On the train home tonight, I saw but did not have a chance to talk with a Major of the Special Operations Command. He was in his BDUs, with both the "AIRBORNE" shoulder sleeve insignia and wings. But he was wearing a black beret.
Now, I don't claim to understand this whole "beret" thing you guys do anyway (though I do get the Smokey Bear, A.K.A. the "Campaign Cover," A.K.A. a "Montana Bash" hat), but I thought I knew that Airborne soldiers wore maroon berets. I didn't see a Ranger or SF tab on the guy's uniform, but I thought he would still get the Airborne beret. Or are these things issued only to units designated as Airborne (e.g., 18th Airborne Corps, 101st Airborne Div), without regard to the individual soldier's accomplishments?
I ask because heraldry is a hobby of mine; and I remember the furor when they went to issuing black berets, which had been the symbol of the Rangers before. Now I'm wondering if even Special Operators are being told to wear the "standard" beret, or if I just don't understand the rules the Army plays by with regard to its headgear.
Question
BLACKFIVE
BlackFive has a story to tell about a fellow soldier who died right in front of him. He's also got some links.
Training is dangerous. There have been years in which we have lost no fighting men to hostile fire, but I doubt there's ever been a year that we haven't lost people to training accidents. Marches are conducted in the heat. "Confidence" courses involve obstacles that are sometimes genuinely dangerous. I remember very clearly the first time I negotiated one such: I was eighteen, a great distance from the ground, without a rope or harness, and leaping into the air to catch the next rung of a giant-sized "ladder" that went up into nothing. Get to the top, climb over the top rung, climb back down. You could have died; you didn't, and you never forget that you managed to do something that seemed outrageous.
Training in jujitsu with a Marine named Ken Caton -- who was a genuine master of the art, but it's a contact sport -- I was nearly hurt, and was rendered unconscious for (I'm told) quite a while. The geography of the hold he was applying at the time is hard to put into words, but it was a leglock around my neck, with him in such a position that neither he nor the witnesses could see my precise reaction, or be sure of how tight the hold was. I lost consciousness before I could tap out, and he held on thinking I might be bluffing.
(Actually, I have a clear memory of tapping out, but all the witnesses agree that I never did. The mind plays tricks when there's no oxygen left.)
Was all this stuff dangerous? You bet.
However, we were young men, full of fire. The stuff we did when we weren't under "adult supervision" was way more dangerous. A lot of training accidents involve machinery -- helicopters, APCs. These are being handled by professionals in a professional, if high-speed and precision, manner.
When we weren't being watched, we were handling other machines (say, automobiles) in a high-speed and precision manner that wasn't the least bit professional. I can remember one little drag race on I-575 (coming back from running the O-course at NAS Atlanta/Dobbins AFB, in fact) where we passed a guy in the emergency lane at a speed I won't bother to record, returning to the road in time to miss the concrete pillars of a bridge that rose out of said emergency lane. By, maybe, six inches.
And that wasn't the worst thing I can remember doing. Not at all. I remember my father telling me many times as a boy that he could never understand how he hadn't gotten himself killed when he was younger. I never understood -- he was always so upright, so responsible! -- until I got to be about twenty-eight. It was only then that the fire faded enough that I could look back on the train wreck of youth with clear, amazed eyes.
The military involves training and honing that natural madness. It is put to a positive rather than a destructive use, to protect the Republic, her citizens and traditions. Just remember that when you read about these things. Sometimes young men get killed doing this stuff... but some of them would have gotten themselves killed anyway, maybe faster, and with less chance of any good coming out of it.
That's what it's like to be a young man. One of any account, at least.
TheStar.com - Spreading the message
'Keep it simple' is the key to the White House, failed Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean told members of his party from around the world last night.He really said that? On the day that the nation is wrapped up watching Congress, the courts, and so forth and so on fight over the life of Mrs. Schiavo, he said Republicans represent the "brain-dead"?
One major reason his party lost the 2004 race to the 'brain-dead' Republicans is that it has a 'tendency to explain every issue in half an hour of detail,' Dean told the semi-annual meeting of Democrats Abroad, which brought about 150 members from Canada and 30 other countries to the Toronto for two days.
Well, he did say this, too...
