Farce

My paper (“The Buildup to the Iraq War as Farce”) for the ISAC/ISSS conference in Providence is complete.

Based on the literature I reviewed in the section, here's my summary paragraph about farce:

A farce is a fast-paced and outrageous story featuring characters that freely employ hyperbole and make nonsensical claims about their situation. Protagonists and antagonists can often be described as reckless fools or devious knaves, though the regular instances of mistaken identity may blur the distinction for members of the audience. Frequently, the threat of physical violence or aggression looms over the story.

Hopefully, I've demonstrated that the buildup to the Iraq war can readily be viewed as farce.

The paper also gives some attention to critic Eric Bentley's "comic catharsis" thesis. Here's an old (March 10, 1961) story from the Harvard Crimson, published after a Bentley campus forum:

Bentley pointed out that by picturing an absurd situation, farce fulfills repressed wishes, although in disguise. "The contrast is between tone and context: the actor threatens murder in a playful tone, but the murderous wishes are true. Farce is a dialogue between aggressiveness and flippancy."

Farce cannot function without this aggressiveness. Bentley stated. He agreed with Freud that innocent jokes do not make us laugh. "We want satire, obscenity, and attack."

Obviously, the buildup to the Iraq war seemed pretty serious at the time, but I think much can be revealed and learned by reading it as farce. I'll try to have a link to the paper next week.

Update: I put a copy on Google Docs.


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2010 Hardy House champs

I often blog about my Hardy House fantasy baseball auction/draft results in the spring of each year, but I've never blogged about the end-of-season results. This is largely because the Bolts From the Blue haven't won the league championship since 1998.

Until 2010, that is.

After week 17 (of 26 weeks in a season), the team's prospects looked pretty dismal in this 12 team fantasy American League. The league uses the ordinary 8 statistics and my team was 20.5 points behind the first place Trapper Keepers (managed by two very smart guys). That was good for second place, but TK appeared to be runaway winners and was genuinely great from top-to-bottom. TK had the best list of retained players heading into the auction and were widely expected to win the league. They had been in first place for many weeks and several owners feared the team had enough retainable talent to repeat in 2011.

Worse, that week 17, my team lost OF Scott Podsednik to the National League when the KC Royals traded him. Also, my top closer, Jon Rauch, was relegated to setup relief when the Minnesota Twins obtained Matt Capps at the end of July. As it happens, I was already next-to-last in saves and 7th in steals and had traded away some power hitters to acquire those guys to help fix the problem. Those were my team's worst categories, though the Bolts were also just 6th in batting average and tied for 6th/7th in pitching wins. My second closer, CLE P Kerry Woods, was also traded to the Yankees that week. It was a disaster.

Thanks to a good draft and a hot start, my team seemed to have plenty of RBI and home runs and because of LAA P Jered Weaver and SEA P "King" Felix Hernandez was doing very well in "ratio" (walks plus hits divided by innings pitched, or WHIP) and ERA. 42 of my 63.5 points were in those four categories.

Years of not being able to win had me feeling frustrated again, but a very careful study of the statistics after the Podsednik and Rauch deals made me wonder if I might be able to implement a mid-year "Sweeney plan," "a popular strategy where you punt the two power categories (HR/RBI) and try to win the remaining six. You buy a few speedsters who'll hit for good averages and pretty much blow the rest on buying yourself a pitching staff."

I already had a lot of points in HR/RBI and a solid base of starting pitching. What if I traded all my cheap prospects for high average "speedsters" and some relievers who garner saves?

It seemed like a possible pathway to victory. My spreadsheet showed that it could work.

The Hardy House League is a "keeper" league, which means that owner-managers can retain players for an additional season or two. Inexpensive potential "keepers" are highly valued by teams far out of the running for the current season title. Given that my team was in second place and far behind the leaders, I figured it might be a buyer's market.

Plus, that weekend, one team near the bottom of the standings sent a very pricey 1B Miguel Cabrera (DET), OF Nelson Cruz (TEX) (2011 free agent) and P Rafael Soriano (TB) ($36 in 2011) to the third place team (not far behind the Bolts) in exchange for OF Josh Hamilton (TEX), who would be $26 in 2011 and $30 in 2012.

