Peggy Eaton

Peggy Eaton

The women who ostracized Margaret Eaton did not act out of mere snobbish rejection of a tavern-keeper's daughter; social mobility was not despised in the Jackson administration. The women saw themselves defending the interests and honor of the female half of humanity. They believed that no responsible woman should accord a man sexual favors without the assurance of support that went with marriage. A woman who broke ranks on this issue they considered a threat to all women. She encouraged men to make unwelcome advances. Therefore she must be condemned severely even if it meant applying a double standard of morality, stricter for women than for men. This conviction was widespread among women, not only in the middle class and regardless of political party. The women who had the courage to act upon it, standing up to Andrew Jackson and risking their husbands' careers, insisted that expedient politics must not control moral principle. They believed that women acting collectively could advance the moral state of society. Theirs was the attitude that justified women's role in contemporary moral reform causes like temperance and antislavery. And although most or all of them would have been shocked if it had been pointed out, theirs was the attitude that would lead in a few more years to an organized movement on behalf of women's rights. [Daniel Walker Howe, "What Hath God Wrought," 2007, p.338]

NY Civil War Draft Riots

NY Civil War Draft Riots Were Racist Attacks on Black People « COMMUNISM NOW!:

Here is a piece of clear thinking from American Communists:

"We must never forget the severity of U.S. racism, both historically and today. It’s central to every aspect of U.S. capitalist history, and remains today the most significant tool that helps the capitalists stay in power."

Post-traumatic Iraq syndrome - Los Angeles Times

Post-traumatic Iraq syndrome - Los Angeles Times

Congress Did the Right Thing Today

This was a big day for our country! When my wife told me the result
of the vote on the phone, I said, "There's hope for the republic
yet." The wise men in Washington thought they had it in the bag, and
democracy won for once. After eight years of watching democracy die,
we had a hopeful sign today.

One of the best parts of the whole scene was Nancy Pelosi's speech
just before the vote. For five days, leader after leader on the Hill,
on campaign, and at the White House said, "We have to set aside our
differences for the sake of the country. Let's put aside the partisan
acrimony of the last years and act in a bipartisan spirit to save the
economy." Then what did Pelosi do? She stuck it in the Republicans'
face just before the vote! She blamed the mess on them and made it
clear the Democrats would ride in to save the day. These are not the
words of someone who believes she might lose the big vote. Not long
after that speech, with the noes stacking up during the roll call,
she and her lieutenants are scurrying around with their cell phones
trying to secure enough votes to pass the bill. What leadership!
Ninety-five Democrats voted with the Republicans to defeat the
legislation. Pelosi didn't even know it ahead of time.

One could say a lot about the vote, the deteriorating economic
situation, and the efforts of government officials to address it.
I'll just comment briefly on a column Steve Pearlstein published in
the Washington Post. I've liked his analysis as we go through these
interesting times. When I saw the title of today's column, They Just
Don't Get It, I thought, "He can't be that condescending. That's not
like him!" Well, he wasn't condescending in tone, but the column did
indeed suggest that if people realized how serious things are, they
would not have told their representatives to vote against the so-
called bailout. Here is the message I wrote to Steve in response to
his article:

Your last sentence is the key to your whole article:

"But it is a measure of how little trust remains in both Washington
and Wall Street that voters are willing to risk a serious hit to
their wealth and income rather than follow their lead."

Voters don't trust Washington and Wall Street because they aren't
worthy of trust. This economic crisis has been developing for a long
time, and we can wait a few more months until we have new leadership.
Never throw good money after bad. The current leadership proved
itself unworthy a long time ago. Voters were right to reject their
leadership now.

My representative, Democrat Stephen Lynch, voted with the opposition
on this one. He stood with only two other members from the
Massachusetts delegation. He may have voted with his seat in mind,
but in fact his seat is secure. His district is solidly Democratic.
He stood on principle, and they are the right principles. Hooray for
courageous congressmen! Through this whole terrible war in Iraq, they
have been spineless wonders. Now at last both Republicans and
Democrats had a chance to repudiate the White House as well as their
own leadership in Congress, and they did it. They picked the right
issue and they did the right thing.

