Remembering the Alamo

This weekend, El Jefe and SWMBO took the Heir to summer camp up near Kerrville. Following some begging by the Heir, en route, we stopped in San Antonio to view the Alamo, which the Heir had never seen. When he was 7 years old, the Heir used to tramp around the house and yard in his pseudo-coonskin cap with his toy musket, and watch all those old movies Fess Parker made in the 50’s portraying Davy Crockett. We’ve seen John Wayne die in celluloid at the Alamo countless times, so I suppose an Alamo trip was inevitable at some point.

The Alamo sits smack-dab in the middle of Downtown San Antonio, on Alamo Plaza, which, as we will discuss momentarily, is more descriptive a name than one might think. Driving in San Antonio can be a reasonably surreal experience to out-of-towners like us, but our handy-dandy Yahoo-generated map guided through the pinball maze of streets safely to the Alamo over streets named Bonham, Bowie and Crockett.

The Alamo is maintained by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, who do a good job running the place with very little money and thousands of visitors annually to cope with. It's obscene but true that the State of Texas contributes nothing whatever to the Alamo's upkeep. However, “Alamo” is really misleading, because most of the mission/fort defended by Colonel Travis and his brave companions in 1836 is just gone – swallowed by downtown San Antonio. All that’s left of the original mission is the church itself, part of the attached corral, and the quarters for the mission’s friars, known to students of the Battle of the Alamo as the “Long Barracks.”

Pause a moment in the mission room where the Alamo’s women and children sheltered during the attack. This room appears to be in more or less original condition, and with a little imagination you can visualize waiting there nearly two hundred years ago, listening to the occasional boom of the big guns, the rattle-bang of the muskets, and the shouts of men in desperate peril. Equally moving is the nearby Long Barracks, where at the end of the battle, bands of Mexican soldiers fought room to room, up close and personal, bitter close-quarters infantry combat with bayonet, pistol and musket-butt, flushing-out the last desperate survivors of the Texian garrison.

Forget the kitschy souvenirs in the nearby gift shop (although your purchases do help support the Alamo), and go outside, back onto Alamo Plaza. This place -- the best spot to stop, sit and think for a minute is ignored by most Alamo tourists, all intent on getting into the generally recognized mission church that means “Alamo” to most people. But the heart of the 1836 Alamo used to be Alamo Plaza itself. The big, 1936 statue in the center of the Plaza – between the mission church and the shops along the south side of the Plaza – was the middle of the Alamo defended by Travis’s men in 1836.

The entry area in front of the Shrine, that is, the Alamo mission entrance, where a sign enjoins visitors to keep voices low, and gentlemen to remove their hats, is right near where the low palisade that Davy Crockett defended stood. Colonel Travis is believed to have died near the steps of the US Post Office, on the north side of Alamo Plaza, which was about where the north wall of the Alamo once rested.

There’ve been many books about the Alamo, but my own favorite is still Walter Lord’s A Time to Stand, published in 1961. Mr. Lord, a journalist turned historian, gets most of the facts right, tells a splendid story, gives good brief sketches of the protagonists, and throws in a sound evaluation of the military situation without all of the tedious social-history ruminations on class and race which are de rigueur for anything written today. As a bonus, he gives an excellent account of the Battle of San Jacinto.

Driving from Houston to see the Alamo enhanced the whole experience, at least for me. You may have figured out by now that military history is possibly a minor interest of El Jefe’s. In any case, the most interesting aspect of the Texian War for Independence for me is the period after the Alamo: that is to say wondering about the question of how General Santa Anna, (who did a splendid piece of work organizing, supplying and moving a Mexican army over the northern Mexican deserts and into Texas), managed to take the Alamo, wipe out the biggest Texian force (Fannin’s little army round Goliad), and still manage to lose the war.

Driving from Houston (site of San Jacinto) to the Alamo supplies part of an answer. Other than being in the Alamo, I can’t imagine a fate worse than being some poor Mexican conscript, probably with no shoes, walking across Texas in March/April, rainstorms alternating with heat, a river in flood to ford every couple of days, and having to fight a battle at the end of it, all the time hoping for something to eat. Meanwhile, Santa Anna, probably concerned about Houston escaping over the US border, wore his army out with longer and longer marches. To the Mexican soldier, Texas must have seemed endless. The Alamo has had lots of books written, but I think the wider war still awaits its historian. In any case, the Alamo trip was an interesting little excursion.

4 June 1942

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

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Midway, the turning point of World War II in the Pacific. Sixty-three years ago today a handful of U.S. aviators, (Navy of course, but also Marines and Army Air Forces) outnumbered, outgunned, some scarcely trained - defeated the cream of Japanese naval aviation and exacted partial revenge for Pearl Harbor by sending carriers Akagi, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu to the bottom. From 7 December 1941 until that day, the U.S. was on the defensive in the Pacific. No longer. At Midway, the United States, in Gordon Prange's words, put aside the shield and picked up the sword.

America and Japan deployed vast fleets that day -- hundreds of ships, crewed by thousands of men. But the battle was won by about 100 pilots in their twenties, many of whom paid with their lives. Sixty years on, we've lost or are losing the World War II veterans. Some, killed that day in 1942 or soon after, are forever young in the memories of their families and their country. Do not forget Waldron, Osmus, McClusky, Lindsey, Gay and all the others. Think of them today and every 4th June.

The Koran and Guantanamo

The media is having a feeding frenzy over Guantanamo again, this time, we are told, because interrogators (1) kicked the Koran, and/or (2) permitted urine to touch it.

Why are we hearing about this ? Would it be news in the American and European press, at least of a similar magnitude if soldiers someplace (1) kicked the Bible; and/or (2) permitted urine to touch it ? We all know the answer, don't we ?

The reason we are hearing about this now is because the mass media has closed ranks around Newsweek, which ran a false Koran desecration story last month. The Bush administation was, for some reason, upset about the resulting riots and killings all over the Muslim world, and had the gall to criticize Newsweek. Clearly, the imperialist U.S. administration must be punished for its temerity, so the newsies have since spent every waking hour looking under rocks for any poor sap that even so much as snarled in the Koran's direction.

Hurray. Now the media's found some patsies and can be "vindicated." Of course, the predictable new round of rioting and killing is of no consequence, and will help the media sell papers, and cripple the American war effort. A win-win for the press. Meanwhile, the interests of poor Mrs. Jones from Nowheresville, Mississippi, who loses her only son in Afghanistan when his Army unit breaks up a riot of angry Koran-thumpers can be completely disregarded -- unless she wants to get in print by blaming the Bush administation for her son's death.

What world do these people live in ? Why does freedom of the press include the right to depress support for the war effort ? Can you imagine the press running similar stories about the mistreatment of, say, Japanese prisoners of war sixty years ago ? Now you know damn well this went on, but somehow the media bosses of the day managed to avoid putting such stories on page one. Too right they did, because the public of those days, serious people who knew where their bread was buttered, would have roasted the editors of such publications on a spit.

3 June 1965

Today is the 40th anniversary of the first walk in space by a U.S. astronaut, Lieutenant-Colonel (USAF) Edward H. White, II, of the spacecraft Gemini IV. Tethered to the spacecraft, and carrying a camera to record some stunning photographs of Earth, plus a "zip gun" propulsion device to move himself around, Colonel White enjoyed his fifteen minute walk outside the capsule so much that Mission Control had to prompt him rather emphatically to come back inside: “Gemini IV, Get Back In !” Colonel White’s crewmate, James McDivitt, didn’t get an opportunity to go outside, having to content himself with watching and relaying messages from the ground.

Colonel White died a tragically untimely death: killed in the Apollo 204 disaster, 27 January 1967. Just 36 years old at the time of his death, he left a wife and two children.

Why Not ?

El Jefe is at work, tending to his day job. During these periods of tedium, while El Jefe mans his desk, advancing civilization and the glory of the nation; not to mention ensuring himself undying honor and fame by drafting letters, briefs and other screeds for litigious employees, modifying employee handbooks and similar important functions, El Jefe sometimes wonders "Why ?" You know, meaning of life, and all that sort of thing.

My mind strays to similar channels, when, while slaving away, the phone chirps at me, and the secretary outside asks "are we talking to family today ?" El Jefe has a minor crisis working involving certain financial issues of other family members. So, very reluctantly, I have to say "yeah, put the call through" rolling the eyes momentarily and thinking how Unfair it all is.

When I finally escape from the call, I again turn my eyes to Heaven and think "Why ?" Why doesn't the lovely and comely secretary buzz-in with a call, but this time say "El Jefe, El Jefe, it's Jenny McCarthy and she wants your body, like now ! She's ordered some Mojitos, she's sending the Gulfstream and is waiting for you on the beach or in her private boudoir at [fill in fantasy destination here] !"

Just a random thought. Okay, back to work. Floggings will continue till morale improves.

Amnesty International, a/k/a Al Qaeda Service Organization

Amnesty International’s Secretary General, an Irene Khan, has called the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba the “gulag of our times” and denounced the United States as the “unrivaled political, military and economic hyper-power” which “thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights.” Ms. Khan denounced the Bush administration for going “…to great lengths to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions.”

Hmmm, I like the “unrivaled political, military and economic hyper-power” thing. Thanks Irene. Long may that situation endure. As for the poor innocent inmates of Guantanamo, my heart weeps; they’re lucky they haven’t been given the last cigarette and stuck up against the wall.

As Ms. Khan knows, or should know, perfectly well, the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the vermin at Guantanamo. The relevant document, “the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War” (1949) provides, at Article 4(2), that persons are considered combatants, and entitled to be treated as Prisoners of War so long as (1) they are commanded by a person legally responsible for his subordinates; and, (2) they have a fixed distinctive insignia recognizable at a distance; and, (3) they carry arms openly; and, finally (4) they conduct their operations “in accordance with the laws and customs of war.”

