The Country Pundit

Middle Earth Parenting

So I went surfing over at Quizilla and dredged up the following results:

Which Lord of the Rings couple would be your dream parents?
brought to you by Quizilla

Your ideal Middle Earth parents are Celeborn and Galadriel. You’re an elf and you live in the beautiful woods of Lothlorien.

Your parents are very wise and will always be fair with you. They also give very good presents that seem cheesy until you realize that they are exactly what you need. Your mother is as beautiful as the dawn, which means that you will be handsome. Arwen is your niece; Elladan and Elrohir are your nephews. Elrond’s your brother in law.

Your mother’s a psychic, which means that you can never, ever lie to her. She’s the disciplinarian and will do her best to see that you become a wise and noble elf. All of your male friends will want to hang out at your flat constantly, in order to look at your mom.

Your father will try to be your best friend. He’s the one to ask when you want money for concert tickets or permission to go to a party. Since he’ll really want to impress you with his hipness, you’ll be forced to listen to him butcher teenage jargon. For example: “What up, homechild? Thou are trippin’ in that tunic, yo.” Try to keep him from doing this in public. Even with all that, Celeborn will spoil you—you’ll enjoy it—so live it up!

Some elements of the parenting quiz have been re-arranged as a result of your correspondent's monomaniacal interest in better format and whatnot. I'm a law student; it's my job to mess up other peoples' writings.

Losing Politely

I've been paying attention to several "official" United Methodist Church internet outlets recently in the wake of the acquittal of the so-called "Reverend" Karen Dammann, in order to understand exactly what's going on here.¹

A key talking point that keeps coming up is the need of Methodists to, as the latest article puts it, "[stay] in Christian conversation". There's been a distinct whine from officialdom about the need for everyone to remain civil and let's all be friends while the ship sinks. This fits into the model I've generally observed:

-Supporters of Karen Dammann, who are generally favorable to homosexuality, "tolerance", and "diversity". They generally don't get wrapped up in this resurrection of Christ nonsense, and prefer to focus upon political action.

-"Centrists", for lack of a better word, who tell everyone to be nice. "Stop shooting the nice xenomorphs, Corporal Hicks. If you wouldn't shoot it, it wouldn't bleed all over you as it tore your head off."

-Supporters of the traditional UMC. They're usually labeled 'fundamentalists' or something similar, always a pejorative.

You can, of course, guess which bloc I fall into; I'm squarely behind backing the UMC's on-paper laws. To me, the Karen Dammann thing was yet another event where left-wing social revolutionaries shirked their institutional duty in order to advance a social agenda that was incompatible with the establishment they swore to uphold.

At this point in time, it is difficult to imagine why I ought to be "civil" to someone who holds a diametrically opposed view of things, and who would run over me if given a chance. Charles Schulz's Peanuts used to have an on-going gag about Snoopy and the Cat Next Door. In an anthology I've got from the 1970s, Snoopy extends a paw with the proverbial olive branch to the Cat, but pulls back a mauled wreck. I get that kind of feeling from assessing the other side.

They're not interested in peaceful discussion nor are they particularly interested in anything but what they want, because they "know" they're right. This is actually a bad thing. Just "knowing in your heart" that you're right and therefore anything is justified is a dangerous scenario. After all, Adolf Hitler didn't get up in the morning to the sounds of George Thorogood singing "Bad auf der Bone"; the Little Corporal thought he was doing the right thing. And no, I'm not trying to smear the other side as having common cause with Adolf Hitler, but I bet their ranks will call me a Nazi simply because I think we ought to stick to the established rules.

At any rate, I don't see how maintaining "civility" is going to do much more than make me fight with one hand tied behind my back. The other guys are going to fight as dirtily as possible, but lo if I retaliate proportionately, then it's Yankee Air Pirate time in the UMC. This seems like the Geneva Convention and other assorted rules of war in that they're great if everyone follows them, but the one who decides not to is in a good position to win, especially when the referees let them them do it. In a way, it's like the conflict in Vietnam: The North Vietnamese were free to do whatever they wanted---rape, torture, murder, assassination, the like---but U Thant (or whoever) forbid that we use B-52D Stratofortresses against their military-industrial complex.

The North Vietnamese ran a pretty intelligent PR campaign and it worked very well on what Ben Kenobi would have called simple minds. The mess of it is that traditionalists in the UMC are in the same boat as the United States back then. A favorable media establishment reports all claims of the pro-homosexual forces with great gusto and scorn for our side. The other side demands, and has an ally in a mindless center, that we play fair while they don't.

Augh. After a long conversation with a friend of mine, we came to the conclusion that I'm far more comfortable with a 'humans fix it' approach instead of hitting the floor to send some 'knee-mail' to the Almighty for help. I've read a couple of message boards discussing this topic that seem to reflect a similar split in attitudes.OK, so I'm going down the same path as others, but I still am not able to see the value of being polite while being punched in the mouth.

¹ On background: The United Methodist Church (hereinafter UMC) is governed by a set of rules called the Discipline. While I've yet to buy a print copy of the thing, I will get it sooner or later and I'll see about providing the relevant information here.

These rules proscribe openly homosexual men or women from serving in the ministry. Recently, the Reverend Karen Dammann wrote a letter to her bishop (two steps up the ladder and who head the UMC's national administrative regions) proclaiming her practice of homosexuality. As such, she was brought before a jury of churchmen in the area for trial, but was acquitted.

Move Along, Move Along

No posting for today; I'm on the road.

Food City 500

Another majority snoozer race. I'm distinctly bored with Nextel's corporate presence, and every time I see one of the "legacy" commercials, I'm reminded of how the sport has changed heavily since I started going to Bristol in the mid-1980s.¹ This is a bad thing, in my opinion. I'd prefer the good old days when names like Waltrip, Allison, and Earnhardt ruled the track.

Enh. On top of that, probably a third of the bloody seats had someone wearing red and black in them. Inasmuch as I loathe Dale Earnhardt, Jr., it's annoying to see the latest bandwagon driver with as much market penetration as he has. I thought it was bad with Rusty Wallace and Mark Martin fans in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jeff Gordon fans in the mid-1990s, and then Tony Stewart fans in the late 1990s, but this takes the cake. None of the guys I like will ever be at risk for 'bandwagon' status, but that's just fine with me.

At any rate, I finally didn't have to have a seat cushion at the Winston Cup² race, which is either a sign of my increased ability to tolerate aluminum seats or the fact that law school has padded my previously-lean posterior.

I was disappointed by the red flagging of the race at the end. I distinctly despise Kurt Busch, and I'm not in favor of him getting to win. I've hated Rusty Wallace since the Reagan Administration---spin Darrell Waltrip and die, punk---but I'd rather him win than that jug-eared Roush brat. Busch was managing to get great restarts, and it kept taking a while for Wallace to run him down. Naturally, if there's only two laps left in the race when the green flag comes back out, Busch can jump to a lead and be essentially safe from harm. Wallace needed a long green flag run where he could have gotten up to the brat and put the Sharpie Ford into the nearest retaining wall.

Alas, that's not the way it was meant to be by Mike Helton and the NASCAR bureaucracy.

On the bright side, I saw Bobby Allison, Ward Burton, Jeremy Mayfield, Sterling Marlin, and some other drivers who I can't recall at the moment. I got to listen to a brief conversation with Representative Richard C. Boucher (D-9th) of Virginia, and I saw Senator William Frist (R-TN), Senate Majority Leader, as he was speaking to Mike Helton, the head of NASCAR.

¹ Yes, and I've got the hearing damage to prove it, I'd bet. Lawsuit for Larry Carrier, Bruton Smith, and the France family for not warning me!

² I know it's not Winston Cup any more, but I learned "Winston Cup" back when they started calling it that, and I see no real need to change now.

Sharpie Professional 250

Good God, this race was boring. I literally went to sleep at the track, but the flyovers by the F-16s and F/A-18s were nice. I would have rather seen F-15Cs and F-14Ds, but one can't be picky, I suppose.

I managed to get my hands on a couple of 1/24 Action Performance cars of my favorite "available" driver for real cheap, so I was happy. Yeah, so this isn't exactly the mental heavy lifting post, but bah. I'm half fried by the sun.

Friday Five 26 March 2004

Er, they don't have one for today. This stinks. At the same time, I'm off to the NASCAR races at Bristol Motor Speedway this weekend, so the postings will be somewhat backlogged.

A Modern-Day Guide to Military Conduct

I've found an account of a compiled military code of conduct, assembled from service experience in the Balkans upon the peacekeeping effort there.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to the blogosphere, for I no longer recall where I found the link to this.

The people in the next apartment are probably angry, because I read this late last night and was laughing almost to the point of relying on my chair's arms to keep from winding up in the floor.

I was going to post a list of personal favorites, but that would probably detract from the value of the list. It is definitely not safe for browsing outside of the privacy of a room or something; I've just about gotten in trouble for reading this in a group situation. I hope the instructor didn't notice me undergoing considerable contortions trying not to laugh out loud.

Poetic License

You are Homer! An epic poet circa 800 B.C., Homer
is the expression of the ancient Greek ideal.
His characters embark upon long and wordy
quests and engage in battles of heroic length.
Monsters are slain and cities are razed. Fun
and glory all around!


Which famous poet are you? (pictures and many outcomes)
brought to you by Quizilla

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Boots and Sabers.

New Derb Interview

There's an honest-to-God interview with Derbyshire as done by that chap Frank J over at IMAO. Click here for the whole thing. It's witty, enraging, and everything you can usually expect from a guy who doesn't mind saying that, "I do have some opinions that aren't very respectable."

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to none other than Derb himself.

What Book Am I?

I've been notoriously bereft of reporting quiz results in the last little while, mostly because it's a pain to deal with the graphic results. Nevertheless, here's a non-triumphant return to the copious posting of tests:

You're The Mists of Avalon!

