Send your Grishams to Iraq

In the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniya, reports Christopher Hitchens, once "a howling wilderness of wrecked towns and gassed, cleansed villages", the American University of Iraq has just opened its doors, and is appealing for people to donate books. According to Thomas Cushman, a professor of sociology at Wellesley College:

What I did was ask colleagues to donate books, which they did in good numbers. We sent thirty cartons of first-rate books, especially on global affairs, history and literature and they are housed in the new library … The university is especially in need of technical books, social science books, software even … Nathan Musselman, the Prefect of the University who is teaching a class, wrote to me thrilled to tell me that the students were now writing their term papers in English and using many of these books as their main sources for research. He is greatly desirous of receiving more, now that the initial library is set up.… So the idea is to get people to donate in a more micro way; to send one or two new, current and important books (perhaps they have review copies, extra copies, etc) to the new library of the University. All of these small polyps could yield a substantial coral reef of knowledge for the new generation of students there.

Books should be sent to:—

Nathan Musselman
The American University of Iraq—Sulaimani
Building No. 7, Street 10
Quarter 410
Ablakh Area
Sulaimani, Iraq
(+964) (0)770-461-5099

It's important to include the number at the end.

How The Onion got everything right

"While serious liberal news organizations such as the New York Times helped disseminate the White House’s specious rationale for war, The Onion’s lampoons turned out to be far more accurate. The Bush gang, the paper said, was hell-bent on invading Iraq, and it would deploy any means necessary in order to do so. Throughout the fall campaign, The Onion continued to see right through Bush’s bluster..... When the war finally began in March 2003, the paper continued to mock both the Bush administration’s theatrics and its claims to an easy victory... Amid the chaotic aftermath of the invasion, many media observers, as well as Democratic Party officials, began to turn against the Bush administration, attacking its incompetent handling of the occupation. The Onion, however, continued its relentless assault on both the design and the execution of the war."

From Theodore Hamm’s The New Blue Media, which views the last few years as seen through Onion headlines:—

• “Holy F**king S**t — Attack on America. U.S. Vows to Defeat Whoever It Is We’re at War With” — Sept 11, 2001
  
• “The Age of Irony Comes to an End: Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bullshit Again” — Sept 19, 2001
• “Military Promises ‘Huge Numbers’ for Gulf War II: The Vengeance” — March 2002
  
• “Bush Won’t Stop Asking Cheney If We Can Invade Yet” — September 11, 2002
  
• “Bush Seeks U.N. Support for ‘U.S. Does Whatever It Wants Plan’” — October 2002
• "Dead Iraqi would have loved Democracy" — March 2003
  
• “Gen. Tommy Franks Quits Army to Pursue Solo Bombing Projects” — May 2003 (“The years I’ve spent with the Army have been amazing, and we did some fantastic bombing. But at this point, I feel like I’ve taken it as far as I can. It’s time for me to move on and see what I can destroy on my own.”)

It's been pointed out by others: what a gift to satirists the Bush presidency has been, if only because Bush made so many bad decisions that all the comedy writers had to do was invert it and they got a) something close to the truth and b) a laugh. I've noticed some uneasiness in the audience recently when Jon Stewart starts in on Obama. The other night even Stewart noticed. "Its okay laugh at him," he reassured the audience, but the laughs didn't get much stronger. I don't think they were holding back out of piety or reverence. It was just that Stewart jokes don't have much traction on Obama, who already comes armed with a sense of irony, sharp intelligence and a leiusurely feel for the ridiculous. He cancels Stewart out.

Our boring war

From the NYT:

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed. Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.”

Don't worry, says Andrew Sullivan. We may be in for an October Surprise.

Nothing's happening!

Gawker starts to panic: "It's one big void out there, the canvas is blank, there is no news.... Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke was the most noteworthy book to be published so far this year..... As for the election, we're in a massive lull until at least Labor Day..... The worst film of the year, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, is (tellingly) about about an epidemic that causes inanition followed by suicide..... the red siren that blares in Matt Drudge's head has been as silent as the one in James Wolcott's.... The Web is dead.... The television season is over.... The economy is in limbo.... There are no new magazines.... There are no parties.... Politics has sucked the oxygen out of media...."

I wonder if they said the same thing during the Blitz. All those tedious bombs. That frightful bore Hitler. A war that was just another sequel.... Actually, they did: "The British governement's morale sampling service concluded that people in England found the war too dull. 'A new restlessness is setting in, a desire for something to happen, however unpleasant.' It was February 1940." (Human Smoke)

Bush Says Iraq was 'the Fun Thing To Do'

WASHINGTON—Despite harsh criticism from both sides of the political aisle, the U.S. populace, and former members of his own administration, President Bush once again defended his 2003 decision to invade Iraq, saying that, in the end, it was the fun thing to do.

"On Sept. 11, 2001, we as a nation faced a difficult decision, an important decision, a decision between what was fun and what was wrong," Bush said during a speech before Pentagon officials Wednesday. "We could have backed down and allowed the terrorists to win. But instead, we stood up to the challenge before us, and we said, 'Bring it on—bring the good times on!'"

"Mark my words," Bush continued. "When the dust settles and the smoke clears, history will look back on the Iraq War as a total blast." — The Onion

Bush is very keen to let history be the judge of his actions, as we all know, which begs the question of how many wars get better — upon reflection, with the passage of time. The second world war: most thought that was a Good Idea at the time and it remains so. Vietnam: people thought it a Bad Idea at the time and still think so. The cold war: one of the participants had a heart attack, so we'll never know. I'm no historian but I can't think of a single example of war that improved with age. Who knows — maybe everyone thought the 100-years war was rubbish at the time but when it got to a hundred they thought: wow. A hundred. Or maybe The Trojan war seemed like a total waste of time until Homer came along to write about it. If anything history is a harsher judge. Someone needs to tell the president that today represents the high water mark of approval for his war. It's downhill from here.

If you can think of any counter examples, let me know.