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In Contentions, Gabriel Schoenfeld, examining the past, peers into the future.
In 1981, Israel hit Iraq’s nuclear facility at Osirak. Eight F-16 fighter-bombers and eight F-15 fighters swooped in to carry out a precision strike that set back Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions by more than a decade.As the whole world knows, Israel now faces a similar challenge from Iran, which has an ambitious nuclear program of its own, and whose president has threatened to wipe Israel from the map. …
… Thus, one does not have to be a Vanity Fair writer, or to love the Islamic bomb, to see that Israel’s decision, whatever it is, will be one of the biggest rolls of the dice in the sixty-year history of the Jewish state.
Norman Podhoretz will be making the case for the U.S. to step up to the plate and deal boldly with Iran’s nuclear program in the June issue of COMMENTARY; an advance posting will be available next week at www.commentarymagazine.com.
Here’s a link for the Podhoretz article. It is 5000 words so it’s doubtful it will be in Pickings.
Ed Koch says the dems own defeat in Iraq.
During the Cold War the pols in Washington were mostly united in support of this goal. But now the Democrats are not. There is no safety for the weak and foolish. When you seek to end a war without substantially achieving your essential goals by simply ceasing to fight, it is often a form of surrender. And that’s the way the Democrat-imposed outcome in Iraq will be understood around the world, especially by our enemies.
David Brooks (Subscription Reg.) sees off Tony Blair.
… In his 1999 speech, Blair maintained that the world sometimes has a duty to intervene in nations where global values are under threat. He argued forcefully for putting ground troops in Kosovo and highlighted the menace posed by Saddam Hussein.He saw the terrorists of Sept. 11 as extremists who sought to divide humanity between the Dar al-Islam and the Dar al-harb — the House of Islam and the House of War. “This is not a clash between civilizations,†he said last year in the greatest speech of his premiership. “It is a clash about civilization. It is the age-old battle between progress and reaction, between those who embrace and see opportunity in the modern world and those who reject its existence.†He concluded that Britain had to combat those who would divide the human community, even without the support of the multilateral institutions that he cherished. …
For two months, Mark Steyn has been in Chicago following the Conrad Black trial. It has been ignored here. Today in National Review, Mark tells us why we should be interested.
Jamestown just celebrated 400 years. David Boaz says private property saved the colony.
May Month honors today go to a post in Volokh by Ilya Somin on the current memorial controversy in Estonia.
Prof. Somin links to a Reason article by Cathy Young. She closes with:
… The best summary of the crisis comes from Elena Bonner, the widow of the great Russian dissident Andrei Sakharov and a noted human rights activist in her own right as well as a World War II veteran. On May 9, the day Russia commemorates its victory over Germany—an occasion that Putin used to take a public swipe at those who “desecrate monuments to war heroes”—Bonner issued a holiday greeting that dealt largely with the drama over the Bronze Soldier.
“I am not insulted by the relocation of the remains and the monument,” Bonner wrote. “It is far more honorable to have one’s final resting place on a cemetery than at a bustling, noisy bus stop. What did and still does insult me is the inscription on the monument. What it should say, in Estonia or in any other country, is not ‘To the soldier-liberator,’ but ‘To the fallen soldiers.’
Soviet soldiers, Bonner writes, liberated no one—not even themselves, though many hoped that after the war things would be different. That hope, she concludes, didn’t come true in 1945—or, for Russians, in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Power Line posts on the ludicrous Chuck Hagel.
The Captain too.
The New Editor exposes most recent hatchet job by MSM
The latest from the “I’m From the Government, and I’m Stupid Sweepstakes.” Of course it would turn out the coerced switch to biofuels has some huge downsides. Ones that may make us worse off than before. Instapundit with the details.
Instapundit linked to a post from Nature.com. That is here too.
Hit & Run post on another dumb law.
When to take social security: 62, 66, or 70? NY Times profiles an econ prof who says wait as long as you possibly can.
… Indeed, requesting your Social Security benefits might seem like the first order of business as soon as the going-away party is over. But you might be a lot better off waiting a bit longer, until age 66 or even 70 before tapping into the government retirement fund. Relying at first on other savings like individual retirement accounts or the 401(k) from work could raise your living standard in retirement as much as 10 percent, according to calculations made by Laurence J. Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University. …
While campaigning on the Iberian Peninsula, the Duke of Wellington, annoyed, writes to the bureaucrats in the foreign office
… to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty’s Government so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both:
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance,
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
Your most obedient servant
Wellington