Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a 2019 command portrait,. Photograph by Monica King, United States Army.
What do September, Labor Day, 9/11, tennis and Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have in common?
One word, one four-letter word — work.
Read MoreNovak Djokovic defeats Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the semifinals of the 2011 Wimbledon to become the No. 1-ranked men’s player, a position he has held — on and off, mostly on — for 10 years. Sourcehttps://www.flickr.com/photos/43555660@N00/5935139063/
On Monday, Aug. 30, Novak Djokovic begins his quest to win the US Open and thus the Grand Slam — holding all four Slams (including the Australian and French Opens and Wimbledon) in one calendar year. Only two other men have done it (Don Budge in 1938 and Rod Laver in ’62 and ’69), along with three women (Maureen Connelly in ’53, Margaret Court in ’70 and Steffi Graf in 1988, the year after Djokovic was born). Graf remains the only person to win the Golden Slam — the Grand Slam and the Olympic gold medal that year.
Read MoreKandahar — an Afghan city founded by and named for Alexander the Great — as seen from an aerial photograph taken by Karla Marshall for the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
Afghanistan has unraveled into a s—- show, and the only surprise is that anyone is surprised at all.
But then, as President George W. Bush, who first got us into Afghanistan, noted, “Americans aren’t very good at looking in the rearview mirror.” No, they aren’t, W. Our ignorance and fear — they go hand in hand — of science have made a muddle of our response to everything from Covid to climate change. And our disdain of history has sent us careening from one hotspot to another in which we never have any clue as to the place or the people we’re purportedly trying to help.
President Joe Biden might think Afghanistan is not another Vietnam, but as today’s heartbreaking reports prove Afghanistan is Vietnam right down to the whirring helicopters and those poor souls clinging to the wheels of the planes, desperate to flee the brutality that is already there. (I shudder to think what life is going to be like again under the Taliban in a country that the historian Michael Wood once described to me as “no place for a woman.”
Read MoreSimone Biles taking the all-around gold at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Photograph by Agência Brasil Fotografias.
Citing some mental challenges, gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from the team competition and individual all-around at the Tokyo Olympics, cheering her teammates instead as they exhibited grace and grit under pressure to win the team silver as their Russian rivals took the gold.
We can’t know what is going through her mind. She had a tough childhood and was among the gymnasts abused by Dr. Larry Nasser. She said she took herself out of competition so she wouldn’t cost her team a medal. Watching her vault again, it’s clear she did the right thing., despite the naysaying from the usual suspects, including provocateur Piers Morgan. Biles seemed disoriented in space, a dangerous thing to be in a sport in which paralysis and death are real possibilities. Without her, there would be no chance for the team gold. But with her, in that condition, there might’ve been no chance for the podium. So Biles was prudent to walk away for now.
Read MoreThe new Japan National Stadium — site of the opening ceremony for the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics and many events inside as well as protests outside. © Arne Müseler
Well, the 2020 Summer Olympics have finally arrived in Tokyo. Let the naysaying games begin.
Once again we’ve heard about the tyranny of the International Olympics Committee, which is more interested in maintaining its power and money than in the athletes it purports to represent; nations trying to medal in the game of under-the-table bribery in a bid for host city status; boycotts by politicians and other world leaders, including South Korean President Moon Jae-in, miffed by a remark made by a Japanese diplomat; and the usual weird Olympic village stuff, like the recyclable, cardboard beds that were thought to deter any extracurricular nooky by the athletes. (As if anything could deter people from having sex, as a world population of 7.7 billion can attest.)
Read MoreJohn Trumbull’s “Surrender of General Burgoyne” depicts the end of the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, the turning point of the American Revolution, in which New England and Hudson Valley militia, under the command of Gen. Horatio Gates, defeated the British, led by Gen. John Burgoyne. Saratoga paved the way for French assistance while demonstrating that you can’t win a war against a people you don’t understand. (The star of the day was brilliant field commander Benedict Arnold., who galvanized the Americans. Three years later, he would be America’s greatest traitor.)
The Americans have left Afghanistan and though President Joe Biden and the public are happy, many of us have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, at 20 years it was the United States’ longest war, and no one wants to fight a forever war. On the other hand, there is a sense of a mission unfulfilled, or perhaps one extended beyond its original purpose and thus unfulfilled.
Read MoreChurch fathers like St. Augustine of Hippo, seen here in Vittore Carpaccio’s 1502 painting “Vision of St. Augustine,” were influenced by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in holding that abortion was acceptable in the first trimester because the fetus had not yet been “ensouled.”
Before I went to Sarah Lawrence College, I attended Trinity College in Washington, D.C., an excellent school that set me on the path of cultural writing. Among my professors was a contrary sort who taught philosophy. He was married to a well-known feminist, but despite this — or perhaps because of it — he liked to confound his logic class in this women’s college by proclaiming women were illogical and that no one would ace or even pass the course unless he graded on a curve. (I used to sit there, praying, “Please let him grade on a curve. Please let him grade on a curve.”)
The professor bewitched, bothered and bewildered the diverse class, which included everyone from Irish nuns to the daughters of Iranian diplomats — with Aristotelean syllogisms and thought experiments like the following.:
Say New York City is under threat of annihilation, and the only thing that will save it is the sacrifice of one man. Do you sacrifice the one man? The answer, which thrust the class into paroxysms of frustration, outrage and utter revolt, is that you can’t. Each life, our professor said, is worth the same as any other. — or millions of others. Life cannot be quantified. As Soviet dictator Josef Stalin is said to have observed — although he may not have meant it the way my professor did — “One man’s death is a tragedy. Twenty million (the number of Russian who died in World War II) is a statistic.”
I thought about all this when I read Ross Douthat’s New York TImes column on American bishops’ threatening to withhold Holy Communion from Roman Catholic politicians who are pro-choice, like President Joe Biden.
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