Progress in Iraq

We have all heard that the surge was effective, but what does that mean? Dexter Filkins paints a picture for us in his NYT piece, "Back in Iraq, Jarred by the Calm." It is well worth your time. If you're like me, you had a hard time listening to story after story of bombing after suicide-bombing. This will be a breath of fresh air, and give life to the political discussion which will no doubt air tonight in the presidential debates.

Here's a taste:

Abu Nawas Park — I didn’t recognize that, either. By the time I had left the country in August 2006, the two-mile stretch of riverside park was a grim, spooky, deserted place, a symbol for the dying city that Baghdad had become.

These days, the same park is filled with people: families with children, women in jeans, women walking alone. Even the nighttime, when Iraqis used to cower inside their homes, no longer scares them. I can hear their laughter wafting from the park. At sundown the other day, I had to weave my way through perhaps 2,000 people. It was an astonishing, beautiful scene — impossible, incomprehensible, only months ago.

When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope. The questions are jarring, too. Is it really different now? Is this something like peace or victory? And, if so, for whom: the Americans or the Iraqis?...

But if this is not peace, it is not war, either — at least not the war I knew. When I left Iraq in the summer of 2006, after living three and a half years here following the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, I believed that evil had triumphed, and that it would be many years before it might be stopped. Iraq, filled with so many people living so close together, nurturing dark and unknowable grievances, seemed destined for a ghastly unraveling.

And now, in the late summer of 2008, comes the calm. Violence has dropped by as much as 90 percent. A handful of the five million Iraqis who fled their homes — one-sixth of all Iraqis — are beginning to return. The mornings, once punctuated by the sounds of exploding bombs, are still. Is it possible that the rage, the thirst for revenge, the sectarian furies, have begun to fade? That Iraqis have been exhausted and frightened by what they have seen?

“We are normal people, ordinary people, like people everywhere,” Aziz al-Saiedi said to me the other day, as we sat on a park bench in Sadr City, only recently freed from the grip of the Mahdi Army. The park was just a small patch of bare ground with a couple of swing sets; it didn’t even have a name, yet it was filled to the bursting. “We want what everyone else wants in this world,” he said.

All the recent discussion about Iraq concerns who can claim credit for these remarkable changes. I don't care who's responsible -- and, clearly, the sharp turnaround is not due to the decisions of only a few men. Still, I am thankful to God for establishing peace and prayerful that he will hold back the wickedness of those who would seek to destroy it.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Abortion and Choice

Good thoughts by John Mark Reynolds on abortion and liberty (i.e., "choice"). (Note: What follows is three separate quotations, not one long quotation):

Every aborted baby looks alike, but every child allowed to live becomes absolutely unique. Abortion crushes liberty for the sake of a single choice—it ends possibility with the cruel actuality of murder.

The right to control over one’s own body ends at the other person’s body. Here, advances in technology have given Americans a window on the womb and knowledge which the authors of Roe did not have. The unborn child is not merely an organ of the mother’s body. Science is at war with the reasoning of Roe.

Liberty always loses when the weak lose rights for the benefit of the stronger... History [does not] suggest that social equality for a group is best gained by suppressing a different group.

Marvel of Marvels

Most of you will know that me and my wife, Maggie, are expecting our first child. Her due date is April 19th. We are very excited, but thankful for nine months time to prepare our home and marriage.

While we are acquiring baby essentials and learning about what it means to parent, our child isn't twiddling his or her little thumbs. Wondrous and marvelous changes are happening to ready this child for life outside the womb. We're following these events in a book, From Conception to Birth: a Life Unfolds by Alexander Tsiaras and Barry Werth. Tsiaras uses the latest in microphotography to capture prenatal development and Werth describes what he beholds.

Here's where Maggie and child are right now:

Despite its wondrous growth and development, its physical achievement, the fetus so far has shown little or no discernible independent movement. It has differentiated into parts - organs, muscles, systems - each with a capacity to perform a specific function. The marvel now is how those parts begin to reunify; how they mold themselves into a form that anticipates, to the last detail, the day the newborn will leave the protective comfort of its mother and begin to fend for itself.

Gradually, at about 8 weeks, the fetus begins to stir, as if from a paralyzing sleep. "Now when the brain signals," embryologist Robert Rugh and obstetrician Landrum Shettles note, "the muscles respond and the fetus begins to kick, turn its feet, and curl its toes." Though it measures little more than an inch long, its arms bend at the elbows and its fingers gather in a fist. Its eyes are sealed shut, months away from first sight. Yet as Rugh and Shettles, pioneering observers, noted, when researchers began in the 1970s to snap more and more portraits inside the womb, it frowns, squints, furrows its brow, purses its lips, and opens its mouth.

These activities lack "purpose" - there is no specific correlation between stimulus and response. But as the fetus stirs, it jars our understanding: In order for even the healthiest to become an individual, able to survive outside its mother, there reamins an astonishing amount of growth, preparation, and refinement still to master.

