The book is being widely quoted in the media as we grapple with the ending of 20 years of conflict. It's highly rated on Amazon, and no. 2 best seller on Afghanistan war.
One tidbit--in the start of the war, from October 2001 to March 2002, we had 12 military killed. In the last 10 days of the war we had 13.
It's roughly 460 pages of text; I'm 100 pages in. More comments as I progress.
I follow Atul Gawande in the New Yorker and his books, particularly his advocacy for checklists (an indispensable tool for bureaucrats). The new print issue of the New Yorker has an article by him concerning health in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica has longer life spans than the US while spending much less on health care. Gawande credits the way in which they have done public health, a systematic way of having health care professional interact with everyone in their district.
To my mind it's another example of the benefits of government focusing on the "last mile", the connection between government and the citizen. FSA does it well for its clientele and programs but the US pattern is to have government work through states and localities.
The possible release of Sirhan Sirhan has prompted a bit of discussion of Robert F. Kennedy's role in American history, and his prospects.
Early on I was torn between Hubert Humphrey and JFK. Humphrey was the stalwart liberal, the speaker on the floor of the 1948 convention, the Senator leading liberals in the 1950's. JFK had charisma and seemed more popular. Defeating Nixon was important, and difficult; less important and less difficult than defeating what's his face last year, so after West Virginia primary showed JFK could win Protestants I accepted his candidacy.
Robert was the kid brother, feisty. (Interestingly, I find in my memory I had conflated Ted and RFK's college records, to the discredit of RFK.) His reputation among liberals was marred by his work first with Joe McCarthy and then investigating labor corruption with Sen. McClellan. It probably hit a low point when his brother named him attorney general.
Bobby's reputation rose during the 1960's, first with civil rights and then on Vietnam, reaching its peak with me with his speech when MLK was killed.
I'm not sure whether I would have supported RFK or HHH finally. Humphrey didn't fare well as LBJ's Veep. It likely would have come down to the man who ran best against Nixon. We know HHH lost, barely. I think it's likely that RFK wouldn't have been able to unite the party; LBJ would have borne his grudges too long for that.
So, my bottom line is I don't think American history changed because of Sirhan Sirhan. It would have been different, but Nixon would have won, the divisions in the Democratic party would have been there, perhaps even deeper than they were. And Nixon would have continued to be paranoid against whichever Democrat seemed strongest in the lead up to the 1972.
Actually 31, according to a NYTimes article on the redoing of seats for orchestra halls--average US male has gone from 168 in the 60's to 199 now.
As I age, there are things I have lost/am losing. Some are big and obvious; I won't mention those. Less obvious is this: loss of finger function, manual dexterity. Specifically the ability easily to pick up small things or, something I notice every morning, to separate the pages of the newspaper.
One thing I haven't lost is a tendency to hypochondria, but I'll use will power and ignore the possibility that this indicates an underlying problem as described here and just assume it's age.
Prediction: One thing which will happen: regardless of the efficiency of the airlift from Kabul, there will be American citizens left behind, likely mostly they have dual citizenship. Some will remain by choice, some will be forbidden to leave because they are Afghans, in the eyes of the Taliban.
I've blogged before about the "last mile" problem in government: the fact the structure of government in the US means a gap between government and the citizen. Here's another example, as reported by Politico:
The Treasury Department said Wednesday that state and local governments had disbursed just over 10 percent of federal rental assistance funds as of the end of July, indicating that millions could be at risk of losing their homes once eviction protections end.
While farmers.gov today just describes the preliminary injunctions, Politico reports that the administration let the deadline for appealing the (earliest?) injunction run out. Apparently USDA will continue to participate in hearings on whether or not there should be a final injunction.
Without absolutely no knowledge of such proceedings, I'd guess the judge(s) would be unlikely to change his mind.
Apparently the concern was there was a weak case which, if lost on appeal, would set a bad precedent for future court proceedings.
I repeat, no knowledge, but it did seem to me that the rationale for the program was weak--in its essentials it was paying off loans for people based on a history of not giving loans to people. The people with outstanding loans which would be forgiven were able to get past any past discriminatory hurdles in getting loans.
[Update--to give the rationale for the program, see this piece.]
[Second update--USDA's argument in court]
Over at the Atlantic, an interview by Conor Friedersdorf with a Nigerian writer. From it I learned learned about the Nigerian caliphate, and its involvement in slavery. If you can trust wikipedia, it may have been the second largest slave society (after US) at any time, though I don't believe it. Brazil likely is similar in size and the Roman empire may well have had more slaves than the US. Other empires likely also had numbers in the millions. The problem though is we're likely comparing apples and oranges, since the rules about slavery were different in different societies.
Nevertheless, an interesting take.
