I’m not taking it personally,but…

The New Neo Posted on by

…why, oh why, did this have to happen on the weekend I was planning to take the Acela to NY for the very first time?

Amtrak, oh Amtrak. I keep hoping it will be improved from the last time I tried it, before the Acela was even a gleam in some Amtrak executive’s eye. But I figure it’s got to be better than when I took the Boston to NY train over Thanksgiving vacation during the Carter-era oil crisis, when there were twice as many people on the train as there were seats. It can’t be that bad, right? Right?

So, today is a travel day. Please wish me luck (the good kind)!

Experts for life

The New Neo Posted on by

A reader, as well as Roger Simon, alerted me to this article by Victor Davis Hanson. It makes some excellent points, as usual, and is well-written, as usual. If you’re not familiar with his work, you might want to put him on your reading list. The article is about the failure of many “experts”–on both sides–to predict recent events.

One thing I don’t understand: is being an expert like being “President for life?” That is, once you are anointed, appointed, elected, whatever, to “expert” status, is there nothing that can impeach you? Like, maybe, being wrong; like maybe, over and over and over again?

I have noticed that a bad track record on analyzing or predicting events is brushed over and ignored, and that experts keep on prognosticating and experticizing (yes, I know it’s not a word, but I think it should be). They are rarely, if ever, called on it–that would probably make the experts angry, and would reduce the field from which the cable news stations can draw. And then what would they do?

It reminds me of a related question I’ve often wondered about: does anyone check up on psychics? How many of their yearly predictions actually come true–the ones that aren’t totally vague, that is? Perhaps people just don’t want to know–it’s a lot more fun to believe. And a lot more lucrative for the psychics.

Saddam gets interviewed, but Dan Rather doesn’t get the scoop this time

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the wonderful things about blogs is that they make it possible to read news that would otherwise be missed. The Iraqi bloggers continue to offer their unique perspective, and Big Pharaoh in Egypt manages to bring still another slant to things. Without him, who outside of the Middle East would know about this, a purported interview with Saddam Hussein in his prison cell?

It’s a radio interview, so I suppose it’s possible it’s not authentic. But it sure sounds like him–arrogant (although Big Pharaoh, oddly enough, says Saddam was “humble” while answering the questions–perhaps it was just the fact that he was answering questions at all, or that the interviewer was allowed to address him using the familiar form of “you”?)

Turns out the guy was framed. Naturally; aren’t they always? And turns out he thinks it’s Bush who should actually go on trial (no doubt some here would agree with him). Here’s part of the interview:

Al Fayhaa: We are not talking about occupation here but about the crimes that were committed by you against the Iraqi people. The mass graves, the killings.

Saddam: These are all fabrications. There isn’t a single evidence to prove that I killed anyone or pulled the trigger on anyone. These are all lies.

Al Fayhaa: There are tons of papers with your signature on them. They all prove that arrests and murders were committed after your command.

Saddam: Anyone can forge signatures. I never touched an Iraqi citizen with harm.

The interview made me think of Arendt’s controversial phrase “the banality of evil.” Ever since she wrote it, people have been arguing about just what she meant, and I have no doubt I won’t be settling that question here. But one of the things I think she may have meant is “the seeming banality of evildoers when they are finally captured and under the control of others.”

Saddam the dictator, able to control the lives of so many, with the ability to torture and murder at will (or to order others to do it for him)–encountering that man in the full flush and exercise of his power was to encounter a person who emanated evil. I saw a TV biography of Saddam once, and it included one of the most memorable sequences I’ve ever seen, perhaps the most chilling demonstration of pure evil ever captured on documentary film. If you’ve seen it, I doubt you could ever forget it.

Not long after obtaining power, Saddam had called a large assembly of his underlings together, men who were officials of various types in the government. In front of the assembled crowd, he called out the names of those he felt had betrayed him in one way or other, and his goons took them out to be summarily executed. He had the entire thing filmed, much as Hitler had filmed the slow executions of those who had tried to assassinate him.

The look on each man’s face as he heard his name called and realized what was going on, the nervous and frantic applause others in the audience started in hopes of placating Saddam and avoiding being chosen (like dogs going belly-up at the approach of an aggressive top dog), the gleam of pleasure in his eye as he relished the spectacle–no, nothing banal there. Totally horrifying; something out of the Roman Coliseum, something epic and truly barbaric.