That deal seemed to confirm that the market would be soft. Hamilton is MVP material, but it was a load of talent traded for maybe a few dollars savings at next year's auction. Who pays more than $30 for a player who doesn't steal bases?

On the morning of August 2, I made the following trades (2011/2012 prices in parenthesis):

1. Sent KC 3B Alex Gordon ($13/$16), LAA P Joel Piniero ($5/$7), TB P Grant Balfour ($3/$5) and DET P Daniel Schlereth ($5/$7) for TB OF Carl Crawford, CWS 3B Dayan Viciedo, NYY P CC Sabathia, and CWS P Matt Thornton. All the guys I acquired are very expensive to retain or 2011 free agents. Viciedo was basically a 3B throw-in until I could fix my positional needs -- but even he was very pricey (his owner, a Sox fan, paid over $30 for him in free agent cash).

2. Sent TB C John Jaso ($3/$5) and CLE OF Trever Crowe ($7/$9) for CWS P Bobby Jenks and SEA OF Ichiro Suzuki, two more pricey guys.

3. Sent CLE SS Jason Donald ($3/$5), TOR P Brett Cecil ($4/$6), and MIN P Jon Rauch ($5) for NYY 2B Robinson Cano, BOS P Jonathan Papelbon and TEX C Taylor Teagarden ($7). Cano and Papelbon have very high salaries.

That gave me two new closers and two of the league's top basestealers that also hit for high average. The trades also brought a top hitting 2B and a third ace starter to go with my top two of Weaver and Hernandez.

I also pressured some teams into including additional free agent cash as part of the deals. Why?

The week also brought some new talent into the league thanks to real baseball deadline trades. Thus, I spent $30 of my newly bolstered free agent cash for LAA P Dan Haren. Four aces? Haren has pitched like an ace in the past, but was having a difficult 2010 in Arizona. I tried to buy Capps, but someone with more resources bought him.

Rather than spending on other marginal new NL talent (mostly power), I also picked up rookie outfielders Ryan Kalish (BOS) and Mitch Moreland (TEX). Indeed, part of my strategy was now built around picking up young free agent talent for relatively low prices and then peddling those very same players in trade to fill needs on the fly.

The first place team responded the following week with a trade or two that potentially undermined some of what I accomplished.

Thus, on August 16, I made two more deals:

4. Traded SEA P Brandon League ($5) for LAA P Brian Fuentes. Unfortunately, Fuentes was almost immediately traded by LA to the Twins to become a setup reliever. League ended the season with a handful of saves versus 1 for Fuentes. This trade was a bust for me and it was clear almost immediately. The owner with Capps and NYY P Mariano Rivera was not available that morning. Sigh.

5. Traded TB 1B Dan Johnson ($3/$5) and BOS IF Jed Lowrie ($3/$5) for SEA IF Chone Figgins. Johnson and Lowrie ended up hitting a lot of September homers, but Figgins was another basestealer with a history of good batting average. This was a gamble since he was not hitting for average in 2010.

By now, Bobby Jenks was injured and it was clear I needed another closer. Plus, wins was a tight category. So, on August 23, I made these trades:

6. Traded BOS OF Ryan Kalish ($15/$18) for MIN P Capps.

7. Traded TEX 1B/OF Mitch Moreland ($13/$16) for BOS P Jon Lester. The other team really wanted Moreland and offered a fifth ace. How could I refuse now?

Our league allows owners to add a player for September and my pickings were slim. Thus, on August 30

8. Traded NYY P Kerry Wood ($17/$20) for a very pricey NYY 1B Lance Berkman. Wood has an outside shot of serving as a closer in 2011, while Berkman was definitely going to be in the auction pool at his price.

By now, the Bolts were gathering steam with steals, improving average, wins and some saves. However, a few teams were starting to mount challenges in HR/RBI. Thanks to the Jenks injuries and Fuentes trade, the saves were not increasing fast enough.

