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Thu - August 25, 2005
You're reading him, right? Because you're not
entirely sure that the mass media is nailing the story in every facet? Either in
the things they cover , or in the things that they don't ?
Sun - August 21, 2005
I've always feared that people who talk about
the thinking of an entire demographic - in the case of the articles cited below,
the "Arab mind" - ran some significant risks. It's dangerous to think that a
group of individual people, all of them richly variegated in experience and
environment could somehow form a coherent and undifferentiated aggregate, and
that this "mind" could be usefully described. This kind of thinking runs the
risk of tiptoeing up to, and perhaps tripping over the edge of the precipice of
racism. After all, with the political divisions in this country, not to mention
the West at large, any discussion of the "Western Mind" is bound to cover a very
great deal of ground - so very much so as to make the description nearly useless
in practice. And what's sauce for the Western goose, the idea that, even in
aggregation, we remain individuals that are too complex and differentiated to be
broadly categorized or neatly pigeonholed, should probably also be sauce for the
Arab gander. Not to mention south Asians or east Asians or Orthodox Christianity
for that matter.
With all that said, it's probably nevertheless true that cultures and civilizations can be distinguished one from the other by the differing foundational truths which color their perceptions of the world around them, their civilizational self-identification, in other words. We do things this way, the other does them that way - they are therefore different.
Wed - August 10, 2005
Last week I mentioned that occasional
correspondent FbL had told me about a project she knew of -
one designed to get low-cost laptops and voice-activated software solutions to
soldiers injured in the Global War on Terror. As a way to keep them connected.
Just like you and I are. Right now.
Sat
- July 23, 2005
As of this morning, the toll is up to 83 killed
in three different bomb blasts in Sharm al-Sheikh - one of Egypt's popular
tourist areas.
Fri - July 22, 2005
You have to wonder what goes through these guys
heads...
Looks like the London police are taking the gloves off ...
Thu - July 21, 2005
Are made manifest when a journalist asks the
Australian Prime Minister a stupid question about whether British policy in Iraq
is to blame for recent terror attacks there.
Just two weeks after 7/7, another
attack:
Tue - July 19, 2005
Josh Chafetz of the Oxblog sends us to an article written by Johns Hopkins University
Professor Eliot Cohen.
Sun - July 17, 2005
And the man who gave him first
aid.
Yah. Strange twist of fate, innit? An insurgent shoots and wounds an army medic, who (courtesy of body armor) springs up, finds cover and directs fire upon the sniper's position. Then, after the wounded sniper and his videographer bug out, he tracks the sniper down, cuffs him and... treats him for his wounds. You couldn't script this on a straight-to-video movie. Too unbelievable. Except that, em... it actually happened.
Thu - July 14, 2005
I wonder how, many years from now, all of this
will be remembered: How will those who fought for us remember those for whom
they fought?
But especially: How will those who chose to stay on the sidelines of this fight remember it? And how will they think of themselves?
Mon - July 11, 2005
"(The jihadists) demand the impossible
- the cessation of all life in favour of prostration before a totalitarian
vision. Plainly, we cannot surrender. There is no one with whom to negotiate,
let alone capitulate."
Sat
- July 9, 2005
I ran across something this weekend in Friday's
WSJ OpinionJournal which rang a little bell in my
head because it seemed simultaneously so uncontroversial, and yet
surprising:
Certainly we should have learned by now that appeasement wins no reprieve. The terrorists don't hate what we do as much as who we are, so there is no safe place to retreat to. Spain's post-Madrid departure from Iraq hasn't spared that country from further terror attempts. Even a complete Western withdrawal from Iraq would still leave the continuing affront to al Qaeda that is NATO's presence in Afghanistan. And retreat from battling the Islamists in the Middle East would only make it easier for them to take the battle to us at home, as they did yesterday in London. That al Qaeda's tactics have changed to smaller bombings is notable, though of little comfort. As in Madrid, the London explosions lacked the diabolical audacity of flying planes into the Pentagon. But as allied defenses against major targets have been strengthened, the terrorists are striking soft targets with bombs that are very hard to detect. While each explosion is smaller, the cumulative death toll can still be terrible (at least 38 killed and 700 wounded in London as we went to press). America may be less vulnerable than Europe to this Israelization of terror, but it is hardly immune. The U.S. Islamic population is less radicalized than Europe's and, unlike in Israel, the terrorists lack the safe haven of Palestine. But it is virtually impossible in a free society to stop a fanatic willing to kill himself with a backpack full of explosives. That Islamists haven't mounted such an attack in the U.S. suggests not they aren't willing but that they haven't been able to. (Emphasis in the last paragraph mine)
Fri - July 8, 2005
Amir Taheri writes today in the London Times,
and as usual, his column is a must read:
"Moments after yesterday’s
attacks my telephone was buzzing with requests for interviews with one recurring
question: but what do they want? That reminded me of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch
film-maker, who was shot by an Islamist assassin on his way to work in Amsterdam
last November. According to witnesses, Van Gogh begged for mercy and tried to
reason with his assailant. “Surely we can discuss this,” he kept
saying as the shots kept coming. “Let us talk it over.”