The Vermont's former governor cut short a campaign swing on Friday to return home after his son was picked up by police along with a group of his friends.... Dean was asked how he would win support of Democratic Party leaders given his frequent criticism of them and he responded that the leaders would come around once they got to know him.What really makes this latest comment so awful, though, is the fact that it doesn't contribute anything to the debate. The "country club" remark at least presents a coherent image that is accurate as far as it goes. It's only the timing that was unfortunate. The "brain dead" remark adds nothing, though, even if there were no such timing issues: calling your opponents "brain dead" is juvenile and unhelpful even if there are no external events that make the remarks seem so ghoulish.
"It is a bit of a club down there," he said. "The Democratic Party, all the candidates from Washington, they all know each other, they all move in the same circles, and what I'm doing is breaking into the country club."
On Monday, Dean winced when he heard his own words.
"That was an incredibly unfortunate phrase," he said.
"Why do I say these things?" Dean asked a press aide.
Dean's not an idiot; he just sometimes plays one on TV. I recall he had some good ideas about Social Security reform. Maybe he should be talking about that. Go ahead: take an hour or two and tell us what you think. If these are your best soundbites, "keeping it simple" is just going to make it worse.
News & Features | Vice in a vise (continued)
It's not every day you see an article in a serious publication approvingly cite Modern Drunkard magazine:
When you look back at history, all the major movers and shakers, these artists, these writers, they were all heavy drinkers. And they were totally fine. They were fully functional drunks! Look at Churchill! Look at FDR! They freed the world from tyranny, and they were drunk all the time.Well, indeed they were, though there were a few other people involved who were perfectly sober. Not as many as you might think, as European armies of the day got liquor rations. The US Navy & Marine Corps were early adopters of Prohibition. Though they had provided a daily liquor ration from the 1700s, in 1899 they put on the breaks, and by 1914 consuption was banned totally. By 1918, federal law banned alcohol within five miles of a naval station. The situation was similar in the Army during WWI, and so it was the case that our military fought the first two World Wars officially sober.
Officially, but under protest. As Bill Mauldin's Up Front reminds us in several of his collected cartoons, the first "strategic" target on liberating any French village was often the wine cellars. One I remember shows a hogshead that was broken up by the Germans before they retreated. The GIs coming in are shocked. "Them rats! Them dirty, cold-blooded, sore-headed, stinkin' Huns! Them atrocity-committin' skunks..." Another buries his face in his hands. Mr. Mauldin had a long bit of writing on the topic, as well. If any of you out there still haven't read Up Front, you should.
If drinking was an acceptable part of life in the European armies, it was a plain vice in the American forces. Yet, as Bill Mauldin and Modern Drunkard point out, the pursuit of vice didn't preclude the pursuit of virtue. It just helped to fill the long, cold spaces in between.
Blogger
Both Blogger and HaloScan are acting up. As soon as I can force them to let me, I'll have more.
Bolton
Joe Conason has a piece this week called "Bolton's Nomination an Insult to the U.N.: Latest in Bush Pattern of Appointing People Who Hate The Institutions They Are To Serve."
Not quite.
Twenty years ago, the then Secretary of State George Schultz used to welcome the Reagan administration's ambassadorial appointments to his office and invite each chap to identify his country on the map. The guy who'd just landed the embassy in Chad would invariably point to Chad. 'No,' Schultz would say, 'this is your country' -- and point to the United States. Nobody would expect a US ambassador to the Soviet Union to be a big booster for the Soviets. And, given that in a unipolar world the most plausible challenger to the US is transnationalism, these days the Schultz test is even more pertinent for the UN ambassador: his country is the United States, not the ersatz jurisdiction of Kofi Annan's embryo world government.Bolton's nomination is an affront to the UN, but it's not an insult. The UN has no dignity to insult.
Sending John Bolton to be UN ambassador is like ...putting Sudan and Zimbabwe on the Human Rights Commission. Or letting Saddam's Iraq chair the UN conference on disarmament. Or...The challenge posed by Bolton may be bracing, or it may destroy the organization. I'm rooting for the latter, myself. The world would be better off without the United Nations. I join with The New Republic in holding that the UN "performs the magic of evil."
The destruction of the UN isn't the point, however. The point is this: Bolton understands what Conason does not. The ambassador's job is to serve the US, not the UN. This is his country. It's permitted for an ambassador to be of service to his host if it does not interfere with the interests of his country. It is not permitted to go native.
The Background of Edsall Road
I went by my favorite pub north of Savannah, Molly's of Warrenton, for a pint or two today. Edsall Road was playing from two o'clock, and I stayed until the crowd got too loud to hear them -- which was about four. I therefore went home well before sunset.
