Early Sorrow

• In memoriam:  Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize-winning author.
• Batocchio (Vagabond Scholar) on war and human stupidity around war.  A taste because otherwise I'd just quote the whole thing (it's that good):

  Tragically, it's easier to start a war than to end one. And it's easier, in national "debates" on war, for the wiser voices to be drowned out by the foolish, the vain, the frightened, the posturing, the political ambitious, and the greedy.
  
  […]
  
  And here's the thing. The national discourse will never be lacking in Richard Cohens and Megan McArdles eager to sacrifice other people's lives because they feel scared. It will never be lacking Tom Friedmans hungry to have others fight in a war to prove their own toughness. It will never lack Ann Coulters filled with rage and driven to prove their dominance, or George Bushes and Bill Kristols enthusiastic to taunt their political foes and live out macho fantasies. It will never lack highly pedigreed but foolish pundits such as Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon, who try to sell (to themselves and others) blithe imperialism as sober-minded realism. That leaves it to the rest of us to oppose these fuckers and build mechanisms so they can't start more unnecessary wars, not so easily. And that will be the work of sustained effort over many years. [Emphasis added.]

  The old-fashioned term is "vainglory." 
• [ETA: This morning over at Comrade Misfit's place, I saw a post announcing that one of the blogs that had been silent for a year was so because the blogger, Jeff Huber, had died, so I ankled on over and I'm still reading, but this post supports what I've been thinking about war for a while now. A sample:

  Every place we have bombed, boarded, bludgeoned, beheaded and bloodied, from Iraq to the Bananastans to Libya to Somalia to Yemen, looks like a big-city zoo ten minutes after the force-ten earthquake hit it.
  
  Our generals and the sycophant politicians who grovel at their spit-polished feet would have us believe that we now have to dedicate the next 80 years or so into rounding up all the critters we let loose and putting them back in their cages. Well guess what, folks. All them loose critters are making new critters faster than we can give Dick Cheney's pals no-bid contracts to build new cages to put them all in. You cannot win un-winnable wars. The longer you pursue them, the longer it takes to lose them.

  By the way, he has a lovely line in euphemism. "Unrefined used horse lunch," indeed.