'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

JWN celebrates 4th blogiversary

Gosh, has it been four years already? And who knows, one day I might even figure out what I want to do with this blog...

I sometimes look up from the keyboard long enough to wonder whether it's all been worthwhile in any meaningful way. Has it made any real difference in the world? Is there perhaps a more effective use I could make of the non-trivial amounts of time I spend doing this?

On the other hand, writing always helps me think more clearly... Plus, with this blog format and the way the comments-board discussions have developed here, I feel I've created a very worthwhile forum for cooperative learning. I've long been convinced that learning is a fundamentally social activity, and the way we have created new funds of knowledge through our discussions here has underscored that point for me many times.

The blog would feel to me like a very different place indeed if we didn't have all the great comments discussions here. Yes, it's true they sometimes get a bit raucous, ill-focused, or non-courteous. But I have learned a tremendous amount from contributions made by so many of the commenters here.

So the first thing I want to do today is say a big thank you to all the commenters! (Particularly the ones who keep inside the courtesy guidelines-- whether they agree with me, or not.)

And secondly, for nostalgia's sake, I just want to go back to my inaugural post here, February 6, 2003. Here it is, in its entirety (and with all my crappy original formating):

I listened to Colin Powell's presentation at the U.N. yesterday, read the text carefully. I was sad for so many reasons. Let me count the ways:
(1) Sad to see this good person beating the drums of war.
(2) Sad to think of the war that his presentation--and his having agreed to play this role-- has brought us that much closer to.
(3) Sad, actually, to read the content and see how thin and tenuous his case was. It seemed like an insult to the intelligence of listeners-- especially, the recycling of the tired old 'aluminum tubes' business. Mohamed el-Baradei laid that one to rest a while ago, saying the tubes in question actually could not be helpfully used for nuclear fuel production. So why did Powell drag that one in?? It seems like an insult to Baradei and the rest of us.

Look, I know better than many other people how terribly Saddam has behaved in the past-- and most likely, he's still behaving that way. But if containment worked for Joe Stalin, why on earth would we imagine it can't work for this regime, whose raw power is a thousand times smaller than Stalin's??

Feb 4th, I went to see 'Bowling for Columbine'. (Okay, I was late getting around to it.) But it was good to see it the night before Powell's speech. I think Mike Moore got it just about right. There's a huge industry out there dedicated to whipping up the fearfulness of Americans; and that keeps U.S. citizens opting for huge military expenditures, tough police and incarceration, etc-- at the expense of the basic social programs which would make our community healthier and safer.

Then, in the column I published February 13, 2003 for the CSM, I took apart the claim Powell had made in that UN speech about the links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda... I note that in Fiasco, the book Tom Ricks recently published about the launching and early years of the US war in Iraq, he says that back in February 2003 Colin Powell was broadly successful in persuading all US commentators of the validity of the arguments he made at the UN.

He wasn't. He never persuaded me; and I was able to write about the flaws in his case both here at JWN and also in CSM. So why didn't Tom Ricks mention that? Was he not looking-- or did he read what I wrote at the time but discount it all for some reason?

I guess I should ask him when I get the chance.

Anyway, that's for another day. For today, I am just really glad that the internet and this great, easy-to-use blogging software have allowed us all to have such a great global conversation here at JWN.

Long may the conversation continue.