This year I have chosen to celebrate my last ever Spring Break by having my tonsils out. So here I am, back home in rural Auburn, California, floating in a sea of movies, war coverage, parental love, and liquid vicodin. The organs in question came out two days ago, and I am handling it pretty well. I am in a lot less pain than I thought I would be at this point. In fact, I even ate solid food last night! All in all, I am enjoying the enforced downtime and using the opportunity to stay fully up-to-date on the sadly-now-unfolding war in Iraq.

Yes, I am against this war. I feel that it will harm America’s security interests more than it will help them. It will do this by further radicalizing the Islamic world, and alienating crucial allies, whom we need to cooperate with in order to share important intelligence regarding terrorist threats.

Also, America cannot afford this war. We have a monstrous deficit, and yet GW has proposed a budget which makes no allowances for war costs, while offering up a massive tax cut. Meanwhile, the school year in Oregon has been shortened almost a full month, due to lack of funding.

And of course, people will die. I don’t want to see and human beings, Iraqi or American, die unless it is absolutely unavoidable. I do not feel that this is the case. I am happy to say that my representative in the House of Congress, Earl Blumenauer, agrees with me. I wrote him a letter today, expressing my support for his efforts to speak for the anti-war stance within the current hawkish administration. He has also proposed the “Bike Commuter Act” which will provide a tax cut for people who ride their bikes to work. Sounds sweet to me!