The Hardy House League doesn't have a trade deadline!

September 20, week 25. The Bolts finished week 24 in first place! TK kept making more trades (the third place team sent them Cabrera, Cruz and Soriano) and the competition for available talent was now quite fierce. TK was grabbing relief pitchers they didn't need just to keep the Bolts from garnering more saves. They also traded for a bunch of two-start pitchers to maximize their chance of pulling ahead of the Bolts in wins:

9. Traded TEX C Teagarden ($7) for BAL C Matt Wieters. I decided not to acquire more starters and stuck with my five aces, plus CLE P Carlos Carrasco, obtained as a September free agent.

September 27, week 26. Every save, homer, win and steal was potentially important for a point or two in a tight contest:

10. Traded LAA Hideki Matsui ($14/$17) and LAA P Fuentes for CLE OF Shin-Soo Choo and DET P Jose Valverde who was supposed to be healthy at long last (he was available for trade for weeks).

And that was barely enough.

In the end, the Bolts finished with 83.5 points and TK had 81.5 (down from 84 on August 2). The Bolts concluded the season with 7 of 13 original offensive players, but only 3 of 10 pitchers. One of those 3 was reserved for the stretch run to make room for Carrasco. The Bolts won batting average, ERA, WHIP, tied for 2nd in wins, and finished 3rd in HR and RBI. Steals (4th) and saves (5th) didn't go quite as planned, but still were much improved over the July totals.

Whew.

Of course, the 2011 keeper list looks kind of thin....Weaver, TOR OF Vernon Wells, TB P Joaquin Benoit, maybe OAK P Henry Rodriguez, and likely one or two very pricey stars.


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Tag word cloud

I removed the names John and Robert because they were distorting the image:

Read the Duck

Virtually all of my recent blogging has been posted at Duck of Minerva:

Today, September 30, I posted Flashback: Afghanistan "Mission Accomplished." The post recalls something goofy Donald Rumsfeld said in May 2003.

Tuesday, September 28: Another war on terror outrage: asylum denied. Read about yet another way the U.S. has been screwing Iraqi civilians.

Thursday, September 16: The Latest in Mole Whacking. The post is about proposed escalation of the "war on terror" -- in Yemen.

Monday, September 6: "Debate Day." I reminisce about how Labor Day was traditionally an important work day for the University of Kansas debate team. The post takes note of recent articles and books by other former debaters.

Wednesday, September 1: "Preemption News." The Pentagon is gearing up to launch "preemptive" wars against potential cyber-attackers.


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Rand Paul Update: Hypocrisy 101

Someone put a Rand Paul flyer on the billboard next to my office. When I read through it quickly yesterday, I noticed something odd that is apparently a point that he has been emphasizing in his latest ads. Fox News:

Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Rand Paul's latest ad is selling him as a Washington outsider. In a new 30-second commercial, the Bowling Green eye surgeon declares he's a "physician, not a career politician."

On his webpage, Paul takes this further, calling for term limits for "career politicians":

Long term incumbency leads to politicians who seem to care more about what is best for their career than what is best for their country.

These are kind of strange claims from someone known primarily as the son of a long-time politician, Ron Paul.

The elder Dr. Paul, Rand's father, has served in the U.S. Congress representing District 14 in Texas continuously since 1996. However, he has been in the House of Representatives much longer as Project Vote Smart clarifies:

Representative, United States House of Representatives, District 22, 1976-1977, 1979-1985

Ron Paul has been in the House for 22 years.

Additionally, Paul lost election for that House seat in 1974 and 1976, which is why he didn't serve consecutively in the period from 1975 to 1985. He also ran for the U.S. Senate and lost in 1984 and ran for President unsuccessfully in 1988 as a Libertarian.

Even if we posit that Paul wasn't a politician from 1989 through 1996, that still means about 30 years of politics as a career choice.

So, would Rand want Ron booted out of Washington?

