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Rich Lowry has a new book out called Legacy, on the Clinton administration. I haven't seen it, but he apparently spends (relatively) little time on the famous sex scandals, and a great deal of time on the decisions for which Clinton hopes to be remembered, both in domestic and foreign policy. Lowry's perspective is that of a complete loyalist to the present President Bush, judging how Clinton should have solved problems that instead were left for his successor. Anything Clinton did right, "any Republican" would have done as well (with perhaps one exception). On the other hand, according to Lowry, Clinton failed in many important areas because he had neither principles nor character.
Here is a friendly interview on NRO (where Lowry is an editor). Based on this interview, it seems that Lowry certainly raises some important questions about Clinton's record. I think Lowry is not giving Clinton enough credit on some matters, but that debate obviously must continue.
On foreign policy: Lowry says Clinton was wrong to pull U.S. troops out of Mogadishu (after "Black Hawk Down" in October 1993), too slow to attack in Bosnia, and terribly wrong to do nothing about the genocide in Rwanda.
My question: didn't many Republicans, including especially Bush Jr., regard all these foreign adventures as a waste of time? There is a thread on the "Winds of Change" site that includes this exchange (prompted by Tom Daschle criticizing President Bush): "My thoughts drift back to the Serbian War, and I remember the unfathomably dovish, wobbly, and appeasing comments made so relentlessly by the Republican leadership (especially Lott and DeLay) against our military involvement, and against the authority of the Chief Executive. In that situation they violated nearly every principle of conduct you now bash Daschle for violating, only they sniped ten times louder, and with a hell of a lot more partisan rancor." Another reader replies: "The comments made by Trent Lott and Tom DeLay regarding the Kosovo air campaign were made during the period between the end of the Cold War and 9/11, when voters weren't paying attention to foreign policy. Remember, Clinton was as wobbly on Gulf War I as Kerry was on Gulf War II, but Clinton had the luxury of running for president in an era where foreign policy credentials were not essential for victory."
Here is an interview from 1998 in which Sen. Richard Lugar (R Indiana) says of both Mogadishu and Bosnia, in effect: Clinton should either have gone in big, or not gone in at all. The thought seems to be left hanging: the same could have been said of Bush Sr.
So maybe both sides can say: we both behaved badly at the time.
Lowry says in passing that he himself is "not a fan of humanitarian interventions generally," but even he, so to speak, is convinced that something should have been done for Rwanda.
What did Bush do about a similar African hell-hole in the recent past? True, he has intervened on a small scale in Liberia. But in Zimbabwe, Mugabe's government is using brutal methods to keep itself in power. Its land redistribution scheme, which involved certain designated lands owned by whites, has not gone as planned. It has often led to mob violence, and much of the land has simply gone out of agricultural production. Much of the economy has collapsed. The election campaign in the spring has been described as a "campaign of terror" on the part of the government.
When Bush went to Africa, he apparently intended to speak out, at least, about the terrible suffering in Zimbabwe. He was persuaded to do nothing at all, however, by the President of South Africa. (He has continued to speak out to some extent). Let's see: an ally, with whom the U.S. has many ties, urges no action at all against a blood-soaked tyranny, and Bush agrees to do nothing....
Lowry's main point, of course, is about international terrorism. Clinton knew about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but did nothing. The retreat from Mogadishu, in particular, we have been told, inspired Bin Laden by convincing him the U.S. would not fight for its principles. Update: There's even a wrinkle here I had not come across before: "By most accounts, al Qaeda trained the Somali fighters to down our Black Hawk helicopters. Then, after losing 18 dead, we retreated, signaling that spilling American blood would inevitably lead to American retreat. Osama bin Laden learned the lesson well."
The American public didn't know as much as Clinton; Clinton should have led, instead of following.
More tomorrow.
Update: One of Lowry's better lines: "Should Bush have done more during the eight months he was in office? Absolutely. But much of his work would have been--and has been--undoing the mistakes of the Clinton administration."
Quite possibly Clinton was too passive in the face of the growth of what we are now taught to think of as "international terrorism." Possibly Clinton and his people were guilty of believing that most people in the world are basically rational, or their behaviour can be changed by rational arguments. As Lowry says, it is probably quite important for any rich country to remember that many people hate you, and then to wonder whether they fear or respect you.
I actually think this last criticism--an overall belief that rationality in itself will win--what Aristotle calls the biggest mistake of the sophists--is better applied to Carter than to Clinton; but again, there may be some justice to it. I would just want to say in Clinton's defence that he was aware there was very little public support in the U.S. for foreign adventures. The public may not have been quite as wedded to contemptible and defeatist isolationism as many Republicans--many of Lowry's friends--certainly were, but the isolationism was a political reality, and the Republicans were willing to exploit it.
Fred Kaplan has written a series of articles in Slate on North Korea's nuclear program. In one piece he says:
"Bush officials have harshly criticized the '94 accord, mainly because it was negotiated by the Clinton administration, which in their eyes means it must be bad, if not traitorous. It was a limited agreement, recognized as such at the time, but it did halt North Korea's nuclear weapons program for eight years. And it's a debatable issue which side is responsible for the accord's breakdown--Pyongyang, for resuming the weapons program, or Washington, for failing to provide the economic assistance that it pledged as its side of the bargain."
I can't find it right now, but somewhere there is a piece--possibly by Kaplan--showing that Republicans in Congress consistently refused to vote for the money that would have allowed the U.S. to keep its end of the deal with Korea.
