Congressional motives: let’s not forget revenge—on Bush

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written a great many posts on the tireless efforts of Democrats in this Congress to stop the Iraq War in the face of the fact that they simply don’t have the votes necessary to override Bush’s vetoes. I’ve described their exertions variously as politically motivated wishful thinking, as theater, and as an overcalculation of their own strength, among other things.

And those efforts are continuing, despite strong evidence of improvement in Iraq and increased optimism about the prospects there for the future.

Why is Congress so stuck on pursuing a strategy that seems likely to come back and bite them? I wrote here that I see it as a combination of antiwar sentiment, placating the Democratic base in order to encourage all-important campaign contributions, and a frantic race against the clock inspired by the need to wipe the slate clean of the messiness of Iraq before what they assume will be a 2008 Democratic victory.

But I forgot another important reason. Perhaps, for some, it’s even the most important one: Bush-hatred, and the related desire to thwart him. Continue reading →

A little traveling music….

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve got a travel day today, returning from a visit with relatives in Chicago over the long weekend, reacquainting myself with a city I once lived in but haven’t seen for almost four decades. I’d heard there were various changes there—all for the better—and that seems true. Plan to write about some of them—but for now, I’m airport-bound.

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.