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.

My nominee for invention of the year: Clocky

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, here it is, the invention I’ve been waiting my whole life for: Clocky, a clock that rolls away after you hit the snooze alarm, forcing you to get out of bed to turn it off when the alarm sounds again. Simplicity itself.

Clocky has so moved me (in the metaphorical sense) that I felt compelled to write a poem in its honor–a limerick, to be exact.

Shag-carpeted, wheeled, it looks schlocky.
But don’t turn your nose up at Clocky.
So, snooze-alarm addict,
Buy one; it’s nomadic,
And plays hard-to-get, this tick-tocky.

The still point in the turning world

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When I was in college we were required to dress for dinner. “Dress,” that is, as in “wear a skirt or a dress,” not as in “put clothes on.” All meals had to be taken in our dorm, and anyone wearing pants to the dining room was turned away.

It goes without saying that the dorm residents were all women; men were allowed only in the common rooms downstairs, (two feet on the floor at all times when sitting on the couches in those doorless rooms), and only till eleven PM, when they were rounded up, the entrance doors were locked, and we were signed in for the night.

It is difficult even for those of us who lived through it to remember that this was the way it was; it seems so very quaint that it might just as well have happened hundreds of years ago. But this was not the dark ages, it was the late 1960s.

But when things changed for us, they changed virtually overnight. One day all those rules were in place (including one that required that, for Sunday dinners, we wear heels and nylons); the next day they were gone. Oh, I know, it didn’t happen quite like that; there was a slight transition period in which the rules were stretched before they were entirely eliminated. But that period was very short. My first two years of college were as described; by my senior year, one could wear any clothes at all to the dining room, and boys were living upstairs with their girlfriends, doors closed (de facto; not yet de jure).

For those who weren’t there, it’s hard to convey the dizzying pace of the change. And, once such change happens, there’s no turning back–at least it seems that way.

But a recent article in the style section of NY Times (what used to, long ago, be called the women’s pages)–about, of all people, Camilla Parker-Bowles–made me think of those days again.

Poor Camilla, doomed to be compared to the beauteous Diana, who remains forever lovely and forever young. It seems that Camilla’s style is–well, not very stylish. She’s a horsey, huntsy, tweedy sort, not much given to paying attention to her clothes, her face, her hair. But now that she’s in the spotlight, the world is paying attention, and it doesn’t like what it sees. Camilla’s latest crime:

Just last weekend she created a mini-maelstrom by appearing in public while on vacation in the Scottish Highlands in – gasp – a pair of blue jeans… But the debate loudly conducted in the press wasn’t about straight leg versus easy fit. Instead, Mrs. Parker Bowles’ choice in trousers inspired conniptions over what may strike most Americans as a very antiquated question: Should women her age be wearing jeans? Definite answers came fast. “I THINK NOT, MA’AM” screamed the headline over a two-page spread on the subject in The Daily Mail on March 29. At 57, the paper snorted, Mrs. Parker Bowles should keep in mind that “jeans are a young person’s garment.” Even in her comfort zone, sometimes Mrs. Parker Bowles can’t win. Among upper-class women, Ms. Andrews sniffed, “Wearing jeans past a certain age just isn’t done.”

So, perhaps one can go back, at least in the UK. Yes, it does strike Americans–at least, this American–as an antiquated question. But then it occurred to me that this question may indeed have tapped into the very essence of having a Royal Family.

Queen Elizabeth, an attractive woman, has always seemed to me to be so magnificently and classically dowdy in her dress and hair that it must be a conscious act. The pace of change in the lives of most of us has been so fast that it threatens us with vertigo, and the Royals must be meant to provide a steadying vision, the still point in the turning world. Camilla may represent change of a sort–after all, in years past, she would have been relegated to the status of Mistress for Life. The times they have a-changed, though, and the wedding will happen–Camilla will marry her Prince. But she is expected to cling to certain standards of the past in the matter of dress, to slow us all down in this dizzying, spinning world.

It’s now official, Saddam was “upset” (but what will Amnesty think?)

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Ann Althouse points out that, in today’s Guardian, Saddam is reported as having been “upset” by watching the news that Talabani was selected as the new President of Iraq.