Update: here is a piece by Jonathan Power that makes this point: "If a Republican Congress had not undermined the administration's solemn promises made to the North on the speedy development of alternative power supplies and an end to the economic embargo, it is highly unlikely that the present crisis would have ever blown up."
Even so, Kaplan argues, the deal almost certainly limited the escalation of Korea's nuclear program, and Bush's response to all this in the first year or two of his administration was clueless.
Lowry takes for granted that Palestinians who attack Israelis are really part of the same "movement" as Al Qaeda and other "international terrorists." He brings one criticism of the Clinton people to a point this way: "They never got that Middle Eastern radicals were attached to the continuing state of war in the region as part of their very being." If this statement is unpacked, it means that some critical mass of the Palestinian suicide bombers and their sponsors don't simply want some different policy out of Israel, or an agreement with Israel--they want to destroy Israel, or to cause so much mayhem that stability and decency are impossible. Same with Al Qaeda, except in their case they are trying to weaken the entire West, of which Israel is a lonely, shining beacon in the Mid East.
Again I would say maybe. But Palestinians have some legitimate grievances; I'm not sure Bin Laden, the rich kid who raised money for the mujahadeen war in Afghanistan, but may have sat out the fighting in Pakistan, really has any at all.
Obviously the Israel-Palestinians issue is changing constantly. One suggestion that quite appeals to me is as follows: Israel is not going to give up more than small areas of the West Bank and Gaza. These areas will become de facto part of Israel. If they become so de jure as well, there will obviously be widespread demands for representation by population in the new enlarged Israel--which will be a more or less Arab country. There has even been a poll which says more Palestinians want to be citizens of Israel than want the "return" of a lot of the land in Israel to previous Palestinian owners.
Update: Oops. I was thinking of this story, but it says only that many Palestinians would rather live in a separate Palestinian state than "return" to land in what is now Israel.
"The poll, conducted among 4,500 refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip,
Lebanon and Jordan, was the first to ask where they would want to live if
Israel recognised a right of return.
Only 10 per cent of the refugees chose Israel, even if they were allowed
to live there with Palestinian citizenship; 54 per cent opted for the
Palestinian state; 17 per cent for Jordan or Lebanon, and 2 per cent for
other countries. Another 13 per cent rejected all these options,
preferring to sit it out and wait for Israel to disappear, while 2 per
cent didn't know."
More details on the survy in question here. If anything like that proves true, I think it will indicate that the straight Bush view is missing a lot.
On domestic policy: is it really true that "any" Republican would have done welfare reform? This strikes me as being analogous to "Nixon goes to China"--it would have been difficult for a Republican to do it without being seen as stereotypically heartless, etc. Also: Lowry seems to agree that neither Bush Sr. nor Bob Dole were exactly policy wonks--how would they think of such a thing? Yet it is excellent public policy, which Lowry says Clinton did "for the wrong reasons." Oh.
Another example: Lowry mentions one policy initiative of Clinton's that probably no Republican would have pushed: "A more distinctive success was his relentless push to expand the earned-income tax credit." Helping the poor get off welfare by lowering taxes on the first dollars earned? Sounds good. Mickey Kaus absolutely loves both welfare reform and the EITC.
I probably should have included this in my earlier discussion of Putin's Russia as an ally of the U.S.: it looks like Russia is unlikely to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and without Russia, it makes no sense for the U.S. to sign on. (Link to Pravda via Colby Cosh). (Another link--to Robert Novak--via The Corner).
Here is a link to an overview of the science of "global warming," also via The Corner.
If a consensus actually develops to the effect that human action is not causing global warming, or if it is, nothing can be done about it at a reasonable cost, then this will be one of those wonderful cases where a putative idiot (Bush Jr.) was right, and the putative experts were wrong.
Newly elected Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty will be sworn in with his Cabinet on Oct. 23. Things seem to be moving at a stately pace--compared, say, to the transition in California. One difference: Gray Davis is able to sign a bunch of bills, and make appointments; an outgoing Premier in our system is supposed to do only the minimum necessary to keep the government running--even during the campaign.
McGuinty has been briefed on the fiscal situation (bad--the outgoing government projected a deficit of $2 billion last spring unless some assets were sold; very few assets have been sold, and the economy has been hit by SARS and other problems, so the deficit may be $4 billion or more). He cannot divulge the confidential stuff, but he is hinting more strongly that something will have to give--he already said some spending promises will be postponed, and now he seems to be hinting that he is willing to run a deficit.
He has a huge caucus, with a good representation of former ministers from the late 80s, and bright new talent. There are at least a noticeable number of women and people of colour, which is important in the cities, especially Toronto, these days.
The Progressive Conservative caucus, on the other hand, is stereotypically Tory: aging, male, white bread, and rural. I don't have bios in front of me, but I estimate that out of 24 MPPs, a maximum of 8 are under 50, and a minimum of 6 are over 60. There are only two women, and no visible minorities. The Tories were completely shut out of Toronto and the suburbs closest to Toronto, as well as the most urban areas of other "big" cities: Ottawa, London, and Kitchener-Waterloo. The northern cities and Windsor were pretty much gone before.
In a way this was an election that went even worse for the Tories than it appears at first. If they emphasize the surviving caucus members, they will have little to say to the urban and suburban voters they lost. Several promising leadership candidates lost their seats, and may decide to stick with private life for a while.
