Kingdom of Chaos

11/11/1918

2011-11-11T13:57:00.004-06:00

(an annual post)

Have you forgotten yet ?

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz – The nights you watched and wired and dug...?

Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again ?’ . . .

Have you forgotten yet ?...

Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.

Siegfried Sassoon “Aftermath, March 1919.”

Today is Veterans Day in the United States. In part because the calendar is crowded with holidays, Veterans Day replaced an older holiday, known as Armistice Day, which commemorated the end of the First World War, surely the most needless, tragic, but consequential war of modern times. Canada, Australia and the other British Commonwealth nations, very appropriately, call today “Remembrance Day.” World War I is ancient history to most of us, yet this conflict, the war that in many ways brought down Armageddon, is with us, always. Pause, friend, for a moment, wherever you are, and remember.

At ten minutes past 5 a.m., on the morning of 11 November, the German armistice delegation, meeting with their allied counterparts in a railway car near the French city of Compiegné, accepted the Allied terms for an armistice. The Germans found the terms harsh (although they were no harder than those they had forced on the Russians in 1917) and they signed under protest.

Although the Germans had agreed to quit, the fighting did not stop until 11 a.m.: the dying that went on the rest of that long morning as pointless and futile as the whole war. In the Argonne, future President Harry Truman's artillery battery was in action, firing until it had no more ammunition at 10:45 a.m. Just east of Mons, Belgium, a Canadian soldier, Private George Lawrence Price, was fatally shot by a sniper at 10:58 a.m., two minutes before the cease-fire, the last of over 60,000 Canadians to perish.

The cease-fire came, but the dying did not stop. The Allied naval blockade of the defeated Central Powers remained in place -- and it was rendered more effective by Allied access to the Baltic Sea. With agriculture and transport disrupted by the war and the political chaos in Central Europe, thousands died of malnutrition, mostly the aged and children. Meanwhile, bankrupted and bereaved survivors, particularly in the defeated countries, now demanded an accounting from their leaders, and tried to understand what it had all been for, and why this had happened.

When historians look back upon our times, they will probably agree that the 21st Century really began on 11 September 2001. Similarly, Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year old Bosnian-Serb revolutionary bandit, member of a terrorist organization familarly called the Black Hand, the al Qaeda of its time, effectively began the 20th Century about 11:15 a.m. on 28 June 1914 when he murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg by a bridge in Sarajevo, in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina. Despite their exalted titles, the dead prince, his wife and their three now orphaned children were, in some ways, quite ordinary; and their ruined family was only the first of millions to come. A month and a week from the murders, after multiple diplomatic fiascos no novelist could invent, that seem impossible to believe today, all Europe was at war.

Ninety years later, Sarajevo was the scene of more violence, this time between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, quarreling over the make-up of the post-Cold War Balkans. The 20th Century thus ended where and as it begin, in Sarajevo, in blood, with another war that nobody would win.

The 1990’s violence in the former Yugoslavia, like almost everything else in modern diplomacy, stemmed from the war that Princip helped begin, and which people tried to begin ending today in 1918. Over 10 million dead bodies later, the war he and a baker’s dozen of incompetents started ended today, in 1918.

Officially ended, anyway. How can an atrocity like the First World War ever truly end? Fought over nothing, ending in no victory for anyone, except political cranks, left wing and right wing radicals, demagogic ideologues and other fanatics. The road to Auschwitz, Hitler and Stalin runs straight from the murder scene in Sarajevo, through the railroad siding in Compiegné where the armistice was signed. The Second World War killed more, in raw numbers, than the First – but the later war was only a continuation made possible by the poisons unleashed in the first war.

Satan had a good day of it in Sarajevo in June 1914. If not for the murderer Princip, and the clumsy diplomats and generals who blundered Europe and the world into a war everyone but the crazies lost, whoever would have heard of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini ? Lenin would have rotted away in exile with his books and scribblings; Hitler no doubt would have died in deserved obscurity in some Vienna doss-house. Stalin would have met the inevitable fate of a bank robber; and Mussolini perhaps never left journalism. No collapse of the British Empire forcing America onto the world stage to redress the great-power balance. No Great Depression, no Nazis, no World War II or Holocaust, no Cold War. Maybe no collapse of the Ottoman Empire giving us, ultimately, Bin-Laden, Zarqawi, Hamas and suicide bombers.

But Gavrilo Princip fired his fatal bullets, and the whole edifice of civilization crumpled before them. The shots of Sarajevo echo still. Gentle reader, think today of his crime, and of all whom, unknowing, ultimately paid. Because of the shots in Sarajevo, men who had no reason to hate each other fought and murdered each other all over the world in job lots -- in the fields of Champagne, on the roads of Poland and in the snows of Russia, in Iraq and in China. Children died in the cold Atlantic and starved by the million in Russia, the mountains of Armenia, and the Balkans. Sleepy eastern Europe, so long a quiet agricultural backwater, twice in fifty years was turned into an abattoir.

Beyond the seas, America lost its isolation. Americans died in the Argonne and, thirty years later, in the Pacific and in the deserts of Africa; later in the jungles of Vietnam. Today US Marines are dying in the hills of Afghanistan, all in some way because of, or related to the acres of warehouses of cans of worms opened by Princip.

Besides the legions of killed, maimed and wounded, the war had other, more insidious effects. Along with butchering millions, the First World War killed the faith of the western peoples in their civilization -- in progress, parliamentary institutions, science and religion, and left us instead the poison fruits of Communism, Nazism, and Socialism. The west, outside of America (for a time) lost confidence in itself -- at some level even in its right to exist as a culture. Germany and Russia, gravely wounded in both body and spirit, led the turn away from God, progress, law and civilization, and burned books and millions of their own citizens. Britain, mother of Parliaments, the law and of the United States, withered -- crippled and bankrupted both by the war and its 1939 continuation; and its political class today quivers in fear of criticism by modernity's ascendant barbarians.

But today, in 1918, on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh month, of the eleventh day – war, for the moment, ended. Think of all war dead today, dear reader. But, almost 100 years on, spare a thought for a moment or two for all the dead of the Great War, so pointless, so long ago, but so horribly, tragically important.

Veterans Day, 2011

2011-11-11T09:43:00.001-06:00

When you go home,
Tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.

Inscription, British War Memorial, Kohima, India.(attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds, Times Literary Supplement [London], 4 July 1918).

As our soldiers, sailors and aviators struggle and stand on guard for us throughout the world, particularly today in Iraq and Afghanistan, pause in your business for a moment, and think of them, and of our veterans who have already served. Remember those who are not with us today, because they made the ultimate sacrifice. Think, also of their families at home, who bear their own scars incurred in coping with the absence and perils of their often far away loved ones.

In particular, I am remembering in my own prayers today (and every year on this day) five US Navy casualties of the Battle of Midway (4 June 1942). Samuel Adams, Lieutenant (j.g.) USN (Scouting Squadron 5, USS Yorktown), holder of three Navy Crosses, who did as much as anybody -- more actually -- to win the battle; Wesley Frank Osmus, Ensign USNR, (Torpedo Squadron 3, USS Yorktown), Frank Woodrow O’Flaherty, Ensign USNR (Scouting Squadron 6, USS Enterprise), and Bruno P. Gaido (Aviation Machinist's Mate (1st Class)) -- O'Flaherty's gunner. Lieutenant Adams and his radioman/gunner, Joseph Karrol (Aviation Radioman (2nd Class)) were presumed killed in action near the battle's end. Osmus, O'Flaherty and Gaido were all US aviators shot down and captured during the attacks on the Japanese fleet, and subsequently murdered by their captors. They each faced their fates alone, but they are never forgotten.

Went the day well ?
We died and never knew.
But, well or ill, Freedom, we died for you.

John Maxwell Edmonds, Times [London], 6 February 1918.

Happy 236th Birthday, Marine Corps!

2011-11-10T14:43:00.001-06:00

Recruiting had produced five weak companies 300 strong by December 1775, and in March of 1776 the Marines found themselves on ships headed for the Caribbean for the first of their many amphibious expeditions (raiding the Bahamas). The Corps has been carrying our flags around the globe ever since, participating with distinction in every American war (even in the Civil War, on both sides -- there was once a Confederate States Marine Corps). US Marines chased pirates and fought Seminoles in Florida, took a tour of Mexico (the Halls of Montezuma in the song), and once even patrolled rivers in China.

It is altogether typical that on their Corps’ 236th birthday, America’s Marines are carrying the fight to the enemy in Afghanistan, just as their fathers, cousins and brothers did before them in Iraq, Kuwait, Grenada, at Hue City, the Chosun Reservoir, Iwo Jima, Peleliu, Tarawa, Guadalcanal, Corregidor, Wake Island, Belleau Wood, the Argonne, Peking, Nicaragua, Mexico City, Tripoli and a million other places. Happy Birthday Marines! Thanks to all of you for your service, and may God be with you and your families, today and every day.

The Next President. . .

2011-08-13T13:04:00.000-05:00

. . .officially got into the race today. At last we have a candidate! For a lot of reasons, I think Rick Perry will win the nomination, and go on to defeat Obama in November 2012. More on that later. For now, Governor Perry's splendid timing totally upstages the (rather silly) Iowa straw poll, and makes it a two-and-a-half man race: Perry vs. Romney plus the survivor of all the others.

Support Boehner's Bill

2011-07-28T15:53:00.000-05:00

House Speaker John Boehner's debt limit bill is grossly inadequate and completely insufficent in terms of spending cuts, but it's the best conservatives can reasonbly expect to obtain today. Moreover, it's certainly more than we're likely to get at the end -- because the Democratic controlled Senate is going to have to put its imprimitur on whatever becomes law. Nevertheless, Republicans should hold their noses and support the Speaker tonight.

The Republican Party has insufficient leverage to impose its legislative priorities: it controls one House of Congress only and is divided between more traditional conservatives and the Tea Party movement. To accomplish what is necessary, in terms of cutting spending, and making some effort to reduce the US debt; and to prevent the govenrment from eating the whole economy, Republicans must put their case to the people in 2012, recapture the White House, and whittle-down liberal power in the Senate. But that's all for another time. We cannot have what we would like, yet, so we must accept something that will do.

OY! Deleted My Blog List!

2011-05-10T22:16:00.005-05:00

Was trying to edit my blog list, and deleted it. I am going to have to re-create the whole thing. So sorry!

I believe that I have reconstructed it more or less accurately. Hope so anyway!

Osama Bin Laden (10 March 1957-2 May 2011)

2011-05-06T09:58:00.009-05:00

Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it. . .

William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act 1, Scene 4.

At last, at last, the Devil himself is dead. Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, author, instigator and organizer of the murder of almost 3,000 of our fellow citizens, was run to earth this week by US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and promptly sent to Hell. May his soul rot and burn there forever, and may the stench of his foul earthly remains not choke the fishes.

Predictably, the carping has started. The SEALs were wrong to enter Pakistan, they shot an unarmed man, they should have brought him back for trial, etc., etc. Let the unctuous whine to their hearts content, Bin Laden is stone-cold dead, thanks be to God.

“We love death. The US loves life. That is the big difference between us,” Al Qaeda's leader proclaimed. I wonder just when it was that he discovered his error? Bin Laden achieved consummation with what he claimed to love, on an upper floor of his refuge, in the forty-minute raid’s last ten minutes. While the great Emir, the Lion, the Sheikh al-Mujahid cowered with his wife and daughter in the dark, listening to the SEALs finishing off his guards and coming closer, how much did he love death then?

When it was time to pay the piper, and death, finally, arrived at his door, the great Islamic Holy Warrior was nowhere to be found. Bin Laden had an assault rifle and pistol within reach, but the new Saladin left his last battle to others -- his son shot on the stairway below, his 24 year old wife shot in the leg defending him. Bin Laden at the last died banking on the mercy he denied to the children and babies his minions killed flying them into buildings.

Did Bin Laden really think he would be taken alive, so that he could preen before the cameras, to hide behind the law and mock us; miraculously gifted with a second life to make public sport of the dead? Like all villains, the jackal Bin Laden counted on the law, but he was blinded to the existence of another Law, and is left to beg forgiveness at another place.

Flag of the New Orleans Greys

2011-03-15T18:55:00.005-05:00

Texas State Representative John Zerwas (R., Richmond) wants an Alamo flag back. Representative Zerwas has filed HB 2824 in the Texas Legislature, seeking the return of a flag captured by the Mexican Army at the Alamo, when it fell on 6 March 1836.

The banner in question is that of the "New Orleans Greys" 1st Company. Volunteers for the cause of Texas independence, the two companies of Greys were, according to the Handbook of Texas Online, organized at a mass meeting in a New Orleans coffee house in October 1835. The flag of the 1st Company was presented to the unit by ladies from east Texas shortly after the company arrived in Texas. According to the Handbook the flag was of blue silk, with an Eagle and Sunburst, and the inscription "FIRST COMPANY OF TEXAN VOLUNTEERS! FROM NEW-ORLEANS." The Eagle carries, in his beak, a placard with the motto "GOD & LIBERTY."

The two companies arrived in Texas early in the Revolution, both units participating in the capture of San Antonio from General Cos, but shortly thereafter meeting their ends as organized units -- the 2nd Company going down at Goliad, the 1st Company trapped at the Alamo. Seven survivors of the two companies, however, were present at San Jacinto.

On the morning that the Alamo was stormed, the banner of the 1st Company was captured by the Mexican Army, and the flag (sent to Mexico City with an accompanying cover letter by President-General Santa Anna to Mexican Secretary of War and Marine José María Tornel) is now in the possession of the National Historical Museum in Mexico City.

Various attempts have been made to reclaim the flag, all unsuccessful. Now we have Representative Zerwas's bill, which, boiled down, amounts to a request to Mexico that it be nice and give us the flag back. The text of the bill directs the Governor to "negotiate" the flag's return from Mexico, via "purchase or lease."

I'm as proud a Texan as anyone, and I can sympathize with the desire to secure the return of a historical artifact associated with one of the most significant events in Texas history. But this is a matter that should be let alone. The Alamo's sequel was San Jacinto, where Texas won its war, and got independence. Another war followed, in which the US occupied Mexico City, and negotiated at gunpoint the transfer of a huge chunk of Mexican territory for a piddling sum. In 1854, President-General Santa Anna, victor of the Alamo, loser of San Jacinto and Mexico's curse, completed his country's humiliation by agreeing to the Gadsden Purchase, which sold another chunk of Mexico, this one the size of Scotland, to the USA.

However, that was all in the future. On 6 March 1836, the Mexicans won the Battle of the Alamo, capturing the old mission, and the flag of the 1st Company of the New Orleans Greys. The Greys died, but their souls are with God, and may rest easily, because their cause ultimately prevailed. Texas won everything worth winning and the blessed place we live in today is a sufficient monument to their sacrifice. Coveting is a bad business, and we don't need that banner back, not this way. The Mexicans paid for that flag, and we should not insult the memory of the Mexican dead by offering to pay their descendants for a prize won in a fair fight and bought with blood.

It would be pleasing for the flag of the New Orleans Greys to, someday, come home. But it is for the Mexicans, on their own, to come to that decision. Meanwhile, let the dead rest.

Blog Layout

2011-02-27T15:30:00.002-06:00

The demise of Blogrolling has forced El Jefe into the somewhat undesired adoption of a new template. Among other things, the switch has disrupted paragraphing and formatting in old posts.

Still experimenting with it, so patience is respectfully requested and appreciated.

Obama Impeachment? Naaah.

2011-02-25T16:28:00.005-06:00

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, and would-be candidate for President, has created a chattering-class kerfluffle: accusing President Obama of sparking a "constitutional crisis" by refusing to support the Defense of Marriage Act (110 Stat. 2419, 1 U.S.C. § 7, 28 U.S.C. § 1738C) ("DOMA") in court against various legal challenges questioning its constitutionality.

The pots are well and truly stirring now. The US News and World Report blog, appears to believe that the Justice Department will no longer enforce the DOMA. I don't believe enforcement of the Act is at issue -- any federal official who knowingly declined to enforce or obey a Federal statute, without some cover by a court decision, would be putting himself in legal jeopardy. What the President has done is to tell the Attorney General not to defend the Act before the courts. The courts will decide whether the law is constitutional, or not.

Mr. Gingrich is astonishingly bright. He is a superb speaker (a scarce talent indeed on the Republican side of our politics) a brilliant writer, a sometimes interesting novelist (check out his and William S. Forstchen's Civil War alternative history series) and in his day, quite a political fixer. Mr. Gingrich, however, wants more -- he wants to be President of the United States; and (quite aside from the curse of having the moniker "Newt") Mr. Gingrich's essential problem is that the road to glory cannot be followed with too much baggage. Mr. Gingrich's pronouncement on DOMA today should be viewed in light of his need to curry favor with the evangelical wing of the Republican Party.

Now I'm not by any means a supporter of President Obama. But, even with considerable anti-Obama bias, it should be obvious that the President is not going to be impeached for a matter which is well within his, and within his Attorney General's, discretion. The Republican Party is not going to commit political suicide -- there's no need for that -- everything is breaking in a Republican way already. Skeptics of this view might ask themselves why Obama took this step, now, with DOMA, and why he announced such an interesting appointment today. We are well into the 2012 election cycle now, and the gay constituency and their large political contributions should be well and truly in the President's corner already.

Mr. Gingrich surely knows all these things. Unfortunately, what he doesn't seem to know is that he is not going to be President in this lifetime.

Changing Sides

2011-01-21T15:55:00.007-06:00

Today, over at Belmont Club, Richard Fernandez (a/k/a Wretchard) discusses the political evolution of Lebanon in directions that the United States and, more immediately, Israel, are going to find increasingly uncomfortable. On Wednesday of last week, the Lebanese government coalition collapsed, when Hezbollah withdrew its support, and directed its ministers to resign from the cabinet. Now, Walid Jumblatt, the most prominent Druze leader and a part of the political opposition -- has changed sides. throwing his political weight behind Hezbollah. Like those of his father before him (assassinated at Syrian instigation), Mr. Jumblatt's changes of faction have long been a reliable indicator of which way the Lebanese wind is blowing:

When Walid Jumblatt’s father was assassinated by the Syrians, the leader of the Druze threw his political support behind the murderers of his father for reasons of state. Then following the 2005 car-bomb killing of Rafik Hariri, he switched. The reason was simple. The tide had turned against the Syrians and, with US troops poised on the Iraqi border across from Damascus, it seem as if the Assads would not survive. After flirting with the Syrians again, Jumblatt until recently said he would support the Saudi plan that would avert a direct confrontation over the indictments expected from the special tribunal, indictments which are expected to implicate Hezbollah in the murder of Rafik Hariri. Now, he has switched again.

Wretchard condemns Mr. Jumblatt's move as "cynical," which it is of course, and writes that his move is "setting the the stage for. . . [Hezbollah's] political domination of Lebanon."

I normally agree with Wretchard, but characterizing this move as "cynical" is perhaps a little hard on Walid Jumblatt and the Druze. The stage is long past set -- the play is, in fact, over. Hezbollah's (and by extension Iran's and Syria) domination of Lebanon was virtually assured following the July-August 2006 Israel-Hezbollah War, and certain following Obama's election as US president and his wish to try a more conciliatory tone towards both the Iranians and Palestinians. Paradoxically, the Stuxnet-produced delay in the Iranian nuclear program has made Hezbollah even more secure: unilateral Israeli military action against Hezbollah's Iranian masters is for the moment less likely, and the chances of a general Middle Eastern war thus somewhat lessened.

In this context, Mr. Jumblatt's latest change of side is quite rational and a matter of survival, because life in Lebanon is going to get harder for enemies of Hezbollah. Tergiversators such as Mr. Jumblatt reflect the realty that already exists -- they are lagging indicators, not leading ones. Peace breaking-out means that Hezbollah rules Lebanon for the foreseeable future.

Confederate Heroes Day

2011-01-19T12:36:00.003-06:00

. . . I feel no hostility to you, Senators from the North. I am sure there is not one of you, whatever sharp discussion there may have been between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, I wish you well: and such, I am sure, is the feeling of the people whom I represent towards those whom you represent. I therefore feel that I but express their desire when I say I hope, and they hope, for peaceful relations with you, though we must part...The reverse may bring disaster on every portion of the country; and if you will have it thus, we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may.

Jefferson Davis, Farewell Address to the U.S. Senate, 21 January 1861. (From The Papers of Jefferson Davis, Vol. 7: 1861, pp. 18-22, LSU Press, 1992).

With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the Army, and save in defense of my native State. . .I hope I may never be called upon to draw my sword. I know you will blame me, but you must think as kindly as you can, and believe that I have endeavored to do what I thought right. . .May God guard and protect your and yours and shower upon you everlasting blessings . . .
Robert E. Lee, to his Unionist sister, Anne Marshall, 20 April 1861. (From The Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee, pp 9-10, Clifford Dowdey, Ed., Da Capo, 1987).

2011 is the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War. There are alternate names, possibly more accurate, but the fact that the generally accepted term for that conflict is "the Civil War" tells us all we need to know about how the South's experiment in secession and self-government worked out.

Today is the 204th anniversary of the birth of Robert E. Lee, General-in-Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States, and the 19th day of January is still recognized here in Texas as “Confederate Heroes Day,” a State holiday. Things being what they are, it is unlikely that the Texas statute book will honor Confederate heroes for very much longer, and like “un-persons” whom the Soviet Communist Party wished to banish from public view, Lee, Jefferson Davis and everything else to do with the Confederate States of America will soon vanish down the memory-hole. Our children, if they are wise, will learn to in public at least, mouth the proper politically correct platitudes and to recite on command the carefully packaged, all-inclusive happy pabulum that passes now for history in our schools.

We are told this is all for the best, but it doesn’t mean some of us have to like it. The names of Lee, Davis and legions of others who gave all they had for Southern independence, whose names would be household words, the Washingtons, Hamiltons and Decaturs of a new country -- had they but won -- are becoming obscure to non-historians, except inasmuch as they serve the purposes of modern politicians and shills for various causes who promote their agendas by damning the memory of the dead. Such excisions from the historial record do nobody any good; as Mark Steyn has truly written: "[w]hen a society loses its memory, it descends inevitably into dementia."

Yes, the war was partly about slavery, and the end of that beastly institution was an unmitigated blessing. Yes, scum have stolen the Southerners' flag for their own purposes and cloaked their racist fantasies in its folds. But that’s not the whole truth about the War for Southern Independence (proper name of the Civil War), any more than the War for American Independence (proper name of the American Revolution) was all about a tax on tea.