Buy a Toyota

All right, I know I get impatient when hear these same old arguments,
and they just don't make any sense. I mean it, they don't make any
sense, and people keep repeating them as if they do.

Take this argument about the trade deficit. It is based on economic
nationalism, an incorrect conception of the nation. The nation is not
an integrated economic unit. The idea that the nation acts as an
economic unit is an incoherent concept. Yet we hear that we are a
debtor nation, and our indebtedness is tied to our so-called current
account, or balance of payments. And the balance of payments is tied
to the balance of trade.

Well let me tell you, these numbers and these concepts are
meaningless in our global economy. A government can be in debt. A
family can be in debt. A business can be in debt. A nation can't be
in debt. What is a nation, from an economic point of view? A nation
doesn't make purchasing decisions. Individuals, families, businesses,
and governments make purchasing decisions. Nations don't decide to
borrow money. Individuals, families, businesses, and governments do.

It makes no sense at all to track balances of payments or balances of
trade, unless you think the nation is an important economic unit. But
it's not. From a global perspective, it doesn't matter if I buy a
Toyota or a Ford. I just want a reliable, safe car - one that gives
me good value for the purchase price. I don't care whether a company
in Japan or a company in Detroit benefits from the purchase. Why
should anyone else care? The companies want to make money and the
purchasers want a good car. How is the nation a relevant actor in
this transaction? Why do we care at all whether the money I pay for
the car stays in the United States or not?

Here is a telling instance where we don't bother to track current
accounts. No one knows the balance of trade between Massachusetts and
North Dakota. No one cares. No one knows the balance of trade between
any two states. There's a good reason for that. The states aren't
economic units. They're taxation units and regulatory units, but
they're not economic units that make purchasing and borrowing
decisions. We don't bother to track their balance of payments,
because to track those numbers for units that don't make such
decisions is meaningless. We're only interested in those numbers for
units that have revenues, expenditures, and debts. Households,
businesses, and governments have revenues, expenditures, and debts.
States don't. Neither do nations.

In the latest economic crisis, we're told by sober experts that we've
been living beyond our means. Economic decision making units can live
beyond their means because they decide to do so. Nation are not
economic decision making units, and they cannot live beyond their
means. National governments can decide to borrow money or inflate the
money supply if public expenditures exceed tax revenues, but nations
as a whole can't live beyond their means. It's just not a coherent
way to think.

Let's say you took the Johnsons in Minneapolis, the Harrisons in
Seattle, the Olsons in Miami, and the Sullivans in Boston. Throw in
the Andersons in Albuquerque and the Dawsons in Denver to increase
the number of households to six. With an average household size of
four, we have twenty-four people in our group. Now suppose we
calculate the balance of payments for these six households. Their
annual income averages $60,000, each household carries so much debt
and pays so much interest, and so on. Why should we care about those
figures? We don't, and there's a reason we don't. These four families
have no economic relationship except that they happen to live in the
United States. Their money-making, purchasing, and borrowing
decisions have nothing to do with each other. In no way do they act
as an economic unit.

Now suppose we throw in a few more families: one from Osaka, another
from Bangalore, a third from Venice, and a fourth from Cairo. Now we
have ten families. This group of ten families is no more or less
coherent as an economic group than the original six. They're just ten
economic units that have nothing in common except that they share the
same planet. That's the point. We want to understand the economic
decisions of actors that actually make decisions. Why would we care
about numbers that aggregate the economic behavior of groups that
have no decision making power whatever?

What's the conclusion here? What's the summarizing point? Let's look
at numbers that affect real decisions. People who cite the trade
deficit have a reason. They say that when we buy more than we sell
overseas, that's bad for the nation. They say that it's bad for the
nation because we're shipping dollars overseas, which makes us
poorer. It's especially bad because they lend the dollars back to us
to cover our profligate spending, so now we're in debt to the people
we've been buying from. It's all balderdash. First of all, it's not
bad to ship dollars overseeas if we're getting so many good things in
return. We buy those goods because we get good value from the
purchases. We'd rather have the reliable car than the money. Thank
heavens, we say, that the Japanese make such good cars.

