Olympics

I'm staying with some old friends here in Tennessee, and we've been watching quite a bit of the Olympics.  I hadn't really seen anything until now, so I didn't really have much commentary.  I still don't have much you haven't already heard, whether it's musing on the age of the female Chinese gymnasts or griping about the problem of incompetent judges.  One thing I haven't heard much about is the jarringly bizarre program commentary provided by NBC's Olympic commenters.  I'm accustomed to the stereotypically-accented rants of Olympic veterans like Bela Karolyi, but the networks own commenters are hardly more coherent at times.

Now That's Journalism

A Georgian reporter was shot and slightly wounded by a sniper during the recent Russian kerfuffle.  Her reaction is spectacular: she just keeps reporting.

Growing Up

Overheard from a buddy's phone conversation about financial matters with his fiancée on our drive to St. Louis:

Yeah, I'll just talk to my parents. They know a lot more about this than we do... Boy, what my Dad would have paid to hear that 10 years ago.

It's funny how, in the right contexts, relying on one's parents is a sign of maturity.

Trip Update

2,000 miles covered already. I need an oil change, but when I detoured through Asheville to look for a JiffyLube, I realized it's not exactly an oil-changin' sort of town. It's the sort of place where even the McDonald's bears a facade in the style of the Biltmore estate, Asheville's primary tourist trap. All in all, though, it looks like a very classily touristified slice of Americana, the sort of place that might make a really nice family vacation destination. And you really can't beat the mountains around here. By the time I got settled for the evening, everything was closed, and unfortunately I'm guessing most places will be closed tomorrow, so my poor car will just have to deal. Right now I'm staying in a hotel in Knoxville, TN, and I'm really wishing I had researched the city a bit more before I made my reservation here on the edge of town; if I had known Knoxville was such a nice city, I'd have gotten a downtown hotel so I could get out a bit instead of spending a Saturday night drinking Sailor Jerry's rum and blogging in my hotel room. Oh well, lessons learned.

So True

Xkcd nails it again. Now, I'm a solid devotee of Google Maps. I probably have a rather unhealthy attachment to it, honestly, to the point that I feel a shudder of horror at the thought of using something so positively primeval as MapQuest. But it does occasionally have some snafus. Or more accurately, this world of ours doesn't quite live up to the perfect order implied by Google. And of course, Google's employees like to leave little jokes here or there. For a while, requesting directions from anywhere in North America to anywhere in Europe would direct you to New York harbor, followed by the line "swim the Atlantic", continuing with road directions from Calais. Google's got jokes.

Driving

So friends, I'm noticing that I've got quite a bit of driving coming up in the next month. Like, just shy of 5,000 miles worth (destinations are approximate and unrepresentative, crazy stalker people!):


View Larger Map

So, who's got some tips for enjoying long lonely drives? I'm no stranger to the open road myself, but I've covered most of this terrain before and I'm a bit worried boredom might get the best of me.

Putin Went Down to Georgia

Yeah yeah yeah, I'm sure I'm not the first to make that joke.

I realize I'm uncharacteristically slow to comment on the "situation" developing in Georgia. Namely, you know, the Russian invasion and air campaign against a sovereign neighbor. I seem to think there's a term for a high-speed armored invasion with overwhelming close air support: oh yeah, blitzkrieg. In any case I'm not hugely read up on Russian and post-Soviet geopolitics, much less on Caucasian studies, so it's taken me a few days to pull together enough to make some informed comments.

In light of Russia's bombing of civil infrastructure, and particularly the attempted bombing of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline that connects the Caspian oil fields to world markets, circumventing Russia's regional petrohegemony, I think it is difficult to see this invasion as anything but blatantly imperial. Russia's transparent excuse to be protecting Russian citizens in South Ossetia from Georgian aggression, well, that one's sort of been used before. True, there's a strong separatist streak in South Ossetia, but the Ossetians in Russia have little more interest in being part of that country, either. So Russia's claim to the moral high ground is pretty difficult to accept.

