December 31, 2003

Groovy, Smashing, Yay Capitalism - LXG and NCC

In my continuing struggle against the collection of financial wealth, I have gone out and found the widescreen DVD of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and a model kit of NCC-1701 USS Enterprise as represented in her 1960s appearance.

Some time next year, I'll write my thoughts on LOEG, because that's a micro-den Beste of its own. Suffice it to say that I was favorably inclined towards the movie, and wished more had been done with it. To the model kit:

It's a snap-together model (yay!) that can be assembled and insignia-ed for seven variations. Parts are included to create Enterprise as she appeared in the first pilot, "The Cage"; the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", and as the regular series vessel. Deep students of the series will know more about this, but the cosmetics largely involve what you cap the warp nacelles with, and what the bridge looks like. Decals are included to also replicate USS Constellation, USS Exeter, USS Defiant, or ISS Enterprise as seen in "Mirror, Mirror".

I've got zero model-building ability (evidenced by a partially-completed Airfix 1/600 HMS Hood that's sat idle for two and a half years and a never-started 1/750 HMS King George V) but I might be able to pull this one off. If USS Constellation as seen in the 2260s ever arises, the readers will be notified.

At any rate, I found these items at the den of evil (no, not Barad-dur; I mean the greater evil in the Mid-west known as Wal-mart) for reasonable prices, and I may yet go back and get another Enterprise in order to have a couple completed ones. Hooray.

Happy New Year to all those who have read since this blog's incept date.

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December 30, 2003

I Don't Want Dean

This shouldn't be, as James Bond once said, "Shocking". I vote Republican and I'm one of those annoying Southerners who bases his vote on God, gays, and guns. I also don't sneer at people who drive pickup trucks with gun racks and who display the battle flag of the Confederate States Army, provided they are of character. Of course, this makes me anathema to many of the sandalistas who seem to be rampant amongst the Democrats these days. Darn.

It is conventional wisdom among my intellectual brethren on the Right of the blogosphere to salivate eagerly over the prospect of running President Bush against Governor Dean. Some people believe that the potential scope of a Bush victory could rival Richard Nixon's 1972 thrashing of George McGovern.

That may be true. It is also hubris, and fate has a nasty way of punishing it. We wrote off a blundering, philandering, pseudo-intellectual buffoon from Arkansas in 1992. That mistake cost this country eight years of moral, spiritual, and civilizational decay when instead we could have been taking the war against Islamist terror to its warrens in foreign lands, and the name of Osama bin Laden could have been a footnote in a history book buried somewhere. '911' would be a number dialed on telephones, and would not symbolize the death of men like Richard Rescorla, or other individuals whose only crimes were that they sought to earn money and make a living.

Governor Dean presents similar problems, but those are not what concern me at the moment. I believe he will be defeated if he is the eventual nominee. I will do my part here in my home, casting a vote for George W. Bush. Virginia will do her part in standing in the ever-thinning ranks of those who stand for what is right and good, and send Dean's irrational ideology back into a dark corner for two more years.

However, I consider Dean's ideology to be poisonous, if not downright cancerous, and his most vocal supporters' beliefs trouble me with their words. They strike me as some sort of evil djinn, which once unleashed from a bottle into the mainstream of American politics, can probably not be recaptured. If indeed this is true, I certainly don't want it to be the case any more than it already is.

Dean's rantings regarding Presidential foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks belong on the fringes of the American political debate, and nowhere near the center ring. Indeed, they have no place under the big top in the American circus of politics. They more properly should be placed in a tent off to the edges of the circus, where only a fevered few travel. Even if they were true---and I do not believe that they are---such a truth could never be admitted. It would have to be concealed among those in the circles power, for such an admission could inflict near-mortal wounds to the body politic.

Dean has, unfortunately, taken up the rantings of the feverish, and will continue to grant them respectability. The threat this poses is to further fragment the American body politic, destroying the "sensible center" where reasonable men of Left and Right meet to discuss what must be done, and how it shall be done.

Dean and his ilk won't be happy to have a vibrant Republican Party on one side, and a vibrant Democrat Party on the other, with civilizational progress achieved through the essential tension between the two. They want the Republican Party defeated, and ejected from politics. This is not Western republican democracy. This is the banana republic single-party system theory, and it is un-American. A true American, devoted to our Republic, would eagerly support two vibrant political parties, either of which was at any point in time, capable of winning elections. To have it any other way probably thwarts our system at some level, and that, to steal from Martha Stewart, is "A bad thing".

For shame, Governor Dean. The people who propel you now are those whose voice should not be the voice of the Democrat Party. I don't want you getting the nomination. I don't want you or your kind to ever influence politics again. I want an adult at the lead of the Democrats as they come forward to challenge the Republicans for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

UPDATE: For what it's worth, I don't believe that a Nixon-style romp through the Republic is possible for George W. Bush, even if Howard Dean is the nominee. Nixon had the benefit of the Thomas F. Eagleton disaster for the Democrats, and McGovern had some real kooks surrounding him. Seeing pictures of the Senator listening seriously to Hunter S. Thompson in bug-eyed sunglasses doesn't make me think that McGovern was doing the right things operationally to maximize his admittedly slim chances of victory. Likewise, the Democrats of 1972 were suffering from the ruins of the post-1968 takeover by radicals who re-wrote the rules of nomination. Demoralized yellow-dog Democrats probably were organizationally demoralized and not eager to work for McGovern. Likewise, Nixon stood astride the country like a giant, and the media organs were a lot more concentrated, thus easier to manipulate. I also am not certain the population base and mix that Nixon used for victory exists today. The weakness of my analysis can be easily shown by a look at demographic trends and so forth, but I don't have that kind of information in front of me.

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December 29, 2003

USC Sheds Its Conservative Image

When I first saw this article's tagline, I was worried. I thought for a minute they were talking about the University of South Carolina. But never mind that.

The next thought that went through my head was, Gina Goodhill? Sounds like a Bond girl. Let's see what she looks like. Hrrm. Not bad. Maybe that should say doffs her sweatshirt, but we won't get into that on a family-safe blog. Anyways, let's fisk into this, shall we?

[Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics director Ann] Crigler said that when she came to USC in 1988 she assumed the school would be very conservative.

Yes, and I'm sure you set straight to work fixing that, eh Ms. Crigler? Got to fight whitey and the power, I'm sure. Never content to control the entire State, but also you and your little dog too, hmm? I bet this change you've spotted warms your black little heart. Peh.

[USC Democrats president Deryn Sumner] said recruiting Democrats for the club has gotten easier every year. "Each incoming class is more politically aware and less conservative," Sumner said.

