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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A Patriotic Rock

Found on a MUSH, somewhere across the Internet: Some chap in Iowa has painted a patriotically appropriate tableau on a rock. It's got various quotes from history on it, and seems like one of those spontaneous expressions of patriotism that pop up where people love their land. If I were to wax poetic, I'd say it was the manifestation of that which is the deep regard of a free man for his land and those who help protect his freedom.

I don't have a whole lot more to say about it, so go on over and check out On a Rock in Rural Iowa.

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Rich Lowry, 'Buckley Brat'

As tipped off by Mr. Lowry himself, there's an article detailing a little bit about his background and the process surrounding his latest book, an indictment of President Clinton for misadministration of the country. (No, this isn't going to be one of those Corner book bleg things.) Although Mr. Lowry had the good sense to go to a school in Virginia, he chose one of the public universities and thus had to swelter in Charlottesville.

Nevertheless, I've always been a little suspicious of Rich, and he finally gives me solid reasons to support that suspicion:

Growing up in Arlington, Va., Mr. Lowry was "rambunctious" and "always dirty and sweaty," more contrarian than troublemaker: When everyone was going on about Star Wars, he didn’t join the herd.

Not only did he got to the University of Virginia, but he grew up in Northern Virginia (more like occupied territory; sooner or later we've got to force the Washington D.C. occupation army out of there...) and didn't like Star Wars.

Lowry, surrender your card in the conservative pantheon right there, bub. Going to U.Va. and growing up in NOVA can be forgiven under the right circumstances (working for the Virginia Advocate goes a long way) but not being a Lucas fan in the 1970s is unforgivable.

Hee hee. For another article on or about Mr. Lowry's latest exploits, (but from a suspect source) see here.

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An Ivy League Bleg

OK, so I'm checking my e-mail, and I find that a Harvard student's got a request for conservative bloggers with a hankering for poll taking: He's in a class full of liberals (At Harvard? Who'da thunk it? --Ed.) and he needs some help showing that people approve of Adam marrying Eve, not Adam marrying Steve. Mr. Barrett wants to see "the Establishment"¹ pass the proverbial brick, and your humble correspondent (Hey now! We can't tell obvious lies in print! Cut that out. --Ed.) concurs, in his own Hunter S. Thompson fight-the-power way.

So here's the action y'all can take: Click here to see his post on the subject, and here to vote in the poll. The Country Pundit is recommending a vote for the third option, so have at it.

This is merely a prank to be used against Ivy League schools, and to shock the kinds of people who want universities to divest themselves of Israeli holdings since the Israelis have this nasty habit of standing up for themselves against Islamist terror. Hee hee.

¹ Once upon a time, that was supposed to be us, wasn't it?

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Wal-Mart v. Art

This is strange:

The Oconee County [Georgia] Wal-Mart was under siege Friday night by a guerrilla performance art project staged by University students for their Studio Art 2810 final.

While I enjoy hearing about problems that befall Wal-Mart, I'm also slightly wishing that someone had fallen while running away from the store or something. This appears to have been some sort of group effort in order to get a grade. The teacher ought to flunk the lot of them for being inane, but that would probably require a showing of academic courage and resolve.¹

Another choice tidbit:

"Our one guideline was to not break any laws, because the intended purpose was that we didn't want to break any laws but we wanted new (policies) to have to be made," Kubie said. "I think we were pretty responsible in the way we executed our overall plan. There was no permanent damage and very little cleaning to be done."

Son, let me explain something to you: Performance art disruptions don't force new policies, other than to cause more trouble for people within your demographic. All you've done is irritate a Wal-Mart manager. You say that there's no permanent damage? How noble! Some poor employee's going to have to clean up after you, and all he's going to think about is how much he hates you. These little punks ought to be assessed the costs of cleaning whatever "temporary" damage was done. Good grief.

I wish my undergraduate days had been this easy. I suppose I was too busy trying to figure out just what the difference was between the various formulations of the categorical imperative, Mill v. Bentham, and lots of other high-brow crap that's been absolutely useless once I got clear of the presidential handshake on graduation day. Oh well.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to DiVERSiONZ.

¹ Perhaps if they'd gone to the local mosque and protested Islamist terror, then we'd see some outrage in academia. Of course, it probably wouldn't matter because the mosque's staffers probably would have wasted the students, being the religion of peace and all.

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Mrs. Claus, Part Deux

I have arrived: James Lileks and I were thinking about the same thing after watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. I am of course filing suit for anger infringement.

