Runaway Turtle

Bailey the Eastern Box Turtle (T. carolina carolina), with fern added to simulate what he's used to (fern added just so I could steal that joke from the late Mitch Hedberg).

BAILEY, named for the creek he was eventually relocated to, was found a week ago Sunday (by my wife) trying to cross our street. I left him in the back yard while I took care of a couple of things, and when I came out he had vamoosed. Gone. 23 Skidoo, hope you're not turtle stew. Couldn't find him anywhere. I hoped he would turn up in a day or two, but no luck. I'd forgotten him (male, check, red eyes) until last Sunday when he was rescued again, this time from the four-year-old next door who found him somewhere (he wouldn't say, exactly) and looked about to test his tensile strength (that is, the turtle's) by hurling him to the driveway with his four-year-old's spastic screwball that I stopped just in time. I then explained to him that this was an Eastern Box Turtle, one my wife had found, and how I was going to return him to his home in the forest, and how no matter how much he looked like a rock he could be hurt by throwing him, and how if his father ever buys him another cowbell or other percussive instrument, or anything in the bagpipe family, I was gonna murder his entire family in their sleep. I grabbed the only empty box I could find in the garage. It had one end loose. I told the neighbor child he'd better go home and have Mom wash his hands really well. I went inside to find some tape. As I was about to exit I see the little bastard dashing off with the box. This causes me to open the back door without considering Larry, the Cat Who Just Waits For The Worst Possible Moment To Dash Out The Door, who chose this moment to dash out the door. And through the gate the kid had left open.

Larry, in happier times.

Then I thought I caught a break, as Larry dashed into the open garage instead of heading for the front yard. I followed and pulled the door closed behind me.

It should have been sufficient to notice his reaction. Loud noises are the only things Larry is known to fear. This does not include loud noises emitted by humans as he carries off their eyeglasses or spills their beverages. Just accidental, unexplained (to him) loud noises. And Larry freaked when the door closed, but my mind was occupied with questions of how one makes a four-year-old's death look like natural causes, and I cornered him, and picked him up, and...opened the garage door. And a newly re-panicked Larry climbed over my neck and down my back, without giving me much consideration as he did so.

I did manage to corral him again. I knew it was hopeless to try to attract any help through the closed door, so I tried to inch it open as quietly as possible. I made it out on the third try. I deposited Larry in the house and went to find the turtle. The entire Henderson clan was there peering into the box. I like the Hendersons. They have that quality I most admire in others: they keep to themselves. The boys are six and the aforementioned four. The whole lot used to stay indoors unless the temperature was between 76º and 78º, and they probably had a relative humidity requirement, too, that I was never able to identify given the small sample size. That was Mom, apparently; with a few years of 'em inside with her all the time she's become a convert to the Free Range system, while she mostly stays indoors and trusts her luck.

The boys have the requisite au courant surnames as first names. Parker's the younger one, the animal lover. O'Toole, his brother, is perpetually sullen, which I fully appreciate since I, too, had a two-years-younger sibling.

I knew it was no good negotiating or trying to explain. The kid's animal crazy, and Mom has convinced him she's allergic to dogs and cats. I thought they might want to keep him. Plus I think they'd heard me swearing in the garage two minutes earlier as Larry clawed his way across me, so I just shouted, "Parker, where did you go with my turtle?" "Oh, is this your turtle?" Dad asked. No, you cow-college weed chomper, your four-year-old just found an Eastern box turtle complete with his own box. I antied up the threat of Salmonella for good measure, then immediately regretted it as Mom appeared to be weighing the pros and cons.

Dad hands him over as O'Toole cranes his neck for a last look. Bailey, quite possible sensing that he'd just dodged another certain-death experience, stirred. "Hey, that turtle's alive!" shouts O'Toole. I'm watchin' that boy real careful for the next twelve years.

SO Bailey gets put in the passenger seat and we drive a couple miles to the power substation at the big bend of the creek. This was the turn-around point when my Poor Wife and I hiked our own neighborhood instead of a state park, back before her knees gave out. I hadn't been back there in a couple years, but it seemed promising. There was about two acres of second-growth woods by the creek there, plus a cleared bank beside the power station wall where the thing turns from the south. Plenty of grub, some sunshine, the possibility of some turtle hotties on Spring Break. You see where this is going, don't you?

The first thing I noticed was the large open field west of the station now had trash cans. And two soccer goals. And, as I turned the corner, a bulldozer parked where about a quarter of those two acres of trees used to be. The giant ruined tulip poplar which used to be the silent center of the place was now plainly visible, front and center. So I marched up there, and just past the tree, nearing the bank, I spy just to my left one of those butt-ugly and totally useless rustic "meeting places" one sees in state parks: series of plank benches, couple of store-bought numbers for the lecturers to use, two thoughtful trash cans. Both half-full of pop cans; I checked later. There never used to be any trash at all in these woods. Fire pit, of course, no doubt illegally placed if not illegal altogether. Then I happened to look up. To the six-foot cross nailed to one of the trees, behind the "altar".