Thus breath-eth the old meme of conservative=stupid/ignorant/whatever. When I headed to my undergraduate institution, I was gradually more and more politically aware, and my loathing of the left---as opposed to people who ought to be Republicans, like Zell Miller---only increased. I think it had something to do with actually meeting some of the people who espoused left-wing ideas. Troubling, and downright puzzling. Greetings from Planet Reality, young collegiate Democrats!

Anyways, Miss Sumner also repeats the hoary old chestnut that "awareness"=Democrat voter. I suppose that's a good thing, because it shows us that she's a) unreasonable, and therefore does not need to be part of the conversation between adults on how best to run the country and b) ignorant of the lessons of reality---about half a country doesn't agree with you---and blinded by ideology. At any rate, I'm glad Miss Sumner has exposed herself as intellectually immature, so that we don't have to waste time trying to figure that fact out.

This article keeps getting better and better:

USC students are far brighter and much more discerning than they were when I first came here," [Richard Dekmejian, political science professor] said. "A lot of people don't know what's happened here, how the grade point average has gone up.
Yes, you stupid conservatives! Stop dragging our GPA down. Doesn't USC practice race-based discrimination in its admissions practices? If so, then how come these ostensibly-inferior students have managed to a) raise the GPA and b) torpedo the ranks of the stupid conservatives, all at the same time? At the same time, I'm tempted to suggest that grade inflation of one sort or the other, or the fear of grading a minority student down has led to the "increase" in student GPA.

Professor Dekmejian also believes that there is "strong opposition" to Operation IRAQI FREEDOM and that said opposition will lead many students to vote. I'll go out on a limb here and guess that he means that a vote, period, means a vote for a Democrat. He also steals a page from Terry McAuliffe's 2002 playbook (probably dug out of the trash somewhere) in regards to the 2000 presidential campaign as he notes that the election "strengthened students' determination to vote". This doesn't really apply to me, since I started voting in 1996 and have done so every single time, but I figure maybe somewhere some conservative college students noticed that the Democrats had sent the poster child for vote fraud (i.e. a Daley from Chicago) forward to champion their cause and decided to make sure that such racialist crap spouted about black disenfranchisement wouldn't sway future elections. Anyways, here's an interesting quip from ProfDek:

"Students are very aware that U.S. democracy has ... weaknesses," Dekmejian said.

Yes, weaknesses like allowing nitwits like him to play in the voting booth. I suppose the weakness that he sees is that this country is a republic and not a democracy, and so therefore there are occasional moments when someone other than Democrats win elections. Darn, those annoying elections that that annoying Constitution says we have to have! Surely, ProfDek would rather have enlightened sovereigns governing by their prior discernment of the general will than those annoying Republicans who occasionally do what the people shout and scream about long enough.

Mediocrity, thy name is USC's political science faculty.

Miss Sumner apparently got ahold of Terry McAuliffe's playbook as well:

"Everyone in general has been paying more attention just because the election of 2000 was so notorious and infamous. People are going to saying, 'Remember what happened four years ago,'" Sumner said.
This is America. Our electorate has trouble recalling what happened four days ago, much less four years. But if you want to go down that road, go right on ahead. It's proven to work, just like it did in 2002. Be my guest. I'd love to have enough Republicans in Congress to be able to override left-wing nitwittery, and enough to write men like Lincoln Chaffee off.

The next howler comes from the almost-aptly named head of USC's Dean movement. Miss Cao, perhaps you forgot to put the 't' in your name:

Bich Ngoc Cao, president of USC for Dean and managing editor of the alternative newspaper The Trojan Horse, said she saw previously uninvolved students participate in politics in response to the recall, and especially in response to Proposition 54, which she said made many students feel personally affected.

[Annoying California local politics snipped.]

"People I know are getting involved in really, really deep levels that I haven't seen before. It's dawning on people that if we don't do something this year, next year we're going to re-elect [President Bush]."

OK, so my snide remark about her name aside, let me mangle something from Star Trek: "Brave words. I've heard them before, from a horde of candidates. Their offices are all Republican now..." (Stop it. Just stop it. --Ed.) Her If We Don't Do Something quip sounds like it's amateur Hunter S. Thompson circa 1971, when he's going on and on about how the country, The Road, and a lot of other things are Doomed by 1976 if Nixon is re-elected. However, HST is a lot more interesting to read and laugh at than Miss Cao is.

It's good to know that America's campuses are still thinking like it's 1969. Miss Goodhill, continue polishing your craft and perhaps you'll be ready in a couple of years to take your place in the clueless pantheon of mindless journalistas robotically parroting the Democrat line as if it were your own creed. If you wise up in the meantime, a gal with a name like that ought to see if James Bond is busy for an evening.

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December 28, 2003

Happiness

Happiness is a fully-configured Alco Century C630 for either the Norfolk & Western Railway or the Penn Central Railroad, installed in Microsoft's Train Simulator and pulling coal on the Delaware & Hudson Railroad's Susquehanna Division.

That makes sense to a handful of readers, but I got some Alco Centuries installed into Train Simulator today, and they're awfully fun to drive around. Brief historical note: Alco, the American Locomotive Company, built its last locomotive in the United States in 1969, driven from the market by General Motors' Electro-Motive Division and their proven GP/SD locomotives, and by General Electric's Universal series.

The Penn Central Railroad would go into the history books on April 1, 1976, after five years of bankruptcy. The Consolidated Rail Corporation, Conrail, would replace it. Conrail's locomotives are light blue and white, and most of the ones still around today say "CONRAIL QUALITY" on the flanks. Conrail itself was bought by Norfolk Southern and CSX in 1999.

The Norfolk & Western Railway, which has run past my house for decades, merged with the Southern Railway System in 1982 to form Norfolk Southern, the Thoroughbred of Transportation. Currently, NS locomotives form the backbone of my collection.

This has nothing to do with politics, other than that the Penn Central was widely regarded as a Republican railroad. Heh heh heh.

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December 27, 2003

Updates to The Roll

I've been meaning to make a round of updates to the links, with additions and deletions. No comments necessary on deletions; additions marked below:

Charlie's Soapbox - The "blog" (I guess) of Charlie Daniels, a musician famous for, among other things, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" and "Uneasy Rider". Charlie's spelling isn't the greatest in the world, but the point gets across. He loves his country and he's a believer in Jesus, and not much more beyond that needs be said. I've seen him twice in concert, and I've really enjoyed his show both times. Thus, I'm happy to link him up.

Matthew J. Stinson - Matt seems like an eminently reasonable guy, and he was one of the people who kept a piece of the "nitwit Austrian" thing alive, and it's about time I added him to the list.

Ipse Dixit - He put up with me when I posted something about Virginia being a Commonwealth and not a State; moreover his list of the Democrat and Republican views on Christmas behavior got me laughing. Mr. Harris, sorry I didn't do this sooner.

