"Affirm the knight"

My parents are teachers. Now, at any rate. My mother trained as a teacher in college; my dad has become a teacher since his retirement from the Air Force some years back. They're about as dedicated as any parent could hope a teacher would be, and their dedication overflows into their grandparenthood, as well as their continuing parenting of their (very-)grown daughter here.

Recently they gave me a book called Why Gender Matters by Leonard Sax. As I have with so many parenting books I've received over my parenting years so far, I thanked them and put it on the shelf - until last night, when I was fresh out of new reading material and needed something, anything, to put me to sleep.

That book was not the right choice. It scared the bejeebers out of me: I railed against the mismatch between kindergarten teachers and their boy students (virtually all K teachers are women and have been trained to do things like speak gently and encourage kids to use lots of color and to draw human figures; boys physically do not hear as well as girls, and their retinas have more "motion-detecting" cells and fewer "identification" cells, such that they tend to draw relatively monochrome pictures of things in motion rather than nice families in their pretty gardens). I boggled at the difficulties of keeping boys interested in art and music, the girls in athletics, math, and science, when a "gender-neutral" approach is the norm. The chapter on teenage sexuality was so horrifying that when I finally fell asleep, it was with my "self-esteem script" for my daughter running through my head. I'm shuddering right now. As Dr. Sax terms it, the teen sex paradigm has changed from the female to the male: even as recently as ten years ago, the female paradigm was more common, in which the girl demanded, and got, at least a verbal and time commitment from the boy before she'd have sex with him (and of course this was back in the day when "having sex" included oral sex, which this book scarily informs me is now "second base" or "equivalent to kissing" to today's teens). The new male paradigm is, as my husband said this morning, a teenage boy's dream: sex with not only no explicit or implied commitment but actually designed and planned to mean a lack of commitment. "Hooking up." Fear it, if you're a parent.

Fear it for your daughters because any fool knows that it isn't all that fun for a girl or woman to perform sexual acts on a boy or man who doesn't give a tinker's damn about her. Fear it for your sons because this is all the warm-up they get in the desperately important "finding a surrogate mother" sweepstakes - let's face it, wives, that's what we are in one vital respect: we are typically our husbands' only truly intimate emotional connection and support besides their moms. And as Dr. Sax points out, single heterosexual men are sicker, unhappier, and shorter-lived than their counterparts with wives or partners.

I'm perhaps halfway through the book so far, and am growing increasingly nervous about the next ten or fifteen years with these kids of ours. How do we teach our daughter that she's "above rubies" and need not "drop to the broadloom" in Mark Steyn's humorous formulation for anyone unless she gets what she wants - love - beforehand? How do we socialize our sons, foster young men who respect women and have an appropriate outlet for their natural aggression?

As one guidance counselor says in the book, you may not be able to turn a bully into a flower child, but you can turn a bully into a knight. Affirm the knight, she says. I'd add that you may not be able to turn a flower child into a truck driver, but you can turn a flower child into an emotional Rock of Gibraltar for all around her.

I want my sons to be manly, my daughter to be womanly. I want them to have courage, to know when it's time to stand up and be counted, to feel deeply but to know when their feelings are not the most important factor. How can I affirm the knight in my sons? I sure hope there are some answers later in the book, because my confidence is at an all-time low right now.

On the other hand, there's this story, courtesy of Instapundit:

When their homes began to sink in Katrina's floodwaters, elders in the quarter here known as Uptown gathered their neighbors to seek refuge at the Samuel J. Green Charter School, the local toughs included.

But when the thugs started vandalizing the place - wielding guns and breaking into vending machines - Vance Anthion put them out, literally tossing them into the fetid waters. Anthion stayed awake at night after that, protecting the inhabitants of the school from looters or worse.

...

In the days after the storm, the Samuel J. Green school also served as their base for helping others in the neighborhood.

They waded through filthy water to bring elderly homebound neighbors bowls of soup, bread and drinks. They helped the old and the sick to the school rooftop, so the Coast Guard could pluck them to safety by helicopter - 18 people in all.

The knight was in the ascendant at that school. There's hope.

For the love of God

I started to title this entry "The wrath of God" but thought better of it; it's too easy to write off a disaster like that witch Katrina as "God's wrath" and stop thinking about it, except, depending on your temperament, to wonder (again) why God allows terrible things to happen, or to wonder why we theists insist that God is Love manifest when terrible things happen.

So instead I'm sending an appeal: for the love of God, for the love of humanity, please don't use this. Don't use this awful tragedy as a smackdown of your favorite Bozo-the-Clown doll. There's plenty of blame, too much blame, to go around: the city and state governments failed their citizenry, some of the citizenry did incredibly foolish things and may cost others their lives, and still other portions of the citizenry are now behaving like rabid dogs and armed two-year-olds, making the horror more horrible. There is no need to begin the accusations so soon. Let's bury the dead first, and pump out the bitter water, and tend to people's hurts. And let's learn: let's learn how to prepare for a foreseeable catastrophe, and how to help others caught up in it. Please. For the love of God.

Buck up, little soldiers!

The other day, my husband shared his concerns about polls showing slippage in American support for Bush and the war in Iraq. He was, he said, starting to despair of our ability to win in Iraq, not because we couldn't actually, physically win but because constant repetition of only bad news can sap, and may be sapping, our will to win.

He's right, of course. We have nothing to fear but our own flagging spirits. So here are some tidbits to counteract the loudest voices. First, credit where due: I found many of the following at Instapundit, and will credit his permalinks as well as original-source links.

• Instapundit brings a tale of two armors to our attention: An Army colonel tells the NWTimes a good-news story about how the Army is ahead of the curve, and the insurgents, on up-armoring its personnel, starting to equip them with armor that protects against not just ordinary rifle bullets but even against most armor-piercing rounds that insurgents are not yet using, and the August 14 Times reports, "For the second time since the Iraq war began, the Pentagon is struggling to replace body armor that is failing to protect American troops from the most lethal attacks of insurgents."
  
  
• When Today's Matt Lauer unexpectedly traveled to Iraq to interview some of the troops, he was shocked to find that their morale is high. Why, he asked? How can it be? The interviewee responded, "Well sir, I'd tell you, if I got my news from the newspapers I'd be pretty depressed as well."
  
  
• Are you concerned about Iraq's draft constitution? There are at least two ways to view its language: as one of the (two) most liberal constitutions in the Arab world, Afghanistan's being the other one with substantially identical language, or, more cynically, as a meaningless piece of paper that will be no more adhered to than the old Soviet Union's. A third way of viewing it is that it unequivocally establishes an Islamic state ruled by shari'a in which no woman will ever again feel sunlight on her hair or step outside without a family escort/chaperone. But that way would be self-deceiving. (Naturally middle ground is possible... but it's not the ground on which the American mainstream media are standing.)
  
  
• The dreaded IEDs: a historical perspective.
  
  
• And two from Powerline: on casualties and the intrinsic risks of soldiering, and on the President's speech yesterday to the Idaho National Guard.
  
  

On the off-chance that a reader from the left happens on this entry, please be assured that I've got a million of 'em.

Sticks and stones

Some time after 9/11, a very liberal friend and I were discussing al Qaeda, and I said, "I don't need to know anything more about 'why they hate us.'" My friend was horrified that I could bury my head in the sand about the causes of Islamist terrorism - how could we expect to end it without understanding it?

This exchange was by email, so of course all those limitations took their toll: no body language, no facial expressions, a lag between statement and response, the constant danger of misunderstanding caused by inarticulateness. Apparently she suddenly saw me as a Know-Nothing, an ignorant American (she is married to a Briton), an ideological isolationist intolerant of other cultures and peoples. Her assumption wounded me deeply; after all, she knew me. How could she discard everything she knew about me in favor of a caricature of her political enemies?

I replied, after I'd had time to cool my jets. What I told her, what I believe today, was this: I already know enough about "why they hate us." It's sufficient for me to know that "they" hate us because of what we are - what we are at our national core. We are an individualistic nation and culture, not submissive to God in the sense that "their" understanding of Islam requires, unwilling to give up our right to make our own moral choices. In order to make them love us, or even simply to stop hating us, we would have to become something other than what we are. And we should not (and I'll fight with whatever weapons I have at my disposal to ensure that we will not) take that step.

Can the radical Islamists pledged to our destruction make the same argument? Is it necessary for them to change what they are in order to live in peace with us, and therefore they fight to keep from changing at their core? The answer depends on how much of "what they are" is "people who cannot tolerate the fact that there are others who don't live by strictest shari'a." It makes no difference to me whether this or that Muslim abides by Islam's narrowest interpretation of its laws. But if it's necessary to one Muslim, or one Muslim nation, to impose shari'a on all others, even all other Muslims, well, that's where my culture trumps my tolerance: the right of the individual to pursue his own destiny, within the limits imposed by not interfering unduly with others doing the same, is much, much more important to me than the "right" of another culture to oppress even its own members, and it would be obscene for us to support such a "right" in the name of multiculturalism or stability. This isn't Kissinger's America.

A faction within Islam is out to destroy us. We are not out to destroy Islam, though there's probably a faction here in the West that would like to. A key difference between our side and "their" side is that the nuts on our side control neither the dialogue nor the guns.

