Bomb, Bomb Iran (Second Verse)

Romney's Remarks at Yeshiva University - Mitt Romney April 28, 2007

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/mitt_romneys_remarks_at_yeshiv.html

"Today, America faces a number of critical challenges. In my view, at the top of the list is the threat of radical, violent Jihad and the associated threat of nuclear proliferation...

Jihadism - violent, radical, fundamental Jihadism - is this century's nightmare. It follows the same dark path as last century's nightmares: fascism and Soviet communism....

First, we have to sharply increase our investment in national defense. I want to see at least 100,000 more troops in our military. I want to see us finally make the long overdue investment in equipment and armament, weapon systems, and strategic defense. That's going to require that we spend at least 4 percent of our GDP on defense....

Others believe that frankly back in the logic of deterrence, which served us through the Cold War - that that will protect us. But for all of the Soviet Union's deep flaws, they were never suicidal. A Soviet commitment to national survival was never in question. And that assumption simply can't be made about an irrational regime that celebrates martyrdom like Iran."

"America must truly be the greatest society of all"

Rosen: True measure of society - Mike Rosen

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5507191,00.html

I almost feel like saluting.

"Perhaps a truer measure of a society is to observe which way the guns are pointed: inward to keep captive subjects from escaping (e.g., the old Berlin Wall) or outward to keep too many hopeful immigrants from entering (U.S. border security - if we had any). That's the objective market test. And by that standard, America must truly be the greatest society of all."

The History of Shock and Awe

70 years of 'shock and awe' :The 1937 air raid on the Basque city of Guernica ushered in the modern concept of total war. - Mark Kurlansky, historian

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kurlansky26apr26,0,5552374.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

His histories of the Basque people and Cod were good but I am a little sceptical whether the US invasion of Iraq can be compared too much to Nazi/Fascist assistance to Franco...

The US and Eu

Hands across the ocean: EU-U.S. summit - Jose Manuel Borroso

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/25/opinion/edbarroso.php

Belgium receives four times as much US investment as China? Who'd have thought?

A Classical Historian on the Iraq War

Is the War on Terror Over? - Victor Hanson

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/is_the_war_on_terror_over.html

Not quite convinced that Al-Qaeda are more of a threat than Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia...

Also:

"And when we kill jihadists abroad, we are told it is peripheral to the war or only incites more terrorism." = killing people doesn't incite violence?

"Fifth, everything from our 401(k) plans to municipal water plants depend on sophisticated computers and communications. And you don't need a missile to take them down. Two oceans no longer protect the United States - not when the Internet knows no boundaries, our borders are relatively wide open, and dozens of ships dock and hundreds of flights arrive daily." = Al-Qaeda are going to attack through the internet? (= greater infringement of our civil liberties as the FBI start monitoring all emails)

The 'war on terror' was useful as a means of mobilizing opinion (and generating money) but used the language of moral crusade a bit too much and thus is now counterproductive. Even the 'Long War' is not much better - surely wars only occur between states?

Just in case you weren't sure

I will vote for Gordon - David Milliband

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2062797,00.html

The 'Inevitability' of Collapse in Iraq

A Hell of a CountryAli Allawi's new memoir shows Iraq's collapse was inevitable - Chirstopher Hitchens

http://www.slate.com/id/2164824/

Interesting to compare this to Niall Ferguson's article on inevitability listed below.

George McGovern...Remember Him?

Cheney is wrong about me, wrong about war - George McGovern

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcgovern24apr24,0,4084076.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Handbags at dawn!

And in other news...

The BBC have been going downhill a bit I think.

Sudan man forced to 'marry' goat - BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4740000/newsid_4748200/4748292.stm

"A Sudanese man has been forced to take a goat as his "wife", after he was caught having sex with the animal. "

Environmentalism is dead, Long Live Environmentalism!

Forget the whales -- save the Earth, Hall Clifford
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-clifford21apr21,0,1537344.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

Why climate change is different to toher types of environmentalism.

