Travels to DC

Hi all -- I've thought long and hard. I realized George Bush just wants to push off declaring defeat onto the next president. I am fully against adding troops primarily because it a) kills more people b) undermines the political solutions that might be available to us c) when we pull out the troops two years later, the same situation will occur and 4) contributes to more people hating the U.S. making us more unsafe.

Had a great conversation with the taxi cab driver last night at 2 am (nothing life a flight with a 3 hour delay and four hours of turbulence)...he was from afghanistan and is recently a new citizen of the U.S. He says that the people in the Taliban "do not love their mothers". Politics reduced to freud.

He left 18 years ago. Lived in pakistan and was a teacher. Then moved here and has three children all who "love school". He has six sisters, all are highly educated (doctor, teacher and engineer). Two were living in afghan during taliban. He said the movie Osama captured only 20% of the horror of living under the Taliban.

His sisters are now spread out. They doctor has returned to Kabul to help her country. Two live in canada, one in the us, one in germany, and one in australia. It made our geographic distance so easy.

Today I listened to a horrid man who staffed the Aspen Institute's Commission on No Child Left Behind who cares nothing about the lives of young people who try to enter their adult lives without a diploma or adequate education. Whenever I come to the beltway I "fire" people. Is this my revenge streak? I dont' know but I know some of the commissioners and i'm going to very nicely let them know that they were poorly staffed and represented.

Signing off from DC...