Month: January 2007

There are parallels but there are major differences as well. Here’s an engaging discussion of both by a reader of Alistair Horne’s "A Savage War of Peace".

Your moment of Wiggum:

He says it’s a bad idea but he’s for it anyway:

Keane appears to be saying that the plan works at an acceptable cost only if the United States can pacify the Shiite militants without forcibly confronting them. To me, and possibly also to the Sadrists, this looks like what gamblers call a bluff. So why shouldn’t the Democratic Congress block such an unpromising strategy?

He has three answers.

San Francisco, California, 7.40 am, from inside the Muni train.

Moqtada says his militias won’t attack for a month; and his chief aide is arrested. What this means is unclear, like a lot of things in Iraq. But these seem like significant developments to me because either a) they reveal the sit-it-out policy of Iraq’s Shia in response to "Plus Up," given a fig leaf by a symbolc arrest; or b) they represent real, if tiny, progress. Here’s hoping it’s the latter.

Here are two sentences to make your head spin:

As required by law, the manual prohibits statements obtained by torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" as prohibited by the Constitution. However, the law does allow statements obtained through coercive interrogation techniques if obtained before Dec. 30, 2005, and deemed reliable by a judge.

So evidence procured by torture is unconstitutional, unless it isn’t. George W. Bush really is president, isn’t he?

Fred Kagan responds to the rather obvious point that his initial assertion that some 80,000 troops would be needed to secure Baghdad has not, er, been borne out by the actual plan. There’s a big difference between 80,000 and 17,500. Or is there? Kagan argues that his 80,000 number was for the "entire Baghdad capital area." 50,000 would be needed for Baghdad proper. 30,000 would be necessary if we were to ignore Sadr City and just clear Baghdad of Sunni insurgents in phases (what Maliki wants). Got that? Still, Kagan has to concede that 17,500 for Baghdad is only around half the number he first proposed. How does he explain that? Here goes:

Brigade sizes range based on the type of unit, but average around 3,500 soldiers each. The administration’s figures are based on that estimate. In reality, the U.S. Army does not simply deploy brigades into combat, but instead sends Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs). A BCT includes a brigade as described above, but also additional support elements such as engineers, military police, additional logistics elements, and so on, which are necessary to the functioning of the brigade in combat.

In a counter-insurgency operation such as Iraq, these additional forces are fully as important to the overall success of the mission as the combat troops. Sizes of BCTs also vary, of course, but they average more like 5,000 soldiers. Since these are the formations that will actually be deployed to Iraq and used there, I have been estimating deployments on this basis: five brigade combat teams include around 25,000 soldiers; one Marine Regimental Combat Team (RCTs are somewhat smaller than Army brigades) includes perhaps 4,000. So the surge being briefed by the Bush administration now is much more likely to be around 29,000 troops than 22,000 – in other words, close to the number of combat troops the IPG recommended, and, when necessary support troops are added, close to the overall numbers I had estimated before the IPG met.

So the Bush plan is actually, according to Kagan, 29,000 troops, not 21,500. Somehow the president forgot to mention that. (For the full monty on this numerical pas de deux, check out this definitive post by Greg Djerejian.) And then we have this rather devastating sentence by Kagan:

It remains to be seen if the Bush administration will adhere to this plan, of course.

The "of course" is priceless. To recap: first Kagan wanted 80,000; then he settled for 50,000; then he was fine with 29,000; when confronted with the Plus Up number of 17,500 for Bahdad and 4,000 for Anbar, he argued that it is actually 29,000, except the president didn’t say so, and except Kagan doesn’t know for sure. So, under these cloudy circumstances, with so much at stake, is he for Plus Up? Here’s the answer:

The new commander, Lieutenant General David Petraeus, has not yet taken up command, and it would be best to await his plan before commenting in detail on proposals that may or may not take concrete form.

The Bush message is now what it has always been: our very civilization is at stake. So let’s wing it.

"If you’re an act, then what am I?" – Stephen Colbert to Bill O’Reilly, last night.

"When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you," – Friedrich Nietzsche.

Because you won’t get it anywhere else:

I’ll respond tomorrow, but this reader couldn’t wait:

Harris wrote:

So why not take these books less seriously still? Why not admit that they are just books, written by fallible human beings like ourselves?

Religious books are not "just" books. Rather they are books that try to guide human beings, and their conduct, through the mystery that is human life.  And when I say "mystery" I don’t mean it in the sense of "Wow, that’s cool!"  I mean it in the sense that we don’t know where we came from, or where we are going, or how, on the one hand, we can have a profound sense of self, but, then, on the other hand, must live with the unease that our entire sense of self – without religion – will somehow some day cease to exist.

Religion, and religious books are designed to help us with these problems of human existence.  They are designed to show us – based on very old traditions – about the proper courses of conduct to lead one to the eventual pride in having lived to the full and to the good the one life that one was granted. They make us glad to be alive.

Other books do not help. Even philosophers are of little use for these areas of life, and most will gladly acknowledge it. Perhaps some people don’t need religion. But most of us do, even if our religious devotions are tinged with more or less worldly skepticism.

It is absurd to claim that whoever – one or many – who wrote, among others, the Dhammapada, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or the Tao te Ching were just regular guys writing regular books.  The only person who can say that is the person who has no sense to appreciate the ecstatic frame of mind that is a core element in the religious life, and which in turn presupposes a voice driving such authors that, in the poor words we humans use, is described a Holy Spirit. And, absolutely, the same applies to the New Testament, which of course was written by real people in real time.

But to say that the New Testament expresses the Holy Spirit is not to be understood either to mean that some kind of vapor descended from on high and penetrated the fingertips of Luke or St Paul. Rather it also means that these are texts that were written by Christians, for communities of Christian believers, and that these communities, over the course of now two millennia, consider them, and their companions, true reflections, in words, of the states of Christian belief and life.

Now, the issue has been phrased as a religious issue but it could also be phrased as an esthetic one.  Artistic experiences, poetry, music, visual arts, will sometimes convey a kind of supernatural and ever-renewing power.  For reasons we cannot put into words, we feel at times – after a Beethoven quartet or a Shakespeare play – that we have been touched by something so special, that it could not be the mere  product of "just some guy." Artists themselves will not infrequently stand in amazement at their own creations. "How did I manage to create something so good?" Here, too, the suspicion arises that the artist is but a medium for something else, indefinable.

I am in sympathy with much of this, but perhaps for the sake of coherence, we shouldn’t ask Sam to address all the readers’ comments as well. I’ll focus tomorrow. Today has been somewhat full.

(Painting: Rembrandt’s "The Evangelist Matthew Inspired by an Angel.")