Columnist.
"Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed." --A. Lincoln Thanks to Bob Woodward, the Washington Post's ever-open drop for leaked documents, the American people have the benefit of the latest report and recommendations from the commanding general of NATO forces in Afghanistan. The front-page headline sums up the 66-page analysis from the general and its stark conclusion: "McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure' " Talk about a feeling of deja vu: The grim picture painted by General Stanley McChrystal sounds much like the one that faced the previous commander-in-chief in Iraq back in 2006, when defeat seemed not only in prospect but already in process. That president and commander-in-chief had a choice: (a) accept defeat, which would of course be called an orderly withdrawal, or (b) stake all on a new strategy and new troops to carry it out with no guarantee of success.
For those who like their fashions retro, these are the good old days -- all over again. Especially if you liked the look of the 1930s. Fashion doesn't apply just to clothes but to ideas, including those about foreign policy. And now appeasement is in again. Naturally, it's called something else now, for appeasement acquired a bad reputation in the Thirties. These days it's being marketed under a new brand name, realism. And it can be worn with accessories like isolationism to complete the ensemble. Together, they produce a whole, not-so-new attitude toward threats from abroad. Mainly, let's ignore them. As in: Why be beastly to the Russians by setting up a missile defense system on what Moscow used to consider its turf -- eastern Europe -- and may still? Let's call the whole thing off. The current regime in Russia, which brings to mind many a past regime in Russia, can only be delighted as this administration goes back to the old sphere-of-influence division of the continent. So delighted it will reciprocate, and cooperate in pressing the Iranians not to develop their nuclear weapon and the means to deliver it. And all will end happily. Or maybe just end.
Dear Old Friend, It was wholly a pleasure to hear your theory about where the South ends, probably because any theory about the South will get a conversation going around dinner tables, at barber shops, in graduate seminars on Southern history, and just about anywhere else in these talkative latitudes. Your theory is that the South ends where the last monument to the Confederate soldier can be seen. This would mean that Bentonville, up in the far northwest corner of Arkansas, and known far and wide as the capital of Wal-Mart, qualifies as Southern. This might comes as a surprise, or even an unwarranted claim, to folks in Arkansas farther south, who think of the northwestern corner of the state as Midwestern. Or at least Oklahoman.
"Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety." --Henry IV, Part I This long, long war now enters its ninth year, counting from that fateful September morning when everything changed, or was supposed to change. After that terrible morning, not even the blindest could deny that America had been attacked. Yet this war had been going on for years. The same enemy had launched earlier attacks in Somalia, against U.S. embassies in Africa, and off the coast of Yemen against the USS Cole. Indeed, the same Twin Towers had been a target once before. At the time the attack was considered a matter for law enforcement to handle -- a crime, not an act of war. But as of September 11, 2001, another date which will live in infamy, the peril that confronted us was clear, or should have been. For explosions not only destroy but illuminate. That was the day the war stopped being unilateral. For the enemy had got our attention at last. Our eyes were opened. And the Long War had begun.
What a fine speaker our president is. That's the overriding impression he left once he managed to get through the endless applause and handshakes and Roman ovations -- late Roman -- that have become a feature of presidential addresses to Congress and was finally allowed to begin his speech about health care. It's not the content of the speech that evokes wonder and admiration but the speaker himself. Content scarcely matters with this president. What counts is how he delivers it. It's as if he were lecturing a law school class, and the students are just bowled over--not with the case he's presenting but the presentation. If the case is a muddle, and will raise more questions than it answers once the haze of admiration has cleared, never mind. For he's a master of what the Italians call una bella figura. He cuts a fine figure.
At the outset of the great break-up of the Soviet Union, many of us hoped Russia would emerge as a free country, if not an ally then a friend. Looking back, any outcome so idyllic was about as realistic as Russia's becoming something other than Russia. Instead, the new Russia that emerged looks a lot like an old one, specifically the tsarist one. One hallmark of Russia's long night under Stalin and his successors remains essentially unchanged: a tendency to airbrush the past to suit the political needs of the present. Note some recent comments from Russia's new tsar and old KGB man, Vladimir Putin -- former president, current premier and future whatever-he-wants-to-be. Making a ceremonial appearance in Warsaw on the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War, he couldn't help but repeat a standard feature of the old regime's custom-tailored history: The war was the West's fault. KGB reflexes die hard.
