Misty Watercooler Memories

If you have been following the Scott Beauchamp controversy over at The New Republic, check out blogger Iowahawk's send-up of The New Republic, and its editor Franklin Foer's recent, er, explanation, here.

Battle of Leuthen, 1757

King Frederick II "the Great" of Prussia (Anton Graff, about 1781, oil on canvas)
Battle of Leuthen, map showing the Prussian flank march

Good morning ! We haven’t had a historical post lately, and there’s no time like the present.

Today is the 250th anniversary of King Frederick II “the Great” of Prussia’s great victory over a twice-as-large Austrian army at Leuthen, near the city of Breslau, in Prussian Silesia, (since 1945, in southwestern Poland) in the Seven Years War.

The Austrian commander, Prince Charles of Lorraine, made the mistake of fighting the Prussian Army on one of its own peacetime maneuver grounds, and paid accordingly: his approximately 65,000 man army losing 3,000 dead, 7,000 wounded and over 10,000 prisoners, along with 51 standards and over half his 200 guns. The Prince, trying to avoid a Prussian flank attack, and forgetting that he who defends everything defends nothing, threw away his superiority in numbers by spreading his army out over (for the linear-war era), an impossibly long five-and-a-half mile front. As it happened, the Prussians, using the rolling terrain to conceal their movements, found the vulnerable left flank anyway.

Prince Charles, loser of three previous battles with King Frederick, (Choutsitz in 1742, Hohenfriedburg in 1745, and Prague earlier in 1757), proved too cowed by his great adversary's reputation, and their respective past records. Rather than figuring out how to use his superior numbers and firepower to crush the Prussians, the Prince sat still and allowed the Prussians to maneuver and crush him.

The Prussian army’s march across the Austrian front, and onto the unguarded Austrian left flank, and the subsequent Prussian attack that rolled the Austrians right up -- eerily resembles the Confederate general Stonewall Jackson’s great flank march and attack at Chancellorsville, in the American Civil War, 106 years later.

Leuthen was Frederick's greatest victory, and it followed, by exactly one month, his great victory over Austria's French allies at Rossbach in Saxony (central Germany).

All this was long ago, and Prussia, the Habsburg Empire, and all they contended for are long since dust. The world no longer has time for kings or princes; and Frederick the Great’s deeds, and those of his and his enemies’ troops, are mostly forgotten: their long-ago struggles remembered occasionally by historians and antiquarians. But it was real to those who lived it, 250 years ago.

Detour for the Dictator

Dear Hugo,

I had not blogged at all on your little constitutional referendum in Venezuela because, silly me, I doubted there was anything to it. I was absolutely certain that, as a candidate member of Dictators for Life, that you had matters securely in the bag. Rule One in the Good Dictators Handbook is to always promise elections, but never to actually have them unless you know the results in advance.

And now you’ve managed to screw the pooch. Gotta tell you, big guy, that your candidate Tinpot Club membership is in serious trouble, Double Secret Probation, even.

All is not lost, Venezuela is stuck with you (more or less legally), until 2012. There is plenty of time to give the voters as many more chances as needed to attach their own chains, until they get it right. “No” is just temporary, but a “yes” is forever and ever; or until you get shot, poisoned, deposed, or (many years hence) your squabbling aides resolve the succession question and turn off the life support, or apply a handy pillow.

This little reverse can even work to your long-term advantage – it’s yet another bit of evidence to be invoked by your useful idiot friends worldwide that you’re a real democrat. Besides, you lose nothing by gassing a little now about democracy, and you have to do that anyway, since the other, more accurate, interpretation of what just happened is that you’ve behaved as an overconfident buffoon.

Until you’re ready for a new and improved referendum you need to review some Dictatorship 101 basic concepts. Friend Fidel over in Havana, professor emeritus and a giant in this course of study, is available for any questions you may have, but for now, lets sum-up where you went wrong:

Counters Count. As old Joseph Vissarionovich might have said, it’s not that people that vote who count, it is the people who count the votes. Clearly, your electoral apparatus needs some “Bolivarian reform.” In future, have no election where the poll-workers aren’t sufficiently inspired, motivated and empowered to ensure correct results.

