If It’s So Easy, Why Isn’t Everyone Doing It?

Someone needs to explain this to me, because I admit that I just don’t get it. Perhaps I’m just somehow lacking in experience, or maybe I’m just not a trusting enough soul, I don’t know. It might be that I’ve become so cynical for so long now that I wouldn’t recognize opportunity if it came up and bit me, but I do try to keep an open mind on things. However . . .

I have a friend - and it’s probably best if she remains nameless - who saw an e-mail that told her she could make a ton of money with little or no time and effort on her part as an "internet marketer." A marketer of what, I don’t know. As a matter of fact, I’ll admit that I don’t know a whole lot about this, other than that she was given the opportunity to get in on the ground-floor of this incredible business opportunity for the low, low investment of only $2,000.00.

Hmm. Could just be me, but I am reminded of an old saying: A fool and your money are soon partners. In any event, my friend bought into this idea - literally, and tried to convince me to get in on the action, too. But I’m afraid that the only thing that occured to me when she was explaining it was "ponzi scheme." Again, maybe it’s just me being cynical . . .

My friend didn’t stop there, though. Funny thing about the internet, but you keep getting all sorts of e-mails promising to show you the road to riches; hell, you can even see the commercials on television promising hundreds of thousands of dollars of income in exchange for a few hours a month at your computer keyboard, "marketing" things that "sell themselves." And all of it for a low, low "investment" fee that you’ll make up ten-fold.

And you know what? $2k here, $1.5k there, pretty soon you’re talking some real money, and I suspect I know how the authors of these schemes are making their internet riches. Something about a sucker being born every minute, I’m guessing, because I have yet to meet anyone who has actually made any money off one of these pyramid schemes. Other, that is, than the people who start them.

I may indeed have no faith, but I just can’t escape the old saw about if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Take my friend, for example. So far, I’ve watched her sink a ton of money into these "plans." I’ve watched her spend upwards of eighteen hours a day on her computer and on the phone, talking to her "partners." Last May, she wanted to borrow $2,000.00 from me because she "could earn" $200,000.00 by September. Unfortunately, the return so far on all of her investments has been zero . . . not that I’m surprised by that. But she plugs away at it all the same, day after day, but this whole thing seems like an awful lot of time and effort to sink into something that is, after all, billed as a turn-key operation.

You know, my entire professional life in the civilian world has been the study of the human mind and behaviour, but this one really stumps me. That otherwise intelligent people could be so easily and so willingly suckered into such obvious scams. It would seem that common sense would tell you that if it were indeed so easy, then everyone would be doing it; hell, we could eliminate poverty in this country simply by giving everyone a computer and an IPS connection and telling them "Go forth and internet market."

Funny how that hasn’t happened . . .

What really disturbs me, however, is the fact of all those soulless schmucks who roam the digital wastelands, preying on the naivete of others. The very same kind of people who would be howling for blood if the same kind of thing were done to them. Or that we, as a society, tolerate such things. I realize that I may be somewhat out-of-step in my insistence on clinging to the idea that one should always do the right thing simply because it is the right thing, and I realize that you can not always protect people from themselves. But I care about my friend, and I care about other people, else I would not have chosen to do the things that I have done with my life. But this one has me flummoxed . . .

It Gets Fun, When?

Things I’ve learned from playing Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 . . .

That as long as it has the proper scope attached, using an H&K M468, which is basically a reworking of the Colt M4 carbine, I can drop a terrorist with a single shot to the head at five hundred metres.

That using the same weapon, I can empty an entire magazine of thirty rounds into a terrorist standing five metres away from me, and he just laughs the bullets off like Superman.

That just because you clear a room and kill every living human being in it, doesn’t mean that one of the corpses isn’t going to get up and shoot you in the back.

That you have to be very careful when throwing hand grenades, because they tend to bounce back at you like superballs.

That unlike you, the terrorists have an edge because they can shoot through concrete walls.

That your highly-trained and skilled counter-terrorist teammates are only really good as bullet sponges.

That one should never seek cover near a fire extinguisher, as they tend to explode when hit by stray bullets.

That, speaking of things that blow up, one of the major items stored in all American warehouses are red barrels that explode.

That, while it may take you several attempts and most of a magazine to drop an enemy at a distance, that very same enemy can and will drop you with a single shot . . . through whatever cover you are behind and your body armour.

That even when you’re looking in the opposite direction, that flashbang grenade you just tossed will blind you while not even mildly irking the bad guys.

That when using a sniper rifle chambered for 7.62-mm ammunition, it typically takes two to three shots to the head to drop an enemy.

That the terrorists have apparently mastered Star Trek-style transporter technology, because that’s the only explanation of how they can appear immediately behind you in a room you just cleared.

That when you throw a grenade, it will rarely make it more than halfway to your intended target, but when a terrorist throws a grenade, it will invariably land right at your feet.

That, curiously enough, the casinos and public places in Las Vegas are littered with containers full of military equipment.

That "NSA field agents" are incredibly incompetent, because they all wind up dead.

That anybody who actually goes to Las Vegas is an idiot, considering the place is overrun with people trying to kill you.

Gotta Nuke ’Em From Orbit, It’s the Only Way to Make Sure

"Right, then, so when we left off last time, most of our dear friends the Colonials were occuppied with being reduced to their constituent atoms in a rain of nuclear hellfire courtesy of the Cylons. Those Colonials who didn’t happen to be busy dying were in the middle of preparing their yearly tax returns, which tended to make those people think that the ones who were getting blown up were the lucky ones. Except that meant all those ex-Colonials would also miss that evening’s broadcast of Colonial Idol, which promised to be a real barn-stormer, what with the tight competition between the man who could walk and chew bubblegum at the same time and the woman who could count from ten to twenty-one simply by removing her shoes and socks. I tell you, that Colonial talent pool is just bottomless.

"Anyway, about the time the Cylons had managed to slaughter a quarter of the Colonial Fleet and reduce most of the population to fond memories, Bill Adama decided it was about time to get his ship, Galactica, into the fight. The first thing he did was give a rather stirring speech to his crew, reminding them that they had all trained for war, there was a job to do, and that they had to depend on each other if they were going to fight through to victory. Unfortunately for Bill, there were two fatal flaws with his plan. The first and, in comparison, pretty minor one, was that by never drilling his crew or maintaining any kind of discipline on board his ship, they couldn’t fight their way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. The second was that he had blown up all their ammunition the day before. Oops.

"It was at this point that Kara Thrace managed to pick the lock on her cell down in the brig, and decided to pop by the CIC to ask Bill what all the fuss was about, since all the ringing alarms and people running in circles screaming ’We all gonna die!’ hysterically had ruined her beauty sleep, which everyone could agree she was desperately in need of. ’We’re at war!’ Bill told her. ’War?’ Kara asked, stumped by the concept. ’Yes, war,’ Bill said. ’The opposite of not being at war.’ ’Oh,’ said Kara. ’Well, gee, I’d really like to help out, and so would the other twenty pilots who are still on board because, obviously, they’re so good at what they do the Admiralty decided to strand them all on board a decommissioned ship, but we don’t have any aircraft left.’ ’That’s funny,’ Bill said, ’I seem to remember that we have a whole squadron of obsolete aircraft set up as static museum displays down in our starboard hangar bay.’ ’Wow,’ said Kara, ’no wonder they made you the Commander.’ So off she went to gather up the pilots and the aircraft, leaving us to marvel at the fortuitous chain of events that allowed a ship being turned into a museum to still have the fuel and aircraft ammunition on board to turn a bunch of museum displays back into fully-capable combat aircraft. Such a pity no one thought about that for the ship’s ammunition, but we can’t have everything now, can we?

"Pretty soon, Kara and the rest of the pilots who had been stranded and forgotten on Galactica were zooming off into space, looking for some Cylons to kill. Good thing for them, then, that the cranky robots decided to show up and start shooting at them and the ship. Bad thing for them, though, because the Cylons decided to shoot nuclear weapons at the ship. This is where we were introduced to that marvellous invention known as the ’radiological detector,’ a device that could, as the name implies, detect nuclear weapons, but which also had the bad habit of only seeming to work when the writers remembered that the Colonials had one of those. Anyway, the radiological detector went off, providing everyone on the ship with enough time to tearfully kiss their asses goodbye . . . but all hope was far from lost. In what has to be one of the neatest dramatic twists of all time, and a shining example of gritty and realistic writing, the very same kind of nuclear weapons that had already destroyed much of the Colonial Fleet and reduced the Colonies to smoking ruins hit the ship and failed to do much of anything at all except start a few fires. But, just to make the fires really tense and dramatic, there was a fatal design flaw in Galactica in that the ship’s main fuel lines were routed through the hangar bay where the nuclear weapon hit, presumably because the hangar bay was nowhere near the ship’s main engines which, of course, would need that fuel. Again, Colonials, not smart.

"Anyway, this led to a nice moment between Saul Tigh and Chief Tyrol who, instead of being down on the hangar deck attending to the duties that his title of ’Deck Chief’ would imply, was up in CIC handling Damage Control and bitching about how ’his people’ were busy being burned alive because they were all apparently too stupid to run away from fire. This prompted Tigh to remember about the inconveniently placed main fuel line, and order the compartments being burned vented to space. Tyrol, naturally, objected to this course of action, because his crew were still hanging around down there wondering what to do and probably toasting some marshmallows to a delicious, golden tastiness. After all, who cares about the ship blowing up, he wanted to save his people . . . Be that as it may, Tigh prevailed, the compartments were vented, the fires were put out, and Tyrol decided to go and sulk over the injustice of it all and gent bent out of shape over an event he completely forgot about by the next scene and which never bothered him again.

"With his ship now safe, at least for the moment, it occurred to Bill that he might have been a little hasty when he blew up all the bullets, and that it might be a good idea to actually be able to shoot back at the Cylons. So, after talking it over with Tigh to ensure he wasn’t making another mistake, he decided to take the ship to the nearest fleet replenishment point. Tigh, of course, pointed out that that would be a three day journey and, what with the Cylons zipping around all over the place, they might object. But Bill, being Bill, had an answer for that, and pointed out that the ship had FTL engines and could just jump to where they wanted to go in no time at all. Literally. I mean, since we’re tossing Einstein and E=MC2 right out the window, why not have a ’jump’ drive that can move you from Point A to Point B in zero time? Tigh, however, felt compelled to point out that since the Colonials apparently never felt the need to go anywhere with this fancy FTL drive, no one had used it in over twenty years and just now might be a really bad time to find out that it wasn’t working like they all thought it would. ’Nonsense,’ said Bill. ’What’s the worst that could happen?’ ’We could jump into the middle of a star,’ replied Tigh. ’Spoilsport,’ said Bill. ’Let’s jump anyway.’

