November 30, 2004

NOVEMBER 30, 1874: WINSTON CHURCHILL ARRIVES

In honor of Winston Churchill's birthday, Horsefeathers offers the great man's timeless words to Parliament in 1938; the lessons for our time still apply(think Iran, North Korea the UN, the Middle East 'peace process', the NYTimes, etc.).

WINSTON CHURCHILL, HOUSE OF COMMONS, OCTOBER 5, 1938.

Having thus fortified myself by the example of others, I will proceed to emulate them. I will, therefore, begin by saying the most unpopular and most unwelcome thing. I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and that France has suffered even more than we have.

VISCOUNTESS ASTOR: Nonsense.

MR. CHURCHILL: When the Noble Lady cries "Nonsense," she could not have heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Sir John Simon] admit in his illuminating and comprehensive speech just now that Herr Hitler had gained in this particular leap forward in substance all he set out to gain. The utmost my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been able to secure by all his immense exertions, by all the great efforts and mobilisation which took place in this country, and by all the anguish and strain through which we have passed in this country, the utmost he has been able to gain--[HON. MEMBERS: "Is peace."]. I thought I might be allowed to make that point in its due place, and I propose to deal with it. The utmost he has been able to gain for Czechoslovakia and in the matters which were in dispute has been that the German dictator, instead of snatching his victuals from the table, has been content to have them served to him course by course.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer said it was the first time Herr Hitler had been made to retract-I think that was the word-in any degree. We really must not waste time, after all this long Debate, upon the difference between the positions reached at Berchtesgaden, at Godesberg and at Munich. They can be very simply epitomised, if the House will permit me to vary the metaphor. £1 was demanded at the pistol's point. When it was given, £2 were demanded at the pistol's point. Finally, the dictator consented to take £1 17s. 6d. and the rest in promises of good will for the future.

Now I come to the point, which was mentioned to me just now from some quarters of the House, about the saving of peace. No one has been a more resolute and uncompromising struggler for peace than the Prime Minister. Everyone knows that. Never has there been such intense and undaunted determination to maintain and to secure peace. That is quite true. Nevertheless, I am not quite clear why there was so much danger of Great Britain or France being involved in a war with
Germany at this juncture if, in fact, they were ready all along to sacrifice Czechoslovakia. The terms which the Prime Minister brought back with him--I quite agree at the last moment; everything had got off the rails and nothing but his intervention could have saved the peace, but I am talking of the events of the summer--could easily have been agreed, I believe, through the ordinary diplomatic channels at any time during the summer. And I will say this, that I believe the Czechs, left to themselves and told they were going to get no help from the Western Powers, would have been able to make better terms than they have got--they could hardly have worse--after all this tremendous perturbation.

There never can be any absolute certainty that there will be a fight if one side is determined that it will give way completely. When one reads the Munich terms, when one sees what is happening in Czechoslovakia from hour to hour, when one is sure, I will not say of Parliamentary approval but of Parliamentary acquiescence, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes a speech which at any rate tries to put in a very powerful and persuasive manner the fact that, after all, it was inevitable and indeed righteous--right--when we saw all this, and everyone on this side of the House, including many Members of the Conservative Party who are supposed to be vigilant and careful guardians of the national interest, it is quite clear that nothing vitally affecting us was at stake, it seems to me that one must ask, What was all the trouble and fuss about? ...

We are asked to vote for this Motion which has been put upon the Paper, and it is certainly a Motion couched in very uncontroversial terms, as, indeed, is the Amendment moved from the Opposition side. I cannot myself express my agreement with the steps which have been taken, and as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put his side of the case with so much ability I will attempt, if I may be permitted, to put the case from a different angle. I have always held the view that the maintenance of peace depends upon the accumulation of deterrents against the aggressor, coupled with a sincere effort to redress grievances. Herr Hitler's victory, like so many of the famous struggles that have governed the fate of the world, was won upon the
narrowest of margins. After the seizure of Austria in March we faced this problem in our Debates. I ventured to appeal to the Government to go a little further than the Prime Minister went, and to give a pledge that in conjunction with France and other Powers they would guarantee the security of Czechoslovakia while the Sudeten-Deutsch question was being examined either by a League of Nations Commission or some other impartial body, and I still believe that if that Course had been followed events would not have fallen into this disastrous state. I agree very much with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook (Mr. Amery) when he said on that occasion--I cannot remember his actual words--"Do one thing or the other; either say you
will disinterest yourself in the matter altogether or take the step of giving a guarantee which will have the greatest chance of securing protection for that country."

