Blaming the victims

This is sad, mean and counterproductive.
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"It's their fault, and by implication not ours, is clearly a theme that's in the air," said retired Army Col. Andrew J. Bacevich, a Vietnam veteran and longtime skeptic of the war in Iraq. It reminds him, he said, of the sour last days of the Vietnam War, when "there was a tendency to blame everything on the 'gooks' -- meaning our South Vietnamese allies who had disappointed us."

"People never understood the culture and the challenges that we faced in trying to build a new Iraq," a senior U.S. intelligence official said. "There's incredible frustration . . . but it also shows a great deal of ignorance."

"Definitely," said Paul Rieckhoff, who served in Iraq as an Army officer in 2003-2004 and went on to found a veterans group critical of the conduct of the war. "It is growing into an angry, scolding tone." He said he finds it "sad" -- "especially after all the talk of our mission to 'save the Iraqis.' "

The long-term effect of blaming Iraqis also could be poisonous, said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan specialist in Middle Eastern issues. He predicted that it will "infuriate the Iraqis and worsen further the future relationship of the two countries."

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H/T Bill Petti
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Is shifting blame to the victims an important component of shaping the political will to bring this mess to an end? Looks too me like the equivalent of that football player who flipped off the crowd as he left the field after a losing game. No class. None.

I think we're better than that. But maybe not.

Newt Watch -- Professor Bainbridge's take

Gingrich has a penchant for saying just the right words to trigger headlines. I think he does this on purpose so that more people will talk about what he is discussing. At some level he knows that no real criticism of what he says will stick without actual quotes, and whenever he tosses out lines like "World War Three" or "curbing free speech before we lose a city"...all he's doing is waving his rhetorical arms around wildly in order to attract attention. Up close, in context, stuff like this loses its punch in the context of a much bigger package of jawboning, typically about a topic more cerebral (i.e. boring) but likely more important than the bait he tossed out.

Professor Baingridge took a closer look at Newt's most recent verbal smoke bombs and this is what he found.
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Newt's speech strikes this observer as eminently sensible. Political speech out to be at the core of First Amendment protections. People should be free to say whatever they want about politics and elections and to publicize their views as widely as possible. In today's media economy, that takes money. Restrictions on campaign finance thus are restrictions on the core of free speech rights.

To be sure, there is some risk of money leading to corruption. The late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously opined, however, that “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” Prompt and complete disclosure of campaign contributions, as Gingrich recommends, strikes the appropriate balance between free speech and fear of corruption.

As for the war on terror, one is reminded of Ben Franklin's dictum that "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." At the same time, however, as late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson famously remarked, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."

There must be a balance. As Russell Kirk wrote, "A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty." Or, as his wife Annette put it, "You can't just have the concept of freedom without order, and that's the first need of all."In a world in which radical terrorists have access to WMD, we can't let either political correctness or extreme claims of personal freedom to protect terrorists from appropriate surveillance. Accordingly, Gingrich is sensibly calling for a proactive discussion of the basic question: What is the appropriate balance between order and liberty?

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Go read the larger Newt quotes and you can see how he comes to these conclusions.

Brian Whitaker on Civil War in Iraq

Ahem. My traffic improved today thanks to a link from the Guardian's Brian Whitaker. "Comment is free" is the Guardian's blog connection and Whitaker is the Mideast Editor. He notes that the term civil war is being used more often regarding Iraq.
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Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, has become the latest public figure to warn that Iraq is teetering on the brink of civil war: "In fact," he said, "we are almost there."

Less than 24 hours earlier, the king of Jordan said in a TV interview: "We could possibly imagine going into 2007 and having three civil wars on our hands," the three being Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

There is an understandable reluctance on the part of politicians and large sections of the media to admit that civil war has broken out in Iraq. Instead they continue talking about "fears" of civil war and how it might be averted, but as far as most political scientists are concerned it's a civil war already.
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Iraq is not only in the throes of any civil war but one of the bloodiest in recent history. "It's stunning; it should have been called a civil war a long time ago, but now I don't see how people can avoid calling it a civil war," Nicholas Sambanis, a political scientist at Yale university told the New York Times the other day. "The level of violence is so extreme that it far surpasses most civil wars since 1945."

Some people might argue that this is just a matter of semantics: violence is violence, whether you call it a civil war or not. The point, though, is that being honest about the nature of the conflict helps us to see its true nature more clearly - and possibly to have a better idea of what might be done about it.

Last September, James Fearon, a professor at Stamford university and one of the world's leading experts on civil wars, gave testimony to a committee on national security in the US House of Representatives. His remarks were largely ignored by the US media, though they were noted by a couple of bloggers (Abu Aardvark and Hootsbuddy).

After saying that "by any reasonable definition" Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, Prof Fearon pointed out that civil wars typically last a long time (more than a decade on average) and usually end with decisive military victories (in at least 75% of cases). "Successful power-sharing agreements to end civil wars are rare, occurring in one in six cases, at best."

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I'm happy for the link, of course, but even more pleased that the reality of what is happening in Iraq is finally being openly discussed. Maybe it will result in a change of policy.

Something has to change. What's happening now ain't working.

Greg Djerejian is just a Little. Bit. Pissed.

I knew there was some reason I liked this guy. In my ignorance I had no idea that he was the son of a diplomat, but I should have known. His writing is not only lucid, but filled with hints that he has been spoon-fed the facts of life by a career statesman, his father, Edward P. Djerejian, a forty-year veteran of the Foreign Service.

This is a long post. Don't start it unless you aim to pay attention. But after reading it, my admiration for Greg Djerejian has moved up to the top notch. He opens with a brief outline of how his father has been maligned. Not by just anybody, but by some smart people who ought to know better, including none other than the Blogfather himself.

...with Glenn Reynolds entering the fray and calling my father's predictions “naïve” (quite a charge coming from that famed Middle East specialist Instapundit(!)—seemingly always at the ‘aw shucks, sounds good’ ready to link whatever neo-con swill du jour), it appears I have to wade into this recriminatory morass, if for no other reason than to defend a family member I respect.
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Thus begins a fisking to end all fisking. No need for me to go further. Read it for yourself.

He ends, however, on a positive note. This is the mark of a real gentleman.

A final word, to anyone who has stuck with me through this lengthy screed. Look, we're in an awful situation in Iraq right now, and I think this country needs to come together and focus on constructive policy recommendations given how grave the situation is. Therefore I am in favor (and of course I am biased, as my father is involved) of at least giving the Baker-Hamilton Commission a real chance at producing their report and seeing if the broad centers of both parties can perhaps broach their differences and unite via the ISG on a plausible way forward. Predictably, the Baker-Hamilton Commission is getting hit from both the Left (who view it as a fig-leaf for a 'peace with honor' type withdrawal that will hold at bay an immediate withdrawal of our troops) and the Right (where fevered total victory types like Rubin see the Commission as a defeatist, appeasement-loving stab in the back that will cheer jihadists from Jakarta to Alhambra). In an era that seems a long, long time ago--politics were supposed to stop at the water's edge. That bipartisan
tradition appears to be mostly (if not wholly) dead, of course, but now we find ourselves in the worst jam since Vietnam overseas and we really need to start pulling together in serious manner in the face of major strategic challenges.
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This is not to say we cannot air our differences, debate is the life-blood of our democracy, and it is imperative. But let's at least try to be constructive (which isn't to say I've not been guilty of broad-sides not infrequently, but I do try to balancethem with contributions to the policy debate, and I've seen precious little of Rubin attempting to suggest credible policy alternatives of late, rather than carp rather incoherently from the sidelines). This, in a nutshell, was the main reason I was so disgusted by Rubin's drive-by preemptive strike on the Baker-Hamilton Commission--not only because of the gross display of arrogance in criticizing those trying to put out a fire that many of his ideological fellow-travellers played a key part in setting alight (to use Greenwald's analogy)--but also because he spent so much time busily poisoning the well (see his aspersions of various ISG study group members in the linked piece) rather than constructively helping to move the situation forward in collaborative manner. In a word, it was low, but these days, par with the course, I guess.

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"...neocon swill du jour."
I love it. Wish I'd thought of that.
As they say, "Heh."

Tea leaves, crystal ball and civil wars that spread...

One of the arguments against ending the US occupation of Iraq is that our military presence there is somehow preventing the spread of violence into other parts of the region. I have seen maps on television with little smoke streams coming up from Lebanon and Gaza, suggesting that the whole place is like a hot pile of charcoal, wet with lighter fluid, ready to burst into flames at any moment. It's an easy message to buy since our news is packaged and portion-controlled to fit into half-hour evening time slots (the alphabet networks) or even smaller soundbites on the cable channels.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Nothing I have studied in history tells me that civil wars are contagious. Like cancer or kidney disease, they may be terrible for the victim, but civil wars do not spread like chicken pox or the flu. This is not to say that other areas are not at risk. The risk is definitely there, whether it be Lebanon, Palestinian Gaza, or anywhere else you want to mention. But those areas were at risk before the Iraq adventure, and are following very different dynamics. Also, for the moment the leadership in those other two "at risk" areas are not sounding as dangerous as one might think.

Take a moment to read this post by Elijah Zarwan.
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The tensions in Lebanon following Gemayel’s assassination have been reflected in the Lebanese blogs over the past week. One post from Mustapha, in particular, struck me as particularly timely given King Abdallah’s warnings about civil wars in Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq today...

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He goes on to quote words that indicate that talk of civil war in Lebanon is more a creation of news machines than an upsurge of political and social conflict.
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People the world over will be watching/reading about our civil war unfolding, in the safety of their countries, and a few months down the line, popcorn in hand, they'll start getting bored of our news. They'll start dissing us as inherently violent and saying that we deserve this because we can't stand each other. The very mention of Lebanon would guarantee their reach for the remote control and switch to Jay Leno.

Whoever the bad guy is (Syria or Israel), the above Scenario is HELL, and we shouldn't let it happen. Honest communication should immediately take the place of tense mobilization.

Mustapha is right. This is not about political passions bursting forth in civil war. It is about the threat of that happening on the part of manipulative leaders pressing this or that agenda. The people of Lebanon -- ALL of Lebanon, thanks to Israel's recent thrashing -- are by now sick and tired of bloodshed. I doubt they are ready to resume fighting in any great numbers, no matter how gifted Nasrallah may be as a charismatic leader. At some level, he probably knows that and will not be calling for more sacrifices any time soon. He may be an extremist, but he's no dummy.

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My guess is that in the absence of US forces the parties involved would come to terms more quickly to end the bleeding that is now tearing apart what's left of Iraqi social and political identity. It is madness to suggest that after fighting Americans for the last four years the Iraqis would sit still for Iran or Syria, or even some land-locked independent Kurdistan, to come in and determine their future.
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My friend Abu Khaleel said that Iraq has a long history of peaceful tollerance between Sunnis and Shiites and I believe him. Moreover, most of what is happening -- and this is the argument that there is "no civil war" going on -- is in fact occurring within a short radius of Baghdad. Most of the country is not engaged in the extreme ugliness that we are being fed by the media.
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One more item before I end this post.
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Today's Washington Post has a satirical piece by Anthony Shadid about the Lebanese factions (Again, thanks to Zarwan for the pointer.) which illustrates the light-hearted manner that people in that country sometimes take their politics.
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...advertisements went up this month on 300 billboards across the Lebanese capital and appeared in virtually every newspaper in the country. Thousands of e-mails carried the ads across the Internet to expatriates. Each offered its take on what one of the campaign's creative directors called a country on the verge of "absurdistan" -- cooking lessons by Greek Orthodox, building for sale to Druze, hairstyling by an Armenian Catholic, a fashion agency looking for "a beautiful Shiite face." At the bottom, the ads read in English, "Stop sectarianism before it stops us," or, more bluntly in Arabic, "Citizenship is not sectarianism."
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The campaign, designed for free by an ad agency and promoted by a civil society group, has forced Lebanon to look at itself at a time when the country is spiraling into one of its worst political crises in years. The timing was coincidental, the message universal, in a landscape with ever dwindling common ground: The forces that dragged Lebanon into one civil war are threatening another.
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Many have praised the ads for asking uncomfortable, even taboo questions about a system in which sectarian affiliation determines everything from the identity of the president to loyalty to sports teams. Some have mistaken the campaign for reality. Across the capital, one in six billboards was torn down, prevented from being put up or splashed with paint, usually the tactic of choice for conservative Muslims irked by lingerie ads.
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"They didn't get it," said Fouad Haraki, a 53-year-old shawarma vendor, idly dragging on a cigarette next to a kerosene tank, across the street from billboards that had been defaced. "They just read what was written on top, not what was on the bottom."
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By tradition, the president is Maronite, the prime minister Sunni, the parliament speaker Shiite. Other posts are reserved for Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Druze. Boy scouts are organized by community, not country -- the Mahdi Scouts for the Shiites, for instance. Television stations have their own sectarian bent -- the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. for Christians, Future for the Sunnis. Christians are partial to the Sagesse basketball team, Sunnis the Riyadi team. There are even two Armenian soccer teams -- Homenmen and Homenetmen -- one faithful to Armenian leftists, the other to the community's right wing. Before this summer's war, Sunni soccer fans loyal to Ansar brawled in a stadium with Shiite youths loyal to Nijmeh. The system, known as confessionalism, dates to long before Lebanon's independence in 1943.
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But there is a growing sense that the decades-old principles underlying Lebanese politics have grown obsolete. In some ways, today's crisis is about the assertion of power -- a coup to its critics -- by the long-disenfranchised Shiite community led by Hezbollah. Hardly anyone can forecast with certainty how the struggle will end, but almost everyone sees it as a turning point, a crisis that intersects raw ambition with ideology, foreign policy, perspective and history, all awash in sectarian combustion.

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The armchair generals who shout directions from living rooms across America have no idea what is really going on over there. And, yes, I include myself in that group. Like Will Rogers, all I know is what I read on the internets.

(And I will be really happy when Beta Blogger gets this annoying problem with spaces between paragraphs figured out. I'm tired of putting stupid-looking periods between paragraphs in order to make my posts format in a visually pleasing manner.)

Doc Searls -- Free your Mind

Reading Doc Searls makes me feel like Butterfly McQueen's character in Gone With the Wind. "Law', Miss Scarlet, I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies" My knowledge of the internets is about as limited as that Senator who splained about tubes and stuff. But this column in Linux Journal excites my imagination as much as watching an extreme sport on YouTube. Just because you can't do it yourself doesn't mean you can't project yourself into the action and pretend. I get the same feeling whenever I hear a good recording of Maple Leaf Rag. Close my eyes and pretend for a moment that is me on the keyboard...
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...The Matrix was a metaphor for marketing. For me this was personal.

When I began writing for Linux Journal in 1996 (as a contributing editor), I was fairly new to Linux and to the free software and open-source concepts that Linux embodies. But I had been working in marketing-mostly advertising and PR-for two decades. For a stretch of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Hodskins Simone & Searls was one of the top high-tech advertising agencies in Silicon Valley. When I left the agency, I went on to become a successful marketing consultant. So I knew how the sausage was made.

Oddly, marketing (including advertising and PR) is not as powerful as you might think. Given the extraordinary inefficiencies involved, the actual influence exerted by marketing (and by advertising and PR in particular), is remarkably small. Even the accountabilities introduced with pay-per-click advertising still involve ratios of "impressions" to clicks that run in the lottery range.

Far more powerful is a belief, held by nearly everybody in the developed world, that the best markets are captive ones. In the Free Software and Open Source movements we call captive markets "walled gardens" or "silos". But to most producers in the developed world, these are ideal. And to most consumers, they are business as usual.

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The carriers claim to be fighting government regulation, when in fact they have known life only inside a regulatory habitat they built themselves and continue to control through an exceptionally powerful lobbying apparatus. Together with the lawmakers and regulators they control, the carriers have created what Bob Frankston (a father of both the spreadsheet and home networking) calls the Regulatorium.

The Regulatorium provides the building codes for telecom and cablecom silos. Telecom (including cablecom) "reform" is entirely about changing the building codes to make the silos more competitive with each other-not to free the captives of those silos or to blow the silos up altogether.

To the Regulatorium, a "free market" for Internet service means you get to choose between a cable and a telephone provider. That's it. These carriers can no more appreciate a truly free market than an agent in The Matrix can imagine a world not run by machines.

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Okay, then. If you don't get pumped letting your inner engineer go crazy, then skip the link and move on. But trust me when I tell you, Doc Searls has vision. Whenever feel like life is getting drab, I can always count on him to write something to make me feel better. Just knowing the future of technology is brighter than the present is enough.

Save Whomever We Can

This one is important.

Take time to watch now.

Then read hilzoy's post. She quotes George Packer (subscription)...

If the United States leaves Iraq, our last shred of honor and decency will require us to save as many of these Iraqis as possible. In June, a U.S. Embassy cable about the lives of the Iraqi staff was leaked to The Washington Post. Among many disturbing examples of intimidation and fear was this sentence: "In March, a few staff approached us to ask what provisions would we make for them if we evacuate." The cable gave no answer. The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad does not issue visas. Iraqis who want to come to the United States must make their way across dangerous territory to a neighboring country that has a U.S. Embassy with a consular section. Iran and Syria do not; Jordan has recently begun to bar entry to Iraqi men under the age of 35. For a military translator to have a chance at coming to the United States, he must be able to prove that he worked for at least a year with U.S. forces and have the recommendation of a general officer--nearly impossible in most cases. Our current approach essentially traps Iraqis inside their country, where they will have to choose, like Osman, between jihadists and death squads.

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We should start issuing visas in Baghdad, as well as in the regional embassies in Mosul, Kirkuk, Hilla, and Basra. We should issue them liberally, which means that we should vastly increase our quota for Iraqi refugees. (Last year, it was fewer than 200.) We should prepare contingency plans for massive airlifts and ground escorts. We should be ready for desperate and angry crowds at the gates of the Green Zone and U.S. bases. We should not allow wishful thinking to put off these decisions until it's too late. We should not compound our betrayals of Iraqis who put their hopes in our hands."

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I can think of nothing to add. The Iraqi nationals who have been faithful to their jobs working for the US will know whether or not they will be safe. Those wanting to flee for their safety must be allowed to and assisted in doing so.

A word or two about #337 $p34l{

Uh, that would be "leet speak" in everyday terms.

What's leet?

Glad you asked. It's the latest in short-cut communication using keyboard and keypad corruptions variants on conventional letters and numbers. Just when us oldsters thought we were getting the hang of things, here comes yet another language to learn.

According to Wikipedia leet derived from hackers, but my instinct is that it has more to do with text messaging and the natual impulse of youngsters to hide stuff from adults than anything else. Text messaging on a keypad takes a lot more strokes than using a keyboard, so anything that can cut down on the number of movements is faster. This means why use two letters when one will do? ( "2" rather than to, two or too for example)

It's all too arcane for my old head, but I am soothed by the hope that it won't be part of commercial messages until the generation that uses it starts handling the money. Oh, wait. That's already here, isn't it? Oh, well, the next big thing will be a teevee message that says...
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%05 P3$3rv3 %37 4n07h3r br34l{ 90P4%...47 M(40n4#p$!!!

...or, as we used to say, "You deserve yet another break today...at McDonalds!!!"

Now you know.
Here's a link to a handy leekspeek translator.
Run with it!
This little factoid post was inspired by a YouTube video found at Andreas Wacker's Blogsnow. (The Blogsnow link is now gone, but since the video was put up in April, it's considered ancient history by now and Blogsnow may be programed to drop it.)

Two years ago it was time to get out...

Surfing over my own site I came across this from before the 2004 election, two years ago. The steady drumbeat of 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 was about to make me crazy as the president continued to wave that bloody shirt. I will forever remember it as one of the most crass and irresponsible campaign efforts I have ever seen. I am just an old guy blogging and it was clear to me that it was already time to wind up the mission in Iraq.

The connection between September 11 what is happening today in Iraq is virtually non-existent. We are in Iraq because a lot of good people made a lot of mistakes in good faith (another great phrase, don't you think?) but were not able to admit it for political reasons. The end of the Saddam era in Iraq may become one of the most important and beneficial events of the Twenty-first Century, and I'm glad that it happened. Although the tyrant is no longer there, the aftermath of his poison remains and America has an obligation to finish what it began, like the doctor who removes a limb has an obligation to his patient help him recover from the trauma then provide him with a prosthesis.

