The Tic-Tac-Toe of Foreign Policy

"It's smarter to be  lucky than it's lucky to be smart."

from the Broadway musical comedy "Pippin"

This morning the television round-table discussion on CNN concerned the situation in Syria and the Obama administration's efforts to force President Assad of  that country to divest himself of all his chemical weapons. The panel was composed of a number of talking heads of a variety of opinions.

The first speaker claimed that the crisis is averted, that the President and Secretary Kerry have obtained their goal by having Assad place all his poison gas in the hands of the Russians, who will oversee their destruction (Question: how are they destroyed?) Then a woman who I would characterize as a hatchetman. tore into the president, saying this is a disaster, that the Syrians will undoubtedly  cheat or President Putin will, and the US was operating from a position of weakness throughout this crisis. She said that Putin is playing chess and we are playing tic-tac-toe.

Newt Gingrich chimed in, saying the president is a lucky tic-tac-toe player.

So I'm wondering: isn't it said that luck is the residue of design? Obama was placing the US navy in position to attack Syria. There didn't seem to be any way to avoid attacking Syria without backing down on the statement that their use of chemical weapons was unsatisfactory. Meanwhile, it was clear that public opinion was against intervening in the Syrian civil war, and it was becoming very clear that the Republicans in the House of Representatives would not authorize use of force there. 

Then Secretary Kerry made this supposedly off the cuff remark that an international solution might be found. Right away the Russians volunteered to act as the nation that would receive the Syrian poison gases, and the solution was at hand. Obama and Kerry were careful to keep the pressure on Assad by saying we would not wait  long for the transfer and it  must be verifiable. 

How is this inept in any way? We get what we want, not a shot has been fired by us, and we have dodged involvement in the morass of Syria. What's not to like? If our side is playing tic-tac-toe, I'd say they played it very well.

As an aside, one has to wonder why Assad used these terrible gases knowing that President Obama had said their use would require a response from us. Is it possible that he didn't order it, that some general made the decision without Assad's approval. 

By the way, it's raining hard here, and after all the rain we've had lately the ground is saturated and there's a lot of potential for more flooding. 

It's Me Again (More gramatically, "It's I again.")

It's been three months since I posted a blog entry, and there's a  simple reason for the lull. Somehow, I managed to change the format for my page and couldn't figure out how to add new entries. It took my son Joe about five minutes to  fix things this morning. Here's a few things I've been thinking about.

My cousin Bob issued a kind of challenge back in May, urging his friends to read the Christian Bible this summer. He says reading the whole thing will change the reader's life. At about the same time I heard of a new book, The New New Testament, that adds recently discovered early Christian writings to the canon we all have known since childhood. I admit I've been slow to do the reading. I read the Gospel of Thomas, really a compilation of Jesus'  sayings rather than a narrative of his life, and the first twelve chapters of Matthew. Honestly, I haven't noticed any change in my beliefs or behavior yet.

I admit that my powers of  concentration aren't what they used to be. A few minutes of serious reading are to often followed by time spent on computer games, or pulling weeds, or Facebook nowadays. Still,  I promise myself I'll make a special effort to get through the rest of it soon.

A few weeks ago I looked at a right wing webpage. Now I'm getting all kinds of conservative come-ons in the margin of my Facebook page. One of them tells me that Ken Buck, defeated narrowly in his race for the US Senate from Colorado two years ago, will make another try for the same office next year. Buck is pictured flanked by two American flags. Occasionally  I find myself wondering if the people who wrap themselves in the flag, as Buck does, wouldn't be the first ones down to the beach to congratulate an invader if one ever showed up.

Baseball. The Red Sox are leading the American League East by four games over the Tampa Bay Rays as I write this. It's too early to say the Sox have the division title in the bag, but right now the outlook is very good. The Sox prove the adage that it's a team sport. Not a single Red Sox player is having an outstanding year. Heck, their number one pitcher has been mediocre, their number two has been unavailable with a neck strain for two months, and the remainder of the staff rank as three four and five on merit. Their bullpen has been good but not outstanding. They're on their third closer.