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

You're obsessed with Camelot in all its forms, from Arthurian legend to the Kennedy administration. Your favorite movie from childhood was The Sword in the Stone. But more than tales of wizardry and Cuban missiles, you've focused on women. You know that they truly hold all the power. You always wished you could meet Jackie Kennedy.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Kennedy. Kennedy?! !@#$% You know, of course, that this means war. More dreadful an insult could not have been made! I'd be a faithful husband, I don't drink and drive, and I'm not a little dirtbag who dilly-dallies with Marilyn Monroe. (She's a bit dead, which tends to simplify things. Drop her in your lap while wearing that diamond dress and cooing 'Happy birthday, Mr. Country Pundit' and we'll see what tune you're whistling. --Ed.) What could I possibly have in common with the Kennedy family? Oh yes, living on this planet.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Deuddersun.

Mel's Next Movie

It appears that, according to the Internet Movie Database, Mel Gibson isn't finished mining the Middle East for religiously-themed movies:

[Gibson] wants to make a movie about the origins of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. Gibson - who was criticized by some quarters of the Jewish church, who accused his epic The Passion Of The Christ of blaming Jews for Jesus Christ's death - has hinted he may make a filmed account of the Revolt Of The Maccabees, the story behind Hanukkah.

The 46-year-old says, "The story that's always fired my imagination is the Book of Maccabees. "The Maccabees family stood up, and they made war. They stuck by their guns and they came out winning. It's like a western." The Maccabees led a three year war, 200 years before the birth of Jesus, against Antiochus, a king who forced the Jews to worship false gods. The war led to the liberation of Jerusalem.

Gibson's interest in Jewish history concerns the Jewish Anti-defamation League. National director Abe Foxman says, "My answer would be, 'Thanks but no thanks.' The last thing we need in Jewish history is to convert our history into a western."

--

Well, if Mel makes it, I'll watch it. I'm not Jewish (y'think?) and so I'd probably miss out on the culture-specific tidbits, but it couldn't be all bad. As for the odious Abe Foxman, I would suggest that the last thing Jewish history needs is someone like him trying to control it.

A good swords 'n sandals epic about a revolution against an oddball king which leads to victory (in the short term) and the establishment of Hannukah would probably be interesting. We know that Gibson would be faithful to whatever source material his research people could turn up. Phooey on you, Foxman.

So I Went to the Movies...

...and I finally saw The Passion of the Christ.

It is, arguably, one of if not the finest movies I've ever seen. From an artistic point of view, it is an excellently-made film.¹ From a content-focused perspective, it is an excellently-made film. The overwhelming reaction that I had to it was, "You are not worthy of this man's sacrifice."

I'll leave it to the cadres of religious bloggers to nitpick over the import of the foregoing statement. At the same time, let me try and inject a bit of something that I hope C.S. Lewis might have said: "Well, of course. That's the very point that you and the rest of us are unworthy and that since we didn't deserve Christ's sacrifice, then it could only be an act of supreme love et cetera, so therefore kindly cease your quibbling."

Now, to the various numbered points:

1. In terms of "inside the box" theological understanding, the opening sequence with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane graphically illustrated a point to me that I usually ignored. Previously, I figured the entire period of time where Jesus was on Earth was essentially a fait accompli, wherein He was here and therefore it was only a matter of time until the redemption of man occurred. It was, in other words, a done deal.

This lead me to roll my eyes at the various Biblical passages wherein Satan tried to tempt Jesus into the service of Hell. I admit to always being amused where that was concerned, because I thought I could imagine Jesus' reactions to the whole bit: "Let me get this straight. Dad fired you, and you came here to planet Podunk where you're the 'prince of the air' or somesuch and you now offer me, the son of God---who I might add was your former boss---an opportunity to rule over this planet if only I'll worship you? Let's see. I'm due for vacation in the rest of Creation here shortly; let me think about your offer. Don't call us; we'll call you." Essentially, it would have been a reaction just short of Jesus bursting out into open laughter.

There's probably an inadvertant denial of the humanity of Christ in there if Torquemada's looking hard enough, but my point is made. Back to the movie: The garden scene gave me the distinct impression that Jesus was close to calling the whole thing off. Not so much that He was going to listen to that creepy-looking Satan, but that He was going to crumble under the burden that lay ahead. In fact, I sat there in the theater and thought to myself, "This was a closely-run thing."²

Realizing that there was a distinct chance that the entire redemption of man might not've come off left me unsettled. Off to a good start, eh?

2. I didn't know that the Roman occupation government allowed the Sanhedrin to maintain an armed body for such purposes as the Sanhedrin saw fit. Ostensibly these were temple guardsmen and security forces, but I had always figured, for some reason, that Roman soldiers or civilians had gone to help out with the capture/arrest of Jesus. The character of Malthus was done rather well; I assume that I would have responded similarly had I lost an ear and suddenly gotten it back.

The use of earth was an interesting touch. I assumed that Jesus simply remounted the detached ear, but it would be more uh, lyrical?, to have man repaired with one of the basic elements of creation, i.e. earth.

3. I'm no longer going to use the pray of "Not my will, but thine". I picked it up from Richard Nixon (said while he was preparing for the Checkers speech), but having seen it in the context that it was used originally, anything I put in that context would only cheapen the original and devalue it. I simply can't use for personal purposes a prayer offered in such earnestness over such high stakes by the son of God.

4. I didn't know (and didn't find in re-reading the King James Version) that there were members of the Sanhedrin who were opposed to the proceedings detailed in the movie. I suppose the Anti-Defamation League's odious Abe Foxman missed the part where Jewish opinion on Jesus was not unanimous. Not knowing anything about how the Sanhedrin worked, I would have thought that the various disassociations from the proceedings would have undermined the strength of the eventual decision. Maybe enough of them didn't leave to set up calls for a quorum or something under Rabinowicz's Rules of Order. It is of course a moot point, but it was something that surprised me.

5. Jesus Christ has to be the bravest man who ever lived. I (physically or mentally) couldn't have done what He did, and I suppose that's just one more reason I couldn't be Jesus.

6. The raven sequence was, at some visceral level, amusing. It's probably a very Roman Catholic thing: Blaspheme, and blammo! Beak 1, Eye Socket 0. Randall Flagg would have approved. I bet it wasn't fun having a raven sit there and play Woody Woodpecker with his skull for a while.

7. The "remember me when you come into your kingdom" component of the story is one of the more powerful components in the crucifixion story, and I thought Gibson pulled this off quite well.

8. Feeling guilty, Mr. Foxman? I suppose you could theoretically find this movie to be anti-Semitic...if you take out every sequence with the Romans in it. We watch the film and we see the ancestors of Beavis and Butt-head (or maybe Leonard and Bubba from Redneck Rampage) making a bloody smear on the floor with Jesus while some bureaucrat scribbles on a scroll. If anything, it was more of an anti-Roman film. This film has been useful to screen out the people who are, at the base of it all, a bunch of fanatics who can't deal with history as it seems to have happened. Those kinds of folks are the ones you don't need to listen to in the future. Mr. Foxman, you've made the list. Congratulations!

9. From an intellectual standpoint, I was happy that I could understand snippets of the Latin conversation. I suppose Latin to English is easier than Aramaic to English. This is meaningless in the big picture, but I enjoyed understanding someone without having to read the subtitles. Not that I mind subtitles; they're very useful if done right.

10. I will be buying the DVD---already got the book---and probably the soundtrack as well. For a review of the OST, see Filmtracks for a review that is more or less favorable.

11. The Passion is a very Roman Catholic film. I'm a Protestant---Methodist by trade, although there are times that I'm embarrassed by the national leadership---and therefore I bet that a lot of things were lost on me. There's probably some grand traditional story that Roman Catholic children are taught about the significance of Mary and Mary Magdalene sopping up the blood of Jesus from that courtyard. In fact, I bet that there was once a relic proclaimed to be the cloths used for that purpose. As for my part, I thought Pilate's wife was handing them a burial shroud.

This same thing cropped up with the woman pressing a towel to Jesus' face. I now know this to be the story of Saint Veronica, but at the time it rang no bells with me.

12. This movie was fair to Pilate. Now, Methodists say (or should say, ahem!) on a regular basis the "Apostles Creed, Traditional Version" (#881 in the hymnal, folks) which mentions that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate. He's been one of the RFSOBs (see Aliens where Private Hudson discusses the fate of Carter J. Burke for a translation) of history as a result. Yet, the older I got and the more thought I put into it, I figured Pilate had a raw deal.

Consider this: Pontius Pilate was an official in a government that didn't take too kindly to failures in office. There would not have been a Paul O'Neill in the Augustus Administration. Instead of Richard Cheney saying something like "The President is making some changes in his economic policy and you are part of that change" which leads to dimissal from office, Vice Emperor Cheney would have politely asked Mr. O'Neill not to bleed on the marble as Praetorian Guardsmen stabbed him to death. With that in mind, failure was not an option for Pilate. The possibility of death tends to make someone's political decisions a wee bit different than they would be if retirement to Tuscany with wine, women, and song were a possibility.

With regards to Pilate's famous question ("Quid est veritas?"), I think it's a fair one in my opinion. Look at it from the perspective of a Roman official governing conquered territory: The religious leadership of a conquered populace comes to you and says they want a guy put to death. You're not part of that religious tradition, and you really could care less what they want. All you're interested in is your performance review from the center, i.e. Rome. You talk to the accused and decide there's nothing there. You say this to the religious leadership.

Then they say the magic words about 'revolutionary' and 'no friend of Caesar'.

It gets very simple from there on out and Pilate does what any self-respecting occupation authority man would do: He caves. This is marvelously explained in the potentially apocryphal scene where Pilate explains to his wife that, "Let me tell you my truth" and that the central government isn't interested in hearing about another revolt. Faced with what seemed like an easy question, Pilate did what he thought was right for the situation. It's very, very easy to sit back and criticize him, but can anyone who does so say this in honesty? What would you, or I, or anyone have done under the circumstances that Pilate found himself in?