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

There was an engraved stone at the entrance to this sanctuary I'd missed coming in. Something-or-other Worship; I was feeling too sick to take notes. I walked with Bailey past the new Rustic™ two-lane bridge, back to the curve of the creek. Still sunshine, still water, still some trees that might not come down even when someone decides that fellowship around a rustic stone barbecue would taste really good. Especially if they ran some electricity back there.

I pulled back the tape and let Bailey climb out. One of us was happy. I walked back along the path trying to convince myself that this probably meant that no one would touch the remaining woods for a while yet, since that would spoil the carefully shaped wooded religious retreat they'd carved out of an actual cathedral of trees. I have no idea who owns the property. I sure hope a public utility didn't turn that tract over for desecration. I don't know the neighborhood. I don't know where there's a church nearby. But these days there always is.

Don't get me wrong: it has nothing to do with the fact that a church did this, even though those Churchmalls have been a major deforester of Marion County in the past decade. God knows secular interests might have done worse. It's not even the abominable fire pit which will never be needed because such people would never be out when warmth wasn't pre-ordained; they'll just burn in it because that's some aging Boy Scout's notion of the wilderness experience. The smell of a campfire and a cold can of Coke™.

Nah. As I got back to the sunlight that now hits you thirty yards earlier I thought, "It's the unintended message. The one no one else will probably get. It's the idea that the same God who made those magnificent tulips and ironwoods would be Foolish enough to give you people bulldozers."

Anyway, God speed, Bailey. If you'll excuse both those jokes.

Shut Up

Frederick W. Kagan, "Plan B? Let’s Give Plan A Some Time First". Times May 6

ONE of the most common criticisms of the current “surge” in Iraq is that its proponents have not developed a Plan B in case it fails.

IT'S nice when one of these guys just goes ahead and pegs the Dishonesty meter with the first sentence and gets it over with. (Bonus points for putting "surge" in quotes, since the "surge", or whatever else you want to call it, is pretty much Kagan's baby.) Correct me if I'm wrong, but complaining there's no Plan B would seem like a criticism of the administration, or the Pentagon, or the military command, not of the "surge". You can add to that I can't recall three people bringing it up, and apparently, neither can Kagan. Actual criticisms of the actual "surge" seem to revolve around concepts such as "Too Little Too Late," or "Not Enough Troops By Army Protocols", or "Already Lost". These would seem to make the existence of a Plan B a dead issue.

The skeptics liken this lack of a backup strategy to the Bush administration’s failure to plan for various contingencies after the initial invasion in 2003; they see a continuity of errors between previous strategies in Iraq and the new one.

Hey, there's just no pleasing some people. Skepticism--which is not a swear word, by the way; more of it could have prevented this problem in the first place--is no longer a requirement for doubting the Bush administration's wisdom, sincerity, or reliability in making change. The current baseline for that is "presence of cortical event and breathing without assistance".

In fact, the debate shows only how little the critics of the war understand about military operations.

As distinct from the all those neocon geniuses, as the last five years have shown us.

As one of the initial proponents of the surge

Lost your scare quotes, I see. Does that you you're a proponent of the surge, but not the "surge"? I guess I don't really understand military operations.

I argue that there is no Plan B because there cannot be one.

Wait! Maybe I do! We're in complete agreement on this!

The idea that there can be a single alternative strategy, developed now, just at the beginning of the surge, is antithetical to the dynamic nature of war. At this early stage, there are only possible general responses to various contingencies, which will become more focused as operations move forward.

Oh, never mind. I meant "there cannot be a Plan B" because we're out of troops, options, and ideas, and we're just carrying on so the Bush administration and certain "Conservative" think-tank sinecures who shall remain nameless can cover their asses a while longer, like until a Democrat gets elected in '08 and they can start blaming him. Or her. Which reminds me, I'm no fan of Hillary Clinton, but in the unlikely event she gets elected the period between election day and the Inauguration is gonna be the sweetest two months of my life since pot was $15 an ounce and all women went braless.

The strategy now under way in Iraq — we are providing an increased number of American forces, working closely with Iraqi troops, to establish and maintain security in Baghdad as a precondition for political, economic and social progress — will change the situation in Iraq significantly, whether or not it succeeds in its aims.

Because in fifteen months the only boots we're gonna have left to send to Iraq will be your's and Victor Davis Hanson's.

In fact, it has already done so, and for the better: the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has apparently fled to Iran; American and Iraqi forces have killed or captured more than 700 key leaders and allies of his Mahdi Army, causing the movement to fragment; sectarian killings in Baghdad in April were about one-third of the level in December.

Wow, that's some textbook data mining there. Seems to me that if things really were going so swimmingly it wouldn't take such contortions to prove it.
Associated Press,

Baghdad Security Crackdown Has Not Reduced Sectarian Violence, U.N. Report Says

April 25:

...UNAMI also said that for the first time since it began issuing quarterly reports on the human rights situation in Iraq, the new Jan. 1-March 31 one did not contain overall death figures from Iraq's Ministry of Health because it refused to release them.

The U.N. agency said the reason appeared to be that after the publication of its last human rights report on Jan. 16, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's office told UNAMI its mortality figures were exaggerated, "although they were in fact official figures compiled and provided by a government ministry."