Swanky Conservative - This chap pointed me towards where I got Donald Rumsfeld in the "Which Member of the Bush Administration Are You?" (and promptly posted the results) and he's also got this, one of my favorite (i.e. most meaningful) editorial cartoons of recent. His post about The World's Largest Shotgun also got me laughing in the evil Calvin manner, and thus I decided it was time to correct an oversight.

Professor Bainbridge - Yes, another law-school tie-in. Fear not! I am not evolving this site into a blawg, mostly because I don't seem to have the intellectual wattage to do so. Go on Crossfire and embarrass James Carville? Perhaps. Snooker Democrats as best I can? You bet. Do anything more complicated than that? No. The Professor writes extensively about the world of corporate law, and that's about the only thing I've been truly interested in since I got to law school. (Thought you went up there to be the next Thomas E. Dewey, Mr. Certain-to-be-a-Prosecutor. --Ed.) He writes well and he writes interestingly; I usually wind up spending more time there than I actually have, so...any low grades are your fault, professor! Incidentally, he also does wine reviews, if you're in to that.

The Adam Smith Institute Blog - These Brits are good people, and they also know how to use e-mail. Lesson: Writing Christmas hellos to this author yields dividends.

And last, but not least:

The Mudville Gazette - Greyhawk runs this site; it's the home of MilBlogs, which I like and am a registered supporter thereof.

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December 26, 2003

The Hunt for Hallmark Ornaments

So it's December 26, 2003.

Earlier today, I went to the local Hallmark shop in order to pick up some ornaments that had been deemed desirable but not at full price. It's regional policy of the Hallmark stores around here to cut prices on their Christmas ornaments by 50% in the day or so after 25 December, and I was going to take advantage of that.

This is what you call a cost control measure, despite the fact that Mom's winter purchases from Hallmark has to underwrite their fourth-quarter profits at some level. I have yet to figure out how to get Hallmark's board of directors to cut us in on the action in terms of dividends. I haven't looked, but they're reportedly a privately-held company, so buying stock or asking for options thereupon doesn't seem to be an option.

To get to where I'm going, here's an observation: You take your own life into your hands when you go to one of these sales and stand between women and bargains. I'm there trying to find a Bugs Bunny in a metal plane from the 1920s. These women are there to get their fourth and fifth example of Super-Duper Snowflake Barbie and so forth. These women are vicious. They take no prisoners and elbows can fly. About the only thing I can liken it to is the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Names of ornaments are called out and occasionally they're handed back. I usually do some of this, because I've got longer arms than the average participant in this melee, and because I've got a nice pair of sharp elbows. As awful as that sounds, these things are useful when dealing with the enraged horde of Hallmark shoppers.

Anyways, after about two hours of work, we managed to procure all but three of the ornaments desired. A quick tour around the other area stores delivered that which we were looking for, and so our ornament quest for 2003 is over.

Mr. Chairman of the Board, Mr. President of the United States, you're welcome for our stimulus of the national economy. I'll be expecting my dividend check in the mail.

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December 25, 2003

Come See What Santa Brought!

Hooray. Although I had previously bought myself the best Christmas present I got this year (i.e. the complete first season of Battlestar Galactica) I did manage to get several things of note:

-The Adventures of Indiana Jones, widescreen edition. Woo hoo. Marian Ravenwood and Elsa Schneider, archeological babes of note. Unfortunately, either the sound mix on Raiders of the Lost Ark is bad or the settings on the family home theater system are bungled, because I can't hear the dialogue all that well.

-Jane's Battleships of the 20th Century by Bernard Ireland and illustrated by Tony Gibbons. This book, although a little on the slim side, is splendid for a quick-reference book on the subject. It's also got short essays on other battleship-related topics, like the loss of Repulse and Prince of Wales to Imperial Japanese aircraft three days after the successful IJN strike against Pearl Harbor. It's also got a color illustration of what a Montana-class battleship would have looked like had we ever finished one. Heh heh heh, these things just scream evil.

-Iowa Class Battleships - Their Design, Weapons & Equipment by Robert F. Sumrall. This is an older book, published by the United States Naval Institute in 1988. I've got the British edition of the book, printed by Conway Maritime Press, which adds to the cool of this tome. It's more than I ever wanted to know about the mighty Iowa-class battleships, and is a splendid reference for these last battlewagons for America's navy.

As you can see, I'm kind of fond of battleships. Suffice it to say that when I stand on the decks of USS North Carolina or USS Wisconsin, I'm prone to getting a big grin on my face as I wander these monsters from out of time. It's almost creepy seeing them, because nothing we've built since then carries the same visual menace as a battleship. John Lehman understood that, which is one reason we brought them back in the 1980s. The Soviet Union understood visual menace, and thus built the hulking Kirov-class atomic-powered missile-armed battlecruisers. Sure, aircraft carriers are wickedly destructive in their own right, but nothing says "Reach out and annihilate someone" like a shower of 16" shells being fired from 20 miles away. Heh heh heh. You can't look at a picture of an Iowa broadside without getting the big Calvin grin on your face.

Anyways, the relatives are over, so I'll hush now and get back to them.

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December 24, 2003

Christmas Eve, Sort Of

Hrrm. Like everything else since I've gotten home from school, this is posted many days out of sequence. The entire Christmas season post-exams has been a blur.

Anyways, I had a nifty rah-rah Christmas message all composed and then I lost it in a browser crash. So therefore, a reconstructed, pared down message:

Merry Christmas. Peace on Earth, good will to men. To our folks overseas, I want y'all home as soon as possible. Be careful out there, as that sergeant on Hill Street Blues used to say.

Now, for something that (hopefully some will interpret positively: I went to my church's Christmas Eve candlelight service and got shanghaied into performing as a communion steward. I hate doing it, because you have to repeat a single phrase (in my case, "The body of Christ, broken for you") over and over, and because you've got to do everything right for each man, woman, and child who comes in front of you. Moreover, I had to work with bread. For reasons of sanitary concern, we wear these gloves, but my hands were too big for the things, and so I basically got to pluck chunks of bread out with these gloves on. The downside of that was that I had a pair of semi-rigid tongs since I couldn't move my fingers, so I managed to crush a lot of bread and make more of a mess than anyone else.

However, I do like, for some reason, dealing with the children whose parents bring them forward. They're usually short enough to where I've got to squat down and hand them their bread. It's a different thing than handing an anonymous adult a piece of badly-torn bread, and the kid's usually looking at you with big wide eyes. I don't know exactly how this gets through the either stoic or downright daffy persona I usually project, but it kind of warms the heart.

Enh. Now that I've done my Scrooge reformed thing for the day, time to warm up the Nike Hercules site and arm the W-31 warhead; I'm going to get that red intruder from the North if it's the last thing he ever does. That'll teach him to invade my airspace and not leave me what I asked for...

