It's been a better week, even though I have relatively little to show for it below. I spent a lot of time last week listening to records I had previously rated, trying to come up with words for the actual Jazz CG reviews. In many cases it proved difficult to say something significant in such short space, but I managed often enough that I'm now confident enough to say that the column will be finished before the end of next week. At this point, all I have left is to go back and find some words that do justice to a few duds, plus sort out the favorable reviews into two piles: one to run this time, the other to run next time. Current album count: 43. Current word count: 2251. I manage about 30 records per column, so I'll probably have to hold back a third, leaving me half-done for next time. That's about how it usually works out.

There will be one more week of jazz prospecting in this round, not so much to find anything new for now as to catch any loose ends. Got a tentative date for publication: April 30.

Vijay Iyer: Tragicomic (2007 [2008], Sunnyside): This took a while to sink in. The turning point may been when I flashed on the notion that Iyer is a new generation McCoy Tyner. Iyer has equivalent facility with the keyboard, although he rarely if ever lapses into Oscar Peterson swing -- he draws the line at, well, McCoy Tyner, but more often favors rhythmic repetition and variation rather than line development. Like Tyner, he generally works in a sax quartet, and like Tyner he often overshadows, indeed overpowers, the horn. One might also note that Iyer's saxophonist, Rudresh Mahanthappa, has a strong Coltrane-ish streak, but that's not so evident here. Mahanthappa has strong and weak outings, and he didn't make much of a first impression here. He only plays on 7 of 11 cuts, often making little more than a buzz around Iyer's prodigious piano. The trio cuts open up more, not least because they give Stephan Crump on bass and Marcus Gilmore on drums more room to shine. One solo cut is further dampened, but logically impeccable. A-

Lionel Loueke: Karibu (2007 [2008], Blue Note): Guitarist, born in Benin, moved to Côte d'Ivoire, then to Paris, then to Boston (Berklee), then to California (Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz), now seems to be based in Bergen County, NJ. He's appeared in quite a few credits since 2001, including some relatively high profile ones -- Terence Blanchard, Charlie Haden (Land of the Sun), Herbie Hancock (The River: The Joni Letters). This is a trio with bassist Massimo Biolcati and drummer Ferenc Nemeth -- mostly: he also picks up a pair of distinguished guests, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, one cut together, one more each. Mixed bag, especially when he sings, but the closer "Nonvignon" is my favorite track here, and he sings on it -- reminds me of pennywhistle jive. [B+(*)]

The Michael Pedicin Quintet: Everything Starts Now . . . (2007 [2008], Jazz Hut): A/k/a Michael Pedicin Jr. Born 1945, plays tenor sax. Father was a musician, but he don't have any details, other than Jr. saying that father introduced him to Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, etc. Most likely the father recorded as Mike Pedicin (b. 1917, Philadelphia, band leader, played alto sax): Bear Family has a 1955-57 collection by Mike Pedicin Quintet called Jive Medicin -- AMG likens it to Bill Haley. Jr. has several albums out since 1980. Lives in NJ now, but this one was recorded in Philadelphia, with Johnnie Valentino on guitar, Mick Rossi on piano, Chris Colangelo on bass, Michael Sarin on drums: a strong group that carries the album -- Valentino and Rossi have albums I've recommended in the past -- setting up the saxophonist. [B+(***)]

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further listening the first time around.

John Chin: Blackout Conception (2005 [2007], Fresh Sound New Talent): Three trio cuts let postbop pianist Chin stretch out and show you what he's got up his sleeve. The other four cuts add tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, who predictably steals the show. Good showcase, but slightly uneven as an album. B+(**)

Josh Nelson: Let It Go (2007, Native Language): Pianist, works in some electric keyboards, but mostly stays acoustic when the Seamus Blake plays tenor sax, getting a little sharper contrast that way. The first-rate band also includes Anthony Wilson on guitar, Derek Oleskiewicz on bass, and Matt Wilson on drums. Serious talent, impressive work, leans toward the side of postbop I find more artful than interesting. B+(*)

Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Avatar (2007 [2008], Blue Note): It seems to me that the Cuban pianist has moved beyond the rhythmic conventions of Afro-Cuban jazz into a whole new realm of personal idiosyncrasy. His quintet has the traditional bebop/hard bop lineup, with Mike Rodriguez on trumpet, Yosvany Terry on various saxophones, Matt Brewer on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums, but none of the traditional forms, veering between progressive postbop and points I don't know how to characterize. Choice cut: "Hip Side" (one of three Terry pieces). B+(**)

Jostein Gulbrandsen: Twelve (2006 [2007] Fresh Sound New Talent): I doubt that I would have noticed the leader's guitar had I not first fallen for Jon Irabagon's tenor saxophone. Irabagon plays in Moppa Elliot's "terrorist bebop band" Mostly Other People Do the Killing, where he has plenty of competition on trumpet. Here he has the field to himself, playing high octane avant-skewed runs that I find utterly captivating. Also a bit of clarinet, much lower keyed. The guitarist adds some licks to the high-speed stuff, but emerges more when the sax quiets down. A-

Ila Cantor: Mother Nebula (2006 [2007], Fresh Sound New Talent): Guitar-sax-bass-drums, same lineup as Jostein Gulbrandsen's record on the same label, but different players, and that makes all the difference. Cantor's guitar is rockish, funky, and the bass-drums (Tom Warburton, Joe Smith) follow suit. Tenor saxophonist Frederik Carlquist, on the other hand, lacks Jon Irabagon's avant edge nor does he try to honk his way through. Rather, he plays the straight man in the group: soft-toned, articulate, logical. I like him quite a lot. Never did track down Cantor's group, the Lascivious Biddies. B+(***)

Steven Bernstein: Diaspora Suite (2007 [2008], Tzadik): A little overblown, but what do you expect in a suite? Using the Nels Cline Singers, plus extra guitar, as the core of his rhythm section, Bernstein gets by with two brass and two reeds, and sounds Ellingtonian in the bargain. What confused me at first was that by styling this as a Robert Altman tribute, I figured he was aiming for Basie. A-

Raymond MacDonald/Günter Baby Sommer: Delphinius & Lyra (2005 [2007], Clean Feed): Duo, free saxophone (mostly alto, some soprano) over drums. MacDonald is little known but worth following if you're into this sort of thing. Sommer is a veteran avant-gardist, his discography including previous duos with Cecil Taylor and Irène Schweizer -- a good partner for this sort of thing. B+(**)

Jason Kao Hwang/Edge: Stories Before Within (2007 [2008], Innova): Dense shades of Chinese jazz fiddle, tarted up by Taylor Ho Bynum's cornet. Plus bass and drums, of course. B+(***)

Vince Seneri: The Prince's Groove (2007 [2008], Prince V): Seneri not only plays the Hammond B3 Organ, he sells them through a company called Hammond Organ World. He puts on a good demo, too, with first rate guest stars -- Dave Valentin takes the fast latin pieces on flute, Randy Brecker splatters his trumpet on the funky ones. The only time the groove lets up is the obligatory sax ballad, which Houston Person aces. B+(***)

Anthony Braxton: Solo Willisau (2003 [2007], Intakt): For Alto redux, 35 years to the wiser, no longer shocking, but still a contrarian puzzle. For one thing, I don't understand why he still insists on fishing sounds out of the horn that neither God nor Adolph Sax ever imagined. Most folks play alto for its smooth control at whiplash speeds, and Braxton has shown that he's second to none in that regard -- compare his Charlie Parker record to the relatively lead-footed originals. But at times he huffs and puffs here like he's playing bagpipes (which he has done, and I swear they're even uglier than For Alto). So I don't get it, but I'm way past minding. He's one of the geniuses of our age. B+(**)

Vandermark 5: Beat Reader (2006 [2008], Atavistic): Downbeat's review mentions a second disc, included with the first 1500 copies, something called "The New York Suite: Part One's for Painters (for Willem De Kooning, Hans Hoffmann, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko), Part 2: Composers (for Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman and Christian Wolf), Part 3: Improvisers (for Don Cherry, Steve Lacy, Archie Shepp and Cecil Taylor)." Didn't get my copy until well after initial release, and when it did come it didn't include the bonus disk. Previous teaser discs were eventually rereleased as Free Jazz Classics, Vols. 1-4. Every review I've read focuses on the integration of cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm into the group -- this is the second album since he replaced Jeb Bishop. I don't really hear it or understand it. The cello lacks the volume and dynamics to compete with the horns, but one reason it does emerge more here is that there are a couple of softer pieces that lead with cello, and it matches up well against Vandermark's clarinet. But most of the pieces crank up the volume, and the one thing that emerges most clearly there is how terrific Vandermark has gotten on the baritone sax. This makes 13 albums in 11 years. The only one I didn't much care for was Simpatico, back in 1998, and the last one I held short of the A-list was Burn the Incline in 2000. Nothing here to complain about. A-

Some corrections and further notes on recent prospecting:

I complained about not having the recording dates to Nik Bärtsch's Ronin's Holon, mostly because the label (ECM) is usually very dilligent about providing that information. My bad. Buried deep in the booklet is a note that says: "Recorded July 2007/Studios La Buissonne, Pernes-les-Fontaines." ECM's publicist wrote in to point that out, more precisely that the dates were July 23-25, 2007. She also thought I should have asked before writing, which is a good idea but hard to do given the way I work. I also wondered about bass clarinet/alto sax player Sha. His name is Stefan Haslebacher. In the info on Bärtsch's 2006 album Stoa, he was described as 22 years old, an "making waves in the Swiss 'new minimal' scene." Should probably ask when his birthdate was, and what the "new minimal" scene is all about, but don't really need to know just now. I still harbor some hope of converting all these notes into some kind of reference website, at which point securing those facts will become more important.

