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Mark Steyn reacts to Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick’s description of the “mean and nasty and bitter” attacks of 9/11.

… At some point in the future, some of us will find ourselves on a flight with a chap like Richard Reid, the thwarted shoe-bomber. On that day we’d better hope the guy sitting next to him isn’t Gov. Patrick, who sees him bending down to light his sock and responds with a chorus of “All You Need Is Love,” but a fellow who “understands” enough to wallop the bejesus out of him before he can strike the match. It was the failure of one group of human beings to understand that the second group of human beings was determined to kill them that led the crew and passengers of those Boston flights to stick with the obsolescent 1970s hijack procedures until it was too late.

Unfortunately, the obsolescent 1970s multiculti love-groove inclinations of society at large are harder to dislodge. If you’ll forgive such judgmental categorizations, this isn’t about “them,” it’s about “us.” The long-term survival of any society depends on what proportion of its citizens thinks as Gov. Patrick does. Islamism is an opportunist enemy but you can’t blame them for seeing the opportunity: In that sense, they understand us far more clearly than Gov. Patrick understands them. …

Gerard Baker with today’s history lesson.

The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there’s something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor.

The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course. General Petraeus was the star turn in Washington this week, testifying before Congress about the progress of the surge by US forces in Iraq. Some evidently see America’s wearying detention in the quagmire of Mesopotamia as a classic example of imperial overreach of the kind that is thought to have doomed Rome. Who knows? Perhaps 1,500 years ago one of the forebears of General Petraeus was hauled before the Senate to explain the progress of some surge of Roman forces to defeat the insurgents in Germania. …

… It is helpful to think about Iraq this way. Imagine if the US had never been there; and that this sectarian strife had broken out in any case – as, one day it surely would, given the hatreds engendered by a thousand years of Muslim history and the efforts of Saddam Hussein.

What would we in the West think about it? What would we think of as our responsibilities? There would be some who would want to wash their hands of it. There would be others who would think that UN resolutions and diplomatic initiatives would be enough to salve our consciences if not to stop the slaughter.

But many of us surely would think we should do something about it – as we did in the Balkans more than a decade ago – and as, infamously, we failed to do in Africa at the same time. And we would know that, for all our high ideals and our soaring rhetoric, there would be only one country with the historical commitment to make massive sacrifices in the defence of the lives and liberty of others, the leadership to mobilise efforts to relieve the suffering and, above all, the economic and military wherewithal to make it happen.

That’s the only really workable analogy between the US and Rome. When Rome fell, the world went dark for the best part of a millennium. America may not be an empire. But whatever it is, for the sake of humanity, pray it lasts at least as long as Rome.

Gordon Chang in Contentions with more on the Israeli strike in Syria’s desert.

… Yet the Times seems to suggest that the raid targeted a Syrian nuclear weapons program linked to Pyongyang. “The Israelis think North Korea is selling to Iran and Syria what little they have left,” an unidentified Bush administration official, referring to fissile material, is quoted as saying. Thursday’s Washington Post states that an unidentified former Israeli official had been told that the attack on Syria was intended to take out a facility that could make unconventional weapons. The paper also reported that satellite imagery has revealed a Syrian facility that could be part of a nuclear weapons program. North Korea, known to merchandise any dangerous item it possesses, has been doing its best to appear guilty. Departing from its usual practice of not commenting on world affairs, Pyongyang on Tuesday denounced Israel’s raid. …

WSJ reporters get an early look at Greenspan’s book.

In a withering critique of his fellow Republicans, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoir that the party to which he has belonged all his life deserved to lose power last year for forsaking its small-government principles.

In “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” published by Penguin Press, Mr. Greenspan criticizes both congressional Republicans and President George W. Bush for abandoning fiscal discipline.

The book is scheduled for public release Monday. The Wall Street Journal bought a copy at a bookstore in the New York area.

Mr. Greenspan, who calls himself a “lifelong libertarian Republican,” writes that he advised the White House to veto some bills to curb “out-of-control” spending while the Republicans controlled Congress. He says President Bush’s failure to do so “was a major mistake.” Republicans in Congress, he writes, “swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.” …

John Fund with interesting Reagan background.

American Spectator says NY Times is very selective when accepting “special advocacy” ads.

The New York Times in the past has rejected “advocacy” ads from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, as well as from the National Right to Life Committee, despite the fact that both would have qualified for the same “special advocacy, stand by” rates that the radical, left-wing organization MoveOn.org was given for its smear ad of Gen. David Petraeus. …

James Taranto wonders if the Times has given a political contribution with the discount.

Thursday we wondered if the New York Times had made an illegal campaign contribution to the MoveOn.org political action committee. The Times, you’ll recall, published a full-page ad Monday in which it attacked Gen. David Petraeus in McCarthyite terms. The New York Post reported that the Times had given MoveOn.org a $102,000 discount from its usual $167,000 rate–which, if true, would be an illegal in-kind contribution under campaign finance laws.

The Times offers this explanation in a news story today: …

Debra Saunders argues for environmental common sense rather than radical measures for a faux problem.

… America’s sacrifices could be for naught, as long as China — which is or is about to be the world’s greatest generator of greenhouse gases — is exempt from any global warming pact.

To go the distance supported by global warming alarmists requires big changes.

If the alarmists are right, the whole world will have to change and it will be onerous. If the global warming alarmists are wrong, much of the sacrifices they demand will have been for nothing.

WSJ Op-Ed illustrates the cancer care available in the US.

Last week the American Cancer Society announced it will no longer run ads about the dangers of smoking and other cancer-causing behaviors and the benefits of regular screenings. Instead, the Society will devote this year’s entire advertising budget to a campaign for universal health coverage. John Seffrin, the Society’s chief executive, said, “[I]f we don’t fix the health-care system . . . lack of access will be a bigger cancer killer than tobacco.” …

 

… International comparisons establish that the current method of financing health care in the U.S. is not a bigger killer than tobacco. What is deadly are delays in treatment and lack of access to the most effective drugs, problems encountered by some uninsured cancer patients in the U.S. but by a far larger proportion of cancer patients in the U.K. and Europe. Cancer patients do well in a few small countries with national health insurance, such as Sweden and Finland, but they do better in the U.S. than anywhere else on the globe.

With a track record like that, the American Cancer Society should continue its lifesaving messages about prevention and screening instead of switching to a political agenda. The goal should be to ensure that all cancer patients receive the timely care our current system provides, not to radically overhaul the system.

American Thinker tracking the continued collapse of NY Times stock.

… This represents a 60%+ loss in shareholder value since the peak in 2002.

Arnold Kling in Tech Central has a go at explaining Hayek’s concept of “spontaneous order.”

One of the most important ideas of the late Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek was the concept of “spontaneous order.” This can be a difficult concept to explain.

When spontaneous order exists, we take it for granted and make little effort to understand it. If your body is healthy, you do not need to think about how your muscles work, how your heart and brain function, or how your metabolic processes operate. You only notice it when order breaks down, and you are sick or in pain.

Similarly, when the economy is functioning properly, we do not notice all the behaviors that are required to make it work. We go to the supermarket and find grapes available, and we do not wonder why or how.

In theory a central grape distributor could be at work. …

In practice, there is no grape-distribution czar. …

… In The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier points out that countries with a lot of wealth concentrated in a natural resource, such as oil, tend to function poorly. When people have to work to earn wealth, there is order. When wealth is there for the taking, then people focus on exactly that–taking. The rewards go to those who know how to use violence and power. Ironically, countries that are rich in resources are “cursed,” because the disorder caused by the fight over ownership undermines the wealth of the resources themselves.

Foreign aid can have the same impact as a resource. It can foster disorder by creating a climate in which ambitious people, instead of engaging in productive activity, fight for control over the distribution of aid. …

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Mark Steyn provided more to mark the six years. His column the day after 9/11 for Canada’s National Post was reproduced Tuesday on his website. It is interesting to see how consistent Mark has been.

This is what I wrote six years ago, on Tuesday, September 11th 2001, for the following morning’s National Post in Canada and that week’s Spectator in Britain. This version is from The Face Of The Tiger, with second thoughts at the foot of the page:

 

You can understand why they’re jumping up and down in the streets of Ramallah, jubilant in their victory. They have struck a mighty blow against the Great Satan, mightier than even the producers of far-fetched action thrillers could conceive. They have driven a gaping wound into the heart of his military headquarters. They have ruptured the most famous skyline in the world, the glittering monument to his decadence. They have killed and maimed thousands of his subjects, live on TV. For one day they reduced the hated Bush to a pitiful Presidential vagrant, bounced further and further from his White House to ever more remote military airports, from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska, by a security staff which obviously understands less about the power of symbolism than America’s enemies do.

And, for those on the receiving end, that “money shot”, as they call it in Hollywood – the smoking towers of the World Trade Center collapsing as easily as condemned chimneys at an abandoned sawmill – represents not just an awesome loss of life but a ghastly intelligence failure by the US and a worse moral failure by the west generally.

…

There are cowards elsewhere, too. The funniest moment in the early coverage came when some portentous anchor solemnly reported that “the United Nations building has not been hit”. Well, there’s a surprise! Why would the guys who took out the World Trade Center and the Pentagon want to target the UN? The UN is dominated by their apologists, and in some cases the friends of the friends of the fellows who did this (to put it at its most discreet). All last week the plenipotentiaries of the west were in Durban holed up with the smooth, bespoke emissaries of thug states and treating with them as equals, negotiating over how many anti-Zionist insults they could live with and over how grovelling the west’s apology for past sins should be. Yesterday’s sobering coda to Durban let us know that those folks on the other side are really admirably straightforward: they mean what they say, and we should take them at their word. We should also cease dignifying them by pretending that the foreign ministers of, say, Spain and Syria are somehow cut from the same cloth.

