I just love roasted vegetables and here’s a good, hearty, warming roasted vegetable dish—perfect for a cold winter night. And the roasted tomato sauce that goes with it is great on pasta, rice, or plain polenta.

ROASTED VEGETABLES WITH POLENTA

Serves four gourmets or two gourmands

1 medium zucchini, cleaned and sliced into ¼ inch rounds
1 medium eggplant, cleaned, peeled, and sliced into ¼ inch rounds
1 medium bulb fennel, cleaned, top removed, and bottom sliced lengthways into
¼ inch slices
½ cauliflower, cleaned and broken into florets
3 Tbsp. olive oil
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 1/3 cups corn meal
1 recipe Roast Tomato Sauce

1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Place the vegetables in a roasting pan in one layer. Baste with olive oil. Salt.
3. Roast for 45 minutes or until tender
4. While the vegetables are roasting make polenta and roast tomato sauce.
5. Polenta: place stock in four quart pan over high heat. Whisk cornmeal into stock.
   Stir until polenta comes to boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cover for 40 minutes, stirring
   occasionally.
6. Spread polenta on serving platter. Top with roasted vegetables. Top with roast
   tomato sauce. Serve any remaining sauce on the side.

ROASTED TOMATO SAUCE

4 servings

6 ripe medium tomatoes, cored and halved
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. minced fresh basil or 1 Tsp. dried

1. Preheat oven to 425°F.
2. Roast tomatoes in oven for 40 minutes in heat-proof roasting pan (with sides)
   until starting to brown on top.
3. Remove tomatoes from oven. Crush slightly with back of spoon and scrape off
   any crusted-on juices.
4. Chop tomatoes in food processor or blender until moderately smooth.
5. Saute garlic in olive oil over medium heat for 30 seconds.
6. Stir tomatoes into garlic and oil. Cook 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
7. Stir basil into sauce.

Serve over pasta, polenta, or rice.

Yesterday I posted my response to The Daily Demarche’s question “What if we had never invaded Iraq?” It seems apparent to me that the only credible scenario under which we would not have invaded Iraq is if we had been otherwise occupied and the most conceivable speculative cirmcumstances under which that might have happened are if we had invaded Afghanistan with a large-scale Desert Storm-scale force.

This isn’t that far-fatched. I’ve heard it suggested by John Kerry (if I understand what he was saying correctly) and other prominent politicians so it’s clearly a mainstream position and I suspect it was probably suggested to President Bush at one time or another.

I’m convinced that such a course of action would have been a thorough-going disaster and that’s what prompted my “What if…” post.

But not everyone agrees with me. Eric of Total Information Awareness in his own speculative response to Dr. Demarche’s question diametrically opposed my scenario.

In an email to Peter Rice whose observations on Afghanistan tallied closely with my own I wrote the following:

I’m afraid that Eric hasn’t considered some basics:

1. Where do you stage a massive invasion force for Afghanistan?
2. How do the Afghans react to such an invasion?
3. How do you apprehend Osama bin Laden or high-ranking Taliban without entering Pakistan?
4. Could Pakistan survive this kind of invasion next door?
5. What would the neighbors think?

Peter was good enough to answer my email and, with his permission and a little cosmetic reformatting, this is what he had to say in a fantastic note:

Let me start off with a bit about me. I am retired from the US Foreign
Service (the diplomatic service of the US Dept. of State), my last post was New
Delhi, India, and I served four years as an officer on active duty in the US Amy,
of which one was in Vietnam. I have not been to Afghanistan, but have been
to Kashmir twice. I have read a lot about the British period in India, from
1600 to 1947. On one flight over Afghanistan was during a clear day and I got
to see much of it, and what I saw was lots of tan mountains and valleys with a
few spots of green (vegetation) and very tiny spots of blue (water).

As to the questions above, a few comments:

1. Where do you stage a massive invasion force for Afghanistan?

   Only in the surrounding
   countries. But the roads are very bad in Afghanistan so it is very difficult to
   get the logistic support in and the bigger the invasion force, the more
   support is needed. There are just two passes from Pakistan and they are easy to cut or delay support. The Red Army had great problems supporting their
   approximate 200,000 troops in Afghanistan.

2. How do the Afghans react to such an invasion?

   They love to fight and they hate outsiders, be they
   outside of Afghanistan or outside of their tribe or their language group, etc.

3. How do you apprehend Osama bin Laden or high-ranking Taliban without entering Pakistan?

   Firstly, lots of efforts and lots
   of luck to locate these folks (and knowledge of Arabic and the various
   languages of Afghanistan) is required. Secondly, immediate sharing of information
   about the location of OBL et al with those who can get them. Thirdly,
   SAS/special forces/CIA teams that can quickly and with little notice grab OBL et al,
   be it in Afghanistan, Iran, or Pakistan.

