Random thoughts on almost anything and everything, with an emphasis on defense, intelligence, politics and national security matters..providing insight for the non-cleared world since 2005.
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Friday, December 15, 2006
Today's Reading Assignment
From Dean Barnett, posted at hughhewitt.com. Dean hits the nail squarely on the head, but sadly, I don't see any American Churchill(s) on the horizon.
For the sake of this country--and western civilization--I hope I'm wrong.
I just replied to a friend who served two terms as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, and who predicts that America needs to suffer an attack on a proportion that is some multiple of 9-11 before we feel challenged enough to get realistic about the war on the Nazi branch of Islam: “I'm not sure that it's not just my desire to see a light at the end of the tunnel talking here but, I am starting to get a sense, just from a few emails and comments here and there, that what the 06 election amounted to was the republicans saying to the dems, "you think this is easy? you think we can just leave? you think we have easy options? take a damn look for yourself and then tell me that a rapid pullout will be less destabilizing than chamberlain's 'peace in our time'!" And the result is that NOW, the democrats and the liberals in society (not just in washington) are starting to realize ..."oh, damned if you don't, too, huh ..." and starting to think ... about realistic approaches to a problem of a comparable scope to a historical problem that was eventually resolved through ... de-nazification (not to mention a double helping of cloudy mushrooms elsewhere).”
Side comment on Obama and Hillary: If we elect a black person or a woman, we'll do it in the Republican party, so as to take the major special interest category across the aisle with them. Seems less likely that the Dhimmocrats lack even one single competent political strategist than that their lives simply lack the meaning that a good shot in the foot might give them.
But why speak so ill of the Dhimmocrats whilst the Repubicants so lack the will to speak truth to power that they would rather (a) invite the Dhimms to see for their own congress that what seems impossible to win is also chamberlame to lose, and (b) invite a few too many cooks, or is it Bakers, to announce a former bureaucrat's Declaration of Answer.
As other commenters noted, if he's a Churchill, he would tend to already know, already be speaking the truth, but not being listened to until the next 9/11vasion, perhaps the unthinkable -- WMD deployment in America. To avoid that calamity, we need more than a Churchill, more than an answer; we need a revealer. Someone totally new to our scene -- a neomensche.
Perhaps he will be an entertainer whose show is blatantly preposterous, and quite shocking in the manner in which it pits painful truth against absurd falsehood, and contains enough kernels of feasibility (one interpretation of “truthiness”) that it risks becoming more-than-trivial. Perhaps he will point out that, in fighting an ideological opponent, we need not just guns, but also an ideological answer. Perhaps he will introduce such innovations as a national, ne, global, spiritual renewal based on a set of pragmatic (classically) liberal (i.e., not Religious) spiritual practices and principles, a nudaism of sorts. Perhaps he will manifest the Messyantic prophecy for the house of D-avid, of the martial Jewish tradition. Perhaps the Mayan calendar is unaccountably sophisticated, and points to a cosmic transition in 12/12. Perhaps that is what it would/will take to convince the fence-sitters (between the sides of those who literally (if such a word still retains any power) smile for the camera as they cut off the heads of their enemies, and those who prefer Southpark not depict their prophet (see "Cartoon Wars"), that the US is neither a paper tiger nor an asshole, or at least we can be more ... and must ... and therefore will. While civilization's enemies do their worst, we will give the world our best. Omnip.
Like him or not, I think Rudy G. has that potential.
ReplyDeleteJohn Howard
ReplyDeleteThe only man who said it like it was was Rick Santorum. Read his farewell speech.
ReplyDeleteChurchill, himself spent some years in the political wilderness.
I just replied to a friend who served two terms as a fighter pilot in Vietnam, and who predicts that America needs to suffer an attack on a proportion that is some multiple of 9-11 before we feel challenged enough to get realistic about the war on the Nazi branch of Islam: “I'm not sure that it's not just my desire to see a light at the end of the tunnel talking here but, I am starting to get a sense, just from a few emails and comments here and there, that what the 06 election amounted to was the republicans saying to the dems, "you think this is easy? you think we can just leave? you think we have easy options? take a damn look for yourself and then tell me that a rapid pullout will be less destabilizing than chamberlain's 'peace in our time'!" And the result is that NOW, the democrats and the liberals in society (not just in washington) are starting to realize ..."oh, damned if you don't, too, huh ..." and starting to think ... about realistic approaches to a problem of a comparable scope to a historical problem that was eventually resolved through ... de-nazification (not to mention a double helping of cloudy mushrooms elsewhere).”
ReplyDeleteSide comment on Obama and Hillary: If we elect a black person or a woman, we'll do it in the Republican party, so as to take the major special interest category across the aisle with them. Seems less likely that the Dhimmocrats lack even one single competent political strategist than that their lives simply lack the meaning that a good shot in the foot might give them.
But why speak so ill of the Dhimmocrats whilst the Repubicants so lack the will to speak truth to power that they would rather (a) invite the Dhimms to see for their own congress that what seems impossible to win is also chamberlame to lose, and (b) invite a few too many cooks, or is it Bakers, to announce a former bureaucrat's Declaration of Answer.
As other commenters noted, if he's a Churchill, he would tend to already know, already be speaking the truth, but not being listened to until the next 9/11vasion, perhaps the unthinkable -- WMD deployment in America. To avoid that calamity, we need more than a Churchill, more than an answer; we need a revealer. Someone totally new to our scene -- a neomensche.
Perhaps he will be an entertainer whose show is blatantly preposterous, and quite shocking in the manner in which it pits painful truth against absurd falsehood, and contains enough kernels of feasibility (one interpretation of “truthiness”) that it risks becoming more-than-trivial. Perhaps he will point out that, in fighting an ideological opponent, we need not just guns, but also an ideological answer. Perhaps he will introduce such innovations as a national, ne, global, spiritual renewal based on a set of pragmatic (classically) liberal (i.e., not Religious) spiritual practices and principles, a nudaism of sorts. Perhaps he will manifest the Messyantic prophecy for the house of D-avid, of the martial Jewish tradition. Perhaps the Mayan calendar is unaccountably sophisticated, and points to a cosmic transition in 12/12. Perhaps that is what it would/will take to convince the fence-sitters (between the sides of those who literally (if such a word still retains any power) smile for the camera as they cut off the heads of their enemies, and those who prefer Southpark not depict their prophet (see "Cartoon Wars"), that the US is neither a paper tiger nor an asshole, or at least we can be more ... and must ... and therefore will. While civilization's enemies do their worst, we will give the world our best. Omnip.
L'chaim