God Save the Queen

Lazy days

Posting has been light of late, and probably will be until next week. Best recent highlights:

- Laban Tall has the last word on the Brooker business.

- Gregory Djerejian has written a post which sums up my views about the war better than I could.

Friday strikes again

- I will doubtless say this again: James Lileks is a funny guy.

- Just lately I've started reading Beldar's Blog. This post on reasons for distrusting Kerry reproduces some of my concerns (though I'm not happy about the idea that the military's preference should play any role in our choice of candidate: so much so that I don't think any polling should be allowed among active personnel).

- And that's it for the week. Have a good weekend avoiding any news reports. I know I will.

Dammit!

I meant to post this yesterday as it was the anniversary of its writing, so I'm told. I forgot. Whatever. I looked it up after reading this Normblog profile and recited it aloud. I choked up a couple of times near the end. Try it (not in public).

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me---
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads---you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred Tennyson

It can be read as over-proud and even suicidal. But that's what you get for thinking too much.

Who? (again)

Norm has issued the challenge. Here's my take.

I've been consuming the RCP poll roundups avidly for a week or two now. I've also been reading all the usual blogs. The key considerations seem to me to be:

- Bush has incumbency on his side - incumbents have rarely lost in American history. But note the dates: Bush 1992, Carter 1980, Ford 1976, Hoover 1932. Those are the most recent cases, and all but the last were in periods of relative crisis - the Great Depression, post Vietnam-and-Watergate, and in the trough of the post-1979 recession. We're in a crisis now, and a lot of people blame Bush for it. On the other hand, a lot - like the lady from Ohio I saw on the BBC this morning - seem to think it's best not to change horses in mid-stream.

- Kerry is taller.

- The Democrats may be suffering because they can't take the so-called ethnic vote for granted. Karl Rove apparently once said that if he could get an extra 3% of Hispanic-Americans voting Republican Bush couldn't lose. That may have had something to do with Bush's regularising the status of several million immigrants from Latin America a couple of years ago: not that gratitude would necessarily make them all vote for him, but it might help to tilt the balance. Bush being a Spanish-speaker may also help there, for instance in New Mexico, one of the battleground states.

- The polls this morning are showing either a tie (Pew, NBC), Bush ahead within the margin of error (CBS/NYT, Time), or Bush ahead outside the margin (Harris, Fox, Gallup, Newsweek). That's been the story for a week or so, and unless they're all wrong (perfectly possible) the logical conclusion is that Bush is ahead in the popular vote.

- But of course only the Electoral College counts. No matter which way you slice it, Bush pretty much has to take Ohio. It is theoretically possible for him to win without it, for instance by taking Minnesota and Wisconsin from the blue column, but although the Republicans seem quite excited about their prospects in Minnesota it feels like a false dawn to me. And the plain fact is that the Ohio race is as close as it gets.

Well, I could go on, but you're no doubt waiting with baited breath (assuming you're still awake). My answer to Norm's questions:

1. Bush.
2. By 1% in the popular vote.
3. By 15 in the Electoral College.

And would I put money on my prediction? Not a penny. I'd probably pay to avoid having to bet on it, if that makes any sense.

Excellent news

This could be a decisive weapon in the Electronic Jihad. Where do I get one?

(Via Mick Hartley and Arts Journal.)

The best reason to vote for anyone

The great man yet again comes up with exactly the right line:

P.J. O'Rourke, author-pundit: He's going for Bush because "I don't want Johnnie Cochran on the Supreme Court." He adds that he always votes Republican "because Republicans have fewer ideas. Although, in the case of George W., not fewer enough."

Also: pagan rights seem to be fairly safe.

(Via Doctor Frank and the latter also via Accidental Verbosity.)