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December 23, 2003

The King Has No Clothes

As stated in yesterday's solitary (and just published today due to continued forgetfulness) post, I did see Return of the King. On with the story: OK, so I got finished with that three and a half hour movie, and I'm left cold.

This was the grand movie that had been built up for about a year? Yawn. I didn't look at my watch, but only through force of will; certainly not through focus upon the screen. ROTK carried great hopes; I'd already been disappointed if not outraged by the flop of The Matrix: Revolutions and was counting on Peter Jackson to expunge the disappointing The Two Towers and do what Andy and Larry Wachowski couldn't, i.e. conclude a trilogy with a bang, not a whimper.

Obviously, I was expecting too much. Anyways, I've got several points to make:

1. I liked the summoning of the army of the dead. That was cool, especially when Aragorn et al looked around to see an entire city of green fog emerging out of the darkness. Of course, I'm a sucker for things like that, and I wish we'd seen more of their slaughter of the orcs at Minas Tirith. Of course, I think I also would have tried to figure out a way to talk them into following me to the battle at the Black Gate, if I'd been Aragorn. However, they did earn their reward, so I wouldn't have been hopeful on retaining their services.

2. I wasn't impressed at all with the Witch King, or the nine proper at all throughout this series. These great evils, these most dangerous lieutenants of Sauron, all billed as these engines of destruction, and they're militarily worthless. All they managed to provide at Minas Tirith was some token air support and some psychological warfare operations. Peh, I bet Sauron's Department of Defense is going to get in deep trouble for spending billions on the Ringwraith program. (At the same time, the element of fear in primitive troops can be an extremely useful weapon, but I would have preferred to see them lay the smack down and earn their keep.)

The Witch King, billed by Gandalf in the movie as Mr. Ultimate Bad-ass, State of the Bad-ass Art, was about as effective in combat as a Frenchman: Lots of talk, not much action. Gandalf's words built up the chief wraith as some sort of killing machine that would stride through the fields of battle leaving ruin, death, and despair in his wake. Instead, it's laid to waste (after a ridiculous speech) by Eowyn and Meriadoc, in what has to be one of the most anti-climactic moments of an anti-climactic movie. Admittedly, this movie does much to cement Eowyn as my second-favorite LOTR babe. Not only does she not have Steven Tyler's genes floating around in her (nor would I have to deal with Agent Smith as an in-law) but she's handy-dandy with a sword and doesn't run away when faced by an empty-helmet monster.

My response to them is on the order of C. Montgomery Burns: "Oooh, the Ringwraiths! I'm so scared! Ooooh, the Ringwraiths!" Bloody worthless they are, for all the build-up they get. Sauron should have just tried to create a team of agents; that would've been more effective and Hugo Weaving wouldn't have had to change his hair work. "Hear that, Mr. Elessar? It is the sound of Sauron; it is the sound of your death..."

3. Was it just me, or was Gandalf not much help? He's billed as "Mithrandir", the uber-powerful back-from-the-dead magician of all power, and capable of much smacking down. Other than swing a sword and talk a little bit, what's he do? He shines a light in the eyes of the evil fell beast that's stalking the remants of the Gondor Expeditionary Force as it retreats from Osgiliath. Even that's ultimately worthless in that all the men in that retreat save Faramir probably wind up dead after Denethor's Bright Idea goes badly.

In conversations with boy of heterophobic I figured out from his advice that Gandalf is more Merlin than Palpatine. Where I expect a veritable Dark Lord of the Sith, with enhanced combat abilities and blue lightning-from-the-fingers, remote strangulation, and the ability to move things with the Force, I actually get wise counsel and the like. Boy further tells me that the role of Gandalf's race is to counsel the people of Middle Earth in the war against Sauron. Gee, so they're like Henry Kissinger? Nothing's special about being a servant of the secret fire other than intelligence? Less Maia, more Mensa, I suppose.

Anyways. Since Gandalf's effectively immortal, I found it almost laughable that he was encouraging the men of Gondor to stand their ground against a large enemy force that was coming through the door. "Stand and fight!" "Yes, I suppose that's a noble statement for someone who can't die. Bloody well sour for the rest of us, don't you think?"

All of that in the face of the fact that both Gandalf and Saruman were capable of physical magic in the first movie---did Gandalf forget something while he was away?

At any rate, I prefer Ian McKellen as Richard Gloucester or Erik Lensherr. It would have been amusing to have seen him quip, "You forces of Sauron and your swords..." right before wreaking havoc on the assembled army as they approached Minas Tirith.

4. Speaking of Faramir, did he do anything important after telling Gandalf that Frodo was still advancing? Other than that foolish charge of his (yeah, a real man would have said, "Dad, I'm not going to die just for your depression! The enemy has had time to dig in and they are superior in number. Any attack against them by our forces would be a useless gesture. There is no captain here that is stupid enough to charge them") I can't really recall him being anything other than a sack of flour for immolation. On the other hand, I was really fond of Sean Bean's Boromir. I suppose he was the character with whom I could most identify, because I would have said the same things he did about the usefulness of the Ring. "Wait, we've got this super-powerful Ring thing here and there's Ultimate Doom stirring in the East for one last big push, and we've got the weapon to stop him, and we're sitting here talking?" To steal from Arthur C. Clarke's Walter Curnow as visualized in Peter Hyams' 2010, "The ayes have it".

5. Gollum/Smeagol annoyed me. He's the Jar-Jar Binks of the LOTR movie trilogy, and just about as annoying. Yes, yes, I know he's more important to the story than a jive-talking Gungan, but I got to the point where I dreaded seeing Frodo or Sam because I knew that annoying CGI monstrosity wouldn't be far behind. I agreed with Sam real quick in wanting to kill Stinker, and I wish he'd fallen down to Minas Morgul. (Admittedly, the look of that place and Frodo's wandering towards the city as the Ring led him was cool.)

Similarly, I think we already know what goes on with Gollum enough to know that he's a ruined hobbit who was corrupted by the Ring. The whole flashback sequence did nothing for me, and made me first want to look at my watch. That's never a good sign.

6. The score was nothing to write home about, and I wasn't fond of Annie Lennox's contribution. Admittedly, I remember nothing about it, or the score to The Two Towers either. On the other hand, "The Bridge at Khazad-Dum" and the music for Lothlorien are spectacular, along with the lament for the (not-so) fallen Gandalf.

7. In surfing around the blog world prior to the viewing of this movie, a distinct sense of "greatest film ever" was palpable. National Review seemed to be almost triumphant about the greatness of this film, as were several other conservatives. Not that I'm particularly susceptible to movie hype any more---The Phantom Menace cured me of that---but the standard Thompson-issue suspicion and paranoia kicks in when people keep swooning over something and I don't.

