Dispatch on hiatus

Work has been going nonstop, 7 days a week, these past few weeks. As a result, the Dispatch is going on hiatus for a while. I'll try to get back to at least once-weekly posts sometime in February. I'd much rather write quality entries than exhausted drivel. Stay tuned. See you in February!

Open-minded musings

"It's a fashion thing"

One thing I neglected to say in my last rant: when it comes to Iraq—and indeed the wider war on terror—people need to stop looking for the one momentous event that will turn the tide, pointing us at last toward the victory every decent American seeks, one of stability, reconciliation and rule of law over vicious and wanton bloodletting.

This ain't your granddaddy's war. And it ain't your daddy's war.

This war, almost in spite of itself, is much more subtle. Real progress can't be measured by battles won, just as real setbacks can't be measured by suicide explosions in Baghdad.

What initially struck me while skimming the revised US Army counter- insurgency manual is how much of it reads like it was written by the Peace Corps. I mean, yeah, military force is still essential, especially when dealing with the likes of hate-mongering tribal militias, al Qaeda, Syria and Iran.

But this war is just as much about winning hearts and minds. Such victories will never be as overtly sensational or immediate in their impact as car bombings and IEDs. But they are nonetheless crucial to the outcome. And for that reason alone worth fighting for. The key is patience, something that appears to be in regrettably short supply with the American public.

While the mainstream media continue to flaunt their perpetual one-note damnation of Bush and his “quagmire,” encouraging news breaks beneath their radar. Over at punditreview.com, Michael Yon, reporting from Mosul, Iraq, says the Iraqi army—at least those units he has observed firsthand—are fighting with more confidence. And morale grows. He adds the latest fad among the Iraqi soldiers he's seen is to sew American flags into their uniforms. Yon, a former Green Beret, calls it a "fashion thing." I call it a bright spot on a depressingly rendered canvas. And one worth acknowledging.

Out of this world?

People who read my posts regularly know I have an interest in UFOs. I had a rather dramatic sighting on Long Island in 1989, and I am quite certain that what I saw was someone else's technology.

It's a shame that in the field known as "ufology" the many eccentrics, attention seekers and New Age nut jobs routinely drown out the voices of those researchers doing quality work. Anyone with the patience to wade through the BS will find much empirical evidence has accumulated since at least the 1950s to support the hypothesis that the earth is being visited by extraterrestrial life forms.

This week I was finally able to look into what appears to be a rather dramatic sighting of a disc-shaped object over Chicago’s O’Hare Airport last November 7.

Here’s a link to the original news story as it broke in the Chicago Tribune on New Year’s Day 2007. The story also contains a link to a Chicago-area TV interview with Jon Hilkevitch, the Trib’s transportation columnist, who broke the story.

The UFO sighting occurred at around 4:30 PM on a Tuesday afternoon when clouds hung at about 1,900 feet. A flying disc estimated by witnesses to be anywhere from 6 to 24 feet in diameter was spotted hovering at about 1,500 feet over Concourse C of the United Airlines terminal.

According to Hilkevitch’s account:

All the witnesses to the O'Hare event, who included at least several pilots, said they are certain based on the disc's appearance and flight characteristics that it was not an airplane, helicopter, weather balloon or any other craft known to man.

United personnel informed pilots of a United plane on the ground near Gate C17 of the sighting, Hilkevitch reported, adding:

…[O]ne of the pilots reportedly opened a windscreen in the cockpit to get a better view of the object…

The object was seen to suddenly accelerate straight up through the solid overcast skies…

"It was like somebody punched a hole in the sky," said one United employee.

Witnesses said they had a hard time visually tracking the object as it streaked through the dense clouds.

It left behind an open hole of clear air in the cloud layer, the witnesses said, adding that the hole disappeared within a few minutes.

The United employees interviewed by the Tribune spoke on condition of anonymity.

The fact that many of the witnesses—airline pilots, mechanics, supervisors, even baggage handlers—are professionals who know aircraft make this sighting particularly intriguing.

The FAA maintains the sighting was the result of weather conditions creating some kind of optical illusion. I say, tell that to the many witnesses who continue to come forward. What kind of optical illusion is observed by many before taking off at a high rate of speed and punching a hole in the clouds?