Sayeth Lileks:

I also don't think Mrs. Claus should be played by Heidi Klum in a white-fur thong, stroked by buff oiled-up elves. Think of the children, I say. Think of the children.

The weird sound you hear is the laugh track of the two protagonists from Beavis and Butt-head, MTV's last gasp of socio-cultural relevance. Huh huh huh...cool. Mr. Lileks, I agree with Mister Green in saying that you're wrong. I, like Mister Green, couldn't find much complaint with a fur-clad Klum as Mrs. Claus, so long as I'm the Mr. Otherwise, of course, this is absolutely shocking and shouldn't even be conceived much less blogged about.¹

However, if Heidi Klum wanted to audition for the part, there'd be no objections from me. No objections whatsoever, your honor.

To close, the only acceptable Mrs. Claus that I've seen was on film was Elizabeth Mitchell's Carol Newman in Tim Allen's The Santa Clause 2. She was a babe, right up until the CGI got ahold of her. It's unfortunate that her latest series got cancelled/put on hiatus, but maybe she'll turn up elsewhere, preferably not in Kerry Weaver's shower.

¹ This is to be read with the manner, accent, and style of John Cleese, preferably in Fawlty Towers appearance.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Mister Green for the story.

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Fresh victims for our ever-growing army of the undead!

All right-thinking peoples are probably concerned about the content and underlying motives of news coverage, whether it be by CNN ("What human rights violations in Iraq? Hear no evil, speak no evil, and for darned sure report no evil.") or FNC ("We report. You buy our personalities' books unquestioningly.") A cautionary tale can probably be issued to both Eason Jordan or Walter Isaacson and Roger Ailes: Be careful how you report. People make decisions based not just on the content of your broadcast, but the style thereof as well.

Luckily for us, the style of recent broacasts concerning events in Iraq has had a pro-Bush effect in one man. John of Argghhh!!! relates the story of one man who goes by the name of Psycho Dad. (I didn't know your father blogged, TCP. --Ed. Get bent. --TCP) In his post entitled I'm Joining the Right!, Dad tells us of his prior ambivalence and disinterest in politics, but which have been turned into strong support for the President, all based upon the content of broadcast media reports in the last little bit.

I reckon he's tired of hearing the modern-day equivalent of, "American troops today landed at Normandy and successfully established a beachhead on Omaha Beach. However, American troops failed to capture Hitler and neither liberated Paris nor defeated Imperial Japan."

Welcome to Blogs for Bush and to the Right as a whole, Psycho Dad. As a brief introduction to our activities (aside from using Mary Matalin to keep James Carville in check¹), we're involved in various projects such as:

-robbing cavefish of their sight²
-holding back electric cars
-making Steve Guttenberg a star
-keeping the metric system down

We've been less successful at the Guttenberg project lately, and rigging every Oscar night hasn't always been successful---see the Denzel Washington & Halle Berry wins---but we're doing pretty good.

Glad to have another participant in the generally rightish area of influence.

1 Talk about sleeping with the enemy! She deserves a medal, for crying out loud! I still wish Tucker Carlson had slapped the trashcan that Carvile put over his head in November 2002 after the Republicans picked up more seats.

2 Actually, we accomplished this one but it's still cool to talk about.

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Three English Roses

The first time I heard the phrase "England's rose", I think it was applied to the late Lady Diana Spencer, ex-Princess of Wales.¹ The next time I heard it was in the context of the British actress Sophie Ward. (She's not all bad looking, but darnit, she defected to the other side!)²

I'm not entirely sure what the term really applies to, but I need an artsy component to excuse what is otherwise an exercise in pure Gallic-bashing and lowbrow celebration of English women and their spirit.

With that disclaimer out of the way, this post comes from what seems to be a relatively new blog based in England, Free Market Fairy Tales. In France & the Rugby World Cup, Mr Free Market tells us a tale about "fine English maidens with the correct outlook on life. I've reproduced the picture in question in order to save him bandwidth and to disseminate this throughout the Anglosphere, all in the interests of cultural exchange. Marvel at their stoic British character as they, clad in diaphanous white, brave the watery precipitation that sends men rushing to ponchos and rain gear! (Either that or wonder just how many sheets to the wind they were before they started. --Ed.) Anyways, affix your gaze upon these women, as they display what Kevin Costner's Robin of Locksley called "English courage". Huh huh huh.

I bet Saint George wouldn't have minded seeing his cross reproduced on these particular maidens.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Free Market Fairy Tales for this image.