John O'Sullivan parallels this for a while (but goes in a slightly different direction than I do) and since I read this before seeing the movie, I presume that some of my thought on the subject was informed by Mr. O'Sullivan.

13. Having just spent a bit defending Pilate, let me say a few words on Caiaphas. Like Pilate, I figure Caiaphas was doing what he had to do. I presume that the Roman policy on insurrection was simple: In case of insurrection, kill the current leadership. O'Sullivan goes further into depth on the question, and my points would be largely repetitive.

All in all, an impressive cinematic experience. I highly recommend to anyone over the age of 18.

¹ Worth noting is the presence of Caleb Deschanel on this film's production. Mr. Deschanel also was the cinematographer on The Right Stuff, The Natural, and The Patriot. His work is good in these films and it is good here. Mr. Deschanel's wife played Annie Glenn to Ed Harris' John Glenn in The Right Stuff, while their daughter, Zooey, was a babe in the Will Ferrell vehicle Elf.

² There are multiple versions of the quote from Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington. My use is more or less what I thought at the time, whether it is accurate to the true quotation by Wellington or not.

den Beste Does It Again (Part One)

This started as a two-topic post that I've decided to split into two pieces (kind of like the Roman Empire's Western and Eastern divisions) due to the fact that I a) want the first piece out the door and b) haven't finished writing the second piece despite having several days to mull it over.

If I were in more of an irreverent mood, I would have titled this post "Nobody Does It Better", in a conscious nod to Carly Simon's schlocky (and double entendre-sporting) theme song for The Spy Who Loved Me. By the way, she's got a concert DVD out that dates from 1987 or so; it's inexpensive and is supposed to be pretty good. Got to buy that.

Anyways. Den Beste usually has some sort of phrase or section in his writings regarding the war on Islamists that gives me the Evil Calvin Grin. When I get a scanner or something, I'll show you exactly what that is. He's also able to invoke a "huh huh huh" on the order of Butt-head, and I thought I'd point out his latest success:

Nations which are weak or craven increase their chances of being targeted when they appease the Islamists. The Islamists don't seem to be seriously targeting the US any longer because they know that we'll fight back. After 9/11 and after months of sustained operations against Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's now clear that the US won't retreat because of such attacks. Instead, we respond violently to them, causing huge casualties to the attackers, in men lost and organizations obliterated and even nations captured. (Italics mine.)

I was instantly reminded of a quip I found in Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South, made by a character, Piet Hardie. Hardie held views on racial relations that I found unacceptable, but that doesn't mean the author couldn't give him a good line. He speaks to a Federal army veteran and now slave that he's just purchased: "I can lick you any way you name: bare hands, axes, whips, guns, any way at all. Any time you want to try, you tell me, but you have your grave picked out beforehand."

I suppose that's why I understood President Bush's "Bring it on!" remark. Every time the al-Qaeda types or their cohorts in Iraq get together for a stand-up fight (i.e. force on force, not drive-by assassinations of missionaries, you dirtbags), they lose, and lose badly. We like those fights. Now, occasionally they get lucky and kill some of our people. This is, of course, regrettable. I would prefer that none of our people die in this annoying war. However, a man with a rifle, body armor, training, and comrades of like mind and circumstance is in a better position to defend himself than is a half-awake commuter on his way to the City of New York from the District of Columbia. Thus, I find that sending our troops into battle is preferable. And by the way, Godspeed. I pray every single night for your safety and for your swift & victorious return.

At any rate, we're probably pursuing the proper strategic doctrine. I use 'strategic' in what must be a simplistic understanding of a professional military meaning for the term: "[Strategy] is the area of the practical activity of the higher military and political leadership of the supreme command, and of the higher headquarters, that pertains to the art of preparing a country and the armed forces for war and conducting the war."¹

One can quibble about our operational level decisions such as Iraq. Since I'm more often than not the cold-eyed practitioner of realpolitik (helps that I'm not actually in a position of responsibility), I'll note that while we may have yet to see tremendous gain from inside Iraq, we have seen a positive external benefit in that Libya has decided to come clean. That by itself is almost worth the cost of the war. Crush one bully, and others may conform their conduct to the law, if you will.

When it is also considered that many millions of people no longer live under the boot of an odious SOB and will now have a chance at national self-determination, both the bottom line and the heart are satisified in terms of Iraq.

Second half coming on Saturday.

¹ Scott, ed. Soviet Military Strategy [1975], p. 11).

I'm Backing A New Candidate

I was rolling on through the blogosphere when I had my Dantooine Road experience. I've found a new candidate for President in 2004, and this guy's not going to be susceptible to questions about his military service.

Courtesy of My Pet Jawa, I bring you my man for 2004: Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith.

THE VADER RECORD

On Terror: When faced with a revolutionary bunch of terrorists from the upper class of society, Darth Vader didn't fall back and suggest that force wasn't a solution. Lord Vader stepped up to the plate and personally led efforts to stop a terrorist "Alliance" dedicated to overthrowing the government.

Everyone's seen the Alderaan example. George Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, but he's rebuilding these terrorist havens. By comparison, Darth Vader obliterated Alderaan. There may be more Alderaanians in the future, but you can bet for darned sure that there won't be any more terrorists operating out of Alderaan. Lord Vader will spare no nation in his efforts to root out political extremists who strike against the government.

On Terrorists: When faced with a dangerous bunch of religious fanatics prone to suicidal attacks, Lord Vader personally led the campaign that exterminated the so-called Jedi Knights. He personally struck down an tall bearded fanatic who had led an impressionable youth away from the straight and narrow. Can George Bush say the same?

When the time came to get information from captured terrorists, Lord Vader didn't pass some un-Constitutional act that would be harped on for years. In the case of Captain Colton Antilles, he took the matter in hand, literally. There was no dithering about while consulting lawyers to see if he could get the information necessary to guarantee the safety of the citizens and the government.

When it comes to security, Lord Vader believes that "no one [should] stop us this time". He'll not flinch at sending troops into danger to protect us from terror. Ask the pilots who followed the Millennium Falcon into an asteroid belt.

In War: Lord Vader led from the front in the Empire's war on terror, personally striding into a war zone on the hostile world of Hoth as he attempted to capture a champagne socialist "princess" and her outlaw lover.

Darth Vader flew a fighter and managed to score several kills in pitched space combat against enemy starfighters at the battle of Yavin IV. Did George Bush shoot down anything in the Texas ANG? Did John Kerry get any kills other than helpless South Vietnamese villagers?

On Efficiency: Lord Vader doesn't tolerate incompetent officers in the Imperial Navy who think they can survive by pleasantries and perfumery. He would have dealt decisively with Wesley Clark the first time Clark tried to end-run him. You could ask Admiral Kendall Ozzel, had he not run afoul of Lord Vader. Captain Lorth Needa is also a testament to Lord Vader's efficiency focus. He wants results, not excuses.

In dangerous times, we can't trust either waffling ex-vets who by the way served in Vietnam or ANG playboys who never left the continent. We have to trust a fearsome warrior who by his very visage commands respect among the lawful and fear among the lawless.

The choice is clear-cut, as if made by a lightsaber: Vader 2004

Tip of the Executor hat to My Pet Jawa.

An Alternative Galadriel

Long-time readers know that I was really fond of Cate Blanchett's turn as Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring. This stands in stark contrast to Joseph Pearce, who prattled something about Galadriel-as-Mary, mother of Jesus and how Blanchett was "disturbed and disturbing". Right. It's my understanding that Mary's turn in history was as mother to Jesus, not as some ageless and immortal insurrectionist sorceress, which is what I understand Galadriel was up to before we got around to the Age of Men. At any rate, Blanchett's Galadriel was a babe, and although I didn't think much of the green scene, I didn't let it detract from my overall enjoyment of the performance.

Anyways, I was browsing the blogroll and found something from Mr Free Market:

Petite Kylie Minogue missed out on a part in Lord of the Rings - because she is too small.Director Peter Jackson reckoned the pop star did not measure up.She wanted to play the part of elf queen Galadriel.But she lost out to fellow Aussie Cate Blanchett, who at 5' 9" is nine inches taller.

I'm not sure what I would have thought of this. Miss Minogue, although a good looker in her own right and everything, probably couldn't carry the "Immortal Ice Queen of Lorien" vibe like Cate Blanchett did. Plus, I haven't the foggiest as to how well Minogue can act. Sure she can prance about on stage, reinvent her career on several occasions, and be featured in the Sydney Olympics (!) but that doesn't automatically translate into qualifications for Galadriel. On the other hand, Cate Blanchett's breakthrough role was playing a woman who got hailed as an icon of an era, and I would think that such experience would mean more.

Nevertheless, Mr Free Market is true to his British roots and includes a wee little JPEG that makes reading his original entry all worthwhile.

Foreign Leaders for Kerry

Everyone's familiar with John Kerry's recent quip to the effect that world leaders have told him that Bush has got to go and they're for Kerry '04. Well, he's backed away from that (No he didn't, you Republican troglodyte; it's called nuance. --Ed.) but the damage has been done:

Foreign Leaders For John Kerry

Heh heh heh. "Ten out of ten foreign leaders support John Kerry! 100% approval from some of the world's most worthless men!"

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to KJL@NRO.

UPDATE: The more I think about it, I think Senator Kerry would respond to this sort of post by saying, "That's not the issue. The issue is that George W. Bush has driven these reasonable men to great distraction in his unilateral war with Iraq, his unilateral occupancy of the White House, his unilateral occupancy of a singular marriage bed with one woman, and his unilateral insistence upon being called 'Mr. President' at appropriate times. That is to say, phrased differently that I would not object to being called 'Mr. President', but rather that it would not be necessary, because I served in Vietnam and by the way, do you know who I am?"