I'm a semi-regular at Molly's; nobody there knows my name, but they all know my two-year-old son's name, and everybody asks me after him when I stop in. The sign they put out front today promised I'd have my ID checked both at the door and at the bar, but in fact nobody asked at all. While other folks were having their credit cards taken up before they'd see a pint, my credit was assumed valid the moment I sat down. It's a nice way to live.
Normally it's a quiet place. In fact, they've quit opening before four on most days, having run into the Southern gentleman's general prohibition against drinking before five (or at least one, if it's a very bad day, or you just really want to). St. Patrick's Day is an exception, though, as all the amateurs come out.
I don't quite know what to do with these folks.
The worst of them consort around Boston, Chicago and Savannah, Georgia. Savannah contains America's greatest Irish pub, and a large contingent of Irish citizens. St. Patrick's Day in these cities -- I've been in Chicago and Savannah on them, and assume it's not different in Boston -- is like Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The city becomes unlivable. One-day Irishmen riot through the place. Sane people stay hell and gone from what are otherwise very nice places.
Well, fun's fun. Good luck to the crazies. Everyone deserves their day, I suppose.
Happy St. Patrick's Day to the rest of you. For those of you who believe in saints, Southern Appeal has a prayer.
Samizdata.net
Our honorable brethren across the sea, Samizdata, have two interesting posts today. One is on what they call a "counterrevolution" in British constitutionalism, which is worth considering in light of Scalia's comments on US constitutionalism. That can be read here.
The other is about the current Blair government's attempts to impose global gun control. In this matter, the government in the UK has its principles all wrong. The UN, also cited in the piece, knows exactly what it is doing: it is using its pseudo-democratic mechanisms to pursue the defense of human tyranny, like always.
My wife and I were discussing gun control principles the other day. She began with the assertion that gun control was foolish because it wasn't practical; since it wasn't possible to really remove guns from the hands of criminals (as the British surely ought to understand by now), it was unwise to remove them from the hands of good citizens. People should be allowed to protect themselves.
I'm glad to say that I convinced her completely to reconsider this principle. Firearms, and particularly handguns, represent a positive good in society. The small, handy, concealable firearm is unique in that it makes equals of thuggish brutes and the elderly; or the brutes and young women, who may have children or their own bodies to protect. A rifle makes it practical for such a person to defend their home. In those places where roving gangs control the streets -- say, the Congo or Philadelphia -- that can make all the difference.
If gun control were practical, we would be thrown back into a situation in which the strong had more force to bear than the weak, and crime would simply be easier for the brutal.
We've seen this in Rwanda, as Samizdata mentions, but also the Congo. I assume you saw the piece about African victims cooked on spits and boiled alive? Didn't need guns for that -- just strong men of no character, fire and oil. Didn't need guns for the raping or mutilations either -- nature provided the necessities for the one, and a machete works fine for the other.
A firearm would have been useful for the mother wanting to protect those children. Life would be better if the villagers of the Congo kept rifles handy, instead of merely the "militias." It is a slander to use that word, as the above article does; these are merely gangs of thugs. If there were real militias, militias of the people that trained together and could rise to protect their common peace against these thugs, Africa would be a happier place.
Those are the principles we ought to use when considering the issue.
Scalia
I had time this afternoon to read this transcript of Scalia's remarks. I think he's right, from first to last.
The "Living Constitution" points to the end of Constitutionalism. It is not the only trend in that direction. Consider the question of Declarations of War, which are now done by simple Congressional votes that aren't, in fact, a Declaration of War. Thus you get what we had in the last election: a Congress that had "authorized military force" but not declared war, and thus a Presidential candidate who had voted 'to authorize force' but claimed to be an antiwar candidate. If Congress were keeping up its Constitutional duties, there would be no such wiggle room: Your Senator would be on record, for or against.
The Supreme Court's abandonment of genuine Constitutionalism is even more dangerous, because the USSC is unacountable, and because the USSC has become the "final word" on what the Constitution is and says. If Congress does something unConstitutional, you can turn to the court; but the USSC claims authority to be the last word.
You don't have to agree with Scalia on any particular case to find his reasoning compelling. He points to some real problems with the system. Unlike many who do that, he has a solution. We need more like him on the Court.
Sharp Knife
Noel picks up on an interesting fact:
In 1996, when Canadians were asked to name both the greatest living and the all-time greatest Canadian, 76 percent said "no one comes to mind."Americans, asked the same question, would have a knock-down, drag-out fight over who belonged on the list -- and who was a Nazi/Socialist/Commie who ought to just be shot. We wouldn't have a shortage of candidates, though, either for hero or scoundrel.