The 258,000 southerners who died for the independence of the Confederate States, and their comrades who survived the war to rebuild their broken civilization, are, of course, long beyond caring. Their souls, and those of the people who loved them and daily prayed for their safety and success now rest with God; and our approval or disapproval of the choices life gave them, is ultimately meaningless. As so many said at the time, they believed they were taking up arms for the most worthy cause imaginable -- protection of their homes and firesides, and those of their neighbors, from hostile invasion, and to vindicate the same principle Americans died for in 1776: the idea that government should rest on the consent of the governed.

Americans not connected with the military in some way have largely experienced war a tragedy that happens in other places. Not so the Civil War, which was fought mostly in – and devastated – the American south. Despite the efforts and sacrifices of so many, Confederate soldiers were unable to successfully defend their country. American cities and fields became battlegrounds, and armies moved and camped in what are sometimes literally our backyards. American cities -- mostly in the South -- were sacked and burned, and homes were plundered by soldiers speaking the same language, and often the same dialect, and American women, children and elderly people driven from their homes and turned into penniless refugees by truly unnatural disaster.

When all was over, the dust settled, and the pain and shouting but a memory; America was the better for the end of slavery, but when the Federal Government forced its yoke at gunpoint on those who did not want it, America lost something precious also. Thankfully those days are past, but they are not totally forgotten. We of course remember the victors: Mr. Lincoln has a memorial in Washington, but his real monument is the country and world we now inhabit. But some of us remember others too…Lee, Davis, Micah Jenkins, Johnston Pettigrew, Cleburne, Jackson, the Semmes brothers, Maxcy Gregg, Thomas R.R. Cobb, thousands of others long dead. To borrow Mr. Khrushchev’s memorable phrase, these will not be forgotten, by some of us, until shrimp learn to sing.

Gee Thanks, Nancy. . .

2011-01-05T14:37:00.002-06:00

Nancy Pelosi says that her Democrats, now a minority in the House of Representatives, want to work with the majority Republicans.

Trust Madame Pelosi to put things ass-end first. They’ve saddled us with Obama care, looted the Treasury, put us, and our great-grandchildren’s grandkids in debt up to their unborn eyeballs and NOW Nancy and Friends want to work with Republicans? Yeah, I’ll bet they do. If the Republicans take her seriously, more fools they – far from “working” with Pelosi, they’ll find themselves worked.

Jonathan Pollard

2011-01-05T12:16:00.005-06:00

The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, has asked President Obama to release Jonathan Pollard, a former US naval intelligence analyst now serving a life sentence for spying on behalf of Israel.

Mr. Pollard, a civilian, was formerly employed by the Naval Investigative Service. The CIA had declined to hire him (too many red flags in his background check). He wound up at the Navy; and, sometime during his employment, came in contact with an Israeli Air Force colonel studying in the United States. In 1984, Mr. Pollard began passing classified information to the colonel for cash and diamonds. Mr. Pollard’s spying was discovered in 1985, and upon apprehension Mr. Pollard cooperated to some degree with investigators, entering into a plea agreement in exchange for leniency for his wife. In subsequent public statements, Mr. Pollard and wife were both unrepentant.

Mr. Pollard ultimately pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to deliver national defense information to a foreign government, and was sentenced to life in prison. Due to the lunacy of US sentencing practices, the “life in prison” sentence means that Mr. Pollard will probably be eligible for parole in November of 2015.

Pollard’s initial Israeli controller got out of the country before apprehension, and the Israelis naturally declined to extradite him. Now the Israeli Prime Minister wants to drag the status of Mr. Pollard into restarting Israeli/Palestinian peace talks. This would win him points politically in Israel. Since the Obama administration has been offering to give Israeli virtually everything in the arsenal that’s not nailed down over some miserable huts on the West Bank, perhaps Mr. Netanyahu’s rather public request is not as unreasonable as it appears.

I don’t blame the Israelis for recruiting Mr. Pollard. Spying is a routine matter for governments, even among mostly friendly ones. I don’t even blame his recruiter – the Israeli colonel was a serving officer, who saw an opportunity for his country, and took it. He was doing his duty. Finally, it speaks well of the Israeli Prime Minister, as a man, that he would seek to ameliorate the personal circumstances of a spy who has done his country significant service. However, Mr. Netanyahu demeans his position and the honor of his state by making this request in public.

But Mr. Pollard? He’s another matter – an American citizen born in Galveston, Texas, who sold American secrets to a foreign government for money. Oh, he’s got Israeli citizenship now, but Israel gave him that after he was in the slammer, and if he’d wanted to be an Israeli, he could have emigrated rather than spied.

Maybe it’s just that I don’t like spies much. A personal failing of mine. They’re about on a level with child-rapists with me. This applies to our spies too. No, I don't mean CIA employees working (sometimes at great personal risk) to ferret-out things we need to know; or Russian Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR) guys, or British MI6 people, or Israeli Mossad or whoever, doing the same things for their countries. Those people are patriots. Sometimes they are enemies of ours, but that doesn't necessarily make them evil. I’m talking about the other end of the food-chain -- the inside operators, the turncoats, the people stealing the documents -- people inside our camp, or inside somebody else's who are selling out their own country for money, ideology or whatever.

I know spies are a necessary evil and often useful, but to me they’re not quite cricket. Two days before the Battle of Ligny, on 14 June 1815, a French general named Bourmont, a royalist, defected from the French army to the Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher’s Prussian army, betraying Napoleon’s plans to the enemy. The old Prussian general turned the pestiferous traitor over to his staff, who learned what they needed to know, but Blucher refused to be in the same room with the traitor, acknowledge him, or shake his hand: saying something to the effect of “A dog is always a dog, no matter whose damn flag he waves.” Blucher hated Napoleon’s guts, but he knew a scumbag traitor for what he was when he saw one.

I find it outrageous that Jonathan Pollard could actually see daylight again. At the least, “life” ought to bloody well mean life, at least in this case and it will be criminal if Obama trades him in exchange for some striped-pants diplomat deigning to shake hands with another one. As for me, if I had my druthers, Mr. Pollard would dance on the end of a rope, or get the cigarette and blindfold.

Christmas, 2010

2010-12-25T23:32:00.000-06:00

Here's hoping God showers blessings on you and your families this Christmas, and on all of us, and our country in 2011. Merry Christmas!

Heck of a Job Brownie...um, Nancy

2010-11-13T08:53:00.004-06:00

Is the President just delusional? Thursday Politico quoted President Obama's response to a reporters's question on whether Congressional Democrats would benefit from new leadership:

Speaker Pelosi has been an outstanding partner for me. Harry Reid has been a terrific partner in moving some very difficult legislation forward. And I’m looking forward to working with the entire leadership team to continue to make progress on the issues that are important to the American people.

Whoa! Heck of a job, Brownie!

How about some other similar thank-yous: "Thank you Captain Smith for bringing Titanic into port." How about "General Pickett, the Confederate States of America thanks you for your efforts at Gettysburg." Or "hey, Admiral Nagumo, sorry about those four carriers you lost, but you did Japan a good job at Midway." Then there's "gee, Senator McGovern, great effort in the 1972 elections. See you at Nixon's victory party."

I shudder to think what happens if Nancy stays outstanding, or Harry goes on being terrific. Should we just declare national doom and bankruptcy now?

11/11/1918

2010-11-11T16:44:00.009-06:00

(an annual post)

Have you forgotten yet ?

Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz – The nights you watched and wired and dug...?

Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again ?’ . . .

Have you forgotten yet ?...

Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.

Siegfried Sassoon “Aftermath, March 1919.”

At ten minutes past 5 a.m., on the morning of 11 November, the German armistice delegation, meeting with their allied counterparts in a railway car near the French city of Compiegné, accepted the Allied terms for an armistice. The Germans found the terms harsh (although they were no harder than those they had forced on the Russians in 1917) and they signed under protest.

Although the Germans had agreed to quit, the fighting did not stop until 11 a.m.: the dying that went on the rest of that long morning as pointless and futile as the whole war. In the Argonne, future President Harry Truman's artillery battery was in action, firing until it had no more ammunition at 10:45 a.m. Just east of Mons, Belgium, a Canadian soldier, Private George Lawrence Price, was fatally shot by a sniper at 10:58 a.m., two minutes before the cease-fire, the last of over 60,000 Canadians to perish.

The cease-fire came, but the dying did not stop. The Allied naval blockade of the defeated Central Powers remained in place -- and it was rendered more effective by Allied access to the Baltic Sea. With agriculture and transport disrupted by the war and the political chaos in Central Europe, thousands died of malnutrition, mostly the aged and children. Meanwhile, bankrupted and bereaved survivors, particularly in the defeated countries, now demanded an accounting from their leaders, and tried to understand what it had all been for, and why this had happened.

When historians look back upon our times, they will probably agree that the 21st Century really began on 11 September 2001. Similarly, Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year old Bosnian-Serb revolutionary bandit, member of a terrorist organization familarly called the Black Hand, the al Qaeda of its time, effectively began the 20th Century about 11:15 a.m. on 28 June 1914 when he murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg by a bridge in Sarajevo, in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina. A month and a week later, after multiple diplomatic fiascos no novelist could invent, that seem impossible to believe today, all Europe was at war.

Ninety years later, Sarajevo was the scene of more violence, this time between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, quarreling over the make-up of the post-Cold War Balkans. The 20th Century thus ended where and as it begin, in Sarajevo, in blood, with another war that nobody would win.

The 1990’s violence in the former Yugoslavia, like almost everything else in modern diplomacy, stemmed from the war that Princip helped begin, and which people tried to begin ending today in 1918. Over 10 million dead bodies later, the war he and a baker’s dozen of incompetents started ended today, in 1918.

Officially ended, anyway. How can an atrocity like the First World War ever truly end ? Fought over nothing, ending in no victory for anyone, except political cranks, left wing and right wing radicals, demagogic ideologues and other fanatics. The road to Auschwitz, Hitler and Stalin runs straight from the murder scene in Sarajevo, through the railroad siding in Compiegné where the armistice was signed. The Second World War killed more, in raw numbers, than the First – but the later war was only a continuation made possible by the poisons unleashed in the first war.

Besides killing, maiming and wounding millions, the war had other, more insidious effects. The First World War, besides murdering millions, killed the faith of the western peoples in their civilization, in progress, parliamentary institutions, science and religion, and left us instead the poison fruits of Communism, Nazism, and Socialism. Most fatally, the west, outside of America (for a time) lost confidence in itself -- at some level even in its right to exist as a culture. Germany and Russia, gravely wounded in both body and spirit, led the turn away from God, progress, law and civilization, and burned books and millions of their own citizens. Britain, mother of Parliaments and the law, crippled and bankrupted by that war and its continuation, abandoned its Empire, is ashamed of its past, and its political class today quivers in fear of criticism by modernity's ascendant barbarians.

Today in 1918 -- on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh month, of the eleventh day – the first war ended, and the pace of the killing slackened for a time. Think of all war dead today, dear reader. But, almost 100 years on, spare a thought for a moment or two for all the dead of the Great War, so pointless, so long ago, but so horribly, tragically important.

Veterans Day, 2010

2010-11-11T09:07:00.002-06:00

When you go home,
Tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.

Inscription, British War Memorial, Kohima, India.(attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds, Times Literary Supplement [London], 4 July 1918).

In particular, I am remembering in my own prayers today five US Navy casualties of the Battle of Midway (4 June 1942). Samuel Adams, Lieutenant (j.g.) USN (Scouting Squadron 5, USS Yorktown), holder of three Navy Crosses, who did as much as anybody -- more actually -- to win the battle; Wesley Frank Osmus, Ensign USNR, (Torpedo Squadron 3, USS Yorktown), Frank Woodrow O’Flaherty, Ensign USNR (Scouting Squadron 6, USS Enterprise), and Bruno P. Gaido (Aviation Machinist's Mate (1st Class)) -- O'Flaherty's gunner. Lieutenant Adams and his radioman/gunner, Joseph Karrol (Aviation Radioman (2nd Class)) were presumed killed in action near the battle's end. Osmus, O'Flaherty and Gaido were all US aviators shot down and captured during the attacks on the Japanese fleet, and subsequently murdered by their captors. They each faced their fates alone, but they are never forgotten.

Went the day well ?
We died and never knew.
But, well or ill, Freedom, we died for you.
John Maxwell Edmonds, Times [London], 6 February 1918.

The Blogroll (or lack thereof)

2010-11-02T15:28:00.000-05:00

Visitors may notice the disappearance of my Blogroll. This was not intentional, at least on El Jefe's part; but is due, rather, to the apparent demise of Blogrolling, the Blogroll provider. El Jefe means to correct this sad state of affairs ASAP, but in the meantime, if fellow bloggers have suggetions for non-techie El Jefe suggestions on where he might find another easy-to-use blogroll widget, he'd love to hear them.

Der Tag!

2010-11-02T10:36:00.002-05:00

At last, Election Day! El Jefe and millions of others have been waiting for two years to deliver the first installment of payback for Election Day 2008. The predictions for the House of Representatives are all over the place, most now suggesting that the Republicans will gain upwards of 60 seats. Jay Cost, writing in Weekly Standard, has an excellent breakdown of how matters are likely to develop in the lower chamber.

As for the Senate, the consensus seems to be that the Republicans pick up eight seats formerly held by Democrats (Arkansas, Wisconsin, Nevada, Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, Pennsylvania and North Dakota). I'll go with those, but I think there might just be a pleasant surprise in Washington, where Patty Murray could go down. Some results (particularly in Washington) are apt to be final only after weeks of recounts and similar shenanigans.

Election Projection (Blogging Caesar's site) and Real Clear Politics, among others, have plenty of details for those so inclined. But it looks like political curtains for Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their whole scurvy crew, and here is a link to some appropriate musical accompaniment for that thought. . .

Keep Talking, Nancy

2010-08-18T09:09:00.001-05:00

Nancy Pelosi wants to investigate the funding of opposition to the Islamic center near the WTC site in New York City. It seems that Queen Nancy (in San Francisco, wanting to talk about a local issue was outraged to be given a question about the mosque project: "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded..."

Keep talking Nancy. Every time she opens her mouth, it costs the Left a thousand votes, except in deluded San Francisco, which will probably have her forever.

A Visit to Craonne

2010-05-14T11:22:00.001-05:00

People who know me are possibly aware of my interest in military history. A while back, I read Major-General Sir Edward Spears’ memoir Liaison, 1914 – the general’s account of his experiences as a British cavalry lieutenant (and intelligence officer), assigned to the staff of the French Fifth Army during the opening campaign of World War I.

Despite his (then) junior rank, Spears had tremendous influence: his credibility with both the British and French high commands doing much to insure these allies cooperated, after a fashion, in the early days of the war. Spears continued, in one position or another, as a liaison officer between British and French high commands throughout the First World War; ending it as cabinet liaison between the French and British war cabinets. During all this activity, he was wounded four times, mentioned in dispatches, and found time to marry an American heiress.

Spears, a great friend and supporter of Sir Winston Churchill, played a similar role in the Second World War, serving for a time as the go-between between the Churchill government and DeGaulle’s Free French.

In any case, Spears was a superb writer. Liaison, 1914, is his account of the opening campaign of World War I. I will have a fuller review later, perhaps, but for now, to give you a flavor for Spears, his times, and his writings, I will leave you with part of his visit to the town of Craonne, between the rivers Aisne and Ailette, northwest of Paris, in Champagne, during the “Great Retreat” of 1914:

I shall never forget arriving at dusk, at Craonne…It was quite impossible to get into the town except on foot, and that was not easy. An endless column of motionless cavalry completely blocked the road. The great towering cuirassiers, clumsy and massive in helmets and breastplates, sat impassive on their horses. Not a man dismounted. In the still evening air, the booming of the guns seemed very near. A gust of wind animated the horsetail plumes that hung down each man’s back, then the long steel-clad column was still again. . .
Headquarters was installed in the small Chäteau where Napoleon stayed, so it was said, a hundred years ago when attempting to stem the tide of another invasion.

I went on the terrace where dinner was being served. It was an ideal situation and a perfect night. The view extended over the Aisne and across the plain to where the lights of Reims could be seen gleaming 20 miles away. . .

There was a faint clatter outside, a metallic jingle, the beat of iron-shod hoofs on the steep street of the little town; the cuirassiers were moving off at last. . .
On every road leading south the endless columns marched on and on without halt and without rest.

Over Paris a German aeroplane dropped a message announcing the arrival of the enemy in three days’ time. . .

Years later, when the war was over, I found myself in the same neighbourhood, but there was no trace of Craonne to be seen. Not a wall, not a stone where the pretty little town had stood. I came on a post to which a board was affixed which bore the word “Craonne”. That board, and those green mounds and hummocks, were all that was left of the place through which the great retreat had once swept.

Maj.Gen., Sir Edward Spears, Liaison 1914 (Da Capo 2000, 316-18).

The New World That's Coming. . .

2010-05-14T10:20:00.002-05:00

While we get ready to enjoy our weekends, it is all too easy to forget the concerns of the wider world. Most Americans, on some level, probably wish the rest of the world would just go away -- and with good reason. Life here is pretty sweet. Unfortunately, for us and our children, we may not be interested in the world, but the world is very interested in us -- like it or not, the US is stuck up to its eyes in absolutely everything. Here is a sampling of today’s headlines at the webpage/aggregator “Real Clear World.” Today's headlines are not atypical.

Many of us have been privileged to spend our lives growing up, living, working and raising our families in the greatest, richest, most powerful country ever to exist in the history of the world. Even America’s poor of today are rich beyond the wildest imaginings of nine-tenths of the humans who have ever lived. Americans have always worked hard, but to a great, often underestimated degree, we owe our national prosperity to a unique set of favorable conditions, chiefly the undisputed military and economic control by a more or less unified population of a whole continent’s worth of resources and space; as well as the outcome of both the world wars, in which the Europeans succeeded in exhausting themselves and handing the US financial and military control of the west. For the past 100 odd years, the world has been our oyster.

Now, those underlying conditions are shifting. America’s power is in relative decline, while that of others rises. Shifts in the relative power positions of nations and groups of people, historically speaking, are seldom peaceful.

There’s a lots for us to think on, and big new world coming, that we need to try to get our children ready for. It can still be good, for America, but we need to get our house in order, and so far, we're not even in the game. Well, we are --because you can't get out of the game, which goes on forever -- but we're not really playing). The people who govern us -- from both parties, are living in a fool's paradise, squandering our children's splendid birthright for a mess of pottage. Enjoy your weekends, but remember that the future’s out there being written. It doesn’t care whether we like it or not.

The End of the West as we Know It.
Natural for Russia to Flex Her Muscles.
UK Must Reject Anti-American Lib Dems
Iran Risks Multi Front War.
Venezuela is Crumbling.
America is Not Greece.
Hezbollah Remains Armed & Dangerous.
BRIC Nations Won’t Conquer the World.
Syria Asks Russia to Pressure Israel.

While we’re at it, here are some headlines from today’s Real Clear Markets:

Second Debt Storm: Who Bails Out Nations?
American Solvency Hinges on Low Interest Rates.
Look Out, Asia is Emerging Stronger.
Take One Guess What Greece Has to Jettison for a Bailout?

The President's Interesting Supreme Court Choice

2010-05-10T10:38:00.005-05:00

To virtually no one's surprise, the President has nominated the present Solicitor General of the United States, Elena Kagan, to the Supreme Court seat of outgoing Justice John Paul Stevens.

Given the composition of the Senate, the odds overwhelmingly favor Ms. Kagan's confirmation, despite her total lack of judicial experience. Ms. Kagan has plenty of impressive credentials -- she is the former Dean of the Harvard Law School, where she was also a professor of law. She has also been a professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and former Associate White House Counsel under President Clinton. But the lack of real judicial experience, much less the lack of non-academic, non private sector experience, are weaknesses in her resume that will no doubt draw some criticism.

I think, however, that Ms. Kagan's real vulnerability will turn out not to be her resume, but her tenure as Dean of Harvard Law School. In her capacity as Dean, Ms. Kagan barred US military recruiters from the Harvard Law campus, apparently because of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy as to homosexuals.

Ms. Kagan's views on this subject are right in line with elite opinion in most of academia, the media and the bar, but probably not with the American public, which supports the military; and is likely to weigh barring military recruiters from Harvard higher than misgivings about unfairness to homosexuals. At any rate, Ms. Kagan's reluctance to accept recruiters on her campus will reinforce flyover country's doubts about this administration, its choices and the worldview of our present political elite. For that reason, Obama's political wisdom in making this appointment, in an election year in which his party, is (to put it mildly) in a corner, is questionable.

However, without more, Ms. Kagan is likely to be confirmed -- the Democrats simply have too large a majority in the Senate for the appointment to be blocked. Moreover, the appointment is not necessarily vital to balance on the Court, Ms. Kagan replaces Justice Stevens: the nomination trades liberal for liberal. Unless the case for Kagan completely disintegrates, there is not necessarily a reason for Republicans to pull out all the stops, this time. Too many Democrats would have to be alienated from the choice. Still, Ms. Kagan's current position is a bad omen -- the last Solicitor General to be nominated to the US Supreme Court was Robert Bork.

Battle of San Jacinto

2010-04-21T09:21:00.002-05:00

Today is the 174th anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, the great Texas victory near what is now Houston that was the pivotal battle of the Texas War of Independence. General Sam Houston’s 900 or so Texans surprised and routed Mexican President-General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s 1,350 Mexicans in just 18 minutes.

Despite the vanishingly small numbers engaged, San Jacinto turned out to be decisive, chiefly because, on the morning following the battle Texan scouts captured Santa Anna himself, and Texas was able to subsequently extort enough of a settlement from the captive Mexican leader to make independence stick. For Mexico, San Jacinto turned out to be the first major blow in a process that lost that country not only Texas, but its entire north – today the American west. San Jacinto, the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War are obscure subjects to most Americans today. Not so in Mexico, which has not forgotten its lost northern territories.

As a military campaign, the Mexican side of the Texas Revolution has always been of great interest to me. The 1,350 Mexican soldiers the Texans defeated at San Jacinto were only a portion of the Mexican forces available in Texas. The Mexican Navy had total control of the Gulf of Mexico and free movement up and down the Texas coast all during this period, and Santa Anna’s “Army of Operations” had almost 6,500 troops in Texas. The Texans had lost nearly 500 men at Goliad, in addition to the 183 killed at the Alamo (which also held most of the available Texan artillery). Houston’s 900-odd half-trained recruits with two guns were the sum total of rebel forces available. How, then, did Mexico lose this war?

