IN THE SHADOW OF THE KORAN


Last Saturday night before going to bed i clicked on the arts and letters daily website to see if there was anything interesting that had been put up since i last checked. the first, newly-posted, blurb in the articles section was a provocative-sounding piece on a radical Islamic philosopher named Sayyid Qutb. I opened the link and began reading Paul Berman's cover story for the new york times Sunday magazine which was to be published in hard copy the next morning.

As i read I imagined with mischievous pleasure the scenes of upset that were going to occur because of this article, of lazy Sunday morning coffee being spilled or left to go cold, of lazy Sunday morning moods being jarred from complacency to fret.

I am not all broke out with genius nor are my friends but we are intellectually curious and better-read than the average bear and spend some time thinking and talking about public occurrences and, after the significance of qutb's work sunk in, the first reaction was "why the hell haven't we heard of this guy before?"

it wasn't just us. Berman makes clear that Qutb's writings were largely unknown outside of Islamic circles despite their centrality to current events and their resonance to prominent western philosophies like existentialism and philosophers like Marx and Nietzsche. it is astonishing that this man, whose philosophy was so influential among Islamic intellectuals that his support was sought by Gamel Abdul Nasser, and who was imprisoned, hung and thereby martyred when he spurned Nasser's entreaties, who created the Islamist movement and whose surviving brother, an Islamic scholar himself, TAUGHT OSAMA BIN LADEN, would be so anonymous in this cyber-linked small world.

Berman singles out for special significance Qutb's gargantuan thirty volume set of commentaries, "in the shade of the Qur'an," written while Qutb was in Nasser's prison for ten years. as further testament to the apparent inexcusable parochialism that kept this work from wide western attention only one volume of the work has until recently been available in English and even that was not available (but soon will, it is predicted) from amazon or Barnes and Noble's main sites but had to be ordered specially from their string of affiliated smaller specialized stores.

i have thus only read that one volume, i have not read the Koran, i am not a religious scholar and i seldom have a positive word to say about any religion, so this post can be discounted as seen fit. i was raised a christian and so have some familiarity with the bible and christian theology and i have an educated, curious person's passing familiarity with Jewish and Hindu thought.

there are two different things to think about when reading a commentary, one is the thought of the commentator and the other is the nature of the text being interpreted. maybe the commentator takes liberties with or misinterprets the text. William Shirer wrote of how the Nazi philosophy was based on crackpot economics, astrology, paranoid sociology and lunatic genetics. Qutb's commentaries on the Koran are rigid and doctrinal but no less so than the text being interpreted.

the first impression of "in the shade of the Qur'an" was how different the tone of the Koran was and how different the image of the almighty was from the other religions. Thomas Friedman wrote last year that "Islam is not an angry religion, it's just that a lot of Muslims are angry." i don't know how he could say that. the Koran is an angry, violent, frightful book. over and over again there are vivid, horrific, Bosch-like images of the vengeance that awaits unbelievers.

all religions divide and i am contemptuous of them for that divisiveness, of Judaism's claim to "the chosen people," of Catholicism's similar hubris that it is the church's way or no way. but they are nothing compared to the Koran. the Koran carves the world up into a dichotomy of believers and unbelievers in the starkest terms.

the metaphor used to describe the godhead in Christianity is the "father" with the connotation of benevolence, protection and tough love. the relationship between Allah and Muslims is one of dictator to subject.

religions are exasperating with their irrationality and the degree to which they have in the past thwarted scientific and intellectual advances because they clashed with official doctrine. the Koran has that too but it has in addition a command not to ask questions that to me is far beyond anything in Christianity, Hinduism or certainly Judaism, which it's my impression, is the most knowledge-friendly religion.

I know the temptation is to discount everything I say and to feel that the portions of the books below are being maliciously taken out of context because of my antipathy to religion and limited exposure to Islamic or any religious thought, but it required no deep textual analysis by me to come to these observations. the fact is, i don't know ENOUGH to interpret maliciously. the books, Qutb's and the Koran, have the subtlety of a two by four.

The Koran consists of 114 surahs, roughly, chapters. the only volume of "in the shade..." that is in English translation is the last, volume 30, covering surahs 78-114.

Below are examples of the many Bosch-like descriptions of the hell that awaits unbelievers in the Koran. clearly Islam is not alone in this. The old testament contains many florid, awful images of the same and in the Bhagavad Gita the setting for the conversation between Arjuna and Krishna is a battlefield but, the Koran seems to me to be singular in the prevalence of this imagery.

"[in hell] they shall abide for ages
tasting neither coolness nor any drink,
save boiling fluid and decaying filth:
a fitting recompense." (surah 78)

"On [judgment] day when the earth shall quake,
followed soon afterwards by the sky,
all hearts will be filled with terror,
and all eyes shall be downcast." (surah 79)

"When the sun is darkened,
when the stars fall and disperse,...
when the camels, ten months pregnant, are left untended,...
when the seas are set alight...
when the records are laid bare...
every soul shall know what it has put forward (surah 81)

Qutb comments are not crackpot interpretations of the Koran. here he writes on surah 81: "The rhythm...is one of violent movement which leaves nothing in its place. everything is thrown, smashed or scattered away. the movement is so violent that it excites and frightens."

"The only thing we know of [hell] is that it 'has fuel of men and stones' [from surah 66]. this is, of course, after they have been thrown in it."

"[on judgment day] there will be horror far greater than any man could have ever experienced."

In addition to their frequency of occurrence, passages like the above are made more frightening oftentimes by being combined with rage-filled invective directed toward disbelievers. For example, immediately following the passage quoted above from surah 78 is this:

"They did not expect to be faced with a reckoning,
and roundly denied our revelations
but we noted and recorded all,
(and we shall say:) 'taste this then;
the only increase you shall have is increase in torment.'"

This is now how the Koran says Muslims will treat non-Muslims on judgment day. disbelievers are taunted and vengeful pleasure is taken in their torment, the recompense for the insult of "roundly den[ying] our revelations." Throughout the Koran and Qutb's commentary is this theme of past humiliation avenged. Qutb: "It is inconceivable that...evil and tyranny can get away without retribution, or that good, justice and right can be left to suffer...without there being a chance to put things right."

Surah 78 concludes with Allah stating judgment day will be so awful for unbelievers that they will say, "Would that I were dust."

Surah 80:

"Some other faces on [judgment] day shall be covered with dust,
veiled with darkness.
These shall be the faces of the disbelievers, the hardened in sin."

surah 83: "woe on that day to the disbelievers...
they shall roast in hell."

In a remarkable footnote Qutb explains matter-of-factly Islam's Manichean worldview: "Islam divides all societies, beliefs and practices into two groups: Islamic and ignorant. whatever is in conflict with Islam can only be derived from ignorance...[Allah] will lead mankind in one direction, namely the Islamic direction...Islam describes such [disbelieving] attitude as one of ignorance, and whatever social setup it produces as ignorant."

On surah 81: "anyone who follows a different path shall, therefore, bear responsibility for his action."

iIremember Shirer's amazement at the directness of Mein Kamph and how the entire Nazi programme was laid out very directly for the world to read. Qutb's writing reminded me of that and it seems to me to be consistent with the words of the Koran itself.

Fear, not love, is what the Koran uses to influence behavior which is why the relationship between Allah and man was analogized to that of dictator and subject above. in surah 49 the prophet says:

"The noblest of you in Allah's sight is he who fears him most."

In commenting on this sentence Qutb writes that man's earthly concerns with family, power and wealth are made void by Islam, "which substitutes for them a single value [fear] derived directly from Allah, the only value accepted by him."

Qutb says in his commentary on surah 79, "The fear of Allah is the solid defence against the violent attacks of desire...fear of standing before his lord, the almighty, should be of great help to [man]."

"The [82nd] surah closes with an air of fear and speechless expectation, which contrasts with the air of violent horrors of the opening. in between the two man is addressed with that remonstrance which overwhelms him with a feeling of shame." Allah is a dictator who rules through fear. there is not one democracy in the Arab world and I believe only one, turkey, in all of Islam.

By contrast the relationship between man and god in Hindu thought is described in the introduction to the Penguin classics edition of the Gita as "the vision of god as man, as the friend to the struggling soul." iIam sure that there are passages in Hindu thought that would seem to contradict that characterization but the point made earlier is that individual passages do not obscure the overall tone of a work. the author of the quote on the Gita is Juan Mascaro and the full context of that quote is his comparison of the tone of the Gita to a piece of music: "After those ineffably sublime harmonies the music descends to softer melodies: it is the vision of god as man, as the friend of the struggling soul. whatever we do for a human being we do it for him."

"In the shade's..." place as the intellectual basis of the Islamist movement is apparent in several places. Surah 79 concerns the futility of a Pharoah's power in the face of Islam and Qutb writes, "One can only imagine what will be the fate of the disbelievers who do not have similar power, authority or glory but still resist the call of Islam and try to suppress it."

In commenting on surah 80: "the only hope that remains is that the new Islamic movement will be able to rescue mankind once again from the clutches of ignorance and bring about a second rebirth of humanity..."

On surah 81: "...the declared aim of Islam, to destroy ignorance and save mankind from sinking..."