But American young people are not sacrificing their lives in Iraq because of September 11. They are there because criminals released by Saddam from Iraqi prisons are running unchecked among a diminishing population of decent Iraqis. They are there because outside forces, probably Sunni and certainly of the extreme fundamentalist stripe, are penetrating the porous borders of that country and are raising hell. They are there in order to make good a commitment to hold elections in January, one way or another. But they are not there because airplanes crashed the World Trade Center three years ago.

The connection, of course, IS world terrorism. But that is the beginning and the end of the connection. I am firmly persuaded, no matter whatever else may be true, that our presence in Iraq is feeding the forces of terrorism with eager recruits. We are not ameliorating terrorism by waging war in Iraq. We are, in fact, doing just the opposite. And thanks to modern telecommunications, we may be recruiting more terrorists outside of Iraq than there.

Little by little the WTC rationale for a US military presence in Iraq has morphed from GWOT to flypaper to planting the seeds of democracy to mission accomplished to staying the course to God knows what. It now looks as though the end may be near, but only after the forces that oppose what has clearly become an "occupation" have come together, stronger and better organized than they were two years ago.

The population of Iraqi people who might be US sympathizers has diminished. For some, family or friends have been killed or injured in "collateral damage," resulting in a change of mind and attitude. Others have left the country altogether. Those who remain, whether Sunni or Shiite, risk more than it is worth to let anyone know how they might feel.

Gone is the outside chance that the US might somehow intervene as peacemakers in the civil war that is already in progress. How can constructive intervention be possible for any force that is a component of the conflict?

We are now what Professor Bainbridge calls "dead enders...Those are the people who pursue lost causes beyond the point of rationality." Read what he writes about dead-enders.
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The Iraq dead-enders are making a classic economic mistake. The relevant economic concept is sunk costs, which teaches that what is done cannot be undone. Sunk costs are those costs that already have been incurred and cannot be reversed, such as the costs incurred in developing a new product.

The rational decision-maker does not factor sunk costs into his analysis. When I lived in Illinois, I had University of Illinois football season tickets. Inevitably, the last game of the year would be played in lousy weather — snow or sleet or something likewise awful. I would propose staying home instead of going to the game.

My good wife would insist that we should go because we had paid for the tickets. So I would explain sunk costs: We had already paid for the tickets. We could not get our money back. The sole question was whether the utility of going to the game outweighed the utility of not freezing to death. The cost of the tickets was irrelevant to that calculus. (The good wife grasped this concept quite easily, being a smart cookie, and not infrequently uses it for her own nefarious purposes.)

The time, effort, money and — yes — the lives we have spent in Iraq are sunk. Nothing we do going forward will bring the dead back to life, nor recover the billions of dollars poured into Iraq. We do not dishonor the memory of those who have died in the service of our country when we say that decisions about what to do now in Iraq.

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Cold-blooded? You bet.
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The calculus of decision-making in war is exactly that: cold-blooded. Why do you think I'm so damned opposed to it? In the meantime, let's make yet another cold-blooded commitment as described so well above and make that one final, necessary step and get the kids home before too many more get killed or wounded.

Rural Training School, Richmond, Kentucky

In conversation yesterday with a coworker I mentioned having gone to school once in a one-room school. She looked at me surprised and seemed not to know what I was talking about. She had no concept of a "one-room school."

"You mean all the subjects were taught in one room? No changing classes for different subjects?"
"No, I mean all the grades were in one place."

"Every grade was separated in a little room by itself?"

"No. Every grade was in a single room. First grade in the first row, second grade in the second row, and so on for six grades."

"Wow! It must have been a really big room!"

"No, there were only four people in my grade. The grade behind me was the biggest; they had seven in that grade."

Even after I described the school she still seemed not to get it. The idea was too far out.

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There are probably a lot of people still around who went to one-room schools, but the number is surely shrinking. With today's home schooling I think the notion would not be crazy at all, but for a generation that has never experienced anything but herding of students by the hundreds, even thousands, the idea is strange for sure.

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Because of frequent family moves I attended five different elementary schools in Kentucky and Georgia, two states not famous for public education. Statistically I ought not to have amounted to much, but that is why my views on education do not conform to most popular opinions. I am a firm believer that all education is from, by and for the student. Teachers are mainly facilitators and it is the value the family places on education which makes the difference between poor, fair and outstanding academic performance. How else to explain the stellar results with Asian students sitting in the same classrooms with fourth generation or more American kids with lackluster or failing marks? But, as usual, I digress...

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The Rural Training School in Richmond, Kentucky was built for the purpose of allowing student teachers from what was at the time Eastern Kentucky State Teachers College to have on-the-job training. My mother had graduated from Eastern (now Eastern Kentucky University) in 1939 so the idea of my going to a "rural" training school was not unheard-of. The thirty-five or so children who went to that school were collected by bus from a few miles along the Lancaster Pike and provided just the right number of students to be taught and coached by young, newly-minted teachers before they got assigned to permanent jobs.

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I don't remember much about the student teachers, except that they were only there a short time. But Mrs. Scott was the principle and had been there for years before I came and was there years after I went on to other places. She was the perfect model of old-fashioned educator, teaching both students and younger teachers at the same time.

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I could fill pages of description and stories, but most readers would find it tedious. Suffice it to say there was no indoor plumbing. Boys and girls outhouses were not too far from the back door. Several times we took field trips in a caravan of cars. I first saw a museum, a zoo, and the state capital on trips from that school. Every Friday morning those who wanted to participate could hike across the field that separated us from the college and go swimming in a year-round indoor pool, after which we came back for lunch and the rest of the school day. Lunch, of course, was always whatever came from home. One-room schools don't have lunchrooms. From time to time the whole school participated in indoor recreation, probably due to bad weather, but I always remember it was better than playing outside. We played games, painted or drew pictures, using powdered colors mixed with water. I remember pushing all the desks to the sides to play drop the handkerchief or dancing the Virginia Reel. We performed plays, told stories, asked riddles and found all kinds of fun activities other than studying.

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On and on the memories go. Such were the lessons that passed for academic excellence half a century ago, but I think we learned more about real life, about getting along with other people, about values than students now do (or don't) in school. We didn't have report cards (to my disappointment). Much more focused and a lot less open for misrepresentation, each evaluation period Mrs. Scott personally wrote a short letter home to each student's parents letting them know what was going well and what was not. Tough to finesse those letters if you had any problems with deportment. Ask me.

Teachers made study notes and tests using a hectograph, a precursor to the mimeograph consisting of tray of gelatin. The master paper was hand-written using a purple mimeograph pencil, then placed face down on the hectograph tray and moistened slightly. After a minute it was peeled up leaving the ink in the gelatin. Copies could then be made by placing paper down on the surface, then peeling them off with the inked side a copy of the original. After two or three copies, the surface had to be moistened again with a sponge, and the process would continue until the ink became too light to see...usually after about ten or twelve pages. Small classes didn't need more than that, so it was a practical, cheap method to make copies. The only drawback was the tray had to rest for a day or two while the ink sank to the bottom until it could be reused. I don't think they ever wore out. When my kids were small I ordered a hectograph from an office supply catalogue so we could play with it at home. They were fascinated and we had fun for a time making pictures to color.

The post is getting out of hand. I'll stop here. As I was writing, I had a flash that someone else from that same school might come across my little remembrance and get in touch. This is the age of search engines and it's not a wild idea anymore.

Newt for president?

Stranger things have happened. Even if he never makes it to the playoffs, his participation will bring some important issues to the discussion table, like health care.
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Gingrich has routinely defied the odds, going from an obscure backbench history professor to House Speaker. He then lost that post after the GOP's 1998 House losses and re-invented himself as a healthcare visionary praised by business and medical groups.

The former House revolutionary has always been considered a wild card in the '08 race. He still has a huge and animated following among conservatives, and his healthcare reform work - he founded the D.C.-based Center for Health Transformation - has enabled him to broaden his appeal to Democrats and centrists.

I missed it but Southern Appeal took note.

I've been watching this guy from the sidelines for a long time.

Syrian connection with Gemayal assassination -- interesting rumor

UAE blog notes what is presented as a "roumor" that fifty-five minutes before the event, a newspaper editor in Damascus called a Lebanese newspaper for the details. Details are not provided, but the story is not altogether unbelievable. It would not be the first time that Syrian actions in Lebanon were clumsy.
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Rumour

Al Seyassah daily learned from authoritative sources in Beirut, that one of the editors of the Syrian National News Agency (SANA) placed a phone call to a pro-Syrian Lebanese newspaper at 3:05 pm on Tuesday. The caller inquired about the details of the assassination of Lebanese Minister for Industry Pierre Gemayel, raising eyebrows at the Lebanese newpaper. The timing of phone call was 55 minutes before the assassination was carried out.Ten minutes after the call was place, the Syrian editor placed another phone call in order to apologize for a misunderstanding.

http://www.alseyassah.com/alseyassah/First_12.asp

Google translation of the page.

Chuck Hagel (R) on leaving Iraq

Tomorrow morning's Washington Post...
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There will be no victory or defeat for the United States in Iraq. These terms do not reflect the reality of what is going to happen there. The future of Iraq was always going to be determined by the Iraqis -- not the Americans.

Iraq is not a prize to be won or lost. It is part of the ongoing global struggle against instability, brutality, intolerance, extremism and terrorism. There will be no military victory or military solution for Iraq. Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger made this point last weekend.

The time for more U.S. troops in Iraq has passed. We do not have more troops to send and, even if we did, they would not bring a resolution to Iraq. Militaries are built to fight and win wars, not bind together failing nations. We are once again learning a very hard lesson in foreign affairs:

America cannot impose a democracy on any nation -- regardless of our noble purpose.We have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam. Honorable intentions are not policies and plans. Iraq belongs to the 25 million Iraqis who live there. They will decide their fate and form of government.

It may take many years before there is a cohesive political center in Iraq. America's options on this point have always been limited. There will be a new center of gravity in the Middle East that will include Iraq. That process began over the past few days with the Syrians and Iraqis restoring diplomatic relations after 20 years of having no formal communication.

What does this tell us? It tells us that regional powers will fill regional vacuums, and they will move to work in their own self-interest -- without the United States. This is the most encouraging set of actions for the Middle East in years. The Middle East is more combustible today than ever before, and until we are able to lead a renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, mindless destruction and slaughter will continue in Lebanon, Israel and across the Middle East.

We are a long way from a sustained peaceful resolution to the anarchy in Iraq. But this latest set of events is moving the Middle East in the only direction it can go with any hope of lasting progress and peace. The movement will be imperfect, stuttering and difficult.

America finds itself in a dangerous and isolated position in the world. We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims. Unfortunately, that perception is gaining credibility in the Muslim world and for many years will complicate America's global credibility, purpose and leadership. This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed as the world seeks a new geopolitical, trade and economic center that will accommodate the interests of billions of people over the next 25 years. The world will continue to require realistic, clear-headed American leadership -- not an American divine mission.

The United States must begin planning for a phased troop withdrawal from Iraq. The cost of combat in Iraq in terms of American lives, dollars and world standing has been devastating. We've already spent more than $300 billion there to prosecute an almost four-year-old war and are still spending $8 billion per month. The United States has spent more than $500 billion on our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our effort in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate, partly because we took our focus off the real terrorist threat, which was there, and not in Iraq.

We are destroying our force structure, which took 30 years to build. We've been funding this war dishonestly, mainly through supplemental appropriations, which minimizes responsible congressional oversight and allows the administration to duck tough questions in defending its policies. Congress has abdicated its oversight responsibility in the past four years.

It is not too late. The United States can still extricate itself honorably from an impending disaster in Iraq. The Baker-Hamilton commission gives the president a new opportunity to form a bipartisan consensus to get out of Iraq. If the president fails to build a bipartisan foundation for an exit strategy, America will pay a high price for this blunder -- one that we will have difficulty recovering from in the years ahead.

To squander this moment would be to squander future possibilities for the Middle East and the world. That is what is at stake over the next few months.

Eloquent, clear and accurate. Those of us who objected to this terrible war now seem to be in better company. Some will blame opponents of the war because we did not "win." My only reply is simply, "Win what?"

H/T Andreas Wacker

Theology: Liberal, Conservative, Progressive, whatever...

This is why I love Gordon Atkinson.
He's one of my favorite Baptists.
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Much of my life has been spent trying to find a balance between progressive, or liberal Christian ideas and the conservative, evangelical Christianity of my youth. That’s probably why I’m still a Baptist. The Baptist community is broad and diverse.

I think The Church needs the full spectrum of her theology. Look, when it comes to God, our language isn’t going to cut it anyway. How descriptive can we be of a being that is utterly beyond our comprehension? The language of conservative Christianity speaks to many people. I appreciate that. Hell, I love it. It brings me to tears.

On the other hand, liberal or progressive Christianity speaks to others, myself included. There was a time when liberal theology came to my rescue. It kept me in the game, you might say, while I worked things out for myself. It also made me intellectually proud, and that is a dangerous thing. Pride, in all of its many forms, is truly a spiritual killer.

Were we to be given a glimpse of the true nature of God, I wonder if our theological differences would be vaporized in that blinding moment of enlightenment. We might come away from that experience laughing at words like liberal, conservative, doctrine, and theology.

But whether you use conservative or liberal theological language, the central issue of our faith – as I see it – is finding a passion for the life and teachings of Christ and giving yourself to Him. Becoming a disciple, as we say, and by that I mean trying to live a Christ-like life. The details of your theology are far less important than that commitment.

Trying to live as Jesus lived is a humbling experience. It tends to shatter the pride of the intellectual and subdue the dogmatism of the provincial. Christian living drives us to a place in the middle that we might call Grace.

Theology is nothing more than language. And as nice as language is, it cannot stand up to the beauty of a life given in the service of God and humanity.

Get. Out. Now.

Found at Gregory Djerejian's blog, Belgravia Dispatch. This is from a National Review article.
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At the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968, while his policemen were beating up the demonstrators along the Loop and in Lincoln Park, Mayor Richard Daley apparently told Lyndon Johnson that it was time to pull the troops out of Vietnam, once and for all. "How am I to do this?" Johnson asked pleadingly. To which Daley is said to have replied: "You put the fucking troops on the fucking planes and you get them out of there!"

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What could be plainer?
Any questions?

The post is long and thoghtful. I just wanted to get attention by snipping this one paragraph.

Lebanon Update

There really isn't much to update at the moment. We are at yet another in a series of historically fragile moments when political power hangs in the balance. No one has any clear idea how it will turn out, but this most recent assassination of prime minister Pierre Gemayel has the government again at the brink of collapse.

Blake Hounshell recommends reading two reporters, one from the Washington Post, the other at the New York Times. Both have good background information. Neither ventures to say much about what might happen next.

Anthony Shadid's report includes this...
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In a city whose segregated diversity can sometimes feel claustrophobic, checkpoints went up Wednesday in Ain Rummaneh and other Christian areas to deter vendettas. News broadcasts blared from passing cars, one delivering remarks by a Gemayel ally, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. "We are the legitimate ones, and they are the outlaws," he said.

People huddled around televisions airing the condolences in Bikfaya. There, hundreds walked behind Gemayel's coffin, waving the white-and-green flags of his Phalangist Party.Across the street from Ain Rummaneh, in the largely Shiite neighborhood of Shiyah, where Gemayel was reviled, it was business as usual -- traffic coursing past open shops as residents ignored a three-day period of mourning.

"Homegrown bananas!" one vendor shouted.

"These are the worst days the country has gone through," said Yusuf Raad, a 23-year-old shopkeeper, who as a Shiite was a distinct minority in Ain Rummaneh. "Everything is possible in a country that is so divided."

Raad ran through the conflicts that have left Lebanon divided into two camps -- one coalescing around Hezbollah, with its allies Iran and Syria, the other around Siniora's government and his allies, backed by the United States and France. That division dates to Hariri's assassination and has left the country in a cold war of sorts for nearly two years.

Raad was glum about the future: If the problem isn't foreigners, it's the Lebanese themselves, too willing to follow their communal leaders. He pointed again and again across the street, at the site of the bus attack in 1975. It was a spark then that ignited a war already simmering. Lebanon is too fragile, too volatile, he said; it can take only so many
provocations.

"Too willing to follow communal leaders" is an important part of the problem. Lebanon's hybrid version of representative democracy has "consociational" features, insuring that minorities are protected from annihilation by law. No matter how off to the edge leaders venture, they can always know that they will have willing followers. This may be the downside of protecting minorities from the political consequences of extremism.
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Michael Slackman writes...
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The so-called Cedar Revolution after Mr. Hariri’s murder was hailed as a chance for Lebanon’s notoriously fractured religious communities to unite. While that has revealed itself as a false promise, Mr. Gemayel’s funeral served as an opposing bookend to the optimism of March 14th. The Cedar Revolution led Syria to withdraw its military forces from Lebanon, and at the same time the United Nation Security Council ordered an investigation into Mr. Hariri’s murder. On Wednesday, the Security Council moved with uncommon speed and expanded the investigation to include Mr. Gemayel’s death.

The March 14th forces insist that Hezbollah and its allies have tried to block formation of a tribunal to hear evidence in order to serve their Syrian allies. Hezbollah and Syria have denied that, but the charge was raised again and again today.

“On March 14th, you held an uprising against the tutelage system for the sake of independence and freedom and now you are doing it again for the sake of sovereignty, freedom and justice and the international tribunal,” said Saad Hariri, son of the former prime minister and leader of the Sunni party called the Future Movement.

Outside, when the funeral-turned-political rally was ending, security forces directed the departing crowds away from one particular street because — they said — Hezbollah supporters were hurling stones at people. They pointed to a yellow Hezbollah flag waving in the distance.

All around town, the streets of the capital were lined with Lebanese Army forces, and state security. There were armored vehicles and lots of men with automatic weapons. Military forces closed all the roads leading to President Lahoud’s residence, in Baabda, east of Beirut. Riot police were in position in case any part of the crowd downtown tried to march toward the residence. The day began in Bikfaya, the Gemayel family village, 20 miles from downtown Beirut. The village itself is a symbol of the divisions that challenge Lebanese unity. At the gateway to Bikfaya stands a Soviet-Style statue of the Phalange Party founder. During the civil war, the Phalange armed the largest militia, fought to oust Palestinians from Lebanon and was reviled by Muslims.

There are as many opinions about what might happen next in Lebanon as there are commentators. In retrospect it is hard to imagine that anything that Israel did to Lebanon made any important difference one way or the other. Infrastructure damage was horrendous, of course, but from a public relations standpoint they had nothing to lose. If Lebanon can be brought this close to a return to a Pax Syriana by a few strategically effective killings, the Cedar Revolution is close to being stillborn.

Two short videos for the season

Rocketboom dedicates one day's reportage to New York City's Rescue Mission. Sincere. Not snarky this time. Similar efforts are going on all over the country. Whether or not the sparks of hope will ever catch fire remains to be seen. Homeless people are a notch below those for whom the minimum wage debate is important. Here is where the safety net is most needed and least available.

Motion Abbey points to Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in a well-made short clip with a somewhat nihilistic ending...
I think they call it art.

John Birge, Charles Laughton and Jack Kerouac

This two-hour program from 2000 was played last night on WABE in Atlanta, and is being rebroadcast today at noon. I found the link for my and your enjoyment any time we want to listen again.
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As Thanksgiving brings family together to share common blessings and a bountiful meal, host John Birge brings classical music and stories together in a thoughtful, contemporary reflection on the meaning of the holiday. John's special guests this year include best-selling author and humorist Anne Lamott and Pulitzer prize winning poet and environmentalist Gary Snyder.

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The voice of Charles Laughton is worth the time it takes to hear the whole program, but if your time is limited, find the second hour and advance the slider to 35 minutes to hear him reading Jack Kerouac. This reading is followed by the most wonderful personal story that no synopsis from me can do justice. Then, fifteen minutes into the Charles Laughton segment, he reads Psalm 104 in that timeless and unforgettable voice.

Enjoy your day.
I hope you make space in your day for this highly recommended twenty-five minutes listening to Charles Laughton. It is from an out of print recording from 1962.

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If you would like to follow along as Laughton reads Psalm 104, I have put together a transcript at the end of the Thanksgiving post below which has the full NIV version for comparison.

