If you want to follow the General Petraeus and Crocker testimony the New York Times, the Washington Post and The Politico are all live blogging it. You can also read Petraeus and Crokcer’s opening statements in full here. Update: Britain and America also has coverage that is well worth reading.
William Hague has just given a non-committal response to the “mixed results” of the American troop surge. I’d rather have liked him to say something like this (adapted from the Giuliani article I mentioned earlier) In Vietnam, just as in Iraq today, America fought a war with the wrong strategy for several years. And then, as now, they corrected course and began to show real progress. Many historians today believe that by about 1972 the South Vietnamese had succeeded in defeating the Vietcong insurgency… But America then withdrew its support, allowing the communist North to conquer the South. The consequences were dire, and not only in Vietnam: numerous deaths in
There’s another bin Laden video coming out soon. This time, bin Laden will introduce the testimony of one of the 9/11 suicide bombers. The appearance of a second video is surprising as it is hard to see why after three years off screen bin Laden is making two appearances in a week. One would have thought that the first video reminding everyone that bin Laden is still out there as the anniversary of 9/11 approached would have served their purpose. It also seems odds that they have sat on this video for so long. One would have expected them to include it with the testimony of some of the other
The next few days will be a big test of whether the political class on both sides of the Atlantic can think about the reality of Iraq. Too often, the war is debated as if it is 2003 and we can still choose whether or not to invade. As this sobering George Packer essay in the New Yorker makes clear there are now no simple or easy solutions to the Iraq crisis. As he puts it, “We might want to be rid of Iraq, but Iraq won’t let it happen.” Given the situation on the ground today, the best course of action is to keep on with the surge. The
I have to admit: last week was a bad one to take off. Plenty happened in Britain, which I’m digesting now (what was Mercer playing at?). But for what it’s worth, here are a few observations from my week in New York… 1. Rudy Giuliani’s campaign is more advanced and heavyweight then is appreciated this side of the pond. His foreign policy is the most convincing explanation on world affairs I have read so far. Hillary is bereft of new ideas: Team Giuliani is buzzing with them. Everyone I spoke to expects the presidential race to be a battle between these two. 2. New York will this year have lowest murder rate
Last week the RSA hosted ‘The Great Digital Seduction’, a lively event that gave rise to a gripping and important debate. On one side was Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, railing against what he called the cacophony of Web 2.0 and the calamitous effects of user-generated content on our culture. Keen vigorously bemoaned the decline of the old cultural gatekeepers, the emergence of ‘digital narcissism’ and the resulting proliferation of inane and banal content on the web. Tim Montgomerie, editor of ConservativeHome and BritainAndAmerica.com, gave a robust defence of new media. He pointed out that old media (of which Keen has a somewhat romantic view) has
General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker’s testimony to Congress will be crucial in shaping future US strategy in Iraq. As a new poll reveals, Petraeus will be delivering his report against considerable public scepticism: 53% expect the report to exaggerate the extent of progress in Iraq. Petraeus is also, as the Washington Post details, having to resist those in the Pentagon who want a rapid draw down of US forces to restore strategic flexibility against Iran. There is, though, real progress in Iraq for Petraeus to report. Michael Gordon reports in the New York Times that civilian deaths have roughly halved since 2006, the number of car bombings in Baghdad has returned
“I wish they would recalibrate. The south is a growing problem. It’s the next big problem to be faced. The British force in the south could do a great deal of good. We need a surge in the south.” So, Lindsey Graham, a Republican Senator from South Carolina, tells the Sunday Telegraph. This is a significant development as Graham is John McCain’s chief lieutenant and one of the pro-surge Senators who are critical White House allies on Iraq. Graham’s voice carries special weight as he has recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq as a reservist. Interestingly enough, the Sunday Telegraph also reports that General Petraeus will answer questions on
‘So. Jeremy. Why do you want to learn about eating seaweed?’ said Ingrid as we trooped down the leafy farm track to the beach. Ingrid, our leader for the day, was a spry woman in her early fifties wearing a hand-stitched buckskin Hiawatha tunic and possibly little else. She was going to show us how to identify, harvest, prepare and cook a four-course seaweed ‘feast’ over a driftwood fire. I was preparing myself for the collapse of civilisation, I told her. ‘When we’re all eating each other,’ I said, ‘I’m hoping that a side dish of seaweed will vary my diet a bit.’ A dozen of us had responded to
Monday V. exciting. Was in charge of note-taking and smoothies at our Emergency Treachery-Management Meeting. We couldn’t decide what to do about Mr Mercer. Jed argued for something v unpleasant-sounding, which would involve us digging for a lot of complicated information, and would take ages. Was a bit worried as have dressage trials with Sesame tonight. Thankfully Mrs Spelperson persuaded everyone we had to lovebomb ‘dear old Paddy’, or he would go ‘all the way over’. It is very confusing: Mr Mercer was supposed to be much too right-wing for us when we sacked him for telling the truth about the army, and now he is making friends with Mr