I'm pleased (and unsurprised) to see Senator McCain's unequivocal condemnation of Russian aggression and his support for our Georgian allies. I'm also saddened (and similarly unsurprised) by Senator Obama's refusal to take sides. Initially, his campaign completely refused to place blame: "It’s both sides’ fault — both have been somewhat provocative with each other." This from his foreign policy advisor Mark Brzezinski. Later, Obama toughened his line. He now "condemn[s] the outbreak of violence in Georgia". Well good for you, Senator Obama, give that outbreak a stern talking-to! Maybe invite the outbreak in for talks, or threaten the outbreak with sanctions. Maybe, if push comes to shove, our military strength might be used to influence the outbreak of violence to behave itself. Senator Obama also says that "Georgia's territorial integrity must be respected." Does he fail to realize that this statement is completely meaningless to a party that has disputed what constitutes Georgia's territory since that country's independence? Yesterday, Obama finally got around to sounding a little bit less like a Kremlin stooge and more like an American President, or in this case more like McCain's initial (and impromptu) statement. Taking 48 hours to reach the same position your elderly opponent came to when questioned on the airport tarmac doesn't really engender confidence for the proverbial 3:00 A.M. phone call.

Response to Shane's Response to Lewis

Shane brought up some very good points in response to Cheryl's quote from C.S. Lewis that I posted yesterday. His points and my responses were really far too long to molder in the comments, so I post them here.

I largely agree - I still love reading what the libertarians at Cato are publishing, and generally prefer non-interference in other people's matters. The main thing that still makes me a liberal who thinks that government does have a role to play in pushing health and safety because:

a) current government policies of subsidies and spending promote unhealthy habits (for example, corn subsidies and sugar tariffs have spawned an industry pushing cheap HFCS [high-fructose corn syrup] as sweetener, leading companies like Coca-Cola to make the average serving size from 8 oz to 20 oz, while government subsidizes driving and discourages walking by building highways instead of mass transit and bicycle lanes).

Absolutely. If a government policy (particularly an already dubious one like massively distortionary ag subsidies) is demonstrably detrimental to the health of citizens, I can't see how any reasonable person could defend it on libertarian grounds: "It offends the dignity of my humanity to pay the market price for unhealthful sweeteners!" Yeah, not so much. As for the driving subsidy, that's a tricky one, isn't it? Clearly, building highways is overwhelmingly more popular with the voting public than trains and bicycle lanes, and it's pretty tempting to believe the public just doesn't know what's best for them in this case. It's also tricky in that transit is extremely messy to privatize; there's no way to accurately judge the market for trains where there simply aren't any. So again, in this case, subsidizing mass transit or bicycle lanes or providing kickbacks to pedestrians or what-have-you to provide some sort of counterweight to all the money going to highways doesn't offend my sensibilities a bit, especially when transit availability is such a liberalizing factor in broadening access to job markets and essential goods and services, particularly for the poor. I've got no problem with subsidies per se, so long as there's transparency as to what we're really paying for, and an awareness that any subsidy will distort incentives and have unintended consequences. There are few cases of an unqualified good in public policy, very few win-win situations, and I wish politicians would acknowledge that.

b) In some cases the public is ignorant, misinformed, or outright deceived of some sources of harm. I can't see how the FDA's core functions can be successfully privatized. I also support laws requiring restaurant chains to publish nutrition facts and disclose their usage of trans fats, etc. In most of these cases, I'd prefer transparency over outright bans, though.

True. On the whole, however, I'll take the harm we can do ourselves through ignorance over the harm we can do each other through creeping totalitarianism any day. And no, the FDA probably couldn't be privatized, but its approvals need not be 100% binding, for example by allowing desperately ill people to give informed consent to use experimental and unapproved medications. It of course follows that I'm completely with you on transparency vs. prohibition. To me, the role of government in this situation is simply ensuring that citizens have the information available to make informed decisions.

c) Some issues are just collective action problems, and pragmatically speaking, the government might be the most efficient coordinator of aggregate behavior.

Yes, sometimes. The earlier example of transit is a great one; do the libertarians honestly yearn for a world in which every road and sidewalk is subject to toll and could be closed and opened at the owner's whim? The issue here, of course, just comes down to deciding which issues are best solved by civil and market forces vs. by government intervention.

