First Really Crummy Day

"...I recommend biting off more than you can chew to anyone; I certainly do.

I recommend sticking your foot in your mouth at anytime; feel free.

Throw it down; the caution blocks you from the wind. Hold it up; to the rays.

You wait and see when the smoke clears. You live, you learn; You love, you learn;

You cry, you learn; You lose, you learn; You bleed, you learn; You scream, you learn..." - Alanis Morissette (1995)

Steven, can you relate to this after your weekend, bro?

This weekend was the first for a 12-week entry-level triathlon training program sponsored by the local tri club. Great to see over three-dozen of my soon-to-be closest friends sitting on the benches; some were truly first-timers, others first-timers this year, & a few making their triumphant return to multisport. The session was originally intended to be a welcome aboard, with the race director of the sprint triathlon this program focuses toward chatting a little about their race, some individual swim pointers, and on to the water.

Of course, that was the plan, filled with assumptions. The reality saw a more-brief swim brief, covered by Bev, Steven's better half. Brian, the club treasurer & guy in charge, took care of pointers & technical stuff from the dock, while Bev was down in the drink with the neophytes. We keep telling her she's got what it takes to be a good coach...but she's a lot more humble about her abilities.The water was comfortable enough for me to get some wetsuit familiarization time. Did about ten lengths of the sound, worked on sighting, & just kept everything comfortable.

I did say this was the first really crummy day, didn't I?

My weekend plans (remember assumptions from the earlier paragraphs?) went south quickly, as we needed/wanted to get some errands taken care of. I did get two hours in on the elliptical trainer, the equivalent of 16 miles, on Saturday afternoon. Hm. Think that might have been a little too much there, Coach?

Naah.

Au contraire, mon freire. Or, for those of you who live in less cultured areas of the country that's another way to say, 'think again, moose breath.' I ditched my goggles & wetsuit, then pulled on my running stuff (including a belt holding four eight-ounce plastic bottles of sports drink) to go hit the road for 45 minutes-to-an hour. The first two to three miles were all right, & then reality set in. Or, as some would say, 'the man with the hammer' showed up.

Oh, did he show up. The first three miles were at a very comfortable eight-minute-per mile pace. The last three & a quarter were much slower. We (I say we, because Bev decided to hang out with me.) ended up running a couple of blocks, then walking a block on the return trip. While I was a little disapppointed, there was a sense of perspective:

This was the first true brick (well, one discipline into the other) workout in some time.

The weather was very warm on the beach by 9:00a.m.

I had nothing in the tank, & forgot to eat anything that morning.

As Alanis (Morissette) would say: 'you live, you learn.' So, today's a rest (-like) day. Tomorrow we're back on the case.

Simplify!

"...We don't train to accomplish any of what these other coaches have tried to coax you into believing. We train to IMPROVE, and to do our best. We train to perform and to win. And while triumph is no doubt defined differently for each of us, it is far easier to comprehend than anything you've heard here... Sure, it's imperative to understand what training does to your body, but it is far more important to know why you are training and what your training is leading you toward, and to have 100% belief in the process. Simplify!" - Chuckie "V" Veylupek (at some nameless coaching conference, way back when)
Not only local runners use me as their coach. I also coach two or three runners by what I can only describe as remote control or belief coaching. After enough research into what makes a good training plan work (periodization) & a little trial/error on my own (candor), some of my friends have asked me to help them achieve their running/triathlon performance goals. So far it has been effective.

What makes it effective is this: Describing my own workout regimen (these repetitions, at this pace, with this recovery) is enough to boggle their mind, but I've been able to simplify it for their benefit. Without spending a month of three workouts per week trying to learn the language, they've been able to improve & progress forward in their training, strictly because I have simplified it for them.