Emphasis mine. How fortunate no one was exaggerating the figures before then. Probably a temp. Oh, wait.

We can add to that the bit about "sectarian killings". In case the wording strikes you as a bit odd, it's because it's administration code for "overnight murder victims whose corpses aren't discovered until morning." Not only are we dealing with figures which are at least partly blanched, if not completely cooked; we're making up categories and insisting they're significant if they show something we want shown. Car bombings are up. So car bombings don't count. Because they're, uh, non-sectarian!

When Moktada al-Sadr called for fellow Shiites to demonstrate against the American surge last month, General Petraeus wrote an open letter to the Iraqi people pointing out that such demonstrations would not have been permitted under Saddam Hussein, and asking the demonstrators to avoid violence. In the end, the demonstrations were limited in scale and peaceful, and fears that Sunni terrorists would set off a wave of attacks on the protesters proved unfounded.

There were hundreds of thousands of Iraqis protesting the Maliki government's refusal to demand US withdrawal. That was the "limited scale" reached by al-Sadr, despite his "apparently fleeing to Iran." Which, by the way, he most likely didn't. Apparently.

He managed to orchestrate that mass resignation from the Cabinet and orchestrate two major protests last month. Plus, we need him, I mean the hard-working sovereign government of Iraq needs him. Funny how "understanding military operations" includes counting rounds of ammo but not figuring out what should or shouldn't be a target.

This is not the time to be rehashing strategies developed six months ago under very different conditions, or to be planning for the collapse of a strategy that has just begun. It is time, however, to consider the possibility that any Plan B in Iraq will focus on exploiting the success of the current surge rather than on mitigating a failure.

We're already mitigating a failure, sir: yours and your fellow neocons. Forced to add an adjective, we select "unmitigated". The surge, or "surge", or "ratfuck" is an accident of electoral politics; shorter Presidential terms, a parliamentary system, a recall proviso, and your control of the troops would have already been ended. That too, sir, is the nature of military operations. Mussolini's war ended with him flying upside down.

This "plan" of yours, or "escape attempt" (it was entitled "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq", in keeping with the whole Disney™ marketing scheme approach to history): one of the ever-changing realities of military operations it dealt with--was forced to deal with--is the absence of troops. You spent a lot of time and effort detailing how we could come up with 20,000 additional troops. Was that because you'd spent that much more time and effort detailing why 20,000 was the right number for the job? Nope. It was because that was all we could scrape together without setting off alarm bells even John McCain might have heard.

If now is not the proper time to revisit current failures, not until we've incurred some new ones, let's return to the beginnings of the war you and your cohorts designed. Plenty of intervening failures between then and now. You do remember that war, right, Professor Kagan? It's the one whose honored dead are kept awake nights as you whistle past it. Where were all the troops that might have made a difference then, sir? Or is that the sort of insight experts in military operations gain only after the situation has changed on 'em?

Okay, Think Back. 5th Grade History? Declaration of Independence? Jefferson? Franklin? Hancock Guy Signed It Real Big?

Dear ESPN:

I don't presume to tell you your business. Maybe the demo for thoroughbred racing skews Suburban Pretentious, or it eyeballs Patrician, or however it is you guys talk. Still, if it's not asking too much, would it be possible to explain to your field reporters, or tossers, or whatever you call them that citizens of the Commonwealth of Kentucky are not subjects of the fucking Queen of England? Or that they are not obligated to wait until spoken to before they speak?

Otherwise, wouldn't it be a good idea if, sometime in your fourteen hours of pre-race coverage, which included a total of three two-minute sporting competitions, you found the time to squeeze in a Proper Way To Curtsey piece?

Yours,

J.B.S. Riley

Elsewhere in the News: Catholics Find Pope "Too Religious"; Ron Jeremy Wants Porn Producers To Cut Out Gratuitous Nudity.

Peggy Noonan, "Blah, blah, Reagan, blah, Reagan, blah blah: First impressions of the GOP's 2008 candidates. OJ, May 4

This is a piece about Thursday night's Republican presidential debates, but first I would like to note that the media's fixation with which Republican is the most like Reagan, and who is the next Reagan, and who parts his hair like Reagan, is absurd, and subtly undermining of Republicans, which is why they do it.

WHICH is why who does what, Peggers? Google "republican most like Reagan". You'll get a CBS piece about how it's difficult for the current crop to sound like Reagan, meaning optimistic. You'll get Ann Coulter, and a Fox News poll which actually asks the question, but you'll have to decide whether Fox qualifies as "the media" before explaining why they want to undermine Republicans. On the second page there's the Dallas Morning News, a liberal hotbed if ever there was one, and somebody in Albuquerque recapping the debate. Wow. Is anyone talking about anything else?

Say this for the Bush years: At their beginning it was still possible to wonder if there was some fiendish plan behind this sort of thing, some magic pixie dust in the formulation, some tantalizingly evident but maddeningly half-glimpsed trollery at work. Didn't they manage to turn every issue into a bumper-sticker slogan? Right to Life, the Unborn, Reverse Discrimination, Death Tax, Freedom Fighters, War on Terror? Didn't they win election after election that way, despite the obvious Eau de Snake Oil the stuff gave off? But it's now well established as the product of prodigious ignorance and an emotional and possibly chemical imbalance, perhaps, as in this case, exacerbated by injudicious application of strong drink and modern pharmacology. The last Republican Presidential candidate who can even vaguely claim The Media treated him worse than his opponent is Barry Fucking Goldwater.

