Why we fight

I've been blogging regularly since 2004, and anyone who's ever blogged before knows it's hard to sustain the same level of enthusuasm day in and day out. The reason that compelled you to start doing it in the first place (in my case, the media's shameful failure to challenge Bush's immoral, lie-laden invasion of Iraq) fades, and new causes rise and fall. Sometimes I think about folks who a) blog full-time and b) have been doing for even longer -- like my friend here in Philadelphia, Duncan Black (Atrios), who's marking his 10th anniversary of blogging this month.

Leave it to him to remind us why we fight:

The ESCHATON DECADE has been a pretty (bleep)ed up decade, a time when this country stopped even bothering to pretend to live up to many of its supposed ideals. We go to war and kill lots of people for no good reason, elites have eliminated any accountability for themselves for criminal wrongdoing, we've tortured and assassinated people, and the response to massive economic suffering and related criminal fraud has been to give lots of free money to the people who caused it all.

Exactly. The war in Iraq is finally over, but there is so much more to do. Nolan Hamilton of Gawker (of all places) also reminds us of the unfinished business:

In the end, it turns out, America's entire post-9/11 response was exactly wrong. The much-derided idea of treating the terrorist attacks as a crime would have been the rational thing to do. Doing our best to launch a world war was not to our benefit. It was not to the benefit of geopolitical stability. It was not to the benefit of the kids who entered the military, full of patriotism and love for their country, and ended up dead halfway around the world. It was not to the benefit of Afghan civilians, people who had nothing to do with any of this, who ended up bombed, shot, maimed, driven from their homes, victims of circumstance. We can fight, if we like, another decade in Afghanistan. When we leave, Afghanistan will still belong to the people who live there, and they, not us, will determine its future.

Next week will bring new stories, new outrages. And we still haven't tackled many of the old ones.

Have a great weekend.