Thanksgiving, 2006

For the Beauty of the Earth

We give you thanks, most gracious God, for the beauty of earth and sky and sea; for the richness of mountains, plains, and rivers; for the songs of birds and the loveliness of flowers.
We praise you for these good gifts, and pray that we may safeguard them for our posterity. Grant that we may continue to grow in our grateful enjoyment of your abundant creation, to the honor and glory of your Name, now and for ever. Amen.

For the Diversity of Races and Cultures

O God, who created all peoples in your image, we thank you for the wonderful diversity of races and cultures in this world.
Enrich our lives by ever‑widening circles of fellowship, and show us your presence in those who differ most from us, until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

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From The Book of Common Prayer.
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And this, Psalm 104, is altogether appropriate for Thanksgiving Day. You probably never stopped to consider that storks nested in pine trees, that that great Leviathan has been out there in the oceans since Biblical times, and this wonderful line that rings true for those of us in the food business, "wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart."
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Praise the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent and lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind.

He makes winds his messengers, flames of fire his servants. He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.

You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth.

He makes springs pour water into the ravines; it flows between the mountains. They give water to all the beasts of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. The birds of the air nest by the waters; they sing among the branches. He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the earth is satisfied by the fruit of his work.

He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate— bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart.

The trees of the LORD are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted. There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the pine trees.

The high mountains belong to the wild goats; the crags are a refuge for the coneys.

The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl. The lions roar for their prey and seek their food from God. The sun rises, and they steal away; they return and lie down in their dens.
Then man goes out to his work, to his labor until evening.

How many are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number— living things both large and small. There the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

These all look to you to give them their food at the proper time. When you give it to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are satisfied with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to the dust. When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth.

May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works-he who looks at the earth, and it trembles, who touches the mountains, and they smoke.

I will sing to the LORD all my life; I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.
May my meditation be pleasing to him, as I rejoice in the LORD.

But may sinners vanish from the earth and the wicked be no more. Praise the LORD, O my soul. Praise the LORD.
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Last night's reading by Charles Laughton was my inspiration for looking up Psalm 104. Like any good actor Laughton elides a few verses, but the result is a version more dramatic in the hearing than it could ever be in silent reading. Taken from the King James version, here is the text he uses.
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O LORD my God, thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.

The waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them.

He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth. And wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread which strengtheneth man's heart.

The trees of the LORD are full of sap, where the birds make their nests. As for the stork, the fir trees are her house.

Thou makest darkness, and it is night: wherein all the beasts of the forest do creep forth.

O LORD, how manifold are thy works! The earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable. There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.

He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke.

I will sing unto the LORD as long as I live: I will be glad in the LORD.

November 22, 2006

It's been forty-three years ago but it seems more recent. I still can't look at the date and not remember the event. Glancing back to my posts from last year and the year before I find something like a replay of the time. As a nation we still have not learned that waging war is not an effective means to win friends and bring about constructive change.

This year I have nothing new to add. Thanks to a calendar circumstance this year tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. Strange juxtoposition...an assassination anniversary on the eve of Thanksgiving. No stranger than the Eucharist, though. It's appropriate to remember death when celebrating life. Each gives meaning to the other.

This morning I was reading the comments at John Scalzi's list of what it means to be poor. It's an uneven piece of reading to say the least, but when a post accumulates over three hundred comments and has to be redirected to another link for three hundred more...that indicated it has touched a lot of readers very deeply. Andnot all of them are positive in their remarks.

Most of the comments are from the heart, you can tell. Why else should there be such an outpouring?

On this Thanksgiving Eve I am copying one of those comments. It illustrates why a day of thanks is appropriate, and reminds us all not to take anything for granted. It is from "cookie September 4, 2005 02:24 AM."
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Growing up poor means that even after you've earned two college degrees (on scholarship) and finally gotten a good job (on merit), you don't trust and still don't feel comfortable around middle-class and rich people because these are the people who used to make fun of your people.

Growing up poor means having to listen to people who never experienced poverty and don't know any poor people ranting about what poor people "should" do.

Growing up poor means that you're always looking over your shoulder because even if you're now successful, you also know that it could be taken away in a minute with a catastrophic illness or accident. You can get back into the cycle of late fees and charges due to simple car repair issues.

Growing up poor and making it in the middle-class world means that people will make white trash and trailer jokes around you not realizing that your mom and many of your relatives still live in trailers.

Growing up poor can give you skills that kids from middle class families don't have. You can grow your own food and have few moral qualms about hunting animals to eat. You know how to fish.You know which wild plants are edible and how to prepare them. You can sew, knit and crochet--not because these were hobbies, but because anything you could make, grow, or harvest wild was one less thing you had to buy.

Growing up poor is having compassion for other poor people who did not have the same opportunities or who do not possess the same talents that got you out of poverty (I am a singer and my voice "bought" my education for me).

Growing up poor means that the loans you took to pay for living expenses in college made it difficult to actually pay for living expenses AFTER college because even with a college education, a good-paying steady job in your field wasn't immediately available---and you get yourself further in debt because you have to play "check roulette" with creditors and bounce a few.

Growing up poor means that your credit rating is shot because it took you so long to pay off that student loan because you were not able to make regular monthly payments.

The statements about how growing up poor means that you don't know how to deal with money all ring true for me. If you've never had any, it's difficult to know what to do with it once you *do* get some. My tendency is to spend it right away because who knows when you'll get more?

Growing up poor means that because of the financial stress of your youth and now only being able to get by despite a decent job, you tell your kids that if they want to go to college, they must do it on their own through merit or by working to put themselves through. It also means that you have no problem encouraging your children to join the military if that's what it takes.

Growing up poor means that you consider yourself rich because even if you struggle to make those house and car payments, you actually know people without either a house OR a car and appreciate your own modest living arrangements so much more.

We now have all the trappings of a middle-class life, but even for middle-class people, we struggle to keep one car on the road, keep up the house payment, feed the family and buy the "right" clothes to fit in at our middle-class jobs. We live paycheck to paycheck (and since I am a musician in addition to teaching part-time at a college, we live from gig to gig). Many people who call themselves middle-class are actually rich in our eyes. They may have two cars or even two houses and still call themselves middle class! To us, that's unbelievably wealthy!

You see "being" poor is not the same as "growing up" poor. There can be an escape from the first but escaping the second often involves more healing than money can buy. Poverty, like combat, doesn't effect everyone the same. As the comment above shows there cn be scar tissue of the mind and soul that doesn't go away.

Mark Lynch on blogging

Long, reflective, well-written and candid.
All the right qualities for any good blogger. Highly recommended reading.
I just came across this link and have to go to work. I'll read it later more closely.
Expect the comments thread to be intelligent, too. Most comment threads are an exercise in carping but this audience is usually more civil.

Bird Flu Update

CFR has a summary of what is curently known (and unknown) about H5N1, including an ABC News report that is cautiously reassuring.

With regard to raising this flag, Hinrichs says that for a bird influenza virus to reach the level of a pandemic and become dangerous to humans, three things must occur. First, the bird virus must be virulent or capable of causing disease. Second, it must be a new virus that can avoid our existing immune system. And third, the virus must be able to spread from human to human.

"At the present time, the current H5N1 virus has only the first two characteristics," he says. "Dr. Kawaoka's research findings add to our ability to detect the basic element of the third characteristic, the ability to pass infection from human to human.
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"By analogy, the current H5N1 virus is like an enemy that possesses a nuclear device, has the intention of using the nuclear device, but does not have a delivery missile," Hinrichs says. "When all three are present, the enemy becomes fully capable, and we must increase our readiness to respond."

So far, not a single case of human-to-human transmission of H5N1 has been recorded. Also, the United States remains apparently untouched by H5N1, as no human or bird cases have yet been reported in the country.

Combat Cowards

Advocating war is easier when you and your family are not endangered by it. I've reached a Rangel-like breaking point with my TV pundit colleagues who championed the Iraq war and now say we can't leave even if we went there for the wrong reasons. For every one of them, I have a simple question: Why aren't you in Iraq? Or why did you avoid combat in your generation's war? The one unifying characteristic that all of us men in make-up on political chat shows share is fear of combat. Every one of us has done everything we can to avoid combat or even being fitted for a military uniform. Just like George Bush, Bill Clinton, and Dick Cheney, we are all combat cowards. It takes a very special kind of combat coward to advocate combat for others. It's the kind of thing that can get you as angry as Charlie Rangel.

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That's how it ends, this Lawrence O'Donnell essay. Read the whole thing.

Being Poor

With the minimum wage now being seriously debated again it's time to read what it means to be poor. There are several "lists" but this one is the best I've seen. The writer is John Scalzi. I don't think he's poor, but his heart is clearly in the right place. I referenced it in a footnote to a post last year when the New Orleans victims were being blamed for their own plight, not only by a lot of ignorant citizens, but also by some really stupid public officials who eventually paid a serious political price for their thoughtless remarks.

Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they're what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there's not an $800 car in America that's worth a damn.

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends' houses but never has friends over to yours.

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won't hear you say "I get free lunch" when you get to the cashier.

Being poor is living next to the freeway.

Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.

Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn't mind when you ask for help.

Being poor is off-brand toys.

Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.

Being poor is knowing you can't leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.

Being poor is hoping your kids don't have a growth spurt.

Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn't have make dinner tonight because you're not hungry anyway.

Being poor is Goodwill underwear.

Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives
with you.

Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.

Being poor is your kid's school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning.

Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.

Being poor is relying on people who don't give a damn about you.

Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.

Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.

Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.

Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger's trash.

Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw.

Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.

Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being poor is not taking the job because you can't find someone you trust to watch your kids.

Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.

Being poor is not talking to that girl because she'll probably just laugh at your clothes.
Being poor is hoping you'll be invited for dinner.

Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Being poor is your kid's teacher assuming you don't have any books in your home.

Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.

Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.

Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually stupid.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you're not actually lazy.

Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.

Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn't bought first.

Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that's two extra packages for every dollar.

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn't know you made when you were 14 years old.

Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.

Being poor is knowing you're being judged.

Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.

Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.

Being poor is deciding that it's all right to base a relationship on shelter.

Being poor is knowing you really shouldn't spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.

Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.

Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won't listen to you beg them against doing so.

Being poor is a cough that doesn't go away.

Being poor is making sure you don't spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.

Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.

Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.

Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.

Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

Being poor is running in place.

Being poor is people wondering why you didn't leave.

If you skimmed the list, go back and read it more carefully. Every item represents a concrete problem for someone without enough financial resources. I know that many readers will scan this list with a bad attitude, quick to jump to the obvious conclusion that too often poverty is the consequence of "bad choices." I respectfully ask that if you are in that group you take a few minutes to read my rant about lifestyle choices.

I'm sick of hearing well-off people with bad habits they can afford complaining about poor people with bad habits they cannot afford. Having money means being able to escape the consequences of being irresponsible. Being judgmental about povety makes a successful person look a bit trashy to me.

Roller Man Video

Be sitting down when you watch.

Think Winter Olympics luge without snow or sled...just a guy in a protective suite covered with rollers. How about streets and sidewalks?
Makes me know how old I'm getting...

H/T Motion Abbey

Jeeves and Dubya Wooster

"...But, if I may, sir, with respect to Iraq?”

“All right, then. Give it to me straight up.”

“Might I suggest, sir, a regional conference?”

“Dash it, Jeeves, we’re at war. You can’t go conferencing with bullets flying all over the place.”

“Indeed, sir. And yet if we were to invite, say, Iran and Syria and some of the other affected countries to sit down for what is, I believe, referred to as ‘networking,’ it might take some of the pressure off yourself?”

“You mean the sort of how-d’ye-do where everyone sits at one of those huge U-shaped tables and makes endless orations all day?”

“That would be the general notion, yes, sir.”

“Now, steady on, Jeeves. You know I hate those things. You sit there with an earphone, listening to interpreters jibber-jabber about how it’s all your fault. I’d rather take my chances playing Blinky with Cobra Woman and Cactus Butt.”

“You wouldn’t actually have to attend personally, sir. Indeed, I could represent you, if that would be agreeable.”

“I say, would you, Jeeves?”

“Certainly, sir. Indeed, sir, it is my impression that you have been working much too hard as it is. Might I suggest that you winter at the ranch in Crawford? I believe the climate there this time of year is thought to be salubrious.”

From The New Yorker via Exploding Aardvark

Pope Benedict XVI in Regensburg revisited

Now that the dust has settled (i.e. mid-term elections are now past) it's time to revisit Pope Benedict's remarks to a group of scholars in Germany. John Burgess and Donald Sensing point to a remarkable letter published just after the event.

I linked at the time to a WSJ piece that more or less defended the Pope, but like everyone else I was led to believe that most of the "Muslim world," whatever that is, was offended by his remarks. Indeed, the piece I linked opened with this...
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Although many Muslims have apparently found Pope Benedict XVI's recent oration at the University of Regensburg deeply offensive, it is a welcome change from the pabulum that passes for "interfaith" dialogue. Since 9/11, his lecture is one of the few by a major Western figure to highlight the spiritual and cultural troubles that beset the Muslim world.
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From there he began what struck me as a reasonable defense. But by way of balance, I also linked to a gripping entry by Blake Hounshell telling about being uncomfortable as an outsider visiting a Cairo mosque during Ramadan.

It's very easy to be swept up in the passions of the moment. I find myself no less prone to that temptation than anyone else. Maybe that's why I often come across as too non-committal or too ready to seek reasoned calm when killing people seems to be the only way out of a problem. But as usual, I digress...

The point is this letter. If Sensing and Burgess say read it, then it's worth reading. Islamica Magazine, the link source, introduces the letter thus:

In an unprecedented move, an open letter signed by 38 leading Muslim religious scholars and leaders around the world was sent to Pope Benedict XVI on Oct. 12, 2006. The letter, which is the outcome of a joint effort, was signed by top religious authorities such as Shaykh Ali Jumu‘ah (the Grand Mufti of Egypt), Shakyh Abdullah bin Bayyah (former Vice President of Mauritania, and leading religious scholar), and Shaykh Sa‘id Ramadan Al-Buti (from Syria), in addition to the Grand Muftis of Russia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Slovenia, Istanbul, Uzbekistan, and Oman, as well as leading figures from the Shi‘a community such as Ayatollah Muhammad Ali Taskhiri of Iran. The letter was also signed by HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan and by Muslim scholars in the West such as Shaykh Hamza Yusuf from California, Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and Professor Tim Winter of the University of Cambridge.

All the eight schools of thought and jurisprudence in Islam are represented by the signatories, including a woman scholar. In this respect the letter is unique in the history of interfaith relations.

The letter was sent, in a spirit of goodwill, to respond to some of the remarks made by the Pope during his lecture at the University of Regensburg on Sept. 12, 2006. The letter tackles the main substantive issues raised in his treatment of a debate between the medieval Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an “educated Persian”, including reason and faith; forced conversion; “jihad” vs. “holy war”; and the relationship between Christianity and Islam. They engage the Pope on an intellectual level concerning these crucial topics—which go well beyond the controversial quotation of the emperor—pointing out what they see as mistakes and oversimplifications in the Pope’s own remarks about Islamic belief and practice.


The Muslim signatories appreciate the Pope's personal expression of sorrow at the Muslim reaction and his assurance that the words of the Byzantine emperor he quoted did not reflect his personal opinion. By following the Quranic precept of debating “in the fairest way”, they hope to reach out so as to increase mutual understanding, reestablish trust, calm the situation for the sake of peace, and preserve Muslim dignity.

Christianity and Islam make up more than half of humankind in an increasingly interconnected world, the letter states, and it is imperative that both sides share responsibility for peace and move the debate towards a frank and sincere dialogue of hearts and minds which furthers mutual understanding and respect between the two religious traditions. Indeed, the scholars point out, both religions teach what Christianity calls “the two greatest commandments”. The commandment that “the Lord our God is one Lord” and that we shall love Him with all we are is enshrined in the first testimony of faith in Islam, “There is no god but God.” The second commandment “to love thy neighbor as thyself” is also found in the words of the Prophet, “None of you believes until he desires for his neighbor (in another version, his brother) what he desires for himself.” The signatories also point out the positive contacts the Vatican has had with the Islamic world in the past, with a hope that they will continue and even grow in the future.
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This introduction is as remarkable to me as the letter itself. Clearly the editors of this publication have serious intentions about building bridges, an impulse I find virtually non-existent in our own swaggering popular press.

Thanks and praise to Donald Sensing and John Burgess whose calm, clear heads are islands of reason in a sea of confusion. That's why they stay on my blogroll.

Michael Savage on Nancy Pelosi

That post title doesn't sound right, but I gotta be careful here because I'm about to quote Michael Savage, one of the nation's most disagreeable radio talk show hosts. (Yes, Virginia, I do listen to Michael Savage because NPR someties fails to catch my fancy that time of the evening.) Come to think of it, my post headline is not all that bad...

"Even a blind hog" exactly says how I want to play this quote. Savage is offensive, but not stupid. He's been around longer than me and has had a lot more exposure to the real world. We have arrived at very different world views, thankfully, but I respect his gift for -- I'll be nice -- candor.

I think he got it right this time when everybody else got it wrong about Pelosi's support of Murtha. That I find myself in agreement with Michael Savage is more disturbing to me than anything that happened in Congress. But my instinct is exactly the same as his in this instance.

DID PELOSI SET MURTHA UP FOR A FALL?

Self-important Washington analysts are all asking why Pelosi nominated Murtha when she didn't have the votes. Republicrats are celebrating her lack of acumen. Demoncats are worried she may be too"inexperienced" for the Speaker's position. My analysis brings me to a different conclusion. Murtha became so engorged on his own image(as a result of his calling our troops "Nazis" and demanding a French-like retreat) that as near as a few months ago he was vying to become the Speaker himself! In other words he challenged Pelosi herself for the top-dog position. By nominating Murtha instead of Hoyer the new Speaker did, in fact, count the votes in advance. And she may have KNOWN Murtha would lose. So why would she do this?To publicly humiliate Murtha, to be rid of him and his radical, left-wing consortium which threatens to swamp the centrist (i.e. business) wing of the Democrat Party.

Political Humiliation

This week Nancy Pelosi used the tactic of public humiliation against John Murtha in order to remove his threat to her leadership. Murtha stood before the cameras at the back of the Democratic leadership, cowed and head hung low, defeated before the world. When he came to the microphone, he had only words of quiet praise for her.

This is not the first time that political humiliation has been used as an effective political tactic. In the 1950's, Lyndon Johnson was Majority Leader in the US Senate and ruled over the chamber with an iron fist. When Paul Douglas, a liberal senator from Illinois stood against Johnson on an ideological point that Johnson knew would never pass the full Senate, Johnson took action. When the vote came down, instead of setting for a voice vote, Johnson insisted that a roll call be taken so that Douglas would hear each and every voice against his proposal, which was defeated almost unanimously.

Douglas eventually became Johnson’s ally, but it was not because Johnson played to his sensitivities. If Nancy Pelosi becomes the Iron Lady of the House, it will not be because she lets Murtha or Hoyer push her around. It will be because she exploits their weaknesses and uses them to her best advantage.

I did the best I could with the link. Savage's site doesn't have hyperlinks, so this is from the November 19 page. Maybe it will get a separate link when it hits the archives. A lot of other stuff is there which I don't recommend. Most of it is fairly, well, Michael Savage. Think Jerry Springer in print. (For example, if beheading videos are your thing, find them there.)

How long? Please, God, how long?

Another group, aged five, seven and nine, tried to run away. The five-year-old fell down and was shot dead. Another boy stopped and told the attacker: “You killed this child. Please let me go.” It was no use. He too was killed, one of more than 20 children who died that day.

Local people in the Darfur region of Sudan put the number of dead in the attack earlier this month at 63, mostly old men and children. The African Union, which has a peacekeeping force in Darfur, said 92 people died in the eight villages attacked.

“They took the babies and children from their mothers’ arms, beat the women and shot the children,” said one witness, Adam Gamer Umar. “They said, ‘We’re killing your sons and when you have more we will come and kill them too’.”

Non-violence takes a few taser hits

My, how times change. I just watched a six-minute video of the widely reported incident in the UCLA library of what I assume are the campus police apprehending an uncooperative subject. The link is via Forbes.com which has a couple of corporate blogs, if you can believe it.

