Me: Frank Lynch

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These are my mundane daily ramblings.
For something less spontaneous, I maintain The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,800 Johnson quotes).

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I hate when that happens... On Saturday Night Live, the "I hate when that happens" routine surrounded a recitation of self-inflicted wounds and how they can be so painful. I'm not sure that the SNL bit is so very relevant here, but I'm sure it wouldn't have happened had I not made a conscious effort to read fiction (very rare for me). Last weekend Ab and I took an inventory of the fiction section at the Union Square Barnes and Noble, and in the process I ran across The Leopard, an Italian historical novel from the 1950's written about a Sicilian prince in the 1860's, an era of political turmoil, and his efforts to maintain stability and a sense of self-worth. I knew that Peter Lawford Burt Lancaster had starred in the movie, and it was sufficiently respected to get the whole-nine-yards treatment from Criterion. Intrigued, I picked it up and started reading it that night.

The language is wonderful, the characterizations are great, and the narrative voice speaks as if there, except for the rare occasions when an allusion is made to political events in subsequent decades. Those allusions aren't really foreshadowing, per se so much as a provision of context. This isn't to say there isn't foreshadowing: it's there, and it's done well, and the author has a deft hand throughout. He's really successful in immersing you in the 19th century.

But oops, this morning I read a passage which was like an arrow into the hot air balloon: where the narrator seemed to be speaking from the 19th century, it ground to a screeching halt. The words went something like "in modern terms these would be the people who fly on planes or jets." It was a very unwelcome intrusion from the wrong era: not quite like an anachronism, I just don't think he understood the perspective he'd created in his narrator's voice. For me, anyway.
Link | | | 11:15 PM | Home
 

The changing neighborhood. My neighborhood in Brooklyn is going through immense changes: not my block specifically, but you don't have to walk far from here to hit an area which is being razed for a huge project which is heading towards a sports arena, office spaces, luxury living spaces, and (claimed) lower income spaces. The whole project is referred to as the "Atlantic Yards Project," and it's been very controversial for all sorts of reasons: traffic changes, shadows, cultural changes, crowding people out, and so on. The "carrot," so to speak, is the luring of an NBA team (the Nets). All this having been said, here's for the call-out: threecee, a Flickr poster, has been dutifully taking pictures of the neighborhood which will be impacted. Here's his portfolio on this. Many of the buildings are already demolished; in the end they will all be gone. If you want to see New York changing before your eyes, start here.
Link | | | 11:25 PM | Home

Bummed. Heading to Chicago in the morning, just an overnight and staying out by O'Hare. I will make it to the business district, but for the life of me I can't find my point and shoot camera. I bought it just for those rare occasions when I didn't want to carry around my bulky DSLR. But it seems as if the strategy has backfired: I use it so rarely I can't remember where it is. (I know, I know, half the world should have such a problem as this...)

UPDATE: Mystery solved, reaffirming my sense of domain. Her Abness had put the aforementioned point and shoot in a satchel hanging on our daughter's doorknob. Explanations beyond this are pointless.
Link | | | 7:43 PM | Home
 

Time to start deploying the troops NOW. The Bush administration is lowering its expectations for the Iraqi government's progress, which was of course the whole point of the surge: not just to improve security, but to create an environment where the Iraqi government could actually meet specific goals. Since they haven't met them, and don't look like they're going to meet them, the surge was therefore meaningless.

It's time to start an orderly deployment of all the troops, not just those involved in the surge. With the administration "focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote," the writing is on the wall. There will always be some sort of shifting, some sort of lowering of expectations. This is not a path to progress, this is a path to nowhere. It's not just that Bush is doing everything he can to pass the Iraq problem on to his successor, but he's asking waay too much of American troops and their families. Bush can now proudly say that they died in vain: he has as much as admitted to it by moving the goal posts again.

Our exit will represent failure to some extent, that is unavoidable. No one in their right mind could look at the post-Saddam efforts we made as a success, what with the failures to guard munition dumps, the abysmal reconstruction efforts, the lack of electricity, the lack of security. That is not what success looks like. And if it is not success, wouldn't you be correct to call it failure? That will not go away.

