"R.A."--Blast from Past

Was talking this morning in our community garden to a neighbor about the damage wrought by this week's rains. She said that 3 of her neighbors in the row of townhouses had basement flooding. In some cases it was because their gutters were blocked; the water backed up into the ceiling and attic and ran down inside the walls. She started to explain that her husband had said that they had been smiled at for having their gutters cleaned so often. She's originally from Vietnam and she stumbled a bit in the telling. At first I thought she was having trouble with the English, which is unlikely since it's good, but when she came out with the phrase "[smiled at] for being so R.A.... I realized she was afraid I wouldn't recognize it, but really it brought back memories.

For anyone under 55 or so it's a meaningless phrase and it doesn't come up in Google's top ten results. Back in the days of the draft, and before the GI's serial number became their social security number, the Army assigned 8-digit serial numbers to every new recruit. If you enlisted, you got an R.A. number, meaning "regular army", while if you were drafted you got a U.S. number. Anyone who bought into the army's ways wholeheartedly (or even quarter heartedly, given the times) was mocked for being "R.A."

Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma--Bad Fact I

On page 38, as part of a discussion comparing the state of agriculture post-World War I to now, Mr. Pollan says that in 1920 only 257 tractors were built in the U.S. That seemed improbable, given the volume of cars so I went to my old copy of "Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957" and in table K-150-158 found there were actually 257,000 tractors in 1920. Mr. Pollan or his research assistant missed the unit of measure (thousands). See here For an accessible source providing some historical background. (Who knew we were actually producing over 2,000 steam tractors a year in 1900?)

Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma--Enjoy with Care

For some reason Mr. Pollan rubs me the wrong way, so I've troubled to try to doublecheck some of the information in his Omnivore's Dilemma. But give him his due--his reviews at Amazon.com are almost uniformly glowing--the only criticism is a couple of former English teachers who critique the editing. Personally, despite my problems with parts, I'd recommend the book, but I'm going to challenge some of his facts in separate posts.

Krauthammer Gets One Right

I don't usually agree with Charles Krauthammer but today's column, Amnesty for Insurgents? Yes. gets it right:

"Reconciliation-cum-amnesty gets disaffected Iraqi Sunni tribes to come over to the government's side, drying up the sea in which the jihadists swim. After all, we found Zarqawi in heavily Sunni territory by means of intelligence given to us by local Iraqis.

Protests in America over the amnesty suggestion have caused both the administration and the Maliki government to backtrack. But don't believe it. Amnesty will be an essential element in any reconciliation policy. Which, in turn, is the only route to victory -- defined today just as it was on the first day of the war: leaving behind a self-sustaining post-Hussein government, both democratic and friendly to our interests. It is attainable. The posturing over amnesty can only make it more difficult."

My agreement is reinforced by my recent viewing of the movie "In My Country", which deals with the Truth and Reconciliation commission in South Africa. That's one thing Krauthammer misses. For liberals, Nelson Mandela is a secular saint and he could have reinforced his argument by pointing to South Africa rather than Chile. The second thing he missed is that he would refuse amnesty to foreign terrorists in Iraq. I disagree--if you want peace, you have to deal with those who fight, regardless. Israel needs to deal with those it calls terrorists, if and when there's an opening; Ian Paisley needs to deal with those he calls terrorists, now there's an opening, etc. etc. When violence is politically motivated, there should always be room for a political deal, however unjust that may be.

The bottom line is

Floods and Rain

Reston got a lot of rain recently. Our rain gauge is in our garden plot and holds 5". We emptied it twice when it was full and again on Tuesday morning it had 2.5". So we can claim to have had 12.5", more than Dulles is reporting.

The area where I grew up, north of Binghamton, has seen flooding of the Chenango and Susquehanna rivers. Binghamton set a new record for rain of 4+". But they've had more flooding than Reston, even though they've gotten much less rain. The difference, I think, is the soil. It's all glacial sand and gravel there and the water runs right through and off. Here we have good Virginia red clay which absorbs a hell of a lot more water.

Wikipedia and Self-righteousness

I've started to get into Wikipedia , the encyclopedia. Several years ago when the "wiki" concept first got a bit of press I looked at it, but didn't follow up to contribute. At that time there wasn't enough to get your teeth into. Or to put it another way, it was like visiting a construction site and seeing some building materials lying around with a few people digging for the foundation. While the idea of a free encyclopedia constructed by volunteers, of work of value coming from nothing, was interesting, I didn't see a place where I could pitch in.

