Vietnamization; Iraqization: (Part II)

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I here]

Whatever your opinion of President Nixon’s politics and policies, I think most of us can agree he was a strange and duplicitous man. I was not a fan, to say the least.

I watched many of his televised speeches at the time. They were not memorable, except for a few catch-phrases–mostly ridiculed by college and grad students such as myself–for example, “the silent majority.”

But in my quest to learn more about the Vietnamization phase of the Vietnam War, the part Nixon presided (literally) over, I read this speech of Nixon’s from November of 1969, in which he introduced and elucidated the concept of Vietnamization (as well as mentioning that famous “silent majority”). And it struck me that—well, see for yourselves:

…let me begin by describing the situation I found when I was inaugurated on January 20.
-The war had been going on for 4 years.
-31,000 Americans had been killed in action.
-The training program for the South Vietnamese was behind schedule.
-540,000 Americans were in Vietnam with no plans to reduce the number.
-No progress had been made at the negotiations in Paris and the United States had not put forth a comprehensive peace proposal.
-The war was causing deep division at home and criticism from many of our friends as well as our enemies abroad.

In view of these circumstances there were some who urged that I end the war at once by ordering the immediate withdrawal of all American forces.

From a political standpoint this would have been a popular and easy course to follow. After all, we became involved in the war while my predecessor was in office. I could blame the defeat which would be the result of my action on him and come out as the peacemaker. Some put it to me quite bluntly: This was the only way to avoid allowing Johnson’s war to become Nixon’s war.

But I had a greater obligation than to think only of the years of my administration and of the next election. I had to think of the effect of my decision on the next generation and on the future of peace and freedom in America and in the world.

Well, it’s always risky quoting Nixon, a deeply flawed President. He was paranoid about his enemies, and his paranoia was part of what did him in, via his illegal actions in Watergate. He initiated the notorious “secret bombing” of Cambodia. He was a man profoundly uncomfortable in his own skin, as well. And, in the phrase he used in this speech, Johnson’s war did indeed become Nixon’s war.

But whatever I might think of Nixon, I have to say that his rhetoric in this speech seems unimpeachable (to coin a phrase). Because, in fact, the abandonment of Vietnam, which finally occurred post-Watergate, in 1975, led to a worldwide sense that America had lost the will to fight. We are still feeling its effects now in terms of international perception; the jihadists certainly have taken note, as they will if we withdraw too quickly and too precipitously from Iraq. The Democratic Congress would do well to ponder Nixon’s words and his warnings:

…many others, I among them, have been strongly critical of the way the war has been conducted.

But the question facing us today is: Now that we are in the war, what is the best way to end it?

In January I could only conclude that the precipitate withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam would be a disaster not only for South Vietnam but for the United States and for the cause of peace.

For the South Vietnamese, our precipitate withdrawal would inevitably allow the Communists to repeat the massacres which followed their takeover in the North 15 years before…

For the United States, this first defeat in our Nation’s history would result in a collapse of confidence in American leadership, not only in Asia but through-out the world.

And try this on for size:

-A nation cannot remain great if it betrays its allies and lets down its friends.
-Our defeat and humiliation in South Vietnam without question would promote recklessness in the councils of those great powers who have not yet abandoned their goals of world conquest.
-This would spark violence wherever our commitments help maintain the peace in the Middle East, in Berlin, eventually even in the Western Hemisphere.
Ultimately, this would cost more lives.
It would not bring peace; it would bring more war.

Nixon went on to outline the principle that Vietnamese forces should be fighting for Vietnamese freedom. He outlined the goal of withdrawing American troops while training the South Vietnamese to take over, but he said:

I have not and do not intend to announce the timetable for our program. And there are obvious reasons for this decision which I am sure you will understand.

And then there’s the following; if more prescient words were ever spoken about Vietnam, I’m not aware of them [emphasis mine]:

In speaking of the consequences of a precipitate withdrawal, I mentioned that our allies would lose confidence in America.

