Ordinarily I try to steer clear of rabid conservative columnist Kathleen Parker (how tidy does your worldview have to be to see the kind of straw men opponents she constantly picks fights with as the only barriers to global utopia?) But I think she makes an important point here (despite her smug rhetoric about how precise our troops have been). I never trust the media when they start quacking "quagmire" one week into any military conflict, as they've done since Vietnam.

Americans and Brits have secured strategic areas, including oil fields in the south and airstrips in the north; carefully minimized civilian casualties; fed and doctored surrendering Iraqis; uncovered a "torture hospital" and a terrorist camp packed with training equipment for nuclear, biological and chemical warfare; and encircled Baghdad in less than two weeks with less than 50 American casualties.

This is a failed plan?

posted by Nathan at 4:07 PM 0 comments

 
Here in Chicago, hope tends to spring in April and collapse by mid-summer for the Cubs. So it was good to see new manager Dusty Baker get off to such a startling good start on Monday with a 15-2 romp of the Mets, the best Opening Day for the Cubs since 1899, if I heard the news right the other night.

Still, the outlook for this season includies too many question marks for Dusty Baker to go to his second straight World Series--read most of them in the opposing scout sidebar in the Cubs entry in Sports Illustrated's baseball preview. Or, as a Bay Area Cubs fan writes to the SF Chronicle:

The Cubs' Opening Day infield will consist of Mark Bellhorn, who's never played third base in his life; shortstop Alex Gonzales, who has less range than Bob Dylan; second baseman Mark Grudzielanek, who at 33 moves like his name weighs 10 pounds per letter; and 250-pound Korean rookie first baseman Hee Seop Choi. On artificial turf, this group is going to look like the freshman class at bullfighting school. Kerry Wood may become the first pitcher in history to request a trade to Colorado.

Sheesh, hard to believe they scored a run Monday, much less 15.

Get the latest from the Cub Reporter blogger, including a second-by-second countdown to the home opener at Wrigley Field.
posted by Nathan at 4:01 PM 0 comments

 
China has threatened global health with its handling of the virus breakout, says the National Post.
posted by Nathan at 3:52 PM 0 comments

 
Proud to be a Grand Rapidian: This report of hoop doings in my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan made the Sports Illustrated daily e-mail newsletter last month:

Let's see. Jock, check. Uniform, check. Shoes, check. Stash ... hey! A
Michigan high school basketball player who dropped a small bag containing
marijuana on the gym floor during a tournament game has been expelled from
school. Ottawa Hills High School in Grand Rapids took the action Monday
after the student, an unidentified senior, admitted it was his marijuana
that turned up during Friday's Class A district boys championship game
between Ottawa Hills and Northview High, said Sue Krieger, a school district
spokeswoman. The marijuana was discovered after a first-quarter scuffle for
the ball. A photographer with The Grand Rapids Press alerted a referee to
what he thought was litter on the court. When it was found to a bag of
marijuana, police were called. District officials said they don't know why
the student had the marijuana, how it ended up under Northview's basket or
where the player was carrying it, since the uniforms have no pockets. The
incident marred a remarkable finish for Ottawa Hills, which recovered from a
0-6 start to advance to the championship game before its title dreams went
up smoke. Northview won 55-53.

posted by Nathan at 3:51 PM 0 comments

 
• Etymology Today from M-W: roorback \ROOR-back\
: a defamatory falsehood published for political effect

If you think dirty politics are new, think again. In the midst of the 1844 presidential campaign between James K. Polk and Henry Clay, a letter was published in a newspaper in Ithaca, New York claiming that a reputable witness (one Baron von Roorback) had seen Polk purchase and brand 43 slaves. The letter caused an uproar that threatened to derail Polk's campaign until it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by the opposing party — a 19th-century Watergate. Baron von Roorback didn't even exist. The incident proved a political boomerang; Polk won the election and the name "roorback" became a byword for political dirty tricks.

• Previous E.T.
posted by Nathan at 3:50 PM 0 comments

 
My latest Tribune article: On baby boomers in career transition:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/realestate/primetime...

• My Tribune archive
posted by Nathan at 6:39 PM 0 comments

 
My latest B&C blog:
Monthly news-in-review; monthly book blog.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/weblog/030331.html

• My B&C blog archive

TIMELINE MARCH 2003 BONUS
Trimmed from the news-in-review:

U.S. nukes Florida
Life expectancy rises
Bombings in the Philippines and Israel
Cuban hijackers detained
Tractor standoff in D.C.
Mysterious illness spreads worldwide
Supreme Court upholds 3 strikes
Vatican weighs in against war on Ash Wednesday
More 'Millionaire' cheats, this time with pagers.
(From late Feb) Black twins born to white couple in mishap
Violence and charity on MardiGras.

More obits:
Bill Carlisle, Grand Ole Opry performer, 94
Judy Wilson, children’s book publisher
Robert Mitchell Hanna, urban spaces designer
Robert Leonard, founder of Ticketmaster
posted by Nathan at 6:36 PM 0 comments

 
I filled out my NCAA brackets with scorn--how silly do you have to be to fill in your picks with any expectation that your forecast will resemble the crazy finishes and Cinderella teams that inevitably emerge once the ball is actually tipped?