Yeah, I like it that way too.
The Ides of March
He was a welder, and eventually the owner of a body shop and service station catering to long-haul trucks down in Knoxville. He was the kind of man who would, and more than once did, disarm a man of a knife or a gun with his own bare hands. Oh, he had a gun -- never until he was very old was he without one. He just didn't feel the need to resort to it.
His given names were "Jackson Theodore," which tells you enough to know that my politics are honestly inherited. He didn't go by that mouthful. The world knew him as "Jack T." My father, even when he was fifty years old, still called him "Daddy" when he talked about him. He called him "Sir" when he talked to him.
You all know by now that I wear his Stetson a great deal of the time. It's a big old thing, in a color called "Silver belly" by the folks at JB Stetson Hats. [UPDATE: Yeah, that hat.] Almost everything I know about being a man I learned from him. Much of that was filtered through the stories of my father.
It's a fine day, the ides of March. Once it saw the end of a tyrant; once, the birth of a brave, free man. I hear a few other things have happened too: but surely that is enough for any day.
Grim's Hall
While pondering Joel's comments to the TR post this morning, I decided to switch the comments section to "oldest to most recent" form. Newer comments will be located at the bottom instead of the top, as is the standard for blogs.
When I first started blogging, there wasn't a standard yet, and I liked the other way better. However, I bow to the common wisdom, and hopefully will cease confusing new readers.
Southern Gentleman, Marine, Germanic Tribalist -- A Different Point of View
Daniel, who offers monthly posts on tactics here at Grim's Hall, has a post on the month of March in Texas history.
One example: the battle of the Alamo ended on March sixth, after "thirteen days of glory." Daniel ends with a quote on the great Jim Bowie:
By Hercules, the man was greater than Caesar or Cromwell- nay, nearly equal to Odin and Thor. The Texans ought to build him an altar.Hear, hear!
BLACKFIVE
BlackFive points out that Greyhawk of the Mudville Gazette is now a twenty-year man. B5 says all that needs to be said, but I'll repeat it: thank you, Hawk, and Mrs. Hawk.
Grim's Hall
A few days back, speaking of a former President, I wrote: "Courtesy and chivalry are important components of the manly virtue of honor[.]" I see today that the New Criterion has a piece on Theodore Roosevelt. The author frets -- that is the only word for it -- that Rooseveltian manliness is gone from the national character.
"Somehow America in the twentieth century went from the explosion of assertive manliness that was TR to the sensitive males of our time who shall be and deserve to be nameless," he says at the beginning of the piece; at the end, "And Teddy Roosevelt was more a philosopher than he knew. His advocacy of manliness reflects the difficulties of pragmatism and tells us something about our situation today. We have abandoned—not reason for manliness like the pragmatists, nor manliness for reason like their tender-minded opponents—but both reason and manliness. We want progress without a rational justification and without the manliness needed to supply the lack of a justification."
It seems to me he misses an obvious parallel with a more modern President:
A New Yorker by birth, he went to the Wild West, and became a Westerner by deliberate intent, or sheer will-power. He became a cowboy by impressing the other cowboys....Surely that reminds you of someone of more recent vintage?
The argument examines the philosophy of Roosevelt, the author attempting to explain it and then to seek contradictions within it. First, the explanation:
Roosevelt had his own, brazenly exclusive moralism; he liked being "in cowboy land" because it enabled him to "get into the mind and soul of the average American of the right type." His democracy satisfies not merely the average American but one of the right type. “Life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living.”I suspect a lot of this fretting comes from the author's position as a professor at Harvard. We've talked about this recently, but there are other things to say.
So much of this arises from the reaction of the upper classes to the First World War. Almost everyone knows the poem Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen. But the words, from Horace, that he called "The Old Lie" are engraved in stone at Arlington. And not only there.
Today I stopped in Lexington, Virginia, passing through on the way back here. We passed by the Virginia Military Institute, which is one of the finest military colleges in the world, along with West Point, Annapolis, and The Citadel. We stopped, by chance, just in front of Washington and Lee College. There is a memorial there, constructed to honor the students who had died in the First World War. And on a great arch above the memorial, engraved in stone, is the same line.