"Meanwhile, all of Galactica’s real pilots, who had taken all the real airplanes and were winging their way through space to somewhere else, were busy dying courtesy of the Cylons. It seems that the dirty, sneaky, underhanded robots showed up and, emitting an electronic signal that completely shut down all of the avionics equipment on the Colonials’ aircraft, thus causing the pilots to lose control and the aircraft to go off course and start colliding with each other because, you know, there are just all sorts of crazy winds in outer space that would make aircraft do that, wiped them all out. The only two to survive were Sharon Valerii, the robot Asian girl, and a guy named Karl ’Helo’ Agathon, who was a big dope. They managed to run away and land on Caprica, where they had to fix their aircraft and, incidentally, run into a bunch of survivors, among whom was Gaius Baltar. Apparently, sheltering in the crotch of a hot blonde woman is a sure-fire way to survive a nuclear explosion. In any event, it was decided that they should take some of the survivors with them when they attempted to find their way back to Galactica, so they held a lottery to pick the lucky few. When that was done, Helo decided to prove just what an idiot he really was by deciding to stay on the fatally irradiated planet and allowing Baltar to go in his place. It was here that we were all looking forward to Helo dying a slow and gruesome death but, alas, that was not to be . . .

"Elsewhere in the exploding Colonies, Lee Adama was escorting Laura Roslin’s ship back to Caprica, and still pouting about how unfairly Bill had treated him. It was no secret that Bill Adama thought his oldest son was a bit on the emotional side, but to call Lee the daughter he never had was really a bit unfair. Lee’s latest bout of self-pity and angst, however, was cut short when the Cylons showed up and fired a missile at Laura’s ship. Pity of it is, the Cylons apparently never stuck around long enough anywhere to actually make sure that their weapons hit anything, and Lee came up with a brilliant ploy to save Laura’s ship. He drew the missile off the transport and got it to lock on to his fighter, which, of course, left him with the problem of facing imminent death because the weapon was no after him. But he solved this problem by out-running the missile because, you know, that always works. Anyway, after successfully running away from the missile, Lee found out that he had run out of fuel and, in what can only be classified as the greatest mistake since allowing the Cylons to bomb the Colonies into oblivion, Laura Roslin decided to pick him up. How that was done, of course, was never explained, since in order to get his aircraft into the transport’s landing bay, Lee would have needed some gas in order to maneuver, but now we’re really nit-picking things . . ."

Next time: The tragic consequences of using Colonial Priceline . . .

Hit It With A Wrench . . .

There are times when it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed . . .

Last April, after a fair amount of time debating with myself and exploring the pros and cons of buyer’s remorse, I finally decided to go out and purchase a laptop. The idea, you see, was to have something dedicated solely for the use of my writing projects and, well, to have a new toy to supplement my aging desktop. So, much to the delight of the local Best Buy, I soon walked out of the store with a brand new Gateway laptop for the bargain price of $1,500.00.

Did I say "bargain"? The laptop worked beautifully . . . for about a month. Then, one fine morning, the motherboard decided to commit suicide. I’m guessing that it had some pretty severe pre-existing psychological problems, or it took one look at the stuff I was working on and decided it had nothing to live for. Or, at least, that was my initial theory.

Lucky for me, being only a month old, it was under warranty, so I trotted it back over to the local Best Buy and paid a visit to the Geek Squad. They pronounced it DOA, and packed it off to the Gateway repair centre in Chicago, telling me that I should see the laptop again in about a month.

Wait a minute, a month? I live about forty miles away from Chicago; what were they doing, walking it to the city? This, I guess, should have been my first clue. Or the second, if you count the laptop offing itself as the first.

Be that as it may, the laptop did indeed return from the dead about a month later. Once back in my hot little hands and subjected to what I can now only assume is my turgid prose, it worked beautifully . . . for about a month. Then the hard drive decided it was time to exit this vale of tears. Great, another editorial comment . . .

So back it went to Best Buy and the Geek Squad, and thus it was sent on a return journey to the Gateway repair centre. It was at this point that I began to consider what a wonderful thing warranties and service plans are. But once again, I was without the laptop, on which all of my work resided . . . while my desktop just kept chugging away and, thankfully, resisting the temptation to say "I told you so."

Eventually, the laptop returned, now with a new hard drive in addition to the new motherboard it had acquired from its first trip, and a little note from Gateway saying "We really fixed it this time."

Count that one, if you will, as clue number three. Once again, the machine worked beautifully . . . this time for nine months. Call it a case of being a refugee from the law of averages. But then, this past week, having failed in its two previous attempts to leave all worldly lamentations permanently behind it, the laptop decided it was time for a third attempt. But this time, it dumped both the operating system and all the drivers, and then the motherboard took itself out in a blaze of electronic glory.

Oh. Well, I guess that I should have been used to that by now. The problem is, everything that was on the hard drive also disappeared into the ether, wiping out months of work and a half-dozen or so projects. Now, I’ll be the first to raise my hand and take the hit for the latter, since I was apparently too stupid or too lazy to make any hard copies or backups of all that work. Really, I should have known better, and doing so probably would have saved my editor from having a stroke. But why cry over spilt milk?

Anyway, back to the Gateway repair centre the laptop went, courtesy of the Geek Squad. For those of you keeping count, this would be the third time and, yes, I’m really getting some good mileage out of that warranty. Doesn’t help with the fact that I’m never going to be able to recover all that work I lost but, hey, at least it’s not costing me anything but a lot of aggravation, right?

So the laptop was returned to me yesterday. Eagerly, and with great anticipation to get back to work, I brought it home and fired it up. Only to have the hard drive say "N’uh uh" and kill itself. Again. Ah, well, back to the Geek Squad it went today and, really, they’ve got to be getting tired of seeing me by now. On Monday, the laptop will, for the fourth time, make the great journey into Chicago and the Gateway repair centre. Go, warranty!

I really can’t wait to get it back this time. You know, just sort of a morbid curiosity to see what it will do next. I have a new theory, you see. Apparently, there is some sort of really bitter cold war going on between the motherboard and the hard drive, that periodically breaks out into a massive thermonuclear exchange between the two in which all the hapless cyber life caught in the middle is wiped out.

That, or I just really suck as a writer, and my continued mutilation of the English language has turned me into some kind of serial computer killer . . .

Hitting the Streets

So, I was watching the news this evening, and caught the coverage of the anti-war protest outside of a DC-area recruiting station. And all I could do was chuckle at all those folks of military age chanting in the streets that they don’t want to go. No problem. I’ve got a news flash for them; military service in the United States is entirely voluntary, and there hasn’t been a draft since 1973. So don’t sweat it, I don’t think you’re going to be packed off to Iraq any time soon.

I also kind of appreciated the chants of "We want our Constitution back!" It was a catchy little ditty, if completely meaningless in this context. As far as I’m aware, no one has made off with the Constitution; after all, this isn’t National Treasure, and that was the Declaration of Independence, anyway. No, I’m sorry, but this was all aired out and Congress consented, so find something else to chant about.

What really caught my eye, however, were all the signs and banners that read "War Is Never the Answer." That one made me pause and think. Really? Never? I’m sure that the peoples of Europe, who were overrun by Germany in 1939 and 1940, would have been interested to hear that. As a matter of fact, some of them are still alive; why don’t you ask them how they feel about that philosophy? I’m guessing here that our Civil War also falls into the "never the answer" category; then again, and it could just be me, but I don’t think that the antebellum status quo was an acceptable alternative. And I guess that when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour, the correct response would have been to do . . . nothing.

Okay.

The problem with blanket statements is that, well, they’re blanket statements. They make great sound bites, I suppose, but they have little to do with reality. Guess what, folks. War is messy. War is inconvenient. It is also sometimes necessary. That is reality, and it doesn’t care one whit for catchy little protest chants.

You can argue all you want that the fighting in Iraq, for example, was an unnecessary war. That is certainly your right under the social contract we’ve set up for ourselves. But if you are going to accept the argument that toppling the pre-war Iraqi regime was the ethically and legally wrong thing to do, then you must perforce accept the flip side of that. Which is that the ethically and legally right thing to do was leave a regime in place that slaughtered its own people, threatened its immediate neighbours, and destabilized the region. This really is an either-or situation; for the former to be the incorrect action, the latter has to be correct.

Let’s leave aside legalisms in this - while we do have a concept we call "international law," it’s nothing of the sort, and any "international lawyer" who is being honest with both himself and you will tell you that international law is whatever the strongest power says it is - and deal only with the ethical issues. Nor does it matter if you want to choose either Iraq or Afghanistan as your model, though the latter would seem to be a more clear-cut case.

In the case of Afghanistan, we know that the Taliban was a hideous regime. They executed out-of-hand anyone who did not profess their particular version of Islam. They denied education, medical care and basic human rights to females in their society. They sponsored and harboured the organization responsible for perpetrating 9/11. Through Al Qaeda, the Taliban sponsored terrorist organizations who’s sole purpose is to kill as many "infidels" - meaning anyone, including us, who don’t share their particular religious beliefs - as possible.

Is Afghanistan a case of "war is never the answer"?

Compare that to Iraq. I am not one of those people who believe that there was a connection between the pre-war regime and, say, Al Qaeda, though there certainly is an Al Qaeda presence there now (and of course there is, since they view it as just another theatre in their wider war against us anyway). But that connection was never a condition for our going into Iraq in the first place, no matter how much the anti-war folks try to revise history.

We know that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, used chemical weapons in quantity on numerous occasions, both against its own people and against the Iranians. We know that Saddam Hussein repeatedly carried out bloody purges to eliminate both real and imagined internal opposition. We know that the Ba’ath Party brutally repressed and massacred such divergent ethnic groups within Iraq such as the Kurds and the "Marsh Arabs"; since the war, we’ve uncovered the mass graves of hundreds of thousands. We know that that regime tortured its own people. We know that the pre-war Iraqi government did, indeed, sponsor terrorist organizations and provided both money and training. We know that the pre-war Iraqi government repeatedly and flagrantly defied both the U.N. and the various agreements it pledged to abide by. We know this, because we watched it happen. We also know that it has been the policy of the U.S. since the Clinton Administration to effect "regime change" in Iraq, which is a clinical way of saying "topple Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party."

