Brilliant article from Hornby, in today's NY Times:
Rock of Ages
By NICK HORNBY
LONDON
It's just before Christmas last year, and the Philadelphia rock 'n' roll band Marah is halfway through a typically ferocious, chaotic and inspirational set when the doors to the right of the stage burst open and a young man staggers in, carrying most of a drum kit. My friends and I have the best seats in the house, a couple of feet away from Marah's frontmen, Serge and Dave Bielanko, but when the drummer arrives we have to move our table back to make room for him. He's not Marah's drummer (the band is temporarily without) but he's a drummer, and he owns most of a drum kit, and his appearance allows the band to make an even more glorious and urgent racket than they had managed hitherto. The show ends triumphantly, as Marah shows tend to do, with Serge lying on the floor amid the feet of his public, wailing away on his harmonica.
This gig happens to be taking place in a pub called the Fiddler's Elbow, in Kentish Town, north London, but doubtless scenes like it are being played out throughout the world: a bar band, a pickup drummer from an earlier gig, probably even the table-shifting. It's just that three or four months earlier, Bruce Springsteen, a fan of the band, invited the Bielanko brothers to share the stage with him at Giants Stadium for an encore, and Marah will shortly release what would, in a world with ears, be one of 2004's most-loved straight-ahead rock albums, "20,000 Streets Under the Sky." These guys shouldn't be playing in the Fiddler's Elbow with a pickup drummer. And they shouldn't be passing a hat around at the end of the gig, surely? How many people have passed around the hat in the same year that they appeared at Giants Stadium?
Thirty years ago, almost to the day, Jon Landau published his influential, exciting, career-changing, and subsequently much derided and parodied article about Bruce Springsteen in The Real Paper, an alternative weekly — the article that included the line "I saw rock 'n' roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen." I had never read the rest of it until recently, and it remains a lovely piece of writing. It begins, heartbreakingly: "It's four in the morning and raining. I'm 27 today, feeling old, listening to my records and remembering that things were different a decade ago." I'm only guessing here, but I can imagine there are a number of you reading this who can remember what it was like to feel old at 27, and how it bears no resemblance to feeling old at 37, or 47. And you probably miss records almost as much as you miss being 27.
It's hard not to think about one's age and how it relates to rock music. I just turned 47, and with each passing year it becomes harder not to wonder whether I should be listening to something that is still thought of as more age appropriate — jazz, folk, classical, opera, funeral marches, the usual suspects. You've heard the arguments a million times: most rock music is made by the young, for the young, about being young, and if you're not young and you still listen to it, then you should be ashamed of yourself. And finally I've worked out my response to all that: I mostly agree with the description, even though it's crude, and makes no effort to address the recent, mainly excellent work of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Robert Plant, Mr. Springsteen et al. The conclusion, however, makes no sense to me any more.
Youth is a quality not unlike health: it's found in greater abundance among the young, but we all need access to it. (And not all young people are lucky enough to be young. Think of those people at your college who wanted to be politicians or corporate lawyers, for example.) I'm not talking about the accouterments of youth: the unlined faces, the washboard stomachs, the hair. The young are welcome to all that — what would we do with it anyway? I'm talking about the energy, the wistful yearning, the inexplicable exhilaration, the sporadic sense of invincibility, the hope that stings like chlorine. When I was younger, rock music articulated these feelings, and now that I'm older it stimulates them, but either way, rock 'n' roll was and remains necessary because: who doesn't need exhilaration and a sense of invincibility, even if it's only now and again?
When I say that I have found these feelings harder and harder to detect these last few years, I understand that I run the risk of being seen as yet another nostalgic old codger complaining about the state of contemporary music. And though it's true that I'm an old codger, and that I'm complaining about the state of contemporary music, I hope that I can wriggle out of the hole I'm digging for myself by moaning that, to me, contemporary rock music no longer sounds young — or at least, not young in that kind of joyous, uninhibited way. In some ways, it became way too grown-up and full of itself. You can find plenty that's angry, or weird, or perverse, or melancholy and world-weary; but that loud, sometimes dumb celebration of being alive has got lost somewhere along the way. Of course we want to hear songs about Iraq, and child prostitution, and heroin addiction. And if bands see the need to use electric drills instead of guitars in order to give vent to their rage, well, bring it on. But is there any chance we could have the Righteous Brothers' "Little Latin Lupe Lu" — or, better still, a modern-day equivalent — for an encore?
In his introduction to the Modern Library edition of "David Copperfield," the novelist David Gates talks about literature hitting "that high-low fork in the road, leading on the one hand toward `Ulysses' and on the other toward `Gone With The Wind,' " and maybe rock music has experienced its own version. You can either chase the Britney dollar, or choose the high-minded cult-rock route that leads to great reviews and commercial oblivion. I buy that arty stuff all the time, and a lot of it is great. But part of the point of it is that its creators don't want to engage with the mainstream, or no longer think that it's possible to do so, and as a consequence cult status is preordained rather than accidental. In this sense, the squeaks and bleeps scattered all over the lovely songs on the last Wilco album sound less like experimentation, and more like a despairing audio suicide note.
Maybe this split is inevitable in any medium where there is real money to be made: it has certainly happened in film, for example, and even literature was a form of pop culture, once upon a time. It takes big business a couple of decades to work out how best to exploit a cultural form; once that has happened, "that high-low fork in the road" is unavoidable, and the middle way begins to look impossibly daunting. It now requires more bravery than one would ever have thought necessary to try and march straight on, to choose neither the high road nor the low. Who has the nerve to pick up where Dickens or John Ford left off? In other words, who wants to make art that is committed and authentic and intelligent, but that sets out to include, rather than exclude? To do so would run the risk of seeming not only sincere and uncool — a stranger to all notions of postmodernism — but arrogant and vaultingly ambitious as well.
Marah may well be headed for commercial oblivion anyway, of course. "20,000 Streets Under the Sky" is their fourth album, and they're by no means famous yet, as the passing of the hat in the Fiddler's Elbow indicates. But what I love about them is that I can hear everything I ever loved about rock music in their recordings and in their live shows. Indeed, in the shows you can often hear their love for the rock canon uninflected — they play covers of the Replacements' "Can't Hardly Wait," or the Jam's "In the City," and they usually end with a riffed-up version of the O'Jays' "Love Train." They play an original called "The Catfisherman" with a great big Bo Diddley beat, and they quote the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" and the Who's "Magic Bus." And they do this not because they're a bar band and people expect cover versions, but because they are unafraid of showing where their music comes from, and unafraid of the comparisons that will ensue — just as Bruce Springsteen (who really did play "Little Latin Lupe Lu" for an encore, sometimes) was unafraid.