In summary of this sprawling treatise, I don't take Lewis's quote to be an indictment of collective action in general -- his politics were never so strident as that -- but rather an admonition to always be on guard against creeping authoritarianism, however it may be disguised. Americans are pretty quick to recognize wanton powerlust in its traditional cloaks of nationalism, militarism, and greed (indeed, some tend to see it so pretty much everywhere), but the same motivating force also veils itself as charity, as genuine concern for public health and the environment. For that matter, "national security" falls into the same category and hides similarly insidious dangers. I don't think "liberal" totalitarianism is any worse than the old-fashioned types, I just think it's more dangerous because America today is mostly blind to it.

Hope and Struggle

I just had a bit of a Eureka moment reading Susan's Pendulum reflecting on Romans 8:23-24 :

23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? (ESV).

As Susan points out, we will never escape from sin in this life; that's the whole point of this passage. We wait eagerly for that day, we hope for it, because we have not seen it. The Christian life is a daily struggle against the sinful nature, and it is a struggle we daily lose. The frustration that comes of this daily Fall, however, should not lead to despair (and this is what so struck me), for the blessed life free of the burdens of sin is precisely that which we eagerly await, for which we hope but cannot see. Too many voices in our lives tell us that we can achieve this blessedness on Earth, if only we were good enough, faithful enough, self-controlled enough. But there's no chicken-and-egg issue here, these virtues are fruits, not prerequisites. We will never earn them for ourselves, nor can we by willfully practicing them avoid facing the consequences of sin in our lives. Instead, we groan inwardly, we wait eagerly. In short, we hope.

She's Got Jokes

Some cheap geopolitical humor via Thursday's Child:

UN Survey

Last month, a worldwide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was: "Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"

The survey was a huge failure because:

In Africa they didn't know what 'food' means.

In Eastern Europe they didn't know what 'honest' means.

In Western Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' means.

In China they didn't know what 'opinion' means.

In the Middle East they didn't know what 'solution' means.

In South America they didn't know what 'please' means.

In the USA they didn't know what 'the rest of the world' means.

Shamelessly Cribbed Quote of the Day

Cheryl at A Round Unvarnish'd Tale shares this quote from C.S. Lewis, a good reminder of the dangers of spiraling do-gooderism:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment".

Now I'm no Objectivist, and Lewis certainly wasn't either. I wholeheartedly believe in personal charity, not least because Christ was sort of big on it. But Ayn Rand does hold a sliver of truth in the potential of charity to become tyrannical, particularly charity institutionalized or nationalized. There's a strong streak of Prohibitionism in America these days, and it seems to be getting stronger; Elephant's Child is right to reference Liberal Fascism.

Language Peeve

I'm currently reading Three Cups of Tea, a book which has been recommended to me again and again, and which is pretty much living up to its reviews. The spirit of Midwestern do-gooderism struggling to build schools in the cold shadow of K2 is pure Olaf, really, and it warms my heart a bit to read. What doesn't warm my heart, however, is shoddy transliteration of Muslim (originally Arabic) names, which brings me to today's peeve. Fairly early in the story, we meet a character named Abdul. Popular conception would seem to suggest that the Muslim world is full of men named Abdul; indeed, I'm guessing if you started asking Americans to list five tradition Muslim names, Abdul would be on many if not most of those lists. One problem: no such name is possible in the Arabic language, whence traditional Muslim names around the world derive. The word abd means "servant" or "slave", and while it can be a name in and of itself, it is generally part of a compound name, as in the familiar name Abdullah, abd-Allah, "servant of God". This construction is the source of innumerable Muslim names such as Abdulrahman "servant of the Merciful", Abdulrahim "servant of the Beneficent", Abdulqadir "servant of the All-Capable", Abdulzahrah "servant of the Flower", Abdulrazzaq "servant of the Provider", Abdulaziz "servant of the Powerful". Indeed, any of the ninety-nine names of God could be made into names by this construction. While these phrasal names are separate words in Arabic, the traditional transliterations divide them in the wrong place (i.e. Abdul Rahman), leading to the misconception that there exists such a name as Abdul. This is rather like an Arab noting the vast number of northern Europeans bearing the last name of Son. Correct yourselves, friends, and please correct others. If a space is necessary, it should go before the article al- (i.e. Abd al-Rahman), but since the space just tempts us to read one name as two, let's just agree to leave it out entirely.