France and Great Britain together, especially if they had maintained a close contact with Russia, which certainly was not done, would have been able in those days in the summer, when they had the prestige, to influence many of the smaller States of Europe, and I believe they could have determined the attitude of Poland. Such a combination, prepared at a time when the German dictator was not deeply and irrevocably committed to his new adventure, would, I believe, have given strength to all those forces in Germany which resisted this departure, this new design. They were varying forces, those of a military character which declared that Germany was not ready to undertake a world war, and all that mass of moderate opinion and popular opinion which dreaded war, and some elements of which still have some influence upon the German Government. Such action would have given strength to all that intense desire for peace which the helpless German masses share with their British and French fellow men, and which, as we have been reminded, found a passionate and rarely permitted vent in the joyous manifestations with which the Prime Minister was acclaimed in Munich.

All these forces, added to the other deterrents which combinations of Powers, great and small, ready to stand firm upon the front of law and for the ordered remedy of grievances, would have formed, might well have been effective. Of course you cannot say for certain that they would. [Interruption.] I try to argue fairly with the House. At the same time I do not think it is fair to charge those who wished to see this course followed, and followed consistently and resolutely, with having wished for an immediate war. Between submission and immediate war there was this third alternative, which gave a hope not only of peace but of justice. It is quite true that such a policy in order to succeed demanded that Britain should declare straight out and a long time beforehand that she would, with others, join to defend Czechoslovakia against an unprovoked aggression. His Majesty's Government refused to give that guarantee when it would have saved the situation, yet in the end they gave it when it was too late, and now, for the future, they renew it when they have not the slightest power to make it good.

All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. . . . No one has a right to say that the plebiscite which is to be taken in areas under Saar conditions, and the clean-cut of the 50 per cent. areas-that those two operations together amount in the slightest degree to a verdict of self-determination. It is a fraud and a farce to invoke that name….

We in this country, as in other Liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination, but it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian States who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds. But, however you put it, this particular block of land, this mass of human beings to be handed over, has never expressed the desire to go into the Nazi rule. I do not believe that even now--if their opinion could be asked, they would exercise such an option….

I venture to think that in future the Czechoslovak State cannot be maintained as an independent entity. You will find that in a period of time which may be measured by years, but may be measured only by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi regime. Perhaps they may join it in despair or in revenge. At any rate, that story is over and told. But we cannot consider the abandonment and ruin of Czechoslovakia in the light only of what happened only last month. It is the most grievous consequence which we have yet experienced of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years-five years of futile good intention, five years of eager search for the line of least resistance, five years of uninterrupted retreat of British power, five years of neglect of our air defences. Those are the features which I stand here to declare and which marked an improvident stewardship for which Great Britain and France have dearly to pay. We have been reduced in those five years from a position of security so overwhelming and so unchallengeable that we never cared to think about it. We have been reduced from a position where the very word "war" was considered one which would be used only by persons qualifying for a lunatic asylum. We have been reduced from a position of safety and power--power to do good, power to begenerous to a beaten foe, power to make terms with Germany, power to give her proper redress for her grievances, power to stop her arming if we chose, power to take any step in strength or mercy or justice which we thought right-reduced in five years from a position safe and unchallenged to where we stand now....

We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude which has befallen Great Britain and France. Do not let us blind ourselves to that. It must now be accepted that all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi Power. The system of alliances in Central Europe upon which France has relied for her safety has been swept away, and I can see no means by which it can be reconstituted. The road down the Danube Valley to the Black Sea, the resources of corn and oil, the road which leads as far as Turkey, has been opened. In fact, if not in form, it seems to me that all those countries of Middle Europe, all those Danubian countries, will, one after another, be drawn into this vast system of power politics--not only power military politics but power economic politics--radiating from Berlin, and I believe this can be achieved quite smoothly and swiftly and will not necessarily entail the firing of a single shot. If you wish to survey the havoc of the foreign policy of Britain and France, look at what is happening and is recorded each day in the columns of the "Times…

We are talking about countries which are a long way off and of which, as the Prime Minister might say, we know nothing. [Interruption.] The noble Lady says that that very harmless allusion is--

VISCOUNTESS ASTOR: Rude.

MR. CHURCHILL: She must very recently have been receiving her finishing course in manners. What will be the position, I want to know, of France and England this year and the year afterwards? What will be the position of that Western front of which we are in full authority the guarantors? The German army at the present time is more numerous than that of France, though not nearly so matured or perfected. Next year it will grow much larger, and its maturity will be more complete. Relieved from all anxiety in the East, and having secured resources which will greatly diminish, if not entirely remove, the deterrent of a naval blockade, the rulers of Nazi Germany will have a free choice open to them in what direction they will turn their eyes. If the Nazi dictator should choose to look westward, as he may, bitterly will France and England regret the loss of that fine army of ancient Bohemia which Was estimated last week to require not fewer than 30 German divisions for its destruction.