But Saddam in power was one thing; Saddam in jail, quite another. The latter seems banal, but that’s because his power has been taken away, and he is made to move to the rhythms and desires of others. Those with power over him now tell him when to eat, when to bathe, when to talk, when to be silent. Now, he has to listen to a radio interviewer address him by the familiar “inta,” now, listeners call in to the talk show and give opinions on what should be done with him.

And still he gives off that air of unbridled arrogance, along with claims that should be familiar to anyone who has read transcripts from Nuremberg or other war crimes trials. He never killed anyone himself, he says. He should be allowed to go into exile (well, after all, didn’t Idi Amin? In Saudi Arabia, by the way.)

I think it’s not merely face-saving bravado; I think his ego is such that he believes it actually will happen. He spent most of his life giving orders to others, and getting away (literally) with murder. Why shouldn’t he think he can somehow continue to do so? Paradoxically, his arrogance is the best evidence of all that he’s been treated awfully well while in captivity.

UPDATE: Reader Steve S. (see comments) informs me that Big Pharaoh has just updated his post to say that the interview was a simulation, not Saddam himself.

Deterrence: thinking about the unthinkable

The New Neo Posted on by

Nuclear deterrence appears to have “worked” during the Cold War to prevent the conflagration most of us who grew up in those times feared and half-expected might happen. If deterrence did work, it was because both the US and the USSR were interested in the survival of their respective countries and people.

Deterrence is an ugly way to go about it–after all, its efficacy rests on the supposition that we be willing to launch a large-scale fleet of nuclear weapons to retaliate against an attack. But somehow, paradoxically, having been on record as being committed to such a course of action seems to have worked to prevent it from actually ever taking place. One can surmise this, although there is no way to know for certain how heavily deterrence weighed into the calculations of the nations involved.

One of the many frightening things about the current crop of Islamicist terrorists is that they are seemingly unconcerned about the survival of any particular country or its people, and they are more than willing to sacrifice populations in order to get what they want. Their focus is less on this world and more on their vision of the world to come, with the consequence that they appear to lack compunctions about blowing us all to kingdom come.

Here’s an interesting attempt by Michael Levi, entitled “Old Guard” (in the subscription-only New Republic), to update the notion of deterrence and make it relevant to the world of modern-day terrorism.

Levi makes two main points. The first is the idea of retaliation even for failed attacks:

A new approach would start by rethinking the terrorist calculus. Observers are right to assume that groups like Al Qaeda would be willing to endure severe retribution following a successful nuclear attack, undermining a basic tenet of deterrence. But such groups may not be willing to endure severe retribution following a failed nuclear plot–for them, that would be the worst of all worlds. As a result, promising retribution for even failed nuclear plots may deter terrorists from taking risks in the first place, and hence from initiating attacks. A strategy like this would work best if combined with homeland security measures designed to make terrorist failure more likely.

The second idea is to make it easier to trace nuclear weaponry to its source throught the use of nuclear “fingerprints,” enhancing the capacity to retaliate against states (who are theoretically, at least, more deterrable) who might try to give nuclear arms to terrorists.

The whole notion of deterrence seems morally abhorrent. It’s both difficult and horrifying to realize what we are actually talking about here, which is threatening the large-scale killing of mostly civilian populations in return for the large-scale killing of our mostly civilian population. And, in order to work, it must not be perceived as a bluff; it must be clear to the terrorists and the countries with the potential to supply them that we mean what we say, and are prepared to carry it out.

Here’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara speaking in 1967 on the concept of deterrence, as it worked back then:

The point is that a potential aggressor must believe that our assured-destruction capability is in fact actual, and that our will to use it in retaliation to an attack is in fact unwavering. The conclusion, then, is clear: if the United States is to deter a nuclear attack in itself or its allies, it must possess an actual and a credible assured-destruction capability

It seems particularly apt that the acronym at the time for the policy of deterrence vis a vis the Soviets was MAD (mutually assured destruction). The whole scenario seemed mad indeed, something out of science fiction. Did it work? I certainly have no particular expertise in the matter, although it seems logical to suppose that deterrence was indeed a factor.

