9/11: six years later

The New Neo Posted on by

[My 9/11 story can be found here.]

It’s been six years since 9/11. Too long for it to remain fresh in our minds, but too soon to know how the aftermath will ultimately go. We are still engaged in what has come to be known as the “war on terror,” a phrase no one really prefers but that’s hard to replace with a better one.

For some, fighting this war is the most important task on the world agenda. For others, it has become either an excuse for the sins of the present administration, or a highly exaggerated myth against an enemy that hardly exists, or both.

On the original 9/11, these positions hadn’t yet hardened into the bitter divisions we see today. Sure, there was the blame-America-first-and-foremost crowd, already quite vocal. For an excellent example of that genre, see what the abominable Michael Moore had to say as early as Sept. 12, 2001. He highly doubts Bin Laden had anything to do with the attack, of course, and it’s just racist for anyone to even suggest such as thing. But if Bin Laden did it, it’s our fault anyway, because we trained him and we’re the real terrorists. And Bush sparked it all by not cooperating with Kyoto and—this might just be my personal favorite—by walking out of the lovefest known as the Durban conference on racism.

But Moore and others were tangential and relatively muted voices, distant enough so that I—who relied back then almost exclusively on the MSM for my news—barely heard them, and was able to imagine for a while that a time of renewed unity of purpose was at hand. Continue reading →

Another act in the surge theater: setting the stage for Petraeus’s testimony

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I’ve likened the political machinations around the surge to theater. And today, as we await General Petraeus’s testimony, the usual players are taking on their customary roles.

The MoveOn Left continues to consider it important to disqualify Petraeus as a liar and Bush stooge before his testimony even begins (“General Betray Us”). Harry Reid has his finger to the wind and is saying the Democrats will now consider withdrawing their demands for a withdrawal date. The Nation calls the surge a “cruel hoax” and discounts any positive results as fleeting and illusory, by definition. And the NY Times kicks up a lot of dust in an effort to spin the fact that the public overwhelmingly trusts military leaders such as Petraeus more than the President or Congress to report on Iraq and make recommendations on how to deal with it. Continue reading →

Osama gives a history lesson

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Here’s American History 101, the 60s according to Osama:

In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the white House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the Presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up from the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefitting from the continuation. And so Kennedy was killled….

Osama has Donald Rumsfeld as a major villain of the pre-JFK Vietnam War although Rumsfeld was a mere twenty-something aide to two relatively obscure midwestern Congressmen at that time. He only started his own political career as a Congressman from Illinois in January of 1963. And prior to 1965, the year the first American combat troops were ordered to Vietnam by Kennedy’s successor Johnson, our involvement there was limited to financial aid and military training of South Vietnamese troops.

But Osama seems to think that JFK was elected President on some sort of anti-Vietnam War platform after Rumsfeld and his aides did all this Vietnam villager killing. and that Kennedy was then killed because of his antiwar activity.

I’ve often lamented present day ignorance of history in general, and of the second half of the Vietnam War in particular, but this is ridiculous. Osama needs to get some new researchers; I think his present ones might be mixing up their Kennedys, mistaking Bobby’s 1968 antiwar Presidential campaign for JFK’s 1960 one.

But perhaps Osama and his aides don’t need to do their homework. Perhaps Osama knows that one can claim almost anything these days and get away with it. And there’s nothing better for The Cause than to say “yada yada yada VIETNAM yada yada yada VIETNAM yada yada yada….”

History is just a constructed reality anyway, right? A bunch of competing narratives, and if it suits him to make the Democratic JFK the martyred antiwar hero of the Vietnam era, the better to appeal to antiwar Democrats today, so be it. But I don’t think that even most Americans who are ignorant of history are quite that ignorant.

Berating the Democrats: Osama, meet Arianna

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What do we learn from the latest Osama videotape?

(1) He’s alive.

(2) He looks like crap, between his dyed beard and his cadaverous mien.

(3) The appeal he’s making is to the useful idiots in the US whom he sees as his de factro allies. It must be hard for them to hear him berate them for not doing enough to end the war.

Here’s Osama on the subject:

People of America, the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven’t made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there, which has led to the vast majority of you being afflicted with disappointment.

I don’t know about the “vast majority,” but Arianna Huffington is certainly “afflicted with disappointment,” and quite vocal about it.

One can forgive Osama for not having a familiarity with the American system of checks and balances, and how the veto functions. Not to mention that he may not be all that aware of how many Blue Dog Democrats there are, and how hard it is for the Democrats to actually embrace defunding the war and to re-gain their reputation as anti-military and pro-retreat.

But what’s Arianna’s excuse? Continue reading →

Bill and Bush: the comeback kids

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Bill Clinton referred to himself as “The Comeback Kid” during the 1992 campaign, when his moribund candidacy was revived in the state of New Hampshire. Now Clinton might be poised to quite literally come back—to the White House, that is, only this time as the first Presidential husband ever. We’d have to coin a phrase for it: First Man? Bill’s return would make Clinton-haters’ blood boil almost as much as would its cause, Hillary’s election.

Nixon was another famous comebacker. When he said they wouldn’t have him to kick around anymore, after his 1962 loss in the California gubernatorial election, it was hardly envisioned that he would become President just six years later.