A necessary enterprise

I [she says with some little defiance] am a stay-at-home mom. I haven't always been, and it's very likely that once our littlest is duly launched I'll find work outside the home that I'll want to do again. At present I'm in the fortunate position that my contribution to family income is not necessary.

My contribution to home life, however, is vital. And today I'm gonna blog about it. Housework, that is.

First the philosophical basis. We decided after our first child was born, when the Man of the House was also the Man in the House and I was the full-time worker, that the at-home person would do "all" the housework, leaving the at-work person free (or shackled, depending on your point of view) to interact with the child/ren after work. Naturally we soon learned that that division of labor is impractical and needlessly mean to both people. There are housework tasks that I hate but Steve enjoys; likewise there are times when he doesn't want to be overrun with children from the minute he walks in until the final salvo of the bedtime battle. So the way it works out is this: I do the cleaning. I do most of the cooking. I dither about yard work because I hate getting all hot and sweaty. I do the laundry but he usually distributes it and puts ours away (the kids put their own away), because I hate that part. He brings me coffee on the weekends, which is a fine morning ritual. He always offers help with the work to be done in the evenings, and if I want to talk I accept the help, because I'm able to work and talk simultaneously; if I want him to talk, I just ask for company, because he talks with his hands and with full eye contact at all time, which puts a serious crimp in the dishes.

As to the cleaning: may I recommend two diametrically opposed approaches:

• Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson, and
  
• the FLYLady.

Cheryl Mendelson, who is a bit persnickety (not that there's anything wrong with that), undertook to write a housekeeping manual such as would have been on the shelf of any middle-class housewife in England or the United States through, probably, the 1930s or so. She wrote a tome, in fact: the book is Bible-sized and biblical in its scope and detail. She tells how to fold a shirt. She tells how to wash a cutting board, as well as what type of cutting board to buy. She tells how to sweep a floor. She tells how to conquer soap scum on a glass shower door if you've let it get out of hand or if (the favorite Mendelson quote of a good friend of mine) "your cleaner has betrayed your trust." She tells what documents you must save and for how long. She tells how to choose domestic help, and how to avoid the commonest pitfalls in the process. The book is an incredibly useful, highly specific reference for almost every housekeeping question you'll ever have. But in order to do everything her way, you'll need her life: she, her husband, and one school-age child live in a Manhattan apartment.

My situation is somewhat different: three kids, one a toddler, in an embarrassingly big house in what amounts to the country - which means dirt. Dirt on clothes, dirt on floors, dirt in bathtubs, dirt on children. Hence the FLYLady. The FLYLady lives in my world and preaches several important sermons:

• You're not behind - just jump in where you are.
  
• Even housekeeping done imperfectly blesses the home.
  
• No whining.
  
• Do your routines.
  
• Shine your sink!

That last needs a bit of explanation. The FLYLady exhorts all harried homemakers to start small: clear our your sink every night before you go to bed, and shine it. Just shine your sink - wipe it clean, dry it, and polish it if it needs it, so that when you get up the next day even if the entire rest of the house appears to be teetering on the brink of disastrous collapse, your sink will make you happy. She establishes a number of routines and brooks no dispute about them: a bedtime routine that includes doing something for yourself alone, a morning routine that gets you out of bed and dressed down to the shoes so that you are aware that you're doing a job, a daily routine that takes care of what needs to be taken care of, a weekly routine for keeping the house in general trim, a seasonal routine that rotates through the standard areas of the home, hitting them thoroughly at intervals so that "spring cleaning" is never necessary. I only aspire to her full system, but I shine that sink and I have my routines that I do my best at... so I never hesitate to welcome people in, because the house is never more than a week out of "clean" and seldom more than half an hour out of a reasonable standard of "tidy."

Moving on to my favorite cleaning tools:

• Roomba! He's not the best vacuum cleaner in the world, and certainly not the fastest, but he'll work while I'm not there, he manages to find his docking station and recharge himself most of the time, and he's great fun to watch. (In our house, he's a "he." Some have "she" Roombas, I understand. It's a difference that only matters to another Roomba.) Besides, with three floors' worth of carpet, it's nice to be able to do a decent job on, say, the basement without having to lug the big vacuum downstairs every week. I remember when I was six and my dad told me that by the time I was a grownup every house would have a central vacuum system; from what I understand they really are da bomb, but I'd rather have my upright and my Roomba. Oh, and my DustBuster and my ShopVac. (Do I really have four vacuums?)
  
• FloorMate. This device is a personal version of the zamboni-like device that drives around shopping malls and airports vacuuming, mopping, and squeegeeing the floor. It looks like an upright vacuum cleaner and it's the least uncomfortable or gross way to clean hard floors that I've found. With constant suction, it wets the floor with clean cleaning solution, scrubs it if you want (you can turn off the brushes if you want to for "delicate" floors, but I figure my family is much harder on our wood floors than a weekly scrubbing with a soft nylon brush), then sucks up most of the water - very nearly all the water if you change one setting with your thumb. This is a boon for people whose children do not heed warnings to "Stay off this wet floor! You might [boom] slip and fall..." There's no bending, no mopping with effluent water, no rinsing, no stinky mop drying in the laundry room or the garage. It's not perfect but it's a heck of a lot easier than the hands-and-knees method propounded by Ms. Mendelson. (I fully acknowledge that only the hands-and-knees approach can get a floor really clean, but even then it's only if you do it absolutely right.)
  
• Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. I resisted these for about two years after they came on the market; they're expensive, compared to making your own disinfecting solution with a little (super-cheap) bleach and water. But the convenience factor cannot be overstated here. I keep a container in each bathroom and in the kitchen, along with a package of the similar Windex Wipes.
  
• Electrasol 3 in 1 Tabs with JetDry Powerball. Honestly, what I like most about these is not so much the great job they do; I have yet to notice a significant difference between dishwasher detergents, which has led me to conclude that the dishwasher makes a lot more difference. What I like about them is that you plunk the whole little brick into the dishwasher without regard to which compartment it goes in or whether you got a little distracted and poured in a whole lot more than you needed. As a person who has had four dishwashers over the past five years, I value not having to understand my dishwasher in detail: which compartment is "pre-wash," which is "main wash," will a particular compartment require a particular setting in order to pop open... Feh. Unwrap a little brick and toss it in.
  
• Clorox ToiletWands. Toilet brushes are gross. This thing is a slim plastic wand that you can hang unobtrusively on the side of your toilet tank, then, when you want to clean the toilet, you click it onto a scrubby disk impregnated with cleaner. When you're done, you hold it over a waste basket, click again, and the scrubby falls into the trash. I have one in each bathroom, together with a six-pack of scrubbies. The Lysol ReadyBrush seems giant by comparison, and though it claims to disinfect its own brush head each time you use it, it still seems gross. The Scrubbing Bubbles flushable toilet brush seems not very scrub-worthy, and with a septic tank I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be flushing things like that in the first place. Scotch-Brite has a competitor out there, but for some reason I like the aesthetics of the Clorox model; you never actually have to pick up even the clean scrubby.
  
• Lest you think I am a full dues-paying member of the Disposable Society, dishcloths. I buy (once every five years or so) a big pack of cheap washcloths, which I then change out at least daily, washing them in the washing machine with chlorine bleach. Chlorine bleach, which has gotten a bad rap lately and is undoubtedly toxic, is also highly effective at disinfecting. I want my dishcloths clean; the sponge-in-the-dishwasher method seems suspect to me, as interior sponge pores aren't readily exposed to the water and detergent. Evidently microwaving sponges can sanitize them - but be sure all food is off the sponge first.
  
• Likewise, cleaning cloths for anything involving heavy scrubbing or just a lot of dusting. I use the least expensive cotton napkins I can find; they're lint-free and can be laundered vigorously.
  

Enough already! I am not a clean freak, I promise. Ask anyone who knows me. I subscribe to the belief that some dirt is not only inevitable but necessary and valuable, and I apply the Five-Second Rule to any food that falls on the floor as long as it's not the floor in front of a toilet or the litter box, for instance. I don't sterilize baby bottles but I do sterilize beer bottles (maybe a homebrewing blog entry some other time); I don't iron children's clothes but I sometimes iron sheets. I am a catch-as-catch-can housekeeper, just doing my best to support the family in the way to which I am currently called.

America the one-eyed

I've been surgically attached to Belmont again this morning, reading two new posts that purport to be about the role of Central Asia in the global conflict, present and future. I say "purport to be" because the comment threads, particularly in the second post, quickly became philosophical rather than strategic. Fascinating stuff, some of which calls to mind the scene from The Princess Bride, Greatest Movie of All Time^TM, in which Vezzini, Buttercup hostage at his side, is lecturing Westley about fights to stay out of:

The first [universal adage] is to stay out of land wars in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! [And then he drops dead.]

I have re-created the quote. All who know the movie, please cut slack.

So my first thought is that if, as Wretchard at Belmont suggests, we're poised to enter that realm of military folly known as "land war in Asia," I certainly hope he's right that our now-demonstrated ability to project force far from the sea and from permanent bases will be as effective as the steppe horses were for the Mongols - NOT that I advocate attacking China, of COURSE. Good gravy. But the point is, that's one big swath of land there, Central Asia, and more than one army has wandered around in it for a long time, getting progressively hungrier and colder before reaching its goal. If our fortunes take us there, we'd better have our supply lines locked down and defended...