Because they're dumb, obviously

For a while now I've been bothered by an issue that seems to have swung a few blogger votes in the US. Let's call it the 'more boots' argument, which I've seen made by a lot of people I respect, such as Dan Drezner, Andrew Sullivan and Phil Carter. The claim is that the Bush Administration has been culpably incompetent in Iraq by putting insufficient troops on the ground. I'm not sure it washes. Yes, before the invasion US generals were claiming that a much larger occupation force was needed than the 130,000 to 160,000 actually used. That isn't enough by itself to secure the conviction in this case, though.
This article (via Phil Carter) makes it clear that the US military airlift capacity is overstretched. The implication should be clear, but I'll spell it out anyway. A contemporary army, especially the American, is utterly dependent on a continuous and massive flow of equipment, spare parts, specialised supplies of all kinds, fuel (again, of specialised types), etc.
That has to be brought in from somewhere, usually from the US itself. A lot of it could be brought in by sea - but Iraq only has very limited capacity for unloading. A lot has been done to get Umm Qasr and Al Zubayr up and running - this report indicates that dredging at Umm Qasr started a month after Baghdad fell and was finished in four months, which sounds pretty good going to me. But they still require a massive effort before they're working properly. This report indicates one reason why:

'Access to Iraq's two deepwater seaports is blocked... by hundreds of sunken ships that were wrecked in wars over the past 25 years, according to a detailed new report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)... Until most of these vessels are removed, Iraq will not be able to rehabilitate the Persian Gulf seaports that once handled the bulk of its commerce, UN experts said.'

In any case, the seaports are needed to import civilian goods. These are not problems that could be magicked away by the Administration. Hence the criticality of the airlift. There are some especially good quotes in the Air Force Magazine article which bear repeating:

'The airlift operation that has supported US forces in Southwest Asia over the past three years now ranks among the most extensive in history. Taken together, the efforts in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom can be put in the same general class as US airlifts to Berlin (1948-49), Israel (1973), and the Persian Gulf (1990-91). And Air Mobility Command leaders expect no letup for at least another 18 months. At the same time, the Air Force faces an acute airlift shortfall. The capability of the fleet used in the 2003 Iraq War was well short of requirement; the gap was at least 10 million ton miles per day. Today, AMC leaders say, the gap is wider—at least 15 MTM/D, perhaps 22 MTM/D.'

I have no military knowledge beyond what I read, but a 'million ton mile' sounds like a hefty sort of unit to me. The article goes on to get the views of General Handy, chief of US Air Mobility Command, who knows what he's talking about, we may presume:

'It all adds up to an airlift fleet that is too small to carry the load and personnel who cannot maintain a breakneck pace forever... The Air Force relies on commercial passenger and cargo aircraft to handle surge periods—such as when large numbers of Army troops rotate out of theater and are replaced by US-based units—but even the commercial carriers “have been in an incredibly high optempo,” Handy said.'

In other words there's no private-sector slack to compensate for the pressure. And no way to use reservists to compensate either:

'The command has also made exhaustive use of the Air Force’s reserve components and is struggling to find ways to meet Defense Department instructions to pare down the use of Guard and Reserve people and equipment.'

Even with all this extra effort, the field units aren't satisfied:

'Moreover, Handy said his command is constantly engaged in negotiations with field commanders, asking if they can accept a delay of one or two weeks in receiving certain cargo, and also trying to differentiate between genuine needs and nice-to-have, nonessential items.'

And bear in mind that his guys are being shot at occasionally.

'...enemies on the ground continue to take potshots at US aircraft using anti-aircraft artillery, man-portable surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and small arms... The loss of even a single large aircraft would affect the nation’s ability to provide the airlift demanded by regional commanders.'

Read the whole article. It's not just transports that are under strain: tankers for in-flight refuelling are ancient.

Let's cut to the chase: assume an extra 50,000 men had been put on the ground in Iraq - how could they be supplied? Even light infantry, with only infantry weapons (i.e. no artillery or armoured vehicles) would be demanding enough, needing food, fuel, ammunition etc. Heavy combat units with their monster vehicles would be even worse.
Getting the Europeans on board wouldn't help, because their airlift capacity is feeble. (The new A400M should address that, but note the delivery date envisioned in this article. Hint: it ain't 2004.)

So I don't buy the 'more boots' argument. Maybe the entire Iraq logistics operation is being run by morons. Maybe General Handy's an imbecile. Maybe all those stupid Yanks are dumb. (Adopts Guardian persona.) Well, obviously. (Guardian persona off.) But what's more likely: that Dubya is starving Iraq of troops, imperilling the success of the operation, the security of the US and his own re-election, or that the US can't sustain a significantly larger force than is in Iraq already?
If anyone could explain to me how I'm wrong on this issue, I'd be glad to hear of it. I'm opening the comments box for this one.