Who needs the Unisom ticking pill when you've got John Kerry's voice? I'll throw out my sleep machine thingamajig and just put a tape of him on continuous repeat.

I Suggest A New Strategy...

And no, it's not "Let the Wookiee win", although my strategy could theoretically be compared to pulling peoples' arms from their sockets.

The Spanish electorate has demonstrated that you need less than a dozen or so bombs and 200 casualties to force them to the bombing party's will. Keep that in mind. So what? Well, perhaps we ought to lose track of a three-ship cell of B-52H Stratofortresses every so often. It appears that it only takes a few bombs to make the Spaniards cry 'no mas'; for the price of just a few Mark 82 500 pound bombs, we could make Madrid do whatever we wanted it to. Live-fire accidents and navigational errors happen all the time, don't you know?

"Madrid, Tehran, Mecca, they all look alike. Shaddup about being off-course and drop the bombs, will ya?" We can even get Slim Pickens or Powers Boothe & Rebecca DeMornay (!) to fly the lead Buff. We then of course issue the appropriate apologies---completely sincere, I assure you---and have a junior Administration official make some crack to the appropriate reporters that, "We took a cue from the Islamists and decided to demonstrate that the price of disobeying America was higher than the price of disobeying al-Qaeda."

When you consider that a three-ship cell of Stratofortresses carries in the neighborhood of 300 Mark 82s, we could put 20 bombs in each of the European Union countries and rule those lands forever, all in a single night and without refueling. Leave RAF Fairford before lunch and be back by supper with the whole of Europe in your hand!

World domination has never been easier.

A Figurative Spanish Casualty

Comrade Commissar, when he's not busy shooting wreckers, kulaks, or bourgeois capitalists in the basement, managed to dig up something from the time of the Soviet Union's first big military effort beyond its borders. His post, Pasionara, has a link to the full story of the thing in question. Read the whole thing, of course.

Apparently, there was a woman on the "Republican" (People's Democratic Republic, you mean. --Ed.) side who went around making speeches in support of the anti-Franco cause. (Lots of talk, lots of fratricide; I tell you, these Marxists stay busy. --Ed.)

Levity aside, Comrade Commissar gives us two phrases that the woman used as signature lines, both of which are now meaningless in the Spanish political scene:

"It is better to be the widows of heroes than the wives of cowards!"

and

"[T]he Spanish people would rather die on its feet than live on its knees."

It boggles the mind to think that a nation whose people spent something like seven hundred years in warfare to eject the Moorish/Islamic presence would roll over and die, crying "No mas!" like Roberto Duran simply because some dirtbag Islamist decides to hit a train.

I find it ironic that Socialists, who are usually always ready to fight against this or that, are so willing to knuckle under when something really worth fighting comes along. Well, I said it before, and I'll say it again: We've won a world war without the help of the Spanish (and probably against their covert efforts, if Das Boot is to be believed) and we'll do it again.

One might be justified in thinking that all their real men moved to Mexico back during the days of Nueva Espana, or went down with treasure galleons.

Another Sprint PCS Website

Found this one at sprintusers: Sprint PCS Info.

In their own words: "[L]ike all carriers, Sprint PCS has some major problems. This site is created to help you work around them, get the best service, and hold Sprint accountable for the stuff that they screw up on."

I haven't fully explored the site yet, but I figured I'd pass it along to all the other SPCS users out there.

Well, Too Bad

Winnie the Pooh puts it best: "Bother!"

Apparently, the Spanish electorate has held Aznar's party responsible for the Madrid bombings and have chosen the Socialists to lead them. CNN reports that the Socialist Workers' Party (!) has defeated the incumbent Popular Party in a 43-37ish split.

The leader of the SWP has pledged to bring the Spanish troops home from Iraq and to concentrate on "all forms of terrorism".¹ Also, he has promised to create a government of change that will work for peace.

Isn't that special?

At any rate, the loss of Spain to the Franco-German alliance is unfortunate and we will struggle on without them. It won't be the first time that English-speaking nations have had to fight a war with the Spanish either sitting the fence or helping the other side. Note to the Spaniards: Last time it happened, we won the war. Just a little note.

Insert the made-up Robert E. Lee quote: "Too bad. Oh, too bad." General Lee slammed a fist on the saddle of Traveler when he "spoke" that. I don't have a horse, so my desk will have to do.

¹ How much do you want to bet that "the terrorism of poverty and the terrorism of the rich" or worse, "the terrorism of George W. Bush" will be on that list? A national Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, eh? Hrrm. Might have to dig into what their real beliefs are.

Rumsfeld's Souvenir

According to the Miami Herald, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld keeps a piece of the jet that clobbered the Pentagon courtesy of al-Qaeda.

Somehow, I approve. On the other hand, the article also tells of people scavenging patches from the ruins of sworn officers' uniforms in the rubble. That's a) ghoulish and b) the desecration of a de facto war grave. (On a side note, I was irritated by the notion that the scrap metal from the target site in the city of New York was hauled away for disposal; it should have been held on to like Elendil and reforged into a new World Trade Center built to the specifications of the original, on the same site as if nothing ever happened.)

Read the whole thing by clicking here.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Diversionz.

al-Qaeda versus Spain

This is snipped from the preceding post in order to maintain the tone of the first.

If al-Qaeda did do it---still a possibility---then they've picked on the wrong people. If we assume that al-Qaeda is motivated by some sort of "anti-Crusader" mentality, then their action is somewhat rational but also kind of stupid.

What's rational? The Spanish are some of the last folks to have really given the Islamic/Moorish empire a bloody nose. Remember that as late as the 15th century, Spain was still possessed of a significant Islamic occupation presence. In fact, it would take until 1492 to complete the reconquista, the reconquest of Spain. For a brief capsule of that and the Alhambra of Granada, see here.

Ostensibly, the religious motivations for al-Qaeda would be avenging, (five hundred years later) the defeat of Islamic forces. At the same time, they haven't just tweaked the nose of the evil crusader country, they've hit a country that's got ruthless running through its history.

After all, it wasn't called the Spanish Inquisition for nothing. Pit and the pendulum, anyone? This is the country that coughed up Tomás de Torquemada. Given that this war against terror is one that is fought largely in the shadows, are you al-Qaeda men really sure you want your troops charging into that country? The land of Torquemada is also a country that has knitted into its cultural fabric the active enjoyment of a literal bloodsport, namely bullfighting.

I ask al-Qaeda again: Do you really want to mess with the guys who cleaned your clocks five hundred years ago, who produced a man whose name is synonymous with brutal torture, and who think a lot of ritualized slaughter? America's put a beating on al-Qaeda, but we've just got a penchant for porn and precision firepower.

Suppose al-Qaeda thinks it can take the Spanish in warfare and out-do them in brutality, slaughter, fire, whatever. That's nice, Osama. You've bagged about 200 people. Congratulations. The Spanish, on the other hand, pretty much laid waste to every indigenous population south of the Rio Grande and Florida, all for the greater glory of Spain, profit for the crown and self, and to save the souls of those Indians from the fires of Hell.¹ That, friends and neighbors, is destruction practiced as an art.

If given a choice between the all-stars of Islamic cruelty and the all-stars of Spanish conquistadors for the Brutality Bowl, I'll take Cortez & Company, thank you. These Spaniards'll tear you a couple of new orifices, right before they set fire to your flea-bitten hides, and all to the sights & sounds of flamenco performers. At this point for us, it's strictly business---for the Spaniards, it will be all personal.

Good luck and good hunting, Spain.

¹ And no, I'm not one of these indigenous-peoples whiners that considers Christopher Columbus the very devil of Hell. Besides, I'm more interested in what happened in 1607 at Jamestown.

The Spain Thing

I am, of course, conscious of the attacks in Madrid. It's a nice-but-nasty city, one where your lungs will instantly know that you're not in America any more once you disembark from your plane.

As usual, I've got something to say about the whole deal:

I was listening to NPR this morning and some fellow---not your usual sandalista---suggested that the discovery of the van was possibly a ham-fisted attempt to shift blame. His primary reasons for saying this were twofold:
-The tapes found in the van were religious sermons that were readily available and were not 'propaganda'.
-The ETA may not be monolithic; see some marketplace car bombing in Northern Ireland by the 'Real' IRA back in the late 1990s.

I agree with this man's reservations. Before I go further, let me say that I know precious little about the Basque struggle for independence, and was surprised to know that the French were in the fight against the ETA et cetera. That is not a back-of-the-hand against Paris; I had thought that the Basque question was solely a domestic Spanish issue. Learn something every day, y'do.

The point about the tapes is interesting to me. I would expect religious material in the hands of men about to commit terrorist acts would be something on the order of "DEATH TO THE ZIONIST PIGS AND THEIR CRUSADER ALLIES, ALLAH COMMANDS IT AND YOU WILL GET 72 COPIES OF SALMA HAYEK IF YOU DO THIS!" Conversely, I would not expect them to have tapes of a run-of-the-mill imam reading the five pillars of Islam or talking about how going to Mecca isn't really required if you can't make it, that Allah in his munificence would understand.

Of course, if it were a sophisticated operation by al-Qaeda forces, there might be incentives to try and cover their trail. I can think of a few, but I'll leave it to them to figure it out. No freebies, you dirtbags.

Secondly, the point about ETA factionalism is almost always true when you're dealing with politico-terrorist organizations. Invariably, there's always someone in the ranks who isn't happy that you've stopped bombing and started balloting, regardless of whether the goals of the group are being advanced. Some organizations probably kill dissenters like that, but they can't catch every one.

This problem even extended to the German National Socialists. Ernst Rohm, the leader of the Sturmabteilung (AKA the 'SA'), become dissatisfied with the actions of Adolf Hitler because the little corporal wasn't doing enough to further the socialist goals Rohm had embraced. Rohm had thought that he and his organization were the vanguard of the national socialist revolution, and thus wanted to be a big dog in the NSDAP's arrangements if not the big dog.