Then I got excited as the first round fell into place approximately as I scribbled it would: I picked 13 seed Tulsa and 11 seed Central Michigan to win, and 11 seed Southern Illinois, which lost by a point. The only first round winners I missed were Butler, California, Missouri, Purdue, Oklahoma St., and Utah. My only Sweet 16 misses were Marquette, UConn, Butler, and Auburn. (Then it gets ugly--I got 5 of the Elite Eight, one of the Final Four, and o-fer from there on out.) This is disillusioning because I haven't followed college basketball as little as I did this year--not only that, but I had half as many wrong calls in the first round as a friend of mine who knows college hoops far better.

The unpredictability is one measure of the absurdity of NCAA pools. But so is the drama. We love buzzer beaters and the crazy hope that a sleeper school can put together a Final Four run. Without that guarantee of volatility, we wouldn't watch. So why exactly do we put our money on certainty?

Incidentally, now that the championship favorites have disappeared, I'm pulling for Kansas to win it all; Roy Williams is one of the best coaches, and best people, to have several championship-caliber teams over the last 15 years and no championships to show for it.
posted by Nathan at 6:24 PM 0 comments

 
Latest B&C blog:
War reflections; Iraq digest.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/weblog/030324.html

• My B&C blog archive
posted by Nathan at 1:40 PM 0 comments

 
With my plea yesterday for some healthy ambivalence in the blogosphere about the war in Iraq, I may have left my own views too vague. Here's my dilemma: Saddam Hussein is a curse to his country, and is screwing around with the U.N. now as surely as he's been screwing around with them for 12 years. What's the point of the U.N. going about its business, passing resolution after resolution, if Hussein keeps responding with occasional half-assed disarmament? However, it seems more likely than not that for whatever weapons Saddam has tried to hang onto, he is smart enough not to rock the boat beyond his borders (unlike North Korea, which has no regional counterbalancing force--Iraq is surrounded by them), and any intention of his to attack North America seems purely hypothetical.

This may not seem like an ideal time for the glib generalities of Maureen Dowd, but this observation sums up my feelings about how disproportionate the attack on Iraq is.

It still confuses many Americans that, in a world full of vicious slimeballs, we're about to bomb one that didn't attack us on 9/11 (like Osama); that isn't intercepting our planes (like North Korea); that isn't financing Al Qaeda (like Saudi Arabia); that isn't home to Osama and his lieutenants (like Pakistan); that isn't a host body for terrorists (like Iran, Lebanon and Syria).

What's worse, President Bush's dubious connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq seems downright manipulative. Saddam is not and won't soon be on Osama bin Laden's Christmas card list; the latter seems to regard the former as too establishment and secular for his tastes; the former regards the latter as too anarchist to be considered noble. Could followers of the two someday cross paths and make nice? Yes, but in the months or years until they do, we have North Korea pointing missiles at our ass. The logic of this Al Qaeda-Iraq connection is an interesting permutation of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" logic. In this case, the logic is, the enemy of my enemy's enemy is my enemy's friend. This is cause for war?
posted by Nathan at 4:10 PM 0 comments

 
Since around-the-clock television coverage, with its blurry videophone images and mysterious explosions, can bring as much befuddlement as clarity about what is going on in Iraq right now, I strolled through some other blogs mistakenly thinking I could gain some perspective.

I started with some right-wing blogs, where the story was this: The surprise strike on Saddam's bunker Wednesday night triggered a war that is going so smoothly and precisely that it's depriving military officials and the rest of the world of the element of suspense. Allied troops are marching in, confident as they are righteous, slowing only to accomodate Iraqi troops--who, absent a leader who may be dead or at least humiliated, are surrendering with the urgency of desert wanderers discovering water--and pausing to stoop and pat the heads of grateful children in liberated Iraqi towns, with expediency that justifies the effort and embarrasses critics (this is what turns me off about blogs--the number of warbloggers who are more interested in how the French, the U.N. Security Council, and peace protesters are looking foolish than in anything occurring inside Iraq).

Then I swtiched over to some anti-war blogs, where the story is just as stark: U.S. forces, in a ill-advised fit of bullying, are impetuously attacking a country that is not threatening it, each step they take a more emphatic demonstration of their defiance of international order and financial prudence, since no explanation of how to pay for this campaign has been offered, which only international leaders and peace protesters sagely understand.

In short, confirmation bias has set in--the epistemology that goes: what is going on is exactly what I thought would happen. Boy, the blogosphere sure does improve on old-fashioned "objective" reporting, doesn't it! Just once, I'd like to read one blogger say, Here's something I didn't expect, which may lead me to rethink some aspect of my views, or at least feel some healthy ambivalence.

This much seems to be true: as of Friday afternoon in the U.S., forces are about one third of the way to Baghdad, which has been weakened by a withering barrage of missile attacks. There are no clear signs Saddam Hussein is in control; the Wednesday strike, evidently a last-minute deviation from the plan (however sincerely it was disseminated) to start with an air-war phase and then send in the troops, seems to have kicked Iraqi leadership in the knees. The announcement by the Turkish government that they will send in their own troops at will to resist a potential flow of refugees, stranding U.S. forces in northern Iraq between the Turks and Kurds, may be the first of many signs that re-drawing boundaries in a Saddam-less Iraq will be a contentious process.