Aside from the obvious parallels with police actions of the Sixties, which I pointed out in a comment at the site, I am struck with the vanilla comments of the reporter/blogger who says...
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...it's not up to me to determine if was actually a serious abuse of power. What's clear right now, though, is that technology has completely changed the way we collect news, monitor public safety, and police those in authority.

If you watch the video, keep an eye open for how many of the students have cell phones out, and are documenting everything that happens. A mere years ago, this fracas would have been an isolated incident on a college campus. There would likely have been no video of what really happened. Today, we've got it recorded from multiple angles by a variety of witnesses. The omnipresence of cell phones makes sure that no newsworthy act goes unrecorded. It's heartening to see that technology is helping us watch the watchmen, even if what we see is hard to look at.

"Not up to me" he says. For crying out loud, if it isn't up to him, me, you and other viewers, the pray tell who is it up to? What does he need to see to conclude that these guys were being thuggish? His comment about technology is correct, thankfully, but where is his sense of civic accountability?

I think he spent too much time in journalism school or something.

I almost forgot. Go watch the video and see for yourself. I'm more disturbed by the manner in which the police intimidated the crowd and the reporter's ethical timidity than the actions of these two ignorant officers. Police officers have a terrible responsibility and I am pleased and greatful when they do their duty well. But in the end I expect them to treat offenders with dignity and professionalism. And responsible citizens should expect no less.

In this instance all the talk about "Arab-looking" this or "smart-ass" that is entirely beside the point.

ISG is looking for a few good ponies

Mark Lynch, card-carrying expert on Middle East affairs, notes the conspicuous absence of experts in the Iraq Study Group. I stole his whole post verbatim. Priceless.
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There's a meme going around the blogs that among the shortcomings of the Iraq Study Group is an absence of Middle East experts. Depends how you count - sure, the top-line members are politicos, not experts, but that's typical (think of the 9/11 commission). If you go into the members of the expert working groups, you'll find quite a few people with quality knowledge about the region, including Shibley Telhami, Jon Alterman, Reuel Gerecht, Raad Alkadiri, Ellen Laipson, David Mack, Judith Yaphe, Dick Norton, Phebe Marr, Steve Cook, Chas Freeman, Wayne White, Bill Quandt, and more. Now, whether those people are having much input into the process is a real question (not a whole lot, from what I hear). So is whether the ISG will come up with any really new ideas (not really, from what I hear) or will be able to get administration buy-in for whatever it comes up with (your guess as good as mine). Just saying that an absence of expert participation in the process isn't the best line of attack.

My advice, when recommendations about fixing Iraq start coming out: keep an eye out for ponies. In Belle Waring's immortal phrase:

You see, wishes are totally free. It's like when you can't decide whether to daydream about being a famous Hollywood star or having amazing magical powers. Why not -- be a famous Hollywood star with amazing magical powers! Along these lines, John has developed an infallible way to improve any public policy wishes. You just wish for the thing, plus, wish that everyone would have their own pony!

So, when judging recommendations for dealing with the Iraq mess, always keep an eye out for ponies! Here's how it works:

*"We should get the Iranians and the Syrians to establish control over the Shia and Sunni areas... and a pony."

*"We should get the security situation in Baghdad under control... and a pony."

*"We should get responsible leaders in each community to strike a reasonable bargain.. and a pony."

*"The administration should get a grip on reality... and a pony."

See how easy that is? If a recommendation rests on at least one totally unrealistic assumption, then no matter how pretty it otherwise sounds, you might as well wish for a pony while you're at it.

All can think to add is the old saw about a camel being a horse designed by a committee. Come to think of it, there are a lot of camels in the Middle East.
Hmm.

New recipe just in time for Thanksgiving: Potted Crow

For those who have been looking, either for themselves or to feed to someone else...

Potted Crow

6 crows
3 bacon slices
stuffing of your choice
1 diced carrot
1 diced onionchopped parsley
hot water or stock
1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup flourbuttered toast

Clean and dress crows; stuff and place them upright in stew-pan on the slices of bacon. Add the carrot, onion and a little parsley, and cover with boiling water or stock.

Cover the pot and let simmer for 2-3 hours, or until tender, adding boiling water or stock when necessary.Make a sauce of the shortening and flour and 2 cups of the stock remaining in the pan.
Serve each crow on a thin slice of moistened toast, and pour gravy over all.

(Found at jesurgislac's Journal dated November 8**. This is the gesture of a real stand-up guy. I don't know anything about him but I like him already.)

**For future reference, the Democrats took the election, winning control of both houses of Congress, breaking a twelve year lock on all three branches. Lotta pundits eating crow now. With Bush a lame duck, the future looks good for Democrats. Of course they can snatch a defeat from the jaws of victory. It won't be the first time.

Mennonites abroad

The Church keeps growing. It is well-known that Pentecostal Christianity is one of the fastest-growing movements in Asia, Africa and South America. An interesting stat is that the Episcopal Diocese of Nigeria has more members than the whole of the Episcopal Church, USA. When Archbishop Akinola speaks, lots of people are listening, not just in Nigeria but around the rest of the world. Why do you think there is a rift between ECUSA and the rest of the World Anglican Communion?

But that is not what this post is about. This is about a much smaller growth of Christianity. I'm still getting used to the notion of Evangelical Mennonites, but I really like the idea. What better group to show the world the core beliefs of our faith? Think of them as Amish people who don't look so different and go on to college. And think of them as Christians meeting the world with love and forgiveness with the simple expectation that the world will accept them for who they are.

Look at how a community of Mennonite Christians came to terms with the sticky problem of how best to deal with Christian converts who had been practicing polygamy. All you panic-stricken hand wringers who don't know how to deal with same-sex love and it's consequences, heads up! There may be a lesson here...

The Meserete Kristos Church General Assembly decided Oct. 6-7 that polygamous converts need not divorce multiple wives and that women can serve in church leadership roles.

The MKC is the world’s largest Anabaptist conference, with 144,600 members.

The assembly approved a recommendation to allow baptism of polygamous converts but to restrict them from leadership positions.

Polygamy, a form of marriage in which a man has more than one wife, is common in Africa.

Look now at this gentle and insightful message found at Young Anabaptist Radicals.

...the Meserete Kristos Church of Ethiopa, recently made two groundbreaking (maybe even radical) decisions. One is that women can now be fully active in leadership in the church. My only comment to that one is: well done, the church will be better for it. More interesting to me is the other decision. Polygamous converts can now be baptised into the church without divorcing all but one of their wives. The church is still saying monogamy is the way to go (their “teaching position”) and men shouldn’t marry any more wives once they are part of the church (also probably shouldn’t be leaders).

The little cynic sitting on my left shoulder wants to make a comment. [On the other hand...]

There’s a clever little Mennonite lesbian sitting on my right shoulder, tapping my ear. [On the other hand...]

So she comes to the point. It seems the Mennonites in North America might look to Ethiopia to learn something about how the faith might be practiced.

Right now the Mennonite “teaching position” on same-sex sexual behavior is kinda like the “teaching position” of the MKC was on polygamy: it’s bad, you should change if you want to join us (even if it is personally damaging) and you definitely can’t be in a same-sex relationship. It is also kinda like the new decision on polygamy: it’s still bad but we can see how it could be personally damaging to change so you can be here as long as you are celibate (or safely in the closet), also, you still can’t be in leadership (but you are welcome to sit here, share your gifts of money and talents as long as you don’t ask for any respect for heaven’s sake). So basically, you can stay as long as you hate yourself enough to follow our bigoted rules or shut up about it enough that we don’t have to notice (also, could you play the organ on Sunday? Oh, and we’re looking for pledges for the new building project, do you think you and your “roommate” could help us out with that? -nudge- -wink-). That was the little cynical Mennonite lesbian sitting on top of my head.

Sound familiar?

It does to me. And I'm not even close to being Mennonite.
Oh, and I really like that little recurring line "Well done, the Church will be better for it."
Quiet and gentle but firm.

Onward, Christian Soldiers

Marine Corps Rules for Gun Fighting

1. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.
2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.
3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
4. If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough nor using cover correctly.
5. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movement are preferred.)
6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.
7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running.
9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on "pucker factor" than the inherent accuracy of the gun.
10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
12. Have a plan.
13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won't work.
14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.
15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
16. Don't drop your guard.
17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees.
18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. In God we trust. Everyone else, keep your hands where I can see them.
19. Decide to be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.
20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.
21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you
meet.
22. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.
23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.
24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with a "4."

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Found at Evangelical Outpost by Younghusband at Coming Anarchy.
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"Younghusband" is a Canadian who recently returned to his home country after a number of years in Japan. Fluent in Japanese and English, with experience in numerous other languages from Spanish to Georgian, Younghusband has travelled throughout Asia from North to South to West. He is currently doing his MA in War Studies at the Royal Military College of Canada.
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Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost says "I'm a Reformed protestant evangelical, though I have a soft spot for Catholics." He is a former Marine, successful writer and blogger.

***

***

There may be scripture to support this list, but I don't have the resources to look it up. Most of what I understand about the Bible, particularly the New Testament, prevents me from finding this list amusing. I found it entertaining at Coming Anarchy but when I learned it came from a source advertising itself to be Christian it hit me like a splash of iced water. I'm working not to sound sanctimonious, but it takes a lot of effort. Sorry, but I seem to be failing.

Minimum Wage comment

The usual suspects are being rounded up now that Democrats are in charge, one of which is the federal minimum wage. This is tiresome Very tiresome. Mostly because there is so much ignorance about business and markets in general, wages in particular.

One of my least favorite bosses (whom I liked a lot better when we became peers) put it succinctly: If you want more money, what you need is a higher paying job.

That summarizes everything you need to know about wages. Someone is going to work for the minimum wage, and some people will work for less. It is not widely known, but the federal wage and hour laws do not apply to businesses under a certain volume and with a certain number of employees. I don't know exactly what those numbers are but it doesn't matter. That is why ice cream stores and other places that employ kids can get away with paying less than the federal minimum wage. That is why they are franchised, not chain-owned...to insure that as small operations (i.e. franchised, privately-owned and operated) they will not likely be under those regulations.

That is why baby sitters don't get minimum wage unless the person paying them wants to give it to them. Although technically they are not exempt from contributing to and withholding contributions to Social Security and Medicare. (Ask some of these high-profile big shots who have been in trouble for not taking care of their maids, nannies and Au pairs.)

There is as much ignorance, too, regarding tip wages. My first ever internet post was about this subject over six years ago when my company started paying former hourly-paid employees at tipped wages. After the great outcry from those affected and their allies, we discovered that (a) the wages of those affected were already so high with unreported tips that their main penalty was reporting that little bit that the law mandated to protect the company from having to bring their $2.13/hr up to the federal minimum. And (b) very few left their jobs and the level of dining room service improved in most locations to a much better level as the word got out that we had tipped jobs. We attracted a whole different population of service people with a very different notion about the relationship between performance and income. (They worked far better, knowing that they would not be getting some "minimum" fixed hourly wage.)

No one working for a company that is covered by the federal wage and hour regulations is working for $2.13. The least that the tipped employee will earn will be (currently) $5.15. If the tipped employee fails to earn the $3.02 needed to satisfy the federal minimum, then the employer is required to supply the difference. Read the mandatory posters and the details are plain.

Not all locations are alike, but in many cafeterias the waitstaff are the best paid people in the building. In some places the paychecks are passed out for the record on the stub only, with the amount being"$0.00/void" because the basic $2.13 is not enough to cover the taxes and other deductions to cover the tips reported. The jury is still out, but the result of tip wages is a marked improvement in dining room service,with underperforming employees requesting some other position in the operation that is not paid tip wage.

I just spent a lot of time putting together a comment at hilzoy's blog at the end of a long comment thread about the minimum wage. My views are lukewarm at best and, like my unconventional opinion about the draft, are not consistent with current Progressive dogma. Here is a link to the post. And here is what I wrote:

Sigh.

I don't know why I bother to leave a comment at the end of such a long thread, but this is a subject to which I have given a lot of thought, having worked my entire life as a food service manager. Despite my job, I started out and am still after thirty-five years an old-fashioned Liberal and for the most part buy the party line.

But in the case of the minimum wage I am not in lock-step with Progressive dogma. Two points:

First, there is a wide spread from one place to another regarding what it costs to "live." Even withing a single metro area (I live in Atlanta Metro) what is a good wage one place is utterly inadequate in another. The single most important variable in wages is simply land costs. Where land is expensive, everything in, on and around that land is correspondingly expensive. Conversely, where land is cheap the cost of living is correspondingly low. Problem is taking advantage of the higher wages that MUST be paid to workers in the expensive areas. (Offer a dishwasher or other hourly employee to work at $5.15 per hour in an upscale area and you will soon be out of business...or washing your own dishes.) That's why tip wages operate. Tips are a way to pay for services that only last for a brief period of time in cases where hourly wages are not feasible. A tipped employee can make the equivalent of $100 per hour during a peak period, so it is not a crazy idea to pay someone else by the hour to clean the floor or wash the windows. You ain't gonna get tipped employees to do that. Etc. Etc...

Second point, and this is much more important: The Federal Minimum Wage has very little to do with the reality of earning at the lower edge of hourly paid workers. However it has a lot to do with the wages of union workers whose contracts are linked to that official "minimum." I have to admit to having skimmed past both the post and previous comments without closely reading, but I did do a word search for "union" and got only one reference ("Francis" above) who raised that very pertinent question and received no answer.

A very smart local talk show host, Neal Boortz, pointed out on his show yesterday that if any proposed increase in the Federal Minimum Wage were passed with language that would prohibit its being a factor in union agreements the proposal would crash and burn. The man is an intolerable ass, but he takes pride in that role and often, as in this case, makes a valid point.

After working all my life with the "working poor" I have to say that the federal minimum wage is not really on their list of problems. Wages are set by the marketplace, not the law. Anyone who argues otherwise is simply uninformed. My Mexican employees told me what they needed to work, not the law. And if I failed to meet their rate I would not have a reliable dish room. The same dynamic applies wherever wages are an issue. Supply and demand determine wages the same as prices.

The Federal Wage and Hour laws are sound and proper. There must be oversight and followup from the feds to insure that unprincipled employers do not exploit workers. The minimum wage has not been changed for years, but that has not prevented various states from establishing their own minimums. This strikes me as a far better remedy because the geography of the nation, reflecting the widespread differences in state and local economies, makes any minimum in the poorest area a joke in the most expensive.

The real issue has to do with the impact of the Federal Minimum Wage on union and other wages. The cascading effect of the "minimum" needs to be considered with an eye toward inflationary pressures, and I think we all know how inflation effects poor people.

My humble suggestion is that we redirect political energy to something more helpful. More affordable health and dental care would be a good start. I have seen a lot of poor people misappropriate meager resources on gambling, drinking and other vices, but I have also seen them endure uncorrected orthopedic, dental, and chronic medical conditions because seeing a doctor was not even on their radar. Unless and until medical insurance premiums become as affordable as satellite TV, fashionable clothing and the interest paid on consumer debt the minimum wage will continue to be a smoke-screen for union interests.


(And am I anti-union? Nope. I am firmly persuaded that any company with a union richly deserves to have it. The way to prevent unions is nothing more than paying them a competitive market-based wage and treating them with fairness and dignity. But that is another discussion.)

(Wish they had spell check at comment windows. I found three or four misspellings when I pasted it here. Oh, well. If that's as bad as the day gets, I'm in for a good one.)

One final word regarding those "higher paying jobs." Please refer to the boldface line above.

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If you want more money, what you need is a higher paying job.

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That means that anyone who isn't making as much as he or she wants needs to be seeking better employment. It may not mean leaving the company, but it may mean working to have the next job up the flow chart or another one nearby. Transferring to a department or getting trained to do more valuable work is the place to begin. Good companies are always looking for good people, those with the ethics to do a good job, get along with other employees and those the company serves, are faithful to the schedule and flexible enough to pull hard with a team when the need arises, who fill in for others when they are in trouble knowing that they will be cared for in the same way when they are in trouble.

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Getting a better job may mean moving. I long ago stopped being surprised when I would ask "Why did you leave such-and-such a job?" and the answer was "We moved." If that meant they were going to a place with more promise, that may have been a good thing. But it might meant they were escaping unpaid rent (or other bills) or some legal problem without coming to terms with them. For successful people there are a few good reasons to move or leave a job. A better job, the expectation of better upward mobility and to get prepared (training) for something better are high on the list.

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And of course the other way to make more money is to get (are you ready for this?) another job. Most of the best part-time employees I have worked with have used the food business as a place to earn extra income to their primary source, their full-time employer. This simple reality is almost too obvious to list, but when I hear talk of a "living wage" I wonder how some one's life has been organized...how much time is claimed by children they cannot afford, payments they cannot meet or recreational pursuits that should not be in the budget.

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Budget. Crap. Don't get me started.

Six-word Fiction

Silicon Valley haiku via Wired Magazine.

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Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?

Automobile warranty expires. So does engine.

We kissed. She melted. Mop please!

Easy. Just touch the match to

Bush told the truth. Hell froze.

Dinosaurs return. Want their oil back.

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Well, fiction really, not Poetry.
Lots more linked via 3 Quarks.

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Time is limited today so I'm hitting a softball. These 3 Quarks people are great. Check out the last day or two and you'll get hooked. The music album link is good for at least half an hour if you're not tone deaf. And Abbas' link to the Thomas Young piece explains the difference between a dilettante and a polymath. Takes one to know one, you know...polymath, that is.

A Letter to Congress from Abu Khaleel

Dspite the horrible circumstances that separate our two countries I have been able to make the acquaintance of one Iraqi gentleman by way of the internet. His screen name is Abu Khaleel, but as the author of his book, Glimpse of Iraq, he is Ibrahim Al-Shawi. His achievements in life and station in the tattered remnants of Iraqi society far exceed mine here in America, but at some level I consider him a peer. Thanks to having spent nine years in England in the seventies his command of the language is perfect, but because his roots and commitments are in Iraq, he is as much a patriot of that country as can be found.

Recently he has been formulating plans to donate about 185 acres of farm land he owns for the benefit of local people in the immediate area. His vision is to have there a clinic which might at some future date be the start of a hospital, a school to replace the one which has been destroyed by the war, a water purification plant, an electric generator and a place for local people to convene for business purposes, probably retailing their own farm products. In my imagination I see something like a big flea market eventually becoming a small town.

His vision is pro-active, peaceful and completely uncontroversial. If he had not already identified himself as Muslim I would think of him as Christian. This is from an email last year.

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I am more of a spiritual person than a religious one. I am a Muslim in name but not a practicing one. My wife is more or less the same but she turns "devout" during the fasting month of Ramadan!

In the countryside (where I spend much time) I am regarded as a liberal. In Baghdad, I am regarded as conservative by friends and acquaintances. In America, I guess I would not fit anywhere in their red-blue map… I think I would look like a weird mixture of left and right.

Anyone who reads my blog knows how well those words resonate will with me. I can see no downside to supporting such a man and will do anything possible to rebuild his country and promote his cause. As an American citizen I can do no less. Everywhere I turn I run into cautious, defensive, reactive thinking and blaming. Everyone wants to define problems but no one seems big enough to take ownership of having caused those problems. I, for one, feel deeply embarrassed and, yes, ashamed as a citizen, that the last two or three years of what must be called plainly a military occupation of Iraq by the US has resulted in so much death and destruction.

As someone who always believes that wars are to be avoided, I am sensible enough to admit that there were good arguments that the Afghanistan adventure. I am also even willing to admit that the invasion of Iraq and removal of Saddam was at some level understandable. But in retrospect it is clear that the post invasion plan (or lack of any coherent Plan B) has been a spectacular and bloody failure. For two years now we have been fighting smoke with water and every indication is that Iraq is more a breeding ground for terrorists in any "global war on terrorism" than a place to reduce their number.

Abu Khaleel has composed a compelling form letter with the aim of influencing Congress and public opinion. Last week's election was as much about the American public's disapproval of the war in Iraq as anything else. Now is the moment, a "tipping point" to use the current buzzword, when a positive new direction might be found. To that end I commend this letter and its arguments for public debate. Foreign policies are officially determined and executed by the Executive branch, but in order to be successful must also enjoy the support of enough ordinary people to fund and complete the execution of those policies. The purpose of this letter is to put real meaning into American foreign policy viv a vis Iraq.