There is also a long-term lesson. The US is an historical anomaly: the first non-imperial superpower. Britain, France and the other old powers believed in projecting themselves, both territorially and culturally. As we saw in Durban, they get few thanks for that these days. But the American position – that the pre-eminent nation on earth can collectively leap in its Chevy Suburban and drive to the lake while the world goes its own way – is untenable. The consequence, as we now know, is that the world comes to you. Niall Ferguson, in his book The Cash Nexus, argues that imperial engagement is in fact the humanitarian position: the two most successful military occupations in recent history were the Allies’ transformation of West Germany and Japan into functioning democracies. Ferguson thinks the US, if it had the will, could do that in Sierra Leone. But why stop there? Why let ramshackle economic basket-cases like the Sudan or Afghanistan be used as launch pads to kill New Yorkers?

…

Let us hope that America doesn’t show the same lack of will. This is, as the German government put it, an attack on “the civilized world”, and it’s time to speak up in its defence. Those western nations who spent last week in Durban finessing and nuancing evil should understand now that what is at stake is whether the world’s future will belong to liberal democracy and the rule of law, or to darker forces. And after Tuesday America is entitled to ask its allies not for finely crafted UN resolutions but a more basic question: whose side are you on?

John Tierney’s last item here was about his sojourn with Bjorn Lomborg. He makes his blog available for his readers to take on Dr. Lomborg.

I’m going to take a wild guess that a few readers differ with Bjorn Lomborg’s message in my Findings column. Here’s your chance to disagree. But first let me present a little more of his argument, and tell you why I like his new book, “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.” …

Victor Davis Hanson with a warning.

Who recently said: “These Jews started 19 Crusades. The 19th was World War (1). Why? Only to build Israel.”

Some holdover Nazi?

Hardly. It was former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan of Turkey, a NATO ally. He went on to claim that the Jews — whom he refers to as “bacteria” — controlled China, India and Japan, and ran the United States.

Who alleged: “The Arabs who were involved in 9/11 cooperated with the Zionists, actually. It was a cooperation. They gave them the perfect excuse to denounce all Arabs.”

A conspiracy nut?

Actually, it was former Democratic U.S. Sen. James Abourezk of South Dakota. He denounced Israel on a Hezbollah-owned television station, adding: “I marveled at the Hezbollah resistance to Israel. . . . It was a marvel of organization, of courage and bravery.” …

Anne Applebaum analyzes bin Laden’s vid.

… It is legitimate, of course, to ask whether it matters what is said by a man who is no longer thought to be in control of his organization, even if he still has access to a video camera inside his cave. But that’s precisely the point. Osama will sooner or later die or be captured. But he, or someone close to him, is now trying to ensure that his ideology lives on. And he, or someone, wants it to survive in a form that will appeal to Americans and other Westerners disillusioned with their own political system. To put it bluntly, someone with an Irish or Hispanic name could have a better chance of slipping past the FBI, or through airport security, than someone named Mohammed. In a world in which counterintelligence and security procedures will slowly, slowly improve—that’s the future.

Corner posts with more Hsu puns. Mark Steyn makes a good point about the media. Then the Corner posts on the new transportation and housing bill’s earmarks.

Club for Growth posts on the bill’s peace gardens and baseball stadiums.

The Captain weighs in too.

Gay Patriot has the story of UC Irvine reneging on its offer of law school deanship to liberal Erwin Chemerinsky because he was “too controversial.” Two of our favorites, libertarian Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and conservative Hugh Hewitt, rose to the defense of Chermerinsky.

Michael Goodwin says the battlefield has shifted. The important battlefield – Congress.

… For Democrats, the hearings were a disaster. They don’t have the votes to force a withdrawal and many were left sputtering mad over their inability to get a usable quote out of Petraeus or Ambassador Ryan Crocker that would allow them to declare defeat for Bush’s strategy. Never before has it been so clear that some – Ted Kennedy, for example – are putting partisanship ahead of country.

Indeed, their performance was so shockingly awful that I am inclined to believe charges that some Democrats actually hope we lose. Up to now, I’ve always viewed such charges as rancid partisanship that demonized legitimate differences. Now I’m not so sure.

My distress began with a smear on Petraeus from Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), who declared his testimony not credible – before Petraeus had even spoken! Far worse was the scandalous newspaper ad by MoveOn.org that shouted “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” There is a special place in hell for such vile people.

And there is a special place for a political party that obeys them – minority status. Democrats are flirting with an electoral disaster next year with their strident anti-military tone. It’s almost as though our success in Iraq has driven them to desperation – calling our military leaders liars, shills and traitors. …

Max Boot posts in Contentions on Petraeus.

Peter Wehner, also in Contentions, wishes for more consistency from George Will.

… Prior to the war to liberate Iraq, then, George Will thought Iraq and the Arab world were quite ready for democracy. He was a strong advocate for regime change and nation building. And he thought Iraq would be an easier undertaking than Afghanistan.
It’s fine—it can even be admirable—for an individual to change his mind in the face of new facts and circumstances. But some appreciation for one’s previous views should also be taken into account.

George Will ranks among the finest columnists ever to pick up a pen (quill or otherwise). Over the years his arguments and words have shaped a generation of conservatives, including me. And I wish the best thing I have ever written were half as good as the worst thing George Will has ever written. But it’s fair to ask that he not write as if he always knew better, as if any conservative worth his Burkean salt should have known that the effort to spread democracy to Iraq was Wilsonian foolishness that was fated to fail.

It wasn’t (and isn’t)—and once upon a time George Will thought so, too.

Tech Central’s editors interview Ken Fisher who says the sub-prime mess is not that big.

TCS: Let’s talk about the current status of the subprime mortgage market. Are you worried?

KEN FISHER: The only thing I fear about the subprime mortgage market is what politicians might do, because fundamentally everyone gets this backwards.

TCS: You don’t see major long-term economic consequences?

KEN FISHER: I think intuitively everybody knows that in the long term, this is not a big deal for the economy and the stock market. I don’t think it’s big enough to matter.

…

Tech Central uses Shakespeare to show the link between Larry Craig and the Sermon on the Mount.

… Shakespeare got what so many commentators missed: Jesus as pundit, wisely (and it turns out accurately) predicting the implosion of the two great political parties of His day. The same holds true for us. The Democrats can’t fly around the world in gas guzzling charter jets to give pious sermons about exceeding our carbon footprints. Republicans can’t go on and on about Idaho family values and then cruise men’s rooms for anonymous hook-ups. It’s not just a matter of ‘hypocrisy’. Hypocrisy is inevitable, any standard worth having is a standard that we will sometimes miss. It’s more a matter of reality. You can’t build a political coalition of lasting viability on leaders who trash by their actions the standards the profess with their mouths. The Prophet and the playwright tells us that it just won’t work.

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Boston Globe with an op-ed by a former Clinton and Bush advisor on the MoveOn.org BetrayUs ad.

… Let us be clear. It is legitimate to grill Petraeus on his testimony and to ask him tough questions about the strategy he has been pursuing. It is legitimate to disagree with him, or to conclude that an alternative course of action has a better chance of advancing US interests in the region. Healthy civil-military relations do not depend on accepting uncritically anything a senior military officer says. Quite the opposite, they depend on a full and frank exchange of views.

It is not legitimate, however, and it is exceedingly corrosive of healthy civil-military relations to question the general’s patriotism when his views differ from yours and are inconvenient for one’s political agenda.

This is a defining moment for the antiwar faction. They can continue on the path on to which they have veered, repeating some of the worst mistakes in American history. Or they can make a clean break with the past, police their own ranks, and promote a healthy, critical, public debate about the best way forward in Iraq.

NewsBusters tells us the discount the NY Times gave to MoveOn.org ad. Would you believe 62%? This from a newspaper whose earnings are in the tank.

… For a paper that has been paying its investors back with lead weighted returns I’d be a little irritated if I had a stake in a venture that puts the subjective political agenda of the editorial staff above the fiduciary duty of the corporation to its investors. Especially considering that MoveOn.org could easily afford the going rate and likely would have run the ad without such a lavish discount. But then again advocacy as a business plan is exactly what the newspaper is about.

When trying to explain how the New York Times Co. managed to shave 50% off the bottom line between 2002 and 2006 some analysts felt that editorial content was not the problem. They looked at other indicators such as poor cost control.

They were wrong in my eyes. The arrogance of the people running the New York Times Co. is a reflection of the paper and its approach to journalism. I’d consider this an example of how editorial persuasion reflects much of the back room operations at the newspaper if not the company as a whole. …

… Yesterday the New York Times Co. reached a simultaneous low while its crown jewel newspaper reached a new low by running a personal attack ad against a war hero. Their stock reflected their standing in the world of character by ending the day with a five year low of $20.72. What a perfectly deserving reflection of the quality of the product coming out of the nation’s biggest clearing house for advocacy journalism.

Roger L. Simon reviews Norman Podhoretz’s new book.

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

I kept thinking of that line – often attributed to Trotsky – when reading World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, Norman Podhoretz’s analysis of the evolution of our current situation.

Not interested, indeed. What normal person would be? Like a lot of people, I was hoping Francis Fukuyama was right back in 1992 when he proffered the “End of History.” No such luck.

Podhoretz might be considered the anti-Fukuyama. His work – published today for the sixth anniversary of 9/11 and amplifying an essay he did for Commentary in August 2004 – posits a view of modern history as one long sequence of sometimes overlapping global wars from World Wars I and II through the Cold War (World War III) to the confrontation with Islamofascism (World War IV), which may be the most intractable and endless conflict of all. Not to pick on Fukuyama – who has long since abandoned his theory – at the present moment, unhappily for all of us, Podhoretz seems to be correct. …

John Fund on the slick Clinton money machine.

