Here are a few choice shots out of the 700 or so I’ve compiled into an album. The photos in this section are from our 4 day excursion through the Mekong Delta to Cambodia.

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Some random shots from Laos to Hanoi to Angkor…
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I’ve been thinking along these lines for a while now, and David Corn of The Nation gets it right. What’s really bothered me are the liberal ‘hawks’ (Friedman, Pollack) who spout off their rationale for ridding the world of the Baathists without considering our dangerously inept leaders who are leading the charge.

“Wars do not happen on their own. They are initiated and prosecuted by particular people. This rather simple point seems to have eluded many within the offices of The New Republic. In an entire issue of quasi-mea culpa, TNR addresses the question, “Iraq: Were We Wrong?” In the good fashion of a typically fractious family (and that is meant as no insult), the answers from The Editors, Peter Beinart (the editor), Martin Peretz (the editor in chief), Leon Wieseltier (the literary editor), Fouad Ajami (contributing editor)–as well as the contributions from author Paul Berman, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria, Brookings Institution fellow Kenneth Pollack, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum–are often at odds with one another. Yet they generally share a defiantly defensive tone as they sidestep toward, “yes, but.” Many boil down to this: “if the war had been run my way, then it wouldn’t have been such a screw-up.”

Perhaps. But this war was George W. Bush’s war (and shared with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and Condoleezza Rice). And the TNRers who favored an elective war at that particular time were also in favor of handing the keys to a rather expensive, dangerous and difficult-to-drive car to a man whom many of them had already pronounced untrustworthy on other fronts (the 2000 election, the tax cuts, etc.) This may have been the non-conservative hawks’ most profound miscalculation. They were blinded by their own desires for war (for the appropriate reasons, of course), and their enthusiasm was not sufficiently tempered by a rather harrowing reality: Bush would have to be the one to get right the occupation, reconstruction and democratization of Iraq–a tremendously challenging set of tasks requiring intelligence, understanding, sophistication, concentration, and open-mindedness. Talk about naive. “

I liked this little anecdote:

“In this we’re-not-sorry special issue, Kenneth Pollack’s piece stands out. He recounts a debate he had in the fall of 2002 with Bill Galston, a University of Maryland professor and former colleague of his in the Clinton administration. Galston held up a copy of Pollack’s book, The Threatening Storm, and said, “If we were going to get Ken Pollack’s war, I could be persuaded to support it. But we are not going to get Ken Pollack’s war; we are going to get George Bush’s war, and that is a war I will not support.”

Read the rest at The Nation

We were out exploring the city last weekend and I just couldn’t shake my tourist inclinations. I took some pictures (see extended entry).

We also chilled out in Washington Square, listened to the ambient sounds of a nearby saxaphonist and random crazies passing by. There is no place in the world like San Francisco.

-Jeff
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We made it back alive. I’m back at work. I’ve resumed my normal consumption of mexican food. Life has returned to the way it was, my adventures in Asia just a hazy patchwork of memories. I like the fact that the tastes, smells, sounds and visions of those experiences will come back to me when I least expect it. So what’s next? I think I’ll continue to use this site as a place to express my state of mind and what I’m up to.

This photo was taken Friday on our flight from Koh Samui to BKK.

I’ve been getting back into reading the news everyday. After a nice refrain from thinking about the sorry state of this country, I’m ready to deal with it again. I’m still as vehemently opposed to the Bush administration as I was when I left, being away only reinforced my disgust and anger. Traveling permits a different perspective and reminds us that the rest of the world is out there and is greatly affected by our actions. While our country has a capacity for great good, it’s recent history is less than golden. Traveling through southeast asia really hit that home. Our misguided leaders seem incapable of learning from that checkered past. America can do so much better.

I’m excited about Michael Moore’s new documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. His last effort (Bowling for Columbine) wasn’t his best work, but Fahrenheit 9/11 has been well reviewed (see the review by Time.com)

I’m also putting together a compilation of photos from the 1300+ Elyse and I took during the whole trip. I’ll post some of the better ones here within the next week or so.

-Jeff