University of Virginia Political Scientist Larry Sabato explains that Rand definitely benefits from his father's family business:

“As we know from almost every state, having a family member in politics can be very helpful. You gain contacts, experience, you understand what the job is all about, campaigning. It’s like the family business,” Sabato said. “When he ran for president, Ron Paul was very popular with a segment of students. They are fiercely anti establishment and perfectly happy to accept Rand Paul.”

That same Miami Herald story notes that the family connection "helped the political newcomer net a big boost in contributions - in part by relying heavily on his dad's donor list."

Always follow the money.

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Joydeep Sarkar, RIP

I never met Joydeep Sarkar face-to-face, but we've exchanged email for more than a decade as part of the Original Bitnet Fantasy Baseball League.

Very sadly, NY Streetsblog reports that Joydeep died in an auto accident earlier this week:

29-year-old Joydeep Sarkar was hit and killed yesterday at 2:22 a.m. on the northbound side of the FDR Drive, near 72nd Street, according to the NYPD. No criminality is suspected, despite a WPIX report that the crash was a hit-and-run.

Back in March, many of the 24 team owners were discussing the history of the league and Joydeep posted this to the rest of us:

I can't believe I've been with this league for so long...I still remember searching the internet for fantasy baseball leagues and somehow randomly stumbling on Jim's OBFLB page with all the history and all-time records. E-mailed Jim then to put my name in the hat as an AGM. If my memory serves me right, I came on sometime during high school as an AGM for the Fevers. I think I stayed an AGM for almost 2 years before taking over the team in '98a.

Was definitely the youngest owner at that point at 18. Now I'm 29...been with you all through some of high school & than all of college, post-baccalaureate, medical school and now as an emergency medicine resident. My only regret is not meeting any of you in person. Jim & I have tried to hook up for Yankee games from time to time but my schedule's always been insane. Tried to hook up with Burke on my trips to Boston to visit my nephews but I see them so infrequently that I never find any time to separate from them. it's been a blast though.

And I third the glad to see Randall's back sentiment! I remember trying to scrounge up money in the early days to buy Baseball Weeklies just so I could do all the weekly stats for the team. LOL, can't imagine what my parents would think if this all happened in this day and age. "You're what?! Playing fantasy baseball with 30 year olds. Why do you keep coming home late? Why are you being so quiet these days? I'm calling the police!"

AGM means assistant general manager.

Joydeep Sarkar's death is a great loss. I've been staggering around all day.


Not that it matters, particularly, but Joydeep was very good at fantasy baseball. His team (Bronx Bombers) won the league championship in 2004B (we play two half seasons per year) and finished second in 1999A, 2001A, 2002B, 2003A, 2009A, and 2009B.

As of today, with the final regular season week of 2010B ending on Sunday, his team has a shot of making the playoffs as the wild card team.


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Save the whales?

In the July/August 2010 Washington Monthly, Phillip Longman makes a case for moving freight by ship rather than truck. Put simply, he writes that "we’ll use less oil, emit less carbon, [and] cut highway traffic."

Longman writes that less than 5% of U.S. freight moves by ship, but significant increases would have meaningful consequences:

If only 30 percent of the freight that currently goes by truck went by barge instead, it would result in a reduction in diesel fuel consumption of roughly 4.7 billion gallons. This is equivalent to conserving more than 6 percent of the total end-use energy consumed by U.S. households, including heating, cooling, and lighting.

Later, Longman writes that "10 percent of U.S. gross domestic product [is] involved in freight logistics."

While Longman writes of using all sorts of domestic waterways, including inland lakes and rivers, many of the examples he employs involve coastal and blue water transportation.

I wonder if Longman saw the September issue of the Atlantic Monthly? In the September 2010 issue, Melissa Gaskill had a short piece noting that whales are threatened by the type of ocean traffic Longman promotes:

When a container ship strikes a 60-ton right whale, no one on board usually notices. The whale, however, may die from massive trauma, hemorrhage, and broken bones. Ship propellers slice whales up “like a loaf of bread,” says Michael Moore of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

North Atlantic right whales—one of the world’s most endangered species, with only about 400 living in the wild—are particularly vulnerable. They feed, breed, and migrate along the Eastern Seaboard, where, as the map at right shows, they encounter increasingly heavy ship traffic.