Islam's anti-intellectualism is clear in several places. Qutb makes this commentary on the themes of surah 78, the discouragement of inquiry, the umbrage taken at disbelief of Islam's revelations and the fate of the unbelievers:"this horrifying position of the disbelievers is the subject of the questions and doubts they raise concerning that fateful tiding."

Below are the first words of surah 78, which concerns the unbelievers questioning of judgment day and resurrection:

"About what are they asking?
about the fateful tiding
on which they are at variance.
no indeed, they shall certainly know!
again, no indeed they shall certainly know."

Qutb writes in commentary, "The surah opens by shunning the enquirers and the enquiry."... "The surah asks what they are talking about: 'about what are they asking?'"..."The question is not meant to solicit information but to draw attention to the singularity of their questioning..."

The last two, "no indeed," lines Qutb says are an "implicit threat which is much more frightening than a direct answer."

"Allah has revealed to us what we need to know of the secrets of the universe so that we may not waste our energy in futile pursuit of useless knowledge."

This is from surah 79:

"They question you about the hour of doom, when will it come?
But why should you be concerned with its exact timing?
The final word concerning it belongs to your lord."

n surah 82 Allah warns mankind that there are angels, "noble recorders...watching over you...who know all your actions." This is not god the father, this is god as an all-knowing dictator. Qutb writes of this passage that it is not clear how this recording is done, nor does it matter, "Allah knows that we are neither given the ability to understand it nor are we going to benefit by understanding it because it does not affect the purpose of our existence."

Allah's unquestioned omnipotence means, and this circular argument is certainly common to all religions, not just Islam, that the complexity and beauty of the universe are proof of that omnipotence. Throughout "In the Shade..." Qutb is utterly dismissive of the possibility of a random universe:

"[One] would then find completely insupportable the argument that all this had been the result of coincidence."
"The very nature of this universe rules out any possibility of its formation by chance."
"The harmony starts with the fact that our solar system is unique among millions and million of planetary systems."

This of course has been proved wrong in the last few years, which presumably led to more rage like the above directed at the "ignorant" unbelievers.

"The fact of elaborate planning, so apparent everywhere in the universe." This is Public Occurrences.

Words

WORDS

it has always been maintained here, wrongly in the opinion of the administration and almost all "respectable" opinion, that the war we are now engaged in is one with the civilization of islam, not with one terrorist group or rogue state. part of the reason why that opinion is viewed as so paranoid and psychotic is the, commendable, contemporary aversion toward unfairly tarring a group with too broad a brush.

that commendable aversion however has taken the uncommendable leap from rule of thumb to prohibition and in that i think there is not just a discourse objection to register but an insidious consequence to policy.

the discourse objection to group references is that not every single member of the group has the complained of characteristic. duh, as they say. but to dispense with this tiresome point let it be said that i do not mean by holding that our war is with islam that our war is with every single muslim worldwide.

the problem with having to make that tautological point is that for most people that ends the discussion. since i concede that in not every muslim chest there beats the heart of osama bin laden it is viewed as just not cricket to continue to claim that we are at war with islam. but i do.

words have consequences. a single individual may be described as both a "freedom fighter" and a "terrorist" and there are no two more opposed words in the language today. although i am in the political discourse equivalent of siberia with my opinion that the war is with islam, EVERYONE uses the word "war" to describe what we're doing here. president bush says we are at "war" with terrorism, osama bin laden says we are at war,the men in birkenstocks and the ladies in sensible shoes, those who have no power to exercise in their lives and therefore believe that any exercise of power by those who have it is icky, those who missed the call of the 60's protest generation, all those who protest, protest against the "war." even as sensible and angst-ridden a chap as thomas ("it's not that islam is an angry religion, it is just that a lot of muslims are angry") friedman holds that we are at war. and of course i hold that we are at war.

and here i register my own discourse objection. "war" is one of the most extreme words there is but it has been devalued by discourse abuse of it's horrific meaning. there are all kinds of wars now, wars on poverty, wars on aids, wars on racism, worthy goals all but those are not wars. if nothing else a war is (1) a military action (2) by one people against another. president bush's war on terrorism is no more definite than those social scourges. and i defy anyone to deconstruct all that thomas friedman has written in the last year and a half and define what the hell it is that he says we are at war with. you have to have a clearly defined enemy to have a war that means what the word is intended to mean.

and here my opponents attempt to hoist me on my own petard. they say i don't even meet the second prong of the my own definition, that for there to be a war there must be a clearly defined enemy. they say islam has no state boundaries, it is a religion, so therefore we can't be at war with it.

that view is too facile; in fact my view has a direct, immediate historical antecedent and that is the war we just fought, and won, against communism. communism was the religion to end allegiance to all religions. it had no state boundaries, there were communist states but there were also communists worldwide, including freely-elected ones in western governments like france, england and italy. even the united states had a communist congressman or two. we were certainly at war with communism even though we didn't shoot an m-16 at france's jacques berlenguer.

islam is as totalitarian a philosophy as communism and as hostile to the united states. if anything, it is at least as confined to specific states as communism: the entire arab world plus turkey, pakistan, indonesia and a handful of others and of course saying that does not mean that to be consistent we must shoot all pakistani convenience store owners or taxi cab drivers.

two things happened yesterday that should and will cause a change in some peoples views of islam and of individual muslims, and policy change should result. the first was the arrest of sgt.asan akbar for the grenade attack in camp pennsylvania in kuwait. as soon as i heard that he was a muslim i knew the motive. it was, as he has now said, because of his opposition to this war, because the united states was attacking a muslim state, not as every military veteran i heard speak on the matter say, a result of battlefield "cabin fever," or some such. that he was a muslim acting out of pan-islamic solidarity was viewed as unfortunate by most.

it should not have been. former under secretary frank gaffney was the only one, i heard at least, who made the obvious point that we better pay closer attention to muslims in our military than we have in the past and he went on to say that it was his understanding that something like nine of the fifteen muslim chaplains in the military preach the violent, intolerant wahibbi strain, that adopted as the official variant of islam by our "friends" the saudis, it turns out. finally gaffney made another point that all those who work in the american criminal justice system know already, that this same totalitarian islam is also taught in our prisons. if memory serves, it was in prison that dirty-bomber wannabe jose padilla also was converted to islam.

i do not propose that we round up every muslim and put him in a concentration camp, but those teachings in our military and in our prisons must stop, just as we are now intensively investigating certain muslim mosques and charities for what they are preaching and who they are financing, just as i say we should order saudi arabia, pakistan, et al to stop their teaching that jews are pigs and snakes and that jewish women should be enslaved for the pleasure of muslim men.

i would further hold that it is more important that we keep an eye on individual muslims in this country than we did individual germans and japanese during world war ii. a german-american did not equal a nazi, nor a japanese-american a loyalist of tojo but islam is a totalitarian philosophy and though most, i would guess, american muslims love and are loyal to america, their religion is generally hostile to other religions, to tolerance, to diversity, and to seperation of church and state, three pretty bedrock principles of the american republic.

the second development last night was the publication, at least on the internet, of the seminal cover story in the new york times magazine by paul berman on the radical islamic philosopher sayyid qutb. berman's article appears balanced, which is frightening because he was so moved by the intellectual depth and keen analysis of qutb and especially one book, "in the shade of the qur'an," frightening because he shows how so much violence and hatred is combined with so much brilliance and beauty. he makes the obvious analogy to das kapital, still the most intellectually rigorous critique of capitalism ever made, even though it's rigor was the philosophical basis for the barbarous soviet state, and to nietzsche, whose existentialism still thrills even as his ubermensch was a harbinger of the nazis "great man."

the new york times, especially the sunday edition, especially the magazine, is the most prominent outlet for ideas in the west. this article will result in the publication of a new edition of this, till now, obscure book, and it may cause a change in the views of islam held by many influential opinion-makers, maybe even thomas friedman.

-benjamin harris

Shock & Awe

Shock & Awe

the frisson of america's "shock and awe" phase of the iraqi war was felt by even the jaded, war-tested, ink-stained wretches "embedded" with the troops, reporters like peter arnett and john burns of the new york times who wrote of the "almost biblical power" inflicted on baghdad by american missiles.

so to avoid being awestruck we acknowledge reasons for caution: it is early in the war, murphy's law was invented for military operations, the fighting will probably get tougher in baghdad, we may yet face bio/chemo attacks and lose large numbers of men, and there are angry demonstrations against the u.s. throughout the arab and the larger world.

having acknowledged that, this war has been and will continue to be a spectacular success. it was not only the fearsomeness of the bombing that so impressed arnett and burns but its precision. as comically one-sided as the first gulf war was it is clear that gulf war part deux is not your grandfather's gulf war.

we are four generations more technologically advanced than we were in 1991. we can now read a newspaper headline from our space satellites (ana identify a wounded dictator on a stretcher), the target range of our smart bombs has been reduced from several meters to less than a meter, and we no longer have to destroy civilian infrastructure to destroy military command and control. burns spoke on cnn friday of watching the fusillade from a hotel balcony just a few hundred yards away and feeling perfectly safe. television images routinely show the incongrous site of street lights on in the east half of the city while the west, military, side burns.

the surprise opening salvo wednesday night against hussein personally and senior iraqi leadership was a spectacular preview of the power and concentration of american bombing. hussein is either dead or wounded. in that one brief, opportunistic foray we may have decapitated the iraqi regime.

it is now more true than it was a year ago when paul kennedy wrote in the aftermath of the afghan campaign that american military dominance is the greatest since at least the roman empire, perhaps the greatest the world has ever seen.