It is fair to appreciate the better security situation which exists in Baghdad, and feel good about it. But the surge is only a success in that aspect, certainly not in governmental improvements. When we leave, it will be fair of us to consider the surge a successful military effort, but one that revealed the shortcomings (failures) of the Iraq government.

We should stop asking our troops to make up for the government's lack, and we should get out. No more moving the goal posts.
Link | | | 9:53 AM | Home
 

Some kind of protection racket? Yesterday's Baghdad market bombing was conducted by Shiite militia groups, and not the Sunni perpetrators who normally use that method. At least, that's the conclusion of Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, who is the top U.S. military spokesman on the scene. Further,

"The intent here was to suggest that al Qaida had conducted this operation," Smith said. "And through that kind of intimidation suggest that the people, at least in that area, that what they really need to protect them from this kind of violence are these [Shiite] militia groups."

Well, isn't this a fine knot to untangle, Stanley. To achieve peace, stabilization, and the American Way in Iraq, we not only have to get Shiites to stop killing Sunnis but we have to get them to stop killing Shiites for theatrical purposes.

It's an interesting tactic. No one in the Bush administration has staged terrorist acts in order to cow us into submission, but I do believe that they've exaggerated existing threats for political purposes (e.g., Ashcroft's announcement about the arrest of Jose Padilla). And if all the press conferences haven't been points of exaggeration — I have too much faith in the career service people to think that politically motivated exaggeration is the rule — we certainly know that the GOP made an early decision to run on the terrorist threat in 2002 and 2004. (The Power Point doc is available on the web, you can probably find it at Josh Marshall's site.) And to run on a threat, you have to keep the threat in the minds of the public; exaggeration isn't necessary, repetition is sufficient. And of course it doesn't hurt to trot out three year old intelligence on occasion, like they did days after John Kerry accepted the Democratic nomination in 2004: it had a nice effect of mitigating the traditional "lift" after an acceptance speech.

Aah, what am I talking about, this the U.S. of A. That can't happen here.
Link | | | 7:25 PM | Home
 

Betraying my age. When Rhino Handmade Records came out with all of John Sebastian's Reprise recordings, I quickly jumped on it. The limited release license quickly sold out, and you can get the individual albums here. (The link takes you to one specific release, my personal favorite, but the others are easily found from there.)

Elsewhere in Baghdad... It's good news of course that violence in Baghdad is trending down, and we hope it continues this way. But if you haven't heard, an attack today killed at least 13 people and wounded scores more. It could be just a blip — but it's certainly more than that to the victims, who would prefer to be something more than a statistic.

Beyond the reduction in violence, the former U.S. commander in Iraq is going to call for withdrawal of combat troops by the end of 2008 in light of the lack of progress on the part of the Iraqi government. We've asked a lot of our troops, and they've done everything we've asked them to, but how can we justify continuing to ask them for more?
Link | | | 10:43 AM | Home

Have a good Thanksgiving? It was balmy here in New York City, and it made for a wonderful walk through Prospect Park, with the leaves at their peak colors (or close), but I now regret not bringing my tripod along. Our dinner prep was fairly simple, as we were guests elsewhere, and we made a couple pies. Some friends of ours hosted a gathering of a few families, no relational squabbles whatsoever, just a pleasant evening.

Over in Iraq, McClatchy's blogger in Baghdad worked to come close to an American Thanksgiving dinner. You can imagine the language hurdles she had to overcome in finding ingredients: it's one thing to know enough Arabic to get you through everyday life, but cooking a turkey as one does in the U.S. presented new vocabulary challenges:

Then came sage, I needed sage for the stuffing. But no one knew what it was. Google translate said it was hakim, the word for wise. So I walked over to the office manager and asked for Hakim. He laughed at me. Eventually I figured out that I'd been asking for wisdom.

I pretty much stole her punch line, so click through the link and read the whole thing: Thanksgiving is more than just the food, and that element comes through in the post.
Link | | | 9:20 AM | Home
 

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