...According to the New England Aquarium, ship strikes and fishing-gear entanglement until recently were killing the whales faster than they could reproduce.

Gaskill does point out that reducing vessel speed saves whales, though the shipping industry is opposed.

This is one of those cases where one environmental value seems to conflict with another. I've often argued in class, without hard evidence, that environmental organizations believe that "poster animals" like whales help attract attention and resources that make their other missions possible. This is an interesting test of the implications, I suppose.


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Top 10 List: "Most Intellectual" College Environments

As my oldest daughter continues to think about her college choices, I'll point readers to Unigo's top 10 list of the "most intellectual" campus environments:

Brown
Carlton
Grinnell
Haverford
Macalester
Pomona
Reed
Swarthmore
University of Chicago
Wesleyan

She visited 5 of those 10 and thought seriously about looking at 2 others. Several were rejected primarily because of geographical preferences.

Meanwhile, 3 of these 10 "new Ivies" are also still under consideration:

Carnegie Mellon
Duke
Johns Hopkins
NYU
Northwestern
Tufts
Virginia
Washington (St. Louis)
Wellesley
Williams

Unsurprisingly, you'll find no overlap from those two compilations with this list.


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Iraq post-mortem

Combat operations have ended in Iraq and all but 50,000 troops have withdrawn (so long as you don't ask about the private security contractors who remain).

How did the U.S. do? Did "we" win?

Former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) isn't kind in this interview:

Hagel flatly rejects the notion — now conventional wisdom among many Americans — that the war in Iraq has been a success. “Did you see today’s paper?” he asked, holding up a front-page story in the Washington Post that described vast swaths of the country as being plagued by electricity outages.

“Look at the facts: No government, less electricity and people want us out,” Hagel pointed out. “Anyway you measure Iraq today I think you’re pretty hard pressed to find how people are better off than they were before we invaded. I think history is going to be very harsh in its judgment — very, very harsh.

Hagel stills says the Iraq war was the worst foreign policy decision since the Vietnam war and one of the five worst in U.S. history.

Hagel is no fan of nation-building, which is why he also says "I think we’re headed for a similar outcome in Afghanistan if we don’t do some things differently.”

Hat tip: Steve Clemons.

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Ripley; Believe It or Not

I just finished Ripley Under Ground, written by Patricia Highsmith and published in 1970. It's the second novel in a series of five. The first book was creepy, but well-done.

This story was fairly implausible; thus, I read it as a cold war allegory -- published prior to the Pentagon papers (1971) and the Church committee hearings (1975).

Highsmith was simply ahead of her time describing unbelievable tales of American dastardly behavior abroad.

In this book, Ripley, the amoral American-in-residence among Europeans, rides roughshod over the region. His self-interested murders and lies are open secrets among those in his closest circle, even though the public officials he evades cannot nail him for the crimes. While Ripley originally went abroad to seek adventure (and perhaps to provide assistance and earn some cash), he is now a man of leisure living in the shadows off a former victim's inheritance, his own criminal activities, and his European wife's allowance. And his wife knows about many of his past and present misdeeds.


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Coalition of the Unwilling: Afghan edition

Thursday, at Duck of Minerva, I blogged "Coalition of the Unwilling: Final Edition?" The post noted the U.S. withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq and pointed out my many posts here over the years on the disintegration of the Iraq "coalition of the willing."

The post also briefly notes that the Afghan war is becoming increasingly unpopular among the American public. Over 60% of those surveyed by CNN oppose the war. Can the U.S. sustain its participation in an unpopular war? Would it want to do that?

Likewise, European publics have long been unenthusiastic about the war. Earlier this year, the Human Security Report Monitor posted a story with this headline: "Dutch Divided on Afghanistan Mission."

That turned out to be important as this past week the Netherlands broke with the Afghan coalition and withdrew its combat troops. Of the 145,000 foreign troops serving in-country, just under 100K are U.S. Thus, any collapse of the coalition would be significant.