It was this kind of celebration that Jon Landau had in mind when he said in his review that "I saw my rock 'n' roll past flash before my eyes." For Mr. Landau, the overbearing self-importance of rock music of the late 60's and early 70's had left him feeling jaded; for me, it's the overbearing self-consciousness of the 90's. The Darkness know that we might laugh at them, so they laugh at themselves first; the White Stripes may be a blues band, but their need to exude cool is every bit as strong as their desire to emit heat, and the calculations have been made accordingly: there's as much artfulness as there is art.
In truth, I don't care whether the music sounds new or old: I just want it to have ambition and exuberance, a lack of self-consciousness, a recognition of the redemptive power of noise, an acknowledgment that emotional intelligence is sometimes best articulated through a great chord change, rather than a furrowed brow. Outkast's brilliant "Hey Ya!," a song that for a few brief months last year united races and critics and teenagers and nostalgic geezers, had all that and more; you could hear Prince in there, and the Beatles, and yet the song belonged absolutely in and to the here and now, or at least the there and then of 2003.
Both "Hey Ya!" and Marah's new album are roots records, not in the sense that they were made by men with beards who play the fiddle and sing with a finger in an ear, but in the sense that they have recognizable influences — influences that are not only embedded in pop history, but that have been properly digested. In the suffocatingly airless contemporary pop-culture climate, you can usually trace influences back only as far as Radiohead, or Boyz II Men, or the Farrelly Brothers, and regurgitation rather than digestion would be the more accurate gastric metaphor.
The pop music critic of The Guardian recently reviewed a British band that reminded him — pleasantly, I should add — of "the hammering drum machine and guitar of controversial 80's trio Big Black and the murky noise of early Throbbing Gristle." I have no doubt whatsoever that the band he was writing about (a band with a name too confrontational and cutting-edge to be repeated here) will prove to be one of the most significant cultural forces of the decade, nor that it will produce music that forces us to confront the evil and horror that resides within us all.
However, there is still a part of me that persists in thinking that rock music, and indeed all art, has an occasional role to play in the increasingly tricky art of making us glad we're alive. I'm not sure that Throbbing Gristle and its descendants will ever pull that off, but the members of Marah do, often. I hope they won't be passing around the hat by the end of this year, but if they are, please give generously.
Nick Hornby is the author, most recently, of "Songbook."
Friday, May 21, 2004
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Hey, hey, hey!"
Good stuff here from Cos, courtesy of the Washington Post:
Bill Cosby was anything but politically correct in his remarks Monday night at a Constitution Hall bash commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. To astonishment, laughter and applause, Cosby mocked everything from urban fashion to black spending and speaking habits.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal," he declared. "These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.' . . .
"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English," he exclaimed. "I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' . . . And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. . . . Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. . . . You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
The Post's Hamil Harris reports that Cosby also turned his wrath to "the incarcerated," saying: "These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
When Cosby finally concluded, Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and NAACP legal defense fund head Theodore Shaw came to the podium looking stone-faced. Shaw told the crowd that most people on welfare are not African American, and many of the problems his organization has addressed in the black community were not self-inflicted.
Good stuff here from Cos, courtesy of the Washington Post:
Bill Cosby was anything but politically correct in his remarks Monday night at a Constitution Hall bash commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. To astonishment, laughter and applause, Cosby mocked everything from urban fashion to black spending and speaking habits.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal," he declared. "These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids -- $500 sneakers for what? And won't spend $200 for 'Hooked on Phonics.' . . .
"They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English," he exclaimed. "I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' . . . And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. . . . Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. . . . You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"
The Post's Hamil Harris reports that Cosby also turned his wrath to "the incarcerated," saying: "These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"
When Cosby finally concluded, Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert, NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and NAACP legal defense fund head Theodore Shaw came to the podium looking stone-faced. Shaw told the crowd that most people on welfare are not African American, and many of the problems his organization has addressed in the black community were not self-inflicted.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
More good lists relating to C.S. Lewis, from the same source as the Lewis booklists previously posted:
The Lewis Legacy
Perry Bramlett's Lists
By: Kathryn Lindskoog
The C.S. Lewis Foundation for Truth in Publishing
September 1, 2000
The 25 Best Books Written about C.S. Lewis
Biographical
1) George Sayer: Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis
2) James Como (ed) - C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table
3) W Hooper & R L Green - C. S. Lewis: A Biography
4) Humphrey Carpenter - The Inklings
5) Lyle Dorsett - A Love Observed (formerly And God Came In)
Studies
1) Chad Walsh - C S Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics
2) J Schultz & J West (eds) - The C. S. Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia
3) Kathryn Lindskoog - C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian
4) Peter Schakel - Reason & Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have Faces
5) Kathryn Lindskoog - Light in the Shadowlands: Protecting the Real C S
Lewis
6) Corbin Scott Carnell - Bright Shadow of Reality: Spiritual Longing in C S Lewis
7) Paul Ford - Companion to Narnia
8) Gilbert Meilaender - A Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical
Thought of C. S. Lewis
9) Janine Goffar (ed) - The C S Lewis Index
10) Joe Christopher & Joan Ostling - C S Lewis: Annotated Checklist of
Writings about him and his Works
11) Walter Hooper - C. S. Lewis: Companion & Guide
12) Jocelyn Gibb (ed) - Light on C S Lewis
13) Doris Myers - C S Lewis in Context
14) James Patrick - The Magdalen Metaphysicals: Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford, 1901-1945
15) Kathryn Lindskoog - Finding the Landlord: A Guidebook to C S Lewis's
Pilgrim's Regress
16) Peter Schakel & Charles Huttar (eds) - Word and Story in C S Lewis
17) James Como - Branches to Heaven: The Geniuses of C S Lewis
18) Joe Christopher - C S Lewis
19) Kathryn Lindskoog - Journey Into Narnia
20) Andrew Walker & James Patrick (eds) - A Christian for All Christians: Essays in Honour of C S Lewis
[Editor's note: I think the first one written, Chad Walsh's C. S. Lewis,
Apostle to the Skeptics, should be one of the top twenty.]