Of course, Hitler didn't like competition. Rohm made some public remarks---something about either continuing the original Nazi revolution or having another one---that got ol' Adolf angry, and so Rohm & Co. were purged in "The Night of the Long Knives", 10 June 1934.

That example is listed to show that even some of the best run groups of thugs have their problems and their "mob" to satisfy, unless you kill them. Given the probable resemblance of the ETA to every other politico-terror group, the aforementioned splinter possibility is given credence by me.

But what of the ETA disavowals? The BBC & NPR reported that 'reliable ETA contacts' (not their phraseology) had disavowed the attacks. That in and of itself is not conclusory. I see two possibilities:

a) They didn't do it, and were wanting to their story out in front that while "Yes, we kill Spaniards in the name of Basque independence, we didn't do this because we're not stupid." This would be intelligent damage control, because the ETA's name came up first in public discussion, sort of the ready wrongdoer. If the public got it in their minds that the ETA was responsible, the bombing Basques might get a visit from the Spanish military that otherwise would not have been made.

b) They did do it, and wanted to cover that up for whatever reason, like too much success. "Oops, we've killed too many." At this point, the ETA leadership would want to distance itself because it would not serve their purposes. It would attract the sort of rage that 11 September got from us. The ETA would like fear and weakness; instead, they would get fear backed by rage, which tends to lead to slaughter of the bad guys. If I were an ETA commander and we'd ordered the strike, I'd do my darnedest to back away. I'd hate to have the Spanish army turned loose on me with any remaining gloves off. Similarly, it would require carefully orchestrated political footwork in order to manipulate the circumstances to ETA's advantage at this point.

At the same time, it would be an interesting way to get on top of the Spanish terror heap; perhaps the ETA saw a useful opportunity in the 'failed' op to stick al-Qaeda with the blame and get them annihilated, so that everyone remembers the ETA and doesn't get distracted with a bunch of Arabs. I suppose it would be something on the order of, "We'll keep the license on killing Spaniards, thank you."

Further ruminations may follow. My second point in this post is now going to be a separate post, due to its less analytical content. The people of Spain are in my prayers.

UPDATE: Matthew Stinson's remarks and round-the-web research are here; go read them.

The Swanky Conservative has found this site about the ETA.

Friday Five 12 March 2004

1. What was the last song you heard?

Hrrm. It may have been Fleetwood Mac's "Nightbird" or whatever it's called, where Stevie Nicks croaks "just like a white wing dove" or something. I despise Fleetwood Mac so I'm not looking the lyrics up.

2. What were the last two movies you saw?

Hrrm. Er. Uh...huh huh huh...hey Beavis. I think it would have been High Plains Drifter and The Godfather. Can't be sure.

3. What were the last three things you purchased?

Lisa Gerrard's new album, Immortal Memory, with Patrick Cassidy. Comments later. Prior to that, it was pencils. Going back one last step, The Amtrak Story by Frank N. Wilner. Mr. Wilner has an extensive background in railroad subjects and writes well. I recommend his works to those who support rail as a means of passenger and freight transportation, and also to those who oppose those goals.

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?

Take the MPRE, recover from spring break---no, not a wild one, just one where I traveled and had to do some nagging things---clean the apartment, and report the SOB who lives beneath me for smoking like a poorly-maintained smelter. Carbonize your lungs but not mine, pal!

5. Who are the last five people you talked to?

The folks and friends from college. Got to keep up the undergraduate network.

Friday Five 05 March 2004

Yes, this one's late as well. Today'll be a two-fer, catching up.

What was...

1. ...your first grade teacher's name?

[REDACTED]

2. ...your favorite Saturday morning cartoon?

The Transformers, without a doubt. I was ready to kill when it would get pre-empted for local advertising or something.

3. ...the name of your very first best friend?

Jonathan.

4. ...your favorite breakfast cereal?

Gee, I don't know. I used to eat a lot of Trix.

5. ...your favorite thing to do after school?

Come home and watch cartoons on the local UHF station that would show, variously, G.I. Joe, Transformers, or whatever else the programming guys could scrounge up. At one point, the station had drawings for G.I. Joe toys, and I was desperate to get a Skystriker. Never happened, until Santa and the free enterprise system intervened later.

Good News from Roanoke

A source reports that the Virginia Museum of Transportation (www.vmt.org) is working on its exhibits again.

Their Norfolk & Western RPO (Railway Post Office) car is being restored. This is, of course, a good thing. The source tells me that new windows are being fitted and a new exterior painting will be applied. Long-range plans reportedly involve the interior restoration of the car so that it can be walked through. The interior of the car is considered "largely intact", and my source confirms this.

Railroads at one time were the means of long-range mail transport. These specialized RPO cars were placed at the head of the train, right behind the locomotives, as they were not open to anyone but their workers and perhaps the train crew. The workers would pick up, sort, and set out mail that was bound for anywhere all over the country, all while the train was moving. Large bags of sorted mail would be chucked from the speeding locomotives onto platforms at various stations in order to make the connection.

The U.S. Mail provided much revenue for the railroads in the waning days of passenger service, until the government decided to cancel the rail mail contracts, choosing trucks and airplanes as the mail delivery system instead.

Sprint PCS Users' Website

I've got a Sprint PCS cellular phone and have had it since the summer of 2001. I've been very pleased with their service for the most part, and I've just found something that I think is worth passing along:

SprintUsers.com, in their own words, is "a resource for Sprint PCS users to learn about the company's products and services - not shoved down your throats by corporate suits, but with suggestions and opinions from other customers just like you."

They have a wide variety of things to look at in terms of the SPCS system, and a pretty active message board that appears to have a lot of good information. I've bookmarked and will use it; thought I'd pass it along to the readership.

VDH Blog

Victor Davis Hanson, who most of the Internet knows from his columns at National Review Online, now has a blog. Visit it at The Official Website of Victor Davis Hanson.

I got this, somehow, from the RSS feed at The Politburo Diktat, who got it from Horsefeathers. Tips of the Wisconsin hat to all involved.

A Stephen Moore Smackdown

There are occasional authors or pieces at National Review Online who have the power to inflict the Nelson Rockefeller effect known as "MEGO", i.e. "Mine Eyes Glaze Over" when they write and I read.

I don't generally keep track of the statistics for this, but Stephen Moore's new piece, entitled What's Wrong With Insider Trading?, must've set a record. I managed to get five paragraphs into it---not far---before immediately hitting the snooze button.

The killer quote: "Libertarians have long argued that insider trading should not be a crime..."

Heh heh heh. I'm not sympathetic to libertarian principles and I don't care for their influence. Libertarians have long argued that they aren't irrelevant, but that doesn't make it so.

And no, I don't like Stephen Moore, either. I'm not particularly fond of his assassination squad which operates under the euphemistic title of "Club for Growth". Mr. Moore, the Party doesn't need a fanatical batch of libertarians running around targeting standing Republicans for annihilation just because they disagree with you.

This does not operate as a defense of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, who doesn't seem to be a good Republican. It does however operate as an indictment of an unelected and unaccountable latter-day Inquisition. I recently got a membership drive letter from the Club, autosigned by Stephen Moore. I read it for amusement, until I got to the fourth page. Then, amusement turned to outrage:

[Y]ou will be part of an organization whose goal is to defeat status quo incumbents.

One lesson we've learned from the Left is that if you really want to advance your agenda, take out an incumbent politician who opposes you. It's amazing how quickly cowardly politicians see things our way when they believe that their political careers are in danger.

Stephen Moore isn't happy just defeating Democrats. He wants to destroy any Republican that doesn't march to his tune, regardless of seniority or electability. I'm distinctly amused at his puffed-up air that sounds straight from The Godfather. Made any offers they can't refuse lately, Don Mooreleone? Or maybe Stephen's seen Enemy at the Gates. Unfortunately, where I winced at the site of NKVD/KGB political types gunning down the hapless Soviet infantrymen, Mr. Moore got some inspiration.

I also went back and read the letter again, because I thought something was missing. Mr. Moore brags and blows about wanting candidates who will, "fight relentlessly for cutting taxes, controlling federal spending, creating personal accounts for Social Security, ending the death tax, eliminating the capital gains tax, providing true school choice, and minimizing government's role in our daily lives". This is supposed to be part of "the way the world really works", coupled with "a strong economy and a strong America [as] one and the same".

Nowhere does Mr. Moore's screed mention national defense. Doubtlessly, his libertarian ivory tower does not consider defense because it is economically expensive. He doesn't say a thing about the fact that oh, a bunch of Islamists want us dead. Perhaps we are to defeat al-Qaeda with lowered taxes? Last time I checked, low taxes did nothing to stop modern day Mistel attacks against American skyscrapers.

Mr. Moore's political hit squad should be unwelcome in polite Republican company. I don't mind the idea of outside PACs exerting influence on our candidates, but I'd at least like for "conservative" PACs to phone home to Planet Earth on occasion.

Captain Ed Reloaded

OK, here's the Captain Ed entry. I excerpted the Captain's comments in block quotation in order to set them off, and if he's got any problem with the representation of the original post and/or his remarks, I'll be glad to revise the presentation of content.

NB: Where Captain Ed uses the term 'Islamofascist', I use the term 'Islamist'. Insofar as I know, we're referring to the same group.

I may not have made clear my belief that absent 9/11, Bush probably would have never gone after the Islamofascists like he has since, or that he probably would have been only marginally tougher than Clinton. Politically, he would have lacked the mandate, and he would have been much more focused on building a broader political base for his legislative efforts.

I would tend to agree with this statement. I wouldn't expect a pre-11 September President Bush to have done much other than talk about being compassionate and cutting taxes, while offering lip service to defense and foreign policy. More hot air from Houston, if you will. The biggest impression I had was how I believed he had handled the EP-3E incident improperly, being too eager to be nice to the Red Chinese. ¹

Also, I'm not saying that I preferred the Thieu government that resulted from the Diem coup -- I'm saying it was a bad idea. I'm not sure I made myself clear in that instance. I think that the coup wound up embroiling us in that problem far more than was necessary, but once we set it in motion, we were left on the hook. A negotiated settlement could have allowed the partition to hold, and Diem may have gotten that. Maybe not. But Thieu and Giap certainly weren't interested in negotiation.