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Conference paper

In the next six weeks or so, I have to write a paper for mid-October delivery at the 2010 annual conference of the International Security Studies Section of ISA and the International Security and Arms Control Section of APSA. That's a mouthful, eh?

As my title and abstract reveal, the paper is part of the ongoing comedy book project. Almost every conference paper I've delivered over the past few years fits into the project.

“The Buildup to the Iraq War as Farce”

Realist international relations theorists such as Jervis, Lebow, Mearsheimer, and Morgenthau commonly describe world politics in terms of tragedy. Dramatically, tragic narratives focus on the downfall or death of an elite character, often caused by the protagonist’s inherent character flaws. The stories are set in the Great Hall or on the battlefield and reveal how little control (despite concerted attempts) the protagonist has over difficult situations and conflict. Despite the obvious parallels with realist views of IR, however, the events of global politics often seem more like farce than tragedy. Farcical narratives often focus on elites, but place the characters in improbable or ludicrous situations that may be exaggerated for comic effect – even though the threat of violent action that would shock the audience may loom over the tale. These are usually frantically paced stories serving to reveal the ridiculous and to critique the characters and the situation. A farce often turns on intentional acts of deception, but does not end in the complete downfall or death of the protagonist.

This paper will explain the buildup to the Iraq war in terms of farce – focusing on the period between August 2002 and March 2003. As is now well-known, the war was premised on evidence and rationales that have been largely undermined by subsequent revelations and events. In retrospect, the claims were improbable and ludicrous. Can international relations scholars recognize a farce while they are observing it?


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Personal notes

In part, I've been silent here because since August 4 my family celebrated two birthdays, made a long weekend trip to Tulsa, and then hosted my wife's mother.

Additionally, I've been unpacking my office -- the entire building got new carpeting and most rooms on my floor received new furniture. All my books and files were packed from the first week of June through late July. While unpacking, I've been recycling lots of really old paper and boxing unwanted books for donations, trade or sale. Anyone want some issues of the American Political Science Review from the 1970s?

Unpacking, I've been listening to a lot of internet radio on my PC, including my Whiskeytown radio station on Pandora. Feel free to check it out.

In any case, don't look for a lot of blogging until Labor Day. I have to complete the syllabi for my two classes, finish a book chapter -- and teach classes. That's right, we begin August 23. Ugh.


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Other writing

Sorry that this blog has been silent for more than a week.

If you want to read my most recent blog posts, then check out these links:

On August 14, I posted about "China's energy future" on the e-ir blog, Climate Politics: IR and the Environment.

At Duck of Minerva on August 5, I blogged "Another Iran Data Point." A former CIA Director (under W) says a strike on Iran "seems inexorable."

July 28, I posted "Identifying Groupthink," which pointed out some additional hypocrisy exhibited by Journolist critics.

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France Declares War on al-Qaida

Last week, various media outlets reported this news:

"Prime Minister Francois Fillon said France is 'at war with Al Qaeda' after the announced killing of a French hostage by an Al Qaeda affiliate in Mali."

France will step up military and intelligence assistance to North African governments to “track down the terrorists and hand them over to the judiciary,” Mr. Fillon said.

French terror experts say that the latest act of violence reflects an attempt by North African groups to garner attention and resources from more prominent terrorists in Pakistan:

The militant organization [in North Africa] was formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat before rebranding itself as Al Qaeda three years ago, and the group has been trying to gain financial and organizational support from Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan since, who treat the North Africa branch as “a peripheral operation,” [Professor Jean Pierre] Filiu [of Sciences Po] says.

NGO leaders in the area insist that France is mischaracterizing the security threat in the region: Remi Hemryck of Paris-based SOS Sahel International:

"Most of the insecurity is in the northern desert fringe... Here, the main problem is banditry, not Al Qaeda. The Sahel is under a famine which nobody mentions. Fifteen to 20 million people are directly affected."

I've often blogged in the past about state policymakers overstating "traditional" security threats at the expense of human security. This looks to be another instance.


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