Where are the rousing speeches (Aragorn's speech fell flat because apparently Viggo Mortensen doesn't believe in what he said) that were supposed to inspire us against Islamist terror? Where was the thing speaking to our times et cetera et cetera? Sure I liked Theoden's address before the Rohirrim charged the orcs at Pelennor Field (muahaha, six thousand mounted cavalry against midget troops not smart enough to form square or to have automatic weapons, whee!) but I couldn't really see anyone delivering these remarks in the present day. They'd be laughed out of the venue. (Whether that's a good thing or not is the subject of a longer and much more morose separate post.)

Most importantly, where was Cate Blanchett? The entire sequence that took place in Lorien was enchanting. Heck, whenever she was on screen, I sat up in my seat with rapt attention, leaning forward with eyes wide open, staring in disbelief. I had great hopes for that sequence when Frodo was running from Shelob and he sees a quick vision to inspire him forward, but alas that led nowhere. Likewise, I was hopeful for her appearance at the dock with the rest of the crew in The End (Part III or IV), but she just stands there and shoots a weird glance off to the vessel. What was that glance all about, anyways? "Psst, we've got a keg on board"? Enh, the lack of substantive Galadriel really kinda dragged down this film, as it did the second one. Too much Arwen, I think...

In closing: Better than Revolutions, inferior to Jedi. Will be better than the third Star Wars prequel. That still isn't saying much, though. The Wachowskis can at least claim that one of their number was busy with a dominatrix and Lucas can claim that his last directorial success was Star Wars, but Peter Jackson's responsible for The Fellowship of the Ring, a movie which held me in thrall to its audio-visual presentation of an utterly compelling story. He follows that with these two movies?

I might buy the DVD---still don't own the Two Towers, period---and hope that repeating viewings will increase my enjoyment of this film. I am not, however, optimistic of that, unless I fast forward through all the sequences with Gollum.

UPDATE: Boy of heterophobic provided much Tolkein knowledge for the post, although he distinctly did not agree with my conclusions.

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December 22, 2003

An Anti-Dean Blog

Jonathan Chait, of The New Republic and professed Bush-hater, has decided to throw up a blog dedicated to being a "Dean-o-phobe". Mr. Chait explains himself here, and the actual blog itself is here.

Current plans are to try and see Return of the King tonight. Hooray, I think.

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December 21, 2003

Bother!

I've been browsing through some remarks at the Internet Movie Database in regards to this Angels in America thing that HBO has put on---haven't seen it, won't see it, don't care about homosexual theater1---and it appears that Emma Thompson and Meryl Streep reportedly share some sort of mid-air kiss.

Well isn't that just special. I had hoped that the end of the 1990s would put an end to this radical chic thing of making grandiose statements with female homosexual expression, but I suppose that some people haven't gotten the memo about the turn of the century. Felgercarb, to steal a line from an old favorite television show.

I'd been moderately fond of Emma Thompson since seeing her as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing in high school, and had been willing to overlook her turn as the ersatz Hillary Rodham Clinton in Primary Colors. But this, yech, banishment to the blacklist. There's no commentary necessary for Meryl Streep, whose last performance of note I considered to be The River Wild.

Sigh. Enh, just another reason to dismiss another downward notch in the cultural spiral. Once upon a time, good things came out of the theater and were celebrated. Why can't we have a cheerful and positive thing like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or something like that? Admittedly, it'd be Seven Husbands for Seven Brothers if written today, and the Pontipee brothers would all be into various things that one could have seen in Times Square before Giuliani cleaned it up. (Oklahoma with Hugh Jackman was on PBS earlier in the month, but you were too busy to notice. --Ed.)

Quoting Harry Turtledove's Robert E. Lee again: "Too bad! Oh, too bad!"

1 Lemme get this straight: It's about Roy Cohn, evil Republicans, and isn't-it-awful-about-AIDS? Bah. We've already been down this road. It's the last twenty years of AIDS activist propaganda, for pete's sake, and, to steal a line from Michelle Branch, I just don't care.

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December 20, 2003

The Colonel Comes to Jesus

Well, not really. I do expect that the sovereign leader of Libya will remain a devotee of the Islamic faith. Nevertheless, the Colonel's done something that I regard as intelligent.

Several points:

1. The Country Pundit is glad this worked without (publicly-known) direct military action. We're a little busy elsewhere, and don't need to be getting too many irons in too many fires.

2. TCP likes sanctions as part of a daily breakfast an overall diversified portfolio of diplomatic options that starts with "The United States would like to express its displeasure..." and stops just short of the shiny things in the silos.

3. Bouncing off of the point above, I'm not entirely sure when the relevant sanctions were put into place, and I'm not sure what they were put into place for. These sanctions things do, unfortunately, take a long time and you're never guaranteed that they'll do much other than enrich the local dictator and irritate the people he's ruling.

4. It's good that the United States is ready and willing to cut deals when the opportunity arises. The 'no regime change' for Libya in exchange for whatever it is exactly that the Colonel's giving up is a good deal, and we've made it before, with Castro. Leaving that nitwit in power down in Cuba was probably a decent deal in exchange for getting the Soviet missiles out of there. Admittedly, it wasn't too good for the Cuban people, but that can't be helped.

5. Both withdrawals of sanctions seem to have been intelligent moves. Call it the two-carrot approach if you will; the problem is that this doesn't always work, and so you have to keep a big stick laying around.

6. Hopefully the State Department had a positive hand in this, and can start pulling its weight instead of being like a dead-in-train locomotive.

7. Also, this may set a good example: Work with us, and you stay in power. Keep up your NBC program (or keep acting like you've got one) and we bring the hurt. Crude, not particularly subtle, but probably effective.

In summary: I'm glad this worked and so forth. I'm hopeful that "Libya" can stop being short-hand for "state sponsor of terrorism" and can move towards the group of nations who at least act like they've got a measure of civilization about them. Hooray for Washington and for London.

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December 19, 2003

Orson Scott Card, Meet Margaret Thatcher

North Carolina-based (I believe) author Orson Scott Card had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, and it threw a couple of rhetorical bombs at his fellow Democrats. I thought it was a good column, from what appears to be a good man.1

Some choice cuts:

[T]heir platforms range from Howard Dean's "Bush is the devil" to everybody else's "I'll make you rich, and Bush is quite similar to the devil." Since President Bush is quite plainly not the devil, one wonders why anyone in the Democratic Party thinks this ploy will play with the general public.

I've often wondered something along that line m'self. Given that Clinton spent eight years hauling directly to the middle of wherever everyone else wanted to go (and seemingly regardless of the merit of any one position in any particular debate) you'd think the professional electoratsia in the Democratic National Committee would know how poorly superheated firebrand rhetoric plays. Lord knows they reminded our people time and time again of that.