Fair enough; I had a feeling there was some sort of message getting lost in there. The 'problem' with Diem---don't get me wrong; I'm probably in the "sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem" category---was that he was in essence a Franco-Vietnamese Roman Catholic trying to hold together a Buddhist majority state. Sure he plays well with the foreign folks (like us) but he apparently couldn't get the whole country behind him.

As for negotiating with Ho Chi Minh, the only way that should have been done was through the use of a Ouija board. Any negotiation in which he was a party to would probably have failed invariably. Either the RVN or the DRV was going to have to win the war outright so long as he, and his disciples, were around. Unfortunately, the wrong side won that one. (By the way, John Kerry served in Vietnam. Brought to you by Kerry 2004. Gotta pay the bills.)

I think both the Diem and Thieu governments understood that the Communists had it in for them, but I'm wondering if the Thieu government (and its assorted participants like Nguyen Cao Ky or that 'Big Minh' character) understood that North Vietnamese victory meant more than just 'loss of power'. I don't quite get the sense that they---the Saigon leadership---were thinking about what the Communist victory would mean outside of the fact that they in Saigon would no longer be calling the shots. If these men had understood the stakes as they truly were, perhaps the infighting and coup-de-etat-of-the-week atmosphere might've lessened a bit and waited until the NVA had been dealt a bloody nose and the war was over.

Technically, Hungary occurred prior to the slice of time I laid out (since 1960), but yeah, I'd say sacrficing the Hungarians to keep the Soviets appeased was a mistake. In this case, as in Czechoslovakia, you still had one side willing to use military force and one side demonatrating it wasn't. I don't know if I'd characterize either as brilliant national-security moves, quite frankly.

I use Hungary and Poland as a way to show that when, the military equation favored us more, we didn't intervene. Toss into that a Republican President of near-unimpeachable military character (unless you're a John Birch man) and it effectively neutralizes, I think, any partisan value. In 1954-1956, we were not bogged down in a Southeast Asian sinkhole, and we were militarily superior to the Soviet Union. It's my impression that the Poles and the Hungarians were in a better position to have actually held out against the Soviets. Even so, both of those countries were effectively unreachable unless you landed troops from the Baltic Sea, drove through neutral Austria, or slugged your way east through East Germany.

There's the rub in all cases. N.S. Krushchev once referred to West Berlin as the 'testicles of the West' which he could squeeze with reckless abandon and we'd do what he wanted. I think some of the theories of the day included a slippery slope to war which began in Berlin. See The Sum of All Fears in paperback to recognize that. Keeping in mind that the Soviets would have regarded any intervention by the NATO powers in what could technically be described as Warsaw Pact business as an act of belligerence, I think we did the right thing in not getting involved.

But Country Pundit, you say, aren't you an anti-Communist? Yes, I am. But we couldn't have gone to the overt military aid of those folks in the 1950s and 1968 without provoking the Soviets. Our people were probably already worried about attracting Soviet attention in Southeast Asia, and I doubt the politicians of the time wanted to risk nuclear annihilation for the dubious cause of saving one Communist's butt from another.

The key thing I think you're overlooking here in your analysis is not so much that we weren't going to use force and the Sovs were, but look at the map. The Soviets could enter Czechoslovakia from friendly territory almost all around. We, on the other hand, would have to either cross enemy territory, violate a neutral, or take the risky step of coming in from the south of Czechoslovakia. How're we going to keep the troops supplied? How do we keep the Soviets from invoking some mutual self-defense clause in the Warsaw Pact and starting World War III?

An example: What would you have done if, during the French student riots of 1968, the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany decided to side with the students and capture France for the Warsaw Pact? They'd have to go through West Germany in the process and it would provoke a general war in Europe that could lead to the big nuclear exchange. Sending CIA in to mess with the situation would be something I might endorse, but sending the 82nd Airborne is not particularly a good idea in my mind.

My closing question on the Czechoslovakian Issue is this: What would you have done had you been the President in 1968?

Operation El Dorado Canyon was an easy call to make, since its mission was against a fixed target. I think it was a great idea and paid off handsomely, in that it kept Gaddafi in a box for the next 18 years. Why didn't the Reagan administration try the same philosophy against Islamic Jihad and Hezb' Allah? Why not go after the Iranians then, who were obviously funding and hosting these groups, instead of selling them arms to release our hostages? That's ineptitude. I understand we were fighting the Cold War, but you could make the same exact argument about Carter. By the way, I disagree with you about his options in Teheran; I think Carter could easily have gotten a declaration of war from that Congress had he pursued one.

EL DORADO CANYON was a good idea, but it was a risky operation. We didn't get cooperation from the French---the more things change, the more they stay the same---we lost some people, and it required a large amount of concentration of forces. I'd say it was good for a one-time event, but I doubt that the Reagan Administration could have gotten away with it for long in Congress.

For a variety of reasons, Iran was not a viable military target. We had to try at least something to keep Khomeini and his people from cozying up to the Soviets, which would have been A Bad Thing Indeed. Also, I have some vague notion that Reagan's people, if not Reagan himself, were thinking about a rapprochement between the United States and the Islamic Republic, kind of on the order of Reagan goes to Tehran, if not in actual form. Richard Nixon, in a ghost-written letter to the New York Times, compared the Iranian initiative to his China opening; he noted that it was a bold strategy that (I think) he liked and had it succeeded, would have been hailed as comparable to his 1972 Beijing visit. If we had been able to get Iran back in our corner, it would have indeed placed another pistol at the head of the Soviets, instead of waving about madly.² The Soviets knew this, and I doubt they would have sat idly by while the Sixth Fleet turned the Islamic Republic into a smoking hole in the ground.

Also, the Iranians were willing to play ball with us in funding the contras in Nicaragua. Remember that the Reagan Administration was tightly focused on stopping the spread of Communism in Latin, Central, and South America; Iran was a means to that end. Congressional Democrats were howling against stopping Communists down there (who could be considered subordinates of the Soviets); I can only imagine Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy, and others in the Democratic majorities going ballistic over the notion that America was going to fight a much more nebulous enemy over the hostage thing.

And as for the hostages, I don't particularly recall---could be wrong---a large movement that said "KILL THOSE WHO TAKE HOSTAGES"; instead, I think more emphasis was placed by the electorate on getting them back home. There are, after all, objective limits to what can be done by a government in a Republic such as ours.

One could theoretically argue that our support for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war was our backdoor way of dealing with the Iranians. In any event, I would like to note my support in the present day for the two-track policy, one where we shake their hands and kick them in the butt at the same time. It's the duplicity and ends-oriented thinking that I like for our people to be practicing; heck with this noble ideals stuff.

In regards to a Carter-era full-scale war with Iran, I have to note that I think it would be a A Bad Idea, whether Congress gave the declaration or not. Any meaningful response would have taken a while to gin up, and the Iranians hadn't wasted the Shah's military base in that worthless Iraq-Iran war. Pahlavi was one of the defense industry's best customers, and I bet the Islamic Republic could have put up a good fight. In 1979-1980, we weren't the cutting-edge superpower we are now; we'd have been fighting on similar material terms, I think. After a few dozen casualties, Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor probably would have been on TV declaring Iranian victory and American humiliation. A double whammy of that so shortly after Vietnam could have been distinctly problematic when the larger issue of fighting the Soviets came up.

I'd also like to stress that in the 1980s, we were making use of Islamic fundamentalists to some extent, inasmuch as we were using them to discover Soviet mines and test their helicopters on in a rocky little dump named Afghanistan. It is unlikely that Islamic terrorism was considered to be a real threat on a major scale such as we saw in this century.

With regards to beating on Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah, perhaps it was thought that we'd best leave them be. These groups didn't necessarily cooperate (I don't think) and some of them were Soviet backed. Had we pursued a policy of direct hunting and killing, I daresay that these various Shiite groups would have found a new brotherhood in Allah to justify a) cooperation and b) taking weapons from the unbelievers in order to fight the infidels, i.e. us. Think the Iraqi situation now, except all over the Middle East and parts of Europe, and with the Soviets and their subordinates in Hungary, Bulgaria, and East Germany helping out.

All in all, I have to admit, you make a very good response to my post, although I still feel that I'm more correct than incorrect. And I finally got fisked by someone. Hmmm ... feels oddly good.

Well, I wish some others would weigh in on this because I think I'm holding a better hand than you are. That being said, I've enjoyed the exchange and I appreciate your remarks. I reckon we're doing what the blog bunch is supposed to do, so yippee skippee.

¹ What would I have done? Depending upon how important it was to the continued preservation of national technical means, I might have given the order to destroy it if possible. Be it Tomahawk by way of a Los Angeles or an F-117A/B-2A attack, that plane would have been bits and pieces. However, the fact that we didn't do it is circumstantial evidence suggesting that it either wasn't necessary or that it couldn't, for a variety of reasons---political or operational---be done. At the same time, the Red Chinese have to learn their lesson; their pilots like to feed on Navy aircraft.

At the same time, I would have liked to have seen someone issue an apology on the order of, "We're sorry that your guys are too incompetent to fly close formation with a lumbering ELINT aircraft" and go from there. The Red Chinese are going to be the real problem in the future, not these dirty Islamists. Enh, I digress.

² I have some notion that the Iranian policy (at one point) during the Khomeini-Rafsanjani years was to consider America the Great Satan (#1, baby!) and the Soviets the Lesser Satan, sort of a 'pox on the Zionist tools and the godless athiests of Russia!' notion. Of course this wasn't an ironclad policy but I think it would be accurate at least once or twice during the Khomeini period.