The Worst Books Written about C.S. Lewis
1) A N Wilson - C. S. Lewis: A Biography
2) David Holbrook - Skeleton in the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis' Fantasies: A
Phenomenological Study
3) John Beversluis - C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion
4) Lenore Fleischer - Shadowlands
5) Michael Coren - The Man Who Created Narnia
6) Derick Bingham - C. S. Lewis the Storyteller
7) Sam Wellman - C. S. Lewis
8) Gerhard Reed - C. S. Lewis and the Bright Shadow of Holiness
9) Douglas Gresham - Lenten Lands
10) A TIE: Paul Holmer - C. S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought; David Barratt - C. S. Lewis and His World
Best Books about C.S. Lewis You've Never Heard Of
(long out of print, small market books, or not issued in the U.S.; in
alphabetical order)
1) Michael Christensen - C. S. Lewis on Scripture
2) Douglas Gilbert & Clyde KIlby - C. S. Lewis: Images of His World
3) Richard Harries - C. S. Lewis: The Man and His God
4) Peter Kreeft - C. S. Lewis: A Critical Essay
5) Leanne Payne - Real Prescence: The Christian Worldview of C. S. Lewis as Incarnational Reality
6) Martha Sammons - A Guide to C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy
7) Stephen Schofield - In Search of C. S. Lewis
8) Robert Smith - Patches of Godlight: The Pattern of Thought in C. S.
Lewis
9) Phillip Vander Elst - C. S. Lewis
10) (TIE) George Watson - C. S. Lewis: Critical Essays; William White - The Image of Man in C. S. Lewis
Most Attractive Books by and About C.S. Lewis
(Packaging, title, printing, cover; ranked in order)
1) Douglas Gilbert & Clyde Kilby - C. S. Lewis: Images of His World
2) C. S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia (British and U.S. one-volume editions)
3) C. S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia (British first edition paperbacks illustrated by Pauline Baynes)
4) C. S. Lewis - The Four Loves (British first edition paperback)
5) C. S. Lewis - Voyage to Venus (British Pan first edition paperback)
6) Walter Hooper - C. S. Lewis: Companion & Guide (British hardcover)
7) C. S. Lewis - Till We Have Faces (U.S. first edition hardcover)
8) C. S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters (British edition illustrated by Papas)
9) C. S. Lewis - The Cosmic Trilogy - Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength (British one-volume edition)
10) C. S. Lewis - The Allegory of Love (both Oxford paperbacks with cover illustrations from Roman de la Rose, Flemish illumination)
11) C. S. Lewis - The Pilgrim's Regress (U.S. edition illustrated by
Michael Hague)
12) Michael Coren - The Man Who Created Narnia
13) C. S. Lewis - God in the Dock (new Eerdmans paperback)
14) Brian Sibley & Alison Sage - A Treasury of Narnia
15) C. S. Lewis - Miracles (British first edition paperback)
16) Paul Ford - Companion to Nanria (U.S. first edition paperback)
17) C. S. Lewis - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (U.S. HarperCollins hardcover gift edition, 1997)
18) Humphrey Carpenter - The Inklings (new British paperback)
19) Kathryn Lindskoog - C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian (Cornerstone 4th
edition paperback)
20) Walter Hooper (ed) - All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis
1922-1927 (U.S. first edition hardcover)
21) Walter Hooper (ed) - C. S. Lewis: Collected Letters Volume I - Family Letters 1905-1931 (British first edition hardcover)
22) C. S. Lewis - Mere Christianity (U.S. Macmillan paperback 1960)
23) Peter Kreeft - The Shadowlands of C. S. Lewis
24) C. S. Lewis - Surprised By Joy (U. S. first edition hardcover)
25) Jeffrey Schultz & John West (eds) - The C. S. Lewis Readers'
Encyclopedia
The Lewis Legacy
Perry Bramlett's Lists
By: Kathryn Lindskoog
The C.S. Lewis Foundation for Truth in Publishing
September 1, 2000
The 25 Best Books Written about C.S. Lewis
Biographical
1) George Sayer: Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis
2) James Como (ed) - C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table
3) W Hooper & R L Green - C. S. Lewis: A Biography
4) Humphrey Carpenter - The Inklings
5) Lyle Dorsett - A Love Observed (formerly And God Came In)
Studies
1) Chad Walsh - C S Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics
2) J Schultz & J West (eds) - The C. S. Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia
3) Kathryn Lindskoog - C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian
4) Peter Schakel - Reason & Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study of Till We Have Faces
5) Kathryn Lindskoog - Light in the Shadowlands: Protecting the Real C S
Lewis
6) Corbin Scott Carnell - Bright Shadow of Reality: Spiritual Longing in C S Lewis
7) Paul Ford - Companion to Narnia
8) Gilbert Meilaender - A Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical
Thought of C. S. Lewis
9) Janine Goffar (ed) - The C S Lewis Index
10) Joe Christopher & Joan Ostling - C S Lewis: Annotated Checklist of
Writings about him and his Works
11) Walter Hooper - C. S. Lewis: Companion & Guide
12) Jocelyn Gibb (ed) - Light on C S Lewis
13) Doris Myers - C S Lewis in Context
14) James Patrick - The Magdalen Metaphysicals: Idealism and Orthodoxy at Oxford, 1901-1945
15) Kathryn Lindskoog - Finding the Landlord: A Guidebook to C S Lewis's
Pilgrim's Regress
16) Peter Schakel & Charles Huttar (eds) - Word and Story in C S Lewis
17) James Como - Branches to Heaven: The Geniuses of C S Lewis
18) Joe Christopher - C S Lewis
19) Kathryn Lindskoog - Journey Into Narnia
20) Andrew Walker & James Patrick (eds) - A Christian for All Christians: Essays in Honour of C S Lewis
[Editor's note: I think the first one written, Chad Walsh's C. S. Lewis,
Apostle to the Skeptics, should be one of the top twenty.]