But one thing seems clear: as abhorrent as thinking this way is (most especially, the idea of retaliating for a failed attack, an attack in which no one has even been killed!), we need to conceive of the horrible possibilities in order to combat them, although sometimes the possible solutions seem almost as horrible. What is the best solution? I certainly do not know. But the idea is that, if we send out the message of readiness to retaliate, we will avoid having to actually do so.

As Levi himself says, we are by no means assured that this approach will be effective. Towards the conclusion of his article, he writes:

None of these elements of a new deterrence strategy is as rock-solid as cold war deterrence once was, and nothing will change that.

I’m not sure I would ever have characterized Cold War deterrence as “rock-solid” (perhaps it was, but, if so, only in retrospect). But it would be a major mistake not to consider these terrible scenarios and try to plan for them as best we can. In fact, if we fail to do so, it would also be “mad.”

So, we face a terrible dilemma: which way lies madness? Perhaps both ways. But the way of preparedness and deterrence seems to be the necessary way to go, as it seems to have been back in those Cold War days. I never thought we’d be feeling so much as a hint of nostalgia for the relative “rock-solidness” of their deterrence–but, regretfully, here we are.

The fox and the hedgehog: Kerry and Bush revisited

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a guy I’d love to have known. Everything I’ve ever read about Isaiah Berlin indicates that he was one of the most fascinating people ever; a giant mind, a great heart, and a tremendous sense of joy. One of these days (yeah, right!) I’m going to actually read some of his works, instead of just excerpts and tantalizing quotes.

Berlin is famous for his distinction between the fox (who knows many things) and the hedgehog (who knows one great thing). Here’s Berlin explaining the idea:

For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle.

During the 2004 campaign, many people pointed out that Bush was the quintessential hedgehog, and Kerry the classic fox. I agree. So why, so long after the election, am I bringing this up again?

Well, one reason is that I really, really, like the fox/hedgehog distinction, so I thought it bears repeating. But the other reason is something that just occurred to me, and that is that perhaps some of the enmity towards Bush comes from lack of understanding of the value of hedgehogginess. Perhaps even some of the anger at Kerry stems from a contempt for foxiness, for all I know (I’m somewhat of a fox myself, so I don’t think that’s what I dislike about Kerry–it is his shiftiness and narcissism, and his inability to take any stand.)

It’s a yin/yang thing, I guess; the world seems to need both types. Each is best at certain tasks. For dealing with the war against Islamicist fundamentalist terrorism, I think it’s clear we need a hedgehog. Others, of course, think a fox is the way to go.

My guess is that the Democratic party right now has a much higher percentage of foxes than the Republicans do, and that hedgehogs are far more numerous among Republicans than Democrats. Perhaps the short version of what happened to people like me, post-9/11 (the very short, hedgehoggy version), is that we changed from fox to hedgehog.

It’s getting better all the time: Iraqization

The New Neo Posted on by

The articles don’t acknowledge it explicitly. But it appears that “Iraqization,” derided by so many, is beginning to succeed. We have quietly, and with great determination, continued to train troops. Now, despite all the criticism, that effort is clearly bearing fruit.

Here’s the NY Times of April 12th, an article entitled “Military Raid in Baghdad Captures 65, Officials Say”:

Hundreds of Iraqi troops and commandos backed by American soldiers swept through central and southern Baghdad early Monday morning, capturing at least 65 suspected insurgents in one of the largest raids in the capital since the fall of Saddam Hussein, military officials said.

Next paragraph contains what I call “the obligatory corrective”–that is, the bad news that must follow all good news, even if the bad news has nothing to do with the headline of the story. In this case, it’s news of the kidnapping of an American contractor.

But after that, the article returns to the successful raid. Of course, it describes it without context or commentary (something it wouldn’t be doing had the raid been unsuccessful, you can bet your bottom dollar). But still, we have the following important and extremely encouraging information:

In the raid, more than 500 Iraqi soldiers and police officers cordoned off areas in some of Baghdad’s most dangerous and crime-ridden areas, searching from house to house in more than 90 locations with American troops playing a supporting role, United States military officials said…The raid was the latest of several large-scale operations led by Iraqi forces in recent weeks.

