If one wanted to know the difference between being an American and being a European, this article from France’s Le Figaro newspaper would be a very good place to start.
From Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky to client number nine Eliot Spitzer and ‘Kristan,’ Europeans have looked at the effect that sex has on American politics with a collective shake of the head. Read the rest of this entry »
But 4,000, well, that one seems to give us pause. For some reason the sight of three zeros makes us turn our necks long enough to pay attention, ask more questions and continue to find few real answers.
So here’s my question on the anniversary of this 4th set of three zeros: Was it worth it?
And more broadly, how has the Bush administration demonstrated that this war has:
been worth the cost in lives,
been worth diverting attention and resources away from domestic issues,
been worth diverting our attention away from other foreign policy issues,
and made us any safer?
The only tangible benefits seem to be that a bad dictator is gone and people have been freed. Fair enough. These are good things.
But Saddam was a bad guy who had no ties to al Qaeda. And, forgive me for being cruel, but it’s not up to us to make sure the entire world is free. If that were the case, we would have started with Darfur, not Iraq.
Another fact that seems to get missed in all these discussions…our intelligence estimates say that al Qaeda is stronger than ever before.
This is why more and more Americans don’t accept the premise that, if we stay there, things are going to get fixed and, if we leave, everything is going to go south. What we’re all starting to collectively realize is that the longer we’re in Iraq, the more chances there are for things to go wrong both there AND here. And what a continued presence in Iraq will most likely result in is we’ll have less say in how we’ll ultimately exit the country. Because we will exit at some point. We all know this. The only way we can control our own destiny here is to set realistic timetables and stick to them.
And yes, al Qaeda will claim victory, but I say let them think they’ve defeated us. Let them believe we’re tucking our tail between our legs. Let them put out their inane little videos. People, just because they say it doesn’t make it true.
Does anybody think if we pull out of Iraq that we’re going to stop tracking down al Qaeda heavies? Does anybody believe the broader fight against the Islamic extremists is going to stop? In fact, now we can start this shadow war in earnest and allocate our vast resources to that fight instead of continuing to throw billions down a hole in Iraq. Can you imagine how many top al Qaeda we could have captured by now using those resources that lay at the bottom of that hole?
Also, is it just me or have we forgotten that we won the war against Saddam and Iraq? Seriously, it was won. Saddam was defeated. We just haven’t been able to secure peace. The difference between those two things is very significant, and I think most of us are accepting the reality that there’s no way we’ll be able to stem the insurgent violence completely. So the fact that Bush and McCain continue to say that withdrawal means “defeat” just shows you how ass backwards our current foreign policy reasoning has become. Again, we all know we have to get out of Iraq at some point, so who’s truly setting us up to fail, the “Defeatocrats” or the “Republican’ts”?
It’s time to go. The sooner the better. Otherwise, we’ll be meeting back here in about a year and talking about the lives that were forever changed between now and 5,000.
As I was watching the Iowa results last night, a friend asked me what the Latin root of the word ‘caucus’ was. I had no idea, but vaguely remembered knowing at some point in the distant past that ‘caucus,’ while sounding vaguely Latin [or Greek] in origin, wasn’t. So off to the OED I went, and found this etymological explanation:
“[Arose in New England: origin obscure. Alleged to have been used in Boston U.S. before 1724; quotations go back to 1763. Already in 1774 Gordon (Hist. Amer. Rev.) could obtain no ‘satisfactory account of the origin of the name’. Mr. Pickering, in 1816, as a mere guess, thought it ‘not improbable that caucus might be a corruption of caulkers‘, the word “meetings” being understood’. For this, and the more detailed statement quoted in Webster, there is absolutely no evidence beyond the similarity of sound; and the word was actually in use before the date (1770) of the event mentioned in Webster. Dr. J. H. Trumbull (Proc. Amer. Philol. Assoc. 1872) has suggested possible derivation from an Algonkin word cau´-cau-as´u, which occurs in Capt. Smith’s Virginia 23, as Caw-cawaassough ‘one who advises, urges, encourages’, from a vb. meaning primarily ‘to talk to’, hence ‘to give counsel, advise, encourage’, and ‘to urge, promote, incite to action’. For such a derivation there is claimed the general suitability of the form and sense, and it is stated that Indian names were commonly taken by clubs and secret associations in New England; but there appears to be no direct evidence.]”