Far more dangerous, we would lose confidence in ourselves. Oh, the immediate reaction would be a sense of relief that our men were coming home. But as we saw the consequences of what we had done, inevitable remorse and divisive recrimination would scar our spirit as a people…Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

Vietnamization was dismissed by many as a sham, and of course in the end our financial abandonment of the ARVN and the South Vietnamese meant we’ll never know what would have happened if we had kept up the economic support at a decent level. This article posits a believable case that, by the time we pulled the plug on the South, a turning point had been reached that would have allowed them to repel the North if they had been given the financial resources to do so. We will never know for sure, of course.

At any rate, we do know that Nixon’s Vietnamization policy did “work” in one respect: he withdrew US fighting forces from Vietnam. It occurred over a period of four years; here’s a chart that shows the pace of reduction of US combat forces, which were all gone by 1973:

The goal of withdrawal was accomplished. But Nixon’s greater fears–the loss of faith in the US, both abroad and at home–were realized. We stand on the brink of major decisions in Iraq which could cause an intensification of this realization, with far graver possible consequences.

Realism for our times*

The New Neo Posted on by

Robert Kagan and William Kristol have something to say in the Weekly Standard about the new yen for realpolitik:

So let’s add up the “realist” proposals: We must retreat from Iraq, and thus abandon all those Iraqis–Shiite, Sunni, Kurd, and others–who have depended on the United States for safety and the promise of a better future. We must abandon our allies in Lebanon and the very idea of an independent Lebanon in order to win Syria’s support for our retreat from Iraq. We must abandon our opposition to Iran’s nuclear program in order to convince Iran to help us abandon Iraq. And we must pressure our ally, Israel, to accommodate a violent Hamas in order to gain radical Arab support for our retreat from Iraq.

This is what passes for realism these days. But of course this is not realism. It is capitulation. Were the United States to adopt this approach every time we faced a difficult set of problems, were we to attempt to satisfy our adversaries’ every whim in order to win their acquiescence, we would rapidly cease to play any significant role in the world. We would be neither feared nor respected–nor, of course, would we be any better liked. Our retreat would win us no friends and lose us no adversaries.

What our adversaries in the Middle East want from us is very simple: They want us out. Unless we are prepared to withdraw, not just from Iraq but from the entire region, and from elsewhere as well, we had better start figuring out how to pursue effectively–realistically–our interests and goals. This is true American realism. All the rest is a fancy way of justifying surrender.

And the Washington Post seems to me to be suffering from multiple personality–or it just that this editorial was written by a committee? For the most part, the author[s] explain why Iran and Syria can’t be reasoned with, and do it rather well. They call for more than talks as a remedy; a “big stick” is needed. But there is a strange reliance on the supposed power of UN sanctions–not only a pipe dream at this point, but a worthless pipe dream, at that.

The Post seems relatively clear on what the problem is. But I’m afraid their solution more closely resembles a small toothpick than a big stick.

[* See this.]

“Obsession”–the Left has theirs, as well

The New Neo Posted on by

Fox News has been doing some interesting and rather gutsy things of late, not by blogosphere standards but by network standards. First, there was the Glenn Beck airing of “Exposed,” and now a recent showing of a broadcast featuring the film “Obsession.”

Some of the footage in the two works is similar or the same. Much or most of it is familiar to those who read blogs But apparently this sort of thing is news to many people.

Taking a look at it last night, I watched footage of radical jihadist Islamists ranting against the US, Israel, the Jews, and the West in the fashion I’ve come to consider typical of the genre, and it struck me that their message is the worst and most blatant example of imperialistic ambition I’ve ever seen.

Of course, I wasn’t around when Alexander was setting about his conquests, nor even for Hitler, and both were determined to have the world fall under their dominion and sway. Nor, as far as I know, were they especially secretive about their ambitions.