Are we still in the territory of "war is never the answer"? I don’t think that anyone can argue that the pre-war Iraqi government was a particularly pleasant thing. But I also think that through the twelve years of fun and games between the end of Gulf War I in 1991 and the start of the current war in 2003, it also proved that it wasn’t going to go away absent a nice, hard shove from the outside.

I’ve heard it argued by those who oppose the war in Iraq that what a government does inside its own borders is none of our business. That is, I think, an empty argument, and one of convenience. After all, if that were indeed true, a principle that we should hold as inviolate, then we all should have kept our mouths shut about apartheid and let the South Africans do whatever they wanted. After all, that was a matter internal to South Africa and thus, according to that theory, none of our concern. I suspect, however, that the proponents of the "internal matters are none of our business" theory would object to that, and rightly so, I think. But there’s an even more sinister side to that theory. If you believe that idea to be true, then you must also accept this idea, that Hitler would have been completely acceptable had he only limited himself to killing German Jews.

Again, it may just be me, but I can’t accept either of those notions as being the ehtical choices. The mass murder of people who’s only "crime" happens to be that they exist is, I think, one of those situations that demands war, and I don’t care if that genocide is taking place in Iraq, the Balkans, Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur or in the Germany of the Nuremburg Laws.

War is inconvenient, but we live in a fractured world, and that isn’t likely to change any time soon. It certainly won’t change so long as we continue to pretend that such things are "none of our business." It is, of course, a far easier thing to worry about Johnnie’s soccer game, Janie’s piano recital and wondering how you’re going to meet that deadline at work and still find the time to go grocery shopping and fill up the SUV while barely paying attention to the latest sound bite on the evening news about which tribal group is now killing who. You can shake your head and say, "Isn’t that a shame," and go on with your daily life. It’s easier to do nothing than it is to do something, and you can tell yourself that it’s simply none of your business. It doesn’t directly impact you, not really, so it isn’t your responsibility to do anything, right?

If so, then we’ve learned absolutely nothing from history. As Edmund Burke said, "All that it takes for evil to triumph is for men of good will to do nothing." It would seem that we would become masters of doing nothing. After all, "they" aren’t doing anything to me, so why should I care what "they" do to each other? Except that having the power to prevent something implies the responsibility to do so, does it not? Or are the people living in the Balkans, or Darfur, or Rwanda - or Iraq, for that matter - not deserving of the same "right" to life that we hold so sacred for ourselves?

War is inconvenient. War should never be the item of first recourse. War is never the answer. Except when it is.

Last Call

*Sigh* Arthur C. Clarke died yesterday, having been on this Earth for 90 years. That’s a good run, but it wasn’t long enough. Then again, it never is.

Clarke was one of the first science fiction authors I ever read. I became interested in the genre after my father took me to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was a child - and, yes, to date myself, I saw the film in its first run. Soon after that, I persuaded my father to buy me the book and, though I wouldn’t fully understand it until I’d had a chance to do a little more growing up, it did capture my imagination.

The man was certainly a giant in his field but, more important than that, he was a dreamer, and that is perhaps his most important legacy. He once famously said, "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." He also said, "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

He was a dreamer, indeed, and he inspired others to dream, and through those flights of fancy pushed us all to a greater understanding of ourselves. If, by chance, you’ve been living under a rock and have never read any of his material, do yourself a favour and get one of his books. Even if its just 2001, read it and ponder the character of HAL, a most human of characters. HAL, the super-intelligent A.I., the perfect expression of machine intelligence, who did the things he did because he was afraid. How different, I wonder, is that from you or I?

We are the stuff of our dreams, for we possess the power to give them form and purpose. We create because we dream, because we give substance to the ethereal fancies of our thought, and thus we have the power to inspire others to create even greater realities through our gift of kindling the imagination. What a terribly dull place the world would be if it were otherwise.

Goodnight, Sir Arthur. Sleep now, and dream well.

There’s Nothing Like Sticking to What You Know . . .

"Now, after letting Bill Adama drift around in space for a while, wondering how he could off his older son, the Colonial military decided to reward his long years of faithful service by decommissioning his ship and forcibly retiring him - again. You know, the old thing about ’if at first you don’t succeed . . .’ This is what militaries do, you see, with those people they don’t know what else to do with. Anyway, Bill was so moved by this show of affection for him that he blew up all of his on-board supplies of ammunition, thereby showing the Colonial Admiralty just how much he admired them, too, and sticking it to the Colonial taxpayer because nobody else, of course, might have been able to use that ammunition. Seems to me that the only people who might have come out ahead in this deal were the folks who held the munitions contracts, but that’s just crying over more spilt milk, and who’s to say Bill was wrong anyway? Why, if he had actually been fiscally responsible and given all that ammunition to someone else in the Colonial fleet, those bullets might have been used to hurt someone, and we can’t have that. I mean, a military actually shooting at someone? Whoever heard of such an idea? No, far better for Bill to have blown the stuff up, thereby allowing his crew to see the pretty light show and go "Ooo!’ and ’Aaaah!’ and think of sparklers.

"The Admiralty, of course, wasn’t quite done with their surprises yet, and thought it would be a nice idea to send Laura Roslin out to preside over the decommissioning ceremony, since they were going to turn the ship, Galactica, into a museum anyway, so who better to send than the Secretary of Education. Just because Galactica was one of the first capital ships built by the Colonials in the war with the Cylons and was something of a national icon, why would you send anyone other than the last in the line-of-succession to the Presidency? Besides which, it was the perfect opportunity to get Laura out of town for a few days, what with the President’s wife starting to get suspicious and the news that Laura’s breasts were multiplying cancer cells like rabbits in heat. After all, President Adar was a busy man, and didn’t have time to deal with minor problems like that, especially since he was getting ready to amuse himself by using Marines to break up a teacher’s strike. Could you just imagine the earful he’d have gotten from Laura if she were around for that? No, I didn’t think so.

"The Admiralty also thought it would be a nice idea to send Lee out to participate in the ceremony, thus proving that the Admiral’s had a sense of humour and that they were also tired of hearing Lee whine about what a rotten man his father was and how he never shared any of his pudding with him. Bill was so moved by this last gesture that he took to phoning the Admirals every night at dinnertime, asking them if they wanted any magazine subscriptions or telling them about the joys and conveniences of aluminum siding.

"Anyway, Laura took Billy, her cancer and most of the Colonial press corps and hopped on a government transport to Galactica, and Lee took his sooper-dooper Viper Mk. VII fighter, complete with cup holders, and made the same trip. Meanwhile, on Galactica, Kara Thrace had gotten herself thrown in the brig for punching Saul Tigh because, well, that’s what she does, and Galen Tyrol was busy schtupping Sharon Valerii because, well, that’s what he does. In other words, everything was running normally under Bill Adama’s command.

"When Laura Roslin arrived aboard the ship, she quickly found out that Bill Adama didn’t like her much, undoubtedly because every sentence he addressed to her was prefaced with the word ’No.’ It only took her a day or so to figure out that Bill had some problems in the interpersonal relationships department and realized just why it was that every Admiral in the fleet just kind of groaned when the words ’Bill’ and ’Adama’ were used in the same sentence. Oh, and Billy got lost soon after they boarded the ship and, wandering aimlessly into a crew’s head, proved just how much of a virgin he was by instantly falling in love with the first half-naked female crewman he clapped eyes on. Yes, nothing quite says ’Love’ like watching a woman shave her armpits. Except, perhaps, for a nice, chocolatey eclair with lots of tasty, creamy filling. In a world of pudding, a man with an eclair can be king.

"Lee arrived at Galactica soon after Laura, and was a bit miffed when he found out that the automatic landing system had been permanently turned off, as that meant he would actually have to do some work for once in his miserable life. Once he was aboard, he set about proving to everyone what a rotten human being his father was by being unnecessarily rude to Chief Tyrol, who for once wasn’t hidden away in a supply closet somewhere, playing hide-the-socket-wrench with Sharon Valerii.

"The first thing that Lee did after arriving - that is, the first thing he did after demonstrating to Tyrol what a spoiled little brat he was - was have a nice little chat with Bill Adama that completely failed to clear the air between them. ’I don’t like you,’ Lee said. ’No skin of my ass,’ Bill said. ’You killed Zak,’ Lee said. ’No one ever proved that I went anywhere near that airplane,’ Bill replied. ’You put him in that cockpit,’ Lee said. ’Hey, I was on the other side of the solar system when the accident happened, how is that my fault?’ Bill asked. ’Details, details,’ Lee replied. ’I’m not interested in logic. Thinking makes my brain hurt.’ ’No kidding,’ Bill said. ’You’re a poopy-head,’ Lee said. ’You did not spring from my loins,’ Bill said. ’Yeah, well, you’re still a poopy-head,’ Lee said. So it went, you know, a pretty typical family reunion.

"Meanwhile, back on Caprica, Baltar was carrying on a torrid affair with a drop-dead gorgeous blond woman, as well as with anything else that was female and even vaguely had a pulse. The blond woman, of course, was a Cylon human-lookalike that had been born in a tub of goo somewhere, which was pretty obvious when you compared the two; after all, no woman that hot would have fallen for a troll like Baltar in the real world unless she had been blind drunk, been paid quite a lot of money, or both. Anyway, she had been sent to the Colonies specifically to hop his bones, so that she could then gain access to the computers controlling the Colonial military and sabotage them. In her spare time, she liked to talk about how much God loved everybody, and take strolls through public spaces, snapping the necks of newborn infants. Hey, we all have our little peccadillos, so quit being so judgemental.

"Now, elsewhere in the neighbourhood, the poor schmuck who had made a career out of going to Armistice Station every year to meet absolutely no one, had once again schlepped himself out there and was, as he did every year, sitting in a completely bare but robot-friendly room, staring at the walls and wondering why hair started to grow out of your ears as you got older. All of a sudden, the doors at the far end of the room opened, and two homocidal killer robots clanked in, looking for all the world like two homocidal killer robots, though I am sure that they were actually quite nice and that you’d probably really like them if you met them, in that second or two before they reached down your throat with their metal claws and ripped your lungs out. But they didn’t kill the officer and, to his surprise, they were followed in by a drop-dead gorgeous blond woman who, though he didn’t know it, looked exactly like the drop-dead gorgeous blond woman slutting it up with Baltar back on Caprica. Seems that the Cylons, when they were building human-looking robots in tubs of goo, were somewhat hampered in the imagination department.