The Worst Books Written about C.S. Lewis
1) A N Wilson - C. S. Lewis: A Biography
2) David Holbrook - Skeleton in the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis' Fantasies: A
Phenomenological Study
3) John Beversluis - C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion
4) Lenore Fleischer - Shadowlands
5) Michael Coren - The Man Who Created Narnia
6) Derick Bingham - C. S. Lewis the Storyteller
7) Sam Wellman - C. S. Lewis
8) Gerhard Reed - C. S. Lewis and the Bright Shadow of Holiness
9) Douglas Gresham - Lenten Lands
10) A TIE: Paul Holmer - C. S. Lewis: The Shape of His Faith and Thought; David Barratt - C. S. Lewis and His World
Best Books about C.S. Lewis You've Never Heard Of
(long out of print, small market books, or not issued in the U.S.; in
alphabetical order)
1) Michael Christensen - C. S. Lewis on Scripture
2) Douglas Gilbert & Clyde KIlby - C. S. Lewis: Images of His World
3) Richard Harries - C. S. Lewis: The Man and His God
4) Peter Kreeft - C. S. Lewis: A Critical Essay
5) Leanne Payne - Real Prescence: The Christian Worldview of C. S. Lewis as Incarnational Reality
6) Martha Sammons - A Guide to C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy
7) Stephen Schofield - In Search of C. S. Lewis
8) Robert Smith - Patches of Godlight: The Pattern of Thought in C. S.
Lewis
9) Phillip Vander Elst - C. S. Lewis
10) (TIE) George Watson - C. S. Lewis: Critical Essays; William White - The Image of Man in C. S. Lewis
Most Attractive Books by and About C.S. Lewis
(Packaging, title, printing, cover; ranked in order)
1) Douglas Gilbert & Clyde Kilby - C. S. Lewis: Images of His World
2) C. S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia (British and U.S. one-volume editions)
3) C. S. Lewis - The Chronicles of Narnia (British first edition paperbacks illustrated by Pauline Baynes)
4) C. S. Lewis - The Four Loves (British first edition paperback)
5) C. S. Lewis - Voyage to Venus (British Pan first edition paperback)
6) Walter Hooper - C. S. Lewis: Companion & Guide (British hardcover)
7) C. S. Lewis - Till We Have Faces (U.S. first edition hardcover)
8) C. S. Lewis - The Screwtape Letters (British edition illustrated by Papas)
9) C. S. Lewis - The Cosmic Trilogy - Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength (British one-volume edition)
10) C. S. Lewis - The Allegory of Love (both Oxford paperbacks with cover illustrations from Roman de la Rose, Flemish illumination)
11) C. S. Lewis - The Pilgrim's Regress (U.S. edition illustrated by
Michael Hague)
12) Michael Coren - The Man Who Created Narnia
13) C. S. Lewis - God in the Dock (new Eerdmans paperback)
14) Brian Sibley & Alison Sage - A Treasury of Narnia
15) C. S. Lewis - Miracles (British first edition paperback)
16) Paul Ford - Companion to Nanria (U.S. first edition paperback)
17) C. S. Lewis - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (U.S. HarperCollins hardcover gift edition, 1997)
18) Humphrey Carpenter - The Inklings (new British paperback)
19) Kathryn Lindskoog - C. S. Lewis: Mere Christian (Cornerstone 4th
edition paperback)
20) Walter Hooper (ed) - All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis
1922-1927 (U.S. first edition hardcover)
21) Walter Hooper (ed) - C. S. Lewis: Collected Letters Volume I - Family Letters 1905-1931 (British first edition hardcover)
22) C. S. Lewis - Mere Christianity (U.S. Macmillan paperback 1960)
23) Peter Kreeft - The Shadowlands of C. S. Lewis
24) C. S. Lewis - Surprised By Joy (U. S. first edition hardcover)
25) Jeffrey Schultz & John West (eds) - The C. S. Lewis Readers'
Encyclopedia
C. S. Lewis Booklists
In 1962 The Christian Century asked C. S. Lewis "What books did most to
shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life?" His answer was
this famous list:
1) Phantastes by George MacDonald
2) The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton
3) The Aeneid by Virgil
4) The Temple by George Herbert
5) The Prelude by William Wordsworth
6) The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto
7) The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
8) The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
9) Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams
10) Theism and Humanism by A. J. Balfour
Below is a second "top ten" list, books which greatly influenced Lewis and
informed his thinking. Perhaps some of these should have been in the top
ten:
1) The Divine Comedy by Dante
2) Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
3) Space, Time, and Deity by Samuel Alexander
4) The Fairie Queene by Edmund Spenser
5) Paradise Lost by John Milton
6) The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
7) The Golden Bough by James Frazer
8) I and Thou by Martin Buber
9) Symbolism and Belief by Edwyn Bevan
10) The Man Born to be King by Dorothy L. Sayers
In 1962 The Christian Century asked C. S. Lewis "What books did most to
shape your vocational attitude and your philosophy of life?" His answer was
this famous list:
1) Phantastes by George MacDonald
2) The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton
3) The Aeneid by Virgil
4) The Temple by George Herbert
5) The Prelude by William Wordsworth
6) The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto
7) The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
8) The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
9) Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams
10) Theism and Humanism by A. J. Balfour
Below is a second "top ten" list, books which greatly influenced Lewis and
informed his thinking. Perhaps some of these should have been in the top
ten:
1) The Divine Comedy by Dante
2) Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay
3) Space, Time, and Deity by Samuel Alexander
4) The Fairie Queene by Edmund Spenser
5) Paradise Lost by John Milton
6) The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
7) The Golden Bough by James Frazer
8) I and Thou by Martin Buber
9) Symbolism and Belief by Edwyn Bevan
10) The Man Born to be King by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Best Little Whorehouse in Iraq
What was the cause of the loss of unit cohesion and breakdown of discipline at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq?
by Cal Thomas
Dave Bischel, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police unit who returned home last month from duty at the prison, was quoted in last Friday's (5/14) New York Post: "There were lots of affairs. There was all kinds of adultery and alcoholism and all kinds of crap going on."
When I was in the Army in the mid-1960s, I never saw or even heard of anything approaching this. I did hear of one sergeant in my unit who was court-martialed and reduced in rank for having an extramarital affair. Adultery was taken more seriously then by military and civilian culture. Discipline and a sense that one was representing the country were instilled from the first day of basic training until discharge.
The one dirty little secret that no one appears interested in discussing as a contributing factor to the whorehouse behavior at Abu Ghraib is coed basic training and what it has done to upset order and discipline.
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba observed in his report on the breakdown at Abu Ghraib prison that military police soldiers were weak in basic operational skills. Is that because 10 years ago, for political reasons, politicians and feminist activists within the ranks established coed basic training to promote the fiction that men and women are the same and putting young women in close quarters with young men would somehow not trigger natural biological urges?