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Arguments of good intentions are refuted by facts on the ground and by results. Even if the forces now devastating Iraq were not intentionally created by the US intervention, an environment was created by that intervention that was extremely favorable for those forces to thrive and become more powerful.

America is therefore responsible for the current failed state of Iraq. The realization and admission of this responsibility is an important prerequisite for any progress towards any solution. Only then can steps be taken to rectify the situation.

I realize that the foreign policy of the US is mostly the domain of the Administration and that it is influenced by several major forces from within and from outside the Establishment. I also realize the difficulty any decent American politician faces and the various forces at play that have to be considered: human aspects, economic issues including the security of oil supplies, immediate and long term security concerns as well as the pressures that can exerted by special-interest groups. I realize all that.

Within Iraq too, the array of forces present is truly astounding: in addition to patriotic or nationalistic forces, the forces of sectarianism, corruption, decay, crime and violence are predominant. Regional countries are pouring funds to allies and cronies.

The solution to all these problems cannot be easy. At present, I can see no painless solution to the 'Iraqi problem'. Whichever direction I turn, I can only see rivers of blood, instability and destruction. This is the present dilemma. There is no easy solution. Yet, a start can be made.

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He summarizes various options that can be considered, none of which is pretty, but all of which involve taking away the US presence which seems to be creating more problems than solutions. Bitter pill though it may be, he concludes with the most disagreeable option of all. He doesn't use the term, but what he is referring to is essentially a civil war. It could be that those of us who grew up in the American South view civil war as a less disagreeable, perhaps even more honorable option than occupation by some foreign power.

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With the passing of the last widows of that terrible era from our own past we have had a couple of generations to forget how bloody and damaging that war was on our own body politic. Indeed the Civil Rights struggles of our own time are a direct legacy of the unfinished business of slavery itself. And today there are still some who argue that the real causes of the American Civil War were economic, not social. (True argument, if you think of employees as depreciable assets instead of human resources. I have seen and worked with people who think in such terms even now.)

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Read this letter thoughtfully and take from it whatever you may. Know that it is not a piece of manipulative propoganda with a hidden agenda. It is just what it represents itself to be: the words of a sincere Iraqi patriot who wants only the best for his country.

Food Business Retrospective

Ah, well. My old buddy of many years has been cut loose from his job. I don't know the details but it really doesn't matter. We live in what is oddly called a "right to work" state, which means employers have the right to fire you without cause and make it stick if they want to chip in on the unemployment costs until you find another job, shit or go blind. As one can imagine, a lot of energy goes into following protocol when you discharge someone...not because you will have to re-employ them, but because the company doesn't want the expense of being "charged" for their unemployment.

I don't know what it's like in places where there are no union-busting rules. Never lived in a place like that. I recall taking part once in an event in New York where everything had to be done in compliance with union rules. As long as you were polite and generous with a few perks you could get almost anything done by union members. Labor cost was no object as long as the union member was happy. I remember having the use of two or three pieces of refrigeration equipment at an event once, at no cost, in return for five or ten pounds of cheese.

But that was then and there. This is now and here. Different time. Different universe. Different protocols. Cat and I know from serving on the management team for decades how air-tight the decision can be once someone has been terminated. "Burning bridges" is a nicety that only applies to employees. Employers need not worry, except that there be no collateral damage to those who remain on the payroll. All fellow employees need to know is that so-and-so is gone and they still have a job. Health problems, traffic accidents, and other jobs take away their peers. But employers routinely burn bridges to individual former employees. In most cases they had it coming, but sometimes the problem is no more complicated than the failure of a subordinate to suck up to a tyrannical boss whose personality trumped any corporate goals. I know this to be true from bitter personal experience.

As I approach the end of nearly forty years in the food business I feel great relief that it is coming to an end. It was nice to be young and full of promise. It gives me great satisfaction to brag that I contributed the max into Social Security for twenty years. And I continue to have personal ties with fine people that go back decades. But those are the exceptions, not the rule.

The rule is that when you are in a labor-intensive environment you know when you get up every day that you will spend part of your day explaining adult behavior to other adults. You will be the safety net for someone who failed to report to work for any of an endless list of important reasons -- none of which will ever allow you to do the same thing. You will smile widely and sincerely at people you wish would just let you get on with your day. And sometimes you will have to find a private place to get away and recharge your battery so you can go back to work. The walk-in cooler is a good place to do this. Something about a forty degree environment really does help you cool off.

I could go on like this for pages, but the reader would simply get bored. All you need to remember is that when you see someone in the food business he or she is either on the way up or on the way out. Very few are there, bright smiles and crisp uniforms notwithstanding, because they really want to be there for a long time. Over the years I have noticed that whenever people come into a lot of money -- entertainers, sports stars, physicians, business magnates -- they often have a fantasy about opening a restaurant. All they know is that they like to cook or entertain at home and they know which places they really like as customers. Few, if any, take the time to really do their homework and realize what it means to be a food service pro. After you blow away the smoke, what is left is this: you are paid a lot more for what you endure than what you do. I remind myself, often daily, that I am paid more for what I put up with than anything I really produce, tangible or symbolic.

The life expectancy of new food businesses is famously short. Everyone knows this, but as in the case of people who smoke, there is a lot of denial among newcomers. The main challenge is that we are not really selling food. We are selling service. You can buy a loaf of bread at the grocery store cheaper than you can at a convenience store at three in the morning. That's why they are called "convenience" stores. The higher price is for the convenience, not the product. Same is true for even (or especially) what is now called "comfort foods," the home-style goodies like mashed potatoes, fried chicken and green beans. When customers remember how really little they cost they often want to complain about the price, not stopping to remember they are miles from home and they don't have to wash the dishes or pick up the bill if someone is injured on the job where they get their meal. (I heard yesterday that American auto manufacturers now pay more for health care than for steel! My guess is that's because they chip in so much for health insurance as a "benefit" over and above their workers compensation bill that they are now crazy out of balance with competitors that have found a way to make their employees pay more for health insurance. But that is another discussion.)

Yep, it's all about people. How to attract them. How to keep them happy. How to get through the day without rubbing too many feathers the wrong way. I have enough left in my tank for another couple of years, but I will go out without a peep, knowing that the food business is a lot better in the telling than in the doing, making better memories than promises.

Good luck, Cat. Take care of yourself.

Pat Tillman: Patriot, Hero, Victim, Martyr

The death of Pat Tillman is becoming one of the most compelling stories of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This week's report of circumstances surrounding his death raise more questions than answers about how he was killed.

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The latest inquiry into Tillman's death by friendly fire should end next month; authorities have said they intend to release to the public only a synopsis of their report. But The Associated Press has combed through the results of 2 1/4 years of investigations — reviewed thousands of pages of internal Army documents, interviewed dozens of people familiar with the case — and uncovered some startling findings.

One of the four shooters, Staff Sgt. Trevor Alders, had recently had PRK laser eye surgery. He said although he could see two sets of hands "straight up," his vision was "hazy." In the absence of "friendly identifying signals," he assumed Tillman and an allied Afghan who also was killed were enemy.

Another, Spc. Steve Elliott, said he was "excited" by the sight of rifles, muzzle flashes and "shapes." A third, Spc. Stephen Ashpole, said he saw two figures, and just aimed where everyone else was shooting.

Squad leader Sgt. Greg Baker had 20-20 eyesight, but claimed he had "tunnel vision." Amid the chaos and pumping adrenaline, Baker said he hammered what he thought was the enemy but was actually the allied Afghan fighter next to Tillman who was trying to give the Americans cover: "I zoned in on him because I could see the AK-47. I focused only on him."

All four failed to identify their targets before firing, a direct violation of the fire discipline techniques drilled into every soldier.

More at the link, including

*Tillman's platoon had nearly run out of vital supplies...

*A key commander in the events that led to Tillman's death both was reprimanded for his role and meted out punishments to those who fired...

*...someone tried to jump-start Tillman's heart with CPR hours after his head had been partly blown off...key evidence including Tillman's body armor and uniform was burned.

*...some of those involved now have lawyers and refused to cooperate...

Ugly picture, so far. "[A]uthorities have said they intend to release to the public only a synopsis of their report..." Wonder why.

H/T Truthout for the link.

Tillman's brother, Kevin, enlisted at the same time that Pat did and has expressed sad regrets.

No need for me to say much. This story speaks for itself. All the spinning in the world will not return Pat Tillman to his family.
"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." That was Joseph Stalin speaking, incidentally, not someone from the Defense Department. They would point out that US casualties in this war are way lower than other wars. Makes you feel all better, no?

'Iraq: Legacy of Hate' : The Lost Generation

Link here to a forty-seven minute long documentary.

I haven't watched it because I have to go to work, but I have an idea where it is headed.

FYI.

When the US-led invasion of Iraq promised to replace Saddam Hussein's brutal regime with freedom and democracy, nearly half of the country's population was under 21.

'Iraq: The Lost Generation' opens a window onto the hidden world of Iraqi youth, revealing the brutalisation and psychological trauma of living under military occupation. It reveals how the people with whom the future of Iraq rests, are reacting with anger, aggression and, in some cases, violence.

Operating at great personal risk, a local Iraqi journalist and crew travelled widely throughout the country, outside the safety of the green zone, to document the lives of a range of young people whose hopes and dreams have been shattered by the occupation. This film highlights how the radicalisation of a generation has taken place -- it's not just the Americans who are the only enemy now there is civil war in Iraq.

H/T Zeyad

Representative Democracy -- Alien to the Arab World

I don't want to sound glib, but the notion of bringing democracy to the Arab world is more noble than realistic. Again today I have come across two unrelated sources that underscore the same idea, that the Arab world (whatever that is, by the way...there seem to be more allusions to the amorphous "Arab World" than the geopolitical names we find on maps) values social stability over what much of the world calls "freedom."

Consider these two observations from that part of the world. Remember, both of these writers know their subjects. They are not "outsiders" trying to stir up trouble. They are commentators trying to make people around them come to terms with what they see as a large challenge that needs to be met.

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...the problem with the Arabs is their submission to dictators and their refusal to break away from their sway. It is as if they have become addicted to oppressive and tyrannical rule to the point of not being able to live without a dictator.

What has happened in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein has clearly shown this. Some Iraqis are fighting one another as a result of the tyranny they had become accustomed to, when they would come into the streets shouting the dictator’s name and cheering him even when he had led them into defeat time and time again.The Arab mentality that has become addicted to submitting to tyrants requires international treatment in which all freedom-loving people all over the world should participate so that a solution can be found for a nation that should not go into the twenty-second century under the whip of tyranny.
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Mohamed Saleh, a freelance writer, opens his essay with the harshest of terms...

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The relationship between any Arab people and their dictatorial ruler is that of the slave and the master; the shepherd and the flock.

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A slave before his master is meek, subservient and obedient, seeking his pleasure and love. When he is away from his master, he is indignant and critical, never ceasing to castigate the master and condemn his ruthlessness, cruelty and voracious desires, regardless of how many wives or mistresses or feasts or millions of stolen dollars he has in his possession. The flock follows the shepherd – mere numbers with heads bowed, walking behind their shepherd as if treading on their minds, even as he leads them to the slaughter.

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The submissive Arab peoples were meant to be like that by their dictators. Their consciousness is so controlled as to remain always dependent, ignorant, subservient and frightened.

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Sayyed Wild Abah is less barbed but every bit as critical in his column in Asharq Alawsat, Democracy and the Fear of the Unknown.

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It is credible that the Yemeni public called upon President Ali Abdullah Saleh to stay in power, not because of the official propaganda that deemed him an irreplaceable sacred symbol and their widely loved ruler, but by virtue of an established truth that is practically tangible in the Arab arena – which is the fear of the unknown in the absence of an effective institutional infrastructure able to protect the country from instability and sedition.

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He continues with several examples from Algeria, Egypt and other parts of the Arab world. He also mentions Gaza in this uncomfortable assessment...

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...how can you achieve democracy in the Arab world without the presence of democrats?

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This exceptional situation caused people to cling to the dominating status quo, adhering to what is required to maintain stability after the requirements for a peaceful democratic change proved to be unfeasible. The large masses that congregated behind Abbas Madani and Ali Belhadj in Algeria in the early 1990s returned to rally behind the presiding President Bouteflika in hopes of saving the country from discord and discontent. Perhaps this scene will be repeated in the near future of the self-ruled Palestinians after the democratic equation suffered a terrible aftermath, especially in light of the Israeli aggression, which has succeeded in impeding all prospects and solutions on the internal political horizon.

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Lots to consider in these two pieces. I take away the lesson that the challenges of bringing about political change in that part of the world are best left up to those who live there. Outside military forces, whether from the United States, the United Nations or any other part of the world, should only be there at the invitation of the host country.

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The seeds of freedom grow very slowly. They are nurtured not by the absence of constraints but the internal resources of those who want to be free. We have in the West a large population that has been cared for, some would say manipulated or led, by benevolent leaders who appear to have the public good at heart. It is no accident that our own leadership rarely suffer the everyday pains that afflict their constituencies. Oh, they have problems enough with their health, their personal lives, their human struggles with unanswered questions about life and the universe. But by and large, most people, given the option, would trade the problems of money and security for the problems of poverty and insecurity. That is what we have in common with the Arab world.

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I have seen it for years. I have spent my life living and working among the working poor in America. And I can assure the reader that without benevolent leadership their lot is often, in fact, "nasty, brutish and short." But as long as they can get good deals at WalMart, make payments on an outsized personal debt and leave work in time to watch their favorite television program, most ordinary people live in a world every bit as small as that of the Arabs at whom we are prone to look down our noses.

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The evening after the election I listened to a popular talk show host who wanted to illustrate how stupid the voters (or non-voters) were who had just expressed their pupulist ignorance at the polls. I can think of no clearer national statement at the polls in my adult life to compare with what we witnessed last week. The landslide defeat of Barry Goldwater might be another case in point, but most elections are decided with razor-thin margins. But I digress...

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The talk show host had an assistant on the streets of New York who was asking random passers-by to name four people by their pictures. Donald Rumsfeld, Nancy Pelosi, Britney Spears and Harry Reid. Out of four or five random interviews linked to the host in his sudio, those being quizzed illustrated to the happy delight of the host how utterly uninformed and downright stupid they were about politics and the election that had just happened.

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As I listened I wondered how the ignorance of the masses had somehow been discovered overnight by this man. Prior to the election I heard lots of insulting and degrading remarks hurled at anyone who dared question the monolithic course that the country has been taking for the last several years. Overnight we discover that when the people speak by voting, as they did last week, all they do is express...what?...ignorance?...stupidity?....bad judgement?

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All this talk about Democracy rings hollow here at home in the mouths of those who have been prating about it. The best way to "defend democracy" and "protect out way of life" is to practice a little more respect for those with whom we disagree. Anybody got a recipe for crow?

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Thanks to John Burgess for both of these links. He's too much a gentleman to take sides and too much a diplomat to speak openly of domestic party politics. But I'm not.

Quiverfull, Home schooling and other trends...

This post is about two unrelated sources have come across my monitor in the last twenty-four hours: home schooling (about which I have already said good things) and the Quiverfull movement. These two ideas intersect at an uncomfortable place: religion. I'm tossing them out for consideration as a pair, because they are related.

The Quiverfull movement is the subject of an article by Kathryn Joyce in The Nation.

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...They borrow their name from Psalm 127: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate." Quiverfull mothers think of their children as no mere movement but as an army they're building for God.

Quiverfull parents try to have upwards of six children. They home-school their families, attend fundamentalist churches and follow biblical guidelines of male headship--"Father knows best"--and female submissiveness. They refuse any attempt to regulate pregnancy. Quiverfull began with the publication of Rick and Jan Hess's 1989 book, A Full Quiver: Family Planning and the Lordship of Christ, which argues that God, as the "Great Physician" and sole "Birth Controller," opens and closes the womb on a case-by-case basis. Women's attempts to control their own bodies--the Lord's temple--are a seizure of divine power.

No need for me to summarize a lengthy, well-written piece here. Go read it for yourself.

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Next, take a look at Preach Your Children Well in New Scientist, focusing on Patrick Henry College, a postsecondary environment for home-schooled Christians of a certain stripe.

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These students are part of a large, well-organised movement that is empowering parents to teach their children creationist biology and other unorthodox versions of science at home, all centred on the idea that God created Earth in six days about 6000 years ago. Patrick Henry, near the town of Purcellville, about 60 kilometres north-west of Washington DC, is gearing up to groom home-schooled students for political office and typifies a movement that seems set to expand, opening up a new front in the battle between creationists and Darwinian evolutionists. New Scientist investigated how home-schooling, with its considerable legal support, is quietly transforming the landscape of science education in the US, subverting and possibly threatening the public school system that has fought hard against imposing a Christian viewpoint on science teaching.

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"This is a Watchbird..."

This is what I think of as a "Watchbird" post. I haven't come to any conclusions yet, but I have enough reservations about both links to read what they have said with respect.

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The Watchbird was a creation of Munro Leaf whose cartoons from the fifties always ended with "This is a Watchbird watching a [whatever]. And this is a Watchbird watching YOU." Maybe it was this early training that made part of me into a Watchbird. I dunno. In any case, it missed the mark. I was suppose to identify with someone in the cartoon, not the Watchbird. I guess even at that early age I was more prone to judging than being judged.

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Discernment versus Judging

According to the New Testament, "judging" is not considered a good trait. I'm always sensitive to that, but I have noticed that modern New Testament scholars have no problem with "discernment." If it makes the reader feel better, think of this post as an exercise in discernment rather than judgement.

Gerard Vanderleun on States of the Union

America is alive and well, thank you. The lacerating arguments of election season, carping, complaining and cussing, have run off the back of the country like rain on ducks. He's here to testify that there is joy in Mudville after all. Go take a little reading trip and lighten your day. This is poetry in the form of prose. Really good craftsmanship.

The long wave laved beaches of the Isle of Palms outside of Charleston reinforce the new rule that no poor -- or even middle class -- people are now allowed to live by the ocean in America. The lots on which the endlessly elaborate houses that look out on the sea stand now cost between three and four million dollars each. If you bought one and immediately burned down the four to six bedroom three-story house, the cost of the lot would still be three to four million dollars. The house is, in essence, free.
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After the casual and lightly populated Carolinas where everyone is slow and polite and easy, there are far too many people happening in the Happy World of Las Vegas. So you rent a car that rides like taking your sofa out for a drive and comes complete with 300 radio stations, and move out to where there will be, surely, not very many people at all, ever: Death Valley.
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Ferris Wheels and Merry-Go-Rounds. Lots of circles in life. It clears the mind to ride our metaphors in the real world from time to time. It lets us see where we stand and where we've been and where we might be going. Even if it is only to "arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Take your sofa out for a drive. I love that image. Several years ago My wife and I were in the market for another car and ended up with a Buick. That was before we wanted to be behind the wheel of a geezer car, but a deal is a deal. Well here we are several years later. We wore out that one and guess what we bought to replace it. You got it. Another Buick. We became card-carrying geezers in just ten years. And yes, it's just like taking your sofa out for a drive.

(I can't get the permalink to work for this post. The link is to his home page. If I forget to come back and correct this, look for November 12, 2006 in his archives.)

"...11/7 was Independence Day for citizens, not just a victory for the Democrats..."

Doc Searls wastes no words. He figured out a long time ago that content is more compelling than form; quality trumps quantity. I'm not good at that myself, but I do appreciate it in my role models. This post is chock full of good links.

Transparency won last Tuesday. But it needs to keep winning in the course of everyday governance. Citizen watchdogs need to guard the henhouse of democracy from the wolves we elect to serve there...

...we need to recognize that 11/7 was Independence Day for citizens, not just a victory for the Democrats in Conres. The Republicans took a "thumpin" indeed; but they took it from voters expressing their independence. As the new majority party, Democrats need to recognize that, or they'll get thumped too, next time around.

He links to Richard Bennet's post with advice for Republicans that I find compelling.

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If Republicans want to win national elections they should drop the Southern Strategy that emphasizes guns, Bibles, and big spending, and adopt a Western Strategy that emphasizes small government, personal freedom, property rights, and the things that can only be done for us by government such as infrastructure, environmental protection, and (competent) national defense. This would be a return to Goldwater’s ideals, and a rejection of the Religious Right’s desire to use government to force a narrow set of social values on people. It’s perfectly OK for the religious people to be grossed out by gays and abortion, but it’s not OK to require everybody else to be grossed-out too.