Marty Peretz caught John Kerry speaking up.

Jerusalem Post tells us what Israel’s air force was doing in Syria’s far eastern desert. This is the first of three items on the raid.

The Israel Air Force jets that allegedly infiltrated Syrian airspace early last Thursday apparently bombed an Iranian arms shipment that was being transferred to Hizbullah, CNN reported Tuesday.

A ground operation may also have been part of the foray, according to the network. Neither Jerusalem nor Damascus have confirmed the report. But Damascus has denied the presence of any Israeli ground forces on its territory. …

Contentions too.

The Captain closes out the subject.

… Israel would not risk war with Syria just to test out an air defense system that Iran might get. They would risk war to stop Hezbollah from rearming to the point where they would launch another attack on Israel and provoke another war in the sub-Litani region, and they would have every right to do so.

Under the terms of the UN cease-fire, Hezbollah is supposed to disarm and the only armed force in Lebanon is supposed to be the national army. Any resupply of Hezbollah is a violation of that resolution. Syria’s complaint to the UN could backfire, if the Security Council decided to take a closer look at Syria’s complicity in arming Hezbollah.

Unlike the last time, Israel appears to have few qualms about acting in its own interest in stopping the arms flow into southern Lebanon. It also has few reservations about the entire world understanding this. Perhaps that may unsettle Bashar Assad most of all.

Tech Central takes another look at the study that dissed diversity.

… As a champion of multicultural diversity, Putnam finds his results disturbing and he has been reluctant to publish them. The only place to find them is in a speech reprinted in the academic journal Scandinavian Political Studies. And even there the data is not provided, only summarized. Putnam told the Financial Times that he “had delayed publishing his results until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity.”

Slate answers the question, “What’s up with all those plane crashes?”

Millionaire Steve Fossett has been missing since last Monday, when he took off from a Nevada airstrip for a short flight. Rescue crews have yet to find the famous adventurer or his plane, but according to news reports, they’ve discovered at least six “uncharted wrecks” across a 17,000-square-mile swath of the Sierra Nevada—or nearly one a day since the search began. Why are there so many undocumented crash sites around the Sierra Nevada? …

Dilbert comments on the study showing liberals and conservatives have different ways of thinking.

… During this time of presidential elections, the story turned into “Scientists prove conservatives are simple-minded.”

I’m guessing this is how the process went down: The scientists (usually liberals) report their findings to their university bosses (usually liberals) who call their public relations people (usually liberals) to sex up this story and feed it to the media (usually liberals). There wasn’t much to slow it down.

Still, you have to give props to the PR person who put the lipstick on this turd. Someone earned his or her money this week. Nice work. …

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James Lileks will make you remember.

Norman Podhoretz honors the anniversary.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on us that took place on this very day six years ago, several younger commentators proclaimed the birth of an entirely new era in American history. What Dec. 7, 1941, had done to the old isolationism, they announced, Sept. 11, 2001, had done to the Vietnam syndrome. It was politically dead, and the cultural fallout of that war–all the damaging changes wrought by the 1960s and ’70s–would now follow it into the grave.

 

I could easily understand why they thought so. After all, never in their lives had they witnessed so powerful an explosion of patriotic sentiment–and not only in the expected precincts of the right. In fact, on the left, where not so long ago the American flag had been thought fit only for burning, the sight of it–and it was now on display everywhere–had been driving a few prominent personalities to wrench their unaccustomed arms into something vaguely resembling a salute. One of these personalities, Todd Gitlin, a leading figure in the New Left of the ’60s and now a professor at Columbia, even went so far as to question the inveterately “negative faith in America the ugly” that he and his comrades had tenaciously held onto for the past 40 years and more.

 

Having broken ranks with the left in the late ’60s precisely because I was repelled by the “negative faith in America the ugly” that had come to pervade it, I naturally welcomed this new patriotic mood with open arms. It seemed to me a sign of greater intellectual sanity and moral health, and I fervently hoped that it would last.

 

But I could not fully share the heady confidence of my younger political friends that the change was permanent, and that nothing in American politics and American culture would ever be the same again. …

Jack Kelly with more bin Laden comment.

There was something odd about the Osama bin Laden video made public last week, noticed Web logger George Maschke (Booman Tribune).

“The video freezes at about 1 minute and 58 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30,” Mr. Maschke said. “The video then freezes at 14:02 and remains frozen until the end. All references to current events occur when the video is frozen.”

Could the current events references have been added to an older tape? Osama is dressed just as he was in his last video, released in 2004. But that may be simply because there isn’t much of a selection at the mall near his cave.

Bin Laden sounds more like Keith Olbermann, MSNBC’s nutty talk show host, than like an Islamic terrorist leader.

Osama’s earlier addresses had an elegance and a consistency to them. Professor James Robbins, who heads the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University, described this one as “an interesting fusion of pseudo-Marxism and standard Islamism, sprinkled with political sound bites that rob the address of whatever seriousness it might aspire to.” …

John O’Sullivan, author of The President, The Pope, and The Prime Minister was in country for the Polish edition.

My Polish visit is only half over. But I have a sense that its grand climax occurred on Thursday at a British-embassy party launching the Polish publication of my book, The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister. Not only was it attended by many veterans of the Solidarity movement who, in a reversal of the proper order of things, wanted my autograph; not only did Poland’s foreign minister, Anna Fotyga, deliver a graceful speech (of which more later) in which she described the book as “as exciting as a political thriller;” but the British and American ambassadors read out letters from Margaret Thatcher and Nancy Reagan welcoming the book’s publication in Polish.

Even I am not vain enough to imagine that this was all about me. After a week in Warsaw I realize that the book is significant in Poland because it celebrates the greatest Pole who ever lived, John Paul II, and the moment in modern history when Poland changed the entire world for the better. …

John Tierney spends time with Bjorn Lomborg and we get a column.

After looking at one too many projections of global-warming disasters — computer graphics of coasts swamped by rising seas, mounting death tolls from heat waves — I was ready for a reality check. Instead of imagining a warmer planet, I traveled to a place that has already felt the heat, accompanied by Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish political scientist and scourge of environmentalist orthodoxy.

It was not an arduous expedition. We went to an old wooden building near the Brooklyn Bridge that is home to the Bridge Cafe, which bills itself as “New York’s Oldest Drinking Establishment.” There’s been drinking in the building since the late 18th century, when it was erected on Water Street along the shore of Lower Manhattan.

Since record-keeping began in the 19th century, the sea level in New York has been rising about a foot per century, which happens to be about the same increase estimated to occur over the next century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The temperature has also risen as New York has been covered with asphalt and concrete, creating an “urban heat island” that’s estimated to have raised nighttime temperatures by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming that has already occurred locally is on the same scale as what’s expected globally in the next century.

The impact of these changes on Lower Manhattan isn’t quite as striking as the computer graphics. We couldn’t see any evidence of the higher sea level near the Bridge Cafe, mainly because Water Street isn’t next to the water anymore. Dr. Lomborg and I had to walk over two-and-a-half blocks of landfill to reach the current shoreline. …

International Herald Tribune on the first Starbucks in Russia. The store is in Khimki, 15 northwest of the city and near Moscow’s international airport. There is a memorial in the town at the point of the furthest German advance towards Moscow. In the About section of our website there is a picture of yours truly at that memorial. The picture was taken Dec. 5, 1991; exactly 50 years from the day the Russians launched their great counter-offensive that would result in the first major defeat for the Germans in WWII.

The most interesting thing about the Russian Starbucks story is a Russian had claimed first dibs on the name. He was willing to give it up for $600,000. Starbucks said no and sued. And won!

Maybe something will come of Russia.

Newsweek, speaking of the Russo/German war, published a piece about the battle for Moscow.

… The battle for Moscow, which officially lasted from Sept. 30, 1941, to April 20, 1942, pitted two gargantuan armies against each other in what was the greatest clash of arms in human history. Seven million men were involved in some stage of this struggle—twice the number who would later fight at Stalingrad, which most people erroneously believe was the bloodiest battle of World War II. The losses were more than twice that of Stalingrad; during the battle for Moscow, 2.5 million were killed, missing, taken prisoner or severely wounded, with 1.9 million of those losses on the Soviet side.

For the first time a Hitler blitzkrieg was stopped, shattering his dream of a swift victory over the Soviet Union. The defeat was also the first signal that Germany would lose the war. As Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a German officer who later joined the conspiracy against Hitler, explained, it destroyed “the myth of the invincibility of the German soldier.” And yet the battle for Moscow is now largely forgotten. …

WaPo has an amazing story about a Maryland college student trapped in a car for 8 days one mile from home. He was near the Baltimore-Washington Parkway when his car left the road and flipped pinning him.

As Julian McCormick recalls it, he lay in and out of consciousness for eight days and seven nights, hot, sticky and bloody with not a clue as to what day it was or how he ended up trapped in his overturned car at the bottom of a steep embankment in Prince George’s County. …

 

… Police categorized McCormick as a “non-critical missing person” because there were no signs of foul play.

They conducted an aerial search for him Friday night from 9 to 10:30 — well after dark, according to the helicopter squad’s aviation log. He was discovered by a motorist Saturday evening.

“I don’t think it was a priority,” Peggy McCormick said.

Added James McCormick: “He’s been there the whole time, less than one mile from home.” …

Dilbert comments on the wisdom of neo-nazis in Israel.

In the news, a gang of neo-Nazis was arrested………………..in Israel.

The gang recorded their violent crimes on video. This is a good idea in case you’re not doing enough to get caught and prosecuted. One of the gang members says, “Heil Hitler” on the video. His lawyer will have to ask to move the trial to Iran so his client can get a fair trial. …

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Some of the crazy left have come down hard on Gen. Petraeus. John Fund leads the way.