Home Again

Yeah, so I got home at like 11:30 or something and I didn't get to write the response to Captain Ed just yet.

Nevertheless, I walked outside and looked up into the freezing night air, and saw a brilliant moon high in the sky, illuminating surrounding clouds to a silver that only seems possible when the temperature's low. Perhaps the mercury in thermometers has fallen out of them and into the clouds? Poor verse perhaps, but it's the best I can do at the moment.

There are no orange lights from a foul city with crime on the rise and no sounds of wailing sirens. The only thing that disturbs the night is the wail of a Norfolk Southern K5LA horn as the Thoroughbred of Transportation thunders past my subdivision in the wee hours of the night, headed for points west.

There's a touch of snow in the air, and the wind's howling around and down into the chimney for the basement fireplace. There are no craven and despicable law students about, and I can look down at the garden/orchard or up at the forested land above my house and realize that I am home.

It's almost as if you could reach out and touch the face of God. Magnificent.

In re Captain Ed

I appreciate Captain Ed's commenting upon my remarks; I'm glad he stopped by, and I'm glad Comrade Commissar mentioned it in dispatches.

A thought-out response will be issued probably late tomorrow, as I've got to take a road trip (Spring break, baby! Just me and the MPRE study book, yee hah!) to get to home and then I'll have him an answer.

Derb: RE: BUTTERFLY BROKEN ON WHEEL

In Which Derb Weighs in on Martha Stewart...

Readers are chiding me for my support of Martha: "Rich rhymes-with-rich... arrogant... female Kerry, DYKWIA?.... little people need protection in the market... integrity of the market... yada yada."

Well, fiddlesticks. I'm a conservative, and my first presumption is that my main enemy is State Power. This was an exercise in State Power, DYKWIA writ much larger than any individual in this country can write it.

Stewart's offenses were trivial, not worth prosecuting. Investor confidence? Insider trading? (Which she was not even charged with!) Gimme a break. The markets are a lottery, and the little guy enters at his peril -- always has, always will. "When the little guy gets in, it's time to get out," has been conventional wisdom on Wall Street since (very probably) the founding of the Republic. There is no way to control insider trading -- in fact, Wall Streeters will defy you to even DEFINE insider trading (the U.S. Congress, for one, gave up on trying). And in fact, a little guy who had held on to his Imclone stock would have been smarter than Martha--the FDA drug rejection that caused the stock to dive has since been reversed!

Arrogance? Yeah, this is arrogance, all right -- the arrogance of gummint prosecutors with too much time on their hands -- since they don't have the guts to pursue REAL federal crimes, like the hiring of illegal-immigrant labor -- hunting for a Great White Defendant to boast to their bosses about, and advance their careers in the federal-judicial bureaucracy -- the same bureacracy that is gradually stifling all our liberties, and wringing the vitality out of our economy. See BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. This is State Power run amok.

I'm a little guy, and I'm in the market. If the feds want to boast that they're doing ME any favors with this grandstanding, here's a message from this little guy to them: NO THANKS!

First they came for the haughty, slightly-dishonest millionairesses....

__________
The original post is here.

Once again, Johnny D. demonstrates why I like him. Even though Martha Stewart is probably a reprehensible human being---friend of Bill and all that---I never really heard what she did wrong. I found it ridiculous that she was being charged for making a false statement on the grounds of saying that she was innocent---or at least that was the media spin on it---and I just couldn't get enraged about her actions. "You are accused of saying that you are innocent. Life in prison." It don't work that way. The law, last time I checked, didn't punish a woman for proclaiming innocence, and the law does not expect the accused to stand out in public and proclaim guilt. (Admittedly, the entire case and the charge that got tossed are probably more complex than that, but we'll not let that stand in the way.)

One of the biggest reasons that I couldn't draw the long knife here is because Stewart reportedly was mean to Perky Katie Couric on NBC's dreadful Today show when Perky wasn't keeping pace in turkey stuffing. Anyone with the nerve to diss the Colon Queen can't be all bad. Heh heh heh.

Professor Bainbridge's writings on the Stewart case can be found here. I'm going on spring break tomorrow and I'll probably peruse everything he wrote; y'all probably should as well.

I hope she beats this rap. Her site discussing the matter can be found by clicking on the link. I checked out the site and I'm intrigued by the Other Voices section of the site. A quick browse through there reveals pro-Stewart columns from the pens of several conservatives, including Bill Safire, Jack Kemp, Paul Craig Roberts, and Emmett Tyrell. Several other people more or less on our side weigh in for her as well, including a libertarian from Cato and a Randian. As Alice once said, "Curiouser and curiouser". I wonder if these people were chosen in order to appeal to the pro-business wing of the political spectrum, because we might just save her butt.

There is still hope, and maybe that idiot juror's decision will be overruled. Clinton-loving dirtbag she may be, but I'd rather see sharp investors stay out of the dock, because I want at least one working for me in the future.

Will Saletan's For W

Folks who read the content here may have picked up on a certain level of discontent with the President. That's not surprising; I'm not entirely pleased with the course of the Bush Administration, and I don't give him a war-based pass on everything.

Does that mean that this blog backs Kerry? Nuh uh. Our version of Merv isn't worth John Nance Garner's warm bucket of spit, and I won't be voting for him. I once snarled at a Deaniac that my mind had been made up in late December 2000¹, and I've quipped words to that effect here as well.

With all that out of the way, I ran across a column by Will Saletan of Slate, the MSN effort at a webzine. Entitled "Confidence Man", its tagline is that the case for George Bush is the case against Bush as well.

Will Saletan's no stranger to "Orange is actually purple" arguments; I saw him on C-SPAN once hawking a book that said the pro-life conservatives had actually won the abortion debate and please stop complaining. Or something; I listened for fifteen minutes and was starting to wonder if I'd slipped into Animal Farm or something. Between the overly-eager host and Saletan's herky-jerky speech, I got lost and I don't think I got his point. That is, if he had one.

The entire Slate article is worth reading, if nothing else for amusement. Without going too deep into it, I'll say that I came away more willing to vote for the President, since I figure that the Merovingian won't do any better. Thanks Will Saletan! The Republican National Committee thanks you.

UPDATE: I visited Saletan's site for the book and it's pro-abortion conservatives that he says have won the war over abortion in this country. Well, whatever.

¹ Remember, had George W. Bush lost at the USSC, we might've had a different nominee in 2004.

Captain Ed Runs Aground

There's a blogger named Captain Ed, who writes Captain's Quarters, and he also is known to be a writer at Blogs for Bush. The Commissar has spoken highly of him before, and he is apparently rather popular.

Anyways, he writes an anti-Kerry post over at Blogs for Bush, and it goes something like this: John Kerry has mouthed off, saying something about President Bush running "the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in the modern history of our country."

Captain Ed responds thusly: "Apparently this hyperbole will be the foreign-policy slogan up through the convention, and perhaps beyond. Let's test this by looking at highlights of the past 40 or so years, which I assume would satisfy Kerry's "modern" qualifier."

He then goes on to break down a few of the foreign policy occurrences over the last forty-odd years, apparently demonstrating that the Bush Administration is the first one in nearly half a century that's shown any spine.

I disagree. Time for a good old fisking.

1961 - President John F. Kennedy implements a leftover plan from the Eisenhower adminstration of supporting a native insurgency in Cuba, but at the last minute and without warning the insurgents, Kennedy withdraws American Air Force support for the attack on the Bay of Pigs. The resultant disaster destroys any basis for improving US-Cuba relations and pushes Fidel Castro to seek protection from the Soviet Union. The USSR begins installing ballistic missiles in Cuba, leading to the worst crisis of the Cold War and almost touching off a nuclear war between the US and Soviets. The solution requires the dismantling of US missile bases in the Near East and may have contributed to the building of the Berlin Wall.

It is my understanding that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy negotiated the removal of PGM-19 Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles from their bases in Turkey, by meeting with the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin. It's worth noting that the Jupiter IRBM was launched from fixed sites. If they're fixed, they can't maneuver. If you can't maneuver, then a missile or a bomber stands a half-decent chance of getting through and putting a several-kiloton-yield device on your launching apparatus, and then it's game over.

Now, I've been a Nixon man since I heard of the guy, and I take a back seat to no one in loathing the Kennedy family. If I could find an opportunity to kick John Kennedy, I would. The Bay of Pigs is an excellent example, and he deserves scorn for losing his nerve. [It is apparently an item of academic debate whether Kennedy's aggressive actions later on were an attempt to prove that he wasn't soft on Communism.] Thus, I'm no JFK fanboy and I scoff at "Camelot". But Captain Ed misses the mark badly here.

The Jupiter missiles had become redundant in terms of the American strategic nuclear deterrent. As fixed missiles, they were the most vulnerable of the triad¹ and weren't an entirely survivable weapons system. Enter the United States Navy.

By 1962, the United States Navy was capable of deploying its Polaris FBM-toting submarines in the George Washington and Ethan Allen classes to the Mediterranean to serve the same role as the Jupiter IRBMs. Soviet anti-submarine warfare in the Mediterranean was probably for naught at the time, so these Polaris boats were effectively invulnerable. Kennedy agreed to trade vulnerable fixed missiles for "Polaris—from out of the
deep to target. Perfect." Kindly explain to me how this is a failure, especially when we kept the trade quiet.²

1962-3 - The Kennedy administration tries several fruitless and laughable methods of assassinating Fidel Castro. They manage to stage a coup in South Vietnam, getting a government that is more inclined to fight the Communists than the preceding Diem government, which was more inclined to negotiation with Ho Chi Minh.

The misadventures of the Kennedys in trying to off Castro are probably too numerous to list. However, it's worth noting that Captain Ed misses the mark on the question of Vietnam. The 1963 coup that claimed the life of Ngo Dinh Diem, president of the Republic of Vietnam, didn't quite turn out like he thinks. Instead of the (admittedly somewhat bumbling) Diem government, we got twelve years of infighting, bickering, and posturing for position that probably didn't help the war effort. Maybe Ed got his terms confused, but the impression I got in a class on the war in college---taught by a veteran---was that the Diem assassination didn't help.