A Billion Bloggers

That would be billion, with a "b." Michael S. Malone says that's the number he thinks will be the eventual number when the number of blogs reaches "equilibrium."

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My gut tells me that the total number of blogs will slow to an equilibrium -- those arriving matched by those departing -- at somewhere around a billion blogs.

But the content of those billion blogs -- that is, the total number of bits generated by the world's blogs in a given month -- will continue to increase at the current prodigious pace (that is, doubling about every nine months) almost forever.

How? You can see it already. The plain vanilla blog -- monochromatic graphics, mostly text -- of a couple years ago has evolved into an increasingly multimedia experience with colorful graphics, digital photos, and increasingly, video.

Stuff is going on all over even basic blogs these days. And at the cutting edge, blogs are developing a whole new visual grammar combining fonts, prose, images, streaming video, podcasts and YouTube windows.

Interesting read. I was feeling kinda insignificant, but this piece made me feel even more so. 'Scuse me while I resume posting at my little vanilla blog. Thanks Allison Kaplan Sommer for the link. She's gonna be one of the literary treasures found in the sweet crude of the tomorow's blogosphere.

Robert Gates is "utterly uncontroversial"

Fred Kaplan at Slate writes positively about the man tapped to become Rumsfeld's successor as the president's Secretary of Defence.

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Gates is more the get-along scholar—professional, fastidious, and nonpartisan. If George W. Bush was looking for an utterly uncontroversial figure to calm nerves, settle bureaucratic hostilities, and re-establish credibility on Capitol Hill, he could have found no one more suitable than Robert Gates.
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Throughout his Washington career, Gates cut a deliberately low profile. He worked in four administrations, of both parties, and stirred few feathers in any of them. I wrote a profile of Gates in 1987, when Reagan first tried to make him CIA director. (I was national-security reporter for the Boston Globe at the time.) Everyone I interviewed in the intelligence community used the same words to describe him: "extremely professional," "an excellent scholar," "not an ideologue," "a tough taskmaster." Some were critical. "He's not a guy to break new ground," one CIA official who'd worked with him told me. "I found him to be the perfect staff officer, an enthusiastic guy, an applauder."

All these traits probably sum up what Bush—and both his partisans and his critics—are looking for: a soothing conciliator who also keeps his nose to the grindstone.

My comment: No one seems to be speaking openly about it, but the next step toward denouement in the Middle East is almost certainly going to involve Iran more than Iraq. It is no accident that Gates' CV includes, shall we say delicately, more than a passing familiarity with Iran. As I recall, the famous "Iran-Contra Affair" was a scheme to sell weapons to Iran and pipeline the proceeds to groups in South America, specifically the "Contras" of Nicaragua, to whom we would now refer as "insurgents" whose aim it was to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.

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Hmm.

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I have always been amazed that the duplicitous villains of the time were able to emerge from their tawdry schemes as patriotic, stand-up American heroes. Such are the vagaries of politics. Yesterday's enemies are today's buddies, and vice versa. Is that where we get the word "vice"? Scanning the Wikipedia article is like looking at an old newsreel. Oddly, the reader needs to understand that whatever passed for morality at the time was subject to later revision.

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Getting to the punch line...
Is it possible that our new Secretary of Defense has some old contacts in Iran that might now be brought into play as that country, the source of "controlled chaos" in Iraq, the old nemesis of Saddam, the most important Shiite state in the world, and yet another vendor of the world's oil supply (oops, sorry...we know it isn't about that...) will have to be part of whatever resembles peace in the region?

See also Vali Nasr's reference to "controlled chaos" here.
Tip CFR for the Slate link.

Yorifumi Yaguchi, Japanese Mennonite pastor

Unusual post title. Unexpected combination of images to say the least. This piece from Mennonite Weekly Review tells of a young Japanese Buddhist who became Christian following the war. Now 74 and very active, he has recently published another collection of poetry.

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Though raised in a Buddhist family, Yaguchi’s earliest encounter with Christianity was through his mother, who attended Christian services without ever formally converting.

But any favorable impressions he might have had of the church were nearly erased by World War II and the great suffering that afflicted Japan. The enemy — the United States and Great Britain — were Christian nations, thus stirring Yaguchi’s impressions of the church with the blood of warfare and the blinding sword of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Most Japanese hated the Americans and British,” Yaguchi remembered of his youth. “We felt they were the enemies. I hated Americans, too.”

But later, when he met Mennonite missionary Ralph Buckwalter, who eventually baptized him in 1958, Yaguchi realized there were Christians who did not commit violence, and who had actually prayed for the Japanese people during the war.

“The Mennonites were different,” Yaguchi said of having his eyes opened by Buckwalter’s witness to peace. “That was really a shocking experience. I never knew this kind of thing before.”

Though he has long been a Christian and a minister of the gospel for more than 40 years, Yaguchi’s later verse still echoes at times the voice and quiet presence of his long-deceased grandfather, chanting in Kannon-ji before the war. Sometimes, the old Zen priest and his grandson seem one and the same...

A couple of his gentle poem can be found at the link. My post about Mennonites continues to receive a few hits, indicating that a few people continue to look into the lifestyle and message they represent.

George McGovern and William R. Polk in Harpers

If I don't blog this I will have failed as an old-fashioned, Sixties-style Liberal. I never expected to see the name of George McGovern appear again as anything other than a footnote, but as this article in Harpers indicates, he is alive and well and ready to give input into contemporary issues.

Okay, all you who thought he might be dead and gone, hold your noses, wipe those sneers off your faces and read this.

Remember as you read that nasty "cut and run" epithet that has been so carelessly been hurled at anyone who dared suggest that "stay the course" might...just might...be an ill-advised course of action.

This plan is not about to happen next week, but it covers a lot of territory that has apparently been overlooked for the last couple of years. We got hit with a terrorist event on 9/11, five years ago. Okay, the response was to go to war in Afghanistan in an effort to locate and destroy UBL and the perpetrators of that event. So far, so good.

But that was not enough. We had then to topple Saddam Hussein because he was thought to be the next big threat to the US because he was on the verge of developing the means to replicate and maybe out-perform the 9/11 even with something even more terrible.

Okay, we did that. But in the aftermath of "regime change" the expected celebration of his downfall did not hold. Instead, the presence of the US military in Iraq combined with already in place forces waiting to fill the power-vacuum following Saddam's defeat resulted in a political, military and economic quagmire of historic proportions.

At that point, some two or three years back, it was time for a change of plans. Unfortunatly there seemed to be no Plan B.

There still isn't a Plan B but at least the idea is finally up for discussion. This article is not the end of that discussion. It is the beginning. Sadly, it is about two years and a couple thousand American lives too late.

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Withdrawal is not only a political imperative but a strategic requirement. As many retired American military officers now admit, Iraq has become, since the invasion, the primary recruiting and training ground for terrorists. The longer American troops remain in Iraq, the more recruits will flood the ranks of those who oppose America not only in Iraq but elsewhere.
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When a driver is on the wrong road and headed for an abyss, it is a bad idea to “stay the course.” A nation afflicted with a failing and costly policy is not well served by those calling for more of the same, and it is a poor idea to think that we can accomplish in the future what we are failing to accomplish in the present.
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...the Iraqi government would be wise to request the temporary services of an international stabilization force to police the country during and immediately after the period of American withdrawal....the composition of such a force most acceptable if it were drawn from Arab or Muslim countries....It would benefit both Iraq and the United States if we were to pay for this force. Assuming that a ballpark figure would be $500 per man per day, and that 15,000 men would be required for two years, the overall cost would be $5.5 billion. That is approximately 3 percent of what it would cost to continue the war, with American troops, for the next two years. Not only would this represent a great monetary saving to us but it would spare countless American lives and would give Iraq the breathing space it needs to recover from the
trauma of the occupation in a way that does not violate national and religious sensibilities.
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We cannot prevent the reconstitution of an Iraqi army, but we should not, as we are currently doing, actually encourage this at a cost of billions to the American taxpayer. If at all possible, we should encourage Iraq to transfer what soldiers it has already recruited for its army into a national reconstruction corps modeled on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The United States could assist in the creation and training of just such a reconstruction corps, which would undertake the rebuilding of infrastructure damaged by the war, with an allocation of, say, $500 million, or roughly the cost of two days of the current occupation.

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Lots more at the link. This strikes me as the beginning of what in other contexts is called "brainstorming." That's how creative solutions to complicated challenges are addressed in the business world. Most of the private sector does this kind of thing all the time. Result: no one gets credit for success because the parts involve too many individuals.

Two courageous and experienced individuals, George McGovern and William R. Polk, have put together an outline that needs to be looked at, discussed and argued about at length. In the end we should see a plan that is smarter, less expensive and more effective at curbing terrorism than anything we have seen for the last two or three years. Incidentally, the cost in dead and wounded American young people will also be predictably lower.

Thanks Truthout for the link.

Michael J. Totten -- A war of Words

Ever the proponent of argument over arms, I have to point to this lengthy exchange between
Totten and a Hezbollah supporter who got into one of his comment threads.

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Normally I don't let somebody show up and do that, but it's not every day that a group of Americans gets to argue with someone like him.

I've argued with several members and supporters of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and my personal experience with them runs the gamut. Many are perfectly friendly and pleasant. Some of the higher-ranking party officials are unbelievably vicious and nasty. (If you want to read the uncut version of my experience with nasty Hizbullahi, you can read an account in the pamphlet Adam Bellow and I published last month.)

Al Ghaliboon is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. As I figured out that he is interested in talking rather than in fighting or screaming, I toned down the temperature of my own responses. Here is my dialogue with him as it originally appeared in real time.

It's long and tedious and I haven't bothered to read it all. But I was caught by this later ("final") post on the matter which concludes with a very long and powerful rebuttal from another source.

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You, sir, are a weakling and a coward, and as such we will never support you. You prove yourself a weakling by announcing your intention to kill, thereby establishing that you are too weak to forgive. You confirm that by never producing anything of your own, only demanding that others provide your support. You have no strength, no power. You are not a slave, and we have no desire to have you as a slave -- a slave must at least be able to hew wood and carry water, and you have established that you have not the strength for that even on your own behalf, by demanding that others do it for you while you arm yourself to kill.

Makes you wanna stand up and clap. Just the right note following this recent blood-letting of an election.

In the end, conflict in the Middle East or anywhere must be resolved by the parties themselves. No amount of external force, short of total annihilation of one of the parties, will bring about reconciliation. Not peace, understand, but reconciliation. There is a difference. Peace is the result of overall agreement. Reconciliation the result of an agreement to disagree without violence. Leila Abu-Saba addressed this difference in a post Thursday. She's referring to Gaza, not Lebanon, but the principles are the same in both cases.

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America is paralyzed and will not step in. Brothers and sisters in the Semitic world, if you really want peace, you will have to make it for yourselves. Peace is possible but only through a just solution for the Palestinians (that includes security assurances - realistic ones - for the Israelis).

Keeping watch -- H5N1

Crawford Kilian, the most informed and focused of the bird flu bloggers, gives high marks to Vincent Lam and Colin Lee for The Flu Pandemic and You: A Canadian Guide. As he said, this is more than a Canadian guide. "[I]ts content would be useful to almost anyone, anywhere, who can read plain English. It provides links to the Public Health Agency of Canada's pandemic plan, but also to American and international resources." Just reading a bit or two from the review nelps me feel better.

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Both Lam and co-author Colin Lee are experienced doctors who were emergency physicians in a Toronto hospital when SARS exploded in the spring of 2003. It was like a dress rehearsal for a flu pandemic, complete with two waves of infections. Lam and Lee, and their colleagues, clearly learned a lot. Some passages in their book describe how they fought SARS, and they're fascinating. As they say, SARS disappeared like a bad dream, but when it ended they took care to remember.

Despite Lam's literary talents, the book isn't inclined toward lush, metaphor-rich symbolic prose. Quite the reverse. Their sentences are clean, clear and instantly understandable.

Without talking down to their readers, Lam and Lee explain technical matters like the reproduction rate of viruses. They calmly discuss how to prepare for pandemic "snow days," when everyone stays home, and even manage a little dry humour: "You will feel very silly if there's a power outage and you can't open your cans because all you have is an electric can opener. You will also feel hungry."

The authors take us into situations we don't want to think about, like being in the same house with family members suffering from influenza, and describe the procedures that will get everyone through with the best chance of survival.

They make reference to N95 face masks ("awkward and probably not needed") and conclude with this reassuring snip...

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"Before you picked up this book," they tell us, "you probably had at least a 95% chance of surviving the pandemic, and your odds are probably even better, because that number draws from the worst pandemic of the 20th century, a scenario that may not recur."

Peggy Noonan is Spot On!

Best comments I have read about the mid-term elections.
Go. Now. Read it all.

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We have divided government. Good, and for many reasons. One: It confuses our enemies. "Who do we hate now?" they ask in their caves, "the evil woman from San Francisco or the old infidel from Texas? Which do we hate more? And if we hate them both does that...unite them?"

We are in a 30-year war. It is no good for it to be led by, identified with, one party. It is no good for half the nation to feel estranged from its government's decisions. It's no good for us to be broken up more than a nation normally would be. And straight down the middle is a bad break, the kind that snaps.

We all have things we would say to the new Congress if we could. We are a country that makes as many speeches in the shower as it sings songs. I would say this: Focus on the age you live in. Know what it is. Know what's coming. The old way is over; the old days are over; the old facts and habits of mind do not pertain, or no longer fully pertain.

This is the age we live in: One day in the future either New York or Washington or both will be hit again, hard. It will be more deadly than 9/11. And on that day, those who experience it, who see the flash or hear the alarms, will try to help each other. They'll be good to each other. An elderly conservative congresswoman will be unable to make it down those big old Capitol steps, and a young liberal congressman will come by and pick her up in his arms and carry her. (I witnessed a moment somewhat like this during a Capitol alarm two years ago, when we were told to run for our lives.) I would say: Keep that picture in mind. Cut to the chase, be good to each other now.

Damn.
Just damn!
Is she good, or what?

Well, uh, yes. I guess so.

Republican officials are blaming tonight's GOP losses on Democrats, who they claim have engaged in a wide variety of "aggressive, premeditated, anti-Republican campaigns" over the past six-to-18 months. "We have evidence of a well-organized, well-funded series of operations designed specifically to undermine our message, depict our past performance in a negative light, and drive Republicans out of office," said Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, who accused an organization called the Democratic National Committee of spearheading the nationwide effort. "There are reports of television spots, print ads, even volunteers going door-to-door encouraging citizens to vote against us." Acknowledging that the "damage has already been done," Mehlman is seeking a promise from Democrats to never again engage in similar practices.

H/T Orin Kerr

Old Europe, New Europe and Rumsfeld

Pieter Dorsman makes a couple of good points regarding Rumsfeld's departure as Defense Secretary. Donald Rumsfeld may not be remembered for his diplomacy, but he did observe accurately a "New Europe/Old Europe" divide.

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...this old-new analogy will be part of the Rumsfeld lexicon and stay with us for a long time. It was one of the things he was absolutely right about. There is a distinction between the tired, careful, economically moribund and static part of Europe personified by especially Chirac’s France and Schroeder’s Germany and the dynamic and pragmatic youngsters that are building something new on the rubble of the former Soviet Empire. Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states: they know exactly what they missed out on for some fifty years and are in a serious hurry to reclaim it, unhindered by strife-inducing immigration, regulation and deep complacency.

The European center of gravity seems to be shifting Eastward. It's too soon to come to any conclusions about what that might mean, but one thing is plain: most Americans are blissfully unaware of any such trend and unfortunately couldn't care less. Donald Rumsfeld at least did his homework.

His link to this 2003 BBC column is worth reading.

Dorsman is a Dutch expat. I regard his blog as as reliable source of informed opinion about anything regarding Europe in general and The Netherlands in particular.

Spinning the election: The Arab world agrees with Bush

There's quite a bit of jubilant celebration about Republican defeats and Rumsfeld's resignation in exactly the places some people most feared - the jihadi forums and some of the more radical Arab newspapers. Al-Quds al-Arabi has an editorial bluntly stating that the electoral outcome was a great victory for the Iraqi resistance... Of course those groups are going to claim victory: the election campaign featured administration officials from Bush on down announcing that a Democratic win would be a defeat for America - so why shouldn't they take Bush at his word? But we shouldn't accept their spin at face value or let them frame the interpretation of the election. The US should have had an aggressive public diplomacy campaign stressing the virtues of democracy and how the campaign and the election would only produce a stronger, more effective American policy in Iraq. But electoral considerations took priority over foreign policy interests, so here we are. Now, among the Arab mainstream, who we really should care about, there's a lot of uncertainty about how this will affect American Iraq policy. This would really be a good time to listen to and engage with those Arab voices over how to change course - a real opportunity that shouldn't be missed.

That's Mark Lynch talking, not me.

He's right, you know. Electoral considerations took priority over foreign policy interests.

I'll go one step further: unless and until we stop killing people and start persuading them, getting pro-active instead of reactive, our foreign policy problems will continue to multiply. Anyone who thinks that America's image abroad is not tied to the success or failure of forces recruiting young people to become terrorists is living in a fool's paradise.

Greg Djerejian comments on Bob Gates

Before I get to the main content of this post I have to say something. I cannot remember enjoying my blogroll as much as I have this morning. The results of Tuesday's election together with Rumsfeld's announced departure yesterday have made the last twenty-four hours seem like a long draft of cold beer on a hot day, followed by a chaser of hard liquor. With few exceptions the mood everywhere is as high as Times Square on New Year's Eve.

Best summary is from Fred Clark...

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OK, um, wow. And perhaps also Woo-hoo! And a bit of bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha!

Ahem.

Enough of that.

Belgravia Dispatch takes a sober look at Bush's replacement for Secretary of Defense and is optimistic.

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...better than late than never...

...at least there is hope now. We will have a Secretary of Defense who displays pragmatism and humility, not recklessness and hubris. We will have a Secretary of Defense in favor of occasionally speaking to our enemies, not intimating mindlessly and unpersuasively that the war might be expanded to new theaters willy-nilly (see Gates' signing on to an excellent CFR task force calling for dialogue with Iran). We will have a Secretary of Defense who would never play Secretary of State, needlessly alienating allies with talk of "Old Europe", or battering our reputation in the Middle East by using gratuitous phrases like the "so-called Occupied Territories". We will have a Secretary of Defense who will display a much more sophisticated understanding of the myriad challenges presented in Iraq and Afghanistan--not to mention the war on terror more generally (an increasingly empty phrase in need of a radical rethink, of which more soon). And, not least, we will have a Secretary of Defense who understands the import of the Geneva Conventions, of the advisability of treating detainees in our custody with respect and dignity, in accordance with
what we used to call American values. In short, we will have a competent pragmatist armed with fresh strategic lens, not an arrogant well past his prime and beholden to the failed polices of the past.

Lots more at the link, including "While it is true Cheney is still around...he is a much diminished figure who, to boot, just lost his main ally today," concluding with...

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...while the damage done has been huge, our country has faced dark hours before, and she has persevered. As I said above, Bush’s move today was no panacea, and he reluctantly took this step because of the ‘thumping’ he received--and as tactical maneuver to deflate some of the Democrat’s momentum—not out of some sudden burst of profound sagacity. But still, he did it, and we must all hope that, now with the seismic shift in Congress and a new Defense Secretary, we just might have a sliver of hope that America's global position can now be ameliorated, both in Iraq and elsewhere, something so critically needed after the gross missteps commited these past years that have caused such a grevious loss of blood and treasure, as well as deep blows to our moral standing and repute.

Great commentary.

The president gets thrashed pretty hard in the comments thread for not having got rid of Rumsfeld earlier. At some level I agree but I remember something that JFK was supposed to have said about the presidency, to the effect that after one is elected he cannot trust anyone who had not been a supporter and friend before. Becoming president is like getting a large fortune. The lover who comes courting may be attracted to mind, looks or character...but there will always be that unspoken possibility that money and power are the real attractions behind the smiles.

I give Bush high marks for sincerity, candor and support of subordinates. And his subordinates get high marks for their loyalty. The main problem with the Bush administration has been the creation of such a tightly-controlled cadre of high-minded, otherwise brilliant sycophants that no one with a differing opinion could get past the door.