Now that I'm revisiting, there's a lot of stuff and a number of places where I think I can contribute. As a know-it-all, like many bloggers, I find correcting people's errors greatly rewarding. I'm not sure I like what that says about me--that I'd rather critique than construct?

Best Use of Money--A Distressing Liberal

I'm pleased with the Buffett/Gates story. (Andrew Carnegie, whose Gospel of Wealth was mentioned in some stories, was raised a Presbyterian.) I was distressed though to read the following comment from History Net news:

"My only problem with the countering illness angle [i.e., Gates foundation focus on malaria, TB, etc.] is that it seems reactionary and addressing the problem on the periphery instead of at the core...when we address the issues that create the conditions that allow these illnesses to run rampant (denial of rights, ignoring the rule of law and international legal authority, illegal wars, insistence on sovereignty, etc), then we will be practicing adaptive management and proactive advocacy and will be able to make more of a difference."

Sounds to me like his brain's been in academia too long.

Quiz--Which Story Belongs to Which Paper?

Quiz:
One of these stories is on today's NYTimes front page; the other on the Washington Times front page. Which is which?

"Amid Iraqi Chaos, Schools Fill After Long Decline

Enrollment in Iraqi schools has risen every year since the U.S. invasion, reversing more than a decade of declines."

Iraq's best, brightest flee from violence

"Rasha Tamimi sits comfortably in the luxurious lobby of the Millennium Hotel in Sharjah, part of a line of skyscrapers that stretches the length of the United Arab Emirates -- a world away from the bloodshed of her old Iraqi neighborhood."

Answer: First
Second

Media Must Help the GWOT

Power Line is, as usual, absolutely right with respect to the latest Times article on the Bush administration tracking money transfers: "It is unfortunately past time for the Bush administration to enforce the laws of the United States against the New York Times. The Times and its likeminded media colleagues will undoubtedly continue to undermine and betray the national security of the United States until they are taught that they are subject to the same laws that govern the conduct of ordinary citizens, or until an enraged citizenry decides, like Bill Keller, to take the law into its own hands and express its disagreement some other way."

Unfortunately they don't go far enough. After all, by definition "terrorism" is a war on public opinion. That means the media are the front line troops in this war. If they would simply stop giving any publicity to terrorist successes they would undermine the whole basis of terrorist tactics. If no one knows of kidnapings, murders, IED's, suicide bombers, they can't be terrorized by them. By the same token, if the media publicized our successes, it would terrorize the terrorists. For example, everyday troops come home from Iraq alive and well. Why shouldn't the lead on the evening news and the top news spot in the papers be a report of this good news.

To clinch my argument, I only observe that Saddam Hussein never allowed the media to report any bad news--just remember his Information Minister in Baghdad. We should do the same.

Fighting the Last War

Haven't read the new Ron Suskind book but the reviews stimulate me to a defense of the Bush administration. First, we should remember that our leaders, of any party, are just poor sods heir to all human ills. They learn from experience, meaning they fight the last war. This seems to be what they did in Iraq.

Remember the first Bush administration was severely embarassed by its failure to anticipate Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Later, they discovered they didn't have a good picture of his WMD programs. And this was after 10 years worth of Republican leadership of the CIA.

So what happens when they come back into power. After 8 years of Democratic leadership of the CIA they can't trust it, even if they were inclined to. This explains Cheney's close scrutiny of CIA product, and the establishment of alternative channels for intelligence in DOD. It also explains why he worried about not knowing, and decided that even a low likelihood of danger (1 percent) justified action.

Then the Bushies fought a dandy little war in Afghanistan, which went much better than I expected and enabled them to laugh at the doubters who had started to emerge over the first 2-3 weeks of combat. (I started writing this yesterday, then saw this report this morning, which supports my argument.) Consequently they were over-confident in taking on Saddam. What Cheney and his team can justly be criticized for is not applying their logic across the board. Yes, the CIA and intelligence establishment couldn't be trusted to give a fully accurate assessment of the WMD danger. And one can argue for acting now to avert possible future danger (that's the form of the liberal position on global warming, after all). But similar logic would say that the intelligence establishment doesn't understand the dangers of a postwar Iraq, so the cautious position is not to break the pottery in the first place.