Remembering the Alamo and Goliad sometimes obscures the fact that up through the fall of the Alamo, Santa Anna ran a pretty good campaign. Just getting an army from central Mexico to Texas was a massive military accomplishment before railroads and the internal combustion engine. The Mexicans had to bring their army across the northern Mexican desert and keep it in food and water, and haul along a big enough margin of supplies for operations such as the Alamo siege. (Food and fodder would normally be bought or “requisitioned” locally, but armies needed extra supplies for periods when they were largely stationary, such as a siege, when local food supplies would quickly be exhausted).

The massacre of the Alamo defenders, as well as Texan prisoners at Goliad and other places in early March probably appeared to Santa Anna to have cleared the boards as far as his campaign was concerned. The rage and fear his actions generated among Texans for a time seemed to work in his favor, as colonists packed up their possessions and fled east, in headlong flight for the US/Texas border. Clearing the majority of the Anglo colonists out of Texas (and no doubt replacing them with military colonies of settlers from his armies) was no small part of Santa Anna’s plans to secure Texas for Mexico – which probably explains his ruthless policy towards Texan prisoners.

In retrospect, the Battle of San Jacinto was lost for Mexico before its first shot was fired, sometime between the fall of the Alamo on 6 March 1836, and San Jacinto, on 21 April, that is, during the period of the so-called “Runaway Scrape.” After the Alamo and Goliad, the last major Texan military force was Houston’s army, which hovered near Gonzales all during the Alamo siege. Upon hearing of the fall of the Alamo, Houston realized that he could not hope to meet Santa Anna’s concentrated forces in the field, and he moved his army east, towards the US border. Settlers fled too, and they were encouraged to destroy their property (particularly food) before leaving.

The US border. . .Santa Anna no doubt desired to close out his war quickly, primarily to forestall US intervention, and he moved out rapidly in pursuit of Houston. Santa Anna, in his capacity as President of Mexico, had already addressed letters to US President Jackson, warning Jackson against interference in Texas, and stating that Americans captured in arms in Texas would be treated as pirates. Santa Anna was probably aware of the personal and political connections between Jackson and Sam Houston, and he would have wanted to finish the war quickly, before the US could decide to intervene.

The Mexican military and political situation the morning after the Alamo fell was not unlike the US/UN situation in Korea in 1950, after MacArthur’s lighting reconquest of South Korea from the invading North Koreans. Much like Santa Anna in Texas, MacArthur was in a hurry to end the war with the complete conquest of North Korea before China could interfere. Consequently, MacArthur (as his armies moved into North Korea) threw prudent military planning out the window in the name of haste. Just as Santa Anna probably considered the Texans, MacArthur thought the North Koreans beaten, and his primary concern was getting his forces to the Chinese border at the Yalu to block Chinese intervention, not caring if in the process his troops got scattered all over the map. . .

For somewhat similar reasons, Santa Anna made haste for the US border, following Houston, wearing his jaded troops out with forced marches trying to bring him to battle and get on to the border. Wikipedia’s article on the Texas Revolution speculates that Sam Houston might have intended to retreat clear across the US border and possibly trigger American intervention (a US army was assembling on the border). We cannot know if Houston actually had this possibility in mind, and in retrospect it seems politically unlikely, but Santa Anna had to take it seriously, and try to catch Houston before he got there.

Whenever I drive to San Antonio, I imagine the barefoot Mexican conscripts, cheap shoes long disintegrated, marching day after day in either hot sun or torrential rains, fording swollen rivers, mainly concerned with foraging for food. The siege of the Alamo had probably consumed much of Santa Anna’s initial stockpile of supplies. The forced marches, the scorched-earth Runaway Scrape of the settlers (burning food needed by the Mexican Army), and Santa Anna’s own uncertainty as to Houston’s precise whereabouts and intentions led Santa Anna to allow his army (fairly concentrated after the Alamo) to become increasingly dispersed as the pursuit wore on. As Santa Anna closed in on the US border, near what would be the battlefield of San Jacinto, only 850 or so men were with him. The rest of his army was scattered.

Santa Anna deeply admired Napoleon, and is said to have called himself the “Napoleon of the West.” I wonder if Santa Anna knew anything about Napoleon’s Battle of Marengo in 1800? Napoleon, trying to pin down an Austrian army in northern Italy, was concerned the Austrians would slip by him, and avoid battle. Napoleon was uncertain of the Austrians’ location, and dispersed his troops to block possible routes of escape. . .but on the morning of 14 June 1800, near the village of Marengo …he stumbled into the whole “missing” Austrian army, with a only a fraction of his own forces present, and was nearly destroyed. In the event, reinforcements arrived, and Napoleon prevailed.

On his own day of surprises, Santa Anna was not as lucky as Napoleon, nor as bright. 500 last minute reinforcements, led by Santa Anna’s brother in law, General Martin Perfecto de Cos, gave Santa Anna a bit of a numerical advantage, but Santa Anna squandered it by failing to post sufficient pickets. On the morning of 21 April 1836, the Texans attacked Santa Anna, surprising his force in camp, with the bulk of his army scattered behind him all over the Texas coastal plain like MacArthur’s on the Yalu when China came into the war, or Napoleon’s on the morning of Marengo.

In just eighteen minutes Houston and his Texans swept all Santa Anna’s campaign plans and greater geopolitical concerns about American intervention, Anglo colonization of Texas and a Mexican empire in the west right into the dust bin. The next morning, 22 April 1836, Texan scouts found Santa Anna near a burned bridge, hiding in tall grass, having doffed his splendid uniform for that of an infantry private. Mexico would now have its cup of bitterness filled to the dregs, and the captive President-General would soon put his name to the Treaties of Velasco, which gave Texas a viable legal claim to independence.

More battles, a Texas-Mexico cold war and a much bigger hot war with the US in 1846 would follow, but for Mexico, San Jacinto, was the real disaster that lost an empire.

Court Martial of a Birther

2010-04-14T11:15:00.003-05:00

The US Army is going to court-martial Lieut. Colonel Dr. Terry Lakin, who has refused to deploy to Afghanistan because he considers orders from the President to be “illegal” on the grounds that President Obama was not born in the United States (and thus ineligible to be President under the Constitution’s Article II, §1).

The Army is acting correctly. Lieut. Colonel Lakin is a serving officer, who has not been asked by his superiors to commit war crimes or other illegal acts. Whatever Colonel Laken believes about the President’s Constitutional qualifications, and whatever his grounds for so believing, the Colonel does not have standing to challenge the orders of the Commander in Chief.

The time for challenges to the President’s qualifications to fill his office has long since past. President Obama has been returned as President by the popular ballot and the electoral college, the results of that election certified by the Senate, and accepted by the courts and by the Colonel’s military superiors. In any case, such challenges are best lodged in other places, and by other persons, and not by serving officers. The very idea of military officers deliberating like some sort of debating society about what orders they will obey is ludicrous, dangerous and subversive of discipline. Lieut. Colonel Dr. Lakin, in his capacity as a military officer, has nothing to say about it; and should either shut up and soldier, or resign and accept the court-martial and the consequences.

Health Care About Character? You Bet it Is

2010-03-19T18:04:00.003-05:00

The President of the United States tells us that the health care bill about to be forced through Congress is "about the character of our country."

Mr. Obama, wrong about so much, is ultimately likely to be correct on this point. At the moment, the health care debate is more about the character of the Democratic Party, which will stop at nothing to foist on the American people a bill that poll after poll shows Americans don't want, and that the country cannot pay for. But Pelosi, Obama, Reid and all their other confederates are certain that the Democratic Party leadership knows better than the people what the country needs; and, that, by hook or by crook, whatever the public thinks, no matter how much we don't want it, we are all going to, come Hell or High Water -- swallow this pill.

On Sunday the 21st, through parlimentary trickery, the Democrats are likely to, for the moment, have their way. Then the President will be correct: the public attitude towards Demon Pass and all the other chicanery that has produced this monstrous bill will indeed show the "character of our country." Will the people sit still for one of the largest power grabs in American history, via trick legislation, or won't they?

Obama's Polls Under Water

2010-03-18T14:09:00.000-05:00

For the first time in this administration, the Real Clear Politics moving average of polls has President Obama "under water" -- that is, on average, more respondents disapprove of the President than approve. Not before time. The repulsive health care legislation so favored by Obama and his minion Pelosi is clearly opening plenty of eyes.

It's Still Washington's Birthday

2010-02-15T10:20:00.004-06:00

Today is the official celebration of George Washington's Birthday (the actual anniversary is 22 February). Despite the "Presidents' Day" moniker popularly used, which also appears in the statute books of my own State, I prefer the older name for the holiday, which is also the name recognized in the Federal statute book (5 U.S.C. § 6103(a)). Our first President, still among the greatest, deserves so much more recognition than he now gets.

At a time when our sensibilities are daily drenched in the noxious effluent of popular culture; when our political leaders appear hopelessly common, venal or just plain stupid; when all seems to conspire, deliberately or not, to belittle and cheapen the whole concept of nationality and patriotism, it is pleasing to recall the legacy of this most uncommon, most upright of men, who placed all he had and was at the service of his country.

The fact that there is a United States at all is due largely to George Washington, and in particular to his military leadership that terrible fall and winter of 1776-77, when he kept the War for American Independence alive on sheer determination. Of course, while fighting the finest army on the planet with raw troops and militiamen who did not even have shoes, Washington had to keep one hand free to keep the politicians in Philadelphia off his back – these worthies all certain that they were qualified to do his job. Had good sense not finally prevailed with the politicos, the British, in spite of everything, no doubt would have prevailed.

Virtually every day of his adult life, George Washington put his country over himself, and for this reason, he could be trusted with power. No Napoleon or Julius Caesar as a general, George Washington did the infant United States a significant service following the war precisely by being no Napoleon or Julius Caesar as a politician. Washington quietly and competently performed his functions as President, and duly made way for his successor when his legal term expired. Washington's greatest bequest to America was his determination that the American national state not be a banana republic: that it become a peaceful instrument of the law, governed by institutions administered by sober-minded men; and not just another creature to be ruled by a great leader, born out of partisan excitement and mob rule.

Of course, we are all too aware that partisan excitement exists, abetted and inflamed by technologies that Washington and the founders could not forsee. So far, however, the tumult and the shouting of partisans and the factious have been successfully channeled and moderated by the laws and institutions the founders made and that Washington protected and helped to grow.

Today, George Washington is somewhat politically incorrect, on several counts: (Dead White Male; Southerner; Slave owner; Rich Landowner). The history-vandals to whom political correctness is important have tried to diminish President Washington’s legacy in the hearts and imaginations of recent generations of his countrymen. Within living memory, almost every American classroom had its picture of George Washington; today, odds are, you will seek his portrait in vain.

But the joke is on the vandals. If you seek his legacy, look around. This country, and all in it, are the fruits of his labors. The pageant that is the American story did not began with Washington, but that great man gave it its tone and direction; and, the tale will endure long after the book-hiders, picture-stealers and speech-scolds and their false gods are dust.

Washington deserves his own holiday, and perhaps someday we will remember what we owe him, and give him his day back.

Happy Birthday Mr. President, and God bless your memory.

Out of Sorts. . .

2010-02-12T22:44:00.001-06:00

Have been neglecting my blog shamefully. Truthfully, I have not felt much up to blogging since fall of 2008 -- first there was Ike, then the elections, and I have been more or less out of sorts in one way or another since.

In any case, here's hoping the blog is not as much abandoned, as in abeyance. Hope to get back to it soon.

27 January 1967

2010-01-27T23:48:00.016-06:00

Apollo 1 Astronauts Roger B. Chaffee, Edward H. White and Virgil I. Grissom in the Apollo simulator (NASA photograph, available here)

43 years ago today, a Friday, was a busy day at the Kennedy Air Force Station’s Launch Complex 34, at what was then called Cape Kennedy, Florida. By 8 a.m. that morning, a cast of almost 1,000 had assembled to support a “plugs-out” launch simulation on AS-204 or “Apollo 204.” Apollo 204 (better known to history as “Apollo 1”) was to be the first manned Apollo space mission, scheduled to fly on 21 February 1967. Shortly after lunch, the flight crew: Virgil I “Gus” Grissom (Lt. Col., USAF), another Air Force light colonel, Edward H. White, and Navy Lt. Commander Roger B. Chaffee, suited up and headed for Pad 34.

Grissom (at 41 the oldest member of the crew) had already flown in space twice, as well as flying 100 combat missions in the Korean War, garnering an Air Medal with cluster and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Grissom had been told, privately, that he was going to be the first American to walk on the Moon. Colonel White, age 37 (the Senior Pilot) was, during the Gemini 4 mission (3 June 1965), the first American to walk in space. The third crew-member, Lieutenant-Commander Chaffee, age 32 (Pilot) had never flown in space. All were married, with children.

The other main character in this story, the Apollo capsule, “Spacecraft 012” fully lived up to the old saw about a camel being a horse designed by a committee. The Apollo moonships were then cutting-edge technology, marginally capable of carrying humans into space and back and far more complex than any spacecraft previously flown. Spacecraft 012 was itself a stop-gap design, a “Block I” capsule not meant to fly to the Moon; intended as a sort of proof-of-concept vehicle to test Apollo systems in Earth orbit. Future manned flights were to proceed in the upgraded “Block II” version, but design and construction details of this version were not finalized. Among other things, the prime contractor, North American Aviation, didn’t like the hatch design on the Block I ship: it wanted to install an outward opening hatch on the Block II’s. Spacecraft 012’s hatch recessed inward before opening.

Numerous changes and modifications to Spacecraft 012 caused Apollo 1’s first launch date, in the fall of 1966, to be pushed back to the spring of 1967. In retrospect, this delay was clearly insufficient – the ship was simply not ready. But the timetable was pushing -- NASA was racing both the Russians and President Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. Consequently, Spacecraft 012 was accepted from the contractors and mated to its Saturn 1B booster on Pad 34 despite a number of known and unknown defects and faults – and with its documentation file in appalling disorder. Many problems were attended to. . .but some were not.

The crew was dubious about the readiness and even the safety of their ship: Colonel Grissom telling his wife that Spacecraft 012 was a lemon. Contractors and engineers on the ground had concerns also, but there was a critical blind spot in most of this thinking, which was primarily centered around problems the Apollo might eventually encounter in space, not on the ground. . .

Flight training and testing proceeded, and on the 27th of January, NASA went ahead with the “Plugs Out” test, in which the spacecraft (on the pad atop its unfueled booster) would be manned, sealed-off from the outside; operating totally on its internal power and systems. A simulated countdown would be conducted, and the crew would practice operation of the spacecraft through several hours of post-liftoff flight, the cabin pressurized with pure oxygen. Shortly after 1 p.m., the astronauts, wearing their full, bulky space suits, entered the space capsule, and technical problems immediately began. Grissom plugged his suit into the spacecraft oxygen system, and complained of a foul, buttermilk-like taste. Proceedings halted while the technicians tried to isolate the problem, apparently without success.

The test resumed. At 2:42 p.m. the white-room technicians closed and sealed the spacecraft hatch, then locked the booster cover cap in place. None then knew that the sealing of the hatch marked the closing of another door, for three of the finest men America ever produced had entered their pyre and tomb, and would not leave the spacecraft alive.

Once the hatch was closed, sea-level air was removed from the space suits and the cabin, and replaced with pure oxygen, at a pressure of 16.7 pounds per square inch. Unlike the earlier Mercury and Gemini capsules, Apollo, built for longer voyages, was designed, once in orbit, to allow for a more or less shirt-sleeve environment. Of course, this meant a pressurized cabin with an artificial atmosphere. The engineers at North American suggested an Earth-like oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. However, NASA worried about decompression sickness and nitrogen mixture issues, and selected pure oxygen. Pure oxygen under (as here) high pressure – burns very well.

The test rolled on, and problems continued as afternoon dragged into evening. There was a problem controlling oxygen flow that repeatedly triggered a master alarm. The control center technicians believed the fault was caused by excessive crew movement, but the problem was not actually resolved. Meanwhile, the crew had difficulty communicating with the controllers in the blockhouse and in two other buildings because of persistent static interference, and an open microphone someplace in the spacecraft that the crew was unable to locate. An exasperated, and, by now, exhausted Grissom wondered aloud: “How are we going to get to the Moon if we can’t talk between three buildings?” The ground controllers became increasingly annoyed and preoccupied by the communications problem.

About 6:30 p.m., the crew members, strapped in their crew couches, were going through a checklist when control center instruments recorded both a surge in oxygen flow into the spacesuits and electrical spikes. At about this same time one of the astronauts said: “Fire. I smell fire.” This changed literally in a flash – two seconds later, horrified ground controllers saw flames appear on their cameras and Astronaut White shouted insistently that there was a “fire in the cockpit!”

An escape drill was specified in the manuals, which the astronauts were supposed to be able to complete in 90 seconds. In practice, the hatch arrangement made this impracticable, even if it would have been possible to unseat the hatch and open it inward against the pressure of the oxygen in the spacecraft. The astronauts were apparently able to accomplish part of the drill: the lights were turned up, and Astronaut White, seated in the middle, had begun work on the ratchet behind his head that controlled the hatch. But the astronauts didn’t even have 90 seconds before they were overcome by smoke.

Technicians frantically rushing to the capsule area to assist were driven back by flames so hot that they had ruptured the hull of capsule. Grissom, White and Chaffee never had a chance to escape, caught behind a double-hatch that took over five minutes to open, bathed in highly flammable pure oxygen, strapped to their crew couches in bulky space-suits. The trapped astronauts died by inhalation of toxic gases and burns.

The electrical fire which asphyxiated the crew was a blow not only to the families of the crew, and to all who knew these men, but to the whole nation, already reeling from Vietnam. An investigation revealed faulty wiring and substandard plumbing throughout the spacecraft (which was full of flammable materials), with the most likely cause of the fire being a short produced by the interaction of a wire with the insulation rubbed off and the spacecraft’s environmental control unit. Changes in the Apollo spacecraft included a different artificial atmosphere, a different hatch and different materials, all of which made Apollo relatively safer. Still, as Apollo 13 later reminded us, the amazing moonships were incredibly dangerous. It is almost impossible to imagine our much more risk-adverse society building such ships now.

Grissom and Chaffee were buried in Arlington National Cemetery, White at West Point. Apollo 1’s booster was later used to fly the first Lunar Module (Apollo 5) in an unmanned Earth orbital test. The fate of the capsule itself was very strange: once the investigators were through with it, Spacecraft 012 was sealed up and placed in a warehouse in Langley, Virginia, where (after a move to a new facility in 2007) it rests today.

Just 21 months after the fire, Pad 34 launched the first successful manned Apollo mission, Apollo 7 -- flown by Apollo 1’s back-up crew. Launch Complex 34 was then taken out of service and dismantled. The concrete launch platform, the base of the pad, still exists, and bears two plaques, the inscription on one of which is an appropriate way to close this essay:

In memory of those who made the ultimate sacrifice so others could reach for the stars; Ad astra per aspera (a rough road leads to the stars); God speed to the crew of Apollo 1.

"Occupation" of Haiti? You Bet

2010-01-19T11:11:00.008-06:00

The Haitian National Palace, Place L'Ouverture, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, heavily damaged after the earthquake of 12 January 2010. The building was originally a two-story structure; the second story has completely collapsed. Compare with picture from 2006, here. (Photograph: United Nations Development Program, via Wikipedia, original here).

A French cabinet official, Monsieur Alain Joyandet, who bears the somewhat ridiculous title of “Secrétaire d’Etat chargé de la Coopération et de la Francophonie” (Secretary of State for Cooperation and Francophony) has accused the United States of “occupying” Haiti. M. Joyandet dropped the o-word after having what the Daily Telegraph described as a “scuffle” with a US commander in the airport’s control tower over the flight plan for a French relief aircraft.

Well, so what if there’s an occupation? Haiti is effectively without government. Its airports, ports, highways and means of communication are in ruins, the government (such as it is even in the best of times) is dispersed and unable to communicate, there are 200,000 bodies all over the place, and no food or drinkable water for millions of people.

Naturally there’s an occupation. There must be people to re-open airports, land, unload and refuel aircraft; people to put the seaports back in operation, secure places to store food, water and medicines; engineers and construction troops to put the roads and bridges in working order; people to distribute the aid and soldiers to protect the aid workers, doctors, media people and do-gooders such as my lord Joyandet from destitute and desperate Haitians. The food, water and medicines are mostly coming from the US, aboard US planes and ships; mostly paid for by the US; and mostly distributed by Americans. There is absolutely a US occupation of Haiti. In fact, the best thing that could possibly happen to Haiti and the Haitians would be a prolonged US occupation of several years duration.

If whatever passes for a Haitian government has a problem with a US “occupation” it can be resolved simply by a meeting between whatever Haitian officials that can be drummed-up, the US ambassador and the US military commanders. Perhaps in flag quarters on USS Carl Vinson? The whole thing wouldn’t take thirty minutes: fifteen minutes for the Haitians to enjoy their first shower in a week and have the use of the admiral’s head; ten minutes talk by the Haitian bigwigs about the grand history of Haiti; thirty seconds for the Flag Secretary to print the two page agreement, a minute for everybody to sign; two minutes for a photo-op, a minute and thirty seconds for everybody to grab coffee and a cookie.

No sensible nation would want to occupy Haiti – the country has always been a basket case, and barring divine intervention will be so until the end of time. Americans, French and everybody else are in Haiti because people everywhere are compassionate and want to help. Location, size and relative wealth naturally means the American role is going to be significant.

From the narrowly American point of view, it is too bad that we cannot transport Haiti and its problems to some other hemisphere. . .perhaps to a point near, oh, France? Alternatively, maybe we should just throw up our hands and declare Haiti a French problem (after all, France is the former ruling colonial power). In fact, I nominate M. Joyandet to be the new “Secrétaire d’Etat chargé de la Coopération, de la Francophonie, et le Gouverneur de Haiti.” I’m sure the French military and the officials that plan its vast budget will absolutely dwell in transports of ecstasy over M. Joyandet's landing them the Haitian job.

Of course, the French don’t really want that responsibility. But their junior cabinet ministers do want their names in the papers, and to get France outsized credit for whatever it contributes, thus maintaining France’s big-brother role in the Francophone world, of which Haiti is a part; and ensuring that right-thinking people everywhere know the proper French officials have burnished their anti-imperialist credentials. All quite understandable, and business as usual. Too much to hope that they'll just let the adults get on with the job.

