Play to the End

When I was haphazardly running my little business, a Kenny Rogers song would float through my mind uncomfortably often. The refrain of Don Schlitz’s “The Gambler” went:

“You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.”

Well, that’s like buy low, sell high. Not that it doesn’t work, but what the hell’s high, what the hell’s low?

It always comes down to an unknowable: we may distinguish a good hand from a bad one (though that is fairly hard); another decision is also important: is that stack at the middle of the table worth the risk? In America’s case, the people that are likely to spend the stack of chips aren’t as likely to be us and, while the short term risks of money and blood are ours, the greatest risks will also not be ours. (Well, now, we are beginning to suspect, in the long run attacks will eventually come our way. Still, a lot of other countries are likely to be bloodied on the way to get us–9/11 was preceded by 20 years of warfare often against us but mostly outside the U.S.) The choices are risky for us – and others. But, oh, the pot; the chips are no gilded base metals. This is the real thing–democracy, women’s rights, people’s rights.

I’m reminded of those worries, that particular mystery when I hear smug State Department types take a grim pleasure in critiquing Bush’s foreign policy; their Olympian self-satisfaction is hard to miss: Iraq is a debacle; not even one of us could undo this damage for a generation. Their dispassion implies the whole thing was merely a game; Bush made a move, we checkmate; let’s call it quits (and send him back to his dusty ranch)

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Fog of War

The Israeli government released transcripts of conversations among and between the pilots who mistakenly attacked the USS Liberty in June 1967, and the military air controllers who directed them. You can find a composite transcript, as well as excerpts from an interview with one of the pilots, in this Jerusalem Post article.

The transcript is worth reading, if only because it confirms that the attack was a tragic blunder rather than an intentional act.

The excerpted interview with the pilot is also worth reading because it gives a sense of what strikes me as a culture clash that has to some extent framed the interpretation of this event. On the one hand some Americans, including former Liberty crew members, are convinced that the Israeli attack was deliberate and that the U.S. and Israel conspired to cover up the truth about it (see, for example, this site). On the other hand, Yiftach Spector, the pilot interviewed in the Jerusalem Post article, comes across like a caricature of Israeli cluelessness about public relations. He seems to misread the motives of the Liberty conspiracy theorists, whom he speculates are motivated by anti-Semitism, or by a desire for monetary compensation, rather than, as appears more likely to me, by traditional American conspiracist wackiness. (Spector was one of the pilots cashiered by the Israeli government after they publicly protested Israel’s policy of assassinating terrorist leaders. Whatever his good qualities, he appears to be at least politically naive.)

An analysis of the attack on the Liberty, by an authority on the subject, was recently published as a book.

(Via In Context)

“…a network of rifle clubs…”

One of the many books I’ve been going to get to for years has been Michael Howard’s older (1972) book The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defense Policy in the Era of the Two World Wars. I finally got it and it is very good so far. History books which are based on a lecture series are often very good, since the author is compelled to keep things simple, to assume his audience already knows the basic outline of things, to deal with themes rather than minutiae. Howard discusses the British response to an invasion scare in 1899, during which the popular press was saying that a European power (France or Germany) could, if it wanted, successfully invade Britain. The official response was interesting.

In May, the Prime Minister himself, the usually phlegmatic Lord Salisbury, warning that all the developing powers of offence on the Continent might ‘be united in one great wave to dash upon our shores,’ called for the establishment of a network of rifle clubs throughout the country.

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Misreading Waugh (As Usual)

My wife sent me a link to this article, from the Guardian (of course) entitled ” The real blame for England’s 20th-century decline lies with the snob who wrote Brideshead Revisited”. The guy basically says that it is Waugh’s fault that British people became sentimental about the aristocracy of their country with its old houses, etc., so that when the ordinary blokes of Britain got an education and a decent job, they were somehow prevented by this nostalgic mental obstruction from forming “a truly classless society”. He also says that Waugh blames the decline of Britain on the rise of the lower classes. I responded as follows:

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