Ed's got some other oddities buried in this piece, and they're in the Extended Entry.

1968 - The Johnson administration, up to its eyeballs fighting a proxy war in South Vietnam to stop the spread of Soviet Communism, fails to respond to the Soviets spreading directly into Czechoslovakia to put down the "Prague Spring" uprising for democracy.

Ed, did you not read the first part of your own sentence? Get out a map, Cap'n. Y'see anything between American forces in West Berlin and Czechoslovakia? No? Try the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. A wee little fortress called the German Democratic Republic---East Germany to Cold Warriors---lay between us and the geographically short route to the Czechs. Never mind that Alexander Dubcek wasn't so much about abandoning Communism but rather putting a Czech-mark on it. The Prague Spring was about "socialism with a human face", not about the departure of Czechoslovakia from the Communist world.

No less an authority than Vaclav Havel described events as a clash between two groups of Communists.

Newsflash: As Ed stated before, we had one group of forces tied down in Vietnam. We had another tied down in Korea. Anything aviation-related that wasn't tasked to the nuclear warfighting mission was pretty much getting taken to Southeast Asia. Ditto the Army, and I'd hate to be a CVBG commander having to maneuver in the Adriatic around Badgers, Bears, and Blinders. I'd like to know where he would have gotten the military muscle to do something about the Prague Spring.

Even if he did scrounge up the military might to get into Czechoslovakia, there's the wee problem of Soviet forces already being there and being a lot closer to resupply than we would be. Back to the maps: East Germany on the Czech northwestern border, Yugoslavia and Austria to the south, and Poland in the north and east. The only approach from the West German border would be more or less from the south, through the Bohemian forests of Bavaria. Even then, you'd have to fight your way all the way north, because Prague itself is more north than south, closer to East Germany than it is the Bavarian lines.

Someone remind me how we're going to crash through either three Warsaw Pact countries or Austria---a neutral country in this time frame---and whack the Red Army without igniting World War III. I darned near hear Wesley Clark in Captain Ed's complaint.

What else could be done? Lodge a diplomatic protest? Yeah, sure. Right when we're trying to keep the Soviets from dropping by Vietnam for an assistance to fraternal socialist allies party. I doubt that Captain Ed would have endorsed a stiff protest, too. With a hot war distracting us in a far away theater, domestic unrest from Communist sympathizers and blacks who threaten a long hot summer, Landslide Lyndon needs to be hollering "Knock it off" at the Soviets. In a word, no. Dwight Eisenhower saw no room to intervene when the Hungarians and Poles rose up in the mid-1950s, and I doubt that Captain Ed would call Ike 'inept'.

I left out criticisms of the Carter Administration, because they're largely on-target. The mullahs of Iran have been earning interest on a beat-down since 1979, when they in essence declared war on the United States by invading our embassy there. I don't know why Carter didn't just walk to Congress, announce that he had exercised Presidential authority and was asking for a declaration of war against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nevermind that he probably wouldn't have gotten that declaration, and from some of the rumblings I've heard about the state of the armed forces post-Vietnam, we could have had some problems laying the smack-down on the Iranians, who would have been enjoying the fruits of our military prowess. Remember: Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was an avid customer of the American arms industry, and had operational F-14A Tomcats at that point, along with Phoenix missiles. We also would have been very easily painted as being the Shah's stooges, and any resulting war would probably have cost us the hostages and lots of casualties. Given the weak knees in Congress, I'm not sure that we would have seen it through.

Besides, better to save the Iranian beating for when it will do the best---like soon.

1979 - 2000 - America either retreats in the face of successive attacks by Islamofascist terrorists or attempts to negotiate with them, instead of attacking them outright. Incidents include the Teheran embassy hostages, the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, a string of hostage-taking in Lebanon, the first World Trade Center bombing, Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, simultaneous attacks on two American embassies in Africa, and a suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, all with the same American response: police work.

Four words, Captain Ed: Operation EL DORADO CANYON. In April of 1986, we paid a leading exporter of state-sponsored terrorism a laser-guided visit with a bomb. Colonel Khadafi, the Libyan head of state, was deliberately targeted for assassination. Although the colonel survived the evening and morning of 14-15 April, there was a drop-off in Libyan-sponsored attacks.

I'd like to know how Captain Ed would have resolved the Lebanon question. Other than what we did, I can see maybe two other routes: Cut and run, abandoning Lebanon and letting the Islamists win. The second alternative is to do what I heard attributed to the Soviets in a Tom Clancy novel: Take hostages of our own and threaten death to the family of the hostage takers. That's an awfully attractive view and I'd endorse it, but I don't know if it's the right thing to do. Given my preference for Nixon, I would have suggested doing something along the lines of what we did, a back-channel to exert pressure on the sponsors of the terrorists and reach our ends of recovering our people.

I won't defend the Clinton Administration---I believe that the seeds of American slumber were sown on his watch---but to sit back and say that we've been bungling for forty years while only George W. Bush has had any clue in foreign policy is ridiculous.

It's easy for a blogger to sit back and demand someone's head, but it isn't always the easiest thing in the world to get it. By the way, Ed: We were busy fighting a little something called the Cold War. John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush didn't have the luxury of George W. Bush, who gets to focus on the Islamists. Those administrations had to worry about the Soviet Union, and I'd say that they were right to do so. George W. Bush has it easy---the worst the Islamists could do is bag a city or two. Regrettable, but that's pretty much the limit. A full-bore confrontation with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, on the other hand, could have ended nations and regions if not threatened Western civilization pretty directly. Islamists as they are now constituted don't have that capability.

Quite frankly, when asked to deal with either the Soviets or the Islamists, I would have chosen to focus my attentions on the well-organized political empire that had ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, and tremendous armies. Unshaven losers whose best weapons are the "not-so-smart-bomb" pale in comparison.

I understand that it's important to many in the conservative blogosphere to credit George W. Bush as the shining star of foreign and domestic policy, the Man Who Would Lead Us to Glory and So Forth. That's fine. Bloggers who wish to deify the sitting President are more than welcome to do so. At the same time, I think Captain Ed has run aground. I do not concur in his judgment and I find his claims to be unsustainable, especially when their point is to bust John Kerry's chops. The Merovingian of Massachusetts can be defeated by other means, and I doubt we need to throw dirt on prior administrations---which would breach a Rumsfeld Rule---in order to do so. There are a lot of good unsung men and women on both sides of the Iron Curtain who probably did their best to make sure that five thousand years of human civilization didn't end in a five thousand kiloton flash, and Ed's dismissal of American policy as 'inept' strikes me as immature. Ed, we're still here. No cities died. All in all, the Forty Years War ended pretty cheaply, and we won. Exactly what's inept about that?

To borrow a line from Top Gun, a movie made during Captain Ed's era of retreat, "Your blogging is writing checks the truth can't cash!"

¹ "The strategic triad", a term used to describe American nuclear forces. The three legs of the triad are/were land-based missiles, manned bombers, and fleet ballistic missile submarines.

² A chronology of the Jupiter missile posted here indicates that the Jupiters were thought of as obsolescent and vulnerable at this point.

Buck Rogers - Rumor Has It

I was plowing through a backlog of e-mail late last night (or early this morning; the days are starting to run together again) and I found some good news:

Someone's going to be releasing the first season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century on DVD. Yeah, sure Gil Gerard can't act and some of the stories were awful, but this means Erin Gray on DVD. As Warner Wolf used to say on Imus in the Morning, "Baby, you've gotta love it!"

Woo hoo. Ostensibly, this would mean that the series release of Battlestar Galactica was to some extent a sufficient success. This is, to borrow a phrase which is probably trademarked, A Good Thing.

ECG Time from Derb

I'd put the writings of the Derb up on the category list from day one, but I'd never really found anything to put in the category, mostly because it was either too contextual to reproduce outside of The Corner or because I forgot to.

Well, here's a gem that earned an Evil Calvin Grin:

I suppose it is "mean-spirited" of me, but I can't help wondering whether this Mayor [of New Paltz, NY, who faced criminal counts for illegal "marriage" licenses issued to homosexuals] would feel differently after spending time behind bars, knowing what we know about prison culture.

Heh heh heh. Mr. Mayor, you'll be sharing a cell with 'Tiny'. See? He likes you. I suppose the Purple Pundit will sooner or later whine about this, but TFB.

Crown the Merovingian

In the manner of Don Imus, I'm not even going to really get into the specifics of it all, but that idiot John Kerry has managed to sucker enough people into voting for him. I figure he's the weaker candidate than Edwards---would really like to have seen Bush KO the soon-to-be-ex-senior Senator from North Carolina, but doubt it would have happened---so I suppose it's a good thing that Kerry's the nominee, but gah!

At least the real Merovingian had Persephone to peek at---Miss Bellucci ain't half bad lookin'---whereas our ersatz Merv has his hideous French-lisping harridan from Algeria or wherever. Enh. Further proof that money means neither virtue nor beauty.

Let's Go Fly a Kite

Hrrm. It's 01 March, and I don't have a place to fly a kite. Bother!

Do people who aren't at the beach fly kites any more? I always fly one at the beach, just because it's absolutely relaxing and you're unobtrusive. It's also a way to talk to people, sort of. And mind you, strolling down the beach with a kite string in hand gives you an excuse to have your eyes fixed in a single direction for a while, which can be very er, rewarding when one's field of vision wanders back to some of the inhabitants of the beach.

Any graduate student guy independent enough to fly a kite on a partially-occupied beach ought to be interest just for the sake of being arrogant enough to do it, right? Right? (Yes, interesting in like call-the-cops-interesting. --Ed.)

Anyways. Two months and counting until graduation. Fear and loathing, here we come.