Veterans Day, Armistice Day

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, indeed, I am that old—old enough to remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day. The change in names occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II and its veterans.

Since then, the original name has largely fallen out of use—although it remains, like a vestigial organ, in the timing of the holiday, the Monday closest to November 11th, which commemorates the day the WWI armistice was signed (eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month).

I’m also old enough–and had a teacher ancient enough—to have been forced to memorize that old chestnut “In Flanders Fields” in fifth grade—although without being given any historical context for it, I think at the time I assumed it was about World War II, since as far as I knew that was the only real war. Continue reading →

Separated at birth?

The New Neo Posted on by

This is the fruit of seeing “Lawrence of Arabia” on TV one day recently, and “Doctor Zhivago” on another:

peteotoole.jpg

julie-christie.jpg

And I’m not the only one who sees a resemblance (see first question here).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an early photo of Peter O’Toole that shows one of the most distinctive traits he shares with Julie Christie—the pale but intense blue blue blue of their eyes, almost phosphorescent.

Yon’s iconic photo; more Congressional shenanigans

The New Neo Posted on by

It used to be that the mainstream media would seek out and publish photos like this one. Now it seems to be up to bloggers such as Michael Yon.

Actually, to be fair, the time when the MSM was publishing that sort of thing wasn’t so very long ago. One example that immediately comes to mind is the toppling of the Saddam statue at the end of the conventional Iraq War. It was covered heavily by the press, although the incident was later found to be US Marine-inspired and led.

Photographs are powerful propaganda tools for shaping public opinion, whether they represent staged, partly staged, or totally spontaneous events. Even the famous WWII Iwo Jima photo, to which the recent Yon photo has been compared, has been accused (wrongly, it seems) of having being staged. And of course there’s the ongoing controversy about the al Durah videotape and photo, which I’ve written about at great length (see the category “Paris and France2 trial” on my right sidebar; also see Richard Landes’ fine work on the subject).

What does this Yon photo represent, and why is it important? After all, it’s merely a photo of a single incident—as, of course, are all press photos. But it is also a symbol, as all press photos are, and this one illustrates the growing cooperation in Baghdad between disparate groups. Continue reading →

Shooting elephants: Musharraf, Pakistan, and Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

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 criticized. We who are fortunate enough to live in this country look at his actions and see violations of all we hold dear in government.

But what were his alternatives, and what are the alternatives for Pakistan? Here’s some food for thought, neither tasty nor pleasant, but probably realistic:

…the potential ruling of the Supreme Court invalidating his October reelection…would have left the country without a constitutional president, which would have only deepened the current constitutional crisis. He would not have stepped down as president of course ”” at this point the “constitution” of Pakistan is so FUBARed that nobody even knows quite what it is anymore, and purely formal questions would have made it necessary to invoke a “state of emergency” ”” which here really meant little more than “I’m going to shut the Supreme Court up before the Supreme Court rules that Pakistan has no legitimate government.” I would remind you as well that [chief supreme court justice Iftikhar] Chaudhry is a post-Musharraf-coup judge who came to be chief justice when he sworn an oath to Musharraf’s provisional constitutional order of 1999 ”” precisely the same oath he now decries.

In Spanish we have a saying, if you shoot an elephant, make sure you kill him with the first shot. Musharraf’s real mistake was to dismiss Chaudhry in March without “killing him” politically ”” now Chaudhry is on a rampage, a personal vendetta, and has the standing ”” and grass-roots prowess ”” to consider a kind of coup against Musharraf, provided he can gain army backing.

The dreadful truth is that, as I’ve written here in a slightly different context, the choice in many countries seems to be between the Scylla of dictatorship and the Charybdis of anarchy—or worse. Continue reading →

Liberty, marriage, divorce

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been slowly reading Allan Bloom’s 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind. It’s a fascinating discussion of trends in higher education that have only continued—and accelerated—in the ensuing years, so that even though some details in the book may be dated, the main points are not.

Bloom ranges further afield than merely discussing how academia—and I quote here from the cover of his book—“has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students.” The work is filled with trenchant and pithy observations on a wide variety of other matters in our society.

I’ve written recently about marriage and divorce, here and here. The number and tenor of the responses—one hundred and fifty-five comments so far, and still counting—are a good indication of how much emotion and controversy the subject generates.