But there are a few things about radical Islamist jihadists that make them potentially even more dangerous. As the program pointed out, the pool of willing jihadists is potentially larger–there are more countries and people involved available for recruitment. Nazism, although theoretically appealing to any person on earth, was in fact a more local German/Austrian phenomenon; the exceptions never constituted a real movement in other countries.

Islamist jihadists have been from the start a pan-Islamic movement, and Islam covers a lot of territory already. They also have a beachfront among the Muslim population of the Western world, and can attract a certain number of followers there for perpetrating inside jobs. In addition, of course, there is the fact that the movement is based on, and feeds off, a religion rather than a “mere” political movement, and therefore is not really of this world–which gives it a far more powerful draw, and far more powerful weapons to use: eternal reward, and war for the glory of God.

But its blatant and domineering imperialism, whose goal (among other things) it to destroy human freedom and all the wonders of the Enlightenment, is minimized or virtually ignored by the Left for the most part (or even tacitly supported, as a foil to Western imperialism, capitalism, whatever “ism” offends the Left) because of its third world origins. The Left follows the rules of the PC Commandments (and if you don’t recall them, now would be a good time for a quick review).

Islamist jihadist imperialist ambitions don’t fit into the Left’s preconceived and rather rigid notions of what’s dangerous or even what’s possible. Nothing in the third world can threaten us, by definition, and everything bad about it is caused by us, by definition. And so the clear and forthright, unashamed, unrepetant threats, ambitions, and raw hatred being expressed on a daily basis in the world of the jihadi are not taken seriously, except as responses to Western crimes, both real and imaginary.

[CORRECTION: It’s been pointed out to me that Glenn Beck’s “Exposed” was aired on CNN, not Fox.}

More fun with sitemeters: reading in Tehran

The New Neo Posted on by

When I first started my blog one of the main attractions was to click on my sitemeter. It was astounding for me to see that anyone was reading here at all, and to watch the numbers climb was satisfying. There was a time when 100 visitors in a day seemed a richness beyond measure. Viewing the breakdown of countries from which they came was an occasion for more awe: someone in Japan, reading my blog? Australia, India, Kuwait?

Now, of course, I’m somewhat jaded. But never totally so; it still seems a wonderful and almost magical thing that people from all over the world can come to read the words I type (excuse me: keyboard) onto a computer in a little room on the second floor of a house in a moderate-sized town in northern New England. I’m often alone when I write and when I hit that “publish post” button. But I’m never really alone at all.

The other night I took a glance at the country distribution on my sitemeter. I hadn’t done that in a long time. What I found was a typical late-night spread here:

I noticed the one from Iran especially. I’ve found in the past that this sort of visitor is usually–although certainly not always–the result of a Google search.

So, what had brought this particular visitor to my blog? Perhaps, I thought, it was my series on the Iranian revolution, a hefty three-parter? Or my post on Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran?

No, no, a thousand times no. It was a search for discussion of Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken,” which had led to this post of mine.

So, not Lolita in Tehran, but the quintessential New England poet Robert Frost in Tehran. Somehow, that made me very happy. Call me a cultural imperialist if you wish (and I’m sure some of you will wish), but I like to think that people everywhere have the same basic underlying makeup, and the same response to beauty and the truths expressed in great literature.

Leftovers: the day after

The New Neo Posted on by

For some it’s Black Friday–biggest shopping day of the year. For me, though, it’s the day of the leftovers. I’m taking the day off from blogging and just having fun with family, friends, and food. Not a bad combination. See you tomorrow!

Happy Thanksgiving: and here’s your pre- or post-prandial podcast

The New Neo Posted on by

I hope everyone is now safely ensconced with the relatives and friends of your choice, with the turkey about to be eaten, or roasting away merrily in the oven, right on schedule.

In my family (I’m here in NY, by the way) we tend to have a late, leisurely, really fine meal. This year features a reunion of sorts with various distant and usually unseen familial elements; should be interesting.