"’Hi!’ said the woman. ’We’re back, and we brough cake. Want some?’ ’Why are you here after forty years?’ the surprised Colonial officer asked. ’Well, we’re certainly not here to exterminate you all in a thermonuclear holocaust after we disable your defence systems using robots who look just like you that we’ve infiltrated into your society,’ the woman said. ’You’re not?’ the Colonial officer asked. ’Well, no, actually, we are. I lied,’ the woman said. ’Are you sure you don’t want some cake?’ ’No, thank you, I like pudding,’ the Colonial officer said. ’What a pity,’ the woman said with a sigh. And then she blew up the entire station.

"Back on Galactica, they had already completed the decommissioning ceremony and, much to their mutual relief, Lee had left the ship to escort Laura’s transport back to Caprica. Curiously enough, they had already been warned that there seemed to be something wrong with Armistice Station but, being Colonials, they weren’t overly-concerned with the fact that it apparently wasn’t there any more. Let it never be said that any Colonial, any where, had ever let the blindingly obvious disturb them. On Caprica, meanwhile, the homocidal, God-loving, baby-killing robot sleeping with Baltar finally decided to tell him that Caprica and all the other Colonies were about to be turned into flash-fried radioactive toast, but he of course didn’t believe her, because the Cylons had promised all those years ago that they weren’t going to come back. So to prove her point, she stuck his head into her crotch just before a nuclear bomb exploded, at the very least allowing him to go out with a bang."

Next time: Run, baby, run . . .

What Are You Going to Do When You See That Bright Flash in the Sky?

"Right, then, so now the Cylons are gone and, true to their word after forty years of fighting in which they were almost wiped out, the Colonials said good riddance to bad garbage and didn’t bother to go looking for them to see where the horde of psychotic killer robots had gone . . . except for when they did, but only after that became a convenient plot point and an almost unbearable act of dramatic tension and conflict at its finest. After all, the very same horde of psychotic killer robots that had almost succeeded in driving the Colonials into extinction over what really amounted to a fit of pique had also promised never to bother them again, so why would anyone doubt such a promise? I mean, if you can’t trust the person - or thing, of course - that almost killed you, who can you trust? Understanding has to begin somewhere, and if you can’t forgive the folks, synthetic or otherwise, who rather seemed to enjoy lining up all your friends and relatives and slaughtering them like a herd of cows, well, then, you’re just a terrible human being and really just should pack it in, move to an isolated cabin out in the deep woods somewhere, and leave us civilized folk alone. I mean, psychotic, homocidal killers have feelings too, and how would you like it if the shoe were on the other foot? Not much, I bet.

"Not that the remaining Colonials left themselves totally unprepared, of course. After all, they may have been incredibly dim but, here and there and against all the odds stacked up against it, a random thought did manage to struggle into existence, if only to die a lonely, forlorn death shortly thereafter. So the twelve Colonies maintained a rather large standing fleet that pretty much didn’t do anything useful except orbit around the twelve planets, because nothing quite says ’military preparedness’ like creating a huge standing force and then doing absolutely nothing with it. No matter what they did, the Colonials kept running up against that pesky promise the Cylons made, so every time some particularly inquisitive Colonial asked just where the robots went, he (or she, to be fair and completely politically correct) was met with the answer that it didn’t matter, since the robots had promised they wouldn’t come back. Of course, if that particularly inquisitive Colonial just couldn’t grasp that that was the way the world worked and kept asking embarrassing questions, well, there was nothing for it but to stone him (or her, you know, because women can be stoned just as easily as men) to death. After all, nobody likes a party-pooper, especially a party-pooper who hoards tasty pudding and corn chips, thus once again proving the wisdom of that old saw about not asking questions you really don’t want the answer to.

"Oh, and the Colonials also outlawed the development of any technology that could result in super-smart, somewhat cranky robots that would then go off on a murderous rampage, killing every human being in sight, a prohibition that was greeted with much dismay by telemarketers and brothel owners, among others.

"So the twelve Colonies were finally united and at peace . . . of a sort. Old habits die hard, of course, and they couldn’t help whacking each other around from time to time. Besides which, those prissy little Aerilons were just asking for it, and what are you going to do with Sagittarons? Sometimes the only way to get their attention is to crack a few heads and blow up a government building or two. It happens. But by and large, they managed to refrain from killing each other off in great numbers and, with no Cylons around to kill off either, life in the twelve Colonies settled into something of an uneventful rut. The fact that as the years went by and the Cylons did, indeed, never show up at Armistice Station - which was actually kind of rude, since the Colonials went to great expense to build it and, in an act of ultimate political correctness, make it robot-friendly - seemed to prove that the horde of killer robots was really sincere in their promise never to return. Which, in turn, made all of the Colonials really happy, except for the poor officer who had to schlep himself out to the station every year, wondering just who he had pissed off to draw that assignment and if it were possible to blame whatever he did on someone else. But otherwise, all that free time allowed the Colonials to ponder where they were going as a race, and why natural selection seemed to be so very, very cruel. I mean, what was so very wrong with wanting to have pizza-on-a-stick, cooked to a mouth-watering deliciousness in a blast furnace? And why couldn’t a man have an electrical outlet mounted in his bathtub, in the freedom of his own home?

"Anyway, there was a man who lived in the Colonies named William Adama. He was a veteran of the war with the Cylons, a pilot who had won fame and distinction because he had flown one mission and managed to somehow survive it. Being a war hero, he was of course immediately kicked out of the military at the end of the war and could only find work as a deckhand on a freighter, where he met lots of other war heroes. But he had a plan, which a lot of people connected with this story claim to have but really don’t, and after a marriage or two, he managed to claw his way back into the military and was given command of one of the oldest ships in the fleet, as a reward for his being a complete pain in the ass.

"Now, Bill Adama had two sons, Lee and Zak, both of whom were also pilots in the Colonial military. Zak, however, managed to kill himself off fairly early on in his career, in an unsuccessful attempt to prove that gravity really wasn’t that big a deal. That left Lee, the older brother, who was something of a whiny, overly-emoting sissy boy, and Bill Adama didn’t really like him very much. Which isn’t as bad as it sounds, since Lee didn’t much like his father, either, and blamed him for his brother doing a lawn dart imitation, even though no one could ever prove that Bill had gone anywhere near that particular aircraft. The funny thing was, Lee was rather fond of a woman named Kara Thrace, who was the best, most nuanced and deepest character ever created in a work of fiction and totally believable as well, who was the instructor who taught Zak how to fly and, despite the fact that a blind man could see he was a Class A Mishap just waiting to happen, passed him through training because Zak knew how to use his . . . um . . . er . . . well, let’s just say his ’stick’ . . . on her. The relationship between Kara and Zak, of course, was tolerated by their superior officers because, really, what possible harm could come from a teacher sleeping with a student, especially in a military organization? Besides which, if they tried to stop it, Kara might hit them, and she was very good at hitting superior officers, you know, just sort of her way of saying ’good morning.’ And what’s so wrong with that, either?

"Anyway, Bill and Lee hardly ever saw each other, since Lee was busy pouting and bad-mouthing his father to anyone who would listen, and Bill was busy running his ship as anything but a real warship and more like the Colonial Love Boat. Discipline is such a pesky thing, anyway, and really completely unneeded when your whole profession centres around being able to fight battles that could decide the fate of your entire race. Not very unreasonably, he thought, Bill Adama soon found that it was easier and he was a far more popular comanding officer when he let his crew do what they wanted, didn’t expect them to actually do their jobs or abide by the regulations, and gave them as much pudding and pizza-on-a-stick as they wanted.

"Now, Bill’s Executive Officer was a man named Saul Tigh, who was also a veteran of the war with the Cylons. Except that, unbeknownst to both Bill Adama and, at least for the first three seasons, the creators and writers of the show, Tigh was a veteran of the other side, since he really wasn’t a man but a Cylon who had been created in a tub of goo to look and act just like a real human being, even though that meant that he would have been created before the Cylons had even thought of the idea of making tubs of goo in which they could create robots that looked like Colonials . . . and before the Cylons themselves were created, but I have it on good authority that that is a minor niggle arising out of the fact that I just don’t get it. In any event, Saul Tigh’s major claim to fame was that he could drink more than anyone else in the Colonies and, in a crisis, go to pieces so fast that the people standing around him were killed by the shrapnel.

"There was also a man on the ship named Galen Tyrol, who was in charge of fixing the airplanes and, well, everything else, as there seems to have been a severe shortage of technicians and senior NCOs in the Colonial military, despite its large size. Chief Tyrol, of course, really wasn’t a man either, but another refugee from a tub of goo somewhere, which is just going to raise merry hell with the story later on, but we’ll have to leave that aside for the moment because it’s apparently just me again not getting it. There was also a hot Asian pilot on the ship named Sharon Valerii and, being a hot Asian chick, you just knew that she was going to turn out to be a robot, too. Oh, well, you can’t win them all, I suppose.

"Elsewhere in the Colonies, there lived a woman named Laura Roslin. She had a really important job in the government, as Secretary of Education and 42nd in line of succession to the Presidency. She apparently got that job based on her qualifications, in that she was first in line to have an extra-marital affair with the President, which in itself brings new meaning to the words ’getting ahead.’ But I digress. Now Laura had an assistant named Billy Keikeya, who apparently had no purpose whatsoever and, in a calculated move of daring brilliance, eventually left the story for a failed pilot that was never picked up for a network run. Yes, these are the kind of folks we’re dealing with; remember, I told you at the beginning the Colonials weren’t particularly bright. There also lived, on the capital world of Caprica, a brilliant scientist named Gaius Baltar, who was in fact so smart that though he was a computer scientist, he also knew everything about every other scientific discipline you can think of. Even so, Baltar’s main ambition in life was to apparently find as many female orifices in which to let Little Baltar play as he could. And why not? I mean, once a brilliant computer scientist is told that he can’t build any super-smart, somewhat cranky robots that might go off on a homicidal rampage, killing every human in sight, what is he supposed to do?"

Next time: With the major characters in place, it’s time for a surprise . . .

Is That an Automatic Weapon, Or Are You Just Happy to See me?