Bye Bye Filibusters?

2009-12-28T01:21:00.009-06:00

According to The Hill, Senator Tom Harkin (D. Iowa) is preparing to introduce legislation to curb the filibuster in the Senate. According to Senator Harkin, the filibuster is being abused by Republicans who use it too often:

You're supposed to filibuster something that is a deep seated issue. . . The idea is to give some time for extended debate but eventually allow a majority to work its will. I do believe there's some reason to have extended debate.

The good Senator Harkin assures us he comes by his proposal honestly (since he first proposed it when a member of the minority); and is not coming forward with it now simply because he’s in the majority -- that same majority that has been absolutely beside itself with spitting angry rage at the minority’s recalcitrance and refusal to drink either the Left’s health care Kool-Aid or the cap-and-trade hemlock. The Democrats are furious that the Republicans are making them amass 60-vote super majorities over small beans like a government takeover of a sixth of the US economy.

Now I know that as a conservative I am supposed to be against this. Jay Cost, over at Real Clear Politics, has today provided all three bipartisans still existing in the United States with very cogent arguments setting out why keeping the filibuster is a smart idea, and arguing that this pesky parliamentary device is more essential now than ever before:

. . . the party extremes have grown farther apart. . . there are now fewer genuine moderates in the United States Senate than at any point in the last half century. Third, there used to be a sizeable ideological overlap between the two parties . . . It no longer exists. Put simply, the Senate parties have become ideologically polarized.
This helps explain the increasing use of the filibuster. As the parties drift apart ideologically, the majority party will more likely introduce legislation that the minority party can't accept . . . Using the filibuster is thus a rational response when one finds oneself in the smaller half of a polarized chamber, which is more likely to be the case today than 45 years ago

That all makes splendid practical sense, if you disregard the fact that the filibuster is not working. Thanks to last year's perfect storm of an electoral debacle, the Democrats have the 60 votes to break filibusters, especially since the Blue Dogs are a bunch of spineless lapdogs. (Oh, they'll bloviate, whine and promise, but the Left buys or rolls them every time, while the lapdogs hold their noses, pocket their money and assume pious expressions). Thanks to the same filibuster, once this monstrosity is passed, there is very little chance of undoing it, whatever happens in 2010 or 2012. This albatross will have to be endured until it fiscally wrecks us.

It’s time for a display of bipartisanship. Senator Harkin is right. The majority should eventually be allowed, as he puts it, to “work its will.” Here’s hoping his bill gets 40 Republican co-sponsors in the Senate. As our President has so rightly told us, "elections have consequences." For a time, the Democrats can keep running wild, and we can have the government the Left thinks we deserve. But that’s not the end of the story. Come November 2010, there are likely to be some more consequences, and even bigger ones in 2012. Perhaps majorities will work their will in ways not at all to Senator Harkin’s liking. Nice thought anyway.

12/11/1941

2009-12-11T09:46:00.026-06:00

No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy . . . but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. . . So we had won after all! Yes, after Dunkirk; after the fall of France; after the horrible episode of Oran; after the threat of invasion, when, apart from the Air and the Navy, we were an almost unarmed people; after the deadly struggle of the U-boat war -- the first Battle of the Atlantic, gained by a hand's-breadth; after seventeen months of lonely fighting and nineteen months of my responsibility in dire stress, we had won the war. . . How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end, no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care. . . We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end. . . Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.
Winston S. Churchill's reaction to the news of Pearl Harbor, in his Memoirs of the Second World War, Volume 3: The Grand Alliance.

Several days ago, the United States remembered the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which, among other things, brought the United States into the Second World War. With the Japanese attack on the United States, the line-up of major powers at war was almost complete – but only almost. The US declaration of war, passed-out of Congress on the 8th (with but one dissenting vote) – named only Japan.

The United States had not yet heard from Japan’s allies, Germany and Italy – co-signatories to the September 1940 Tripartite or “Axis” Pact. On 11 December 1941, this changed when Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. A good argument can be made that with this step, Nazi Germany committed suicide.

In the strategic sense, Hitler’s decision to make war on the United States – for it was his alone – was absolute lunacy. In December of 1941, Germany had all it could handle in Russia: Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s plan to conquer the Soviet Union in a single campaign in the summer and fall of 1941 – had already failed, and the German Army was stuck in the snow in front of Moscow: its supply lines a shambles or non-existent, casualties already numbering over a million (front line infantry regiments barely fielding the strength of companies). On the 6th, the Russians – who seemed to the Germans to have bottomless resources – launched a massive counteroffensive.

Germany’s other enemy, Great Britain, was running its own war in North Africa, and at sea, relying on massive dollops of American financial and military aid to stay in the war. But without more, and as long as Germany could keep the situation in Russia more or less under control, Britain’s efforts, strategically, were an irritant, and not a threat. But with the Russian campaign teetering in the balance, Germany verged on strategic bankruptcy.

So why then, did Hitler compound his problems? Why did Adolf Hitler, with his eyes open, enter into war with the greatest industrial power on Earth? Pre-war German military planners concluded that Germany had lost the First World War because the Kaiser’s Navy had dragged America into it. But on 11 December 1941, Hitler proved to the world he was an amateur strategist, and repeated the mistake.

On the other hand, Hitler might well have considered that, practically speaking, the US and Germany were already at war. Legally, Germany and the US were at peace, but US ships were protecting convoys of US military aid to Britain in the North Atlantic; aid that the US, through the convenient fiction of Lend-Lease, was essentially giving to Britain. In fact, Britain (out of money, and without a sufficient population or resource base to really fight Germany on its own) was on US military and economic life support. Without the Lend-Lease breathing machine provided by Uncle Sam, Great Britain would have been forced to the peace table with Germany by mid-1941.

But convoying and massive aid was still not full-scale war, which the Germans, up till late 1941 – seemed to understand very well: the German Navy in the Atlantic being under orders to “avoid incidents with the USA.”

It seems that Hitler, just as he had underestimated the Soviet Union, underestimated the industrial and military power of America. Partly on the basis of bad advice from his admirals, and his own assumptions about Germany's ability to defeat the Soviet Union for good in 1942, he reasoned that Japan would keep the Americans busy enough for him to win his war in Europe without much American interference.

Time would prove that Hitler made himself and his country a sucker's bet. Fortunately, American resources were vast enough to fight a full scale land, air and sea war with Japan; raise and supply a major army to fight land campaigns against the Germans in Europe; arm and feed the British; help the Soviets; build the ships to move the army and supplies around in; build an air force from scratch to level Germany’s cities; build roads and ports on five continents; work on costly experiments like the atomic bomb – and still manage to pay for all this. America could afford it. By comparison, Hitler's Germany, and every other power in the conflict -- fought a poor man's, shoestring war.

Perhaps more importantly, Hitler made the fatal error of taking the struggle personally. He wanted a confrontation with the rich plutocratic Americans -- in any way that he could get one. The Führer really, really hated America, and in particular the US President, Franklin Roosevelt – as a reading of his diatribe in the Reichstag, announcing war with the United States -- makes amply clear:

And now permit me to define my attitude to that other world, which has its representative in that man, who, while our soldiers are fighting in snow and ice, very tactfully likes to make his chats from the fireside, the man who is the main culprit of this war. . .

More even than his faulty strategic assumptions, Hitler's hatred and envy of America and its President drove him to abandon rational calculations of interest and advantage, and into the fatal misstep that would destroy him.

What if Hitler had declared neutrality in the Pacific War? Not that treaties were ever an issue for the Nazis, but technically, Article 3 of the Axis Pact did not require Germany to go to war with the United States. Probably, neutrality would not have helped Hitler much, but it would have gravely complicated the allied position politically.

President Roosevelt could probably have obtained a declaration of war on Germany anyway, (Congress was working on that already), but there were large segments of American opinion that wanted to stay out of the European War. On 12 August 1941, with Hitler holding almost all of Europe, his U-Boats in the Atlantic, and the German armies knocking at the gates of Moscow -- the US House of Representatives, evidently living on another planet, opted to keep the draft by a majority of one vote.

It is very unlikely that the United States would have enjoyed the unity that allowed it fight the war to the finish had Hitler not moved first. Hitler, by stealing Roosevelt’s thunder, did the world a favor by destroying in advance the arguments of the isolationists, solidifying the conviction of the American people that there could be no deals with the Nazis or the Japanese, and that the war had to be prosecuted until total victory. Isolationism was mortally wounded by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and finished-off by Hitler’s speech in the Reichstag, as the ensuing American declaration of war (after Hitler's) proved. Churchill's reaction to Pearl Harbor, recorded above, more accurately reflected the situation after 11 December 1941.

Suppose, however, that Hitler had not only declared neutrality in the Japanese war, but torn-up the Axis pact and actually declared war on Japan? Unlike democracies, dictatorships can change policies on a dime -- as Hitler had shown in 1939 with his deal with Stalin, that he tore up in June 1941. What if Hitler had gotten up in the Reichstag, denounced the Japanese sneak-attack on America, and offered the US "help?" Not that Germany would have ever really fought such a war, but it seems improbable that the United States could have gone to war with Germany under those conditions.

With America out of the European war, and what was left of the isolationist lobby demanding full focus on the war with Japan (no aid for Britain and Russia, and no second front, ever). Hitler might well have forced the British to a separate peace and beaten the Russians. At the least, Hitler could quite possibly have achieved a stalemate with Stalin, thus managing to keep much of Germany's ill-gotten gains, and having his hands free to maintain his criminal Nazi regime indefinitely.

Fortunately, Hitler’s half-baked views of strategy -- and his paranoid fantasy that Roosevelt and the Americans were part of his mythical world-wide Jewish conspiracy – drove Hitler and Nazi Germany to suicide. On 11 December 1941 – Hitler abandoned strategy and just did what he wanted to, cast off ambiguity, and made the quasi-war with the United States real.

Now that pretense was over, the very next day, as the historian Christian Gerlach has shown, Hitler took steps to move the Holocaust (already begun in Russia) into high gear, announcing to his intimates his decision to annihilate European Jewry. But history had other plans. Matters would end quite differently than the architect and maker of all this misery supposed, because Hitler’s decision on 11 December 1941 led not to a German-dominated Europe but to his squalid suicide in his miserable little Berlin bunker, and the burning of his carcass on some rubbish-heap.

Messy Desk

2009-11-19T13:25:00.006-06:00

Whenever I finish a major writing project, at work or at home, I have a ginormous mess of papers to clean up. Some of them are normally related to whatever I'm working on, but other stuff is usually totally unrelated, and usually pertains to (1) possible blog projects; (2) weird historical/political material I like to read; (3) correspondence; or, (4) just misc. kaka.

Here's a sampling of today's gleanings. As will be apparent, I tend to print hard copies of virtually everything. I also probably have serious ADD. . .

(1) Collective Bargaining Agreement between. . . (parties omitted).

(2) measurements for a home shelving project.

(3) notes on opposing party's brief in (case names omitted).

(4) article: Ballistic Tests on the IJN Shinano's Turret Face Armor, by Nathan Okun, 31 Aug. 1999.

(5) article from the New Republic "The Reinvention of Robert Gates" by Michael Crowley, 9 Nov. 2009.

(6) Memorandum for File concerning conversation with . . .(business, never mind).

(7) Article from Stratfor.com "Twenty Years after the Fall" [of the Berlin Wall], by George Friedman, 9 Nov. 09.

(8) Personal e-mail letter from X to moi, dated 25 Mar. 09.

(9) Print-out of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure No. 56.

(10) Article from Mysteries of the Imperial Japanese Navy: "Death of Battleship Hiei: Sunk by Gunfire or Air Attack?" by Anthony P. Tully, 1997.

(11) Article from Wall Street Journal Online "The KSM Trial Will be an Intelligence Bonanza for al Qaeda" by John Yoo.

(12) Print-out of Texas Property Code § 209.006.

(13) Photocopies of 10 pages from Elkouri & Elkouri's How Arbitration Works.

(14) Old receipt from Tony's Mexican Restaurant.

(15) "List of H.M. Ships operating in the English Channel, May 1805" (printout, 3 pages, source unknown).

(16) Friend's Christmas letter from December 2008.

(17) Annotated copy of page from O'Connor's Texas Rules * Civil Trial (2009).

(18) Article from the American Interest "Pillars of the Next American Century" print-out dated 26 Oct. 2009.

(19) Article from National Affairs "Who Killed California?" by Troy Senek (print-out dated 2 October 2009).

(20) A random copy of a page from Black's Law Dictionary with, among other definitions "Nomographer."

What's on your desk?

Why is the President Bowing?

2009-11-14T12:10:00.003-06:00

Who in Hell does Obama think he is, in his capacity as the President of the United States, to bow before the Emperor of Japan?

A proper respect for crowned heads is appropriate, but a well-mannered greeting in the name of the United States, is quite enough. Ostentatious deference to a monarch by a sitting President is at best an idiot's breach of protocol and at worst a cavalier act of disrespect for both his own office and the people who elected him.

The United States submits to no earthly power. The President is the elected representative of the republic, and appears in the name of the United States before foreign heads of state and governments. He has no right to bow to anyone in the name of the United States.

(Hat tip: Power Line Blog).

UPDATE (16 Nov. 09) Check this most interesting You Tube video, which speaks for itself.

Veterans Day, 2009

2009-11-11T07:41:00.004-06:00

When you go home,
Tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow,

We gave our today.
Inscription, British War Memorial, Kohima, India.(attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds, Times Literary Supplement[London], 4 July 1918)

As our soldiers, sailors and aviators serve and struggle for us throughout the world, particularly today in Iraq and Afghanistan, pause in your business for a moment, and think of them, and of our veterans who have already served. Remember those who are not with us today, because they made the ultimate sacrifice. The terrible events of the past week at Fort Hood make it especially important for us to reflect gratefully on all they have given.

In particular, I am remembering in my own prayers today three casualties of the Battle of Midway (4 June 1942). Wesley F. Osmus, Ensign USNR, (USS Yorktown), Frank W. O’Flaherty, Ensign USNR (USS Enterprise), and Bruno P. Gaido (Aviation Machinist's Mate (1st Class) -- O'Flaherty's gunner). All were aviators shot down and captured during the attacks on the Japanese fleet, and murdered by their captors. They faced their fates alone, but they are never forgotten.

Went the day well ?
We died and never knew.
But, well or ill, Freedom, we died for you.

John Maxwell Edmonds, Times [London], 6 February 1918.

Happy Birthday Marine Corps!

2009-11-10T07:44:00.001-06:00

On 10 November 1775, before the United States was yet a country, the Continental Congress created what became the United States Marine Corps, the resolution of that date providing for the raising of two battalions of Marines. Legend has it that the first Marine recruiting post was in a bar (most say Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, although the precise identity of the hostelry is in dispute). Recruiting had produced five weak companies 300 strong by December 1775, and in March of 1776 the Marines found themselves on ships headed for the Caribbean for the first of their many amphibious expeditions (a raid on the Bahamas). The Corps has been carrying our flags around the globe ever since, participating with distinction in every American war (even in the Civil War – both sides had Marines). Today, the Marines are 200,000 strong.

It is altogether typical that on their Corps’ 234th birthday, America’s Marines are carrying the fight to the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, just as their fathers and brothers did before them in Kuwait, Grenada, at Hue City, the Chosun Reservoir, Iwo Jima, Peleliu, Tarawa, Guadalcanal, Corregidor, Belleau Wood, the Argonne, Peking, Nicaragua, Mexico City, Tripoli and a million other places. Semper Fi guys, and thank you. May God be with all of you every day, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hello Mr. President?

2009-11-06T12:00:00.007-06:00

So what's with a Commander-in-Chief making a speech following the news of the shootings at Fort Hood, and not even mentioning it till just under two minutes into the light preliminary banter of a totally unrelated speech?

Obama's remarks -- when they got to the subject -- were appropriate. But the coolness, the detachment, the disconnect between our glacially calm President, the plight of the soldiers of which he is the commander, and the shock of much of the rest of the country was profoundly unsettling.

Couldn't the introduction to his (no doubt) deeply important speech to something called the "Tribal Nations Conference" hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs (yawn) have waited for just a minute? Why does the President get to the important matter -- a crime that concerns the whole country -- two minutes into his talk; when the speech is getting TV coverage, and much of the country tuned in precisely because it's seeking reassurance and information from the President?

Who is advising Obama? Why did the speech go forward? What makes Obama tick?

Who is this man?

(hat tip, Lasso of Truth).

Election 2009

2009-11-05T08:54:00.008-06:00

A day shy of a year from the Great Disaster of 2008, America went to the polls again. For Republicans and conservatives, accustomed to an almost uninterrupted diet of political disaster since November 2004; the election of 2009 was the first good news in a long, long time. El Jefe has some very general observations.

1). A very good night for Republicans, better, actually, than if they had won the much-watched race in New York Congressional District 23. Had Mr. Hoffman prevailed there, extreme conservatives would have taken this as a hunting license with which to harass Republican Party moderates. Ideological purity is well and good, for purposes of arguments, but elections are about assembling coalitions (difficult even under the best of conditions). It is helpful to be reminded of the need to make converts, not to simply preach to the choir.

2). New Jersey was a good win, but despite Obama’s appearances there, and his apparent investment in the campaign, much of the reason for the Democratic loss here was Jon Corzine and his baggage. Not to detract from Governor-elect Christie’s victory, but New Jersey was mostly a nice surprise, a one-off, produced by a confluence of very favorable circumstances, and a very well-run Republican campaign.

3). Virginia is the real bad news for Democrats (in particular, as Karl Rove points out, the suburban vote-swing). Obama carried Virginia in 2008 with 53 percent of the vote. The Democratic candidate for governor could manage only 41 percent of the vote this last Tuesday. Democratic Senators and Representatives elected from Red States (many of the so-called “Blue Dogs”) will have to think very carefully about the likely consequences of supporting Obama’s health care and environmental schemes.

3a). While thinking on the election results, the Blue Dogs would do well to reflect on the posture of their own Congressional leadership, which is dominated by the Democratic Party left. The party leadership would certainly like their votes for Obamacare and for cap and tax, but would probably not be displeased to see many of them lose in 2010 – thus eliminating more conservative voices from Democratic Party councils. At any rate, there might well be rich seams of divergent interests available to be mined between Blue Dogs and Lefties; Senate and House; White House and Congress and any other combination Republicans can think up. Hey Republicans, how's it going with Lieberman these days?

4). Thinking of the Democratic Party leadership, positively the most stupid reaction to Tuesday’s results was Comrade Pelosi’s declaration yesterday that “we won last night.” No report yet saying that the Speaker of the House has been arrested for smoking crack.

5). The Republicans have gotten off the deck, and found a bit of a voice, but they have work to do. We know what Republicans are against: the expansion of government by Obama and the Democrats; the administration’s reckless spending and feckless foreign policy. But what do Republicans support?

6). While developing a more affirmative program, the Republicans must keep fighting. Dick Morris should be correct in asserting that Tuesday’s returns constitute Obamacare’s death certificate. There is a chance not only to block the public option, but to stop the legislation entirely, and probably the cap and tax environmental scheme as well. The key will be finding ways to fracture Democratic Party discipline – and given the problems Tuesday shows the Blue Dogs might have in 2010, this is now within reach. A bill is going to come out of the House soon but Senate Majority Leader Reid is now saying that there may be no bill on his side till 2010. If this is so, time is very short: if matters are spun-out much past March, we will be too deep into the 2010 election cycle for the production of meaningful legislation.

7). There is now the interesting question of what Obama will do? Barring a foreign policy crisis (which will change all calculations) he has, essentially, two choices:
(a) Doubling Down – mobilizing all the liberal lobbies and interest to arm-twist the Blue Dogs to secure the legislation he wants by Valentines Day. Don’t know enough about the liberal set-up to know if this can work. I think he needs the complete support of the unions to do it, and unless card check’s coming, that might be tough.
(b) The Bill Clinton Three-Step – essentially, this involves pulling back some – giving up the public option on health care, ensuring environmental legislation is harmless to small business interests; and focusing instead on jobs and employment. This would perhaps cause the Chamber of Commerce and the business lobby to demobilize somewhat, and would probably produce a modest recovery in independent support – thus, better poll numbers. If Obama triangulated a la Bill Clinton, the Left would be furious, but Lefties have nowhere to go. The Right would be flat-footed by losing its most potent rhetorical talking points.

8). As a narrowly political matter, the smart move for the Democrats (in the short term), and probably the best move for the country (period) would be Plan B. Set against this though, the Democrats have to consider that whatever 2010 looks like, the historical probabilities indicate that the Republicans, as the completely out of power party, have no place to go but up; and that in all likelihood, Republicans will gain congressional seats. Put another way, the Democrats will never be as strong as today, and now might be the time to use their votes, before they lose them.

President of the World

2009-10-09T09:58:00.007-05:00

April Fool's Day in October! President Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize?

For what?

Clearly so that the Nobel Committee can gloat that the US President is Not Bush (nominations were due 1 February, so what else could it be?) Giving an "attaboy" to Obama for his kumbaya kaffee klatch foreign policy of apologizing to everybody for everything (in the modern Euro manner) is no doubt high on the list too.

I wonder if Obama will travel to Oslo to accept the award? He would probably like to: the man seems to enjoy the company of Europeans and world celebrities more than he does tending to the business of legislation and government in Washington.

During the late campaign, Obama often appeared as an unknown, unknowable, distant figure, a man who kept everyone at arms length; a robot which his handlers could program with happy talk and point at useful groups of voters; and a screen on which the credulous could project their good wishes for whatever different future was appealing at the moment. Not for nothing did Obama use appeals to "hope" as a campaign theme.

Now that we are learning more about Obama the man, he increasingly seems seems dreadfully miscast as President of the United States. The office of President combines the roles of Head of State (think of the British Monarch) -- the greater of foreign visitors, the host of state dinners, who appears at ceremonies and serves as the face of the state to the world; and of Prime Minister. The Prime Minister does the real work of government -- produces legislation, presides over the cabinet, tends to the construction and maintenance of a political coalition to do all this -- and positively enjoys the nuts-and-bolts of figuring out what Senator X wants to vote for Project Y.