Searching through some old mail, two notes from musicians I had recalled as offering corrections could almost be read as fan mail. Matt Lavelle wrote "you got me man, . . . i think you got my captured my sub-conscious intent. . . . your review has helped me take a closer look, and helped me get a better understanding of myself." Of course, that's not the purpose -- at best a lucky side-effect. What was the purpose was to find good records, most of all ones that weren't getting recognized. Lavelle sought me out in that record, so I should be thanking him.

Melody Breyer-Grell also said "you got me there!" but the subject was the gap in her timeline, which she explains: "as a severely depressed failed opera singer I spent 10 years looking at the ceiling . . . the truth is I was practicing and practicing till I thought I sounded and felt credible enough to make a cd." She has a credible record now (maybe two -- haven't heard her first). Those gaps aren't uncommon -- especially with female vocalists, but I've run across a bunch of others with big gaps, many not making their move until retirement age. She's younger, but I still don't know her age. Payoff line in the letter for me was: "I would like to address some things you said because they are so right on that I feel that you are in my head somehow!"

Helena Cobban: Is This What the Current Fighting in Basra Is About?. Looks like the US is building one of its huge enduring but not exactly permanent military bases near Basra, an area they've mostly left to the British until lately (e.g., as the Brits are leaving). They will need some kind of force presence to protect vital supply lines from Kuwait, and having the whole region largely controlled by the Mehdi Army evidently doesn't give them much of a comfort level.

Late breaking news is that Sadr has pulled his fighters back in a deal that was brokered in (if not necessarily by) Iran. It looks as though Maliki, at least, has realized his miscalculation. I doubt that anyone in the US chain of command has learned much, so this is likely nowhere near the end of the story.

I suppose we should have known we were in for big trouble last week (March 24, to be exact) when Frederick Kagan announced, "The civil war in Iraq is over." The Surgemeister has never been right yet, but even by his standards this is pretty spectacular. With Dick Cheney and John McCain touching base in Iraq recently, with General Petraeus due for a DC dog and pony show on how the Surge has brought peace and prosperity to Baghdad, with the withdrawal promised back at the start of the Surge on indefinite Pause, it looks like all the planets were aligned to tug Kagan's brain even further than usual out of orbit.

I've read a few theories about why Maliki decided to lapse from his well established habits of do-nothingism to pick a war with the Sadr faction of Iraqi Shiism that brought him to power, but I haven't read anything convincing. Most likely the orders came from Washington, given how readily everyone from Bush on down fell into line, with US air power and tanks already taking over much of the fighting. But why Washington would push for a plan like this is hard to fathom. You'd think they'd be happy just to leave well enough alone and try to play out the clock, leaving the mess for the next administration. But that line of thinking assumes they're conscious enough to realize they're fucked and there's nothing much they can do about it. Since they have done something about it, we need to focus on dumber lines of reasoning, since clearly they're not smart enoguh to stay clear of this mess.

One question is whether they think they can effectively defeat Sadr. One problem is that the military damage they do manage to inflict will be self-limiting: the more dominant they are, the more they will drive the Mahdi Army underground into a protracted guerrilla war. Their chances at a military rout of a well armed, popularly supported, and increasingly decentralized movement are vanishingly small. The far bigger problem is political: it's inconceivable that US-backed Maliki unleashing war in Shiite neighborhoods will do anything but boost the Sadr movement's legitimacy as the only credible force willing and able to stand up against the US and their Iraqi cronies.

Any way you slice it, this sure looks like a losing move. So why? Here you have two basic choices. On the one hand, you can guess that the US thinks it can win this war, because the idiots-in-chief always think they can win everything no matter how often they're proven wrong. With Bush and Cheney, it's hard to dismiss this possibility no matter how stupid it looks. On the other hand, it's doubtful that Maliki is that stupid, which raises the other option. It's possible that Sadr, working behind the scenes of his cease fire, was on his way to putting together some sort of alliance that could send the US packing and Maliki into hiding. That might make one desperate enough to wage a preemptive strike, even if the prospects of it working for long were slim -- and with the US time is especially important.

As you'll recall, the US occupation was on the ropes back in spring 2004, with the US fighting Sadr as well as the Sunnis, and losing spectacularly on both fronts, but more dangerously with Sadr backing the Sunnis. The US backed off, making deals with both sides, most of all to keep them separate. Sadr, for his part, hurt himself immensely when he sat by idly while the US punitively destroyed Fallujah after the 2004 election. His sectarian Islamism and fanatical anti-Baath stance undercut his appeal as an Iraqi nationalist, and that's kept him on the sidelines ever since. But nobody else's in a position to do what needs to be done. Right-wingers like Fred Barnes have been saying all along that sooner or later the US has to take out Sadr. For them, later is coming sooner now -- hitting Sadr later in the election may be too much, and waiting until the election's over may be too late. They may figure this is the best chance they're going to get, so caution be damned.

One side effect of the siege that we're already seeing is the shutdown of Iraq's remaining oil exports, pushing pump prices up to soon-to-be record levels. Presumably that's not the reason, but Cheney may find the synergies gratifying.

Glenn Greenwald: Fred Kagan on Monday. The Kagan quote and more, including several updates.

Other than Bill Kristol and Fred's brother, war cheerleader Robert Kagan, nobody has been more wrong about more things with regard to Iraq than supreme war theorist Fred Kagan. He's also deemed by the establishment media and the Bush administration to be the most respectable and knowledgeable expert on Iraq. Within that depressing contradiction lies most of the answers as to why we have destroyed that country and will continue to do so indefinitely.

Fred Kaplan: Warlord vs. Warlord. An early attempt to sort out what's happening in Basra. I like the parenthetical line: "The lively blogger who calls himself Abu Muqawama speculates that Bush officials have embraced ISCI because, unlike Sadr, its leaders speak English." ISCI is the former SCIRI -- founded, trained, and armed originally by Iran, but close to the US occupation, unlike Sadr's group, which is wholly based in Iraq with no foreign entanglements. This points to the sort of shallow reasoning the US specializes in, even though it leads to all sorts of insane confusion about which bad guys Iran must be backing even though Iran's real allies in Iraq are actually our so-called good guys.

Patrick Cockburn: Iraq Implodes as Shia Fights Shia. Another report:

Mr Sadr's followers believe the government is trying to eliminate them before elections in southern Iraq later this year, which they are expected to win. [ . . . ]

The supporters of Mr Sadr, who form the largest political movement in Iraq, blame the Americans for giving the go-ahead for Mr Maliki's offensive against them and supporting it with helicopters and bomber aircraft.

Cockburn notes that Sunnis seem to be supporting Maliki, seeing the Mehdi Army as little more than a death squad. This suggests Sadr hasn't made much progress in forming a united anti-US front. His short-sighted failure to do so is what allows the occupation to carry on, despite its destruction and unpopularity.

If these events prove anything, it's that the argument that the US has any sort of moral obligation to stay in Iraq to fix or at least steady things that it wrecked is completely at odds with the actual US presence in Iraq. Balancing conflicting forces and nudging them toward some sort of political compromise might be desirable, but that's not part of the skill set Bush et al. have brought to the country. They persist in picking sides, backing favorites, working out longstanding grudges. They think force works, and they see politics as just another means to extend their force. If it was ever going to work, you'd think you'd see some sign by now. As this proves, there is no such sign.

I just posted an updated recipe page on something called Eretz Israel Cake. Joan Nathan published the recipe in her cookbook, The Foods of Israel Today. I've made it three times now, and the latest was possibly the best cake I've ever made. The ingredients include marzipan, dates, and lots of oranges -- touted as the taste of the land of Israel. Of course, under a different twist of history it could just as well be Land of Palestine Cake.

I made it for a potluck dinner we had to discuss Sandy Tolan's remarkable book, The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East. Seemed like an appropriate thing to bring.

I've long had a section on the website here with a collection of recipes, mostly cribbed from cookbooks with minor annotations. One reason is just that it gives me easy recourse to look up old favorite recipes, especially when I'm travelling and don't have access to the usual cookbooks. But I've only updated the cache occasionally, and right now it's in limbo between two designs and indexing schemes. A lot of things should be there but aren't, but if you rummage around you'll find some very good recipes -- mostly international (Spanish, Turkish, Indian, and Chinese are staples here) plus a few down home favorites (like my mother's chicken and dumplings).