Can we blind ourselves to the great change which has taken place in the military situation, and to the dangers we have to meet?.

This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.

November 25, 2004

ISLAMIC SCHOLARSHIP SUFFERS A SETBACK

According to the noted Islamic scholar Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Muslim clerics at Fallujah didn't adequately pursue their scholarly tasks. Perhaps they won't get tenure when the school year ends. John Burns reports on the latest videotape from Iraq:
"...Addressing the Muslim "ulema," an Arabic term for Islamic clerics and scholars, the [Zarqawi] tape drew a grim picture of the consequences of what it described as their failure to step in to help the Falluja rebels against the Americans.

"...You made peace with the tyranny and handed over the country and its people to the Jews and Crusaders, by resorting to silence on their crimes and preventing our youth from heading to the battlefields in order to defend our religion..."

These religious scholars need not fear, however. Their 'scholarship' will undoubtedly be welcome at Columbia, and by fellow seekers after truth in other Middle East studies departments of elite American universities. Just one small request: leave the AK-47's and rocket launchers in the mosques and don't bring them to the next faculty meeting.

November 24, 2004

HORSEFEATHERS CONTEST: RENAME WASHINGTON NATIONALS

It is nice to know that even with the heavy schedule that Washington D.C. has on its agenda—Iraq, the CIA, Social Security, Tax Reform, Election Denial—it still has time to devote to naming its new baseball team: The Washington Nationals. In a sense the new name is not surprising. In a city which is dominated by bureaucracy it is expectable that the choice of name would turn out to be the safest, least offensive, most colorless, most redundant name possible. Most baseball teams try to instill terror in their opponents with their names—the Giants, the Indians, the Diamondbacks, the Bucaneers, the Pirates. Or there are those team names that generate fierce pride and admiration in the courage and strength of their teams—the Braves, the Rangers, the Astros, the Yankees.

Then there are those teams that turn to their gentler, even maternal sides—the Cubs, the Blue Jays, the Orioles, the Cardinals. And those that appeal to the power of religion and goodness to win out over their opponents—the Angels, the Padres. And the animals—Devil Rays, Marlins; the minerals—the Rockies; fortunately no vegetables unless you consider the Soxes, White and Red, to be vegetable derivatives.

In any case all of our baseball teams try to take vivid, colorful, concrete names, the names of things, not concepts. The word National is a concept that requires a dictionary definition: “of or relating to a nation.” And when you turn to Nation you find: “Nation: a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status.” Taking this definition into account, it is easy to see that the name Nationals is totally inappropriate because DC is not independent and is small in size. Besides which, “Nationals” seems to imply that the team is the team of the nation which it certainly will not be since baseball like politics and real estate is always local.

Thus HORSEFEATHERS proposes a contest to rename the Washington Nationals (prize to be decided later) and will start the ball rolling with one or two suggestions.

The Washington:
Bosses
Crooks
Log-rollers
Hacks
Big Shots
Ducks (Lame)
Stumpers
Hopefuls
Wannabees
Baby Kissers
Dark Horses
Ward Heelers
Pussy-footers
Mudslingers

Send in your entries early and often. Any number can play.

November 23, 2004

BASKETBALL BRAWLS AND HUMAN NATURE

        Horsefeathers lost interest in professional basketball years ago, about the time when “palming” the ball stopped being an infraction. On the few occasions in recent years when the game intruded on our consciousness, we had the impression that we were watching the Rikers Island all stars vs. San Quentin. The finesse we had enjoyed was gone, replaced by brute physical strength and size. Sure there were great individual stars, like Michael Jordan, but the charm of basketball had been its team aspect, the old Boston Celtics or L.A. Lakers, the Knicks of Earl Monroe, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Jerry Lucas and Bill Bradley. Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics embodied the aesthetically pleasing sense of individual talent subordinated to team goals.
        So when we heard of Ron Artest attacking a fan our immediate reaction was to assume that Mr. Artest was simply a hoodlum with a talent for basketball. He may indeed be a guy who is one jump shot away from a lifetime behind bars, but when we heard the loud lamentations from the MSM we felt compelled to check out the video and written accounts. Our suspicion that the moralists were spewing cant was confirmed by the basic observable facts of the incident. If you're a ball player and a drunken thug throws a cup of beer in your face you can anticipate that the media moralists will be shocked if you respond with a right cross to his jaw. They'll say "he's a fan, he paid to see you play", as though that requires you to transcend human nature. However, human nature being what it is, no one should be shocked, and the media's phony moralizing is utter nonsense. Assaulting someone who is not a follower of Mahatma Gandhi will very likely provoke a response. The personal injury lawyers may be lining up to sue you, and pacifists may condemn you. Horsefeathers, however, will understand that human nature is not likely to change, even when ESPN insists it should.

