War Stories

I think it is likely that Edison was in the precarious position of being patriotic and wanting to serve his country, while at the same time abhorring war and violence. Edison seemed to believe that superior technology would do more to prevent wars than to end them. During World War I, this concept may have had merit. But if he had been alive during World War II or subsequent wars, he would have witnessed the creation of military labs whose sole purpose was to use technology to create weapons of mass destruction. Thomas Edison was famous for inventing and developing technologies that improved our lives. What would he think of our military use of technology today?

My advice is to read “The Diary of Anne Frank”, watch the movie and reflect on your life in America and what life would be like under the threat of tyrants and dictators, extremists and terrorists. Ask yourself if America isn’t better for their accomplishments in the world, our graciousness, our goodness and our sacrifice. Ask yourself if our non-support of the soldiers of WWI, WWII, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and others would have been tolerated.

The new Mark Fiore animation on the Iraq war is on the Internet.

So, I expect more and more rumblings about a draft (perhaps under the rubric of "national service") from the left and right wings of the War Party. It is a slow campaign to soften up public opinion. The downside, as far as the imperialists are concerned, will be that, when the middle class sees its sons and daughters involuntarily hauled off to fight in Africa or Asia, those potential draftees will march in the streets as they did during the Vietnam War. But, by then it may be too late.

Almost missed it this week, but Great Lives on Radio 4 features the life of William Beveridge.

That may be one of the dumber things I've heard in a while. We gave the president time for his plans to work. We've been in this war now longer than we were in World War II. We could conquer Japan and Germany in less time than this. Besides, the president has been wrong on so many things, he no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt on anything. He has to prove it.

Those of you looking for some new Howard fixes for 2007 have a lot of choices. Last night I celebrated Howard’s birthday by reading Steve Tompkins’ thought-provoking introduction to Del Rey’s Kull — before Steve, had any of us ever considered the influence of World War I, Jazz Age flappers, and Macbeth on Howard’s Atlantean, and through him on the history of Sword-and-Sorcery? — and then relishing “Exile in Atlantis” and “The Shadow Kingdom.” If you haven’t yet bought this Del Rey release, head on over to Amazon or your favorite local bookstore and snatch it up.

The President won't move from his position, which is escalation, but Congress can act aggressively to stop him. Encourage them do just that by appearing at the above date and time to march against this war in Iraq. Iraq is not Al Qaeda, no matter how our Leader tries to confuse us. Just because you are not being drafted doesn't mean that you shouldn't take a stand for the troops now fighting, as ill-equipped and ill-manned as they are due to incompetent leadership.

Tony Corn, arguing for his own variant of 4GW warfare, in the September 2006 Policy Review. It’s a pithy little snippet, to be sure, but he lets his biases shine through a bit too brightly: as a former State Department guy, he’d be biased against traditional military approaches in favor of a heavily culture-centric one.

Man-machine interface: A mishmash of fetishes ranging from World War 2, fighter planes, garters, blondies, Russians, nekomimi, pantsu and lolicon.

Clint Eastwood tells the other side of the story of his earlier “Flags of Our Fathers”. Decades after the battle of Iwo Jima, researchers unearth several hundred letters from Japanese soldiers never sent to their families. The letters put a human face on the men who fought one of the most brutal battles of World War 2. I saw this as a study of leadership, thanks to actor Ken Watanabe’s excellent portrait of General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the architect of the Japanese plan of silence and ambush. Eastwood gives us an “ah ha” moment in a long shot of the American flag far away on one of the hilltops of the island, the flag made famous in the Life Magazine photograph.

The Republicans are quaking in their boots; 2008 looms in their reelection minds. Flash back to 1968, the Vietnam War is raging and students are demonstrating, the Democratic convention implodes, and Richard Nixon rides into the Presidency, promising a “secret plan to end the war.” Democrats went from the New Frontier and the Great Society to losing a critical election.

November of '07 would give the U.S. and Iraqi forces just enough time to clean up the streets of Baghdad and Anbar, IF they are serious about it. They must fight the insurgents (Al-Sadr especially) and not fight with diplomacy but weapons. The surge may or may not be a good idea, but the message it sends to the insurgent groups is a good one. It tells them that we will do what we say, no matter what.

Both the Congress and the Senate are preparing to cast symbolic votes against the increase in troops in Iraq. They are using the same Republican tactics that were used on flag burning and gay marriage and every other issue that places you in your category and box on the voting ticket. Vote for the increase in troops and you are in step with the madness of the President that has us involved in what is now a civil war in Iraq. Vote against the troop increase and you are with the liberal whining left that doesn’t know any better and terrorist are going to kill us all at the local coffee shop.

In the March/April 2004 issue of Foreign Policy, along with collaborator Andrei Shleifer, a professor of Economics at Harvard University, Treisman published a voluminous essay about Russia entitled “A Normal Country.” It was just about the time that Vladimir Putin, a proud KGB spy, was being reelected president, and the West had to decide whether to fish or cut bait in opposing him. In the article, Treisman argued that while “conventional wisdom in the West says that post-Cold War Russia has been a disastrous failure, the facts say otherwise. Aspects of Russia’s performance over the last decade may have been disappointing, but the notion that the country has gone through an economic cataclysm and political relapse is wrong–more a comment on overblown expectations than on Russia’s actual experience. Compared to other countries at a similar level of economic and political development, Russia looks more the norm than the exception.”

This is a well-known fact for politicians, and they do not hesitate to use our money to buy support in order to break political competitors. Democrats may be outraged by Bush’s “new” strategy for the Iraqi war, but it they are certainly not outraged because he spends Americans lives in a distant land in a pointless war. They are outraged because they know Bush’s excellent sense for political tactics might cost them the next presidential election.

This piece is written by Kirsten Powers, a former Clinton appointee in the Clinton Administration, who just happens to be a Fox News Political Analyst. That will probably immediately turn off the extreme leftists like members of the American Nationalist Socialist Workers Party who came and visited the Wide Awakes the other day. She is a social liberal, as far as I can tell, for example, she was against the Iraq War, I supported it, she is against the death penalty, and I am for it. (Interesting how they’re ‘against’ things and we’re ‘for’ things.) But the conclusions she draws in this piece are fascinating, considering they’re coming from someone who I would term as a liberal. It gives me a little bright spot. Thanks to TK for sending this in.

But, why do we have such laws in place for the state? Simply put, to prevent the federal government from impeding on the state. We learned this lesson from the Civil War. The state has a responsibility to its citizens and to abstract further, the city has a responsibility to it’s people. Why are so few asking why the hesitation from the Mayor to discuss matters with the Governor ? Further, why the hesitation from the Governor to ask for help from the President?