Niall Ferguson on the Difficulties of Causality

Niall Ferguson - We can see the causes of Cho's rampage now, so why not before?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/04/22/do2201.xml

"Having been completely caught out by some random event, we human beings are wonderfully good at retrospectively predicting it."

Taleb's 'The Black Swan' and the Virginia massacre. Argues that our retrospective models of reality never fit the real thing. Interesting if not terribly convincing.

An Interesting Article From the Archbishop of Canterbury

Down with godless government - Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1687465.ece

This article raises the interesting question of whether morality, or rather morality in government, is possible without the Church. Would there have been an end to slavery without Wilberforce? Does an absence of religion lead to moral nihilism/relativism? How would politics safeguard the intrinsic value of an individual? (Apart from groups that the Church is happy to discriminate against e.g. gays)

However, a closing paragraph reveals another, more politick, concern:

"And I make no apology for saying that the nature and extent of religious representation in the upper house — a bigger issue than the number of Anglican bishops holding seats there — is not a marginal question at all in the light of this discussion. "

The Church of England gets free (i.e. unelected) seats in the House of Lords (26 I think), under threat, no doubt, from current reforms. Why do we not have representatives from other faiths? (NB This might mean a Jedi Lord in the near future) What about atheists (a significant proportion of the populace)? The Church of England needs to go a long way to justify deserving these freebies.

My Historian's Spidey Sense is Tingling

Gun control isn't the answer - James Wilson, LA Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-wilson20apr20,0,4514008.story?coll=la-opinion-center

"For historical and cultural reasons, Americans are a more violent people than the English, even when they can't use a gun. This fact sets a floor below which the murder rate won't be reduced even if, by some constitutional or political miracle, we became gun-free."

This is set in an argument AGAINST gun control... Surely if it's true (which I very much doubt) America should have STRICTER control on guns. And knives. And sharp poking things.

I Can't Tell if this is Satire...

Did the Devil Make Him Do it? - Lauren Green, FoxNews

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266860,00.html

"Was Cho Seung-Hui schizophrenic … psychotic … manic-depressive? Or were the shooting deaths of 32 people, including Cho himself, at Virginia Tech University part of the ongoing struggle between God and Satan … good against evil … lightness and darkness?"

cf 'How to Spot a Psycho'

On the Dangerous Anachronism that is the 2nd Amendment.

Only the names change. And the numbers - Gerald Baker, The Times

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article1662949.ece

Slightly worrying is the response from one that the problem can be solved by students being armed.

"there is a lot to be said for militarism" (!)

Global leaders need to rule the seas - Niall Ferguson (imperial and imperialistic historian)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-ferguson16apr16,0,1130365.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

(NB Highly selective quotation)

The New Axis of Politics...?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2057060,00.html
Or, the Pope has a pop at postmodernism...

Arms Race in the Far East?

An interesting article by historian Paul Kennedy:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/05/opinion/edkennedy.php?page=1

Far Eastern states are building their navies at a time when European states are mothballing their fleets. This includes the two Koreas, Vietnam, a nationalistic Japan and China, the "next superpower."

George Bush Takes an Interest in History...

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a5b7ebd2-dd4c-11db-8d42-000b5df10621.html


The historian shielding Bush from reality

By Jacob Weisberg

Published: March 28 2007 18:35 Last updated: March 28 2007 18:35

President George W. Bush is sometimes a boastful anti-intellectual, but in the past year he has been touting his reading lists and engaging in who-can-read-more contests with Karl Rove, his chief political adviser. There is even a White House book club.
The most recent selection was A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 by Andrew Roberts, the conservative British writer. Mr Bush invited Mr Roberts for a discussion over lunch at the White House earlier this month. The author was joined by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Mr Rove and a variety of other neo-conservative intellectuals, officials and journalists. Mr Bush’s embrace of Mr Roberts’ book is hardly surprising, given how it glorifies his presidency. But it does suggest that all the reading he has been bragging about lately may not be opening his mind.