LIKE GRANDFATHER, LIKE GRANDSON! THE YEAGERS--"STILL THE BEST. PERIOD"

Legendary Chuck Yeager as described by his friend, Col. C.E. 'Bud' Anderson:
“...As a fighter pilot, Chuck had the rare ability to concentrate totally on the task at hand. In combat, he could block out fatigue, fear, or any other distraction. His confidence grew with his successes and this bolstered his already strong physical courage. Right from the beginning and without his knowing it, Chuck had the ideal profile as a leader. I mean, he was always calm, poised, and never flustered in the air. He never complained or griped when things were grim, setting the example for the rest of us, even those who outranked him . . . He was aggressive and competitive, but awfully skillful, too. In combat, he didn’t charge blindly into a gaggle of Germans but, with the advantage of sharp eyes that could see forever, he set up his attack to take them by surprise, when the odds were in his favor. And, when Yeager attacked, he was ferocious. But he was also a superb team player; he saw everything taking place around him and, in his calm and confident manner, helped a lot of guys out of tough moments. There wasn’t a pilot in the squadron, including a few who didn’t like him, who didn’t want Yeager close by in a dangerous mission . . . Yeager was the best. Period.”

A Marine in Fallujah, describes heroism in combat. They still have 'the right stuff'.:

"...His name is Corporal Yeager (Chuck Yeager's grandson). As the Marines cleared an apartment building, they got to the top floor and the point man kicked in the door. As he did so, an enemy grenade and a burst of gunfire came out. The explosion and enemy fire took off the point man's leg. He was then immediately shot in the arm as he lay in the doorway. Corporal Yeager tossed a grenade in the room and ran into the doorway and into the enemy fire in order to pull his buddy back to cover. As he was dragging the wounded Marine to cover, his own grenade came back through the doorway. Without pausing, he reached down and threw the grenade back through the door while he heaved his buddy to safety. The grenade went off inside the room and Cpl Yeager threw another in. He immediately entered the room following the second explosion. He gunned down three enemy all within three feet of where he stood and then let fly a third grenade as he backed out of the room to complete the evacuation of the wounded Marine. You have to understand that a grenade goes off within 5 seconds of having the pin pulled. Marines usually let them "cook off" for a second or two before tossing them in. Therefore, this entire episode took place in less than 30 seconds..." See the rest here.

November 21, 2004

FALLUJAH: THE MSM'S TET FANTASY

        Unchastened by the election, reactionary Liberalism continues its efforts to derail the war on Islamo-Fascism. Through the eyes of the MSM---the NYTimes, Washington Post, the Sunday morning TV punditocracy---Fallujah was a battle between a noble, outgunned Iraqi 'insurgency' and America's "...best marines, its most proficient killers..."(yes you read it right: it's 'insurgents' vs. 'killers'!)
        Apart from their ideological biases, the MSM are utterly ignorant of military history. While the Tom Friedmans and Nick Kristofs pontificate about supposed military mistakes, they seem to ignore the extraordinary skill with which our current battles are being prosecuted. They possess minimal interest in learning how our military planners were able to execute the Battle of Fallujah, against a barbaric foe, with minimal casualties. Fortunately, the MSM are now viewed with the distrust they've come to richly deserve, while other voices are being heard. Here's what Jack Kelly had to say: "...Fallujah ranks up there with Iwo Jima, Inchon and Hue as one of the greatest triumphs of American arms, though you'd have a hard time discerning that from what you read in the newspapers.

The swift capture of Fallujah is taxing the imagination of Arab journalists and -- sadly -- our own. How does one portray a remarkable American victory as if it were of little consequence, or even a defeat? For CNN's Walter Rodgers, camped out in front the main U.S. military hospital in Germany, you do this by emphasizing American casualties.

For The New York Times and The Washington Post, you do this by emphasizing conflict elsewhere in Iraq.

But the news organs that liken temporary terrorist success in Mosul (the police stations they overran were recaptured the next day) with what happened to the terrorists in Fallujah is false equivalence of the worst kind. If I find a quarter in the street, it doesn't make up for having lost $1,000 in a poker game the night before.