"from those to whom much is given, much is expected." we should use our power to make the world safe for ourselves and our values by (1) remaking the entire middle east. (2) reconfiguring the international diplomatic and alliance structure and (3) solidify the nascent bush doctrine of preemption into a grander framework such as the "international federalism" proposed on this site last june.

for fifty years the arab-israeli conflict has smoldered without resolution, causing the deaths of thousands. diplomacy, whether from the u.s. or the u.n. has failed. only the u.s. with it's military and economic power and trust by both sides can end this conflict once and for all. all sides, the palestinian, israeli, and american, have committed themselves to the establishment of a palestinian state. now one should be imposed. we should tell israel that a demilitarized palestinian state will be established on the entire west bank now. israel should be told to remove the settlers and we should offer to pay for some or all of the cost of the resettlement. we should tell israel that if they do not agree to this that we will immediately cease all military and economic aid.

we should tell the palestinians that they are to get their state but that it will be demilitarized, there will be seperation of church and state at least to the extent as in turkey and that will be no teaching or preaching of hatred of jews or other religions. we should tell the palestinians that if they do not agree, or if such a state becomes a staging ground for guerilla attacks on israel, that we shall permit and assist if necessary, israel in forcibly and permanently annexing the entire west bank and relocating the palestinians to jordan, or killing those who resist.

throughout the islamic world--for are at war with islam--from saudi arabia to egypt to jordan, libya, syria, iran yemen, pakistan and indonesia, we should tell governments that the teaching and preaching of hatred of jews and others will stop or we will topple their regimes. islam is going to have reformation forced upon it. we should tell pakistan and saudi arabia that if they cannot get control of the lawless regions in their countries and the terrorist training camps, that we will do it.

we should bomb any suspected sites of wmd facilities in the arab world, such as the nuclear site in iran.

we should withdraw from nato, a position long-advanced here and reconfigure our alliances to reflect the post-cold war realities. in our conflict with the islamic civilization for intance our permaent alliance would consist of the united states, great britain, and israel. we should negate our treaty obligations with taiwan and south korea and encourage japan to remilitarize.

we should withdraw from the united nations, another relic of the cold war. its failure to deal with the iraqi problem has made its league-of-nations impotence apparent.

there should be severe, temporary, symbolic diplomatic sanctions against the coalition of the unwilling--france, germany, russia, and china. they opposed u.s.-british military action simply as an attempt to increase their power and diminish america's. that attempt has failed. perhaps a temporary break of all diplomatic relations as a political "shock and awe" tactic, or at least the recall of our ambassadors should be done.

how radical. how unrealistic. how naive.

these things will happen, at least some of them and at least in some form. there will be a palestinian state established, our military involvement in the arab countries will not end with regime change in iraq. listening to the talking heads last night there is forming a critical mass of respected conservative opinion now calling for withdrawal from the united nations and on the, or to the, left, thomas friedman famously advocated france's eviction from nato last month.

morton kondracke, fred barnes and charles krathammer have advocated an aggressive remaking of the middle east. the administration has already adopted preemption as a principle of action and it is predicted here that they will use it against north korea, and should usse it against iran if that principle is to mean anything.

we have been hamstrung too long by geopolitical stare decisis. the rotten structures, alliances and thinking of the ancien regime should be kicked over by the one world power that can do it, the only nation that has ever been able to do it, not to establish a pax americana but to clear the world's landscape of dictators who threaten our security, of weapons of mass destruction that threaten humanity and to allow peoples the world over their right to self-determination.

-benjamin harris

TRUE CRIME STORIES

Actual telephone conversation, trying to get a witness to come in for a pre-trial conference on a murder case. The witness's grandmother, the head of the household, answered the phone.

Her: "Hello."

Me: "Is Clarence there?"

Her ( in soft office receptionist voice): "Who's calling?" Me: "This is Ben Harris from the District Attorney's office."

Her: "Just a minute."

(Her exasperated head of household voice heard in background): "CLARENCE, GET YOUR WEED-SMOKIN' ASS OUT OF BED! YOU GOT A PHONE CALL!

(heard in background: loud male voice saying yelling something indistinguishable)

Her: "He ain't comin' out of the room."

Me: "He was supposed to be in my office at 9."

Her: "Oh well."

Me: "And his deposition is set for 11:30."

Her: "He ain't gonna make it. You're depending on the undependable."

Me: "Well can you have him give me a call when he wakes up?"

Her: "Well i'll tell him and he won't do it and then I'll have to beat his ass again. Seems like a lot to go through for a phone call but I will."

Me: "Thank you very much."


-benjamin harris

on a gray, hot, humid day, i died a little.

-benjamin harris

Crazy as a Clockwork Orange

CRAZY AS A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

orange is the "in" color in fashion these days. couture shops display orange handbags, sandals, even lipstick. tom ridge, fashion plate, has noticed. the administration trotted him and his silly rainbow out two weeks ago to announce that the country was now on orange, or "high," alert.

me, i'm color blind. i only see terrorism in black and white. the administration upped the color-code to orange only "after weeks of internal debate," which if true is evidence of their own sight problem. i say they have myopia. they don't want to see the big picture, that this is a war with islam not with one terrorist group or with one man.

the real reason for the color change was another of al jazeer's journalistic coups--it is journalism right? not that they're in cahoots with al qaeda?--the release of the latest taped communication from osama bin laden. each time a tape is released this image comes to mind, of nervous gulps, of wingtips and sensible pumps scurrying down the "corridors of power" to the nearest bathroom, of a quick evacuation and then a flush and of depleted stocks of immodium in all the stores around d.c., because this administration knows that the success of its "war" on terrorism and its own survival rests on one fragile, albeit significant, reed, that there have been no attacks on the "homeland" since 9-11-01.

they say it's a war but of course it's not to them, it's just a police action. hyperbole is an affliction that allows small people to dream big thoughts when they're too small to act big. they cannot conceive this as a real war because that is too big, too awful and they are psychologially unprepared for it. so they treat it as a police action. the goal of operation "defend freedom," or whatever the hell it was called, was to rout al qaeda and "get" bin laden "dead or alive." but even the boots of the old west sheriff proved too big for bush to fill. seventeen months after the fact the tall bearded one is alive, he walks among us, he is not in custody.

they know they've failed. not having a strategy to succeed they adopted a strategy to cope with failure. a new cabinet department, color codes, talking heads who are dispatched to the important media outlets to solemnly intone that a new attack might be in the works. they try to prepare us for it because they are unprepared for it.

they know it's all a house of cards that could collapse at any moment. when the first bin laden tape surfaced they thought that might be it. i remember the look, looks, on bush's face--fear, concern, embarrasment, perplexity. he didn't know what to do. bin laden was alive. they had failed even at that minimalist conception of success. and he's the president, the leader. but what to expect of someone who inherited his father's birth defect, being born without "the vision thing?" the intestinal discomfort was made more acute by tommy franks, their military leader of whatever this is, who almost contemporaneous with the tape's release, declared in a public speech his personal belief that bin laden was dead.

intelligence? military or brain, there's no there, there. we haven't a CLUE what's going to happen next or where it's going to happen. we have no idea of the enemy's capabilities. a "dirty bomb? ricin? some other chemo/bio agent? who knows? maybe the mother-of-all computer hacking jobs causing the pentagon to launch icbms or the hoover dam to release? they have no idea. they sit around thinking what could be done with no idea of what might be done.

all that experience; the foreign policy "dream team." meant to comfort that bush will never be allowed to bump his head on his intellectual ceiling. a pathetic substitute for leadership. foreign policy incoherence. cheney the hawk, no rumsfeld, powell the dove, no powell the hawk making the case for war to the u.n. the "axis of evil." remember that? supposed to be bush's "iron curtain" speech, to define the struggle before us. north korea included as if by an affirmative action program to ensure that we didn't have all muslim countries. no more thought given to it than that. the war isn't with islam, see? we got north korea in there. some of our best friends are muslims.

they're running tv ads showing "good" muslims expressing fealty to the founding fathers ideals. see, here's muhammad jones, autoworker. he's just like us. and there's north korea, just as bad as those bad muslim countries. some ink-stained wretch even wrote "thank god for north korea." be careful what you wish for. the crisis with north korea is now a more serious threat than iraq and completely of this administration's making. before that speech north korea was a psych ward patient but it was isolated in its padded room and sedated. you don't give a paranoid schizophrenic cause to be paranoid and that's what that speech did. now the whole peninsula could blow. rumsfeld keeps running his mouth. "we can fight two wars at the same time," as if that was the preferred option. ahh, the dream team.

tv ads. and leaflets too. we're dropping leaflets on iraq telling the masses a better life is on the way, one where individual rights will be protected. sounds like the baghdad streets must be teeming with proponents of constitutional democracy. maybe there are federalist society sleeper cells? secret meetings of "iraqi's for democratic action"? do the leaflets tell them about seperation of church and state? maybe save that one for later. we could have jimmy carter preach a guest sermon in one of the mosques. "saddam, let's join hands and pray to our common god, the father of muhammad and jesus."