They should stop it already, and Republicans should stop playing along. They should try instead a pleasant, "You know I don't think I'm Reagan, but I do think John Edwards may be Jimmy Carter, and I'm fairly certain Hillary is Walter Mondale."

See? Q.E.D. In the midst of the worst Presidency since Buchanan, which is my way of trying to be nice about it, the spectre of Jimmy Carter is still supposed to frighten little children in their beds. How badly would Carter beat Bush in an election next Tuesday? How badly would Mondale? Raise taxes? I think he could promise to confiscate all property in excess of $1000 and still carry everything outside of Dixie.

Reagan was Reagan, a particular man at a particular point in history. What is to be desired now is a new greatness. Another way of saying this is that in 1960, John F. Kennedy wasn't trying to be the next FDR, and didn't feel forced to be. FDR was the great, looming president of Democratic Party history, and there hadn't been anyone as big or successful since 1945, but JFK thought it was good enough to be the best JFK. And the press wasn't always sitting around saying he was no FDR. Oddly enough, they didn't consider that an interesting theme.

Okay, look. I'm not saying that Peggy Noonan isn't a remarkable case even when it's a buyers' market in galloping Miss Havishamitis on the Right. Yes, they know the value of a lie, and they're willing to tell one just for the exercise, let alone when they imagine some small benefit. But an adult liar is supposed to exercise some modicum of restraint. These people lie like children, and like children they've run off to some secret womb-like location to lie to each other. And that womb-like structure is Ronald Reagan. And the let JFK and FDR in when they feel like telling bogeyman stories.

What "faith in America" did Reagan "restore"? Certainly not any among his own party; they hate everything about American government--except its ability to bully ten-rate military powers, of course, now called into question--even more vehemently than they did before, and now they hate it even when they're in control. I'm not giving away any secrets by admitting that stuff was always lost on me, that at the time it had, not the feel of Rhinoceros but the vibe of the mega-promoted pop culture phenomenon. Still, I don't know anyone who became a "conservative" because of Reagan. No doubt some people did, just as there's no doubt some admirers of Beethoven out there owe it all to A Clockwork Orange, but that doesn't constitute proof of anything. I know there's a demimonde of thirty- and forty-somethings out there who claim Road to Damascus-type revelation, but their precocious supposed liberalism is never credible nor believable. David Brooks? Glenn Harlan Reynolds? Neither evinces even a passing familiarity with the Civil Rights movement; both have a political cartoonist's take on Feminism. What the hell were they so damned Liberal about in the 70s, anyway? The Reagan Era gave them the opportunity to keep dressing like their Inner Nixon Staffer but feel like they were finally trendy. It changed the things people talk about. So does every new administration.

Then there's the fictitious record of fictitious "conservative" accomplishments of the Reagan Era. Do we really need to intone the litany here? That his "Tear down this Wall!" had about as much to do with the collapse of Communism as his throwing a bottle of hair dye at it would have? Okay, okay, Reagan hated Commies. That was the guiding principle of the government of the United States of America for forty fuckin' years. We knew, absolutely, by the 1970s that the Soviet economy was going to collapse and that they could not sustain their military spending, yet the Reagan administration chose to "outspend" it militarily, for which it is often given undeserved credit. (To be clear about it, we're not suggesting Reagan should have simply ignored the Soviets, only that his wanton spending on Bright, Shiny Objects should not be credited with accomplishing something that was already happening before he was elected. The Soviets didn't bankrupt themselves trying to find an answer for Star Wars.)

We can go on and on, from running the most corrupt administration in history (present occupant excepted), to ignoring Posse Comitatus law, violating the Boland Amendment, and quite possibly the Logan Act (hey, thanks for bringing it up), to cutting and running in Lebanon, the S&L scandal, the War on Drugs Not Being Smuggled By Section 8 Marine Colonels in Administration Employ, to the simple question of why the first President hailing from the "FDR was a tool of the Communists!" end of the political spectrum turned tail the minute he met opposition to his plans to scrap Social Security. That's greatness?

Ronald Reagan's "greatness" is a product of his supporters' wishful thinking. FDR's is not a Democrat Thing. We can acknowledge that the New Deal was a mixed bag, that the Second World War is what eventually lifted the United States out of the Great Depression. But then let us also admit that some major reworking of the government was inevitable with 25% unemployment, farm prices off more than 50% in two years, and a Too Little Too Late administration and Congress tossed on its ear in the '32 elections. So let's note that whatever pummeling it's suffered while being used as a political football, under Social Security (and Medicare) we no longer have 60% of our elderly population living in poverty. The Roosevelt administration was responsible for Federal Home loans, Rural Electrification, the GI Bill, Federal Deposit Insurance, and, by extension to the Truman administration, the School Lunch program and the creation of the Centers for Disease Control. Granting different approaches to the functions of government, this still would seem to top, objectively, "Selling natural resources on Federal lands for two cents on the dollar" and "Declaring ketchup a vegetable".