Obama, clearly, has nothing of the Prime Minister about him. He is in such trouble on health care (supposedly a main legislative priority) because he largely ignored the nuts and bolts -- trusting Pelosi and Reid to do it for him. A similar condition obtains on environmental legislation. Obama appears to neither know about, nor have any interest in, the production of legislation. Contrast Obama with Clinton -- whatever problems Slick Willie had as Head of State -- he certainly understood how to be Prime Minister.

But Obama, who cannot bear to get his hands dirty with government, is not much of a Head of State either, at least of the United States. America is, perhaps, too small; too parochial a stage for him? Obama clearly wants to appeal to a larger audience. Obama doesn't really want to be President of the United States. To Obama, haring-off to Copenhagen to hob-nob with the Olympic committee is much more important than spending an afternoon with Senator Snodgrass of Noplace to grub for his vote or staying in a room with General McChrystal for more than 25 minutes. If rubes in Texas and Missouri can't stand Obama, what of it? What is the approval of uneducated, unsophisticated American nobodies next to the approbation of the Worldwide Great and Good?

This will end badly. There is even an element of personal tragedy in it: Obama is more of a Secretary-General of the UN -- more a world conscience type than he is a President of the United States. But that's not what he's being paid for. What will he do when the rubes figure him out?

On the Sidelines

2009-09-30T09:39:00.007-05:00

El Jefe apologizes for his silence of late.

In general, I have used this blog for my comments on things political, and since the elections of last year, I have cared a good deal less, primarily because I have not seen the point. It is no secret that I am conservative: and for the moment, conservatives in this country are politically powerless.

Watching the gyrations of the left-wing Democrats and the "blue dog" Democrats in Congress over Obama's health care legislation, the cap-and trade foolishness, and the other dog's breakfast of legislation favored by this administration has been beyond boring for me. The royalist Baron Astley's comment in the English Civil War to his parliamentary captors: "You have now done your work and may go play, unless you will fall out amongst yourselves" has summed-up my attitude since last November perfectly. I am sick about what is being done to the country by these people, but have felt both powerless to influence it as well as cut out of it.

Meanwhile, there have been other diversions: Facebook; my family; friends; too much food and wine; books. I have found ways to stay busy, and have tended to put the newspapers aside. It has been better for my blood-pressure, in any event.

Time has passed, and I've become more interested in matters political lately. Maybe things are not as hopeless as they have appeared, although the situation of the country seems worse than ever. Our President seems hopelessly out of his depth, and unable to distinguish between campaigning and governing. I'm not sure if he thinks that he is President of the World or of the United States. At any rate, I'm thinking it's time to saddle-up again.

9/11 Remembered

2009-09-11T09:47:00.005-05:00

Today is the eighth anniversary of the murderous Al Qaeda terrorist attack on the United States. May our enemies ever be remembered for the cowardly and dastardly nature of their attack on our country; and, today, in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Iraq and other places, the armed forces are serving our foes with the appropriate condign punishment.

Eight years later, some of the foul perpetrators are in Hell already. Others are waiting their turn to go there, rotting in jails, in Guantanamo and other places; we can only pray God speeds their appointment with the hangman.

Spare a moment, reader, and remember the dead: especially heroes like Rick Rescorla.

"Soul of the Democratic Party" Indeed

2009-08-29T12:30:00.004-05:00

President Obama today lauded the deceased Senator Ted Kennedy as the "soul of the Democratic Party. . ." Truer words were never spoken.

The late Senator was a silver spoon to the manor born, never in any trouble that family influence and position could not work him out of. Senator Kennedy spent most of his adult life becoming the liberal "Lion of the Senate," all afire with virtuous, expensive and patronizing plans to spend vast sums of other people's money for their own good; certain that he, his fixers, lawyers, media pals, professors and other hangers-on (such as our new President) -- all knew better than the intended beneficiaries what was good for them, and their country. How appropriate and fitting that his liberal colleagues want to "win one for Teddy" and ram government control of health care down our throats under his name . Soul of the Democratic Party," indeed.

Ted Kennedy, R.I.P.

2009-08-26T11:52:00.003-05:00

I have not got much to say about the passing of Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D. Massachusetts). It is hard for prey to mourn, unduly, the passing of the "Lion of the Senate," particularly when said Lion's political allies are obviously going to use his death as a banner to rally their people behind ramming a particularly pernicious piece of legislation through the Congress.

The Senator's political life and positions are well known, as are the less savory aspects of his personal life. All this will no doubt be dissected by the press for weeks and weeks in nauseating detail. But those discussions will be left to others; and I will say no more other than that all should pray for the repose of his soul, and that God may guide his tragic family to some kind of peace.

Texas Governor's Race

2009-08-17T12:23:00.003-05:00

As widely expected, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison announced her entry into the Texas Governor's race today. According to the Dallas Morning News, Senator Hutchison told a crowd in LaMarque that Governor Rick Perry ". . ..dedicated public servant. . .I know he loves Texas. But now he’s trying to stay too long.”

Senator Hutchison added some complaints about Perry's tenure -- high taxes, pricey college tuition, among others. We need "results, not politics," Senator Hutchison tells us, plus term limits for the Texas governorship. Yeah, I can see where she might have an interest in that. . .

I've never been overly sympathetic with a demand for term limits, I think if people are bored with a politician they can simply vote him out at the next election. But more fundamentally, I cannot find a reason for Senator Hutchison's candidacy, other than the fact she wants to be governor, Perry's had the job for awhile, and the Senator thinks it's her turn. Governor Perry's a dedicated public servant, and loves Texas, the Senator assures us -- but she's really got a beef with his "trying to stay too long." Sorry Senator, but that's not enough.

I'm going to support the Republican candidate for governor, whether it's Governor Perry, or Senator Hutchison, but I have been well satisfied with Rick Perry, and see no reason for a change. It would be better for Texas and the country if Senator Hutchison would abandon ideas of Austin, and keep her seat in the Senate. The Republican Party and the country have enough troubles without Senator Hutchison engineering needless faction fights, and producing opportunities for Texas Democrats to put another Obama supporter in the Senate.

The Last Boat Home

2009-07-26T10:28:00.005-05:00

The Daily Telegraph reports that Harry Patch, last or next-to-last surviving British veteran of the First World War, died yesterday at the age of 111. I had a long post prepared on Mr. Patch, his wounding near Ypres in 1917, the deaths of his friends, and some thoughts on the First World War as the agent of ruination of modern civilzation. However, on second though I'll leave you with his Telegraph obituary (and another from the New York Times this morning) which together cover the ground well enough; as well as these words from one of Patch's fellow soldiers:

When the Last Long Trek is Over

When the last long trek is over,

And the last long trench filled in,

I’ll take a boat to Dover,

Away from all the din;

I’ll take a trip to Mendip,

I’ll see the Wiltshire downs,

And all my soul I’ll then dip

In peace no trouble drowns.

Away from noise of battle,

Away from bombs and shells,

I’ll lie where browse the cattle,

Or pluck the purple bells.

I’ll lie among the heather,

And watch the distant plain,

Through all the summer weather,

Nor go to fight again.

Written near Arras, France, by Alec deCandole, Lieutenant (4th Bn., Wiltshire Rgt., attached 49th Coy., Machine Gun Corps) on 2 September 1918. Killed in action near Bonningues-lès-Ardres, France, 4 September 1918, age 21.

Why Does Obama Side With the Liberals? Well, Duh...

2009-07-22T15:23:00.004-05:00

Clive Crook, over at the Atlantic, wonders why President Obama keeps siding with Democratic liberals, rather than with his party's moderates:

If Obama offends the left, what are they going to do apart from whine? Let them whine. If he offends the center, he loses votes and is deeply wounded electorally. . .
Obama could fix this problem so easily. . . But he has to start disappointing the party's liberals. He has to pick a fight or two, and takes sides with the centrists. In choosing the party's liberals over the party's moderates, he is repudiating one of the most brilliant campaigns ever seen. I simply don't understand it.

Mr. Crook needs a visit from Captain Obvious. This doesn't take an Ivy League degree, or a job at the Atlantic to comprehend. What's hard to understand here? Maybe Obama sides with his party's liberals because he is. . .um. . .a liberal?

Just a thought.

China Must Pay Eh? How's that?

2009-07-21T12:52:00.002-05:00

According to Reuters, yesterday , US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the Manufacturing Council (what Reuters calls a private sector advisory group) that China must help pay for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming:

"They've got to step up. They've got to pay for the cost of complying with global climate change. They've got to invest in energy efficiency and conversation, but also [take] very definitive steps in reducing greenhouse gas emissions" Locke decreed.

I must have missed it -- when did the US Army occupy Beijing? When does Hu Jintao go on trial? What else do we want from China besides their "stepping up" on global warming? Cancellation of our debts, maybe? Dream on.

Mr. Locke is not alone on the homily circuit. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when in India recently, was telling that country to step up also: “It is essential for major developing countries like India to also lead because over 80 percent of the growth in future emissions will be from developing countries."

The Indians have been unimpressed with US arguments, but the Chinese have been making cooperative noises on global warming lately. Since the present depression has hit their manufacturing sector rather hard, it could well be that the Chinese leadership is simply making happy talk that costs them (at present) absolutely nothing.

But, seriously, just what are Mr. Locke, Ms. Clinton and their pals thinking? Mr. Locke and Ms. Clinton aren't newspaper columnists, bloggers, actors or other nobodies, they are cabinet members of the United States government, speaking for that government -- making public demands of the sovereign governments of great powers; of the type normally made only at bayonet-point, after an unconditional surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship? This is particularly pertinent in the case of China, which has its own dire internal problems, and is apt to stand very much on its dignity when it comes to being ordered about in its own house by foreigners.

Is it any wonder that on so many issues, the Chinese are telling us, in diplo-speak, to piss-off? Is it any wonder that the Indians, aware that we need their help on Iran, and other matters, are somewhat dismayed at the talk coming out of Washington? Hopefully the government's representatives moderate their public tone somewhat; and we should hope, also, that the government which they represent moderates its fantasyland objectives.

Honduras

2009-07-05T12:43:00.004-05:00

The former President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, is, or is about to be, on his way by air to Honduras, aboard the President of Argentina's official aircraft. Mr. Zelaya is accompanied by a crowd of do-gooders and right-thinking people, including the Nicaraguan Sandinista U.N. General Assembly President, Miguel D'Escoto.

The position of the United States government -- specifically, President Obama -- on events in that country has been most disappointing and troubling. Former President Zelaya was about to hold a "referendum" on amending the country's constitution to allow him to seek another presidential term. Mr. Zelaya was told to cease and desist from doing so by Honduras's Supreme Court and by the Congress -- but Mr. Zelaya -- figuring he could find some group of people willing to anoint him Jefe, got himself some ballots and advice from Hugo Chavez and was planning to go ahead anyway. At this point, the army, with the support of the rest of the Honduran government -- aborted Mr. Zelaya's coup and quite properly removed him.

Now Obama is standing with Chavez and the Castro brothers and the United Dictators club to tell Hondurans they can't do this -- that the rest of the world has more to say about who is President of Honduras than Hondurans do.

Honduras has been one of the USA's best friends in Central America, particularly in the hard times of the Soviet, Cuban and leftist Nicaraguan backed insurgency in El Salvador and the years of the confrontation with Nicaragua's Sandinista regime. The Obama administration's stand towards events in Honduras is despicable.

Hopefully, the Hondurans turn Mr. Zelaya's plane away. If it actually lands in Tegucigalpa, here's hoping they give the accompanying do-gooders the boot and put Mr. Zelaya where he belongs -- in jail.

A Little to the Left, Please. . .

2009-06-24T11:48:00.005-05:00

Well, Obama's "appalled and outraged" at Iran. With good reason, to be sure. Maybe he's getting tougher, but I'm joining Dick Morris in not holding my breath. It's hard to escape the view that the President views Iran, North Korea, Iraq and the wars as annoyances, distracting him and the country from the real job of reforming health care and building a green economy.

I'm not even sure I blame Obama, much. Sometimes the options available are limited to bad and awful, particularly when the military account is both underfunded and overdrawn. More to the point, the President of the United States is not the only one with options and plans. Our dear friend the Dear Leader and his minions in North Korea have been heard from today.

No doubt Obama is appalled and outraged about this also, and people throughout Asia and the Pacific very nervous. But for all our sakes, President Obama needs to be careful, because it looks a little like the Dear Leaders and Khameneis of the world have decided Obama's actually Hans Blix of the UN and Team America World Police. . .

Letter to Khamenei

2009-06-19T19:34:00.008-05:00

An Iranian exile, Professor Dr. Afshin Ellian, teacher of the philosophy of law at Leiden University in the Netherlands, has published (in the online journal Telos) a splendid open letter to the Iranian "Supreme Leader,"Ayatollah Khamenei.

Excellency Khamenei, you and I know that no tyranny has ever succeeded in creating a political system that lasts. Your advisors have been misinforming you these past years. They have made you deaf and blind to what is really happening. The truth is that the ruling elite is despised by the people. Your puppet Ahmadinejad, who likes to appeal to Iranians in populist terms, is reviled. If you continue to use violence against your people, then you have obviously learned nothing from the tragic fate of the last shah of Persia.
The mothers of the members of my family who were executed will not forgive you. But they will let you withdraw peacefully, for the sake of freedom and the peace of their grandchildren. Time is pressing for the Iranian people, and for the international community. I wish you wisdom and peace. . .

The whole piece should be read, not only because it catalogues the serious grievances so many Iranians have against their rulers today; but also because Dr Eilian's letter is a window into the dreams of those, including the Professor, who made and fought for the Iranian Revolution of 1979. But Ayatollah Khomeini and his friends (including the present Supreme Leader) -- far from answering Iranian dreams of freedom -- brought nightmares instead.

Khomeini and those around him, the Professor says, repaid their millions of backers in false coin: hijacking the Iranian revolution against the Shah and using it as a vehicle to establish their theocratic tyranny. I would be less than candid if I did not admit I have little sympathy for the Professor's claims on this score. Bloody revolutions and the bastard states they throw up are themselves the very negation of the law and philosophy the professor today teaches in the Netherlands. Revolutions of the French, Russian or Iranian variety usually just replace one tyrant with a bigger one -- deadlier because the new master supposedly rests on a species of public consent. The squabbling lawyers of the Tennis Court Oath and the Estates General gave way to Robespierre and the Reign of Terror; Kerensky gave way to Lenin and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat; the moderate professor Mehdi Bazargan to the radical Islamic Republic of Khomeini. In revolutions, the democrats always, always lose out to the radicals, the fanatics and the guns. Then starry-eyed supporters and romantics elsewhere tell us that Next Time will be different.

Do not misunderstand. I hope and pray devoutly that the crowds marching through the streets of Tehran prevail. I hope they go all out, that the Islamic "Republic" is toppled, and that the Ayatollahs and thugs who run it and have caused more misery and death then ever the Shah did on his worst day are paraded through the streets in chains, and that they wind up in ditches. I hope it happens. But I don't know if it will make things any better. It's possible, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hat tip: Michael Ledeen, Faster Please.

Iran Round Up and Links

2009-06-16T09:05:00.007-05:00

El Jefe has been preoccupied of late with personal business (of the good kind) but the situation in Iran demands attention, and he hopes to have a little more on this subject presently.

Meanwhile, check out Michael Ledeen, writing over at Pajamas Media, frequently. In addition to Dr. Ledeen's posts, be sure to read the comments -- sometimes the commenters seem uncommonly well informed.

Today Dr. Ledeen tries to assess how things are going. In a nutshell, he thinks that if the crowds in the streets get organized, the regime is in real trouble; but if not, the system will muddle through, as was the case during lesser periods of unrest in 1999 and 2003. The money quote:

. . .The regime has the guns, and the opposition has the numbers. The question is whether the numbers can be successfully organized into a disciplined force that demands the downfall of the regime. Yes, I know that there have been calls for a new election, or a runoff between Mousavi and Ahmadinezhad. But I don’t think that’s very likely now. The tens of millions of Iranians whose pent-up rage has driven them to risk life and limb against their oppressors are not likely to settle for a mere change in personnel at this point. And the mullahs surely know that if they lose, many of them will face a very nasty and very brief future.
If the disciplined force comes into being, the regime will fall. If not, the regime will survive. . .

Dr. Ledeen's most interesting comments concern the state of morale in the regime's security services. The Iranians have a National Police (under the Ministry of Interior and Justice) but the true prop of the Islamic Republic, and its most important guarantee, is the Sepáh e Pásdárán e Enqeláb e Eslámi ("Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution") or, more frequently the "Revolutionary Guard" and its associated militia the "Basij" ("Mobilization"). Dr. Ledeen seems to think that the senior Iranian leadership somewhat distrusts the Revolutionary Guard's bosses, who have perhaps gone soft. Read the whole thing.

Robert F. Worth and Nazila Fathi write in the New York Times this morning about the demonstrations in Tehran. Worth and Fathi report that some of the demonstrators:

. . .were especially outraged that Mr. Ahmadinejad on Sunday dismissed them as nothing more than soccer fans who had just lost a game and as "dust." One demonstrator fired off a Twitter message. . .proclaiming: "Ahmadinejad called us Dust, we showed him a sandstorm."

The Times piece said that on Monday, the police stood "on the sidelines" at least during daylight, but that violence erupted after sunset, when the "Basij militia opened fire, leaving one dead and several others injured." It is not clear from the Times piece exactly where this shooting took place. On this subject, Dr. Ledeen says that the regime ordered the Basij and "imported Hezbollah thugs" to open fire on the crowds, and that the UK Guardian (which Ledeen considers very reliable on Iran) had reported "a dozen or so" killed Monday. Haaretz's round-up of wire-service reports comes up with a total of twenty killed today around the country.

Given the size of the crowds shown in the photographs and on You Tube, the numbers of dead reported indictes to me that the crowds, for the moment, are mostly peaceful. Despite the thousands in the streets, and the great degree of provocation necessary to produce demonstrations of this size, the Times article quotes an actor as saying that people ". . .are not seeking a revolution." For the moment, this appears to be correct.

The Guardian is live-blogging events in Tehran. Today's Guardian online has a story about the decision by the Iranian "Council of Guardians" (senior clerics that operate as sort of a Board of Directors of the Islamic Republic) to recount the election ballots. I question, from the point of view of the mullahs, the wisdom of this move -- it is seldom wise for rulers to make concessions in the face of mobs on the streets. On the other hand, it gives the government time to indoctrinate the riot police, bring up reinforcements, kick out the foreign journalists (they are already officially barred from street reporting, God protect those disobeying) -- shut down Twitter access, put down the crowds when ready, and spin a good story.

Twitter, by the way, is an important part of how things have developed. The demonstrators have been using Twitter to coordinate their efforts, and the government has been unable, at least partially, to close down access to it. Twitter is helping -- the service has delayed scheduled downtime maintenance to help the demonstrators. Good for them.

Stay tuned.

ADDENDUM: Michael Rubin, writing in National Review Online's "Corner" speaking to the question of whether the Mullah regime could actually fall, gives us a useful list of points to ponder. See also, Richard Fernandez's "The Moving Finger Writes" -- at his Belmont Club site on Pajamas Media). Mr. Fernandez, also known as "Wretchard" includes a great link to an AEI article on the organizational evolution of the Revolutionary Guard, driven in part by that organization's concern with countering and crushing popular movements.

Justice Ginsburg's Chrysler Fiat. . .

2009-06-08T17:37:00.005-05:00

Oy.

The Chrysler secured creditors unhappy with the government-brokered Fiat purchase of Chrysler's assets might get a hearing after all. Fiat can walk away if nothing happens by the 15th. . .

Comprehension Dawns

2009-06-08T14:53:00.006-05:00

Somebody sees the light. Too bad it's too late.

Like many Americans last November, I voted for change. I had hope. I no longer have hope since the president I voted for never mentioned a fraction of the agenda he now espouses. I did not vote to lower my standard of living, humble as it may be. Nor did I ask to jump into the economic abyss in order to “save” the planet.

When the economic chickens of this agenda do come home to roost, many people will change their perception of the whole quasi-religious scam known as “climate change.” Once you view the fall you’re about to take, it’s natural to turn around and take a good look at who is pushing you.

I voted for change, not economic suicide.

All is not lost: this is a rich, big nation, full of people who don't want socialism. Perhaps someday, the largely self-inflicted damage the country is about to sustain can be undone. It will be for our children to resurrect the concept of capitalism and to redeem the promise of American nationality once our wanna-be Euro socialists are through. But that's all for later. Elections have consequences, and the Left is well and truly in the saddle, and gets its chance to take us for a ride.

Hat tips: Confederate Yankee, American Thinker.

D-Day, 65 Years On

2009-06-06T10:27:00.011-05:00

Official U.S. 1st Army Group position map at 2400 hours on D-Day (6 June 1944).
(Source: Library of Congress G5701.S7 svar .A4, via Wikipedia).

In this column, I want to tell you what the opening of the second front entailed, so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those both dead and alive who did it for you.
Ernie Pyle, 12 June 1944 (as quoted in Stephen Ambrose, D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (Simon & Schuster, 1994).

65 years ago today, the western allies returned to the European continent: the Normandy landings signaling the beginning of the end of Hitler's Germany. The invasion, Operation Overlord, with 15,000 vessels, over ten divisions of troops (from the US, UK and Canada as well as Free-French contingents) and thousands of aircraft, is still the largest amphibious assault ever attempted, only approached in size by the invasion of Okinawa in 1945. (Operation Olympic would have dwarfed Overlord, but thankfully, that one never happened).

Neither D-Day nor the ensuing Normandy Campaign (Operation Cobra, and the breakout across France) decided the war -- in retrospect, the Germans had lost the war, probably, by August 1941, certainly (as I wrote here) by December 1941. But the allied armies delivered the western half of the continent from Nazi bondage and barbarism, and by their victory bought liberty and freedom for much of Europe. In the fullness of time, eastern Europe too, would be delivered from tyranny: and the foundation for that outcome was laid in particular by the sacrifices of the Americans, Canadians, Britons, Poles and Frenchmen who died on Normandy beaches, and in the hedgerow country (bocage) in the summer of 1944.

The greatest American President of the postwar era, Ronald Reagan, visited Normandy in 1984, on the 40th anniversary of the landings. His brief speech on that occasion is probably his finest, and his tribute to those he called, "the boys of Pointe du Hoc" (via Real Clear Politics), is as timely now, as then.

Been on Vacation

2009-06-04T09:31:00.004-05:00

El Jefe has been in the provinces, specifically Seaside, Florida, far away from computers, and seldom bothering with newspapers. Have been eating and drinking too much, getting sunburned and doing some reading (Telford Taylor's Munich: The Price of Peace) and several crime novels.