oh sure there'll be some cheering in the streets when we enter baghdad. hussein is a tyrant. they'll be glad to get rid of him but unless we're prepared to enforce a liberal democracy like we did in japan after wwII, any "regime change" will be cosmetic rather than substantive. the arab masses do not teem with liberal democrats.

individual intelligence. think of bush and ridge. bush the yalie legacy, the "gentleman's c" student, the cheerleader, and ridge the football player who, as tip o'neill said of gerry ford, played too many games without his helmet on, bush's favorite governor, bush's personal choice for veep except bush's brain power ceiling and lack of foreign policy bona fides militated against it. but gotta find a place for tom. like to be around him. real man's man. see his shoulders? big, square. i like that. cheered for guys like that. the look on bush's face at the first tape release, like the ernest but vacuous pupil sitting in class when he hasn't done the reading and the class is calculus. not a clue. ridge is put in charge of sifting the wheat from the chaff in intelligence reports. his previous experience as governor of pennsylvania in dealing with the complexity of snow removal and the issuance of hunting licenses preparing him perfectly for his new job.

and i say they have DELIBERATE myopia. the attack on the theater in moscow, the phillipines, the attack on the french tanker--ah, FRENCH tanker...uh, ok let's give them a pass on that one--bali, the killing of the american soldier in kuwait, bin laden's home in the lawless region of our "friend" pakistan, saudi, also our "friend," royal financing of al qaeda, public opinion polls in islamic countries, palestinians cheering in the streets at the collapse of the twin towers, "the protocols of the elders of zion," the hit of the season on egyptian tv. they do not "connect the dots" and the connection could only be missed by someone deliberately near-sighted. saying he cannot see the big picture, he presses his face up against the tv screen until he only sees the dots, because the big picture is too horrifying for him to see and he's scared of horror movies.

they haven't ended terrorism either but they've convniced us they have. americans are still being killed, but "over there," and so it doesn't penetrate consciousness. we are both blessed and cursed by our geography. in this case, as in many others historically, if it happened abroad, it just didn't happen. and so america sleeps, led by a somnambulent president.

arright, so we haven't got bin laden and we haven't broken up al qaeda, but we "degraded" them. yeah, that's what we did. we degraded them. military word, degraded. like military words. like degraded. we degraded them.

we have partners in this "war," don't you know. a regular coalition. gotta stroke 'em. keep 'em on board. like pakistan. yeah pakistan. i like musharraf. tough guy. guy's guy. lot like tom. loyal guy. like loyal guys. but the tough guy can't even control half his country. our daisy cutters just caused the evanescent one to change addresses, move across town really, from tora bora to western pakistan.

and saudi arabia. friendly saudi arabia. they understand us. they understand oil. and money. just like me. and dick. they're good muslims too. part of our "coalition." gotta stroke 'em.

nothing except our support for israel hurts us as much among the arab masses as our alliance, our dalliance, with saudi arabia. and a river of black gold runs through it, this relationship, this dalliance. talk of democracy and free elections is just that when you support one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. we have no more in common with that medieval kingdom, than with a medieval kingdom. it is only the river that connects us and has connected us for decades. the relationship was profitable, literally to both sides. but only in terms of money.

our hypocrisy is exposed. we are seen as being only about money. and the price we pay for that oil is an al qaeda factory. that's how the family maintains its hold on power. they provide a base for "the base" and a pulpit for the most hateful mullahs, like the one who was part of the official saudi delegation to visit bush in texas, who had given a sermon in riyadh in april calling for the enslavement of jewish women for the pleasure of muslim men. those are our friends and that's their pressure valve. they allow, encourage, such things to keep the street rage directed away from them. so the kingdom became an incubator for the 9/11 terrorists. something like 13 of the 19 hijackers were saudi. and then a couple of months ago the revelation that their princess had provided funds to the hijackers. "follow the money." but not in this case. they're our friends. part of our "coalition." gotta stroke 'em.

we dithered. the meaningful "coalition" we now seek, the "multi-lateral" approach we're being forced into now, the u.n.-sanctioned use of force we grovel for, all of that we had in the immediate aftermath of sept. 11. timing may not be everything in life but it's a lot. it was lucky that so many of the west's leaders were in aspen that day in 1992 when hussein (why is he called by his first name, saddam?) invaded the 19th province. george the elder dithered then, another birth defect passed from father to son. but maggie thatcher was there and told him, "this is no time to go woolly in the knees, george." and so the first bush obeyed and said that that aggression "would not stand."

the one reed the administration clutches to is the lack of a follow-up attack on u.s. soil since 9/11. and it is a substantial reed. it is in fact what led to the (quickly withdrawn) july, 2002 post on this site retreating from previous advocacy of an expanded attack on the countries of the terror crescent. part of the reason for that post was acknowledgment of the political impossibility of such an action so long after the precipitating event. that was a consequence of bush's dithering and it is still the case today. now we are so constricted by the "entangling alliances" woodrow wilson warned against that we have not even attacked iraq yet. it is simply impossible to reasonably suggest a simultaneous, perhaps nuclear, attack on baghdad, tehran, tripoli, and damascus.

and then, admittedly, there was moral concern. it was estimated here that such a general war would take the lives of 2,000,000 muslim men, women and children. that IS a horror movie and anyone who does not recoil from it is either not being honest or not being human. the cost of such a war would also be staggering. we almost certainly do not have the manpower today to do the post-war policing and reconstruction that would need to be done. the draft would have to be reinstituted. the financial burden of all of this would be immense.

but the islamic threat has not dissipated. that "religion," that "tenth century penal code," in christopher hitchins words, still is nazism by another name. and that religion's "practitioners," the islamic masses, are still filled with the hate and call to violence and intolerance and scorn that that religion preaches. so secretary rumsfeld may get his wish for two simultaneous wars yet.

it is the fervent belief expressed many times here, that america is being "israel-ized," constrained and conditioned into accepting terrorist attacks as a part of life. it is also the belief, call it hubris or arrogance, that the administration and the american people do not understand something: we could lose this war. islam could defeat us. this is not understood because "war" is such a loaded term. we think of invading and occupying armies, of declarations and formal surrenders. that is not this war. that is not the kind of war generally fought in the two thousand year history of islam. rather, it is guerilla warfare, just the kind we face today.

we are conditioned to believe that guerilla warfare is the warfare of the weak. that may be true in other contexts. it is not the case with islam. that is their traditional method. so no, there is no fear of islamic hordes advancing on washington. they don't want to conquer our land. they want to conquer our culture. they can do that. the 9/11 attacks caused a mini-recession in our economy. a dirty nuclear bomb set off in manhattan would essentially render the island unhabitable for the foreseeable future. given the concentration there of so much that is vital to our economy, such a crude, guerrila attack would cripple the u.s. economy. it would spark a depression. that's what islam wants. our economy is the engine of our culture. destroy our economy and you destroy our culture.

they hate our culture on religious grounds. women in america have freedom to work where they wish and to vote. in islam they can do neither. our liberal sexual mores are anethma to islam's rigidity on sex and dress. interest--"usery" to them--the backbone of capitalism, is forbidden by islam. their religion teaches that followers of any other faith are "infidels." and these extreme philosophical differences are exacerbated by the humiliation of the west's success and islam's failure for so long. islam had a proud, rich intellectual, cultural and military history. but christianity defeated it during the crusades and as christianity modernized through a reformation period, islam never did. hence it remains a tenth century philosophy ten centuries later.

so what is to be done? a war with iraq will occur, apparently. washington fears a "destabilizing" effect on other islamic countries. that should not be feared. it should be planned for and is preferable to the israelization of america.

of all the other terror crescent countries, probably emeritic iran, so little in control of it's emotions and actions, would be the most likely country to involve itself. if in the slightest way that occurs, through acceptance of fleeing iraqi soldiers for example, we should immediately expand the war by attacking iran. if also, our embassies are attacked in other islamic countries, we should attack them. by international law after all, an embassy is considered the sovereign territory of the represented country.

if israel is attacked we should not discourage their retaliation. we should anticipate it and accept it. this site has previously suggested an american/english/israeli military alliance to replace outmoded and disgraced nato, to counter islam at least. (can anyone contest the wisdom of that now, of the irrelevant--and worse, obstructionist--north atlantic alliance, now that the miserable french have worked their mischief again?). in this way general civilizational war between judeo-christianity and islam could occur, not wished for, but not feared either, and infinitely preferable to living with continued terrorism or having our economy crippled. in such a war islam would be defeated and an overdue reformation imposed on it.

one by one, the islamic dominoes may fall in behind brother hussein when the american "riposte" comes.

let it be.


-benjamin harris.

Out of Step

OUT OF STEP

there were protests against the war this weekend. there is no war yet but there were protests, preemptive protests against a preemptive war.