I also have a website section for books -- another longterm, slow-evolving project, although I've been giving it a lot more attention lately. The link above to The Lemon Tree puts you there. I originally started collecting comments I had written on books I've read, but that soon evolved into collecting quotes (with or without annotation). Most of these have been posted at one point or another in the blog, but they're more accessible in the books section. The page on The Lemon Tree should give you a pretty broad sense of the book.

The books section currently lists 35 books on Israel. I've read two-thirds of them (plus a few others, some showing up in other categories). A couple more are on my shelf, and a few more are books that I've written something about based on a review (e.g., Dennis Ross, who is very, very low on my reading priority list). Tolan's book is especially good for how it personalizes the conflict, but also for the extreme rigor of its writing. Avi Shlaim's The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arabs is probably the best general history up to 1998 or so, but it misses the Barak-Sharon destruction of the Oslo Peace Process. Richard Ben Cramer's How Israel Lost: The Four Questions has a lot of insight into the politics of perpetual war in Israel, although subsequent events have overtaken him as well. I don't think anyone has taken full account of how morally corrosive the Bush administration, with W's dead certain faith in the clarifying power of force, could have been to Israel. (The news today from Iraq, along with Bush's musings on the need to confront outlaws, are one more instance of this mindset.)

At some point I should add cookbooks to the books section, and cross-reference the recipes. Nathan's cookbook is rife with Israeli propaganda, as well as Israeli glosses on mostly middle eastern recipes, plus a few specialties of Arik Sharon's wife. Still, the Eretz Israel cake is a wonder. Like Bashir and Dahlia's lemon tree, it's something we all can savor.

Austan Goolsbee: The Next President's Plan. Finally got to Obama's brief economic agenda today, following pieces from the McCain and Clinton camps the last two days, occasioning last night's post. This one was written by Austan Goolsbee, an economics professor at the University of Chicago serving as Obama's senior economic adviser. It's relatively straightforward and sane, starting with a housing program that would help "low- and middle-income borrowers" to obtain affordable, stable 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, and moving on to a few more issues, like some kind of "infrastructure plan" that would create much needed jobs doing much needed work. Last but not least is providing some real oversight on a financial system that's run amok.

William Greider: Hillary's Economic Plan. Evidently, Clinton's solution is to appoint "an emergency working group on foreclosures" including eminences like Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan -- i.e., the people who got us into this mess. Conclusion: "There will be no surprises when she gets to the White House. Her long experience tells her to stick with her friends and make the same mistakes her husband made, all over again."

Andrew Leonard: Obama's Plan to Change the Economy. Some info from Obama's Cooper Union speech. Good line on McCain:

The comparison with Senator John McCain's speech on Tuesday could not be more stark. Obama's jibe -- that McCain's "plan . . . amounts to little more than watching this crisis happen," is not off the mark.

The link gets you to an earlier post: "John McCain's plan to ignore the economy."

Paul Krugman: The Age of the Anti-Cassandra. All of Krugman's recent columns are worth reading -- titles include "Betting the Bank," "The B Word," "Partying Like It's 1929," and "Taming the Beast." Good stuff on his blog too, but this one struck me as especially right:

Reading some of today's news, it suddenly struck me: we're living in the age of the anti-Cassandra.

Cassandra had the gift of prophecy -- she saw, correctly, what was coming -- but was under a curse: nobody would believe her.

Today, our public discourse is dominated by people who have been wrong about everything -- but are still, mysteriously, treated as men of wisdom, whose judgments should be believed. Those who were actually right about the major issues of the day can't get a word in edgewise.

What set me off was the matter of Alan Greenspan; as Dean Baker like to remind us, news analyses of the housing and financial crisis almost always draw exclusively on "experts" who first insisted that there wasn't a housing bubble, then insisted that the financial consequences of the bubble's bursting would remain "contained."

It's even worse, of course, on the matter of Iraq: just about every one of the panels convened to discuss the lessons of five disastrous years consisted solely of men and women who cheered the idiocy on.

Gene Sperling wrote a book a couple of years back, called The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity (2005, Simon & Schuster). He was touted as one of the top gurus of Clintonomics. The book looked to be short on insight and long on bullshit, but I had some minor interest in how he might try to play it, especially given the traps that Bushonomics dropped along the way. So I thought I might wait for the book to come out in paperback, but that still hasn't happened. Now he seems to be Hillary Clinton's economics spokeswonk. The Wichita Eagle has been running a series of columns -- McCain and Clinton down, Obama to go -- on how each of the presidential candidates proposes to address the economy. Sperling wrote Clinton's piece. It is as lamebrained as McCain's (written by Douglas Holtz-Eakin) was incoherent. (Both are here, on the Washington Post's website. Sperling leads off:

To solve the current crisis, Hillary Clinton believes we need sorely missed proactive policies that ask what is best for families on Main Street.

He then repeatedly refers back to this "Main Street Test" (always capitalized, sometimes in quotes), as in "Sometimes the best way to meet the Main Street Test is to directly assist those who live there." He even gets witty at one point, asking "can't we afford $30 billion to prevent Main Streets from turning into mean streets?" -- the $30 billion referring back to her proposed Emergency Housing Fund and/or the Bear Stearns bailout.

As someone who literally grew up on Main Street, I can relate to this notion as well as anyone, even though I'm skeptical that the 1,000 sq. ft., $30,000 houses on my block -- my parents bought one for less than $8,000 in 1949, and lived in it until they died in 2000 -- are Clinton's idea of Main Street. The mortgages going belly up these days are more likely to be on suburban cul de sacs, because that's where the overreach is: the gap between how well we think we're living and how poorly we're actually doing. Clinton seems to think Main Street is just another word for her chosen demographic, the sanctified Middle Class -- of "American Dream" fame, now every bit as illusory as Main Street.

But where the Middle Class is a time-tested cliché, and Main Street is a hoped-for cliché, the really lame thing is the Test. She's done this before with her Commander-in-Chief Test. Indeed, this seems to be her specialty: making up bogus standards, then declaring oneself to have passed while the competition fails. Maybe she likes the pass-fail aspect, or maybe she just likes playing games. But even if you take this at better than face value and assume that by Main Street she means people with more/less median incomes, wealth, and security, and that she would really like to do something to help those people, it still makes no sense to say that the Main Street Test holds the answer to every economic problem. Preventing the entire financial house of cards from collapsing is a much bigger matter than just how it affects Main Street.

Similarly, there are many other economic problems that are not all that well viewed from the middle. In particular, the poor have a much clearer view of economic risk and lack of opportunity than median earners have -- part of this is that the poor show what can happen to the currently better off if/when misfortune strikes, but the reasons for addressing these problems shouldn't be limited to the Middle Class fear of falling. There are other cases where the rich offer a clearer view -- often times as bad examples, but not always.

One quasi-interesting thing about the Fed's actions to date is that thus far they've enjoyed pretty much across-the-board support. That's basically because no one wants to see the whole system fall to its knees, and that's about all these stopgaps can try to prevent. But there are much bigger political problems, which hardly anyone is up to raising -- least of all presidential candidates. But the problems aren't likely to be avoidable for long.

Garry Wills: Head and Heart: American Christianities (2007, Penguin Press)

My first encounter with Garry Wills was Nixon Agonistes, a long book that dealt so sympathetically with the great political monster of my formative years that I always figured Wills for a deep conservative. This sympathy helped Wills expose deep veins in the America that made and was exploited by Nixon, which made the book valuable as history and informative as political theory. I always imagined that Wills' book on Reagan did the same service for a younger generation, but found Reagan so transparently false that I never saw the need to dig deeper, let alone appreciate any nuances in his political culture. (Probably a mistake, given how Reagan has been canonized. The next thing I read by Wills was his book on John Wayne's America, another book that met America more than half way. Lately I've gathered that Wills' politics are on the liberal side, if not necessarily on the left. (He did write a book called Confessions of a Conservative in 1979, so I may not have been so far off.) His essay on Bush's Fringe Government is one of the basic keys for an understanding of a third generation of Republican monsters. But most of what Wills has written about recently has been religion. I have a copy of What Jesus Meant, and will get to it shortly. At least it looks agreeably short.

His latest is a history of Christianity in America, Head and Heart. I took a look at the book in the store, my first notion to look up what he had to say about Mormonism, a prime example of 19th century American protestantism's penchant for sectarian invention. But the index has no entries for Mormons, Latter Day Saints, or Joseph Smith. Wills evidently has something else in mind. Patrick Allitt, in his New York Times Book Review, explains that Head and Heart follows the gnarly threads of Enlightenment deism (head) and evangelicalism (heart) through American history, ending in a current-day political tirade. Not sure from the review whether the book is worth spending much time with, but I wanted to comment on one paragraph in Allitt's review:

Historians and sociologists for nearly a century have wondered about America's resistance to secularization. Why, they ask, has religion thrived so much more in America than in the rest of the industrialized democracies (where, by now, only tiny minorities still go to church)? Because, says Wills, religion is not entangled with the state. Both benefit from separation, and neither is distorted by the other. Conversely, he believes that both have suffered from periodic attempts to reduce the separation, like Prohibition in the early 20th century or George W. Bush's faith-based initiatives in the early 21st.