Pictures of the event are said to exist. If this is true, it's only a matter of time before they wind up on the Internet. I'll continue to research the story and report updates.

If the Trib story piques your interest, check this out. It’s video of a local newscaster—in fact the same local newscaster who originally interviews Hilkevitch—chatting with someone off-camera about the sighting, the global interest it generated and story updates, and doing a follow-up interview with Hilkevitch.

Finally, what doesn’t anger some Muslims these days?

So "B" it

Do not forsake me O my darlin'
You made that promise when we wed
Do not forsake me O my darlin'
Although you're grievin', I can't be leavin'
Until I shoot Frank Miller dead

Wait along, wait along
Wait along
Wait along

– “Do Not Forsake Me (The Ballad of High Noon)," words by Ned Washington, music by Dmitri Tiomkin

Okay, here's what I think about what the New York Post calls Bush's "Plan B" for Iraq.

I say Madame Speaker, to hell with no smoking in the Speaker’s Lobby! I say Congress, where do you get off staying home Monday to watch a football game—after the Dems, the new majority party, promised you would right away start actually working for your cushy pay?

I say, get your asses back to work!

Oh yeah, as for "Plan B," I say let's go. Let's go! Clear-hold-build. ‘Hold’ is the key here. Before it was clear-and-leave…and watch any building destroyed by murderous, fanatical thugs. Now it’s clear-hold-build—jointly with Iraqis each step of the way. Seek out and destroy the insurgency and reestablish security side-by-side with Iraqi army and police forces. Rebuild with infusions of Iraqi and US dollars.

And when Iraqi security is standing on its own, we’ll take a hike; maybe go to Kuwait. You know, keep an eye on things.

Let’s go. Let’s brandish that big stick, wink at Iran and Syria and quietly place them on notice: their aiding and abetting of chaos is about to end...by God-awful brute force if necessary.

Prosperity, security and liberty are the death knell to radical Islam. It's that elemental.
–Victor Davis Hanson

Clear-hold-build. Secure Baghdad under the watchful command of Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, onetime commander of the legendary 101st Airborne Division and overseer of the revised counterinsurgency manual.

Lt. Gen. Petraeus has learned his lessons both on the ground and by studying the history of counterinsurgency. Browsing the revised manual, Counterinsurgency, published last month by the Department of the Army, you get a sense of Petraeus’s thinking about the Iraq insurgency and how he plans to address it.

Out the window go these “unsuccessful practices”:

• Overemphasize killing and capturing the enemy rather than securing and engaging the populace.
• Conduct large-scale operations as the norm.
• Concentrate military forces in large bases for protection.
• Focus special forces primarily on raiding.
• Place low priority on assigning quality advisors to host-nation forces.
• Build and train host-nation security forces in the U.S. military’s image.
• Ignore peacetime government processes, including legal procedures.
• Allow open borders, airspace, and coastlines.

And into the mix come these “successful practices”:

• Emphasize intelligence.
• Focus on the population, its needs, and its security.
• Establish and expand secure areas.
• Isolate insurgents from the populace (population control).
• Conduct effective, pervasive, and continuous information operations.
• Provide amnesty and rehabilitation for those willing to support the new government.
• Place host-nation police in the lead with military support as soon as the security situation permits.
• Expand and diversify the host-nation police force.
• Train military forces to conduct counterinsurgency operations.
• Embed quality advisors and special forces with host-nation forces.
• Deny sanctuary to insurgents.
• Encourage strong political and military cooperation and information sharing.
• Secure host-nation borders.
• Protect key infrastructure.

Enough of those “nuanced” critics and their ridiculously simplistic and one-dimensional broadsides against "the surge.” Again, read those bullet points above and learn a little bit about what real counterinsurgency entails. Pretty radical, eh?

The rules of engagement have changed. No more bloody mayhem from Muqtada and the militia boys. No more destructive outside influences. Let’s go! Secure Baghdad and al-Anbar Province. We not only can do it, we must. For the future of Iraq, the Middle East, and the free world.

This is Iraq’s last, best chance. Let’s not blow it. Let's go!

It’s time to demystify climate change

A ghost of Spring descended on the greater New York Metropolitan area this weekend. And yes, Sleepy Hollow, despite the laid-back moniker, is part of the New York Metropolitan area, situated as it is in Westchester County on the east bank of the Hudson River, only about 25 miles north of Harlem.

