War Commentary

Being Killed By False Guilt

Shelby Steele has an important essay on the false consciousness of the left, and Europe:

The West is stymied by this extremism because it is used to enemies that want to live. In Vietnam, America fought one whose communism was driven by an underlying nationalism, the desire to live free of the West. Whatever one may think of this, here was an enemy that truly wanted to live, that insisted on territory and sovereignty. But Osama bin Laden fights only to achieve a death that will enshrine him as a figure of awe. The gift he wants to leave his people is not freedom or even justice; it is consolation.

White guilt in the West–especially in Europe and on the American left–confuses all this by seeing Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is so terrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism and colonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Western world, a politeness. But Islamic extremists don’t hate the West because they are oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppression and colonialism–not their continuance–forced the Muslim world to compete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to the sense of defeat that turned into extremism.

But the international left is in its own contest with American exceptionalism. It keeps charging Israel and America with oppression hoping to mute American power. And this works in today’s world because the oppression script is so familiar and because American power cringes when labeled with sins of the white Western past. Yet whenever the left does this, it makes room for extremism by lending legitimacy to its claim of oppression. And Israel can never use its military fire power without being labeled an oppressor–which brings legitimacy to the enemies she fights. Israel roars; much of Europe supports Hezbollah.

Fortunately, at least in England, the left may be finally waking up to reality:

It is amazing how a few by-election shocks and some madmen with explosive backpacks can concentrate the mind. At any rate, British citizens, black and white, can move onwards together

Space

Continuing Giggle Factor Decline

There’s a very friendly article toward NewSpace in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required, sorry) based on the reporter’s interview with Clark Lindsey. It notes the disconnect between the science-fiction reality in which we live in many respects, and the woefully slower pace of space development, relative to what we thought we’d have:

…the Pluto debate was another unhappy reminder that except for a few astronauts, we’re stuck down here on Earth long after sci-fi paperbacks predicted we would have been occupying moon bases or exploring Mars or mining asteroids. It’s not as if we haven’t seen an enormous amount of technological progress in recent decades. In some ways, we live in a science-fiction world: We carry massive music collections in our pockets, conduct real-time conversations with people across the globe for fractions of a cent and can spend hours playing (and even making money) in hypnotically detailed virtual worlds. Pure cyberpunk, down to the jihadis exchanging deadly tips on hidden message boards.

But at the same time, the science fiction of “out there” seems stillborn — 25 years after the first space shuttle took off, it’s news if it returns with all aboard safe and sound. Space elevators and moon bases? C’mon, kid: Your square-jawed rocket engineers of future histories past are now tattooed, pierced software engineers coding social-networking sites. Pluto’s a faraway place in more ways than one.

Or is that too pessimistic? Is there another way into space, one that isn’t dependent on the fitful attention of big government and the iffy performance of big bureaucracies?

Clark S. Lindsey, for one, is optimistic. Mr. Lindsey is a Java programmer and space enthusiast who runs the blog www.spacetransportnews.com. Last summer, a Real Time column being decidedly mopey about the future prompted a letter from him, contending that we’re at the start of a private-industry-led era in space development, one that would develop more quickly than many disappointed sci-fi fans like me thought. (His letter, and other reflections on space exploration, are available here.)

…As sketched out by Mr. Lindsey, it sounds convincing — aided, perhaps, by the fact that I desperately want to believe it. Once thing that does seem certain is this: If we’re to shed our disappointment, we have to let go of space exploration as it was, and accept how it will be. Don’t think of the race to the moon as a first step to Mars and beyond — that’s a perspective best left to history books that will be written centuries from now, if we’re lucky. Instead, consider the space race of the 1960s a mutation of cold-war competition, a peaceful contest that caught the imagination of a more-uniform society that united behind it. Put that big-government model from your mind, and the relatively small scale of private-sector efforts to get into orbit may catch your imagination, instead of just arousing cynicism and disappointment.

General

Up Go The Shutters

I was hoping to avoid it this year, but that was wishful thinking. It is ironic, though, that the first hurricane of the season is coming right up the Florida peninsula. Hope it’s not a harbinger of the next two or three months.

The scary thing is that the NHS is saying there’s a possibility of strengthening to a two or three before it heads into the swamp. It would probably lose some strength over land, but a semi-major hurricane coming all the way up Florida, then continuing on up the coast into the Carolinas is going to cause a lot of cumulative damage, even if it’s not as intense as Katrina was, particularly considering property values in south Florida. I just hope the track doesn’t shift even further east and scrub us directly or from just off shore, in which case we might actually have to evacuate due to potential for flooding from surge.

