Over at the American Conservative, Gil Barndollar, former Marine Corps officer and currently Military Fellow-in-Residence at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship, has an excellent article on the modern American version of Dolchstosslegende (“dagger stab myth”)—the claim made by the German Right and immensely amplified by Adolf Hitler that Germany’s…
Search Results for: iraq
Short takes
Donald Trump not a nice person, Megan McArdle discovers Well, he isn’t. As Megan explains, following the announcement by Texas Republican Representative Will Hurd, the sole black Republican in the House, that he is retiring: All of which [Hurd’s intelligence, honesty, and decency] makes Hurd’s impending departure the perfect symbol of what has happened to…
Dirty Chinese try to prevent the U.S. from spying on them
Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former case officer with the CIA, pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide intelligence information to the Chinese government. He did not admit to actually providing information. You can read about the case in this story from the New York Times by Julien E. Barnes. According to Barnes, Lee’s case “highlighted…
Uh, so I guess it was just LARGELY about the Benjamins
Last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, which I did not know really still existed, had an impressive article by Nathan Thrall, “How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics”, which, shockingly enough, confirms about half of what the notorious Ilhan Omar had to say about Jews, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee…
Robert Kagan writes an interesting essay, with some stretchers, and not a few omissions
In one way, Robert Kagan’s recent “long-form” (7,000 words) essay in the Washington Post, “The strongmen strike back”, is an honest, intelligent examination of the rise of illiberalism in the modern world, a phenomenon as incontestable as it is dispiriting. In another way, Bob’s latest and longest is a bit of a con job, and…
Shorter Dick: Do as I say, not as I did
Or, maybe, do as I did, not as I say. Or even, do as I say, not as Reagan did. You may have heard that our former veep, Ragin’ Dick Cheney, ripped our current veep, Mild Mike Pence, a new one over the Trump Administration’s less than rumbustious foreign policy. Money quote (or money shot)…
Ilhan Omar: The strange case of the little girl in the headscarf who noticed that the emperor has no clothes
Oh, Ilhan Omar, what have you done? Yes, speaking the truth in the halls of Congress has always been hazardous to your health, but when little Ilhan, newly elected representative for the fifth district of Minnesota (basically Minneapolis and environs), remarked that “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says…
“Democrats need to beware their looney left,” says confirmed looney Max Boot
“As I’ve traveled around, speaking about my book on how extremists hijacked the Republican Party,” says WashPost pundit Max Boot. “I have been hearing from Democrats who are worried that the same thing is happening to their party. They have good cause for concern.” Well, that’s true, and much—but certainly not all—of what Max has…
Random Rants
Max Boot, feelin’ full of pith n’ vinegar. Again. Back in the day, when invading other countries first began to seem like a good idea to some people, Max Boot rushed to the very front of the queue o’ stupidity by opining that “Afghanistan and other troubled lands cry out for the sort of enlightened…
Go Donald! Go Donald! (Some of the time)
Yes, it has come to this: the American “Establishment” is so blind, benighted, and beggared that it takes the installation of a complete mountebank1 in the White House to save that Establishment, and the United States as well, from that Establishment’s ever-compounding follies. I refer, of course, to Donald Trump’s precipitous withdrawal of a relative…