How about war with Syria? Anyone? Anyone?

It seems we're already "engaged" on the Iraq/Syrian border:


And you thought I was joking.

I know, I know. You're saying to yourself that we already have a shortage of troops in the overstretched military, that we're already spending billions that we don't have (and that we're borrowing from China) to sustain our ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the corporate pillaging in the Gulf Coast, and you're wondering how we can afford, in the fullest sense of that word, yet another war. And I say to you, have faith! Faith in our president and his leadership!! With God telling him what to do he will not lead us astray.

Is it just me or is it becoming increasingly difficult to write about politics? I feel like I write the same argument over and over again in response to the same outrageous actions by the administration, and nothing ever changes. It's as if we are on a carousel in the middle of the drowned Ninth Ward, fighting the waters slapping all around us just as the mad carnival operator operates the machine with a remote control high up in his Blackhawk enjoying every minute of our suffering. I read a comment today on another blog about how evil homosexuality is but how it's okay if the army turns their blind eyes from gay soldiers who have been activated for Iraq, even if those soldiers have been open about their homosexuality and therefore have violated the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Several commenters even said that gay soldiers fighting in a war zone are "patriotic" but that when they get back from their war service they should be "prosecuted" and given a dishonorable discharge because "their lifestyle is evil." There are still neanderthals out there that think this way.

And then there was the comment on Op Truth from a soldier who participated in Bush's Q&A the other day that was "outed" by the AP as being staged. The soldier said that he and the others weren't prodded at all, that they are firm supporters of the war in Iraq, and that they are "preserving YOUR freedom of speech." I have no doubt that this soldier, and probably the other nine who were handpicked by the military to talk to the president, is behind the war. And I have no doubt, too, that the vast majority of soldiers who are serving in Iraq are "for the war" when their superiors are standing next to them or behind the cameraman facing them, and that many remain supportive even when they get home and get the hell out of the military. This doesn't mean that tens of thousands of soldiers aren't against the war, but who can deny that many are for it? When they are trained to fight in wars and, especially the younger ones, are eager to 'test' their training in the field, it's not exactly a surprise. I also have no doubt that not a single soldier fighting in Iraq, not a single soldier who has died in Iraq or lost a limb in Iraq or lost his or her mind in Iraq, is or was "preserving" my freedom of speech.

The carousel spins and spins, waterlogged and rotten.

And speaking of the Ninth Ward and Lakeview and New Orleans East, apparently animal rescue workers are finding more dead than alive, except for the feral dogs roaming the streets and no doubt feasting on the corpses of their dead cousins and neighbors. I wonder how many of these wild dogs became wild the past month and a half and how many were already wild, members of the roving bands we'd encounter walking our dog down Carondelet and driving down Louisiana Avenue or even Napoleon. Sometimes the dogs still had their leashes attached. Many had remnants of collars, but many more had no leash, no collar. They were pure-bread dogs and mongrels, the females with fat nipples hanging down toward the ground, the males free to piss on every patch of "who" grass along the crackled sidewalks. They were sometimes intimidating, their free-spirit struts and power in numbers, and our dog Casey would breathe heavy until they passed or we made it home. The first pack of wild dogs we saw on our trip to New Orleans before deciding to move there, the same trip we heard from the real estate agent (who was, in theory, trying to sell us a house) that any house would "get flooded and get termites," and probably have to be shorred up, and the same trip where we saw then-mayor Marc Morial on our B+B room television set standing before a green-screened animated computer graphic of the city filling with water like a baby's bath tub under the spout, and telling us that the levees along the lake were certain to be breached and overflowed from even a category 4 hurricane. I remember S turned to me when we saw the dogs and said, "I feel like I'm in Mexico," and after Mayor Morial's half hour plea to get the hell out of the city if he tells you to, "We are definitely not buying a house down here."

One Saturday when we lived on Magazine Street near the "dog park" levee at the turn of the river, we encountered a yellow/brown dog hanging out at the gravel parking lot next to an abandoned, condemned shop. The dog was clearly abandoned too, and was making a home for himself in the upturned insides of the building that just a few days before had been torn apart by a drunk driving a pick-up (the driver had plowed into the building, scraping two cars parked there and barely missing ours, and then abandoned his car and fled. Since it was New Orleans, it took about two weeks for the truck to be removed and the wall to be patched up with plywood.) The dog wasn't quite feral yet when we first saw him. He accepted food and water from us and didn't growl. We called the humane society (the police didn't have a K-9 or animal control unit. At least that's what they said when I called.) and were told that it would take at least two weeks for someone to come for the dog because there were so many reports, always, of near-feral dogs and they were horribly understaffed. The man on the phone told me we had two options: feed the dog and hope for the best, that the dog could survive the two plus weeks it would take for a professional to collect him, or take the dog in. We couldn't do the latter -- our leaky apartment was already too small for my husband and I and our dog -- so we kept feeding the animal, but within a week he was gone, and I'm quite certain he wasn't picked up by SPCA. He just joined the others, leashed or not, to hunt for rats in the bushes and undergrowth of New Orleans, or take a spin on that waterlogged carousel.

So my cousin Bobby couldn't come up this weekend after all. He was offered a job he couldn't refuse. I'm completey excited for him and I don't mind waiting until S comes home to install our new kitchen. Bobby and his wife have started their own housebuilding business and they break ground on their first spec-house in just two weeks. They both have to keep their regular jobs -- with four kids between them they really have no choice -- and any extra income from overtime weekend jobs helps a lot. Oh well! I know "we can do that," and I don't much mind waiting. I've lived with this kitchen for six years, so what's a few more months?

This means that I can enjoy this beautiful fall day, though I'm not sure how I'll do that. S is stuck in Kabul for another couple of days, away from his cold-weather clothes and he's already sick. I'm sure the depression he's dealt with ever since landing back at Bagram doesn't help. He knows it's only a handful of months, but every day feels long and those months seem impossibly so. Hopefully he'll be able to call again today. For that reason I selfishly wish he could stay in Kabul, even if he was stuck for the next few months with the "mofrakies" he's dealing with there (or the "PX soldiers" as my cousin Bobby, a former Blackhawk pilot, calls them). It's so wonderful to hear his voice, even if it is crackled with static and delayed from its long travel up to space and back down again.