Hope you have a lot to be thankful for. And hope that one of those things is the latest Sanity Squad podcast, one with a Thanksgiving theme. (How’s that for a segue?)

Listen to it pre- or post-dinner (I would not suggest during). And a wonderful holiday to all–even to my friends around the globe who don’t celebrate it!

Talking with the enemy: Syria and Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

[The follow-up second part of yesterday’s post on Vietnamization and Iraqization is coming soon. It was postponed for this one.]

Assassinations are a dime a dozen in the Middle East. Lebanon, in particular, has seen quite a spate of them within the last two years.

And now it’s Industry Minister Pierre Gemayal’s turn. His death is a whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie, most especially And Then There Were None:

Anti-Syrian Parliamentary leader Saad Hariri interrupted a press conference to accuse the Syrian regime of “trying to kill every free person” in Lebanon.

“The cycle (of killings) has resumed,” he said.

The usual suspects? Syria. With Iran perhaps somewhere in the mix. With the resignation of Shiite Cabinet ministers about a week ago in a bid for power and control by Hezbollah (see this), the idea is to topple the fragile “Cedar Revolution” government.

It’s the old Mideast dilemma: how can a democratic government stay in power, when murderous thugs who will stop at nothing to undermine that government see it (and all non-thug governments) as inherently weak? Beats me. But that’s what realpolitik was all about; the propping up of a thug who was “our thug,” but a thug nevertheless, because thuggery was seen as necessary to fight even worse thuggery.

One of the few silver linings in the dark Lebanese cloud is this: “Lebanese Murder May Weaken Push in US to Engage Syria in Iraq.”

Was there ever really such a push, and how strong was it? I can’t bring myself to believe that the Administration was ever that insane. Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, seems to agree with me. He says that deeper U.S. engagement with Syria on Iraq “was unlikely and is now even more unlikely.” Sounds reasonable to me.

James Baker may think otherwise. But how did his Iraq Study Group suddenly get elevated to superstar status? It will be making recommendations, it’s true. But we don’t even know what those recommendations are yet, although Baker himself is on record as advocating (as a general principle, at least) talking with the enemy.

But all rumors of the recommendations the Iraq Study Group will make seem to be just that at the moment–unsourced rumor, reverberating in the echo chamber that is the MSM. And, even if the MSM turns out to be correct, and the ISG does end up making a recommendation to talk to Syria and Iran re Iraqi “stabilization,” no one need act on those recommendations.

Mary Madigan thinks such talk would be like trying to negotiate with the Mob. I like the analogy, except that the mob had far more honor and far less power than these guys in Syria and Iran. Tony Blankly, in an article in RealClearPolitics, writes what appears to me basic common sense on the matter:

Iran has been our persistent enemy for 27 years — Syria longer. They may well be glad to give us cover while we retreat, but that would merely be an exercise in slightly delayed gratification, not self-denial, let alone benignity.

What’s up with this belief in the power of talk? Yes, sometimes, if there’s something in it for them, one can talk with the enemy and convince them to cooperate in an endeavor that gives them some sort of secondary gain. Or, it can work if we couple it with a big enough threat; but our threats are getting a bit hollow these days.

I read this editorial, and especially the quoted paragraph that follows, over and over, trying to parse some sort of sense from its Alice-in-Wonderland reasoning. I failed; perhaps you can enlighten me:

There is little doubt that Iran and Syria, especially the former, can play a crucial role in bringing peace to Iraq. Teheran’s influence on Iraq’s Shia political alliance and their numerous militias is hardly a secret. Iran has skilfully used its friends in Iraq to send the message to Washington that it could add to its woes, if the US pressured it on the question of nuclear programme.

Let’s see; I could paraphrase it something like this:

There is little doubt that the fox can play a crucial role in bringing peace to the henhouse. The fox’s raids on the chickens are hardly a secret. The fox has skillfully sent a message to the chicken farmers that it could add to their woes, if the chicken farmers tried to shoot it.