-
Van Gogh, who had angered Islamists
with his documentary about the mistreatment of women in Islam, was reacting like
BBC reporters did yesterday, assuming that the man who was killing him may have
some reasonable demands which could be discussed in a calm, democratic
atmosphere."
Thu - July 7, 2005
Almost 40 killed and many hundreds injured in
the latest assault on the west. The numbers on both measures of the butcher's
bill are likely to rise.
-
"A series of coordinated rush-hour
explosions blasted the transportation system across an arc of central London
Thursday, injuring at least 700 people and killing more than 37 with the numbers
expected to rise.
-
The explosives detonated on at least
three trains moving through London's vast subway system and on a double-decker
bus, which had its roof torn off by the blast." - Washington
Post
Sat
- June 25, 2005
Several months ago I wrote a rather long,
somewhat overwrought response to a question about the War on Terror that had
been asked of me by a liberal friend: Can we
win?
In essence, I concluded that we could win, and that we would, as soon as the enemy realized that we would not be defeated. But there was a corollary to that conclusion as well, one I left unspoken. One I did not choose to even think upon, so close were we to the results of a national election which had hinged upon the war itself - an election in which a majority of Americans appeared to validate a war president's choices in taking his country to war. The question was this: Could we lose?
Fri - June 3, 2005
While at sea, I managed to get access to this op-ed in the WSJ, written by Fouad Ajami
- a writer whose clarity of thought i greatly admire.
Wed - June 1, 2005
The power of the internet amazes
me.
I wrote over the weekend , in part about a man named Major Ricardo A. Crocker, U.S. Marine Corps, killed in action in Iraq. I wondered aloud what his friends called him, postulating that we'd never know. I was wrong. His friends called him "Rick."
Tue - May 31, 2005
While at sea I received an email copy of a
speech by one Professor John Gaddis, professor of history at Yale, given at
Middlebury College in Vermont last month.
It was a stunning read, delivered from well inside the ivy-dappled academic parapets, from a man that had this to say about President Bush's policy in the middle east: - I said that he had “failed
miserably” in getting United Nations support for the invasion of Iraq. I
said that his solutions to complex problems tended to be “breathtakingly
simple.” I said that the phrase “axis of evil” originated
“in overzealous speechwriting rather than careful thought.” I said
that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had
“diminished, in advance, the credibility of whatever future intelligence
claims Bush and Blair might make.” I said that the so-called
“coalition of the willing” there had been “more of a joke than
a reality.” I said that, “within a little more than a year and a
half, the United States had exchanged its long-established reputation as the
principal stabilizer of the international system for one as its chief
destabilizer.”
-
And after having said all that, of course - he got
invited to come to the White House and brief the NSC staff. Which caught him by
surprise.
-
Between those opening thoughts, and his finishing
lines in which he quotes two of his former students, is an absolutely compelling
story written by a well-qualified observer, looking on in open admiration as the
Bush administration engages (for the most part successfully) in a game of grand
strategy that his critics can't even comprehend, burdened as they are by their
prejudices and preconceptions.
-
And I was really looking forward to sharing it
with you, and having you all applaud my sources, taste and
discernment...
Sun - May 29, 2005
This won't be deep, or moving. It won't challenge
your assumptions or change your world view. There will be no blinding revelation
at the end, something that ties it all together in a neat emotional
bow.
Loss isn't like that. |
Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." - John Paul Jones "Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Ceasar and Cleopatra" "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friederich Nietzsche "Blogito Ergo Sum" - Neptunus Lex About Me Email me: Solidarity
Soldier's Angels
Free Speech - From those who make it possible.
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