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Returning to the war zone, US soldier posts on the US portion of his trip.
Gerard Baker of London Times wonders why we might need to outfit B2 stealth bombers so they can carry 30,000 lb. bombs.
… The only real question about the next phase in this war is whether an escalation by the US, in a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, would further American – and Western – objectives, or impede them. The evidence is increasingly suggesting that the costs of not acting are equal to or larger than the costs of acting.
Military action is not inevitable; yesterday the US again emphasised the diplomatic option with a strengthening of economic sanctions. And it’s still possible that someone will prevail on the Iranians to ditch their menacing and destructive aims. But it is starting to look as though, with not much more than a year left in his term, President Bush has decided, as he surveys the unedifying global territory of ideological and state-backed terror, that he needs to clean house.
And a 30,000lb MOP might be just the job.
Mark Steyn takes exception to a Newsweek column claiming the movie “Deliverance” as a metaphor for the war in Iraq.
… That’s the real flaw in Christopher Dickey’s “Deliverance” metaphor: If Cheney is Burt Reynolds, and the rest of America is Jon Voight, and the river is Iraq, who are the hillbillies? Well, presumably (for he doesn’t spell it out) they’re the dark forces you make yourself vulnerable to when you blunder into somewhere you shouldn’t be. When the quartet returns to Atlanta a man short, they may understand how thin the veneer of civilization is, but they don’t have to worry that their suburban cul-de-sacs will be overrun and reduced to the same state of nature as the backwoods.
That’s the flaw in the thesis: Robert D. Kaplan, a shrewd observer of global affairs, has referred to the jihadist redoubts and other lawless fringes of the map as “Indian territory.” It’s a cute joke but a misleading one. The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: No one had to worry about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue, just as Burt Reynolds never had to worry about the mountain man breaking into his rec room. But Iran has put bounties on London novelists, assassinated dissidents in Paris, blown up community centers in Buenos Aires, seeded proxy terror groups in Lebanon and Palestine, radicalized Muslim populations throughout Central Asia – and it’s now going nuclear. The leaders of North Korea, Sudan and Syria are not stump-toothed Appalachian losers: Their emissaries wear suits and dine in Manhattan restaurants every night.
Life is not a movie, especially when your enemies don’t watch the same movies, and don’t buy into the same tired narratives. To return to that 1996 presidential race, Bob Dole, apropos Pat Buchanan’s experience hosting a CNN talk-show, muttered testily at one point, “I was in the real crossfire. It wasn’t on television. It was over in Italy somewhere, a long time ago.” Happy the land for whom crossfire is purely televisual and metaphorical. But, when it turns real, it’s important to know the difference.
Charles Krauthammer answers complaints about the GOP field.
Major grumbling among conservatives about the Republican field. So many candidates, so many flaws. Rudy Giuliani, abortion apostate. Mitt Romney, flip-flopper. John McCain, Mr. Amnesty. Fred Thompson, lazy boy. Where is the paragon? Where is Ronald Reagan?
Well, what about Reagan? This president, renowned for his naps, granted amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants in the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill. As governor of California, he signed the most liberal abortion legalization bill in America, then flip-flopped and became an abortion opponent. What did he do about it as president? Gave us Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, the two swing votes that upheld and enshrined Roe v. Wade for the last quarter-century.
The point is not to denigrate Reagan but to bring a little realism to the gauzy idol worship that fuels today’s discontent. And to argue that in 2007 we have, by any reasonable historical standard, a fine Republican field: …
Bill Kristol has similar thoughts about GOP prospects.
“In case you missed it, a few days ago Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum. Now, my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time.” This jab by John McCain at Hillary Clinton at the most recent Republican presidential debate received the evening’s only standing ovation. Admittedly, those standing were partisan Florida Republicans. Still, it was a moment–in its combination of high-spirited playfulness and polemical sharpness–that made me think happier days may lie ahead for the GOP.
The first two years of George W. Bush’s second term were rough: the situation in Iraq worsened, and his key domestic proposals–Social Security and immigration reform–flopped. The big Republican losses last November followed. Since then, it’s been conventional wisdom (including among many Republicans) that 2008 is likely to be a replay of 2006–this time leading to the loss of the White House too. But this conventional wisdom could well be wrong. …
Roger Simon has his election thoughts.
Adam Smith responds to latest sky is falling environmental report.
Yesterday the UN released another ‘doom and gloom’ report about the world’s environment, claiming that humanity could face extinction if it doesn’t change its wicked ways.
The report will undoubtedly be used by environmentalists to justify all manner of government interference in our lives. The thing they’re missing, however, is that property rights and a properly functioning free market would solve almost all of the problems the UN report details. The exhaustion of fish stocks, for instance, is a classic tragedy of the commons situation. In Norway, where fishing policies are based on private property rights, fish stocks are thriving. …
The Economist reviews a book on the human cost of Stalin’s Soviet Union.
ONE of Russia’s most popular television shows is “Wait For Meâ€, a true-life tear-jerker that finds and reunites separated couples and families. Sometimes the stories it tells are run-of-the-mill melodramas that could have happened anywhere. But often they are tragically Russian, combining huge distances, lavish and indiscriminate cruelty and impenetrable bureaucracy: siblings separated 70 years ago when their parents were executed; lovers who lost one another in prison camps. …
… There are incredible reunions in this book, achieved through impossible stamina and ingenuity. But there are also homecomings as terrible in their way as exile: parents who finally reclaim children from orphanages, but live out their relationships in stigma and silence, for ever hoarding food and quailing before policemen. Husbands and wives remarry, thinking their spouses are dead. Sometimes those left behind remain true believers; sometimes it is the returnees who still are. Some hide their pasts from families for decades, as the authorities obfuscate and lie to cover up the extent of their crimes.
It is perhaps a failing—though a fitting one—that people sometimes get lost in this book, disconcertingly reappearing after long gaps, just as they reappeared in reality after alienating absences. Some of Mr Figes’s judgments are cursory. But this is a humbling monument to the evil and endurance of Russia’s Soviet past and, implicitly, a guide to its present.
He writes of the “genetic fear†that percolates through generations, and the need to believe in bad rulers because the alternative, believing in nothing, could be worse. “Either they were guiltyâ€, Simonov says of Stalin’s victims, “or it was impossible to understand.†The terror, Mr Figes notes, “tore apart the moral ties that hold together a society.†It is still recovering.
Talk about a contrarian, WSJ op-ed by middle-age man who starts smoking.
To all the other superlatives used to describe China we may now add the fact that it has the tastiest cigarettes. I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur, having only begun smoking a couple weeks ago, but then again I’ve been inhaling the smoke of Chinese cigarettes for years.
The country consumes about one-third of the world’s cigarettes. As a student, I often carried a pack just to offer to others. Want to start a conversation on a train in China? Shake the pack. Asking directions? Hold out a stick and say, “chou yi ger.” If the guy is already smoking, he’ll tuck it behind his ear for later. …