Now about the borrowing: we don't necessarily go into debt to buy the
Japanese car. If we do borrow to pay for the car, the loan isn't
necessarily held by a foreign bank. If the loan is held by a foreign
bank, who cares if the interest rate is fair? Yes, shipping dollars
overseas makes it easier to loan large amounts of money to the United
States government and United States banks. You can't blame the trade
deficit for those loans, though. If U. S. institutions want to borrow
money and foreign banks have cash because exporters have deposited
their profits with them, why shouldn't they loan it to us. Now we've
benefited twice: we have all those high quality cars on good terms,
and we have access to relatively cheap credit as well. Moreover, not
one decision maker in this chain has been coerced or tricked into
making a choice contrary to his or her interests.

Economists and politicians worry about this chain because we don't
want people and institutions here to be in debt to foreign banks. But
why? Why do we care who holds our loans? I just want the bank that
holds my home mortgage to treat me fairly and honestly. Whether the
bank's owners live in the United States or elsewhere doesn't affect
me at all.

The worriers have one big ace up their sleeves. What if we go to war,
they say? Then economic nationalism makes sense. We have to have
energy independence because our enemies could cut off our oil supply.
We have to cut down our foreign debt because our enemies could cut
off our credit. We have to become self-sufficient in every way,
because if we go to war that's the only way we can survive. If you
want to base all of your economic policies on the possibility that
you'll go to war, without even knowing who your enemies are, go
ahead. It doesn't look like a wise path to me.

The fact is, these ideas about economic nationalism go so far back
it's hard to trace them. We all know about mercantilism, the first
organized form of economic nationalism. People took a lot of pride in
their nation - they saw their nation as their extended family as it
supplanted the tribe and the clan. No wonder they wanted it to do
well economically. No wonder they took notice if other countries did
better. No wonder they wanted their current account to show a
positive balance at the end of the year. Let the gold pile up in the
treasury, for gold is good. We are a rich nation.

Things don't work that way anymore, Dorothy. The gold in our treasury
is an economic throwback, that's for sure. Who's to say that the
Japanese are better off than we are, when they have a lot of money in
the bank and we have millions of Toyotas to transport us all around?
By people's decisions, we have the cars we want and they have the
money they want. If General Motors can't make a profit, that's not
your neighbor's fault, it's not Toyota's fault, and it's certainly
not the United States' fault. It's not a sign of weakness, either, or
a sign of living beyond our means. No one has made a bad decision
here, except for the managers at General Motors, of course. But for
their poor stewardship, they might have competed successfully with
their brothers in Tokyo.

I'd say that's enough for now, wouldn't you? Someday you might draw a
diagram to illustrate the chain you describe above. If people can see
the diagram, they'll understand your analysis and criticism better.

We Were a Democracy

We are a democracy.

Let political parties say what they like, but end propaganda by
elected officials, using public money to pay for it.

Let religious organizations be active in political arguments, but
stop public leaders who use religious organizations to advance their
aims. No to claims of moral authority that derive from religious
beliefs.

Let us defend ourselves against our enemies, but say no to torture,
no to illegal wars, no to occupations, and no to prison camps.

Let political leaders offer persuasive arguments for what they would
like to do, but no to fear mongering, panic, lies, distortion, and
intimidation.

Let us maintain our system of distributed power and shared
responsibility - squash the theory of the unitary executive.

Let us restore the Senate and House of Representatives to a place of
strength and influence. We don't want a compliant legislature that
bends to the executive's will.

Let us keep freedom alive in every way. We won't tolerate security
measures that give the government more power, and that put people in
more, not less danger.

Let us set an example of freedom for our friends and our enemies. End
now the aggression, intimidation, fear, and every other way we have
lowered our standing in the world.

We are a democracy, or at least we were. We were admired everywhere,
now we have truly lost all we held dear.

