Mark Steyn writes about Hollywood, and the war:
Which brings us back to those yelps of delight when the Americans clobbered the jihadists two hours into the test screening of The Kingdom. Pace Peter Berg, it’s not “bloodlust”: if you want that, you’re best to stick to the amoral fetishization of violence in the 3.10 remake. What the preview crowd were telling Berg is, hey, we’d love to see one film where our guys kick serious terrorist butt
Mark Steyn writes about Hollywood, and the war:
Which brings us back to those yelps of delight when the Americans clobbered the jihadists two hours into the test screening of The Kingdom. Pace Peter Berg, it’s not “bloodlust”: if you want that, you’re best to stick to the amoral fetishization of violence in the 3.10 remake. What the preview crowd were telling Berg is, hey, we’d love to see one film where our guys kick serious terrorist butt
That’s what John McCain is saying about his stance on Iraq, and the consistency with which he’s been calling for more troops from the beginning. And he’s right, he has.
The problem is, I remain unconvinced that more troops were the answer, then, or now. I always thought that the surge was misnamed. I think that there are two other factors that are as important, and perhaps much more important, than troop levels per se.
First was the change of tactics, in which rather than hunkering down in bases and training Iraqis to go out and fight the insurgency, Petraeus put the troops out in the field and worked with the locals.
But I think that the most important factor was simply that the Iraqis tired of the insurgency and Al Qaeda. I think that Petraeus was the right man at the right time, but I don’t think that it takes anything away from him to question how well the strategy would have worked two, or three years ago. It probably would have been better than what we were doing at the time, but I think that the time had to be ripe for the awakenings in Anbar and Diyala, and now in Baghdad. It may be that the Iraqis simply had to go through this brutal period to understand the barbarity and viciousness of the fundamentalists that were attempting to colonize them, as they had Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the benefits of working with Americans and each other, rather than trying to fight each other for the spoils of the war.
The Sunnis are probably finally coming to the realization that they are never going to rule over the majority as they had under the Ba’athists, and seem to now be ready to accommodate themselves to the new Iraq, and are trying to cut deals. Again, I don’t think that’s something that could have happened overnight.
I don’t think that it was ever realistic to think that we were going to get a well-functioning democracy quickly in Iraq, even if we managed to get votes much more quickly than most predicted. Anyone who has studied military history knows that wars, and insurrections, are generally long protracted periods of one disaster after another, until one side finally throws in the towel. World War II was a series of bloody blunders, in both theaters, but we had the will and the resources to continue on regardless until the enemy was finally defeated. That’s why I was never as critical of Bush and Rumsfeld as many were. Not to say I think the decisions flawless, but sometimes things have to happen at their own pace, regardless of tactics. The only wars that America has lost are those in which it got tired, and gave up.
One fears that the attention-deficit, teevee-remote, video-game generation won’t have the patience to win the long war against our new ideological enemy, which is likely to continue for decades, as our war against totalitarian communism did. But give the president credit for standing firm in the face of the surrender demands of the Democrats after the election. I think that history, however else it judges him, will be kind to him in that regard, and less so to the Reids and Pelosis.
We’ll never know, of course, if more troops or better tactics would have gotten us to this point sooner, though if we have to do something similar in the future, we may take some lessons from Iraq, and try it. But history doesn’t really allow controlled experiments. In any event, while Senator McCain can be praised for consistency, it remains unobvious to me that his prescriptions would have been as effective at the time as he wants to claim now.
That’s what John McCain is saying about his stance on Iraq, and the consistency with which he’s been calling for more troops from the beginning. And he’s right, he has.
The problem is, I remain unconvinced that more troops were the answer, then, or now. I always thought that the surge was misnamed. I think that there are two other factors that are as important, and perhaps much more important, than troop levels per se.
First was the change of tactics, in which rather than hunkering down in bases and training Iraqis to go out and fight the insurgency, Petraeus put the troops out in the field and worked with the locals.
But I think that the most important factor was simply that the Iraqis tired of the insurgency and Al Qaeda. I think that Petraeus was the right man at the right time, but I don’t think that it takes anything away from him to question how well the strategy would have worked two, or three years ago. It probably would have been better than what we were doing at the time, but I think that the time had to be ripe for the awakenings in Anbar and Diyala, and now in Baghdad. It may be that the Iraqis simply had to go through this brutal period to understand the barbarity and viciousness of the fundamentalists that were attempting to colonize them, as they had Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the benefits of working with Americans and each other, rather than trying to fight each other for the spoils of the war.
The Sunnis are probably finally coming to the realization that they are never going to rule over the majority as they had under the Ba’athists, and seem to now be ready to accommodate themselves to the new Iraq, and are trying to cut deals. Again, I don’t think that’s something that could have happened overnight.
I don’t think that it was ever realistic to think that we were going to get a well-functioning democracy quickly in Iraq, even if we managed to get votes much more quickly than most predicted. Anyone who has studied military history knows that wars, and insurrections, are generally long protracted periods of one disaster after another, until one side finally throws in the towel. World War II was a series of bloody blunders, in both theaters, but we had the will and the resources to continue on regardless until the enemy was finally defeated. That’s why I was never as critical of Bush and Rumsfeld as many were. Not to say I think the decisions flawless, but sometimes things have to happen at their own pace, regardless of tactics. The only wars that America has lost are those in which it got tired, and gave up.
