Ciao!

Ah, the moral United Nations

I met w/ Aparna for lunch at Campus Kitchen. It was great. I haven't seen Apu since just before Thanksgiving. We're both in the desperately tedious phase of grad school where we just write our dissertations. Since writing a dissertation takes a long, long time, this part of grad school also takes a long, long time. Pretty much, we commiserated w/ each other.

After work, I got my haircut at my local New Deal social-democrat barber (Barber Jim). We usually get in interesting political conversations. This time was no different. We talked about Thomas Friedman's latest column in The New York Times.

Friedman balances the extreme positions between hawkish conservatives and dovish liberals and argues that even if the reasons articulated by Bush for disarming Iraq aren't the best, it's still a legitimate policy goal that should be pursued. In short, the cost of war seems outweighed both by the cost of not going to war and the benefits of regime change. Condoleezza Rice has an interesting opinion piece explaining why we know Iraq is lying.

We also talked about the recent change in the UN Human Rights Commission. Libya, that country w/ an oh-so-spotless human rights record was chosen to chair the commission. The only countries to vote against the appointment were the USA, Canada, and Guatemala. Our European allies abstained from the vote. So much for the legitimacy of the UN.

Posted by Miguel at 08:13 PM