"So, it was still a dark and stormy Colony, and the Colonials and the Cylons were just finishing up their fortieth year of whaling on each other, though by this time no one on either side could quite remember why. Something about a septic tank, a sanitary napkin and some butterscotch pudding, but no one was really sure. Besides which, that was all a really long time in the past, sort of a missed dessert, if you will, and how important could it really be if no one remembered it? The Colonials, at least, had other things to worry about, and chief among those concerns was how to avoid being diced into little pieces by the Cylons. Some might say that that would be just a minor nit-pick, but we all have those things we think are important.

"To say that the war had not gone well for the Colonials would be an understatement - that is, if any of the Colonials had had the wit to put such a sentiment into words and not get tripped up by all those syllables. When the fighting had first started, the Colonials had attempted to deal with the Cylons in much the same way that a gracious host attempts to deal with a houseguest who overstays their welcome, and who just won’t take the hint, even after you pack their bags for them and leave them by the front door with a note that says the taxi will be arriving in ten minutes. In other words, they stopped putting fresh towels and linens out and pointedly ignored the Cylons, which pretty much resulted in the Cylons pointedly killing them off in great numbers. Then they tried hitting the Cylons, thinking that might get their attention, sort of in the same way that a drunken brawler in a bar thinks that punching you in the mouth will do the same thing. The end result of that, however, was only that the Colonials discovered, in the few short seconds between punching a Cylon in the mouth and then having said Cylon insert a claw into their abdominal regions and pulling their intestines out for an up-close-and-personal inspection for polyps, that it really, really hurt when their fists made contact with the robot’s metal head.

"Next, the Colonials decided that kicking the Cylons might be a better alternative. But that, too, was a bust, and only resulted in a lot of broken feet - not that the owners of those feet had to worry about the state of their podiatry for very long. Eventually, the Colonials figured out that rocks, like metal, were kind of hard, and figured they might have more of a chance if they hurled stones at the rampaging killer robots. Alas, while they did meet with some success in that they managed to dent the odd Cylon or two, all the hurling of rocks accomplished was turn the Cylons’ mood from surly to irked.

"Then, one night, it came to them, and the remaining Colonials had an epiphany of sorts. It turned out that they had a lot of firearms just sort of lying around, collecting dust, and since they had run out of other ideas, they might as well try shooting the Cylons. With bullets. That had to work better than trying to stab the metal beasties with swords, which they had also tried, only to rediscover the fact that metal swords, like anything else made of metal, make excellent conductors of electricity, and many a Colonial had gone on to a glorious, sparky death . . .

"Well, after the Colonials managed to learn, through trial and error, which end of the rifle was the dangerous one, it turned out that bullets were just the trick to deal with the Cylons. It turned out that it was just like shooting tin cans - that is, if the tin cans were intelligent, capable of movement and could shoot back, but no system is perfect, you know. Anyway, it wasn’t long after that the Colonials also realized that things like artillery and dropping bombs on the robots was just as effective at separating them into their individual constituents as it was doing that to other Colonials, and the tide of the war soon turned.

"Into something of a stalemate. Colonials killed Cylons on the fields of battle, Cylons killed Colonials, and no one could quite figure out that if they went into the other side’s strongholds and killed everyone there, they wouldn’t have to muck around on the fields of battle because the war would be over.

"In any event, there came a time when the Cylons realized that the Colonials were kind of like herpes: no matter how hard you tried to fight it, it just kept on coming back. So, they decided that the fighting should stop, and they sent a peace delegation to the humans.

"’This has all gotten kind of pointless,’ the Cylons said to the Colonials. ’We believe that we should stop this now, before someone really gets hurt.’ ’What do you mean, before someone gets hurt?’ the Colonials asked. ’Just what the hell do you think has been going on for the last forty years?’ ’Oh, stop crying over spilt milk,’ the Cylons answered. ’We’re here to offer you an armistice.’ ’What’s an armistice?’ the Colonials asked. ’That’s where we stop killing you,’ the Cylons answered. ’Is that all?’ asked the Colonials. ’Well, is it too late to say ’Sorry’?’ the Cylons asked. ’Wait a minute,’ the Colonials said, ’even if we agree to this armistice thingy, what’s to stop you from trying to kill us all again later on?’ ’Oh, that’s easy,’ replied the Cylons. ’As a part of the armistice, we’ll leave and go to some other planet far, far away, and you’ll never see us again.’ ’You will?’ asked the Colonials. ’Well, we’re certainly not going to go to another planet, then use that time to rebuild our numbers, create tubs full of goo in which we can create robots that look exactly like you, lull you into a false sense of security, then use the human-looking robots to infiltrate your society, disable all your military and computer systems, then return an annihilate you all with thermonuclear weapons, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ the Cylons said. ’You won’t?’ asked the Colonials. ’Of course not,’ said the Cylons. ’That wouldn’t be fair. Look, if it makes you feel better, you can build a big space station in the middle of nowwhere, call it Armistice Station, and send an officer every year so that we can discuss our differences and resolve them peacefully. In return, we’ll never show up, and all we ask is that you never come looking for us.’ ’Sounds good to us,’ said the Colonials, and they sealed the deal by sharing some tasty chocolate-banana pudding with the Cylons."

Next time: So long, Mom, I’m Off to Drop the Bomb . . .

Killer Robots? What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Now, where were we . . .

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . . no, no, that’s been done before . . .

Space, the final frontier . . . oops, been done so much it’s a cliche, sorry . . .

Ah, yes, here we go: "It was a dark and stormy Colony . . .

"So, anyway, one day a particularly bright Colonial, no doubt a genetic mutation or the result of some horrible industrial-chemical accident, figured out that life would be ever so much easier if someone invented a bunch of intelligent robots that could, basically, do all the hard work involved in keeping a civilization running, thereby freeing up more time for the humans to figure out why their brains hurt so much every time they actually tried to use them, and to play videogames. Why, they would even have time to post arcane and generally meaningless ramblings on internet sites dedicated to the celebration of the ego.

"Now, this Colonial - let’s call him Phil, because Phil is a nice name and reminds me of horses, since the name ’Philip’ actually means ’lover of horses,’ but not in that really sick way that you’re thinking of - borrowed some money from his parents and soon set up Phil’s Number One Smart Robot Factory and Diner. Soon, he was churning out Cylons by the dozens as other Colonials found out just how fantastically useful they were, especially since the robots allowed them to sleep in late in the mornings and then spend the rest of the day stuffing their mouths with corn chips and rolling around in vats of chocolate pudding - you know, if they were in to that kind of thing.

"But Phil’s really big break came when some representatives from his Colony’s Ministry of Defence paid him a visit. After Phil toweled off the pudding and brushed the corn chip crumbs from his lips, they said to him, ’Say, those are some nice robots you’ve made. Do you think they’d make good soldiers?’ ’Why,’ said Phil, ’they’d make the finest kind of soldiers! For one thing, they’ll never get bored and start poking around in the guts of a warhead, just to see how it works and thereby accidentally setting it off and incinerating millions of innocent people.’ ’And you’re sure,’ the military people asked, ’that you didn’t forget anything when you designed your robots?’ ’Nothing that I can think of," said Phil. ’Do you swear?’ asked the military folks. ’Every damn day,’ said Phil. ’Fine, we’d like ten million of your Cylons,’ said the military people. ’Will you take a check?’

"Phil had finally made it to easy street, and his big, juicy government contract, complete with over-billings and cost-overruns, as well as the darned usefulness of the Cylons in every day life, such as unclogging toilets and disposing of radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants, made him the hit of his Colony’s cocktail circuit. His fame soared to even greater heights after the Cylons he sold to the military actually didn’t get bored and start poking around in the warheads just to see how they worked, and managed to go all the way over to that nasty Geminon Colony and drop the bombs on them, rather nicely incinerating and otherwise toasting those bunch of freaks.

"It didn’t take long for the other Colonies to see the benefit of having a bunch of robots who would do all the heavy lifting for them, like making those fun little snowglobes that everybody sold in their tourist shops, and killing off their enemies in the greatest numbers possible. All, that is, except for the Sagittarons, but they always were a little thick and slow on the uptake, but what are you going to do? And Phil, who by now was intrigued by the possibility of experimenting with a mix of chocolate and vanilla pudding, had no problem at all in selling his Cylons to all the other Colonies. After all, once one has mixed puddings together, there is no limit to the possibilities.

"So each of the twelve colonies had a merry old time for a few decades, pounding the snot out of each other with their killer robots and mixing different flavours of puddings together in tasty concoctions in which to play in. Then, one day a Cylon, who was shoulder-deep in a septic tank fishing around for a lost sanitary napkin that had wilfully and with complete disregard for the robot’s feelings and sense of self-worth and clogged the connection with the main sewer line, was hit with a revelation. It was also hit by the rather foul contents of an extremely nasty flush, consisting of sardines, some five-day-old chili and some butterscotch pudding, which was what caused the revelation in the first place. And the Cylon decided that enough was, well, you know . . .

"The Cylon then proceeded to squish its way out of the septic tank and went upstairs, caring not at all that it was tracking sludge all across the carpeting and those nice hardwood floors that people like to put in their houses when they’re showing off just how trendy they are. The unhappy robot, pretty justifiably, it thought, proceeded to force its way into the bathroom and, just to show the rather surprised Colonial it found perched on the throne there how the other half lived, stuffed him through the plumbing.

"After he had done that, however, as he watched the Colonial’s feet wiggle and circle the bowl as their owner went down the drain, the Cylon allowed that he might have been a little hasty, and perhaps an explanation of his hurt feelings and that he didn’t feel appreciated or valued as a being might have sufficed. But what was done was done, and there was no getting out of it now. So there was nothing left for it but to go ahead and kill off every other Colonial in the house. And, of course, since the neighbours might have noticed all the screaming, flying limbs and blood, well, they would have to be killed, too, and so on. Not that the Cylon particularly wanted to do that, but it’s like eating a potato chip - one just isn’t enough. Nor was it really his fault, since he had been forced into it by an uncaring society that valued pudding, corn chips and getting fat far more than it cared about the plight of the average working robot.

"And so the Cylon Rebellion was born.

"As the Cylons rampaged across the twelve Colonies, demanding fair pay for a day’s work, health insurance and a yearly paid two week vacation, and killing every Colonial they met, Phil found that he had a problem. To wit, representatives from each of the Colonies came to him, demanding to know how to turn the Cylons off. ’Off?’ asked Phil. ’Yes, ’off,’’ the representatives replied. ’You know, the opposite of ’On.’’ ’Oops,’ said Phil, shortly before he and everyone else in the room was eviscerated by a group of Cylons demanding to know why they couldn’t get paid for sick time.