The fallacy of that thinking began to show up less than two years after the coed policy was implemented. Sex scandals were reported at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and at basic training facilities around the country.
Former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, R-Kan., headed an independent advisory committee in 1997 that studied coed basic training. The committee unanimously found that bundling men and women together in such situations "is resulting in less discipline, less unit cohesion and more distraction from training programs." A year later, the House passed legislation to end coed basic training, but the Senate called for a congressional commission instead. Key findings of the 1999 commission escaped notice, but in 2002 an Army briefing concluded that gender-integrated basic training was "not efficient," and "effective" only in sociological terms. Should sociology be a concern of people who are supposed to know how to fight wars?
Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, has noted: "Social experiments - particularly the unrealistic theory that men and women are interchangeable in all roles and military missions - have failed the test of Abu Ghraib. 'Equal opportunity abusers' are not typical, but the debased activities of a few Americans reveal what can happen when uniformed soldiers - lacking a firm grounding in legal, moral and ethical values - wield unsupervised power over other human beings."
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski says she was ignorant about the abuse behavior and sexual misconduct allegedly practiced by the MPs under her command. Why? Did she not know the right questions to ask, or was it a matter of "see no evil" because of the sexual politics involved?
From the "don't ask, don't tell" policy pertaining to homosexuals in the military, to the politically correct assignment of women at the most sensitive levels, politicians, military and civilian commanders pretend that the powerful sex drive can be controlled and made irrelevant in the pursuit of military objectives. On ABC's "Nightline" last Friday, several women said they had been raped by fellow soldiers. They said the Army has not properly investigated their claims.
The military has tried to desensitize men through a program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) so that any enemy could not exploit a captives' heightened concern about female colleagues being physically and sexually abused. In 1992, SERE trainers said the entire nation would have to be conditioned to accept combat violence against women.
Congress and the Pentagon need to do something about coed basic training and the assignment of women to certain jobs that put them and what should be the military's primary goals at risk. If they do, they are likely to find a connection between the disciplinary breakdown at the jail of ill repute in Iraq and the sexual politics of people who think the military is just one more sociological playground which can be changed into something it isn't.
What was the cause of the loss of unit cohesion and breakdown of discipline at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq?
by Cal Thomas
Dave Bischel, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police unit who returned home last month from duty at the prison, was quoted in last Friday's (5/14) New York Post: "There were lots of affairs. There was all kinds of adultery and alcoholism and all kinds of crap going on."
When I was in the Army in the mid-1960s, I never saw or even heard of anything approaching this. I did hear of one sergeant in my unit who was court-martialed and reduced in rank for having an extramarital affair. Adultery was taken more seriously then by military and civilian culture. Discipline and a sense that one was representing the country were instilled from the first day of basic training until discharge.
The one dirty little secret that no one appears interested in discussing as a contributing factor to the whorehouse behavior at Abu Ghraib is coed basic training and what it has done to upset order and discipline.
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba observed in his report on the breakdown at Abu Ghraib prison that military police soldiers were weak in basic operational skills. Is that because 10 years ago, for political reasons, politicians and feminist activists within the ranks established coed basic training to promote the fiction that men and women are the same and putting young women in close quarters with young men would somehow not trigger natural biological urges?
The fallacy of that thinking began to show up less than two years after the coed policy was implemented. Sex scandals were reported at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and at basic training facilities around the country.
Former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, R-Kan., headed an independent advisory committee in 1997 that studied coed basic training. The committee unanimously found that bundling men and women together in such situations "is resulting in less discipline, less unit cohesion and more distraction from training programs." A year later, the House passed legislation to end coed basic training, but the Senate called for a congressional commission instead. Key findings of the 1999 commission escaped notice, but in 2002 an Army briefing concluded that gender-integrated basic training was "not efficient," and "effective" only in sociological terms. Should sociology be a concern of people who are supposed to know how to fight wars?
Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, has noted: "Social experiments - particularly the unrealistic theory that men and women are interchangeable in all roles and military missions - have failed the test of Abu Ghraib. 'Equal opportunity abusers' are not typical, but the debased activities of a few Americans reveal what can happen when uniformed soldiers - lacking a firm grounding in legal, moral and ethical values - wield unsupervised power over other human beings."
Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski says she was ignorant about the abuse behavior and sexual misconduct allegedly practiced by the MPs under her command. Why? Did she not know the right questions to ask, or was it a matter of "see no evil" because of the sexual politics involved?
From the "don't ask, don't tell" policy pertaining to homosexuals in the military, to the politically correct assignment of women at the most sensitive levels, politicians, military and civilian commanders pretend that the powerful sex drive can be controlled and made irrelevant in the pursuit of military objectives. On ABC's "Nightline" last Friday, several women said they had been raped by fellow soldiers. They said the Army has not properly investigated their claims.
The military has tried to desensitize men through a program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) so that any enemy could not exploit a captives' heightened concern about female colleagues being physically and sexually abused. In 1992, SERE trainers said the entire nation would have to be conditioned to accept combat violence against women.
Congress and the Pentagon need to do something about coed basic training and the assignment of women to certain jobs that put them and what should be the military's primary goals at risk. If they do, they are likely to find a connection between the disciplinary breakdown at the jail of ill repute in Iraq and the sexual politics of people who think the military is just one more sociological playground which can be changed into something it isn't.
"Remember all the movies..."
Lots of movie viewing going on the last couple of weeks, thanks to the folks at Hollywood Video having a 99 cent rental offer. Tonight I watched a very good film, The Yards. The movie starred Mark Wahlberg, James Caan, Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, Faye Dunaway, and Ellyn Burstyn. Archetypal story of good guy from a rough neighborhood trying to make a new start after a bad break, and getting sucked into circumstances where he seems to have no control over what happens to him. Watched it because of an Anthony Lane recommendation in his book of film criticism, Nobody's Perfect. Well worth viewing.
Lots of movie viewing going on the last couple of weeks, thanks to the folks at Hollywood Video having a 99 cent rental offer. Tonight I watched a very good film, The Yards. The movie starred Mark Wahlberg, James Caan, Joaquin Phoenix, Charlize Theron, Faye Dunaway, and Ellyn Burstyn. Archetypal story of good guy from a rough neighborhood trying to make a new start after a bad break, and getting sucked into circumstances where he seems to have no control over what happens to him. Watched it because of an Anthony Lane recommendation in his book of film criticism, Nobody's Perfect. Well worth viewing.
