Jan 12 2007
Some Must Reads
To understand the debate on the Iraq and the ME one should do as much homework as possible to engage in a manner that will result in a success. I am woefully behind on this and constantly find people with so much to educate us on what is going that it baffles me that we even think we are having a national debate. In what has to be the underlying strength of the Blogosphere in the modern era of communication is the electronic word of mouth. The news media is vacuous and full of inexperienced and unseasoned journalist majors who, with a few excellent exceptions, are totally incapable of grasping what is going on in the world. For example I point people to two stories in the blogosphere you will never see in the news media. And without this knowledge we cannot hope to have a serious debate on our future path.
One sotry is at Ed Morrissey’s and is on the continued ratcheting down on the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is a great example of drawing a bright line of acceptable behavior or the Islamists and delivering a crushing blow when they cross that line. We will be here very soon in many regions. We will accept the right of Islamicists to hold their views, but we will also bound them to live within our common laws and to leave others in peace who do not agree with them.
The second story is the history of the military command that has been in charge of the ME for decades – CENTCOM. It is an important review of how we got where we are and why Bush, like Lincoln before him (and Roosevelt as well, though to a much lesser extent), is changing military leadership. We are still, 5 years later, still making adjustments to the post 9-11 world. And that is to be expected. We will be making corrections and adjustments for years in this generational fight. Hat Tip to Clarice Feldman for the link to this second article.
What is important is we are making great progress in the War on Terror, and we still have a long, long way to go. The enemy is not giving up, so neither can we.
My hat’s off to this President! Like Lincoln, before him, he’s underestimated in his own time. But the results will be there.
And, yes. Bush has gone through a lot of personnel. Personnel that “grew” with the institutions, involved. But did NOT grow well. Anymore than haarvard, for example, has grown well.
So, it was necessary for Bush to go through a lot of different people. Each recommended in the past, by the George Tenet types. And, they’re no longer around, either. So our President does have staying powers!
Lincoln had Halleck. And, he created a terrible mess.
It took Lincoln a long time to come upon the HERO OF OHIO: Grant. But once he did, the war against slavery took on all the drastic proportions it needed to finally solve the problem.
Michael Oren (famous for his book “The Six Day War”), has written another. “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present.” Due out this Spring. And, he goes back to 1776, to show you how themes have emerged from the Middle East.
While to the Europeans, there’s just hatred that the “Jews Own Real Estate AT ALL!” (They haven’t won a thing, by their way, with their various culpabilities.)
It seems to me, that the democrats, AND the media, both fight from their 20th Century perspectives of success. In other words, they keep trying to roll out Vietnam. Because through Vietnam America’s war presidents (LBJ and Nixon), were defeated.
Pelosi just came out with a comment towards Rice, that is so out of line, it’s a wonder she stays seated! She told Rice that “Rice was obviously incompetent to have an opinion about the Mideast, because she has no kids in this fight.”
Meanwhile the bad stuff keeps flowing out of the toilet that was once the only place one could go for “media information.”
For most people? The donks haven’t made the connections.
For most people, ahead, there’s gotta be a better solution HERE, than the one we get from those who thought they were in charge.
That canard, that the Jews have to lose, so we can “win,” should have been mothballed. Or at least countered: The arabs have jordan. Where 80% of the population is “palestinian.” Why not just call it as it is on the ground? That kinglet? He’s from Saudi Arabian stock.
And, the House of Saud remains the problem.
On the other hand? Ken Lay thought he was riding high, and was way to big to fall. Shows ya what happens when you count as “chips” … chips you don’t really have.
Coming out of the election of 2006, can you imagine any worse plays the donks could have tried, that they haven’t implimented yet? If they were actually getting anywhere, especially “up HILL,” they couldn’t have done a worse job, short of going into reverse; while blowing out the showroom window. (I had thought pelosi drove through that one, with her eyes in front.) Who knew?
What a typical rambling and meaningless response to your post!
As I read the CENTCOM article a couple of days ago, my immediate response was to ruminate about the perfidy of State, DOJ, CIA etc. that Bush inherited from Clinton, and now (apparently) Defense. How much more effective would the GWOT have been had Bush not been forced to deal with holdovers from prior administrations? And not just Bush, but every president. It just seems that holdovers from the left are more pervasive and destructive than those from the right. There should be a better way for each elected executive to implement his agenda, on either side of the political continuum.