I'm not training anyone to improve their VO2max score, training stress score, magic mile or any of that stuff. Simply put, I try to help them be (in the words of Daft Punk) harder, better, faster, stronger. The nice thing is that there's only one measure that will honestly prove that on race day...the clock. The SRM won't do it. The HRM won't do it. And no matter what WKO says when all that GPS stuff is uploaded into your PC, the (four or) six numbers that really count are xx:xx:xx. Outside of (to borrow from Disraeli) numbers, d*mned numbers & statistics, the only other thing that matters is whether they make it across the finish line in one piece. If they make it across in a better time than they hoped for, all other controllable factors being equal, so much the better.

Seems pretty simple to me.

Get Some Changing Done

"You've been saying for the longest time that the time has come; you've been talking like you're of a mind to get some changing done..." - Mary-Chapin Carpenter (2001)

The hardest decision to make comes when there's a big change involved; new job, new relationship, new commitment, new routine...I think you get the picture. Most times, these decisions aren't made capriciously, but after soul-searching, counsel & balance of the possible positive & negative outcomes. It's hard to continue to stay the course for sake of staying the course, especially when you know something different can be done. However, it means being honest enough with yourself to say: 'what I've done up to this point in time has not been successful. It's time to take a different approach.'

"...No one knows where they belong; the search just goes on and on and on, for every choice that ends up wrong another one's right..."

So, you have to be pragmatic when the potential remedies cross your desk, so to speak. I had a friend ask me 'so, what do you want to do?' when I first began looking at the options. Once I developed enough clear thought about what was really happening, it was simple to know the what.

I enjoy coaching & providing sensible guidance to runners & triathletes. Some even appreciate the advice & counsel - imagine that. And that's the fun part of coaching; collaborating with an athlete to see how they can prepare for best performances. But to get that level of interaction, there needs to be a certain degree of trust and confidence - both on the part of the athlete and of the coach.

Sometimes the relationship comes naturally over the course of time. Sometimes the relationship is built by money changing hands.

Once the relationship is developed, expectations on the part of both parties follow, especially in the areas of communication & discipline. I've wondered what people would think if I did not show up for a track workout (even after the car accident in January of this year, my wife & I called the cell phones of at least three training group members to let them know what happened). 'Ah, but you're the coach,' you say. 'You're supposed to be there. That's why you were chosen.'

So, why do I coach? Ah, it must be for something. My coach & his coach say it's for love of the sport. And I love the sport, too. But shouldn't the people I coach have that same love? If they don't have it, is it because I haven't instilled it in them? Does love of sport come intrinsically, or as the result of some pot metal/nylon medallion or glass/ceramic beer mug?

"Call it chance or call it fate, Either one is cause to celebrate; Still the question begs why would you wait and be late for your life..."

I guess I coach for the same challenge the athlete has: To make them better on the day. The athlete is the weapon & the battleground. And I am just another guy with a map.

Isn't It Ironic...

"Well, life has a funny way of sneakin' up on you when you think

everything's okay and everything's going right; And life has a funny

way nobody helpin' you out and everything blows up in your face..." "Ironic" (Morisette/Ballard, 1995)

Most of my family knows my struggle with the religious/faith issue. It's not that I'm opposed to it. I lost faith more in my fellow religionists than I did in the scriptural texts which most faiths report to follow. My father-in-law & I probably have more in common that I care to admit, except that he still maintains his faith. Mine, on the other hand, is more than a little bit in need of preventative maintenance.

The nice thing is there are situations which remind me of the presence of a divine creator, their handiwork, & the need to appreciate both. That's where the long(er) bike rides definitely serve their purpose.

I had no intention whatsoever to do anything on Sunday morning, save for drink coffee & engage in mindless reading...which for me means history books or memoirs. However, my friends graciously invited me to go ride with them along the southern Alabama coast, from Orange Beach (Sportsplex was the starting point, below) to Fort Morgan & back. Since my loving wife is out of country, it made perfect sense to keep myself occupied.

Since I didn't run on Saturday morning (worked a 5K on the beach) or afternoon (100-plus degree heat index) I figured the "missed" workout could be made up for by a nice, leisurely ride. Well, the plan was to go leisurely. We were close enough to leisurely for a good portion of it.