One of the best pieces of analysis yet written on the Iraq war:
WRITTEN ON WATER
No Way to Run a War
The Democrats are guilty of ideological confusion and the Republicans of disdain for reflection.
BY MARK HELPRIN
Though America has condemned the cruelties of Abu Ghraib, they remain nonetheless a symbol of the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought, and with too little regard for the American soldier, whose mounting casualties seem to have no effect on the boastfulness of the civilian leadership.
Before the war's inception, and even after September 11, the Bush administration, having promised to correct its predecessor's depredations of the military, failed to do so. The president failed to go to Congress on September 12 to ask for a declaration of war, failed to ask Congress when he did go before it for the tools with which to fight, and has failed consistently to ask the American people for sacrifice. And yet their sons, mainly, are sacrificed in Iraq day by day.
When soldiers are killed because they do not have equipment (in the words of a returning officer, "not enough vehicles, not enough munitions, not enough medical supplies, not enough water"), when reservists are retained for years, and rotations canceled, it is the consequence of a fiscal policy that seems more attuned to the electoral landscape of 2004 than to the national security of the United States. Were the U.S. to devote the same percentage of its GNP to defense as it did during the peacetime years of the last half-century, and the military budget return to this unremarkable level, we would be spending (apart from the purely operational costs of the war) almost twice what we are spending now.
The year-and-a-half delay between action in Afghanistan and Iraq mobilized the Arabs and the international left, weakened the connection with September 11, and prompted allies who would have been with us to fall away. The delay was especially unconscionable because it was due not merely to normal difficulties but to the aforementioned military insufficiencies and to indecision masquerading as circumspection. Once the Army and Marines were rolling, their supply lines were left deliberately unprotected, and are vulnerable to this day. Why? Why do the generals, in patently identifiable top-down-speak, repeatedly state that they need nothing more than the small number of troops (for occupying such a large country) that they are assigned? Why do they and the administration steadfastly hold this line even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy?
From the beginning, the scale of the war was based on the fundamental strategic misconception that the primary objective was Iraq rather than the imagination of the Arab World, which, if sufficiently stunned, would tip itself back into the heretofore easily induced fatalism that makes it hesitate to war against the West. After the true shock and awe of a campaign of massive surplus, as in the Gulf War, no regime would have risked its survival by failing to go after the terrorists within its purview. But a campaign of bare sufficiency, that had trouble punching through even ragtag irregulars, taught the Arabs that we could be effectively opposed.
Mistakenly focused on physical control of Iraq, we could not see that, were we to give it up, the resultant anarchy might find a quicker resolution than the indefinite prolonged agony through which our continuing presence has nursed it. Seeking motivation after the fact, we decided to make Iraq a Western-style democracy, and when that began to run off the rails, to make Iraq the mere model for a Middle East filled with Western-style democracies. Of course, instead of a model to inspire them (of which they have many, such as Switzerland), what the Arabs need is first the desire, and then a means to overcome the police states that oppress them, neither of which a reconfigured Iraq, were it possible, would supply. Japan and Germany are often cited in defense of this overreach, but rather than freeze our armies in place and set them to policing and civil affairs as we fought through the Second World War, we waited until we had won.
Having decided to remake a country of 26 million divided into warring subcultures with a shared affection for martyrdom and unchanging traditions, the administration thought it could do so with 100,000 troops. Israel, which nearly surrounds the West Bank, speaks its language and has 37 years of experience in occupation, keeps approximately (by my reckoning) one soldier on duty for every 40 inhabitants and 1/13th square mile, and the unfortunate results are well known. In Iraq we keep one soldier per 240 inhabitants and 1.7 square miles. To put this in yet clearer perspective, it is the same number of uniformed police officers per inhabitant of the City of New York. But the police in New York are not at the end of a 9,000-mile supply chain (they live off the land at Dunkin' Donuts), they do not have to protect their redoubts, travel in convoys, maintain a hospital system, run a civil service, reform a government, build schools, supply electricity, etc. And, most importantly, they do not have to battle an angry population that speaks an alien language, lives in an immense territory, and is armed with automatic weapons, explosives, suicide bombers, and rocket-propelled grenades. Imagine if they did, and you have Iraq. Imagine if then the mayor said, "We don't need anything further, it's just a question of perseverance: Bring it on," and you have the Bush continuum.
Leaving out entirely our gratuitously self-inflicted inability to deal with major contingencies in Asia, this has been the briefest summary of mismanagement, a full exposition of which could fill a thick and very unpleasant book. But to these failings the left offers no better alternative, for if the right has failed in execution, the left's failure, in conception, is deeper.
John Kerry may say one thing and another, but no matter how the topgallants break in the Democratic Party, its ideological keel is a leaden and unthinking pacifism, a pretentious and illogical deference to all things European, and the unhinged belief that America by its very nature transforms every aspect of its self-defense into an aggression that justifies the offense against which it is defending itself. After the enemy has attacked our shipping, embassies, aviation, capital, government and largest city, and after he has slit the throats of defenseless stewardesses, and crushed and immolated three thousand unwary men, women, and children, those who wonder what we did wrong are not likely to offer a spirited defense.
Their allergy to military expenditure assures that, unlike Republicans, who provided just enough to accomplish an arrogant plan if nothing went wrong, they would not provide enough to accomplish a humble plan if everything went right. They say that war is not the answer, and, meaning it, profess their faith in special operations. But are we to credit their supposed indignation that in the early Bush presidency there was a shortage of covert insertions into sovereign states, a dearth of assassinations, the absence of close cooperation with the intelligence services of dictatorships, and insufficient funding for black operations? Or to take seriously the crackpot supposition that this was a war for oil, the price of which, since the war, has gone up? And why then did we not invade Venezuela? It's closer, and the food is better.
With nothing to offer but contradictions and paralysis, they and their presidential aspirant have staked their policy on a mystical and irrational prejudice against unilateralism. This is a new thing under the visiting moon, an absurdity propounded by the very same people who often urge the U.S. to unilateral action when it refrains, for example, from interventions in Africa to fight genocide or AIDS. In what way is America, moving in concert with Britain and Spain to invade Iraq, more unilateral or less multilateral than France moving in concert with Germany and Belgium to oppose it? And does a wrong act cease to be wrong if others join in, or a right cease to be right if others do not?
