WhimsyLand

Harper's has an excerpt from the most cogent article I've read yet about what we're doing wrong in Iraq, extracted from an essay by Robin Fox.  Fox concedes that we went into Iraq to project our power and protect our oil sources, but opines that at least that showed the (morally dubious) good sense of putting national interests first.  The Big Mistake was assuming that we could impose upon the fiction that is Iraq, a set of borders carved out of the Ottoman Empire, the kind of liberal democracy that took the West a thousand years to develop.  Like most of the Third World, Iraq's societies work day to day under the rules of tribalism.  There are no lasting institutions nor hard-fought-for philosophies to overcome the perfectly natural workings of human nature evidenced in Iraq today.  As we preach the "naive optimism of the missionary" we see that Iraqis still marry within their clan, in most cases within their family − the most common marital pair in Iraq is a pair of first cousins.  This should be required reading for both sides of the Congressional aisle (it would be wasted on most of the Executive Branch).  Nicholas Johnson bemoans the change in Antarctic exploration, from a grubby time when McMurdo was a looked like a "fire-swept mining town" to its current state where it has "morphed in Boulder, Colorado − full of mountain bikes and bongos and penguin paintings", which is why he left to become a mercenary in Iraq.  Making Mitt Romney documents the many twists and turns that has transformed the GOP's most liberal governor into a self-professed leader of the Religious Right.  Photos of the amazing, opulent wonderland that is Dubai.  Mark Kingwell announces that architecture has gone from radical to chic.  Terry Eagleton discusses Hardy, the works of Hardy, the myths of Hardy and the degree to which Henry James characterized him with "droll patronage".  I never know what to think about Harper's artwork.  It's at least occasionally interesting (which is seldom what I can say about the poetry they reprint), but often just plain stupid, like the photo art piece "Friends Smacking Me (Jay 2)".  From Harper's Index:  Percentage change in the number of Iraqis detained in U.S.-run prisons since "the surge":  +50%;  Percentage change in the number of prisoners aged 9 to 17:  +540%;  Percentage of Iraqis who say the surge has worsened security:  70%;  Percentage of Americans who have not read a book in the last year:  27%;  Percentage of African-Americans who haven't:  20%;  Number of immigration bills passed in state legislatures this year vs. the last 10 years:  1,404 and 1,300;  Number of Manhattan residents who received federal farm subsidies between 2003 and 2005:  573;  Average number of hours of housework performed by a cohabitating boyfriend vs. a husband:  10, 9;  Percentage change since 1991 in the number of electric-carving-knife accidents:  -80%.

See you tomorrow.