Hitler's Rise to Power

Proverbial Wisdom from Around the World

As They Say in Zanzibar, by David Crystal

In this captivating tour of humanity's received wisdom, one of Britain's best-known and best-selling authorities on language, David Crystal, brings together more than 2,000 delightful proverbs from 110 countries--the first new book of world proverbs to appear in nearly eighty years.

Here readers will find proverbs they have known all their lives--such as
"Everything comes to those who wait" and
"Once a crook, always as crook"
--alongside such lesser known gems as
"One generation plants the tree, another gets the shade" (China) or
"When two elephants tussle, it's the grass that suffers" (Zanzibar).
Indeed, one of the great virtues of this volume is that Crystal serves up proverbs almost certain to be unknown to the reader, providing many fresh and wonderful surprises. Readers will find shrewd and incisive sayings from virtually every continent, ranging
from Finland ("Even a small star shines in the darkness")
to Ethiopia ("The smaller the lizard, the greater its hope of becoming a crocodile")
to Japan ("Too much courtesy is discourtesy").
Loosely following the method of Roget's Thesaurus, which groups words with similar meanings, Crystal has gathered these proverbs in 468 fields such as sameness and difference, small amount and large amount, thus placing similar and antithetical proverbs in close proximity. In addition, there are more than thirty side panels on special topics, such as proverbs in Shakespeare ("Brevity is the soul of wit"), biblical proverbs ("Pride goeth before destruction"), and much more.

Proverbs are fascinating in what they tell us about another culture's view of life. Each proverb in this book adds a tiny bit more to our understanding of the world's cultural diversity, and thus helps us grasp more fully what it means to be human.

THE WISDOM OF THE WORLD:
A coconut shell full of water is a sea to an ant (Zanzibar)
Don't call the alligator a big-mouth till you have crossed the river (Belize)
A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses (China)
They dread a moth, who have been stung by a wasp (Albania)
God heals and the doctor gets the money (Belgium)
The nail suffers as much as the hole (Netherlands)
When you sweep the stairs, you start at the top (Germany)

Journler Entry

We are a democracy.

Let political parties say what they like, but no to propaganda by
elected officials, using public money to pay for it.

Let religious organizations be active in political arguments, but no to public leaders who use religious organizations to advance their
aims. No to claims of moral authority that derive from religious
beliefs.

Let us defend ourselves against our enemies, but no to torture, no to
illegal wars, occupations, and prison camps.

Let political leaders offer persuasive arguments for what they would
like to do, but no to fear mongering, lies, distortion, and
intimidation.

Let us maintain our system of distributed power and shared
responsibility - no to the theory of the unitary executive.

Let us restore the Senate and House of Representatives to a place of
strength and influence - no to a compliant legislature that bends to
the executive's will.

Let us keep freedom alive in every way - no to security measures that
give the government more power, but that don't make people safer.

Let us set an example of freedom for our friends and our enemies - no
to aggression, intimidation, fear, and all the other ways we have
lowered our standing in the world.

We are a democracy. Or at least we were.

A Melancholy Man of Letters

A Melancholy Man of Letters - WSJ.com: "It is an interesting question whether a person who thinks that he is on the brink of insanity is indeed so."

Republican VP Selection

Alaska made it into the news suddenly last week, and for an unusual reason! We’ve been reading about Sarah Palin down here, of course. Naturally I had to look her up online. John McCain may have picked her in order to strengthen his vote-getting among women, but it’s men who care about how she looks!

Am I my brother's keeper?

Am I my brother's keeper?

Barack Obama asserted in his acceptance speech that we have a responsibility to each other, that each of us is our brother's keeper. Perhaps. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between taking care of your brother and being a busybody. What's entirely clear is that the government is not your brother. Obama's vision is that we should take care of our brothers via the government's good offices. Don't do it! The government is a necessary evil, not a caring brother. It is not even a good channel for caring brothers. It's good for a very limited number of purposes, and caring for your brother isn't one of them.

Here is the link to Obama's speech.

