James Fallows’ article in the December issue of Harper’s is entitled, "Why Iraq Has No Army".
Putting aside ther wisdom of the US attack on Iraq, it sets out to retrace the history of the attack and occupation of Iraq, focusing on the insurgency and the American effort to establish Iraqi military units to put it down.
Fallows’ method is to talk to US civilian and military experts, some on the record. He does so factually and unemotionally.
He reports on the thinking and the practical efforts to rebuild an Iraqi military in four stages up to the present. His conclusion is that American hopes for "an orderly exit" depend entirely on building an Iraqi security force and that "there is no indication that such a force is about to emerge."
That, he thinks, leaves two options: Making serious changes in policy including staying in Iraq for "many years" or recognizing the US "has no orderly way out…".
Sobering?
However, his narrative and analysis lead me to two other conclusions.
One is journalistic – so huge is the gap between the simplicity of daily newspaper reporting and even daily interpretative pieces on one hand and Fallows’ complex analysis on the other, that the average newspaper reader (or TV viewer) cannot hope to grasp the reality.
The second is political. Based only on their conduct of the war, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are guilty of malfeasance in office. My conclusion, not Fallows’.
If you read the article, let me know if you reach any other.
Here is the Albuquerque Tribune column that ran Nov. 24, Thanksgiving Day:
THANKFUL TO DEATH
Joyous funeral send-offs a happy development of recent years
By Arthur Alpert
Every Thanksgiving Day I ponder my luck – my good looks aside, I have friends, family, food, shelter and health. This year I am grateful, too, for a new blessing – funerals.
No, really. They’ve changed.
If memory serves, the funerals of my youth were cruel. Button up emotions. Recite prayers. This is death, everybody, be miserable and share it. Wakes were better - for crying out loud - but still not ideal. Funerals were few but punishing.
Today, because I am ancient, I regularly visit churches, synagogues and funeral homes from the far Northeast Heights to Barelas. And I come away feeling pretty good.
The idea of celebrating the life rather than bemoaning the death has caught on - a great advance.
Well, not always. When a teacher-actor friend passed away a few years ago, his memorial service resembled a Dean Martin roast, a platform for narcissists who forget the star. Still, he loved laughs.
Most funerals I attend do not overdo. They combine traditional liturgy with thoughts from the priest, minister or rabbi and testimony from family members and close friends.
I must confess the liturgy- whether in English, Spanish, Latin or Hebrew - doesn’t inspire me, but that’s my problem; others presumably find consolation in the ancient prayers.
The clerics usually acquit themselves well, using the content of their faith to comfort family and friends. Only once or twice have I bristled, as when an otherwise intelligent Protestant minister in Los Lunas explained that God welcomes only members of his denomination. Behind me sat several Roman Catholic friends of the departed. What did they think? Me, I figure any Deity worth his or her salt despairs of human arrogance.
The celebration arises, of course, from family testimonies. Now I wouldn’t be there, right, if I didn’t know the man or woman they’re talking about. Turns out, I didn’t. Listening, I become envious of those who spent more time with the departed, sorry I wasn’t closer and that I missed hidden traits – some that bring me to tears and some Pink Panther silly.
Family photographs adorn a lot of these celebrations; the more candid, the more emotional. Video, too, and the deceased’s favorite music, not just Ave Maria but Dixieland, Country and songs of the Auvergne.
Family members spoke of their father’s love of chocolate. And as we left, they handed each of us a silver-wrapped "kiss."
Words spoken to celebrate the dead can pierce. "A happy man," is how the rabbi described a New Mexico pioneer I often lunched with. Walking out, I thought that’s not true of me and ever since, I’ve been wondering why and can I change.
Most inspiring are stories about how these friends loved, laughed, were quirky, maddening and brave. Like the stricken priest who, near the end, "refused to yield…his beautiful full head of hair" to the doctors.
Bartender, I’ll have what he was having.
I walk out of the Masses, memorials, services and – yes, roasts – crying inside for the spouses and kids but joyful, too. I haven’t decided yet if I am going to die, but these celebrations spur me to live harder, with as much passion and humor as I can summon up - starting, oh, 10 minutes ago.
For which I am thankful.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Alpert is a semi-retired journalist in Albuquerque. Email him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column runs the fourth Thursday of the month.
Here we go again. David Broder proposes, in a column published in today's Albuquerque Journal, that the moderates in both major parties are "reasserting themselves."
Well, you can make that case where the GOP is concerned. (Though for the sake of precision you would do better to say GOP conservatives - not moderates - are standing up.)