Is it an old lie, or is it a grim and terrible truth? Through the arch at Washington and Lee is visible the tomb of Robert E. Lee. That tomb lies beneath a chapel named for him but dedicated, as he was, to higher service. It is through such devotion -- only through it -- that what good there is in this world can arise. That was Roosevelt's insight as well.
Roosevelt's explosive devotion was, as the piece explains, the moving force behind a great wave of Progressivism that outweighs anything attempted or envisioned today precisely because there is no similar motivating force. Roosevelt rejected talk of rights, and spoke instead of duties -- another regular theme at Grim's Hall. Modern liberalism talks a great deal about rights, but has little enough concept of duty. We have surely reached the high water mark of this tide with the current movement to restore voting rights to felons, "who have paid their debt to society." No, indeed they have not; that is only a saying.
The debt owed is far greater and more demanding than that, having done wrong, you should endure your sentence. The debt is owed by all citizens. The true debt owed is this: to love and to improve the civilization into which you are born; to defend and sustain the common peace; to preserve the Republic and its freedoms; to suppress rather than to become the unjust; and to uphold the weak.
Roosevelt understood this, and it animated him in great labors to protect the poor, to preserve the land, and to raise the Republic and her principles. A Democrat today, had he the thundering voice of TR, could hammer the Republicans on this question. This recent bankruptcy reform bill is a perfect example. Exploiting people with proven incapacity to handle easy credit is immoral, like selling whiskey to the homeless. We who are not weak have a duty to protect, in at least a minimal fashion, those who are. The government has let down this duty, and allowed immoral behavior to become even more profitable than it was before. And, as with the whiskey to the homeless, this "profit" will create costs for the Republic as well as for the homeless man.
But there is no vocabulary for discussing this among the powerful of the Democratic party. The first error lies here: It wants to speak of the rights of the poor rather than their duties, and so it is incapable of adequately condemning the weakness of those who cannot handle easy credit. It will not do to make assertions that people are poor, and can't be expected to pay their bills. That sounds like an invitation to higher taxes and welfare payouts, rather than a call to restore order so that credit companies do business fairly. The first will not move the heart of much of America; the second would.
This first error gives rise to the second error: they cannot speak of the duties of the rich with any authority if they do not address the unfulfilled duties of the poor, and so they do not do that either. Instead, they appeal to guilt: that you, doing relatively well, ought to feel bad for doing so well while these others are doing badly. But you, presumably, are doing your duty to the Republic, to your family and friends. You are the only actor in this transaction who is doing his part: the debtor is not, the creditor is not, and the politicians certainly are not. You, alone, have no reason to feel bad about this. The appeal to guilt also collapses.
Therefore there are expanding Republican majorities, with the Left scratching its head as to why these common American people don't 'vote their pocketbooks.' There is a one word answer: duty. There is a seven word answer: They feel their duty to the Republic. Roosevelt, understanding that, living it, worked wonders for the Progressives.
So very much comes back to the words: Dulce et decorum est, pro patria... We think of these words, and the feelings they inspire, usually only when pondering the great national questions. They touch them all, however, from the largest to the smallest. The divide in our nation is between those who feel that the words are "the Old Lie," and those who engrave them in stone.
Indiana Printing & Publishing Co.
I'm home. This weekend marks the first time I've ever been snowed off the road. About the time we reached the southern gap of the George Washington National Forest, the weather got so bad that there was no point in trying to continue. We ended up spending a late night at a hotel in West Virginia. The roads were clearer this morning, however, and we made the passage across the Alleghenys this morning. More on that later.
There are other homecomings this week, and while heading out I encountered one of them. I flew out with three soldiers returning from Iraq. I got to talking with them because our flight was delayed for an hour. Two were Sergeants, and the other was a Specialist.
The conversation started because I asked the older of the two sergeants about his unit heraldry. I knew the 1st Cav insignia, but not the subordinate unit insignia. I haven't been able to locate it at the Institute of Heraldry, but it is very similar to the Indiana STARC. It's apparently attached to the 1st Cav, providing aviation support. They were on a long trip home, with many stops: but this was the last.
The other sergeant came over when he saw me with his companion, and he brought a great big cardboard box with him. He nodded to my hat, and said, "Let me show you my Stetson." He had lovingly packaged the thing in plastic, built the hatbox for it, and carried it to Iraq and back separate from the rest of his gear.
You can always tell a real American man because of the love he shows for his John B. Stetson hat.