1 Sounds like I'm talking about a Royal Navy warship to be nitpicking about 'ex-Princess of Wales' or something, but never mind that.

2 The Country Pundit, being a traditionalist and not particular sympathetic to the ridiculous "inclusive language" doctrine forced upon him in undergraduate, considers calling a woman who acts an 'actor' is tantamount to an insult against her femininity.

Miss Ward shares circumstance with Episcopalian Bishop V. Eugene Robinson in that both of them have bailed out of heterosexual marriages and taken up with a homosexual partner. As Robert E. Lee says in The Guns of the South, "Too bad! Oh, too bad!"

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Rule Britannia

Everyone knows that the United Kingdom's best and brightest hate the idiot chimp AWOL corporate tool President-select (Hail to the thief!!!!!) Bush, right? RIGHT?

Wrong.

The people over at the The Guardian usually don't produce much of note. (Buggers had the temerity to slam the character of Jean Grey in X-Men 2, don't you know.) However, as President Bush was winging his way across the Atlantic (should've been steaming into Southampton or Liverpool on SS United States) the Guardian up and published letters to the President from Britons.

Some of them are the usual tripe from people who need to be given close-range exposure to a Clue-by-Four. See Harold "I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments" Pinter.

Another couple of them are from noteworthy Britons, and they're excerpted here:

It is regrettable that Tony Blair misled you into thinking that he could deliver Mr Schröder, Mr Chirac and Mr Putin to vote for a UN resolution. The PM does, I am afraid, have delusions of grandeur. Unfortunately, the doomed strategy of making weapons of mass destruction the cause of war has discredited the war in the UK. You did better to say frankly that you wanted to remove the Saddam regime which so brutalised its people and destabilised the region.

-Michael Portillo, Conservative MP

I beg you to take no notice. The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshipped the other genocide, Josef Stalin.

. . . .

Eleven years ago something dreadful happened. Maggie was ousted, Ronald retired, the Berlin wall fell and Gorby abolished communism. All the left's idols fell and its demons retired. For a decade there was nothing really to hate. But thank the Lord for his limitless mercy. Now they can applaud Saddam, Bin Laden, Kim Jong-Il... and hate a God-fearing Texan.

-Frederick Forsyth, author

But when the chips are really down, Britain is as always a firm ally, standing alongside the United States in the cause of making the world a safer place. That is what we have done for well over half a century and what we shall continue to do, whatever the chants of the demonstrators. It's called the special relationship.

-Charles Powell, member, House of Lords and foreign affairs advisor to Margaret Thatcher & John Major

Europe is bent on constructing in the EU a new nation on the old European pattern: flag-waving, glory-seeking, protectionist, exclusive of other races and creeds and full of touchy amour-propre, to say nothing of naked resentment of the US. This is a world that needs, just as much as it did in 1945, the unique American ability to be at once strong and principled in its global leadership.

Please pledge, Mr President, that under your leadership that proud tradition will be maintained and that the US will never, whatever the provocations from Europe or elsewhere, slip back into the bad old pre-1945 vices of nationalism, unilateralism, autarky and the laws of the jungle.

-Peter Jay, former ambassador to Washington

And a personal favorite:

Are you getting out enough? The world is divided into two groups of people and here I draw no political or social distinctions. I am, of course, referring to those that run and those that do not. When you kindly granted me an interview last year, your first question to me was "Are you still getting out?" I remember the look of puzzlement that settled upon the faces of your inner circle. "Yes, Mr President," I replied, "and I hope you are too." More puzzlement. In fact, I am sure they felt that they were being deliberately excluded from the conversation in some Masonic-type code.

Maintaining your daily running diet will keep your head clear and your mind focused, and will remind you constantly that, as a runner, you have the advantage over others, knowing that the road is often undulating and the gradient and surface uncertain. You will also know, as any runner does, that the session has to be completed and, unlike the bluffers who make up the ranks of the political intelligentsia, you do something on a daily basis that is objectively measured. Good luck and, as they would say in the north of England, "Get the miles in."

-Sebastian Coe, Conservative MP and former world-class miler

Go figure. Some of the responses I've been reading around the world of blogging indicate that the British are actually in favor of the President and aren't a bunch of slobbering toadies to totalitarianism, but one can never be sure with polls. After all, before them come lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Glenn Reynolds.

