Orwell knew full well how important this sort of erasure of history by the Obama campaign is, although he didn’t envision the help of the internet’s wayback machine in reconstructing the vanished past. Do Obama’s scrubbers realize that such a … Continue reading →
The Obama camp says the McCain campaign is wrong to accuse him of playing the race card in the following remarks Obama made while addressing a crowd in Missouri yesterday: Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer … Continue reading →
Obama’s fast becoming nearly as famous for gaffes as Yogi Berra. But Berra’s often made sense; Obama’s never do. That said, not all of Obama’s errors are created equal. Some fall into the category of slips of the tongue—after all, … Continue reading →
Today is Mayday. As a child I was confused by the wildly differing associations the word conjures up. It’s a distress signal, for example, apparently derived from the French for “come to my aid.” That was the first meaning of … Continue reading →
Science and sport—and Speedo—(how’s that for alliteration?) march on. In the drive for human progress, the competitive swimsuit has undergone a remarkable transformation. Some of us, of course, merely hope that our swimsuits will manage to hide rather than reveal … Continue reading →
First we had the new counterinsurgency manual. Now the army has a new operations manual with an emphasis on postwar stabilization. This is referred to as a “newly minted doctrine” and “a major development that draws on the hard-learned lessons … Continue reading →
The book A Better War by Lewis Sorley has just gone on my all-too-lengthy must-read list (to find the book review, scroll down a bit after you click on the link). Yes, more “Vietnam revisionist” history. Dismissed by those who … Continue reading →
Pakistan faces a crisis. President Musharraf has gone a route that appears to be highly tyrannical—declaring a state of emergency, suspending human rights guarantees, and arresting his enemies (including the head of the Supreme Court). For this, he’s been roundly … Continue reading →
Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that Andrew Bolt is right, and that we’ve already won in Iraq. Or if that’s too utterly unbelievable for you, let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that the violence in … Continue reading →
This TimesOnline piece points out that things are going relatively well in Iraq today, and yet many people have their own reasons for refusing to acknowledge that fact: The current achievements, and they are achievements, are being treated as almost … Continue reading →
For quite a while now the liberal/Left position vis-a-vis 9/11 has been that those on the Right are a bunch of namby-pamby fraidy cats, motivated by an unwarranted and pathological fear of terrorists. Or, alternatively, that the Right is not … Continue reading →
Those who are so certain they know how history will judge George Bush—or any other president, for that matter—show their ignorance of history itself. It’s not just that contemporary perceptions of a leader are often quite different from their evaluations … Continue reading →