Michelle and i went to the new york public library on Saturday, oblivious. when we got there about 10 am there were a couple hand fulls of protesters on the steps. when we left about an hour later there were already about 100. as we walked down 5th avenue we passed multitudes, thousands, heading in the opposite direction toward the library, ground zero.

a surprisingly large number, way over a majority, carried signs. an unsurprising number were baby boomers, their hair gray, or is some cases white and curled also by the lack of melanin, their teeth yellowed, but on this occasion anyway, with still a spring in their step. there was a festive air among them. they looked excited and talked excitedly. "we're getting the band back together again," that's what came to my mind anyway.

down by the flatiron building there was a man in about his mid-forties with a younger male, perhaps his son. of a sudden the older man, carrying a placard, began high-skipping in the street beside the cars. i thought he was going to start blocking traffic or pounding on the hoods but that kind of thing came later. i was surprised at first by the harshness in the signs. "Cheney is Evil" with devils horns, similar ones about bush, the counterculture's iconic American flag with the swastika in place of the stars, "Down with American fascism." not harshness, hatred really. surprised at first but not when i thought about it. it had been that way over Vietnam.

the protests evacuated certain segments of the city. Chelsea has been the "in" arts section for the last few years and was where we were walking to Saturday when we stopped off at the library. the lady at the Whitney museum had given us a place to go to there so we turned right a couple blocks before the flatiron and walked in the cold.

the place was a building from the industrial age, which had been converted into 9 floors of artists studios and small galleries. we decided to take the elevator to the top and work our way down. Saturday is the big day of the week for the artists in Chelsea. all of the big dealers and collectors go there. but today 90% of the studios in this building were empty. we went to one and the proprietress told us everyone was at the protest. she was listening to it on the radio herself. a couple of others were open but we were finding only one or two per floor so we left. later we went back to the hotel and saw on tv that some of the protesters had turned violent.

Artists can see things others can't. maybe they can see this too. And the public too. a majority of Americans oppose an attack on Iraqi at this time. it's not a common coalition--the artists and the public. but i can't see it myself. that night when we left the ballet there was an anti-war sign on the ground and i went over and stepped on it.

-Benjamin Harris

A Good Walk Spoiled*

A GOOD WALK SPOILED*

my dad was an energetic man--when he was younger. he had, really, two families. mike and don were the first family and then there was a gap of 10 years before me and tim. it's hard to raise children, but 4? and 4 boys? in two sets spanning a gap of 10 years? dad was supposedly a taskmaster with the older boys but they took a lot of the fight out of him and he was 10 years older by the time he got to us. age alone mellows you. the effort of getting yourself worked up to be mad and then yelling was just more trouble than it was worth.

dad was not a physically intimidating man. he had male pattern baldness bad. his hairline began just above his ears and he wore big elvis costello glasses. although he was 6' tall, he was skinny. and bony. he was like one of those creatures you see on the discovery channel that has evolved peculiar defense mechanisms, like a foul smell, or squirting a jet of inky fluid. dad's were his elbows. we would play-box, even in adulthood. he had no boxing skills whatsoever. he'd parry our jabs with his bony elbows and we'd jam our hands and wrists on them, which always infuriated us.

so physically he didn't cow you and he had a predictable set of mannerisms when he got mad that caused more mirth than intimidation. he would scrunch up his face and yell out of the corner of his mouth, "holy hell [object of anger]! "holy hell ben, i told you to mow the lawn this morning," like that.

dad's mellowing was accelerated by the invention of the tranquilizer, adavan. i believe he started taking it when mike was in vietnam, cause enough for sure, but his usage outlasted mike's tour, and then the war itself, disco and the cold war. he always took it in moderation but he always took it. we called him "dadavan." his tolerance for aggravation was increased, his "holy hell" trigger harder to pull, his facial expression bemused. i once saw the same look on a somewhat goofily smiling, post-electroshock ernest hemingway.

dad's mellowing was not matched by a dimunition in pranks and juvenalia by his sons however. long into adulthood we were inflicting such as in-face flatulence, forced anus-viewing, throwing cold water on each other in the shower, all the pieces in the sophmore's repertoire. with mike and don when they were younger, these produced "holy hells." later, bemused, post-electroshock face.

after getting out of the navy, don got married and took a job in buffalo, new york. we vacationed there each summer when we were little and mum and dad continued to go there so dan bought a vacation home there.

one summer we all vacationed together for the first time since tim and i were little. i had just graduated from law school and tim was working in the mines back home, so we were about 25 and 23, full adults. dan was an even more "mature," 35 years old.

everyone in the family except me played golf regularly and if they were all going out i'd go along and take a few whiffs to be with them. they all decided to play a round of golf one day at the lake and so we went out. don brought a couple 6-packs along. as we played mum and don's wife chatted and we 4 "men" were constantly goofing on each other, clearing our throats on backswings, mocking each other's muffed shots and the like. really having a good time.

the course was a little hilly sowe rented one golf cart in case somebody got tired, and to store the beer. after they all hit their shots on one hole we started down the fairway which was bordered by slopes on either side. mum and billie sue walked together in the back, dadavan was riding in the golf cart with dan driving and each was drinking a beer. tim and i were walking ahead of the cart.

don began to drive the cart toward tim as if to run him over. tim jumped out of the way. dan chased after him. they settled into a routine a little bit like a bull and a matador. tim would stop and taunt. don would drive toward him and tim jump out of the way at the last minute. then tim began jogging in a zig-zag pattern and don trailed him. don, tim and i were laughing and dad sat cross-legged in the cart holding a beer, mellow hemingway look on his face.

then tim zigged and don zagged. the cart lurched sharply to the left and dad went out the cart to the right. head over tin cups. beer flew, glasses came off. he tumbled a bit down the slope. for a moment we were all mortified. he could have broken his neck. but he jumped up to his feet. and he was pissed.

"HOLY HELL DAN, I'LL DRIVE THAT THING!", he yelled out the side of his mouth. "LOOK, JOAN [mum}, I'M INJURED," and he rolled up his pantleg to show a minor cut on a bony, pale-white shin.

as with all good slapstick, the degree of laughter is directly proportinate to the degree of danger avoided. tim and dan and i were beside ourselves. don rested his head on the steering wheel, his shoulders shaking in laughter. i think tim and i were on the ground. but dad was understandably still a bit shaken up and got more pissed when he saw us laughing. and then mum got pissed and started yelling at us.

don surrendered the wheel to dad and mum got in beside him. don and tim and i got as far ahead of them as we could so they couldn't hear our laughter but it was uncontrollable.

like all good slapstick though, the laughter is uncontrollable

*Credit to John Feinstein and Mark Twain for the title.

October, 1962

OCTOBER 1962

if the 1950's as a cultural era ended, as i hold, on nov. 22, 1963, then oct 1962 was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of that era. youthful jfk had been elected president in 1960 promising "vigah" and to "get this country moving again" after the stolid years of the aged dwight d eisenhower. the contrast was typified on inauguaration day, kennedy, seemingly oblivious to the bitter cold delivering his vaulting speech while ike sat to the side wrapped like an infirm grandfather on an outing being pushed around in a wheelchair.

youthfulness can be misread as callowness however which is the way nikita khruschev, the peasant leader of the soviet union, read kennedy. they had met for the first time face to face in vienna and khruschev had sized jfk up as the weak, pretty-boy son fulfilling the ambitions of his strong-willed father. khruschev threatened war at that meeting over berlin. as the meeting ended kennedy said "mr. general secretary, it is going to be a long cold winter." the two men walked out together and posed for pictures, khruschev smiling at his bullying, kennedy, shaken and not smiling.

October, 1960

OCTOBER 1960

i believe my first memory of a public occurrence, that is non-personal, non-familial, was the 1960 world series. i say, "i believe" bcause i can't be certain. memory of an event when one was so young is unreliable and some occurrences attain such centrality and are retold so frequently, that they become a part of virtual, if not actual, experience.

in any event, the 1960 world series was between the pittsburgh pirates and the new york yankees and in western pennsylvania in 1960, for the entire century actually up until 1972, the pirates were the region's secular religion.

the football steelers, or "stillers" as we pronounced them, wre almost a circus sideshow by comparison, a chronically inept band of jokers with their own freak, big daddy lipscomb. if anything, the steelers were only the regions second most prominent FOOTBALL team behind that of the university of pittsburgh. pittsburgh has never had an nba team and the farcicaly named penguins of the national hockey league were, in 1960, still 7 years from being born, or hatched. the pirates were the unquestioned kings.

this was before the advent of cable and so one's viewing options were limited to three stations which in that mountainous region was often reduced to two or even one station by land mass interference, planes overhead and the quirks of rabbit-ear alignment. there were only two radio stations of consequence, wjac in johnstown, and the behemoth, kdka in pittsburgh, both of which carried pirate games.

it is so commonplace an image of small-town america in the 1950's as to be almost a parody that summer afternoons and evenings were spent to the dulcimer call of the baseball game but that's truly how it was. people would string their big, boxy radios out onto the porch or into the backyard and listen to to the game while napping, playing, chatting, mowing the lawn or, as in my hometown, just sitting there waiting for something to happen. my dad always napped to the sound of the pirates games but then, dad also napped at the live games themselves when we made our summer pilgrammages from our mother-of-all-backwaters to the shrine of forbes field.

