Friedman is in Cairo and has the view of the war from 3 different Eygptian (pan-Arabic?) perspectives: Arab Liberals, Arab Majority, Eqyptian government. Egypt is one of the key players in the region, a friend of the U.S., but also a very represive regime (as the media tells it). There is skepticism about what the U.S. is going to do with this,

"Whose view will be redeemed depends on how Iraq plays out, but, trust me, everyone's watching. I spent this afternoon with the American studies class at Cairo University. The professor, Mohamed Kamel, summed up the mood: "In 1975, Richard Nixon came to Egypt and the government turned out huge crowds. Some Americans made fun of Nixon for this, and Nixon defended himself by saying, `You can force people to go out and welcome a foreign leader, but you can't force them to smile.' Maybe the Iraqis will eventually stop resisting you. But that will not make this war legitimate. What the U.S. needs to do is make the Iraqis smile. If you do that, people will consider this a success."

There is a lot riding on that smile, Mr. Kamel added, because this is the first "Arab-American war." This is not about Arabs and Israelis. This is about America getting inside the Arab world — not just with its power or culture, but with its ideals. It is a war for what America stands for. "If it backfires," Mr. Kamel concluded, "if you don't deliver, it will really have a big impact. People will not just say your policies are bad, but that your ideas are a fake, you don't really believe them or you don't know how to implement them."

Could this be the right president and right administration to fight the war and not the secure the peace? While there's a lot of bitching about the war plan, let's hope that's Monday morning quarterbacking. And I haven't heard of large set-backs in the way, so I'm going to have to believe it's going OK. But I have to say I'm not too sure that George W. Bush is the face and voice I want people that we are now going to become intimately familiar with seeing and hearing as the voice of America. I say this because I just don't see a true desire in him to communicate with people from other lands on their terms. It is their land we are invading. Let's hope they will be smiling both sooner and later.

Others are dropping out of the hope business all together.

"I'm dropping out of the war. I don't want war in my living room any more. I don't want to give it my attention. I can't stop it, can't change it, won't fight it. All I can do is live as peacefully as I can, without sucking in its virtual fumes."

11:10:32 AM    comment []  Google It!  

"Very soon people will come to respect weblogs as a representation of your collective knowledge, experience, interests and political stance. It will be your public face to the world where you'll want to show your best. I think we are coming quickly to a point where the quality of thoughts online in weblogs will start to affect the world around us. A world where fictional Locke and Demosthenes will be possible."

I thought I saw a site around somewhere where strangers critque your blog. It might be interesting to have something like that except where people write keywords or phrases that they would use to describe you (like a job interviewer would) after they read your blog.
10:27:54 AM    comment []  Google It!  

Here's a slide-show of the counters pre-rock (along with some other pre-move-in pictures that I should expand on...here's a dark picture of the kitchen in it's 'before' state). Hopefully we'll roll a few more post-rock pictures for comparison purposes.

Boy, I almost sound optimistic about the whole thing. I must be totally illin'.
10:07:23 AM    comment []  Google It!