Both are discussed today over at Lileks’ place. Also, judicial overreach in the Great White North.
Category Archives: History
Learned Nothing, Forgotten Nothing
Andy McCarthy says that Barack Obama is the September 10th candidate:
The fact is that we used the criminal justice system as our principal enforcement approach, the approach Obama intends to reinstate, for eight years — from the bombing of the World Trade Center until the shocking destruction of that complex on 9/11. During that timeframe, while the enemy was growing stronger and attacking more audaciously, we managed to prosecute successfully less than three dozen terrorists (29 to be precise). And with a handful of exceptions, they were the lowest ranking of players.
When an elitist lawyer like Obama claims the criminal-justice system works against terrorists, he means it satisfies his top concern: due process. And on that score, he’s quite right: We’ve shown we can conduct trials that are fair to the terrorists. After all, we give them lawyers paid for by the taxpayers whom they are trying to kill, mounds of our intelligence in discovery, and years upon years of pretrial proceedings, trials, appeals, and habeas corpus.
As a national-security strategy, however, and as a means of carrying our government’s first responsibility to protect the American people, heavy reliance on criminal justice is an abysmal failure.
Obama is going to be pounded on his appalling historical ignorance throughout the campaign. “Auschwitz” was just the beginning.
[Update at noon]
Apparently the McCain campaign thinks that this is a major vulnerability for Obama:
As the war of words between the two presidential campaigns is escalating, McCain advisers and surrogates unleashed some of their harshest language yet in describing Obama.
On a conference call with reporters, former CIA chief James Woolsey and others said Obama’s policy regarding the handling of terrorism suspects would create an opening for more attacks like those on Sept. 11, 2001.
Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy adviser, said Obama represents “the perfect manifestation of a Sept. 10 mindset.”
“If a law enforcement approach were accurate, then you wouldn’t have had Sept. 11,” Kori Schake, a McCain policy adviser, said.
I think it’s going to be 1972 all over again. The reason that the “superdelegate” concept was come up with was exactly to prevent this. It would seem that they’re not doing their job.
Of course, it’s still several weeks until the convention. If I were the McCain campaign, I wouldn’t actually be pounding Obama this hard until he is safely the nominee. It probably helps Hillary! more at this stage than it does them, particularly since the public has a short attention span, and isn’t necessarily going to remember this by November.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Another history lesson for Obama:
Yasin fled the United States after the bombing to Iraq, and lived as Saddam Hussein’s guest in Baghdad until the invasion. He is still free, and wanted by the FBI.
Picky, picky, picky.
Anyway, it can’t possibly be true. As everyone knows, Saddam had absolutely no connection to terrorism, or World Trade Center bombings.
What’s Wrong With Redneck?
Andrea Mitchell felt compelled to apologize for calling southwest Virginia “real redneck country.”
Well, she’s right, it is. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I think that what she should be apologizing for (which perhaps she is, obliquely) is the insinuation that that’s a bad thing. While I understand that a lot of southerners take umbrage at the word, it’s really just a synonym for Scots-Irish, and it came over with them from England (and no, it has nothing to do with working in the hot sun). It was a phrase used to describe Presbyterians from northern England, who wore red collars. They were the people who settled Appalachia (and other regions). Eastern Virginia (and Maryland and Delaware) was settled by the so-called Cavaliers of southwest England, who had lost the Civil War to the Roundheads.
I think, though, that in the mind of east (and west) coast media elites like Andrea Mitchell, “redneck” is synonymous with “hillbilly,” which is unquestionably an uncomplimentary term, and why the apology was necessary. It’s also a mark of the cultural ignorance of those same media elite about flyover country.
What’s Wrong With Redneck?
Andrea Mitchell felt compelled to apologize for calling southwest Virginia “real redneck country.”
Well, she’s right, it is. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I think that what she should be apologizing for (which perhaps she is, obliquely) is the insinuation that that’s a bad thing. While I understand that a lot of southerners take umbrage at the word, it’s really just a synonym for Scots-Irish, and it came over with them from England (and no, it has nothing to do with working in the hot sun). It was a phrase used to describe Presbyterians from northern England, who wore red collars. They were the people who settled Appalachia (and other regions). Eastern Virginia (and Maryland and Delaware) was settled by the so-called Cavaliers of southwest England, who had lost the Civil War to the Roundheads.
I think, though, that in the mind of east (and west) coast media elites like Andrea Mitchell, “redneck” is synonymous with “hillbilly,” which is unquestionably an uncomplimentary term, and why the apology was necessary. It’s also a mark of the cultural ignorance of those same media elite about flyover country.
What To Take With You?
I agree with the commenters who say that almost anyone from the modern era transported to medieval Europe would be unlikely to live more than a few days. I’d certainly have pretty bad odds.
A New Project In The Works?
Alan Boyle has an interview with Paul Allen. This isn’t right, though:
Adrian Hunt, the collection’s executive director, told me that putting a pilot in the V-1 turned out to be a terrible idea.
“The theory is that you open the cockpit and you jump out just when you’re getting close to the target,” he said. “There’s a slight design fault there. Once you open the cockpit, that’s the intake for the rocket – and it tends to suck in things, including people.
“…intake for the rocket”?
It was a pulse jet.
A Tour Of What We Liberated
On the anniversary. Enjoy.
In Defense Of A Small Town
A lovely evocative essay, from Jim Manzi. Though it’s not really the subject, it’s an appropriate one somehow, for the anniversary of D-Day. This is what blogging is all about.
Mormons And Infrastructure
Jon Goff has a truly excellent post on what will be required for space settlements, with useful historical analogies. I’ve always considered the LDS analogy quite apt, both in terms of types of technologies and infrastructure needed for the emigration, and the motivations. As he notes, unfortunately, the space community often uses unuseful historical analogies and/or fails to recognize where they break down.
But what he describes would be a true “Interstate Highway System” for space, as opposed to what Mike Griffin considers one (Ares/Orion).
Forty Years
I recall waking up to my clock radio, which was announcing that Bobby Kennedy had been shot and killed the night before in LA, on June 5th, 1968. It was quite a shock to someone growing up in a family of Democrats, coming so soon after the King assassination, and a reminder of the assassination of his brother less than five years earlier.
Now, decades on, it’s pretty clear to me that, like his brother, he was vastly overrated, but his death was a tragedy nonetheless. Not because we were deprived of a great leader, but because we imagined we were, and it was traumatic, particularly for the left. To the point that, like JFK, though he was killed by a leftist (in this case a vengeful Palestinian) they had to concoct bizarre theories to make it appear to be a “right wing” conspiracy. Both the Kennedy assassinations are wounds from which so-called liberals have never really recovered, or gotten over their anger.