Disney doesn’t seem to think so.
Monthly Archives: June 2004
What Does Victory Look Like?
In comments to the previous post, Duncan Young writes:
The big difference is that in WWII the shape of victory was pretty damn clear – specific land was occupied, papers were publically signed, POW’s turned over etc etc.
I’ve never heard a non-handwaving description of what ‘winning’ looks like in the War on Terror. Which is a bit of a problem with applying the whole ‘war’ paradigm to this case.
That’s one of the problems with calling it a “War on Terror.”
If we call it by its right name, a war on radical Islamic fundamentalism, then the victory conditions become more clear, if not entirely politically correct.
It means a Middle East (and other places) in which governments don’t actively fund (or look the other way at) terrorist activities, in which imams in the mosques don’t preach hate and death to the Jews and other infidels every Friday evening, with either active government support or acquiescence, in which madrassas, if they exist at all, teach a modern and reformed version of Islam. It may also include a prosperous and free Arab world, though unfortunately it need not if those other conditions can occur without it.
That’s what victory looks like. How to achieve it is unclear, and worthy of debate, but many opponents of the war and the administration don’t even seem to see that as a legitimate goal, let alone one to debate the means of getting there. The politically incorrect part is that it means committing “culturicide,” which is something that remains an anathema to the multi-culti cultists, to whom all is relative. And while it doesn’t require genocide, it may indeed require killing many more people than we might desire, because there are some minds that won’t be changed.
Certainly policies followed in the eighties and nineties (to which it sounds like Senator Kerry wants us to return) won’t get us there. Whether or not the current policy will remains to be seen, but it’s got a lot better prospects than prosecutions and diplomacy alone. There will be many more regime changes, by various means, before this war is over.
And Speaking Of WW II
Go read VDH today:
We do have a grave problem in this country, but it is not the plan for Iraq, the neoconservatives, or targeting Saddam. Face it: This present generation of leaders at home would never have made it to Normandy Beach. They would instead have called off the advance to hold hearings on Pearl Harbor, cast around blame for the Japanese internment, sued over the light armor and guns of Sherman tanks, apologized for bombing German civilians, and recalled General Eisenhower to Washington to explain the rough treatment of Axis prisoners.
I Hope NORAD’s Been Notified
This is kind of cool. Via Jim Oberg, I’m informed that two Russian strategic bombers are going to fly from Russia over the north pole and land in Oregon.
1350 GMT — Russian strategic bomber to visit U.S. for first time
MOSCOW. June 4 (Interfax-AVN) – The Russian TU-95MS Bear strategic bomber will conduct a flight to the U.S. for the fist time, Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky,head of the Air Force press- service,told Interfax-Military News Agency on Friday. According to him,the strategic bomber’s flight is timed to the 100th birthday of famous Russian test pilot Valery Chkalov to be celebrated on June 15-21.
“The ferry flight will be conducted along Chkalov’s route from Russia to the U.S. via the North Pole,” Drobyshevsky said. He also noted that the TU-95MS would be refueled in the air over the Arctic Ocean outside the Novaya Zemlya archipelago by the IL-78 Midas tanker.
The TU-95MS is to fly from the Russian Air Force base in Engels to Portland, while the IL-78 from Anadyr airbase to Portland. The IL-78 will carry a delegation of Russian Air Force officials and various equipment for the bomber. “It will be the first time Russian aircraft of this type visit the U.S.,” he emphasized.
I Hope NORAD’s Been Notified
This is kind of cool. Via Jim Oberg, I’m informed that two Russian strategic bombers are going to fly from Russia over the north pole and land in Oregon.
1350 GMT — Russian strategic bomber to visit U.S. for first time
MOSCOW. June 4 (Interfax-AVN) – The Russian TU-95MS Bear strategic bomber will conduct a flight to the U.S. for the fist time, Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky,head of the Air Force press- service,told Interfax-Military News Agency on Friday. According to him,the strategic bomber’s flight is timed to the 100th birthday of famous Russian test pilot Valery Chkalov to be celebrated on June 15-21.
“The ferry flight will be conducted along Chkalov’s route from Russia to the U.S. via the North Pole,” Drobyshevsky said. He also noted that the TU-95MS would be refueled in the air over the Arctic Ocean outside the Novaya Zemlya archipelago by the IL-78 Midas tanker.
The TU-95MS is to fly from the Russian Air Force base in Engels to Portland, while the IL-78 from Anadyr airbase to Portland. The IL-78 will carry a delegation of Russian Air Force officials and various equipment for the bomber. “It will be the first time Russian aircraft of this type visit the U.S.,” he emphasized.