And my second thought is related. Some Belmont commenters, examining the prospect for our chasing down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan or wherever his fortunes have taken or will take him - but probably northward if, as many believe, he's currently harboring in northwestern Pakistan and we have any success in convincing Musharraf that we're going to come after bin Laden no matter how concerned he, Musharraf, is about Pakistan's border integrity - brought up the question of why we're not trying to get Russia or (less probably) China involved in the forward effort. After all, the reasoning goes, all the 'stans were once in the Soviet sphere and Moscow retains at least illusions that they are Russia's turf; why not use that to our advantage?

The title of this post is intended to convey my belief and understanding that we are not licensed drivers of the engine of history, a tortured metaphor if ever there was one. We, like every other civilization and people before us, are doing the best we can to choose a course that is good for us. The difference between what we're doing and what other, less visionary (if I may use the term) nations are doing is, I think, that we're attempting to see at least the medium term. It's been pointed out in various spots and with various emphases that the War on Terror is in fact in some respects a war for oil - or, more cogently, a war for Our Way of Life, since OWoL runs on oil (and gas, and coal, pace my husband in the energy biz). Oil matters. Oil on the open market matters a lot - nowhere have we "conquered" an oil-producing nation and arrogated its oil resources for ourselves; we always buy, and in practice we prefer the market model for pricing. Giant oil fields in the hands of militant Wahhabists - that's not a scenario we should want to promote, either from an OWoL standpoint or from a human rights standpoint. Central Asia has promise as an oil-producing region - some say as productive a region as the Middle East is today, though I haven't looked that up anywhere. So. Do we want that region under the control of bin Laden's spiritual brethren (by whom I do not mean Muslims, but rather militant Wahhabists, Islamofascists, or choose your euphemism for Muslims who believe that their mission in life is the return of the Caliphate by whatever means necessary)? Clearly not.

But almost as clearly, we don't want those lands under the control of a Russia that apparently still entertains notions of "democracy" radically different from ours. (Recall that the Soviet Union always tried to convince the world that it was a "democracy" too - just a remarkably unified one.) Nor do we want China, with few pretensions to post-Soviet reform, in control. While we're allied with both, in general, in the GWOT, our interests do not align perfectly, to say the least. So in the medium term, at least, it behooves us to prepare to project our power into the vastness of Central Asia, not to subjugate it but to provide its people with an alternative to Chinese central control and Russian pseudo-empire. If we succeed in promoting real democracy in the 'stans, how much the better for us?

This is where I get puzzled: where are the Russians and Chinese? Why aren't they taking advantage of either the wide-openness of the region or our current "distraction" in Iraq? If we must get involved in Central Asia, even if "only" to the extent of supporting democratic reform movements (as we're already doing, which in itself represents a pretty significant departure from the past century or so), we stand to create a region of allies where we've never had them before. If Russia and China have had the use of their eyes over the past twenty years or so, perhaps they've noticed that Soviet-style socialism is gone the way of the dodo and Chinese-style socialism has survived only by hybridizing heavily with capitalism; why would they ignore these facts of recent history and, respectively, warn the US to stay out of the 'stans because they're "traditionally" part of Moscow's sphere of influence, or apparently ignore them altogether? See this map and ask yourself why China isn't in the news all the time concerning Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Certainly there are ethnic considerations - but I say again, these countries appear to be "up for grabs" in the alliance sweepstakes, in an area of important strategic value right now and potentially even more important economic value in the future - especially with China's oil consumption growing like the weeds I can't keep ahead of in the back yard. Yet - nothing. In the country of the blind, we do appear to be king.

Do I cheer or weep?

Victor Davis Hanson is kind of an odd duck. A Californian, a farmer, a Hoover fellow, an expert in military history - I look to him from time to time when I need a historical perspective on war (for instance, when I've seen too many "War is not the answer" bumper stickers in one day). He's often breathtakingly brilliant, I think. But I was dismayed by an article of his I just read.

Called "The Same Old, Same Old," the article concerns the circumstances that made the London bombings possible: in particular the feelgood political correctness that declares any suggestion of a gigantic common link between the London bombings, the Egyptian bombing last weekend, Madrid last year, 9/11, the USS Cole, the Marine barracks in Lebanon back in the '80s, and so on, and so forth, ad in-bloody-finitum - a violent and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam - racist and unacceptable. We are so afraid to be insensitive to the cultural imperatives of others, Hanson says, that we shelter the asp in our bosom, trumpeting free speech as young Muslims in London (and not just London) are taught to hate the system that feeds, clothes, shelters, and permits them to hate it.

That's not the part I'm dismayed about. All that is common knowledge among those paying attention. Look, I've got no beef with Islam; as I might say about Christianity if I knew as little about Christ as I know about Mohammed, any religion that can retain the belief of a billion people can't be all bad. (Yes, I know some call Islam the "one-way religion"; I have no personal knowledge of how easy, difficult, or acceptable it is to become an apostate Muslim, so I can't comment.) I have a huge problem with the fact that the Muslim "mainstream" is not more vehement in its denunciations... and this is the part of Hanson's article that I hated. He says this:

...a madrassa that indoctrinates directionless youth, or an imam who shouts hatred to his audience, must always simultaneously when called upon “condemn” terrorism, and then seek victimhood when the rare scrutiny of an outraged public nears.

And even more to my dismay:

Bin Laden has so far only made one mistake: He took down the entire World Trade Center rather than the top floors, and had the misfortune of having George Bush as president. Thus he lost Afghanistan and ended up with democratic reform from Iraq and Lebanon to the Gulf and Egypt. Train bombings in Madrid and bus explosions in London, like the carnage in Iraq, are preferable, since they are enough to terrify and demoralize the Westerner but not quite enough to knock sense into him that only military resistance and victory will save his civilization.

In other words, the goal of terror attacks (brace yourselves, this is self-evident but I forgot it) is terror, not necessarily the infliction of mass casualties and certainly not military supremacy. Hanson suggests that the scale of terror attacks since 9/11 has been deliberate - deliberately small: just enough to sap our will for this fight, without being enough to galvanize our resolve. So far they've failed, because of Bush, Blair, and Howard and the stubborn will of the Anglosphere (not being culturalist here; can anyone believe that if we went home to sulk within our own borders, Romania would fight on?). What happens in 2008?

On the good side, it's not clear on which side the terrorists have been erring: have the attacks been too small to sap our will effectively, or too large such that they have bolstered our cojones? And, too, I confess to a sense that even Hanson can overestimate our opponents: are they - and by "they" I mean the midlevel people who must be in charge of planning and executing attacks such as the London bombings - as subtle as all that? Or would they in fact aim for the most blood, the most torn metal, the most horror they could gin up?

In any event, their second try in London is clearly a loss for them, a win for us. In no way was London "terrorized" by the second, failed bombing attempts. I've heard a few commenters suggest that the failure will act in the terrorists' favor in that they'll garner grossly misplaced sympathy on their account - but really, people. And, too, I've heard some commenters make the point that we tend to ascribe to our enemy almost supernatural powers - their numbers grow magically and geometrically, like the undead fighters in Alexander's Black Cauldron (LOVE those books), while we can't always make our recruitment numbers (but our reinstatement numbers are exceeding goals) even with increasing enlistment bonuses, etc.

All right then. I've cheered myself up to some extent. Kids crying to go to the pool - off I go to brave the chlorine, the ultraviolet, the Lyme disease...

On eating and having cake

I've been over at Belmont Club, one of my favorite strategy/foreign affairs blogs, and Wretchard, its erudite and almost anonymous (he just revealed his Secret Identity a few weeks ago) author, had interesting things to say about the presence or absence of a global terror network. It appears that in January 2005, the BBC ran a series called The Power of Nightmares. (I'd give you the link, but I'd rather you followed the Belmont Club "presence or absence" link in the previous sentence, which will point you to the BBC if you want to go there. Reason: Wretchard is infinitely smarter than the Beeb and it's in the comments to his blog that my point resides.) The premise: that there is no global terror network, but that the illusion of one, created or at least used by politicians to cement their positions, scares us just as much as a real one would. The problem: the London bombings, which are increasingly acknowledged to be linked to al Qaeda (not least because people claiming responsibility for the first set of bombings stated that they are a branch of al Qaeda).

There's been a lot of talk from some quarters, including the Kerry camp in the runup to the November 2004 elections, that if Bush had "kept his eye on the ball" (as if that was the problem) and captured bin Laden rather than getting "distracted" by Iraq, we wouldn't now be in the mess those quarters claim we're in. (Side note: this view of how to capture bin Laden reminds me a lot of an old joke about how to perform a do-it-yourself kidney transplant: "First, remove the diseased kidney..." I'm no doubt grossly misstating it, but the point the joke and I are trying to make is that simply glossing over the so-difficult-it-could-be-considered-miraculous-if-successful does not constitute a complete instruction. Thusly: "All Bush had to do was keep his eye on the ball and he would have captured bin Laden.") Anyway. The implication, sometimes the bald statement, was that capturing bin Laden would bring an end to Islamist terror against the West. If that were the case, my goodness, sounds like a global terror network to me...

Nobody messes with our mom...

And may the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen.