So sorry, that definition doesn’t cover our little Al Qaeda friends at Guantanamo, who ram airplanes into buildings, certainly have no insignia recognizable at a distance, and do not carry arms openly. Claiming otherwise, as Ms. Khan and her ilk to, is both naïve and stupid, or more likely, an attempt at a power grab by self interested lawyers and bureaucrats for themselves. It also advances the cherished goal of do-gooders here and throughout the world of hobbling the United States.

"Gulag" indeed. I suspect the good Ms. Khan wouldn't know the gulag from Six Flags. Too bad Guantanamo is not the Gulag, because the Gulag is no better then those sewer rats deserve. The scumbags at Guantanamo are nothing but pirates and brigands completely outside the law. Crucifixion would be too good for them. I suppose we can't do that, but the US government would be perfectly justified in hanging the aforementioned scumbags from the nearest tree, and hopefully it does so quickly.

UPDATE: Go read Dymphna's post "Fisking Amnesty International" at the Gates of Vienna blog, here. Dymphna detailed examination of AI's bloviations shows how utterly contemptable absurd and dangerous the AI/PC International Do-Gooder claque really is.

Kicking the Can Down the Road

As everyone by now knows, a “moderate” Senate faction of fourteen Democrats and Republicans reached a deal last night that will prevent, for the moment anyway, Senator Frist and the Republican majority in the Senate from resorting to their “nuclear option” of abolishing the filibuster for judicial appointment purposes.

As readers of the Kingdom of Chaos may be aware, I never thought that the “nuclear option” was a particularly good one. Yet the Republicans, the majority party in the Senate and in the country, had few good options, given the Democratic Party’s manipulation of the Senate rules to block appointments of nominees who could win a majority of votes in the Senate. A simple majority is all that the Constitution requires.

The deal is a bad one, it remains to be seen for whom. The deal makers, in writing, have guaranteed an “up or down” vote on appointments to the various Courts of Appeals for Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, Justice Janice Rogers Brown, and Judge William Pryor. In effect, as Senator Cornyn puts it, this is an “admission of guilt” by the Democrats, that these people should never have had their appointments hijacked by filibusters to begin with. Two equally qualified judges, William Meyers and Henry Saad, have been abandoned by Republican signatories to this pact, who “make no commitment” to vote to end debate as to these judges.

How the Democrat parties to this agreement are going to enforce this deal – that is, prevent more than 40 of their confreres from voting against ending debate on Owen, Brown and Pryor (41 puts a filibuster in place) is not clear. There is also the interesting question as to whether the Republican signatories to this deal have privately agreed to vote with their Democratic friends against the confirmation of the three judges released from filibuster purgatory.

As to future appointments, “[n]ominees should only be filibustered under extraordinary circumstances” whatever that means.

The disaster has been moved from place to place, the can in effect kicked down the road. This appears to narrow President Bush’s options as to future nominees considerably. A Supreme Court appointment is likely this summer. President Bush will in effect be forced to chose a milquetoast, or face the likely invocation of “extraordinary circumstances.” Based on the text of the agreement – the fourteen signers are committed to oppose any future attempts to change the rules in the 109th Congress, so the “nuclear option” appears to be completely gone.

John McCain, the organizer of this agreement, appears to have given up his Presidential hopes, at least in the Republican Party. The Republican Party will never accept him as a nominee after a sell-out like this. I’m not even sure he can keep his Senate seat. In general, the so-called Republican moderates probably have rather bleak futures in terms of perks and pork from the party of which they are nominally a part. Senator Frist, who had Presidential ambitions, is another loser, the nuclear option was his baby.

It’s not clear that the Democrats are winners either, least of all the Democrats who signed on to this deal. The liberals, at least so far, are denouncing the deal as a sell-out. But on balance, I think for the moment, they have more reasons to be happy then the Republicans.

Return to Galveston

I would have done almost anything to get out of town this last weekend, and luck was with us, because T most graciously invited El Jefe and family down to their beach house in Galveston Saturday afternoon. This sounded like a great idea to us, so El Jefe, the Heir and SWMBO loaded up and cruised.

Now I know it’s virtually impossible to get lost between Houston and Galveston, and we’ve been down this road lots, but we gave it our best shot. Thinking to avoid the traffic on I-45 out of Houston, we opted to leave the city on State Highway 288. Good idea, because there was no traffic this way, but you do need to look out for the Sam Houston Tollway, so that you can switch back to I-45 for the bulk of the journey. However, we got so busy chattering that we missed the turn, and didn’t catch our error until we were nearly to Angleton (down the coast from Galveston). We turned around, and got a splendid tour of Alvin, Santa Fe and other Gulf Coast garden spots winding our way back over towards I-45 and Galveston.

In any case we finally made it. T promptly made some really excellent Cosmos, which was such a good thing, because I needed one at this point. Shortly thereafter we went to dinner (Playa de Loro, in Pirate’s Beach Center – try the Tortilla Soup, El Jefe pronounces it very good). Then back to the beach house where T, her husband E and El Jefe stayed up till all hours talking and drinking wine. (SWMBO retired early). The Heir, T’s kids and their other guest – a child they are keeping while his mother is in France – watched television.

Large quantities of water between glasses of wine ensured that we were able to avoid waking up with a wine-head that El Jefe, at least, no doubt merited. The Moon was very near full, producing most interesting luminous reflections off the very calm sea.

The next morning, the kids went to the beach and looked for crabs, while T made a yummy breakfast – biscuits and gravy, one of my favorites. My Mom used to make that – and except for when T makes it, I have not had it in years. Sadly, we had to leave about 10:30 a.m. to head back to Houston for a little league party. It was so nice to get out of town for even a little bit. Thanks so much to T and E for making that possible.

Saddam's Underpants

“I see England ! I see France ! I see Saddam’s Underpants !” The British tabloid newspaper The Sun today printed photographs of the former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein – in his underpants. The photographs have been reprinted by the New York Post, and a link to the "Butcher of Sagdad" photo is here for your delectation. Both The Sun and the New York Post are part of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper chain.

It’s not clear how Mr. Murdoch got the photographs. It is possible that they were sold to The Sun in violation of US military regulations – public distribution of photographs of Saddam, at one time considered a PW, would possibly violate the Geneva Convention, and probably US Army regulations on the treatment of prisoners. It is also possible, however, that the photographs were leaked deliberately, as a psychological blow against the Iraqi rebels.

According to Agence France Presse, lawyers representing the deposed tyrant have stated that they plan to sue The Sun. Bully for them. Long before such nonsense can come to trial, Saddam will hopefully be rendered into ashes poured out in some anonymous ditch some place (like the executed Nazi criminals at Nuremberg that Saddam emulated so well).

The matter does present some interesting legal questions. Saddam’s lawyers in this lawsuit would do well to secure payment in advance, because their client is not the only one who can manipulate the law. At one time, Saddam could certainly have claimed the protection of the Geneva Conventions, but it is far from clear these are available to him now. Saddam is no longer a PW, but technically at least a state prisoner of the Iraqi government, which may deal with him according to its laws and wishes. The WW II allies evaded the Geneva Conventions in a similar manner, when they tried the Nazi war criminals. After the German surrender, the Allies, then exercising all political power in Germany, by the stroke of a pen, turned German prisoners from PW’s into “internees” – taking the Geneva Conventions right out from under them.

Certainly, there are plenty of Saddam-era laws and regulations which would permit the tyrant to be stood up against the nearest convenient wall and shot without benefit of a farcical trial, but no doubt Saddam is going to get the due process he denied to so many others.

Similarly, it is questionable whether the present rebels can claim Geneva Convention protections, unlike the Iraqi soldiers who fought the Coalition forces during the invasion, prior to the fall of Baghdad. The rebels are not part of a regularly organized army or militia, and do not fight for any lawful government, and are thus nothing but rebels and brigands, and outside the law, and, in the good old phrase from (I think) the Roman proscription notices: "cast out from all protection of law, enemies-general of all mankind, to be dealt with as wolves are." Too bad we're too nice for that.

Emperors, Lists, Day Jobs

Good morning ! El Jefe sits on the verandah of his summer palace, or whatever, contemplating his vast and nefarious empire and sipping his morning Bloody Mary.

In miscellaneous trivia important to your host, today in 1804, the French Senate proclaimed Napoléon I the Emperor of France. Going from Corsican nobody to one of the crowned heads of Europe is a pretty impressive career path.

Looking over my Really Irritating Things list and my Good Things list, I see I missed a slew of things. Could add to them, but no supplemental list at present. Still thinking about that Discovery Channel list of "Greatest" Americans. Might work on one of those too. Meanwhile, the Day Jobs are calling...

Fun and Good Things

This is the promised sequel to my earlier post “Really Irritating Things.” El Jefe, perpetually irritated about some things, can still manage to see the good in lots and lots in this world. Life is Good. Here is the by no-means exhaustive list of Fun and Good Things (FGT), and stuff I generally just like.