Picks of the day

- Via Eric the Unread and the Blithering Bunny, this essay on Virginia Woolf. I read Three Guineas many years ago but had completely forgotten its content: on reading this essay I can see why. The content bears no intelligible relation to reality, so my mind must have decided it was not worth wasting memory on.

- Erik of No-Pasaran shows the French Resistance at work. (Via Instapundit.)

- David Adesnik at Oxblog has a reasoned case for Kerry, taking into account the views of Gregory Djerejian and Dan Drezner. It's a good case and I respect his reasoning and his doubts. People like those three restore my faith in the possibilities for reasoned debate. More please.

- Jeff Jarvis expresses Loyal British sentiments. Good for him.

- The worthlessness of the UN, part 37: Winds of Change has a nice comment which shows that watching fairy stories can be useful for understanding international politics. Incidentally, if it had been Dubya rather than Kofi coming out with that 'banana republics' remark how long would it be before The Pundits started insinuating racism?

- This is the kind of thing that encourages me to believe that the Americans will usually do the right thing eventually. Merely dragging their feet for six years is bad, but it's a blip historically.

Until they're dead

Robert Conquest is a better historian than poet, but he can string words together a bit:

Get Lost, Gulag Archipelago!

"The present Soviet generation is not obsessed with the errors of the past. It looks to the future..."

For years those dreary old complaints
That we'd unfairly snuffed the lives
(We've never claimed we're plaster saints)
Of husbands, brothers, sisters, wives.

Thank God for the present lot!
They won't act up like those others.
After all, we only shot
Their fathers, uncles aunts and mothers.

(From the collection Forays.)

Couldn't find that on the web so I actually had to type it in instead of my usual lazy copy-and-paste routine. What's the world coming to? More pertinently, why am I still so keen to refight the Cold War nowadays? By training I'm a historian. We're not really interested in any events until everyone's dead, as it's only then that one can come to even a tentative judgement. But that means one distrusts contemporary assessments. What Klio remembers is unlikely to be what journalists think important at the time. Lincoln and Roosevelt were vilified as widely as Bush. George Orwell worried about something called 18b - what was that? (Short answer: the 1941 equivalent of the Patriot Act.) My point is fairly banal: newspapers may be the first draft of history, but most first drafts are not worth reading.

Monarchy

David Starkey's new series is worth watching, though I'll probably not bother with any of the rest. Last night the subject was Anglo-Saxon kingship, the stars of the show being Ethelbert of Kent, Offa of Mercia and - above all - Alfred the Great of Wessex. Starkey made the key point, compared to which all others can be let go: that the monarchy which we have today is the lineal descendant of the Anglo-Saxon monarchies, and that they were rooted in Germanic custom. Christian and Roman ideas came later to exalt the idea of monarchy, but the substratum was that of the Germanic chief, who holds power on behalf of the people and in constant, institutionalised consultation with them. Consultation is not full accountability, but it provides an excellent foundation for it. It also enables much greater national efforts, so long as the ruler is in accord with the people: it enabled Alfred and his successors to defend Wessex from the Vikings and, within fifty years, to wrest the whole of the territory now known as England from their pagan grasp. And they did it without turning England into a dreary militaristic autocracy, but by preserving and using the customary mechanisms of the people, and at the same time as encouraging the growth of learning and the arts. Alfred and his son Edward and grandson Athelstan were men of no common stamp.

C., with whom I watched the programme, commented that Alfred's cultural efforts were a bit wasted because most of the English couldn't read. But mass education in that time was neither necessary nor possible: Alfred was trying to create, virtually from scratch (because the Vikings had slaughtered every priest and monk they could find) an educated ruling class capable of leading the people in difficult times. No offence, but C. reads the Guardian.

This kind of institutional history is a bit out of fashion today, since TV producers and publishers like to go for the easy marks and the mass market, hence the endless flood of books about Nazis and mad Roman emperors. But the difference between that sort of thing and Starkey is the difference between entertainment and understanding.