Just as many Republicans detest the idea of international governance but glow at the prospect of empire, many Democrats are reliably anti-imperialist yet dewy-eyed about world government. Thus, Sen. Kerry's only non-secret policy for the war is a bunch of mumblings about the U.N. and our "allies," presumably the ones who are not with us at the moment in Iraq. It is they and the U.N. who in the fairy dust of multilateralism will solve this most difficult problem. But in fact they neither can nor will do any such thing. Either Sen. Kerry knows that his strategy is just a cover for simple, complete, and ignominious withdrawal, or he does not know, which is worse.
Though the parties have been incompetent, nothing but politics keeps them from correcting their deficiencies, and at a point like this, even if professional politicians are incapable of knowing it, explicit and decisive correction would be the best politics. The situation need not remain intractable if once again respect is accorded to certain fundamentals.
The military must be reconstituted so that it has a surplus of power without having to choose between transformation and tradition, quality and numbers, heavy and light: All are necessary. This is expensive, and would require more plain speaking and less condescending manipulation from those who govern, but would allow for the quick and overwhelming application of force, unambiguous staying power, coverage of multiple contingencies, and, most importantly, deterrence. It is always better to deter an enemy than, by showing weakness, to encourage him to take the field.
In addition to more aggressive unconventional, police, and paramilitary operations against the fragmented terrorist legion, we must strengthen civil defense. Although striking a thousand targets is easier than defending ten million, it isn't possible to control every laboratory and closet in the world. If the social cost and hundreds of billions of dollars annually necessary for a probabilistically effective defense against weapons of mass destruction appear a great burden, they pale before an unrestrained epidemic or a nuclear detonation in a major city.
In the Middle East, our original purpose, since perverted by carelessness of estimation, was self-defense. To return to it would take advantage of the facts that the countries in the area do not have to be democracies before we require of them that they refrain from attacking us; that a regime with a firm hold upon a nation has much at stake and can be coerced to eradicate the terrorist apparatus within its frontiers; and that the ideal instrument for this is a remounted and properly supported U.S. military, released from nation building and counterinsurgency, its ability to make war, when called upon, nonpareil.
The Kurds and Shia of Iraq could within days assert control in their areas. We already have ceded part of Sunni Iraq: What remains is to pick a strongman, see him along, arrange a federation, hope for the best, remount the army, and retire, with or without Saudi permission, to the Saudi bases roughly equidistant to Damascus, Baghdad, and Riyadh. There, protected by the desert, with modern infrastructure, and our backs to the sea, which is our metier, we would command the center of gravity of the Middle East, and with the ability to strike hard, fast and at will, could enforce responsible behavior upon regimes that have been the citadel of our enemies.
In a war that has steadily grown beyond expectations, America has been poorly served by those who govern it. The Democrats are guilty of seemingly innate ideological confusion about self-defense, the Republicans of willful disdain for reflection, and, both, of lack of imagination, probity, and preparation--and, perhaps above all, of subjecting the most serious business in the life of a nation to coarse partisanship. Having come up short, both parties are sorely in need of a severe reprimand and direct order from the American people to correct their failings and get on with the common defense.
Mr. Helprin is a novelist, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.
Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
WRITTEN ON WATER
No Way to Run a War
The Democrats are guilty of ideological confusion and the Republicans of disdain for reflection.
BY MARK HELPRIN
Though America has condemned the cruelties of Abu Ghraib, they remain nonetheless a symbol of the inescapable fact that the war has been run incompetently, with an apparently deliberate contempt for history, strategy, and thought, and with too little regard for the American soldier, whose mounting casualties seem to have no effect on the boastfulness of the civilian leadership.
Before the war's inception, and even after September 11, the Bush administration, having promised to correct its predecessor's depredations of the military, failed to do so. The president failed to go to Congress on September 12 to ask for a declaration of war, failed to ask Congress when he did go before it for the tools with which to fight, and has failed consistently to ask the American people for sacrifice. And yet their sons, mainly, are sacrificed in Iraq day by day.
When soldiers are killed because they do not have equipment (in the words of a returning officer, "not enough vehicles, not enough munitions, not enough medical supplies, not enough water"), when reservists are retained for years, and rotations canceled, it is the consequence of a fiscal policy that seems more attuned to the electoral landscape of 2004 than to the national security of the United States. Were the U.S. to devote the same percentage of its GNP to defense as it did during the peacetime years of the last half-century, and the military budget return to this unremarkable level, we would be spending (apart from the purely operational costs of the war) almost twice what we are spending now.
The year-and-a-half delay between action in Afghanistan and Iraq mobilized the Arabs and the international left, weakened the connection with September 11, and prompted allies who would have been with us to fall away. The delay was especially unconscionable because it was due not merely to normal difficulties but to the aforementioned military insufficiencies and to indecision masquerading as circumspection. Once the Army and Marines were rolling, their supply lines were left deliberately unprotected, and are vulnerable to this day. Why? Why do the generals, in patently identifiable top-down-speak, repeatedly state that they need nothing more than the small number of troops (for occupying such a large country) that they are assigned? Why do they and the administration steadfastly hold this line even as one event cascading into another should make them recoil in piggy-eyed wonder at the lameness of their policy?
From the beginning, the scale of the war was based on the fundamental strategic misconception that the primary objective was Iraq rather than the imagination of the Arab World, which, if sufficiently stunned, would tip itself back into the heretofore easily induced fatalism that makes it hesitate to war against the West. After the true shock and awe of a campaign of massive surplus, as in the Gulf War, no regime would have risked its survival by failing to go after the terrorists within its purview. But a campaign of bare sufficiency, that had trouble punching through even ragtag irregulars, taught the Arabs that we could be effectively opposed.
Mistakenly focused on physical control of Iraq, we could not see that, were we to give it up, the resultant anarchy might find a quicker resolution than the indefinite prolonged agony through which our continuing presence has nursed it. Seeking motivation after the fact, we decided to make Iraq a Western-style democracy, and when that began to run off the rails, to make Iraq the mere model for a Middle East filled with Western-style democracies. Of course, instead of a model to inspire them (of which they have many, such as Switzerland), what the Arabs need is first the desire, and then a means to overcome the police states that oppress them, neither of which a reconfigured Iraq, were it possible, would supply. Japan and Germany are often cited in defense of this overreach, but rather than freeze our armies in place and set them to policing and civil affairs as we fought through the Second World War, we waited until we had won.
