Month: February 2007

A reader writes:

I appreciate the recent rugby focus of the blog. I grew up in a "rugby family," which in the U.S. is not so normal. Not only did my father play, my mother did as well. Explaining to friends that my mother lost her voice for two months because she got elbowed in the throat during a rugby game was just one of the interesting tales I got to tell my friends.

Most of all, I remember how wonderful I was treated as a child by the rugby players and their families. There weren’t a lot us kids at the games but we always felt like part of the crew. And falling asleep while listening to members of the visiting Australian team singing bawdy songs in the living room was always grand (what’s the one where you hold your tongue while singing?). I have nothing but fond memories of growing up that way. Although I never played myself, my brother did, and my father just barely gave it up after numerous knew surgeries. He would’ve played until he was 80 if he could have.

Mine was a rugby home too. My dad was always AWOL on Saturdays, captaining or playing for the town team. But I didn’t really find running for my life in a muddy bog once a week my idea of fun. And I kinda liked my ears as they were. My dad’s got plastered halfway round his head by the time he was my age – and his nose was broken a few times as well.

I asked re: Whitman:

Why are young gay students not being taught about their extraordinary cultural inheritance?

A college professor writes:

The seminal book on this was published in 1991 by one of the preeminent senior scholars in American literature, Michael Moon, Emory University. The book was called Disseminating Whitman: Revision and Corporiality in Leaves of Grass (Harvard Univ. Press).

There are any number of other scholars working on gay Whitman. For example, one of the best Whitman scholars is Michael Warner, who is also known for having been instrumental in the development of "queer theory." You can’t seriously do Whitman in an American university today without articulating his patriotism with his homosexuality. Whenever I teach him, it is in this vein. My classes read, for example, "Scented Herbage of My Breast" alongside his ode to Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d." I’ll be doing that pairing in two classes this spring, in my Survey of American Literature, 1865 to Present, and in a seminar on the 1890s. But I’m hardly original in this regard.

(Photo: Thomas McVety.)

The United Nations gets 58 countries to sign a long-negotiated treaty prohibiting governments from "disappearing" individuals or keeping anyone in secret detention. A no-brainer, right? The United States is defined by its refusal to indulge in such totalitarian, police state practices. Well, it was. But not under this president. The U.S. won’t sign.

Time for some good news in the war. In the Philippines, there’s been success against a Jihadist entity called Abu Sayyaf which captured three American hostages in May 2001 and threatened the Philippine government. My new colleague, Mark Bowden, has a cover-story in the new Atlantic on this under-reported victory, a victory that might be very helpful in figuring out how to win the war in the coming years:

Eliminating [Aldam Tilao, the group’s leading figure and spokesperson] was a small, early success in what the Bush administration calls the "global war on terror," but in the shadow of efforts like the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, it went largely unnoticed. As a model for the long-term fight against militant Islam, however, the hunt for Tilao is better than either of those larger engagements. Because the enemy consists of small cells operating independently all over the globe, success depends on local intelligence and American assistance subtle enough to avoid charges of imperialism or meddling, charges that often provoke a backlash and feed the movement.

Bowden is interviewed about his report here.

Will it go down well in South Carolina?

A reader writes:

I’ve always appreciated your "The View from Your Window" postings for their beauty and fascinating randomness.  The photograph yesterday from Grand Rapids revealed a power in them I had never realized before. The photograph is of the neighborhood in which I grew up.  Seeing it, sitting in my New York apartment, through the vantage point of a former neighbor, or now more likely a stranger, was a surreal experience.  For the first time, the blog realm, which so often seems synthetic and distant, felt personal and communal.

A reader writes:

I just read the email you posted about Rambo at Camp Phoenix. Just wanted to add my confirmation of the incident that you posted. Rambo is a well known fixture at the Camp and one of the important things is that because he has been there for so long, he pretty much knows everyone who normally comes in and out. And I was actually at that Camp a few days after the incident. We had to come through a different gate as the old one had some damage to it.

And do you know who was back on the job 2 days later at the other gate? That’s right, Rambo, doing his job once again, big stick in hand. No resting on laurels for him. Back to the grindstone, day after day. But one thing he does have is the admiration of all who work on that Camp and respect of all in Kabul.

As a person who just got done doing about a year in Baghdad, the difference I feel between the Afghans and the Iraqis is remarkable. Here, you get a sense that they want more for their country, they want progress, and bluntly, they want what we have in the West. A co-worker tried to come incountry with an expired visa and the local passport people tried to extort a bit of cash from him. He refused and then mentioned the name of the LN (local national) that we used to facilitate such issues. The official immediately dropped his price down to the official one and begged the co-worker not to mention what he had tried.  This never would have happened in Baghdad.

In Iraq, you get the sense they are biding their time until we leave and then finally a blood debt will be repaid in full. Afghanistan wants to work with us and likes the use of the word ‘Ally’ and ‘Friend’.

So let’s focus on Afghanistan, can we? All is not lost. We can redeploy away from the civil war in Iraq, and re-engage when the blood-letting has died down.

That’s what it looks like to many Lebanese:

There is no Syrian-Israeli axis, not in the real world. But from a practical Lebanese point of view that doesn’t make any difference. While most Lebanese want regime-change or at least regime-punishment in Syria, the Israeli government openly, categorically, opposes any such thing. The Israelis dread the idea of post-Baathist Syria, and they therefore swear they will do nothing whatsoever to weaken or punish Assad. They want to negotiate with him and preserve his regime.

This is horrifically offensive in Lebanon, especially after the Israelis bombed Lebanon and left Syria alone last July.

Michael Totten elaborates here.

Nick Schulz makes a persuasive case.

"The church offered me a second insight: that faith doesn’t mean that you don’t have doubts. You need to come to church precisely because you are of this world, not apart from it; you need to embrace Christ precisely because you have sins to wash away – because you are human and need an ally in your difficult journey.
It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany; the questions I had did not magically disappear. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth," – senator Barack Obama, speaking words that help explain his mysterious but powerful appeal right now.

His full address is well worth reading – and, in my view, the finest public speech on religion in public life in years.

(Photo: Obama and Clinton at the National Prayer Breakfast, 1 February 2007 in Washington, DC., by Brendan Smialowski/Getty.)