One fears that the attention-deficit, teevee-remote, video-game generation won’t have the patience to win the long war against our new ideological enemy, which is likely to continue for decades, as our war against totalitarian communism did. But give the president credit for standing firm in the face of the surrender demands of the Democrats after the election. I think that history, however else it judges him, will be kind to him in that regard, and less so to the Reids and Pelosis.
We’ll never know, of course, if more troops or better tactics would have gotten us to this point sooner, though if we have to do something similar in the future, we may take some lessons from Iraq, and try it. But history doesn’t really allow controlled experiments. In any event, while Senator McCain can be praised for consistency, it remains unobvious to me that his prescriptions would have been as effective at the time as he wants to claim now.
That’s what John McCain is saying about his stance on Iraq, and the consistency with which he’s been calling for more troops from the beginning. And he’s right, he has.
The problem is, I remain unconvinced that more troops were the answer, then, or now. I always thought that the surge was misnamed. I think that there are two other factors that are as important, and perhaps much more important, than troop levels per se.
First was the change of tactics, in which rather than hunkering down in bases and training Iraqis to go out and fight the insurgency, Petraeus put the troops out in the field and worked with the locals.
But I think that the most important factor was simply that the Iraqis tired of the insurgency and Al Qaeda. I think that Petraeus was the right man at the right time, but I don’t think that it takes anything away from him to question how well the strategy would have worked two, or three years ago. It probably would have been better than what we were doing at the time, but I think that the time had to be ripe for the awakenings in Anbar and Diyala, and now in Baghdad. It may be that the Iraqis simply had to go through this brutal period to understand the barbarity and viciousness of the fundamentalists that were attempting to colonize them, as they had Afghanistan under the Taliban, and the benefits of working with Americans and each other, rather than trying to fight each other for the spoils of the war.
The Sunnis are probably finally coming to the realization that they are never going to rule over the majority as they had under the Ba’athists, and seem to now be ready to accommodate themselves to the new Iraq, and are trying to cut deals. Again, I don’t think that’s something that could have happened overnight.
I don’t think that it was ever realistic to think that we were going to get a well-functioning democracy quickly in Iraq, even if we managed to get votes much more quickly than most predicted. Anyone who has studied military history knows that wars, and insurrections, are generally long protracted periods of one disaster after another, until one side finally throws in the towel. World War II was a series of bloody blunders, in both theaters, but we had the will and the resources to continue on regardless until the enemy was finally defeated. That’s why I was never as critical of Bush and Rumsfeld as many were. Not to say I think the decisions flawless, but sometimes things have to happen at their own pace, regardless of tactics. The only wars that America has lost are those in which it got tired, and gave up.
One fears that the attention-deficit, teevee-remote, video-game generation won’t have the patience to win the long war against our new ideological enemy, which is likely to continue for decades, as our war against totalitarian communism did. But give the president credit for standing firm in the face of the surrender demands of the Democrats after the election. I think that history, however else it judges him, will be kind to him in that regard, and less so to the Reids and Pelosis.
We’ll never know, of course, if more troops or better tactics would have gotten us to this point sooner, though if we have to do something similar in the future, we may take some lessons from Iraq, and try it. But history doesn’t really allow controlled experiments. In any event, while Senator McCain can be praised for consistency, it remains unobvious to me that his prescriptions would have been as effective at the time as he wants to claim now.
In the eighties and nineties, I was a devoted reader of the Economist. It was my primary source for news (having long before given up on the pablum offered up by Newsweek and Time). But things like this are the reason that I no longer am. It would be nice if we could once again get a classically liberal news magazine.
This is a huge story if it pans out, and the headline is exactly right. Researchers create stem cells without destroying embryos. I’ve never been as upset about embryo destruction as many want me to be, but if this can take that issue off the table, it will make it much easier to forge ahead. In fact, what’s great about it is that it seems to be a much more promising technique than nuclear transfer:
…it’s not such a surprise that Ian Wilmut, the man who cloned Dolly the sheep a decade ago, recently said he has been persuaded to give up his own cloning experiments, thanks to news of Dr. Yamanaka’s successes.
“Any scientist with basic technology in molecular and cell biology can do reprogramming,” says Dr. Yamanaka. “If we can overcome the issue [of having to use dangerous viruses to ferry the genes into cells], many more people will move from nuclear transfer to this method.”
As the article notes, it’s surprising how quickly they got to this ability. We could conceivably see it in action within a decade, and perhaps within a very few years. Good news for those of us still in relatively good health. It may significantly accelerate our progress toward actuarial escape velocity.
That he himself was rebuked for failing to stay his own desire to squeeze, some say, was proof of a Natural Law above Whipple and the society he represented, but this was seen quite correctly by critics as a reflexive sop tossed to the reactionaries, a way of undercutting the existential truths Whipple
…of the Internet.
The audio of the king of Spain telling Hugo Chavez to shut his pie hole is being downloaded as a ringtone:
In Venezuela, a group of students who oppose Mr Chavez’s government have also been downloading the ringtone, a US newspaper reported.
“It’s a form of protest,” a 21-year-old student in Caracas told the Miami Herald. “It’s something that a lot of people would like to tell the president.”
As that great philosopher, Nelson Muntz (more than) once said, “Ha ha!”