Bush cannot ever be elected President again (do I hear sighs of relief from many quarters?) and wife Laura is highly unlikely to pull a Hillary and run. But Bush is having his own modest comeback lately. Congressional opponents who thought they had him on the ropes vis a vis Iraq and the surge have had to realize that they simply do not have the votes to override his agenda. How they ever thought they might in the first place is a mystery to me; they would have needed substantial Republican support that never seemed to be there.

The lesson seems to be that, in politics, it’s not very savvy to underestimate your opponent or count him/her out. Those who are attracted to the political fray often have an unusual and unexpected ability to bounce back.

They ain’t marching anymore: disbanding the Iraqi Army

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It’s become common wisdom to say one of the many huge mistakes of the postwar era in Iraq was to disband the army.

But it’s always puzzled me that so many people seem to think it’s a self-evident truth. I’ve wondered, for example, why people thought there was an army left in the first place, and how they thought they could reconstitute it when it had melted away by the time the invasion was over.

Would we just announce army members should appear at a certain time and place, and expect it to happen? We would get the old Baathist generals in to command them to do so, and why would they cooperate? Or would it be done by a house to house search, looking for old uniforms? Wouldn’t these have been tossed, as well as any papers that went with them? Would we go to some master list in Saddam’s defense department, and round up all the men who’d served under him, and imagine they’d make the switch easily to being in an army that would serve the occupation’s needs? Or would we vet them and sort them out, and be successful in telling who was friend and who foe—and, if so, why would this process be any better or easier than just asking for volunteers, paying them, and starting from scratch?

This is not to say that it’s a self-evident truth that disbanding the Iraqi army was a the best thing to do, either. Continue reading →

I knew it all the time: the skinny gene

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Well, of course. Scientists have discovered that certain people can eat anything and everything and not gain an ounce.

Well, duh. I could have told them that years ago.

In the early 70s I was blessed with three roommates of that sort. It was rather trying listening to them compare notes on the fattening foods they were eating in a vain attempt to pack on the pounds; sort of like eavesdropping on a club I couldn’t join, though I’d have dearly loved to.

Bags of potato chips and candy bars were seeded throughout the house, the better for them to bulk up, but to no avail. They remained very thin—skinny, even. While I? Well, let’s just say I remained “not so very thin”— except when, by force of enormous willpower during my dancing years, I kept my consumption down to one thousand calories a day while exercising like a stevedore.

I can’t really complain, though, because even though I haven’t been blessed with the skinny gene I at least seem to have been blessed with the “more or less average” gene.

At least so far. These things can change, you know. My very own mother was not just skinny but emaciated until she was a young woman. Then she became merely slender, and in midlife she finally reached average, where she has remained. And I have friends who started out skinny and ended up heavy, with no seeming change in eating habits and not even much of a difference in exercise habits. Plus, we’d all do relatively well in a famine.

And those three skinny roommates? Well, I’m still acquainted with them, and guess what? Those genes are holding; they’re still pretty skinny. And think of the fun they’ve had along the way.

Vietnam: remembering the second act

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In a recent Atlantic article by Robert Kaplan entitled “Rereading Vietnam,” the author discusses a number of books that have been given little press and short shrift by reviewers. These are histories and memoirs written by men who served in Vietnam and consider it to have been an honorable task, and they feature tales of heroism in the face of great odds.

In his piece, Kaplan mentions an anomaly in much other writing about that war: the relative absence of attention paid to its second half; its “Vietnamization,” Nixon-driven, half.

I’ve noticed this myself. It sometimes seems that, other than historians and war buffs, most people’s knowledge of even the most basic facts of the war gets cloudy after the year 1969. Continue reading →

Free the al Durah tapes

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I’ve written at some length about the France2 trial and the fact that the al Durah tapes have never been released (if interested, see my posts on the subject from October 24 to Oct 30, 2006). Here’s a petition the indefatigable Richard Landes has set up to persuade France2 that it’s time to let the public know what’s in those videos. Please sign if you agree.

Figure/ground: perceptions of the Vietnam and Iraq wars

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Remember those tests of perception known as figure/ground drawings? As a child I was fascinated by their magical “now you see it, now you see something else” mutability.

Here are two of the most popular—the vase/profiles one and the young woman who turns into the old hag (or vice versa, as you wish):

figureground.jpg

figureground2.jpg

What does all of this have to do with politics? I was reminded of the drawings by a Mark Steyn article that contained the following pithy quote about the difference between those who advocate withdrawal from Iraq and those who feel it is of the utmost importance that we stay until some stability is attained there:

Then as now, the anti-war debate is conducted as if it’s only about the place you’re fighting in: Vietnam is a quagmire, Iraq is a quagmire, so get out of the quagmire. Wrong. The ” Vietnam war” was about Vietnam if you had the misfortune to live in Saigon. But if you lived in Damascus and Moscow and Havana, the Vietnam war was about America: American credibility, American purpose, American will. For our enemies today, it still is.

Bingo.

Is anti-Americanism over in Europe? The short answer is…

The New Neo Posted on by

…no.

But it may have peaked and even be on the decline—for the moment.

This Newsweek article on the subject reads as though it were written by a committee—and, as it turns out, perhaps it was. No less than seven journalists worldwide assisted the main author, Stryker McGuire (great name, by the way), which may account for some of its inconsistencies.

There’s no missing its point of view, however. The author[s] manages to write an entire piece about how Europe has become friendlier to the US recently and yet begrudges giving Bush any credit—except, of course, for causing the previous anti-Americanism in the first place.

But anti-Americanism has a long and illustrious history in Europe. Continue reading →