It should also be noted that the track of this storm takes it just to the west of KSC. They’ll have to roll the Shuttle back (or at least start preparing for it–they could change their minds for a period of another day or so). Probably no launch this week (and maybe none next unless they can get some kind of accommodation with the Russians to resolve the schedule conflict with the Soyuz mission).

War Commentary

Israel’s Tet Offensive?

In an interesting analysis, Dan Gordon writes that Hizbollah lost, and Israel won, except in the press:

What they failed to gain militarily they accomplished through the manipulation of the Western Media, which were their willing dupes and through the ineptitude and weakness, if not down right appeasement of the political leadership of the International community. This has all but guaranteed that this war will be but round one.

As a result, it only delayed the ultimate war, it didn’t end it.

[Monday morning update]

I’ve had to close comments on this post. For some weird reason, it was really attracting spam–I got over two hundred yesterday, and they were continuing to hit me this morning. If you want to comment, go here. Hopefully the male enhancement hawkers won’t follow us there.

War Commentary

Israel’s Tet Offensive?

In an interesting analysis, Dan Gordon writes that Hizbollah lost, and Israel won, except in the press:

What they failed to gain militarily they accomplished through the manipulation of the Western Media, which were their willing dupes and through the ineptitude and weakness, if not down right appeasement of the political leadership of the International community. This has all but guaranteed that this war will be but round one.

As a result, it only delayed the ultimate war, it didn’t end it.

[Monday morning update]

I’ve had to close comments on this post. For some weird reason, it was really attracting spam–I got over two hundred yesterday, and they were continuing to hit me this morning. If you want to comment, go here. Hopefully the male enhancement hawkers won’t follow us there.

War Commentary

Israel’s Tet Offensive?

In an interesting analysis, Dan Gordon writes that Hizbollah lost, and Israel won, except in the press:

What they failed to gain militarily they accomplished through the manipulation of the Western Media, which were their willing dupes and through the ineptitude and weakness, if not down right appeasement of the political leadership of the International community. This has all but guaranteed that this war will be but round one.

As a result, it only delayed the ultimate war, it didn’t end it.

[Monday morning update]

I’ve had to close comments on this post. For some weird reason, it was really attracting spam–I got over two hundred yesterday, and they were continuing to hit me this morning. If you want to comment, go here. Hopefully the male enhancement hawkers won’t follow us there.

Humor

Snakes On A Plane Was Ripped Off

…from Chaucer. Figures.

Spoyler alert: If ye haue nat yet sene the performaunce of ‘Serpentes on a Shippe,’ rede nat of the romaunce, for it doth telle of the manye suprises and straunge eventes that happen in the course of the storye, and thus it mayhap shall lessen yower enjoiement of the performaunce yt self.

I just think that it’s great that he finally got a blog after all these centuries.

Administrative

Better Load Up On Canned Goods

It doesn’t look like Florida is going to avoid getting hit by Ernesto. Even the southeast coast (where I am) is in the cone, though to the extreme right side of it. I hope we’ll have a better idea of the situation by tomorrow.

[Update at noon]

Looking at the current forecast track, it’s looking an awful lot like Hurricane Charley a couple of years ago, that originally projected to come ashore in Tampa, but unexectedly took a right turn short of the goal, and pounded southwest Florida pretty hard. Batten down the hatches, Kathy.

[Update at 3 PM]

The latest Accuweather track seems way out of bed with everyone else (NHS, Weather Underground, Weather Channel). It has a much faster storm, heading up the Florida peninsula on Tuesday (forget about launching the Shuttle this week–they’ll almost certainly have to roll back to the VAB). And we’re right in the bulls eye (though at least it would be coming up through the swamp, so minimal storm surge).

Everyone else still centers it off the gulf coast, and not hitting until Wednesday. I hope that everyone else is right, but it looks like we’ll probably have to shutter up tomorrow. Anyone know why the disparity?

[Update a couple minutes later]

I just figured it out. They have their days mislabeled. They think that today is Saturday. That’s a relief, but I still don’t like the eastward trend of their track.

[Evening update]

It’s been downgraded to a tropical storm. Jeff Masters thinks there’s a good chance that it won’t be able to recover to hurricane strength in the Florida straights, and could come on shore as a tropical storm or a low-level hurrican at most.

…given Ernesto’s small size and the difficulty he is having with Hispanolia, there is hope that the expected 1-2 day traverse of Cuba will significantly weaken him. It may take Ernesto a day or two to regain hurricane strength once he emerges into the Florida Straits. This bodes well for the Florida Keys, which may dodge another hurricane. I think that only if Ernesto makes landfall north of Tampa will he have time to organize into a major hurricane.

Here’s hoping.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!