Then, as if on cue, a post from J.L. Bell over at Boston 1775 came across the transom. That 1763 quotation mentioned above, the first known use of the word ‘caucus,’ was from a diary entry written by [drum roll please] John Adams. He wrote in February, 1763:
“Boston Feby. 1763. This day learned that the Caucas Clubb meets at certain Times in the Garret of Tom Daws, the Adjutant of the Boston Regiment. He has a large House, and he has a moveable Partition in his Garrett, which he takes down and the whole Clubb meets in one Room.
There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one End of the Garrett to the other. There they drink Phlip I suppose, and there they choose a Moderator, who puts Questions to the Vote regularly, and select Men, Assessors, Collectors, Wardens, Fire Wards, and Representatives are Regularly chosen before they are chosen in the Town. …”
Bell’s got more on the process, and promises another post today on the origins of the Boston caucus. I’ll post a link to that when it’s up. [Update: John’s follow-up post is here].
I’m reviving this late great TMV feature for the day in honor of David Halberstam, whom I remembered in a post earlier today.
This quote, which Dick Polman had the good sense to dredge up, is from the closing pages of Halberstam�s The Best and the Brightest (1972):
Lyndon Johnson had lost it all, and so had the rest of them; they had, for all their brilliance and hubris and sense of themselves, been unwilling to look to and learn from the past. . . . He and the men around him wanted to be defined as being strong and tough; but strength and toughness and courage were exterior qualities which would be demonstrated by going to a clean and hopefully antiseptic war with a small nation, rather than the interior and more lonely kind of strength and courage of telling the truth to America (about an unwinnable war) and perhaps incurring a great deal of domestic political risk…
Nor had they, leaders of a democracy, bothered to involve the people of their country in the course they had chosen; they knew the right path and they knew how much could be revealed, step by step along the way. They had manipulated the public, the Congress, and the press from the start, told half truths, about why we were going in, how deeply we were going in, how much we were spending, and how long we were in for. When their predictions turned out to be hopefully inaccurate, and when the public and the Congress, annoyed at being manipulated, soured on the war, then the architects had been aggrieved. They had turned on those very symbols of the democratic society they had once manipulated, criticizing them for their lack of fiber, stamina, and lack of belief. . . . What was singularly missing . . .was an iota of public admission that they had miscalculated. The faults, it seemed, were not theirs, the fault was with this country which was not worth of them. So they lost it all.
Today’s literary quote of the day is from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Governor Plumer in 1816, partially published in the book Thomas Jefferson on Democracy edited by Saul K. Padover:
The generation which commences a revolution rarely completes it.
As always, share your thoughts on today’s literary quote in the comment section of this post.
February 26th, 2007 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was an American journalist and novelist best known for “The Red Badge of Courage� (1895), a bestseller that plumbed the mind of a young soldier as he dealt with the horrors and triumphs of the Civil War. It is considered by some people to be the first detailed account of what has become known as post-traumatic stress disorder.
An excerpt:
At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.
Today’s literary quote of the day is from sir Francis Bacon’s Of Great Place.
For good thoughts (though God accept them) yet, towards men, are little better than good dreams, except they be put in act; and that cannot be, without power and place, as the vantage, and commanding ground.
Share your thoughts on today’s literary quote in the comment section of this post.
Every rational creature has all nature for his dowry and estate. It is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it; he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to the world by his constitution.
Share your thoughts on today’s literary quote in the comment section of this post.
Women are the most reasonable beings in the world; at least, I am sure nobody ever catches a woman without an unanswerable reason for anything she wishes to do.
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Mick LaSalle just e-mailed me: he published chapter 8 today. East - someone who refused to play East’s game of unite and conquer - has killed the Pope… and Sadie is trying to come to terms with, well, the fact that her father killed the most important Christian leader.
O… and who will become the new Pope and what will the results of that be?
Priscilla will get married… who’ll perform the wedding ceremony?
What am I saying, just go and read it!
Today’s literary quote is, btw, from this chapter:
It never ceased to amaze me how many sane people you could have in a country and still be ruled by a sick bastard.
Today’s literary quote of the day is unconventional. Normally I quote from (famous) books, short stories, poems, etc. Today not so. Today’s quote is from a short story written by a good friend of mine, Sema Babacan. She wrote the short story not for publication, but simply because she enjoys writing. Since I enjoy reading, she shares some of what she writes with me.
If words could explain what I have felt for you, believe me dear, I would not feel them.
As always, share your thoughts on today’s literary quote in the comment section of this post.