1. Parties.
2. November’s election results.
3. Cookies and Cream Ice Cream.
4. BMW’s.
5. A decent Merlot – from Chile not California.
6. This April’s weather.
7. Seaside, FL.
8. Dancing.
9. A trip to the Museum, and not in a hurry.
10. Tea – iced or hot.
11. Road trip to Da Beach. Cool if No. 7, Cool if Galveston or Surfside too.
12. Hiking.
13. A quiet afternoon with a book.
14. Camping.
15. When the Heir is happy.
16. Watching them drag Saddam out of that hole.
17. When SWMBO is happy.
18. 18 year old Scotch.
19. Dinner and Drinking with pals.
20 When the Heir is in the mood to tell me the kiddo gossip.
21. Jenny McCarthy.
22. Popcorn.
23. E-mail.
24. Cats, in particular, FLINKY, and MILO and the new High Patronesss, SUNSHINE.
25. Watching Lefties go Bonkers.
26. Sunsets.
27. Thunderstorms when I don’t have to be anyplace.
28. Going to a Movie with SWMBO.
29. Snail-mail. (I love to write and receive letters: See #23).
30. Hearing that the military has helped some Jihad types meet Allah.
31. Sleeping late.
32. The GoGo’s.
33. Some stuff by the Carpenters.
34. The Circus.
35. Hershey Bars.
36. Deutsche Bier.
37. Deutsche Marschmusik.
38. Payday.
39. Gossip.
40. Old Books.
41. Miniskirts.
42. Grapes.
43. Regular Coke.
44. Italian Food.
45. Rome.
46. Blueberry Pie.
47. A stay at the Four Seasons, or the Lancaster.
48 The Corrs.
49. Flirting.
50. Military History.
51. Dolphins.
52. Australians.
53. Guns.
54. A fire – fireplace or campfire.
55. The stars at night, away from the city.
56. The British.
57. Blackened Redfish or Snapper.
58. Black Coffee – piping hot.
59. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 “Eroica.”
60. Austin, Texas.
61. Roller Coasters.
62. Winston Churchill and all his books.
63. Writing in my journal.
64. George Strait.
65. Barbecue – specially brisket.
66. Hats.
67. The Washington Post.
68. Ronald Reagan.
69. Keeping my friends’ secrets.
70. Paris.
71. Riding my bike.
72. A royal flush.
73. Attention.
74. Irish Whiskey.
75. Cigars (only occasionally)
76. European history.
77. Chit-Chat about nothing in particular (see No. 39).
78. VanGogh.
79. The Buffalo River valley, Arkansas.
80. Gustave Courbet’s The Sea (1867).
81. Dogs.
82. Nice shoes.
83. Chess.
84. T’s Cosmos.
85. A window seat on the plane.
86. Kate Winslet in Titanic.
87. Deeply intense conversations about abstract political or historical happenings.
88. Ernest Meissonier’s Campaign de France, 1814 (1864).
89. Pie Jesu (from Andrew Lloyd Webber, Requiem 1985)
90. Strawberries.
91. Double entendres.
92. NFL Football Games – when I don’t have to drive.
93. Kissing.
94. The smell of fresh cut grass.
95. SWMBO’s cooking.
96. An afternoon at the bookstore.
97. The Driskill Hotel, Austin.
98. Boats and ships.
99. John Singer Sargent’s Lady Agnew of Lochnaw (1892-93).
100. Biscuits or Biscuits and Gravy.
101. The Heir’s face when asleep.
102. Masraff’s (Restaurant), Houston, Texas.
103. Le Musée de l’Armée, Paris.
104. The Forum Romanum, Rome.
105. Swim-Up Bars.
106. The Godfather (all three parts).
107. John Sanford’s Prey novels.
108. FLINKY when she Meows at my study door to be let in.
109. The smell of the ocean and listening to the waves. (See #7, # 11).
110. The color red.
111. The Band of the Coldstream Guards.
112. Chicago (before Cetera left), Boston, and the BeeGees, or most 70’s/80’s bands.
113. Stuffing my head with pointless trivia.
114. Late night phone calls.
115. Late movies.
116. Irish bars.
117. Pizza.
118. Clocks that tick loudly.
119. Women in black.
120. The Heir when he says “But I have a question.”
121. Cleopatra (Liz Taylor, Richard Burton, Rex Harrison).
122. Late nights drinking in smoke-filled bars with obscure bands playing.
123. Buying flowers.
124. The color blue.
125. Sudden, spur of moment road trips.
126. Ceremony.
127. Hearing train whistles a long way off.
128. My book collection.
129. New and different tee shirts.
130. Cilantro.
131. Interesting perfume.
132. SWMBO’s Tales of Office Politics.
133. Not having to do anything in evenings but sit out front and chit-chat with neighbors.
134. A nice sirloin, medium, with some mushrooms.
135. St. Clement, Chardonnay (’02 or ’03).
136. An afternoon snooze.
137. Flying a kite.
138. Touring old battlefields.
139. The flag.
140. Anything with Clint Eastwood in it.
141. The Heir petting MILO.
142. An evening at a play.
143. The New Car smell.
144. St Arnold’s Amber Ale.
145. Anything about or to do with Theodore Roosevelt.
146. John Wayne movies.
147 Falling asleep – that point when not quite awake, but not asleep yet either.
148. Maps.
149. Golf, as long as we're not keeping score and somebody snuck in a flask.
150. Going bump in the night.

Really Irritating Things

Last night’s post on that silly Discovery Channel seems to have gotten me stuck on lists. Everybody in the blogosphere seems to be there too, and El Jefe definitely wants to keep up with the March of Civilization. I am relatively easy to irritate, so I figured I’d start a list of Really Irritating Things (“RIT’s”). Normally, I’m a relatively happy guy and to prove it, a sequel: Fun and Good Things, is in preparation. But meanwhile, I’m in a grumpy mood and want to talk about RIT’s. Here’s a sampling:

1. People who don’t turn their cell phones on.
2. People who call me on my cell phone, if they’re people I don’t want to talk to.
3. Inability to hang-up on an answering machine without it making your phone ring.
4. The ginormous amounts of ad material in the Sunday paper.
5. The Democratic Party since the 60’s.
6. Gossip about me.
7. Gossip about other folks I don’t hear first.
8. Not keeping my secrets or quarrelling in public.
9. People who call with a problem, and don’t GET TO THE POINT.
10. Longwinded excuses for the point. Stuff is what it is, people. (See #9).
11. John McCain. Splendid fellow, but I don’t as a rule like gadflies.
12. Getting home and going out again for something I could have gotten on the way.
13. People who don’t tell me the bad news up front.
14. Choo-Choo trains blocking the tracks where I need to drive at 5:00 p.m.
15. Missing a party.
16. Forgetting something and having to go back.
17. Tactlessness. When you have to say no, say good-bye, or otherwise deliver disappointment, it costs nothing to be polite.
18. Telemarketers at the dinner hour, or pretty much any other time.
19. Michael Moore. Needs no explanation.
20. Finding the butter left out.
21. Lateness.
22. Paul Krugman. All his stuff reads the same.
23. Being awakened before at least 10 a.m. on a Saturday.
24. No caffeine with my breakfast.
25. People who don’t return my books.
26. The sound of Rod Stewart. Makes me want to reach for my revolver.
27. People who are mean to animals.
28. The United Nations. It’s quite enough that we pay for it, why should we have to listen to it too ?
29. Ice Cream on my brownie. Put it on the side, please.
30. Fire ants.
31. Doing the first name thing if you’re trying to sell me something or do business with me and I don’t know you yet. That’s MISTER El Jefe to you.
32. Rodents – are right out.
33. Lawyers. Yes, I am one, but I put it away when I go home, as do most lawyers I like.
34. People who don’t control their kids in public.
35. John Kerry. Okay, I have a problem with Lefty Massachusetts Yankees.
36. The maids hiding my stuff.
37. People poking into my beeswax.
38. Answering questions. I ask them, thank you.
39. Bait and switch. I HATE people who revise the deal.
40. Do-gooders who want to beat on people with the law. If people want to smoke, drink, run their weedeaters or fornicate, and it’s on their dime, what’s it to ya ?
41. Rudeness. Just a “thank you,” “good morning” and a little eye-contact goes a long way.
42. Not keeping your word.
43. Ted Kennedy (see # 35).
44. People who don’t return calls or e-mails. If you have bad news – stand in the door and deliver it.
45. People who aren’t nice to my cats.
46. Finding the fridge door cracked open.
47. The color yellow.
48. Complaining, past a certain point. Specially if there’s nothing I can do anyway.
49. Silence. I like background noise, at least.
50. Spongbob Squarepants.
51. A hard sell – you don’t make me want to buy with the high pressure gig.
52. People who don’t fall in with my plans.
53. Trucks and busses in front of me when I’m driving. I like to see.
54. Liberals who can’t tell you why they think what they think.
55. Road construction.
56. Business calls at home.
57. Computer Manuals: Written by robots to be read by machines.
58. Money. Having it is good, but dealing with it is DULL.
59. Not having money.
60. Slow service.
61. People who are over-businesslike. Smell the flowers. Be impractical sometimes.
62. The paranoid set who think we’re going to wake up tomorrow in a theocracy.
63. The wingnut set who want us to wake up tomorrow in a theocracy.
64. Liver and Onions. Nooooo thanx.
65. Peaceniks. Drive their Volvos and Saabs, eat at their high dollar restaurants, wear their fashionable outfits, play 60’s music, shop at Whole Foods, and ceaselessly bleat about oil, US imperialism and the corpos that make it all possible.
66. Michael Jackson.
67. Whiny voices, specially when combined with # 48. Throw those in with # 9 and # 10 and you’ve got The Perfect Storm.
68. Too many tattoos.
69. Rap Music, Hip Hop, or whatever it’s called this week.
70. Green peas in my salad.
71. Fidel Castro. Hopefully the rotten old bastard croaks soon.
72. Chest colds.
73. A red wine hangover.
74. People who are PC.
75. When the mail’s late.
76. Malfunctioning street lights.
77. Mixed vegetables.
78. Jimmy Carter.
79. Balancing my checkbook. (See # 58).
80. Discovering the absence of TP too late in the game.
81. Family quarrels.
82. The AC getting busted. Without AC, life itself is impossible.
83. Overcast days – come on: rain or shine world, don’t just glower.
84. Not being listened to.
85. Spotting a typo after something’s already done.
86. Car trouble.
87. Bad red wine. (see # 73).
88. Disappointing the Heir.
89. Pissing-off SWMBO.
90. Leaving the mattress pad home when camping.
91. Long boring questions by know-it-alls when the speaker’s done at a seminar.
92. Dan Rather. A smug face that just begs for a slap.
93. Runny eggs.
94. Disloyal friends.
95. Commies, socialists and lefties generally. Particularly professor types.
96. A sink full of dishes and a full dishwasher.
97. Being out of red wine. (see #73 and #87).
98. Cold coffee.
99. Downwind of B.O. or bad breath.
100. Not going bump in the night.