The resistance has suffered a loss of more than 2,000 combatants, out of a total force estimated by U.S. Central Command at about 5,000 (other estimates are higher) as well as its only secure base in the country. But both the Arab media and ours emphasize that the attack on Fallujah has made a lot of Arabs mad. By this logic, once we've killed all the terrorists, they'll be invincible.

"The experience of human history has been the more people you kill, the weaker they get," Thompson noted..."

November 19, 2004

THE BATTLE OF FALLUJAH AND THE WAR OF IDEAS

        The battle of Fallujah is sure to go down in military history as one of our greatest triumphs. Beyond its strategic value, it marks an important victory in the war of ideas. Post-modern relativism, the dangerous dogma of political correctness has been shaken off by our heroic USMC. This time we went into Fallujah with overwhelming lethal force. No longer could the enemy appeal to our multicultural fantasy that Islam means Peace, and that all religions are equally worthy of respect. Holy sites, like mosques, when turned into arsenals, bomb factories, and hiding places for killers were not spared. Our tender hearted liberal concern for Muslim sensibilities during holidays like Ramadan was set aside in favor of killing our enemies. Victor Hanson has often remarked on how slow democracies are to react when attacked, but once they do, their lethality is immense. So we have seen in Fallujah, and now there's more good news from Baghdad.:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - "Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. soldiers, stormed one of the major Sunni Muslim mosques in Baghdad after Friday prayers, opening fire and killing at least three people, witnesses said. In the battle for control of Mosul, Iraqi forces raided several areas overnight, killing 15 insurgents, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said..."
See the rest here.

November 17, 2004

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

While the MSM work themselves into a frenzy about the video showing a U.S. Marine offing a terrorist in a Fallujah mosque, here's an assessment by one who knows.

They're Called Security Rounds
"...Its a safety issue pure and simple. After assaulting through a target, put a security round in everybody's head. Sorry al-Reuters, there's no paddy wagon rolling around Fallujah picking up "prisoners" and offering them a hot cup a joe, falafel, and a blanket. There's no time to dick around in the target, you clear the space, dump the chumps, and moveon.org. Are Corpsman expected to treat wounded terrorists? Negative. Hey libs, worried about the defense budget? Well, it would be waste, fraud, and abuse for a Corpsman to spend one man minute or a battle dressing on a terrorist, its much cheaper to just spend the $.02 on a 5.56mm FMJ.

By the way, terrorists who chop off civilian's heads are not prisoners, they are carcasses.

UPDATE: Let me be very clear about this issue. I have looked around the web, and many people get this concept, but there are some stragglers. Here is your situation Marine. You just took fire from unlawful combatants shooting from a religious building attempting to use the sanctuary status of their position as protection. But you're in Fallujah now, and the Marine Corps has decided that they're not playing that game this time. That was Najaf. So you set the mosque on fire and you hose down the terrorists with small arms, launch some AT-4s (Rockets), some 40MM grenades into the building and things quiet down. So you run over there, and find some tangos wounded and pretending to be dead. You are aware that suicide martyrdom is like really popular with these kind of idiots, and like taking some Marines with them would be really cool. So you can either risk your life and your fireteam's lives by having them cover you while you bend down and search a guy that you think is pretending to be dead for some reason. Also, you don't know who or what is in the next room, and you're already speaking english to each other and its loud because your hearing is poor from shooting people for several days. So you know that there are many other rooms to enter, and that if anyone is still alive in those rooms, they know that Americans are in the mosque. Meanwhile (3 seconds later), you still have this terrorist that was just shooting at you from a mosque playing possum. What do you do?

You double tap his head, and you go to the next room, that's what.

What about the Geneva Conventions and all that Law of Land Warfare stuff? What about it. Without even addressing the issues at hand you first thought should be, "I'd rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6." Bear in mind that this is a perpetual mindset that is reinforced by experiences gained on a minute by minute basis. Secondly, you are fighting an unlawful combatant in a Sanctuary which is a double No No on his part. Third, tactically you are in no position to take "prisoners" because there are more rooms to search and clear, and the behavior of said terrorist indicates that he is up to no good. No good in Fallujah is a very large place and the low end of no good and the high end of no good are fundamentally the same... Marines get hurt or die. So there is no compelling reason for you to do anything but double tap this idiot and get on with the mission.

If you are a veteran then everything I have just written is self evident, if you are not a veteran than at least try to put yourself in the situation. Remember, in Fallujah there is no yesterday, there is no tomorrow, there is only now. Right NOW. Have you ever lived in NOW for a week? It is not easy, and if you have never lived in NOW for longer than it takes to finish the big roller coaster at Six Flags, then shut your hole about putting Marines in jail for war crimes..."