The stakes in Iraq

This entry, dear reader(s), is part of an ongoing discussion at a favorite blog check-in of mine, Tom Maguire's JustOneMinute (found here). The topic of discussion was nominally that the Gray Lady was finally realizing that, willy-nilly, we are in Iraq - time to focus on how to win there, and on what constitutes victory; TM's specific entry is here. I was - I won't say "chasing a rabbit," because in my oh-so-humble opinion the point I raised is absolutely critical - but I was skating dangerously close to an attempted blog-hijack, I think - posting comments that were getting sufficiently off-topic as to annoy both host and fellow commenters.

My point was that Republicans and/or conservatives and/or generalized hawks are highly motivated to keep trying to convince those on the other side of the necessity and positive significance of the war in Iraq not just because we're contentious, but more importantly because Bush cannot be reelected. We face the prospect of a Democratic or otherwise dovish White House in the next Presidential term, and if we lose the political will to stay in Iraq until our presence is no longer needed to create or maintain security for the new democratic government there, we stand to lose much more than face. I laid out several results of an Iraq cut-and-run, which are not an exhaustive list but are what I immediately thought of:

If we leave Iraq before it's ready to stand on its own, surrounded by non-democracies and pseudo-democracies and itself a novice at self-determination, we:
1. Squander our hard-won credibility - for once in the past fifty or so years, we've so far done what we said we'd do;
2. Condemn one or more ethic minorities in Iraq to the tender mercies of whatever faction manages to grab power there;
3. Orphan democratic movements throughout the region;
4. Lose out on a big chunk of energy portfolio diversification and put ourselves again in the Saudis' hands;
5. Lose an incredibly valuable intel/translator/interlocutor source and an actual Arab ally;
6. and have to do it all again one day.

One commenter who disagrees with me put it this way:

1. Squander our hard-won credibility - for once in the past fifty or so years, we've so far done what we said we'd do;

I didn’t know we said we would invade a country for what non-state actors were doing to us in Africa, Aden and NYC. “If you hit me again Jamie, I’m going to punch out Cecil!”
We picked out Saddam to overthrow for the acts of others? How does punching out the wrong man strengthen our credibility against the perpetrators? The only way it does is to link terrorists to Saddam, which is why it’s the current R talking point.

2. Condemn one or more ethic minorities in Iraq to the tender mercies of whatever faction manages to grab power there;

This is our job? They have been fighting each other longer than this country has existed. I really don’t think we will “solve” it , or even contain it, unless we maintain a military presence indefinitely. They will have to work it out themselves.

3. Orphan democratic movements throughout the region;

We have adopted them? We are supporting fifth columnists in every Arab country? How would we feel of foreign powers were funding “movements” in this country? Remember the Chinese political fundraising ruckus?

4. Lose out on a big chunk of energy portfolio diversification and put ourselves again in the Saudis' hands;

So you agree it was the oil. We’re the strongest – we’re taking it – right? Law of the jungle. Nasty, brutish and short.

5. Lose an incredibly valuable intel/translator/interlocutor source and an actual Arab ally;

How is a perceived puppet valuable to us in a conflict with our opponents? We’re winning hearts and minds by imposing western values? If “liberals” are traitors for mentioning the word NAZI, how will some Islamic demagogue paint a “free” Iraq?

6. and have to do it all again one day.

Absolutely correct. We will have to do it once a generation – forever.

And below is my reply:

"We resolved then, and we are resolved today, to confront every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America" and "Over the years, Iraq has provided safe haven to terrorists such as Abu Nidal, whose terror organization carried out more than 90 terrorist attacks in 20 countries that killed or injured nearly 900 people, including 12 Americans. Iraq has also provided safe haven to Abu Abbas, who was responsible for seizing the Achille Lauro and killing an American passenger. And we know that Iraq is continuing to finance terror and gives assistance to groups that use terrorism to undermine Middle East peace." (both from http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html) "Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing." (from http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030317-7.html) Our quid-pro-quo was clear; we followed through exactly as we said we would. For more on the ever-popular "Why Iraq? And if Iraq, why not North Korea?" please see den Beste, for example, at http://denbeste.nu/essays/strategic_overview.shtml, for all the good it'll do. Warning: it will give you what you think is ammo for the "Bush lied!" thing; he points out that WMDs were not a primary rationale against Iraq, though their threat was certainly viewed as real.

This nation never said "We will pursue the planners and any surviving perpetrators of the attacks on 9/11 to the ends of the earth - but only those people" because, as many have noted, the criminal-indictment model had already proven itself a big flop. As much as you personally, and many who share your views, would like to believe that our only legitimate action would have been a la the prior WTC garage bombing, the policy of our nation from September 2001 onward was to take the fight to terrorists and their supporters (necessary, since terrorists don't have to squat in one spot and wait, but nations do), at our option rather than solely in response to their actions, wherever we found them.

Onward. Re: failing to follow through on our promise to the various ethnic minorities of Iraq - yes, these people have been fighting one another for hundreds of years, and we're standing in the way of continued ethnic violence. Having stepped in, staying in during this tenuous time is indubitably our responsibility. Before we were in Iraq, Saddam was able to oppress and kill his populace at his own whim; one of the costs of regime change in a post-realpolitik world is that we don't allow the next-strongest strongman to take over that task. It's to our nation's shame, but to the doom of a lot of Iraqis, that we failed to follow through on our implied commitment to them back after GWI. Similarly, our armed support of a democratic Iraq has emboldened democratic movements throughout the Middle East. It's not exactly like finding a baby on your doorstep, who becomes your responsibility willy-nilly, but more like (ohboy, here goes) Syndrome in The Incredibles: inspired by Mr. Incredible, Syndrome wanted desperately to become his youthful ward and sidekick; rebuffed, he made revenge his life's work, which is where the analogy fails utterly, since although I could see a movement that could feel itself abandoned becoming both powerful and vengeful against the US, I think its home government's oppressing it out of existence is the more likely outcome.

Re: oil. We aren't taking the oil. We are buying the oil. We buy oil where oil is. If Iraq is producing oil that's available on the open market, we don't have to buy as much Saudi oil, and we are less "beholden" to the Saudis and hence more able to pursue hard diplomacy concerning their support of Wahabbiism and terrorists. Portfolio diversification is not only a weapon in the WOT but sound policy in any case, unless you want to put all our nation's eggs in one basket as we did during the '70s energy "crisis." Look. There's no commercial alternative energy source available or even on the horizon; oil is the world's fuel. Would you rather be majority-dependent on Saudi Arabia, or Mexico, or Russia, or would you rather have a stake in each of these markets and have less concern about natural or artificial shortages in one?

Re: Iraq as puppet, I defer to Will (thanks, Will)[Interjection for bewildered blog-readers: Will is another commenter, who stated that other Arab nations' perception of us or of Iraq is less important than the Iraqi people's perception of their own government; if the people of Iraq can see their government acting in their interests and not at our behest, in time even electing leaders on a platform of "Americans out!," their perception that their government is in fact independent, not a puppet of the United States, is in the long run the only one that matters.]. But as to translators, surely you agree that a whole nation full of Arabic-speakers could be useful; as to intel, surely you realize that it's easier in general to infiltrate an enemy organization if you're a native speaker, and that Ba'athist elements in Iraq who may be turned could have interesting information for us (you may not realize or want to admit that, since it implies a connection between Saddam and Islamic terror, but there you go); as to interlocutors, OK, perhaps initially - but nonetheless, as an "infidel" woman, I can't even shake hands with an observant Muslim, and Condoleezza Rice is in that position as well. Even an Iraqi "puppet" diplomat would have more instant ability to defuse cultural prejudices than Sec. Rice would, and negotiation works a lot better when the weaker or aggrieved party at least doesn't feel as if it must jettison its principles, such as they are, from the get-go.

As to your "we'll have to do this once a generation - forever," you lost me there. Is the world's history entirely bereft of ethnicities who learned to live in civility, if not harmony? Or do you contend that Arabs just aren't up to it? (Yup, bait. But how else should I take the statement?) Shoot, even fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews are able to live side-by-side practically everywhere, not always without tension but almost always without violence, and we all know that even in recent history some Christian sects (and one Gospel was written/translated in such a way as to emphasize this misunderstanding) blamed Jews for Jesus's death - is there a more, you should excuse the expression, fundamental rift than that? What is necessary is in essence forty years of wandering in the desert, a tactic those aware of Judeo-Christian tradition will recognize as God's own way of dealing with culturally ingrained but harmful ideas.

We won't be necessary as a security force in Iraq for much longer. "Much longer" is not to be understood as months, however, but as years. It may well be longer than the remainder of Bush's term, but I am confident that it won't be as long as Saddam's reign. Possibly this period could have been shortened by different or more precipitate action immediately after the fall of Baghdad - but we'll never know, and we have what we have. It's time to stand still on the spot you choose: do you want to win, for ourselves, for Iraq, for the Middle East, or do you want to lose, so Bush looks bad or for the sake of your own ideology? (These "you's" are impersonal ones, not aimed at my commenter-opponent.) (It is of course possible that you would want to win for the sake of making the other side look bad, but because winning will have mostly good effects and losing will have mostly bad ones regardless of motive - I don't see that there's another way to view the outcomes - feel free to feed your desire to gloat, pro-winning types.)

I'm interested to hear comments concerning alternative views of what the result of "Iraq: Out in '09" would be. Please convince me, if you can: like all good Americans, I don't want to lose one more American soldier, one more contractor, one more innocent Iraqi, without good reason.