1960 was really part of the '50's as an era, which is why that term was used above. conceptually, the 1950's was the era of the traditional family structure, peace and prosperity, the baby boom, innocent, unsophisticated, unmodern tranquility. it's beginning can plausibly put at the end of world war ii in 1945, or in 1948 with the election of harry truman and the formal end of the roosevelt era, or in 1952 with dwight eisenhower's election. the era lasted until 1963 and the assasination of president kennedy. cer which usherered in the age of violence, protest and unrest that we associate with the era of the 1960's. certainly for me, non-black, non-ethnic, non-female, non-poor, these truly were "the good old days,an idyllic time and elmwood, pennsylvania was a glorious place to be as a five year old in 1960.

pittsburgh is and was then less a city than a quilt of small towns patched together by the steel industry. pittsburgh has always been lumped in as part of "the east" but is really more a mid-western city culturally. pittsburgh is closer to cleveland than to, rightly, despised philadelphia, which is in every sense more a part of new jersey, to which, in the opinion of all other pennsylvanians, it should be attached after being surgically removed, as a hideous, superfluous digit, from the commonwealth.

the pirates came out of the blue in 1960. then, as now, a small-market franchise, they could not hope to, and did not, compete on a consistent basis with the big market teams, epitomized, then as now, by the yankees. too, in 1960, the bucs were a part of their own 1950's, which in their case was in no sense a golden age, but an ice age of 100-loss seasons and talent-challenged players like dick stuart, a heavyweight slugger relegated, because of his "hands of stone" fielding "ability", to first base, to which every potential put-out ending in "3" on the scorecard was as likely to be preceeded by an "e" as a "1", "4," "5", or "6".

the 1950's pirates are famous for two things, one outfielder dale long's eight consecutive game homerun hitting streak, and pitcher harvey haddix' incomparable 12-inning no-hitter.

long's accomplishment is the definition of "freak "occurrence," the equivalent of those pop music one-hit wonder bands, baseball's version of "looking glass," "katrina and the waves," et al.

haddix' feat is one of the wonders of baseball lore but perfectly typifies the 1950's pirates. despite 12 no-hit innings, haddix and pirates LOST the game on an error and a hit in the 13th.

this then was the recent history of the team that represented the national league in the 1960 world series. their stars were a mormon preacher named vernon law, a diminutive relief pitcher named elroy face, a catcher named "smokey,", gumby-limbed donn clendenon at first base, the dynamic double-play duo of gene alley and bill mazeroski, and in right field, the soon-to-be-, and at that time almost, -legendary roberto clemente, known perversely and comically in those americanized times as "bobby" clemente.

opposing these pirates of perchance were the yankees, for whom the term "vaunted" was invented. whitey ford, mickey mantle, yogi berra, and a seeming cast of thousands of future hall-of-famers made up the team that had won more world series in the previous decade than pittsburgh had won in the entire century.

obviously, a world series is a mega-event, no matter which cities are represented. for a "town" like pittsburgh however, it was so much more, it's hard to understand unless you lived there.

the pirates were near the top from the start of the season and, as their excellence continued through the summer, the whole region became galvanized. someone came up with a little ditty which got played on all the stations, all the time:

"the bucs are going all the way,
all the way, all the way,
the bucs are going all the way,
all the way this year."



the series was a grotesquerie, recalling the cartoons of bugs bunny versons the gargantuon, muscle-bound "terror." the yankees obliterated the pirates by scores of something like 16-3 and 9-1, total mismatches. the bucs won their games 3-2 and 2-1 with the help of screwy plays and bad hops, one of which famously hit an infield divot and bounced up to strike the adams apple of yankee shortstop tony kubek, whose resulting exaggerated "OHHH!" facial expression next came to ublic attention on the face of lee harvey oswald when he was shot by jack ruby.

after six games like this--12-1, 2-1, 16-3, 3-2, 9-0, 3-1--, the whole shootin' match came down to game 7 on an october afternoon at forbes field.

my father owned the local newspaper, the elmwood gazette. if "all thenews that's fit to print," is the slogan of the new york times, "ANY news that's fit to print," would have been the gazette's, where, truly, photograpphs of simple car accidents resulting in no injuries and little property damage were front-page material.

a newspaper owner is a newspaper owner is a newspaper owner however, whether his name is harris or hearst or sulzberger and as such dad got free tickets to all manner of events. it was through this journalistic patronage system that we attended pirates games.

what do i remember specifically of that summer. i remember a general rise in the background noise to my simple life, more, but not specific, baseball chatter; more excited, animated conversation. i think that's the way kids generally process things that do not directly effect them. they call tell anger obviously, but also more subtle emotions, like concern, from the tone of adults voices even if they don't understand content.

i remember "the bucs are going all the way..." i can still hear it on the radio, somewhat tinny, but very cheerful. i remember singing it myself.

when the pirates won the pennant, i remember my brother dan pleading with my dad to get tickets. dad couldn't, or said he couldn't. my guess is that he hadn't really tried. i could see dad not really wanting to make the effort, his life already filled with enough effort as purchase's william randloph hearst, as husband, as father to four boys and, pittsburgh being two hours away and with the ability, with proper rabbit-ear adjustment, to watch the games on tv.

maybe this is unfair. this was a world series after all and forbes field only held around 35,000 people. i do know that he realized the uniqueness of a world series game 7, and how much it would mean to dan, and he spent whatever time there was after game 6 calling in all favors to get two seats.

and as of about 8 am game day, he didn't have them and told dan so who went off to school head down and shoulders slumped.

it was really getting close to the 11th hour now. if, as i assume, the game started at 1 pm, they would have to leave absolutely no later than 11 am to get there on time.

at about 10:30, he got the tickets. where and how he got the tickets, i do not know andnever remember him saying. it would be interesting to do some historical research on that, to go back to the issues of the gazette in october and november of that year and see if there was any clue, perhaps a fawning front-page profile of someone nicknamed "bugsy," or to examine the paper's books to see if there was a suspicious increase in expenditures during that time.

however it was accomplished, he got the tickets and called the high school principal and said simply, "send danny harris home." if world history were written from the harris family point of view, "send danny harris home," would be grouped in significance with such as, "the eagle has landed," "tora! tora! tora!," and "watson, come in her, i want to see you." but imagine the effect of those words on the listener, dan. they convey nothing more than an urgency and his need at home. dan could thought that some tragedy ahd occurred, a terrible accident or sudden illness. he could have thought, from those words, that perhaps his beloved little brother benjamin had been hit by a car and run home crying.

he could have thought those things but he didn't. they meant only one thing to him, at 15: "dad got the tickets." he covered the 3 blocks distance between high school and home in about 3 strides, his shoes almost making contact with the pavement on one and, as i was saying about children being able to discern emotion from adults voices even when they don't understand content, i detected no hint of concern or worry in his shrieks and yells.

dan made it home before dad did. dan made it home before dad hung up the phone, probably.

i remember the excitement at home, mum frantically making sandwiches for them, telling danny to wear warm clothes. i remember dan's affect, the manic pacing and jumping bout, teh repeated questioning "what's taking dad so long"; i remember the groin-grabbing and constellation of other physical symptoms that signified that loss of bladder control could be imminent.

i remembe my dad's car pulling up and dan bursting out the front door, and the look on my dad's face, the excitement and joy, for his son, not for himself. what a gift to be able to give a boy. the gift of a lifetime.

as every sports fan knows, game 7 of the 1960 world series is one of the most famous in baseball history. all thewackiness of the revious 6 games was distilled into that one. i'm making these scores up, but it went something like this. bucs lead 3-0; yanks score 5 in one inning and lead 5-3; bucs claw back and lead 7-5; yanks lead 9-7; bucs tie it at 9.

and there the game stood going into the bottom of the 9th inning, tied 9-9. the pirates had a number of good hitters on that team, real sluggers, including "bobby" clemente, but one of them was not bill mazeroski, the clean-fielding second baseman. even by the meager standards of those who play his position, "maz" was a weak hitter.

so with the game tied and the shadows lengethening on an october day in pittsburgh, bill mazeroski stepped to the plate. i believe he was the first batter that inning, but i may be wrong. the pitch was delivered and maz swung. you could tell it was a good swing right away, his body twisted sharply to the left and the end of the bat tipped near his right foot which the torque of the swing had twisted under left leg. good swing no doubt, but this was maz after all. roberto clemente nearly cork-screwed himself into the ground when he ahd a good swing. the bat speed of a great hitter like clemente or barry bonds is such that the bat becomes just a blur as it crosses home plate. there was no sign like that.

as the ball left the bat it was clear that maz had gotten solid contact too. he got under it well, it was going to be a fly. the ball lofted into lef-center field. incongruously, the yankee's catcher, yogi berra, was playing left field that inning. i don't know what player substitutions resulted in that bizarre shift but it was a wacky series and wacky game.

berra was playing medium-deep, as i recall, which would have been unusual in itself with bill mazeroski hitting, but the thinking probably was, in a slugfest like this, the outfielders were instructed to keep the ball in front of them so that a single didn't turn into a double or triple. too, yogi had catcher's speed, which is to say, noe and could not have been expected to cover the ground that a normal outfielder could.

good swing, good contact but the first indisputable sign for pirates fans was that even at that depth yogi berra was looking up and over his right shoulder as the ball carried. he only took a step back when he stopped and watched the ball sail over the fence.

at about the same time the yankee pitcher, i don't remember his name, quickly looked down at the dirt, put his hands on his hips and took a step off the pitcher's mound.

maz followed the flight of teh ball as he ran toward first base, he rounded first heading to second and about halfway there saw the ball go out of the park. he skipped and swung his left arm in the air, then his right.

he passed second base heading to third swinging his arms that way, a big smile across his face. by the time he rounded third, some fans had begun to come out of the stands. there's a famous photo of a smiling man in a white shirt and a hat i believe, running behind maz, and a policeman performing the duties of pittsburgh native not public service officer, smiling and reaching out to shake maz' hand, maz himself with a "whoop" expression on his face, his right hand in the air in mid-swing, his left at his side holding, i believe his hat.

his teammates were waiting for him at home plate and his small frame disappeared into their embraces as the yankee pitcher walked toward the dugout, head down with his teammates following after him. it is the only game in world series history to be decided by a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning.

forbes field has long since been torn down. in 1971 the pirates moved into their new home, three rivers stadium, which itself has been torn down. forbes field was razed to make room for the expansion of the university of pittsburgh campus. on the site now is the law school and the graduate school for public and international affairs. but home plate and the ivy-covered section of wall that bill mazeroski's ball cleared, has been preserved and stands there still and forever.