Is There Really News in Newsweek ?

After riots with deaths and property devastation throughout the Muslim world following a Newsweek slander that American soldiers desecrated the Muslim Koran, Newsweek now tells us that it was all a mistake. According to Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker: “[w]e regret that we got any part of our story wrong and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.”

Thanks for nothing, you [fill in expletive of choice here].

After the business with Dan Rather and the forged National Guard memos in the last election; and the blatantly biased reporting most of the national television media give us on Iraq, I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised at stunts like Newsweek’s. The east coast media will clearly publish or broadcast anything that undermines the Administration or the war effort. Anything is fair if it makes the US and that wicked Bush administration look bad.

This time it’s really over the top, even for the lefty media. Newsweek is admitting that it created an international political incident, and caused violence that, in Afghanistan, actually got people killed over absolutely nothing. Some media outlets abroad are already reporting that Muslims are greeting Newsweek’s retraction with skepticism, and who can blame them ? Who knows what is true with these media people ?

Explain to me again, somebody, why we have a free press ? Why is the First Amendment and freedom from legal accountability a good thing, when the press uses its freedom to – groundlessly – incite people to riot and murder and threaten our troops ? If the mass media wants to act as a propaganda platform for people who kill American servicemen and seek to incite others to do so, then it threatens the basis of its existence.

Greatness vs. Celebrity

As part of a publicity campaign for its new television show “Greatest American,” which premieres on Sunday, 5 June, the Discovery Channel, together with America Online, on 18 April released their list of the “100 Greatest Americans.” If you have the time to waste, and are that interested in who Discovery Channel and AOL came up with, see the list, here.

El Jefe expected to have some major quibbles about this list and his expectations were not disappointed. I had originally intended to go through the list person-by-person and comment on the rejects, and on omissions, but I soon found that there were more persons on the list I had quibbles with then approved of – so the exercise was pretty pointless. I think my real beef with the Discovery Channel list is that it is not so much a list of the greatest Americans, as it is a list of celebrities – that is, the most famous Americans.

When I was “editing” the list, before I gave up the job entirely, I found myself striking off “celebrity” types. Yes, I know Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ellen DeGeneres, Madonna, Christopher Reeve, Clint Eastwood, Malcolm X, Mel Gibson, etc., etc., etc. have accomplished or did accomplish much in their lives, sometimes despite serious disadvantages and handicaps, but we’re supposed to be talking “greatest” Americans here. I mean, George Washington, Audie Murphy, George Patton, and Dwight D. Eisenhower (also on this list) were what I would call great Americans. Similarly, Theodore Roosevelt was a great American, as was Alexander Hamilton – but Barack Obama, Rush Limbaugh, Barbara Bush and John Wayne ? All worthy of admiration in many respects, but I’m not buying the last four in the company of the others.

Some of the choices just seemed, well, wacko to me. Lyndon Johnson ? What did he do, besides screw up Vietnam beyond belief and almost bankrupt us ? Michael Moore ? Not buying that one at all -- some of us think he ought to be behind bars rather than on a pedestal.

I found some of the omissions interesting also. I’m a southerner, so I would quarrel with any list of the hundred greatest Americans that didn’t include Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee. For that matter, where are Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman ? Without these last two gentlemen, we would be talking about two countries, not one. Where is James K Polk, who engineered the Mexican War, effectively doubling the size of the United States. How about James Madison, author of the Constitution, or John Marshall, its first important expositor ? What of Walter Reed, conqueror of Yellow Fever ? Where is George C. Marshall, organizer of victory in World War II, and savior of western Europe from communism ?

None of these people, or many others, makers of the American nation, are present on this list of “greatest” Americans, but don’t worry, Oprah Winfrey made the list.

This list is of course a product of a species of democracy in action – a half million online nominations. Discovery and AOL’s interests are easy enough to figure out – your average bear would certainly prefer to watch a half hour of TV on Hugh Hefner, Marilyn Monroe or Martha Stewart rather than a show on Chester Nimitz, and the job is, after all, to sell ads and make money. Still, wish Discovery and AOL had used a little truth in marketing and called their show FAMOUS Americans rather than GREATEST. Finally, the historical ignorance of persons who could really call Michael Jackson, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, "great Americans," on a level with Mark Twain, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, is just staggering to me.

The Reign in Spain

Good news for monarchists everywhere: the Spanish Royal family has announced that Princess Letizia, future Queen, wife of Felipe, Prince of the Asturias, future King of Spain -- is pregnant. If the child is a male, he too is a future King of Spain. While the Spanish do not bar females from the royal succession, as does, for example, Japan, precedence is given to the male line.

In any event, the senior branch of the House of Bourbon (Juan Carlos is descended directly from Louis XIV, unlike the heirs to the French royal crown), is assured to continue for another generation. The Spanish Bourbons are serious royalty -- by comparison, the British Royal House are a bunch of minor German princelings. Congratulations to the Spanish, and to the House of Bourbon.

The West and the Past

Today is the 60th Anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany. If you’re interested in the cataclysmic events surrounding the fall of the Third Reich, there are hundreds of excellent books: In particular, I’d recommend John Toland’s The Last 100 Days, Cornelius Ryan’s The Last Battle, Christopher Duffy’s Red Storm on the Reich, or the recent book by Max Hastings, Armageddon, which is really superb.

But, as is obvious, all that’s past history. What’s more interesting to me today are the media and political world’s current reactions to this event, and what they say about our own view of how we got to the modern world. Ignorance, self-indulgence and just plain weirdness are much on display this week.

Three sets of issues call for comment: first, current views of the consequences for eastern Europe of the Soviet Union being one of the victorious allied powers; second how the Germans are dealing with their defeat; and, finally, the related question of how the Russians are coping with the fall of the Soviet Union – which amounted to the end of the World War II political settlement.

Take President Bush. I’ll give him that he had a tough course to navigate this week, but his comments on the Yalta agreement (the wartime agreement between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt on the division of influence in post-war Europe) were just silly.

At Yalta, Churchill and Roosevelt, among other things, essentially conceded to Stalin that he could keep his ill-gotten gains in Poland and along the Baltic from his earlier deal in 1940 with Hitler, and acknowledged that in the post-war world, Stalin would have the most to say about which Polish factions would govern what was left of Poland and other parts of eastern Europe

This week, President Bush said that the United States shared some blame for what happened to the Poles, the Estonians, the Latvians, and everybody else who wound up behind the Iron Curtain at the end of the war, calling it part of an “unjust tradition” of earlier treaties such as the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1940.

Well, I suppose. But saying that Roosevelt and Churchill, let alone the electorates that employed them, were at fault for what happened in eastern Europe seems pretty asinine to me. Of course the Soviet Union was going to dominate eastern Europe. Of course eastern Europe was going to go communist. The Soviet Union did the bulk of the fighting and dying in that war, and in 1945 the Soviets had 400 divisions sitting on the real-estate in question. Yes, Yalta was bad, and the fate of eastern Europeans dreadful, as Bush, very gently, and others, more loudly, such as Pat Buchanan, have pointed out. But possession is nine-tenths of the law. Just what do safe, happy well-fed editorial columnists think we should have done about Stalin in 1945 ? Fight another war ?

There was no way to prevent a communized eastern Europe, from the moment Madman Hitler got it into his head to lose a war he had already won by invading Russia. Nobody can be blamed for what happened in eastern Europe except the Germans and the elites in that country who mortgaged everything to Hitler and his crackpot party. The Germans, and nobody else, opened eastern Europe to the communists.

None of this should precisely be an education to anybody. But it just gets irritating to see so many people who should know better blame statesmen for not thinking like ivory-tower professors. There are not always choices or good options.

Then there are the present Germans, who seem to me to be, well, strange. Today’s New York Times has an article about a bunch of nice liberal Germans who want to honour deserters from the German Army in World War II. I don’t get it. That’s like the Germans who want to send representatives to the periodic ceremonies in Normandy on the anniversary of the D-Day landings or to the present event in Moscow celebrating VE Day. A segment of the German commentariat likes to claim that the fall of the Third Reich liberated Germans too.

Maybe it did, but I’m glad I’m not a German. I could never be comfortable embracing such a view. Hitler was certainly a monster, and everyone should be glad he is dead, but, thinking as a German, that’s a long way from celebrating the laying waste of one’s own country, or honouring people who deserted the colours and left others to carry on and die in their places, (the German Army was draftee -- Nazi or anti-Nazi, you had to go). I’ve got a great deal of respect for real dissidents, like Colonel vonStauffenberg, who tried to blow up Hitler, but it’s hard for me to find much emotional common ground with people who think that the invasion of their own country could ever be a good thing.

Don’t get El Jefe wrong. I’m an American, I think our cause in the Second World War was among the most righteous for which people ever took up arms, and I’m glad Americans invaded Germany, kicked the tar out of the German Army, and saw that Herr Hitler and his pals were made stone, cold, dead. It just confuses me a little that Germans could be totally okay with this, no matter how good it was to see Hitler gone. Not cricket not to care for your own side.

In a similar vein, Right Thinking People’s hearts are all a’flutter because Russian President Vladimir Putin recently characterized the demise of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” This is cited as evidence of Putin’s tyrannical tendencies.