General David Petraeus was unanimously confirmed to lead U.S. forces in Iraq just last year, but it apparently it wasn’t unanimously hoped that he would be successful in his new job. Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid has little use for the general now that he might report measured optimism in his forthcoming update. “He’s made a number of statements over the years that have not proved to be factual,” Mr. Reid now says. …

Ed Morrissey is next.

Using a schoolyard manipulation of General David Petraeus’ last name, MoveOn asked in a full-page advertisement whether this honorable commander would betray his nation for the sake of a temporary political advantage. Calling the MNF-I commander “Betray-Us”, the Democratic activist organization accused the general of deliberately misreporting the results of the war effort to boost the Bush administration: …

Byron York comments for the National Review.

With its full-page “General Betray Us?” ad in the New York Times, MoveOn.org has once again put itself at the forefront of the antiwar movement. And if past patterns are any guide, a number of Democrats are embarrassed, and even angered, by MoveOn’s actions but are afraid to reveal the true extent of their feelings. MoveOn simply has too much fundraising clout — and a fear-inducing inclination to attack Democrats who stray from the MoveOn line — for many in the party to take it on.

Democratic leaders might be further embarrassed by a new email, headlined “Your dog can help end the war,” sent out by the leadership of MoveOn’s political team. The email asks members to attend a protest on Capitol Hill this morning preceding the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus. “Congress was fooled before by the White House’s ‘dog and pony show,” the appeal says. “We need to make sure they’re not fooled again. That’s why we’re hosting our own ‘Dog and Pony Show’ outside the Capitol Building right before Petraeus takes the stage for his testimony. We want to show Congress and the cameras that the American people aren’t buying the White House spin.” …

 

… Now, with the “General Betray Us” campaign, those Democrats again face the question: Do they dare to cross MoveOn? Not long after the 2004 elections, Pariser famously said of Democrats, “Now it’s our party. We bought it, we own it, and we’re going to take it back.” The next few days could be crucial in determining whether he was right or not.

Ralph Peters rounds this out in the NY Post.

ONE of the many disgraceful things about Washington is that it really doesn’t matter what Gen. David Petraeus says in his testimony this week.

Minds are already made up. Senators and activists will listen only for a “Gotcha!” opportunity. Staffers have already formulated the sound bites and written the statements denouncing any progress in Iraq as meaningless.

Politically terrified by positive developments in Iraq, Democrats are trying to explain them away preemptively. Premature Iraqulator Sen. Charles Schumer even resorted to outright lies last week.

We’ve reached a grotesque low point when scoring political points means more to our legislators than winning a war. …

The Captain provided three great posts. First on a WSJ op-ed by Fouad Ajami on Iraq. Then on the non-event of Al Gore’s possible endorsement. He closes posting on a WaPo story on the surge.

The Washington Post tells the story of the surge from inside the Bush administration in a lengthy and intriguing article. Headlined as “Among Top Officials, ‘Surge’ Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting,” the compendium from the Post’s reporters actually tells quite a different story. While the surge initially produced dissent — even within the military command — the results have united the administration and the military more than at any time over the last eight months.

In the beginning, Republicans outside the administration objected to the new initiative and the Pentagon’s new chief, Robert Gates, wanted to start drawing down troops. Having just lost an election with Iraq as a significantly contributing factor, the GOP wanted to see an exit strategy by 2008. George Bush wanted to take one final shot for victory, and he pressed for the surge to give the Iraqis enough time to start creating the political environment where it could take root.

And in the end, it turned out that Bush may have been right (via Memorandum): …

Vargas Llosa writes for Tech Central on documentary film – “Mine Your Own Business.”

One would think only a crazy couple would declare war on environmentalists by presenting them on film as snobs, hypocrites and enemies of the poor. Luckily for those of us who think one-sided debates are boring, Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney are just crazy enough to question the environmentalists’ opposition to mining projects in poor countries in a documentary — “Mine Your Own Business” — that is gaining attention.

McAleer, an Irish journalist who covered Romania for the Financial Times, and McElhinney, his wife and co-producer, look at three mining investments: a gold project by Gabriel Resources in Rosia Montana, in Romania’s Transylvania region; Rio Tinto’s ilmenite project in Fort Dauphin, in Madagascar; and a vast Andean operation undertaken by Barrick Gold in Chile’s Huasco Valley.

In the movie, many of the critics who claim to live in the affected areas are less than honest. One, a Swiss environmentalist who leads the opposition to mining in Romania, actually lives in the sort of town to which many of the impoverished peasants of Rosia Montana want to move. …

Yale Daily News reports Yale profs donate on a ratio of 45 to 1. Do Pickings readers know which way they swing?

When it comes to the “money primary,” Yale employees favor Democratic presidential candidates over their Republican rivals — by a margin of 45 to one.

Federal Election Commission filings from the first two quarters of the year show that University faculty and staff have given $44,500 to Democratic presidential candidates — most often to Sen. Barack Obama — and just $1,000 to Republicans.

Division of Labour says Hong Kong wins the economic freedom index. Dead last is Zimbabwe.

Interesting series of Corner posts on the natures of men and women. The last post is by Yuval Levin.

… But the basic civilizing forces in a civilized society are the preferences of women. For reasons both low and high, men try to do what women want, so societies try to educate women to want the right things. Think of the Victorian education of women, or the medieval code of chivalry, or Plutarch’s Spartan women. Tocqueville’s reflections on the American woman are full of wisdom on this too (Democracy in America, Vol. 2, Part 3), and the passage on the ideal man and woman in Rousseau’s Emile is not bad either. “Women make mores,” as Tocqueville puts it.

And it’s not just a matter of education. Women generally (all of this is awfully general of course, there are many exceptions) don’t seem to need quite so much coaxing and civilizing to stay with the family and live responsibly as men do. And when civilization breaks down (due to war, say, or some moral collapse) women tend to end up with awful responsibilities and men tend to up awfully irresponsible. That’s why the coming woman shortage in China is cause for great concern, and why the wild west was wild. It wasn’t the federal marshals who calmed it down, it was wives. …

Beltway Blogroll with a round-up of the Norman Hsu puns. Here’s a sample.

…

– Tusk & Talon: “Deja Hsu”
– TigerHawk: “Stomach Hsu”
– Grammaticus: “Hsu Two”
– Small Dead Animals: “Hillary Hears A Hsu“

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Mark marks the sixth anniversary.

… Have you seen that bumper sticker “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB”? If you haven’t, go to a college town and cruise Main Street for a couple of minutes. It seems odd that a fascist regime that thinks nothing of killing thousands of people in a big landmark building in the center of the city hasn’t quietly offed some of these dissident professors – or at least the guy with the sticker-printing contract. Fearlessly, Robert Fisk of Britain’s Independent, the alleged dean of Middle East correspondents, has now crossed over to the truther side and written a piece headlined, “Even I Question The ‘Truth’ About 9/11.” According to a poll in May, 35 percent of Democrats believe that Bush knew about 9/11 in advance. Did Rumsfeld also know? Almost certainly. That’s why he went to his office as normal that today, because he knew in advance that the plane would slice through the Pentagon but come to a halt on the far side of the photocopier. That’s how well-planned it was, unlike Iraq. …

 

… And what of those for whom the events of six years ago were more than just conspiracy fodder? Last week the New York Times carried a story about the current state of the 9/11 lawsuits. Relatives of 42 of the dead are suing various parties for compensation, on the grounds that what happened that Tuesday morning should have been anticipated. The law firm Motley Rice, diversifying from its traditional lucrative class-action hunting grounds of tobacco, asbestos and lead paint, is promising to put on the witness stand everybody who “allowed the events of 9/11 to happen.” And they mean everybody – American Airlines, United, Boeing, the airport authorities, the security firms – everybody, that is, except the guys who did it.

According to the Times, many of the bereaved are angry and determined that their loved one’s death should have meaning. Yet the meaning they’re after surely strikes our enemies not just as extremely odd but as one more reason why they’ll win. You launch an act of war, and the victims respond with a lawsuit against their own countrymen.

But that’s the American way: Almost every news story boils down to somebody standing in front of a microphone and announcing that he’s retained counsel. …

… In his pugnacious new book, Norman Podhoretz calls for redesignating this conflict as World War IV. Certainly, it would have been easier politically to frame the Iraq campaign as being a front in a fourth world war than as a necessary measure in an anti-terrorist campaign. Yet who knows? Perhaps we would still have mired ourselves in legalists and conspiracies and the dismal curdled relativism of the Flight 93 memorial’s “crescent of embrace.” In the end, as Podhoretz says, if the war is to be fought at all, it will “have to be fought by the kind of people Americans now are.” On this sixth anniversary, as 9/11 retreats into history, many Americans see no war at all. …

Gerard Baker, chief U. S. scribe of the London Times, says the lame duck Prez shows signs of healing.

At this late stage in an American presidency, even in the most favourable circumstances, even for the most popular incumbents, lame duck is definitely on the menu.

These are hardly the best of circumstances and this is hardly one of the most popular incumbents. With little more than a year to go to the end of George Bush’s presidency, his approval ratings stand near historic lows at just above 30 per cent. Last November his party lost control of both houses of Congress.

The death march of senior officials out of the Administration, routine around this stage of a second presidential term, has become a stampede. Karl Rove, the top White House aide, the Cardinal Richelieu of the Bush presidency, has gone. Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney-General, the Harpo Marx of the Bush presidency, will be gone in a few weeks.

By now Mr Bush should be a governing irrelevance, a liability to his party, the object of scorn and derision. Every Republican candidate with an ounce of instinct for self-preservation in his blood should be running away from the President as though he were a burning building.