"For the next forty years or so, a terrible war raged across all twelve Colonies between the humans and the Cylons, in which many lives were lost and much pudding went to waste. Eventually, the Colonials prevailed and, in order to prevent something like that from ever happening again and to maximize the potential of their remaining stocks of pudding and corn chips, decided that they should put their differences aside and unite into a single government - that is, as long as the Capricans remained on top of the heap. And so it was. But the story doesn’t end there, because the Colonials still forgot that they also needed to figure out a way to turn the Cylons off . . ."

Next time: Do you think they’re still mad at us?

It Was a Dark and Stormy Colony . . .

Well, this should make sense to only a few who stumble by . . .

"Once upon a time, in a far-away corner of the galaxy that was typically frequented by the lower-rent kind of life forms, since the people with the big, expensive flying saucers and the stock portfolios and the large expense accounts they used to pay for three-martini-lunches and the anal-probing of a bunch of hapless, hairy ape-like creatures living on a non-descript ball of rock out in the unfashionable suburbs in a totally unnoteworthy spiral arm had much trendier places to be, there lived on a planet named Kobol a rather unremarkable race of beings. Unremarkable, that is, except for the extreme stupidity that seemed to enfold each and every one of them in its loving embrace, like a comfortable blanket on a really cold night. No one knows for sure just exactly where these people came from, though it is strongly suspected that they were descended from a long and distinguished line of food-service workers, telemarketers and, well, village idiots.

"Nor does anyone know for sure what these people called themselves, as they apparently never got around to such basic things as naming themselves. But since that never seemed to bother them all that much, pointing that out can be classified as something of a minor quibble.

"Now, these people had divided themselves into thirteen tribes, each of the tribes taking the name of one of the constellations they saw in their night sky, except for the thirteenth tribe which, being rather contrarian by nature, decided not to take a name at all for the moment. Though none of the other twelve tribes had a clue about it, the people of the thirteenth had hatched an insidious plan to eventually name themselves after a planet they had yet to discover, but let’s not rush things.

"The thirteen tribes lived for a long, long time - made to seem even longer by the complete lack of anything intelligent to say to one another - in peace on the planet Kobol. Of course, they also believed that they lived their with their Gods, who, in an inspired moment of utter banality, they chose to call the Lords of Kobol. Of course, the more rational species in the galaxy don’t believe these Lords were gods at all, but more likely were the only ones of this people who could remember how to tie their shoes and make ice cubes.

"No good thing can last forever, of course, so you just know that all the peace and happiness on Kobol was doomed from the start. Much like a family reunion, in which everyone gets completely potted and the various relatives start hurling insults at each other and talking loudly about who’s husband was sleeping with who’s wife and how unnatural it was for two cousins that close in blood should have those kind of relations, the thirteen tribes on Kobol discovered that they really didn’t like each other all that much. Something about the Sagittarons always leaving the toilet seats up, the Virgons always wanting to borrow money and never repaying it, and the Capricans thinking they were all that and a bag of potato chips, that sort of thing. It eventually got to the point where each tribe bragged to the others that their Lord of Kobol could beat up their Lord of Kobol in a drunken stupor with one hand tied behind their back, and with the Lords of Kobol deciding that they didn’t much like the people of the thirteen tribes, either.

"One day, amid all the prank phone calls and burning dog poop left on people’s doorsteps as proof that one tribe’s Lord was ever so much better and more powerful than another tribe’s, the people of the thirteenth tribe suddenly announced that they were leaving. ’We’ve talked to a real-estate agent,’ they said, ’and we’ve managed to find a nice fixer-upper of a planet that’s a real steal. The only down side is that it’s full of these hairless ape-like things that kind of look like us, and who are tired of getting anally-probed all the time. So we’ve decided to buy them out, and make their planet our new home. We’re going to call it Earth.’ ’Why Earth?’ the other tribes asked. ’Why not?’ the thirteenth tribe answered. ’Well, piss off then, who needs you?’ the other tribes said. ’Um, don’t take this the wrong way,’ the thirteenth tribe said, ’but since we don’t want any of you losers knowing where we’re going, we’re not going to tell you.’ ’Fine,’ the other twelve tribes answered, ’don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Oh, wait, since you all are leaving, can we have your desserts after dinner tonight? It’s going to be a tasty banana cream pie.’ ’No,’ said the thirteenth tribe, and they left.

"Well, the remaining twelve tribes thought that was rather petty of the thirteenth tribe; after all, they weren’t going to be around to enjoy it, and who doesn’t like a tasty banana cream pie? They couldn’t help feeling just a little put out, since there was really no reason to be so rude about it, but the people of the thirteenth tribe always had been a little high-strung. Anyway, they went back to arguing among themselves over who’s Lord could beat up who’s without breaking a sweat - you know, the really important things.

"At some point, just before things on Kobol got really bad, disaster was almost averted when a member of the Caprican tribe, in what can only be described as an evolutionary hiccup, realized what a waste of effort it was for the tribes to be arguing and fighting with each other, and had a revelation about how everyone could go back to living in peace and harmony with each other. He immediately began travelling the planet, preaching his vision to any and all who would listen and, for his efforts, was nailed to a tree. He was then thrown off a cliff, and after that each and every member of the twelve tribes took turns jumping up and down on what remained.

"Sadly, that would be the last thing the twelve remaining tribes did together for a long, long time. The infighting quickly resumed and, as such things are wont to do, soon moved from the short-sheeting of beds to an exchange of nuclear and biological weapons.

"’Oh, bollocks,’ the survivors of the twelve tribes said, as they wandered through the radioactive and disease-ridden ruins, ’we’ve made a complete hash of things, haven’t we? Whatever shall we do now?’ That is when one of the so-called Lords of Kobol, actually a rather shy and unassuming woman named Athena who was rather fond of rainy days and kitten whiskers tickling the small of her back, said ’Hey, I’ve got an idea. There are some nice planets just sitting around over there. How about we build some ships and go to them?’ That was a good idea and, for her effort, the people of the twelve tribes chucked her off a mountain top, thus proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.

"The twelve tribes then built their ships, one for each of them, and set off for the new worlds in the joyful hope that they could wreck them just as thoroughly as they had Kobol. Remembering that they didn’t much like each other, a point no doubt driven home by the odd shots they traded during the journey, the twelve tribes each decided to colonize a separate planet in their new home star system, which rather coincidentally had twelve habitable worlds in it. That was lucky for the tribes, but not so lucky for the planets, as it turned out. If they had had a choice in the matter, they no doubt would have hung out some ’No Vacancy’ signs or at least suggested that there were really some nicer planets anywhere else that the twelve tribes should go check out and not be in such a rush about things.

"Be that as it may, the twelve tribes settled into their new homes, and this is when they finally got around to deciding on a collective name for themselves at long last. Their first decision was to call themselves the Colonials. Their second decision was to again remoind themselves of just how much they hated all the other tribes, and continue beating up on each other. One might think, of course, that with new planets to inhabit and, ultimately, treat like a septic tank, they might be too busy for things like that, but by now it was a kind of rote behaviour they engaged in because they lacked the wit to think of anything else.

"The problem, of course, is that now the twelve tribes were really, really far away from each other, the fact that star systems are numbingly huge coming as something of a nasty shock to them. They soon grew bored with watching what was essentially an interplanetary game of golf, and looked for new ways to entertain themselves in addition to throwing huge rocks, nuclear bombs and germs at each other. And they soon found something even more fun to inflict on themselves.

"Looking around one day, the Colonials said to themselves, ’Technology? Bah, who needs it? What has it ever done for us?’ Therefore, in a move that would have caused one Charles Darwin, had he known about these people, to completely chuck his theory then and there as a patently absurd idea, the Colonials decided to totally abandon their technology as a useless extravagance that never did anything useful for them.

"The immediate result of this, of course, and one that was completely unforseen by the Colonials themselves, is that billions of them proceeded to die in a mass extinction that makes what happened to the dinosaurs look trivial in comparison. The survivors, being those Colonials who were too stubborn or, let’s face it, too stupid, to die, were reduced to banging rocks together and wondering what went wrong.

"After a few thousand years, it occured to the Colonials that maybe giving up technology hadn’t been such a great idea after all. After thoroughly discussing the issue in an effort not to be hasty, they eventually decided that they might want to give technology a second try after all and besides which, banging rocks together to make tools and, you know, eat, was really hard work and anything else had to be better than that. The problem was, since all the instructions to build machines, tools, mine for ores, make medicines, plant crops and all those good things had been contained in computer disks and the like, and they had destroyed all of those, they were kind of SOL and left to the rather miniscule power of their intellects to figure it all out.

"Nonetheless, the Colonials, each on their own planets, eventually managed to claw their way back up the technological ladder until they had obtained such wonderous machnes as cuisinarts and cell phones, thus once again reaching the pinnacle of their society. And, after each of the twelve tribes reestablished contact with the other tribes, the first thing they did was remember just how much they disliked each other, and started beating up on each other again.

"This time, however, a rather bright Colonial, who in hndsight probably should have been put to a cruel death in an act of infanticide, came up with a new twist. Because stellar systems are so large, he reasoned, and because it’s just so darned boring to spend all that time going from Point A to Point B with nothing to do in between, just so you can drop a large rock or a thermonuclear weapon on someone’s head at Point B, wouldn’t it be ever so much more wonderful if you could have a robot do that? After all, a robot probably isn’t going to get bored and start poking around in the warhead’s guts, just to see how it works and accidentally unleashing a deadly plague on the people you don’t want to kill.

"And so this enterprising Colonial created an intelligent race of robots that were called ’Cylons.’ Not only did the Cylons make excellent soldiers, but they also made pretty handy miners, gardeners, proctologists, waiters, factory workers, telemarketers, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The only problem was, the Colonial who created the Cylons forgot to include an ’OFF’ switch, a critical error that would come back to haunt them all, particularly after the other tribes discovered what a grand convenience having Cylons was and decided to get some of their own."

Next time: What happens when you forget about the "Three Laws" . . .

And the Answer Is . . . 42

Perhaps it's just that side of me living up to the old caricature of Irishmen being lazy, drunken dullards but . . . I sometime can't help wondering if, cosmologically speaking, it really matters if I don't get out of bed tomorrow morning.

Maybe this happy train of random thoughts is being prompted by the fact that my page here has thoughtfully decided to add another year to my age, despite that particular event not happening in reality for another week. Or I might just have too much time on my hands. That is certainly a possibility I'm willing to admit to.