Educate the Students. It’s hard to set up a regime of justice and enlightenment if the students haven’t been taught manners. It’s not enough to have fans in the English and Political Science departments of a bunch of American and European universities – these idiots are useful of course for confusing and retarding pesky foreign interference, (and for keeping tabs on what their lawyer and media encrusted governments might be up to). However, there is no substitute for properly intimidated students. With all the demonstrations late last week, it’s painfully apparent you haven’t got the students housebroken. Access to education and employment has to be made dependent on political correctness, and those who still talk too much need to be reeducated or otherwise disappeared. You need to read up on East Germany. Fidel can probably help here too.

Police ! It’s simply inexcusable that after almost ten years in power, your police allow you to be embarrassed in such a manner. The coup of 2002 should have been a wake-up call for you. Yes, I know you’ve worked on this a bit since then, but it’s painfully clear that your Chekists are not up to the job. Fidel’s Ministry of the Interior (Security Section) is probably the most appropriate model, but you should look at the East German Stasi too. By this time you should have had the opposition completely penetrated by informants; your police should have files on everybody of significance, and all the troublemakers locked up someplace. If you want to be the Savior of the Nation for Life and build justice for the downtrodden – you really need to get busy here.

Bread and Circuses. Your plebiscite failed, among other things, because of low turnout among your supporters. Probably the voters you were counting on were too busy trying to use their next to worthless currency to find the meat, bread, milk, pasta and vegetables that are no longer available in your stores. Yes, yes, shortages of staples are a common consequence of socialism; and poverty and inflation byproducts of your Great Plans For Justice for All. Still, on election day, you should have used some of that oil money to pay for hand-outs by your party workers of free food and other goodies. Of course, if your police were up to snuff, you’d even know who to give the food to, and who to throw in the paddy wagons, but we’ve been over that point.

Shut Up and Lets be Friends. As your regime of Social Justice marches on, you’re going to find places like Miami filling up with all sorts of troublemakers. These people are, in varying degrees, dangerous – they’re the people smart enough, and liquid enough, to get out. While you’re working on the police, you need to be working on foreign intelligence too, so that the people in Miami can be reminded occasionally that you have a long arm. Also, you need to make better use of your idiot friends in academia and the media in the US and Europe – they will be helpful at running interference for whatever trouble the dissidents and conservatives manage to stir up. Meanwhile, they can help muddy the waters by parroting what will no-doubt be your party line that you only lost this referendum due to "CIA intervention." Again, Fidel can really help out with these things.

Cash. The basis of your power, in the short run, is the oil money, so you’ve got to be careful with the cash-cow. Take better care of PDVSA ! You need to see that it gets just enough reinvestment so that it keeps producing cash to pay your police, and for the bread and circuses, and for all the Heroic Socialist Projects that will keep you the Man of Destiny for Life. This is more than a little tricky – your extra heavy, soupy oil takes real engineering skill to refine and use properly, and American engineers are going to be harder and harder to come by.

You need a foreign patron with plenty of skilled engineers. The Russians and Chinese can’t be much help here, they bid for the same foreign technicians you do, and they have their own problems. My own suggestion would be to explore connections with the French: they have some skilled people, and they aren’t over-burdened with scruples, as long as the money is good. As for other sources of income, your prison system should be taking in plenty of skilled troublemakers who can be put to work producing foreign exchange. (See Gulag).

Well, big guy, this should be enough for you to start with. Who knows, you might even have the chance to do it, if you don’t wind up dead in a ditch someplace, as you should have after the coup of 2002. But, hey, that possibility’s a chance you take, when you’re wanting to be the Savior of the Nation. Here’s hoping you screw that pooch too.

Technical Difficulties ?

Rumor has it that comments haven't been working. The Secret Police Organization is even now rounding up the usual suspects, clearing out dungeons and firing up the waterboards, and hopefully the problem, if any, is fixed soon.

Iran's Impeachment Defense System

Iranian air defenses have received a possibly unbeatable improvement. This new weapon, the Iranian Bombing Impeachment Defense System (IBIDS) may provide absolutely ironclad protection for Iranian nuclear efforts, Revolutionary Guard facilities, and other Iranian strategic assets from American forces. American pilots should be aware that the IBIDS, when in use, emits a distinctive ranting whine.

No doubt other Third World tinpots and potential targets of US forces will want to deploy similar defenses.

Mistakes Were Made. . .

The Washington Post reports this morning that CNN is admitting problems with their vetting process for questioners at last Wednesday night's You Tube Republican Presidential debate. This controversy erupted after it emerged that a questioner on the issue of gay service in the military was an advisor to Hillary Clinton. The questioner, a retired California Army National Guard Brigadier General) -- is a member of Hillary Clinton's steering committee on gay/lesbian issues.