The catcher strikes out too much and won't match last year's home run totals. The first baseman has gone ice cold at bat, the second baseman is excellent, but having an average year for him, the shortstop has been very good lately, but his batting average for the year is something like .240, third base has been a black hole for power production, though Jose Iglesias, now traded, was a marvel at the plate for the first two months of the season. There is no regular left fielder, though the platoon of Gomes, Nava and Carp (Sounds like a law firm, doesn't it?) has been good. The center fielder leads the league in stolen bases but his power numbers are poor. The right fielder has been good but not great.

Contrast all this to the Colorado Rockies, a team I also follow. The Rockies have two great star players, Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez. They are respectively the best shortstop and left fielder in all of baseball, bar none. Nolan Arenado at third base is an emerging star, DJ LeMahieu has solidified second base, the right fielder, Michael Cuddyer, is having a standout season, and the combination of Jorge de la Rosa and Jhoulys Chacin is a very good top of the pitching rotation. Yet the Rockies are floundering and will be hard pressed to avoid a losing record for the year.

Why? Because the supporting cast is weak. The Rockies lacked the depth to cover for injuries to their stars, and overuse weakened their bullpen. The number four starter has been very inconsistent and the fifth starter position has been a disaster.

And now to happier news. I am becoming a grandfather again, pretty much as I write this. Jennifer and Brian are moving  Jeremy Shepherd into their home today and will proceed with adoption as soon as the courts allow. I couldn't be more pleased for them. Congratulations to them all!

That's all for today, I think. Must get back to civilizing the world.

Retirement

Although I'm still on the library's books as an employee until May 31, and although I have two days as a substitute booked during the summer, practically speaking I am now retired.

This isn't my first rodeo as a retiree.  I left the National Park Service at the end of 1997 on an "early out" option, and declined to continue teaching high school in 2004. So I know the ropes about not working. This time it's for keeps though. My working life is over.

And I don't  know how to feel about  that.  I hear you saying, "There's always plenty to do around the house - there's always cat vomit to clean up after all - you could volunteer someplace, join clubs and discussion groups, go hiking, take day trips to interesting places. That great American novel isn't going to write itself, you know, so get busy."

You're right, and I'll do those things, but there's still a kind of void. As that great social critic Homer Simpson once said, "My job is my identity. If I'm not a whatchamacallit, I'm nothing!"

So my first day out of the work force has me thinking, "The vacuum cleaner belt is broken. I have to check to see if we have a spare, or go buy a new one. I promised to bring lunch to Kris and take a hike with her. Our yard is full of dandelions that need to be dug out. Is this what my life is going to be from now on?"

I don't want to paint a bleak scenario here. There's a chess club here in town that I might join. I could do some political things. I haven't walked all the trails in the nearby state park. (Some of them are going to require a better level of physical conditioning than I have right now, and that's another thing to point at as a goal.) I want to do some volunteer work helping homeless people. But I'm going to wait a month and see whether I can fill the days or become awfully bored. Kris is already asking me to volunteer at the park.

Retirement is a real break in a person's life, akin to getting married or divorced. It remains to be seen how I'll take to it. I know I don't want to become a grumpy old man, or someone who sits by the side of a pond, feeding the ducks and waiting for death.

I'll be more upbeat about this by tomorrow, I promise.

(Oh yes. We're going to France next year, so I plan to spend a considerable amount of time sprucing up my French language skills. Adieu.)

Poli Sci 101

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on the radio today. Honest, I only had him on because the same AM radio station carries Colorado Rockies games in the evening. I could only stand it for a minute before I turned him off. (And oh, if only we all could turn him off!)

Limbaugh's rant today had to do with the Constitution. According to Rush, the whole thrust of the Constitution is to create limits on the power of the national government, thus to prevent any tyranny from arising on our shores.

That's bad history.

The constitutional convention met not to limit the federal  government, but to strengthen it. The Preamble says,  "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more  perfect union...." (Italics mine.) The delegates were dissatisfied with the first United States government, the Articles of Confederation for the very reason that it was inadequate. The Articles had no independent executive, no federal judiciary, and a Congress in which each state had one vote. It was a league of states, little more.