Let us hope that the proper DOD representation is now moving into place.
Books are also an excellent source of information, and sometime they are better to understand wars, enemy’s, etc. I just ordered a few to better educate myself on the Enemy.
ENEMIES by Bill Gertz
This is about Terrorist Organizations and Foreign Governments Stealing Vital U.S. Secrets.
Now They Call Me Infidel by Nonie Darwish
She was in Obsession. Her father was the Marter who Killed himself for Allah.
Never Again by John Ashcroft
Andrew Mc Carthy wrote a good review of it, and Rush said it was very good. So, I want to read it.
The Truth About Muhammad by Robert Spencer
Andrew Mc Carthy also recommended this, as well as many, many others.
Because They Hate by Brigitte Gabriel
She too was in Obsession, on with Pastor Hagee, and in the Glen Beck Special. She is from Lebanon.
Not a Suicid Pact by Richard A. Posner
The Constitution in a time of National Emergency
Many of these are written by people dirrectly affected by the enemy. I can’t wait to get them.
But I’m also addicted to the internet too!
Carol, Correction. The Civil War was not about salvery. Slavery was the issue that Northern warmongers used to stir up animosity against the South. The Civil War was about taxes. taxes and more taxes.
In Beaufort, SC there is a big Oak Tree which is known as Seccession Oak. It’s where local residents met to discuss seccession in 1844 after Congress levied a 25% tariff on all goods imported from Europe. It seems that the Yankees thought that all white southerners were rich folks sitting around on their verandas sipping mint julips while slaves did all their work. So Yankee manufacturers, thinking, as they still do today, that what they made was worth more than that made by anyone else, kept raising their prices on goods sold in the South until they were no longer competitive with goods made in Europe. Hence Congress passed the 25% tarriff on all goods imported from Europe..
By 1860 the Yankee manufacturers had kept raising their prices until again they were no longer competitive with European goods. When Congress voted to levy a 25% increase on tariffs, raising the price of everything sold in the South by another 25%, that’s when every man and boy in the South over the age of 16 grabbed their guns and went to war.
That is the reason southerners fought the way the did. Surely nobody is dumb enough to think those men were fighting to the death, as they did, so some rich guy down the road could keep his slaves. The vast majority of Southerners did not own slaves. Most of the big plantations run by overseers were owned by absentee owners who owned clothing factories up north.
Slavery was the issue that the price gougers in the North used to stir up animosity against the south. They painted a picture of all southerners being rich slave owners. Yet, General Grant, on a tour of the war ravaged South was appalled at the abject poverty of the average southern family.
So the Civil War was really a War of Northern Agression. It was not about slavery. Lincoln only freed the slaves in the South in hopes they would rise up and start a second front when the Northern Army was about to lose the war.
As for Grant being such a fabulous leader, here is a little known fact that history has overlooked. When Jeff Davis was Secretary of War in the administration prior of Lincolns, he ordered everything in the armories in the north to be shipped to southern states and then sold to the Governors of the Southern states. When the War started, the North had few, if any armaments, and it took a couple of years to manufacture enough to turn the tide. That is the reason the South very nearly won the war in the first two years and why all those Northern generals looked so bad in the fields.
I got this information by reading old records , first hand reports, while doing genealogy research.
Carol
Did you know that Lee graduated 2nd in his class from West Point and had no demerits the whole time he was there? He was superintendent of West Point for three years for gosh’s sake. He was offered command of the union field forces in the civil war and refused. Don’t discount Lee in favor of Grant. Lee was by far the better general. He almost won the thing against all odds. And the way the government treated him after the war was abysmal. They confiscated the plantation that had been in his family for more than a century and made it into a public park and cemetary. That was purely vindictive. Even though his father had been a hero in the revolutionary war they still took his property away and put him in prison. The fact of the matter was that the states could legally secede if they wanted to and it was not a criminal enterprise. However I am glad the south lost because I doubt we would be such a great country if we were divided into two countries.
Slavery was the issue that the price gougers in the North used to stir up animosity against the south. They painted a picture of all southerners being rich slave owners. Yet, General Grant, on a tour of the war ravaged South was appalled at the abject poverty of the average southern family.
And that fact didn’t stop the government from making the south pay for the war. We didn’t stop paying for the war until way into the 1900s. The south took a long time to recover from all that revenue going out of the area. We had the right to secede but we had to pay for the war that forced us back into the union.