And so while the 2-month-old fetus may be more or less whole, it will require another 7 months inside its mother before it can fully face the world -- 7 months in which its weight will multiply up to 1,000 times. It is as if all the instruments of an orchestra have been created. Now, in the third month, rehearsals begin for a lifelong symphony, and hte players must learn to perform. In unison.

Is there anything so marvelous as this? King David didn't know the half of it when he wrote in Psalm 139, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." What comfort Maggie and I take from this reality! And not just while our child is in utero, but for his/her entire life. David knows that God's knitting doesn't stop with the birth -- v. 16, "Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

God has great plans. He is working them out right now in glorious detail. Let us respond as David did: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well."

SNL Skits

I've been fairly impressed with the new SNL cast. Here's a skit from last night I found very funny:

Just Another Election

Peggy Noonan is an insightful critic of American politics. She has a regular Friday column on the WSJ Opinion Page that is well worth checking out. Here's this week.

As a former speechwriter for President Reagan, she leans conservative. However, she's not a surrogate for McCain or the Republican party. She's not a Bill Bennett or Karl Rove. She regularly criticizes both Republican and Democratic politics.

In reality, she presents herself more as a surrogate for the American people. She seeks to capture the thoughts and perceptions of average Americans. Notice the simplicity of her language -- short sentences and fragments, earthy descriptions, the occasional curse word. Compare reading her to reading George Will, who has me often reaching for Wikipedia or Wiktionary. Her seriousness is always laced with humor because she knows there are more important things than politics. Though she's a pundit, she knows it's improper to take herself too seriously. Her writing style is really refreshing.

What's striking about Noonan is the tremendous respect she has for the average American person, especially in contrast to the knowledge and ruling classes. What makes up "normal" -- marriages, families, jobs, schools, churches, vacations, sickness -- holds so much weight and meaning for her. It also gives insight and credibility in deciding how to (or who will) run a country. And Noonan knows that this is who fundamentally decides elections. So she tries to glean that insight for those in the knowledge and ruling class who might have forgotten the value of common sense.

From this week's column:

A final point. Do you ever have the passing thought that the presidential election doesn't matter as much as we think? Whoever wins will govern within more of less the same limits, both domestically and internationally. A New York liberal leaning toward Mr. McCain told me this week he has no fear that Mr. McCain may be a more militant figure than Mr. Obama. We already have two wars, "we're out of army." Even if Mr. McCain wanted a war, he said, he couldn't start one.

I wonder if we follow the election so passionately because we're afraid. We're afraid a lot of our national problems are intractable, and the future too full of challenge.

We cannot tolerate feeling this way. So we make believe the election can change everything. And we follow it passionately to convince ourselves its outcome will be decisive and make everything better. We reassure ourselves with pictures of the cheering crowds at the rally. We even find some comfort in the latest story of the latest dirty trick. But deep inside we think: Ah, that won't work either.

Some part of me thinks we are all making believe this is a life-changing election because we know it's not a life-changing election. Ever have that thought? Me too. Then there's a rally or a scandal or a gaffe, and it passes.

Rest assured, you won't get that from MSNBC or Politico.com.

Anathem (Books to Read No. 1)

If the publishing industry placed a moratorium on new books, there would in my mind still be an endless number of books worth reading. Yet, time is not endless and other more worthy responsibilities abound.

A more sane man might give up on the endeavor, but I am no sane man. I frequently entertain grand plans to read them all. I think to myself regularly, 'I must remember this title for that spare moment when [insert fantasy].' Unfortunately, the equation of my life renders spare moments equal to something like n + 1, where n stands for some actual time in the future and spare moments are always just beyond reach.

And time is only the first problem faced by my grand schemes. The other is remembering the titles themselves. Left to my own devices, that is becoming increasingly difficult as more and more books are stored in my feeble memory.

That's where this new series of posts come in. As books are recommended to me, I will recommend them to you. In so doing, I have a searchable database of recommended books which (theoretically) will always be available. I have some other nmenonic devices in mind, but this will do until those are in place.

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This first book is a perfect inaugural post for this series. Anathem by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow, 937 pages, $29.95, reviewed more thoroughly here) is a fantasy set on a very earth-like planet with earth-like people in the earth-like future. In the face of an increasingly technologized culture, a group of people form a monastic society which separates itself from modern comforts. They spend all their time reading and studying and learning. Geeky, I know.

Those outside are called slines. Here is how they are described by the narrator Erasmus, "I was struck by their intelligence, their polish, and how much stuff they owned. But there was nothing underneath. They knew many things but had no idea why. And strangely this made them more, rather than less, certain they were right."

Every now then the cult must war, because anti-intellectualism revolts against the monastery and disperses its followers. This story, though, centers around a period when the slines faced a problem so tough they appeal to the monks for help.