Like the mule who needed a two-by-four to get his attention, maybe the results of Tuesday's voting will have some effect on George Bush's management style. We'll see.

Or maybe not.

Reflections the Morning After

Yesterday evening I wrote a pitiful little thank-you response to an anonymous reader on antisemitism in the Arab world. In it I expressed the hope that one day -- not in my lifetime, but eventually -- an exchange of young people between Israel and her neighbors might start to overcome this most durable of all human shortcomings...prejudice in general and antisemitism in particular.

For someone waving the flag of optimism (see my tag line) I was feeling whipped and low. My voting yesterday had not helped. I live in an area where local ballot choices are mostly a slate of unopposed Southern Republicans. State-wide, Democrats are mainly embedded old-timers, ensconced in their respective offices for years. I have always thought of myself as a principled independent, casting my votes for individuals, not parties. But that kind of thinking seems to have got me nowhere. I am slowly coming round to the idea that party juggernauts will in the end be the political engines that will really make the big differences. Feeling like someone coming late to a party, for the first time since I started voting I cast my votes for a slate of whatever yellow dogs were listed, whether or not I knew anything about them, and went on to work.

This morning I feel somewhat better. For the past five years I have endured the waving of a bloody shirt and a message of fear, insults and faux-patriotism that takes a lot of energy to ignore. I'm not the one who hitched the president's wagon to the star of 9/11. He is. When I hear that this election is a referendum on the war, my response is "So...when every speech invokes references to that war, then what else am I to believe?" It's not an avalanche, but this morning's news seems to indicate that a lot of others besides me felt the same way. There's a long way to go, but it's a small comfort.

Those of us who have been labeled Left, Progressive, Libruls, Nut-jobs or whatever designation you prefer can for a moment enjoy something of a reprieve. At our finest we are not local-issue people. Local issues tend to bring out selfishness in people. "We need to change leadership in Washington...all except MY Congressman, MY Senator, MY issues, MY pork, etc..." Principled Conservatives turn a blind eye to the problems of ordinary people, saying to themselves (and to those with the problems) If they would only work harder, make better choices, take better care of themselves and make better plans for the future they wouldn't find themselves where they are...Many of us, however, look at those same ordinary people and try to imagine how we might help them avoid the problems they face. Better education, more available health care, and positive leadership models for those who can help themselves...and some kind of safety net for those who cannot.

I'm not as articulate as others expressing these ideals. This morning I have come across two excellent essays that do it much better than I. Interestingly enough, the first is from Egypt, of all places. The inimitable Bayeyya, whose writing I have previously linked, remembers one of Egypt's most respected veterans of the Egyptian Left, Ismail Sabri Abdallah. I never heard of him before, but reading this remembrance makes me wish I had. (Readers who tend to tremble at the mention of the word Marxist should move on to the next post. My allusions to global politics will not make you happy.) I link to Baheyya only partly because I like her politics. My take on Socialism might be as disagreeable to her as hers is to American readers. But her writing is worth the time it takes to read.

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Abdallah was born in 1925 to a family of rural notables that hailed from Upper Egypt. His cultured, erudite father invested much in his children’s education. Ismail’s sister was one of the first to attend a boarding school established by Nabawiyya Musa, the pioneer advocate of women’s education. Ismail’s early intellectual strivings were nurtured by his father’s extensive library, particularly rich in the classics of Arabic literature. Ismail then enrolled at the Law Faculty and immersed himself in the heady politics of Egyptian communism of the 1940s, when various communist factions alternately competed and cooperated with one another and with other ideological formations to recruit adherents. In a conversation with me toward the end of his life, Abdallah recalled that it was during this formative period that he understood that electoral democracy was meaningless without a bedrock of economic redistribution.
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Abdallah’s endearing personal qualities are no less evocative for me: he hated mediocrity and resisted it in his daily life. He was punctual to a fault, dapper but never ostentatious, gregarious but never babbling, truly modest but without a hint of falsity. He was exasperatingly stubborn and dogmatic about rival political factions, most especially the Islamists, the only issue in which his clear thinking gave way to what I think was really political envy more than anything else.

As those who knew him know well, Ismail Sabri Abdallah went to work every day in a nondescript office in begrimed building No. 36 on chaotic Dokki St., the kind of building that reeks of history, where the stairs sag under the accumulated weight of the years, the stairwells are pitch black, and the patterned tiles have taken on a dull, grey hue. His desk was perpendicular to the desk of his lifelong fellow traveller, Ibrahim Saad Eddin; the two looked like two ancient civil servants poring over administrative memoranda. While Abdallah was gregarious, Saad Eddin was the quiet scribe who softly interjected reminders or corrections to the occasional visitor who interrupted their quiet work routine. The tea always came in a chipped teacup
and mismatched saucer, the chair was uncomfortable and downright evil, and the conversation was never anything but edifying, stimulating, and challenging.

Having said that, I now point to a more digestible essay from our own soil. Sarah Robinson, writing at David Neiwert's blog, has produced on the eve of this mid-term election another inspiring tour de force. I can't say too much about it. She says it all. That a troll captured the first post of the comments thread tells me she cuts to the quick even those who disagree. Read and be edified.

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Today is a referendum -- not just on Bush and his regime, but on the whole four decades over which that post-Goldwater Republican juggernaut has been rolling. When we look behind us now, we can see, beyond any possibility of denial, where it has taken us -- and where they mean to take us. The landscape they've dragged us through is scarred by broken lives and ruined hopes: the gutting of the middle class; the growing divide between rich and poor; the raging ugliness of the Culture Wars; the collapse of the educational, scientific, and planning infrastructure that fed our industries and empowered us to meet the future on our own terms; the humiliating exposure of the limits of American power; the reckless fouling of our air, land, and water; and -- perhaps most iconically -- the battered and exhausted army now making its last stand in the sands of Iraq.

Americans are looking at trail behind them -- the blood and the mud, the stench of corruption and decay, the undrinkable water and unbreatheable air -- and realizing that nothing about this trip looks like the sunny golf courses and well-kept Main Streets pictured in the GOP's bright and happy Morning-In-America travel brochures.

You think that's something? You ain't read nothing yet. That's only the beginning...

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In the 70s, this core [Conservative] structure was plastered over with Christian fundamentalism, which had to perform impossible perversities upon its own philosophical corpus in order to turn Jesus into an anti-Communist, pro-military free-marketeer. If you looked at it closely, the whole edifice was nothing more than spit, duct tape, and paint; but given sufficient ignorance and the right lighting, it looked like a plausible spiritual and philosophical foundation on which to construct a conservative vision for America's future.

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We may vote them out of Congress today. We might even, with luck, take back the Senate. We can make George Bush's next two years a living hell (and I hope we do). But let's not forget that these are True Believers with 40 years already invested in a vision -- and no matter how badly we thrash them at the ballot box or on the floor of Congress, they will not be going away.The only way we can defeat them is:

1) Reaffirm our deep philosophical commitment to Constitutional principles as the guiding force for a truly American morality and politics

2) Draw our own vibrant narrative about the kind of America we want to create -- one that will not require much change or amendment, and which we can rely on to guide our choices for the next 50 years

3) Elevate and support that vision over the priorities any faction, any strategy, or any single leader. The ultimate criterion for all our choices should be: "How does this help manifest our vision?"

4) Have complete and unshakeable confidence in the inevitability of our own victory. We will win because we are keeping faith with the best ideals of America.

5) Realize that we and our children and grandchildren will be in this battle, probably fighting these same people, for as long as it takes to win. In the long term, defeating them will not mean defeating individuals or candidates, but rather the issues and institutions that feed their cause.

FOX. Henhouse.

Today is Election Day.
Ain't free speech great?
Love the snarky comments this time.
Sheesh! Let me move on...

Head Lice Treatment

Is this blog eclectic or what?
Yeah, I know. What's the big deal with head lice?

If you had a couple of grandchildren who got head lice you wouldn't ask that question. Ever had to do the mayonnaise treatment? The nasty shampoos?

Worse yet, have you ever had to deal with parents who seem oblivious to their kids' hygiene?
Let me tell you about nit-picking. Getting rid of head lice is where we get the term.

Good news! Check this out...

A contraption that looks like a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a hair dryer could rescue children from the scourge of head lice, a new study claims.

According to one of its creators, the device has a near-perfect success rate at killing off both lice and any of their eggs lurking in kids' hair. And the little critters shouldn't become immune to the so-called "LouseBuster," as they already have to some pesticides.

"It's extremely effective and extremely safe, and we think evolution-proof," said study co-author Dale Clayton, a University of Utah biology professor. "It would be very hard for insects to develop resistance to this assault."

According to Clayton, an estimated one in four American children will get infected by head lice. The tiny insects -- about the size of a sesame seed -- can be very difficult to eradicate.

One way is to get rid of them is to use repeatedly use special lice combs on children's heads, but this approach is so time-consuming that it can overwhelm parents. A variety of anti-lice shampoos are also available, but some parents don't like the idea of using insecticides -- including Malathion -- on their kids. Also, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says some lice have developed immunity to the chemicals used to kill them, although such problems are scattered.

Enter hot air, which some specialists think may be better at killing lice and their eggs. Clayton and his colleagues tested a variety of hair dryers -- including handheld and "bonnet" models -- on 169 local children who were infested with lice. Their findings appear in the November issue of Pediatrics.

All the hair dryers killed at least 89 percent of lice eggs. But only one -- the specially designed "LouseBuster" -- managed to both kill eggs (98 percent) and wipe out high numbers of living lice (80 percent). The remaining living lice appeared unable to breed, perhaps due to stress or sterilization, the team said.

So, according to the study, the heads of children treated with the LouseBuster were free of lice one week after the half-hour treatment.

"We think it has a delayed effect on the lice it doesn't kill," Clayton said. "When you go back a week later, there's nothing there."

The air produced by the LouseBuster is hot -- much warmer than a typical hair dryer. Also unlike a hair dryer, it has a special handpiece designed to expose the roots of the hair.
The device apparently works by drying out the lice and their eggs, not by heating them, Clayton said.

The cost of the device is unknown, although Clayton estimated it should be in the hundreds of dollars, not the thousands, making it affordable for school districts. He predicted it could be on the market within a year or two, and added that the time required for treatment could eventually shrink to 15 minutes.

Dr. Craig Burkhart, a dermatologist at the Medical University of Ohio who studies lice, doubted that the device will be a success, however.

"The problem with the treatment is that it takes a half an hour at least to destroy the lice and the contraption is somewhat expensive and very cumbersome," he said.

What to do? "As with all bugs, insecticides remain the treatment of choice," Burkhart said.

End of the Neo-Cons (their caption, not mine...)

David Olive, writing in the Toronto Star, drives many nails into a coffin being prepared for the grand design which caused the worst US foreign policy nightmare since the Vietnam era. It's name is neo-conservatism. Its proponents are legion and this writer picks them off like shooting fish in a barrel.

...the neo-conservative vision that has guided American foreign policy since 2001 has run its course. The neo-cons' grand design lies in ruins, having accomplished nothing other than to shrink America's stature in the world.

The great unwinding of the American "benign global hegemony" first heralded by neo-cons William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1996 will commence after the election, when America's political leadership will abandon Iraq and the neo-cons.

The neo-cons' starting point, of course, was the Americanization of Iraq — the "easy win" that would trigger rogue states from the Middle East to the Korean peninsula to fall in line with American values of capitalism, democracy and pro-Israel policies.

But the Iraq conflict has proved unwinnable. And as handmaidens to a $300-billion (U.S.) catastrophe in Iraq that has cost the lives of at least 400,000 Iraqis and almost 3,000 American soldiers, and which ranks as the worst American foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam, the neo-cons have irretrievably lost their credibility.

By Christmas or soon thereafter, a White House that has run out of options on Iraq will begin to cut and run, pronouncing favourably on an exit plan that is now in the final stages of completion by a team led by James Baker, former U.S. secretary of state and a close friend of the Bush family, and Lee Hamilton, a respected former congressman and Democrat who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission.

***

Let it not be said the neo-cons are without a legacy, despite the brief zenith of their influence. Long after the days of "The smoking gun might come in the form of a mushroom cloud," "Shock and awe," "Mission accomplished" and "Bring 'em on" are mercifully past, historians will chronicle an early 21st-century America so distracted from its real enemy that Osama bin Laden and even the perpetrators of the 2001 anthrax attacks against Congressional leaders are still at large.

An America, too, whose diplomatic influence has cratered, due not only to the unilateral belligerence with which America went to war in Iraq, but also the incompetence subsequently exposed in almost every particular of its Iraq occupation: intelligence breakdowns; acrimonious relations between the civilian and military U.S. occupation leadership; rampant theft by contractors; and the failure to provide Iraqis with security, power, fresh water and other essentials even now, 43 months after the invasion. The resulting diplomatic void has been filled by China and Russia, now resisting U.S. calls for their imposition of sanctions against North Korea and Iran, respectively.

There also is the blighting of America's self-image as a champion of human rights, with U.S.-sanctioned torture of terrorist suspects Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Canadian citizen Maher Arar, and countless other detainees at Guantanamo Bay, at the network of covert CIA detention centres across Europe and the Middle East, and at Saddam Hussein's notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, reopened by U.S. forces to warehouse thousands of Iraqi citizens rousted from their homes in random sweeps. Bush's repeated lie that "America does not do torture" merely compounds the current distrust of the United States.

And there is the discredited state of American conservatism, which has allowed neo-cons to trade away its electoral trump cards of perceived superiority over Democrats in foreign policy, national security and balancing the books. Infighting between the secular neo-cons and the GOP base of fiscal hawks and evangelical Christians will intensify after the expected Republican losses on Tuesday. And that will likely thwart Bush counsellor Karl Rove's ambition to make the GOP the permanent U.S. governing party.

Finally, there are the consequences of America's certain failure in Iraq.
Apart from the crisis of the boat-people evacuees, the fall of Saigon was not cataclysmic. Having achieved its goal of being left alone, Vietnam now peddles its wares at Wal-Mart and extends a warm greeting to American corporate investors.

.

Lots more at the link if you have the time and the stomach.
I got tired of reading.
I hope he's correct, but I don't count chickens til they're in the pan. (Sorry. Bad food service joke.)

H/T Truthout

Zayed response to the Saddam verdict

One of Iraq's most articulate English language bloggers has a lengthy post in response to the Saddam verdict. Go read his anguished rant and reflect on whether anything is moving in the right direction...

Some Iraqis are saying that the timing of the sentence was intended to influence the mid-term elections in the U.S. Republicans say that’s a preposterous charge, and point to the “impartiality” and “independence” of the Iraqi court. I can’t attest to the former, but I know for a fact that describing the court as independent and impartial is preposterous. The Iraqi government has interfered with the court proceedings from day one. The first presiding judge resigned, citing “interference from governmental officials.” Another was replaced because he turned out to be a member of the Ba’ath party under Saddam, and a third was kicked out because some officials were outraged when he appeared to be a bit sympathetic to the dictator. Two members of Saddam’s defense team were assassinated by sectarian militias aligned with parties close to the government, and the court failed to provide them with the necessary documents on time over and over again. A video of the prosecutor general wearing a turban and sitting in a reception for SCIRI at Dujail was leaked to the court by Saddam’s defense team but was dismissed. One witness was shown on tape contradicting his testimony to the court at the same reception, and so on.

***

I'll end with Shalash Al-Iraqi's reaction to the verdict, and I wholeheartedly agree with him:

I do not deny that Saddam was a dictator. Show me one person in the Green Zone who is democratic, even on TV.

I do not deny that Saddam was brutal, terrifying and mystifying. Are the brothers in the Green Zone angels of mercy?

Saddam used to appoint his relatives and party members. Do you want me to bang on my head?

Saddam stole the people’s riches. Do you want me to tear off my clothes?

Saddam was a traitor. Do you want me to hurl myself on the floor?

Saddam was sectarian. No … I have to laugh at this one.

My brothers, I truly wished to see Saddam tried for his crimes. But I also wished to see him tried while the country is rebuilt, while freedom is spreading, while joy is overflowing the streets, while Iraqis stay up until morning on the banks of the Tigris, while our schools compete with those of Japan, while our streets are cleaner than a plate of cream, while our riches are evident on our faces, while our displaced brothers under God’s stars return to their families and loved ones, and while joy, joy, joy is everywhere.

Come see our schools. They are ruins and animal barns. Come see our streets. Even though there is a curfew, I don’t know who urinates on them at night. Our people are roaming on the face of earth, some in impoverished countries, and others in tattered tents that break the spirit. Beggars fill the street, and poverty has nested in ruined homes. Depression, disease, drought and horror prevail. I’m left in this wilderness alone after all my friends and relatives have left. A childish fool who doesn’t know how to write his name comes and screams at me, “Shalash! Are you not happy? Yallah, go out in the demonstration.” Wallah, I swear I’m happy, but I’m afraid I would go out and then people would envy me.

We came out of Saddam’s night, but we fell into a well … when will we come out?

Our problem is not Saddam, Barzan, or Taha Yassin Ramadan. Our problem is who is going to be dragged in the night from among his children and family to be found next morning a headless corpse. Inshallah it won’t be you, dear reader or me. Inshallah the fire of sectarians will eat their wood.

Riverbend comments on the Saddam verdict

Riverbend makes a few acerbic but accurate comments about the announcement of the Saddam verdict, as well as its possible impact on the country.

Iraq has not been this bad in decades. The occupation is a failure. The various pro-American, pro-Iranian Iraqi governments are failures. The new Iraqi army is a deadly joke. Is it really time to turn Saddam into a martyr?...

It’s not about the man- presidents come and go, governments come and go. It’s the frustration of feeling like the whole country and every single Iraqi inside and outside of Iraq is at the mercy of American politics. It is the rage of feeling like a mere chess piece to be moved back and forth at will. It is the aggravation of having a government so blind and uncaring about their peoples needs that they don’t even feel like it’s necessary to go through the motions or put up an act. And it's the deaths. The thousands of dead and dying, with Bush sitting there smirking and lying about progress and winning in a country where every single Iraqi outside of the Green Zone is losing.

***

A final note. I just read somewhere that some of the families of dead American soldiers are visiting the Iraqi north to see ‘what their sons and daughters died for’. If that’s the goal of the visit, then, “Ladies and gentlemen- to your right is the Iraqi Ministry of Oil, to your left is the Dawry refinery… Each of you get this, a gift bag containing a 3 by 3 color poster of Al Sayid Muqtada Al Sadr (Long May He Live And Prosper), an Ayatollah Sistani t-shirt and a map of Iran, to scale, redrawn with the Islamic Republic of South Iraq. Also… Hey you! You- the female in the back- is that a lock of hair I see? Cover it up or stay home.”

And that is what they died for.

She also has screenshots of Iraqi television showing how the media iworks in Iraq.

"Sharqiya channel announcing breaking news: Two channels, Salahiddin and Zawra, shut down. Security forces raid the offices of the channels."

Bloglines seems not to be updating this and a couple of other sites. I found this via Wampum.

More about Alyssa Peterson

Her story is not going away. According to my Sitemeter stats, my Alyssa Peterson post about seventy-two hours ago has received more hits than the next twelve most popular posts combined, including my home page. Nearly all have resulted from search inquiries. My little blog is not a high traffic site, but little birds in coal mines aren't too big either.

Saturday's post by Scott Horton at Balkinization is much better than mine. Anyone digging into the details of the story should read what he wrote. He makes a strong argument that the circumstances of Alyssa Peterson's tragic death beg more forthcoming details from behind the secrecy curtain. He doesn't use the word conspiracy, but he does say "not everybody is happy with the characterization of suicide that the Pentagon is so adamant about applying to this case." He also recalled the case of Col Ted Westhusing, about whom he had composed an excellent background piece last December.

Take a minute or two to read these two posts by Scott Horton.

Last Saturday, regarding Alyssa Peterson...