Actually, I think that if you go back to the eve of World War II you'll find that America was more/less as secular as western Europe. Two things happened then that made all the difference in the world. The first is that the American and European experiences of the war were vastly different because the devastation took place in Europe (and Asia), not here, where America underwent an economic boom and an enthralling sense of solidarity. If you're inclined to attribute varying fortunes to God, you're likely to feel blessed in America and cursed in Europe. Postwar Europe was very disillusioned with the dominant civilization that had brought two such damning wars upon itself, and religion was one particularly disposable part of that. America suffered no comparable loss of faith.

The second thing was the Cold War. For various reasons, after WWII the US establishment adopted a strategy of opposing Communism all around the world, and one propaganda tactic they found useful was to build up religion as a bulwark against Marxist atheism. At the time, the US was dominated by the Democratic party, which had attracted imperialist-minded businessmen as far back as Wilson. The Republicans decided to join in, and even tried to outflank the Democrats on their right, and they were successful enough to pin the Democrats' backs to the wall. Most of the "under God" pledges and slogans date from the early Cold War period, the same stretch of time that brought us Taft-Hartley and McCarthyism. This had many effects, one being that it made religious belief mandatory for anyone with political aspirations. Without any sort of political legitimacy, atheists were forced to the sidelines, and Christian opportunists were able to press for ever more public testaments of faith. Troubled people are easily attracted to religion, especially in this self-reinforcing framework of a "nation under God," questioned by only the most marginal of characters.

I'm not saying that Wills' point about separation of religion from politics isn't valid. It certainly is true that the lack of a legally established church opens up the market for faith-based hucksters. Anyone in the market for religion can find plenty of options to choose from. By keeping religion personal, it also limits most folks' concerns about others' beliefs, letting most religions go uncontested. Wills is also right that when religious figures do push too hard they generate a backlash, and that's when people do start to publicly challenge religion. That has started to happen in response to Bush and the Republicans. But the question of America vs. Europe is pretty clearly political. We have been very slow to realize the costs of taking such an extreme anti-Communist stance following WWII -- one that put the US in league with fascists, militarists, and clerics all over the world, united primarily by their opposition to workers and peasants, a strategy that turned us into the world police for the protection of international capitalism.

John McCain's latest view of the future: "Today in Iraq, America and our allies stand on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism." Precipice? My dictionary gives two definitions: 1) An extremely steep or overhanging mass of rock; 2) The brink of a dangerous situation. Even the less metaphorical first defintion begs a question: how many allies can you fit on a precipice? (About as many as the US has?)

In the Wichita Eagle's article on the 4000th US soldier killed in Iraq, they go on to report a few more events of the day:

In Sunday's worst attack, a suicide bomber blew up a tanker laden with explosives at the entrance to an Iraqi army base in Mosul, a northern city described by the US military as the last urban stronghold of Sunni militants loyal to the group al-Qaida in Iraq.

At least 12 Iraqi soldiers were killed and 30 others injured along with 12 civilians, said army Brig. Gen. Mohammed Ahmed.

Another suicide car bomber attacked an Iraqi army checkpoint in Mosul, killing one officer and injuring 10 other people, police said.

Militants pounded the capital with at least 16 rockets and seven mortar rounds Sunday, including three barrages aimed at the Green Zone, the Interior Ministry said. US officials did not immediately say who was responsible for the attack, but typically they blame rogue elements of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia for such attacks.

Sadr has ordered the militia to stand down until August, a move US officials credit with helping to reduce violence in Iraq. But a series of clashes with US and Iraqi security forces in Baghdad and south of the capital in recent days has frayed the truce.

Shiite neighborhoods also were hit in Sunday's rocket and mortar fire, which police said killed at least 13 people and injured 29, suggesting Sunni militants may have been firing rounds.

Gunmen in three cars sprayed bullets at commuters waiting to board minibus taxis, killing seven people and injuring 16 others in the mostly Shiite southeastern neighborhood of Zafaraniya, police said.

In the northwestern Shiite neighborhood of Shula, police said a suicide car bomber attacked a line of people waiting for gasoline, killing seven of them and inuring 12. The US military described the method of attack as a parked car bomb and put the toll at five dead and seven wounded.

Police in Baghdad also recovered the bodies of six people killed execution-style.

Northeast of the capital, two police officers were killed in drive-by shootings in Baqubah and Balad Ruz in Diyala provine, police said. Two other policemen were injured in the Baqubah attack.

South of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb exploded near an Iraqi military convoy, killing four soldiers, police said.

In other developments, the US military said it had verified the identities of six people killed in a helicopter strike near Samarra the previous day and determined that none of them were members of a US-backed neighborhood guard force known as the Sons of Iraq. A military statement said they were killed after five people were spotted conducting "suspicious activity" in an area known for raodside bombs. An Iraqi army commander and a local guard leader had said the men were manning a Sons of Iraq checkpoint.

The decision of tens of thousands of mostly Sunni Arab fighters to defend their neighborhoods against the insurgents they once backed or tolerated was another decisive factor in the ebb in violence. But tensions are building after a series of mistaken US strikes against the guards.

Meanwhile, George W Bush concluded: "The surge is working. And as a return on our success in Iraq, we've begun bringing some of our troops home. The surge has done more than turn the situation in Iraq around -- it has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror."

It's hard to imagine what Bush could possibly mean by victory. But McCain has a point about the precipice: it's the point from which every direction heads down, most (for lack of a better word) precipitously.

Michael Schwartz: How to Disintegrate a City. The history of the Battle of Baghdad. The Bush and McCain quotes above come from Tom Engelhardt's introduction. Schwartz has a book coming out in June, based on his remarkable series of TomDispatch posts: War Without End: The Iraq War in Context.

Not a happy week. Having a lot of difficulty writing, especially on the records I should be shepherding into the finished Jazz CG. They still sound good enough, but the words aren't coming. Very frustrating. I so wish I was done with it.

Lauren White: At Last (2006 [2007], Groove Note): Singer, from Dallas-Fort Worth area, reported to be 20 years old. Three songs look like originals, credited to "(L White, W White)"; rest are covers, mostly Gershwin-Porter era standards, but also Roy Orbison's "Blue Bayou," Leon Russell's "Superstar," and Lee Ann Womack's "Why They Call It Falling." Some good musicians, including tenor saxophonist Ricky Woodward on 4 cuts, guitarist Anthony Wilson on 4, and pianist Bill Cunliffe on 3. All that suggests good taste, albeit nothing distinctive or idiosyncratic. Not much of a jazz singer, though. B-

Duke Ellington Legacy: Thank You Uncle Edward (2007 [2008], Renma): Nine-member group, eight instruments plus vocalist Nancy Reed, at least for this record -- website shows two other lineups, the common denominators being leader-saxophonist Virginia Mayhew, trumpeter Mark McGowan, pianist Norman Simmons, drummer Paul Wells, and namesake guitarist Edward Ellington II, Mercer's son, Duke's grandson. Two guests here are Joe Temperley on bass clarinet/baritone sax and Wycliffe Gordon on trombone. (If you're counting, that leaves bassist Tom DiCarlo.) Ellington songs (one from Mercer, the rest from Duke) aside from the well disguised "Toe Tickler" by Mayhew. Five vocals, mostly unexpected -- e.g., Jon Hendricks vocalese on "Cottontail." The arrangements are big and bold, and the band swings hard. Didn't much notice the guitar. B+(**)

Virginia Mayhew Septet: A Simple Thank You (2007 [2008], Renma): Saxophonist, plays tenor and soprano here. b. 1959 San Francisco, based in New York since 1987. Sixth album. Might as well think of the Septet as a small big band: the hornplay, with two brass and two reeds, is constant and complex; the rhythm of guitar, bass and drums is inconspicuous but capable of pushing the horns hard. Best thing here is the closer, "Sandan Shuffle," for just that reason. Didn't much care for the intricate postbop until then, but going back I find more hot spots, including a rousing "Rhtyhm-A-Ning." B+(**)

David Liebman/Roberto Tarenzi/Paolo Benedettini/Tony Arco: Dream of Nite (2005 [2007], Verve): Never got a final copy of this. I gather from the cover scan Liebman is David, not Dave, like my copy of the credits says. Also looks like it was originally released on EmArcy in Italy, then picked up by Verve here, and came out last November. Recorded in Italy, live (I think), with a local group, none of whom I recognize. Pianist Tarenzi wrote two tunes; if drummer Arco is the same as A. Arcodia, he wrote one also. Last two pieces are Liebman's, and they do one from M. Davis. Benedettini plays double bass. The band is pretty sharp, especially Tarenzi, and they keep Liebman on his postbop toes. For once, I can't even complain about the soprano. B+(*) [advance]