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Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

The people at Right Wing News have published the results of a poll sent to 150 rightists in the blogosphere. The poll asked for the respondents to compile a list of their "Most Interesting Dinner Companions". The top twenty vote-getters:

20) Voltaire (4)
20) Sun Tzu (4)
20) Martin Luther (4)
20) John Locke (4)
20) Rush Limbaugh (4)
20) C.S. Lewis (4)
20) Andrew Jackson (4)
20) F.A. Hayek (4)
20) Milton Friedman (4)
20) Ann Coulter (4)
20) William F. Buckley (4)
20) John Adams (4)
1 Franklin Delano Roosevelt (5)
1 Muhammad (5)
14) Socrates (6)
14) Teddy Roosevelt (6)
14) Julius Caesar (6)
14) George W. Bush (6)
12) George Washington (7)
12) Margret Thatcher (7)
William Shakespeare (9)
Ayn Rand (9)
George Patton (9)
Leonardo Da Vinci (9)
7) Mark Twain (11)
6) Ben Franklin (12)
5) Thomas Jefferson (15)
4) Abraham Lincoln (16)
3) Winston Churchill (1
2) Ronald Reagan (19)
1) Jesus (20)

What?! I wasn't asked to participate? I must register my sincere protest at the non-inclusiveness of this survey and its suspect methodolgy.¹

1 Also known as "the Moynihan objection", since the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan articulated said objection numerous times as one of the ways Washington does business. I don't have the quote in front of me, but he once said something on the order of "Most objections in Washington boil down to this: Why wasn't I asked?"

Tip of the Wisconsin hat to Tyler Cowen at The Volokh Conspiracy for letting me know about this.

TECHNICAL QUERY: When I use the HTML blockquote tag, the entire list compresses to a paragraph, ignoring darned near everything I could throw at it. I didn't try the br tag because I figured that would somehow break the blockquote arrangement. If anyone knows how to get around this, I'd appreciate knowing it.

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A Blogger's Worst Case Scenario

Thanks to the good guys at Boots and Sabers for alerting me to this story in The Onion that neatly summarizes one of the deeply-held fears that many bloggers probably have, namely discovery of the blog by someone who doesn't need to know.¹

In a turn of events the 30-year-old characterized as "horrifying," Kevin Widmar announced Tuesday that his mother Lillian has discovered his weblog.

. . .

Upon receipt of the e-mail, Widmar mentally raced through the contents of his blog. He immediately thought of several dozen posts in which he mentioned drinking, drug use, casual sex, and other behavior likely to alarm his mother.

"I don't have one of those sites that's a big tell-all about one-night stands and wild parties," Widmar said. "I mostly write about the animation I like or little things that happen to me and my friends. But there are definitely things in there that I wouldn't, well, write home to Mom about."

Fortunately for Widmar, Lillian's comments about the site indicate that she has not delved deeply into its contents.

. . .

As of press time, Widmar had not decided whether to shut PlanetKevin down.

I'd been looking for an excuse to link to Boots and Sabers for a while, and this is that excuse. Owen and Jed regularly pontificate on law, firearms, a certain heiress and her recorded tryst, technology, and the military, all while being rather enthusiastic about bonfires. It must be a Texas thing.

A coordinate post at Tiger: Raggin' & Rantin' said that the greatest fear he had was having no one read what he wrote. Given my generally paranoid disposition, I can state that I share in his fears---and also worry that someone might actually read it. Talk about your fear and loathing in the blogosphere.

1 I know the Onion is fiction. Given the nature of blogging, and the often refreshing candor with which many bloggers write, I think the reaction of the fictitious blogger is realistic. Or so I would think.

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Must-Not-See TV

According to an entry at the Internet Movie Database's Studio Brief (reproduced in its entirety at the link ending this entry), the National Broadcasting Company has decided to suspend its broadcasts of the American version of Coupling. This version is after a British comedy of the same name which apparently does well on the BBC.

Who cares, you ask? Well, I don't care all that much. I hadn't watched a new series on NBC since they canned Dark Skies, and the only thing before that was ER along with Law & Order back in 1991-1992. The reason I care now is because of what Coupling was supposed to be. The IMDB blurb stated that the series "resolve[d] to push back the boundaries of sexual expression on television". That's right. In an era where we've got a cable network dubbed 'Skinemax' and an Internet whose underlying architecture is probably nothing more than a massive porn delivery network, NBC felt the need to push back the dreaded censorial hand of decency.

This isn't some great victory in the culture war, I suppose. We'll still be stuck with images of that repulsive relic Madonna sucking face with the trailer-trash Britney Spears, but at least the annoyingly repetitive in-your-face sex crowd's been pushed back for a little while.