Side note that isn't really "side": yesterday my oldest informed me that soldiers on the battlefield might be able to talk encouragingly to their enemies, and convince them that peace is better than war. I stopped in my tracks: time for what is sometimes called a "come-to-Jesus" in Texas and points east o' there. He's a young kid, still, so I went against my nature and tried to keep it simple, but in essence here it is: peace is obviously better than war in a neutral sense, but there are some things worth fighting for, and when one of those things is in jeopardy you must fight or die, either individually or as a nation. Or, I presume, as a civilization or a species. Furthermore, your enemy will not always be amenable to encouraging words, and - again with a The Incredibles reference - will not hold back because your intentions are good. The way in which this is not a side discussion ought to be obvious: giving Iraqis the hope of and the ability to start and nurture a government of, by, and for their own people is a good reason to stay there until they can manage it alone.

Our neighbors to the north

This article from the Ottawa Citizen is instructive:

"If you are at the public trough, if you are collecting taxpayers' money, you should be following taxpayers' laws. And that means adhering to the Charter [of Rights and Freedoms]," says Kevin Bourassa, who in 2001 married Joe Varnell in one of Canada's first gay weddings, and is behind www.equalmarriage.ca.

...in an article titled "Gay advocates fight churches' charity status -
Institutions fear losing tax breaks if they oppose same-sex unions; Rightly so, gay-rights group says."

Over at Jane Galt's place, earlier this spring, we had a long and interesting discussion about gay marriage - or, more accurately, about the unforeseen consequences of changing major social structures such as marriage, with illustrative examples from divorce law in the early 20th century and the concept of "bastardy" somewhat later. The comment thread eventually wound down into my favorite potential logical fallacy - the slippery slope - countered by "That's a logical fallacy!" Thusly:

Gay-marriage opponent: If you can redefine marriage by taking gender out, why not number of participants? Why not age of participants?

Gay-marriage advocate: That's ridiculous!

Gay-marriage opponent: Why? Tell me what would prevent it, once the meaning of "marriage" is on the table.

Gay-marriage advocate: Now you're just being obtuse.

Gay-marriage opponent: Seriously, what would prevent it? While we're talking about social change, what about churches that refuse to marry gay couples?

Gay-marriage advocate: What about them?

Gay-marriage opponent: How long would it be before a church is accused by the ACLU of hate crime for discriminating against gay people?

Gay-marriage advocate: That's ridiculous!

And so on. I will say it again:

The "fallacy" part of the slippery-slope fallacy is not that the undesired end of the slope is possible, but that it is inevitable. And where we have contemporaneous evidence from a culture much like our own that the undesired end of the slope is approaching, "possibility" is not a high hurdle.

This issue is one I struggle with. Marriage has been a powerful shaper of my life. Not having to take extraordinary measures to be able to see my husband in the hospital, not having to adopt one another's children, being free from compulsion to testify against my husband - all right, so far I haven't had much specific use for many of the automatic rights of marriage, but it's nice to know they're there. And I have no animus against committed gay couples, or against gay people who want to find a life partner. (I do have some animus against "players" of whatever gender or orientation. Not my idea of how a person who wants to be good behaves.) So. What to do, when a group, through (I believe) no fault of their own, is unable to take advantage of benefits I enjoy, through no virtue of mine?

This isn't a case of conflicting rights, as the abortion debate is, or as slavery was once purported to be by some. If gay people were to marry, it wouldn't abrogate the right of straight people to marry. But - again let me direct you to the esteemed Jane - we are speaking of the unintended consequences of such a sweeping change. As Megan McArdle (a.k.a. Jane Galt, and no relation, by the way) points out, it's at the margins that the effects of change may be most readily observed. In this case, while the marriage of gay people would not affect my willingness to live in the state of matrimony, there are marginal cases whom it would affect (if I recall, one such case turned up in the comment thread to either the post above-referenced or in the follow-up post she wrote - a minister and wife who have stated their intent to divorce if gay people are allowed to contract legal marriage, because in their minds such a legal right would dilute the meaning of their own marriage). Marriage is good for society; it acts as a stabilizer, provides better for children, on average, than single parenthood or two-parent parenthood in which there is no legal bond between parents, and makes people happier, again on average, than single life. Where marriage falls into decline, other important social structures may as well: while my understanding of the data from Scandinavia and the Netherlands is that it's more correlative than causative, even the removal of all "marriage advantages" from marriage by the introduction of formal civil unions for opposite-sex couples accompanies a drop in both marriage rates and birthrates. So my answer is this:

Ahem. First let me say that, in contrast to the claims of some gay-marriage activists, the lack of a legal right on the books to gay marriage is not equivalent to slavery, and I believe that the epic indignity of slavery is lessened by the comparison. Now. My answer is that, with apologies to same-sex couples who want to commit to one another in perpetuity and desire the advantages that legal marriage conveys on that commitment, I think this is one of those times when we might act in haste and repent at leisure. Therefore, I believe we ought to act ever so slowly, taking careful note of the effects on more precipitate societies around us. If same-sex marriage is an overall good, it'll become clear (or at least clearer) in a generation; twenty years is not too long for society to hesitate when an institution that predates every society now in existence is in question.

Petit poulet

So my husband calls me from his commute today - something that has never happened in the history of his having a cellphone, except for once when he was almost at work and realized he'd left his computer at home. He listens to NPR in the car, and wanted to give me the four-one-one about Climate Change In Our Time. Apparently the bets are being hedged:

Q: Could global warming really slow down the Gulf Stream and cool Europe, or maybe even start a new ice age?

Unfortunately I'm not finding the actual Marketplace piece he was listening to, but the story linked above is the same one: global warming, even 1-2 degrees, could (a similar BBC article said "would") melt the Greenland icecap, diluting the salinity of the waters of the northern Atlantic and slowing or changing the course of the major source of Europe's relatively warm climate (as compared to other places at the same latitude). The results could devastate, among other things, the vineyards of France, and presumably change the range of the rain in Spain.

Well, darn it.

All right. I was trained as a geologist, many a year ago. It didn't take long to learn the fundamental lesson that the Earth is not a hunk of rock that can be held in stasis. Climate change is the norm; the fact that someone is around and able to watch it happen is the most significant difference between this time and, say, the Wisconsinan glaciation of some 20,000 years ago (when, surely, there were people around, but their interest was personal and far from academic). All the agitation of all the "concerned" groups in the United States and elsewhere will not halt the process.

Finally, "concerned" groups appear to have realized that "ordinary" people are on to this fact, and they've changed the nomenclature: no longer is the big bugaboo "The Coming Ice Age" (because many people reasonably believe that we're in an interglacial period anyway, and there will be another ice age no matter what we do) or "Global Warming" (because, first, the evidence is less than compelling in spots, and second, eternally, climate change is the norm) but "Abrupt Climate Change." Abrupt climate change, human-caused, to which the marvelous feedback loop of Mother Gaia will be unable to respond, and disaster will follow.

No, sorry. Disaster will not follow. The Earth, Mother Gaia if you will, has survived and thrived through absolutely no free oxygen but lots and lots of volcanogenic carbon dioxide, through abundant free oxygen (one of the more corrosive gases around, witness rust and tarnished silver), through meteor strikes, through the drift and smash of continental plates into and away from one another such that, at one point, the average summer temperatures in the center of the massive supercontinent known as Pangaea were perhaps twenty degrees hotter than the American interior desert today, through ice ages that buried Great Britain under a mile of glacier (it's still rebounding - measurably), through two-day catastrophic floods draining 3000-square-mile, 2000-foot-deep lakes that carved drainage systems amazing to shutterbugs today, and above all through that terrible scourge life in every available niche. She is as vital now as she was when the biggest land critter was a centipede.

Don't get me wrong: when the polar ice caps melt - again - Manhattan, if it still exists, will be Atlantis, and Orange County will bloom like the rose. I'm not saying that human life will not be affected. But let's frame this debate appropriately: it's not the Earth that's in danger. It's Western civilization's current condition, and only that. Stop Climate Change - as well try to stop an earthquake. The Sahara Desert used to be a garden; can we delude ourselves that its hardscrabble residents today would not welcome more rainfall? Niagara and Angel Falls are ephemeral; the Great Salt Lake is ephemeral; the Nile is ephemeral; the Himalayas are ephemeral. We may not be as ephemeral as all that, we may be able to cheat the fate of most other species through careful application of our intelligence to the problem of our survival under constantly changing conditions, but so far our entire timerange as a genus, not even a species, is only a fifth of that of the apatosaurus. (Ask your kids.)

It's hard for me to get too worked up about "Abrupt Climate Change!"; as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, forest fires, floods continue to wipe our little creations off the map no matter what disaster preparedness and resource management we bring to bear, I wonder just how much effect we humans actually have on the robust and stunningly adaptive system we call the Earth. A major component of my belief in God comes from the presence of our massive oceans - the majority of our home planet, filled with a substance almost unmatched as a heat sink, and with unicellular life that kindly photosynthesizes for our benefit no matter how much forestland we convert to agriculture. It's as if God provided us with "baby gates" to keep us from killing ourselves until such time as we learn to do dangerous things safely.

