James Lileks has one of the most unique sites on the web. His mixture of the adventures (joys, mostly) of fatherhood combined with irony-laced political commentary has become, for me, an antidote to the “all bad news, all the time” reporting on the radio. (ABC News… ’nuff said)
Today’s entry (column?) is particularly good.
Blaster, over on, fittingly enough, Blaster’s Blog has a word of advice for the terrorists allegedly plotting a big summer strike on the U.S.
Yet you persist. Gonna hit us big this summer. You want 4 million of us, I hear, just to make things even. Not sure “even” for what. But I’m telling you right now, it is an extremely bad idea. Do it – or just try it – and I can’t even begin to guess at what would be coming your way. You have no idea what we can do. You think you’ll scare us, maybe we’ll hold a big commission again and wonder what we did wrong. Maybe. But first we’ll kick the living dog**** out of you and anybody who likes you or talks like you or maybe just says you aren’t so bad. We’ll forget about how bad we felt about the naked guys in prison. And so will you. (emphasis mine)
I will just say that if they only “try it” as he says then the climate won’t change much. The attack would actually have to be at least partially successful to generate the backlash of American fury. BTW, if you scroll to the top you can read the latest about the artillery shell filled with Sarin that was exploded on May 15.
But, remember, there were no WMDs in Iraq.
I had some problems with the html formatting of my first attempt so I =
made a change and am giving it another “whirl.”
I won=92t get much use out of this, but on rare occasions, if I=92m away =
from the computer for most of the day, it will be nice to draft a post =
on the Palm and simply upload it when I get home.
Just to test this,
href=3D=93http://www.georgebush.com/News/Read.aspx?ID=3D2678=94> =
here=92s the President=92s address from tonight.
Being relatively new to the whole “open-source” thing, particularly PHP and such, I don’t have a basis for comparison, but I still feel confident saying that this upgrade had to be about as easy as they come.
To celebrate this improved interface and expanded functionality I set up the Writing by Email function and composed this on my new Palm Tungsten-E.
Thanks to the folks at WP for delivering a fine product that’s free to boot!
Yahoo! News – Berlusconi vows to stay ‘to the very end’ with US in Iraq, bashes opposition
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi strongly defended Italy’s military presence in Iraq (news – web sites), slamming the opposition for demanding a withdrawal from the US-led coalition and accusing them of serving the interests of the “enemies of democracy”.
Nice to see a European leader with guts.
Australian blogger, Chrenkoff gives us what our news networks won’t. Believe it or not, Iraq is not all naked prisoners and “wedding massacres.”
(hat tip: WSJ OpinionJournal Online)
(hat tip: Media Backspin)
An op-ed piece in the New York Post discusses the impact of media propagandizing reporting on modern combat operations and makes the case that a new strategic imperative is required to counter it.
The author, Ralph Peters, a retired Army officer, describes the problem:
The media is often referred to off-handedly as a strategic factor. But we still don’t fully appreciate its fatal power. Conditioned by the relative objectivity and ultimate respect for facts of the U.S. media, we fail to understand that, even in Europe, the media has become little more than a tool of propaganda.
That propaganda is increasingly, viciously, mindlessly anti-American. When our forces engage in tactical combat, dishonest media reporting immediately creates drag on the chain of command all the way up to the president.
I put a phrase in the above quote in bold text to highlight what I view as a bit of generosity on Mr. Peters’ part, but perhaps it is fair to say “relative” in comparison to global media and al-Jazeera. Nevertheless, “objectivity and ultimate respect for facts” are not attributes I would comfortably ascribe to our mainstream press.
In light of the challenges presented a military force under the pressure of the propaganda machine, Mr. Peters makes the case that our only means of obtaining decisive victory under such conditions is to act far more swiftly and lethally in order to beat the news cycle that will cause the chain of command to call off the dogs.
Our military must rise to its responsibility to reduce the pressure on the National Command Authority — in essence, the president — by rapidly and effectively executing orders to root out enemy resistance or nests of terrorists.
To do so, we must develop the capabilities to fight within the “media cycle,” before journalists sympathetic to terrorists and murderers can twist the facts and portray us as the villains. Before the combat encounter is politicized globally. Before allied leaders panic. And before such reporting exacerbates bureaucratic rivalries within our own system.
Time is the new enemy.
I think Mr. Peters may be right, assuming that he’s correct when he states earlier in the article that the involvement and impact of the press in modern combat is “the new reality” and “we can’t change it.” As he acknowledges, however, such a change in how we fight on the ground will necessarily mean more casualties on both sides. With the need to “speed the kill” as he puts it, there will be no time to give as much consideration to avoiding civilian casualties and damage to “cultural infrastructure,” particularly when facing enemies that rely on using both to mask their operations and for propaganda value. Americans need to strengthen their stomachs to the realities of warfare.
As each day passes, reports on American activities in Iraq sound more and more like the kind of reporting we’ve heard on Israeli operations against Palestinian terrorists. Perhaps we’ll learn to take both with an appropriate measure of salt.
(The Belmont Club has a post on the problem with public dissemination of news which changes rapidly as initial reports give way to more facts as they are uncovered. It doesn’t directly relate, but it is certainly food for thought.)