Ah, but I digress. Probably the first five miles or so of the ride, & another five after that, was mostly on winding bike paths. Okay, if you're training for a triathlon it's probably going to be a little too technical for the speeds you want to be going, or it will reinforce the need for a comfortable pace. Nice thing about the vast majority of these bike paths was the fact they were tree-lined; the first five was almost completely tree-shaded. So we weren't hammering or anything...definitely enjoying the conditions on the way out. However, I have to admit the heat became quite oppressive on the return trip & no amount of shade was of benefit.

The bridge below was on the first/last miles of the trail...all I could hear in the back of my mind was Phil Keaggy's March of the Clouds. Almost a meditative state for the earliest part of the ride. I guess that is the nicest thing about bicycling. You can put in enough of an effort to feel good about yourself, yet you're not beating yourself up. If you are on a scenic road you might see one or more cool things, nature-wise.

Go off the front for the occasional ten-minute solo pace push & you almost can hear yourself think...of course, as long as your heart rate is low enough you don't hear all that pounding. You get to see stuff at a pace you would never have noticed in an automobile. We were pleased the terns decided to leave us be yesterday morning; the ones around Pensacola Beach are a lot more aggressive than the ones in Alabama. During the brief mid-point stop at Fort Morgan (at the ferry to Dauphin Island) we saw a few dolphins moving through the water. Sometimes the reminders are subtle, y'know?

I had the opportunity to watch a video about three triathletes & their preparation for 2008 Ironman Wisconsin, titled The Distance. Steve suggested I watch it (we'll have to sit down and play it for Suzanne); I was worried at first he wanted to drop some bad news my way with it. However, watching these normal, ordinary people prepare for the same thing I was doing now was pretty entertaining. When you saw them registering for the next years' event even before they had accomplished this years' goal, I realized the very message my friend Christian has tried to remind me: 'it's the journey, not the destination, that's important.'

It's easy to get hung up in the minutiae of training. Steve & I have compared notes over the past weeks; he has a slightly different perspective than I about the training. He's using a heart rate monitor & GPS & high-tech stuff...I'm a little more low-tech, using a heart rate monitor for some workouts (I'm used to working out via perceived effort), a few reference spreadsheets for others, tracking my efforts via another spreadsheet. He's set a specific time goal (well, he has a wager with his wife); all I want to do is finish.

Same journey, same destination.

At the Sportsplex in Orange Beach (and in most every city in Alabama I've visited) the facility looks top-notch. The soccer fields were in fantastic condition; with grass which cries out for you to take off your shoes & run in it (which I think Beverly did after our ride), decent bathrooms, concession facilities, & so on. I asked myself why Pensacola couldn't have something that nice; why was it we had to literally drive an hour into another state to get a good training ride, where we didn't have to worry about broken beer bottles (okay, there was one place near the end of the ride where I saw a lot of broken glass, but...) getting cut off or hassled?

Maybe Alabama cities realize good parks & good recreational facilities are what keep families living there. I realize it takes tax money to run this stuff, & you have to have dedicated maintenance employees, but I don't think you can place a price tag on quality of life stuff.

It only seemed ironic that the local newspaper's headline this morning was City's Parades In Peril. The city council has decided it cannot afford to pay for the city workers to put up/take down barriers, the police to re-direct the traffic, sanitation to clean up afterward, etc. etc. etc., all the stuff having to do with the countless parades here. When it was local road races taking the hit for police coverage the general population did not seem all that sympathetic.

Hm...maybe that's why OB can get Steely Dan, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, etc., to come do concerts & Pensacola gets...monster trucks.

Do This, Not That...

...and in the case of that 72-year-old Texas lady, DO NOT HARASS A TASER-PACKING TRAVIS COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPUTY. That video, by now, has to be on YouTube. The squeal she let out when the peace officer let-'er-have it was nothing less than epic. Before you pass judgment, take a look at the entire story. A couple of years further down the road & she might be one of those folks who strike a group of cyclists. As Lance said: "RT @trainright: justice? she killed 2 cyclists while dui of prescription morphine & barbiturates http://tinyurl.com/luahnn "

In my humble opinion, she was warned.