What continues to interest me the most is the ongoing debate about government services vs. tax cuts. Several high-profile school trustees and/or teacher representatives were elected as Liberals, and there seems to have been a sense among the urban middle class that cuts had gone too far--the schools are hurting. Health care is always an issue, in that no matter how much money is spent, one can point to line-ups somewhere, but I think the Tories were successful in neutralizing that issue in comparison to education and possibly "public health/environment."
The Tory government was, once again, stereotypically Tory in that while talking tough about cutting spending (not necessarily services) and taxes, they kept trying to beef up services in rural and remote areas. They tried to establish equalized per-pupil classroom funding "regardless of where your child lives in the province." If the general fiscal restraint means that cities face real cuts in services, while the areas where "the people aren't" enjoy increases, you are asking for trouble. Toronto tends to have a sense of entitlement--people there often think it is too interesting a place to be in Ontario, or Canada--and they got used to seeing tax revenues that were raised there, spent there. They had little extras for everyone. Now there's less of that, and there are complaints that the city has become a shabbier place.
The soon-to-be-federal Liberal leader, Paul Martin, who supposedly has to wait until February to take over officially, is promising to dedicate some of the gasoline tax to the cities.
McGuinty says he will cap class sizes (the Tories had capped the school board-wide average class size, allowing flexibility as long as big classes were made up by small ones somewhere in the system). The Liberal promise will be expensive, and a lot of work for school boards.
It made news in the past few weeks when it was revealed that Saudi Arabia is considering developing nuclear weapons. The Saudis immediately denied that they have made this decision, but they are clearly considering options, and indeed they may have leaked this story themselves to make sure they got the attention of the U.S.
Questions are being raised as to whether the Saudi government is more or less actively supporting terrorists in Iraq--the same questions that are more commonly asked about Syria, and that continue to arise about the relationship between the Saudi government and the 9/11 terrorists.
Michael Moore's latest book apparently argues that the 9/11 attacks were planned and executed by the Saudi government. Many people have suggested that radical Islam and terrorism both enjoy at least semi-official support from the Saudis. This is generally seen as potentially embarrassing to the Bush family, who are friendly with many "ruling" Saudis, including several members of the Bin Laden family.
An investigation of the story of how several Bin Ladens and other Saudis were allowed to leave the U.S. shortly after 9/11 has apparently revealed
the following: various individuals were flown to Houston from several sites in the U.S., at a time when virtually all flying was banned. Special permission was obviously granted for these flights. The flight from Houston to Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, took place after the ban on flying had ended. (Link via Instapundit).
Joel Mowbray has written about friendly ties between the State Department and Saudi Arabia, resulting in outcomes including very effective lobbying for Saudi Arabia in Washington, and extra efforts being made to smooth the entry of Saudi nationals into the U.S.--even after 9/11. (It was Mowbray's appearance on Pat Robertson's show that caused Robertson to say something like "the State Department should be nuked").
Mowbray seems to be a loyal Bush Republican, who is trying to say that none of the perfidious State Department actions are any of Bush's fault. But who has been president for two and a half years?
A number of things seems to be going on here. Partly, the Bush administration is frustrated both with the State Department and the CIA. (Rumsfield also has problems with the Pentagon, but that is more about scale and type of missions than over-all orientation or "ideology"). The classic debate between State and Defence goes something like this: State has more "experts on the regions and countries," people who speak the languages and have lived there, and have enormous sympathy for the local people. This may not lead to any intense loyalty to existing governments, but there is likely to be a sense that "we have to work with the status quo," "they're the best we can do," and even "making a change, especially by violence, will only make things worse." In the 50s, of course, State became hated by Republicans for arguing that the Communists, i.e. the bad guys, were going to win in Vietnam and perhaps other places, just as they had in China.
Defence may be cautious about deploying force (especially after Vietnam), but when they are convinced there is a problem, they can become impatient with diplomacy, and they know that force can work--they've seen it happen.
The CIA I guess often sides with State. My son who's now 13, and going to public school in Canada, came home with a joke one day about the CIA, the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department. All three organizations are given a mission: neutralize a specific bear in a specific forest. The CIA reports back: they are in regular contact with many creatures in the forest; they even have some creatures of their own working under cover; they are getting daily reports on several bears, one of which is no doubt the bear in question. They will need a great deal more time to complete the assignment, but impressive progress is being made.
The FBI reports back: they deliberately burned the entire forest, killing everything that lived there. They can report with confidence that the suspect bear is dead.
The LAPD arrives late for their briefing, and they are dragging a rabbit, kicking and screaming, badly bruised from a severe beating. Alright, alright, the rabbit says: I'm a bear! I'm a bear!
The Bush people are attracted to moral certainty and rapid, decisive action. They distrust anything that looks like consciously making accomodations to the enemy. To over-state for clarity, one could say that State might have recommended "constructive engagement" with practically anyone--even the South at the outbreak of the Civil War. Make a deal; give them what they want, if you have to. What is war going to accomplish? The Bush people would like to think they are like Lincoln, FDR/Churchill, and the greatest Cold Warriors: here is a moral cause. We must do what is right, no matter how risky or imprudent it seems.
The French and Germans have made it clear they are not buying this at all, so some Bush supporters are inclined to say it's "surrender to evil" in these countries all over again.
