that terrorism exercise: a week and a half later

Ok my first post was silly. I was put on the spot, but now acting on my own will, it is time for a real entry (not that my original post was a metaphysical phantom blob on a parallel dimension, it's just that this post will be more meat and potatoes, comparatively). Ahh I've already gotten off to a shaky start, commas, commas, and parenthesi (is that the plural?). Enough lame banter and down to biznazz.

The hostage situation was really a lot more interesting and engaging than I expected. Everyone played their part well and took it seriously, which added to the realistic effect despite corny nation names (is it pronounced kee-bar or ki-bar? I will never know). Luckly, I was an advisor to the President, Secretary of Defense/war depending on your terminology. I had little insight what was going on outside the oval office, so I relied on Jill's character for nearly all of my information. I would have loved one big round table discussion with everybody. We could have solved that pickle in five minutes, but that is the nature of the game and real life. We had to speak vicariously through a series of people each filtering the message, a telephone game of sorts.

Back to the oval office. I really didn't want to intervene with any sort of military action until all chances of reasonable compromises were exhausted. I was against moving a military battleship to the coast of Kiebar because I thought we couldn't have that option so readily available and posess the restraint not use it. Luckly, Jill and Tessa convinced me otherwise and the boat was sent resulting in a compromise in the final hours (yay!). My greatest shock came in the final group discussion when Patrick (terrorist) said something to the effect of, "We were relieved when the boat came because it forced us to make a move."

There are two big problems this raises that concern me. How many times can a nation throw around military threats before we have to use military force? And for an example: we threatened Iraq with military force to open up to WMD inspections. They didn't comply and we laid the smack down on them, at least that is my basic understanding of it. The other question being: How do countries without substantial military power pursue justice? Maybe terrorism (it sort of worked in this case) or begging powerful nations for aid.

For the record I was wrong about moving that damn boat (but who's counting). I say this as an example to those with real power, because I would love to see more high ranking political officials admit when they are wrong. I don't see it as political suicide, supuku maybe (the honorable samurai suicide). But in all seriousness, I could forgive an honest politician, if there was such a thing.

alls well that ends well...and happy sailing,

tim