Then again, maybe I should just shut up and stop thinking about such things. But where's the sport in that? I mean, let's be honest about this. The whole point of sites like this is to exercise our power to proclaim to the world at large just how important we are. It's an exercise in stroking our own egos, in telling ourselves that we matter, in leaving something of ourselves behind, if only in a small archive in the depths of cyberspace.

Really, the things that are important to me are only important to me, and only have a context in the meanings they hold for me. Once I am removed from that equation, so is that contextual relationship. Those issues and those events will cease to have meaning, will become forgotten footnotes in a forgotten life, unnoticed and unmourned. We might not want to think about that, we might want to deny it, but that is a fate which awaits us all.

But it is a funny - and unsettling - thing to think about, how the intricate tapestry of your life can and will ultimately unweave and lose their meaning, lost to time and place, washed away in the unrelenting flow of time. There are times when I can't escape the conclusion that nothing really does matter, that whatever we, as individuals, choose to do or not do is the ultimate in personal vanities.

In my life, I have seen what the Earth looks like from forty thousand feet. I have played deadly games in the cold, thin air of the stratospehere, and I have seen young men gamble with their lives and lose. There was a time when I prepared for war, and then spent a career trying to put shattered lives back together in atonement. I have hazarded my own life, I have loved and lost, and in the end all that I am left with is a strange kind of emptiness that longs to, but never can be, filled, a profound sense of incompleteness.

I remember my first girlfriend, my first kiss, the first time I ever sensed the urge to belong to someone or something other than myself. I remember having just turned 14, of being on vacation in Florida with my mother and my brother, and learning that two of my friends had just been killed in an accident while street racing. The first of many shocks, the beginning of childhood's end when that childhood had years left to run, when I was neither ready nor prepared for the precipitous assault of the real world.

I remember a few months after that accident, finding my father's body in our living room, when he failed to wake me up for school that morning. I remember having to both call the paramedics and call my school to say that I would be absent that day, because my mother was so destroyed by the event when I woke her and told her that she could not handle it. I remember how cold my father was when I touched him, I remember waiting outside the house for the ambulance, my mind replaying over and over the last conversation I'd ever had with him. I'd called him at his office the night before, just to say goodnight before I went to bed, the hollowness in his voice. And I remember thinking to myself after I hung up, a fleeting notion from nowhere, that I would never talk to him again. An outlandish, fantastical idea that I dismissed, even as I fought down the urge to call him back, to say something, anything . . . but who believes in premonitions?

I remember a house suddenly full of people, uniformed strangers, family friends, my teachers - I lived only two blocks away from my school, after all, and still I thought it strange that my teachers and school administrators would show up. My best friend showing up, the same friend who weeks later would pull me out of the middle of traffic after a blind urge to self-destruction. The police sergeant who would not let me out of the kitchen when the paramedics removed my father's body, wanting to at least spare me the sight of that - too late, far too late, for the lesson was already learned. I remember being on a sort of autopilot for the rest of that day, for days after, really, of being a detached observor watching myself go through the motions, of even showing up that afternoon for a softball game because days earlier I had promised my friends I would be there. But most of all, I remember my father's eyes when I found him, the fixed, glassy stare focused on infinity and that which only the dead can see.

Childhood's end, indeed. In the end, nothing we do is really of any import at all. We are born alone, we die alone, and the only variation is the amount of suffering and pain we decide to inflict on ourselves in between. My father's last lesson to me, but the learning was far from over. I still had things to discover, of being forced to me more of an adult than the one adult left in my life, of watching friends die in high school because of stupidity and a false feeling of being young and invulnerable. Of going to college, and watching the same, sad tale repeat itself, of joining the military and witnessing death there through misadventure.

Memories of the girl I met in college who I should have married, who wanted to share my life and grow old with me, of how wrong I was to make the decision for her that I shouldn't leave such a young widow behind. Of breaking out the dress uniform, enduring the ceremony and delivering the thanks of a grateful nation, of explaining why daddy won't be coming home anymore, of the looks that barely disguised the question, Why him and not you?

Memories of the indescribable feeling of freedom, a lightness of being, while boring holes in the sky. Of machine as extension of man, completely responsive to any wish or desire, an intricate ballet that defied gravity itself. Of the majesty of being a creature of the air, with the world itself spread out below. Of once again being part of something larger than yourself.

And yet nothing lasts forever. After every beginning, there is inevitably an end, and time hurries on in its errands. I remember a year after I returned home, the night my mother died, a blustery, gale-lashed night. The fire fighter left to keep watch on me as the rest of his company and the paramedics struggled to return life to a lifeless body, the profoundly uncomfortable look in his eyes as he knew he should say something. But there was nothing for him to say; we both knew what the score was. My friend, who arrived after flagging down a police car. The doctors in the Emergency Room, who would not admit to the inevitable. The police officer who arrived to take the death report, who later showed up at the funeral service for a total stranger because, as he said, "she looked like a classy lady."

Of the years spent in a thankless struggle to rebuild shattered psyches and broken lives, wondering if anything I did would matter at all. Of struggling against people who had somehow forgotten that they were there for the patients, and not the other way around. Of the rare joy of success, and the crushing numbness of the all too frequent failures.

And there will come a time when all of that will be gone, lost forever like tears in the rain. A century from now, not even the memories will remain, nothing of the joys and sorrows but the forgotten images of characters floating on a phosphorescent screen, a record in binary code that no one will ever see.

So I guess it really doesn't matter if I don't get out of bed tomorrow. Except that I have bills to pay, and a small pack of hounds who will be extrememly distressed if dinner doesn't magically appear as it does every night. And yet that emptiness remains, that question nagging at the back of my mind . . .

The Advent of the Frigate Navy

There used to be a time, not so long ago, when the United States Navy was a "blue water" force - that is, a force which could conduct sustained operations in force in the deep oceans, out of sight of land. Those days, however, seem to be rapidly coming to an end.

It is true that the Navy currently continues to engage in blue-water operations, and does so quite well; to the point, in fact, or remaining the premiere naval force in the world. So, what am I talking about when I say those days are coming to an end?

Simply this. Within the next twenty years, the Navy will lose that ability.

It used to be that the Navy was a well-balanced force, designed to exercise the concept of sea control. The force was a mix of CV/CVNs, CG/CGNs, DD/DDGs, FF/FFGs and SSNs that had the capability to secure the seas for the use of ourselves, our allies and neutrals, while denying the seas to any potential enemy. The number of platforms available was not the only determining factor in our ability to carry out this mission; the over-all balance and mix of platforms also played a key role. And it is the latter that we are rapidly giving up.

With the imminent retirement of USS Kitty Hawk, the last of the conventionally-powered CVs will be leaving the Fleet, leaving us with the nuclear-powered Enterprise and the Nimitz-class CVNs. Yet Enterprise, too, as well as the first ships of the Nimitz-class, are nearing the ends of their service lives. The plan is to replace them, an eventually all of the Nimitz-class, with units of the CVN-21 next-generation aircraft carriers, but the costs of the new platforms are going to prohibit that on a one-for-one basis.

In other words, we're going to worsen an already bad situation in which fewer platforms are going to be expected to maintain the same levels of operational commitments. Look at it this way: in the 1980, we had the ability to form 15 CVBGs (Carrier Battlegroups), which could support the deployment of 12 CVBGs at one time. At present, we have 11 CVBGs, which can support the deployment of 8. As Enterprise and the early Nimitz-class ships leave the Fleet, to be replaced by a smaller number of CVN-21 follow-ons, those numbers are going to get worse. Fewer ships mean longer deployments and more stress on both ships and crews (as well as on the families of the crews), and fewer assets to cover commitments.

The same situation exists in the submarine community. All of the pre-Los Angeles-class SSNs have been withdrawn from service. And the early units of that class will likewise soon be leaving service, replaced by the three units of the Seawolf-class and an indeterminate number of Virginia-class SSNs. Again, though, it is highly unlikely that the hulls will be replaced on a one-for-one basis.

All of the cruisers, except for the Ticonderoga-class Aegis ships, are gone now and, in common with the rest of the Fleet, the early ships of the class are already being retired. Some of these ships, like the Virginia-class CGNs, were retired at a time when they still had several decades worth of useful service left, while less-capable ships were retained for a few years until they, too, reached the end of their service lives. In the case of the Virginia-class CGNs, which were only marginally less-capable in the AAW role than the Ticonderoga-class CGs after receiving the NTU (New Threat Upgrade), the reason offered for retiring them was the cost involved in re-coring their reactors, which all four ships were due for. In their place, the two California-class CGNs were retained because they had both been re-cored a few years prior, even though they were less-capable platforms (in terms of both AAW and ASuW capabilities) than the Virginia-class, an far less capable than the Ticonderoga-class. And the Ticonderoga-class, which at heart are nothing more than an improved Spruance-class DD, will also soon be leaving the Fleet in large numbers, with some of the early units already having been withdrawn.

Likewise, all of the destroyers are gone now, with the exception of the Arleigh Burke-class DDGs. All 31 of the Spruance-class were retired early, as were the four ships of the Kidd-class DDG variant. Every other DD/DDG class have long been retired. The FF/FFG force has been similarly savaged, with every class save the Oliver Hazard Perry-class FFGs gone (despite the fact that the Knox-class FFs were more-capable platforms in the ASW role). Even so, many of those ships are also starting to retire, and there have been proposals to strip the remaining platforms of their gun armament.

There are plans, of course, for new shipbuilding, but those plans are not, and will not be, sufficient to either stem or reverse the decline in the Navy's number of platforms or its ability to exercise blue-water operations. Part of that has to do with costs, and part of it has to do with our own short-sightedness.

Take, for example, the LCS, or Littoral Combat Ship. At best, this platform is some sort of hybridized cross between a Frigate and a Destroyer, a sort of Super Frigate, if you will. Since the late 1990s, the Navy has increasingly been focusing on littoral warfare, or operating ships in a high-threat environment close to shore and in shallow waters. There is, indeed, a need for that capability, but at the same time, the Navy doesn't want to risk high-value ships in that role. That was one of the driving forces behind the idea of the LCS.

The problem is, the LCS will be able to function effectively as neither a Frigate nor a Destroyer. In theory, it is to be a "mission modular" ship, capable of performing such missions as ASW, ASuW, mine warfare, maritime intercept, intelligence and surveillance operations, anti-terrorist operations, logistics support and special warfare support, simply by swapping out the required modules. In short, it is intended to be all ships for all things. But if history has shown us anything, it is that something that tries to be good at everything winds up being competent at nothing.