I want to be gracious about both topics above because of my parents, both out in the Kingdom of the Sun & here in the Sunshine State. They are occasionally skeptical, yet bottom-line supportive, of my (my wife's also!) endeavors. Thank heavens they are still in good health, still have their partners, & blessed with (as a whole) responsible children who step to the plate as needed.

I vaguely recall the tale of the man who built a box to carry his elderly father up a mountain...where he would be left to spend his last days exposed to the elements. The man finished the project, placed his father in the box & hoisted both upon his back...then started up the mountain. Once the man reached the tree line, he stopped climbing & placed the box down on the ground. Sorrowfully, yet without a word, he turned to return down the mountain when his father said: 'my son, take the box with you; then your son will not have to build one for you.'

Every once in a while, I come across "Eat This, Not That" articles posted on-line. Fortunately for me, I've not been guilty of liking any of the prime offenders. However, it's only a matter of time. Since my anti-beer diatribe about two weeks ago, I've been more-conservative in my beer intake; staying at the two-per-day (sometimes less!) limit supported by the research I cited. My intent is to not make drastic changes all of a sudden, but here a little, there a little...line upon line...precept upon precept. It's especially nice when the missus is not stressed out & the training volume isn't hectic, because I see more veggies, fruits, & salads as part of my (primarily) carnivorous diet.

Hm...might have to do some serious prep work while the missus is still in town. She goes on the road for a couple of weeks, which leaves the doggie & me in a world of hurt. The nice thing is she'll be back just in time for the Independence Day festivities. We're going to try something a little different...road trip to Freedom Springs with a few friends to participate in a sprint distance triathlon. I suppose we'll be back home in enough time to park on the back porch & watch the neighbors burn all of their disposable income, one bottle rocket at a time. Nothing special planned for that evening, though, since I have to train early the next morning. Wonder what the beach is going to look like. Might be another "do this, not that" workout.

Making Good on Threats

Run races for long enough, & eventually there are several risks which can become clearly apparent:

First, the risk of over-racing.

Second, the risk of over-partying.
Third, the risk of having too many race t-shirts.

The first two can hurt you really good. The third is much less of a physical threat, unless you try to carry out the entire ten-year race shirt stash in one fell swoop. I've talked about over-racing & over-partying in the past, but I don't think I've ever talked about the serious problem of having too many race t-shirts.

The problem is not so much having too many shirts as much as it is having too many plain white, generic-design race shirts. What is it with race directors who think they can get away with a minor - or no - variation of the same race logo every year? (All right, we were guilty of the same thing with our triathlon shirt, but they were colored & it's only the second year for the event.) As you approach the Fourth of July/Independence Day holiday season you can guarantee something that has some cheesy flag motif splashed all over the son of a gun. Death by overdose of red, white & blue...bleah...
Come on, guys. Let's use a little bit of imagination here. It's as bad as sponsoring a womens' exposition & calling it something like Sisters For Life. Sorry, I know my sister would barf at the thought of some of the girly-girl stuff displayed at such a shindig. Even the name would probably send her into an apoplectic fit.

Some of the guys I know who are also race directors would tell me, 'Mike, it costs too much to use a shirt that isn't cotton/white/plain print/(fill in the blank). We would take a major loss.' I've also known races which were awful courses, in awful conditions, during awful times of the year...had great shirts, good post-race parties, and efficient scoring. Now a great shirt might not make up for a crummy race, but the individual participant is more likely to wear the son of a gun out in public. Don't tell me anyone wears those white cotton wife-beaters I've seen given for local summer races.

You can only do two things - perhaps three - with a shirt like that. One is use it for bicycle maintenance. Or you can save them for those foreign mission trips...but then, I can hear the cries of the poor souls out in the mission field: 'what is this!?' So, rather than inflict undue punishment upon some poor souls out in the developing world, I think I'd rather use the plain white shirt as a pallette for the use of my imagination.