But what is this? Next week Mr Bush seems certain to score one of the most important political victories of his presidency. General David Petraeus, the commander of US forces in Iraq, will testify before Congress, along with Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador to Iraq, on the progress of the “surge” Mr Bush ordered earlier this year to much domestic political opposition. …

Taylor and Johnson, authors of the Duke rape fraud book, with an op-ed in WaPo.

One night in jail: So concludes the Duke lacrosse rape case — rape fraud, as it turned out. The legacy of this incident should include hard thinking about the deep pathologies underlying the media sensationalism and the perversion of academic ideals that this fraud inspired.

The 24-hour sentence was imposed on Mike Nifong, the disbarred former district attorney of Durham, after a contempt-of-court trial last week for repeatedly lying to hide DNA evidence of innocence. His prosecution of three demonstrably innocent defendants, based on an emotionally disturbed stripper’s ever-changing account, may be the worst prosecutorial misconduct ever exposed while it was happening. Durham police officers and other officials aided Nifong, and the city and county face the threat of a massive lawsuit by the falsely accused former students seeking criminal justice reforms and compensation.

All this shows how the criminal justice process can oppress the innocent — usually poor people lacking the resources to fight back — and illustrates the need for reforms to restrain rogue prosecutors. But the case was also a major cultural event exposing habits of mind among academics and journalists that contradict what should be their lodestar: the pursuit of truth. …

Thomas Lifson, in American Thinker, suggests the dénouement for the lawsuit against the voters in Durham, NC.

… Not just the pols and the employees, however, deserve accountability. The voters of Durham elected Nifong as DA because he pandered to their desire for race and class vengeance on the wealthy white Duke students. Cutting city services and/or raising taxes on them to finance a settlement or judgment strikes me as perfectly appropriate. …

Contentions provides a series of post on Middle East events.

Max Boot on Madeline Albright – fabulist. You will read in disbelief her comments today compared to when she was in office.

Gabriel Schoenfeld posts on Mearsheimer and Walt and then Osama’s favorite pundit.

… Scheuer, who ran the CIA’s al-Qaeda unit from 1996 to 1999, has been making a great name for himself as a counterterrorism expert since leaving the agency in 2004. Among other high-visibility perches, he serves as a “consultant” to both CBS and ABC News and is cited frequently by leading journalists.

The question is: is bin Laden’s endorsement of Scheuer’s books good for this pundit’s career? Although one should never underestimate the media’s lack of curiosity, my own guess is that it is going to hurt, and hurt badly.

Bin Laden’s endorsement is not the direct reason. Rather, the increasing attention it will bring him will also bring him increasing scrutiny. And scrutiny is not something Scheuer will easily withstand. …

Emanuele Ottolenghi demonstrates the power of the Israel lobby. Reacting to statements by Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief of staff that Israel tried to wave us off Iraq he says;

… And all this time, I thought the war in Iraq was launched at the behest of the Lobby, to serve Israel’s interests.

Victor Davis Hanson leads our bin Laden items.

… As for the Chomsky, Scheuer, and all the left-wing talking points echoed by bin Laden, what to make of that fallout?

What do you do when a mass-murderer not only finds you a fellow-traveler, but somehow manages to confirm everything that you deny—that radical Islam hates the West for what it is — capitalist, powerful, free, secular—rather than the particulars of what it does? …

Power Line’s post is titled “Osama bin Chomsky.”

… Bin Laden sounds for all the world like a Marxist. He praises Noam Chomsky as one of the “most capable” of American war opponents. Over and over, he attributes American foreign policy to “the owners of the major corporations.” In bin Laden’s view, “[t]hose with real power and influence are those with the most capital,” and “the essence of man-made positive laws is that they serve the interests of those with capital and thus make the rich richer and the poor poorer.”

Third, bin Laden’s disappointment in the Democrats is palpable: …

The Captain is next.

… And just to show that Osama’s not all jihad and mass murder, he offers to solve our domestic problems as well:

He also speaks to recent issues grabbing headlines in the United States, referring to “the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes…”

“To conclude,” bin Laden says, “I invite you to embrace Islam.” He goes on to say: “There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakaat [alms] totaling 2.5 percent.”

Isn’t that sweet? If we just agree to live as slaves under our new Taliban masters, we can finance our homes at a flat 2.5% fee. Think of how liberating that will be! Well, except for the burqas, the barbers, the end of music, dancing, Judaism, Christianity, voting, the press, the 13th-21st centuries, science …

James Robbins in NRO is last.

The new bin Laden videotape is a great disappointment. No new threats, no new deals, just a new beard, if it is even real. Apart from being dyed, the shape is a departure from previous styles, and it looks a bit too full on the sides. Losing his beard would of course be counter to the Islamist orthodoxy, but the requirements of the life of the fugitive will out. Hasn’t al Qaeda instructed its operatives to shave, wear Western clothes, and hang out at strip clubs to allay suspicion?

His speech, such as it is, is an interesting fusion of pseudo-Marxism and standard Islamism, sprinkled with political sound bites that rob the address of whatever seriousness it might aspire to. The real terrorism is global warming and the failure to observe Kyoto! Please. And the bit about how Americans are suffering under credit card-debt and mortgage payments — it’s like his speech team is cribbing from the presidential debates. I really expect more from a terrorist mastermind. …

WSJ op-ed with realistic parenting advice.

… As it turns out, this tension between realists and utopians has existed for at least as long as people have been making a buck dispensing wisdom about how other folks should raise their kids. Ann Hulbert’s “Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice about America” reveals successive generations of disciplinarians pitted against “gentler Rousseauian” proponents of the inherent goodness of a child’s nature. Ms. Hulbert quotes the president of the National Congress of Mothers proclaiming in 1897 that science-based parenting innovations would so change civilization that “those of us who live to see the year 1925 will behold a new world and a new people.” Fast forward past two world wars and the global ravages of utopian totalitarianism to 2006, when education expert Stephanie Marshall writes exuberantly that “the fundamental purpose of schooling is to liberate the goodness and genius of children.”

Perhaps the fundamental purpose of schooling should be to liberate parents from the necessity of supporting our kids well past our retirement years. But regardless, this notion that humans are inherently angelic, and that it is society that corrupts them, is at the heart of much bad parenting, as well as inept schooling. Rather than help our children develop internal constraints that channel their energy and passion into productive enterprises, we end up teaching them that limits and discipline are for chumps. Ms. Hulbert notes that even Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose advice in his book “Baby and Child Care” was so often blamed for parental permissiveness, had seen enough of the consequences: “I can hardly bear to be around rude children,” he wrote. “I have the impulse to spank them, and to give a lecture to their parents.”

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Abigail Thernstrom reviewed the Stuart Taylor/KC Johnson Duke story -”Until Proven Innocent.”

Privileged, rowdy white jocks at an elite, Southern college, a poor, young black stripper, and an alleged rape: It was a juicy, made-for-the-media story of race, class and sex, and it was told and retold for months with a ferocious, moralistic intensity. Reporters and pundits ripped into Duke University, the white race and the young lacrosse players at the center of the episode, and the local justice system quickly handed up indictments. But as Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson show in “Until Proven Innocent”–and as the facts themselves would show when they finally came to light–it was a false story, a toxic controversy built on lies and bad faith.

There was plenty of wrongdoing, of course, but it had very little to do with Duke’s lacrosse players. It was perpetrated instead by a rogue district attorney determined to win re-election in a racially divided, town-gown city; ideologically driven reporters and their pseudo-expert sources; censorious faculty members driven by the imperatives of political correctness; a craven university president; and black community leaders seemingly ready to believe any charge of black victimization.

“Until Proven Innocent” is a stunning book. It recounts the Duke lacrosse case in fascinating detail and offers, along the way, a damning portrait of the institutions–legal, educational and journalistic–that do so much to shape contemporary American culture. Messrs. Taylor and Johnson make it clear that the Duke affair–the rabid prosecution, the skewed commentary, the distorted media storyline–was not some odd, outlier incident but the product of an elite culture’s most treasured assumptions about American life, not least about America’s supposed racial divide. …

… Richard Brodhead, the president of Duke, condemned the lacrosse players as if they had already been found guilty, demanded the resignation of their coach and studiously ignored the mounting evidence that Ms. Mangum’s charge was false. He was clearly terrified of the racial and gender activists on his own faculty. Houston Baker, a noted professor of English, called the lacrosse players “white, violent, drunken men veritably given license to rape,” men who could “claim innocence . . . safe under the cover of silent whiteness.” Protesters on campus and in the city itself waved “castrate” banners, put up “wanted” posters and threatened the physical safety of the lacrosse players.

The vitriolic rhetoric of the faculty and Durham’s “progressive” community–including the local chapter of the NAACP–helped to intensify the scandal and stoke the media fires. The New York Times’ coverage was particularly egregious, as Messrs. Taylor and Johnson vividly show. It ran dozens of prominent stories and “analysis” articles trying to plumb the pathologies of the lacrosse players and of a campus culture that allowed swaggering white males to prey on poor, defenseless young black women. As one shrewd Times alumnus later wrote: “You couldn’t invent a story so precisely tuned to the outrage frequency of the modern, metropolitan, bien pensant journalist.” Such Nifong allies–unlike the district attorney himself–paid no price for their shocking indifference to the truth.

Evan Thomas reviews the book for Newsweek.

On March 28, 2006, the four co-captains of the Duke lacrosse team accused of gang-raping an exotic dancer met with university president Richard Brodhead. One of the captains, David Evans, emotionally protested that the team was innocent and apologized for the misbegotten stripper party. “Brodhead’s eyes filled with tears,” write Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson in their new book on the case, “Until Proven Innocent” (420 pages. Thomas Dunne Books. $26.95). Brodhead “said that the captains should think of how difficult it had been for him.” The misbehavior of the players, said Duke’s president, “had put him in a terrible position.” Listening to Brodhead, Robert Ekstrand, a lawyer representing the captains and many of their teammates, “felt his blood starting to boil,” write Taylor and Johnson. “Here, he thought, is a comfortable university president wallowing in self-pity in front of four students who are in grave danger of being falsely indicted on charges of gang rape, punishable by decades in prison.”

