As Nasruddin emerged from the mosque after shalat, a beggar sitting on the street solicited alms. The following conversation followed:

- Are you extravagant? asked Nasruddin.

- Yes Nasruddin. replied the beggar.

- Do you like sitting around drinking coffee and smoking? asked Nasruddin.

- Yes. replied the beggar.

- I suppose you like to go to the baths everyday? asked Nasruddin.

- Yes. replied the beggar.

- ... And maybe amuse yourself, even, by drinking with friends? asked Nasruddin.

- Yes I like all those things. replied the beggar.

- Tut, Tut, said Nasruddin, and gave him a gold piece.

A few yards farther on. another beggar who had overheard the conversation begged for alms also.

- Are you extravagant? asked Nasruddin.

- No, Nasruddin replied second beggar.

- Do you like sitting around drinking coffee and smoking? asked Nasruddin.

- No. replied second beggar.

- I suppose you like to go to the baths everyday? asked Nasruddin.

- No. replied second beggar.

- ... And maybe amuse yourself, even, by drinking with friends? asked Nasruddin.

- No, I want to only live meagerly and to pray. replied second beggar.

Whereupon the Nasruddin gave him a small copper coin.

- But why, wailed second beggar, do you give me, an economical and pious man, a penny, when you give that extravagant fellow a sovereign?

Ah my friend, replied Nasruddin, his needs are greater than yours.

The Mulla was a Marxist!

One day, my son and I went on a trip. I decided to let my son ride the donkey while I walked. Along the way, we passed some travelers.

"Look at that healthy young boy on the donkey! That's today's youth for you! They have no respect for their elders! He rides while his poor father walks!"

The words made my son feel very ashamed, and he insisted that I ride while he walked. So I climbed on the donkey and the boy walked by my side. Soon we met another group.

"Well, look at that! Poor little boy has to walk while his father rides the donkey," they exclaimed.

This time, I climbed onto the donkey behind my son.

Soon we met another group, who said, "Look at that poor donkey! He has to carry the weight of two people."

I then told my son, "The best thing is for both of us to walk. Then no one can complain."

So we continued our journey on foot. Again we met some travelers.

"Just look at those fools. Both of them are walking under this hot sun and neither of them is riding the donkey!"

The hell with it, I said. I lifted the donkey onto my shoulders and said, "Come on, if we don't do this, it will be impossible to make people stop talking."

The first warm, springlike clear day in the Putrid Sound. Time to drag out the Hawk and the Duc, and leave no turn unstoned!

Lemme' go see if the Duc will start- it's been a while.

Psychology? Maybe.

But the last sentence from your quotation from Mr. Steyn is, for me, illustrative. He says that the strategic challenge exposed by 9/11 has not been accepted by the electorate. Strategic challenge? What #@!!%$ strategic challenge (leaving aside the PC-speak for the moment)?? In al-qaeda we're talking about a relative handful of people with maybe a few hundred millions in funding. They have no military forces except for what might be called a militia armed with purely low tech weaponry, no Air Force, and no Navy. How in God's green earth can such an organization represent "a strategic challenge" to the country with the world's most over funded and badass military?

It reminds me of the questions I asked my senators and representatives prior to our invasion of Iraq. How, I asked, can a country with no blue water Navy, no long range Air Force, and no ICBMs that is half a world away be a clear and present danger to the US? Unfortunately, the braindead myopia exhibited in both instances strikes me as too similar to write it off as a simple psychological flaw.

the Sufi and Nasruddin stories here.

At least in Kipling's era, the conquerors were surprisingly interested and intrigued with the cultures and customs of their conquered peoples, so much so that entire programs of education, entire shelves of nonfiction books, and whole series of novels were devoted to this or that aspect of one or another of the British Empire's many different peoples.

Archaeology (and of course looting of historic treasures) flourished, history was reconsidered in light of constant discoveries made; ruins were described, shored up, in some cases restored.

The exotic locales of the far flung British overseas empire were constantly of interest to the British people.

But the American situation, Projecting Power, is entirely different. You realize Our Troops have built a military base on top of some of the ruins of Babylon? The other famous ruins of Mesopotamia have been as mistreated as at any time in their many-thousand year history, looted and destroyed for that All Important Antiquities Market. The Baghdad Museum was looted, yes, but so were all the other historical museums in Iraq, and Rummy's attitude about it ("Seen one vase, seen em all") pretty much sums up the American attitude in general. There is no cultural interest in Iraq at all. How many Americans have any interest in Iraq's contributions to civilization? Do you think Bill Kristol does? Cheney? Bush? Of course not. There is no interest, and there is no interaction.

Americans know nothing at all about the contemporary culture of Iraq, and they have no interest in it. There is no interaction on a cultural level or even a personal level. Iraqis are entirely objectified -- which makes them much easier to slaughter, much easier to destroy their homes and cities, much easier to steal their diminishing wealth, to dispossess them, to negate their history, their very existence.

Meanwhile, they, the Iraqis (as well as the Afghan resistance) are no doubt creating a whole literature of this struggle, and the survivors will be telling stories and singing songs about it forever.

Americans couldn't care less.