Month: January 2007

The Daily Standard provides a helpful profile of an impressive soldier.

Mark Blumenthal does the math. Bottom line:

Both polls show similarly strong polarization, with most Republicans favoring a troop surge, and most independents and Democrats in opposition.

More here.

Beliefnet highlights the regular prayer of Father Mychal Judge, who died in the World Trade Center, ministering to his flock. Money quote:

Lord, take me where You want me to go;
Let me meet who You want me to meet;
Tell me what You want me to say, and
Keep me out of Your way.

But God wanted Mychal in His way, at the appointed hour.

A reader cites the correct reference:

The term "Author of Liberty" comes from the fourth stanza of Samuel Smith’s hymn "America," which is sung to the tune of "Good Save the Queen."

Here’s the verse:

Our fathers’ God, to thee,
Author of liberty, to thee we sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by thy might, great God, our King.

I like the indirectness of the invocation of the deity. Less is sometimes more.

A telling extract from Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol," where Scrooge meets the angel who is the Spirit of Christmas Present. They argue over the morality and legality of closing stores and pubs on Sunday, a cause dear to Christianists in Victorian England:

"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, "I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment."

"I!" cried the Spirit.

"You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all," said Scrooge. "Wouldn’t you?"

"I!" cried the Spirit.

"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day," said Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."

"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.

"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge.

"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

(Photo: a scene from the 1935 movie, Scrooge, featuring the Spirit of Christmas Present.)

The last European country that retains a Catholic church with real life, Poland, now has to cope with its own priest abuse scandal. Except the abuse this time was the trust of ordinary Poles whom some priests spied and informed on for Communist authorities. Rocco has an update.

This site proves that bears know how not to take themselves seriously. This YouTube has its charms.

Sane words:

Those who don’t have an answer for Iraq aren’t necessarily morally unserious, and those who do aren’t necessarily dogmatic.

[Apologies for garbling this in the first posting.]

A key premise of the president’s speech is that the alternative is so horrifying we have no choice but to press on. But this assumption, like the fixed WMD assumption before the war, risks freezing our thought and immobilizing strategy. The assumption deserves close examination. I’ve argued that withdrawal to Kurdistan, allowing the Sunni and Shia forces in Iraq to reach their own settlement through a real civil war with a real outcome, is something we need to think through. It may be less damaging to our interests than the surge. Its most important aspect is the way it changes the narrative of the war from Osama’s "Islam vs the West" to "Islam vs itself". I think that’s a strategic game-changer that may redound to our long-term advantage. It requires a United States prepared to let go of trying to control the region and stabilize it. I fear the president is unable to even think in such terms. But that doesn’t mean we cannot. I air this scenario in this post over a month ago and this one yesterday. A reader throws in his two cents:

We are not going to be able to win the argument on the war until we enter into a real, cold-eyed discussion of what the alternative to direct military engagement would likely look like.  Up to now our collective thinking has revolved around a choice between more of the same versus giving in to inevitable chaos.  It’s the "inevitable chaos" alternative that needs to be challenged and analyzed.

Would Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda in Mesopotamia based in Anbar hold a lovefeast to celebrate our departure, or would the Sunnis immediately commence a hunt-down of the alien, troublesome jihadis?  (Maybe the Taliban can push around the disparate Afghans, but I don’t think that the Iraqi Sunnis would put up with that shit.)  Would Iraqi Shia, having finally gained control of their own destiny, be inclined to throw open the door to the Persians next door?  Would the Shia majority be interested in occupying the oil-less sands of the Sunni Triangle and would the Sunni minority be interested in a never-ending war against the overwhelming Shia majority if a real deal on oil revenue could be put in place?  Would the Kurds be paranoid about an Arab invasion, and would the Turks be paranoid about a Kurd invasion if there was an American rapid response force in place in Kurdistan?

I’m just an ignorant slob sitting way back in the bleachers, but I think I know enough to be aware that these and other topics that can define the probabilities of an alternative to Bush’s war are not being rationally and thoughtful discussed. It’s past due.

Agreed. Over to you, realist Republicans and sane Democrats.

Where’s Rove? He’s been awfully quiet lately, hasn’t he? But one reader suspects his finger-marks are all over this speech. Here’s an interesting take:

If one views the speech as a campaign speech, it becomes intelligible. The words are focus group tested and, and while it cannot contain lies readily detectable by the audience, the truth is viewed as irrelevant. Therefore there is the reference to 9/ll because it is still is a hot-button phrase, although by 43’s own admission that has nothing to do with Iraq. He refers to another hot-button issue, controlling the threat of terror, even though his own National Intelligence Estimate concludes the Iraqi war is exacerbating that threat. He harps on Iran because memories linger of the kidnapping of the US employees at the American Embassy there. 

He accepts responsibility for mistakes because they learned from a similar admission with Katrina that this plays well. Of course, as with Katrina, it means nothing because he is by definition responsible and because the acceptance of responsibility has no policy ramifications. Jordan has an attractive and westernized king and queen and therefore he avoids references to that country even though most aid to the Sunni insurgents flows across its borders.

One could go on and on. But, fundamentally, the speech can only comprehended if it’s analyzed as a campaign tool intended to achieve an objective but with no intention of conveying concrete information.

But whose campaign? This president is outta here soon. I think the reader may be more accurate if he described this as a political speech designed to provide minimal cover until the president leaves office. But, still, I’m not convinced. I have a feeling that this is less a Rove speech than a Cheney speech. I don’t believe Cheney thinks this anemic gesture is a game-changer. Even he hasn’t become that unhinged. So what else can it mean? My gut tells me that this speech was, in fact, a serious military warning to Syria and Iran. This president may have in mind a future escalation far greater and more explosive than anything we’re doing in Baghdad. The real reason we’re not withdrawing is that we are keeping our options open for a wider war. And the president, as always, is not being honest about his real intentions.

(Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP.)