It is possible to feel sympathy for Brodhead (who in an interview with Taylor denied he was tearful or self-pitying at the meeting). The president of a modern, elite university must be careful not to cross his politically correct faculty. Brodhead had already lost face with some professors (who dislike the admissions break given to athletes) by appearing to kowtow before Duke’s iconic basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, to stop him from jumping to the pros. Brodhead had to worry about potential riots if he were seen as an apologist for the lacrosse players. They were white and the alleged victim was black; Duke is seen as a bastion of white privilege in its racially mixed hometown of Durham, N.C.

Still, as unforgivingly portrayed in “Until Proven Innocent,” Brodhead appears weak-kneed. In their vivid, at times chilling account, the authors are contemptuous of prosecutor Mike Nifong, whom the North Carolina legal establishment disbarred for his by now well-documented misconduct. (Nifong’s lawyer, David Freedman, says “there are a number of people who testified at the state bar proceeding that [Nifong] was a very caring career prosecutor.”) But their most biting scorn is aimed at the “academic McCarthyism” that they say has infected top-rated American universities like Duke. …

… The authors make the Duke faculty look at once ridiculous and craven. For months, not one of the university’s nearly 500-member faculty of arts and sciences stood up to question the rush to judgment against the lacrosse team. So much for the ideal of the liberal-arts university where scholars debate openly and seek the truth. (“This book provides one interpretation,” says Duke spokesman John Burness.) The only group that shows any common sense in “Until Proven Innocent” is the student body. Aside from a few noisy activists who assumed the players were guilty, Duke undergrads mostly overlooked the political correctness of their professors.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit keeps the book reviews going with his post on The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.

Excerpt:

It is unimaginable that Francis Biddle or Robert Jackson would have written Franklin Roosevelt a memorandum about how to avoid prosecution for his wartime decisions designed to maintain flexibility against a new and deadly foe. . . . Many people think the Bush administration has been indifferent to wartime legal constraints. But the opposite is true: the administration has been strangled by law, and since September 11, 2001 this war has been lawyered to death.

As I’ve said before, this war has been overlawyered, which is not to say it has been well-lawyered. Goldsmith notes that the Defense Department alone has over 10,000 lawyers, not including reservists. …

John Fund with a couple of shorts.

William Buckley reviews the new book by Norman Podhoretz.

… He quotes in his book Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum. Pipes is off to a rollicking and reassuring start in what becomes the deadliest paragraph in town. Begin with our military superiority, which would appear to make victory inevitable. “Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the Cold War. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the Gulag?”

A thoughtful answer to that question is sobering. The Islamists have:

A potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life.

A religious appeal that provides deeper resonance and greater staying power than the artificial ideologies of fascism or communism.

An impressively conceptualized, funded and organized institutional machinery that successfully builds credibility, goodwill and electoral success.

An ideology capable of appealing to Muslims of every size and shape, from Lumpenproletariat to privileged, from illiterates to Ph.D.s, from the well-adjusted to psychopaths, from Yemenis to Canadians.” …

The Captain posts on how you can get to be a scoundrel in eight months.

If anyone wants a lesson in how to lose a reputation for diligence, honor, and honesty, all they need to do is get confirmed by Congress for a vital role in American security. Eight months after the Senate confirmed David Petraeus as commander of American forces in Iraq, the same Senators who voted for his confirmation have now begun a character-assassination campaign to discredit him: …

Agriculture is no longer the leading occupation of the human race – for the first time in 10,000 years.

… In recent years agriculture has lost its place as the main sector of employment and has been replaced by the services sector, which in 2006 constituted 42.0 per cent of world employment compared to 36.1 per cent for agriculture. As for the industry sector, it represented 21.9 per cent of total employment, which is almost unchanged from ten years ago. Although textbook theory suggests that economic development entails a structural transformation with a shift away from agriculture to the industry sector, this no longer seems to be reflected in reality. Instead of moving into high-productivity jobs in the industry sector, people are moving directly into the services sector, which consists of both high- and low-productivity jobs.

Therefore, it is unclear if the sectoral shift goes hand in hand with productivity increases and thereby a better utilization of the workforce. Agriculture is still the main sector of employment in the world’s poorest regions. Two-thirds of workers in sub-Saharan Africa and almost half of workers in South Asia and South-East Asia & the Pacific are in agriculture. …

Speaking of farming, can you guess what ethanol is screwing up now?

… Everywhere farmers grow corn, water is becoming a major concern as ethanol plants ramp up production at a startling rate and the threat of drought is ever-present. Rushing to help meet President Bush’s call to cut gasoline use by 20% over the next 10 years, the ethanol industry has projects under way that would nearly double capacity from the current 6.8 billion gallons of ethanol a year.

A 50-million gallon ethanol plant might use about 150 million gallons of water to make fuel. That’s more water than some small towns use, raising some local battles over placement of the plants. But farmers in Mr. Clements’s district alone pumped 62.6 billion gallons of water from underground in 2005. That’s why many water experts are more concerned about farmers growing more thirsty corn to meet the extra demand from ethanol than they are about the water used by the distilleries themselves. …

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Mark Steyn reviews Norman Podhoretz’s new book for The New Criterion. This is long, but worthwhile.

… But the people who got World War III wrong (That would be the Cold War) *Pickerhead (and, in its darkest hours, potentially fatally wrong) were given a pass: they got to skate. Moral equivalists, looking-at-the-world-through-Red-colored-glasses sentimentalists, hardcore anti-Americans, all were as entrenched as ever in the institutions of the West when the new struggle began—and with an even freer hand to get it wrong one mo’ time. In a particularly sharp chapter, “From World War III to World War IV,” Podhoretz traces the links between the two: the forces of defeatism in the Cold War’s bleakest decade—the Seventies—that also emboldened new enemies. He quotes Jimmy Carter’s mockery of the old assumptions, the “belief that Soviet expansionism was almost inevitable and that it must be contained. Being confident of our own future, we are now free of that inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator who joined us in that fear.”

No fear of that anymore. And so the Shah fell to the Ayatollah Khomeini. “Just how blind the Carter administration was to this portentous development,” writes Podhoretz, “can be gauged by the fact that Andrew Young, Carter’s own ambassador to the UN, hailed the radical Islamist despot now ruling Iran as a saint and a great believer in human rights.”

The seizure of the U.S. Embassy disabused even Carter of Carterian delusions. He loosed Zbigniew Brzezinski to deal with the Soviets in Afghanistan. In post-Watergate post-Vietnam Washington, the “covert mission” barely existed, so Zbig outsourced the Afghan operation to Pakistan’s ISI and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Turki, and they in turn signed up Osama bin Laden and other excitable types. Thirty years on, the idealist buffoon Carter and the wily “realist” Brzezinski are not laughingstocks but prominent and reasonably respected and indeed bestselling analysts of our present woes.

Carter got it exactly wrong. It was precisely because we were not “confident of our own future” that we were so tentative in response to provocations. There were two forces at play in the late twentieth century: in the east, the collapse of Communism; in the west, the collapse of confidence. And, with the end of the Soviet existential threat, the enervation at home only accelerated. …

NY Observer comments on the deflating Harry Reid.

Harry Reid left Washington last month a frustrated but optimistic man. He is returning, it seems, a humbled one—at least as far as the Iraq debate goes.

It was at the end of July that just about every Republican in the Senate—plus Joe Lieberman—stood together to block a vote on a troop withdrawal plan, dealing a blow to Mr. Reid and his antiwar allies, who had championed the proposal. But Mr. Reid was also confident that the August Congressional recess would change the math, with irate constituents giving the holdout Republicans a piece of their mind about their unwillingness to end the war.

But recess is almost over now, and with the Senate reconvening on Sept. 4, Mr. Reid doesn’t seem nearly as sure of his hand. Of the Iraq debate that will soon resume, the majority leader told The Washington Post late last week that “I don’t think we have to think that our way is the only way.” …

The Captain posts on Hillary’s depraved privatization thoughts.

Hillary Clinton has an interesting view of the American economy, if her remarks to the AARP serve as any sort of guide. She told its legislative conference that Social Security is the “most successful domestic program” in American history, and that only government can make the necessary decisions for its beneficiaries (via reader Online Analyst):

“This is the most successful domestic program in the history of the United States,” Clinton said to applause from seniors gathered in Washington to push their policy agenda. “When I’m president, privatization is off the table because it’s not the answer to anything.” …

Kathleen Parker’s cartoon column is sneaky good. She starts out writing about the Swedish cartoons showing Mohammed’s head on a dog. Then she flips to American editors who cave preemptively.

… Outrage, never far from the front burner where the date palms grow, was swift. Egypt complained, Jordan condemned, Afghanistan protested, and Iran — that arbiter of taste and protocol — suggested ways Sweden could become a better country. In Pakistan, where effigies are a cottage industry, “Muslim youth” burned a straw likeness of Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who bravely and beautifully articulated why Westerners allow cartoonists to be offensive: …

… These lessons of freedom and tolerance, which we can’t seem to export with much success, are also apparently lost on some American newspaper editors who declined recently to run two of Berkeley Breathed’s “Opus” comic strips out of concern — or was it fear? — that they were potentially offensive to Muslims. …

… The first “Opus” strip, which can be viewed on Salon.com and at comics.com, shows Lola Granola dressed in a Muslim headscarf and veil. “A Muslim fundamentalist?” asks her boyfriend, Steve. “No. Radical Islamist. Hot new fad on the planet.” The final panel suggests that, given Lola’s new identity, Steve will be denied her affections. The second strip continues the plotline and shows Lola and Steve preparing for the beach. Steve urges Lola to wear that “smokin’ hot yellow polka dot bikini” and reminds her, “You love freedom. You love hotness. And you love that I’m so darned smart about what’s best for you.” Lola emerges from the dressing room covered head-to-toe in a “burqini.”

