Barack Obama, The Queen, Libya, Vietnam War, Alain de Botton

All the way with BHO doesn't have the same ring as LBJ, but I'm exited, in exactly the same way that I wasn't at all when the stupid Queen trounced about thinking she had any relevance at all, that he is coming to visit Canberra. I hope I get to see him, but although they have all the roads blocked off I'm assuming they might not say where he's going to be at any given time. We love Obama, he's number one, I think he might even improve the PMs' rating if she hangs out with him a bit, cool is contagious.

Been reading more of Bullen's Vietnam war diary, and Paul Ham's Vietnam, as well as Alain de Botton's Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. Paul showed me that Ho Chi Mihn & co, were absolute pricks, as were French, Nguyen Van Thieu & Ngo Dinh Diem's mob and I think the Americans come a distant forth, and the Aussies come out okay- especially the SAS, at least hadn't heard of any major atrocities. I do have a better understanding of the Vietnam War and I think there is lessons to be learnt. It was far too simplistic to paint the commie's as saints fighting corrupt and vicious Catholic supporting/ Buddhist-hating south Vietnamese government. I think the commies did some horrendously horrible stuff that was unforgivable and just plain stupid.

The lessons: 1. If you are going to support one side, better make sure they have some qualities worth fighting for - Ngo Dinh Diem and Nguyen Van Thieu obviously didn't have these qualities. 2. Even where there are oppressive regimes in the world who are killing their own people, you can't defeat them until the people are ready to defeat them - the average Vietnamese peasant wasn't going to go out and fight communism, if anything it appealed to them, or they didn't give a shit, they just wanted to grow rice.

I think on the 2nd point the west has learnt something, Libya was a good example. Gaddafi was an arsehole, but as Machiavelli wrote, if your enemy is up to their waist in water (can't remember if it was waist as haven't read it for ages) you help him up; if is up to his neck you push his head under. I don't actual advocate violence, but if you are going to do it, you better make sure the outcome was better than just leaving he status quo, however bad that status quo might be. The Vietnam War showed why you let the people sort their own shit out as much as possible, same as with Cuba, and probably Iraq and I daresay Iran.

As with Alain de Botton, as I've finished with war, his chapter on rocket science sounded like a Lonely Planet piece, the other day he had me looking at all sorts of shit, thinking wow this was all made by other people and I'm using it, but I never asked them to make it, and isn't it wonderful and amazing, and it's cool that the Number 10 bus driver always pulls up and picks me up in the morning and even though he earns much less than me, he has a more important function to play as if he didn't show up we'd all be late for work, and the n he writes a load of guff about rocket fuel, hope he gets back to philosophizing in the next chapter otherwise I'll be most aggrieved (that's the sort of thing Alan the Philosopher would write). That is, unless his philosophization in the rocket science chapter is so deep and philosophical that I just don't get it, which is always a possibility given that I'm a backward antipodean (can't believe I even spelt that word write!).

So go BHO! I mean go in a good way, like in come over, you're welcome, park airforce one at Canberra airport, there's plenty of spots left. I even see kangaroos on our way to work everyday - seriously we do, it is pretty much the countryside, not like the whole Boshington phenomenon.