Hot for words: "general time horizon"

New York Times: U.S. and Iraq Agree to Goals for Troop Cuts:

The United States and Iraq have agreed to set a “general time horizon” for the “further reduction of U.S. combat forces in Iraq” following the improvement in security conditions in the country, the White House said Friday.
…
The administration on Friday insisted that it had not shifted its position. It said that the move was simply a reflection of the changing nature of conditions in Iraq.

“These are aspirational goals, not artificial timetables based on political expediency,” said Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman....

I thought that the Administration didn’t want to set any points in time—lines or points on the timeline—for withdrawals of troops? They've been pretty clear about that.

Hmmm. A time “horizon,” is, of course, a horizon, and, according to my Mac's dictionary, a horizon is a line:

horizon |həˈrīzən|
noun
1 [usu. in sing. ] the line at which the earth's surface and the sky appear to meet : the sun rose above the horizon.

So a “time horizon” is clearly a point in time, a line on the timeline. A "general" time horizon presumably is one that is not specific: between this month and that month. OK, but to the extent that one is general, one is failing to really say anything. "We'll withdraw troops some time in the future" is meaningless. Further, those who have argued for a timeline don't seem to have a problem with some generality re the line or lines.

The White House says that the horizon will not be "artificial." Artificial means “produced by human beings.” The White House's “time horizon” will of course be produced by human beings—unless they're consulting astrologers or tea leaves.

“Aspirational”? That’s just fancy talk for “we want this.” An "aspirational" goal is just a goal. C'mon.


So, I guess what this comes down to is: the White House has shifted its position. What's more, it has shifted it in the direction of what war critics have long wanted.

But it is asserting that, unlike war critics, the White House’s desire for an artificial timetable is not based on “political expediency.”

OK. That means that, unlike critics, the White House is not motivated by politics. —You know, like wanting to help out Republicans who are facing an election in a few months.

Really?

You gotta love politics.

HotForWords: "phoney"

A star for a Mexican

As he himself informs us today, Gustavo Arellano (Ask a Mexican) is about to publish a history of Orange County (Sept. 16), and the book has just been very positively reviewed by Publishers Weekly, which writes:

Orange County: A Memoir
Gustavo Arellano. Scribner, $24 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4165-4004-5

Readers get two stories for the price of one in this witty and informative memoir. Journalist Arellano (¡Ask a Mexican!) chronicles the sweet-and-sour story of his family's assimilation into American culture, while also recounting a historical narrative at odds with the bucolic ideal of a place that's been mythologized for decades. “We're so American, so Orange County, that we're even prone to romanticize a past that never existed.” Arellano's structure keeps the narrative moving along at a snappy pace, alternating the threads of the story so “odd chapters constitute the memoir, even chapters tell the history, and one complements the other.” Readers get solid background on the beginning of master-planned communities during the 1920s, the little remembered Citrus War, Orange County's embarrassing 1994 bankruptcy and special mix of conservatism coupled with a dollop of big-time religion. “A 2005 Harper's article named Orange County the country's second hotbed of evangelical Christianity after Colorado Springs,” Arellano writes, and of the 100 megachurches in the U.S. with the largest congregations, four are in Orange County. Arellano explores a place he calls the “Petri dish for America's continuing democratic experiment” and delivers a prescient view of the new American landscape.