Broder goes on to argue that Democrats ran to the left in the last election, as liberals, not to the middle of the road. This amazes me.
If that were the case, Dean, not Kerry would have been the candidate. Or Kerry might have said the Iraq War was a terrible diversion from the war on the 9/11 terrorists, that it was pre-planned, etc. etc. He didn't.
Domestically, Kerry would have proposed national health insurance. He didn't.
And the Democratic candidate for VP would have proclaimed when tort reform came up in his debate with Cheney that the Democrats side with individual Americans against corporate power. He didn't. He ducked.
I could go on but you get the idea. Broder doesn't define "moderate," but it's clear he means the Democrats need to find the middle no matter where the middle has moved. There's no bedrock here. If the argumnt is between the Fascist Right and the neo-Fascist Right, Broder would, like Clinton, find the space between them. It's triangulating. It's all tactics, no beliefs.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if editors demanded that columnists define their terms?
The Washington Post having reported last week that the CIA has "black sites" - secret prisons - in eight countries including some Eastern Europe democracies, there is outrage in the Congress. As we might expect.
But it is not outrage about the existence of these secret prisons.
No, it is outrage at the leaks and leakers who talked to the Post.
From my perspective, the perspective of an American brought up to revere the Constitution of the United States and its spirit of decency, open-ness, democracy, legal equality – this is cause for outrage.
Joseph Welch, the Boston lawyer, asked Sen.Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no shame?"
There’s no need to ask that question of the White House today. Like all True Believers, they know the end justifies the means. They have no shame.
I learned from the Albuquerque Journal Nov. 9 that Tom Moser, CEO of the Lovelace Sandia Medical Center, had resigned effective immediately.
I learned from the Journal the next day that his boss, Norm Becker, Chairman and CEO of Lovelace Sandia Health System, resigned effective Dec. 31. Voluntarily, he said. Time to make a transition to new leadership, he said.
Maybe so, but Lovelace Sandia has been suffering great pains over the past two years. It has lost many top administrators as well as many doctors. In that time, Ardent Health Services of Nashville has been trying to mesh the two medical systems it bought here, Lovelace and St. Joseph’s. Also, it has been trying to make the single unit more efficient.
Assignment for New Mexico newspapers: What’s going on at Lovelace Sandia? Why two resignations so close together? Why the earlier losses in the executive suite and staff? How is this process affecting profits? How is it affecting patient care?
Any takers?
A reporter cannot write that a Congressional hearing is a stage play, a farce, a show intended to deceive the audience. That judgement rests on so many conclusions about the meaning of facts that it becomes opinion and belongs in a column or editorial.
Michael Coleman, the Journal’s Washington reporter, attended that kind of hearing before the Senate Energy Committee Wednesday. Senate Energy is headed by New Mexico’s own Pete Domenici, a Republican. Its ranking Democrat is New Mexico’s Jeff Bingaman. You will remember they co-authored a recent energy bill that pleased oil and nuclear and coal interests.
Back to the hearing. Here are Coleman’s lead and second paragraphs:
"The US Senate had oil company executives right where the American public wanted them Wednesday – on a congressional hot seat facing hard questions about high gasoline prices.
"But the heavy grilling never materialized."
He went on to report that Domenici found the oil companies’ defense convincing.
That’s very well done. Coleman could – and did – make it clear that the hearing wasn’t hard on the oil barons, thereby perpetrating some useful journalism. That’s my first point.
I have a second – ideology can distort our thinking. Case in point: Charles Krauthammer, the brilliant right wing columnist who writes in today’s Albuquerque Journal:
"The Senate just loved its little oil-executive inquisition."
I guess one man’s patty-cake is another man’s Inquisition.
In fairness, Krauthammer isn’t all wrong. I suspect the Senate did love its
hearings; they made it look as if the Senators were responding to their constituents.
Further, his column suggests higher gas taxes to reduce consumption, a reasonable idea. (Of course, he also tells us "we" need more refineries.
In other words, with the oil industry unwilling to build refineries because they would expand supply and thereby lower profits, the taxpayers should foot the bill.)
No matter. My point is that Krauthammer’s ideology led him to mischaracterize the Senate hearing. Liberal (and neo-con) Tom Friedman did something similar in today's New York Times; only ideological bias could lead a guy as brilliant as Friedman to suggest the national Democrats are dominated by their left wing.
Hey, ideology-distorting eyesight isn’t unusual. I am certain that my blinders - sometimes liberal, sometimes radical, sometimes conservative - lead me astray, too.