There’s not much else in the article describing the raid; the rest is basically a discussion of Iraqi politics. But, reading between the lines, the story seems to be that the Iraqi forces performed credibly and effectively, and that this is happening more and more. Notice, also, that the US played backup here. Lately, that seems to be the situation, and my guess is that it accounts for the effectiveness of recent operations, and the large numbers of “insurgents” (i.e. murderers, terrorists, Saddamites, and foreign agitators) captured and/or killed. Logic dictates that the fact that Iraqi intelligence and Iraqi forces are leading the way makes this sort of large-scale operation much easier to carry off.

Months ago, who would have predicted it? Certainly and most assuredly not the NY Times. I wish they would publish something that acknowledges what a major breakthrough this is, what astounding progress has been made, and how another Vietnam analogy has bitten the dust.

Oh, well–never mind, as Emily Litella would say.

Ho Jo’s No Go

The New Neo Posted on by

I heard it on my car radio this evening while I was driving. I don’t even know what they were saying about it–I just caught some fleeting mention of the name, and something about it being the last one in Maine. The last what in Maine? The last Howard Johnson’s restaurant.

How the mighty have fallen. One with Nineveh and Tyre, and all that. My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair. Those orange roofs that had dotted the highways of my youth, gone? There were so many once, like the passenger pigeons that had blackened the nineteenth-century skies; how could they be no more?

Well, it turns out they’re not all gone. In this internet age, there is a website devoted to Ho Jo, where one can learn (as I did) that nine Howard Johnson’s still remain, the last leaves on the spindly Ho Jo tree; soon to be eight, with the sole Vermont one closing next month.

One can also learn of the great and illustrious history of HoJo’s, named after its founder, one Howard Johnson. The man was a marketing genius who almost-singlehandedly invented the fast food business. He started the first HoJo in Quincy, Massachusetts, in the 1920s; by the midst of the Depression he had 25 of them going in the state, having also invented the concept of the restaurant francise. He correctly foresaw the changes the automobile would bring, and located his restaurants accordingly. He started the practice of doing most of the cooking in a centralized location and then shipping the product to the local restaurants for the finishing touches. He came up with the idea of standardizing the architecture (and everything else), using signature orange roofs, highly visible and instantly recognizable
(Golden Arches, anyone?). He thought America needed more ice cream flavors than vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry–twenty-five more, in fact—and America agreed.

I didn’t know until I was twenty-one years old and had moved to New England for the first time (Boston) that a clam had a body part called a belly, and that this part could be eaten. Before that, I had only known Howard Johnson’s clams, and Howard Johnson’s clams were expurgated, bowlderized, sanitized. America wasn’t ready for the clam belly (or perhaps they didn’t freeze, store, and ship well?), so HoJo’s selected only the bland and rubbery feet, and fried those in quantity, ignoring the way New Englanders eat clams—whole, with the soft belly tasting strongly of the ocean.

But the piece de resistance (although no one tried to resist it), the creme de la creme, was Howard Johnson’s ice cream. I was especially partial to the flavor peppermint stick, which sounds awful but was fabulous. I do believe that HoJo’s ice cream would stand up well even now, in this era of premium and gelati and $3.50 cones.

Why did Howard Johnson’s die out? Poor management, lack of interest, cost-cutting, competition, changing tastes—whatever. It’s time had come and gone.

The last time I was at a Howard Johnson’s was in New Hampshire in 1986, at four-thirty AM in the dead of winter. We had gotten up in the middle of the night, dragged our 6-year-old out of bed, and gone with friends to see Halley’s Comet. The only way to view it, the newspaper had said, was to wait for the wee hours of the morning, and go out into the country where there were no lights to interfere.

But the night was bitter cold—way below zero–and, even though it was clear out, Halley’s Comet looked no more visible than any ordinary star, perhaps even less so. Afterwards, we passed the HoJo’s, saw that it was open, and stopped there for pancakes. We were punchy from lack of sleep, but I remember it as one of the most enjoyable meals ever, a sort of clandestine conspiratorial party, all of us up and dressed and exhausted, out at a time when the rest of the world slept on.

I knew it was virtually impossible that I’d ever see Halley’s Comet again (next time it comes, it will be the year 2062). What I didn’t know was that I’d never eat at another Howard Johnson’s.

