She began by saying that, with reference to Iraq withdrawal, Obama’s speech to Congress was a “good start” in that it articulated an unqualified or least less qualified commitment to withdrawal; and the point of her article is that we can use such statements, along with stern objections to the 50,000 to be left in Iraq by such as Pelosi and Reid as opportunities for the peace community to hold all these people to the letter of their verbal commitments. To which I responded by saying, as you did at the beginning of your action, that talking is not acting, and in fact I argue that talking is likely to be a substitute for action, as it pacifies those who demand, for example, Iraqi withdrawal, who feel that “it’s coming” and need not be worked for, because all those political worthies are saying it will come. So Obama is giving an “education” speech tomorrow and I’m thinking: look out, he will sound like the N.E.A. in his fulsome rhetoric of massive expansion of education while his Education Secretary goes about his grim business, a la Chicago, of privatizing and militarizing the nation’s schools, with standardized testing as the executioner of the public schools. And while he and the Madame Secretary of State are talking of “diplomacy” with Iran, Dennis Ross is busily planning with Israel for an attack on the country. (Think of the Japanese “peace envoys” who were in D.C. “talking” peace as that country was planning to bomb Pearl Harbor.)