4. Could Pakistan survive this kind of invasion next door?

   The Pakistani masses know that their country is
   run by the elite, and that the elite of the elite are the commissioned
   officers of the Pakistani Army (the Navy & Air Force are less relevant). What these
   commissioned officers think is very important, and they are VERY dissimilar
   from the Pakistani masses. The commissioned officers are based on the Indian
   Army model (the Indian Army was split in August 1947 and the Indian and
   Pakistani armies for the most part are very similar) with English being the language
   of the Army (ditto for the Navy and Air Force) and most having grown up
   speaking English and thinking in many regards like an Englishman (of 1947). If these
   officers oppose an American invasion, then the Pakistani Govt. would oppose
   it. These officers believe that their prime directive is to protect Pakistan
   from invaders, mainly the Indians. If we were to invade Afghanistan via
   Pakistan with the permission of the Pakistani Army, there ought to be few problems
   with the masses and the Muslim leaders. And the few problems would be resolved
   by having the police be a bit strong armed with those causing problems.

5. What would the neighbors think?

   The Indians want anything that causes
   problems for Pakistan and for Muslims. The Iranians would not be pleased, in
   particular as American forces (in strength) approached the Iranian border, and
   much the same for the former USSR republics.

I believe that the biggest problems were the USA to have used massive force
to invade Afghanistan would be two:

1. Logistics, and the ease of Afghans and others to cut the supply lines.
2. The love of fighting and the hatred of outsiders by the Afghans, and that
   this would be directed at a large American force.

I believe what we have is about all that we could have in Afghanistan,
several thousand troops (many NATO) in and around Kabul (protecting the Afghan
Govt.), troops at a small number of other locations for logistic support and
aircraft (attack and transport), and a very small number of SAS/special forces/CIA
personnel who work with Afghan forces to seek out and attack al Qaeda and
Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

I chat from time to time with a retiree from the CIA who does some contract
work with the CIA. He returned recently from several months in Afghanistan.
He was part of a review group that traveled extensively in Afghanistan and he
said that almost all of the roads were like the very worst test tracks one
could think of, often FAR worse. Such bad roads greatly limit the ability to
support any large military force and for it to maneuver.

I want to thank Peter Rice for his great contribution to the discussion and hope you find it as interesting as I have.

Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning:

• Abu Aardvark fills us in on what’s on TV on the Arab-language satellite news stations.
• Marcus Cicero of Between Hope and Fear cross-posts so much of his work on Winds of Change that
  I don’t look in on his blog often enough. Go check out his reflections on 2004, a great small essay from one of the best essayists in the blogosphere. I think he needs a hug.
• Maurice Bernstein of Bioethics Discussion Blog discusses the conflicts between do not
  resuscitate directives and surgical consent.
• When is an idiot a savant? When he’s the richest man in the world, apparently.
• Brad DeLong lays out the Social Security Talking Points.
• Glen Wishard of Canis Iratus has an amusing list of things he believes but cannot
  prove (yet).
• Noah Millman of Gideon’s Blog, a favorite of mine who posts too infrequently, considers the
  prudence of solving our problems with North Korea by asking the Chinese to invade it.
• Gene of Harry’s Place appreciates the irony of having Kid Rock perform at the
  upcoming inauguration.
• Glenn comments on a new book by
  Mary Ellen O’Connell. Mary Ellen is a really brilliant woman and the first woman to ask me to marry her (back in college). She was kidding. I think.

That’s the lot.

The Daily Demarche has recently produced a couple of speculative pieces wondering what if the United States had not invade Iraq in 2003. You can read these pieces here and here. Marc Schulman of American Future has recently contributed his own speculation so I thought I’d join the fun and do some wild-eyed imagining myself.

Since I think that you can’t reasonably suppose that we would not have invaded Iraq without some reason I’m going to further assume that President Bush had decided to do exactly what some of his pro-War on Terror domestic critics have suggested: commit the forces to Afghanistan in 2001 that he’d committed to Iraq in 2003. I’m not much of a fiction writer but I think I’ll try and put this into something resembling narrative. Imagine a February 1, 2005 that will never happen now.

[continue reading…]

That’s the news in Chicago today:

The 2 inches of snow that fell overnight across the Chicago region was just the beginning of a larger storm, according to forecasters, who predict 8 to 12 inches of snow and ice by Thursday.

The National Weather Service has posted a heavy snow warning until midnight Thursday.

Heavy snow could fall this afternoon throughout the late evening before tapering off to flurries, with northeast winds of 15 to 25 m.p.h., causing drifting snow, the warning stated.

Snow has a different meaning for me. Those are my girls in the picture up there: my wife and Jenny, Tally, and Mira. Snow means we break out the sled and try to get in some serious dogsledding. Believe it or not there are lots of great places to go dogsledding in the Chicago area. Up in Lake County there’s even an area exclusively devoted to it.

If you’ve never been dogsledding there’s no way I can really describe it to you. Imagine racing along in the cold, clean, silent snow with a bunch of your best friends who are doing something they absolutely love to do. Something they were born to do. Friends whose eyes flash with understanding when they cast their first glimpse of snow. “This is why I have the long, thick coat and the strong shoulders and the legs that yearn to run. Let’s go!” It’s just the greatest and I can see how people can become totally obsessed by it.