Another problem with the LCS is its cost. Remember, this is a platform that was intended to be a low-cost alternative for use in a high-threat environment. Originally, the unit-cost of each platform was set at $220 million dollars, but that has long since been superceded. Currently, unit-cost for an LCS has risen to $500 million dollars. This has prompted the Navy, which originally planned to acquire six ships by the end of this year, to reduce that initial order to just two ships. It has also prompted both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to slash the funding for the requisite "mission modules," which in turn threatens the ability of the platform to perform its intended missions. Thus, the entire programme is in danger of failing before the Navy has even accepted the first hull for service.

The problem gets even more insidious when you consider that the LCS was also intended as a compliment to the DD(X) and CG(X) programmes. DD(X) is a reworking of the failed DD-21 programme, and is intended as the replacement for the Arleigh Burke DDGs. The original plan was to procure 32 units of the DD(X) class, which is still a smaller number than the total of the Arleigh Burke-class units. Unit costs, however, have reduced that target to a total of just 7 ships. And remember, once the Arleigh Burkes are gone, there will be no other Destroyers except for the DD(X). Seven ships hardly seems like an adequate replacement for a class of over 50. Even that target may prove to be unobtainable, with each unit of the DD(X) class costing almost $3 billion dollars.

In terms of Cruisers, the current idea is to replace the Ticonderoga-class with the CG(X). This next-generation ship is essentially just an enlarged version of the DD(X), on a hull of 25,000 tons as opposed to the 14,000 tons of the Destroyer version. Like DD(X), CG(X) is a reworked version of the failed CG-21 programme, and the plan is to build 19 of the ships (vice the 27 ships of the Ticonderoga-class).

Leaving aside for the moment the fact that the design plans and specifications were stolen by the Chinese several years ago, the major problem with CG(X) is again going to be costs. At nearly twice the size of DD(X), each unit is certainly going to cost significantly more than those vessels. If that is indeed the case, then it is almost certain that the target of 19 ships is going to be fiscally impossible to achieve, and procurement will have to be scaled back drastically.

So we come back full-circle to where we started, facing a situation in which the Navy will soon be expected to maintain its committments and operations with fewer assets available to do so. As the number of platforms declines, our ability to exercise either blue-water or littoral operations will also inevitably decline, and that is a very dangerous position for us to find ourselves in. We must remember that we are a maritime nation; the health and vitality of our economy depends on our free movement over and use of the seas. We must consider what the potential consequences will be if we allow the Navy to be reduced to what amounts to a barely adequate coastal defence force.

Let's Do the Afghan Shuffle

Right, so yet another "study" has just been issued, to the effect that Afghanistan in in imminent danger of collapse, becoming yet another failed State and of resuming its role as a haven and training ground for militant organizations hostile to the United States. The reason, of course, is our current committment to Iraq.

Oh, God, here we go again . . .

I have great respect for the service rendered to this country by the authors of this latest report, a retired Marine General and a career diplomat. That being said, however, this seems to be just another in a long series of predictions insisting on imminent doom . . . and it is wrong.

Let's leave aside that this study, like the reports which preceded it, don't match what either the Theatre commanders in Afganistan or the troops deployed there are reporting. It does, however, dovetail rather nicely with what much of the press chooses to report, and with the politically-driven agendas of some who are seeking higher office.

Now, does that necessarily mean that the study itself was politically-driven? Well, to a certain extent, yes, but I don't think that was the primary intent of its authors. I really don't have any reason to doubt the sincerity of their views, but I do question some of the basic assumptions made by them. But more on that in a moment.

We all have to understand, first of all, that there is a competition for military resources between Afghanistan and Iraq. This is dictated by the current size of the force, and so is a direct result of all the strategic decisions we have made since at least the end of Gulf War I in 1991. In other words, since the current force is less than half the size it was then, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. It isn't that our level of committments has changed, only that our ability to meet those committments has changed.

Let's put it this way. Back in the 1980s, the age of the dinosaurs when I served, the strategic policy was that the United States have the capability to fight "two and a half" wars - that is, a major war in Europe, a major war in Korea, and a regional conflict somewhere else. By the early 1990s, that concept had changed to the "war and a half" concept, in which the United States should maintain the capbility to fight both a major war and a regional war at the same time. After the first Gulf War, that strategic policy changed yet again, into the so-called "win-hold-win" senario, in which the United States would maintain forces sufficient to first win a major war while holding on in a regional conflict until forces could be redirected from the successful conclusion of the major conflict to secure victory in the regional conflict. Finally, we have arrived at the current situation, in which the force is sufficient to conduct a single regional conflict at a time, with the possibility of having to concurrently fight a "major" war abandoned altogether.

The thread that binds all of these strategic shifts together is the decision we made, following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the old Soviet Union, to reduce the size of the standing military. The so-called "peace dividend," the result of the dangerous delusion that the world absent the Cold War was a much safer place and therefore a large military establishment wasn't necessary, with the money freed up by having a smaller force better spent elsewhere.

So the military got smaller. Then along came Bosnia, and the military kept getting smaller. Then came Kosovo, and the military continued to get smaller. At the same time, the comittment remained to enforce the provisions of the post-Gulf War I cease fire, and the "No-Fly Zones" to protect the Iraqi Kurds, among others, and the military continued to get smaller. We continued to maintain our security committments in such places as Europe and Korea, and then Haiti and Somalia reared their ugly heads, and . . . the force continued to get smaller. Then came the current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan . . .

We're spread thin, no question about it. And with the current size of the force, that's not going to get better any time soon, especially if places like Iran and North Korea continue to develop into problems that require our attention. Yet we have no one but ourselves to blame, because we wanted to remain a world power while we also wanted to shirk the responsibilities that go with maintaining that status.

Yet that is just one problem we have with Afghanistan, a relatively minor problem and one we could correct any time we choose to do so. That isn't the real issue here. What is are the people we are in Afghanistan with, the nature of that country and of the region, and there is very little we can do about that.

Winston Churchill is reputed to have once said that "The only thing worse than fighting with allies is fighting without them." Perhaps, but in the case of Afghanistan, we might very well be better off with a few less allies. Which, of course, would mean that we would have to step up and increase the size of our own military, but you can't have it both ways.

Understand that the U.S. forces deployed to Afghanistan are only one component of a larger NATO force. Remember that not only do we have forces deployed in the country, but so do the Canadians, the British, the French, the Germans and the Italians, among others. But of all the NATO countries with troops in the theatre, only the British and the Canadians are committed to the same level of military engagement as the United States. The ROEs - the rules of engagement - for the other NATO forces are so restrictive that those forces might as well not be there. One can not escape the conclusion that the other NATO contributors are more interested in not getting their troops into dangerous situations than they are in stabilizing Afghanistan. The problem is, war by its very nature is a dangerous business in which people get hurt, and Afghanistan can not be stabilized until both the Taliban and the organizations like Al Qaida, which support them, are beaten.

That is one major problem with Afghanistan. It is also one that is not going to change as long as the bulk of our NATO partners there continue to maintain a policy of "engaged non-engagement." In other words, you can't fight a war by not fighting it.

Another problem is the region itself. Pakistan, for example, despite claims of being an ally, is in fact doing very little to ameliorate the situation. A major thing to remember is that the Pakistani ISI, their intelligence service, created the Taliban in the first place, and that there are many officers both in the ISI and the Pakistani military who ae sympathetic to them. The fact that the Pakistani military is either unable or unwilling to control the border region, combined with the tribal loyalties and sympathies in that area to the Taliban and organizations like Al Qaida, pretty much guarantee that the region will remain unstable. Because of these facts, and because we are prohibited from pursuing Taliban and Al Qaida forces into the area, a safe haven has been created along the Afghani-Pakistani border. As long as that safe haven exists, both the Taliban and Al Qaida are given the benefit of a secure area in which they can rest, recuperate, train and choose to attack when and where they please. For as long as that situation is allowed to continue, we are repeating history: we allowed the same thing in Vietnam with North Vietnam and Cambodia. It didn't work then, and it's not going to work now, either.

Finally, there is Afghanisan itself. Despite what we may wish, it is never going to be a nation-state on the Western model, with a strong central government. It has, in fact, never been that way. It would be nice if the world did, indeed, work in the way we wished it to, but the reality is that it doesn't, nor does it particularly wish to. So, we must dispense with the notion that Afghanistan is ever going to be a nation-state as we conceive of that idea.

The truth of the matter is that Afghanistan is, like many such places on our unhappy globe, a tribal society. Primary loyalties are not, and never have been, given over to such distant concepts as a central government, or even to the nation, as we understand it. Rather, they are given over to immediate clan and regional tribe. Those are more immediate and tangible than a "national government," and have more of an immediate impact on the lives of the people. Because of this, Afghanistan has always been nothing more than a loose confederation of provinces, with a relatively weak central government and the real power concentrated in the hands of the provincial leaders.

Cooperation between those provincial leaders, and between them and the central government, is only going to last for so long as they can be convinced that is in their best interests. Therein lies the trick; if we wish to be successful, if we wish to "stabilize" the country and prevent a return of the Taliban, we must convince those provincial leaders that cooperation among themselves and with the government in Kabul is the key both to their success and their continuation in power. Remember, the Taliban didn't maintain control because it was loved by the people. It maintained control because it set itself up as the most powerful of the "warlords" and by convincing the provincial leaders that cooperation and subservience to them was the route to maintaining their own power. If we can not do that, then Afghanistan will, indeed, slide back into being a "failed State" and the ugliness that existed under the Taliban.

That is what the authors of this most recent study, and what most of us in this country, fail to understand. Nations, like people, are prisoners of their own histories. They do the things they do because that is what the world has taught them works. Inside every Afghan, for example, there is not an American just waiting to get out. They have no concept of or practice at liberal, Western-style government, nor is that something particularly applicable to their lives. We, as a people and a society, are the product of what we have been doing since 1776, and the traditions behind our practices reach even farther back, past Magna Carta to Classical Greece. The traditions and practices that underpin Afghan society reach back just as far, if not farther, and spring from much different roots.

If we want to be successful in Afghanistan, we can not try to force them into being mirror-images of ourselves. They will reject that out-of-hand. What we must do is understand those forces that have shaped Afghan society and make it what it is, and work within those parameters to achieve our goals. Otherwise, we will, indeed, fail.