In honor of the second anniversary of April 9: thank-you to Iraq the Model

The New Neo Posted on by

Mohammed of Iraq the Model, eloquent as always, wrote a post yesterday in honor of the second anniversary of the 9th of April–a day he calls the “Eid of Liberty”–when US troops streamed through Baghdad and the statue of Saddam was pulled down. Mohammed begins his post this way:

I don’t think I need to tell you how close is the 9th of April to my heart. And now, after two years happiness is still the same for me; one person among millions who were freed on that great day.

He ends his essay with these words: Finally, I would like to say it again and say it loud: Thank you our liberators.

Reading his post, I remember that it’s I who want to thank him, for starting the blog Iraq the Model back in November of 2003.

Until then, we’d heard from very few Iraqi voices other than those of politicians and exiled activists. Salam Pax, the very first Iraqi blogger, was an exception. His Dear Raed was begun a few months before the war itself, and I had read it almost from the start, amazed that he was able to post from inside Iraq. Salam (a pseudonym) had previously lived for many years in the West, and was sardonic and sophisticated–cynical and bitter and slightly hopeful, all at the same time. He had an especially idiosyncratic voice. Fascinating though he was (and I read him every day), it was hard to know whether he represented anyone in Iraq other than his very own unique self.

Ali and Mohammed, the brothers who were the main writers of the Iraq the Model blog (brother Omar, less prolific, was mostly involved in the technical aspects), seemed different. They had lived in Iraq their entire lives. They were heartfelt and impassioned and hopeful, yet at the same time practical and realistic and logical. Their voices–and I kept thinking of them as voices, not simply as words on a computer screen–had an immediacy, a power, and an intimacy that cut right through the huge distance, both cultural and otherwise, that separated them from so many of their English-speaking readers. They were talking directly to us, it seemed; they were talking directly to me.

What were they saying? Here are some quotes from one of their very first posts:

I was counting days and hours waiting to see an end to that regime, just like all those who suffered the cruelty of that brutal regime….Through out these decades I lost trust in the world governments and international committees. Terms like (human rights, democracy and liberty..etc.)became hallow and meaningless and those who keep repeating these words are liars..liars..liars. I hated the U.N and the security council and Russia and France and Germany and the arab nations and the islamic conference. I’ve hated George Gallawy and all those marched in the millionic demonstrations against the war. It is I who was oppressed and I don’t want any one to talk on behalf of me, I, who was eager to see rockets falling on Saddam’s nest to set me free, and it is I who desired to die gentlemen, because it’s more merciful than humiliation as it puts an end to my suffer, while humiliation lives with me reminding me every moment that I couldn’t defend myself against those who ill-treated me.

I had lived in New Hampshire for many years, and the license plates there had borne the state motto “Live Free or Die.” Back in those pre-9/11 days, it had seemed a bit much to have that saying displayed on my car–outdated, over-the-top, full of hokey flag-waving rah-rah drama.

But when I read those words in 2003 on Iraq the Model (It is I who was oppressed…I, who was eager to see rockets falling on Saddam’s nest to set me free, and it is I who desired to die gentlemen, because it’s more merciful than humiliation), I thought immediately of those license plates, without a trace of irony. Ah, I thought, that’s what those words were about, that’s what they meant all the time!

It’s not that, prior to that, I hadn’t realized the importance of freedom. But freedom had seemed to be an abstraction, and somehow, without even realizing it, I had taken it for granted. Now, here on Iraq the Model were some young men who would never–could never–take it for granted, not for a single moment. Here were people who had earned the right, through years of almost unimaginable suffering, to embrace freedom wholeheartedly, to not be afraid to say exactly and precisely how much it meant to them. And what it meant to them, quite simply, was their lives.

Over and over, as I continued to read their blog over the next year and a half, I was struck by how much the brothers Fadhil resembled the patriots in the early history of our own country. Who would have predicted such a thing?

It was like listening to a living embodiment of Patrick Henry: Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! Patrick Henry, transformed in some magical manner into a young Iraqi man who most likely had never heard of his speech and never had experienced a moment of freedom in his life, but was somehow recreating those same sentiments in the present day, in a country halfway around the world.