Well of course Putin thinks the collapse of the Soviet Union (the Russian Empire by any other name) is a disaster. Why shouldn’t he ? Mr. Putin’s a Russian for goodness sake. The collapse was a disaster for Russia. Thanks to the events of 1989-1993, the Russians must suffer America setting conditions for fair elections in Ukraine, and NATO troops within 100 miles of St. Petersburg. How would Americans feel about the Russians sticking their noses into, say, Mississippi elections ?

Why shouldn’t the President of Russia be concerned with the power, standing, aggrandizement and international standing of Russia ? Of course, Putin will do what he can to rebuild the power and position of his country. Putin will try to rebuild the Russian military, and certainly try to grab back various pieces of real-estate that used to be part of the Soviet Union. This is normal, and is the way nation-states operate.

Just because Right Thinking media elites think nationalism is passé doesn’t mean that it actually is. Certainly, Putin doesn’t think so. He will certainly try to rebuild Russia. Where Russia's interests and aims do not collide with ours, we may even help Putin. It is for us, and others acting in the international system, to set down markers, so that other actors know where the limits are, and what actions, specifically will not be tolerated. But why so many seem to find it shocking that other countries and powers actually have foreign policies of their own is a complete mystery to me.

David Hackworth, R.I.P.

One of the most decorated soldiers of his generation, U.S. Army Colonel David Hackworth, (74) has just died in Tijuana, Mexico.

Colonel Hackworth joined the Army just after the Second World War, and was surely one of the most talented and courageous individuals ever to put on the uniform. Holder of a Distinguished Service Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, a Silver Star with nine oak-leaf clusters, a Distinguished Flying Cross, a Bronze Stars with "V" device and seven Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Purple Heart with seven Oak Leaf Clusters, and a whole chest-full of other medals. Recommended for the Medal of Honor three times, the last recommendation is still under review in Washington. Veteran of Korea, and of four tours in Vietnam, Hackworth was pilloried by the Army brass when he spoke out against the conduct of the Vietnam War.

Ultimately, Hackworth resigned his commission, giving up his medals in protest, and went to Australia making millions in the restaurant business and running a duck farm. Finally, Colonel Hackworth came home, and covered the First Gulf War as a war correspondent for Newsweek. Some measure of vindication came: his books (both memoirs and novels) were well-received, and the Army ultimately reissued his medals. Even after leaving Newsweek, he always spoke out for the interests of ordinary soldiers, and against the "perfumed princes" he felt were ruining the military. He had no patience with those unwilling to "stand in the door" and do the right thing, whatever it cost.

Look up his books -- they are all excellent reading. The U.S. Army and the country were much the poorer when he left the service, and his contributions to public discourse will be missed.

UPDATE: A splendidly written obituary is available at Colonel Hackworth's website, here.

Noxious Do-Gooders

I suppose, in a perverse way, it’s good to know that besides the Stupid Party, we’ve still got the Evil Party in there kicking. This Saturday, thanks to some group called “Onward Austin,” voters in the Texas capital will decide whether smoking should be completely banned in bars, bowling alleys and pool halls. It’s already banned in restaurants.

Yeah, I know about all the health arguments about smoking, and I'm sure they're true, but that's beside the point. The quasi-Fascist, Do-Gooder impulse to take care of all us cretins because we are too backward to do it ourselves just drives me absolutely berserk. I’ve never smoked (cept occasionally), but people like this make me want to go light up the biggest, smelliest cigar I can find.

This sort of thing makes me wonder about self-government in general. Back in the bad old days, King George or whoever had to be very careful about too much legislation related to health, welfare, morals or whatever wasn't directly concerned with administration of the State, because the locals, having no say in their own government, didn't necessarily need to be reminded of that fact. As long as the peasants paid their taxes on time and showed up when they got drafted, the king could rest content.

But in a republic, where we, in theory, govern ourselves (under the guidance of the overclass of lawyers, bureaucrats and lobbyists) -- self-government is used by self-interested do-gooders to stick their interfering noses into just about everything. Democracy amounts to a hunting-license for organized busybodies. More on this point another time.

Galveston

El Jefe went to Galveston on Saturday afternoon, and was the guest for the evening of his friends T and E and their two children at their beach palace. Was much fun -- T made some Cosmos (which were yummy, El Jefe might have had, oh 5 or so) and we all sat on the deck and watched the sharks chasing the shrimp boats, a scary movie that night, and the weird horizon at high tide the next morning. I had been agitating to get down to Galveston for some time, and it was so cool of T to make that happen. Thanx !

UPDATE: It is been brought to the Management's attention that certain people, who shall remain nameless, don't think El Jefe has been abjectly grateful enuf for his entertainment at the Beach Palace. Okay, okay, I admit it. I left out certain things, like the grapes and the succulent hors d'ouvres while watching the table dancers, (specially hired from Ricks), the Ice Sculpture that said "El Jefe, El Supremo" on the bar, the sharks swimming in formation, the visit by Jose Cuervo (a friend of mine) and the impressive loyalty ceremony on the south lawn. I am truly, totally, grateful to T ... er, the certain people, for organizing it, and seeing that I had an excellent evening. Mucho gracias. (Hopefully, the contract I've been told that's out there will be lifted now ???).

Stop That Cheerleader !

The Texas Legislature has shown yet again why Republicans are often castigated as the “Stupid Party.” Even though we live in a state that has barely functioning public schools, an antiquated, creeky Constitution, under-funded and under-staffed courts, and wacko tax system, the House of Representatives still has time to waste on fripperies like banning “overtly sexually suggestive” performances by public school cheerleaders and drill teams. Honest, we need this, even though we’ve already got laws against public lewdness.

Of course, the draft approved by the House doesn’t identify what “overtly sexually suggestive” might be, or establish a penalty for violations. It just makes the Texas Legislature look like bigger clowns then they already are.

Hmmmm…next we’ll hear that the Legislature is establishing a “Cheerleader Review Board” to monitor which performances violate the statute…

Storm Warning

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, in his piece in today’s Times entitled “What, Me Worry ?” denounces the Bush administration for having “no big idea” on the home front despite big plans for foreign policy “worthy of a presidency and America’s long-term interests.” Mr. Friedman, who is a more thoughtful liberal then average, cites as cases in point America’s broken school system, particularly high schools and the related unwillingness or inability of the administration to deal with rising economic competition from Asia, most particularly China and India. Immigration, intellectual property law, and many other areas touched on today by Mr. Friedman, and in several insightful articles of his recently, all need to be addressed to adequately cope with what he styles, the “flat world” produced by high technology and globalization.

If you’re wondering why the administration has big foreign policy plans, but “no big idea” on the domestic front, leave the editorials and the op-ed page and go back into the news section of your paper. Yesterday, Congress finally managed to accomplish virtually its most important function, passing a $2.6 trillion budge resolution for Fiscal Year 2006. Well, barely passing it, in the House of Representatives, the vote was 214-211, and in the Senate 52-47. If, like El Jefe, you find numbers and money incredibly tedious, keep reading, and you’ll find the solons quarrelling over filibusters, appointments, and everything but the color of the paint (gee, red or blue?) in the Senate washrooms.

Of course the President concentrates on foreign policy. It’s easier. If the President decides he wants to invade Iraq, pressure Kofi Annan, sell F-16’s to Pakistan, or make a trade deal with Japan, he is generally dealing primarily with expert bureaucracies and military organizations run on rational lines which are easier to pull in his direction then 535 little kings and the organized interests behind them.

Congress, of necessity plays a lesser role in foreign policy, and often the aforementioned vested interests have less power here, and often, less skin in the game. F-16 sales to India or Pakistan affect favorably a few congressional districts where such aircraft are built – and of course the interest of millions of Indians or Pakistanis who do not have a vote. By contrast, if you’re a President or a Congressman, and decide you want to make people really sweat, what do you do? Want to get people seriously mad at you? Propose a reorganization of elementary, secondary or high school education in the United States; or restrictions on immigration; or, for that matter, a reform of Social Security. Good luck, Congressman, no more junkets or appearances on Today for you, and please don’t let the door hit you in the behind on the way back to Podunk, Montana.

The American political system is biased against the production of legislation. It was designed that way. When modern American lawyers study constitutional law – they are concerned primarily with the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. The nuts-and-bolts of legislation and the actual operation of the Federal structure are ignored unless we have a disputed election as in 2000.

Trouble is, the system was originally designed in the 1780’s to be operated by a very narrow political oligarchy, who more or less agreed among themselves on how they saw the world, and who kept real political power safely concentrated back in their home state legislatures. It was emphatically NOT intended to serve a centralized, world-wide empire, such as we have today. It certainly cannot operate such an empire when the empire is internally divided – as ours is.

But Mr. Friedman is right, you see. The concerns he sees are, for the sake of our children, and theirs – going to have to be dealt with. A raft of others: the low personal savings rate; personal and public debt; immigration; the place of religion in our society; and many others need attention. These issues are going to be addressed, one way or another, or they will address us, no doubt unpleasantly, and the world is not going to wait while we get our house in order.

The answers to most of the questions confronting us are out there, and aren’t great undiscovered mysteries. I know half a dozen schoolteachers and rocket scientists who, between them, could probably tell you what was wrong with the schools, and how to fix the problems. The same is true of these other issues, also. But the solutions aren’t going to happen for the present, and the problems will continue to fester and grow. Because the division in our country is real too, and it is not over trivial issues, and is not the sort of chasm that can be papered over with conciliatory words and simple political compromises. The Red and Blue State division so apparent last November is really over first principles. Solutions to our problems are not painless, and are going to produce LOTS of losers. And these losers have real political power at present.