In his book, Bloom sees the modern breakdown of the family as having its roots long ago, in the rise of the championing of individualism as a value to support. Continue reading →

Hillary: “flailing?”

The New Neo Posted on by

The problem that began for Hillary Clinton in the debate a week ago seems to be lingering on. According to Yuval Levin at The Corner and Mickey Kaus at Slate, the issue is not so much her position on the issue itself—licenses for illegal aliens—as what the incident and her subsequent behavior reveals about her personality.

Kaus describes her as “flailing,” not a good image for someone who wants to convince us she’s made of Presidential timber. And Levin describes her campaign as “panicked.”

Although both statements contain a bit of hyperbole, I agree that Hillary is showing traits that are counterproductive to the image she wishes to project: firm, unflappable, cerebral; a cool head in a crisis. I’m not a Hillary hater, although back in my liberal Democrat days I was only a lukewarm Clinton supporter at best. There was just something too slick and smarmy about him, too laserlike about her.

I agree with Kaus that Hillary would do best to take a stand, then quit fussing with the subject and move on. The current brouhaha is not all that important except as a revealer of character. It shows her as a person who is more easily flustered than we may have thought.

I’ve said before that I’m already very tired of this election, and we’ve still got a year to go. But one benefit of the incredibly lengthy Presidential campaign process these days is that it takes stamina on the part of the candidates, and over time it continues to reveal character. Stamina is a trait that’s very much needed in a President, and character issues are vital in evaluating how a person would perform in that terribly pressured role.

The campaign marathon may seem endless already, but it’s really just getting going. We’re nowhere near Heartbreak Hill yet, but we’re learning more and more about the toughness of the participants.

Toughness is an odd trait. We all need a certain amount of it, and Presidents need far more than most. Too much qualifies as ruthlessness and coldness, too little as weakness. But no one ever said running for President was easy.

Just wondering…

The New Neo Posted on by

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 Iraq continues to decline, civil order continues to improve, and it ends up being a viable and functioning country—and an ally—within the next couple of years.

In other words, what if the new counterinsurgency methods of General Petraeus really have reversed a situation that as recently as last spring looked exceedingly dire, and had many declaring it was already lost?

If so, these would be my questions:

If things turn out well in Iraq, will it finally put the ghost of Vietnam to rest?

If things turn out well in Iraq, will naysayers Reid and Pelosi and Edwards ever say they were wrong?

I have a strong feeling that the answer to both these questions is “no.” This is partly because the Vietnam War years were so searing and the scars so long-lasting, and partly because Vietnam has been so useful for the antiwar side to invoke in order to rally feeling against any subsequent war involving complexities, hardships, or errors of execution. In addition, the Iraq War itself has already caused so much division and anger that even victory will probably be defined as just not worth it by many of those opposed to the undertaking. It is also because admitting misjudgment is an exceedingly difficult thing—and that’s a phenomenon hardly limited to Democrats.

But if things do turn out well in Iraq then I, for one, will be deeply grateful that the Democrats lacked enough votes to achieve their goals of prematurely cutting off the surge and pulling out of that country. Of course, had they been able to do so, history would probably have said they were correct to do so because the Iraq War was manifestly unwinnable.

History isn’t really all that good at evaluating alternatives to what actually happens. Most of the time, it’s difficult enough to understand what did happen, much less to understand the ramifications of what did not. The latter seems to be a matter for the alternative history science fiction writers, not the historians.

The iPod vs. the Top Twenty

The New Neo Posted on by

I (heart) my iPod.

Regular readers of this blog know I’m not the most technologically advanced of people. But although I may be slow on the uptake, I did finally join the trend a few months ago when I became a proud and pleased iPod owner.

It took me a while to learn the basics. But after downloading a ton of music onto it—and spending a bit of money at the iTunes library along the way—I found it a great pleasure to have all those old and new favorites quite literally at my fingertips.

No, I haven’t turned into one of those iPod zombies one sees so often on the street and in the subway, lost in their own world of unending music on demand. Nevertheless, buying the iPod turns out to be only the tip of an expensive iceberg. I’ve successfully resisted the full complement of chic accessories, but I’ve experimented with various earbuds and diverse methods of hooking the iPod up to the car stereo so I can have my music while I drive.

Much as I love my iPod, I’ve perceived over time that it has its own subtle drawbacks. Continue reading →