And granting that there's something admirable, in a Miss Havishamish way, of the continued Republican fealty to the bankers and railroad barons of 75 years ago, we'd like to remind you, Pegs, that FDR proved a genius as a wartime leader. He made correct strategic decisions right down the line. He put the right people in the right jobs. Lend-Lease saved the Allies (over Republican opposition, we could add). His handling of the MacArthur-Navy squabbles in the Pacific was Solomonic. He kept both your boy Churchill's propensity for hare-brained Gallipoli schemes and the British desire to restore their Empire with American blood in check. He made George Marshall Chief of Staff, put Ike in charge of the Channel crossing, even saved the cracked thespian MacArthur, who wound up remaking Japan in a way no other man is likely to have done. He acted on the Einstein letter. He did all that in four years, Peggy; tell me again what Reagan did in eight.

Friday Garden Blogging

Hosta "Chartreuse" (which doesn't get any bigger) left, Siberian bugloss in flower, right (there's no way I can capture the intensity of that blue; it's probably my favorite Spring display), and the intervening pictorial warning about planting dead nettle (I planted only the white one; I now have three leaf colors and four flower colors, and it takes season-long dedication to its wholesale destruction to keep it from taking over everything. Pretty, though).

STRANGE season, but then they all are. A tropical December that discouraged pruning, followed by extremely cold temps, and then a well-behaved March followed by a frozen April. Great crocus year. Lousy daffodil display, unless you really like their leaves. Next to no tulips. The daffodils belong to my Poor Wife, who never met a plant with irritating habit she didn't want to put someplace wholly inappropriate. I like daffodils, too, especially in someone else's yard, where they can spend the next three months splaying, blocking views of everything around them, and slowing dissolving to pools of brown slime as someone else's problem.

Roses survived; it was touch-and-go for Pascali for a bit, and April re-pruned the climber, and they all lost out on the month of Spring sun they usually get before the big trees leaf out. The herb bed is showing its age, especially the grand old sage in its center which was the first thing I planted here. Various nippages being overcome now. The Japanese painted ferns, especially, did not care for the extended Winter remix, and the two tassle ferns I transplanted three weeks back groused about that for a while, but everybody will be fine. Catbirds have been chasing through the yard, and one of them accompanied yesterday evening's weeding with a fine display of virtuosity. Oh, and either the possum population expanded over the winter or the neighbor's daughter is refusing to clean up after her dog again; I'll have to track down the source of the smell in the next day or two.

Happy Birthday

James Joseph Brown
May 3, 1933--December 25, 2006

Wondrous Ways

Indianapolis Star

Signs spark biblical debate about homosexuality

Church's billboards that contend Bible approves of gays attract vandals and a countercampaign

By Robert King
robert.king@indystar.com
April 27, 2007

The billboard claims "Jesus affirmed a gay couple."
A vandal's own statement -- the words "Lie, lie, lie" spray-painted in red -- delivered an opposing view above them.
In some ways, the argument in giant letters above an Eastside street reflects society's ongoing argument over homosexuality -- on issues ranging from same-sex marriage to gay clergy.
The discussion just got more intense in Indianapolis where 22 billboards and 1,000 yard signs went up recently as part of a campaign based on the premise that the Bible approves of gays and lesbians.

THE curious thing--for me, anyway--is that here vandalizing a billboard engenders, in the Star, a debate over "the issues" (including a sidebar exegesis on the relevant Biblical texts, but none on, say, whether defacing someone else's billboard constitutes covetousness, or theft) whereas when two of my wife's former students were caught a couple years ago with paint and a "Bush=Hitler" stencil, having defaced a Bush/Cheney billboard, the only debate that sparked in the pages of the Star was whether they'd get jail time or community service.

Maybe It's Time To Reconsider The Link Between Comic Books And Wanton Juvenile Violence

Victor Davis Hanson, "Don't Give Up," April 26.

Sometimes no comment is needed. So it was of Vietnam when victorious Gen. Giap later remarked that that the American Left was “essential to our strategy.” He elaborated to the Wall Street Journal : “Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement.”

And Giap added that anti-war activists, “Gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war.”

HERE"S a quick experiment for you. 1) Go to Snopes.com. 2) Click on "What's New". 3) Open the first wingnutty article or Email-related story that strikes your fancy. I picked "Does Steak and Shake have a company policy prohibiting customers from praying at their restaurants?" but choose what one you wish. 4) Read the email/set-up ("This recently happened right here in Albany, Georgia"). 5) Note how fucking similar the story is to the above.

That, or you could check out the now-lost-under-piles-of-intervening-bullshit Zarqawi letter from those computer files we seized in a safe house raid took from a captured al-Qaeda courier found by the side of the road back in '04. Remember that one? Proved without doubt the Iraq insurgency-al-Qaeda link, warned of recruiting difficulties in the face of so much American competence, urged action before the all-important June 30, 2004, return of Iraqi sovereignty which would establish a democratic Iraq once and for all? Boy, those were the days.

