Re: 9/11 documentaries

Wolcott is a tool. He declared George Galloway "a hero for our time." He roots for hurricanes to inflict maxium damage (in a post the coward subsequently took down which, as I understand blogger ethics, is a no-no). I think I'll let Scooter handle this attack on VDH.

Not surprisingly, when I was a CLL I really liked him. Frank Rich and MoDo too. Excuse me now; I feel dirty and need to wash.

I'll address "Why We Fight" later.

9/11 documentaries

I ran across this article from James Wolcott in Vanity Fair. Of course, given my political leanings and "conspiratorial worldview", I loved it. It hit all the points that resonate with me:

1) the "fear" mentality that the current administration pushes and pushes upon us
2) the influence of the "military-industrial complex"
3) the coup d'état of American foreign policy by neoconservative ideologues
4) the influence of right-wing of think tanks
5) the "taboo" of any 9/11 images or video
6) and a personal favorite, the linking, then un-linking, of Saddam Hussein and 9/11

I hope to see both movies ("Why We Fight" and "The Unrecovered"), though I have a feeling the latter will be difficult to find.

Blackwell, Swann and Steele

I've made my contributions, you can do so

here (Blackwell),

here (Swann) and

here (Steele).

(Sorry Mr. Swann, you got less than half of what I gave the others because I bet you're pretty well financed and because you beat my Pokes twice in the 70s in the big game.)

History and War

As I continue through Victor Davis Hanson's Carnage and Culture, I am just aghast at how little "Western Civ" I know. In addition, as I learn more, I really do begin to see just how relevant that history is to today.

From his site today, a fairly lengthy piece from the American Enterprise Magazine:

"Apart from these specific historical lessons, there are four bothersome facts about war that contemporary minds, full of utopian hopes, often fail to grasp.

First: There is often a savage utility to war. The great pathologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries —— slavery, Nazism, fascism, Japanese militarism, and communism —— were ended only through force and military deterrence. More recently, brutal bullies like Manuel Noriega, Slobodan Milosevic, and Mullah Omar were stopped from preying on others only by the barrel of a gun. The U.S. military did more in three weeks early in 2003 to save threatened Iraqis and begin humanitarian improvements than 12 years of no-fly zones and a fraudulent United Nations Oil-for Food program had accomplished."

I know, I've become an absolute groupie.

UT plans expasion of DKR Memorial Stadium

From today's Austin American Statesman:

University of Texas System regents on Thursday are expected to approve spending nearly $150 million to remodel and expand Royal-Memorial Stadium.

The project, scheduled to be completed in August 2008, would boost seating capacity for football games to more than 90,000.

Blackwell Update

KLo's been reading SSJ? Ok, maybe just City Journal. She writes what I should have written instead of this regarding the on the Blackwell article.

This could be really big in a "swing state" like Ohio.

Mother Sheehan a Sock Puppet?

And this from that conservative rag the San Francisco Chronicle.

(If I have to hear about her moral authority one more time.)

Update: Victor Hanson's Carnage and Culture

Got about a hundred and twenty pages into it over the weekend. Must reading for history buffs, military or otherwise. Caveat, as one starts a new chapter, skip ahead a few pages to the simple maps of the battlefield...makes reading the battle descriptions much easier to follow.

The premise is that democratic citizens wage war better than any other type of culture...the Greek's winn at Salamis (after Thermopylae), Alexander kicking Darius's butt at Guagamela. Even in the loss of 70-80,000 Romans to a far outnumbered Hannibal at Cannae, Hanson shows how those fighting for democratic ideals perform better (in this case outcome notwithstanding) than their counterparts under a tyrant.

Coincidentally, I read this from Hanson at RealClearPolitics.com today:

"So is Europe now finally at the front or will they retreat Madrid-like in the face of the inevitable second round of terrorist bombings and threats to come?

"Americans are not confident, but we should remember at least one simple fact: Europe is the embryo of the entire Western military tradition. The new European Union encompasses a population greater than the United States and spans a continent larger than our own territory. It has a greater gross domestic product than that of America and could, in theory, field military forces as disciplined and as well equipped as our own."

The article is a breath of fresh air follwing his and Mark Steyn's recent pieces on the EU.