According to the Journal News on-line:

The temperature reached a high of 69 degrees in White Plains yesterday, breaking the record set in 1998 of 52 degrees. Today is expected to be slightly cooler with temperatures in the low 50s, said AccuWeather Meteorologist Alan Reppert.

Global warming? Could be. It could also be just another freaky hiccup of nature.

I've posted here before about climate change. I think there’s little doubt we’re experiencing some very unusual weather; the question is, what’s causing it? Are we humans, in our conspicuous consumption of fossil fuel, to blame? Or are these changes part of a natural cycle that will work itself out?

No matter which side of the fence you’re on, you have to admit it’s pretty lame that, 14 years after Al Gore first helped focus public attention on the global warming controversy with the publication of his book, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, we have yet to arrive at a consensus.

Both naysayers and alarmists wear blinders and omit pieces of the puzzle in laying out their respective positions. Don’t you think it’s high time we found out the truth by bringing earnest, dispassionate, bipartisan science to bear on the issue?

Although global warming remains a fractious issue among Republicans, the Bush Administration can score big points with the American public, and find common ground with Democrats, by taking the initiative here. I sense increasing concern over the weather among many different people I encounter in everyday life. As one young woman—a bank teller—said to me yesterday while the sun shined and temperature climbed, “I don’t know if I should be happy or scared.”

Aerobic rhetoric

"The only thing that happened to me, was my blue hat got dirty." Wesley Autrey, “Subway Superman,” on "The Late Show With David Letterman."

Tonight I'm heading out to the Tarrytown Y, that four-story brick marvel on Main Street in Tarrytown, for a quick workout. Care to join me?

The grand old Y is a far cry from the small basement facility that is Mid-City Gym on West 49th Street in New York City. There I shared sometimes-cramped quarters with actors, actresses, bodybuilders and dancers, gay and straight, known and unknown, as well as regular joes and joannes, for most of my 7 years in Hells Kitchen. Tossing the bull with Scotty, Jeremy, Anthony and the rest of the Mid-City staff was always a gas. My one bad memory of the place: almost no one wiped down the equipment after using it; that job was routinely left to the floor help or to the rare germophobe like me. It was like no one dared stoop so low, or so it seemed. Don’t let anyone tell you a certain snootiness doesn’t pervade the Big Town, and I won’t tell you I was immune.

At the Y, one difference I noticed right away is the well-worn equipment is cleaned by almost everyone using it. Every 5 minutes someone heads for the electronic paper-towel dispenser and spray bottle. Students, 9 to 5ers and blue-collar types of all shapes and sizes crowd the main exercise room most evenings. Unlike Mid-City Gym, the Tarrytown Y also has lots of kids. Afternoons they gather by the indoor pool and exercise their imaginations in supervised classrooms. Crayon-drawn and other artworks decorate a main corridor--the Y's equivalent of refrigerator art--and every time I walk down that hall I just have to grin.

You say you’re not up for a workout? OK, then climb into my head, relax and listen with me as I pop in the earphones, put the iPod on Shuffle Play and pass time with the rower and spin cycle. It's time to shut out the mean old world for an hour or so. (Actual Shuffle-Play sequence during last night’s workout, with accompanying random thoughts, follow.)

As I plop on the rower the first digitally recorded sound we hear is a piano hammering out the opening bars of

Invitation to the Blues, Tom Waits
Waits growls, "She's a moving violation from her conk down to her shoes," and I picture him singing with a Band-Aid on his forehead as I settle into a steady rhythm on the rower.

Rock the Casbah, The Clash
It's 1982 and I’m in the SUNY-Binghamton gymnasium watching the Clash close out a sold-out show. The band was very good, but Squeeze stole the bill—“If I Didn't Love You," "Tempted," "Annie Get Your Gun" (which was brand new), "Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)." Need I say more? Opening was Flock of Seagulls, launching "Space Age Love Song," “I Ran” and other rocket anthems. My ears ache to think about it.

You Can't Do That, The Beatles
Forget "Imagine." I'll bet that if John Lennon were alive today he'd be closing out his shows with this early Beatles' rouser. And why the heck not? The primitive and frantic guitar solo might be John's best as a Fab. It's funny, as a kid I remember my older brother and sister playing Beatles' records on their bedroom phonographs, but I don't remember hearing "You Can't Do That" until I bought The Beatles' Second Album for myself years later as a teen in the 1970s, not long after the group's demise. Just as well. I don’t think I’d have appreciated this blistering rebuke to a fickle girlfriend as much at 7 or 8.

