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Monday, June 20, 2011
1630: Larry Niven and Steve Barnes were over from about 1100, then for a hike up to the top of Mulholland (a good 4 miles about about 700 feet) and back, then lunch, so this is a late start. We are working on a novella that will be a sequel to Legacy of Heorot by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes. It takes place a few years after Heorot but before Beowulf's Children, the actual sequel. This will be a novella or short novel, and presents a new alien critter and a lot more of the sociology of a high tech interstellar colony where if you didn't bring it with you, you either make it or do without it.
We got a late start, so it was hot on the hill, then a long lunch. The current draft of the book has about 33,000 words of perhaps 50,000 total. It's pretty good, but needs some fleshing out, and some more attention to detail. If you liked Heorot you'll like this.
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Last night we had a note from Dr. Cochran to the effect that it is cheaper to have Pakistan as an enemy than a friend, and caution from a deployed trooper commenting on that. Go see them if you haven't.
It's worth thinking about. Afghanistan has makes nothing we want, and unification of Afghanistan under a government in Kabul is resisted -- indeed detested -- by a good part of the rest of the country. The one thing that unifies Afghanistan is the sight of armed non-Afghanis on Afghan soil. That includes us. On the other hand we went into Afghanistan to kill Bin Laden. That took time, but it worked. We can declare victory and get out.
Of course the instant anyone speaks of ending the wars -- we are in three for certain and apparently contemplating a fourth in Syria, and a fifth in Yemen -- the cry of ISOLATIONISM goes up. I don't know what isolationism means. The United States could have intervened decisively in some Middle East situations -- if we had devoted anything like the resources poured into Iraq into Lebanon that once prosperous nation might well have been stabilized into a viable ally -- but in general we are not politically capable of acting decisively when that action is in the US interest. There appears to be a strong political faction that just plain can't stand the notion of using US forces to protect US interests, and we can spend the blood of the Legions only if we can prove that we don't get anything out of it. That is one of the factions that cries Isolationism! when we try to bring the Legions home and invest in domestic or at least hemispheric developments.
I said most of this as we were contemplating the expansion of the war into Libya. That was months ago.What was said then still applies. There is a limit to what the United States can do, and as we cut the Navy budget that becomes less. The US is broke. It is time to act decisively where we can be decisive, and cut our losses and come home where we cannot. In Afghanistan we have the added merit of having accomplished the goal of killing bin Laden.
Declare victory. Bring the troops home. Let someone else follow Alexander the Great into the graveyard of empires. We have a lot to do at home. We are better at being the United States than we are at pacifying the Middle East.
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