A recession may stunt more than material growth. It can also drain intellectual curiosity. For economic pressure can lead people to settle for what only seems to be security instead of following their dreams. Which can be a tragedy for both the individual and a society that depends on people reaching ever higher, rather than not settling for what only seems safe. Poverty is much overrated as a spur to human achievement. Rather, it's a brake on it. The romantic image of the starving artist creating a masterpiece in his garret, charming as it may be, has little connection with reality. Walking around hungry is not a good thing, no matter what people who've never been hungry say. Maybe that's why it hurts to learn about the declining enrollments at some of the country's finest liberal-arts colleges. Such schools have long stood out as islands of education in a sea of technical training, but they're short of students these days.
The old man had long ago given up fixing shoes and tried other occupations, but always at the same location, and usually with the same customers. But he never found any other work that gave him as much satisfaction as putting new soles on a pair of old uppers. Or a pair of Cat's Paw heels on shoes that still had a lot of good wear left in them. You could be sure he'd do the job neatly, surely, carefully -- to last. He loved the feel and aroma of new leather, the grain in the old. He was seldom as happy as when he could hold a pair of weathered shoes in his hands, turn them over and over, feel the tread, admire the workmanship ... and judge whether they were worth saving. Labor omnia vincit.
It was just back in April that a still new president and commander-in-chief assured the Central Intelligence Agency of his support, especially those of its agents who had protected the country during the dark, confusing days after September 11th. (That date doesn't need a year to identify it, any more than December 7, 1941, once did.) Remember what Barack Obama said then? Even as he was releasing memos that he had to know would be treated as raw meat for the agency's most vociferous critics at home and its deadliest enemies abroad, the president told the agents they need not fear being prosecuted for "relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Justice Department." He even added, "This is a time for reflection, not retribution."
Yale University long has been a citadel of political correctness and a prime example of the current academic rage for deconstructing truth. But this time it's reached the bottom (let's hope) of its flight from Lux et Veritas, Light and Truth. It's getting so that the only remaining evidence of either one at Yale may soon be confined to its motto. This time Yale's university press was about to publish a scholarly volume that would provide some historical and artistic context for those controversial cartoons that Danish newspapers published in 2005 and early 2006, including caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, and that so enraged mobs throughout the Muslim world. Here, you would think, is just the sort of scholarly study that a university press ought to be publishing.
Now let the trumpets blare and the obsequies begin, as full of bombast as some of Ted Kennedy's own orations. Let us begin in the spirit of nil nisi bonum: Speak nothing but good of the dead. Let us recall Sen. Kennedy's work with George W. Bush on the No Child Left Behind law: If the senator's political record was a model of effective partisanship, he was also capable of making a bipartisan gesture against the bigotry of low expectations in public education. Even if he had to disappoint his political base, notably including the teachers' unions. Which was no small thing for one of the always politically savvy Kennedys. That was one time he inspired admiration rather than suspicion.
the President and the People
Remember those days of yore, namely the presidential campaign of 2008, when Democrats regularly accused the Bush administration of politicizing the Justice Department? You could scarcely make your way down the aisle of the U.S. Senate without encountering a Democrat who was outraged, indignant and generally all het up over how the administration of justice had been corrupted. The righteous cries of Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Russ Feingold, Patrick Leahy and all the other usual suspects rent the air. All demanded that the attorney general -- it was the hapless Alberto Gonzales at the time -- adhere to the "rule of law and the Constitution," to quote Senator Schumer.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong." --H. L. Mencken The Great Explainer is at it again. Every era has one, or maybe quite a few if it's as enlightened, liberated and gullible as our own. Think of the 1920s, when Freud was a rising star, Marx was about to be, and Charles Ponzi had figured out a way to make any investor millions. Now we have Bernard Madoff, and our great explainer is Malcolm Gladwell.
Gosh, what a surprise: A committee of their fellow senators has decided that Chris Dodd and Kent Conrad did nothing unethical when they took out loans from Countrywide Financial on the kind of favorable terms not available to us mere mortals without their financial or political standing -- or a personal connection to the head of Countrywide. The very Select Committee on Ethics did recognize that the whole deal looked bad, and gave its colleagues a gentle pat on the wrist for creating "the appearance that you were receiving preferential treatment based on your status as a senator." But in the end one hand washed the other, if not very well.
Good morning. What do you think your day holds in store for you? Marcus Aurelius knew, and told us -- right at the beginning of his Meditations, just after he'd finished thanking all those who had made him what he was: a well-educated, self-disciplined and effective Roman emperor. "Begin the day," he advised, "by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial."
They wait for us by the side of the road, not that most of us notice. We've got places to go, things to do, people to see. So we zoom past, one eye on the clock, the other on the rear-view mirror. And never spot them.