November 16, 2004

PSYCHOBABBLE ALERT! THE LIBERAL VAPOURS

        The so-called psychological 'helping professions' have, in recent years, become the natural home of leftist utopian ideologues. From pacifism to perversion, from gay marriage to animal rights, mental health workers will endorse every mischief making cause taken up by left utopians. Political utopias may have failed, human nature may be recalcitrant, but the new psychotherapists will counsel and console on how to endure the awful victimization of life in Bush's Amerika. Quick pass the smelling salts, the liberals are fainting!

"Mental health officials in South Florida blasted Rush Limbaugh on Monday, saying the conservative talk show host’s offer of “free therapy” for traumatized John Kerry voters has made a mockery of a valid psychological problem..."
See the rest here.

November 15, 2004

GET RID OF THE JOURNALISTS AND GIVE THE F--KIN' MARINE A MEDAL

No sooner than I had heard the story on the six o’clock news it was on the internet.

The story boils down to something like this. Fifteen insurgents had been using a Mosque as a fortress from which to kill marines. The marines killed ten of their enemy and apparently wounded another five. The following day another group of marines came upon the five wounded insurgents and one of the marines thought that one of the insurgents was faking being dead and shot him dead to make sure. Unfortunately, there was an embedded camera crew from NBC which filmed the event. The reporter, Kevin Sites, reported the story as though the marine were a war criminal, and the Marine Command relieved the marine from duty in order to investigate the case. And I’m sure we’ll hear a lot about it from the NY Times. (Read more here.)

Now, let’s cut to the chase, and cut out the hypocrisy. If there had not been an embedded journalist in that action, we would not be reading or hearing about the matter. It is only because of the delicate feelings of correspondent Kevin Sites that the event has been elevated to a moral crisis—another example of entertainment-media-morality—as fraudulent and phony as most of what appears on the media.

The marine who shot the mujahedeen insurgent had been wounded in the face the day before and had finished a week of heroic fighting of the kind that is the most challenging in modern warfare. House to house fighting in a town that had been waiting and making preparations for the marines. The insurgents had prepared booby traps, tunnels, explosive devices of all sorts. They are not beneath using any deception, firing from behind innocent children, dressing as women or pretending to be legitimate policemen, booby-trapping bodies, pretending to be wounded and then killing our men when they approach to give aid. They don’t care about dying as long as they take one of our men with them. Our men have rules of engagement, the insurgents do not.

Such conditions require split-second responses, hair trigger reactions, and a high degree of suspiciousness—paranoia is highly adaptive in such a situation, not only for oneself but for one’s whole squad.

The marine was doing his job when he shot the insurgent, thinking that the man was faking death and about to spring a trap. The young marine should be given a medal instead of investigated. Everyman and marine in this kind of warfare believes that it is better to err on the side of killing the other guy if there is any doubt. Only those holier-than-us journalists would disagree.

Embedded reporting worked during the early phase of this war, but it doesn’t in this phase. The beginning of the war, in which there was little or no hand-to-hand fighting at close quarters, was an opportunity for journalists to get to see warfare close up. It allowed the reporters to get some idea what our fighting men were up against—and, hopefully, so the Pentagon thought, the journalists would empathize with our soldiers. And this worked because the anxiety level among our men was high but not at its zenith. The kind of fighting in Fallujah raises anxiety to a much higher pitch because the actions are so much more risky, ambiguous, and fast. Our fighters, in this situation, are bound to make a greater number of mistakes—some fatal for themselves or the enemy.

Keeping journalists around in this situation is only adding to the burdens of our fighting men if they also have to give consideration to the moral sensibilities of journalists. Get rid of them!

November 14, 2004

CULTURE WATCH

By Rita Kramer

The writer is the author of various books on biography, history, and contemporary issues, has published articles and op-ed pieces in numerous periodicals here and abroad, and, incidentally, is Yale’s wife.

The Literary Mind at Work…

If the revamped New York Times Book Review is any different from its old self, it can only be said to be more of the same. Bigger, hardly better. This week’s cover feature is a review of the latest book from one of my favorite authors, Alice Munro, whose stories I discovered over two decades ago. One of her earliest collections, and still a favorite of mine, was called “Lives of Girls and Women,” and the title could describe everything she’s written since, stories that could only be described as political by those to whom everything is political. A modest Canadian who never participated in the circus of personal publicity and mutual-blurb-writing that is the Manhattan cocktail-circuit literary life, Alice Munro has been persuaded by her agent and/or publisher to become the object of a kind of media blitz with the publication of her new book. Nothing wrong with that; she deserves recognition and plaudits. Last week a long profile about the author, this week an unusually long book review.

