I don't know if my surreal mood is because the war has actually started or because I woke up and 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep.
Jacqueline couldn't sleep either, even less so than I, mostly because she is getting sick, but also because she could hear the drone of what sounded like planes overhead all night. I can hear it a bit now, in fact. Perhaps they've been patrolling the bridges all night? Surreal.
I think this thing is even more surreal to me because I live in California, and the overwhelming majority of people here (at least, in the San Francisco Bay Area) are anti-war. Today's New York Times had an interesting article about it. The article focuses a lot on Hollywood, though, which is not part of my California. Those people are in their own world.
Still, how is it that so many Americans have been snowed by the Bush Administration into believing that this war is necessary? Friends in New York confirm the relative lack of anti-war sentiment over there. New Yorkers obviously identify more closely with 9/11 than the rest of the country, but what the hell does this have to do with 9/11? How many of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis?
Actually, I don't want to continue that train of thought; it's too simplistic and overdone.
However, the Administration's real goal appears not to be striking a blow to terrorism by taking out Saddam, but to assure the US position as the world superpower by cleaning out potential threats to its dominance. "Democratizing" the Middle East should take care of that problem, right? It's policy that Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, and others have been pushing for over 10 years, and they've finally got a president weak-minded enough to go through with it. More here.
Enough war talk.
As you see, I've jumped on the blogging bandwagon. Fortunately for you, the intent really isn't to spray my political opinions out into the ether, but to provide a place for family and friends to go to get updates on Jacqueline and I as we tour the world. We're leaving at the end of April, driving cross-country in our bus, flying to Greece and environs for 6 weeks, coming back to New York for a July 5 wedding, then getting back in the bus and travelling around the US until November or so. Then, if we haven't either run out of money or gotten sick of travelling, we'll probably fly out to New Zealand/Australia, and work our way over to Europe, eventually (hopefully) spending enough time in France so I can learn to say something in French without thinking about it for 2 minutes first.
Au revoir!