Back in the World today, and the papers have all kinds of news, most of it bad. I should have stayed in Florida! I will be back to speed commenting, soon enough.

This morning, listening to Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 in D-Major, feeing virtuous but hungry for passing on the doughnut at Starbucks, and trying to find the top of my desk. It's here someplace, I'm certain.

America's Broke, So How About Some Cars and Gov't. Health Care?

2009-05-27T13:13:00.007-05:00

US revenues are down $138 billion (about 34 percent) from April a year ago, reports USA Today.

The UK Daily Telegraph reports that China has expressed concern about recent purchases by the Treasury of US bonds. The story, by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, reports that the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, Mr. Richard Fisher, was questioned repeatedly by Chinese officials about the US government's intentions to "'. . .monetise the actions of our legislature'" -- essentially, whether it was going to just print money.

Mr. Fisher is, according to Mr. Evans-Pritchard's article, "running a fervent campaign to alert Americans to the 'very big hole' in unfunded pension and health-care liabilities" to the tune of $99 trillion.

Meanwhile, the taxpayers are going to take over GM (about 69 percent of it, anyway) which is very nearly bankrupt.

When do we get Obama care for everybody? You know that's coming, right? If China doesn't pay for that, you will. . . What utter good sense. The treasury's broke, the lenders are balking, and Obama wants health care "reform" and he's putting the government deeper into the auto business.

Freedom Then, and Now

2009-05-26T17:34:00.005-05:00

Here's something to think on:

Until August 1914, a sensible law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state, beyond the post office and the policeman. He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card. He could travel abroad or leave his country for ever without a passport or any sort of official permission. He could exchange his money for any other currency without restriction or limit. He could buy goods from any country in the world on the same terms as he bought goods at home. For that matter, a foreigner could spend his life in this country without permit and without informing the police. . .

* * *

Substantial householders were occasionally called on for jury service. Otherwise, only those helped the state who wished to do so. The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale. . .or rather less than 8 per cent. of the national income. The state intervened to prevent the citizen from eating adulterated food or contracting certain infectious diseases. It imposed safety rules in factories, and prevented women, and adult males in some industries, from working excessive hours. . .Expenditure on the social services had roughly doubled since the Liberals took office in 1905. Still broadly speaking, the state acted only to help those who could not help themselves. It left the adult citizen alone.
(A.J.P. Taylor, English History, 1914-1945, (Ed. Sir. George Clark, Oxford Univ. Press, paperback, 1992) at 1.

Now, just who lives, or lived, in what the Founders of our republic might have called a free country? Pre-1914 Britons in a limited monarchy where relatively few people could vote; or modern Americans in our 2009 land of universal suffrage, civil rights for every hyphen-group imagined or imaginable, global warming legislation, border controls, passports, v-chips, the internet, drinking age regulations, prolix statutes and regulations on jaywalking, the layout of parking lots, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the FBI, CIA and the IRS?

Food for thought.

Memorial Day, 2009

2009-05-25T11:28:00.005-05:00

When you go home,
Tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.

Inscription, British War Memorial, Kohima, India. (attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds, Times Literary Supplement [London], 4 July 1918).

For a moment, pause in your enjoyment of a day off of work, spent with your families, and remember our soldiers, sailors and aviators, serving, struggle and carrying the flag for us, in Iraq and Afghanistan and throughout the world. Particularly keep their families in your thoughts and prayers. Remember the wounded who are reminded of their service to us daily. Never forget those who made the ultimate sacrifice; who gave all their tomorrows, for all our todays.

God be with them, with you, and with our country, today and every day.

Watch Obama TV, Keep Your Head Down. . .

2009-05-22T10:33:00.004-05:00

As if the regular TV media were not enough, Obama's now got his own Ministry of Propaganda -- Obama TV, complete with its own logo.

Meanwhile, more and more people are afraid to speak up when they disagree with this administration. Peter Robinson writes in Forbes about Clifford Asness, who runs "an approximately $20 billion dollar money management firm" who is fearful of criticizing President Obama's economic policies in writing: "It's really a bad idea to speak out" Mr. Asness wrote. "Angering the president is a mistake."

Robinson's piece goes on to supply several other all tending to show that opposing the administration is bad for business, and that there's real fear of reprisal in the future:

. . .Lately, a professor explained, students and faculty had begun quietly approaching him. "Everything's on the hush-hush," said the professor, a senior member of the faculty. "But they're looking for support. . ."
What did those who had approached him fear?
"They're afraid for their careers," the professor said, now serious. "These are young people I'm talking about. they don't want to become known as opponents of this administration. They [sic] way things are going, they figure, this new pattern we're seeing, with the government ordering businesspeople around, could become a permanent way of life."

So far, so fast. Not even five months into this administration. Obama the dictator is no longer such a joke.

Obama's Outrageous Speech

2009-05-22T08:34:00.004-05:00

I hope to have a fuller, more reasoned reaction, soon, to President Obama's absolutely outrageous speech yesterday, at the National Archives Museum. For the moment, I want to think more on what he said, on what Vice-President Cheney said; and on what I'm going to say, and read everything again. But the explosion will come in due course.

Obama's Auto Fiat

2009-05-20T08:41:00.007-05:00

The subhead of a Wall Street Journal piece on President Obama's auto-fuel efficiency increase decree yesterday neatly sums up the whole thing, and further comment by El Jefe is mostly superfluous:

Bankrupt companies making 39 mpg autos. Are we nuts?

No, but courtesy of the voters, the nuts are in charge for the moment. Elections have consequences, and two of them are a Speaker of the House with a CIA persecution complex who is upset she can't have President Bush's head on a platter; and beyond-insane fiats from the O-God on auto fuel efficiency (mostly to appease the global warming cult) while the whole domestic automobile industry is dying.

But the nuts won, so they get to do damage for awhile. The only real issue before the house is how much of the country can they wreck till the adults are in charge again.

Ghost Fleet, Storm Warning. . .

2009-05-14T11:14:00.007-05:00

The first page of yesterday’s New York Times business section has a story by Keith Bradsher on a vast ghost fleet of cargo vessels, which are now congregating in the Straits of Malacca, by Singapore and Malaysia, across from Indonesia.

The Times article, citing a research department of Lloyds, reports some 735 vessels now sitting idle there. Truly an immense fleet: some of these vessels displace almost 300,000 tons. For comparison purposes, a Nimitz class aircraft carrier displaces approximately 100,000 tons at full load. “To go out in a small boat along Singapore’s coast now is to feel like a mouse tiptoeing through an endless heard of slumbering elephants,” Mr. Bradsher writes. No doubt the Ghost Fleet is truly awesome to look at, but it is also terrifying, as it is a visible symptom of the utter collapse of world trade.

The normal business of this cargo fleet is the carriage of raw materials from all over the world to the factories of Asia (particularly China). The ships then turn right round, and then move the produce of all these factories to the markets of Europe and North America.

But the ships – each with crews, maintenance expenses, berthing contracts, fueling and victualling contracts, insurance policies and miles of ledgers and lists of other associated expenses – are all just sitting. America and Europe are not buying right now. There is no need for raw materials at the factories, no cargo moving to the docks. Chinese exports, reports the Times, fell 22.8 percent in April from the same period in 2008. Philippine exports fell 30.9 percent in March from the same period a year ago.

Think on those idle ships, their crews, the factories and business they serve, and all affected by the collapse of that trade. Contracts are going unfulfilled, wages are being stretched and unpaid, millions of people have lost, or are losing, their livelihoods – maybe (eventually) including us both, dear reader. That’s not the worst of it, either: the ramifications of those idle ships and shops haven’t even begun to work through the world nervous system.

The Malacca Ghost Fleet is more than economic disaster for millions of people – it’s going to be a political nightmare of the first order, as the destituted demand that their leaders produce quick solutions and easy answers – neither of which will be forthcoming. The tide of fear and populist rage that’s building is going to be terrible, likely sweeping away governments and bringing chaos all over the globe. The Ghost Fleet is warning us that a tsunami is coming.

McKiernan Replaced in Afghanistan

2009-05-11T13:41:00.010-05:00

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has, according to the Associated Press, decided to replace General David McKiernan, who is double-hatted as both the US commander in Afghanistan, and the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) there. General McKiernan's replacement is to be Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, presently in the Pentagon as Director of the Joint Staff.

The Associated Press story states that Secretary Gates asked General McKiernan to resign his post and that this "probably" ends his career.

I am sorry to read this, I happen to think that General McKiernan (commander of the US 3rd Army, which was US Central Command's main ground component during the Second Gulf War [ARCENT] march to Baghdad) -- never got the promotion, recognition and preferment that should have been his due.

During the planning phase of the war in Iraq, General McKiernan consistently (and correctly) demanded more troops than Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and his boss (General Tommy Franks) wanted to allocate; and he was the first senior commander to recognize that the Fedayeen Saddam (and not the Republican Guard) were the real locus of military opposition. Despite the lack of cooperation or even understanding from seniors higher up on the command chain, General McKiernan worked with what he had, solved his problems and still got the Army to Baghdad faster than the Iraqis thought remotely possible.

When the war yielded to pacification operations, McKiernan was (in my opinion) wrongfully passed over as Franks' successor to the command in Iraq in favor of the much more junior and recently promoted Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez.

It will be interesting to see what prompted Secretary Gates to relieve General McKiernan so publicly. My bet would be that McKiernan's side of the story will be both hard to come by, and very well-reasoned. The US effort in Afghanistan is at best stalled, at worst in serious trouble, but this is hardly General McKiernan's fault: the General has, to the best of his considerable ability, been running a poorly-funded war in a land-locked country with few roads; populated by people who hate foreigners and foreign soldiers; with hostiles on virtually every border. The reinforcements McKiernan and others have been crying for are now in the pipeline. Whether more troops will actually make a difference, and whether this war is at all winnable, I beg leave to doubt.

In any case, General McKiernan's relief really smells, and for the second time in his long and decorated service to the United States, it appears that General McKiernan has been ill-used. General McKiernan has no reason to envy the incoming General McChrystal custody of the Afghanistan tar-baby, but this is a sad end to the career of a man who, based on the quality of his service, probably should have been Chief of Staff of the Army.

Fifth of May

2009-05-05T09:01:00.011-05:00

Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, first American in Space, in his capsule "Freedom 7 " during a test shortly prior to his flight on Mercury-Redstone 3, 5 May 1961 (NASA[KSC] Image No. 61-10515).

All kinds of interesting historical events, today.On this day in 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space when Mercury-Redstone 3 blasted-off from Cape Canaveral's Pad 5 and took Astronaut Shepard and his capsule Freedom 7 into space. Freedom 7 did not orbit, only going up, and then right back down (a "suborbital" flight), and he was only up for 16 minutes.

After moon landings and space shuttles, it doesn't sound like much now, but if you have ever seen a real Mercury capsule (eleven and a half feet wide, just over six feet in diameter), you would understand how absolutely brave a stunt it really was to climb into this thing (actually, you pretty much wore it, you didn't get in it) and sit quietly on the pad while the smart boys fired up a rocket as likely to crash or explode as to fly.

Rear-Admiral Shepard, who later played golf on the Moon commanding Apollo 14, died in 1998. I will never forget, when I was about 16, having the honor to shake the man's hand and talk with him briefly.

On this day in 1883, the first Earl Wavell, or to give him his full titles, Archibald Percival Wavell, Field Marshal, Earl Wavell, Viscount Wavell, Viscount Keren of Eritrea and Winchester, GCB, GCSI, GCIE, CMG, MC, PC -- was born in Colchester, England. Colchester, the oldest Roman town in Britain, seems an appropriate place of nativity for such a distinguished soldier, of a family of soldiers. The future Lord Wavell was not long in Britain, however: he spent most of his youth in India. Wavell's father, like his son and grandson, was a career soldier in the British Army, the father retiring with the rank of Major General.

After a glittering British Army career in the First World War and between the wars, Wavell was given command of all British forces in the Middle East early in World War II. Wavell was given an almost impossibly huge task (containing the Vichy French, beating the Italians and later Rommel, and keeping the Arabs quiet) -- with far too few forces.

Wavell's problems were compounded by excessive political interference, particularly by Winston Churchill. In early 1941 Wavell's forces were winning in Libya and mopping-up the Italian East Africa colony. However, in February 1941, Wavell was ordered by London (that is, Churchill) to halt his advance from Egypt into Italian Libya (Wavell was beating the Italians), and send his best forces off to Greece to fight Germans and Italians. Wavell protested, and the British intervention in Greece proved, as Wavell had predicted, a complete disaster.

The intervention in Greece, with the diversion of effort it occasioned, and the loss of much of the intervention force and its heavy equipment in Greece and Crete, gave the Italians and Germans a breathing space in Libya, and an German general named Rommel his opening. Wavell's efforts to stop Rommel were unsuccessful, although he was able to keep Iraq in the British orbit by successfully suppressing pro-German nationalist rebels (the Anglo-Iraq War), as well as ending Vichy French control of Syria (Operation Exporter).

Wavell was eventually shunted off to Asia, being made the British commander-in-chief there, just in time for Japanese entry into World War II. Again, Wavell was asked to do much too much with far too little, and he made as good a job of it as could be expected, finishing his career as a Field Marshal, and Viceroy of India, and the king creating him Earl Wavell in 1947. Upon Wavell's death on 24 May 1950, all his titles passed, of course, to his only son, another Archibald, another soldier. Major Lord Wavell was killed in action in 1953 in Kenya (fighting the Mau-Mau), and with the son's death, the titles became extinct.

Today is also the anniversary of the death in 1821 of French Emperor Napoléon I, while in British captivity on St. Helena in the South Atlantic. "To live defeated is to die every day" the Emperor said, during this bitter period of his life, and, passing his days at rat-infested Longwood house, Napoléon had ample time to ponder the subject. But Napoléon never gave up or accepted defeat lying down: as a captive exile he fought and won his last (political) battle for control of the popular imagination. Aided by the petty humiliations of his stupid and unimaginative British jailer, the Emperor constructed a political and historical narrative of his life (which was even a little bit true) describing a great man brought low by pygmies. The "Napoleonic legend" helped his nephew become Emperor Napoléon III.

Speaking of Emperor Napoléon III, on this day in 1862, his forces in Mexico (there to collect debts and carve out a Mexican Empire) suffered a check at the Battle of Puebla, on the road to Mexico city, in 1862. General-de-Division Charles Ferdinand Latrille, Comte de Lorencez, with his tough little army of line infantry; Chasseurs a Pied; Zouaves; mounted Chasseurs d'Afrique; sailors with rifles; and the Troupes de Marine -- the French Marines -- tried to overrun General Ignacio Zaragoza's dug-in Mexican Army regulars and local militia straight off the march, but soon learned that fighting even raw or half-trained troops in buildings and behind the walls and trenches of both regular and extemporized fortifications was quite different from catching them in the open, where French fire discipline and training would have told to best advantage.

Count de Lorencez possibly deserves a marginally better press than he gets. True, he rushed into a fight after only slapdash reconnaissance and after ignoring advice from friendly Mexicans. But he had reasons for haste: he was trying to collapse resistance to the French and the Mexican faction they supported with a quick blow to the Mexican forces around Puebla. Most importantly, Count de Lorencez knew he had with him some really splendid troops, which had routed a similar Mexican force with ease on 28 April at Aculzingo. However, the quality of his own force led him to discount that of his Mexican opponents: many of whom (even the militia) were veterans of Mexico's most recent civil conflict and were fighting on their home ground.

In any case, the Mexicans repulsed the French attack, and de Lorencez fell back out of range. The French waited in their own positions for two days, hoping to draw a Mexican attack on their own positions: and when it did not come, they fell back on Orizaba to await reinforcements, allowing the Mexicans to claim the victory.

Count de Lorencez would not be the first general confronted, without realizing it, with a politico-military situation that was quite beyond him. Possibly my Francophile side is showing. In any case, the anniversary of the Puebla engagement is celebrated in parts of Mexico, and among Mexicans in the United States as Cinco de Mayo.

Specter of Defection

2009-04-28T13:52:00.006-05:00

The Republican political firmament, already roiled enough by November’s election, has gone into further convulsions after Pennsylvania’s Senator Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democratic Party this morning.

Republicans and conservatives will likely want to argue that Specter's jump is inconsequential – that Specter was so Lefty he was mostly a Democrat anyway, and that Senator Specter’s desertion just ratifies what everybody already knew. Don’t believe the happy talk this is staggering news.

First, the obvious: Assuming, as I think likely, that Al Franken finally prevails in Minnesota, the Democrats now have their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority. In actuality, they will usually have a few more than 60 seats because Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (both Maine Republicans, at least for now), vote with Democrats on many issues.

Specter can be expected to be more liberal now that he has not got to worry about facing Republican primary challengers and keeping the Republican caucus quiet. In fact, even more than wanting to align ideology and party, Specter’s defection seems to have been occasioned by his possible loss in the Republican primary next year to Pat Toomey.

The national Republican party would have tried to help Specter retain his seat, as much as it could, but a strong primary challenge would have cost Specter a bundle, even assuming he prevailed. Now, Specter can run for re-election in a state trending strongly Democratic (the reason the national Republicans supported him) -- with the strong backing of the locally popular President of the United States.

Moreover, as a member of the majority party, and a convert whom the Democrats will want to bend over backwards to welcome, Specter will actually have legislative relevance. As a raw political calculation, Specter’s defection is quite rational, and for the moment has little downside, either to him, or to Democrats.

However, the complete Democratic dominance of the Senate carries considerable long term risk. The congressional Democrats, more than ever, have complete ownership of the consequences of Obama’s – and their own – decision making. They now have a big enough majority to have legislation pretty much their own way, and their backers will demand that they make use of this power: on spending, on foreign policy, and on, say, the question of CIA policies towards prisoners under Bush.

The Democrats will not be able to rely on Republican votes for cover, because they now have the naked power to steamroll, and all the players know it. If the Republicans pick up their toys and leave, and Obama’s plans do not work out. . .the blame will be all on Democrats, who have a long way to fall.

If the election of 2008 were not evidence enough, the loss of Specter is further proof of the utter disappearance of Republican support in the northeast. The national Republican Party (that is, the Beltway party, exemplified by new RNC Chairman Michael Steele (from Maryland) – sees this as catastrophic. Viewed another way, the Republican Party is now largely confined to the South and to the flyover plains West. The coasts and northeast are secure Democratic territory. The Beltway Republicans fear that the party will never be competitive again nationally if it cannot attract northeastern voters.

Perhaps so, but Republicans in the southern and western heartlands of the Party (who embraced Sarah Palin over the doubts of the Party establishment) just might not care. The cleavages between the parties and the regions have not developed by accident, or for trivial reasons. The two parties – and the regions of this country -- have genuine differences of opinion on almost every subject of interest, across the board.

The voters have been offered clearly different approaches to the questions facing the country, and have regionally made diametrically opposite choices. The euphoria of the mostly coastal opinion makers over Obama obscures a regional divide in this country as stark as anything seen since the Civil War. The cooler heads among Republicans may want to tack a little to the Left, and try to recover some urban and northeastern voters. The chiefs might well want to lead in this direction -- but I question whether their Indians are going to be willing to follow.

No matter where one sits politically, the ride ahead looks to be bumpy. The staggering debts our children are facing are quite sufficient reason to view the future with a good deal of apprehension. What will happen when the bills come due? I think we are all going to shortly find out whether the coasts and the rest have anything constructive left to say to each other.

Obama's Popular -- Explain It To Me

2009-04-24T08:35:00.004-05:00

This is a request for assistance.

Obama's been President for about 100 days now, and he seems to be getting generally high marks. Real Clear Politics today talks about an interesting Gallup/USA Today poll. According to Real Clear Politics:

56% of Americans saying Obama is doing an "excellent" or "good job" as President while 20% say he is doing a "terrible" or "poor" job and 23% say the new President is doing "just OK."

From what I've seen elsewhere, this might put Obama's approval on the low side.

Explain, expound, please. As somebody who did not vote for Obama, wouldn't have even thought of voting for Obama, and who cannot at all fathom why he's popular, explain for me why he is. Mind you, i'm not trying to be mean, or snide, I sincerely don't comprehend his appeal, and will readily admit to being quite out of touch on this subject.

Bill Maher writes in the LA Times that "[t]he Republican base is behaving like a guy who just got dumped by his wife." Marc Ambinder writes in the Atlantic's blog that Obama is "almost single-handedly pulling the nation's confidence up by its tattered bootstraps." According to Mr. Ambinder "Independents remain firmly rooted in the Democratic garden. They're skittish about deficits, but they love Obama. They trust him, alone, of all the institutions of and figures in -- government."

Is this true? Are we talking about the same country?

I'm not kidding. I'd like to understand why. I'd like to hear what you think. I'm particuarly interested in hearing from independents, or people who were unsure of how to vote last time, but who are have been happy with the man so far.

Think of me as an alien arriving on planet Earth on a spaceship. Set me straight on why Obama's popular.

Earth Day, 2009

2009-04-22T13:36:00.006-05:00

Earth Day celebrations are in full swing all over Cuidad El Jefe. Incense has been burned in front of the shrines to Holy Obama and Robot ALGORE, and a noxious methane-producing cow has been sacrificed, in support of fervent prayers for total industrial collapse.

The nuclear waste dump is glowing brightly, all the city lights are blazing, whale steak's on the grill, and I'm burning lots of coal trying to think of other ways to celebrate. Going on a special Earth Day shopping spree for regular light bulbs, fluorocarbons and air conditioner freon. Gonna go smoke some cigarettes and cigars in a densely packed public place while I think on whether I've left out anything.

San Jacinto and the Morning After

2009-04-22T12:39:00.003-05:00

Yesterday was the 173rd anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, the great Texas victory near what is now Houston that was the pivotal battle of the Texas Revolution. General Sam Houston’s 900 or so Texans surprised and routed Mexican President-General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s 1,350 Mexicans in just 18 minutes.

Despite the vanishingly small numbers engaged, San Jacinto turned out to be decisive, chiefly because, on the morning following the battle (173 years ago today) Texan scouts captured Santa Anna himself, and Texas was able to subsequently extort enough of a settlement from the captive Mexican leader to make independence stick. For Mexico, San Jacinto turned out to be the first major blow in a process that lost that country not only Texas, but its entire north – today the American west.