Peggy Sue, Buddy Holly
Rock 'n roll really is dead. Nowadays the world is just impossibly cynical for someone to write an unabashedly rollicking love song like this and be taken seriously. I like irony like the next guy. But what I really like is the genuine article, and that was Buddy Holly. Pity.

When the Wind Was Green, Frank Sinatra
I thought Frank was an old man in 1965 when he recorded September of My Years, the album from which this deceptively winsome ballad comes. He was staring at 50, just like I am today. Who's the old man now, Bones.

Pennies From Heaven, Frank Sinatra
Frank from the '50s, his best period. This is from the album Songs for Swingin' Lovers, a record that swings like crazy. I think of my late Uncle Tommy. Tom was a painter and paperhanger who as a young man won dancing competitions at places like Roseland Ballroom before going off to serve with the Seabees in the Pacific Theater during World War II. One of my fondest memories as a musician involves Tom. After jamming a bit in my parents' basement on an unseasonably balmy Easter Sunday afternoon in 1980 or so, my brother Paul and I decided to take our instruments outdoors. We set up in the backyard and were improvising on a chord progression I'd made up when all of a sudden the short, stocky, 70-something Uncle Tom saunters out the back door, moving about the patio like a medicine man in a trance. Paul kept drumming and I kept strumming a steady rhythm, and we just laughed.

Gonna Make You Sweat, C&C Music Factory
I finish up on the rower with this urban dance track. I uploaded it to iTunes several years ago from a CD my ex-fiancee had; but while other songs will remind me of Maureen, this kinetic number remains inextricably linked to that hilarious 1997 episode of The Simpsons, “Homer’s Phobia.”

OK, enough work with the arms on the rower; it’s on to the spin cycle where I can get the legs going and get a better look at that cute gal’s midriff. Yeah, I know; getting old and still a pig. As if on cue, Shuffle Play selects “When I’m Cleaning Windows,” recorded by uke-playing comedian George Formby, a legend of the English music hall scene, in 1936:

Now I go cleanin' windows to earn an honest bob
For a nosy parker it's an interestin' job

Now it's a job that just suits me
A window cleaner you would be
If you can see what I can see
When I'm cleanin' windows

Honeymoonin' couples too
You should see them bill 'n coo
You'd be surprised at things they do
When I'm cleanin' windows

Following that voyeuristic ditty is

Know One Knows, Badfinger
This somewhat elliptical rocker about finding carnal pleasure with one's mate is but one of several great but not well-known songs from what I consider Badfinger’s best album, Wish You Were Here. “Know One Knows” was penned and sung by Pete Ham. Near financial ruin in 1975 after a royal screwing by the band’s manager, Ham went off to his garage and hung himself 3 days before his 28th birthday. If only he had recognized his own considerable talent superseded any money worries he could have. “Without You,” co-written by Ham with Tom Evans, another suicide victim, is today an established pop standard. I’m sure it continues to pay handsome royalties to the co-writers’ respective estates. Harry Nilsson, who played a big part in sending "Without You" to the pop stratosphere, won a Grammy for his compelling vocalization. When he first heard it Nilsson thought it was a Beatles tune. Personally I’ll remember Ham for the gorgeous power ballads “Day After Day,” “Baby Blue,” “Name of the Game” and “Dennis.” Hearing a Pete Ham song is, however, a bittersweet joy; for me it’s a lot like listening to Karen Carpenter.

Apeman, The Kinks
As my legs spin round and sweat runs down my limbs and on to the floor, I return again to the early 1980s, this time to the Pot Belly Pub in West Hempstead, Long Island. For the soundtrack to our smoking, drinking, and pinball, my pal Hank and I would pump quarters into the jukebox and punch letter-and-number combinations for songs like “Apeman,” “Vicious” (Lou Reed) and “Desperado” (Eagles). It’s reassuring to know I’m much happier today than I was during those fond and lonely nights. I can’t thank old Hank enough for living them with me.