As such, I hesitate to support, much less encourage, any precipitate action on our part to monkey with the system. Efforts at forest management in this country led to a tangle of underbrush that burned faster, hotter, and more destructively than any natural fire, when it finally and inevitably burned. Efforts to contain the Mississippi in straight concrete banks did nothing noteworthy to stop her cycle of flooding. Efforts to move wild animals too often lead to human tragedy, the animals' failure to thrive in their new environment, or the proliferation of other species just as undesirable - think of rabbits in Australia, or, in the plant kingdom, the nightmare of kudzu in the American South.

I don't claim that we can do no wrong. We have the ability to create persistent toxins; we have been and presumably are being an agent of extinction (but remember that extinction is first and foremost a natural process - many creatures and environmental conditions have brought about extinctions); there is some evidence that it's possible for us to trigger earthquakes under some specific circumstances. What I do advocate is caution, especially of our tendency to hubris. We are only human. We are not the protectors of Mother Earth but just one set of her tenants - arguably the most creative, but not even close to knowledgeable or prescient enough to "save" her from herself.

Activism

Says here that activism is "a doctrine or practice that emphasizes direct vigorous action especially in support of or opposition to one side of a controversial issue." Recent examples:

• Perorations against judicial activism from the Right, using terms such as "legislating from the bench" - while I agree in general, I do wish the Supes hadn't ruled the way they did in this case. It's not that I support legalizing marijuana, either growing or use, since I think we have as much as we can handle with alcohol, tobacco, and addictions to legally prescribed drugs - just that it seems to my non-lawyerly ears an overreaching of the Commerce Clause.
  
• Barbara Walters's expression of discomfort at the sight of a mother's breastfeeding her baby in the next airplane seat over sparks a nurse-in by breastfeeding moms. I sympathize with Ms. Walters, but as a breastfeeding mom I sympathize more with the mother trying to keep her baby quiet and well cared for in the confines of an airplane cabin, even in first class. Would Ms. Walters have preferred loud squalling from the seat next to her? Oh, wait - possibly she does not know that some babies refuse the bottle, or she believes that any such refusal is "temporary" and able to be overcome, which I suppose is true in the strictest sense - the most recalcitrant baby will presumably take a bottle if it is starving.
  
• Amnesty International's un-frickin'-believable equation of Gitmo and gulags brings human rights activism to a perigee. Not to mention their refusal to admit that the comparison is not just ludicrous on its face but weakens their entire mission.
  
• Here, with angry tears, the suggestion that the proposed "International Freedom Center," to be located on the site of the fallen World Trade Center, will call out to "great leaders, thinkers and activists'" to visit and hold forth on just how we go about seeking and interpreting freedom in this confusing world of ours. Of all places on earth, that one must be one of the least confused. Let them find another forum for their ideological explorations.
  

What am I going on about?

Sigh... It's this: activism is a luxury. It's a hobby. Not every time, not to everyone, but it's possible today to be an "activist" by refusing to go to McDonald's for a year (as a friend of ours did) or by giving money to that incurably silly Dr. Dean or by only buying organic produce (in blissful ignorance, I maintain, of the terrible cost to the world if everyone followed your lead).

I'm having word problems, in other words. I believe that one of the most human activities in which a human being can engage is to be serious about an important subject (and, I suppose, one of the greatest freedoms with which our system endows us is to be serious about a frivolous subject) - but to call oneself an "activist" is too facile, too noncommittal, and begs the question, "What action?" There's a great divide between not allowing your children to watch television and spiking trees... I abhor the word as much as I abhor the word "lifestyle." I never want to "have a lifestyle." I want, always, to live.

Similarly, I want to act, rather than to "be an activist." At present, the main way in which I want to act is to inform myself and to do my best to formulate my thoughts in writing such that others can learn some small thing from my interpretation of events... chalk that up to small dependents; my time outside these walls will come.

Sith blogging

It has to be done. Apologies in advance.

Episode IV and Episode III are not quite bookends in my life, but they're not far off. I was eleven when Star Wars came out, back before it was a franchise; my son is eight now, and saw Revenge of the Sith with me tonight. I told him afterward how much I wanted to be eight, or eleven, again, so that I could see this "episode" with the same easy suspension of disbelief that I'd been able to conjure up for the first/fourth "episode." (Obviously I didn't tell him the last clause of that sentence.)

Some random thoughts first:

• It's surprising how many worlds in that galaxy far, far away can sustain abundant life without so much as an acre of arable land.
  
• Hayden Christensen's eyebrows must have won him the role of Anakin. The eyebrows go a long way toward the whole "journey to the Dark Side" thing. And he's cute too, which helps in the tragedian sense.
  
• Padme must have had a line on some incredible skin care products; not only has she not aged a day since she first met Anakin back when he was, what, seven years old [Update: nine] - but even when confronted with the knowledge that her beloved husband has embraced Evil, her lip gloss is noteworthily perfect.
  
• Pregnant women long ago and far, far away obviously carried their unborn children either in a space warp of some kind or in checked luggage, based on Padme's delivery of twins the size of two-month-olds after having had such a tiny belly just the previous day that, from a distance, I thought the continuity people had messed up and forgotten to fit her with a belly at all. She was mighty light on her feet at that point, too.
  
• If I were a Jedi, I think I would have led the charge to change the uniform. Flowing robes look cool but would undoubtedly twist around your lightsaber arm or flop over your face at the wrong moment in a pitched acrobatic battle.
  
• But they do look cool, and on just about everyone. I want a cloak just like Obi-Wan's and Anakin's. The fabric, sadly, doesn't seem to hold up as well as the alloys that went into C3PO and R2D2, based on Ben Kenobi's disreputable appearance on Tatooine some eighteen years later. Possibly, though, he had to scrub it on rocks, which would take a toll on even the sturdiest material. [Update: And, come to think of it, Tatooine took a heck of a toll on Kenobi himself, didn't it?]
  
• Everyone seemed really to enjoy hand-to-hand combat in this movie; every lightsaber battle involved smiles and laughter - admittedly a lot of it sinister, but Kenobi's grins caught the light in each fight scene I can recall.
  
• Sword-fighting is hot, especially if you're good at it. Think of Inigo Montoya, of Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans (who also showed the S.A. factor of long rifles), of Carey Elwes in both Princess Bride and, more so believe it or not, Robin Hood: Men In Tights. (Don't take my word for it - watch him.) Anakin and Obi-Wan, being the best sword-fighters in the piece (since the older Force-users tend to do more "send the Force toward the opponent with a rigid claw-like hand" maneuvers), clearly had training in both grace and deportment, and also in exhibiting an economy of movement bespeaking Utter Confidence and Total Competence. Whoo-ee!
  
• Was that really Jimmy Smits? Huh. Jimmy Smits. Whaddaya know.
  
• Mark Hamill wasn't all that bad, on balance - better in V than in IV, kind of odd in VI. Carrie Fisher was fine once she lost the accent with which she did the first fifteen minutes of IV. Hayden Christensen seemed to improve over the course of III's two hours, I think primarily because he had fewer quips and more eyebrow-work to deliver toward the end.
  

On to the substance of my comments: The first half hour or so of Sith had me alternately rolling my eyes and laughing out loud, but at some point after that I got in touch with my Greek tragedy side and realized that there was actually something very classical about this movie. (I'll resist calling it a "film" - Star Wars, never to be known as A New Hope no matter what kids today think, wasn't a "film" and no other movie in the series ought to claim that moniker lest it be seen as a social climber.) Here I shall announce -

***SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!***

...although anyone who cares at all can figure out the way things have to happen in III in order to make IV, V, and VI possible. So. Greek tragedy. There is a love affair, destined to end in death: the "best" possible death, too, for a tragedy - death in childbirth. There is a flawed hero, his pride and impetuousness destined to lead to his downfall. There is a prophecy, destined to be fulfilled by the flawed hero, who does eventually fulfill it but not... just... yet. There are demigods whose behavior is more noble than that of the gods, who - in this version - are almost all amoral and sinister. There is a terrible bargain, which draws our hero down the slippery slope of evil, his pride allowing him to believe that he'll be able to stop before he falls into the pit at its end.

Folks, it wasn't bad.

Episode III had to do three things. First, it had to explain all the loose-hanging plot points from IV, V, and VI. Check. Second, it had to have a story of its own. Check, though it was a bit of a stretch at the beginning. Third, and most importantly, it had to provide a credible reason for Anakin's transformation into Vader, along with a believable sequence of events carrying him through it. By resorting to the classical approach, Lucas actually pulled it off: the combination of love, a prescient vision of death, and a deal with the Devil to hold that death at bay - well, it worked for Frank Herbert in the second of the Dune trilogy, though he forced his hero to be heroic rather than flawed, and allow his love to die. In fact, it works every time, as a concept.

As screenwriting and acting, maybe not so much. I haven't seen Episode II (but I will now, just to complete the cycle); I understand the "love affair" between Padme and Anakin is not exactly Romeo and Juliet, or even Maddy Hayes and whatsisname on "Moonlighting." Knowing that the suspension of disbelief over that plot device alone was a big problem for many watchers, I was predisposed not to believe it too readily in this movie - and Natalie and Hayden didn't give me a lot of reason to change my mind. Still. Once I made up my mind that the story alone, even if fairly woodenly written and played, was enough to catch my interest and even tug at my heart a bit, I was able to enjoy how very beautiful Hayden and Natalie are, how dead she was going to end up and how disfigured and inwardly destroyed he was going to end up, how fantastically Alec Guinness played the older, weary Obi-Wan, his wisdom hard-won from years in the desert - who knew, back in 1977, that he'd turn out to have been so impulsive as a young Jedi? Makes you see his exhortations to Luke to be calm, be patient, let go, in a whole new light.

