Untitled Document

01 March 2007

Lions of Spring

I hope to feel the warming breeze of Spring soon, wafting up from the Gulf across Texas and Louisiana and across the upper South. The President is headed down there today, to say “Howdy!” to the people in New Orleans and ask how they are doing. It is the deadline for filing claims with the Corps of Engineers for damages caused by the failed levees.

I'm sure it is just a coincidence and not some subtle message. I assume the trip will wind up in Crawford, Texas, for some Presidential down-time.

It is a new month in a still-new year, and even if it comes in as a Lion, it will exit as a lamb. O, that it would be the same overseas. The big cats are roaring in the dark, and the portents are uncertain.

The sound at is why I have so rapt in examining the entrails of the past. It is a comfort to deal with subtle nuance revealed, old mistakes that have lost some of their sting, and the stirring recollection of some ancient evils vanquished. Sometimes the Texas Ranger arrives with bold stride: “One riot, one Ranger,” is one of the mottos, since bravado is sometimes a critical component of a subtle plan.

Not always, though, and a one-note campaign of bravado alone will simply get the Ranger killed. It offends my delicate sensibilities.

There is so much new evil abroad, swirling around us. It is not completely opaque. There are whispers of plots right here in New York. Surveillance missions, they say, run out of the UN embassies in the First City of diplomacy. It is enough to make me a little uneasy, though that will not surprise you. It just feels a little thin here, what with the President having sent the Army and Marines to war without us.

My fascination with the birth of the nuclear age is mirrored by the fierce desire for others to join that once-exclusive club. This week President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran made an astonishing announcement, stating that “Iran has no brake and no reverse gear in its nuclear program.”

Goodness, I thought. That must be a mistranslation from the Farsi.

The President was a young lion once, as was I. Persians are a ruthless enough people, by history, but also known for their subtlety in the art of the bargain. I'm sure no one would boast of being at the controls of a locomotive hurtling into a station without the means to stop.

Think of the consequences, the engine slamming into the platform, cars snaking forward, jumping the tracks and crumbling like mad aluminum accordions into the waiting room of the station, the snack bar and out into the sea of waiting taxis.

That would be crazy, right?

I will offer that the President is committed to riding the pony he brought to the show, but he must be looking over his shoulder. I have an ambivalent relationship with the Islamic Republic. I admire the Persian culture, though radicals of all stripes tire me easily. Iran is not the monolith that is depicted on cable news.

Persians are only the majority in that country, and the ruthless suppression of the Sunni sect, of which there are a million in Tehran alone must have someone in the locomotive a little nervous. Not to mention the brutal scourging of the Bahais and Christians and Jews and Zoroastrians.

Particularly the Bahais, whose doctrine is so reasonable that it must be blasphemy.

I think there is a case to be made to let the engineer of the locomotive simmer a while in the heat of the firebox behind him, which is not at all the same thing as not chatting with him in a forthright manner. Perhaps it would be useful for him to cut down a little on the caffeine, though that might be a good approach for all concerned.

He definitely should stop bankrolling those mindless acts of murder. It really is quite intolerable, and my sympathies go out to the policymakers who are responsible for the future, since they have squandered the truth so recklessly in the past. Now that a little cold assessment might be useful, as the new DNI Mike McConnell did in the Senate yesterday.

It was quite refreshing to see him on the television, sincere, measured and accurate. It was like a declaration of independence from the spin machine that has hummed along in the background since we decided to go to war.

It is almost as though our own President has decided to see if there are other controls on his own locomotive to try, in addition to the accelerator. He has dispatched Mr. Cheney almost to the front lines, to chivvy President Musharrif, and bolster his allies across the Pacific.

I believe that the people he has recently appointed to positions of authority recognize that the hydra has many heads, and it will require a certain subtlety to deal with it. An oriental subtlety, the nature of which only some Persians have forgotten, and which even some Texans, regrettably few, understand.

Where is Bobby Ray Inman when you need him, you ask? The man who was the first intelligence officer to reach four stars, the deputy and acting director of CIA at a dangerous time was such a man. He was the most subtle of them all, and as I look around the capital these days I can see his distant hand, all the way from the hill country of Austin.

He has sent his people to see if they can help. There is more than one riot in progress, after all, and at least a few Rangers will be required to deal with the lions.