Obama pulls a Homer

It strikes me that the recent turn of events surrounding Syria, the Chemical weapons, threatened military action and so forth, have resulted in President Obama “pulling a Homer”.

For those not-so-dedicated Simpsons fans, the phrase is defined as “to succeed despite idiocy” – in the episode “Homer defined”, Homer accidentally causes the nuclear plant to go into meltdown, then, by dumb luck, manages to avert the meltdown and save the plant, Springfield etc.

With Syria, when Obama declared that using Chemical weapons was a “red line” that Assad could not cross, he effectively forced his own hand into action when these vile weapons were deployed.

If only it were as simple as Fox News would like – The US of A could destroy Assad’s Chemical weapons capabilities, deal a crippling blow to his evil regime, and the “good guys” of the Syrian resistance would sweep Assad from power and a new era of peace, democracy and better oil trading with the West would begin. Of course, Obama found himself in a far more complex situation. IF, it could be proved that Assad deployed the chemical weapons, IF it were possible to locate the weapons, If it were possible to destroy them without civilian casualties, IF the US could do this as part of a truly International effort with a UN mandate...then, just maybe, all would work out fine.

But, with his major ally showing no stomach for any action (being Britain, and I suspect a possibly relieved David Cameron who may have looked weak when he lost the vote, but at least avoided getting sucked into conflict), Russia and China certainly not letting any use of force to pass through the UN, and the US Congress being mighty reluctant to authorize military action – Obama found himself looking ineffective and guilty of making empty threats.

This is where dumb luck (for Obama) comes in – a casual remark by John Kerry suddenly becomes a Russian Peace initiative.

On the surface, you could say that Obama comes out of this looking terrible - the Russians bat the useless American efforts at sabre-rattling aside, prevent escalating violence and bring Assad to the peace table. And a humiliating address to the American people by Putin in a US newspaper can never be a good thing to happen under your Presidency.

However, looking at this in another way....

With the threat of American force, Obama has made Russia, who have long stood in the way of any sanctions that might have curbed Assad’s brutality, come to step up and actually take some responsible action. Russia may score a few points right now, but if/ when Assad fails to comply with demands to surrender his chemical weapons, they will surely be forced to take a harder line.

So – Obama may succeed in removing Assad’s WMDs, he also may have neutralized future Russian blocks to meaningful further action against Assad; which also means Assad loses a lot of the support of one of his biggest allies. Obama has not handed Syria to a bunch of extreme Jihadists by just cutting Assad’s regime away – and he’s managed to do this without firing a single American bullet.

Bush used shock and awe (and billions of dollars and thousands of lives) to achieve only worldwide contempt for the US and plunge Iraq into bloody civil war. Obama made a threat and may have neutralized a brutal and oppressive regime.

Time will tell of course – I think there is, sadly, a lot more blood still to be shed by the people of Syria. While the various deals/ proposals etc being bandied around at the moment may offer a glimmer of hope that, at least, the Chemical weapons may be taken out of the equation, history tells us that strong words frequently mean nothing.

But, if this does turn out to the good – ie Chemical weapons removed and destroyed, Obama may well have scored a significant victory – even though it might come about in spite of, instead of because of, his actions.

So Hard it could crack an egg

I’ve been writing…

 

My first draft of my “Regenerations” story is complete – and frankly it needs some serious work. The ending is awful, it’s there because something had to be – I sort of knew what had to happen in the end but wrote myself into a contrived confrontation. Still, it’s seven thousand odd words actually written down, which is better than nothing – though I’m not sure what it’s rambling about. Hopefully a week or so away from it may give a fresh perspective and help me figure out just what these people are doing. Rampaging Moas, errant teens, strange, super-powered girls? What the hell is going on? And I’m the writer.

 

As a kind of back-up, I’ve returned to an earlier story that could well fit the bill for the Regenerations book – a story I was convinced was definitely complete. A new look at it does reveal the need for a little more oomph and a bit of restructuring. I’ve been using my “technique” that I used for “The Royal Wedding from Hell” – which uses the Lester Dent Masterplot concept of looking at your story in 4 parts – which I think of as:

 

Intro – where we meet the characters and situation, and problems

Build-up – where we throw more problems in their way and reveal what’s going on

Blow-up – where the poor buggers get even more crap thrown their way and we reveal what’s REALLY going on

Finale – where everything gets sorted out

 

It’s not overly dissimilar to structure ideas explained superbly by Larry Brooks – his latest blogpost lays it out very well (he refers to the 4 parts as Setup, Response, Attack, Resolution). And I heard of Larry via Debbie Howell, interviewed in my previous blog as part of SpecFicNZ blog week.

 

So having done the “pantser” bit with both stories – in other words just getting some bl**dy words down which, at least, give me characters, places and some kind of idea – I can move on to the rebuilding bit, where we turn all that raw material into a coherent and (hopefully) engaging story.

 

In addition to all that, I’ve started plodding along with a novel – “The Camp” – I have a rough structure of 4 parts laid out, but am feeling my way forward, finding out what makes my main man tick to start with. 5000ish words so far, only about 45000 or so to go.

 

I’ve been watching…

 

Dr Who – the latest 5 episodes (Season 7, part 1) were an improvement on last season (“Asylum of the Daleks” was the best episode since Time of the Angels/ Flesh and Stone from a couple of seasons ago) – but, when you know that the Ponds are leaving at the end of episode 5, then the other 4 episodes have an air of just being there to fill up time waiting for the important one. Thankfully, Amy and Rory are gone now, as far as I’m concerned they royally overstayed their welcome, the new girl seems interesting (at least from her intro in Asylum of the Daleks) so we wait for Xmas and the other 8 episodes to come along. And it’s the big 50^th anniversary next year so who knows what excitement is planned?

 

The fun and jollies of the US Election - like most of the rest of the world, I feel relieved that our man Obama won. Romney, himself, doesn't seem like an idiot (unlike say, George W Bush, Sarah Palin or Rick Santorum) BUT, he has to swallow the rest of the party line to keep the support of all the other red-neck loons that make up his party. I've got more to say on the warped ideology of the American right, but it will take another blog for that.

 

With the weird atmosphere of untruth that surrounded the US election, I found myself re-reading 1984 - I read when I was about 18. It was superb then, but with the wisdom that comes with age, it is simply staggering today. I will bring these threads together in my next blog.

 

Okay, and now, this month’s drabble is more of a sort of prose poem – compiled from the subject lines of the spam I get about various pills and, uh, “enlargement” products. Do they form some kind of art work? I’ll let you judge. If anyone wants me to forward one of the spams, please shout. I offer no guarantees about their products….

“So hard it could crack an egg.

Saucy young college hotties.

Germany gets first strike with extra inch

Vids from Yacht party

Your love tool is set to thrill

Butts that look awesome

Girls at $200 a pop

What really happened on the Tonight show?"

 

So - has anyone else written several thousand words of story, get to the end and decide that it really makes no sense at all?

What did everyone else think of the latest part-series of Dr Who? Are you glad the Ponds have gone?

And can anyone see art in spam? Probably not.

 

Now - go and buy "The Royal Wedding from Hell"