All right then. I return to my first statement: I wish I could have been eleven while I watched this movie; I would have been more credulous, certainly, but also more forgiving. Those of us who grew up with Star Wars have expected each episode to grow up with us. When I was a pre-teen, Star Wars was just right: black and white, good and evil with the good guys always winning in the end, never ever by cheating. The Empire Strikes Back hit in the fullness of my teens, getting the hook in good and deep about scoundrels: my first marriage might owe something to that darn conflicted Han Solo. Return of the Jedi reached me as I was graduating from high school, blurring the lines between right and wrong but still ending happily (all too happily, with those foolish teddy bears. Oh well).

But Episode I didn't come about for another sixteen years. Lucas made the right decision as a moneymaker to address it to a new generation of fans, keeping some character and story continuity to appease us oldsters, but in essence, it was aimed at the teenage me instead of the wife-and-mother-and-career-woman me. Was it the right decision as a filmmaker? Who am I to say? Because here's the thing: for all my pretensions, I couldn't have written this screenplay. It may be unsubtle and, at base, classically derivative upon analysis, but I couldn't have conceived of this as a solution to the threefold problems I mentioned a few paragraphs up. As Yoda might (but wouldn't) put it, smart am I, but create something such as this, I could not.

Standing in the breach

Long time no blog... Blame my sister and her fiance, whose impending nuptials are taking a good chunk of my free time. I don't grudge them a minute - but it does get in the way of my timeliness!

The recent Newsweek faux pas (if that isn't too innocuous a term for a mistake resulting in seventeen or so deaths and hundreds of injuries) has revived the languishing Abu Ghraib fiasco and a general sense, in the media, of distrust for the American military. I'm late to the table, but it's time for me to say my say on those who stand in the breach for us.

The U.S. military is heir to the British, of course. To understand all the implications of this inheritance is far beyond me, but some things are obvious: the British military was and is synonymous with honor and duty. That's not to say there haven't been wartime atrocities committed by the British, or by Americans; but these two and their "relatives," at any rate, explicitly rejected that earlier, longstanding military inheritance of rape and spoils as the proper right of the victor. The world has followed suit, at least publicly - but we can see the vestiges of prior custom among UN peacekeepers, for instance.

In America, the military still makes men - and women, these days. Rude, haphazard teenagers undergo a scant few weeks of basic training and begin to metamorphose, if they make it through; they stand straight, their clothes and shoes and hair and bodies are clean and neat, they know when to look someone in the eye and when to keep eyes front, and they begin to learn about esprit. They begin to learn that they are responsible not only for themselves but for the well-being of their entire unit, and that their unit is responsible for completing its mission, on which may ride the fate of many more civilians who do not or cannot wear the uniform. They learn appropriate pride - not vanity but a knowledge of their own worth and the worth of the guy next to them and, as well, the worth of the ones who would be undefended if not for them. Some military people may secretly - or not so secretly - look down on civilians, but at the same time they realize that the right to live as you wish, the essence of American civilianhood, is unutterably precious and worth fighting for.

Another inheritance: in old Britain, the military was a conduit between classes. More surely than through education, assassination, religious vocation, or simple deceit, a patient man could improve his family's lot by joining the Navy. Perhaps he himself might never achieve the officer corps, but his son could have that chance. And an officer could interact socially with almost anyone.

In the United States, the military was also a conduit from social ignominy "upward." More: it was, and still is in some areas, an absolutely unparallelled conduit from the generational poverty and despair suffered by some Americans of color, to something much better: the knowledge and the power of self-determination. There's nothing like knowing you are the primary author of your destiny to raise you from perceived victimhood to self-reliance, and many, many Americans of all ethnicities, including the white underclass that gets no play in popular media, have first experienced that knowledge when they joined up, made it through boot, sewed on the first stripes they earned, and passed in review surrounded by their new family. Not every member of the military becomes an automatic success, either in the military itself or later in the civilian world - but if the world into which you were born took it as given that you'd die in the bed you were born in, no better off than the squalling baby you once were, the military offers a stunning alternative that rests almost entirely on your own commitment to it.

Unfortunately it's not available to everyone. Because the mission of the military isn't to be a social program but rather is a serious obligation of government recognized even by libertarians, the disabled can't participate in it, at least not so far. Possibly as we are able to automate more and more of the work of war, some forms of physical disability in some areas may become irrelevant. Mental disability never will: there's no such thing as cannon fodder in America's infantry.

Aside from the almost complete absence of serious illness and disability (both are probably less common among military dependents than in the general population, I'd wager, because at least one parent has passed stringent physical and mental testing - and anyone who doesn't think that boot camp constitutes mental testing has never seen boot camp), the military world is a microcosm of society, with the tails of the curve cut off. There are good people and bad people, but not many saints or sociopaths. There are very smart people and not-so-smart people, but few supergeniuses (they're too nonconformist to cope with the conformity a military structure requires) and no clearly developmentally disabled people. Some are fundamentalist in their faiths; some are lukewarm; some are outright atheists. Crimes are committed, some types perhaps in greater proportion than in the civilian community; I'm preaching rather than reporting research here, but intuitively it seems obvious that that can happen when you select for wolves and reject dogs: the base level of aggression is higher in the military than in the civvie world as a whole, though not higher than in some civilian sectors (teamsters, police officers, any inner city). So there's domestic violence, assault, rape, murder - but these violent crimes are not as common as you might think, because of the self-discipline that is the underlayment of all military members' lives, not to mention the swift and sure judgment that's waiting for anyone who's caught. Neither is a guarantee of self-control, but both are strong deterrents.

Military service tends to run in families. I myself am a barren twig in this regard: my father was career military, but I decided not to join up because I was uncertain about whether I too would be willing to go career. In my seventeen-year-old mind, I was half afraid of how different military life might be from military dependence, and half mindful of the un-recouped cost of my training if I decided not to reup after my six post-training years. All right, maybe I was more than half afraid... Regardless, I turned down my best chance to follow in my dad's footsteps, and it's about the closest thing I have to a regret now. I can't truly regret it, because a different life after high school would have meant, well, a different life after high school, basically - and I love my husband and my kids and wouldn't trade them for anything. But I have a wide patriotic streak that I've never put sufficiently on display because of that decision half my life ago. And I hate being labelled a chickenhawk, because the stinging truth of it is that the chance to serve my country was in a letter in my hand and I passed it by. If I had had a crystal ball -

Futile speculation. I can't imagine not having my kids, not being married to the non-military guy I chose.

Moving on. American journalism seems to run, if not in families, then in classes - or at least the process of becoming a journalist seems to have predictable and homogeneous results, one of which seems to me to be passive voice-abuse. But more to the point, journalists who succeed in garnering a place in a major media organization seem to start from the premise that the American military is tantamount to the Roman military: killing for salt, looting for profit, raping for fun, torturing out of ignorant spite. It's frankly weird. It's like comparing a brand-new laptop to an abacus: they share one function - arithmetic, or war; and one physical characteristic - being rectangular, or being human. Yet the journalistic trade seems not to understand the distinction.

THe Hugh Hewitt interview with Terry Moran of ABC speaks to this strangeness. As Moran himself says, "There is, Hugh, I agree with you, a deep anti-military bias in the media. One that begins from the premise that the military must be lying, and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong. I think that that is a hangover from Vietnam, and I think it's very dangerous." That's a telling admission, I think.

Not for the faint of heart

John Bolton is up against it, as Condoleezza Rice was before him, as Bush appointees to the federal bench continue to be. And President Bush stands mute, or mostly mute, as the Democrats and their PR arm, the "news media," rant and wave their arms and invoke Nazi imagery (something that's simply not allowed in the blogosphere if you want to be taken seriously, unless you're over at Kos, so please forget I mentioned it). Every now and then I get a little peeved at our fearless leader for not sticking up for his subordinates more loudly and publicly.

Then I think about it, and I realize that he's got it exactly right.

We are, after all, attempting to be a majority of one, we American conservatives. Those who support the Bush administration's policies are going to be solitary voices in unfriendly rooms most of the time. If they buckle under the pressure of questioning by Democratic senators, if they shrink from the ghastly spotlight of the New York Times (some swear it puts ten years and ten pounds on you, unless you're at least a vegan from the Upper East Side), if they quail when their fashion choices or hairstyles become fodder for the lefty blogs, they have no place representing the US in 2005.

See, for instance (this will probably be the only time I ever link directly to Kos - enjoy it if it's your thing, then get the bleep on over there where you belong), this Kos entry claiming that Bolton ("our favorite mustached villain") is dead in the water versus Rich Lowry's discussion of Democrat tactics against Bolton - hint: the "mustached villain" comment is par for the course. I'd like to point out something about the Kos piece: its source is the NYT, which should surprise no one, and this phrase - "Four of 10 Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee have expressed concern about Mr. Bolton, on a panel where one Republican vote against him could keep the nomination from reaching the Senate floor" - strikes me as a clear indication of which party is thinking and which is jerking its knees in partisan unison. This is not to say I have even the time of day for the "four of 10 Republicans" if their qualms about Bolton are based on the silliness that's been brought to light thus far - especially Mr. Specter, Republican In Name Only.