Even for therapists–and therapists believe in talk–there’s a time when talk is not appropriate–in dealing with relationships in which there are massive differentials of power, and ones that involve violence, for example. That’s when the law steps in.

There’s an almost unbelievably ridiculous and misplaced faith in talk across the land, a faith not-above-board players such as Syria and Iran do not share. They view our devotion to talk and to pacts and truths as a wonderful opportunity to exploit the naivete and weakness of the West. And they are right.

Munich was a wonderful talkfest, as well. And the ever-eloquent Churchill had something to say about it, too:

…[T]he terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: “Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting”. And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

Churchill didn’t want a world war; he wanted to prevent one by taking a stand at the right time for the right thing. But he knew that trusting the words of an enemy such as Hitler was no way to go about avoiding one; au contraire.

[ADDENDUM: Victor Davis Hanson agrees.]

Vietnamization; Iraqization (Part I)

The New Neo Posted on by

Wars tend to be hard on Presidents as well as on nations. Lincoln barely survived the Civil War before he was assassinated. Wilson’s health permanently deteriorated in the immediate aftermath of WWI, when he undertook a grueling speaking tour in a vain attempt to rally the country around support for the League of Nations. FDR died shortly before WWII ended, leaving the unseasoned Harry Truman to make vital decisions at its conclusion.

The Vietnam War was a bit different; no executive died (although my guess is that it may have hastened the death of Johnson, who already had a bad heart). But there’s little doubt that it prematurely ended the political career of Johnson, who’d been elected in a huge landslide in 1964 but declined to run in 1968. And of course Richard Nixon, the proximate cause of whose political demise was Watergate rather than Vietnam, had to leave office before the war was over, leaving the unelected Gerald Ford to preside inneffectually over Congress’s final financial abandonment of the South Vietnamese.

President Bush is still with us, despite the war (and those who wish he’d drop dead). This time, the casualty was Republican control of Congress. The Iraq War will have been started by a Republican executive paired with a Republican Congress, and will now be continued by a Republican President (at least for now) and a Democratic Congress.

Many people who have only a passing acquaintance with the history of the Vietnam War fail to realize that the first phase, escalation of American combat forces in the country, was engineered by two Democrat Presidents (Kennedy but then much more importantly Johnson) and a strongly Democratic Congress. The second part–Vietnamization, or the drawing down of US combat forces, ceding the actual fighting to the South Vietnamese–was undertaken by a Republican executive, Nixon, working with a profoundly Democratic Congress. The third stage, occurring when there were no more US combat troops in Vietnam, was presided over by a weak and unelected Republican President and a Democratic Congress, although it was the Democratic Congress that was the main player in the cutoff of funding to the South Vietnamese, sealing their fate; President Ford was active in that decision mainly by his failure to fight it, or to suggest alternatives. We can say that the Vietnam War was a bipartisan affair, but Democrats had the leading role, especially in stages one and three.

Why am I bringing this up now? We seem to be facing a decision somewhat similar to that faced by Nixon on his election: how to deal with a war that isn’t going as anyone would have hoped. This commission or that commission or the other commission is studying the problem: realpolitik or not? more troops or fewer? big, long, or home?

Victor Davis Hanson, an expert on military history, has recently written a column in which he weighs current suggestions for Iraq policy, especially troop increases. He says–and I agree–that it’s the second stage of the Vietnam War our present involvement should try to resemble (only we need to accomplish it more effectively, of course): that of Vietnamization.

In contrast to Vietnam, the US political parties involved in the Iraq War are somewhat reversed. The first stage of the Iraq War (if this election can be said to mark the end of the first stage, which I believe it does) was as much a Republication endeavor as the first stage of Vietnam was a Democratic one: Republican President, Republican Congress. And now, although the change of party power is different than it was in 1968 (change of legislature rather than executive) the Democrats get a chance to try their luck at the second stage, Iraqization, just as the Republican Nixon did back in early 1969 when he introduced Vietnamization. It can either be done slowly and carefully, or quickly and recklessly.