Having decided to remake a country of 26 million divided into warring subcultures with a shared affection for martyrdom and unchanging traditions, the administration thought it could do so with 100,000 troops. Israel, which nearly surrounds the West Bank, speaks its language and has 37 years of experience in occupation, keeps approximately (by my reckoning) one soldier on duty for every 40 inhabitants and 1/13th square mile, and the unfortunate results are well known. In Iraq we keep one soldier per 240 inhabitants and 1.7 square miles. To put this in yet clearer perspective, it is the same number of uniformed police officers per inhabitant of the City of New York. But the police in New York are not at the end of a 9,000-mile supply chain (they live off the land at Dunkin' Donuts), they do not have to protect their redoubts, travel in convoys, maintain a hospital system, run a civil service, reform a government, build schools, supply electricity, etc. And, most importantly, they do not have to battle an angry population that speaks an alien language, lives in an immense territory, and is armed with automatic weapons, explosives, suicide bombers, and rocket-propelled grenades. Imagine if they did, and you have Iraq. Imagine if then the mayor said, "We don't need anything further, it's just a question of perseverance: Bring it on," and you have the Bush continuum.
Leaving out entirely our gratuitously self-inflicted inability to deal with major contingencies in Asia, this has been the briefest summary of mismanagement, a full exposition of which could fill a thick and very unpleasant book. But to these failings the left offers no better alternative, for if the right has failed in execution, the left's failure, in conception, is deeper.
John Kerry may say one thing and another, but no matter how the topgallants break in the Democratic Party, its ideological keel is a leaden and unthinking pacifism, a pretentious and illogical deference to all things European, and the unhinged belief that America by its very nature transforms every aspect of its self-defense into an aggression that justifies the offense against which it is defending itself. After the enemy has attacked our shipping, embassies, aviation, capital, government and largest city, and after he has slit the throats of defenseless stewardesses, and crushed and immolated three thousand unwary men, women, and children, those who wonder what we did wrong are not likely to offer a spirited defense.
Their allergy to military expenditure assures that, unlike Republicans, who provided just enough to accomplish an arrogant plan if nothing went wrong, they would not provide enough to accomplish a humble plan if everything went right. They say that war is not the answer, and, meaning it, profess their faith in special operations. But are we to credit their supposed indignation that in the early Bush presidency there was a shortage of covert insertions into sovereign states, a dearth of assassinations, the absence of close cooperation with the intelligence services of dictatorships, and insufficient funding for black operations? Or to take seriously the crackpot supposition that this was a war for oil, the price of which, since the war, has gone up? And why then did we not invade Venezuela? It's closer, and the food is better.
With nothing to offer but contradictions and paralysis, they and their presidential aspirant have staked their policy on a mystical and irrational prejudice against unilateralism. This is a new thing under the visiting moon, an absurdity propounded by the very same people who often urge the U.S. to unilateral action when it refrains, for example, from interventions in Africa to fight genocide or AIDS. In what way is America, moving in concert with Britain and Spain to invade Iraq, more unilateral or less multilateral than France moving in concert with Germany and Belgium to oppose it? And does a wrong act cease to be wrong if others join in, or a right cease to be right if others do not?
Just as many Republicans detest the idea of international governance but glow at the prospect of empire, many Democrats are reliably anti-imperialist yet dewy-eyed about world government. Thus, Sen. Kerry's only non-secret policy for the war is a bunch of mumblings about the U.N. and our "allies," presumably the ones who are not with us at the moment in Iraq. It is they and the U.N. who in the fairy dust of multilateralism will solve this most difficult problem. But in fact they neither can nor will do any such thing. Either Sen. Kerry knows that his strategy is just a cover for simple, complete, and ignominious withdrawal, or he does not know, which is worse.
Though the parties have been incompetent, nothing but politics keeps them from correcting their deficiencies, and at a point like this, even if professional politicians are incapable of knowing it, explicit and decisive correction would be the best politics. The situation need not remain intractable if once again respect is accorded to certain fundamentals.
The military must be reconstituted so that it has a surplus of power without having to choose between transformation and tradition, quality and numbers, heavy and light: All are necessary. This is expensive, and would require more plain speaking and less condescending manipulation from those who govern, but would allow for the quick and overwhelming application of force, unambiguous staying power, coverage of multiple contingencies, and, most importantly, deterrence. It is always better to deter an enemy than, by showing weakness, to encourage him to take the field.
In addition to more aggressive unconventional, police, and paramilitary operations against the fragmented terrorist legion, we must strengthen civil defense. Although striking a thousand targets is easier than defending ten million, it isn't possible to control every laboratory and closet in the world. If the social cost and hundreds of billions of dollars annually necessary for a probabilistically effective defense against weapons of mass destruction appear a great burden, they pale before an unrestrained epidemic or a nuclear detonation in a major city.
In the Middle East, our original purpose, since perverted by carelessness of estimation, was self-defense. To return to it would take advantage of the facts that the countries in the area do not have to be democracies before we require of them that they refrain from attacking us; that a regime with a firm hold upon a nation has much at stake and can be coerced to eradicate the terrorist apparatus within its frontiers; and that the ideal instrument for this is a remounted and properly supported U.S. military, released from nation building and counterinsurgency, its ability to make war, when called upon, nonpareil.
The Kurds and Shia of Iraq could within days assert control in their areas. We already have ceded part of Sunni Iraq: What remains is to pick a strongman, see him along, arrange a federation, hope for the best, remount the army, and retire, with or without Saudi permission, to the Saudi bases roughly equidistant to Damascus, Baghdad, and Riyadh. There, protected by the desert, with modern infrastructure, and our backs to the sea, which is our metier, we would command the center of gravity of the Middle East, and with the ability to strike hard, fast and at will, could enforce responsible behavior upon regimes that have been the citadel of our enemies.
In a war that has steadily grown beyond expectations, America has been poorly served by those who govern it. The Democrats are guilty of seemingly innate ideological confusion about self-defense, the Republicans of willful disdain for reflection, and, both, of lack of imagination, probity, and preparation--and, perhaps above all, of subjecting the most serious business in the life of a nation to coarse partisanship. Having come up short, both parties are sorely in need of a severe reprimand and direct order from the American people to correct their failings and get on with the common defense.
Mr. Helprin is a novelist, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.
Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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