OK, who gets the joke?

Interpreting cartoons is risky business, as they’re not intended to be taken literally. And, reading letters posted at Salon.com, it’s clear that everyone has his own interpretation of what the strips are saying. Breathed himself prefers to stay strictly out of it. What seems clear, however, is that strip is making fun of a certain shallowness on our side of the pond. Breathed is often hard on males and no one looks more foolish in these strips than the character Steve, who is oblivious to all but his own needs and desires.

If anyone is offended, it should be American males.

What is also clear is that the editors who killed these strips surrendered in advance of controversy. Thanks to previous acts of protest and intimidation, radical Muslims have succeeded in directing editorial content of America’s free, and formerly courageous, press.

The joke really is on us. And it’s not funny.

Mark Steyn with a surprising Corner post that grew out of an Orwellian Sunday Telegraph item.

A pregnant woman has been told that her baby will be taken from her at birth because she is deemed capable of “emotional abuse”, even though psychiatrists treating her say there is no evidence to suggest that she will harm her child in any way. …

 

… The case adds to growing concern, highlighted in a series of articles in The Sunday Telegraph, over a huge rise in the number of babies under a year old being taken from parents. The figure was 2,000 last year, three times the number 10 years ago.

Critics say councils are taking more babies from parents to help them meet adoption “targets”. …

John Stossel gets a return engagement with “toilet man.”

I didn’t recognize him until he reminded me I’d interviewed him a decade ago. Then I remembered he was “toilet man.” That’s what I called him privately when he was the energy department bureaucrat under President Clinton who defended the government’s demand that all of us buy “low-flow” showerheads and “water-saving” toilets.

I did a “Give Me a Break” segment on that for “20/20″ mocking the endless rule-making process, which somehow concluded that exactly 1.6 gallons is all that every toilet needs. I interviewed people who were so unhappy with their new toilets that they were combing junkyards for old ones, or going to Canada to buy them, because 1.6 gallons doesn’t always get the job done. Homeowners and apartment managers kept telling meme, “The toilets don’t work!”

“They do now,” Romm said to me last week. Manufacturers eventually made 1.6 gallons flush successfully, proving, he suggested, that my “Give Me a Break” was misguided and that government rules spur improvements. Now, he says, we need to save the earth by passing rules that restrict carbon use.

The fact that it took years for manufacturers to solve the flushing problem, at great expense to consumers, and that during that period many people had to flush several times, wasting lots of water, and that the one-size-fits-all rule applied to all of America, forcing flushing embarrassment and lousy showers on people in Vermont and other places that have plenty of water and don’t need to conserve, and the water savings were less than 6 percent of what farms use every day for irrigation — none of that bothers Romm.

He now works at the Center for American Progress, a lefty think tank where policy wonks seem to think that government telling us what to do is the solution to many problems.

Nice Samizdata post.

… There’s a special sort of piece that appears only in The Guardian (or The New York Times) that deserves to be recognised as a journalistic genre in its own right. They masquerade as balanced and judicious profiles of individuals. But in fact they are vigorous defences, or at least pleas in mitigation, for people who cannot be allowed to be seen as guilty of any great sin because they’re On The Left. …

Reason’s Hit & Run tries to take the NY Times where an intelligent policy might lead.

… Surely one of the chief reasons the DC school system is so wasteful and unproductive is because it’s in nobody’s interest to save taxpayer money or provide a quality education. Generally public schools are not run for the benefit of students. Instead they are run for the benefit of teachers and the educrats in the central office. So why not make it someone’s interest to save money and turn out a quality education? Take the $11,000 per pupil the DC public schools spend and give it to parents as a voucher. Then let parents make the decision about which schools are actually educating their children. Or at the very least adopt the successful school choice program that San Francisco has.

Paul Greenberg sips from the cup that keeps on flowing – John Edwards’ hypocrisy.

… Hypocrisy, said La Rochefoucauld, is the tribute vice pays virtue, and let it be said John Edwards never stops paying tribute to virtue.

It hasn’t been too long since he was urging his Democratic rivals for the presidency to return any money they’d received from press tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the publisher the left loves to hate, and refuse to appear on Murdoch’s Fox News network. Mr. Edwards himself had appeared on Fox News 33 times at last count. And he’s collected $800,000 for a book published by a subsidiary of a Murdoch corporation, HarperCollins. (The candidate says much of the money went to charities. One of them, College for Everyone, turns out to be one he founded.)

Presidential campaigns have a way of attracting gold-plated phonies and, before this one is over, no doubt the inconsistencies of other candidates will be laid bare, too. But for now, when it comes to deciding who’s the phoniest of them all, John Edwards leads the pack — and his lead may be unbeatable.

Carpe Diem posts on globalization’s benefits.

Hit & Run posts on progress in the Venezuelan economy. NOT!

Gay Patriot with a wonderful story.

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Mark Steyn makes a good point in “There were two creeps in the men’s room.”

… The human comedy is not to be disdained. Nonetheless, after listening to the post-arrest audio tape of Craig’s interview with police Sgt. Dave Karsnia, I find myself inclining toward Henry Kissinger’s pronouncement on the Iran/Iraq war: It’s a shame they both can’t lose. As it happens, I passed by the very same men’s room at the Lindbergh Terminal only a couple of months ago. I didn’t go in, however. My general philosophy on public restrooms was summed up by the late Derek Jackson, the Oxford professor and jockey, in his advice to a Frenchman about to visit Britain. “Never go to a public lavatory in London,” warned Professor Jackson. “I always pee in the street. You may be fined a few pounds for committing a nuisance, but in a public lavatory you risk two years in prison because a policeman in plain clothes says you smiled at him.”

Just so. Sgt. Karsnia is paid by the police Department to sit in a stall in the men’s room all day, like a spider waiting for the flies. The Baron von Richthoven of the Minneapolis Bathroom Patrol has notched up a phenomenal number of kills and knows what to look for – the tapping foot in the adjoining stall, a hand signal under the divider. Did you know that tapping your foot in a bathroom was a recognized indicator that a criminal act is about to occur? …

Jonah Goldberg has a winner reviewing the Katrina conduct of the media.

… there was one thing missing from the coverage of this natural, social, economic and political disaster: the fact that Katrina represented an unmitigated media disaster as well.

Few of us can forget the reports from two years ago. CNN warned that there were “bands of rapists, going block to block.” Snipers were reportedly shooting at medical personnel. Bodies at the Superdome, we were told, were stacked like cordwood. The Washington Post proclaimed in a banner headline that New Orleans was a “A City of Despair and Lawlessness,” insisting in an editorial that “looters and carjackers, some of them armed, have run rampant.” Fox News anchor John Gibson said there were “all kinds of reports of looting, fires and violence. Thugs shooting at rescue crews.”

TV reporters raced to the bottom to see who could moralistically preen the most. Interviewers transformed into outright scolds of administration officials. Meanwhile, the distortions, exaggerations and flat-out fictions being offered by New Orleans officials were accelerated and amplified by the media echo chamber. Glib predictions of 10,000 dead, and the chief of police’s insistence that there were “little babies getting raped,” swirled around the media like so much free-flowing sewage.

It was as though journalistic skepticism of government officials was reserved for the White House, and everyone else got a free pass.

Of course the Bush administration made serious mistakes — politically, logistically and otherwise — in a difficult situation. But Katrina unleashed a virus of sanctimony and credulity for urban legends almost without precedent. …

It’s decades late, but Teddy Kennedy is finally getting some critical comment from the left.

… The source of unhappiness is Kennedy’s efforts to kill an offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound. Cape Wind was to be the first such project in the United States and a source of pride to environmentally minded New Englanders. Polls show 84 percent of Massachusetts residents in favor. But now it appears that America’s first offshore wind farm will be near Galveston, Texas.

Proposed the month before Sept. 11, 2001, Cape Wind remains in limbo. It’s been frustrated at every turn by a handful of yachtsmen, Kennedy included, who don’t want to see windmills from their verandas. Many millions have been spent spreading disinformation and smearing the wind farm’s supporters.

The towers would be at least five miles out and barely visible from shore on the clearest day, but the summer plutocrats resent any intrusion on their waterfront vistas — and, equally, any challenge to the notion that they control everything.

“But don’t you realize — that’s where I sail!” may stand as Kennedy’s most self-incriminating quote. …

Jack Kelly writes on how the media lets the Dems slide.

… But media bias is not the main reason why Republicans suffer more from scandals. Democratic voters expect Democrats to steal on their behalf. Lawmakers are judged on the basis of how many goodies from the federal treasury they can shower on their constituents. The typical Democratic voter doesn’t mind terribly if their senator or congressman takes something for himself along the way. (Time Magazine’s story on Rep. Mollohan’s re-election was headlined, “Pork Trumps Scandal.”)

The typical Republican voter wants his senator or congressman to keep his taxes low, his government honest. He is furious when GOP lawmakers stick their fingers in the cookie jar, or give lip service to values they do not practice.

Republicans must be squeaky clean to win elections because their voters will crucify them for behavior Democratic voters wink at so long as the pork keeps flowing. This is why his GOP colleagues already have stripped Sen. Craig of his committee assignments, and many have called for his resignation, while Democratic senators are comfortable having among them a man who left to drown in his automobile a young woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

Corner posts on the African proverbs that won’t go away.

