Some goals, and the not-quite WIP

Since finishing SHAHIDA in April (and again in August), I've been researching the next novel. It is a low-level obsession, always at a simmer, which is how I know the idea has the staying-power to keep me interested in the project for the next two to three years. Still lacking an outline, or even a logline, I cannot call it my work-in-progress yet: But I can finally identify the obsession. It's that America has been at war for ten years, but until I met my wife, who is a decorated participant therein, it was easy to, well… forget, most days, that we are fighting.

From this side of the gun (or console), why does war look so much like peace? Should it?
Is it a war between the United States and al-Qaeda, or between the nation-state and a borderless state?
What does victory look like? How do we know for sure if we've won?
Who is responsible for this quasi-amnesia, and is it needed to win a war on terror?
What does Internet freedom have to do with it?

I know the standard answers to these questions. Those answers fit on placards. The longer versions fit in op-eds. But there is a dystopia, a speculative novel, something, simmering between the lines, too. My goal is to outline the story soon, and then fill a few more months with research; I will say more later, but for now, I trust there is an important effect on human identity, and therefore relationships, that matters here. And that effect is worth a novel.

Besides that goal, here are the others in no order: Finish the marathon on Nov. 13. Stay on schedule at work. Plant some flowers around the tree in the backyard. Find a damn agent, finally. Walk the dogs in this beautiful warm autumn weather. Sleep well two nights in a row. And life is good; therefore, to live it in awareness that it is not good for everyone, and write something that might make a difference.