Category Archives: War Commentary

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

The Headchopper Next Door

Some uncomfortable truths about Islam:

Mohammed was quite clear about what he wanted. For all the abrogations, the Koran is reasonably clear on what it expects its followers to do. Mohammed’s history was that of a man who tried to convince the Arabs that he had seen an angel by telling them and failed, and who succeeded only when he killed enough of them, not to mention the Jews and any other infidels hanging around the place.

That is the history of Islam.

Germany was not a nation of monsters. It was a nation that behaved monstrously. The average German would not stick his neighbor in an oven in his basement or chain him up as a slave. He would however do these things in Poland because he was contextually contaminated by a monstrous ideology.

As an individual he was a nice man who loved his children, petted his dog and enjoyed street fairs. As a loyal member of a system run by the Nazi Party, he would do monstrous things. And then when the Nazi machine was switched off, he would go home to his wife and children without ever killing anyone else.

He was not a good man. Good men don’t do the things he did. But he wasn’t a budding serial killer. He was just doing what a death cult told him to do.

As I noted over the weekend…

Also, Barack Obama and John Kerry lecturing Muslims on what is and is not the nature of Islam is a theater of the absurd.

History, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The American Dunkirk

8 Comments

Remembering the Manhattan boat lift.

I should note, though, that it’s not really fair to compare the time taken for the two events. You can make a lot more trips across the Hudson in a given time than across the Channel.

[Afternoon update]

As Paul notes in comments, it’s also a lot easier to evacuate when you don’t have the Luftwaffe attacking you.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Susan Rice

14 Comments

Diplomat:

In one meeting, Rice pressed the German delegation relentlessly for leadership within the European Union. The Germans sought more time and consultation with other EU member states, frustrating Rice to the point that she lost her cool and reportedly launched into a profanity-filled lecture that featured a rare diplomatic appearance of the word “motherfucker.” Germany’s national security advisor, Christoph Heusgen, was so angered that he told an American confidante it was the worst meeting of his professional life.

…Rice’s bluntness and hot temper have undercut her effectiveness throughout her career. In July 2014, the New Republic reported that she once confronted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas outside the Oval Office, saying, “You Palestinians can never see the fucking big picture.” A U.N. ambassador of one of the world’s major powers told me that he didn’t “understand what she thinks she is achieving by talking to us like a longshoreman.” The brusqueness hasn’t helped with her interpersonal relationships within the administration or with her staff, either.

Actually, though, the piece is really a critique of the administration overall, and Obama in particular:

The problem is that in seeking to sidestep the pitfalls that plagued Bush, Obama has inadvertently created his own. Yet unlike Bush, whose flaw-riddled first-term foreign policy was followed by important and not fully appreciated second-term course corrections, Obama seems steadfast in his resistance both to learning from his past errors and to managing his team so that future errors are prevented. It is hard to think of a recent president who has grown so little in office.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The Problem With “Fierce Minimalism”

15 Comments

Thoughts on crises, and urgency:

One of the implicit assumptions of “fierce minimalism” is that action fuels the flames. Obama argued as much at an American Legion speech. He said, ”the answer is not to send in large scale military deployments that over stretch our military, and lead for us occupying countries for a long period of time and end up feeding extremism.” An alternative point of view using almost an identical metaphor was articulated by Franklin Roosevelt. “Suppose my neighbor’s home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire.”

The difference in the two presidential fire examples is the element of urgency. Roosevelt was aware that the fireman’s enemy is time and one of the points of the hose story, which everyone in that era understood, was the importance of dousing the fire while it was still small. Obama, by contrast, lacks the dimension of time. His approach implicitly assumes he has the leisure to add an ounce here and an ounce there to achieve a nuanced outcome. Roosevelt understood that a crisis was urgent. In the current case, Obama is busy calibrating, thinking and golfing like he had all the time in the world.

What happens when a fierce minimalist meets a fierce fire?

Things can get out of control very quickly.

And then there’s this additional comment:

Any return to the Middle East will be as a salvage party re-entering the smoking hulk of a ship looking for survivors. And whoever reboards that derelict in the future had better be alert. In the glare of their flashlights they’ll glimpse strange, furtive forms.

“Was that a man I saw Captain?”, one boarder will ask. “It looked funny but I only saw it for an instant.”

“That’s because he was carrying a head.”

“Oh. What’s through this door Captain?”

“It used to be Lebanon. Ok men, form a stack. On my count …”

There is no way back to the status quo ante. The Iraq legacy, for good or ill, is gone. The Cold War victory of 1989 is gone. What Kissinger called “a brief moment in human history when one could speak of an incipient global world order” is gone. Maybe for the best.

Obama will be remembered as an extremely consequential president. He did “fundamentally change” the world but not in the way he can understand. I almost wish he did by design. But I have a feeling the verdict of history will be that he pushed the wrong buttons by accident, simply because they had bright colors and made beeping sounds.

Frighteningly true.