But let's start at the beginning. Most of us learn at some point that if something sounds too good to be true it undoubtedly is. Though obviously, assuming you get email, you realize that shit must float in somebody's pool. You might expect, though, that an alleged historian would check out this Wet Dream Wrapped In Satin Sheets.

Well, Victor Davis Hanson didn't.

We can be sure of this 'cause the interview, which he seems to quote fairly accurately, down to Hanoi Jane's Hanoi red dress (the interview is not online; there's a supposed copy of it here) wasn't with Gen. Giap, but with Colonel Bui Tin, a member of the general staff who became a Vietnamese dissident in the 1980s, exiled himself to France, and wrangled a book deal telling the American Right that every last drop of those delicious post-wargasms was pure ambrosia and right on target. So either V.D. has been carrying those quotes around in his head and failed to check them before typing, or he made Giap the source on the grounds that it sounded better to have the actual Viet Minh military commander say it than some guy with an obvious motive. Thousands, in fact. All green.

The thing is stupid on the face of it. The Vietnamese had been fighting for independence since 1940, against the French, the Japanese, the British (all but forgotten, it was they who propped up the former colonials in 1945-46 until they could re-assume military control), the French again, and then the US. The idea that thirty years on they'd crave the approval of some bimbo Hollywood actress, giving them the strength to persevere, is beyond belief. Make that rational belief. What sort of military history expert are you, again?

So now read the official al Qaida response to Sen. Harry Reid’s declaration that the war is lost:

Or, y'know what? Better yet. Don't.

Who issues the al-Qaeda response to US political news, anyway (gotta admit, though: that "official" is a sweet seeing-eye double with men in scoring position) ? This Parson Weems of Military History styles himself an expert. I'd like to hear one example, just one fucking example, of an insurgency, guerilla movement, partisan faction, or side in a civil conflict, other than one fighting against a pet project of the American Right, which based its strategic plan on the enemy's internal politics, headline writers, or anti-war movements. Just one, from any time in recorded history. It sure didn't matter to the Vietnamese whether the French occupiers were Vichy or Gaulist. The Zionists fought Labour or Tory; so did the Irish, so did half-a-dozen other colonized peoples. Israel's various enemies have fought on regardless of what line was taken against them.

Alternately, name me the insurgency that has simply given up in the face of cold-eyed resolve that booked no domestic criticism. Partisans operated against the Nazi occupier in every country despite a backing back home in the Fatherland that approached statistical unanimity. Insurgents are insurgents because they're 1) aggrieved enough to fight and 2) weak enough that they can't employ conventional forces. They already fucking know those things.

And by the way, only 15% of Americans can identify Harry Reid. It's hard to imagine they're sitting around the wireless in the Pakistani badlands waiting for the man to give 'em a pep talk, but if they are maybe they need to check in with Gallup more often.

How odd that the ongoing evocation of Vietnam by the Left in connection with Iraq has proven silly in every aspect—we’ve lost 5% of the fatalities of the Vietnam War, have been in Iraq as third as long,

How odd of a "military historian" to count only fatalities. let alone to do so like he's scoring a baseball game. Iraq is deadly enough. In one-third of the time, with less than one-third of the troops involved (which Hanson leaves out) we've suffered 10% of the total casualties, in a war where we have specifically sought to minimize casualties (just as we've minimized troop commitment) to reduce domestic opposition to a senseless mission with no clear plan. Ten percent in one-third the time may sound good, unless it's you coming home with a softball-sized piece of your head missing, but let's stop the fucking gloating about it, already. In the name of fake decency, if nothing else.

have witnessed a popularly-elected government in place,

Well, depending on your definition of "popularly-elected". There weren't any in Vietnam, granted. That's because we blocked 'em when it became obvious our side would lose. This is the place where we point out that the Popular Elections in Iraq were held because the bumbling Bush administration was forced into backing them after it faced an insurgency it hadn't expected or planned for.

are fighting primordial reactionary religious fundamentalists

Primordial? Maybe next time you could look up what that means. But yeah, it's a difference. In Vietnam we were backing the theocrats.

except one: the reoccurring liberal effort to cut-off funds and end American support for a consensual government.

Consensual? Is that the best you can manage in the way of getting around the lack of democratic elections in the "democratic" South? It was governed by a series of thugs and criminals installed by us or with or consent and removed the same way. Who consented?

If this succeeds, so will follow the Vietnam-era sequelae: mass exodus, mass killing, American humiliation, and regional realignment with the winners. Who would want that—and why?

First, there's already been mass exodus, mass killing, and American humiliation, same as there was in Vietnam long before we cut off funds. "Regional realignment with the winners"? What regional realignment followed the Viet Minh victory? As to who would want it, well, if you ask me, Vic, that would be the people who want to pretend that the massive screwups to this point 1) don't exist and 2) wouldn't count if they did. How's the view from up there, anyway?

Or put another way: who would want to continue to employ US troops well past the point of fracturing men and matériel just so the party that got us there in the first place could deny to itself that it was responsible? And why?

