For six days the new American-trained Iraqi army was unable to wrest control of the southern oil port of Basra from Moktada al Sadr’s Shi’ite militia. Then Mr. Sadr suspended the battle and demanded concessions.

That’s the news. We’ve all heard it. But something is buried in the news that calls into question all the claims by George Bush and John McCain and Dick Cheney and others that the surge is working: senior Iraqi officials had to go to Iran to negotiate the end of fighting with Mr. Sadr. (more…)

There are many ways to walk down a street in New York City.

You can walk like the Grim Reaper, caring less.

You can walk as if people are supposed to notice you and reward them with an ostentatious, What’re you lookin’ at?

Or you can smile at the faces and demeanors you like and hope for the best. That’s not unlike taking an experimental drug. If it works it just may give you a new lease on life. If it doesn’t work, you’re just another unsung hero.

There are many other styles. Oblivious is good, if you’re seven feet tall or old and brittle. (more…)

The next time a politician or pundit says anything about Iraq, anything at all, ask yourself if you have ever heard him say that Iranians have historically regarded Shi’ism as a deterrent to Arabization?

If you haven’t heard anybody who sounds knowledgeable talking about this, then you have no reason to think him knowledgeable.

We may not have liked Saddam Hussein, but unless we intended to hand over most of Iraq to Iranian influence, we should have thought twice before invading. Iran’s quarrels with the Arabs far outweigh its quarrels with us. (more…)

Since the end of World War II it has been gospel in the United States that all development is good. It creates jobs and fuels consumption. It’s never rapine, bad for the environment or corruptive of the public weal.

Farmers sell land to developers, developers lop off the tops of mountains for resorts, concrete spreads, the infrastructure groans—all this is good. That is the gospel according to our political exegetes. But what if their desire to be right outweighs their intellects? (more…)

(This is the transcript of Hot Copy No. 39, Del Marbrook’s podcasts for The Student Operated Press)

Sometimes it’s hard to say just when the heyday of a great institution was. I had the privilege of working briefly for The Baltimore Sun in the mid-1960s. It might not have been The Sun’s noblest moment, but it was certainly still shining brightly and Maryland was still revolving around it. I worked on The Sun’s copy desk under the best copy chief I ever encountered, John Plunkett. I say I worked there briefly, because I soon accepted an offer I couldn’t refuse, to become Sunday editor of the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel.

When I was at The Sun I had already learned a great deal about makeup and layout at The Elmira Star-Gazette in New York’s southern tier. By the time I got to Winston-Salem I had a free hand to experiment, and I think I managed to produce some lively and engaging feature pages. But there were many things I couldn’t do, not because my superiors wouldn’t let me—they warmly encouraged innovation—but because what I wanted to do was simply too expensive and time-consuming. (more…)

I recently took part in a deeply rewarding discussion of late-life writing. Sponsored by Passager journal and press, housed at Baltimore University, the panel at Rehoboth, Delaware, explored not only the challenges facing elderly writers but the elderly’s special strengths.

We were all writers on the panel, Shirley Brewer and I were guests, and Passager’s editors, Kendra Kopelke and
Mary Azrael presided. The people who came had moving stories to tell and were living creative lives. I remember one woman who had been a librarian. In her retirement she decided to move into a community more culturally and ethnically diverse than anything she had known, and she felt richer for it.

Going to the conference I had wondered what to say, what to share. How could I shed light? How could I be encouraging when I myself was encountering so many difficulties on the way to publication. I decided to make two points, one encouraging, one daunting. (more…)

(With apologies to Wallace Stevens)

In 2000 one in four American voters claimed to attend church at least once a week. While they attend church others watch Sunday talk shows or buy Chinese goods at Wal-Mart.

It may be that the folks spending their dwindling resources at Wal-Mart are in closer touch with reality than those who sit in church or at home listening to people tell them what their lives are all about.

The people shopping in Wal-Mart know their lives are not about making more money, sending their children to good schools or affording good health care. They know their lives are valued only for what they spend. (more…)

The squalls of hypocrisy accompanying disclosure that Barack Obama’s pastor of some twenty years has been inveighing against our cultural doubleness, one society for people of color and another for whites, is something like a national case of reflux.

Is it big news we live in two societies—black and white, rich and poor, powerful and powerless, big-mouthed and voiceless? Sure, it’s big news when the White House is within the reach of someone of color. But that’s the only time it’s big news, when we’re actually in danger of proving ourselves a democracy. (more…)

If we vote for a new dispensation of comity in our affairs, whether it comes in the person of a Barack Obama or a city mayor or council member, we may also be voting against radio poison ivy.

The notion is beginning to make the rounds of the panel shows that the reign of largemouthed, pea-brained radio yak is closing. Maybe it’s wishful thinking on the part of the television noisemakers. (Last Sunday TV’s The McLaughlin Group degenerated into scratchy babel.)

I have little doubt a reading nation would tune out the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. Such a nation might give Lou Dobbs five minutes of ear time for his efforts to point out the plight of the middle class, but an hour sharing his high dudgeon is enough to last a week. (more…)

The less Americans read the more BS they’re likely to believe. So when I hear of someone referring to the Qu’ran as an evil book, a fascist book, a license to murder, I take him to be someone who takes his reading in small doses prescribed by quacks.

I’ve read the Qu’ran in translation many times. Its heavenly language is mesmerizing in its sonority. Like the Old Testament it contains passages that trouble the enlightened modern ear, passages open to many interpretations. But whoever takes it for license to do evil is a cheap propagandist. (more…)