We finally got underway. Because the US Army is so very generous, these fellows were seated all the way in the back for their flight home. As a consequence, I got off the plane in Indiana before they did. I knew that the old Sarge would have family waiting, because he'd had a teddy bear tied to the outside of his bag, but they had more family than I expected.
Their whole unit, from their Major down, had come out to greet them at the airport.
We're getting close to the 17th of March, when I expect that a number of you will be out somewhere hoisting a pint or two. Most likely, there will be a band playing traditional Irish music. If they're taking requests, have them play "Gary Owen." Drink one of those pints to the good lads of 1st Cavalry, who take care of their own.
On the High Road
I'm going to be travelling for the next few days. I'm not sure how much access to a computer I will have, as I'll be enjoying the beautiful (frigid, icy and snow-bound) scenery of our nation's highways. Fortunately, I'll have my 4x4, my faithful wife and a firearm, so with any luck we'll be back in good order by the end of the weekend.
In the meantime, visit some of the links on the sidebar. And maybe Eric and Daniel will take it upon themselves to keep you entertained while I'm gone.
And don't forget Eat An Animal for PETA Day. For the first one, I invented a dish called "PETA Pie," which goes something like this:
2 squirrels, skinned and butchered
1 pound ground wild turkey breast
Venison sausage to taste
3 strips bacon
1 double-crust pie shell (either frozen or, preferably, fresh-made with cracked Red wheat flour.)
Fry bacon; crumble and reserve grease. Brown all other meats; drain. Fill pie crust with meats, crumbled bacon & bacon grease. Spice to taste, including vegetables if you must. Cover with pie crust top; crimp and brush with any remaining bacon grease. Cut three slits in the top of the pie for steam. Bake at 425 degrees until contents are bubbling through the slits at the top.
Enjoy!
MSNBC - Interview: 'People Are More Hopeful'
I'm sure you all saw this interview with former President Bush, since Drudge linked to it. The same thing that interested him interests me:
I'll give you one example of the courtesy he showed me. There is one bedroom on that plane -- a government 757. There's a kind of VIP bedroom with its own bathroom. Then the next room has two tables and eight seats. He decided ahead of time that we want President Bush to have the front room, which was heaven for me, because if I don't stretch out, lie flat, I really hurt my body these days -- spoiled -- so anyway, he was going to have the other room. Well, he got in there and he wanted to play cards at night, and the next morning I got up and stuck my head in and I found him sound asleep on the floor of the plane. We could have switched places, each getting half a night on the bed, but he deferred to me. That was a very courteous thing, very thoughtful, and that meant a great deal to me.I have very strong, negative opinions about
With time to reflect, though, I have to say that Bill Clinton was a far better man than I thought he was. I retain a perfectly negative opinion of much of his staff, especially Ms. Reno. I know, too, that many of my readers retain a wholly negative opinion of Clinton himself.
Still, I can't help but feel a certain kinship with a poker-playing Southerner who feels it is important to give up the bed to an older gentleman, and who would never think of waking that gentleman out of his sleep halfway through the night in order to improve his own comfort. It is even more impressive when remembering that Clinton is himself a heart patient who nearly died only months ago.
Courtesy and chivalry are important components of the manly virtue of honor, and they impress me when I see them. The fact that there is so much to disagree about, the fact that I was sometimes horrified by certain actions the man took as President, the unfair and tenditious speeches he gave in favor of the recent Democratic presidential candidate, these things remain.
I think we must, though, remember the new facts too: his boldly pro-American words when speaking abroad to anti-American audiences; this kindness to an old gentleman. I salute the man for what he has done well. It is the sort of thing that means a great deal to me, too.
Michael Ledeen on Peter Malchin on National Review Online
Zvika, as he was known. Ledeen isn't a big influence of mine, but I thought this was a well-written and insightful portrayal of one of the 20th century's master spies.
The Spectator.co.uk
Once you've read Doc Russia's piece, below, you might try Mark Steyn's latest:
I hope if ever I find myself one of the unfortunate subjects of a totalitarian dictatorship, that it's Bush and the Republicans who take up my cause rather than the Left.Cuba Libre. It's not just a cocktail.
The other day I found myself, for the umpteenth time, driving in Vermont behind a Kerry/Edwards supporter whose vehicle also bore the slogan FREE TIBET. It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for the FREE TIBET stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing thereof will actually get under way...
If Rumsfeld were to say, "Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division go in on Thursday," the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast. But for those of us on the arrogant unilateralist side of things, that's not how it works. FREE AFGHANISTAN? Done. FREE IRAQ? Done.