The U.S. allies, however, generally seem to show how complicated the situation really is. What exactly is Saudi Arabia doing, either to further U.S. efforts or to impede them? Does anyone know? To what extent have Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups had semi-official if not official sanction from the Saudis? If the Saudis officially gave some kind of support to the 9/11 attacks, would this have been sheer stupidity on their part? Or would they like to see the U.S. re-arrange the Mid East to some extent, as long as doing so doesn't directly harm the Saudis? Perhaps the Saudis know they have helped to release a dangerous genie (radical Islam/terrorism), along with Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, and the madrassahs in Pakistan, so it wouldn't be a bad thing if the sherriff came to town for a while. I just don't know.
How much do we really know about 9/11? Without getting into the crazier conspiracy theories, there are certainly those who say the attacks were a bit too professional for Al Quaeda. I remember someone saying on 9/11 or the next day: this doesn't look like a typical Al Quaeda attack--it's too smart or sophisticated. The World Trade bombing in 1993 was crude and unsophisticated--although, in the case of a typical high-rise, it would have succeeded in bringing the building down. Other incidents that have been shown to be the work of Al Qaeda are similar--includling the idiot who was stopped at the Canada/U.S. border, with his trunk full of explosives. A smarter person would have found a way to acquire explosives once inside the U.S.
Update:
Just scanning recent headlines: Saudis
say
they will not send troops into Iraq now (contradicting an earlier report); in fact they will not do so until they are asked by a "legitimate" government there.
Saudi police arrest 4 "suspected Muslim militants" trying to cross into Iraq.
The Saudis are given credit for cracking down on Saudi nationals with links to Al Qaeda--but they have done so mainly since the bombing in Riyadh in May.
Meanwhile, Iraqi police say Saudi nationals were involved in some of the more serious bombings in Iraq in recent months--especially the one at Najaf which killed a mullah and many others. The Saudis say they have no knowledge of the involvement of their nationals in such acts, and anyone with solid information should come forward.
The government of Turkey has succeeded in getting parliamentary approval to send troops into Iraq. A similar proposal, strongly supported by both the Turkish and U.S. governments, was turned down by the parliament at the onset of the U.S. invasion.
Opposition to the move from Iraq's IGC and a wide coalition of Moslem countries here. More background here.
There have been demonstrations within Turkey against deployment in Iraq: see here. This led to a witty comment by Jeff Taylor on the Hit and Run site, something like: we can all be thankful that pre-emptive war has stabilized the entire region.
Very few details have been announced officially. Apparently 10,000 Turkish troops will be deployed. There has been a virtually independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq since the early 90s (thanks to a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone), and there has been criticism that Turkey wants to control at least part of Kurdistan--particularly the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Apparently in response, the U.S. has said Turkish troops will operate in the central part of Iraq, not the Kurdish north.
Ralph Peters bitterly criticizes the U.S. decision to welcome Turkish troops into Iraq. (Link will degrade).
"Certainly, there is nothing wrong with rebuilding a working relationship between the United States and Turkey. But Iraq is the wrong place to do it.
"No troops from neighboring states should be allowed to meddle in Iraq, but we would be better off with Iranian troops than with Turkish forces.
"The administration is even dishonest about Kurdish 'terrorists.' The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has, indeed, engaged in terrorist actions against Turkish targets in the past. But if there ever was a case of freedom fighters using terror as a tool, it's the PKK. And, in recent years, the PKK has changed its practices. Its members are not innocents, but neither are they the bloody-handed murderers Ankara declares them.
"By far the worst acts of terror in the struggle of Turkey's Kurds for elementary rights were committed by the Turkish military, not by the PKK. Anatolian Kurds remain a brutally oppressed people whose plight cries out for justice.
"It appeared that Iraqi Kurds, at least, had found their long-awaited champion in America. Our defense of the Kurds and our support for their self-liberation were wise and moral actions. And the Kurds continue to yearn for constructive friendship with America. They know that no one else has the power - or the potential selflessness - to protect them.
"But this is a terribly discouraging week for all Kurds. They know too well what disasters could follow a Turkish occupation of any part of Iraq.
"Even Iraq's American-backed Governing Council has protested the deployment of Turkish troops. Washington's response has been to tell them to shut up.
"Doubtless, Bush's enforcers will bully most of the members of the council into accepting Washington's will. But our actions make a mockery of the values we have professed to the Iraqi people."
Peters' most depressing message is that Turkey always appeared to like working with Saddam--especially when it came to oppressing Kurds. If Turkish troops become a presence in the Sunni parts of Iraq, this may be an opportunity to work with Baathists and try to restore the old regime.
Timothy Noah in Slate has been offering updates on what he calls the "Kurd Sell-Out Watch" for months. He always says the Kurds in Iraq have been the most pro-American, or the most consistently pro-American, of all the disparate groups in Iraq, yet the Bush Administration acts like it would readily sell the Kurds out for any kind of two-bit deal with Turkey.
Noah points out that in fact 4,000 Turkish troops are already in Iraqi Kurdistan, and they refuse to leave. Some of them were arrested by U.S. forces for "reportedly plann[ing] to assassinate the Kurdish governor of Kirkuk." Turkey has not confirmed that the new troops will only be deployed around Sunni-dominated central Iraq, and indeed they have indicated clearly that they will take part in joint operations with the U.S. against the PKK in Kurdistan. It also seems that the only way for Turkish troops to get to central Iraq is through Kurdistan.
Glenn Reynolds looks for the good news in this story. Turkey must think the U.S. is going to win; otherwise why be so eager to get in on the operation? In response to one of his readers, he even hints, perhaps jokingly, that this is all part of a U.S. effort to have the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) taken seriously; members of the IGC have been quoted extensively on this story.