Not long ago I discovered (through a listserv I belong to) a nice video on dogsledding. You can watch it here. That’ll give you something of the idea.

Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning:

• Dan Drezner contemplates a help wanted ad. Sounds
  like a good opportunity for off-shoring to me.
• Dean has another installment in his series on skepticism on the HIV-AIDS hypothesis.
• Arnold Kling’s EconLog has a pretty fair summation of the Social Security reform debate.
• Den Beste fans take note of this exchange.
• FuturePundit reports that Embryonic Stem Cells Reduce Parkinson’s Symptoms In Monkeys
• The Moderate Voice has more on the Saddam-al Jazeera link.

That’s the lot.

We must think of a test which sounds fair, and looks fair, and seems fair, and isn’t fair.

Queen Agravain, Once Upon a Mattress

Ann Althouse has a good post up questioning Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s characterization of Justice Clarence Thomas’s legal opinions as “poorly written”:

As Taranto notes, the case Reid cites doesn’t even have a Scalia dissent, so Reid’s answer says something about Reid’s poor reading, but nothing about Thomas’s writing compared to Scalia’s. Maybe he meant to compare Thomas’s dissent to Stevens’s long majority opinion.

I wonder if what Mr. Reid’s claim tells us is what the likely approach to Supreme Court confirmations by Senate Democrats will be: throw out as many claims about the candidate as possible—some legitimate, some bogus.

Fasten your seatbelts, we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Earlier I linked to Callimachus’s post, Serendipity. In this post Callimachus observes:

The “right” seems to have been stung particularly by the “stingy” sneer from the U.N. Perhaps that helps ratchet up their focus on the relief work, to play smackdown with the U.N. fool. That could be a partial explanation. But how does that explain the relative lack of interest on the left? Unless you want to factor in its desire to prove that America is, in fact, the evil, niggardly, self-righteous place many of their leading lights tirelessly tell us it is?

More likely the overall difference I notice (if it is genuine, and I am sure there are some left blogs hard at work on raising relief money) reflects the right-left perspective shift that left me often on the “right” side of things.

I’ve taken a look at the first eight days of coverage of the Sumatran tsunami and its aftermath from December 26 to January 2 in the top four blogs in the left and right hemispheres of the blogosphere (based on the TTLB Ecosystem) and have summarized the findings in the following tables. I’ve tried to include every post.

Key to table

12/28 from Daily Kos: “Any formal donation drive must wait for Markos.” [ed. we’re still waiting]

These tables only include the actual appeals and references in posts to contributions. Blog ads were not included although, to their credit, most of the blogs did include tsunami relief ads in their sidebars.

I don’t interpret this relative lack of interest in private contributions (other than as a stick to bash the president with) as any lack of sympathy, compassion, or even lack of interest in the relief efforts on the part of the left half of the blogosphere. My interpretation is that the right half of the blogosphere has a fairly traditional de Tocquevillian American reaction: if you believe in something, do it. The left half of the blogosphere has more of a European-style social democrat reaction: if it’s worth doing, it should be done by the government. This explains both the lack of column space devoted to contributions and the inclination to bash Bush for not doing more.

And, by the way, don’t make the mistake of thinking that left-leaning bloggers aren’t pitching contributions. Lots and lots of them are. But it’s interesting to see what the big dogs are doing.

As a final note the table above also gives us a hint as to why Glenn has the most traffic in the blogosphere. He posts more than anybody else and he posts stuff that people want to read.

UPDATE: Submitted to the Beltway Traffic Jam.

I’d like to thank Dean Esmay for linking to Clay Shirky’s fabulous post Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality in his own post of the same name. I’ve seen it referred to before but I hadn’t actually read it until now. I definitely agree when Dean writes:

The data used in the article is out of date. But I see no reason to believe that the trends it noted are anything other than self-evidently true today–or that they won’t still be true ten years from now. (Hey what do you know? Economics really is a science after all!)

A quick look at the TTLB Ecosystem certainly supports the claim.

From my own small point-of-view it’s great with me if Glenn gets a million hits an hour. He works very hard at it and he’s been doing it for some time. I visit his site several times daily and I think he’s earned the traffic. If Instapundit didn’t exist, we would be forced to create him.

For me the really neat thing is that—even with the power-law effect of blog traffic described in the link above—as the number of people reading and writing blogs increases even a small-fry like me who’s only been in operation for about eight months probably gets as much traffic as Glenn did after his first eight months of operation. That’s certainly more than I expected to get when I started out. As far as traffic goes I’ve already achieved the small goals I set for myself when I began.

The goal that I’m working on now is opening the discussion more and creating more of a community with the little coterie of bloggers and readers that I interact with most. That and becoming a better writer and more effective and more honest advocate. In my opinion those are goals that are really worth going after. And isn’t that the very best thing about blogging? Blogs are the perfect Horatio Alger universe. If you have the ability and you work hard enough you can achieve your heart’s desire.