The same Preamble says the government is charged with providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Clearly, the framers felt the government of the Articles incapable of doing these admirable things.

The Constitution specifies what powers the new government would have, substantially greater powers than the Articles had provided to the federal government. Read those powers and you'll see what I mean.

After the Constitution was agreed upon by the convention, it was submitted to the states for ratification. Proponents of the new framework were known as Federalists and the opposition as Anti-Federalists. George Washington, who presided over the convention, was a Federalist.  So were James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and a host of others. Patrick Henry led the Anti-Federalists in Virginia, but by and large the opponents of the Constitution could not match the numbers or abilities of the Federalists. Thomas Jefferson was out of the country, and though he said he had substantial reservations about the Constitution, he soon became Secretary of State, then Vice-President, and finally President.

It is true that the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, are meant to limit the powers of the national government.  But we should not mistake the  amendments for the body of the Constitution, the great organic document of our country. Neither should Rush.

Who Deserves What?

Yesterday, on my way to work, I drove up the exit ramp of the Interstate highway to a traffic light where I take a left turn. On the side of the road was a man in a wheelchair and another man standing next to him. Both looked scruffy. The man in the wheelchair held a cardboard rectangle with homemade  writing saying, "Disabled veteran. Anything helps."

By the time I dug my wallet from my back pocket and thumbed a couple of dollar bills from it, the light had changed to green. There were two cars behind  me and I decided I couldn't hold them back, so I went ahead and didn't give the guys any money.

Almost immediately I started thinking about the parable of the good Samaritan. Didn't the first passers-by decline to help the bleeding man by the roadside because they were too busy? At least in their own opinions? Was I any better than they were?

The man in the  wheelchair wasn't bleeding - he'd done his bleeding some time ago - and who knows what his circumstances are now. Possibly he shuns work and prefers to make a career of  sorts from begging. Our local newspaper, whose editorial policy is somewhere to  the right of the Hapsburg monarchy, featured a story once about a man who uses an Interstate exit for begging, and manages about twenty dollars an hour, much more than he'd get with a minimum wage job. Clearly the message was that roadside beggars are undeserving of anyone's charity.

But, who cares, really, what his motive is or whether he deserves any of my hard earned money? The good Samaritan wasn't concerned at all about the history of the man he helped. Jesus never mentioned in the parable how the injured man "fell in" with robbers. Maybe he "fell in" with robbers because he was used to their company, being a robber himself. Possibly they caught him trying to take their ill-gotten loot, and beat him up for that reason.

My point, and I do have one, is that it's a waste of  time and energy to try and determine if a roadside beggar deserves our help. And I'll try to do better in the future, even if it inconveniences motorists behind me.

Spoon River, Wider Than a Mile

Back when I was in high school, sometime during the presidential administration of  Zachary Taylor, my American literature teacher, Brother Steven, told us about "The Spoon River Anthology." The anthology is a series of poems written by Edgar Lee Masters about a hundred years ago, centering on the fictitious town of Spoon River, located along the very real Spoon River in Illinois. I don't remember anything else Brother Steven said, but then it was a long time ago.

(Some of you might be wondering how I could have been in high school during the Taylor presidency, 170 years ago, and studied poems written only one hundred years ago, but I am employing a device called "poetic license" you  see.)

Anyway, in the intervening years the "Anthology" has never been far from my thoughts. (And if you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.) Not too long ago, I spotted a copy of the anthology at the public library and borrowed it. I've been going through the poems since then.

It turns out the poems are all in the voices of various deceased residents of the town, writing from  the graveyard. Taken together they are an indictment of small town hypocrisies and greed. What follows is one of them, in the voice of the town prostitute.

Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon
Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received
For supporting candidates for office?
Or for writing up the canning factory
To get people to invest?
Or for suppressing the facts about the bank,
When it was rotten and ready to break?
Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge
Helping anyone except the "Q" railroad,
Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley
Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still,
Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do,
To the building of the water works?
But I  Daisy Fraser who always passed
Along the street through rows of nods and smiles,
And coughs and words such as "there she goes."
Never was taken before Justice Arnett
Without contributing ten dollars and costs
To the school fund of Spoon River!