As a military campaign, the Mexican side of the Texas Revolution has always been of great interest to me. The 1,350 Mexican soldiers the Texans defeated at San Jacinto were only a portion of the Mexican forces available in Texas. The Mexican Navy had total control of the Gulf of Mexico and free movement up and down the Texas coast all during this period, and Santa Anna’s “Army of Operations” had almost 6,500 troops in Texas. The Texans had lost nearly 1,000 men at Goliad, in addition to the 183 killed at the Alamo (which also held most of the available Texan artillery). Houston’s 900-odd half-trained recruits with two guns were the sum total of rebel forces available. How, then, did Mexico lose this war?

Remembering the Alamo and Goliad sometimes obscures the fact that up through the fall of the Alamo, Santa Anna ran a pretty good campaign. Just getting an army from central Mexico to Texas was a massive military accomplishment before railroads and the internal combustion engine. The Mexicans had to bring their army across the northern Mexican desert and keep it in food and water, and haul along a big enough margin of supplies for operations such as the Alamo siege. (Food and fodder would normally be bought or “requisitioned” locally, but armies needed extra supplies for periods when they were largely stationary, such as a siege, when local food supplies would quickly be exhausted).

The massacre of the Alamo defenders, as well as Texan prisoners at Goliad and other places in early March probably appeared to Santa Anna to have cleared the boards as far as his campaign was concerned. The rage and fear his actions generated among Texans for a time seemed to work in his favor, as colonists packed up their possessions and fled east, in headlong flight for the US/Texas border. Clearing the majority of the Anglo colonists out of Texas (and probably replacing them with settlers from his armies) was no small part of Santa Anna’s plans to secure Texas for Mexico – which probably explains his ruthless policy towards Texan prisoners.

In retrospect, the Battle of San Jacinto was lost for Mexico before its first shot was fired, sometime between the fall of the Alamo on 6 March 1836, and San Jacinto, on 21 April, that is, during the period of the so-called “Runaway Scrape.” After the Alamo and Goliad, the last major Texan military force was Houston’s army, which hovered near Gonzales all during the Alamo siege. Upon hearing of the fall of the Alamo, Houston realized that he could not hope to meet Santa Anna’s concentrated forces in the field, and he moved his army east, towards the US border. Settlers fled too, and they were encouraged to destroy their property (particularly food) before leaving.

The US border. . .Santa Anna no doubt desired to close out his war quickly, primarily to forestall US intervention, and he moved out rapidly in pursuit of Houston. Santa Anna, in his capacity as President of Mexico, had already addressed letters to US President Jackson, warning Jackson against interference in Texas, and stating that Americans captured in arms in Texas would be treated as pirates. Santa Anna was probably aware of the personal and political connections between Jackson and Sam Houston, and he would have wanted to finish the war quickly, before the US could decide to intervene.

The Mexican military and political situation the morning after the Alamo fell was not unlike the US/UN situation in Korea in 1950, after MacArthur’s lighting reconquest of South Korea from the invading North Koreans. Much like Santa Anna in Texas, MacArthur was in a hurry to end the war with the complete conquest of North Korea before China could interfere. Consequently, MacArthur (as his armies moved into North Korea) threw prudent military planning out the window in the name of haste. Just as Santa Anna probably considered the Texans, MacArthur thought the North Koreans beaten, and his primary concern was getting his forces to the Chinese border at the Yalu to block Chinese intervention, not caring if in the process his troops got scattered all over the map. . .

For somewhat similar reasons, Santa Anna made haste for the US border, following Houston, wearing his jaded troops out with forced marches trying to bring him to battle and get on to the border. Wikipedia’s article on the Texas Revolution speculates that Sam Houston might have intended to retreat clear across the US border and possibly trigger American intervention (a US army was assembling on the border). We cannot know if Houston actually had this possibility in mind, but Santa Anna had to take it seriously, and try to catch Houston before he got there.

Whenever I drive to San Antonio, I imagine the barefoot Mexican conscripts, cheap shoes long disintegrated, marching day after day in either hot sun or torrential rains, fording swollen rivers, mainly concerned with foraging for food. The siege of the Alamo had probably consumed much of Santa Anna’s initial stockpile of supplies. The forced marches, the scorched-earth Runaway Scrape of the settlers (burning food needed by the Mexican Army), and Santa Anna’s own uncertainty as to Houston’s precise whereabouts and intentions led Santa Anna to allow his army (fairly concentrated after the Alamo) to become increasingly dispersed as the pursuit wore on. As Santa Anna closed in on the US border, near what would be the battlefield of San Jacinto, only 850 or so men were with him. The rest of his army was scattered.

Santa Anna is said to have called himself the “Napoleon of the West.” I wonder if Santa Anna knew anything about Napoleon’s Battle of Marengo in 1800? Napoleon, trying to pin down an Austrian army in northern Italy, was concerned the Austrians would slip by him, and avoid battle. Napoleon was uncertain of the Austrians’ location, and dispersed his troops to block possible routes of escape. . .but on the morning of 14 June 1800, near the village of Marengo …he stumbled into the whole “missing” Austrian army, with a only a fraction of his own forces present, and was nearly destroyed. In the event, reinforcements arrived, and Napoleon prevailed.

On his own day of surprises, Santa Anna was not as lucky as Napoleon, nor as bright. 500 last minute reinforcements, led by Santa Anna’s brother in law, General Cos, gave Santa Anna a bit of a numerical advantage, but Santa Anna squandered it by failing to post sufficient pickets. On the morning of 21 April 1836, the Texans attacked Santa Anna, surprising his force in camp, with the bulk of his army scattered behind him all over the Texas coastal plain like MacArthur’s on the Yalu when China came into the war, or Napoleon’s on the morning of Marengo.

In just eighteen minutes Houston and his Texans swept all Santa Anna’s campaign plans and greater geopolitical concerns about American intervention, Anglo colonization of Texas and a Mexican empire in the west right into the dust bin. The next morning, 22 April 1836, Texan scouts found Santa Anna near a burned bridge, hiding in tall grass, having doffed his splendid uniform for that of an infantry private. Mexico would now have its cup of bitterness filled to the dregs, and the captive President-General would soon put his name to the Treaties of Velasco, which gave Texas a viable legal claim to independence.

More battles, a cold war and a much bigger hot war with the US in 1846 would follow, but for Mexico, San Jacinto, was the real disaster that lost an empire.

Waterboarded 183 Times? That's Not Enough

2009-04-20T12:43:00.005-05:00

Reuters reports today that CIA interrogators used "waterboarding" 183 times during interrogations of Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, "admitted planner of the September 11 attacks."

As a point of information for the unconscious, the "September 11 attacks" refer to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States that killed 2,998 people (mostly civilians) (not including 19 scumbags), and wounded over 6,000 others.

I wonder how many of Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed's victims (or their families) would have given all that they possessed to have been waterboarded 183 times, if it meant that they (or their loved-one) could go on living?

I find it insane and morally reprehensible that Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his friends are allowed to go on living for even one more hour, being coddled at Guantanamo or whatever caves they're being kept in.

I find it obscene that the interrogators have not daily and hourly been squeezing Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed like a fruit, till beyond juiced, giving him a lot worse than waterboarding.

I find it incomprehensible that Mr. Khalid Sheik Mohammed might even be afforded the dignity of a trial, rather than just giving him a drumhead court-martial and a shot in the back of the head in a ditch someplace; with his sorry carcass being tossed on the nearest rubbish-heap, and whoever whelped this beyond depraved pirate being billed for the bullet.

I sure haven't forgotten 9/11. How about you?

Texas and Secession: Brief Introduction to Legal Issues

2009-04-17T16:19:00.016-05:00

There has been a lot of talk these past several days about Texas secession in the news, and since this topic is interesting to me, here is a brief introduction to some of the legal and historical issues surrounding the question of Texas secession, with some links to pertinent documents. The opinions herein, are of course my own.

Rasmussen has a poll out which might be some comfort to those thinking that they’re cooler heads and that secession is a lame-brained idea. According to Rasmussen:

Thirty-one percent (31%) of Texas voters say that their state has the right to secede from the United States and form an independent country.
However, the latest Rasmussen Reports poll in the state finds that if the matter was put to a vote, it wouldn’t even be close. Three-fourths (75%) of Lone Star State voters would opt to remain in the United States. Only 18% would vote to secede, and seven percent (7%) are not sure what they'd choose.

That would seem to settle the issue pretty definitively, unless one considers the context. We’re being told that 31 percent of the Texas population thinks that Texas has the right to leave if it wants, and 18 percent would actually do it in circumstances where there has been no organized agitation for secession, and no political party or faction pushing for it. How would these numbers look if there was a serious independence movement here, and not a few cranks?

Other commentators opine that the Civil War settled the issue, and the crushing of the Confederacy establishes that Texas, or other states, have no right to secede. Poppycock. The war had nothing to do with settling the existence or non-existence of a legal or moral right for a state to leave the US. For that matter, neither did Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869), the Supreme Court case (the majority opinion written by Lincoln's former Treasury Secretary, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase) that purported to settle it later.

The right to secede is a political question, inherent in the concept of government by consent of those governed, and the right of people to determine their own governing institutions. The states pre-dated the Federal government, their citizens delegated power to it, and can resume it. Texans have as much of a moral and legal right to secede from the US as the colonies did to leave Great Britain.

The only real questions are whether they want to do so badly enough, and then have the power to make it good. If, say, Vermont (which actually has some kind of secessionist movement, unlike Texas) someday votes to pull itself out of the Union, I cannot imagine that Americans would actually, in the modern world, tell Vermonters they had to stay in a union they didn't want to remain a part of, much less use force to make them do so.

On the other side of the coin, there has been some loose talk about an urban legend that claims that the US Congress’s Joint Resolution, and the Texas Convention's Ordinance of Annexation, bringing Texas into the United States in 1845 reserved Texas the right to secede later. This is completely mistaken.

Texas rejected a treaty of annexation. Bringing Texas into the United States was accomplished by a Joint Resolution of the US Congress, and an Ordinance of a special convention in Texas. Neither the US Joint Resolution, nor the Texas Ordinance, address the issue of secession at all. Texas did reserve the apparent right to divide itself into other states, which has been proposed at various times, and which would today probably produce a bunch more Republican Senators, and possibly a couple of Democrats.

Provision for division was made, but inclusion of specific language on secession in either the US or Texas documents would have surely killed US support for annexation. Southerners and others supporting the admission of Texas to the US would never have called into question for their own states a right they maintained was already inherent in statehood by giving it specifically to Texas. When Texas left the United States in early 1861, it did so by means of another State convention and another Ordinance (later approved by the voters) that simply repealed the Texas Ordinance of Annexation of 1845.

Further, I'm not sure the mechanisms allowing Texas to divide itself into more states are worth the paper they’re written on – considered as either statutory law or as some sort of treaty, the analysis is the same. In the United States, both treaties and statutes can be changed and modified by subsequent Congressional legislation. This is true of treaties even if the change amounts to a “violation” of the treaty. Even assuming Texas had some kind of "treaty" allowing it to divide itself, the international position of the US on such a treaty is a political matter, to be resolved between sovereign governments. Texas, unless it secedes and makes it stick, is not sovereign. As far as American law is concerned, the last action in time controls. Congress could quite legally pass a statute and tell Texas it could NEVER split – at least if it split within the union.

Reconstruction muddied all these murky waters still further. Under the Union theory of the law (Lincoln's specifically) Texas and the other Confederate States never left the Union, they simply got themselves out of proper relations with it. Therefore, the provisions allowing Texas to divide might still be operative, if no subsequent statute changed them.

This would be the case even under Congressional reconstruction, which, unintentionally, implicitly acknowledged the validity of secession by treating the former Confederate States as "conquered provinces” and later making them go through a process of re-admission to the Union. However, Congress insisted on one further wrinkle – before Texas could re-enter the Union -- it was forced to produce yet another Ordinance, by yet another convention (15 March 1866), declaring secession in 1861 null and void, and renouncing the right in future.

The 1866 Ordinance is really no impediment to secession either, since a further convention could simply repeal this Ordinance also -- just as the 1861 convention repealed the Ordinance of Annexation. Probably none of this will ever happen, but the right of the people of a state to resort to secession is implicit in the entire concept of republican institutions, ordered liberty, and self-government. Whether secession can be successful is more a question of popular will and raw power than it is of law.

Which End is Up Now?

2009-04-16T08:52:00.007-05:00

Yet another among the many reasons for El Jefe's relative silence of late is the rapid and increasingly disorienting change in the political and economic landscape. The ground is shifting in strange, unprecedented ways almost hourly.

Yesterday the Governor of Texas said that Texas could secede if it wanted -- and my sense is that a not insignificant percentage of Texans think they would be happy to see this happen. This came only a day after Governor Perry endorsed a State Sovereignty resolution pending in the Texas House of Representatives that proclaims that the 10th Amendment:

. . .assures that we, the people of the United States of America and each sovereign state in the Union of States, now have, and have always had, rights the federal government may not usurp. . .

The draft resolution, (citing the 10th Amendment) goes on to demand that:

. . .the federal government, as our agent. . .cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers. . .

Read the whole thing. The draft resolution appears toothless, but the fact that it is being considered at all tells us that we are now in a different world than only a year ago. How much stranger will things get, as the implications of US national bankruptcy begin to be understood? (I think yesterday's Tea Parties were less about our already high taxes than about the well-founded fear of our spending ourselves and our children into bankruptcy). Will we come together as in the 1930's? Or will the crowd head for any exit it can find, like a theater audience leaving a bad show?

"May you live in interesting times," the Chinese curse goes. Ours would certainly seem to fill that bill. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Kathy Ireland

2009-04-07T10:16:00.004-05:00

Kathy Ireland, former Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, has a weight problem?

The purveyors of such vicious and noxious propaganda should be locked up, in the deepest dungeons of the Kingdom, at once!

El Jefe still thinks Kathy Ireland is one of the most beautiful women God ever unbagged.

Obama Discovers a New Language

2009-04-06T10:22:00.006-05:00

The President, during a NATO press-conference yesterday, referred to the language of Austria as "Austrian," a malapropism that would have left 19th and 20th Century European statesmen and historians absolutely speechless. (video here)

We skeptics are endless assured that our Columbia University and Harvard Law School educated President knows better about everything. No doubt he does, but possibly Obama was too busy studying community organizing to pay much attention to central European history, and all that boring Großdeutschland/Kleindeutschland, Otto von Bismarck, Anschluss Österreichs, World War I, World War II stuff. Possibly I'm nitpicking just a bit (Hell, I admit it), but the man who discovered the "Austrian" language is clearly just the fellow to get us on better terms with Europe, eh?

Maybe I should give the fellow a break. Certainly, the press is -- James Fallows writes in his blog at The Atlantic:

He [Obama] also appeared to refer to the language of Austria as "Austrian," thus: "I don't know how you say it in Austrian, but we call it wheeling-dealing." If this had been GW Bush, it would have been taken as an obvious gaffe, as in his calling the residents of Greece "Grecians." Here you can't be sure whether it's a plain error or a knowing casualism, as in saying that Australians speak "Australian" -- eg, in the ad that says, "Foster's: Australian for 'beer.' "

Now folks, that's true journalistic skill. Admit a double standard, and make it positively sound rational, and do it in a tres gentil way. Yes, you silly unwashed rubes, the Great One may have slipped, but he's the Man of Hope. Now if Bush had talked about some Austrian language, you can bet your last Euro that Fallows is right and the journos would have jumped all over Bush like the Gestapo did to Austrians who didn't vote Ja on the Anschluss. But times have changed, and the Eurolefties that run things across the pond, Obama's spiritual brothers, are likely to declare Austrian a language if it would make the Sainted One look good.

Still Here. . .

2009-04-03T15:58:00.002-05:00

As is painfully obvious, El Jefe just hasn't felt much like posting lately, and is still sort of sulking on his estates., I rather think I'm still in mourning over the election.

I can barely stand to turn on the television or the radio, and when the Chosen One comes on, I usually opt to save my blood pressure and immediately turn the channel. I've been reading a lot, mostly history, hanging out in the country as often as I can get there, and working. Facebook's interesting too -- have recently gotten onto that and reconnected with lots of folks.

Anyway, I miss blogging, and hope to feel up to the work, soon.

AIG: Why is Anybody Surprised?

2009-03-18T11:46:00.004-05:00

El Jefe confesses that he finds economics a dismal science, which is one of the reasons he has not had much to say about the apparently endless successions of bailouts, financial rescuses and assorted conniptions that form so much of our recent news.

The AIG business, however, is farcical. The politicians are shocked, SHOCKED that AIG, handed wads and wads of cash by the government, would do what ginormous corporations habitually do; and pay its senior management and its high-flying traders huge bonuses. AIG and the other corporate big wigs, for that part are shocked, SHOCKED that Federal money comes with some real strings, namely 535 gasbags who have to have their five minutes on television bloviating to show the home-folks that they are cracking-down on the fat-cats.

What's really going on here, of course, is unorganized bankruptcy, as compared to the more organized liquidation process provided by the Bankruptcy Code. Had AIG been pushed into bankruptcy, the offending salary contracts would have been out the window, and the company's assets sold to healthier entities. Instead, the government elected to go with bailouts, for arguably good reasons. Maybe AIG and the others really were Too Big To Fail, and bailouts were necessary. For the record, I supported the TARP (but not the recent "stimulus") because I bought the Too Big to Fail argument, and believed that not doing it risked a meltdown of the whole system.

But, today, quibbling over the side effects of bailouts is just absurd, particularly since the Feds forked-over the cash without making ANY rules beforehand. Now everyone affects surprise because the players have (of course) maneuvered for advantage. That's just farcical. All this crying over bonuses and other payments that the Obama administration knew about months ago is either gross stupidity, or political playacting. Probably, it's both.

Water on Mars

2009-03-10T15:31:00.002-05:00

From the News that's No News Department:

Some scientists think that the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander found -- wait for it -- water on Mars! The scientists spotted droplets that seemed to change in size on photos of the spacecraft's legs. Some of said eggheads believe that this must be water.

Well, duh. What do they think Martians drink, anyway?

Grab Bag

2009-03-10T12:35:00.001-05:00

El Jefe has been up to his ample posterior in work of late, and distracted anyway, and just generally hasn't felt like posting.

Okay it's a lame excuse. But as every fourth grader understands, better a bad excuse than none at all. A bad excuse, if nothing else, allows a little extra time to find somebody else to blame. . .In any case, I'm sure the present posting funk will pass. God knows, I'm not short of opinions.

I see that the Dow Jones is up like a rocket today, apparently because Citigroup actually reported a profit for the first of this year, and because Barney Frank thinks the SEC will re-impose the "uptick" rule against short-selling. But that hasn't happened yet. Wonder if the shorters will appear today, before closing time maybe? No matter: the markets appear to be fundamentally irrational at the moment, on the floor or the ceiling as the mood suits.

Oh bag that. For today anyway. Not for nothing is economics called the dismal science. El Jefe has been busy with other things -- playing with Facebook, and his impending birthday.

My dear friend T had SWMBO, the Heir and I to dinner last Friday evening. T is a good cook, and among other things, she had a super-wonderful chocolate cake and all kinds of other yummy food. All this food was exceptionally good for reasons not limited to taste -- we started on Cosmos at six-o'clock, and moved on to red wine at dinner, and wound up (sometime in the wee small hours) drinking champagne. As if that were not enough, T, knowing one of my many failings, gave me some uber cool books. Fortunately, T lives not far from the palatial residence of El Jefe, who, despite drink taken, managed to be-bop back to the Palace without any untoward incidents. Thanks to the food, and scads of water, even though I was pretty trashed, I was in good shape the next morning, although I didn't deserve to be.

This was a good thing, because on Saturday, El Jefe and family entertained the Great One's friend L, her hubby, and their two-year old son. SWMBO was such a really good sport, and, even though she had a really long week, she cooked all day, making super yummy steak pitas (very elaborate recipe) with Greek salad, interesting sauces for chips and the pita sandwiches, and key-lime pie (one of my fav things). L and family came all the way into town to see us, and it was lots of fun to have them around for the evening. Our guests also played to another El Jefe weakness -- bringing him a bottle of very good scotch.

On a less happy note: my home computer appears to have died. I've lost some pictures, a bunch of documents (most are backed up, but not all) and the whole business is just generally a mess. I can afford to replace the computer, but I don't want Vista, or the new post 2007 Microsoft Office.

In any case, I'm trying to figure out what to do. Any ideas? Is a second-hand machine practical? Available? Totally turned off by Vista -- but more especially by the re-design of Word. Probably too old a bunny to go to Apple, but I'm thinking about it because of the mad I've got on towards Microsoft. SWMBO's machine has the new version of Word, and every time I fool with it, the thing makes me mad enough to spit. Probably, I will have to give up and accept change at some point. . .but not quite yet.

Obama to Wall Street: "Drop Dead."

2009-03-03T12:23:00.008-06:00

President Obama, following his meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, told reporters, Breitbart says, that he was not measuring policies against the ". . .day to day gyrations of the stock market" but by whether lending is flowing more freely, businesses are investing and the unemployed going back to work.

Quite aside from the fact that we're failing on all Obama's parameters, the president's utterances need translation for all us non-Kool-Aid drinkers. St. Barack (no doubt pumped by his meeting with Mr. "Global New Deal" Brown) is telling us: "Who cares about the banks? I've been to Harvard Law, I was a community organizer, a Senator, and both Soros and Michael Moore like me. I know what's best for you, peasants! Who do you believe, me or Wall Street?"

True, the President says stocks look like a "potentially" good deal if you have a long term perspective on it. Oh, swell. Does St. Barack not understand that a rather off-hand comment by the President that stocks are a good buy in the "long" term may have somewhat deleterious effects on Jello stock in the short term? Does he care? Probably immaterial anyway, since all of us, our children, and our kids' great-grandkids are going to be so mortgaged paying on the stimulus that we won't be buying stocks.

Every time this guy opens his mouth, the Dow drops like a stone. How much will it fall this time?

What's a Simon? What Does he Say?

2009-02-27T12:04:00.004-06:00

I don't watch American Idol or much television period, save for House, Burn Notice, and whichever Law and Order whatever network it is happens to put on on a given night. Consequently, I miss a few things.

Along those lines, who and what is Simon? Does he matter? What does he say? Are these questions important? Why should we care?

These and many other issues are no doubt things I need to think on, possibly with a glass of wine or two. The popular-culturally-connected may want to enlighten me beforehand.