Bo's Art Trio: Live: Jazz Is Free and So Are We! (2007 [2008], Icdisc): Bo is Bo van de Graaf, Dutch saxophonist (soprano, alto, tenor). Don't have much background, but he's been around since 1976, discography since 1981, mostly on BVHaast. Has some sort of relationship with film composer Nino Rota. He formed Bo's Art Trio in 1988 with pianist Michiel Braam and drummer Fred van Duijnhoven. Like much of the Dutch avant-garde, the operative concept here is humor -- most obviously on the two pieces where Simon Vinkenoog shouts poetry over Braam's jokey, crashing piano chords: D.H. Lawrence's "A Sane Revolution" from 1928 and a "Jazz and Poetry" original, in Dutch, I believe. Those pieces may limit the appeal. Van de Graaf's saxes are bright and edgy, bursting with joy. B+(**)

Maurice Horsthuis: Elastic Jargon (2007 [2008], Data): One thing I've found is that there's usually an exception to any generalization one might make. By now, you know how much I hate the sound of massed violins, how lame I find classical string quartets, maybe even how estranged I feel from so much advanced contemporary composition (or whatever you call it -- maybe only because I get so little opportunity to follow it). Even at best I figure those things are projects, something that, given more exposure and understanding, I might some day learn to sort of like, a little bit at least. But here's an exception: all strings (4 violins, 2 violas, 3 cellos, double bass, and electric guitar), a very limited pallette with a lot of sawing back and forth, but it's really flowing, with waves of ideas, crashing and bubbling. Need to hold it back as a sanity check. Horsthuis plays viola. He's part of Amsterdam String Trio, which has at least four albums. He's also played with Misha Mengelberg's ICP Orchestra back in the 1980s; also with Han Bennink and Maarten Altena. Group name could be Maurice Horsthuis' Jargon, in which case album name might be Elastic. [A-]

Plamen Karadonev: Crossing Lines (2007 [2008], Mu): Pianist (also plays keyboards and accordion), from Bulgaria, where he studied at the Academy of Music and played for the National Radio Big Band. Got a scholarship to Berklee in Boston, where he's currently based. First album: in fact, a good example of what we might call First Album Syndrome, where a new artist tries to show off as many friends, connections, styles, and skills as possible. Originals, covers (Cole Porter, John Coltrane, Ivan Lins), a take on Schuman, expansive piano pieces, two guest shots for trombonist Hal Crook and two more for saxophonist George Garzone, three cuts with vocals by Elena Koleva. The individual pieces are impressive enough -- even the rather limited vocals come through. Garzone, of course, is always a treat, but the piano more than holds up, and the accordion solo on the Lins piece is lovely. B+(*)

John Ellis & Double Wide: Dance Like There's No Tomorrow (2007 [2008], Hyena): Saxophonist, mostly tenor (also soprano and bass clarinet here), originally from rural North Carolina, now in New York, with an identity-forming stop in New Orleans along the way. Fifth album: one in 1996; another on FSNT in 2002; three now on Hyena, where he's been going for a soul-funk vibe, which he mixes up a little more than usual this time. This is a quartet, with Gary Versace on organ and accordion, Matt Perrine on sousaphone (a marching band tuba filling in for bass), and Jason Marsalis on drums. He's got a distinctive tone on tenor sax, which the deep brass only adds to. B+(**)

Lisle Ellis: Sucker Punch Requiem: An Homage to Jean-Michel Basquiat (2005 [2008], Henceforth): Ellis is a bassist, also interested in electronics. Originally from Canada. Three previous albums, plus three more as part of What We Live, plus scattered credits, mostly avant-garde. I can't tell you what if anything this has to do with Basquiat, a painter and drug casualty evidently quite fond of jazz, except that Ellis pulled "sucker punch" out of a bit of Basquiat graffiti. Group here strikes me as an odd bunch. Pamela Z's electronically filtered vocals add an air of high church to the requiem, and I suppose Holly Hofmann's flute could signify angels. Mike Wofford is a first-rate pianist who works a lot with Hofmann. Susie Ibarra is an interesting percussionist formerly associated with David S. Ware and Assif Tsahar. They work hard to hold this together, but George Lewis is pretty inscrutable on trombone. On the other hand, the one thing you really do notice here is the sax, unmistakably the work of Oliver Lake. B+(*)

Jacob Garchik: Romance (2007 [2008], Yestereve): Trombonist, originally from San Francisco, in New York since 1994. Second album. Side credits include Lee Konitz's New Nonet, John Hollenbeck's Large Ensemble, Frank London's Klezmer Brass All Stars, and Slavic Soul Party. I recall liking Abstracts, his first album, but didn't manage to write more than a note on it -- "free jazz, sharply played." This isn't, even though it's the same trio (Jacob Sacks on piano, Dan Weiss on drums). Slow, arty, even more abstract. Judith Berkson adds her voice to two cuts. More dead weight. B-

Marc Copland: New York Trio Recordings, Vol. 1: Modinha (2006, Pirouet): Got this for background after listening to Vol. 2. Gary Peacock plays bass on both, but the drummers change: Bill Stewart here, Paul Motian there. One thing I always remember about Stewart is how he completely slam dunk aced a blindfold test a few years back (in Jazz Times, I think). That almost never happens: not only did he recognize everyone, he provided a lot of detail on why. Clearly, he knows his trade and its lore. Compared to Motian, however, he's very straightforward, which makes him hardly a factor in these fine piano trio recordings. Three covers here provide some melodic highlights -- especially lovely is the closer, "Taking a Chance on Love." B+(**)

Marian McPartland: Twilight World (2007 [2008], Concord Jazz): A piano trio, with Gary Mazzaroppi on bass and Glenn Davis on drums -- not names I recognize, and not all that important here. A hard record for me to judge, not just because I rarely have much to say about piano trios, but also because this is so straight mainstream it's hard to discern anything that signifies this is jazz -- except her erudition and fine sense of musicality. B+(**)

Paolo Fresu/Richard Galliano/Jan Lundgren: Mare Nostrum (2007 [2008], ACT): Fresu's trumpet and flugelhorn finally got an ear when Carla Bley tracked him down last year. This is a good chance to hear more. Lundgren's piano is a little short on rhythmic push, but has to do. At least he punctuates the lushness of Galliano's accordion. Not quite prepared to deal with this right now. Wouldn't be a bad idea for me to revisit Bley's record, either. [B+(***)]

Dave Douglas & Keystone: Moonshine (2007 [2008], Greenleaf Music): I don't doubt for a moment that Douglas is brilliant, but often find that he is either over my head or beyond my ken. As near as I can tell, he does two things here: especially on the first half, he concocts postbop so tricky it puts classical music to shame; and he returns to his electronics experiments, mostly as coloring, but DJ Olive finally gets the upper hand with "Kitten." One piece in the lurch is called "Flood Plane," with a Bush sample mumbling something about terrorists as Douglas conjures the lost spirits of New Orleans over Olive's scratching. Relatively small group, with Marcus Strickland taking over the sax spot, and Adam Benjamin on Fender Rhodes. Interesting, but after four plays I'm still stumped. [B+(**)]

Delirium Blues Project: Serve or Suffer (2007 [2008], Half Note): I suppose "What Is Hip" is intended to be delirious. It is the least blue of these nine songs, with Lil Green's "In the Dark" the most archetypal, "Don't Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirits Down" the most ordinary, and pieces by Tracy Nelson, Joni Mitchell, and Mose Allison not much one way or another. Kenny Werner is the leader, arranging the songs and playing keyboards. Never thought of him as a blues guy -- Copenhagen Calypso is one of his more memorable titles. Roseanna Vitro sings. I liked her Ray Charles record quite a lot, but these songs rarely fit. The band has some all-stars, and they deliver a couple of scorching solos -- Ray Anderson on trombone and James Carter on tenor sax are standouts, and Randy Brecker has some moments on trumpet. Recorded live at the Blue Note. B

And these are final grades/notes on records I put back for further listening the first time around.