Chancellorsville

It's May 1, and 150 years ago today the battle of Chancellorsville began, the battle that's often called Robert E. Lee's masterpiece. What follows is written from memory, so there might be factual errors.

Actually, it started off pretty well for the union Army of the Potomac. Major General Joe Hooker had restored the morale of his troops in the aftermath of Ambrose Burnsides's disasters at Fredericksburg and on the "mud march." Furloughs and better food had worked their magic, and the yankee troops were in reasonably good shape as Hooker led them into the scramble of new growth woods known as the Wilderness. Also, Hooker's intelligence gathering apparatus had told him how many troops Lee had and where they were.

There were two factors working against Hooker as he set out to defeat Lee and end the rebellion. First, he seems to have feared that someone on his staff would leak the army's plans to the Confederates, and so he kept his strategy to himself. This would have important and disastrous consequences. Second, the army was relying on a new telegraph apparatus that often failed to work. This too would prove to  be a great hindrance to his operations.

Hooker's army got off well, flanked the Confederates west of Fredericksburg, and reached the crossroads at the Chancellor house deep in the forest. Then they halted. Whether this was by design is something historians are still arguing about. (Historians, as we all know, will argue about almost anything.)

Hooker's move took Lee by surprise.  He had been guarding Fredericksburg, the mid-point on the direct route from Washington to Richmond, but he reacted quickly when word reached him concerning Hooker.

Historians who defend Hooker claim this is just what the yankee general wanted. Lee was rising to the bait Hooker dangled in front of him. Cannonading and infantry clashes broke out on May 1.

And then fate took a hand, not  for the last time in this battle. Next day a Confederate cannonball struck the porch of the Chancellor house as Hooker stood nearby. Part of the porch collapsed and Hooker was hit hard on the head. Undoubtedly, he suffered a concussion. Alas for the union, the symptoms of concussion make the affected person appear to be drunk. Hooker was alternately alert and incapacitated for the rest of the day. He issued few orders and provided little direction, but refused to surrender command to his senior corps commander, Darius Couch, who mistakepunly thought Hooker was drunk.

Lee audaciously divided his army, ordering his best subordinate, Stonewall Jackson, to make a flank attack on the union right. Dividing your army in the face of a numerically superior foe is usually a prescription for disaster, but Lee sensed that the yankee forces were suddenly inert and he could take the gamble. Jackson's men smashed into the union's eleventh corps, generally considered the weakest of the army at sunset. The eleventh collapsed, and panic spread to neighboring yankee troops. Only darkness and the nearly ready union dinners halted the rebel advance.

Then it was the Confederates who experienced a disaster. There was a full moon that night, enough light for the attack to continue. Jackson rode forward to check the situation and became the victim of friendly fire. Shot three times, he had his left arm amputated that same evening, and died a week later from pneumonia.

Meanwhile, Hooker pulled himself together enough to order his detached corps at Fredericksburg to attack Confederate forces there the next morning. The order was issued that evening before midnight but not dated or timed. The telegrapher sent the message after midnight, dated and timed at the moment of transmission. Sixth corps commander, John Sedgewick, assumed he had an entire day to prepare, thus giving Lee time to reinforce his own men there.

All of Hooker's plans had come to nothing, but his army was not defeated despite taking huge losses. He might have continued the battle, but although his army was not beaten, "Fighting Joe" was, and ordered a retreat. "My God," President Lincoln exclaimed when told the news. "What will the country think?" Union losses in killed, wounded and captured totaled 17,000.

In the aftermath of his victory, Lee decided to repeat his strategy of 1862, invade the north and fight a decisive battle to win Confederate independence and end the war. He would have to do so without Jackson, who would be replaced by General Robert Ewell, who did not possess Jackson's intuition for the enemy weaknesses or aggressive spirit.

In addition, as Lee began to maneuver north, his cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart, fought a battle against union men at Brandy Station, and for the first time the yankee horsemen gave as good as they got. This was a good omen for the north, but not for Lee's hopes as he advanced towards Gettysburg.