Month: February 2007

Yes, I know some of you were actually vacating over the weekend, but the blog wasn’t. A quick catch-up, if you’re interested in what you missed: Benjamin Franklin disagrees with Sam Harris; Mark Steyn appears to endorse "culling Muslims"; what Barack Obama has in common with the new Tory leader in Britain, David Cameron (who’s on track to be the next prime minister); and Mitt Romney’s anti-atheist bigotry. Enjoy.

The short answer: You can’t see me. Money quote:

Research by Jennifer Beer, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, finds that a face-to-face guidance system inhibits impulses for actions that would upset the other person or otherwise throw the interaction off. Neurological patients with a damaged orbitofrontal cortex lose the ability to modulate the amygdala, a source of unruly impulses; like small children, they commit mortifying social gaffes like kissing a complete stranger, blithely unaware that they are doing anything untoward.

Socially artful responses emerge largely in the neural chatter between the orbitofrontal cortex and emotional centers like the amygdala that generate impulsivity. But the cortex needs social information — a change in tone of voice, say — to know how to select and channel our impulses. And in e-mail there are no channels for voice, facial expression or other cues from the person who will receive what we say.

This is the downside, and I have had my fair share of online embarrassments over the years. But there is also an upside. My own experience with this blog is that anonymous emails are also a way for people to express their own thoughts more candidly and fearlessly than they might if they had to look me in the eye. My email in-tray each day – several hundred messages from all over the world – is a cornucopia of brutal insults, bigotry, scatology – and astonishingly articulate and honest expressions of thought, experience and opinion. I’ve learned that you can only have the good if you also have the bad. And one reason why I haven’t (yet) added comments is that by reproducing almost exclusively the good on the blog, I tend to encourage more of the better kind of candor.  From descriptions of how one feels in showers to expressions of faith to memoirs and reminiscences, the candor of the internet is a gift as well as a curse. It is one of the most treasured gifts I’ve received since starting this blog seven years ago. I don’t mind being flamed, if that’s a side-effect.

If we’re being honest, Iraq is currently a complete mystery. We have only a handful of signs to measure what is really going on in that country as the Bush administration continues its public relations exercize called "Plus Up." But since the initiative has gotten under way, we can see that the Shiite militias, the ones controlling the U.S.-backed "government", have backed off. Al Sadr is probably in Iran; Shiite violence appears to have ebbed. In contrast, Sunni violence seems to have reached new levels of sophistication and ambition. They may be getting far better at targeting helicopters and yesterday conducted a brazen al Qaeda-style atttack on a U.S. base in Tarmiya.

What can this tell us? I don’t know, but I can guess. It makes sense if you see the "surge" as essentially a breathing space for the Shia to regroup before the U.S. withdraws. They are the majority; and they will probably win the larger civil war that will follow this minor one when the U.S. quits. Sunni insurgents are therefore attacking the Shiites’ U.S. protectors (we may not be officially siding with the Shia but in practice, because we do not have the forces to shift the power-balance decisively, we are). The rape of a woman by Shiite forces – I mean the national government forces – can only intensify the distrust. It’s rare that a raped woman goes public in Muslim countries. All in all, a phony calm underpinned by a small notch upward in sectarian hatred and tension, driven by Sunni fear of the genocide ahead. At least, that’s my best distant assessment on the evidence before us. I hope I’m proven wrong.

Rabat, Morocco, 5.30 pm.

"Call Tim. He hates Chris," – Mary Matalin’s advice on how to release classified information to protect her boss, Dick Cheney.

Tim is Tim Russert; Chris is Chris Matthews. Good to see high affairs of state being conducted in the White House at a time of war. What’s revealing to me is what the administration was so focused on while the Sunni insurgency was in its initial stages: not the enemy abroad, but the enemy at home. We are discovering that Rove and Cheney were just as concerned with the latter as the former. They were D’Souza-ites before D’Souza.

The terrible sight of John McCain mortgaging his integrity to the Christianist right continues. David Kuo recalls another McCain, a man whose faith could inspire where Falwell’s merely divides.

He was for them before he was against them before he was for them before he was against them. I think that gets it about right. But I may have missed a pirouette somewhere along the way.

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner] … I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country," – George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775.

"We do not torture," – George W. Bush, lying through his teeth.

Scott Horton explores the true America this president has violated here.

A Chinese snake charmer performs at a temple fair to mark Chinese New Year February 19, 2007 in Beijing, China. (Photo: Guang Nui/Getty.)

Here’s hoping.