All I hope now is that before President Bush names a name, he first meets privately with the owner of the name and says to that man or that woman, "If you accept, you're goin' to have to cowboy up." Those on the coasts may take that colorful phrase as some kind of sign of childish bravado; those from Texas will understand what it would mean to him.

Update: PowerLine has much more on Bolton last night and today - or more to the point, on those opposing Bolton and, by extension, President Bush:

Vreeland [who yesterday claimed to have been a colleague of Bolton's at State in the early '90s, and who has leveled harsh criticism at Bolton's diplomatic skills] was a member of, and financial contributor to, a group called "Diplomats & Commanders for Change," which opposed President Bush in November's election. The organization's mission statement says that its members "are deeply concerned by the damage the Bush Administration has caused to our national and international interests."

That's what this is about: the attack on Bolton is being orchestrated and carried out by the administration's political enemies, as part of their effort to subvert the President's foreign policy.

Oh, and you may recall Melody Townsel, the former Moms Opposing Bush leader who claims that Bolton spent one wild night chasing her down hotel corridors, an accusation that is met with disbelief by anyone not actively working to bring him down. PowerLine (via Little Green Footballs via DANEgerus) notes that:

she has written her close friends at the Daily Kos to alert them to a history of plagiarism which she says will be used against her by Republicans.

I strongly recommend checking out the LGF link - it contains the text of her email to the Kossacks.

The only surprising thing about the Powerline pieces to me is that the brilliant John Hinderaker writes as if there's anything surprising about the source of opposition to Bush appointees' being the usual suspects (the Anti-Bush League).

The washout system works

I was just listening to that precious broadcast gem, "This American Life" on NPR. I can't find a link to a transcript at the moment - it may not be up yet - but when it comes up I'll include it here. [Update: here it is.] Good grief.

The final segment, in brief: a young man tries to get into the NSA, and fails. He was a pothead and-so-on in high school, but left all that behind in college and undertook to train himself ideally for a career in intelligence, achieving a grad school spot in foreign affairs at a top university and learning Chinese, and simultaneously with grad school applied to the NSA, a grueling process that includes a polygraph test. He failed the polygraph test - miserably - because his stress reactions wouldn't stop even for the easy and obviously truthful questions. Ultimately, under the interrogator's prompting to "dig deep" for whatever the reason might be for his overreaction, he "confessed" to seeing child pornography over the internet, something like 50 images. It was an event train that he didn't see coming: he's terribly stressed because he wants the job so much, he blabs unnecessary details all over the place about his drug use and every possible indiscretion he can think of (including the fact that he's gay, which, when the interrogator looked at him in puzzlement, he said was "illegal in some states" - untrue, though certain types of sexual activity regardless of who's doing them may still be illegal on the books, and unprosecuted), the interrogator tells him he's failing and urges him to seek the buried reason for it, he says he may have inadvertantly seen an underage person in internet porn but he has no way to tell, she presses him - he either has or he hasn't, and he says all right, he has then, she presses for a number of images, he comes up with 10, she presses further with veiled threats that if he's wrong, even by only one image, he's still lying, he changes his answer to 50...

Evidently to his surprise, he was rejected, and the letter he received gave the reason as "due to [his] involvement with child pornography." He got a lawyer in case the government decided to prosecute for this felony he had admitted to but not committed, took a second polygraph exam that he passed without problems, but the government would neither reconsider his application nor "clear his name." Unbelievably, he later applied at the CIA, and was rejected because of his failed NSA bid. (The "unbelievable" part is that he applied, not that he was rejected.)

Eventually, as in "in the last minute of the segment," the reporter got around to what should have been the point: the young man was absolutely, patently not suited to intelligence work, as he'd "cracked" even when confronted with a friendly interrogator. Yet the sense of the injustice of it all prevailed all the way to the very last sentence, in which the reporter said he would not reveal the young man's new home or job at the man's request, because now he realized the value of keeping some things to himself.

The young man named his failing "immaturity." He apparently still rails at the irony that people later found to have been Soviet spies "make the cut" but that he, completely loyal, completely dedicated to grooming himself for exactly this kind of work, did not. Can he really believe that he was ever cut out for human intelligence work - indeed, any intel work? Here are some qualities that ought to disqualify an applicant: Immaturity. Confessing to crimes not committed. "Diarrhea of the mouth." Lack of judgment. Inability to visualize the end of the road before taking a a completely unreasonable fork.

Obviously the system is not perfect; our intel services have been under heavy fire for believing their own stories too much, for building up said stories on shaky evidentiary foundations, and indeed for inadvertantly harboring Soviet asps in their figurative and collective bosom. But at least this story provides some indication that the people who wash out are the people who ought to wash out.

If we outlaw invasions...

...only dictators will invade.

Heh, as Prof. Reynolds would say. That Mark Steyn, he's something else.

Jamie: the sequel

Bought new unmentionables today (obviously without breaking the bank, if you follow my link)... Soon I expect to burst out of my cocoon of mommyness, spend a little time curing my silk-and-lace wings, and then catch the wind again, and taste the nectar, and altogether celebrate that I was I before I was a mom, no matter how Mom I always intend to be.

Take that, ZPG!

Rather a thrown-together post. Apologies in advance.

Mark Steyn, who somehow I missed all this time but who's swiftly jumped to the very top of my reading list, has this to say about babies, or lack thereof:

In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo's life in Florida or the cleft-lipped baby's in Herefordshire has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general. Hence, the shrivelled fertility rates in Europe and in blue-state America: John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.

The 19th-century Shaker communities were forbidden from breeding and could increase their number only by conversion. The Euro-Canadian-Democratic Party welfare secularists seem to have chosen the same predicament voluntarily, and are likely to meet the same fate. The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism. This is the political issue that will determine all the others: it's the demography, stupid.

The Herefordshire (UK) baby he mentions was aborted because of a treatable cleft palate. The doctors responsible for the decision(?) and the abortion were not prosecuted for their action because authorities were convinced that they were acting "in good faith." What prosecution they might have faced if they hadn't been successful in convincing authorities of their good faith, I don't know; unlike the Supreme Court, I'm not terribly interested in the laws of other countries, at least as they relate (or don't) to our own system of laws and jurisprudence.

All over the board today, aren't I?

Steyn's op-ed piece is titled "The strange death of the liberal West" and deserves a read in toto. The upshot: our need for particular resources and our ability to produce them change over time - e.g., the oil that we were supposed to have run out of by now - but the changes rely on one thing: human ingenuity. Human ingenuity, it is patently obvious, is only available when there are humans. Falling birthrates denote a loss of the one resource we absolutely can't do without, he says.

When we're having a kid-intensive moment, my husband and I joke that we only ever wanted two children - sometimes these two, sometimes those two... In light of Steyn's comments, tonight at least I'm altogether happy to have had three.

"Be not afraid"

In the death of Pope John Paul II, the freedom fighter, the defender of life, the one who asked forgiveness and who forgave, the man who sought daily that his life be a reflection of the life of Christ, we are diminished and we are exalted. He was great, because he stood like a rock in the stormwaves of the end of the second millenium, sometimes submerged in the froth of rhetoric and disapproval but never washed away. He was great, because he placed his hope in his Lord and he garnered his strength from the Gospel: he was great, because he never attributed greatness to himself but to God alone. If the cardinals have among their number a man who can be as great, let the white smoke rise quickly over their decision to elevate that man. If they have no one as great to choose, let God lead them to choose the one who will at least not detract from the greatness of his predecessor.

In my time I've criticized Catholicism for its resistance to change - the changes I considered good, at any rate, such as the ordination of Godly women. I'm Episcopalian now because Catholicism was hard bread for my husband; I wanted to worship with him, even if it meant accepting a doctrine different from the one under which I was raised, and my criticisms made my decision easier. But today I say: Bravo, John Paul, for not listening to my kind. Change for the sake of "evolving standards of decency" or a "modern understanding" of good is a dangerous matter.

I believe that the Catholic church may eventually allow women to become priests. They may, on the other hand, decide to allow non-celibate - married - men to become priests, though I think the women have a better chance, sooner. But to embrace either of these changes because of a social evolution encompassing only forty-odd years, in an institution spanning two millenia and with roots much older, would have been foolhardy; there's no hurry. Conservative? Yes, John Paul was conservative, and so should any Pope be. The Holy See should not innovate; it should preserve the heart of the faith intact, and move as slowly and inexorably as a glacier to change its underlying landscape.

That his death follows so closely on the death of Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo is a powerful evocation of John Paul's papal message that we are not to be afraid. Calls to kill Terri, in the guise of "letting her die with dignity," "giving her release," or "fulfilling her wishes," were rooted in fear: our fear of helplessness, of uselessness, of indignity exposed, of mysterious suffering we cannot quantify that can only be answered by death. John Paul's message, the message of his words illustrated by his long, difficult, private life made public for our edification, is that when we place our trust in God, we may not be spared suffering, but we will surely be given the resources to withstand it.

More than that: to triumph over it, even if the world sees only defeat.