Turkey is perhaps the most Westernized and modernized of all the Moslem countries. It is not an "Arab" country, which may help. I have still not read nearly enough about the Arabs, the Turks, the Middle East, The Persian Gulf, Central Asia, etc. I was struck recently by a comment James Q. Wilson made in an article some time ago: Turkey made strides to becoming modernized many decades ago; but it required a "strong man (Ataturk)," indeed a kind of Oriental despot, to achieve this. I linked to this article in an update to an earlier
post.
I guess all sane people in the West want NATO to expand to include former enemies or problem areas--countries that were formerly behind the Iron Curtain, above all. The long-running project to make Turkey (which has been in NATO for years) as much as possible a part of Europe seems to be related to this goal.
It is easy to find discussions on the web of human rights abuses by Turkey throughout the 90s--especially committed against Kurds, and in Cyprus. There has been progress in parliamentary democracy and rule of law for most people, but the security forces have had something of a free hand with people who are classified as enemies. In particular, suspects could be detained without charges.
That is supposed to be changing, as Turkey tries to carry out the reforms that are seen as necessary for it to join the European Union.
Thanks to a reader for noting that Turkey has recently received more then $8 billion, yes billion, from the U.S. Ted Kennedy has called this a "bribe" to get Turkey to do more to help the U.S. in Iraq.
Since I couldn't find a poem that captured my feeling that fall is the best of the seasons, I wrote one myself:
Out of the blazing heat of summer
--Stark white light bleaching out colours
Flattening the dusty view
The dull, insect-humming quiet
Broken only by thunderstorms--
Comes, like moth from chrysalis
The Autumn
Colour throbbing rich and moist
(Until branches are bare)
Gentle rains
Clear vivid light
In the declining hours of day
I say:
Autumn is as beautiful
Hopeful and melancholy
As human life
Compare and contrast:
Mother, Summer, I
by Philip Larkin
My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,
And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.
Autumn Daybreak
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud
At dawn, a fortnight overdue,
Jostling the doors, and tearing through
My bedroom to rejoin the cloud,
I know--for I can hear the hiss
And scrape of leaves along the floor--
How may boughs, lashed bare by this,
Will rake the cluttered sky once more.
Tardy, and somewhat south of east,
The sun will rise at length, made known
More by the meagre light increased
Than by a disk in splendour shown;
When, having but to turn my head,
Through the stripped maple I shall see,
Bleak and remembered, patched with red,
The hill all summer hid from me.
Second April (The Death of Autumn)
Edna St. Vincent Millay
When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,
And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind
Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned
Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes,
Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak,
Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,--
Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes
My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die,
And will be born again,--but ah, to see
Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!
Oh, Autumn! Autumn!--What is the Spring to me?
Larkin comes to a kind of gruding acceptance of fall--summer, it turns out, is too perfect, or it demands too much. I think part of the meaning of the word "autumnal" is resignation to less-than-perfection, middle age, mortality: mediocrity? For his mother (and perhaps he doesn't remember her when she was young) summer is just too stressful--autumn is a relief.
The first Millay poem seems to be all about sadness and loss--being able to see a hill that was hidden by leaves hardly seems much compensation.
The second Millay poem seems to have a twist ending. Does she truly look forward to Spring, the new birth of Beauty, or not? Maybe she has fallen in love with specific beautiful things, including people, and when they die they cannot be reproduced--only replaced.
I'm not sure I've succeeded in making fall a positive thing. "moth" from chrsyalis sounds like something gray--although of course there are some lovely moths. Let's face it, there is both decline and melancholy in there. Is it a sign of middle age to welcome the fall?
Yesterday evening I interrupted my "Predators" post to walk the dogs. The Westie is almost healed. When I take them for a longer walk, he puts down the "bad" leg every time in turn (although he may not be putting full weight on it). I think it's been 12 or 13 weeks since the surgery, and he's supposed to be fully healed at 16 weeks. I still keep him on lead.
So we're back at our "big" park again. It has a big wide open space with maybe four soccer fields. As you would expect, at times in the summer it is full of kids. But there is also a more wooded area that allows you to walk along one side of the creek, with some hills and other features the dogs like, then cross a bridge and come back on the other side. Many dogs owners go there and let their dogs off-lead.
Yesterday as we arrive, a cab driver is praying to Mecca. I don't think I've seen that anywhere, and ours is a rather "white bread" suburb of Toronto. He had laid a rug out on the grass, right by a soccer goal post, and he was kneeling with his forehead on the rug. It was exactly sundown. I don't know: do Moslems pray 5 times a day? Would this be the 4th or 5th?
Later, when we were in a more remote area, we encountered something you would expect, but which I actually haven't seen in this park very much: a young couple getting to know each other. When I arrived with the dogs, I saw the young woman (with the light failing) and said Hi. The young man turned out to be a few feet away, taking a leak into the bushes. As soon as he was done, the two of them were in each other's arms, and the dogs and I moved on.
I don't have any profound comments except: I guess this is liberal democracy.
All this talk of animals have reminded me of my collection of dog books.
Recommended:
Best "all-breed" book I've found: Dogs: Portraits of over 400 Pedigrees, by Bruce Fogle.
