Foreign Policy, History, Homeland Security, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, War
To support the troops is to relinquish slogans in favor of an understanding of history. Honor the troops, but not in “a cursory way” that makes you feel better; but in a way that does them good.
[Sent by Bob Schaffer.]
English, Human Accomplishment, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Literature, Neoconservatism, The Zeitgeist
I can’t say that Christopher Hitchens had a philosophical core—he did not. Thus the attempts in this BBC tribute to imbue the stands Hitchens took over the years with nobility fall flat. However, the late Mr. Hitchens possessed a formidable intellect and was both a great rhetorician and writer. One can agree with the somewhat prosaic Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who once worked as an intern for Hitchens.” Clegg said: “Christopher Hitchens was everything a great essayist should be: infuriating, brilliant, highly provocative and yet intensely serious.”
BBC News doesn’t divulge who dubbed Hitchens “a drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay.” BUT I can tell you it was MP George Galloway. The quaint “popinjay” coinage gives Galloway (what a character!) away. Besides, back in 2005, I had blogged about the delightful joust between Galloway and Hitchens, RIP. I am nothing if not consistent. Here is what I wrote at the time:
Now hold your horses, will you, because I also admire Christopher Hitchens as a stylist, conversationalist, and an extraordinary flyter. What is flyting, you ask? It’s an ancient Scottish form of invective, a true master of which is the MP George Galloway. I don’t care for his or Hitchens’ ever-shifting views, but I loved the flyting that flew between the two. Galloway called Hitchens a drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay. Hitchens responded over the pages of an august publication by likening the lickspittle praise Galloway once bestowed on him to spittle flung in place of argument. Later on, the two dueled deliciously on C-Span, where, I’m afraid, Hitchens proved his uncontested superiority in this spontaneous rhetorical art.
Barack Obama, Bush, Democracy, Iraq, Middle East, Military, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, Religion, War
Saddam Hussein ruled over what the state department considered a rogue state, Iraq. The US eliminated Hussein and invaded his country (not in that order). Thanks to the American invasion, Iraq is now a failed state, where the politically weak are forsaken, and a muscular majority exercises its authority (a dispensation also known as democracy). The deposed dictator had kept a lid on the cauldron of sectarian strife, now boiling over in Iraq.
I’ve covered the plight of the millions of Iraqi refugees we helped uproot.
Against the backdrop of “Obama basking in the Iraq withdrawal” comes a reality check: a report, via CNN, on those Iraqis who have been internally displaced.
While war supporters may console themselves with the fact that “displacement is not new in Iraq,” as this Brookings-Institute observes, Iraq since the blessings of Bush is suffering a displacement crisis.
Foreign Policy, John McCain, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Paleoconservatism, Russia
“Marco Rubio vs. Rand Paul” is a column only Pat Buchanan could have written—the writing is “muscular” and spare and the analysis rooted in a deep understanding of history and Old-Right tradition (“… one of the great patriots of our time,” I had called Buchanan).
(See my take on the “We are all Georgians” McCain-coined mantra, mentioned in the “Marco Rubio vs. Rand Paul” column.)
Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio, rising star of the Republican right, on everyone’s short list for VP, called for a unanimous vote, without debate, on a resolution directing President Obama to accept Georgia’s plan for membership in NATO at the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago.
Rubio was pushing to have the U.S. Senate pressure Obama into fast-tracking Georgia into NATO, making Tbilisi an ally the United States would be obligated by treaty to go to war to defend.
Now it is impossible to believe a senator, not a year in office, dreamed this up himself. Some foreign agent of Scheunemann’s ilk had to have had a role in drafting it.
And for whose benefit is Rubio pushing to have his own countrymen committed to fight for a Georgia that, three years ago, started an unprovoked war with Russia? Who cooked up this scheme to involve Americans in future wars in the Caucasus that are none of our business?
The answer is unknown. What is known is the name of the senator who blocked it – Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, who alone stepped in and objected, defeating Rubio’s effort to get a unanimous vote.
The resolution was pulled. But these people will be back. They are indefatigable when it comes to finding ways to commit the blood of U.S. soldiers to their client regimes and ideological bedfellows.
A while back I had warned about Rubio, in “Neoconservative Kingpin Taps Ryan/Rubio.”
William Kristol was touting Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio as a 2012 presidential item. “If Kristol is this excited, it mus be at the promise of killing and carnage.