Perhaps worst of all, our internal difficulties and division are occurring when a foreign challenge to our continued complacence and prosperity is becoming increasingly likely. A symptom of the changing environment is obvious at American gas pumps every day. Rapidly industrializing powers – China and India, are gobbling up commodities and capital at a frenetic rate. One-fifth the world’s aluminum, a quarter of its copper, a third of the steel and half the world concrete production are being bought up by China. China is now the second largest oil importer, after the US. Economic development, of course, is not necessarily a threat, but it is producing the need, seen by Mr. Friedman, for us to work much harder, and in general be more competitive and up to the mark.

But development is only part of the picture. At the same time, bankers estimate that the total portfolio of bad loans held by China’s state banks amounts to perhaps a third of China’s Gross Domestic Product. Meanwhile the Chinese government faces internal threats to its legitimacy, is pursuing a serious international (or internal, if you buy the Chinese line) dispute with Taiwan, a long time American ally, and has winked at loud and sometimes violent nationalist demonstrations against another American ally, Japan. Meanwhile, across its Korean border, another Chinese ally charitably described as unstable brandishes nuclear weapons at all and sundry. Asia has become a giant great-power war breeder.

The collapse of the Roman Republic has interested me my entire adult life, but I never thought I might live long enough to see a reprise. The Romans’ problems were so eerily similar to our own: How to run a great empire with a government designed for a tiny city-state, while at the same time coping with serious military threats on their empire’s periphery ? They really tried, but the Romans couldn’t solve their problems either, so they lost their beloved Republic and their ancient ruling class and after lots of upsetment, got the Emperors. And most people, when this finally happened, were sick of chaos and glad for the change. Yes, our houses are more comfortable, and our food and medicine better, but I don’t think we’re any smarter than Marius, Sulla, Cicero or Caesar – probably, if anything, less.

Perhaps I’m a little alarmist, but I don’t think so. Our size, wealth and from most of the world’s problems have always assured us a soft landing in bad times. But the toast lands jelly-side down sometimes.

29 April 1975

Today is the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, capital of the Republic of Vietnam, to the North Vietnamese. Despite almost 60,000 American deaths from the early 1960’s to 1972, and millions of South Vietnamese dead, the armed forces of the Republic of Vietnam were ultimately unable to maintain that country’s liberty and independence, particularly after the Democratic majority in the Congress of the United States cut off arms, ammunition and fuel to our beleaguered former allies.

The generals and soldiers of our sometime enemies, the People’s Army of Vietnam, have every right to be proud when they think of their army’s splendid spring campaign of 1975, that toppled South Vietnam in about 55 days. The end result was never seriously in doubt however, because the Soviet Union and China, unlike the United States, ensured their own Vietnamese allies had all the fuel and weapons they needed.

It’s hard to blame the Nixon administration, and its chief negotiator, Henry Kissinger, much, for the sham Paris Peace Accords of 1973, which abandoned South Vietnam to its enemies. Public opinion demanded a rapid American exit from that war, on almost any terms, and Nixon and Kissinger, given their hopeless bargaining position, probably extracted the best terms possible: i.e. a “decent interval” for the Americans to complete their withdrawal before the communist armies overran South Vietnam.

The “Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam” which Secretary of State William Rogers put his name to for the United States, neither ended the war nor restored the peace. Two more years of bitter fighting followed, before the final North Vietnamese offensive in the spring of 1975. During those two years, South Vietnamese soldiers and their Marine brothers often put the lie to the old canard that the ARVN couldn’t, and wouldn’t fight. But it’s hard to fight on when your planes have no gas, and your tanks no spare parts.

Cutting and running– er, withdrawing, from South Vietnam was politically inevitable. In retrospect, what seems completely inexcusable to me (besides, that is, the failure to insist on and receive a full accounting as to our PW’s and MIA’s) was the failure to provide – following American withdrawal – the South Vietnamese with the weapons and supplies they needed to defend themselves.

Besides the moral bankruptcy of leaving people in the lurch who had openly and publicly supported the United States, the cutoff of aid to South Vietnam dishonoured our dead, and ensured their sacrifices were in vain. If America thought it necessary to abandon South Vietnam to its enemies, then why was this not done in 1966, prior to 60,000 American dead, not to mention millions of Vietnamese ?

In particular, the Democratic leadership in the United States Congress from 1970-1975 bears a heavy responsibility for the final collapse of South Vietnam and its consequences – the abandonment of thousands of persons, compromised in the eyes of the Communists, for their pro-US positions, who should have been evacuated in the spring of 1975; for the minimum of 65,000 executions of pro US Republic of Vietnam officials, and others who irritated the new communist overlords; the “reeducation camps” and other prisons reserved for millions more; the pathetic “boat people” and other refugees; and the prison camp country that the communists made of South Vietnam after the collapse, that is only now beginning to moderate, a little.

The Congressional Left and its allies in the media did everything possible to block the Nixon and Ford administration’s efforts to get even a little help to the South Vietnamese, and to their equally embattled Cambodian allies. The sick part was that so many of these people were and are proud of what they did, one of many reasons I’ve never been able to stomach the Left.

Yes, it was all so very long ago now, and I guess that’s supposed to help a little bit. I wasn’t there, and had, so to speak, no oar personally in the water on that one, but I cannot even imagine how angry it would all still make me if I were a vet, or a refugee, or if I had lost someone.

Time for Lunch...

Da Boss was in an ecumenical mood today, and took us to lunch at Masraff’s, a local noveau American/Southern European cuisine restaurant. Super yummy. El Jefe had the Sea Bass stuffed with crab with steamed vegetables, and some really excellent bread. The wine was a California Chardonnay, Bernardus, (02, I think) from around Monterrey. Nice and light, on the sweet side, just right. Was a super good lunch. Have no idea how El Jefe will manage to focus on work this afternoon. Hopefully the large cup of coffee staring at me will help.

Mixed Bag Post

Yes, El Jefe is back in his capital, and has been given a rapturous greeting by his millions of devoted fans, High Patronesses FLINKY and MILO, and anyone else possibly of importance.

Both Heir and his Dad El Jefe agree that camp was fun, El Jefe just wishes he was going. Climbed around on mountains, shot rifles, bows and arrows, and went canoeing, and sundry other stuff. Sleeping accomodations, well, wern't the Ritz, especially at night when it got downright COLD.

Back in town, facing the sad, sad music of work; yet another week with a rent car. (El Jefe's in a couple of, ahem, unfortunate accidents); a busted refrigerator and various other catastrophes. No problems that a trip to a Mexican restaurant and a few very large Margaritas wouldn't solve.

Mixed bag post today. The giant Airbus A380 (capacity of 555 passengers) made its maiden flight at Blagnac, France this morning. El Jefe confesses a certain fascination for this behemoth, largest passenger aircraft ever built, but he is also glad to see that Airbus’s American rival Boeing just booked a $7 billion order for eight B777-200 LR’s, 15 B777-300 ER’s and 27 B787 “Dreamliner” jets.

Boeing’s bet seems to be that the A380, designed to fly hub-to-hub, is too big to be commercially profitable, and that the way to go is with a smaller aircraft, designed to fly to more destinations. Hence, the shorter range “Dreamliner” which can carry 255- 296 passengers. So far, Boeing’s gamble seems to be paying off.

The Republicans in the Senate seem to be prepared to go ahead with their “nuclear option” and change Senate rules to squelch the filibuster for judicial appointments. Stupid, stupid, stupid. The Republicans should, as Dick Morris argues this morning in The Hill – call the Democrats’ bluff and make them really filibuster – complete with endless quorum calls, late night sessions, cots in the cloakrooms, etc.

Once the public sees the Democrats tying-up all public business over some judge in Mississippi, people are likely to see the justice in halting filibusters. But as long as the present pattern of simply conceding when the majority lacks 60 votes continues – without actually pushing the minority to filibuster – it just looks like the Republicans want to cut off debate for their own petty purposes.

Hmmm, today in history. That’s interesting to me, so… In 1812, US troops entered Toronto (then called York) Canada. In 1861, Abraham Lincoln suspended the use of the writ of habeus corpus in several states in the United States. This action was later challenged successfully in the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Merryman. No problem there, though, Lincoln simply ignored the Supreme Court. Other stuff today: in 1941, German troops entered Athens; and in 1822 today was the birthday of the great General and author (but poor President), Ulysses S. “Sam” Grant. Check out Grant's memoirs sometime -- even though my sympathies are with the other side -- I think he wrote a great book.

Off for the Boonies

As the courtiers weep, El Jefe is off for the boonies of central Texas, land of no cellphones, restaurants, cosmos, wine, TV, books, or all the other things that constitute civilization. Sort of like the song at the end of Gilligan's Island: "no phones, no lights, no motorcars...." come-on, sing it. In any case, El Jefe goes, with the Heir, to visit Heir's summer camp. SWMBO will be left to her own devices.

El Jefe hastens to assure the world media, his goombas, his capos, mistresses, other henchmen and hangers on, that he will indeed return, no doubt to much rejoicing. But till next week, adios.

Squandering Opportunities

Despite some successes in Iraq, the Bush White House and the Republican Party seem hell-bent on squandering the advantages they won at the polls this last November. This is apparent on at least three fronts (1) the Bolton UN Nomination; (2) judicial nominations; and, (3) Social Security reform. Mr. Bush and the Republican bosses need to quit coasting and get in the game. The Social Security issue is worth its own post sometime, if I'm ever really bored, (cause it's boring), but a couple of points about the other two issues.

(1) The Bolton UN Nomination. Can't anybody play this game ? It's been obvious since the President announced Mr. Bolton's appointment to the UN ambassadorship that the Democrats (in particular Christopher Dodd) and, more importantly, the left-overs from the Powell State Department days were gunning for Mr. Bolton. Despite all this, the White House and the Senate managers seem to have been caught flat-footed by the intensity of Democratic opposition. They failed to defeat the nominaton on the merits, so the dirty tricks boys have gone looking and come up with a grab-bag of former co-workers with gripes. All very predictable. But most importantly -- they didn't make sure all their own guys were on board before they had their TV hearing yesterday. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid ! Dumkopfs ! Make sure the fix is in before you go on TV. Why didn't Richard Lugar know Voinovich had a problem before he convened the committee ?