**************************

a couple of years ago dan, now living in north carolina, went to a shopping mall with his son. unbeknownst to him, a baseball card-signing show was taking place and bill mazeroski was signing memorabilia. dan waited in line and paid whatever fee there was. when it was his turn he told maz, now grandfatherly, his own story of that day, how dad had finally got the tickets, about "send danny harris home," about running home and never touching ground, about the two hour drive to pittsburgh, about seeing the pitch and seeing the swing and seeing the ball in the air and seeing yogi berra go back and stop and seeing the ball go over the fence and about it being a gift of a lifetime.


-benjamin harris

nelson goodman: god is the collective conscience of mankind.

john steinbeck, the grapes of wrath: reverend jim casey: "i figgered about the holy sperit and the jesus road. i figgered, 'why do we got to hang it on god or jesus? maybe,' i figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the holy sperit--the human sperit--the whole shebang. maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' "

very emotional today, right now. on the verge of crying; can feel the emotion compressing my chest, for hours now. stringing lights on the tree, the last one i'll have living under this roof. feel enormously guilty at the hurt i've caused my wife; not for the divorce, we're both glad that is going to occur but for the sorrow, pain and anger i've caused. my "little" boy, now 13, helping us with the lights. 13 prior christmases with my golden-haired golden boy. the last one for me. don't "deserve" to feel such hurt inside since i am not the victim, i'm the perpetrator. still do.

waiting for divorce is a death watch. very much like dad's last few months. it is coming, you know the loved one will be better off but its a sadness unique in our existence, to know that there is no more final finality. the divorce watch.

i don't so much feel conflicting emotions but seperate, different, sometimes contradictory emotions one by one. anger one day, grief another, acceptance, excitement; maybe not excitement but a "looking forward to."

i really think though that next christmas, and those thereafter, will be better.

-benjamin harris

A MAN AND HIS DOG


the man walked with his dog in the woods that he had known since childhood along an old indian path that long ago had been widened to allow for forest fire fighting vehicles. he had hunted white tail in these woods with his older brother. his brother taught him to look for the green deer eyes at the tree wall, the point in the forest where the arboreal density made it impossible to see beyond. the tree wall was black, a swallowing, impenetrable,depthless black, not so much a color as a condition.

as he walked he saw another out in the woods with his dog. the other sat on a promontory overlooking a small ravine, the same ravine that the man, then a boy, and his younger brother had swung out and over as they hung onto vines.

the other stood up and threw a large, thick stick high over the ravine. his dog, a chocolate labrador retriever locked in on the stick, ran down the slope, looked up to check coordinates and arrived where the stick fell within moments of it's landing.

the man went over to the other, they nodded greetings, and they watched the dog, blue, the other said his name was, grasp the stick in it's jaws and prance over the floor of the ravine with the pedigree's haughtiness, it's head held high, it's tail in the air. the dog bounded up the slope, it's black coat shimmering in the late afternoon sun and went to where the other sat, dropping the stick on the ground by him.

yes the man said he had a dog also. he was black too though not a pedigree, neither large nor small and he had had him for a long time.

throw, chase, retrieve. throw, chase, retrieve. he watched as the other threw the stick and the shining chocolate lab chased after it. down the hill, up the hill.

the man nodded to the other and took his leave and he continued on his walk.

the man had gotten his dog many years back in the year of the great changes. it was in the fall or winter of that year, it had been so long ago he didn't remember, but not in the spring or summer.

almost all the boys he grew up with in the country had dogs so he didn't think much of the dog coming to him in that year. his dog seemed different but much about the world seemed different to him in the year of the great changes.

the dog's eyes were dark, almost black and they communicated intelligence, maybe not intelligence, but a knowing, but no playfulness, no child-like joi de vieve. it displayed none of the affection toward him that makes this interspecies bond unique. when it looked at him it was with familiarity, that knowing, and when he looked at it, it was with familiarity, almost with resignation.

his dog did not bound about nor did it display any territorialness toward strangers. it's only interest was the man. it's coat was black but not the shiny black of the other's dog but the swallowing, impenetrable, depthless black of the tree wall so that when the man looked at the coat he didn't see the contours of the dogs muscle and skeleton, just the blackness.

the man, then a boy, didn't speak of the dog much and noone seemed to notice any difference in the dog and since everyone had a dog he came to accept it even though he didn't much like it and he was not much afraid of it.

and for some years that's how it was. the boy, now a young man, and the dog. he came to view it as a part of him, something that made him who he was, like the bullet fragment he had in the palm of his hand. he knew it was there and so he came to accept it.

when it got cold, the tissue around the fragment would get inflamed and it would swell slightly. he would touch the small bump and roll it around with his thumb and index finger, knowing what it was, wishing he didn't have it but not concerned that it was doing him any harm. he just lived with it. he was amused by it, almost affectionate toward it. like the bullet fragment, the dog would be a significant presence at some times but at others the young man wasn't even aware that the dog was with him.

but one year the relationship between the man and the dog changed and the dog was closer to him than it had ever been before, not in a loving way but as a greater part of him. it did not growl or bite, but the dog became menacing nonetheless, it's closeness oppressive.

the man was in the arena frequently the year the dog became oppressive and he would come home with a fatigue he had not known before. as soon as he got into bed the dog would lay on him and he could feel the oppression and he felt that he couldn't move.

but this was not like harry and the hyena. the man used the dog's presence to help him sleep. he would stare into the dog's depthless black coat and lose himself. he surrendered to the blackness. he felt himself floating in the void. there was a peace that he had never known before. it was not another world, not a dream utopia, but nothingness and the man would awake in the morning and not be rested. "fifteen hours and then i can sleep again," he would tell himself. and throughout the day when he was in the arena and didn't know how he was doing it he would encourage himself. "eight more hours," "three more hours." "i have miles to go before i sleep and miles to go before i sleep."

for many months that's what the man did. the dog would crawl on him, the man would feel almost pushed through the mattress unable to move and he would give himself over to the dog and the void.

but even with the peace that the dog brought, the man knew that the dog was now a problem. maybe lots of people have dogs, but this sleeping with him for months,and pushing his whole body down, this he was sure was a problem. the man had seldom spoken of the dog with others before but now he did and with a little help from his friends he got the dog off his chest and farther away from him than it had ever been before. but the dog was still around and the man remembered the year the dog became oppressive and knew that the dog would always be with him. he would grow older, the man thought, but the dog would not.

it was now dusk and the man began walking back. the other was leaving also and the man waved to him who waved back. the other watched as the man walked away, the fading sunlight overpowering the colors of his clothes, the purple shirt and khaki pants, blending the colors until they were indistinguishable. the other watched until the man became just a silhouette, the black of the silhouette a swallowing, impenetrable, depthless black.

-benjamin harris


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Islam In Its Own Words

ISLAM IN ITS OWN WORDS, CONT.

"do not have mercy or compassion toward the jews. their women are yours to take, legitimately. god made them yours." (sheik saad al-buraik; the new york times, november 8, 2002, p. b41.)

these words are from a sermon calling for the enslavement of jewish women by muslim men delivered in a mosque in riyadh, the capital of saudi arabia. the sermon was delivered in april 2002. that same month al-buraik was part of the official saudi delegation that visited president bush at his crawford, texas ranch.

i say the war is with islam. where do you stand?

