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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. …