Today marks the first day of legalized gay marriages in Massachusetts by mandate of the state’s Supreme Court and against the will of the people.
As of Monday, Massachusetts joins the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada’s three most populous provinces as the only places worldwide where gays can marry, though the rest of Canada is expected to follow soon.
Congratulations, Massachusetts, on that dubious distinction.
Celebrating the occasion, one participant made the following pronouncement:
“It’s the next evolution in the history of marriage,” said John Yarbrough of Minnesota, who traveled to Provincetown to marry his partner, Cody Rogahn. “The idea of who you love shouldn’t be dictated by the government.” (emphasis mine)
Note that the government has at no time attempted to dictate the idea of who you love and the debate has never been about that. It is the recognition of the uniquely beneficial societal institution of marriage as between one man and one woman that is at issue.
The impact of this court’s ruling has already sparked “civil disobedience” in San Fransisco and elsewhere as city officials violate the duties of their offices to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in direct contravention of the law.
While proposed constitutional amendments establishing the traditional definition of marriage move forward in both Massachusetts and on the Federal level, in the intervening period states will be forced to deal with the reciprocity issue on whether to allow recognition of gay marriages that were legal in their state of issue.
I suspect that by the time the amendments come before the voters the idea of same sex marriages will have sunk in to the point that the public will be loath to invalidate those marriages (likely thousands) that have already taken place. I believe this to be a pivotal point in America’s history and one that will have deep and long-term effects on the health of our families and, by extension, our very society.
I pray both for God’s mercy on us as a nation and that He will intervene through His Church to influence this culture in the other direction.
(hat tip: Drudge)
Victor Davis Hanson on Rumsfeld and Iraq on National Review Online
Have we any memory of a man in a suit and tie, nearly three years ago wading through the din and panic amid the morning rubble, assuring millions of stunned Americans that the national headquarters of their armed forces was still intact and capable of defending us after the mass murder of 3,000? And have we no shame in recognizing that should some congressional critics and Washington harpies get their way, Americans will accomplish what bin Laden’s suicide bombers could not on September 11: remove America’s finest Secretary of Defense in a half century?
I forced myself to watch the video of Nick Berg’s beheading.
I sort of felt like it was a responsibility to bear witness to the monstrous savagery with which he was murdered.
Is there anything that they can do that will shock the appeasers and Bush-haters into facing the reality of the conflict that confronts us?
Reporting on a speech delivered by L.A. Times Editor John Carroll, the Oregon Daily Emerald recounts Carroll’s description of a problem in journalism today:
The media industry has been infested by the rise of pseudo-journalists who go against journalism’s long tradition to serve the public with accurate information, Los Angeles Times Editor John S. Carroll told a packed room in the Gerlinger Lounge on Thursday.
Carroll delivered the annual Ruhl Lecture, titled “The Wolf in Reporter’s Clothing: The Rise of Pseudo-Journalism in America.” The lecture was sponsored by the School of Journalism and Communication.
“All over the country there are offices that look like newsrooms and there are people in those offices that look for all the world just like journalists, but they are not practicing journalism,” he said. “They regard the audience with a cold cynicism. They are practicing something I call a pseudo-journalism, and they view their audience as something to be manipulated.”
So far, so good. As I’m reading, I’m starting to pump my fist in agreement. “Yeah, what he said!”
Guess who he was talking about?
In a scathing critique of Fox News and some talk show hosts, such as Bill O’Reilly, Carroll said they were a “different breed of journalists” who misled their audience while claiming to inform them. He said they did not fit into the long legacy of journalists who got their facts right and respected and cared for their audiences.-Emphasis mine
Riiiiight.
During a day at the park with my family and my sister’s I took note of a car in the parking lot. Half-joking, I said, “I know this is racial profiling, but check out the Mercedes with the Arabic word on the license plate! Should we be concerned?”
The license plate bore the label PRAZHIM.
My sister took a look. After only a quick glance she turned back to me with an eyebrow raised and informed me, “Umm… it says ‘Praise Him!’”
Peggy Noonan (e-mail registration required) has touched on a different aspect of the prisoner abuse story, and one which I haven’t seen elsewhere.
Her column at Opinion Journal is, for the most part, more of the same kind of commentary on the scandal you’ve no doubt already read or heard. At the end, however, she says the following:
The most distressing of the scandal photos is, to me, the one of an American woman, a GI, who is laughing, holding a cigarette and aiming her fingers as if comically shooting or aiming at a group of prisoners, presumably Iraqi. They are naked and hooded. She looks coarse, cruel, perhaps drunk. And as I looked at her I thought Oh, no. This is not equality but mutual degradation. Can anyone imagine a WAC of 1945, or a WAVE of 1965, acting in this manner? I can’t. Because WACs and WAVEs were not only members of the American armed forces, which responsibility brought its own demands in terms of dignity and bearing; they were women. They apparently did not think they had to prove they were men, or men at their worst. I’ve never seen evidence to suggest the old-time WACs and WAVEs had to delve down into some coarse and vulgar part of their nature to fit in, to show they were one of the guys, as tough as the guys, as ugly at their ugliest.