As with all parallels to Vietnam, this one is far from an exact comparison. For one thing, President Bush and the Defense Department have been trying for years to Iraqicize the conflict, although without enough success. Another difference is that the American presence in Iraq has never been close to what it was in Vietnam in terms of numbers or casualties. We deposed Saddam’s regime at the outset of the war, and in record time; we never achieved that goal in Vietnam with the North Vietnamese (in fact, it doesn’t really seem to have been one of our goals there). In Iraq, we’re facing a conflict that’s less clear geographically (although Vietnam was far from clearly demarcated), and involves far more sides, including ancient religious clashes as well as modern-day jockeying for secular power, and an enemy that’s even more brutal than the North Vietnamese were (and that’s saying something).

Vietnam became a war in which both Democrats and Republicans had a chance to make decisions. Peggy Noonan writes, reflecting on the change represented in the recent midterm election:

We are in a 30-year war. It is no good for it to be led by, identified with, one party. It is no good for half the nation to feel estranged from its government’s decisions. It’s no good for us to be broken up more than a nation normally would be. And straight down the middle is a bad break, the kind that snaps.

“Vietnamization” was a word that became a sort of joke to many liberals and those on the Left, representing the shoring up of a corrupt regime in South Vietnam, the secret bombings of Cambodia (and thus, more deception to the American people), and the final retreat and abandonment of the country. In Part II, I plan to take up a discussion of what Vietnamization actually was, and how it might relate to the decisions we face today.

You heard it here first: Charles Rangel, the draft, and the Hegelian dialectic

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems to me that Representative Charles Rangel’s suggestion to reintroduce the draft should get some sort of prize for cynical ploys in Congress. Granted, he’s got a lot of competition, but this one is designed to offend almost everyone, including the vast majority of his fellow Democrats, and even Rangel doesn’t think for a moment that his proposal has a chance of passing.

Whether or not he’s serious about the actual institution of an actual draft, Rangel certainly has been serious about suggesting such a thing. He did it back in January of 2003, to a resounding defeat–and, interestingly enough, Rangel was one of the defeaters: he voted against his own bill.

Those Republicans and Independents who turned on the Republican Congress this past election and either stayed home from the polls or voted for Democrats in protest may be rethinking just a bit when they learn that Rangel is going to be chairman of the influential House Ways and Means Committee. But the moving finger has writ.

And now it’s deja vu all over again, especially if Rangel has his way. Paraphrasing one of my personal heroes, Groucho Marx, Rangel said “you bet your life” when asked yesterday on “Face the Nation” if he would renew his call for a draft.

What’s motivating Rangel, besides the desire for publicity? He says he thinks a draft would make future administrations more wary of going to war in the first place; no doubt he’s studied the Vietnam years and knows that the war protests were at least partly fueled by the understandable self-interest of the youth of America, who were reluctant to be drafted into a far-off war that seemed both unwinnable and strategically unnecessary. But Rangel also says he wants the army to be more socioeconomically even-handed; he believes it’s the poor who are exploited by the present system.

Of course, Rangel is ignoring the evidence that indicates the composition of today’s armed forces do not at all correspond to his vision (see this, for example.) Perception is all, after all. Not to mention the fact that the highly specialized nature of today’s military does not lend itself to a draft.

Even among his constituents, many seem to regard Rangel as a sort of buffoon or even the enemy:

Along 125th Street in New York City on Sunday, Rangel’s draft plan was met mostly with derision.

“What, he was smoking pot or something?” said 58-year-old James Brown [no; not this James Brown].

“He doesn’t represent the people of Harlem if he’s for the draft,” Neil Davis, 48, said.