After I finished my English undergraduate degree, I almost exclusively read non-fiction. I have such great memories of escaping into a book and would like to try it again. I've often thought I would like fantasy or science fiction books for this reason. Maybe this will be a good start.

Tell me what you think if you pick it up.

Kim Jong Il Will Not Rest in Peace

Foreign Policy has an article (subscribers only) about Kim Jong Il, North Korea's dictator. It is written by Kim Hyun Sik, a North Korean defector who has known Jong Il since the fledgling despot was 17. He taught him Russian and remained close to the family until Hyun Sik failed to return to the country after illegally meeting with his estranged sister in Russia. (Hyun Sik's immediate and extended family was promptly taken and executed -- all of them.)

In the article, Hyun Sik recounts this and other horrible stories about the reign of Kim Jong Il. He portrays him as a megalomaniac with a constant need to fuel his own pride. It's clear that he will never step down from his post because it is the nation that forms and perpetuates his distorted self-image. In a telling story, a young Jong Il asks his father, Kim Il Sung, "what good is this earth without North Korea?" In other words, Kim Jong Il would rather destroy everything than let North Korea cease to exist.

Hyun Sik also speaks of an otherwise ethical people driven to horrible acts for self-survival, like when a doctor assisted in the systematic removal of short people from the capital city, Pyongyang, prior to a national event orchestrated to rival the successful 1988 Olympics in Seoul. This was in an effort for North Koreans to appear to be greater physical specimens than their South Korean counterparts. At Jong Il's instruction, he divided them into men and women (so they could not procreate) and left them on an uninhabited island to die. They were never heard from again.

This past week, news broke that Kim Jong Il might have suffered a severe stroke and maybe nearing death. I wonder if such frailty is frightening to such a prideful man, or does his gross delusion continue even in the face of death. One thing is for sure -- the brief moment his physical life ends he will face an eternity experiencing the full weight of the Supreme Lordship of God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. No more delusions.

"Let Justice roll like a river. Like a river, let it roll."

10 Worst Ideas

Foreign Policy's take on John McCain and Barack Obama's 10 worst ideas.

Radiohead Live

NPR Music has made available a 2-hour Radiohead concert for streaming. It is excellent and free!

Paralipsis (New Word No. 4)

[A long time ago I started an indefinite series on New Words I learn. I haven't posted one in a long time, and it's not because I have had ready definitions for every word I've seen lately. It's because I've been lazy. I'll try to be more consistent.]

Here's a great one! Paralipsis is a rhetorical turn of "emphasizing or drawing attention to something by professing to say little or nothing about it, or affecting to dismiss it.” You should have plenty of opportunity to employ this in the upcoming months of electioneering.

The classic example is Ronald Reagan's one-liner during a presidential debate with Walter Mondale in 1984: "I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." Brilliant and dirty!

There is a goldmine of recent examples for the more cynical readers. For instance, Hillary claimed that Obama was not a Muslim "as far as I know." One wonders if it's also behind the high-minded insistence that Gov. Sarah Palin's family is "off-limits" -- in other words, toxic.

[I'm trying to think of similar Republican slights of hand, but I can't think of any. Surely this is due to my partisan blindedness, not due to the innocence of Republicans everywhere. If you remember some, feel free to drop it in the comments.]

Perhaps we give them too much credit. But for political-watchers, it's fun to imagine.

Already Not Yet

Inaugurated eschatology seems to be on a lot of people's minds these days.

Past Mistakes and Present Credibility, Part 2

I posted earlier a link and comments about an insightful article documenting William F. Buckley and his conservative movement's contemptible laissez-faire attitude toward civil rights in the 1950s and 60s.

To be fair, I thought I should post this article documenting the Democratic Party's likewise dismal civil rights record. In "The Democrats' Missing History," Jeffrey Ford notes the convenient glossing over significant portion's of its history on the DNC's official website. "Literally, the DNC official history, which begins with the creation of the party in 1800, gets to the creation of the DNC itself in 1848 and then--poof!--the next sentence says: "As the 19th Century came to a close, the American electorate changed more and more rapidly." Perhaps by change, they are referring to the systematic marginalization of black people through Jim Crow laws and economic oppression. Jeffrey Ford fills in the gap for us.

It reiterates the point from my earlier post -- our present credibility is compromised by a history of failure. The impulse to hide mistakes, however, must be avoided for several reasons. First, it's dishonest. Second, when found out, our credibility is damaged to a far greater degree than if we had been truthful. Third, we fail to learn from history. Fourth, and perhaps most important, we fall prey to our own trap. The illusion of perfection is internalized, becoming delusion. We feel we can do no wrong. Maybe if we remembered our checkered past, we would keep the present in perspective.

Let the Heckling Begin!

We will be assembling a team. Spots go to the 10 best one-liners in the comments section.

Surprises

School has kept me from serious extracurricular reflection, so I hope you don't mind me substituting it with funny stuff I find. Here's some great physical comedy from SNL.