But the young woman soldier in the scandal photo–she looked, shall we say, confused about these issues. It was chilling. Perhaps we should be worrying about that, too.
Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
This is a point that bears further exploration. Ms. Noonan is rare among commentators for her clarity regarding the differences between women and men and how those differences relate to how we ought to behave in society. There is nothing wrong and much to be praised, in Ms. Noonan’s view, in men acting like men and women acting like women, using pre-feminism senses of both of those terms.
I have been frustrated several times by the involvement of women in aspects of the armed services that have clearly put them in harm’s way despite their prohibition from direct service in the Combat Arms occupational specialties. Not being an infantry soldier didn’t do Jessica Lynch a bit of good. (Does it seem I’ve wandered into unrelated territory? Bear with me!)
It frustrates me because, as a man, I have natural protective tendencies towards women (and, of course, children) and can’t help but think every time a woman is captured or killed in hostile territory, “What the strudel is she doing there in the first place?!”
This takes the question of feminine involvement in the military, and other largely male dominated arenas, back to issues more fundamental than the appropriateness of combat roles. Issues such as whether it was ever a good idea to integrate women into male units and have them eating, sleeping and working in close quarters 24/7 for significant periods of time.
This post is rife with potential for misunderstanding, so let me try to clarify what I’m not saying here:
Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost (Contains graphic examples!) has written on Abu Ghraib’s parallels to fraternity and athletic hazing rituals, not to minimize the crimes, but to illustrate the common seeds of sexual humiliation. Interestingly, a few of his examples include females, which could be seen to weaken my point, but I see it as only another symptom of the de-femininization of women. What we are talking about are the basest of male behaviors that have been adopted by women in masculine environments. Is it any worse that they engage in these behaviors than that men do? In a purely moral sense, no. In a societal sense, I say, yes, because it indicates a spread of a particular type of depravity to the gender from which one least expects it.
To summarize, clearly a broader societal issue is at question when it comes to addressing the roles of women in the military. Peggy Noonan’s comparison to WACs and WAVEs of different eras shows that it was once considered important to preserve a woman’s femininity while involving her in the war effort. Insofar as we once believed women incapable of doing traditionally male-oriented tasks, we have been right to correct our thinking. What should be re-examined now is whether we have lost a precious aspect of womanhood in the rush to show her as capable as a man.
Nothing profound to say. The need is obvious.
As a helpful reminder to myself that prayer should always precede posting, I’ve added the Freedom Five link to my menu.
Update: It looks kind of tiny over there on the right, so here’s a bigger version!
Why do I get the feeling that it’s not ultimately going to matter to what extent the participants in prisoner abuses in Iraq are identified and held responsible? It seems the entire world, including our own media, are caught up in a frenzy to uncover American abuses anywhere we are conducting, or have conducted, activities. This one small group of idiots that thought it would be fun to have photographic trophies of their thuggery may have succeeded in undoing everything that the real soldiers in Iraq are fighting and dying for.
Every news broadcast just bathes me in revulsion, both for the content and tone of the report and for the incredible attempts to deny culpability and shift blame by family members, attorneys and friends of the accused or, in a few cases, the accused themselves.
I’ve made my feelings known about the matter so I will not, henceforth even bother with the obligatory, “there’s no excusing these actions, but…” in my posts. There’s no shortage of sources that will be rehashing this incident and rushing to unearth new incidents, whether real or alleged, and heaping scorn on the guilty and not guilty alike. You can bet that every Iraqi (or for that matter any military detainee) who’s been detained is going to have a story to tell that the world press will be eager to lap up with zero fact-checking.
My fear is that the political fallout is going to cost Bush the support he needs to continue to fight this war and, ultimately, the White House. If it doesn’t, it certainly won’t be because of any restraint on the part of the left. And, though we likely would have continued to hear it in any event, we are absolutely certain to be treated to louder and more strident calls of “we brought it on ourselves!” when the next successful terrorist attack occurs.
Saw a bit of the White House Correspondents Dinner on C-Span tonight. My wife asked our 2.5-year-old son who that was speaking on the television.
Brightly, he replied, “President!”
She asked again, “And what is the President’s name?”
With a grin, he piped up, “Bush!… Dobbyu Bush!”
I said, “Yes, son, that’s right… and God willing he’ll still be president when you are about to turn six.”
He happily carried on; oblivious to the sudden seriousness of my mood.
Folks, this nation has survived some pretty awful presidents. I don’t for one second believe that John Kerry in the White House will mean certain doom for all of us. I do feel certain, however, that under his leadership and his likely policy shifts in foreign affairs, that terrorist organizations will have ample opportunity to regroup, re-establish bases of funding and embark in more ambitious plans of attack against our homeland.
The world needs to come to grips with the fact that its alternatives against militant Islam are only two: eradication or capitulation. There is no middle ground. And, no, Kerry’s much touted military service does not qualify him to meet the threat. Taken in their entirety, his service, his postwar activities and his political record paint a clear picture of a man who is disdainful of using America’s military might to deal effectively with our enemies.
Such a person is not fit to be Commander in Chief and we had best convince as many people of that as we can before November.
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