Mr Roberts’ book picks up in 1900, around where Winston Churchill’s four volumes of a similar title left off. It also takes up Mr Churchill’s pet idea that the Anglo-American alliance is uniquely responsible for the survival of liberty in the world. Though Mr Roberts does not favour the term, his framework closely tracks the notion of an “Anglosphere” – a natural alliance among the English-speaking former colonies of Great Britain that serves to spread civilisation in the form of democracy and capitalism.

His own idiosyncratic definition of the English-speaking world, which includes New Zealand but not Bermuda, Canada but not Ireland, and Australia but not India or South Africa, explains the book’s curious cross-cutting from London to Wellington to Washington to Canberra.
At the core of the book is Mr Roberts’ notion of what might be called the “super-special relationship”. When Britain could no longer rule its empire in 1946, it handed the responsibility for mankind over to its successor, the US. Mr Roberts views British colonialism and American hegemony as alike in their benevolence and effectiveness. Like Mr Bush, he is peevish that the recipients of such generosity are not more grateful.

As a historian, Mr Roberts is present-minded in the extreme, returning at every stage to justifications for Mr Bush’s actions in Iraq. The neo-conservatives who want to spread democracy in the Middle East are the heirs to compassionate Victorians who sought to civilise India, China and Africa. While the reader is still choking on his casting of Richard Perle as Lord Macaulay, Mr Roberts is already at work grafting Mr Bush’s head on to Mr Churchill’s body. The president’s prosecution of the war on terror is “vigorous” and “absolutely unwavering”. The Iraq war has provided “excellent value for money” to the British taxpayer. That Mr Bush has brought “full democracy” to Iraq is stated as unequivocal fact.

Mr Roberts has written several other well-regarded works of history, but it is hard to see how this form of assertion qualifies as scholarship, as opposed to polemic. A true historian explores questions; a great popular one can spin a yarn while revealing complexities. Mr Roberts musters a muscular narrative, but examines nothing. All charges against the Anglo-American imperium are dismissed, from the “supposed ill-treatment” of women and children in Boer war internment camps to Dresden, Nagasaki and the prison camp at Guantánamo, which he declares Mr Bush is “right” to keep open. The abuses at Abu Ghraib, he writes, were overstated and resulted from “the fact that some of the military policemen involved were clearly little better than Appalachian mountain-cretins”.

Mr Roberts is as sloppy here as he is snobbish. Charles Grainer, the alleged ringleader at Abu Ghraib and the only such “cretin” named, grew up in California. I am seldom bothered by minor errors from a good writer, but Mr Roberts’ mistakes are so extensive, fatuous and revealing of his basic ignorance about the US in particular, that it may be worth noting a few of them.
The San Francisco earthquake did considerably more than $400,000 in damage. Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself in 1941, did not write for Encounter, which began publication in 1953. The Proposition 13 tax revolt took place in the 1970s, not the 1980s – an important distinction, because it presaged Ronald Reagan’s election. Michael Milken was not a “takeover arbitrageur”. “No man gets left behind” is a line from the film Black Hawk Down, not the motto of the US Army Rangers. Gregg Easterbrook is not the editor of The New Republic magazine. In a breathtaking peroration, Mr Roberts points out that “as a proportion of the total number of Americans, only 0.008 per cent died bringing democracy to important parts of the Middle East in 2003-05”. Various issues aside, 0.008 per cent of 300m people is 24,000 – off by a factor of 10. If you looked closely enough, I expect you could find an error on every page.
With this book, Mr Roberts takes his place as the fawning court historian of the Bush administration. He claims this role not just by singing its achievements but by producing a version of the past century that confirms its assumptions and prejudices.
He favours Mr Bush, but does him no favour, by feeding his preference for the unknowable future to a problematic present, assuring him that history will vindicate him if only he continues to hold firm.