Alyssa's fate in Iraq was driven by events on the other side of the world, in a conference room in the Pentagon. In the summer of 2003, Donald Rumsfeld, at an intel briefing in the Pentagon, expressed his anger that he was not getting "good humint" out of Iraq. He banged his fist on the table and demanded that they "get Geoffrey Miller out to Iraq and gitmoize the situation." By the phrase "gitmoize," Rumsfeld meant the introduction of a palette of highly coercive interrogation techniques developed for use on detainees in Guantánamo. These techniques included cold cell, long-time standing, sound and light deprivation, and on several documented occasions, waterboarding. In implementation of this vocal command, which was entrusted to Dr Stephen Cambone and his deputy LTG William ("My God Can Beat Your God") Boykin, MG Miller traveled to Iraq at the end of the summer, visiting with LTG Ricardo Sanchez in Baghdad and traveling out to Abu Ghraib itself to speak with senior military intelligence personnel. Throughout this process, Miller advocated the introduction into Iraq of Guantánamo techniques – techniques which are plainly seen in the photographs that emerged in April 2004 when 60 Minutes and The New Yorker broke the Abu Ghraib story. Miller also advocated the use of military police forces to "prepare" detainees for interrogation – in breach of military doctrine concerning the training and deployment of military police personnel. He specifically discussed and advocated the use of military dogs for purposes of terrorizing detainees. Contemporaneously with Miller's visit, and in the weeks before, instructions went out throughout the military intelligence network in Iraq, to "take the gloves off." Physical assault on detainees was authorized and occurred in hundreds of documented cases.

And from last December...

Col. Ted S. Westhusing, the highest ranking US soldier to die in Iraq, was also the US Army’s premier ethicist. His Ph.D. dissertation was written on the classical definition of ‘honor’ and its application in the law of armed conflict. I didn’t know Col. Westhusing, but I knew and admired his work. In his last reports from Iraq, he expressed real anguish about the collapse of the discipline and values for which the US military has been known historically. According to the Los Angeles Times account, his last message included these lines: ‘I cannot support a mission that leads to corruption, human rights abuse and liars. I am sullied. I came to serve honorably and feel dishonored.’ In Ted Westhusing’s life and death lies an unmistakable and profound bond with the past – with Seneca, Addison’s Cato, and George Washington. This loss diminished our military service, for who can doubt but that Westhusing was an important moral leader. America’s leadership desperately needs to hear Col. Westhusing’s call.

A Mennonite girl experiences the Roman Catholic mass

I don't know a lot about Mennonites other than that they share the Anabaptist heritage with the Amish and others. Unlike the Amish, Mennonites do not routinely stop education with eighth grade but continue through college. There is also an online presence with the cyber-version of Mennonite Weekly Review.

Here is a warm, appreciative post by a young woman at Young Anabaptist Radicals who has been attending mass long enough to love that form of worship.

Over the last year and half at Notre Dame, I have let myself become more and more engulfed in mass. It calms me. It blesses me. And the spirit moves. I feel more andmore that I am coming to understand what transubstantiation means. I think this understanding actually came more as a result of backpacking this summer and reading a lot of Mystics, than actually participating in mass. How can I not understand or recognize the embodiment of the Divine—In the trees, in the Earth, in Eyes that shine, in conversations that churn my stomach, and yes, in the wine and bread?

Take a moment to read the whole thing. Then read the comments. This is Christian witness illustrating ecumenical tolerance at its best. What a great find for a Sunday afternoon!

Guantanamo detainees -- a partial followup

It is not widely reported, but the "detainees" (don't you love that word? Why not just call them what they are: political prisoners?) at Guantanamo are being released, a few at a time, back to their respective countries. I don't know the details, but I remember reading about a group or two that have been returned to Saudi Arabia for repatriation and re-education.

This report from Asharq Al Awsat, English language newspaper from KSA, is interesting. It seems a group of these men were released to spend Ramadan with their families, and all but one of them returned themselves to prison. (One is still in the hospital following injuries sustained in a traffic accident.)

The Saudi Ministry of Interior returned 28 of the 29 former detainees of Guantanamo Bay for the temporary period of 38 days on Tuesday. This came as a result of the new initiative adopted by the Saudi Ministry of Interior on September 21 in which the ministry negotiated a framework agreement that would enable the detainees to spend the month of Ramadan and Eid-ul-Fitr with their families in Saudi Arabia. Security investigators are currently expected to resume their investigations and questioning.

The initiative was implemented under the directives and supervision of Saudi Interior Minister, Prince Nayef Bin Abdulaziz. One of the detainees is currently being held in hospital to receive treatment for injuries and a pelvic fracture, which requires a short hospital stay, after being involved in a traffic accident. The hospital expenses and damages for the vehicle he was driving during the accident are being covered by the Ministry of Interior.

Fahd Bin Mohammed al Subaey told Asharq Al-Awsat, “The detainees were returned to prison last Monday after the Ministry of Interior allowed 29 prisoners to spend Ramadan outside confinement.” He added that the temporary release came after “the positive results witnessed by the authorities after granting detainees a one-week release period upon bail from Guantanamo Bay.”

Thanks to John Burgess for the link. As he commented, "...some feared that they would run away and become involved in terrorism again. According to the Asharq Alawsat piece, that wasn't the case."

Indeed. Lots of what has been dished out about Gitmo hasn't been the case. Makes me want to sneer as I think about it.

Election Day. Hat. Rabbit.

Could it be?
Naw.
Surely not...

U.S. and Iraqi officials say the timing of the expected guilty verdict and sentencing is sheer coincidence.

Lots of details will be forthcoming. All the right people are on top of the story. Michael Scharf's comments at Grotian Moment blog are an interesting read.

Ted Haggard redux

A year and a half ago I put together a post about mega-churches inspired by an article in Harpers by Jeff Sharlett. The subject of the story was the conspicuous success of Pastor Ted's New Life Church in Colorado.

Pastor Ted, who talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday, is a handsome forty-eight-year-old Indianan, most comfortable in denim. He likes to say that his only disagreement with the President is automotive; Bush drives a Ford pickup, whereas Pastor Ted loves his Chevy. In addition to New Life, Pastor Ted presides over the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), whose 45,000 churches and 30 million believers make up the nation’s most powerful religious lobbying group, and also over a smaller network of his own creation, the Association of Life-Giving Churches, 300 or so congregations modeled on New Life’s “free market” approach to the divine. Pastor Ted will serve as NAE president for as long as the movement is pleased with him, and as long as Pastor Ted is its president the NAE will make its headquarters in Colorado Springs.

In light of this week's developments regarding Pastor Ted, the article reads with a somewhat different resonance. Different how? I'm not sure.

It's possible that the Harper's piece served to kick-start Ted Haggard, his church and affiliated organizations to very high-profile exposure. Too much exposure, it seems. Jeff Sharlett met and interviewed the man long before last week...

...since I wrote about Ted Haggard and his church, New Life, in the May, 2005 issue of Harper's...Ted has been decidedly less than friendly. I always wondered why. Although my article was critical, it led to a surge of more mild-mannered media for Ted, one of the most powerful but least-known evangelical bigs in America. Barbara Walters asking him about heaven, Tom Brokaw doing his "on the other hand" routine.

But too much attention can be a bad thing. Details are still coming in, but it seems a gay man in Denver named Mike Jones was watching TV recently when he saw one of his regular sex partners, whom he knew only as "Art," on the tube: Ted, welcome to celebrity.

I just talked to Jones on the phone. He's not vindictive, nor particularly political; he's voted for Republicans and Democrats. He struggled with his decision, out of compassion for a man in the closet. He was motivated, he said, simply by being a gay man who's been around long enough to know how Ted's politics play out in the ordinary lives of people Jones cares about. That's about as good a motive for outing someone as I've ever heard. This afternoon, Ted announced that he was temporarily stepping down from his positions of authority. A press conference of national evangelical figures that planned to express support for Ted has been called off. Jones has made available recordings he says are of Ted asking him to procure meth, and an envelope in which he says Ted mailed him money.

Thanks to Fred Clark for catching this before me. His comments are worth reading.

All that language -- forgiveness, deliverance, confession, repentance -- really means here only that Haggard needs to go back to living a lie. If he agrees to live that lie, and with clenched teeth to continue proclaiming that others must join in living that lie, then Haggard will be "accepted" back "into fellowship."

Haggard is now seeking "spiritual advice and guidance," and there are tens of thousands of Very Nice Christian people praying for him. But his spiritual guides and advisors are all going to tell him to follow that script. Those people praying for him are all praying for him to follow that script. And that script is evil. That script is a lie.

For Christ's sake, enough with the lies. The last thing Haggard needs is to be "accepted" into a fellowship that cannot accept who he really is. Both he and that fellowship have just been given an opportunity to abandon lies. I'm praying that they will recognize that opportunity and take it.

Bitter medicine, indeed. I doubt the people who need to swallow it are paying attention. Too bad. What he's saying, of course, is that the Church must accept homosexual people as equals, sinners as part of the larger flawed population comprising the Body...then work on shortcomings.

Some churches are in that fold, but not all by a long shot.

Tony Badran on Syria under Bashar Assad

It's not an exaggeration to use the word byzantine referring to politics in the Middle East. Geographically the name derives from an old name for what is now Istanbul, but the word suggests a convoluted system of social/political/religious "checks and balances" cobbling together something resembling a coherent system. That is the image I get as I read this piece.

Writing in Mideast Monitor, a relatively new bi-monthly, Tony Badran delivers yeoman's work analyzing the regime of Syria's Bashar Assad. This is not light reading. This is prescription-strength, somewhat dry but important, scholarly research looking at how Assad has succeeded in keeping his footing following the death of his father, Hafez Assad, six years ago.

Anyone commenting on Syria not conversant with details so carefully laid out in this piece needs to stop talking and start reading. (That rubric, incidentally, rules out about ninety-five percent of everything I have read about Syria. As in the case of so many high-profile stories, the depth of ignorance about the subject, though no longer surprising, is astounding. And I include myself in that assessment as well.)

The late Syrian President Hafez Assad's success in maintaining his grip on power for three decades depended greatly on his skillful use of coercion and cooptation to divide opponents of the regime along ethnic, sectarian, and ideological lines.

His son and successor, Bashar, has failed to manage these divisions. Unfavorable international conditions, colossal foreign policy failures, and a precarious economy have left the regime with little bargaining leverage other than its control over the instruments of repression. This asset remains effective in silencing and intimidating dissidents individually, but ineffective in obstructing their collective gravitation around the demand for regime change.

Nevertheless, the Syrian opposition remains weak and (apart from Kurdish groups) isolated from the population at large. In the face of a state that penetrates the daily lives of its citizens at will, this is a serious shortcoming. The fact that Syrian intellectuals have gravitated toward the demand for regime change, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, does not herald the end of the struggle for democracy in Syria, or even the beginning of the end. At most, it is the end of the beginning.

So begins a close scrutiny of what may be another vulnerable regime in the Middle East. But just because Assad's success, if it can be called that, owes more to default than design, that is no reason for optimism as we have seen in Iraq. Read to learn the distinction between islah (reform) and taghyeer (change) of the regime. Follow the trail as the writer describes the Secular-Islamist Divide, the Arab-Kurd Divide, the Internal-External Divide and the Sectarian Divide.

Catch your breath as you come to this conclusion...

Many in the opposition express fear that the international community will cut a deal with the regime that would relax outside pressure and give it a new lease on life. For better or for worse, however, Assad has thrown in his lot with an ascendant Iran, which he thinks will emerge as the top regional power in the twenty-first century. This alliance and his policy of brinkmanship, he believes, will force the international community to deal with him on his terms, without any serious concessions on his part.

.

Now that islah is dead, as one prominent Syrian political analyst notes, the regime's goal is to "recreate legitimacy based on something other than reform." Having once marketed himself as a pro-Western reformer, Assad has now repackaged himself as a defender of Arab-Islamic interests and values, coalescing his radical anti-Western foreign policy with an Islamification campaign at home. The iconography in Syria today depicts the trinity of Assad, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah as embodying "the culture of resistance." He has carefully manipulated popular animosities toward Lebanon, America and Israel to sell this image.

.

All in all, his transition from "reformer" to "resister" has drawn some support from the Syrian masses, particularly the youth (roughly 60% of the population is under 20). This has served to isolate aging opposition leaders and will suffice to maintain his grip on power for the time being. At the end of the day, however, it is unlikely to alleviate the country's stifling isolation, solve its crippling economic problems, or persuade the educated elite of Syria to reunite behind the regime.

I want the writer to be wrong. Very wrong. But if history is any teacher, children are much more controllable than adults. And by children I am old enough to mean anyone under twenty. So if the stats are anywhere near correct -- sixty percent of the population under twenty -- whoever is in charge in Syria has a good shot at staying there as long as he can keep enough people from getting hungry or poor.

Heck, look how well Americans can be led by the nose. Bread and circuses is all it takes. Some principles never change.

Tonay Badran blogs at Across the Bay.

David Neiwert on the growth of fascism

Probably the main reason I write about fascism and its immanations in the United States is because I've seen genuine fascism up close and personal -- particularly the Aryan Nations in northern Idaho and the universe of right-wing extremists it attracted, all settling into the dark backwoods and making themselves at home there.

When you get to know fascists up close, you realize that the stereotypes of them -- either they are poor, uneducated backwoods hick, or vile, monstrous skinheads in black leather -- don't fit very well. For the most part, in fact, they are ordinary-seeming people who live in ordinary homes and go to regular day jobs.

Pogo's line applies here: We have met the enemy and he is us.

I'm sure Neiwert would not object to this construction of his thesis. He knows, probably better than most people, the subtle temptations that attract people to join groups and organizations that stroke their inner monsters, transforming them in time into hate-filled human viruses that have as much potential to kill and maim as any suicide bomber. The difference is merely one of image. As I read his powerful analysis I say to myself There but for the grace of God go I...

For those of us who stubbornly refuse to drive on the right, Neiwert continues to do most of the heavy lifting. His writing is air-tight and full of examples. I do not understand how any thinking person can find serious disagreements with his arguments but clearly there are many people who will skip over his words and dismiss what he says with the same breezy carelessness as they ignore other disturbing trends that are plain to see but up for discussion as to cause and effect. [Global warming, growing numbers of unwed mothers, redefining the meaning of the word torture, the continuing unraveling of the institution of marriage (apart from the homo-marriage straw man) and a list of other topics come to mind.]

The chief means for the spread of this kind of hatred has been a national media that gives people like Coulter and her junior partner, Michelle Malkin, far more than their 15 seconds of fame. More importantly, the press allows hatemongers in the ranks of movement conservatives to peddle race-baiting and bigotry with references that only the most obtuse can miss -- as with the ugly race-baiting recently thrown Harold Ford's way.

The only way to combat it, in the end, is not to allow race-baiting and sly racial inferences, so common among right-wing pundits and politicians, to go unremarked. It's in not allowing hatemongers like the Minutemen and the assorted anti-immigrant xenophobes -- see particularly Pat Buchanan -- now driving our immigration debate to proceed apace, applauded by Lou Dobbs and Ed Schultz alike.

Unfortunately, we're doing a lousy job of that these days.

I challenge skeptical readers to read this man's post and links carefully and with an open mind. It could be a paradigm-shattering experience, so prepare to be rattled.

The Decline Of Trust

In the 1990s, after academics and pundits began talking about trust, the nation did actually become more trusting. The share of Americans saying they trust government "most of the time" or "just about always" rose from 21 percent in 1994 to 56 percent in 2002. Equally, elections became less abrasively focused on accountability. In 2000, according to John Geer of Vanderbilt University, a relatively low 40 percent of the messages in presidential TV spots were negative, down from 47 percent four years earlier.

But some time after the Iraq invasion, these trends reversed. In 2004 the share of Americans saying they trusted government fell to 47 percent, and this month a CBS News-New York Times poll put it at a rock-bottom 28 percent. Meanwhile Geer's measures show that in the 2004 election negative messages jumped to 50 percent of the total, and he guesses that this year's congressional races are the most negative in history.

This column in Monday's WaPo is excellent. Sebastian Mallaby puts his finger on a baseline change in the way Americans perceive trust...in government in this case, but in my view that is an indicator of a larger issue. (Thanks to Steve for the link, found in the comments thread at Mark Cuban's blog.)

The words trust and faith are more than semantically connected. Both mean the same thing in a way, though the word trust sounds secular, faith religious. Is it accidental that the president brought to us partly on the wings of a pop faith angel, Evangelical Christianity, has managed to preside over a decline in our sense of trust/faith?

I have complained before about the trend toward a theology that is a mile wide but only a few inches deep. Such is the legacy of the numbers and revenue-driven mega-church phenomenon. And such seems to be a spin-off of the "Christian Coalition" and its cousins. The bizarre preoccupation with end-times and neo-apocolyptic ruminations comes to mind. Is not that the final expression of the end of all trust? All that remains for the world as we have known it is to come to an end?

There are powerful reasons trust tends to decline and accountability advances. Mobile societies tend to have weak bonds; the Internet makes it easier to hold people accountable and encourages acerbic negativity. And the absence of trust can feed on itself. Leaders function under stifling oversight; this causes them to perform sluggishly, so trust continues to stagnate. But occasionally there is a chance to escape this trap: A shock causes trust to rise, leaders have a chance to lead and there's an opportunity to boost trust still further.

We've recently had a double opportunity. The boom of the 1990s boosted trust in business; the 2001 terrorist attacks boosted trust in government. But CEOs and politicians abused these gifts with scandals and incompetence. Such is the cost of corporate malfeasance and the Iraq war: Precious social capital is destroyed by leaders' avarice and hubris.

I report. You decide.
I'm not making this happen. All I can do is read the papers, see what others are saying and pray for God's grace.

Mark Cuban's blog on Google's acquisition of YouTube

Last night I published a link to Mark Cuban's blog and some turkey put a long spam message as the first comment. This new Blogger Beta doesn't have a feature yet to delete comments, so I deleted the whole post. Spam really pisses me off. Overnight I got seven hits to that post, so here is the link again.

In the deleted post I went to a lot of trouble to reformat the content to be easier to read, but I'm not doing that again. Read it for yourself at the link.

Youtube knew they had an issue and had offered a straight revenue share deal if the complainants would call off the dogs and give them time. The media companies quickly rejected this path for two reasons. First off Youtube wasn't making any money and was fuzzy about how they would generate revenue in the future. But more important the media companies view is that there was a mountain of past infringement that Youtube had engaged in and built their business on and they felt they deserved some of this accumulated value. And who could blame them. In spite of the media "user generated" puff pieces it was clear to all involved that they generated that content by hooking up their TV tuner cards to their PCs.

These comments by an unnamed but clearly in-the-know observer bring up serious and as yet undecided legal points regarding copyright and revenue flow (i.e. royalties).

Question is: As it now operates, is YouTube a ticking bomb? For that matter, is Google itself skating on the same thin ice?

Google is eating everything in sight. I heard a great description of Google's competition strategy..."deny oxygen." In other words, Google simply hires or buys any raw materials that might otherwise be used against them by competitors, whether content, design, emerging businesses or human resources.

For those of us on the gravy train, it's kinda like having a very rich uncle. Hey, except for not being able to delete spam comments, I'm a happy camper. And I'm sure that little wrinkle will be ironed out in due time.

Mentos & Diet Coke -- Yet another one

When I think how hard I worked in my life I wonder how I never got to get a job like these guys.

Here is a three-minute sequel to the original Mentos and Diet Coke video.

This line of research just gets better and better, but I still think the original one was more inspired.

My Old Kentucky Home

Today's new term: chem demil.

Love those bureaucratic contractions...this one is short for "chemical demilitarization."

This item caught my eye as I perused this morning's reading.

...today marks the beginning of the end of a 20-year struggle to rid Madison County of its weapons of mass destruction.

Whaddya know! My old hometown is in the news again. This time because the Bluegrass Army Depot (which we always referred to as "The Bluegrass Ordnance") will become an employer cash cow for the local economy thanks to the efforts of Senator Mitch McConnell and others.

...U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and local politicians, military leaders, project officials and activists will welcome a $2 billion chemical neutralization plant that will employ hundreds of people and change the face of Madison's industrial economy.

More important, it will destroy 523 tons of lethal nerve and blister agent stored at Blue Grass Army Depot, some of it since World War II.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm glad we moved away from the area when we did. It is a blessing that dangerous stockpiles of nerve gas and who-knows-what-else stored in those igloos haven't leaked too much into the local environment (as far as anyone knows) but I feel much better to have grown up hundreds of miles away.

At least one observer takes a jaundiced view of Senator McConnell's...what's the right word?...tenacity?...duplicity?...success?

I watched Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil again last week. John Cussack delivers a great line describing the defense lawyer. "That man could spin horse shit into Egyptian cotton."