In the year and a half since the brothers have been blogging, both at Iraq the Model and at Ali’s spinoff blog Free Iraqi, their voices have been the source of inspiration and calm for many of us. Time and again, when things in Iraq looked as if they were falling into chaos and darkness, and all the efforts and deaths seemed to be for naught (and there were many such days), I’d spend hours reading the gloomy prognostications in the mainstream media and the blogs–and then I would turn to the brothers. Always reassuring, not with empty fantasies but with a unique combination of passion, humor, and cold logic, they would analyze the situation and explain why all was far from lost. Their personal courage was immense; they were willing to risk their lives, and they reported that they were not alone. Many Iraqis felt the same, according to the brothers; I had no way of knowing whether this was true, but I trusted them. They had never let me down before.

When the 30th of January finally came, and the Iraqi people stunned the world with their bravery in the face of threats, I thought (of course) of Iraq the Model. I was ecstatic for Ali, Mohammed, and Omar, and for the Iraqi people. But no one who had been a regular reader of their blog could have been totally surprised at the conduct of the election. After all, the Fadhil brothers had always told us it would happen that way.

So, as Mohammed is thanking his liberators, I would like to thank Mohammed and his brothers: for their bravery, and for writing to us with words of such passion and clarity and reassurance–and, in the process, helping our own history to come alive. Seeing their words for the first time, “hearing” their Iraqi voices, was to receive a stirring message of hope and courage which spoke to the mind and heart, forming a deep and human bond–reaching out to us as though from terra incognita, the dark side of the moon.

An unlikely place for geriatric disenfranchisement–the Vatican

The New Neo Posted on by

Every now and then, some small fact grabs my attention and piques my curiosity. Last night, it was the rules for selecting the next pope.

I had always perceived the Vatican to be one of the last and greatest strongholds of geriatric power. It ordinarily takes quite a long while to rise in the hierarchy of the Catholic church. By the time a man becomes a cardinal, he is usually fairly elderly; and, as with Supreme Court Justices, the only mandatory retirement age is death.

I had thought that, in the Catholic church, wisdom was presumed to grow with age, not diminish. Therefore I was surprised to hear, during the funeral services for John Paul II, that cardinals over the age of 80 are not allowed to vote for his successor.

We’re not talking about an insubstantial number of cardinals, either. At present, about a third of the cardinals are over 80 years old. That’s a lot of disenfranchised cardinals.

Why the ban? I think there may be an interesting story there, but it’s not easy to find an answer. It turns out that it’s a relatively recent ruling, especially in light of the lengthy history of the Catholic church. It was only in 1971 that Pope Paul VI banned cardinals over 80 from voting for pope. I’ve been unable to find anything online explaining the reasoning behind this rather radical change in an institution not exactly known for innovation.

The cardinals themselves appear to have taken it well, with a minimum of fuss. I could find only one exception. In 2003, an Italian cardinal named Silvestrini mounted a drive to have the rule changed back again (not totally coincidentally, he himself was about to turn 80 at the time).

An excerpt from an interview with Silvestrini sheds a little light, however, on John Paul II’s views on the reason for the ban:
In his 1996 apostolic constitution “Universi Dominici Gregis,” John Paul II says the over-80 cardinals should be excluded so as “not to add to the weight of such venerable age the further burden of responsibility for choosing the one who will have to lead Christ’s flock in ways adapted to the needs of the times.

So it appears that the reason behind the rule is the quite legitimate and understandable concern that the over-80 cardinals might not be forward-thinking enough to elect a pope for the twenty-first century. It’s therefore technically possible–although highly unlikely–that, when the cardinals convene, we could have the paradoxical result of a pope who is over 80 being chosen by a process in which his over-80 peers (including himself!) are excluded from voting.

Part 4 coming soon to a blog near you

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been trying to write Part 4 of the “mind is a difficult thing to change” series (see right sidebar for links to the earlier parts), and it’s been slow going, much slower than the others. I’m pretty sure it’s because the subject is the Vietnam War.

I’ve been impressed for some time by how much emotional power that era still carries, and how much confusion and controversy it continues to cause. The unusually laborious process of trying to write something about my own reaction to it as a teenager and young adult has driven the point home to me even further. So it’s a lot easier to write limericks about Clocky, or reminiscences about curfews and dress codes in the 60s.

Oh, excuses, excuses! I’m pretty sure I’m going to have it done within the next couple of days, and I’m also pretty sure I’d better not wait till I’m totally satisfied with it to post it, or I’ll never do so.