João Lencastre's Communion: One! (2006 [2007], Fresh Sound New Talent): Recorded at the Hot Club de Portugal, with a couple of well-known Americans -- trumpeter Phil Grenadier and pianist Bill Carothers -- in the drummer's band. Covers from Ornette Coleman, Freddie Hubbard, George Gershwin, and Bjork, sandwiching group improvs. Postbop, a little slow and fussy for my taste, but full of interesting little details. B+(**)

Marc Copland: New York Trio Recordings, Vol. 2: Voices (2006 [2007], Pirouet): The change from Vol. 1 was to replace Copland's usual drummer Bill Stewart with veteran maestro Paul Motian. Motian has made a whole career out of teasing pianists, and Copland is notable enough he'll slot right into a long list that starts with Bill Evans and extends through and beyond Marilyn Crispell. Gary Peacock plays bass. He has a long history with Copland, and takes a large role here -- in addition to his solo time he wrote four songs to Copland's three (Miles Davis' "All Blues" is the only cover). B+(***)

The Willie Williams Trio: Comet Ride (2007, Miles High): Sax-bass-drums trio, nothing fancy, just hard, fast bop, swinging especially hard on the closing "Caravan." B+(**)

Adam Kolker: Flag Day (2007 [2008], Sunnyside): Very pleasing, easily listenable sax quartet, where three notable sidemen each have something distinctive to add: John Abercrombie on guitar, John Hebert on bass, Paul Motian on drums. Mellow sax, subtle surprises. B+(***)

Marty Ehrlich & Myra Melford: Spark! (2007, Palmetto): Deceptively calm sax-piano duets from two musicians used to playing on the edge, but not so calm they slip into the background. Not sure what the idea behind the title was, but by removing all the tinder their spark never gets engulfed in fire. B+(**) [advance]

Omer Klein: Introducing Omer Klein (2007 [2008], Smalls): Let me start with one more pitch for Klein's earlier Duet with bassist Haggai Cohen Milo, on Fresh Sound New Talent a couple years back. That's where I got introduced, and was impressed with his subtle melodicism. Still, this is an advance, and not just because added drums and percussion push a much more upbeat rhythm -- actually, bassist Omer Avital may have as much as anyone to do with that. B+(***)

Evidently the number one obstacle in Israel to any sort of peace deal with Abbas isn't the opposition Likud or the rump-Sharonist party of Ehud Olmert but the new leader of the Labor Party, also Defense Minister, Ehud Barak. Helena Cobban recently had this to say about Barak, and I think it's worth quoting at length:

In the west, Ehud Barak is generally widely thought of as a relative "peacenik" among Israeli political leaders. In 1999, when he was head of the Labor Party, he was indeed elected PM on a strongly pro-peace platform. ("I will complete the negotiations with the Palestinians within 6-9 months," etc.) He failed miserably. In fact, he was hustled at the speed of light out of being the IDF's chief of staff into being head of Labor, and never had time to learn anything at all about politics or diplomacy along the way. Hence, the coalition that he headed in Israel fell apart in almost record time, because of his total lack of political skills. The "peace process" fell apart disastrously, too, bringing us in short order Sharon's disastrous September 2000 visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the outbreak of the Second Intifada, and Sharon's amazing triumphant re-entry into national leadership just 17 years after the Kahan Commission had said he should be banned from high office for life.

Along the way, Barak did make what could be described as two "drive-by, quickie" attempts at peacemaking. One with Hafez al-Asad, which failed miserably because of Barak's arrogance and duplicity (and Bill Clinton's complicity with both those aspects of Barak's behavior.) That failure almost certainly helped kill Hafez al-Asad. After that one failed, Barak turned those same attributes in Yasser Arafat's direction, forcing him to the completely ill-prepared Camp David 2 summit from which both Barak and Clinton emerged vociferously and in a quite one-sided way blaming Arafat.

My best friends in the Israeli peace movement heap a lot of blame on Barak for killing the Israeli peace movement at that point. By successfully spreading the (significantly inaccurate) story that he had made Arafat a "generous offer" and that Arafat had turned it down out of hand, Barak spread the idea very broadly in Israel and the US that the Israelis had "no partner for peace" on the Palestinian side.

Israel's Labour Party has always been a flawed vehicle for any hopes of concluding a just and sustainable peace. One problem with the party since its inception has been the extremely incestuous relationship between its leadership and that of the Israeli military. Some of the IDF's retired generals have become voices of good sense regarding the need for peacemaking; but many more of them have not. People like Ephraim Sneh, Binyamin ("Fouad") Ben-Eliezer, and Ehud Barak have taken into the party's upper echelons the mindset of bulldozers and bullies. They are also very much aware of the huge interests many of their friends and former colleagues have in the success of Israel's massive military-industrial complex.

A lot more could be said about Barak. I think his low point was after all but throwing the 2001 election to Sharon, he asked Sharon to return the favor and make him Defense Minister. Now he's finally made it, under Sharon's successor. He probably thinks of that as some form of vindication. More likely Olmert's just trying to figure out how to blow off the shotgun deal that Rice is trying to rope Olmert and Abbas into. He may figure that if anyone can sabotage a deal it is Barak. After all, Barak not only opposed Oslo from the start; he took a fall as the most incompetent Israeli Prime Minister ever just to kill Oslo in the end.

A couple of links on Iraq. I'm sure many more would be possible.

Patrick Cockburn: Iraq is a country no more. Like much else, that was not the plan. This is the new Iraq we have wrought: a space on the map hopelessly divided into waring factions:

Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.

Fred Kaplan: Have five years of war achieved anything in Iraq? He weighs this out and concludes no. One quote on Rumsfeld's own special interest in the war plan:

In other words, it is not the case, as many critics charge, that Rumsfeld "miscalculated" how many troops would be needed for the mission of stabilizing post-Saddam Iraq. Rather, he wasn't interested in that mission. [ . . . ] With the Iraq war (and the Afghanistan conflict before it), he wanted to send rogue regimes and other foes a message: Look what we can do with one hand tied behind our back. If we can overthrow Saddam (and the Taliban) so easily, we can overthrow you, too.

Another quote:

Gen. Petraeus made the point in the Army's field manual on counterinsurgency that he supervised before returning last year to Iraq. Such wars, the manual says, are by nature prolonged and costly; they are difficult to win, easy to lose; they require soldiers to be extremely creative and citizens to be ceaselessly patient.

One unstated lesson of the field manual is that our political leaders should think very carefully before plunging into war.

Marc Lynch: Thinking Through Withdrawal. A thought piece on what would happen if the US withdraws from Iraq (assuming a 16-18 month withdrawal period, the timing less important than a clear signal of intent to completely withdraw). Lynch sees the big political split within Iraq as not between Shia and Sunni but between the "Green Zone political class," which depends the most on US support, and non-Green Zone actors, which include Sadr and the Sunni Awakenings movement. Reconciliation is of little import to the Green Zoners, not least because it would allow the US to start to withdrawal. A firm US commitment to withdrawal, on the other hand, would push the Green Zoners to find new bases of support, possibly positioning for further sectarian conflict, or to reconcilation. It largely depends on whether the Green Zoners can broaden their base to work with presently excluded forces which have strong potential to disrupt the state.

Tony Karon: Iraq, an American 'Nakbah'. Starts with a picture of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice out for a stroll, captioned "American Taliban council of war." As anyone's who's followed the Palestinians knows, nakbah is Arabic for catastrophe. Karon trots out the usual statistics, then goes back and rifles through pieces he wrote in 2002-03, before the war, to show how obvious even then the case against the war was. He talks about the lack of evidence for WMD, the spurious Al-Qaeda connection, the media manipulations, the "Feith-Based Initiative," how an invasion and occupation would play into Al-Qaeda's hands. The section on "The Liberal Hawk Fallacy" is particularly quotable:

The idea that the best reason for going to war in Iraq is to overthrow the noxious Saddam and replace him with a democracy is simply wishful thinking. Democracy has never been the organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy, and to imagine the Bush administration as a kind of Lincoln Brigade of selfless internationalists going out to fight the good fight is simply delusional. These are the same people who helped empower Saddam Hussein in the 80s -- Rumsfeld was Reagan's point man in cutting deals with him.

Thought I'd do something on the 5th anniversary of Bush's Iraq invasion -- five years ago I described it as a "day of infamy," and there's no reason to reconsider those words. But it's been a very distracted day, so here's a book review piece I had ready to go. The title shows not just that war doesn't pay. It hasn't paid for a long time.

Adam Tooze: The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (2007, Viking)

Big book, 802 pages, not much of a priority, but Richard J. Evans' New York Times Book Review (Dec. 20, 2007) review sums up some points worth noting:

Between 1924-35 the United States was already the wealthiest nation in the world. Some GDPs compared to the US: Great Britain 89%, France 72%, Germany 63%, Soviet Union 25% (p. 76):

European contemporaries were very much aware of these facts: and none more so than Adolf Hitler. Already in his unpublished "Second Book," written in 1928, he was declaring that "the European, even without being fully conscious of it, applies the conditions of American life as the yardstick for his life." For Hitler, who read the Wild West novels of Karl May during his childhood and adolescence, it seemed obvious that America had achieved its industrial advantage and high standard of living through its conquest of the West and its extermination of the Native American population. If Germany, as Europe's leading power, did not do something similar, the "threatened global hegemony of the North American continent" would degrade all the European powers to the level of "Switzerland and Holland." Far from being the revival of some medieval dream of conquest sparked by the example of the Teutonic Knights, Hitler's drive to conquer Eastern Europe was based on a very modern model, a model of colonization, enslavement, and extermination that had its parallels in the creation of European empires in Africa an Australia, or the nineteenth-century Russian conquest of Central Asia and Siberia.

(p. 76):

Hitler's drive to rearm was so obsessive, so megalomaniacal, that he was prepared to sacrifice almost anything to it. In particular, consumers suffered as resources and foreign exchange were diverted into arms expenditures. Cotton imports, for example, were hard hit, and people started to complain about the poor quality of the synthetic-fiber clothing they were forced to wear. Tooze here completely explodes the German historian Götz Aly's recent claim that the Nazi regime deliberately cushioned the civilian population for fear of alienating it. Contrary to what Aly suggests, Tooze points out that Germany's population was the most heavily taxed in Europe.