The game season is upon us, and game is rather shaming. We have so much of it in Britain but we don’t cook it very adventurously. This is particularly true of game birds like partridge, quail and wild duck — wonderful birds which deserve better than over-roasting and gooey fruit sauces. Most of the game I buy in London is farm-raised and tastes tame. Like salmon, a mallard or partridge needs the great outdoors. But I suspect most cooks are, like me, bad at Nature, and shrink from the great outdoors. (Nature seems best when observed from a terrace, glass of wine in hand.) To treat game well requires at
Theodore Dalrymple’s cover story about our sentimental and brutal society (‘Too many teardrops’, 1 September) has given me an idea. Our thuggish society Sir: Theodore Dalrymple’s cover story about our sentimental and brutal society (‘Too many teardrops’, 1 September) has given me an idea. In order to reduce the impact of the British disease of vulgarity and rudeness, the principle of offsetting could be extended beyond carbon pollution. I concede that a donation to the society of polite gentlefolk would not necessarily solve the problem, but it would help and it would remind us that incivility is not morally neutral. The offset system could also be applied to all forms
On a beautiful, crisp Saturday morning on the first of the month I flew from Gstaad to the château de Dampierre, the duc de Luynes’s seat southwest of Paris. My old friend Jean-Claude Sauer was getting hitched for the fifth time, to a wonderful girl by the name of Brigitte — incidentally, the fifth Brigitte he has married in his long and colourful life. (He obviously loves the name although he insists it’s a coincidence.) Jean-Claude lives in a charming house on the estate, now that he has left Paris Match after 40 years of covering wars and women for the French weekly. He and I go back to the
Q. I am shortly going to stay in a glamorous venue in Tuscany whose name I cannot reveal here as it would look like vulgar boasting. I have not been there before, and am extremely worried about the layout of the lavatories. Due to having had an extremely strict English nanny who would not let me, aged five or six, ‘spend a penny’ in the night — I was sometimes reduced to using a wastepaper basket — I suffer from abnormal anxiety about having to pee when away from home. I was recently a guest at a bohemian house party in the Isle of Wight. My first night there I
English-speakers working in Russia generally go through a stage where they jokingly refer to a restaurant as a pectopah. The joke consists in pronouncing the cyrillic letters as if they were Roman. I was surprised to discover that the Germans fighting in Russia in the second world war made a joke on the same lines with the Russian for a barn (in which soldiers might well be billeted), calling it a capau (whereas the Russian would be transliterated saraj). This I discovered from a new book on slang from the war called Fubar by Gordon L. Rottman (Osprey, £9.99). Unusually, in addition to two sections on British Commonwealth and American
During this summer of catastrophic floods, a good news story washed up on one or two newspaper sports desks. Ben Kay and Martin Corry, two of England’s most experienced forwards who had been preparing for the Rugby World Cup at the appropriately named city of Bath, drove home through Gloucestershire when they encountered drivers in trouble on roads that had turned to inland waterways. Our heroes waded in to help rescue the drivers, winning the admiration of locals in one of the heartlands of the English game. It was a selfless act in the middle of what has been a largely miserable summer of sport in these wet islands. Apart
A lifetime’s ambition is fulfilled as I get to hear and see Wagner in Bayreuth… Bayreuth A lifetime’s ambition is fulfilled as I get to hear and see Wagner in Bayreuth. After 1945 it was touch and go whether enough support could be found to get the Bayreuth Festspielhaus back on its feet for the month-long festival of Wagner operas. It was the German trade unions who stepped in to support the reopening of the festival despite Bayreuth’s Nazi connections. As a result, 4,000 tickets at £50 a head are still reserved for trade unionists and German labour friends get me a ticket for the Die Meistersinger. As we take
The morning after England’s Rugby World Cup triumph over Australia four years ago I walked down my local high street and saw two boys doing something which deeply disturbed me. Knock knock. Who’s there? Jonny. Jonny who? The morning after England’s Rugby World Cup triumph over Australia four years ago I walked down my local high street and saw two boys doing something which deeply disturbed me. I knew these kids and had always thought them normal, well-adjusted, cheerful youngsters. And now, here they were, in the street, throwing an oval ball to one another. Running and throwing an oval ball to one another. Never seen them do that before.
Rugby players come in all shapes and sizes, even if the small ones are now big, strapping and muscle-bound, but when it comes to characters most are only two-dimensional at best. Jonny Wilkinson is the nearest thing the game has to a Beckham-style icon. He is wonderfully talented, admirably dedicated, but also somewhat dull. It is difficult to warm to a man who takes several hours out of his Christmas Day to practise goal-kicking. If you prefer your rugby heroes with a dash of showbiz, a depth of character and a bit of devil, then you must have been heartened to see Lawrence Dallaglio’s name in England’s squad of 30
Q. My son is a member of a rugby team at his university. They are a lovely bunch of chaps during daylight hours but some sort of group hysteria seems to take hold during post-match victory celebrations and they behave more like cavemen than gentlemen. They obviously need the civilising influence of female company in the form of girlfriends — but how to find them? Although there are many suitable single girls in our circle, the four we took to a recent game in the hope of doing a spot of match-making were put off by the beer-fuelled boorishness in the pub afterwards. What do you suggest, Mary? V.H.R., Devizes,