Another questioner, on abortion issues, was wearing a "John Edwards 08" tee-shirt. A third questioner, on gay issues, is identified on the Barack Obama website as one of his supporters, and says that St. Barack ". . .inspires me with his sincerity, his earnestness, and his vision for change." Presumably, none of these people plan to vote in their Republican Presidential primary, much less for a Republican candidate in the general election.

I don't think much of Presidential debates in general -- they are cattle shows where candidates are careful to never say anything too important, and where the winner is the one who demonstrates the ability to make his opponent look like an idiot with a well-placed zinger, or makes the best joke out of a particularly stupid question.

Quite aside from the doubtful relevance of questions on gays in the military and abortion at a Republican debate (most Republican primary voters have made up their minds on these issues, one way or another), the problem I have with Wednesday's proceedings is that I doubt CNN has Republicans questioning Hillary Clinton. If CNN wants to have Democratic questioners at Republican debates, fine -- but it could have shown at least a pretence of even-handedness by similarly stuffing the Democratic You Tube debate with McCain, Giuliani and Romney supporters.

Respect Optional ?

The NFL skipped the National Anthem before Monday night's Miami Dolphins/Pittsburgh Steelers game.

No doubt the NFL had what it would consider valid business reasons: there had been a weather delay, and television time is expensive, but this is simply not acceptable, and hopefully the NFL finds other corners to cut in future.

Pucker Factor

With the help and the sanction of the King of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, former Prime-Minister of Pakistan, deposed by the current President, Pervez Musharraf, eight years ago -- is even now returning to Pakistan. Mr. Sharif is expected to arrive in Lahore early tomorrow, despite efforts by the Pakistani government to prevent his departure from Saudi Arabia, and warnings to Mr. Sharif from the Pakistani government not to return. Mr. Sharif has done his best to make stopping him awkward: besides traveling with the sanction of the Saudi King, he is accompanied by his wife, other opposition figures, presents (including an armored limo) -- and his aircraft left from the Muslim holy city of Medina.

Mr. Sharif has certainly thrown down a marker hasn't he ? If this man is permitted to land, without being arrested-- when the Pakistani government has bent over backwards to keep him out -- it will quite probably be the end of Musharraf, and maybe order in Pakistan.

The die has been cast, and is now rolling. What number is going to come up ?

Post-Thanksgiving Grab-Bag

No, it's not Thanksgiving, but I hope that everyone had a happy one.

Today is Friday, and no I didn't set the alarm for oh-dark-hundred hours so that I could be at the malls when they opened at 4 a.m. or midnight or whatever. SWMBO asked me if I was disappointed that she hadn't done so, I told her that if she was up in the wee-small hours to shop, she needed her head examined.

I'm too lazy today to post much, but I do have a few little things in the grab-bag: For the historically minded, here's a link to a list maintained by the Centre for First World War Studies at the University of Birmingham, on the nicknames of First World War British Generals.

If you doubt that real life is weirder than any possible fiction, check out Wretchard at Belmont Club's post on the strange influence of western popular culture on assorted Third World murderers and bandits.

If you must think about Presidential politics, forget Hillary and Obama for a bit, and have a look at this piece under John McCain's name in the Des Moines Register. I've said plenty of hard things about McCain, but the more I hear of him lately, the more I'm inclined to forgive him whatever sins I taxed him with. I sure like the way this sounds:

I am running for President to protect our country from harm and defeat its enemies. I am running for President to restore trust in our government and to ensure it remains worthy of that honor. I am not running to leave our biggest problems to an unluckier generation of leaders, but to fix them now, and fix them well.

I am running for President to make sure America maintains its place as the political and economic leader of the world; the country that doesn't fear change, but makes change work for us; the country that does not look longingly to the past, but aspires to even better days. I am running for President of the United States, a blessed country, a proud country, a hopeful country, the most powerful and prosperous country and the greatest force for good on Earth.

All that's more or less my political religion.

Charles Krauthammer has a good column on Iraq today, which I mostly agree with. However, I am mistrustful of all the optimism in the air on Iraq, where the situation appears to me to be improved, but not under control. We will be in Iraq for years more, whoever is elected in 2008.

The Australian parliamentary elections are tomorrow. The US has a big stake in the outcome: and we must hope that Prime Minister Howard (a staunch US ally) and his center-right coalition manage to maintain control of the next Parliament. Right now it looks too close to call.