(p. 77):

Looked at from an economic perspective, indeed, the cards were stacked against the Germans from the outset. Tooze perhaps overstresses the point when he describes Germany, as he frequently does, as a "medium-sized European power"; even according to his own figures it far outclassed all other European states with the exception of Britain and the Soviet Union. The point was, however, that by the end of 1941 it had arrayed against it the combined might not only of these two countries, together with the British Empire, still at this time the largest the world had ever seen, but also of the United States.

To try to counter this, Hitler more or less abandoned the construction of costly and generally ineffective battleships and poured resources into the U-boat campaign with which he hoped to cut off British supplies from across the Atlantic and force a separate peace. Yet there were too few submarines to make an impact, especially against an enemy that organized an effective convoy system and had the advantage, thanks to the Ultra decoder, of being able to decipher German signals in advance of the operations they unleashed. Once more, the raw materials needed to build and fuel a submarine fleet large enough to overcome these obstacles were simply lacking.

Tooze points to a similar problem with the projected invasion of Britain in the summer and fall of 1940. Irrespective of whether Hitler was really set on this course, he simply lacked the resources to establish the air superiority that was the sine qua non of a successful crossing of the English Channel. A third of the initial strength of the German air force, the Luftwaffe, had been lost in the western campaign in the spring. The Germans lacked the trained pilots, the effective fighter planes, and the heavy bombers that would have been needed. Moreover, before long, the German attempt to gain control over the oil-rich Middle East and also threaten British control over the vital artery of the Suez Canal had suffered a fatal blow when Britain defeated a German-sponsored uprising in Iraq and seized Syria from the Vichy French.

Germany, of course, had at its disposal the resources of conquered countries in Europe, from France in the West to Belarus in the East. The Nazis had no compunction in ruthlessly exploiting the defeated nations to their own advantage. Tooze notes that by 1944 the Germans had taken nearly four million shells, over five thousand artillery pieces, and more than two thousand tanks from the French. Nearly half of all German artillery guns in March 1944 were non-German. Enough tin and nickel was seized after the victories in the West to cover German needs for a year, enough copper for eight months. France was drained of almost all its gasoline supplies. Yet such exploitation contributed to a collapse of the French economy in 1940, and the confiscated resources did not last for very long. This was another reason for Hitler's avoiding any further delay in pushing on with the invasion of the Soviet Union.

(p. 77):

When German armies marched into the Soviet-controlled part of Poland in June 1941, they soon scored a series of stunning victories, surrounding and killing or capturing millions of Red Army troops. Here too, shortages of fuel and ammunition quickly affected the German armies as their rapid advance stretched their supply lines to the breaking point. More serious still was the food situation. It was no use commandeering the Ukrainian collective farms if there was no gasoline to run the tractors and combine harvesters. Millions of German troops had to be fed, and more resources still were needed to sustain the civilian population back home, not to mention the foreign workers who were being forced into the country by the millions to boost the labor supply.

The Nazis and the German military decided to deal with this problem through the planned starvation of the native population of the occupied areas of Eastern Europe. At least three and a third million Soviet prisoners of war were deliberately killed in German captivity, allowed to die of starvation, disease, and neglect, or simply shot. Nearly three quarters of a million people perished during the German siege of Leningrad as a deliberate result of the blockade. German plans for the region envisaged the deaths of up to 30 million of its civilian inhabitants over the following years as German settlers were moved in to populate its towns, cities, and manor houses. This was mass murder on a historically unprecedented scale.

One thing that seems clear is that World War II was decided primarily by economic depth and reach. Germany tried to compensate with its blitz tactics, but the largest foe they were able to defeat that way was France. Britain was sufficiently protected by its moat. Germany pushed deep into Russia, but couldn't push deep enough. Russia was able to move much of its production back to the Urals and Siberia, wear down the onslaught, and turn it back. Japan fared little better against China, even though they had little trouble with colonial regimes in southeast Asia. Neither Germany nor Japan had any chance against the US.

The economic resilience which allowed the US to defend against the Axis powers has only increased since 1945. Aside from the vulnerabilty that all nations fear from nuclear attack -- which the US is uniquely able to deter, assuming that makes a difference -- it is inconceivable that any nation or realistic alliance of nations might threaten the US. It's also increasingly unlikely that anyone would try: WWII took place in an era still drunken with imperialism, but everything since then has shown that empires are unsustainable and not very desirable. As such, the US for its own defense needs no more and probably a good deal less funding than in 1939. Yet we see the opposite: the US spends over 50% of the entire world's military budget. The very fact that no other country considers an arms race with the US shows that what the US spends is almost totally wasted.

Andrew Leonard: The crash in Republican economics. For most of us, what happened over the weekend, not just to Bear Stearns but to capitalism as we know it, is nearly impossible to fathom. Leonard's been writing a column called "How the World Works," and he's come as close to tracking it as anyone I've found. This is a very important article, which needs (and deserves) to be read very carefully. The following quote only sets the stakes:

The consequences of Bear Stearns' failing are simply too great to allow ourselves the moral satisfaction of watching the guilty and the greedy drown in their self-inflicted gore. If anything has been conclusively demonstrated by the past year of market follies, it is that the world's financial institutions are bound together more closely than they have ever been before in a web that is extraordinarily fragile. If one string unravels, the whole structure seems poised to disintegrate -- a process that will inflict pain on a far greater number of people than those who go to work in buildings on the southern tip of Manhattan.

Another quote:

But whether or not the current ills afflicting the economy do bloom into something much worse, it's hard to argue with the thesis that the rhetoric of market fundamentalism hasn't looked this threadbare since Ronald Reagan won office in 1980. Deregulated markets were given their chance. They didn't work, or, at least, they now look to be in need of serious overhaul.

He then tails off by looking at what the presidential candidates have to say about all this. Not much, folks (although you won't have any trouble handicapping them). As for Bush, there's an entry in "How the World Works" that I can only quote whole (title: "George Bush's reality distortion field"):

The president addressed the economy Monday morning. Referring to an economic update provided to him by Henry Paulson, secretary of the treasury, he said:

You've reaffirmed the fact that our financial institutions are strong and that our capital markets are functioning efficiently and effectively.

How the World Works finds itself incapable of summoning up the appropriate level of sarcasm necessary to comment on this quote. Truly, the end times are nigh.

Nicholas von Hoffman: Economic Chaos, Political Consequences. Not much optimism in the what-does-it-all-mean department:

We are in unknown territory facing situations that have never arisen before and taking measures that have never been tried. For the present we know that Bear Stearns/J.P. Morgan has been saved -- sort of. We suspect that some thousands of Bear employees will lose their jobs in the near future; we know that the news of the latest Fed actions was quickly followed by a fall in stock prices in Asia and another dip in the value of the dollar.

In a few weeks this latest insult to the once-imperial Yankee dollar will express itself in higher gasoline prices. That will hurt, but it may be the least of our pain. No body, no government agency, no clutch of economics professors, certainly nobody on Wall Street can lay out a plan of action. We do not know the dimensions of the storm buffeting us but that it is huge and enormously dangerous there can be no doubt.

Of course, what makes these events newsworthy is that now we're finally talking about economic events that hurt rich people -- that in fact threaten to blow their whole financial house of cards into dust. When it was just jobs that were being lost, when it was just the private and public sector safety net that was being shredded, when the infrastructure that supports our way of life was eroding, when the spreading gap between rich and poor was undermining the notion that we live in a just society, those were all things that could blithely be swept under our carpet faith in free markets, as the media quickly moved on to report the Dow Jones numbers. For a long time now, but especially since the 2001 recession that was compounded and exacerbated by 9/11, the federal government has been stuffing money into rich people's pockets to prop up the illusion that they are the health of the economy. What we're finding is that the rot at the bottom is increasingly hard to cover up with the riot at the top.

Von Hoffman thinks that we're going to be so busy bailing out the rich that there won't be any money for aspiring politicians to fix any problems:

There will be no health insurance for everyone. No long-needed increases in teachers' salaries, no big infrastructure projects, no decent-paying new jobs for those laid-off workers in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and nothing for single-parent (read mothers) households. There is no money. As things stand now we may have to spend hundreds of billions to prevent millions of people from being thrown out of their homes and billions more to prop our crooked, avaricious, heedless and duplicitous financial system so it does not come crashing down on all of us.

It isn't clear to me that these things are either/or, although they will be if it isn't recognized that the finance problems are symptomatic of more serious structural problems: in particular, the growing chasm between rich and poor. The Keynesian money pump is a way of compensating for short-term slumps in demand, but doesn't add to persistent demand unless it increases the wealth of people at the bottom end of the scale. The current vogue for stimulating the economy via tax cuts and low interest rates for the rich has remarkably little effect. The only thing that stands a chance of actually reversing the hollowing out of the US economy that we've witnessed over the last few decades is to start putting not just money but power into the lower classes, to build up the sense of worth that drives long-term demand. The Fed won't be taking the lead there. To do so requires political change. But it wouldn't be unprecedented: that's pretty much what did in fact happen in the New and Fair Deals.