The review is by Jonathan Franzen, the kind of novelist who is the darling of the gatekeepers of the culture at the New York Times and the New Yorker. You know the kind of novel—the dark side of American culture. Setting forth his reasons why Book Review readers should be Alice Munro readers, Franzen praises the stories for such inarguable virtues as their richness of detail and unforgettable characters and then, just when you think he’s done a good enough job of presenting the obvious and maybe even earned himself a blurb for his next book, you come to the following explanation of why Alice Munro has not become better known up to now. Ready? It’s because “Hatred is entertaining.” And this is what follows:

“The great insight of media-age extremists. How else to explain the election of so many repellent zealots, the disintegration of political civility, the ascendancy of Fox News? First the fundamentalist bin Laden gives George Bush an enormous gift of hatred, then Bush compounds that hatred through his own fanaticism, and now one half of the country believes that Bush is crusading against the Evil One while the other half (and most of the world) believes that Bush is the Evil One….”

Well, dear readers, this is what passes for worth publishing in the New York Times Book review. Repellent [elected American] zealots…Bush’s fanaticism…Fox News? They, according to this deep thinker, are the spreaders of hate. And we poor philistines thought it was Arab Moslem jihadists, a corrupt United Nations, renewed French anti-Semitism, things like that. But what do we know compared to the sophisticated members of the literary world. Our brains have obviously been invaded and conquered by the likes of Fox News. By the way, has anyone seen anything by Mr. Franzen, with his admirable disapproval of hatred, a review maybe, or perhaps a passing comment, about Michael Moore’s “Farenheit 4/11”? No? Wonder why…

I wonder too whether Alice Munro is embarrassed at having been used so shamelessly to put forward a political agenda. There’s no way of knowing. That’s the irony. Her stories are not about politics, they are about the lives of girls and women in a world more rich and more complicated than the much-prized novelist –another irony—can imagine.

And now for the good news. All is not bleak on the arts front. At last there is some theater in New York that is not about oppressed homosexuals, oppressed women, oppressed blacks, or misunderstood child-molesters. For Horsefeathers readers within striking distance of Manhattan, two treats are available. The first, at an off-Broadway theater that is actually on [upper] Broadway, is “Trying.” Never mind the plot, giving it away would spoil the fun. And the play is fun, even though it is also sad. It’s about mortality, something by which we are all affected, not as members of this or that interest group. It is really about the human condition, and offers one of the most affecting performances imaginable by Fritz Weaver, who is not a star but an actor. One of the best we have. You will leave the theater uplifted, trust me.

The other play is called “Doubt,” and it is set in a religious school some years ago. It raises more questions than it answers in its totally absorbing hour and a half. The characters are not sounding boards for the playwright’s positions (one has no indication of what those are) but you will not easily get them out of your mind. What a treat to see a play of ideas again when one had thought everything but the politically correct had disappeared from the theater thanks to the good offices of Frank Rich and his right-thinking (read left-thinking) successors at the New York Times, final arbiter of the fate of most plays and prizes. “Doubt” is a current offering of the Manhattan Theater Club.

November 05, 2004

WHY THE LUXURY LIBERALS STILL DON'T GET IT--HUGE EGOS

On the day after the election Joseph Berger, reporter of soft news for the New York Times, did a post-election psychoanalysis of the soul of New York City—well not exactly New York City: most of the article was taken up with the fragile denizens of the Upper West Side.

The Upper West Side is the epicenter of Luxury Liberalism in America. It extends along the Hudson for two Miles from Lincoln Center to Columbia University. It has block after block of huge apartment buildings filled with old, high-ceilinged, spacious apartments, each one worth a gazillion dollars, and owned by celebrities from Hollywood, Broadway, and the media—print and broadcast. Probably most of the upper echelon of the New York Times lives there. ABC News is located there. And thousands of patients and their analysts live there.

Take Zito Joseph, shaken to the core by the election results, he is one of Mr. Berger’s disconsolate cases: " ‘Everybody seems to hate us these days,’ said Zito Joseph, a 63-year-old retired psychiatrist….

“Dr. Joseph, a bearded, broad-shouldered man with silken gray hair, was sharing coffee and cigarettes with his fellow dog walker, Roberta Kimmel Cohn, at an outdoor table outside the hole-in-the-wall Breadsoul Cafe near Lincoln Center. The site was almost a cliché corner of cosmopolitan Manhattan, with a newsstand next door selling French and Italian newspapers and, a bit farther down, the Lincoln Plaza theater showing foreign movies.