The Senate Foreign Relations committee needs a new boss, somebody who isn't a milquetoast. And if this comes out jelly-side down, it should be a cold day in Hell before Voinovich ever gets another highway project, military base, or any more pork from this administation. And no tickets to state dinners at the White House, or invites to the Kennedy Center either.

This isn't over yet, but it's time to think in terms of Bolton going down. Gotta come up with a way to make lemonade out of the Bolton lemon. Make the Demos regret their victory. In lieu of Bolton, come up with somebody likely to be even more unpleasant to the State Department faction that wants to make nicey-nice at the UN. Somebody who will really drive the Ivy League professors bonkers. "Attention, please, attention....Senator Zell Miller, paging Senator Zell Miller...please answer the red telephone in the blue concourse..."

(2) Judicial Nominations. The Republicans are currently mulling over a plan to amend the Senate rules to allow a simple up or down vote on judicial appointments, in order to prevent the Democrats from filibustering Republican judicial nominations. Effectively, the Democrats can, at present, force Bush to have two-thirds approval to appoint a judge. I agree completely that the Democrats have totally abused the Senate rules, and that they will continue to do so, and that a lot of qualified judges will not be confirmed at this point. Priscilla Owen and William Pryor in particular.

However, I also agree with Dick Morris that the Republicans' forcing the issue on the filibuster would be a disaster at this point. By the time you've got your hangover, it's too late to go out on the town and party. The headache here is the price of the misguided Congressional interference in the Terri Schiavo mess. If the Republicans change the rules now and eliminate the filibuster, they will confirm the worst fears of most independent voters that the Republican Party means to force its views on religion and sex on the whole country.

No, I don't agree with this view, but it's a perception that has been reinforced by the Schiavo business. Instead of pandering to votes they already have, I wish the Republicans had done their homework, intelligently introduced their judicial nominees to the country, and tried to make the political case for getting rid of the filibuster. But they wanted to grandstand with Ms. Schiavo instead, and now they are set up to pay in terms of being unable to appoint meritorious persons to the bench.

As distasteful as it is, forget the rules change and let the Democrats play their filibuster game for the present, hopefully as often as possible, and for as long as they want to. Oh, and Senator Frist ? Forget that White House thing for awhile, okay ? You've got a D-minus on your present gig, and it's still headed south. Fix It, Doctor!

Before we can fix the Democrats, they have to be put in the wrong. The game now is to position them for the 2006 elections. Rather than setting themselves up to be tarred (falsely) as "extremists" the Republicans need to concentrate on getting the Democrats to paint themselves as "obstructionists."

In general, for the present, the entire Republican strategy should be built around giving the Democrats all the rope they will take. The Democrats are at present a minority party. They control no national center of power. They cannot reward supporters with offices and jobs. Like Newt Gingrich a few years ago, they have to take aggressive and bold positions to attract donations, and to keep their base motivated. They should be encouraged, nay begged, to do this. to pander to their most committed followers' most self-destructive instincts. Let them filibuster, obstruct and thwart and delay -- all the better to hang their sour attitude around their necks at the polls. In particular, encourage their pacificism and their anti-militarism in foreign affairs. Goad them here any way possible. The pacifist/lefty streak is their weakest point -- too many Democatic Senators next up for election are in Red States -- and this the part of the Democratic worldview that is most out of step with the post-9 /11 world.

But most importantly, the Republicans need to wake up, quit taking victory laps, and get their kaka together. They need to get a plan, and stick with it. The Demos are united at present. They have to be, their backs are to the wall. If the Republicans want to keep them there, they'd better remember that.

Big Selloff in El Jefe Stock Market

Excuse El Jefe, but he's really out of it and feeling a little cornered. Lots of things are combining to give me a real case of the blahs (to use a nice word for it). Rather upset in fact. If my mood was the stock market, the Dow would be down, down, down.

Pope Benedict XVI

The Catholic Church has a new Pontifex Maximus -- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the first German Pope since the Eleventh Century. He will be known as Benedict XVI.

El Jefe is not Catholic, so he is able to look upon the new Pope with a certain degree of detachment, but this is a choice that is almost guaranteed to drive the Left bonkers. This was the guy they didn't want -- the liberal bete noire. The former "Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" is known as a hard-liner conservative on most issues. Not sure I'd agree with the new Pope on lots of things, but still --it's going to be such fun to watch all the Right-Thinking People, who've been vaporing breathlessly about an African or Hispanic progressive Pope for weeks -- go absolutely gaga.

Would be even more fun if the Senate Foreign Relations Committee votes favorably on John Bolton today. El Jefe's cup would positively runneth over. Of course, cardiac wards across the country would be jammed with Liberals thinking the Apocalypse was here...

18 April 1942

Today is the anniversary of the “Doolittle Raid” – when 16 land based U.S. Army Air Corps B-25 bombers, flying from the deck of U.S.S. Hornet, a ship not designed to carry or launch such large planes– gave Japan the first installment of payback for Pearl Harbor, by bombing Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya, Yokosuka and other land targets in Japan.

Only six months after Pearl Harbor, American naval and military power in the Pacific was on the ropes. The papers were full of news of defeat after defeat. The day Admiral William “Bull” Halsey’s task force, built around aircraft carrier Enterprise, sailed out of Pearl Harbor to join Hornet at sea (coming from San Francisco), the American garrison on Bataan, in the Philippines, surrendered to the Japanese – the largest mass surrender of US troops to a foreign enemy in history. America badly needed some kind of good news. President Roosevelt insisted that a way be found to hit back at Japan.

The idea for the Doolittle Raid was conceived when Captain Francis Lowe, attached to the staff of Admiral Ernest King, the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet, visited the new carrier Hornet at Norfolk, Virginia. Hornet, (CV-8), commissioned in October of 1941, called “The Ship that Held the Line” by one of her chroniclers, had just one crowded year of life before being sunk by the Japanese, but her service summarizes the first year of the Pacific War: the Doolittle Raid, Midway, the invasion of Guadalcanal, convoy escort duty, the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, sunk at the Battle of Santa Cruz (27 October 1942).

In any case, on his visit to Hornet, Captain Lowe saw, at a nearby airfield, an outline of a carrier deck painted on the tarmac for practice landings. Lowe inquired of another officer, Captain Donald Duncan -- whether large, land-based bombers could fly off an aircraft carrier. Duncan looked into the matter with Hornet's captain, Marc Mitscher, (one of the finest naval officers this country ever produced), and they soon found that B-25's, land-based bombers, with much longer range then smaller naval aircraft, could fly off of an aircraft carrier, (although not return). The means of raiding Japan had been found.

The mission was prepared in great secrecy. The volunteer bomber crews, and their commander, the famous pre-war stunt pilot, Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle, had to learn short-range takeoffs at land bases – there was no way the Navy could risk damage to a precious aircraft carrier by allowing the crews to practice on board ship. When training was complete, the bombers were hoisted on board Hornet at San Francisco. Hornet and her cargo of bombers met Enterprise at sea on 13 April, and the thousands of crew members of the carriers and escorting vessels, speculating about the presence of Army bombers on a Navy ship, finally learned their real mission when Admiral Halsey signaled by flag and blinker: This Force is Bound for Tokyo.

The plan was for the task force to move in at high speed to a point 400 miles from the Japanese coast, and, about midday on 18 April, launch the bombers, and turn for home. The B-25’s would then go on to bomb targets in Japan, and then fly to friendly airfields in China. However, about 7 a.m. on the morning of 18 April, the force was spotted by a Japanese patrol vessel. The escorting ships quickly sank the snooper, but Admiral Halsey had to assume the picket got off a contact report and he had to make a decision: launch the planes now – at ranges almost too far for the pilots to be assured of a landing in friendly territory; or wait and risk contact with superior Japanese naval forces. The decision was obvious, although not easy, the pilots and bombers were expendable, the carriers weren’t. Hornet launched her bombers right then – 600 miles from Japan.

As it turned out, the picket ship HAD accurately reported sighting the American force, but missed spotting the Army bombers on Hornet's deck. The Japanese assumed they had an extra day before the ships came in range of Japanese targets. Plenty of time to prepare an ambush. Consequently, the arrival of the US planes over Japan on 18 April, earlier than anticipated, was a complete surprise.

The bombers arrived over Tokyo and their other targets about noon, bombing an oil tank farm, steel mills and power plants, the aircraft carrier Ryūhō (then under construction) and, among other things, breaking up a baseball game. The raiders then made for China, and now the price was exacted for the early launch: One plane crashed in the Soviet Union (its crew interned for the duration), the other 15 planes crash-landed at various locations in China. Most of the 80 pilots and crew survived, but the Japanese captured eight. Three of these men were murdered by the Japanese and one died in captivity.

The Japanese were shocked by the Doolittle Raid, which their propaganda machine quickly christened the “Do-Nothing Raid.” There was some truth to this slam – the military damage was negligible, but the psychological damage was immense. The Japanese generals and admirals had assured the Japanese people that American planes would never bomb Japan, and the commander in chief of the Japanese fleet, Admiral Yamamoto, personally apologized to Emperor Hirohito. More importantly, the Doolittle Raid goaded the Japanese Naval Staff to finally approve Admiral Yamamoto’s plan to do something about the U.S. Navy’s pesky aircraft carriers, which resulted in, among other things, the Battle of Midway.

UPDATE: A question has been posed re the significance of Midway. The Japanese, nettled by the Doolittle Raid, and in any case looking for a decisive showdown with the US fleet, found it at Midway Atoll (northwest of Honolulu/Pearl Harbor, at the west end of the Hawaiian chain). Unfortunately for the Japanese, the battle was decisive the wrong way. The Japanese, looking to ambush and wipe-out the US aircraft carrier force instead found themselves ambushed by the Americans. (who were reading the Japanese codes).

