Month: August 2007

From the NIE Report:

There have been measurable but uneven improvements in Iraq’s security situation since our last National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in January 2007. The steep escalation of rates of violence has been checked for now, and overall attack levels across Iraq have fallen during seven of the last nine weeks. Coalition forces, working with Iraqi forces, tribal elements, and some Sunni insurgents, have reduced al-Qa’ida in Iraq’s (AQI) capabilities, restricted its freedom of movement, and denied it grassroots support in some areas. However, the level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high; Iraq’s sectarian groups remain unreconciled; AQI retains the ability to conduct high-profile attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively. There have been modest improvements in economic output, budget execution, and government finances but fundamental structural problems continue to prevent sustained progress in economic growth and living conditions.

We assess, to the extent that Coalition forces continue to conduct robust counterinsurgency operations and mentor and support the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), that Iraq’s security will continue to improve modestly during the next six to 12 months but that levels of insurgent and sectarian violence will remain high and the Iraqi Government will continue to struggle to achieve national-level political reconciliation and improved governance.

So we’re left with continuing the current strategy, which will give us no real gains over the current situation, or leaving, and the civil war that would follow. It seems to me the choice is between an open-ended occupation, hoping with no reason for the best and a prudential withdrawal, expecting with good reason the worst.

A zoologist rhapsodizes:

The train to Buffalo isn’t just the train to Buffalo, it’s the train to everywhere in between New York City and Buffalo. Announcing a train departure properly can’t help but have more personality than an airport speaker’s monotone statement that 1st class passengers are now welcome to step onto flight somethingoranother going to whothehellreallycares. But there was one guy at Grand Central when I was growing up who could really do it right. I can still remember:

"Now boarding at Gate Number twenty-three, Platform A, Train Number 63, The Lake Shore Limited 2:30 departure for Buffalo. Making station stops at Crrrrrrr-Oton HarmonPoughkeepsieRhinecliff HudsonAllll-Bany Rensselaer. Schnectady. AmsterdamUticaRomeSyracuseRochesterBufffffff-Alo Depew! Continuting on to Erie. Cleveland. Chicago. Connect at Chicago for Allllllllll points west and south. Now departing Gate Number Twenty-Three Alllllll-A-bo-oard!"

It had rhythm and poetry. It was a performance in the spoken word. And I miss that magic.

It’s appropriate on the eve of my own wedding, but my favorite poem about trains is "The Whitsun Weddings." It’s here. You won’t regret the read.

"You’ve got me? Who’s got you?" "Superman."

(With love from Matt Forke to Margot Kidder.)

A reader writes:

What strikes me about Kristol’s rhetoric of late, and Bush’s Vietnam analogy, is how this War’s supporters –more so then it’s critics–have "given up". Chait is right, Kristol is smart, he knows how this will all end. He too, like us, has watched the moments of promise, of crumbling statues, of elections, disintegrate in chaos. He no longer has any interest in finding a way of out Iraq, instead he’s preparing for a way out of "Iraq Syndrome". When Kristol says:

"They sense that history is progressing away from them"

It is actually a much deeper and profound thought then you give him credit for. We have to remember that this has always been about "History" to the Neo-Cons. They were going to be the triumphant liberators of Iraq, upon whom books and movies would be based, they were going to knock the "greatest generation" off their pedestal through the sheer magnanimity of their glorious re-shaping of the world. But what Kristol, Perle, Bush et al. are now left with is a harsh reality, where to be effective they would have to engage in the relativism of picking lesser evils and there’s nothing glorious about that. So instead, they’ve just skipped a few pages in the history books, to where we all wonder "who’s to blame".  That’s what Bush was doing yesterday. Building an alibi. Blame the detractors for the negative externalities of my war and then get off the hook for blowing it.

A digression into literary envy by David Leavitt. Clive James said it best, though:

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life’s vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one’s enemy’s book —
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.

Continued here. Book here.

Whatever happened to the current generation of Matthew Bradys? Missing in action.

An interesting part of his debate in the 2004 Senate race against Alan Keyes:

There would be even more dissertation topics, I guess:

"If the plays had been written with a word processor on a computer that had somehow survived, we still might not know anything definitive about Shakespeare’s original or final intentions — these are human, not technological, questions — but we might be able to know some rather different things… We might discover the play had originally been called GreatDane.doc instead of Hamlet.doc. We might also be able to know what else he had been working on that same day, or what Internet content he had browsed the night before (since we’ll assume Shakespeare had Web access too). While he was online, he might have updated his blog or tagged some images in his Flickr account, or perhaps edited a Wikipedia entry or two. He might even have spent some time interacting with others by performing with an avatar in Second Life, an online place where all the world is truly a shared virtual stage.
…
We may no longer have the equivalent of Shakespeare’s hard drive, but we do know that we wish we did, and it is therefore not too late — or too early — to begin taking steps to make sure we save the born-digital records of the literature of today."

Matt Yglesias explains to Senator Lieberman who the insurgents are in Iraq.

Things have changed over the years:

Cats were not discussed in America’s first general pet reference guide, the 1866 Book of Household Pets, even though almost every household had one. But cats weren’t pets; they were seen, according to pet historian Katherine Grier, as “independent contractors,” housed in exchange for controlling vermin. Today, pets rarely have practical functions. According to the APPMA, the most frequently cited benefit of pet ownership—listed by 93 percent of dog and cat owners alike—is “companionship, love, company, affection.” The second-most-cited benefit is “fun to watch/have in household,” and the third is “like a child/family member.” Seventy-one percent of dog owners consider their pet a member of the family, as do 64 percent of cat owners, 48 percent of bird owners, 40 percent of small animal owners, and 17 percent of reptile owners. Even the scaly and cold-blooded, once brought into the home, can inspire parental affection.

I wonder if there’s a book about the evolving meaning of pet-ownership as a parallel to the evolving meaning of marriage. Snoop-Dogg puts clothes on his, by the way.