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HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL Options for the long war It isn’t irony, it’s history, our immediate history, where what we choose to do - or not do - will have extraordinary effects on the course of this challenging century. Still, the week of the 65th anniversary of Japan’s sur prise attack on Pearl Harbor was a historically profound moment to consider what the military calls “courses of action” in Iraq and the Global War on Terror. It has been a week of “strategic” leaks. The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group dropped hints, then The New York Times published Donald Rumsfeld’s classified “good bye memo” containing Iraq war options. On Dec. 4, The Wall Street Journal discussed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Peter Pace’s “study group,” which is considering other alterna tives. In an interview that appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, John McCain supplied a pithy reminder for all engaged in the debate: “... in war, my dear friends, there is no such thing as compromise; you either win or you lose.” The Pace group recommends more military forces in Iraq (focused on Baghdad). It may view Iraq as a peacekeeping problem. The Journal wrote that Pace’s group sees a U.S. pull back as triggering “more vio lence” and making “political compromise impossible.” Rumsfeld’s memo is a hodgepodge of ideas at least two years old. I found three exceptions. He suggests embedding Iraqi troops in U.S. units to train them (a Korean like Katusa program). He suggests the United States might provide security only in provinces that request U.S. help and adds an “accel erated 2007 drawdown” option - which looks like a drawdown and re-basing proposal considered for the 2009 time-frame. How does global warming impact you? By Susan Varlamojf University of Georgia What does global warm ing mean to you? State cli matologist and University of Georgia atmospheric sciences professor David Stooksbury answers ques tions on climate change in Georgia. How will global warm ing affect Georgia? We don’t know. The mod els ddn’t do a good job of pre dicting climates on the local scale or predicting extreme climate events. What we do know is that Georgia has cooled down slightly (0.1 degrees Fahrenheit) in the past 100 years. I think this is the result of Georgia’s going from primarily row-crop agriculture in 1900 to for est. Today, 60 percent to 70 percent of Georgia is for ested, and we think transpi ration of water vapor from the trees has caused a drop in temperature. Can we link high car bon dioxide levels to Earth’s warming? We have the highest car bon dioxide levels in geologi cal history. Atmospheric sci entists have been sending up two weather balloons daily nationwide since 1948, and we see no trends for warm ing or cooling in the bottom Donate Your Car to Goodwill! One Car at a Time ... Creates One Job at a Time When you donate your car to Goodwill, you II ' \ get a tax deduction, and your car will become HHvi * \ part of Goodwill s Automotive Training Program \ Goodwill’s trainees will learn valuable job skills x jin automotive technology so they can get good T jobs in our community. B Isi Mg I SSMm / Call 1-866-Let-lt-Go or visit www.goodwillworks.org m jj / Building lives, families and communities ttL SKI ONE JOB AT A TIME. M I The Baker-Hamilton report became available this week. Its leaks suggest a “diplomacy-led” option, with a publicly broader inclusion of Syria and Iran. Publicly is an impor tant word, because “back channels” have been steadily engaged. All three studies lay the ground work for establish- ||||: JL > Austin Bay Military Affairs Creators Syndicate ing a bipartisan U.S. com mitment to finishing the job in Iraq and - by implication - this century’s long war for modernity. Democrats now have leadership stake in determining U.S. policy, and the process of policy recon sideration gives them cover for slipping the critic’s role and assuming leadership responsibility. The three “strategic leaks” consider how “best to fight” the war. Precious time, lives and treasure will be wasted if debate sidetracks on “when to fight.” Like Dec. 7, 1941, we’ve got a war, like it or not. Arguably, after Khomeinist Iranians sacked the U.S. Embassy in 1979, the United States tried to delay a war on Middle Eastern tyranny and terror. Sept. 11 changed that. The radical Sunni war on the West (as expressed by al-Qaida’s precedents) has roots in the 19405. (Read Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower,” which I will review in a couple of weeks). Our enemies have long time lines. They see the United States through the templates of Vietnam and Somalia (bug-outs), not the template of sticking out the Cold War. But our “course of action” must account for others’ half of the atmosphere. The measurements show ing Earth is warming are taken on the surface. We’re just not sure of the feed back loops and what part is human-induced. If sea levels rise global ly, will the Georgia coast be flooded? Along the Georgia coast, any change in sea level will have catastrophic impacts because of the shallow nature of our coastal waters. Around the world, we don’t see uniform changes in sea levels. The local sea level is modu lated by local geological pro cesses. Two important such processes are local uplift of the earth’s surface and the deposition of soil from the continent. On the global scale, ice melting in the sea doesn’t cause a sea level rise only ice on land, such as Greenland. We know the North Pole is melting, but the South Pole ice sheet is increasing. These problems are complex. Can we expect hurri canes like Katrina to hit Georgia? Yes! Major hurricanes have struck Georgia in the past and will in the future, regardless of climate change. We hear about hurricanes only when they hit land, so this year we’ve had little capabilities as well as our expectations. In August 2004, I had a conversation in Baghdad with a U.S. Army officer - an Arabist with a diplomatic back ground. He was tasked with helping Iraqis establish an operations center. I asked how that project was going. “They’re doing the best they (the Iraqis) can,” he replied, thoughtfully. “(They’ll be running it) in their own way, not like us.” Translation: What they