Olio

• The past week of my life has been consumed by bricks. Used bricks. Finding, loading, transporting, unloading, laying out, taking down, cleaning, laying back out. Still to come: laying more out, cutting, and then, finally, setting in two inches of sand two borders, one path, all of which should have been done about seven years ago. I learned three things. One, the dearth of businesses willing to deal in used brick has a lot to do with the use of stronger mortars over the past forty years. Two, I should have bought a mason's hammer fifteen years ago. Three, if someone tells you that phosphoric acid is a much safer alternative to muriatic acid, what they are leaving out is this: with muriatic acid there's a minute possibility you will die a horrible death involving all the flesh melting off your bones; whereas with phosphoric acid you will simply die of old age waiting for the stuff to do anything.

* As a result I've been about a week behind the news. Randall Tobias, tied up and spanked in the DC Madam scandal, is a Hoosier, a former Eli Lily poobah. When his picture hit the Star's front page Wednesday, my Poor Wife said, "Hey, that guy caught in the DC Madam scandal was president of Lily." "What DC madam scandal?" I asked.

• I got so far behind watching Daily Show tapes I ran into this Wolcott piece on McCain before I saw him tell Jon he'd left a souvenir IED under the seat, yuk, yuk, yuk. There's a bonus takedown of "lighten up," a phrase which, in my experience, is inevitably employed by someone whose lack of a sense of humor includes a lack of any sense of what humor is. McCain's candidacy is now so horrific that not only has it clearly delineated that he's unfit for office, his choice to continue it is now of itself grounds to disqualify him.

• Is the Army Headed for Collapse? Major Gen (ret.) Robert H. Scales, Washington Times, March 30. Yes, the Times. which probably explains why I didn't see it until after he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. Conclusion:

Another strange consequence is that the current political catfight over withdrawal dates is made moot by the above facts. We're running out of soldiers faster than we're running out of warfighting missions. The troops will be coming home soon. There simply are too few to sustain the surge for very much longer.

Bear in mind that these shortages were made explicit to the Congress in November of 2002. America has been suffering from Battered Spouse Syndrome with regard to the military since the aftermath of Vietnam. Don't say "defeat" (smack). We weren't defeated (smack). And if we were it's the fault of the troops (smack). And if it's the fault of the troops it's because you ruined their morale with your defeatist talk. (wallop). None of which is true, all of which has been internalized to such an extent that even a population which clearly sees what a strategic fuckup the Bush/Cheney administration has wrought flinches at the word. It's the only real explanation for why the White House isn't surrounded by people holding torches and pitchforks. And where, exactly, are the Democrats with this information? Are they afraid such information compromises national security? The Iraq clusterfuck has compromised it more than words can ever say.

• Since I tossed aside the faith I was raised in--roughly the same time I got out of kneepants--I've read a lot more religious material than anti-religious. Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Martin Buber, Reinhold Neibuhr, Thomas Merton, the Upanishads, Confucius, Mo tzu, the Taoists, various histories of Islam, Alan Watts, Paul Tillich and the I Ching sit on a bookshelf eight feet south of me with only Bertrand Russell and a reference book of Biblical absurdities to wrestle with, aside from each other.* I suppose if someone was to send me a review copy of one of the recent spate of anti-God books I'd be happy to read it, but otherwise it interests me about as much as a UFO debunking or a catalogue of Barbie™'s sins. I'm glad they're out there--someone needs to counterweigh that 20% of The History Channel's programming devoted to reviving claims of the Shroud of Turin's authenticity and revealing startling new discoveries about the placesettings at the Last Supper. Otherwise, they're not for me.

So last night--which is to say I managed to watch Monday's show last night--when Christopher Hitchens staggered onto the Daily Show set to hawk his new entry in the burgeoning field I was doubly disinterested, a snap judgment last week's Slate excerpts, found later, did nothing to overturn. At one point Hitchens plopped the supposed virgin birth of the Buddha onto Jon's desk, but Buddha isn't a God, nor does Buddhism posit one--though it's apparently flexible enough to accept people who do--and the story seems to trace to 4th Century Christian sources. Even in hard-pressed America, as in hard-pressed Afghanistan, we ought to apply the tar with the proper-sized brush. Not all Christians are glossolalic snake-handlers. God knows (sorry) we'd be better off if the ones who didn't scream the loudest got the teevee airtime. But I happen to know people, including family members, from a wide variety of faiths, and while I'm frankly a bit wary of all of them I cannot be convinced that every last one has some deep-seated aversion to the birth canal.


* Which is not meant to suggest that the Easterners and their admirers among them are theistic.

Sports Update

IT'S likely they've cleaned up the last signs of the traditional NASCAR fan salute to a Jeff Gordon victory by now. I'm just guessing that the protocol is track first, then the stands, so the Alabama champagne shower--a barrage of tall boys of indifferently-fermented hog feed--is probably given pride of place. Hell, they can probably collect the ones that didn't bust an' sell 'em back to Gomer next October.

Real racing fans are outraged by this sort of shit, but then real racing fans have never particularly been NASCAR 's target audience. The matter was decided early, like about two minutes after the celebration was over, when Jeff Gordon His Ownself expressed his admiration for people who would try to hit a moving target from that high up in the stands. Soul of a product pitchman, that boy.