Someday I'll dive into my rant on pronunciation of Arabic names and place names. My opinion may surprise you. But today is not that day.

Cherry Jump

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of completing my "cherry jump" with the 82nd Airborne. I'm not finding much online explaining the tradition of the cherry jump, so here goes:

Here in the 82nd Airborne Division (and elsewhere), a new soldier to the unit is known as a "cherry" (I'm assuming you can follow the connotation), and his first jump in Division is known as his "cherry jump" or "cherry blast". While this part of the tradition has now been gutted in an ill-targeted crackdown on "hazing", the cherry soldier used to be given a cherry-red helmet cover to single him out (which would also, to my mind, rather helpfully alert the jumpmasters to his inexperience). The cherry is also given a cherry pie to carry in his pocket during the jump, which he then eats on the drop zone after his landing. Complicating this process, however, are his fellow paratroopers who, through much good-natured punching, ensure he lands with nothing but a charleyhorse and a pocketful of cherry goo.

So that's the tradition, but I missed out on most of it. One of my buddies had indeed bought a full cherry pie (instead of the usual Hostess single-serve pie) for the three cherries in our platoon, but I ended up in a different "chalk" (a single planeload of paratroopers) and so managed to jump without my pocketful of pie. Oh well. I've got that out of my way, and got my first precious scrap of Airborne credibility.

Which is not to say the jump went off without a hitch. After a shockingly early wakeup call and zero-dark-thirty manifest formation, we arrived at the drop zone to find that, in all-too-classic fashion, our unit had failed to procure both parachutes and working aircraft for the day's jump. One could be forgiven for incredulously exclaiming that these are, in point of fact, the two sole necessary elements of an airborne operation. But, you see, you would be applying sense, and the fact of the matter is that, particularly in garrison training operations, the Army rarely makes any. Eventually, though, 'chutes were scrounged and a bird was summoned, and we jumped. And I'll never understand what makes a sky full of paratroopers such a beautiful sight, but maybe I've drunk just a bit of that Airborne Kool-Aid, because this is awe-inspiring:


Next time I jump I'll try to post a good short video of the jumpers coming out of the bird. It's awesome.

All aside, it was a good jump and a safe landing, even if it was a bit harder than textbook. It's well and good to angle your body to adjust for your direction of drift, but they never really tell you what to do when you're falling straight down. Land like a sack o' potatoes, apparently. Oh, and the green patch that looks thick and soft from 200 feet up? Yeah, that's blackberry briar and it's nowhere near as soft as it looks.

Protestant America

Joseph Bottum of First Things shares a fascinating historical perspective on Protestantism in America. Having been educated in the limestone tower of Mainline Lutheran (ELCA) academia, much of Bottum's analysis rings true as things I'd known, without knowing I knew. (And apparently I can simultaneously channel Plato and Mr. Rumsfeld). I really like his analysis of American society resting on the three-legged stool of democracy, capitalism, and religion, and his social and economic analysis of civil religion's role in general. As to where that society can be headed on a two-legged stool none of us can say for certain, but neither politics nor economics has a good track record in trying to fill the role of civil religion.

Cake Wrecks

A new fun blog: Cake Wrecks. A gallery, with commentary, of some truly appalling cakes (and a few totally awesome ones). My favorite is titled I'll Take My Chances. That or the cake-entombed baby. Yeah, you read that right.

Zucchini

Big Doofus reveals the truth behind the Zucchini Conspiracy. Concerned citizens beware.

Priorities

Apparently Obama's got 'em, but they don't reflect particularly well on him, as PowerLine reports. What amazes me more than his preference for sightseeing rather than visiting wounded soldiers in Germany is that -- again -- the allegedly masterful campaigner seems unaware of or indifferent to the sort of message these choices send. We must conclude that is either a) a fool, or b) cynical enough to write off the yellow-ribbon crowd as already lost to him and not worth the trouble of pandering.

Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns

I just finished reading Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. It's a very good book, and its popularity gives me faith in the American book-reading public. I know he made his name with The Kite Runner, and they already made a movie and all, but this book is better. Hosseini's storytelling talent and incredibly, almost painfully honest portrayals of the guts and grit of human relationships, which made The Kite Runner so rightfully popular, are here refined even further. So, too, is the pain and torment, the heartbreak, the devastation of a whole country told through so many devastations of individual lives.

There was a particular point that caught me, though, in the midst of all the terror and destruction wrought by the waves of utopian revolutionaries, Soviet "liberators", counterrevolutionaries, and holy warriors of all stripes whose various crusades all but destroyed Afghanistan. At one point in the novel, a character is standing trial before a Taliban judge, who explains in the sentencing that while the circumstances of the crime tempted him to mercy, he was himself nearing death, and feared that he would be held to account for his failure to uphold God's law. He imagines God standing judgement upon him saying, "But it was not for you to forgive, Mullah". Probably the second-most common Muslim epithet for God is al-Rahman, the merciful. Every letter, every document, every memo in the devout Muslim world is headed by the phrase bismallah al-rahman wal-rahim. In the name of God, the Merciful, the Benificient. Islam hangs all hope of salvation on this, the mercy of God. Does God really then hold a monopoly on mercy?

This point struck me so because it is the complete reversal of a Christian understanding. My God is indeed not merciful, not in the sense of a pitying judge who pardons the truly guilty, for He is just, and justice demands payment for sin. This payment has been made. Our sins are not pardoned out of mercy, they are absolved by Christ's redeeming sacrifice. All of which allows us to leave divine judgement where it belongs, in God's hands. A judge, no matter his personal faith, does God's work when he rules wisely according to the law of the land. We ought not be so bound by the Law that we fear damnation for encroaching on God's mercy, for stepping on His toes.

Back at Bragg

For my four readers who aren't family members or reading this on Facebook, I'm now safely back in the best country on the planet: Not Iraq. Specifically, America. Or 'Murka, if you're Toby Keith. We've been having lots of free time since we got back, which is rather nice. Still waiting to get most of my stuff out of storage and get fully moved into the barracks. It's definitely a different feeling, settling into a place with the expectation of staying a while, rather than just living out of one's bags, waiting to leave again. I haven't gotten internet in my room yet, but there's at least coffeshops and such here I can use, so I'll likely be posting on a fairly regular basis again. I've got a lot of material in my mental queue, so expect plenty of stories and reflections from my deployment.

Classic Moments in Soldiering: Hey, Try This!

This exchange came as we scarfed down the goodies out of a care package that had been handed to us as we sat around the chaplain's tent today. We found a bag of peanut butter M&Ms that was already torn open, spilling some into the box, which I snatched and tossed into my mouth.

Me (chewing): Uh, this bag wasn't sealed and these kinda taste like diesel exhaust.
Sgt D (eating): Yeah, definitely diesel exhaust.
Me: So, uh, you gonna stop eating them?
Sgt D (still eating): Hmmmmm, thinkin' about it.

So we stopped eating, but we definitely didn't throw them away, because we had to offer them to anyone who came into the tent. And it wasn't like we were tricking anyone:

Us: Hey, try one of these. They taste like diesel.
Them: Awesome. (tries one). Gross.
Us: Yeah, ain't it?

It's the little things.

Soundtrack to My Life

Oh, it was getting about time to participate in another silly meme. So here we go, courtesy of IndianaJane.

Here's how it works:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...
7. Include commentary

Opening Credits: Zak and Sara, Ben Folds Five.
Pretty good start, to a quirky romantic comedy. Which is not at all what I imagine my life to be.

Waking Up: I Can't Help It, Johnny Cash.
Starting the day with unrequited longing? At least the dragging beat fits my typical morning mood.

First Day at School: Wolverine, Sufjan Stevens.
Fitting: hesitant, understated. "Take it in stride, take it in stride, take it in stride. It's not your fault, it's not your fault, it's not your fault". I wish someone had told me that then!

