My cousin Steven is back with more thoughts on the pizza places in my neigh­bor­hood. I got this one in the e-mail this morn­ing, and, once again, he’s given me the go-​ahead to post away. Thanks cuz!

FRANCESCO’S, 531 Henry Street, between Pres­i­dent and Sackett.

The pizza here is totally solid. The crust is suf­fi­ciently crispy, and sup­ports a well-​balanced sheet of cheese over non­de­script but not at all poor sauce. Francesco’s is brightly but not flo­res­cent lit, and they have a beer and wine license. They also have a gen­eral Ital­ian food counter, which is very pop­u­lar. A good number of people— from the police to the teenager— ordered spaghetti with mari­nara and extra moz­zarella and sides of broc­coli and spinach. There’s a tele­vi­sion in the corner by the drinks refrig­er­a­tor that usu­ally plays sports. A cheer­ful man buses the tables, too. When I sat down with my slice, he rushed over and put a wad of nap­kins by my plate. That was a nice touch. And if you don’t feel like throw­ing out that bottle of Snap­ple fruit punch when you’re done, he’ll gladly rush over just as you’ve stood up, thank you for coming, and dis­card of it him­self. Believe it or not, Francesco’s might be the future of your typ­i­cal neigh­bor­hood pizza place.

1/ From Andrew Bace­vich, in the LRB:

Con­sider the views of John Nagl, a former sol­dier, counter-​insurgency enthu­si­ast and some­time adviser to Petraeus and McChrys­tal. Accord­ing to Nagl, ‘pop­u­la­tion secu­rity’ – the cen­tral ele­ment of McChrystal’s pro­posal – ‘is the first require­ment of suc­cess in counter-​insurgency, but it is not suf­fi­cient. Eco­nomic devel­op­ment, good gov­er­nance and the pro­vi­sion of essen­tial ser­vices, all occur­ring within a matrix of effec­tive infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions, must all improve simul­ta­ne­ously and steadily over a long period of time if America’s deter­mined insur­gent ene­mies are to be defeated.’ The imper­a­tive, Nagl argues, is for the United States to wage a ‘“global counter-​insurgency” cam­paign’ – in Pen­ta­gon par­lance, GCOIN. Indeed, Nagl and other counter-​insurgency enthu­si­asts believe that with Petraeus’s ‘surge’ having demon­strated the effi­cacy of FM 3-24 in Iraq, the US mil­i­tary has already embarked on such a global cam­paign. Afghanistan is merely the next step.

In giving McChrys­tal what he wants, Obama, whether wit­tingly or not, has signed on to this larger cam­paign. Bush’s policy of rely­ing on Amer­i­can mil­i­tary prowess to ‘change the way they live’ is now Obama’s. Cui bono? For defence con­trac­tors, ‘counter-​insurgency experts’ and the var­i­ous insti­tu­tions that make up the national secu­rity state, GCOIN – jus­ti­fied as nec­es­sary to pre­vent another 9/11, enforce the Carter Doc­trine and uphold the Pax Amer­i­cana – promises to be the gift that never stops giving. Per­pet­ual war now looms as a real prospect, car­ry­ing with it abun­dant oppor­tu­ni­ties for exer­cis­ing power, reap­ing profit and sat­is­fy­ing per­sonal ambi­tion. Lost along the way is the promise of ‘change’ that vaulted Barack Obama to the White House in the first place.*

2/ From CNAS’s Andrew Exum:

Spencer Ack­er­man, who con­fuses the coun­try we live in with the coun­try we want to live in, still gets it exactly right in the end:

This is the fun­da­men­tal error of Obama’s civil-​liberties back­slid­ing. The coun­try, I’d con­jec­ture, would tol­er­ate a pres­i­dent saying: You know what? Now that my team has looked in detail at all of the Guan­tanamo cases, I see that the Bush admin­is­tra­tion fucked this up even worse than I thought. We’ve been hold­ing people at Guan­tanamo on pretty flimsy evi­dence. Some of them may be bad people. Some of them may not be. Some of them are prob­a­bly pretty pissed at the U.S. for detain­ing them unjustly. But I’m not going to con­tinue to per­vert the rule of law because Bush pan­icked, as most of us did, after 9/11. And I’m really not going to do that to cover up the ini­tial error. Guess what, Amer­ica: some of these men are inno­cent, even if they’re not angels. We have to deal with that. I wish it wasn’t the case, but it is.

But instead Obama took the coward’s way out. Which is no way “out,” only a way deeper into the morass.

See also.

I want to know how many of us who buy blue jeans have also bought poetry. I mean, if you buy blue jeans, I want to know how much money you have spent on both blue jeans and poetry.

This past year was not a par­tic­u­larly good year for me in terms of blue jeans. Although I would have liked to have had more blue jeans, I only bought one new pair from a dis­count store, and although they fit well, I did not par­tic­u­larly like the fit­ting but had to live with them anyway as my tol­er­ance for trying on clothes and return­ing them is low. My other pair had slowly worn away in the butt area, as so many of my jeans do, my butt ulti­mately being too much butt for the cut of the jeans. Right below each butt cheek, a slow wear­ing away that will even­tu­ally thin enough to reveal skin.

In terms of poetry, how­ever, this year was a par­tic­u­larly good year. I am a tenure-​track pro­fes­sor of lit­er­a­ture and cre­ative writ­ing. This means that I can buy many books related to research or teach­ing and have my pur­chases reim­bursed by my depart­ment. It also means that I can assign poetry books that I would like to read in my classes and request free instructor’s copies, and I do. In terms of poetry, I have spent much money this year.