| 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.
=============
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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