Falling in Love: It's Been So Very Long, Plankeye.
Pop-punk's a strange genre for love, but the lyrics are perfect: "It's been so very long, since I've been man enough, to be the kind of man, if I'm'onna hold your hand."

Fight Song: La redecouverte. Yann Piersen (Amelie soundtrack).
The fight occurs in surreal silence behind a lilting waltz of an accordion, a glockenspiel, maybe, what is that, a klavinette? Is that the right name for that? Anyways: Awesome.

Breaking Up: Pancho and Lefty, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.
I throw my banged-up guitar into my rusted musclecar and tear off down a dusty country road. Cue montage of me drinking my sorrows away in a series of increasingly shady roadhouses, finding myself down and out in a gutter, pulling out that picture of my girl that I just couldn't let go of, throwing away my fifth of cheap whiskey in disgust (which shatters, because in movies even cheap booze still comes in glass) and climbing onto a bus headed for home.

Prom: Oh, Fugazi.
This soundtrack rather optimistically imagines my high school to have been much hipper to the indie scene than is plausible for rural east-central Wisconsin. Also, you can't dance to this, but it'd be amusing to see someone try.

Life's Ok: This Is Not a Love Song, The Juliana Theory.
This would make for a very bittersweet sort of "Life's Ok" moment. Maybe this is fitting for a Dark Lutheran? "and you're so far away, and I'm sitting right here. It's ten o'clock your time, and it's one by mine".

Mental Breakdown: Take the "A" Train, Duke Ellington.
Hahahahaha. I love it. My soundtrack is so very appropriately surreal.

Driving: Janine, Soul Coughing. This is more than just a trip, this a journey. A journey of self-discovery. Contemplative, mournful, dirty acoustic guitar scratching, and the gonzo touch of a lo-fi answering-machine recording of a woman singing "The Lemon Tree" (tune-and-rhythmlessly) playing in the background through the length of the song.

Flashback: It's a Scientific Fact, Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans (the Singing Science records). Definitely a flashback, but not exactly what we were going for. "It's a scientific fact that there are belts of radiation in outer space that are a hazard for future space travelers to overcome."

Getting Back Together: Lady Eboshi, (Princess Mononoke soundtrack).
Haunting orchestral melody, pizzicato strings opening to an oboe solo, brimming with mournful hope. The past cannot be forgotten or overcome, but the pain strengthens our love.

Wedding: The Colony Room, The Sea and Cake.
Now is the time for something understated and light-hearted. We don't want to overdo anything.

Birth of Child: Amazon, M.I.A.
What better to commemorate the birth of a child than underground Lankan-British trip hop self-produced on a 4-track mixer in a London basement?

Final Battle: The Gash, The Flaming Lips.
The song is about not quitting, as much as any Flaming Lips song is about anything. I suppose that works. I just wish it had been "Fight Test". That'd have been perfect. Oh well.

Death Scene: Narcolepsy, Ben Folds Five.
I guess that works. It's sort of epic-tragic anyway. I'd like to think of my life as more the former than the latter, but you take what you get.

Funeral Song: Cinders and Smoke, Iron and Wine.
"Give me your hand, take what you will tonight. I'll give it as fast, and high as the flame will rise. Cinder and smoke, you ask me to pray for rain, with ash in your mouth, you ask it to burn again." Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.

End Credits: Brazil, Grant Green.
(from the Brazil soundtrack, which is something like 17 different versions of the same tune).
A nice electric jazz guitar version of the old standard. A fitting end to the strange movie of my life.

The Face Of Hope

Meet Sheikh Ahmad Fatah Khan al-Rishawi. He and his late brother Sheikh Sittar (assassinated by al-Qaeda last fall) have been architects of the "Awakening" movement that since summer of 2007 has seen Sunni tribes in Anbar province join with each other and with coalition forces to rid their lands of al-Qaeda, and which has become the archetype for American counterinsurgency efforts throughout Iraq. Now he's offered to send his tribesmen as advisors to Afghanistan.

Remember hearing how Iraq's tribes were going to be such a stumbling block? We don't know anything about their relationships, it's a dangerous wildcard, we told ourselves. Seems nobody had the optimism to believe that a social institution that has provided a coherent framework for Iraqi life through millennia of upheaval just maybe could turn out to be a stabilizing force.