Ian Smith, R.I.P.

The Rt. Hon. Ian Smith, GCLM, ID, former Prime-Minister of Rhodesia, has died in Cape Town, South Africa. He was 88 years old.

Preceded in death by his wife Janet, Mr. Smith had the great misfortune to outlive his era: a true son of the British Empire, trapped in the modern post-colonial world, which he never really comprehended. Like Jefferson Davis, (first and only President of the Confederate States) he put all he had and was in the service of his country, as he understood it, and followed that calling wherever that took him.

Now Mr. Smith, like his country, is part of history. May God grant him peace.

ADDENDUM: A remembrance book is here. A much fuller and better obituary is here.

Licensed to Kill Gophers. . .

It seems that Al Qaeda has found an insidious new way to attack vital infrastructure. These well-organized fanatics put paid to two electrical power grids.

Probably the Air Force needs to be planning deep strikes on their supply lines, focusing on acorn storage facilities. Maybe the military can infiltrate SEAL teams into their sanctuary zones.

Possibly, a more surgical approach is needed. Calling Special Agent Carl Spackler. . .

Supporting the Troops By Seeing That They Lose

The Democratic Party continues to play politics with the war in Iraq, by attempting to tie appropriations for carrying on the war in Iraq to a timetable for cutting and running. The Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada), and the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, say that if Congress cannot pass legislation that ties military appropriations to troop withdrawals, they will not send the President a bill this year.

Shame on Reid and Pelosi, shame on their party, and shame on the voters who sent them to Washington. Harry Reid, who bloviates about "our troops" continuing to "fight and die valiantly" while he sabotages the money for their food, fuel, medicine and bullets -- clearly cares more about what MoveOn and Code Pink and the left loons who run his party want than he does the troops. If you don't support victory, you can't be supporting the troops.

They Can Stay in Vegas

I have been asked for my reaction to last night's Democratic debates in Las Vegas. For those who care, there is plenty out there to read: National Review Online has what looks like an excellent round -up.

However, I must confess my complete and utter disinterest. The chances that any Democrat outside of Joe Lieberman could have my vote are less than zero -- in general this has been the case since 1972, although I would have had possible cause for pause had the Dukakis-Bentsen ticket in 1988 been a Bentsen-Dukakis ticket. Given the Democratic Party's attitude on the war, intelligence-gathering, military appropriations, detainees, immigration and judges, manifested so vividly in this present Congress, I find them even more repugnant than usual.

Now I do have my own preferred candidate for the Democratic nomination, but I'm going to stay quiet about that one. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, they're all the same to me. Let them have their fun, carry on their silly debates, and fall all over each other zealously worrying about the rights of the scumbags at Guantanamo; and hopefully put up the most Bozo-the-Clown stereotype wacko liberal candidate possible; with racks of skeletons in his or her closet.

How NOT To Change A Tire

Tools for loosening lug-nuts: (1) lug-wrench; (2) shotgun. No, I'm not kidding, somebody tried to take off a balky lug-nut with a shotgun.

Having tried unsuccessfully to budge machine-tightened lug-nuts using only the lug-wrench in the tire kit myself, I can certainly empathaize with this fellow's frustration, although he chose an extreme way to vent it. Apparently, the 66-year old gentleman had been repairing his Lincoln Continental in his driveway for a couple of weeks, and when it came time to remove a tire, he had gotten all the lug-nuts off except this one sticky one. No, he wasn't going to ask for help, or find somebody with an impact wrench, but one way or another, that nut was coming off !

Anyway, the article says that the guy who preferred the 12-gauge lug-wrench got a trip to the hospital, but it doesn't say whether he got that pesky lug-nut off.

11/11/1918

(an annual post)

Have you forgotten yet ?
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.
Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz – The nights you watched and wired and dug...?
Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again ?’ . . .
Have you forgotten yet ?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.

Siegfried Sassoon “Aftermath, March 1919.”

Today is Veterans Day in the US. Because the calendar is crowded with holidays, Veterans Day replaced an older holiday, known as Armistice Day, which commemorated the end of the First World War, surely the most needless, tragic, but consequential war of modern times.Canada, Australia and the other British Commonwealth nations, very appropriately, call today “Remembrance Day” which is how I prefer to think of it. World War I is ancient history to most of us, yet it is with us, always. Pause, friend, for a moment, wherever you are, and remember.