We had threatened to do something like this a couple of years ago when we first moved into our house. The pile of plain white cotton race shirts were growing exponentially and the no shirt option had not become popular. I joked about how we needed to do something cool with the shirts...like, say, tie dye them so we could stand to go out in public in a shirt that had a little character.

My wife decided the best way to do something like this was to make it a social thing. She's the kind of person who doesn't mind going out in public in a shirt with character, like a tie-dyed one...but she likes being a trend-(re)setter, too. Give her the chance to start a mini-revolution & she is all over the idea. She wanted to get rid of some of the excess stuff around the house, so it seemed only logical to her to have a yard sale/tie-dye party. She knew she could talk a few of her close friends, as well as my training partner & his wife, into joining in on the fun.

So, we sat out under a canopy in the driveway, basking in the warmth, socializing between customers & turning our excess into eccentricity. Nothing like a little bit of arts & crafts to bring out the inner hippie in everyone...without the threat of upcoming drug testing to dampen our spirits. If you're smart about the process of tie-dyeing, after a little trial and error, you can use the shirt design to your advantage. If it doesn't work, it's not like you have lost anything either...more bike maintenance cloths, right?

Intolerance Over Intolerance

With a tip of the hat to Stephen Stills & the rest of CSN&Y...

"I lost my innocence over intolerance - All the indignities heaped on the black man - We went to church they all prayed for the white man - The cops and the preachers - Were most of 'em in the Klan - What's a kid s'posed to think when the adults - Are all such hypocrites impossibly smug..."

I work for a very conservative organization, but harbor a great deal of left-leaning (some would even say leftist) thought...rare to find in this organization. Not so much the left-leaning as much as thought. The most frightening part is I used to harbor many of the Manichaean light v. darkness, good v. evil, black v. white, sheep v. goats, go to hell, go directly to hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $200 opinions of my immediate co-workers.

And, frustratingly, I try to remind them there is an entire world beyond filled with people who (gasp!) have the ability to think for themselves & make rational, conscious decisions about their lives without the express written consent of their pastor or the guidance of Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Oh, yeah, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution still are valid.

Thinking for ones' self is a good thing. It makes coaching much more entertaining when the athlete has an idea of what they think needs to be trained.

As a guy who likes to solve problems, or at least look into the possible root causes of them, you learn early on to ask the why at least five times. If you can get a person to explain the why to the why to the why to the why to the why of a problem, the odds are really good you'll either find out what the problem truly is...or the person you're asking will become so frustrated they pour your coffee in your lap. The frustrated ones are usually addled by religious dogma, prejudice, or philosophical restraint that cause them to completely refuse to change their mind in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Naturally, this is also true in the athletic world, with VO2max still held forth as the determinant of athletic performance, lactic acid as an evil, and stretching completely good. Fortunately, there are still researchers who like to prick those big balloons, in spite of the shrieking at the pop by the nekulturny.

"You got powerbook potentates - Pointedly obviate - Every opinion - They have about anything - Even if they don't know $#!+ - Stay in the limelight - Got your own website - Got all the answers, ain't got a lick of sense - Practicing psychiatry without a license..."

First you get the doctor in Middle America who gets shot at church because he's performing medical procedures permitted in many states as a result of Roe v. Wade, which leads to a screaming fit about the government financing things in which they fervently disagree. As a person who will never need to undergo such a procedure I shouldn't have a dog in the fight...makes it a lot easier for me to look at the economic and sociological root causes, reinforced by research and statistics. Wow. Who would have thought. But you might as well forget about presenting cold, hard facts when you're dealing with a shrieking co-worker. I wonder if she watches Bill O'Reilly, too?

I've talked about the divide between what is said and what is followed by many folks . Telling someone who has a hard time losing weight they can benefit from changing their diet, avoiding certain fast food restaurants and engaging in a regular exercise routine is one thing...listening to them tell you why they can't do it is another.