Quem Cochicha O Rabo Espicha, Caetano Veloso
I have no idea what the title means, but anything by Caetano Veloso puts me back on West 49th Street, where I moved after splitting with Maureen in 2004. There I battled bedbugs and became a huge fan of Latin music. I let this song play out, but my favorite Veloso tune is “O Leãozinho.”

I Believe in You, Neil Young
Neil Young’s body of work is so prodigious that I can’t possibly dismiss it entirely. "Powderfinger" is one of the best songs about an ill-fated youth I've ever heard. I'd still pay to see him playing electric guitar with Crazy Horse. But the Martin-toting Young has not worn well with me over the years, and this song just sounds whiny and grating. Let’s fast forward to

I'm Not That Kat Anymore, Doug Sahm & the Sir Douglas Quartet
Ah, the late great Doug Sahm, musical virtuoso and father of Tex-Mex, playing with his largely Mexican hippie band over 30 years ago. Much better.

Lay Your Hands on Me, Peter Gabriel
Favorite line: "Working in gardens, thornless roses, fat men play with their garden hoses."

We're nearing the end of the workout, and my 3-year-old iPod's battery just went dead. I only get about an hour of music with each charge these days. Oh well. Thanks for listening.

Bless this mess

With a record crowd predicted in Times Square last night, I figured I needed about 2 hours for the drive from Sleepy Hollow to Tribeca in lower Manhattan to see my old friend Fausto and his band ring in 2007 at Walker's Restaurant. That's roughly twice the normal travel time; and as it turned out, I wasn't too far off the mark.

Not that crowds in Times Square had anything to do with delaying my trip. In fact, if it hadn't been for an accident creating a bottleneck at the merge to the West Side Highway from I-95, I probably would have arrived with an hour to spare.

As it was, the ride down, minus the delay caused by the fender-bender, was amazingly smooth. I also found easy on-street parking within a block of N. Moore St., where last night the landmark building housing Walker's had its painted, tin ceilings crowded with silver and black helium balloons dangling shiny strings. Thus I had ample time to not only grab dinner beforehand but also to catch nearly 3 full sets of the Fabulous Faustones playing gritty, garage band quality rock 'n roll, swing, and roots music.

Yogi Berra once said, in reference to a popular restaurant, "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." Certainly a plausible corollary is if everyone understood that to be true you'd probably have no trouble making a reservation. And that's what I, having lived in and witnessed the ebb and flow of New York City for 14 years, find is often the case with driving around Manhattan on holidays like New Year's Eve, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving: many people expect lots of traffic and choose not to drive, which clears the streets for those of us willing to test that assumption.

So much relies on perception. The New York Times recently ran an article entitled, “Saying Yes to Mess.” (Unfortunately to access the story in the Times archive you need to subscribe to “TimesSelect.”) Published in advance of Get Organized Month, which begins today, the story spotlights a growing “anti-anticlutter movement” that “urges you to embrace your disorder”:

"Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat ''office landscapes'') and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It's a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands.

"'It's chasing an illusion to think that any organization -- be it a family unit or a corporation -- can be completely rid of disorder on any consistent basis,’ said Jerrold Pollak, a neuropsychologist at Seacoast Mental Health Center in Portsmouth, N.H., whose work involves helping people tolerate the inherent disorder in their lives. ‘And if it could, should it be? Total organization is a futile attempt to deny and control the unpredictability of life.'"

Imagine if the New York Times applied this same line of thinking to the current situation in Iraq. In effect, it would be subverting the assumption popularized by its own editorial writers and columnists: that the Bush Administration, in its often sloppy and bungled efforts to establish representative government in Iraq, have perpetuated a hopeless, irremediable mess.

My hope for 2007 is that more Americans will acknowledge to themselves what history tells us: that war is always a messy affair requiring unwavering commitment and a constant testing of assumptions for victory to prevail. If we can do that, and if we choose victory, I believe we'll find the long, often agonizing road to a free, self-sustaining Iraq is ultimately worth every effort, perfect and imperfect, of our collective will.

Addendum:

I highly recommend Bill Roggio’s blog for perspectives on Iraq and the war on terror you’d be hard-pressed to find in today’s mainstream media. His post, “The State of the Jihad,” provides startling information on the scope of the war against western values being waged by Islamic fanatics. As a companion piece, I also recommend this revealing interview with an Iraqi journalist.