D5 Diary's foreign policy

If the Bay Guardian's Tim Redmond can write about international affairs, I guess I can, too. Actually, facing the draft in the 1960s, I was forced to think about international affairs at an early age. But this blog is about San Francisco politics and issues, and, for the most part, I don't have anything to say about national/international affairs that isn't already being said---and said better than I can say it---by others, including a couple of my favorites, Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens. Unfortunately, Sullivan and Hitchens don't write about SF politics, so we're on our own. But the Guardian misunderstands its function in San Francisco; we need coverage of local issues, not Tim Redmond's unremarkable ruminations on the left-fringe notion that the impeachment of President Bush is even a remote possibility.

Even so I'll contribute a few Small Thoughts on the Big Picture every now and then, because national/international issues are of legitimate concern here in D5 and San Francisco. Many progressives seem to be under the mistaken impression that they have something original or interesting to contribute to the discussion of national/international issues. It's not that all politics are local; it's just that our political opinions are more likely to be of interest on issues we are in a better position to know something about---city housing, transit, planning, Muni, etc.---since we can more easily inform ourselves on those issues than we can about Gaza or the Middle East war/peace process.