can achieve is not on our schedule. President Bush insists on achieving this strategic goal: a self-sustaining, free Iraq that is an ally in the War on Terror. That is an achievable goal. Columnist Michael Barone likens Bush’s determination to that of Harry Truman confronting the Korean War or Winston Churchill after Dunkirk. These are dramatic analo gies, but our situation is not nearly as desperate. We’ve had big successes. Iran is sur rounded, Syria hemmed, al- Qaida shot to shreds. Given the ideological and political dimensions, a more apt anal ogy is Ronald Reagan’s 1983 “Euromissile” struggle. The Soviet Union gam bled it could to “decouple” Europe from the U.S. nucle ar umbrella; it waged a war of perception in the United States and Western Europe. America was the aggressor. Reagan was evil, a Hitler, a warmonger. Reagan focused on the strategic goal of winning the Cold War and deployed U.S. missiles to counter the Soviet missiles. The Kremlin broke nego tiations in a huff, but within two years returned to seri ous disarmament talks. The road to 11-9 (Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall cracked) is history. To find out more about Austin Bay, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. news. In the 1800 s, Georgia had six category 3 or higher hur ricanes. Thousands of people were killed. We’re overdue for a major hurricane. But, as I said, our models can’t predict when. How does burning fos sil fuels fit into global warming? It’s very complex. Atmospheric carbon diox ide caused by burning fossil fuels has increased since the 1750 s and especially since 1945. Global temperatures have increased during the same period. However, there isn’t a sim ple, one-to-one relationship between carbon dioxide in See GLOBAL, page SA THERMAL SIDING & REPLACEMENT WINDOWS ♦ CsdftMAX rliHu >y ; m i p-, sjmi 0 SI MON TON' W 1 N DOW $ vet imuvg mtrefttvttr? 929-2701 LOCAL Why do we love our parades? I first noticed it about a decade ago. It was mid-morning on a crisp Autumn day. A man pulled in front of our newspaper office, got out of his truck, jumped into the bed and set up a lawn chair with a cooler next to it. He then sat down in the lawn chair facing the main drag in front of our office and popped open a cold one. “What in the heck is that guy doing?,” I said to myself and to anyone without ear shot. He just sat there and sat there and sat there. Finally, my journalistic curiosity kicked in and I went outside to find out what was up. “Excuse me, sir,” I said to the man as he surveyed the passing traffic. “What are you doing?” “I’m waiting on the parade,” he said between swills. “The parade? You mean the Homecoming parade?” “Yep,” he muttered, or perhaps it was a burp. I paused, looking down at my watch, baffled. “It’s 11 o’clock,” I said. “The parade doesn’t start until 2.” “Yep,” the early bird replied. “Wanted to get a good seat.” He wasn’t the only one. By the noon hour, the high way in front of my office was lined with people in lawn chairs and on tailgates - waiting on the parade. It was then I realized that folks in my community love parades. Our county only has 7,000 residents, and I would estimate every one of them, and then some more, line our streets annu ally for our Homecoming parade. This year, I saw more of my classmates from my graduating class along the Homecoming parade route than I did at our reunion - which was held that night. I often wondered what STILL USING DIAL-UP? , - mm l VLB ■ ■ ** Ui Internet is - I . : mMM M m available! * *» ° M ;** * * ' v„' C J -;-#- ", f 5 | ’„' %|BMS f ". * > < J ' loi^owoo 1 Mrwf iighbors x mm? ■ AM fill - aygfa,, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2006 ♦ travellers going down our main highway on a fall day at noon thought as they saw people just sitting on the side of the road, watch ing cars passing by. “Look, Margaret, these people down here in South Georgia must not have cable yet. They have to watch cars pass by for enter tain- ment.” For years, I have thought that this was a ,-0 Hkl . ~c ...IS?-; . a Len Robbins Columnist phenomenon of my commu nity only - a rich tradition of loading up the extended family and waiting on the roadside for four hours to watch a 40-minute auto cade. Not so, I learned the other night. I had a book signing in Blackshear at Country Bumpkins Gift Shop. The signing (for my new book, “The Greatest Book Ever Written About Cheese” - available in fine bookstores everywhere) was slated to begin after their annual Christmas parade. I had to park three blocks away. Their Christmas parade consisted of every beauty queen and busi ness and church and fancy truck in the tri-county area - just like ours. And I bet the streets were lined with folks for hours, wanting “to get a good seat.” DAVID OVERTON JEWELERS •Jewelry Repair & Cleaning •Watch Repair •Engraving „ b b Hours: •Appraisals Mon. -Fri. •Estate Jewelry 9:3oam-s:3opm J Sat. •Class Rings 9:3oam-2pm 905 Downtown Carroll St. • Perry 478-987-1392 Why are parades so beloved in small towns? I live in one and don’t really know. My best guesses are as follows: 1. Free candy. Most parades I’ve been to involve the throwing of free hard candy from the procession’s participants to onlookers on the side of the road, which has to violate some type of ordinance or safety code. Being hit in the head by a Jolly Rancher thrown from a moving vehi cle - even one going five miles per hour - can be smarts. But It is free. 2. People like funny trucks. Parades often involve trucks dressed up in some fashion - which some folks apparently find amusing. 3. In addition to free candy, parades are also free. Unlike cable, which should be free, they don’t charge you anything to watch the parade. That said, PTA meet ings and public hearings on civic matters are free too, and nobody seems to go to those. Maybe if we called them “parades,” more peo ple would show up. Hmmm. So, please make plans now to attend my next Book Signing Parade - coming soon to a tailgate or lawn chair near you. (In case he didn’t mention it, Len Robbins is the author of “The Greatest Book Ever Written About Cheese. ”) Enjoy the Internet at high speed from Com South. It's much faster than dial-up - up to 100 times faster - plus you do not tie up a phone line and you are always connected! m * ... .fcj" g a ♦ xa ' » 5A ■tows