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

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

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

When historians look back upon our times, they will probably agree that the 21st Century really began on 11 September 2001. Similarly, Gavrilo Princip, a 19-year old Serbian revolutionary bandit, member of a terrorist organization called the Black Hand, the al Qaeda of its time, effectively began the 20th Century about 11:15 a.m. on 28 June 1914 when he murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, Archduchess Sophie, by a bridge in Sarajevo, in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina.

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

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

Officially ended, anyway. How can an atrocity like the First World War ever truly end ? Fought over nothing, ending in no victory for anyone, except political cranks, left wing and right wing radicals, demagogic ideologues and other fanatics. The First World War, besides murdering millions, destroyed ancient Christian kingdoms, and killed the faith of the peoples in their civilization, in their leaders, in progress, parliamentary institutions, science and religion, and left us instead the poison fruits of Communism, Nazism, and Socialism.

The road to Auschwitz, Hitler and Stalin runs straight from the murder scene in Sarajevo, through the railroad siding in Compiegné where the armistice was signed. The Second World War killed more, in raw numbers, than the First – but the later war was only a continuation made possible by the poisons unleashed in the first war.

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

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

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

Besides killing, maiming and wounding millions, the war had other, more insidious effects. Most fatally, Europe lost confidence in its leaders, in science, in the Christian religion – in itself -- at some level even in its right to exist as a culture. Germany and Russia, gravely wounded in both body and soul, led the turn away from God, progress, law and civilization, and burned books and millions of their own citizens. Britain, mother of Parliaments and the law, crippled and bankrupted by that war and its continuation, abandoned its Empire, is ashamed of its past, and its political class today quivers in fear of criticism by modernity's ascendant barbarians.

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

ADDENDUM: (13 Nov.) For some good thinking on the outbreak of the Great War, in the context of the present crisis with Iran, see Spengler's excellent piece at the Asia Times website, here.

ADDENDUM No. 2 (13 Nov.) Of related interest, here is a link to the Constitution of the Black Hand.The "Black Hand" was the organization that kicked off the Great War, in 1914, by murdering Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Students of al Qaeda and other modern terrorist organizations will find the concepts and general tone therein quite familiar.

Greetings to Osama

Col. Austin Bay recently had the privilege of putting a note on a bomb -- a 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), soon to be delivered courtesy of the USAF to some of our enemies, probably someplace in Iraq or Afghanistan. (Hat tip: Belmont Club)

When ya care enough to send the very best. You'll have to read his post to see what he wrote on his greeting card. What would you put on yours ?

Remember, Remember the 9th of November

H.I.R.M. Wilhelm II, German Emperor, King of Prussia, (1859-1941; r 1888-1918), in Prussian military uniform.

The 9th of November is a day freighted with plenty of significance in modern German history. Since Germany is a great power in the center of Europe, this has consequences for everyone else, particularly when Germany produces more history that it can consume locally.

On this day in 1918, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, Wilhelm II, abdicated his throne. The Kaiser abdicated because insurrection had broken out all over Germany once it became clear that the First World War was lost.

This war, the Mother of All the Catastrophes of the 20th Century, doomed what was left of Old Europe, made a political madhouse of the Continent; empowered cranks, fanatics and maniacs everyplace; and replaced the old order with chaos and all the political and economic "isms" that afflict and plague us to this day. In Berlin, on the same day the Kaiser abdicated, the Weimar Republic was proclaimed.

As on other subjects, I'm a contrarian on the Kaiser, the German Empire, and the causes of the First World War, and I take a generally dim view of the German Revolution of 1918 that uprooted almost 1000 years of monarchical German history. The Second Reich's replacement: the weak Weimar Republic, used and abused by everyone, hated by Left and Right -- that is, by everybody but the lawyers and professors and some cloud-cuckoo-land politicians -- proved a bad bargain, ultimately leading to a real catastrophe. . .

On this night in 1938, the Nazi successors of the Weimar Republic organized the Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom. Throughout Germany, in a night of deliberately planned terror, the homes, shops and places of worship of Germany's Jewish population were vandalized -- the occupants and owners often murdered. At least 30,000 people were taken off to concentration camps; over 1,600 synagogues were ransacked or set on fire. The pogrom takes its name from all the broken glass left in the streets.