"So you got overfed - Talking heads on television - Ignoring the obvious with pained expressions - Ask the ones that sell the d*mn guns - By the truckload every day - Fast as they can make 'em - What's a kid s'posed to think - When the adults - Refuse all accountability - When they $&#* up..."

The cherry on top of this sundae of silliness had to be the e-mail sent out from one of my senior shipmates, which contained a press release from my big boss, the POTUS. I guess the month of June has been established as LGBT Pride Month. For those of you who are not familiar with the acronyms, that has to do with what my co-workers would call sexual deviants or perverts. Since I, on the other hand, know quite a few deviants and none of them were of the strictly non-hetero nature, then lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender will have to do.

A close friend and mentor told me that until the advent of the 20th century (1895, when Oscar Wilde was placed on trial) there was no joining together of one's identity with one's sexual activity. After that, if you engaged in buggery you were a bugger.

Today's piece o' advice: Think about the things you believe and ascribe to within your lifestyle, your training and your goals. Make certain that it's what you believe and not what someone has necessarily shoved down your throat. Heaven knows, history, culture and science are continually changing. We never step into the same river twice.

Great (Frustrated) Minds Thinking Alike?

On occasion I have the opportunity to recommend some of the many thick, meaty tomes in my personal library to my wife, usually as the result of a discussion which segues from work to culture to history...right up my personally alley. As a result of the most recent discussion and my book recommendation, Suzanne suggested I talk a little about the recommended book. Well, it seems Norman Solomon beat me to the punch about ten days ago. Perhaps great minds do...while I was looking a little more closely at the previous administration, there are moments Solomon feels the present one has engaged in it's own share of wooden-headedness.

Barbara Tuchman was a very smart lady. It's a shame she's not around to do an update on The March of Folly. I'm going to shamelessly borrow from Solomon's article for the rest. Enjoy.

The March of Folly is a chilling assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things - how a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession - and how we, with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names.

What happens among policymakers is a "process of self-hypnosis." After recounting examples from the Trojan War to the British moves against rebellious American colonists, she devotes the closing chapters of "The March of Folly" to the long arc of the US war in Vietnam. The parallels with the current escalation of the war in Afghanistan are more than uncanny; they speak of deeply rooted patterns.

With clarity facing backward, President Obama can make many wise comments about international affairs while proceeding with actual policies largely unfettered by the wisdom. From the outset of US involvement in Vietnam, Tuchman observes, vital lessons were "stated," but "not learned." As with John Kennedy - another young president whose administration "came into office equipped with brain power" and "more pragmatism than ideology" - Obama's policy adrenalin is now surging to engorge something called counterinsurgency.

"Although the doctrine emphasized political measures, counterinsurgency in practice was military," Tuchman writes, an observation that applies all too well to the emerging Obama enthusiasm for counterinsurgency. And "counterinsurgency in operation did not live up to the high-minded zeal of the theory. All the talk was of 'winning the allegiance' of the people to their government, but a government for which allegiance had to be won by outsiders was not a good gamble."

Now, as during the escalation of the Vietnam War - despite all the front-paged articles and news bulletins emphasizing line items for civic aid from Washington - the spending for US warfare in Afghanistan is overwhelmingly military. Perhaps overeager to assume that the context of bombing campaigns ordered by President Obama is humanitarian purpose, many Americans of antiwar inclinations have yet to come to terms with central realities of the war effort - for instance, the destructive trajectory of the budgeting for the war, which spends ten dollars toward destruction for every dollar spent on humanitarian programs

From the top of the current administration - as the US troop deployments in Afghanistan continue to rise along with the American airstrike rates - there is consistent messaging about the need to "stay the course," even while bypassing such tainted phrases. "For the ruler it is easier, once he has entered a policy box, to stay inside. For the lesser official it is better, for the sake of his position, not to make waves, not to press evidence that the chief will find painful to accept. Psychologists call the process of screening out discordant information 'cognitive dissonance,' an academic disguise for 'Don't confuse me with the facts.'" Along the way, cognitive dissonance "causes alternatives to be 'deselected since even thinking about them entails conflicts.'"