“ ‘I'm saddened by what I feel is the obtuseness and shortsightedness of a good part of the country - the heartland,’ Dr. Joseph said. ‘This kind of redneck, shoot-from-the-hip mentality and a very concrete interpretation of religion is prevalent in Bush country - in the heartland.

“ ‘New Yorkers are more sophisticated and at a level of consciousness where we realize we have to think of globalization, of one mankind, that what's going to injure masses of people is not good for us,’ he said.
“His friend, Ms. Cohn, a native of Wisconsin who deals in art, contended that New Yorkers were not as fooled by Mr. Bush's statements as other Americans might be. ‘New Yorkers are savvy,’ she said. ‘We have street smarts. Whereas people in the Midwest are more influenced by what their friends say.

" ‘They're very 1950's," she said of Midwesterners. ‘When I go back there, I feel I'm in a time warp.’

“Dr. Joseph acknowledged that such attitudes could feed into the perception that New Yorkers are cultural elitists, but he didn't apologize for it.

" ‘People who are more competitive and proficient at what they do tend to gravitate toward cities,’ he said.”

It was wise of Dr. Joseph to retire from his profession at an early age, HORSEFEATHERS’ believes. Lacking insight, he is also, apparently, unfamiliar with the diagnostic category of “narcissistic personality disorder,” which describes a person with the following traits: has a grandiose sense of self-importance; believes that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by, associate with, other special or high status people; shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

It sounds to HORSEFEATHERS like Dr. Joseph and Ms Cohn were made for each other.

And so we must take our leave of New York’s Upper West Side where all the women are strong-minded, all the men are overweight, and all the children are spoiled.

November 03, 2004

AMERICA HAS ANSWERED THE QUESTION

We are not Spain. We are America--land of the free and home of the brave.

November 01, 2004

THE FINAL ENDORSEMENT OF JOHN KERRY

MEMRI translates an article by Mamoun Fandy in the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram;
'Bin Laden Votes for John Kerry: A Tape of Admission, Voting and Capitulation.' The following are excerpts from the article: [1]

'Osama Bin Laden Announced his Vote for John Kerry'...see the rest here.

        Today we find out where the American people stand: are they with the candidate preferred by infidel hating, mass murderer, Osama bin Laden? Are they with the first choice of the world's oldest AIDS ridden terrorist, Yasser Arafat? Do they support the preferred candidate of Mattathir Mohammed, George Soros, and Michael Moore, of Mohammed el Baradei, Kofi Annan and every Muslim, Jew hating despot--or are we with the candidate preferred by the man who led in the months following the sneak attack, Rudy Giuliani? When Horsefeathers enters the polling booth, here in left-liberal utopia-ville, we know which side we'll be on. In the early days of World War IV, President Bush described our enemies thus: "These terrorists...we have seen their kind before. They're the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies."
        President Bush forced nations and individuals to choose. You're with us in this war, or you're with the terrorists. Today it's America's turn to choose. It's each of our turns to choose. Are we on the side of the terrorists seeking to destroy us? Have we lost so much confidence in the noble idea of America, that we have become a nation of metrosexual wimps, like Spain, eager to be liked and guiltily ready to admit we've committed wrongs for which our enemies- we empathically understand- seek revenge?If we have wavered, been weakened by our wordsmith intellectuals 30+ year outpouring of Post-modern multicultural cant, then we will accept Osama's offering: security in return for electing a more compliant, therapeutically oriented pre 9-11 leader, John Kerry. After all, many of Kerry's criticisms of Bush are identical with the complaints of bin Laden. If we want to go back to the big, stock market induced sleep of the '90's all we have to do is stand against the President. President Bush with his repeated promises to be "relentless" in pursuit of our enemies, has sought to keep us awake and to point out that, unlike in dreams, reality doesn't always yield before infantile fantasies. He has also asked our help, to the very end of the campaign, asking people to "Stand with me." We rise to attention and proudly stand with him, ready to help.
        Horsefeathers is grateful that when the crisis of our age smashed home on 9-11, George W. Bush and not Al Gore was President. We thank George Bush, a good and decent man who has been reviled for assuming the leadership role history required of America, the last best hope of mankind, of Western civilization against the onrushing tide of Islamo-Nazi barbarism.
        George Canning wrote these lines about Pitt after the battle of Waterloo:
And oh if again the rude whirlwind should arise
The dawning of peace should first darkness to form,
The regrets of the good and the fears of the wise,
Should turn to the pilot who weathered the storm.

         Now, let's roll!

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