Within a couple hours NASCAR had issued a statement moderately deploring hurling debris on the track, but the paid shills were pretty much attuned to the vibe all along: You Don't Mock The Cult of Earnhardt Mysteries. Not in NASCAR. Not if you want to keep eating regular. By Monday night, when the highly entertaining Michael Waltrip pointed out to Dave Despain that it wasn't the guy in the 3500 pound car built to withstand 190 mph collisions who was gonna get hurt, but some unsuspecting fan hit with an aluminum missile that failed to clear the fence, it was already sounding wistful and vaguely Pollyanna-ish.

And yes, it may well be my most trite observation of the month, but if you could have found two Very Large Gentlemen of African Ancestry near the place, and if they'd have decided to charge into the stands to extract Goober's remaining tooth, you'd have seen the replay forty times an hour on CNN the past two days. That is, unless it's topped by the thought experiment of the ever-desirous-of-international-expansion France family faced with the spectacle of hundreds of cerveza bombs flying in Mexico City when Junior punts Montoya into the turn three wall. Jes the Good Ole Hombres lettin' off some steam.

This is the really interesting thing about watching NASCAR. (God knows it's not often the contrived racing.) It's how the dictates of large-scale popularity (albeit gleefully overstated) have collided with the phony Moonshiner creation tales of NASCAR 's past, how it came to be a symbol for the loud-mouthed reactionary politics of what is now called its Southern Fan Base, and the stumbling moves it's been forced to make since. At some mysterious point NASCAR went from using that aesthetic to bring in the rubes to actually adopting it as a governing principle. NASCAR became the I Hate Political Correctness Racing League. It instituted an American Products Only policy. It was pointedly slow to eliminate leaded gasoline (in use up to this year's Daytona 500) even as Indy cars have run on methanol the past thirty years. And it was slow to the point of being adverse to implementing or mandating safety features. "We aren't Communists," as the NASCAR philosopher and perennial back-marker Kyle Petty explained.

Of course, that was before St. Dale of Earnhardt was killed on the last lap at Daytona in 2001 in an accident he would have survived had he been using a head restraint system. Earnhardt's crash was almost identical to the ones the previous year which had killed Kenny Irwin and Adam Petty, which NASCAR responded to with quick fixes and half-measures; Earnhardt's death was followed by a season-long investigation which ultimately blamed, sort of, seat-belt manufacturer Bill Simpson and then quietly settled his lawsuit out of court. "There goes the evidence!" as Fatty Arbuckle once said.

It was Formula One which found the HANS system, developed in the 1980s, in response to a skull-fracturing crash involving Mika Hakkinen, and which then had to reengineer it for single-seater cars. NASCAR could have adopted it right away. It was Indianapolis' Tony George who developed the SAFER barrier. NASCAR , which reminds everyone within earshot that it's the second-most popular spectator sport in the US, whether or not it is, can't even be bothered to pony up for a traveling, professional firefighting crew.

And somehow, at the height of its popularity, NASCAR found itself at the mercy of that same reality that gobsmacked the real Confederacy as well as the counch-mounted artillery of its sheet-wearin' descendants. It had to look to big-city viewers and international markets to continue to grow. It had to welcome Toyota into the series. It had to fluff Juan Pablo Montoya at its Mexico City Busch race this year--the fawning coverage angered a lot of knuckle-draggers who've gladly lapped up the Soviet-heroic portrayal of middling-talent Dale Jr. for the past several years. Like the Republican party, NASCAR finds itself unable quite to shake the forces of Bronze Age barbarism it used to court, even as they embarrass it, even as it tries to inhabit a world that passed them by a century and a half ago.

Happy Birthday

Cynthia Wesley
April 30, 1949--September 15, 1963

Dear Mr. Norbizness,

IT'S the Moon. It's the Planets. It's the Weather. It's six-and-a-half fucking years of the Bush administration, at once the crookedest, most ignorant, and least incompetent ever. It's the fact that not only does such an administration still garner the support of 30% of our fellow citizens but that such support includes sending women and men off to die, first for cynical reasons, now for no reason. It's the wondering if the other 70% of the country deserves that, or what percentage does. It's wondering what portion of that number doesn't give a shit provided they drive a Beemer or have a shot at winning American Idol, or their favorite contestant has a shot at winning American Idol. It's that part of the culture that lies as the only way it knows to take in oxygen.

You, sir, are brilliant, funny, insightful. You have no business being all those things. I turn to you before the tea has finished steeping every morning. I wish that were enough. I wish I could remember how many women I'd said that to over the years.

Look, comments, schmomments. Kevin Drum gets 200 every time he sneezes, and I'll bet he'd trade it all just to be able to tap dance like you. And your commenters are invariably bright, funny, and witty, present company excepted. If I owned a network you'd be producing the news. Okay, cable network.

So my advice is, "Fuck it, I'm not qualified to give you advice." Follow the Muse. Read Chuang-tse:

Starlight asked Non-Entity, "Master, do you exist? Or do you not exist?" He got no answer to his question, however.

We'll wait, dude. Feel free to stop by Indianapolis, where both the booze and the In God We Trust license plates are free, the women are well-rounded, and a weekend's worth of discussing troublesome bare patches under shallow-rooted trees will show you what's important.