The Iraqi human rights minister is quoted as having told Reuters:

He [Saddam] was clearly upset. He realised that it was over, that a democratic process had taken place and that there was a new, elected president.”

I’m wondering whether, now that Iraq seems well on the way to becoming a functioning democracy, human rights minister Amin will be besieged by the equivalent of the ACLU or Amnesty, claiming that forcing Saddam to watch Talabani’s selection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

But no, I see that’s been covered, too. Apparently, no coercion was involved. According to Amin, the former dictator had chosen to view the recording of the parliamentary vote.

Is Saddam a glutton for punishment (his own, I mean; we already know he feasts on that of others)? Or is he so bored he’ll watch anything at this point? Or perhaps he’s delusional and narcissistic enough to watch because he thought they’d be clamoring for his reinstallation?

He may not have liked the beer and taco chips, either.

Talabani, the Kurds, and the Jews

The New Neo Posted on by

I was reading a thread at LGF about Talabani’s selection as interim President of Iraq, when I saw this remark by a commenter named sandspur:

Just saw a little clip of Talabani on FNC. Sorry I can’t quote him verbatim, but he said that Jews, Arabs, all will be treated equally.

As extraordinary as Talabani’s election was, this comment seemed even more extraordinary. Why mention Jews? Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a link for the quote. But in researching it, I came across some other information that I found fascinating.

There are almost no Jews left in Iraq, although it once teemed with them, and the Jewish presence there was ancient. At the time of WWI, one-third of the population of Baghdad is estimated to have been Jewish. But anti-Semitism in Iraq increased during the early 1940s, influenced by Nazi-inspired leaders who staged a coup (and I don’t mean “Nazi-inspired” as a metaphor; I mean it literally). Violence against Jews intensified after the state of Israel was established, and most of the Jews of Iraq left the country.

Well, it turns out that this mention of Jews by the Kurdish Talabani was no fluke. Today, while researching this, I came across an extraordinary article written in 2001 by Michael Rubin, entitled “The Other Iraq.” Read the whole thing, as Glenn Reynolds would say.

According to Rubin’s article, written before the Iraq war that deposed Saddam, many Kurds were already expressing approval of Israel and studying the country as a model for their own autonomy and liberation. Victims of persecution and genocide themselves, they could identify. What’s more, they despised the Palestinians for their support of Saddam. The older generation of Kurds remembered the absent Iraqi Kurdish Jews fondly, and even the younger generation were able to listen to Israeli radio, watch Israeli TV, and access Israeli websites, unlike the inhabitants of the rest of Iraq.

So Talabani’s statement doesn’t come out of the blue, although it was a total surprise to me. I was ignorant of this long history of relative goodwill in the Kurdish part of Iraq towards Israel and the Jews.

The plot thickens, though, because this long history gets even longer–and more astounding–when genetics are factored in. It turns out, as this article relates, that a team of scientists (Israeli, German, and Indian—that’s quite a story in itself!) discovered in 2001 that the Kurds may be the closest genetic relatives to Jews in the entire world.

Once again, read the whole thing.

Revenge is a dish best served cold

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s very close to the second anniversary of the fall of Saddam, and the news is good. Very very good. For this anniversary season, I think it only fitting that Iraq has just elected Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani to be its interim President.

From this AP article, we hear how the once-beleaguered Kurds received the news:

In the north, Kurds danced in the streets.

Those same streets where so many of them once lay dying from Saddams’s little chemistry experiments.

But there was someone else watching today, someone with a more than mild interest in the proceedings, and I doubt he was dancing:

Ousted members of the country’s former regime ”” including toppled leader Saddam Hussein ”” watched the event on television in their prison cells, Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin told Al-Arabiya television.

When I picture all the possible punishments for Saddam, it’s hard to know what could actually be appropriate. In the end, nothing–nothing–would be enough, even monstrous sorts of revenge that we, as civilized people, should not tolerate.

But the news today has made me think that perhaps the old saying about justice is true, after all–it grinds slow, but it grinds exceedingly fine. It brought a smile to my lips to picture the old tyrant, accustomed for so many years to wielding the absolute power of death and destruction to all who opposed him, and summarily and preemptorily snuffing out all political opposition, to be sitting in a cell somewhere in Iraq, watching this election on TV.

I don’t even care if he had a beer and a few taco chips while he watched.