Fogle doesn't stick to the increasingly arbitrary classifications of breeds that are used in dog shows and kennel clubs: he uses less arbitrary groups that have relevance to history. The first chapters are "primitive dogs," "sight hounds," "scent hounds," and "Spitz-type dogs," because these are ancient "types," some representatives of which have not changed much to this day. After "terriers" and "gun dogs," you come to "livestock dogs," including all the "Mastiff" types. Some of these are also quite ancient--going back to the "drovers" that would protect herds from predators, as distinct from "shepherds" that would round up strays. Lovers of Rottweilers and Dobermans may not like finding their dogs in this chapter, but it makes sense to me.
Sometimes I could go through this book for hours--like the vain idiot who kept going through the "Peerage" in Jane Austen's Persuasion. Do I have even less excuse in that I am not personally in this book?
Best "background" book I've found on dogs: Illustrated Dogwatching, by Desmond Morris. Besides the beautiful pictures, Morris asks lots of questions we all want answers to, and gives good brief answers. There are about 50 questions and anwers in all. Some favourites: Do dogs show remorse? Why do dogs eat grass? (Morris doesn't know, but he rejects the usual explanation that there is something lacking in a dog's diet, and they need some salad or juice from same). How well can dogs see/hear? (How do these senses of theirs compare to ours?)
Of course, the winner: how exactly do dogs mate? One interesting wrinkle: most adult male dogs do not get laid. In the wild, only the alpha is permitted to--that's the main thing the males fight to the death over. Domestically, breeders of course control mating, and often resort to artificial insemination. I guess this is what Walt Disney was getting at in Lady and the Tramp: a dog pretty well has to take to the streets to have any chance of getting lucky. At the same time, very few human beings have actually seen the doggy deed, so Morris describes it.
Actual intercourse has three stages. The male gets no pleasure out of the third and last, but it is necessary for pregnancy to occur. So the female's body "locks in" the male. One can apparently actually see the male struggling to escape, while the female calmly hangs on. Sociological, anthropological, moral and political observations of the "Archie Bunker" variety are simply too obvious at this point.
Two recent episodes, in which an animal which is a natural predator has attacked a human being, reminded me of a great book on dogs that I got as a gift last Christmas.
The book is "The Truth About Dogs," by Stephen Budiansky. Budiansky questions how exactly dogs ever became domesticated; he doubts that this happened primarily because of human effort or planning. Rather, he thinks dogs found some advantage in changing their behaviour--first in acting more cringing and cowardly, as opposed to threatening, then in acting positively "friendly."
For one step of his argument, he stresses how few species have ever been domesticated in the whole history of mankind on earth.
"...out of more than 4,000 species of mammals and 10,000 of birds that have inhabited the earth for the last 100,000 years, only about a dozen have ever entered into a domestic relationship with man. The ancient Egyptians, as we know from depictions of their failed experiements that they ingenuously carved instone, tried unsuccessfully to domesticate antelopes, ibex, gazelles, and hyenas, none of them improbable candidates on their face. Wolves, aurochs, jungle fowl, wild rabbits, and wild horses did become domesticated; coyotes, bison, grouse, squirrels, and zebras did not. It is hard to escape the conclusion that success had as much to do with them as with us." (p. 17)
In fact, it seems certain that only one type of wolf was domesticated; other types have always resisted domestication. "...wolves that are raised in captivity lose some of their fear of approaching humans--and with proximity comes trouble....captive wolves who had the closest relationships with humans were by far the most dangerous and unpredictable....Both wolves and wolf-dog hybrids kept as pets have attacked young children without warning, apparently when the child's running, crying, or stumbling triggered a predatory response. Predatory attacks always come without warning, for to be an effective hunter in the wild, a predator must of course be stealthy. That even socialized wolves can display such extremely dangerous, and extremely instinctive, behaviors makes it highly unlikely that wolves could ever have made workable pets, even to a bunch of hairy guys with clubs." (pp. 19-20)
Which brings me, of course, to the recent episodes. More later.
Update: Roy Horn, of Siegfried and Roy Las Vegas fame, was mauled by a tiger, and nearly killed, during a show on Oct. 3. He and the tiger were the only ones on stage. The tiger refused an order to lie down, and Horn hit him on the face, repeatedly, with a microphone. At one point Horn reached for the chain around the cat's neck. He missed (this is where some accounts say he actually stumbled) and the big cat did what he would do in the wild when he was sure he was dealing with a weakling: he went straight for the throat and carried his prey off in order, presumably, to devour it in privacy.
"The tiger refused Horn's command to lie down, audience members said, and appeared to take a playful pat at Horn, swinging a paw at the entertainer.
"'He lost the chain (around the tiger's neck) and grabbed for it, but couldn't get it,' Cohen said.
"The tiger locked his jaws on Horn's right arm as Horn unsuccessfully struggled to free himself by striking the animal with the microphone. That's when the tiger lunged at Horn, clamping his jaws onto his neck."
Horn had announced, as apparently he always did, that this was the tiger's first time on stage--but in fact the tiger had performed regularly since it was six months old. This lie was described after the mauling as a "joke," but it was presumably intended to raise the audience's expectation that the big cat might be nervous, might do something unpredictable and dangerous. S and R also lied about the tiger's age, making it 7 instead of the actual 9 years old--I'm not sure why.
Another account includes the stumble, which is what really might make a predator think "snack":
"The white Siberian has been a cooperative cat. But on Friday night, he didn't want to walk in the right direction. So Roy hit him on the cheek with his microphone five times.