But I don’t think Rangel is dumb. In fact, he may be extremely smart. Certainly, he’s about to become a great deal more powerful when he ascends to his new chairmanship. And it occurs to me, attempting to drag some hazy facts from the dim reaches of my college memory (an era in my life that grows further and further away even as I write this), it seems to me that Rangel may be one of the few people on earth who understands the concept of the Hegelian dialectic.

Yes, you read me right: the Hegelian dialectic. As I recall, it’s one of those things where you go in one direction in order to end up in the opposite one by causing some sort of outraged reaction and backlash–but, as I said, my recollection is a trifle dim (the dialectic hasn’t come up too often in my daily life of the past few decades). So I decided to Google it.

And immediately fell into a deep morass of obfuscation. You take a look if you like; I’m weary. It reminds me of just why I decided not to become a philosophy major: impenetrability. Perhaps my interpretation of the dialectic is wrong; if so, I can count on you readers to set me straight.

But if–as I suspect–Charles Rangel understands and is operationalizing all of this, he’s got some heavy-duty intellectual chops to go with his heavy-duty audacity.

I’m just a Richard Thompson groupie

The New Neo Posted on by

I went to a Richard Thompson concert the other night.

Who’s he? Just one of those old guys (in his fities!) still churning out the music and touring round the world. He’s never become a household word despite a career that’s lasted over thirty years.

But here’s my small effort to promote one of the most electrifying and intense performers of all time. And I’m not even getting a fee, although a meeting with the guy, if anyone could arrange one, might be awfully nice (in this latter endeavor I’m inspired by The Anchoress’s call for a similar rendezvous with Bryn Terfel. Each to his [her] own).

I discovered Thompson about fifteen years ago and the minute I heard him I knew I was hooked. I was idly listening to one of those FM stations that specialize in what’s known as “folk” music nowadays, a genre that bears little or no resemblance to the folk music of my youth (I’m not complaining). Yes, every now and then Thompson, a Brit, does compose a ballad (although never a conventional one; see this) that harks back to traditional folk roots. But most of his music is indefinable, except that it partakes of his caustic, often bitter and yet poetic sensibility, and sometimes a biting humor.

And, to those of you who call me anti-Muslim, let it be said here and now that years ago Thompson converted to Sufism (not exactly mainstream Islam, of course). Which is irrelevant, except to him; he’s no Cat Stevens. The main thing is the music and the lyrics.

Thompson writes both, and it’s hard to say which is better. His recordings are good (listen to some of the cuts here, for example). But it’s live that he shines–although “shines” isn’t exactly the right word–he smoulders, and then explodes in a very controlled burn.

Thompson is an astounding guitar player; aficionados consider him the best or one of the best in the world. In person, he emanates a deceptive stillness that contains within it a coiled tension. He moves hardly at all when he plays and sings; all that energy is focused on his hands, face, and mouth. Every now and then a leg kicks out in a small karate-like action, potential energy transformed to kinetic. But within his control is an emotionality that can break the heart and reach the soul, especially through the remarkably expressive instrument that is Thompson’s voice (listen, for example, to the cut “Persuasion,” here).

I’ve seen Thompson in concert five or six times, and all of them have been extraordinary. He never flags and never gives less than his all, which is far more than most people’s all. Go see him if you can–and oh, yeah; give him my love.

[NOTE: When I wrote this piece, I had no idea how to embed YouTube videos on the blog. Now I do.

So, since one video is worth a thousand words, I’ll offer more than one. The first is Thompson in a pensive, deeply poignant mood (the music begins about forty seconds into the clip):

The second is Thompson with more flash and bite (wait for the guitar solos):

Oh here, have another. You’ll be glad you did:

Ah, just one more. Back to the simplicity that shows Thompson’s astounding versatility:

Oh, just go to You Tube and watch them all.]

