While you suckers are watching at home, check out Robert Kagan's WaPo column from last week, "Iraq and Averages," - it's probably the most best article I've ever read about the Yankees winning the Series and the USA 'winning' in Iraq (two of my favorite topics) COMBINED:
In May Boswell wrote a column about the misfortunes of the New York Yankees, particularly Derek Jeter, then in a horrendous slump. Sure, Jeter might come out of it, Boswell admitted, but maybe after eight great seasons the league had found a fatal flaw, namely, Jeter's tendency to swing at too many bad pitches. "Can a hitter completely reverse a characteristic so basic? And once pitchers have recognized it, will they forget?" Boswell also ruminated on other Yankee problems. Gary Sheffield had "a tiny three homers in 43 games," a paucity Boswell attributed not to a bad streak but to Yankee Stadium's capacious left field. Sheffield had averaged 35 homers a year for the five seasons before he joined the Yanks and had boasted, "No park can hold me." But Boswell was dubious: "Big home parks change power hitters' swings." These and other observations led Boswell to contemplate a year when the Yankees, with the biggest payroll in history, might yet miss the playoffs -- and that, he added, would be "delicious." ...Now if Thomas Boswell can make this kind of mistake, imagine the mistakes the mortals who write about foreign policy can make. Few possess the historical knowledge of their subject that Boswell has of baseball. And during an election season, especially this election season, they can't help succumbing to the rooting-interest corollary to the availability heuristic. And so for the past few months it has become common wisdom that the war in Iraq is lost, based on what any historian will tell you is far too little evidence to make such a final judgment. Not only that, but the entire approach to foreign policy that has been called the "Bush doctrine" is, therefore, finished. Another fine Post reporter, Robin Wright, wrote at the end of June that the Iraq war had undermined or discredited the four central planks of President Bush's foreign policy: preemptive action to "prevent strikes on U.S. targets"; a willingness "to act unilaterally, alone or with a select coalition, when the United Nations or allies balk"; a policy to promote democratic reform in the Middle East, sparked by democratic progress in Iraq; and Iraq as "the next cornerstone in the global war on terrorism." I'm not sure what the last one means exactly, so I'll give it to her. As for the other three, is it really likely that they are dead as principles of U.S. foreign policy? ...the United States could conceivably lose in Iraq, just as Jeter could some day hit under .200 for a whole season. But the odds are against it, and it is certainly far too early to make that judgment. And as for the effect of such a loss, the strategic and moral disaster would be enormous, and America would pay a huge price. But the fundamental course of American foreign policy would not change. Over the past two decades, the United States has launched nine significant military interventions abroad, about once every two years. That's a more significant predictor of the future than the events of the past four months. And the United States will remain involved in the Middle East for decades to come, trying to protect its security by promoting democracy. The history of U.S. foreign policy, our "lifetime average," suggests it is a mistake to write off key elements of the "Bush doctrine," especially those that Bush only inherited from his predecessors. We all make a common logical error that cognitive psychologists call the "availability heuristic." It means making judgments about the future based not on a broad body of historical evidence but on recent, vivid events that skew our perceptions. My favorite recent example, for reasons that will be apparent, concerns this baseball season and the era's finest sportswriter, The Post's own Thomas Boswell.
INDEED! Go Yanks, GO USA!
PS: This should not be taken to mean that I think that Boston is the equivalent, militarily, morally or otherwise, of the Iraqi insurgents and/or Al Qaeda! Pedro's attack on Zim last year was no 9/11, and Osama and Zarqawi are no Pedro and Schilling, you know? (I hope...)