of contention with President Bush is that it has taken him four years to make a trip across the norther border. You can get a little sense of that just from the front page of their major news site.
Here’s what CNN is running regarding President Bush’s speech this morning:

President Bush is in Halifax, Nova Scotia, today giving Canadians a belated “thank you” for helping Americans after the 9/11 attacks. When the United States closed its airspace after the terrorist strikes, more than 200 airliners were diverted to airports across Canada, where stranded travelers were welcomed into homes.

And here’s what the CBC is running (emphasis added):

U.S. President George W. Bush arrived in Halifax on Wednesday to thank Atlantic Canadians for opening their doors to stranded Americans after the Sept. 11 attacks three years ago.

You do have to wonder what the point is in giving a “thank you” speech three years after the fact. Another excuse to talk about the “war on terror,” I suppose.

“Blog” No. 1

Top Ten Merriam-Webster word searches of 2004:

1. blog
2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration

As the story points out, eight of the words are related to news events.
I’m not surprised by most of the words on the list. But hurricane? People haven’t figured those out yet?

Bad Guy Count

Juan Cole has an interesting post examining differences that liberals and conservatives see in the use of military force. But here he makes a good point on the body count mentality of some in the Pentagon:

The US military seems strangely unaware of the realities of insurgencies. It seems to think there are a limited number of “bad guys,” who can all be killed or captured. The possibility that virtually all able-bodied men in Fallujah supported the insurgency, and that many are weekend warriors, does not seem to occur to them. In fact, as Mao noted, guerrillas swim in a sea of supportive civilians. The US military slides suggest that now that the bad guys have been taken care of, the civilians can be won over. That this outcome is highly unlikely does not seem to occur to them.

As long as we’re simply killing bad guys, we’re never going to turn this thing around in Iraq; more will just keep popping up. The only thing that’s going to stop this is if we get the Iraqi civilian population to turn against the insurgency. And, unfortunately, we haven’t seen a great deal of progress on that front during the past six months.

Red November

It’s the last day of November. Unfortunately, at least 133 U.S. troops serving in Iraq will never get to flip their calendars from November to December, because they’re now dead. When it’s all said and done, November might be the the most deadly month for US forces in Iraq.

“I think it [Iraq] has been a remarkable success story to date, when you look at what has been accomplished overall. I think the President deserves great credit for it.”
Vice President Dick Cheney
October 25, 2004