That was a mighty short honeymoon: Pelosi

The New Neo Posted on by

Nancy Pelosi may have gotten the kid-gloves treatment from the media during the election, but now the gloves are off. Her championing of Murtha for Majority leader (and her simultaneous abandonment of her former deputy, Hoyer) seems to have struck a nerve.

We expected her stand to offend Republicans; that’s not news. But it offended Democrats as well, not to mention Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, previously labeled “…probably the most anti-Bush reporter currently assigned to the White House by a major news organization” by John J. Miller of National Review.

Milbank doesn’t sound all that fond of Pelosi’s track record so far, either; he seems to think this Speaker might do well to do less Speaking and just STFU.

And it’s hard to blame him, or those Democrats who are angry that Pelosi’s misguided boosting of Murtha put a damper on their victory party as well as their party unity. And then there are statements by Pelosi such as the following, made after Murtha’s defeat; it’s almost beyond parody:

Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with us. Let the healing begin.”

It’s a noble sentiment, but better suited to the pulpit than the Speaker’s podium. Perhaps she was speaking ironically? At any rate, it appears that nobody’s listening:

For Pelosi, who led Democrats back to a majority in the House after 12 years, yesterday should have been a coronation for the first woman to be speaker. Instead, her party had plunged into fratricide, and cable news was running nonstop clips of Murtha talking with FBI agents posing as sheiks in the Abscam sting.

Was this a great moment for Democrats, or “total crap”? “The latter,” Pelosi spokeswoman Jennifer Crider had to admit as she surveyed the melee outside the caucus room.

Personally, I don’t really care if the Democrats unite or not–what I care about is what they accomplish, or fail to accomplish. If they somehow, despite Murtha et al, refuse to cut and run in Iraq, and manage to force the administration into formulating a better plan for dealing with the situation in Iraq here-and-now–that would be a consummation devoutly to be wished. I’m interested in results, not who gets us there.

[NOTE: Why did Pelosi abandon Hoyer, despite his great popularity among fellow Democrats? Perhaps it’s because he’s too much of a centrist? And see this–those Blue Dog Democrats seem to be up for another Pelosi challenge. I wish them well; Hastings is a lousy choice, but Pelosi appears determined to strong-arm her candidates into place over the objections of many, rather than having learned the lesson of the Murtha defeat. “Peace on earth” indeed.]

[ADDENDUM: I mentioned the Pelosi-bashing in the Post; Tigerhawk notices something similar at the Times.]

[ADDENDUM II: It occurs to me that this honeymoon was so short and unsweet that some Democrats might prefer an annulment.]

Glee may be premature, on both sides

The New Neo Posted on by

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the largest newspaper in Iran during the 1970s. Ever since, he’s been writing about the Middle East and Iran for a wide variety of Western papers, as well as the Arab News and the pan-Arab daily Asharq Alawsat. You might say he’s well-versed in the region.

Taheri sees the Islamist totalitarian jihadis as jubilant after last week’s US election. In fact, as Taheri describes them, our enemies of that ilk from Baghdad to Tehran to Beirut–and everywhere in-between–are probably far more gleeful right now than even the Democrats in Congress. The former view the election as a sign of America’s weakness, and are convinced the fix is in for Iraq: it’s cut and run time. Showing those films of American helicopters on the roof in Saigon seems awfully prescient for Saddam, who even as he marches off to the gallows may get to shout a triumphant “I told you so!” to his former subjects.

Or maybe not.

Maybe one of the reasons the Democrats aren’t feeling so sanguine is that they realize, as Taheri says; it’s one of those “be careful what you wish for” things:

Some Democrats may have promised cut-and-run. But, once in power, the party as a whole may realize (to its horror) that, this time, those from whom Americans run away will come after them.

Leaving Iraq precipitously is by no means a foregone conclusion, even with the Democrats in power in Congress. The jihadis make an error if they automatically assume that it is. Although there’s no denying that Taheri is correct–this election sends a very bad message regarding American resolve–as he also points out, the Democrats might surprise the Arab world by countermanding that message.