Hurray! Bernanke's Happy

2009-02-24T15:21:00.008-06:00

Debt as far as the eye can see. Then, the new President wants to blithely throw troops into a war that's probably hopeless. North Korea can't feed its people, but the Dear Leader's slaves can build nukes, and some missiles; and the Land of the Kims is about to thumb its nose at Obama and everybody else by playing rocket games. Meanwhile, China has its own stimulus problems.

Still, Ben Bernanke's in a good mood, so stocks go up 230 points or so. This would seem to place an awesome responsibility on Bernanke's restauranters of choice, his wife, his family, his barber, masseur and others charged with keeping him happy. Hey, it's good that some people in this world know what they have to do.

The market's down 3oo or so on Monday. Up 230 today. Nothing whatever has changed, except Bernanke's in a good mood, and St. Barack's going to grace our televisions with a speech. Woo Woo! Life is good.

The secret, dear reader, is that the "leaders" - the movers and shakers who run our money and are charged with our security -- know less than NOTHING about whatever the Hell they think they're doing. They're a herd of leaderless cows ready to moo because Bernanke had a good wine with lunch and was happy today. The bears will just as easily stampede them tomorrow.

Is it any wonder that people think that the Harvard MBA types in charge of the money in this country are absolute total dolts and morons?

If you're not angry yet, you're not paying attention.

Blog Quietness

2009-02-24T10:27:00.004-06:00

As longtime readers possibly notice, posting has slowed down lately. Since the election -- more accurately, since October, when it became apparent electoral disaster was approaching, I've just kind of been snoozing.

As a spiritual outsider, I've been watching the Obamaites enjoy their triumph. Sometimes, watching present goings-on makes me think a little of an English Civil War royalist, Baron Astley of Reading. When the wrong side prevailed, and Astley surrendered, he allegedly told his captors: "You have now done your work and may go play, unless you will fall out amongst yourselves."

For the moment, the loons run the asylum, and I've been interested in other things. Obama and crew are working on it, but the world hasn't ended quite yet. I've reconnected with people I used to know on Facebook. I have a place in the country I like to visit. The Heir and SWMBO need attention, and the Heir is growing up. There are mountains of books needing my attention; I've become interested in the care and feeding of various firearms; and, there are surely many tasty foods and bottles of wine in dire need of consumption. Working is good too: all these habits definitely need supporting.

But I'm going to do better with posting. Obama and his friends, unfortunately, are providing us with mountains of fodder for comment, and as time goes on, St. Barack of Obama is going to be an even greater recruiter for the conservative cause than Reagan.

We Go to Hell, Nancy Goes to Rome. . .

2009-02-13T13:35:00.005-06:00

The House of Representatives has just passed the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" draft bill agreed upon in the Senate/House of Representatives conference. (Confederate Yankee more accurately calls the bill the "Multi-Generational Financial Rape Act").

The vote was 246-183. Seven Democrats voted against it. One Democrat voted present. Zero, zip, nada Republicans voted for it. Two Republicans did not vote.

As of 5 p.m. yesterday, the Republicans had not been shown the draft bill. At 1000 pages plus, it seems unlikely that few of the Representatives could have actually even begun to read the text of the legislation: which is going to expend $1 trillion plus of your dollars ($787 billion is the figure bandied about, but the rest is in the details). The Senate is supposed to vote today also, and they haven't read it either.

Why the hurry? Maybe so Nancy Pelosi could go to Rome today?

The government of this country is absolutely insane.

Lost Weapons in Afghanistan (gasp!)

2009-02-12T15:28:00.003-06:00

Agence France-Presse reports that thousands of US weapons provided to the Afghan police and military (including assault rifles and grenade launchers), have turned up missing in a General Accounting Office audit.

Yawn.

Don't get me wrong, this is a matter of serious concern. But it is hardly news. Show me one war, anywhere on Earth, fought by anybody, anytime since man left the caves (and before) -- where supplies and weapons have not disappeared in big batches, walked off, been sold by their bearers, stolen, lost or otherwise gone unaccounted for.

Move millions of dollars of supplies and weapons all the way around the world, and give huge dollops of them to allies and auxiliaries in a place where the concept of money is itself rocket science, and stuff goes missing. Stuff goes missing anyway. If it's NOT going missing: you can only assume that the quartermasters are doctoring the books worse than usual.

Running empires is never cheap, easy, or safe, as much as the bean-counters might want it so.

A Bomb vs. Da Bomb

2009-02-11T14:07:00.005-06:00

Yahoo! (Yahell?) says that Jennifer Aniston's first movie was "a bomb." Uh. . .since she's still Da Bomb, who cares about details?

About Us, Without Us. . .

2009-02-10T12:03:00.004-06:00

By a vote of 61-37, Obama's so-called stimulus bill has passed the US Senate. By no stretch of the imagination can this very, very left-wing porkapalooza (Powerline's term) of a bill be described as bipartisan, unless "bipartisan" is understood to mean agreement with whatever Obama wants. Three northeastern Republicans (Snowe and Collins of Maine, and Spector of Pennsylvania -- Republicans in name only) joined all the Democrats in voting for this bill.

For those of us opposed to this bill, which will bring us ruin, and, probably, war; there is, for now, nothing that can be done but to watch. Our fate is no longer in our own hands. Obama has won his chance to drive the bus over the cliff, and we just have to watch him do it.

Republicans have the small consolation of having their votes against this disaster registered: and an epic disaster it will prove to be. Our President promised us catastrophe unless his bill was passed. He will soon have his bill, which cannot be paid for by taxes, and for which the money cannot be borrowed. There will be nothing left but to run the printing press. The President will have his stimulus, and get catastrophe, anyway.

Save the F-22 Raptor ? Yes, But for the Right Reasons

2009-02-08T12:42:00.007-06:00

Two USAF F-22A Raptors of the 27th Fighter Squadron (Langley AFB, Virginia). form-up on a KC-10 Extender tanker aircraft while en route to Hill AFB, Utah. (USAF Photo: TSgt. Ben Bloker).

As per usual modus operandi, El Jefe spooled up the Drudge Report this morning and was greeted by a banner ad exhorting readers to help save the F-22 Raptor, because American jobs were depending on it.

The F-22A, presently entering USAF front-line service, is indubitably the finest fighter plane in the world, and is primarily intended to replace the several variants of the F-15 Eagle in the air superiority (fighter vs. fighter) role. The F-35, another new aircraft, is the projected replacement for the F-16. The original requirement was for 750 F-22's, but this has gradually been whittled-down to about 130.

I'm all for the F-22 and the F-35, and if I were El Jefe of America, rather than the Kingdom of Chaos, I'd be spending money on building 600 or so more F-22's and a fleet of F-35's them rather than on "community development block grants," university building projects and the various and sundry other Left-wing nostrums contained in the stimulus nightmare pending before Congress.

Actually I'd put the Navy destroyer, submarine and carrier building programs ahead of the F-22's. But that's beside the point. The banner-ad in Drudge irritated me a little because of the reasons it sought support for the aircraft program. We don't need to build F-22's as some sort of jobs program. We need them to maintain the combat power of the US Air Force and of the United States as opposed to other countries. End of story.

Prince Bismarck once said that people should never witness the making of sausages or legislation. I suppose such pandering for votes is all part of the usual course of business in a republic. Sort of like naming aircraft carriers for living politicians (a policy with which I've indicated some irritation in the past). If playing-up jobs will get the pro-F-22 vote of Congressperson Emptyhead from the State of Ultraleft, than I'm definitely for it. Repulsive to watch, however.

Hamas Stimulus Package

2009-02-05T14:26:00.002-06:00

I guess Hamas got its bailout check. . .

Choose Your Catastrophe

2009-02-04T12:16:00.010-06:00

President Obama tells us that the recession will turn into a "catastrophe" if his over $900 billion "stimulus" (including health-care "reform" and green energy) isn't passed quickly. Congress should stop being "recalcitrant" as the AP puts it.

Here's a thought: suppose it's not a "my plan or catastrophe" situation? Perhaps it's "my plan AND a catastrophe;" or, more likely, an "any plan, or no plan and STILL a catastrophe" situation? I'm not blaming Obama for this, but suppose circumstances mean that catastrophe is baked into the cake already? Maybe what we really ought to be thinking about is the degree of catastrophe.

The US has no money for Obama's porkulus stimulus. It is simply not credible that Europe and Asia are going to continue to buy US treasuries and bankroll bailing out the US economy, not to mention Obama's version of Hillary care. One survey says 40 percent of Japanese investors think that there is a risk of a US government default on its debt. As Megan McArdle puts it at Atlantic:

There are other reasons to worry about US debt, like the downturn, the dollar, and our entitlement problems. But when the citizens of a country with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 1 and more than a decade of economic stagnation behind them start complaining that you're not such a good credit risk, it's time to start worrying.
(Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit).

The stimulus packages cannot be paid for with taxes -- even if the rich are expropriated wholesale. That leaves the printing press. The Obamaites, who cannot even manage to adequately check out appointees for government office, are going to wind up trying to bail the overdrawn US economy out by debauching the currency. Pardon me, but I'm a little skeptical about rapid solutions favored by Obama and Ms. 500,000,000-jobs-lost-Pelosi.

The financial contagion is worldwide. Andrew Stuttaford this morning describes Britain as "Iceland without the fish" -- that is, flat broke. A lot of that going around. There are other pots boiling: Pakistan's imploding (which is a problem with an army in Afghanistan). Putin, Chavez and the Iranian mullahs: all dissatisfied with the present world system, are all, rhetorically at least, on the march. With Obama wanting a ten percent cut in the military budget, I wonder how long their trouble-making stays rhetorical?

I could go on, but my bet would be that catastrophe is already a done deal. Sorry, it's just how I see it. If trouble's coming, it would be prudent to be very careful on where we throw our last row of poker-chips. Why make it worse by dropping a trillion dollars we don't have because the former "community organizer" says we need to hurry about it? Maybe, but some care is called for here. Congress, in other words, shouldn't be panicked or railroaded into anything.

Ayatollahs Launch a Satellite. What's Next?

2009-02-03T15:52:00.004-06:00

Well, the Iranians claim that they have put a satellite in orbit. The US says it's "gravely concerned."

Gee, ya think?

An anonymous security official says this launch is not a "game changer." Perhaps not, but it's getting pretty close. Rocket boosters powerful and reliable enough to orbit satellites can certainly carry other payloads. The United States and other powers (guess which) must consider that the mullahs can not only now determine for themselves which countries segregate swimming pools by sex as the Ayatollahs consider just and right; but that the Iranians may soon have the ability to fry those not in compliance with their particular version of shari'ah.

The US Intelligence Community, in November 2007, issued a National Intelligence Estimate stating that the Iranian nuclear program had effectively stopped in the fall of 2003. We must hope the spook-lords, who have such a great post World War II track record (Korean Conflict, fall of the Soviet Union, 9/11, invasion of Kuwait...etc) were correct: because in November 2007, their conclusion effectively (and probably deliberately) robbed the Bush administration of any military option, or any options period beyond listening to ourselves talking.

Now the Iranians have a real missile. And we have Obama. We'd better do some praying.

So Much for the New Diplomacy. . .

2009-02-03T13:37:00.005-06:00

The EU doesn't like the "Buy American" provisions contained in President Obama's Socialism pack. . . er, excuse me, stimulus package pending in the Senate. The Stimulus Bill contains provisions mandating that only US made steel and goods be used in programs funded and established by the bill.

Okay, but I thought Obama was bringing the world a new era of good feeling, concord between America and Europe, all made possible by a new respect for treaties, unlike in the Bad Old Bush era. The problem is, the "Buy American" provisions in the Socialism Bill may be inconsistent with US membership in the World Trade Organization, not to mention the North American Free Trade Agreement. Nothing like a new era that begins with a good trade war with, say, Canada, eh?

Considering the attitude towards the recent US elections of foreign elites, particularly in Europe, it's hard to feel too sorry for some of the loudly complaining suspects -- this is the President they wanted, right? Well, congrats to the Euros, because they've sure got him. So do we. Shocking, isn't it, that the Euros' pet-American President would want to protect American union workers and not Euros?

Still, not for the first time, El Jefe wonders if this man and his party have even the smallest clue about what they're doing?

Puff Daschle Blows Away

2009-02-03T11:55:00.006-06:00

Tom Daschle, President Obama's nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary has asked the President to withdraw his nomination. "Puff" Daschle, former Majority Leader of the Senate, who used to lead Senate filibusters preventing confirmation of President Bush's judicial nominees, has been hoist on his own confirmation petard. Senator Daschle was driven out of contention by, among other things, tax problems with a car and driver provided by a former business partner.

Quite amazing: to my recollection Daschle's the first Senator nominated for a position not to benefit from the old-boy network and be confirmed since John Tower failed confirmation for Secretary of Defense, in George H.W. Bush's administration.

Additionally, the President's proposed "Chief Performance Officer," Ms. Nancy Killefer, withdrew her name from consideration for this new position this morning. It seems Ms. Killefer has tax problems of her own. All this comes after Treasury Secretary Geithner fessed-up to nanny-tax issues prior to his own confirmation.

One wonders what the story is with Obama's vetting process. Can't anybody play this game?

Play the Bailout Game

2009-01-28T11:52:00.005-06:00

Think you've got what it takes to be a Master of the Universe, save the economy and affect the world distribution of Jell-o? Play The Bailout Game and find out!

Let the introduction spool through, and have at it. The financial system depends on you! Glory and wealth as a respected pundit, presidential advisor, friend of Oprah, or ex-cabinet member awaits! Yes, it's the big time, or else an unpleasant exile in cheap hotels with your bored mistress and hangers-on, fliting from country to country fleeing subpoenas and journalists. Good luck!

Hat tip: Belmont Club.

Obama's Second Oath

2009-01-22T09:29:00.007-06:00

Obama's second oath is going to get the conspiracy theorists working overtime.

The second-oath is not unprecedented (Chester Arthur took one) and it's debatable whether it was actually needed, despite the script-flub during the inauguration. But the manner in which this was handled was, at a minimum, tactless.

The fact that President Obama did not use a Bible for this second oath does not render it in any way deficient, but given the pre-existing rumors and questions about Obama's religious convictions, Obama's failure to use a Bible for the mulligan oath was monumentally stupid. The President has needlessly offended millions and provided gratuitous fodder for rumor and scandal mongers.

I have no emotional investment in Obama, so it's all machts nichts to me, but I wonder just how good this man's political instincts really are. Can he function without handlers and a script?

Blog Business

2009-01-22T09:04:00.005-06:00

Readers may notice that the Kingdom needs some work.

In particular, the Blogroll has some issues: many of them occasioned by the apparent death of Blogrolling, provider of the widget that operates the Blogroll. Also, I want to use tags, but that necessitates actually tagging the posts, and since there are over 1100 posts on this blog, that process might take a while. Finally, the template needs a bit of updating, which I have so far been reluctant to do because a template update will affect some of the Blog's widgets and attachments.

In any case, El Jefe hopes to get to this soon, but the Kingdom -- with the exceptions of the happy peasants toiling in their fields, the workers slaving over their machines in the Kingdom's many arms factories, the devoted palace servants, the royal mistress, the ever-loyal regiments of Goomba guards, the prelates of the State church and Bingo parlors, the vigilant Organs of State Security, and the accountants in the Off Track Betting Ministry -- is a one-man band. In any case, the matter has been referred to the urgent attention of the Ministry of Procrastination.

Book Review: The 47th Samurai

2009-01-21T17:39:00.010-06:00

El Jefe recently finished Stephen Hunter's The 47th Samurai.

47th Samurai is the latest addition to the Bob Lee Swagger/Earl Swagger saga (Bob Lee appearing as the main character in one set: Point of Impact, Black Light and Time to Hunt; and his father Earl in Hot Springs, Pale Horse Coming, and Havana). Point of Impact, an excellent book, was bowdlerized into the thoroughly boring film Shooter (2007) with Mark Wahlberg completely miscast as Bob Lee Swagger. (Of the bunch, I'd recommend Point of Impact, Hot Springs and Black Light most strongly). There are several other Hunter books, in which various Swaggers, Swagger relatives and assorted hangers-on common to the books sometimes make appearances

Bob Lee’s appearance in 47th Samurai is possibly the book’s great defect. You see, Bob Lee (a somewhat worse-for-wear super-sniper Vietnam Marine) -- has already wrecked a Russian spy ring in Time to Hunt; solved the mystery of his Dad’s murder while going up against the Southern mob and rogue CIA/DOD contractors in Black Light; and foiled a tricky assassination plot in Point of Impact while beating a bunch of other super-snipers. Bob Lee’s also an alcoholic who periodically falls off the wagon, gets more time away from his beautiful and very tolerant wife than anybody I’ve ever met, and during all this carrying-on somehow gets very rich, and owns a ginormous ranch in Idaho.

Bob Lee’s has clearly had a busy life, and you’d think that he’d want to stack arms and get on down the road. But no! Clearly, Stephen Hunter got a call from his literary agent with an Idea that He Couldn't Refuse – I’m visualizing this scene with a cigar-chomping agent screaming at Hunter through his cell phone: “Stephen! Let's send Bob Lee to Japan!”

Stephen does, and Bob Lee goes to Nippon to return a long lost samurai sword, captured by his Dad (Marine war hero Earl Swagger) during the Battle of Iwo Jima. The sword is returned, but a Yakuza crime lord has plans of his own, and makes the serious, serious mistake of chopping up some of Bob Lee’s Japanese friends, and the story’s off to the kendo ring.

As usual, Bob Lee takes things personally, and even though he speaks no Japanese, he manages to find a Sancho Panza or two (well, 46 rōnin maybe) to enlist in his crusade for justice. Almost overnight Bob Lee becomes the first redneck samurai super swordsman (you saw this episode of Pokémon right?) which is more than a little unbelievable. Say, doesn’t Bob Lee have any cousins?

We find out about the bad guys and their evil plans (truly bad, truly evil, but with a somewhat underwhelming strategic objective). We learn a little about the samurai culture, about Yakuza, and probably more than we wanted to know about sword play and cutting with a katana. Spies and gangsters with their own agendas and various interesting sinister and shadowy types make their appearances.

The story is well paced, lots of dramatic confrontation and swordplay, building towards the inevitable bloody showdown with the bad guys. As usual with a Hunter novel, much of the enjoyment is the reader’s understanding that, no matter how strong or many the bad guys might be -- against Bob Lee, (redneck polymath that he his) who figures out all the bad guy moves before they do -- the no-goodniks just don’t have a chance.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a fun, fun book, and if you like violent thrillers with bad guys you can really hate, or have liked previous Hunter books, buy it! I burned through it in two days. Enjoy it in the manner of one of those afternoon Samurai movies, where the hero faces impossible numbers and does amazing sword tricks, comes away victorious, gets the girl and there’s a big fiesta at the end. Fun, as long as you make the popcorn, have a spare afternoon, and suspend disbelief a little.

Hillary Clinton Confirmed

2009-01-21T16:04:00.004-06:00

By a vote of 94-2, the Senate has confirmed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Good.

As I have written, I think this appointment is extrordinarily ill-advised, and that Mrs. Clinton is in general a poor fit for this position. But that's water under the bridge now: Obama is President and a know-nothing on foreign affairs. But the choice, and the responsibilty, is his. Too much is going on in the world to have the State Department left rudderless (of all departments, this is the one least to be trusted on its own) while the Senate shilly-shallies over an appointment that was going to be confirmed anyway.

Similarly, I hope the Senate moves immediately to confirm Mr. Timothy Geithner over at the Treasury Department. I don't see why this man doesn't think he has to pay taxes, but he and his lawyers can square matters with the IRS and their lawyers on Mr. Geithner's own time. The banks are crumbling, the President is in dire need of professional advice on this subject too and Mr. Geithner, (the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank) fills this bill.

Senator Roberts of Kansas has told Mr. Geithner that he will be confirmed. This is obvious, so why fool around?

Someone Else's Party

2009-01-20T08:30:00.004-06:00

The dread day is finally here, Obama becomes God-Emperor.

I opened the front page of my local newspaper, the Houston Chronicle this morning and immediately wanted to vomit. The paper version features a giant picture of the Supreme Leader, with the headline "A Day for Change," with the Presidential oath from the Constitution in script below -- the oath highlighted by tiny pictures of Obama's predecessors. The accompanying article by "Chronicle News Services" tells us that:

The inauguration of the youthful and popular new president -- and the departure of the incumbent, George W. Bush -- will set off a potentially dramatic shift in direction on policies, from the wars abroad to the role of the federal government at home, and a change in tone, with the rise of a new generation more prone to problem solving than to ideological conflict.

Gee. am I reading the Houston Chronicle published in Houston, Texas, USA, or is this from Pravda or Izvestia in Soviet times, or from the Völkischer Beobachter? The fawning, gushing, breathless tone of all the coverage; the pictures of the Leader everywhere, the kitschy souvenirs we are assured will be sentimental treasures in the future. Are we getting a new public official, or is Obama God? Do people know the difference?

We have no choice but to accept the people's verdict. Obama is going to get his chance, but that doesn't mean some of us have to like it. The Obamaites should enjoy their party: they earned it. But they can keep their change, and their Kool-Aid, thank you.

Pardons Anyone?

2009-01-19T11:19:00.006-06:00

Josh Gerstein in Politico speculates today on possible Presidential pardons by President Bush in his last hours in office, before the Supreme Leader takes power. Most of these possible pardons are uninteresting, at least to El Jefe, but Mr. Gerstein says a mouthful when he notes:

. . .Bush could quickly leap back into the spotlight in the next two days if he issues a blanket pardon immunizing CIA and military interrogators, as well as their bosses, from criminal prosecution over harsh treatment of prisoners from the war on terror . . .

Mr. Gerstein is referring to possible prosecutions of military personnel and intelligence officers for interrogations of terror suspects (mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan) following 9/11. Mr. Gerstein notes that Eric Holder, the Attorney-General designate, seems "open to the idea" of prosecutions.

In a sane world, such prosecutions would not even be a remote possibility, avoiding the need for the dreadful precedent of a pardon. As blogger Tigerhawk notes, "the best result" would be "no pardon, and no prosecution."

Considering the stripe of those coming into power, and their hunger for investigations and "war crimes" prosecutions, action by Bush is called for. Doing nothing is not only unwise, but a real disservice to officers, soldiers and other public servants doing their duty, as they saw it, under extraordinary circumstances. So, I hope that President Bush finds a way, and unfolds the blanket pardon.

Besides, it would drive the Left absolutely bonkers. . .