"Ay, and build the future with its ruins"
G.B. Shaw visits Baghdad and the Fray.
Caesar to Theodotus: "Let it Burn": Remembering George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, LegalCodger parallels the burning of the Royal Library of Alexandria with the looting of the National Museum and Library in Baghdad here. The excerpt from the play: THEODOTUS CAESAR THEODOTUS CAESAR IraqNoPhobia makes direct reference to Alexandria here and attempts to place Baghdad in context with other historic sackings. Major_Danby feels that "we are Napoleon shooting off the nose of the Sphinx, but to the hundredth power," while Thrasymachus laments that "the Bush Administration, not surprisingly, contains no Cordell Hull." Hull served as FDR's Secretary of State and is believed to have persuaded the powers-that-be to spare pristine Kyoto as an A-bomb target. On the other side, EarlyBird "can imagine the letter from the commanding officer to the widow: '... Just know that your husband died like a soldier: while defending a 3,000 year old bas relief of the Sultan of Ur,' " here. Zathras points out that "no Iraqis in a position to prevent damage to the Museum and Library appear to have anticipated the looting either." PaulB and others remind the Fray that it was Iraqis doing the looting: "If the Iraqis weren't concerned enough to put their lives on the line for their cultural treasures why should any American soldier be expected to do otherwise?" And mikkyld speculates: Had they been so placed, I can just imagine the hilarity with which such a move would have been greeted by the US media. Or worse, the anger that would have targeted the administration if it were perceived that a soldier lost his life in such duty. Your Word Against Yours: Engram, here, returns to a William Saletan piece following the September 11th attacks, titled "Bum Rap," in which he says, essentially, that hindsight is 20/20. Engram writes, "It's simply disingenuous to knowingly claim that the disastrous museum events were obvious in prospect. Or can someone point me to Meghan O'Rourke's article that emphasized this obvious risk of the impending war?" And in light of Slate's "The Case for Looting," JCSNY asks "how can Slate run the Landsburg article of earlier this week, that so glibly approached the looting that was going on, and turn around and present this latest article?" Finally, Nike is choked up: "It sucks that all the treasure is gone all the same, some people are gonna be disappointed. Jeb was supposed to get that bust of Sargon the Great on the right of your screen, Rummy was supposed to get the Ninevah emeralds." … KFA10:15 a.m.
What is burning there is the memory of mankind.
A shameful memory. Let it burn.
Will you destroy the past?
Ay, and build the future with its ruins.
Thursday, Apr. 17, 2003
Syria 'round: They're after Chris Suellentrop in Assessment Fray for on-ramping the Road to Damascus. Betty_The_Crow wastes no time in asking, "Was there any actual content to this article?" in a post titled "Suellentrop's Forrest Gump Impression."
One needn't sympathize with Syria to see that nothing short of abandoning Lebanon, Hamas, Hezbollah and chemical weapons would have removed the country from Washington's shit list. Doing all that would almost certainly get Assad killed by his own people, whereas he has at least some chance of surviving the administration; no one in the region would support an attack on Syria and even US voters might balk at the notion of using Iraq as a base to launch yet another and considerably more speculative preventive war on a Middle Eastern country. All of which is to say that Suellentrop's article does absolutely nothing to cast light on Syria's situation or Assad's competence.
To be fair, TheBrewmaster takes aim at the whole roster of Slate political reporters, citing the catalog of stories in recent days here. ShriekingViolet concurs, "Sure, Slate's writers aren't lusting for blood like the staff at the Weekly Standard, but by treating war with Syria as a legitimate subject for discussion they are playing the hawks' game." BML asks:
Why am I being pushed into deciding about war with this country? And what could be possibly be gained sending troops into Damascus? We'll still read Slate if we don't go to war, or if you never predicted war in the first place. So don't rush me into what seems like an excessively silly conflict.
The_Slasher-8 takes up for Suellentrop here, and expands on Syria's possession of chemical weapons, which have "no value in terms of any ability to change the geopolitical situation, but it does make the other side think before acting." … KFA3:15 p.m.
Partly Cloudy: ShriekingViolet takes tongue-out-of-cheek in reference to the self-effacing title The Dismal Science, calling Economics "pure guesswork" in contrast to "weather forecasting" which has "gotten more accurate over the years due to analysis of historical patterns." Violet is reacting to Robert Shapiro's analysis that economists have been navigating the mild recession and weak recovery in the theoretical dark because the factors introduced in the current cycle are unprecedented in breadth and scope. Shapiro explains, "Don't blame the business-cycle theorists for missing so much. Economic change has been so rapid and far-reaching lately… that no model can hope to take account of it."
Is Violet anti-intellectual? DeaH appreciates the comparison between meteorology and economics here, and claims that "economists have learned a lot from studying the math of weather predictions. What they haven't seem to learn is the most important lesson -- what to do about" the financial Hurricane Hugos. Truth_Teller isn't so generous, "Changes in business cycles are always unforeseen. Sometimes a pundit gets lucky, but that is just what it is... Luck!" TT fires a salvo at the good folks in Oslo here, "giving a Nobel prize in economics makes about as much sense as giving one for phrenology."