The more I think about it, there must be some connection between this firebrand mentality and what appears to be more of a focus in base energizing and mobilization in current electoral politics (i.e. telling them what they want to hear; preaching to the choir) instead of doing what President Nixon might suggest, namely leadership in saying "This is where I am. I am right. Follow me." Of course, President Nixon also said that Republicans were to run to the right in the primaries and back towards the center in the general election; for all I know, Dean's people are holding that up to a mirror and reading it 'run left' and 'to the center'.

Anyways. Maybe I don't see a lot of this because I just don't care about Governor Dean. He's a novice and probably has the Federal-level governing ability implied by that. I'm personally still waiting for Joe Lieberman or perhaps John Edwards and Richard Gephardt to take off, and put adults back in charge of the Democratic Party. I don't want the Democrats marginalized as a party, primarily because I don't know who's most likely to take their place, and I don't like uncertainty at this level. Similarly, they force Republicans and conservatives to keep the intellectual power plants at full load. That's good for us and that's good for America.

There are Democrats, like me, who think it will not play, and should not play, and who are waiting in the wings until after the coming electoral debacle in order to try to remake the party into something more resembling America.

Mr. Card, if you love your party, you might not want to wait until after this election. Although I certainly don't think sanity's going down without a fight in the Democrats, these Dean people are, to steal a phrase from Smith, like a virus. As one recent article on Doc Strange put it, "When most candidates commit gaffes, the money dries up. When Howard Dean commits a gaffe, the money comes flowing in."

This leads me to another point: Does the FEC have adequate oversight of these web-based donations? Several of us at the school were trying to figure this out, and we don't know where the law is on donations of that kind. Between the Clark and Dean types who'd post saying "I just gave $x to Wesley/Howard!!" and list their donation numbers, I'm almost convinced that election-cycle donation limits are being reached somewhere.

Next up, a nasty slap at Reuters, who usually deserves it:

Reuters recently ran a feature that trumpeted the "fact" that U.S. casualties in Iraq have now surpassed U.S. casualties in the first three years of the Vietnam War. Never mind that this is a specious distortion of the facts, which depends on the ignorance of American readers. The fact is that during the first three years of the war in Vietnam, dating from the official "beginning" of the war in 1961, American casualties were low because (a) we had fewer than 20,000 soldiers there, (b) most of them were advisers, deliberately trying to avoid a direct combat role, (c) our few combat troops were special forces, who generally get to pick and choose the time and place of their combat, and (d) because our presence was so much smaller, there were fewer American targets than in Iraq today.

Harrumph! Mr. Card, you've forgotten the primary rule of Reuters: Never let little inconvenient things like facts (e.g. what you've illustrated that counterpoint with) stand in the way of an ideological (probably trans-national or at the very least pro-European Community) bias. You got that? Now we see why you're just a (pretty prolific, good, and awarded) writer of books and are not a member of the Fourth Estate. Tsk tsk!

The old SSI wargame Great Naval Battles of the North Atlantic used to have an animated officer to report hits on enemy vessels. If that little dude were here, he'd say "PENETRATING HIT, 16", TO GOOD SHIP LIBERALPOP". Mr. Card lands a bunch of large caliber hits on the whole "I'm not unpatriotic for calling Bush the equivalent of Hitler or for wanting Saddam Hussein to win" crowd:

Not at all--I'm a critic of some aspects of the war. What I'm saying is that those who try to paint the bleakest, most anti-American, and most anti-Bush picture of the war, whose purpose is not criticism but deception in order to gain temporary political advantage, those people are indeed not patriotic. They have placed their own or their party's political gain ahead of the national struggle to destroy the power base of the terrorists who attacked Americans abroad and on American soil.

Patriots place their loyalty to their country in time of war ahead of their personal and party ambitions. And they can wrap themselves in the flag and say they "support our troops" all they like--but it doesn't change the fact that their program is to promote our defeat at the hands of our enemies for their temporary political advantage.


Patriots like Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 when General George Catlett Marshall asked him to basically throw the election in order to preserve an American cryptographic advantage. I'd like to believe that I would have made Dewey's choice, but there are times when I get the feeling that a lot of politicians today wouldn't be real men such as Dewey. Or Marshall, for that matter. (NB, Wesley Clark: You would rise in my estimation if I thought you capable of standing within sight of Marshall or any other of our World War II leaders (even Admiral King) without being required by objective fairness to scream "Unworthy" while ducking your head if they drew near.)

I would not have chosen Afghanistan and Iraq to start with; Syria, Iran, Sudan and Libya were much more culpable and militarily more important to neutralize as sponsors of terror. (They say that Libya and Sudan have changed their tune lately, but I have my doubts.)

I don't necessarily agree with the first part of this sentence. After 11 September 2001, it was politically necessary to strike directly at al-Qaeda, and in a dramatic fashion that said "America chooses to slaughter her attackers". I understand and concede---in fact I agree---that targets of military importance ought to be struck, but we had to go and ring Osama bin Laden's bell, whether or not that helped the overall war effort. War is one of those complex things with public relations, political, and military components that often may not make immediate obvious sense. I believe that Mr. Card's statements miss the mark here. Striking the Sudanese may be necessary (and I think a good idea for what I keep hearing about their pro-slavery and anti-Christian policies), but it wouldn't have made a lot of sense in terms of getting revenge for the immediate 11 September attacks. The point is, however, moot in that we've already gone to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Card turns from noting the need for political unity in order to achieve victory and to the politico-media front, and after some ruminations, produces this gem:

And in all the campaign rhetoric, I keep looking, as a Democrat, for a single candidate who is actually offering a significant improvement over the Republican policies that in fact don't work, while supporting or improving upon the American policies that will help make us and our children secure against terrorists.

Well, I may disagree on several things with OSC in terms of domestic or even foreign policy, but at the same time, he appears to be what Margaret Thatcher once said of M.S. Gorbachev, "a man with whom we can do business". I don't expect everyone in this country to agree with me---since I'm human and automatically capable of error, this is a good thing---but I also don't have time for the types who foam at the mouth and who can't accept reasonable disagreement. That kind of behavior pretty much in my book cuts the foamer out of reasonable debate. Of course, this also has the effect of cutting many in the loudmouth wing---i.e. the Dean "Democratic" wing---of the Democratic Party out of the people whose input I'll listen to. So be it. One can only hope that the adults take control of the Democratic machine soon; much more of MoveOn and the Dean camp, and something will have to arise to take its place. That's not a good thing.

I am glad I've been reading Card since the last Gulf war; it seems that he's not only a good writer, but a good thinker.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Kevin Patrick at Blogs for Bush.