… On what conceivable grounds is it warranted to say, “What would the Africans do?” Even on the wishy-washy proverbial terrain Clinton is usually dealing with — “children,” “villages,” etc — is there any empirical basis for arguing that the African Way is superior to our own? Maybe there are studies that show “Africans” are happier than Americans — when the former aren’t dying of malnutrition or medieval health care, or desperately trying to emigrate to the West, no doubt. …

Adam Smith.org reminds what we owe to Milton Friedman.

NY Sun says Pete Seeger is facing up to his Stalin worship.

… “I’m singing about old Joe, cruel Joe,” the lyrics read. “He ruled with an iron hand / He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land / He had a chance to make / A brand new start for the human race / Instead he set it back / Right in the same nasty place / I got the Big Joe Blues / (Keep your mouth shut or you will die fast) / I got the Big Joe Blues / (Do this job, no questions asked) / I got the Big Joe Blues.”

Mr. Seeger continued in his letter to me: “the basic mistake was Lenin’s faith in [Party] DISCIPLINE!” He often tells his left-wing audiences, he said, to read Rosa Luxemburg’s famous letter to Lenin about the necessity of freedom of speech. And despite all of my criticisms of Mr. Seeger over the years, he ended warmly, saying: “You stay well. Keep on.” …

John Tierney keeps us up with the war on drugs.

I recommend a couple of articles chronicling the unintended consequences of the war on drugs. One, by Ethan Nadelmann, is a global look at the damage done by prohibitionist policies. The other, by Radley Balko, is a look at a doctor convicted for prescribing opioids — and this case is in some ways more troubling than the Hurwitz case that I’ve been writing about. …

Thomas Sowell on health care.

Anne Applebaum is just what the doctor ordered if you’re tired of the Diana thing.

… In fairness, I should note that the grumblers don’t deny the tragedy of the princess’s death—of course it’s sad when a young mother dies suddenly. But they do rightly cast skepticism on the notion, prevalent outside Britain, that Diana’s death somehow “changed” the country forever. Though this latter idea is often repeated—among other places on the cover of Time International last week—as time goes on, it looks ever more absurd.

In fact, the genuinely bizarre aspect of the all-consuming Dianamania that gripped Britain a decade ago this week is how slight a trace it has left behind. Actually, the royal family is pretty much the same, only quieter. From Diana, they learned that there is such a thing as too much publicity. Prince Charles and his children are more rarely seen in public; the prince’s current consort, Camilla Parker Bowles, is admired for holding her tongue. When the queen mother died in 2002—at age 101, the quintessence of old-style British manners—more people showed up to mourn than had appeared for the funeral of the people’s princess. …

James Taranto picks up on the foolish health care plans of John Edwards. It is increasingly obvious this candidate was a gift from the gods for our comic relief.

Who does John Edwards think he is, our mother? The Associated Press reports from Tipton, Iowa, on the lovely and talented one’s latest brainstorm:

Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

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Marty Peretz posting in the Spine introduces a WSJ op-ed.

Josef Joffe is the editor-publisher of Die Zeit who knows the United States very well, and he knows the world well, too. That is, without sentimentality or hyperbole. His eyes are among the most incisive lenses on international affairs that I know, and they look out for the destiny of just societies. Real ones, not imagined ones.

He and I knew each other at Harvard, and have seen each other off and on over the decades. I think I’ve read all his books, and his last one, Ãœberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America had much to say about the distress of the United States in its relations to friends, adversaries and enemies.

Being conscious of this strain, Joffe knows the cost of faltering in the Middle East, of faltering in Iraq. Maybe there are few options left in Iraq. But then we should know the costs, the terrible costs. He lays these out in a piece, actually a dazzling piece, in the Wall Street Journal. …

Here’s that piece by Josef Joffe.

In contrast to President Bush’s dark comparison between Iraq and the bloody aftermath of the Vietnam War last week, there is another, comforting version of the Vietnam analogy that’s gained currency among policy makers and pundits. It goes something like this:

After that last helicopter took off from the U.S. embassy in Saigon 32 years ago, the nasty strategic consequences then predicted did not in fact materialize. The “dominoes” did not fall, the Russians and Chinese did not take over, and America remained No. 1 in Southeast Asia and in the world.

But alas, cut-and-run from Iraq will not have the same serendipitous aftermath, because Iraq is not at all like Vietnam.

Unlike Iraq, Vietnam was a peripheral arena of the Cold War. Strategic resources like oil were not at stake, and neither were bases (OK, Moscow obtained access to Da Nang and Cam Ranh Bay for a while). In the global hierarchy of power, Vietnam was a pawn, not a pillar, and the decisive battle lines at the time were drawn in Europe, not in Southeast Asia.

The Middle East, by contrast, was always the “elephant path of history,” as Israel’s fabled defense minister, Moshe Dayan, put it. Legions of conquerors have marched up and down the Levant, and from Alexander’s Macedonia all the way to India. Other prominent visitors were Julius Caesar, Napoleon and the German Wehrmacht.

This is not just ancient history. Today, the Greater Middle East is a cauldron even Macbeth’s witches would be terrified to touch. The world’s worst political and religious pathologies combine with oil and gas, terrorism and nuclear ambitions.

In short, unlike yesterday’s Vietnam, the Greater Middle East (including Turkey) is the central strategic arena of the 21st century, as Europe was in the 20th. This is where three continents — Europe, Asia, and Africa — are joined. So let’s take a moment to think about what would happen once that last Blackhawk took off from Baghdad International. …

John Fund with a couple of posts.

The Captain posts on Harry Reid, Mugabe, Fred Thompson, and the general uselessness of the debates.

In WSJ we learn the CEO of Cypress Semiconductors went back to college as a trustee. A salutorian who graduated from Dartmouth with degrees in chemistry and physics ran for a seat reserved for alums. How’s that working out?

… Mr. Rodgers founded Cypress in 1982, and now, a lifetime later in the hypercompetitive semiconductor business, it is an industry leader. Mr. Rodgers, for his part, has reached that phase where success purchases new opportunities.

Some men of his means and achievement buy a yacht, or turn to philanthropic work, or join other corporate boards. Mr. Rodgers went back to school: He became a trustee of his alma mater, Dartmouth College–and not a recumbent one. He has now served for three years; and though he notes some positives, overall, Mr. Rodgers says, “It’s been a horrible experience. I’m a respected person here in Silicon Valley. Nobody calls me names. Nobody demeans me in board meetings. That’s not the way I’m treated at Dartmouth. The behavior has been pretty shabby.” …

… “They attack things that don’t matter because they can’t attack you for what you stand for–quality of education. . . . The attacks become ad hominem. . . . We get called the problem. The fact is that we’re a response to the problem.”

In Mr. Rodgers’s judgment, the increasingly political denigration–the “rancor,” he calls it–has seriously impinged on his effectiveness as a trustee, and on the effectiveness of the board in general. “Before I ever went to my first board meeting,” he says, “I did what any decent manager in Silicon Valley does–management by walking around. You actually go and talk to people and ask how they’re doing and what they need to get their jobs done.”

He noted trends: over-enrollment, wait lists and an increased percentage of classes taught by visiting or non-tenure-track faculty. He concluded that many departments–economics, government, psychology and brain sciences, in particular–were “suffering from a shortage of teaching.”

“It’s a simple problem,” Mr. Rodgers says. “You hire more professors.” His effort to get an objective grip on the problem would be comic were it not so unfathomable. “I’ve had to scrounge to get data,” he says, the administration not being forthcoming. “My best sources of data come from faculty members and students.” …

WSJ with an editorial on college governance issues.

… In 1891, Dartmouth agreed to a pact that instituted a novel scheme of democratic governance. Alumni–the school’s financial underwriters–won the right to elect half of its non-administrative or ex officio trustees, who oversee the school and hire and fire its president. (The remaining seats are filled by appointment and typically go to big donors.)

The candidates for elected trusteeships have traditionally been vetted by a small committee, ensuring quiescence. Over the last four years, however, no fewer than four reform-minded candidates won seats on the board using a provision allowing nomination by petition. They include Silicon Valley CEO T.J. Rodgers and Virginia law professor Stephen Smith, who have raised the profile of such issues as academic standards, bureaucratic bloat and free speech.

Their presence has proven to be a tremendous offense to Dartmouth’s inner circles. Like administrators at most universities, these academic elites expect only money–not opinion and oversight–from their alumni donors. A year ago, the administration worked with a small committee of alumni to alter the petition process to make it less likely that outsiders could win. They lost in a rout in an alumni referendum.

But rather than accept that rebuke and seek some common ground, the school’s president, James Wright, and his trustee allies now seem prepared to overhaul the school’s governance more or less by fiat. …

The Economist with interesting obit of a Stalin era survivor.

HAD he been born in Iowa, Tikhon Khrennikov might have enjoyed a modest fame. Early discovery as a talented pianist; studies in composition, perhaps at the Juilliard School; schmoozing with Hollywood actors and directors, who would have appreciated his amiable character and his ear for a good tune. Irving Berlin and George Gershwin might have been his friends; he might have been remembered, like them, for hummable classics.

But Mr Khrennikov was born, one of ten children, into a horse-trading family in provincial Yelets, four years before the Russian revolution; and he died 16 years after the Soviet Union became Russia again. Over this period he was presented with moral choices and political demands which, as a musician, he should have been spared. He was not—like Sergei Prokofiev or Dmitri Shostakovich—a great composer. But he was the chief composer.

As secretary of the composers’ union, a title he received from Joseph Stalin in 1948 and kept until the USSR disintegrated, in 1991, Mr Khrennikov had enormous powers. But he had never sought them. He had come to Moscow to be a musician, and seemed likely to succeed: not so much with classical pieces, though his first symphony was conducted by the flamboyant and popularising Leopold Stokowski, but with scores for theatre and film.

Concurring Opinions is wondering when the NY Times will issue a correction acknowledging its problem understanding what are constitutional rights.