And So The Luster Fades

In a few short months, my opinion of Senator Barack Obama has degraded considerably, to say the least. At the start, when I knew nothing of him but what he chose to present of himself, I was suitably impressed. I never thought much of his policies (or lack thereof), but I at least believed in his idealism. When his church was shown to be a hotbed of racial contempt and grievance-mongering I at least admired his willingness to stand by his associates, even while he artlessly dodged the implications of those associations. I lost the last of my personal respect for him when, so soon after defending his pastor of 20 years, he publicly sacrificed the Rev. Wright on the altar of political expedience. Call me old-fashioned, but loyalty still means something to this soldier.

Then came Mr. Obama's autohagiographic commencement speech this past Memorial Day weekend, with its strangely limited conception of service. For Obama, improving the lives of others apparently only counts as "service" when you're an underpaid left-wing rabble-rouser or organ of a maternalistic government bureaucracy. Referencing the economic challenge of India and China, Obama calls for graduates to become not engineers, scientists and tradesmen, but teachers and administrators. He quotes a young man who joined the Peace Corps “because it was the first time someone asked me to do something for my country.” This young man has seemingly never seen an Armed Forces recruitment ad anywhere, ever. And those men and women many of us think of first when we think of "service" -- firefighters, policemen, armed servicemen -- who daily protect Americans from those people and forces that would do them harm? Ironically for a speech on service, "the Service" earned not even a mention from Mr. Obama.

After all that, however, it was Senator Obama's victory speech last night in St. Paul that turned my ambivalence to disgust. There are a lot of things in this speech I could write pages about: Obama's disingenuous mischaracterizations of John McCain; his arrogant naivety in thinking that handing out international legitimacy like party favors counts as "tough, direct diplomacy"; his Obamessianic promise to retrochronically create the fields of health care and employment while channeling King Canute's promise to command the tides (and without the good King's pious intent); his fascistic sanctification of "change", as if we live in the worst of all possible worlds and any change must be for the better; or his adolescent whinging that McCain hasn't given him an attaboy for his (unsuccessful) campaign to get asbestos removed from some Chicago tenements at the same age McCain was having his bones broken in a North Vietnamese prison camp. But I'll leave all that aside for the one unforgivable quote of the speech:

[I]t's not change when [John McCain] promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians.

Mr. Obama, before now I was thinking that you really need to visit Iraq, to understand the imminent victory from whose jaws you are so intent on snatching defeat. But after that remark, I truly wish you wouldn't visit Iraq -- though I know political expedience will force you to -- because you have no right to stand alongside the Iraqi politicians you sneer at. If you must go, however, I wish their examples might teach you what hope means when it's not just a pleasant buzzword. These men risk their lives daily to build a future for their country; many have had family members kidnapped and killed. We ask nothing?! They risk everything! They risk everything because they. have. hope. Hope for the future and faith in their countrymen. You would present yourself as an expert on hope, but your denial of the courage and determination of these brave men -- and your cynical reliance on the ignorance and indifference of your supporters to the undeniable political progress being made in Iraq -- has made me realize that whatever you mean by that word, it's something I don't even recognize.

Basrah, After

In March the Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police, with limited support from American and British forces, took back control of the port city of Basrah from assorted bands of smugglers and puritanical thugs under the aeges of the Jaysh al-Mahdi (Mahdi Army) and Iranian-supported "special groups". While Prime Minister al-Maliki's new-found willingness to confront Shi'a extremist groups closely tied to his political base was a welcome development, at first the rather slapdash execution of the operation rightly made concerned observers a bit nervous. I stated back in April (a bit boldly, in hindsight) that the IA had proven the naysayers wrong, and it seems the center continues to hold as IA and government-aligned civilian militias keep the peace. Basrah joins the majority of Iraqi cities on the path toward a semblance of normalcy, something even the Washington Post can celebrate with a photoessay of life cautiously coming out of the shadows. At the start of the Basrah operation, I called these "dangerous but hopeful times for Iraq". The danger is most certainly not past, and any progress is reversible. But these pictures speak to the power of hope.