1 Yes, that's right, I said that a Democrat was a good man. I'm from the rural South and I've been raised to speak well of good people, regardless of party affiliation.

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December 18, 2003

Safire Strikes Back

Just when you thought it was safe to cheer the capture of Saddam, Bill Safire comes along and ruins it.

Bill's a Nixon man, and therefore the Country Pundit likes him. Anyways, to the points:

Why did he not use his pistol to shoot it out with his captors or to kill himself? Because he is looking forward to the mother of all genocide trials, rivaling Nuremberg's and topping those of Eichmann and Milosevic. There, in the global spotlight, he can pose as the great Arab hero saving Islam from the Bushes and the Jews.

While the Country Pundit knows that no right-thinking individual would believe that Saddam Hussein could claim the mantle of great Arab hero1, the Pundit also knows that there are plenty of deluded people who would, as stated earlier, suggest that Saddam was doing his duty against the Zionist oppressor if he was caught in an Israeli sheep pen with his pants down.

I don't know the mind of Saddam Hussein, but one wonders if he has in essence surrendered himself to his fate. By this I don't mean surrendering to objective justice, heavens no. I guess I'm more wondering if he thinks he'll ever get Iraq back again, or if he's figured it's time to break out Bon Jovi's "Blaze of Glory" after watching Young Guns II for inspiration.

Safire goes on for a little while longer, but closes with this gem:

We are not finished with this remorseless monster; Saddam will have his day in an Iraqi court. But so will the ghosts of poison-gassed Halabja and Iraqi children forced to clear minefields in Iran. The meticulous presentation of his offenses against humanity will demonstrate again that all that would have been necessary for the triumph of evil was for good people to do nothing.

I haven't made a final decision as to what the best use of Saddam Hussein would be, but as one of those pathetic individuals struggling through law school (And nowhere near the front of the class, either! --Ed.) I'd like to see him standing in a dock somewhere with a bill of indictment being read against him. Ideally this will be in the hands of a reconstituted Iraqi criminal justice system. Hopefully he'll be given as fair a trial as can be, in order to show the old coot how civilized nations go about the even-handed application of the rule of law, not of men.

1 Setting aside for the moment the fact that those three words may be a contradiction in terms.

[Yes, this is posted late. I've had to write thirty-plus pages of pseudo-analytical legal text and take two exams in the last four days. Right now I'm happy to not be falling asleep on the keyboard.]

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December 17, 2003

A Century of Flight

One hundred years ago today, the first powered heavier-than-air flight was achieved at 10:35 A.M. at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Orville Wright, of Ohio, was at the controls of the Wright Flyer.

The entire human race has benefited from the persistence and ingenuity of Orville and Wilbur Wright. Their invention and surrounding technological breakthroughs have helped knit countries together, saved lives, made possible dramatic increases in the mobility of people, and have spurred on the technological developments that would give rise to America's lunar landing and many, many, other marvelous wonders of technology.

We are honored and blessed to have had them among us.

Visit The United States Centennial of Flight Home Page for more on this monumentous occasion.

It is difficult at this point to say anything more; the magnitude of what these men wrought requires rhetorical skills greater than mine at present to describe.

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December 16, 2003

WC's Humor in the WC

Heard on a local public radio broadcast:

Winston Churchill was not fond of his Labour Party successor, Clement Atlee, who launched a massive nationalization of various sectors of the British economy. One day, Churchill entered the bathroom at the House of Commons and saw Atlee there as well. Sir Winston promptly chose the farthest position from Atlee in order to continue his business, and was addressed by Atlee: "Feeling stand-offish today?"

To this, Churchill replied, (roughly): "I do so because every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it."

Tee hee. WC's humor in the WC. Gotta love it.

This story has not, however, been independently verified.

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Joe Lieberman, Man of History

I was reading The Politburo Diktat last night when I noticed an interesting post by our lovable Comrade Commissar on the future of Senator Joseph Lieberman, D-CT. The money quote:

But now, Angry Joe has set himself up as the "Un-Dean." Very clever. Very strong.

Reminds Commissar a little bit of another very strong, very clever "Comrade Joe." And remember who that Joe brought down.

Of course, Comrade Commissar is referring to our glorious Comrade Stalin1. I agree (for the tongue-in-cheek purposes of this post) that Senator Lieberman reminds me of a historical tyrant who didn't mind slaughtering lots and lots of people to achieve his policy objectives. However, I disagree on who that tyrant is. Is that disagreement because comparing any American politician to Stalin is an outrage and unsupportable on the facts? Well, probably, but I had another angle in mind.

Harkening back to campaigns of previous years:

We've got reason to be scared of Joe, but it ain't because he's Stalin. Connecticut Joe may offer platitudes and warm fuzzy feelings about things, but make no mistake about it: Any Lieberman budget for defense will have an item for a project earmarked "SPACE STATION - ULTIMATE POWER IN UNIVERSE". He'll probably also have that wheezing and sighing physical wreck (no, not Darth Vader; I mean Ted Kennedy) alongside him to do his dirty work.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

1 In all seriousness: Rudolf Rummel, of the University of Hawaii, has produced figures that show Stalin as being responsible for over 42 million deaths of Soviet citizens during his reign, enough to ensconce him as history's all-time mass murderer. See Freedom's Nest and Rummel's academic site for more of these chilling details. We hear much about the evils of Hitler, but precious little (thanks for nothing, Pulitzer Committee in re: Walter Duranty) about how Uncle Joe took tens of millions of lives indiscriminately. Guess Hitler should have gone whole hog and been an open Communist; he'd get a pass.

NB: Apologies for the grainy nature of that picture; I couldn't find a higher-resolution version of this which had previously been floating around the Internet in large quantities. Winston Smith, call your office.

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December 15, 2003

Curse You, Allahpundit!

After a long and excruciating law school final in which I'll probably set the personal record for failure, I drifted by Allah Is In The House, and promptly became irate.

TCP's anger extends from Allahpundit's latest reporting on the Howard Dean endorsement list. Now, we all know that many entertainers and members of the coastal elites (of which I will be one, sooner or later; viva la revolucion...) don't have the brains that God gave geese, so they often go and do stupid things. Tom Cruise ditching Nicole Kidman is one of these things. Nevertheless, the Country Pundit would like to believe that people he counts as "enjoyable entertainers" aren't stupid. That's a complex and narcissistic calculation that occasionally needs a little bit of grandfather clausing or regulations exempting a specific individual. (Hoo boy, have you ever got that right. Two words: Sheryl Crow. What's next, your re-embrace of the Dixie Chicks? If this keeps up, you'll be worse than Imus. --Ed.)

