@Benedick: Plausible deniability and guilt = Civilian surge!

@redmanlaw: Saw the most beautiful doc that would so connect with you and the family. Note by Note. About the construction of a Steinway concert grand. Class, culture, heritage, art. Beautiful.

“Now lemme tell you somethin’. I’ve had enough of Irish Americans who haven’t been back to their country in twenty or thirty years come up to me and talk about the resistence, the revolution back home. And the glory of the revolution, and the glory of dyin’ for the revolution. Fuck the revolution! They don’t talk about the glory of killing for the revolution. What’s the glory in takin’ a man from his bed and gunnin’ him down in front of his wife and his children? Where’s the glory in that? Where’s the glory in bombing a Rememberance Day parade of old-aged pensioners, their medals taken out and polished up for the day. Where’s the glory in that? To leave them dyin’, or crippled for life, or dead, under the rubble of a revolution that the majority of the people of my country don’t want.”

Bono in “Rattle and Hum”

My impression is that al queada and the taliban hang out in Waziristan, where they can cross the border at will between Pakistan and Afghanistan at will, depending on where they are safer. We seem to have gotten some sincere and real support from Pakistan lately in going after them on the Pakistan side of the border, and to me, the best evidence that the pakistan government and army is really going after them, is the fact that Pakistan has had a serious string of horrible terror attacks against government and army targets in just the last month.

It seems to me, from inferences that its plausible to make from the situation, that the US had to make a commitment to Pakistan that if they are going to make a real military push on their side of the border, they insist that we have a real force on the afghanistan side of the border, so that the al queada and Taliban won’t just cross the border and wait out the Pakistani surge.

Thats what it seems to me.

But that was in 1910.

Benedick is right about the IRA terror campaign being completely unappreciated in the US. People here have no idea of the signifcance that they killed Lord Mountbatten, whom I understand was among the most beloved of the royals.

I have a wonderful story about the 90-year old titled Brit that Mrs. Prom and I met in a tiny bed and breakfast south of Tulum, in Mexico, some years ago. The old guy developed an absolute crush on Mrs. Prom, and for the 3 days we were there together, every day during the cocktail hour, when Mrs. Prom and I would enter the little bar, we would sit at the bar, and the old guy, who was there with his nephew and the nephew’s wife, would get up, totter over on his walker, and hoist himself on the stool next to Mrs. Prom, and talk with us, mostly complaining about his nephew, whom he called “general” very loudly, in order to humiliate him, because he was a retired Major. We actually tried to fix him up with my mother, he was going back to England through Philadelphia, and he wanted to come see us, but I know that the nephew put the kibosh on that.

It was extremely interesting, this old Brit Lord of some kind, in his early 90s, he would gab with us for an hour each night till his nephew pulled hm away.

But the amazing thing was when it came up that I was of Irish descent. Suddenly the Major and his wife were spouting the most virulent anti-Irish racism I have ever heard. Turned out the Major spent a large part of his career in Northern Ireland, commanding British troops there.

But the old guy was great, told stories of running factories producing arms during the war, and his work in time and motion studies, and in basic studies on work among hard laborers, he said he had discovered that people doing difficult labor work hard for about 15 minutes of each hour, and slack for 45, and nothing in the world will make them more productive, and you have a happier, more productive workplace, if you don’t try. Quite enlightened.

What was most interesting was hearing people from a society with legal class distinctions, and from the upper class, discuss class distinctions openly, which apparently Brits will do with Americans because they I guess assume if you are at the same resort with them, you are in the same class, and besides, americans are outside their system, and get a pass.

My impression was that there is less evil in a recognized, socially and legally accepted class system, than in a place like the US with a secret, hidden class system.

It seemed to me, that where there is an accepted, hereditary class system, and people know they are Uppers because of birth, they are less morally condemning of the poor, its more of a “we have different roles to play in society, thats the way it is.” Here in the US, where the rich do not have an official, legally sanctioned reason for their superiority, they find themselves having to make up moral excuses for there superior position, and are more likely to view the poor as being poor because they are morally deficient, lazy, immoral, stupid.

It was fucking interesting, thats all I know.

Anyway, back to what you were saying. The Economist used the analogy in an article this week on how the Kurdish problems could potentially be solved in Iraq. And North Ireland used to be viewed as intractable. Perhaps there is a shred of Hope ™ in there for us.

In my own experience I was in London when she was being bombed by the IRA. That organization was almost entirely funded by well-meaning Americans. I was in a show when the police were informed that a bomb would go off every half hour on Shaftesbury Avenue. Every show was shut down and evacuated. Have you any idea what that means? Every theatre emptied and searched. Another time I was in a theatre when a bomb went off outside. London was under siege and it had no reality here in the US. After we came here I was in a theatre and was confronted by an usher wearing a “Britain out of Ireland” badge. Imagine my reaction.

That situation seemed to be intractable until it wasn’t. Blair sent mega troops in, conducted talks and broke the back of the IRA which had been kept alive by poverty. I can only hope that he has a plan. Why wouldn’t he? He’s a considerable man. Again. We must cut him some slack or we will bring disaster on our head.