I hope NBC lost a pile of money on this. If I wanted sexual content, I'd fire up my modem and check my inbox. I don't need it on broadcast television. But no matter---I haven't been big on watching a regular series or anything since The Lone Gunmen got taken off the air. more...

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General Boykin, Redux

Readers of this site will know that I posted an earlier defense of Lieutenant General W.G. 'Jerry' Boykin. In my ever-ongoing search for controversy, I went and asked a practicing Muslim what their read on Boykin's comments was. The answer came quickly, and it had several angles, two of which are listed below:

1. A negative effect on non-Christian servicemen.
2. The effect when he deals with Islamic counterparts in rest of world.

1. My conversational companion suggested Boykin's remarks tended to indicate that we had a 'Christian army', when this was obviously not the case. It was specifically mentioned that we had Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, et cetera, and (more generally) that it had a negative effect on those troops who don't show up for Sunday school.

I saw the point, but I'm not convinced. Maybe servicemen in the audience could weigh in on this; I'm not a soldier so I'm not entirely aware of the "world" in which the soldier lives and fights.

That point didn't sway me so much as the next one, and even then, the sway only came because I like to think of myself as looking at foreign policy and so forth through a cold-eyed realpolitik lense in the model of Richard M. Nixon and Dr. Henry A. Kissinger. (There is, of course, also present what one of my college professors noted as a 'Reaganistic idealism about the world that you seem to have woven with hard-nosed realism'. He was decidedly neither Republican nor conservative, so I'm not sure that it came as a compliment. However, I chose to take it as one.) Anyways, on to the next point:

2. I don't want to sound like I'm waffling on this subject, but we're in a new kind of war, one that isn't just us versus the Germans or us versus the Russians and whoever they could rope together. We're in a war with an enemy whose potential population base, if you will, could be upwards of a billion people scattered all over the globe and into our own country. Any one of those individuals who seeks to 'enlist' in the army of al-Qaeda doesn't have to make his way to the capital of al-Qaeda, 'jine the cavalry', and take up arms in a foreign land and fight on foreign soil. With the click of a mouse or a call on a phone, a man could serve al-Qaeda without ever leaving the comforts of home. This is a problem.

In the past, we had clearly identified nation-state actors to peg as the aggressors. Now, we face a nebulous foe with no centralized capital, no infrastructure of its own to pulverize with an air campaign, and no traditional formations to engage with our own superb conventional weapons.

Rather, we face a shadowy foe who strikes at his discretion and melts away into various corners of the world. Previously, if we wanted the U-boats to stop torpedoing American ships in the North Atlantic, we crushed Germany. That's a great model, but it doesn't help much against a supranational movement that reaches around the world.

To apply the previous model, one would literally have to invade every nation that harbored these al-Qaeda fanatics, and probably wind up garrisoning the bloody planet. That isn't going to work, for a variety of reasons. One of the largest problems is that these guys aren't clearly state-sponsored. If they were, rhe sponsor would probably suffer the fate of Afghanistan. Phrased differently, if there was for example, "Osamaland", we would have wiped it out and come home some time in December 2001, confident in the success of our mission.

Instead, the more economical, more practical, and more viable method is to work with the country that is "infected" with al-Qaeda members to purge the victim country, through legal, political, or military means. This means close coordination of American forces and assets with other-national assets, namely the victim country's security service, intelligence service, and perhaps the armed forces. That requires the American coordinator to be someone who can "do business" with whoever his (and I mean a man; I doubt a lot of these countries where a major al-Qaeda presence is going to take root would welcome the sight of a female general officer) counterpart is on the ground in the country.

If it's an Islamic country and Jerry Boykin goes there, the guy on the ground is probably not going to be as eager to cooperate with America in general or Boykin in particular. The al-Qaeda boys will be darned sure to get the message out that America has sent a man who hates Islam (the usual...) and is a crusader who's managed to survive the past nine hundred years and still marches under the banner of Richard the Lion-Hearted. Unfortunately, we cannot afford giving al-Qaeda the opportunity to say that---we can't give them any extra advantages that they don't already have.

Therefore, it is with considerable irritation and regret that I have to reverse an earlier position and suggest that General Boykin be reassigned in a manner that would get him out of the position he's in now, solely to deny al-Qaeda the opportunity to use him against the country I, and I am certain he, loves. I absolutely don't want the guy punished---just a 'tsk tsk, Jerry' and make sure his career survives, because the read on him that I've gotten is that this nation owes him a debt of thanks for many risky and dangerous missions.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:40 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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