I Hope NORAD’s Been Notified
This is kind of cool. Via Jim Oberg, I’m informed that two Russian strategic bombers are going to fly from Russia over the north pole and land in Oregon.
1350 GMT — Russian strategic bomber to visit U.S. for first time
MOSCOW. June 4 (Interfax-AVN) – The Russian TU-95MS Bear strategic bomber will conduct a flight to the U.S. for the fist time, Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky,head of the Air Force press- service,told Interfax-Military News Agency on Friday. According to him,the strategic bomber’s flight is timed to the 100th birthday of famous Russian test pilot Valery Chkalov to be celebrated on June 15-21.
“The ferry flight will be conducted along Chkalov’s route from Russia to the U.S. via the North Pole,” Drobyshevsky said. He also noted that the TU-95MS would be refueled in the air over the Arctic Ocean outside the Novaya Zemlya archipelago by the IL-78 Midas tanker.
The TU-95MS is to fly from the Russian Air Force base in Engels to Portland, while the IL-78 from Anadyr airbase to Portland. The IL-78 will carry a delegation of Russian Air Force officials and various equipment for the bomber. “It will be the first time Russian aircraft of this type visit the U.S.,” he emphasized.
Sixty Two Years Ago
The beginning of the end of the war in the Pacific occurred for the Japanese.
The Battle of Midway was the most decisive single naval battle in U.S. history. The battle left two heavy Japanese carriers against four U.S. carriers, and cost the Japanese veteran pilots whose inexperienced replacements would require a full year of training. Furthermore, the Imperial Japanese Navy lost the secret of its Zero fighter, leading to certain improvements of the F6F Hellcat, which would, just a year later, begin to destroy Japanese air supremacy.
The Battle of Midway enabled the U.S. Navy to go onto the offensive. Herein lay the importance of the battle. For this is where I think people are wrong when they say that the loss of the battle would not have been a too important event. If the U.S. had indeed lost all three carriers at Midway there would have been merely three carriers remaining to oppose any Japanese move — none of which was a really good ship. Saratoga was old and slow in maneuvering, Wasp small and with a small complement of planes, and Ranger slow and small as well as ill-protected. None of these carriers could hope to last in a battle with the Japanese carrier fleet which would allow the Japanese to prosecute several goals: construction of airfields on Guadalcanal; invasion of Port Moresby; invasion of New Caledonia; and more. The Battle of Midway reversed this. The Japanese could never again operate offensively, while the Americans could now do so at places of their own choosing.
Two years later, almost to the day, the successful invasion of Europe at Normandy would signal the beginning of the end of Hitler’s regime as well.
Aldridge Results
The commission’s report will be released next Thursday, a little less than five months after the president’s announcement of the new policy and the formation of the commission. NASA will have a briefing on it the next day, a week from today.
What Was Tito, Chopped Liver?
Via Clark Lindsey, here’s an article on the upcoming SpaceShipOne flight that’s more than just a regurgitation of Scaled’s press release. It helped that the author interviewed Jeff Foust about it. I only found one problem with it.
The pilot, who will become the first nongovernmental astronaut in history, then will fly the craft back to Earth after it reconfigures from rocket to glider plane.
Emphasis mine. Apparently he’s never heard of Charlie Walker, the Japanese news agency guy, Helen Sharman, Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth…
It would have been correct to say that he was the first astronaut to fly on a non-government-developed vehicle, which is the real significance (particularly when one looks at the relative cost).
I also found this part interesting, because I hadn’t previously seen much of a hint about Paul Allen’s motives:
Crediting Rutan and the Scaled Composites team with accomplishing “amazing things” without government backing, Allen said SpaceShipOne proves that a privately funded space industry is possible.
“Every time SpaceShipOne flies we demonstrate that relatively modest amounts of private funding can significantly increase the boundaries of commercial space technology,” Allen said in a statement.Foust said “modest” might be in the eye of the beholder, but Allen’s funding had shown that a relatively small amount of money — on the order of a few tens of millions — can fund development of a manned, reusable, suborbital spacecraft that could open new markets, such as space tourism.
It’s not clear if he has a business plan for follow-on developments, but it is clear that he’s been thinking about it. If he starts to compete with fellow Seattleite (Seattleinian?–are either of those correct, or even words?) and dotcom entrepreneur Jeff Bezos, things could get very interesting very quickly.
Let It Die
Apparently Arnold is as ignorant about the “assault weapons” ban as many others. But it probably won’t hurt him much in California.
In fact, supporting an extension of the ban, while having no practical effect, may give him cover to veto some of the loonier things that the legislature does in Sacramento (e.g., the ammunition tax, or the requirement to report gun ownership when renewing drivers license registration) without being called an NRA stooge.