"After the fifth time, the tiger, which weighs about 600 pounds, attacked. The animal grabbed at Horn's arm, causing the entertainer to stumble.
"The tiger then lunged at Horn, who tried to beat the animal away with the microphone. It bit into the left side of Horn's neck and dragged him off stage by the neck. The attack barely missed severing Horn's carotid artery."
Roy's partner Siegfried, along with others who have made a fortune from this show, have offered reassurances that the attack happened because of unique circumstances. The cat was distracted by something in the audience (a woman's hair?), Roy decided to move the cat away, in a manouvre that was not part of the act, and it was this strange movement that the cat resisted. Roy "courageously" put himself between the cat and an audience member.
Jack Hanna, the zookeeper of TV fame, has backed up this story by saying that if the tiger had set out to kill his prey, that would simply have been done. Well, it came close.
Several of the more recent articles are like
this one: "Tiger Meant to Kill Roy Horn, Experts Say."
Then there is the grizzly bear attack. (Or Alaskan brown bear--same species, living on the coast).
Timothy Treadwell was known for saying these bears are basically harmless and playful. He made a point of getting close to them, and touching them. Experts had expressed concern in the past: "'At best he's misguided,' Deb Liggett, superintendent at Katmai, told the Anchorage Daily News in 2001. 'At worst he's dangerous. If Timothy models unsafe behavior, that ultimately puts bears and other visitors at risk.'"
If you have a dark sense of humour, you can enjoy other details here and here about this guy's life from the Globe and Mail: he sometimes kissed the bears, he lived with them for months every year, he once denied that he had a death wish, or that he was addicted to the danger he was exposing himself to. He began his wilderness studies after a drug overdose. (A woman was killed along with him).
My point is simply this: do these people think they are in a Walt Disney movie? They probably think they are better than the "bad" kind of human beings--you know, the ones who believe in controlling and exploiting nature. But isn't this the greatest arrogance of all--to think you can become one of the family with a wild animal? That you have some special charm or skill ("I know I have to be careful, but I won't screw up like those other losers") that protects you?
See also: swimming with dolphins, sometimes off of cruise ships. My sense is: yes, a pod of dolphins might adopt you as a member of the pod. But, if they have not yet adopted you, they might just attack you. And they can be violent creatures, contrary to what you might think from TV.
Also: one of the family that brought us "Born Free," about living with lions, was killed by one of the family lions.
UPDATE: I was thinking of Joy Adamson, and this turns out not to be true. Because of the way her body was found, it was initially assumed she had been mauled by one of her lions, but it was eventually concluded she had been stabbed to death, and someone was convicted of murder for it.
Not that maulings by lions are exactly rare in Africa. I don't know who the "conservation" group is that's responsible for this newsletter, but this piece is cynical and hilarious. "Meat is Meat" as far as lions are concerned.
UPDATE: Then there are elephant attacks. I read a review of a book a few years ago (I can't find any reference to it now) that apparently showed a consistent pattern. Supposedly domesticated elephants will suddenly attack and kill someone--not by accident, but quite deliberately. It is a bigger problem with males than females, so performing elephants today are almost all female; but the problem has never gone away.
Since I started out with dogs, I might as well end with them. Many people will say: aren't domestic dogs also unpredictable, and sometimes prone to violence? Yes. Even with a well-trained dog, I think you should never assume a dog will be good with strangers or children. All dogs have some version of the "us vs. them," "friend or foe" instinct, and it is fully engaged when meeting new people, or when encountering children who are themselves unpredictable. (I think quite a few kids like to try to poke a dog in the eye--I don't know why).
Still, the danger is mostly with a few breeds--contrary to what the owners of those breeds always say when they are threatened with a by-law. There are reputable dog books that say Doberman pinschers from Europe are more likely to have a "wild" hunting/attacking instinct than those from the U.S. With any Dobie, there are warnings that if you succeed in training them to chase and grab something, even in fun, you might find this brings something out which is more dangerous than you bargained for--and you can't bottle it back up again. I met a Dobie owner in a park once, and he said he wasn't going to train his dog to chase anything until about 3 years of age. I read a great article on Weimaraners once--a superb breed--which simply said: don't teach these dogs to chase young children or smaller pets.
We worked for a few weeks with a dog trainer who owned Rottweilers and portrayed himself as a real tough guy--I show these dogs who's boss, etc. Yet there were times, even in the few weeks I knew this guy, when the dogs didn't do what they were told. Great. I once foolishly opened the gate and went into the trainer's yard, where one Rottie was on patrol. (The owner was home, and we were there to pick up our Westie. Our messages had crossed about the pick-up time, and the guy had closed his gate). Fortunately I knew the Rottie's name, and stayed calm. When the trainer came out, he said I was lucky the dog hadn't gone for my throat; this was probably because the owner was in fact at home, with his car in the driveway. Great.
In an NPR interview
with Vladimir Putin in the fall of 2001, there is the following moving exchange:
"Mr. Siegel: You have just been to Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, and I want to ask you first your reactions on seeing that.
"President Putin: It was a very emotional experience. Of course all of this I had already seen a number of times on television, and I must tell you that as far as the official schedule of my visit, the trip to New York was not part of it. However, I could not help but come here, both to New York itself and of course the Ground Zero, the disaster site. And it made a very big impact -- not just on me personally, but on Russia as a whole. And what I wanted to do was not just to go visit that place, but to pay my respects to those who had suffered in this tragedy. And I wanted to once again by doing that, by going to the site, to attract the attention to this tragedy, to do everything that I can to make sure that nothing like this happens in the future, that there is no repetition of this in the future. And I would like to express my admiration for the courage displayed by the New Yorkers. I also would like to say that there was a poster across the street from the Russian flag, because of course there were some Russians among the casualties -- and I signed the poster. And what I wrote there was that, quote, 'This great city and the great people of America will no doubt prevail,' unquote."