Souped up and devouring fuel, the war train cannot slow down for the recommendation that "an 80-20 ratio (political-military) should be the formula for funding our efforts in the region with oversight by a special inspector general to ensure compliance." Or that "US troop presence in the region must be oriented toward training and support roles for Afghan security forces and not for US-led counterinsurgency efforts." Or that "the immediate cessation of drone attacks should be required." Or that "all aid dollars should be required to have a majority percentage of dollars tied or guaranteed to local Afghan institutions and organizations, to ensure countrywide job mapping, assessment and workforce development process to directly benefit the Afghan people." The policymakers can't be bothered with such ideas. After all, if the solution is - rhetoric aside - assumed to be largely military, why dilute the potency of the solution? Especially when, as we're repeatedly made to understand, there's so much at stake.

During the mid-1960s, while American troops poured into Vietnam, "enormity of the stakes was the new self-hypnosis." Tuchman quotes the wisdom - conventional and self-evident - of New York Times military correspondent Hanson Baldwin, who wrote in 1966 that US withdrawal from Vietnam would bring "political, psychological and military catastrophe," signaling that the United States "had decided to abdicate as a great power."

Many Americans are eager to think of our nation as supremely civilized even in warfare; the conceits of noble self-restraint have been trumpeted by many a president even while the Pentagon's carnage apparatus kept spinning into overdrive. "Limited war is not nicer or kinder or more just than all-out war, as its proponents would have it," Tuchman notes. "It kills with the same finality." For a president with so much military power under his command, frustrations call for more of the same. The seductive allure of counterinsurgency is apt to heighten the appeal of "warnography" for the commander in chief; whatever the earlier resolve to maintain restraint, the ineffectiveness of more violence invites still more - in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

"The American mentality counted on superior might," Tuchman commented, "but a tank cannot disperse wasps." In Vietnam, the independent journalist Michael Herr wrote, the US military's violent capacities were awesome: "Our machine was devastating. And versatile. It could do everything but stop." And that is true, routinely, of a war-making administration.

Here is the grim and ultimately unhinged process that Barbara Tuchman charts: "In its first stage, mental standstill fixes the principles and boundaries governing a political problem. In the second stage, when dissonances and failing function begin to appear, the initial principles rigidify. This is the period when, if wisdom were operative, re-examination and re-thinking and a change of course are possible, but they are rare as rubies in a backyard. Rigidifying leads to increase of investment and the need to protect egos; policy founded upon error multiplies, never retreats. The greater the investment and the more involved in it the sponsor's ego, the more unacceptable is disengagement."

A week ago, one out of seven members of the House of Representatives voted against a supplemental appropriations bill providing $81.3 billion to the Pentagon, mainly for warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. An opponent of the funding pointed out that "the president has not challenged our most pervasive and dangerous national hubris: the foolhardy belief that we can erect the foundations of civil society through the judicious use of our many high-tech instruments of violence. That belief, promoted by the previous administration in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, assumes that the United States possesses the capacity and also has a duty to determine the fate of nations in the greater Middle East....I believe that we are not bound by such a duty. In fact, I believe the policies of empire are counterproductive in our struggle against the forces of radical religious extremism."

"If it is our goal to strengthen the average Afghan or Pakistani citizen and to weaken the radicals that threaten stability in the region, bombing villages is clearly counterproductive. For every family broken apart by an incident of 'collateral damage,' seeds of hate and enmity are sown against our nation....Should we support this measure, we risk dooming our nation to a fate similar to Sisyphus and his boulder: to being trapped in a stalemate of unending frustration and misery, as our mistakes inevitably lead us to the same failed outcomes. Let us step back; let us remember the mistakes and heartbreak of our recent misadventures in the streets of Fallujah and Baghdad. If we honor the ties that bind us to one another, we cannot in good faith send our fellow citizens on this errand of folly. It is still not too late to turn away from this path."