-benjamin harris

Paul Wellstone

Paul Wellstone

amongst the many sincere tributes paid to the late senator paul wellstone were interspersed various short clips of his remarks over the years showing his passion and committment to the issues he believed in. in one of those clips he reiterated his intent to stand alone in the senate if voting in the majority meant going against his convictions. in the other he expressed his gratitude to the many of his constituents who he said had come up to him after his nay vote on the iraq resolution to pledge their support for his independence of judgment even as they disagreed with that particular vote.

the image of senator wellstone held here is the one he celebrated in those remarks, that of the, sometimes lone, dissenter speaking on c-span in the senate well, empty except for him and the stenographer. it is an image shared by others as well. platitudinous euolgies aside, it apparently was hard to dislike wellstone, his convictions being so obviously and sincerely held and his personality so generous of spirit. his opponent, former st.paul mayor norm coleman, decided on what here seemed a brilliant, and the only potentially successful, strategy to unseat him. our virtues are our vices and wellstone's principled virtue had the concommitant of ineffectiveness if not irrelevance.

this race, already closely watched for it's effect on control of the senate, shone a spotlight more than most on the politician's existential dilemma, the ancient dialectic in representative politics between voting one's independent judgment and voting one's constituency's desires. these are often short-handed as being "principled" and "pandering" which is why coleman's campaign slogan probably wasn't "to get along, i'll go along," but that view is short-sighted as well as short-handed. there is no formula that tells politicians when to do one and when to do the other.

the case for the "principled" position was most famously laid out by edmund burke in his "speech to the electors of bristol" in 1774 when he was campaiging for a seat in parliament. he offered in himself:

"unbiased opinion, mature judgement, and enlightened conscience. parliament is a DELIBERATIVE
assembly of ONE nation, with ONE interest, that of the whole, where, not local purposes, not
local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole."
[emphasis in original]

courageous. wise. principled. would that we had leaders like him today. the electors of bristol could have had him but there weren't enough of wellstone's selfless norwegians about and they decided against it. burke lost, presumably to someone more biased, less mature and less enlightened, but guided more by local prejudices.

the countervailing view is the realpolitik of harold lasswell, the title of his most important work perfectly expressing his view of where the emphasis in politics should be.: "politics, who gets what, when, how." why is this considered a crass view compared to that of burke? if england had wanted a parliament of m.p.'s elected nationally it could have had it. it chose instead to have representatives run from different geographical units. why shouldn't they vote "local prejudices?"

wellstone's minnesota twin, hubert humphrey, had no difficulty explaining his preference for lasswell over burke when he said, contrasting himself with michael dukakis, "dukakis doesn't care if shit come out of the pipes so long as the pipes are nice and shiny. i don't care what the pipes look like so long as the right thing comes out."

but if one only votes one's constituency's desires then another kind of irrelevance is produced, that of the non-thinking scribe who simply records his masters wishes. there's a name for that too, it's called direct democracy and it's mechanism is not the election but the referendum.

our founding fathers had deep misgivings about too much democracy. the electoral college was to be a serious buffer between popular preference and selection of the president. wellstone's senate was to be exclusively appointive, the better to ensure a critical mass of "unbiased opinion, mature judgement and enlightened conscience," or, to provide a sinecure for those who couldn't get elected to the mean house of representatives.

these then are the politician's scylla and charybdis. for most, there's a "heads i win tails you lose" quality to their approach to the problem. agricultural subsidies for example, are not pandering; they're "preserving the family farm," true if the families involved are named archer, daniels or midland, while the REAL pork is that which exists in other members public works projects.

for some politicians though, predominantly those of the fevered brow on right and left alike, there's "courage" in tilting at windmills and statesmanship in 99-1 votes. that is proof of their burkean independence. what it is also proof of is their subconscious desire to avoid the responsibility of power. take extreme enough positions and you'll never be in a position to make a tough decision, call it what you will.

wellstone was a smart man and a professor of politics. he recognized the collegial if not deliberative nature of the senate early in his first term and toned down his personal criticisms of his political foes, like jesse helms. but coleman's campaign strategy still had traction as the polls say. the point is not that wellstone was right or wrong on all those lopsided votes but whether a senator so out of the maistream can be effective in representing his constituents interests.

how to resolve this conundrum? obviously it can't be resolved and the position advanced here is that there is no disquiet in that realization. everyone is confronted with important decisions in life, to marry, to procreate, to choose a career path. these are vexing moments but their cumulative effect is to sculpt out of an amorphous granite slab of potentiality the individual character of each of us. sometims we regret the decisions we have made but we come to realize that we are the sum of those choices. if we have put sincere effort into making the decisions that is enough. we learn that often there is no one right answer, no one person who is to be our soulmate, no one career. there are many. there are many truths.

most admirable are those who constantly reach higher even if their grasp is sometimes exceeded. politicians do that, as do police officers, judges, proecutors and fire-rescue personel. they put themselves in positions to extend the existential dilemmas that are thrust on them in their personal lives to decisions involving the lives of other people. not many of us have the courage to do that.


-benjamin harris

BODY AND SOUL


what if someone from, say, the 18th century could be transported to the 21st century and see all the technology we have? what if that person were someone like benjamin franklin who would have some understanding of the basic science behind it all? imagine his awe at radio, television, the internet. imagine walking with him down a new york city street and watching his amazement at the cars going by and the jets overhead.

now imagine that you turn a corner on that street and duck into a gold's gym for a quick workout...

what would he think? picture the scene from his perspective: muscular men strenuously lifting, pushing and pulling...something, but to no apparent purpose, not building anything, not moving objects from one place to another. also women running IN PLACE on moving surfaces and climbing contrived stairs. "are these people slaves?" "is it a penal colony?" "an insane asylum?" "is it the sisyphian nightmare come alive?" more importantly, how would we explain it to him?

anthropologically, deconstructing the gym's raison d'etre proves nettlesome. the usual rationales are health benefits and as counterweight to our otherwise sedentary lives.

however, weight-lifting is hardly the ideal form of exercise for either short-term or long-term fitness. it does little for the heart and has some not insignificant risk of injury. it certainly does not compare with, say, swimming in it's ability to make the body slimmer, sleeker and more supple. those of us who lift weights exclusively are likely to be humbled if we take a friend up on an invitation to run a 10k race, for example.

if it's a more aerobic workout we want, why pay the price to join a gym to use a treadmill when there's a street right outside? why use a stairmaster when you could bypass the elevator at home and work and climb, like, real stairs?

further, the muscles built in weight-lifting are utterly useless. they're rather like the shrinking, withering hindlegs of creatures who have evolved from land-dwelling to sea-dwelling beings. there is no plausible retirement scenario that we are preparing ouselves for by lifting weights. we are not going to be spending our golden years in the construction industry nor, hopefully, in slavery or prison.

the counterweight-to-the-desk-job rationale doesn't hold either. the sheer purposelessness of the activity that would confound an 18th century observer is not consistent with that explanation. we could get similar exercise in the above-mentioned construction industry or, more philanthropically, in habitat-for-humanity or similar public service activities. we could volunteer to do menial municipal improvement jobs like picking up trash along the streets or planting trees or painting buildings.

the gym gesellschaft is also predominantly an american phenomenon. there are comparatively very few home-grown gyms in europe, that is, those not affiliated with hotels and other tourist centers. to even call it a phenomenon, implying a fad, is not true. gyms became popular in the early '70's. that's over thirty years, making them more fixture than fad.

their popularity correlates with the entry of the first of the baby-boomers into their thirties. but it is not just a boomer obsession either. generation x'ers and y'ers have followed their elders to the point that working out is de riguer, and even those much older, those in their sixties and over, are a visible presence in any large gym.

none of these factors individually or together accounts for the prevalence of the gym in american life. the position advanced here is that it is a manifestation, perhaps a trite manifestation, of the american soul, one distinct from the european. comparatively, americans are a faster-paced, harder working, more ambitious people than are europeans. any visitor from one place to the other notices the difference. a slovakian yuppie remarked on how the american idea of morning coffee is as likely to be a cup in the car on the way to work while she was accustomed to the more leisurely, "civilized" cafe moment before starting her day.

americans work harder, play harder and more relentlessly pursue their goals which, rightly or wrongly, are wealth and beauty. europeans put a greater emphasis on "quality of life" factors. thus, europeans exercise to stay fit. americans exercise to become beautiful. europeans walk much more than americans do. walking will keep you fit but it will not make you beautiful. bulging biceps and pectorals may be as useful as fins on a cow but they are considered attractive so men strive for them. cellulite on a woman's thighs or buttocks has zero health implications but is considered unslightly so they strive to get rid of it.

plastic surgery is the first cousin of the gym. the vast majority of americans will have some sort of appearance-enhancement procedure done sometime in their lives. orthodontic work is so common now as to be a teenage rite of passage. crooked teeth are simply unacceptable. having perfect white teeth has become a european caricature of americans. a friend told of her flirtatious encounter with a couple of discolored/crooked-toothed european men in a bar. "i bet you brush your teeth every day," one said teasingly. "sometimes twice," replied my friend, in revulsion.

orthodontics, teeth bleaching, liposuction, breast enhancement, hair replacement, face lifts--all of these are part of the american landscape. they certainly make for an edgier, more unforgiving landscape. my wife, like i, firmly ensconsed in middle age, just returned from paris where she reported there was an obviously broader range of that which is considered beautiful. she saw men in their fifties and sixties, well-dressed, well-coiffed, slim, oh, maybe a little belly, but still handsome even to women in their twenties and thirties. it's a valid point. americans, men and women, often hit the panic button at passing one of the markers that indicate removal from that cohort identified as "young adult:" child-birth, the big four-0, balding, graying, the onset of the paunch. that's when you see the desperate lunging back for the accoutrements of youth: a new, sexier car in place of the old one; a new, sexier wife in place of the old one.

nonetheless, the crass behavior mentioned above is just the inevitable frayed edge of an otherwise strong fabric. there is an elan vital in america that is not as prevalent in europe. effort, whether in work or play, is prized more. the goal of beauty, like that of truth, may be a chimera but to strive to make oneself better is not a fool's chase but the best of the human spirit. maybe franklin, france's favorite american, would understand. as he put it in poor richard's almanack, "no gains without pain."

-benjamin harris

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