Anyways, Allah's post brings me Photoshop edits of pictures shot at a Dean fundraiser where none other than Carly Simon performed for the little bugger and his crowd of Bush-haters. This is most unfortunate news, because TCP likes Carly Simon's work. Heck, I even own her last new album, along with that two-disc anthology that was recently released. ('course, that's two of the three albums of hers I own, and the other one's the Elektra compilation from the early 1970s) Heck, I even found an eight-track of the Elektra "Best of" and played it until the cursed thing broke, sometime in the late 1990s.

It strikes me as strange that a woman who would write a song desiring the arrival of a 'New Jerusalem' ("Let The River Run", from the Working Girl soundtrack) would also endorse and be all happy for a guy who doesn't seem to be all-fired eager to bring the hurt to people whose platform includes "death to Israel!" Admittedly, Simon's judgment on things other than music doesn't always go too well; she took part in a 1980 "rockumentary" called No Nukes, which was against atomic energy. I had managed to gloss over that by this point, but Allahpundit's post is going to require a little more spinning or generalized exception in order for me to not shelf another artist.

Anyways. Luckily for me, I'm at a point of "I don't care" when it comes to celebrity endorsements of candidates, so perhaps this one will slink under the radar. In the grand scheme of things, an endorsement from an ancient relic whose last hit came during the Reagan Administration doesn't matter; I believe I'd be best advised to let this one slide. Enh.

Visit his post (linked above) and laugh, if for no other reason than the rather clever quotes attributed to Governor Dean.

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The Professionals Respond to Saddam, Part II

George Will, in today's Washington Post:

The tyrant's capture has triggered a predictable chorus from those who have consistently subordinated the interests of Iraq, and other things, to their agenda for aggrandizing international institutions. They say an international tribunal should have a role -- perhaps the role -- in the trial of Saddam Hussein. So it is timely to recall the Nuremberg anomaly.

Can I call 'em, or what? Admittedly, these people are so predictable that saying this would happen is of equivalent predictive value to "I'm going out on a limb here, but the sun's gonna rise. Be sure of it."

Mr. Will calls the inclusion of the Soviets in the Nuremberg Tribunal "grotesque" but also denotes that it was "necessary". The problem here is, of course, that he's right. It would have been very strange to the security situation of 1945 and 1946 for the Western allies to shut the Soviets, no matter how onerous their presence, out of the post-war punitive effort against the National Socialists. Perhaps the Soviet government didn't belong there, but the peoples under Stalin's heel deserved to be heard for what the Nazis did to them, and that was (in retrospect) the only justice they'd ever get, since nobody was going to say "Hitler down and Stalin to go". There would never be an "avenger of the bones" for the millions that Stalin killed, either in the Soviet Union or wherever the Red Army went. But I digress...

It might have been easier if Hussein had died resisting capture -- although that would have allowed the mythmakers, who are legion in that region, to envelop his memory with a nimbus of martyrdom. The fact that he was captured with a pistol he would not use even on himself makes it unlikely that he can seem bravely defiant in his trial.

I'm not so sure a heroic death for Saddam would have been useful. The mythmakers of which Will is correct in taking note of could probably spin Saddam's death even if he died with his trousers down in a sheep pen: "He died fighting the evil Zionist sheep! He gave of his dignity to punish them!"

The attempts of "internationalists" to hijack Hussein's prosecution are partly for the purpose of derogating the importance and legitimacy of nation-states generally. But Iraqi nationhood -- currently tenuous as a political and psychological fact -- can be affirmed by entrusting it with the trial. By serving Iraq's national memory, the trial can be a nation-building event.

Bloody internationalists have got it in for the nation-state for sure; I ran into that kind of thinking in college. Luckily, I could usually get away by being dismissed as the class dissenter when I'd grumble about the abrogation of sovereignty that supranational bodies inherently relied upon.

Final quote:

But perhaps Sunday's euphoria among the majority of next November's voters will cause Democrats to pause on their double-time march toward nominating the one serious candidate of whom it can be indisputably said that, were he president, Hussein would still be a president too.

Heh. Anger-powered Howard may have lots of trouble with the fact that we've actually caught Saddam. Oh well. Perhaps the nation will get around saying that they'd prefer Bush (or Bush Lite) to the Howard 'n Hussein ticket.

Anyways, that's it for the day. I've got a final today that I'm simply not optimistic about, and for which I have precious little reason to be hopeful. I found m'self once again saying, "Dear Lord, if you've got anyone on standby....I could use 'em."

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The Professionals Respond to Saddam, Part I

Two columns this morning on what to do with Saddam, one from the illustrious John Keegan of England, and another from George Will of the Washington Post:

Sayeth Keegan:

Though the security situation is simplified, however, the constitutional situation is not. How to dispose of a fallen dictator is a problem of immense complexity for victor states.

You would bring that up, wouldn't you? Nothing in life is simple, bah.

Sovereign states shrink from disposing peremptorily of sovereign rulers. The process, whichever is chosen, always threatens to set inconvenient precedents. Since 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia created the principle that sovereign states, and therefore their sovereign heads, are both legally and morally absolute, there has been no legal basis for proceeding against such a person, however heinous the crimes he is known to have committed.

Bloody rot, these cursed precedents. However, insofar as I know, he's right. Civilization is so inconvenient at times.

Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito were all sovereign rulers, de jure as well as de facto. For another, there was no body of law under which they could be arraigned.

Another problem is that we have no use for Saddam. Mr. Keegan points out that America found a useful policy objective in retaining the Japanese emperor, whereas Hitler and Mussolini were dead before we got to them. Saddam does not have the benefit of the first case, and does not fit (although he may belong) in the second case.

None of these precedents seems likely to spare Saddam. He may, de facto, have been head of state but, by fleeing his capital and office at the outset of the last Gulf War, he effectively abandoned whatever constitutional status he enjoyed.

That's interesting. I didn't know that flight on the part of a national leadership abandons constitutional status. I would have thought prior to Mr. Keegan's remarks that the presumption of the custom would have been something to do with an exception for flight to evade capture in the event of hostilities, but go figure. Does that mean that President Davis abandoned his constitutional (supposing, I reckon, that you grant legitimacy to the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia) status when he fled the Confederate capital in the face of Grant's Army of the Potomac?

There may be some cultural thing of which I am not aware, that a leader is supposed to remain in the capital even if the invader's armies reach the capital, and the leader of the conquered state is supposed to acknowledge defeat, unfortunate reversal, etc. etc. and an end to the hostilities results. If anyone knows that, I'd appreciate the answer.

At present there is no death penalty in Iraq, but it seems possible that the Iraqi Governing Council will introduce one and Washington will undoubtedly wish to see Saddam dead. As he has brought death to so many innocents, it is a fate he unquestionably deserves.

That's pretty much the probable score. Keegan wants him dead, and I'm pretty certain that we'll see that at some point.

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