It looks like we may actually have a Shuttle launch in a couple weeks. The best place to stay on top of this will probably be The Flame Trench, the Florida Today blog.
The Deadliness Of Political Correctness
“Fjordman” over at The Gates Of Vienna says that we didn’t win the Cold War decisively enough, and it makes it harder to fight the new form of anti-Enlightenment totalitarianism represented by Jihad. We still haven’t put the wooden stake through the heart of Marxism.
[Via Mars Blog]
[Update in the afternoon]
Here are some related thoughts on multi-culturalism and how it will kill us as well, if we let it, from the preface of Ayann Hirsi Ali’s new book.
What’s The Problem?
Keith Cowing seems to think that Stephen Hawking is being inconsistent:
When asked about his thoughts on President Bush’s proposal to put a man on Mars within 10 years, Hawking simply replied: “Stupid.”
This, in the context of the recent story that Dr. Hawking thinks that we must colonize space for our long-term survival.
I don’t see what the problem is. It’s possible to both believe that we should colonize space, and that the current policy is a poor way to do so, for the expenditures being proposed. I can attest to this, because I do in fact believe that.
What’s The Problem?
Keith Cowing seems to think that Stephen Hawking is being inconsistent:
When asked about his thoughts on President Bush’s proposal to put a man on Mars within 10 years, Hawking simply replied: “Stupid.”
This, in the context of the recent story that Dr. Hawking thinks that we must colonize space for our long-term survival.
I don’t see what the problem is. It’s possible to both believe that we should colonize space, and that the current policy is a poor way to do so, for the expenditures being proposed. I can attest to this, because I do in fact believe that.
What’s The Problem?
Keith Cowing seems to think that Stephen Hawking is being inconsistent:
When asked about his thoughts on President Bush’s proposal to put a man on Mars within 10 years, Hawking simply replied: “Stupid.”
This, in the context of the recent story that Dr. Hawking thinks that we must colonize space for our long-term survival.
I don’t see what the problem is. It’s possible to both believe that we should colonize space, and that the current policy is a poor way to do so, for the expenditures being proposed. I can attest to this, because I do in fact believe that.
Another Blow To Old Europe
Airbus is spiralling in. Nice to be a Boeing shareholder, these days.
[Afternoon update]
Here’s more.
Time Is On The Side Of The Infidels
An interesting find in the Zarkman’s (un)safe house:
As an overall picture, time has been an element in affecting negatively the forces of the occupying countries, due to the losses they sustain economically in human lives, which are increasing with time. However, here in Iraq, time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance for the following reasons:
I particularly like this problem they seem to be having:
By undertaking a media campaign against the resistance resulting in weakening its influence inside the country and presenting its work as harmful to the population rather than being beneficial to the population.
Those evil propagandists! Only they could fool people into thinking that brutally murdering and blowing up innocent men, women and children, and kidnapping and people and making head-chopping snuff films with them, was harmful to the population.
Anyway, they must be talking about Iraqi media. I haven’t seen much of that in the western press. Most of what I read here, based on interviews with Murtha and Kerry, is that we can’t win, and must give up. Wonder what they’ll have to say about this document? Someone should ask them. But they won’t.
And note that the enemy knows who its best friends are, as evidenced by the fact that this is their numero uno strategem:
To improve the image of the resistance in society, increase the number of supporters who are refusing occupation and show the clash of interest between society and the occupation and its collaborators. To use the media for spreading an effective and creative image of the resistance.
Yup. They keep playing the western media like a finely-tuned Strad. And the western media love the tune, because they share a common enemy–George Bush.
[Update in the afternoon]
I just noticed in reading more carefully that a key part of Al Qaeda/Iraq’s strategy seems to be to foment a war between the US and Iran. We’ll have to look out for this. I wonder if the Iranian government is aware of this (and if they’ve been harboring Al Qaeda types to whom they’ll no longer be as friendly).