The battle (4-7 June 1942), ended with the Japanese losing four of the six heavy aircraft carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor (Akagi, Kaga, Hiryū, Sōryū). The Americans, for their part, lost carrier U.S.S. Yorktown (CV-5). The Americans could in time replace their losses, the Japanese could not. With the gutting of their carrier strike force, the Japanese were unable to keep the pressure up on the Americans, who then had time to regroup, launch an offensive of their own (the Solomons campaign) and eventually swamp the Japanese with their much greater industrial production.

Naval Nomenclature

Submarine U.S.S. Jimmy Carter (SSN 23) has recently joined the U.S. Navy. Although it is gratifying to see the Navy receive an augmentation of strength in this splendid new vessel (a modified SSN 21 Seawolf class boat), El Jefe confesses that he is less then pleased at the now well-established trend of naming US warships for politicians, some of whom are still living.

El Jefe admits that he finds Jimmy Carter a ludicrous name for a warship, considering that President’s attitude towards the military, but Democratic presidents who view foreign policy as another form of social work are not the only beneficiaries of the Navy’s misbegotten nomenclature policy. The ship list of Nimitz class carriers commissioned since 1975 includes, not only U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, (CVN 69), U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), U.S.S. George Washington (CVN 73), but also carriers named for Presidents Harry Truman (CVN 75) and Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) – as well as ships named for two friends of the Navy from Congress – John Stennis (CVN 74), and Carl Vinson (CVN 70). The pattern is continuing: U.S.S. George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), named for the first President Bush, is even now building at Newport News.

I can see naming ships for Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Washington. I can even see Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan as justifiable names. But Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush -- living ex-presidents ? Two Congressmen (however credible their service ) ? That’s a bit much.

If you look carefully at the names of the vessels and the funding and commissioning dates, you can see the political compromises that went into naming these ships – the ships occur in pairs Washington and Lincoln; Truman and Reagan, Bush and Carter. Naming a ship for Harry Truman meant that the original name intended for CVN 75 – U.S.S. United States, could not be used.

The name change for U.S.S. Harry S. Truman illustrates one of the more unfortunate aspects of this contest in political puffing. An earlier U.S.S. United States, a sister ship of the famous frigate U.S.S. Constitution, won one of the most celebrated naval victories of the young U.S. Navy, capturing British frigate H.M.S. Macedonian in 1812. The U.S. Navy, like its parent the British Royal Navy – reuses famous names, or at least it did -- Hornet¸ Lexington, Yorktown, Enterprise, Essex, Boxer, Wasp, Constellation, Texas, Virginia and on and on. For a time, the U.S. Navy even borrowed the fine old British tradition of commerating victories over enemy warships by using the names of defeated enemy vessels -- the U.S. Navy for years had vessels named Macedonian, Java, and Guerriere -- all named for prizes taken from the British.

Modern naming practices slight over two centuries of naval history by passing over such names, or wasting them on less significant vessels. Given the Navy’s need to replace its warships, and to obtain political approval for same, it’s clear why this has occurred, but it’s still rather sad.

Brooding

Yes, yes, I know, El Jefe has been silent for some time, away from his capital, brooding on his estates, contemplating his billions on deposit round the world, his many palaces, (more even than Ken Lay in his salad days), his fanatically loyal armies of goombas, his bevies of comely mistresses, his vast wine cellars, cases of scotch, the fifty different types of ice cream in his coolers, his campaign to be elected Pope, or ruler of a small but wealthy country, etc., etc.

Fear not, the Great One is returning, and shall end his silence presently. Lots going on in the world. The John Bolton confirmation hearings (with enemies like his, he must be a prince of a guy); the Republicans in the House of Representatives, (showing again why another name for Republicans has always been the “Stupid Party” as opposed to their counterparts, the “Evil Party.”). If that’s not enough, there are always Euros and other assorted wackos to rave at.

Stay tuned.

Book Review: Washington's Crossing

I promise not to inflict my reading tastes on the public too often, but I noticed in the paper today that a book I recently read, David Hackett Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing, just received the Pulitzer Prize for History.

Washington’s Crossing is, of course about the American Revolution, and the pivotal New Jersey campaign of 1776-77. After a series of terrible defeats around New York, (which probably would have rendered the Revolution a minor historical footnote in British Empire history, had Sir William Howe been up to his job), the Continental Army, George Washington and the New Jersey State Militia rose to the occasion and gave the British a bloody nose. What looked like inevitable victory for the King’s armies turned into a long war. Washington’s Crossing is the story of how this reversal of fortune came about.

As the title indicates, the fact that there is a United States at all is due largely to George Washington. The eventual first President emerges as no Napoléon or Julius Caesar but still a good general, learning from his defeats around New York; holding his indifferently supplied, untrained and raggle-taggle army together; managing a surprise river crossing of the Delaware in a winter storm and clobbering British detachments at Princeton and Trenton while avoiding being flattened himself. The defeated British commander in the Princeton operations, Cornwallis, better known for losing later at Yorktown, thought this campaign Washington's finest work.

Of course, while fighting the finest army on the planet with raw troops 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 being convinced that they were better 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.

Washington, then, comes off well, and is perhaps worth a higher valuation of his generalship then I have hitherto given him. The British commanders, on the other hand, Howe in particular, appear to be due substantially lower marks. Howe passed up several chances to destroy Washington’s whole army around New York, apparently deliberately, because he perversely thought allowing his enemy to escape would facilitate a negotiated settlement. Fatal error – depriving the Americans of their one functioning army, at that point in the war, might well have opened the path to negotiations. As Fischer makes clear, the Revolution was very near to political, financial and military collapse in the fall and winter of 1776. The British would never have another chance at military victory.

Professor Fischer spend a little too much space for my taste on “social history,” that is, the obligatory salaam to race, class and gender issues so common in the academy today. I would have preferred a straight, traditional military history, but Professor Fischer weaves his social history discussion right into his narrative, so the story does not suffer too much.

To me, the most interesting part of Washington’s Crossing is Fischer’s treatment of British occupation problems in New Jersey. As the British would discover so often in that war, Tory support was greatest in places where no British troops were to be found. Much of the population of New Jersey, initially neutral, or prepared to be favorably disposed to the British, soon turned against the Crown when the heavy-handed British troops arrived looking for supplies, and not being too careful about which “rebels” they “requisitioned” them from.

In any case, the local inhabitants soon began an effective guerrilla resistance to British occupation which was at least as important as Washington's Army, if not more so – in running the British out of New Jersey. Considering that Americans have been running occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan these last several years, the story of British efforts to pacify New Jersey is very topical, and for me was alone worth the price of the book.

Professor Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing completely deserves its Pulitzer Prize. Anyone interested in the period of the American Revolution will want to have this book.

El Jefe is presently reading Conspiracy of Fools, the new Enron book. Maybe more on that next week.

Shoes and Pies and Salad-Dressing…For Now

Captain Ed over at the Captain’s Quarters Blog calls attention today to the political Left’s new reasoned argument of choice – the food fight. That is, attempting to silence and humiliate and possibly injure their political enemies by throwing food, and other things, at them.

The latest victim is pundit and sometime presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, doused last night with salad-dressing by a demonstrator screaming “stop the bigotry !” during an appearance at Western Michigan University. Mr. Buchanan declined to press charges for felony assault. This follows a pie in the face on Tuesday for the conservative Weekly Standard’s editor, William Kristol, then speaking at Earlham College, a Quaker institution in Richmond, Indiana.

Finally, there’s the protester who threw a shoe at Pentagon advisor Richard Perle back in February, screaming “Liar ! Liar !”

The hard Left commonly refuses to engage its political enemies' arguments on their merits, and has for years resorted to the Fascist and Communist tactic of trying to shout-down or sabotage speakers of whom it disapproves. My own first exposure to the preferred Leftie method of reasoned debate was during a speech in 1979 or 1980 at the Student Union of the University of Texas by a former official of the Imperial Iranian Government.

This gentleman, who had fled Iran to escape certain execution by the present bandit regime (his brother was not so lucky), was barely able to say “good afternoon” before being heckled and shouted-down by the anti-Shah friends of the liberty and democracy the mullahs were bringing to Iran. Most of these persons were not Iranians, but American leftists, all on fire to stand-up for freedom by muzzling the speaker. After all, anything is fair if one is “speaking truth to power,” and if it’s done for the “people” and not for the “powerful.”

Instead of summoning the campus police to clear the room of the screamers so the rest of the audience, (the great majority) could hear what the man had to say, the organizers and the administration cravenly folded and cancelled the event. I’ve read this gentleman’s books, and I still, to this day, regret the lost opportunity to hear what he had to say in person. (Aside: fascist tactics only work when the authorities are weak-kneed enough to let them).

It was already obvious to most sentient life-forms that the mullahs were going to make the Shah positively look like Thomas Jefferson by comparison, and at the time, I wrote-off the Screaming Friends of Democracy as dolts and idiots. Revolution usually begets dictatorship, not liberty. On reflection, that rabble had instincts much more in common with the Fascist regime of the Mullahs then I realized. But even these people contrived not to throw things.

Conservative speakers need to be careful and keep their heads down and perhaps invest in flak-jackets. The defeats in the last two general elections, the policy choices of the Bush administration, and the evident approval of these things by the American people has stoked the rage of the hard Left to white-hot intensity. The turn of events in Iraq for the better, since the January elections, is just making the Left angrier, because the Bush administration, the Lefty True Believers think, is “getting away with it.”

Shoes and pies and salad-dressing. What’s next ? I’ve written at another place about what I’m afraid may be the answer to this question. Watch out, people.