Postscript: In another How the World Works column ("Easy money days are here again?"), Andrew Leonard notes that the net effect of the ultra-low interest rates that Alan Greenspan pushed from 2001 through Bush's 2004 election, against the backdrop of an otherwise stagnant economy, sent Americans off on a spending spree at the cost of accumulating $3 trillion in household debt. Now that interest rates are dropping again, will the same thing happen? Well, starting out $3 trillion deeper in debt makes it that much harder to convert newly available money into consumer demand. We already saw from 2001-04 that the low interest didn't go into new capacity. It mosty went into the pseudo-growth of asset inflation (i.e., the real estate bubble). With debt past any resemblance of sane limits, and assets deflating like crazy, it's hard to see where the money can go -- although I suppose some people will try to use it to pretend nothing disastrous is happening. Last thing anyone would think of doing with it would be to spend it on poor people, helping them live a little better and becoming more productive.

Hillel Cohen: Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration With Zionism, 1917-1948 (2008, University of California Press)

The Nation (Mar. 24, 2008), Neve Gordon has a long review of Cohen's book. Gordon introduces the subject by drawing on examples of Israel's targeted assassination program which has to date killed over 400 Palestinians. The following quotes are from Gordon's review.

(p. 24):

Army of Shadows chronicles a tragic chapter in the people's history of Palestine, one that many Arab scholars have refrained from writing because it contradicts the dominant ethos of Palestinian national unity. Zionists have abstained from recording it as well because it undermines their claim that the Palestinians were able to unify and fight against the establishment of a Jewish state after the UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947. Cohen reveals that many Palestinians signed pacts with the Zionists during the 1948 war and that some even fought with the Jews against the Arab armies.

Collaboration is a very thorny issue, primarily because of its corrosive blend of betrayal, exploitation and deceit, so it's not surprising that Army of Shadows created a stir when the Hebrew edition was published in 2004. Both liberal Jews and Palestinians found the book difficult to digest because each group found its side portrayed in unflattering terms. Many Jewish readers were upset by Cohen's revelation that the prestate Zionist intelligence agency, Shai, and the Jewish Agency's Arab bureau exploited almost every honest Jewish and Palestinian relationship to advance narrow Zionist interests. There were, Cohen notes, many Jews who desired only friendship or good business relations with Palestinians but were eventually identified by the Shai, which used them to collect information and enlist Palestinian collaborators. The Jewish Agency even helped establish and finance Neighborly Relations Committees, which initiated mutual visits and Jewish-Palestinian projects, ranging from pest control to the sending of joint petitions to the Mandatory government. The rationale for the creation of these committees was not only to enhance coexistence but also to recruit informers.

Ezra Danin, head of the Shai's Arab department from 1940 to 1948, identified twenty-five occupations and institutions in which Jews and Palestinians mixed company, among them trucking, shipping, train and telecommunications systems, journalism, Jewish-Arab municipalities, prisons and the offices of the British Administration. He proposed that the Jews in these walks of life enlist Arab collaborators, adding that "such activity should be similar to the way the Nazis worked in Denmark, Norway, and Holland -- touching on every area of life." Cohen explains that this approach was different from that of the British intelligence, which allowed only political and military organizations and subversive bodies to be targeted as pools for potential informers. This revelation, besides shedding light on some of the ruthless tactics employed by the intelligence agencies, helps explain why, from Zionism's very beginnings, it was almost impossible for many Jews to develop loyal relationships with indigenous Palestinians.

Army of Shadows also disturbed Palestinian readers because it reveals for the first time the extent of Palestinian collaboration with the Jews during the Mandate period and the ensuing 1948 war. Some Palestinians were opportunists who collaborated with the Zionists to make money or advance their careers -- these were primarily land brokers and people seeking administrative jobs. Others were mukhtars [village leaders] who wished to advance their regional or village interests or, in cases of internal competition, to solidify their leadership with the Zionists. Still others can be characterized as Palestinian patriots who simply disagreed with the dominant national leadership. Finally, there were those who had Jewish friends and did not view Zionist immigration as a catastrophe. The problem, though, as Cohen points out, is that regardless of the motivation, collaboration contributed to the fragmentation of Palestinian society at a time when its very fate was being determined.

(p. 26):

Cohen documents numerous cases of Palestinians refusing to attack Jews. This unwillingness to do battle pervaded the country. In December 1947, Cohen writes, "the inhabitants of Tulkarm refused to attack Jewish towns to their west, to the chagrin of the local Holy Jihad commander, Hasan Salameh. Sources in Ramallah reported at the same time that many were refusing to enlist, and reports from Beit Jibrin indicated that 'Abd al-Rahman al-'Azzi," the head of a very influential family, "was doing all he could to keep his region quiet. The villagers of the Bani-Hassan nahiya southwest of Jerusalem decided not to carry out military actions within their territory, and the people of al-Mahila refused to request from 'Abd al-Qader al-Husseini to attack the Jewish neighborhoods of Mekor Hayyim and Bayyit va-Gan." In these places as well as in many others, fear of the Jewish forces was the source of reluctance; and in still others it was friendship that had survived many years of national strife. "Palestinian Arab interest in fighting the Jews seems not to have been very high," Cohen concludes.

The review also discusses a second, still untranslated, book by Cohen called Aravim Tovim (Good Arabs), which carries the stories of Palestinian collaborators into the 1948-67 period. As Gordon points out, Israeli use of collaborators continues to the present day. Gordon concludes with an example (p. 28):

Today a request to exit the Gaza Strip to receive medical treatment, visit a dying relative or study in the West Bank or abroad is often contingent upon one's willingness to collaborate. In early January a number of patients were referred from Gaza -- where they could not receive medical treatment -- to Maqassed Hospital in East Jerusalem, and received permits to leave the region. At the border, though, they were interrogated by Israeli security service officers, who demanded that they become collaborators. According to Hadas Ziv of Physicians for Human Rights, Israel, those patients who refused had their travel permits annulled and were sent back home. While these patients managed to resist the temptation to collaborate, despite their medical ills, others do not. The persistence of collaboration is a result of not only the historical processes Cohen eloquently describes but also the harsh conditions under which Palestinians currently live.

Every occupation has depended on collaborators, and every insurgency has found it necessary to dissuade collaboration, often with violence against their own people. William Polk's Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, From the American Revolution to Iraq, has numerous examples (including a chapter on Palestine). In the worst cases, the struggle between insurgents and collaborators reaches the proportions of a civil war -- Iraq is one such case. But even where the violence level is relatively mild, collaboration leads to an immense psychic rift within a people -- France under Nazi Germany and its Vichy client state is a good example where the resistance was never as strong as one liked to remember, in large part because the taint of collaboration never faded away.

One thing that Bush et al. certainly did not think of when they invaded Iraq was what would ultimately happen to the thousands of Iraqis they were able to recruit to try to secure the occupation. They really needn't have thought back any further than Vietnam. Tens (or maybe hundreds) of thousands of Vietnamese who had foolishly allied themselves with the US occupation sought refuge here after the war. Thus far the US has allowed no more than a few dozens of the millions of displaced Iraqis to immigrate here, but as the US presence ends, the moral pressure to provide sanctuary will only increase. Will our kneejerk nativists welcome those Iraqis with the flowers Bush expected awaited the Americans in Baghdad?

Postscript: I was wrong about Polk having a chapter on Palestine. The lineup: America (vs. England), Spain (vs. Napoleon), Philippines (vs. US), Ireland (vs. England), Yugoslavia (vs. Nazi Germany), Greece (vs. Nazi Germany, England, US), Kenya (vs. England), Algeria (vs. France), Vietnam (vs. France, US), Afghanistan (vs. England, Soviet Union), and Iraq.

There was a gathering in a park here in Wichita last Saturday to mark the 5th anniversary of the Bush invasion of Iraq. Laura Tillem gave a short speech, and this is what she said:

Let's talk about why getting out soon is better for the Iraqis.

Let's be clear: what the US as represented by the Bush administration does in Iraq has not been and will not be concerned with the interests of Iraqi people. They are interested in having a power base in Iraq with which to exercise power over the entire Middle East. Refusing to leave now that we have sowed destruction has nothing to do with stopping a civil war (in fact we are arming the Sunnis so when we do have to leave the civil war will be more deadly). Instead it is because they do not want to give up the idea of a pliant government there and they do not want to admit what the whole world knows: the US cannot just impose its will on another people.

But let's talk about this idea that staying can help fix Iraq. That is, fix what we have broken. As though it was not us that destroyed the institutions that ran Iraq and replaced them with nothing but Halliburton boondoggles.

Staying in Iraq means, at best, the level of violence in spring 2005. This means that in a nation that used to have the highest educational levels in the Middle East, it is now and will be mostly i