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here’s a story that says the Iraqi government believes that it’s broken the back of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
The mine of information from Al-Qaeda documents seized during raids spelt “the beginning of the end” for the terror group, said Iraqi national security advisor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie
“We believe Al-Qaeda in Iraq was taken by surprise; they did not anticipate how powerful the Iraqi security forces are and how the government is on the attack now,” Rubaie told reporters.
The documents had given Iraq an “edge over Al-Qaeda and will also give us the whereabouts of their network and their leaders and their weapons, and the way they lead the organisation and the whereabouts of their meetings”.
I hope they’re right, but I’ll keep the champagne chilled for now.
[Update at 3:30 PM]
One more interesting point about that letter from the (un)safe house, re: benefits to AQ in Iraq of a US/Iran war:
Numerology
They couldn’t even wait for the next thousand on the odometer. Remember the big deal the press made about the 2000th death in Iraq? Now the magic (and utterly meaningless) number is 2500:
While there were no details on who it was or where the 2,500th death occurred, it underscored the continuing violence in Iraq just after an upbeat Bush returned from a surprise visit to Baghdad determined that the tide was beginning to turn.
In other words, we’ve now lost, over a period of over three years, almost as many as died in a couple hours on the beaches of Normandy (perhaps even the same number as were lost just in training for that event). Would the media have been so hung up on these kinds of numbers during that war? It seems unlikely, but if they had (or to be more precise, had today’s media been reporting then), the story would have been something like this.
Words To Ponder
Jonah Goldberg says that we should have installed liberalism in Iraq, not democracy. There is a confusion between the two, and as he points out, introducing democracy in an illiberal society will not necessarily provide helpful results.
…many on the left see no problem singing the praises of leftwing regimes which put “equality” ahead of democracy. As Derb once put it, “Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.” But regimes which put liberty and the rule of law ahead of democracy and the like are always immediately derided as dictatorial “strong-man” regimes. I’m not saying that such criticism isn’t sometimes accurate. After all, democracy is good and tends to innoculate against tyranny and without democracy enlightened regimes often go bad. But I would still have preferred to live under Pinochet than Castro or Lee Kuan Yew instead of Hugo Chavez (or, heh, the Hapsburgs than the Soviets).
As someone who still considers himself a classical liberal, that makes a lot of sense to me, given the often ugly choices of the real (as opposed to ivory-tower) world. It’s easy to overrate and overemphasize democracy. As Churchill once said, it’s the worst possible system, except for all the others.
Dispatch From Planet Clueless
It had to be a slow newsday, with a reporter who hasn’t been paying much attention, to generate a thumbsucker like this: “Politics is clouding message of antiwar activist Sheehan.”
When Cindy Sheehan burst on the national scene, it was as an aggrieved mother whose son had died in Iraq. Plainspoken and unscripted, Sheehan delivered an easily relatable story that gave her a kind of moral authority.
OK, so what is the “easily relatable story that gave her a kind of moral authority”? Our intrepid reporter can’t be bothered to say. Just how does one derive “moral authority” from a dead son, anyway? Can someone explain this to me?
She deserved, and to the degree that she actually mourns her son (questionable, at this point–if there’s anyone of whom it could be said, in Ann Coulter’s much-criticized words, that they are “enjoying” a death, it is Mother Sheehan–she was obviously having the time of her life when she got arrested at the White House), continues to deserve our pity, but that doesn’t give her “moral authority,” absolute (to use Maureen Dowd’s silly adjective) or otherwise.
Since then, some have questioned whether Sheehan has strayed too far politically.
Gee, do ya think? What cave has this reporter been in?
And in not describing the “easily relatable story” (I guess we’re just supposed to infer it–“My son died in Iraq, you have to listen to my opinions about the war, and the war-mongering, lying terroristic Bush administration”), he can avoid telling the other side of the story. That is, she had already met with Bush once and was demanding a revisit with her Crawford histrionics, she couldn’t be bothered to put a stone on her son’s grave, her husband and son disowned her over her loony antics, etc. None of that can be found in this story. No, it’s just a noble woman who suffered a grievous loss, and who (in consorting with dictators and making common cause with the monsters who are actually responsible for killing her son) may have gone “a little too far.”
Sickening.