Random observations and snippets from around the Web:

• How news producers think: If we fail to introduce news coverage of the war with radar-screen graphics and thumping war-movie music, viewers will fail to realize that the events we are broadcasting--namely, a world superpower attacking another country's capital city with missiles and bombs--is of significance. Show of hands in the control room here: who wants to call our coverage "America At War" and who likes "America Attacks"?

• Says Dennis Miller:
- You can take this one to the bank: Saddam and bin Laden will NOT seek UN approval before they try to kill us.
- If you are anti war and even an outright "America Basher," to bin Laden you are still an "infidel" whom he wants dead.
- Be careful: if you believe in a "vast right-wing conspiracy," but not in the danger that Hussein poses, the only job you may be able to get is as an Ivy League college professor.

UPDATE: Snopes.com says this may not be from Miller

• I couldn't believe how tacky and tasteless this lead sentence was in yesterday's Wash. Post about TV Wednesday night's TV coverage.

The war has already claimed its first victim: ABC News. The network not only jumped into the story about 11 minutes behind ...

How shallow do you have to be to get this caught up in which-network-beat-which-by-how-many-minutes game at a time like this, much less to make light of war's victims with a lead like that?

• Some friends of mine on an e-mail list-serv, responding to this story about Montreal hockey fans booing the U.S. national anthem:

> No offense, Canucks, but this is an example of why, sometimes, my criticism of your country is sometimes slightly more serious than joking. On a related note, what's the general feel on the war from a Canadian standpoint? Is this booing indicative of the population at large?

> It's probably best not to criticize an entire country based upon the actions of a few morons. Plus, American hockey fans were booing the Canadian national anthem before Islanders games during the Stanley Cup playoffs last year (ironic, considering most of the players on the Islanders are Canadian). I think these occurances may be indicative of the lack of political savvy and tact on the part of hockey fans, rather than the country as a whole. As far as Canadian opinions on the war go, there's the usual irrational America-bashing, but there's also a lot of intelligent commentary. I imagine most Canadians are against the war, though. On a somewhat related side-note, I've been watching the CBC's coverage of the war, and I have to say that it's head and shoulders above the coverage given by CNN (and of course much better than FOXnews).

• This is what I linked to above from Tom Tomorrow:

When you need some money to pay for war--and you've already promised your rich contributors a huge tax break--well, you can always squeeze disabled veterans a little tighter:

"By a vote along party lines, the majority members of the House Budget Committee passed and reported for a vote by the House a budget resolution that would cut $844 million from veterans’ medical care next year and $9.7 billion over the next 10 years. In addition, the budget resolution would cut $15 billion from the disability compensation and other benefit programs over the next 10 years."

Support the troops, indeed.

• Surely, the most ardent of pro-war bloggers can agree this war is about reluctantly plucking Saddam from power, right? And securing the peace, right? Well ... here's Mickey Kaus:

I suppose it would be good to kill Saddam Hussein with the opening shot of the war. But it's not hard to imagine circumstances in which it would not be good ... What if the new leader actually turned over a whole bunch of chemical and biological weapons Saddam had been hiding? It might be very difficult to justify continuing an invasion in those circumstances -- and yet the job would once again be left half-done, or three-quarters done. ... Could we trust the new government? ... We might end up with the opprobrium of the world, but no crowds cheering us as liberators, no "prosperous and free" Iraq and no guarantee of disarmament.

Boy, what a bummer it would be to actually get rid of the guy we can't seem to get our minds off and have to stop this little tea party just when it was getting good, huh?. No, really, Kaus and others say, this war is a last resort, a desperate attempt for permanent peace!

• This clip from the always incisive journalist James Lileks is being passed around the blogosphere:

5:17 PM News report: Hans Blix admits that he would have never have found all the WMD. Thanks, Hans. Much obliged. I’m guessing that he was paid by the week, not by the discovery; if we’d given him a bonus for Finding Stuff, and the bonus exceeded what he would have made in a year of desultory squinting, we might have had the material breach in week one.

... The local news said that many high school students had walked out and gathered at the U to demand that the war stop now - the King Canute Brigade, if you will. The most delicious line came at the end of the report, noting that the University itself was currently on Spring Break, but many students planned to leave class when they resumed on Monday.

God forbid you should leave St. Petersburg a few days early to assert your principles.

• NOTE: Some week-in-review thoughts and links coming Monday in my B&C blog.
posted by Nathan at 5:59 PM 0 comments

 
Latest B&C story:
The true meaning of "reality TV": my Web review of the verite documentary Domestic Violence:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/bccorner/030317.html

Latest B&C blog:
Media violence and worldview; plus the University of Chicago's application essay questions
http://www.christianitytoday.com/books/features/weblog/030317.html

My B&C blog archive
posted by Nathan at 5:22 PM 0 comments