The pogrom was organized by the various Nazi organizations -- the Party itself, the SA, the SS, but at least part of the civil population also participated. Thousands of ordinary people involved themselves in dastardly, barbaric crimes unthinkable in a supposedly Christian country, even thirty years previously; before the general coarsening of morals produced by war, economic depression and exposure to crank ideologies. The police either stood-by and watched, or further disgraced themselves by participating.

As the London Times rightly said in its 11 November 1938 edition: ". . .no foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenceless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday." When Germany woke up on the morning of the 11th, the Nazis found themselves troubled by the question of who would pay for the preceeding night and a day of legalized mayhem ? Among others, the insurance companies were quite concerned. Naturally, the Nazis came up with a solution: fining the Jewish population and confiscating the insurance settlements.

Worse awaited -- exterminations and a war that killed millions. Later, after the Holocaust; and, after the insane war that Hitler and his minions unleashed came home to Germany, the country was torn in two; Germany's capital city Berlin itself sundered by the Wall.

The Berlin Wall and the division of Germany were the paramount geopolitical facts of the 1945-1989 world. Over time, the cruel, farcical, pseudo-state known as the "German Democratic Republic" -- neither democratic, nor a republic, and more correctly called "East Germany," actually began to seem real. Then, on this day in 1989, a miracle happened, and the terrible Wall came down at last, without a war. Soon enough East Germany disappeared too, and the terrible 20th Century in Europe at last drew to a close.

What to Do With a 10-year old Boy ?

Time reports this week that California prosecutors are trying to determine what to do with a 10 year old child who apparently started the "Buckweed" fire in Los Angeles County. The fire destroyed 21 homes and injured three people. Apparently, the fire was started by the boy's "carelessness" while playing with matches. Quite naturally, local residents are in a "less than forgiving mood" and the State of California may be also:

Though too young to be charged as an adult, the boy could still face millions of dollars in fines, removal from his home and possible detention as a ward of the state. For now the boy's fate -- and that of his parents, who would be partially liable for any restitution payments he would have to pay -- rests with Los Angeles County.

I am the last person in the world who would be soft on vandals or criminals, but is there nothing else to do here ? Does justice require that this child be ruined forever, possibly taken from his family ? The family will no doubt wind up financially ruined in any case from legal bills, before we get to any possible punishment, not to mention civil damages. Some folks will have no problem with this: I wonder how many of them have never had the experience of trying to keep up with a 10-year old ?

The punishment awaiting this child and his family seems enormous, but so to is the damage: this child and his damned box of matches caused more devastation and ruin than many a World War II air-raid. But the damage was unintentional. While stupidity should by no means be rewarded, must the child and his family be destroyed ?

My questions are not rhetorical: I genuinely do not know the answers. I'm sure plenty of lawyers will soon supply them.

Machiavelli Checks In

For some really splendid, splendid, El Jefe-channelling thinking on President Musharraf's situation, see James S. Robbins' very entertaining and well thought-out piece today, at National Review Online, here.

Boiled down, Mr. Robbins suggests finding some tame lawyers to read the constitution the right way; holding elections under favorable (i.e. controlled) conditions; ignoring the US and Euro do-gooders wringing their hands all over the place; and, looking effective and keeping the Americans on board by bagging Bin Laden. In general, all this sounds good, if the Pakistani Army will play along, and if, as Robbins puts it, the President-General watches his back with Madame Bhutto.

Coup in Pakistan

My impression of events in Pakistan is somewhat different from most of what we are reading and hearing. I will possibly have more to say later in the week, but I was not surprised at all by proclamation of a state of emergency, and martial law-- really a second coup d'etat by President Musharraf. I have expected something like it since the President's confrontation with the Supreme Court last spring. My own view of current events in Pakistan is effectively summed-up here.

The Pakistan Supreme Court looked set to rule this week that President Musharraf could not stand for re-election, and that the results of last 6 October's parliamentary re-affirmation of his rule were thus invalid. This would have effectively put paid to the backroom power-sharing scheme between President Musharraf and Madame Bhutto that was favored by Washington. What the good judges thought would happen in the event they effectively nixed the elections -- that is Musharraf and this deal -- is unclear: did the judges really think that a mob of lawyers and politicians, demonstrably incompetent and corrupt, could control the Army and the Islamicist militants, without Musharraf's help ? Civilian governments in Pakistan are historically breathing spaces between military rulers.

"Thousands" are reportedly battling the police. If the protests go beyond the lawyers and the politicos, I will be interested, but for now, the only relevant question is the attitude of the troops and police.