Surely Putin is, to flog a cliche, an enigma. In a joint statement after their "mini-summit," just a few days ago, Putin and Bush agreed that neither Iran nor North Korea should have nuclear weapons, but they disagreed as to next steps. Russia will continue to help Iran build a nuclear generating station, which could be used to enrich plutonium for weapons. Putin says he will urge Iran to co-operate with international nuclear weapons inspectors, while Bush would like him to make a much tougher stand. There's something funny here--an ally says let's leave it to the inspectors, and the U.S. grudgingly agrees.
On Korea, Putin thinks that if the U.S. demands a dismantling of nuclear weapons, it should guarantee North Korea's security; Bush is not willing to do this.
On Iraq, Russia is sounding like France: no commitment to re-building Iraq until there is a new UN resolution, and the resolution should provide for other countries to be involved in decision-making. He also seems to agree with France that Iraqi self-government should proceed more quickly than the U.S. is providing for.
There seem to be question marks about Putin mainly because of his long KGB career, Chechnya, and the possibility that he is not totally committed to democracy.
Two recent Slate articles: one by Ed Finn focusses on Chechnya's election today; "Chechnya's Sham Elections."
"The election has been almost universally derided as a one-sided sham, largely because Russia's chosen candidate for the job, Akhmad Kadyrov, has forced all serious competitors to drop out of the race with a combination of money and brute force. The race is particularly ridiculous because Chechnya's incumbent president is leading rebel forces in their battle against the Russians."
This rebel leader, Aslan Maskhadov, elected in 1997, is a Moslem, but he denies any connection to Al Qaeda or international terrorism. A French paper gleefully points out that not a single Chechan was found fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Apparently Bush buys what Putin says: he is not fighting Chechan nationalists, but international terrorists--the same ones Bush is fighting. In the NPR interview Putin says roughly that authentic Chechan nationalists were left in charge in 1995, when the Russians pulled out, but terrorists and fundamentalists took advantage of the situation and began using old Chechan disputes to hurt Russia.
Putin's chosen candidate, and by election day, the only candidate, was Kadyrov, who has made a name for his brutality.
Another piece is by Kim Iskyan; "Tolerating Putin's Evil Empire." The gist seems to be that Putin is tightening control over the press, and when one of the super-rich oligarchs made some moves to become a leader of the political opposition, Putin cracked down on him under laws that are normally not enforced.
Again the focus is: why does Bush not criticize Putin?, and: is Putin itching to be a dictator for life?
Ed Finn says Bush now has a nickname for Putin, "Pootie-Poot." So friendly have they been, notwithstanding some real disagreements, that Jim Pinkerton says:
"The UN Security Council opposed [Bush]; he couldn't even get the vote of his "friend," Russian chief Vladimir Putin. Parenthetically, one must note with wonder that Bush has never figured out that the ex-KGB man has been playing him like a balalaika. As he hosts Putin at Camp David tomorrow, it can be said that no president has been so trusting of the Russians since Franklin D. Roosevelt clinked glasses with Josef Stalin during World War II."
Update: The New Yorker (Oct. 13) has an article on Putin by David Remnick.
High points: Putin had a somewhat mediocre career both in the Communist Soviet Union and in post-Communist Russia. He was promoted quickly by Gorbachev and Yeltsin largely because he served the pro-reform and pro-Gorbachev forces in Leningrad (now once again St. Petersburg) loyally and bravely--even though one of the coup leaders in 1991 was an old friend and KGB mentor of his.
Putin has been criticized for restoring a Soviet hymn, albeit with new words. In general he favours a mixed collection of national symbols, "some tsarist, some Soviet, some sui generis." He is convinced this is what the people want--they feel some nostalgia both for the pre-Soviet period, and for the Soviet period when they were considered in some ways equal to the United States. One of Putin's favourite lines is "Anyone who does not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union has no heart, but anyone who wants it restored has no brain."
Putin seems to want to be known above all as in many ways an ordinary person, but also a person of demonstrated competence in comparison to his predecessors.
"There is constant talk in Moscow political circles about Putin's lack of commitment to democratic principles, especially civil liberties." There is a comparison, lasting a few paragraphs, with Silvio Berlusconi of Italy. Putin, one source says, is closer to Berlusconi than Blair, but still a democrat. The comparison to Berlosconi may be especially apt in that it is the media, above all, of which Putin does not want to yield control.
The military is in drastic need of complete reform, which has barely even begun.
Putin has proved flexible enough to support the U.S. in Afghanistan (contrary to what many of his advisers suggested), and yet to stay at more of a distance over Iraq. His initial "pro-American" stand after 9/11 gave him a world forum in which to say fighting Chechans is now part of the larger fight against international terrorism. Remnick says matter-of-factly that "Key Chechan militant groups have accepted help from Islamic radicals, including Al Qaeda."
Update Nov. 1: a nice post by Andrew Stuttaford
on The Corner about the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Stuttaford says, I suspect wisely, that it is hard to know what is going on,and then quotes some words of wisdom from Khodorkovsky.
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