"I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

Obama Secures Historic Nomination - NYTimes.com: "Mr. Obama himself arrived in Denver Wednesday afternoon. He recently gave reporters a brief hint of the acceptance speech he will deliver at Invesco Field at Mile High Thursday night. “I’m not aiming for a lot of high rhetoric,” Mr. Obama said. “I am much more concerned with communicating how I intend to help middle-class families live their lives.”"

First Message in a Long While

Hi Everyone,

A few days ago, I finished a year-long term as president of STC Boston. That’s the Boston chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. During that time – July 2007 to June 2008 – I pretty much shut down my e-mail communication beyond narrow limits. I struggled to keep up with STC traffic, let alone other interests and obligations. That’s over now, so I’ve wanted to exit the STC honeycomb and check out the broad world again.

First of all, happy Fourth of July to all. You remember that the Fourth was Ronald Reagan’s favorite holiday. This year is the ninety-seventh anniversary of his birth in 1911. Sean Wilentz’s recent book, The Age of Reagan, suggests that the man’s legacy becomes more important each year. We have two books now called The Age of Reagan, the first by Steven F. Hayward and the second by Sean Wilentz. More books will come, with different titles but a similar appreciation of Reagan’s importance.

Now for the main news about editorial policy. I think I wrote something similar a couple of years ago, before TLJ went into hibernation. The journal needs to broaden its subject matter beyond Reagan and his beliefs, beyond the Iraq war and its difficulties. It is after all a journal of democracy and public affairs. It’s bound to reflect my own interests, which point toward both libertarian and mainstream politics in this election year. A lot of interesting things occurred during this spring’s primary season, and the general campaign should be interesting as well.

One part of TLJ’s editorial policy won’t change. It remains open to articles and letters from anyone who would like to contribute. Please write to me at steveng@techwritepublishing.com if you have an article, or an idea for an article. A letter to the editor is the easiest format, of course. Write and let me know what’s on your mind.

That’s enough for today. If you like what you read here, please forward TLJ to a friend or family member. If you don’t like it much, please unsubscribe with no hard feelings. And thanks for your interest through many months and changes.

All the best,

Steven Greffenius

Reagan Quotation

“Enjoy life. It’s ungrateful not to.” ~ Ronald Reagan

Three Quotations

“He took words and sent them out to fight for us.” ~ Margaret Thatcher on Ronald Reagan and the Cold War

“The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.” ~ Ronald Reagan

“They keep talking about drafting a constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it has worked for over two hundred years, and we're not using it anymore.” ~ Anonymous

John Podhoretz on Ronald Reagan

In PoliGazette - Speechwriter John Podhoretz on Ronald Reagan:

"I discovered, reading through the archives of his addresses, was that he was never hortatory. He never told his audience what they “must” do; he did not even say what “we must do.” It was not his place to do so; he worked for the American people, he was not their boss. He did talk about what politicians must do or should do to fulfill their compact with the people who elected them, but he did not place himself in a position superior to his employers. It was his view, rhetorically, that the American people were the repository of wisdom and he was just trying to discern what they believed and act according to it."

From Reagan's First Inaugural

SouthCoastToday.com

'In this present crisis,' President Reagan said, 'government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.'

The Wrong Path

It isn't the homecoming they planned - Los Angeles Times:

'I see these protesters in California and elsewhere on TV, talking about pulling out of Iraq, and it makes me furious,' said Barb Bruner, co-owner of the Batavia Heights Christian Child Care center. 'I hear these politicians come here to Ohio, wanting our votes and talking about how Iraq was such a mistake. We've sacrificed too much to protect our country for you to tell me this was a mistake.'

Remember this piece of advice:

"No matter how far down the wrong path you've gone, when you discover your mistake, turn back."

By Barb Bruner's reasoning, no war could be a mistake, because every war involves a huge sacrifice. By her reasoning, you could never end any futile conflict until you had exhausted - sacrificed - all of your resources.

Ultimately, what soldier wants fight in a conflict where you throw good lives after bad, where you stubbornly compound mistakes because you have already sacrificed so much?

Opponents of the war may make you furious, Barb Bruner, but you are still mistaken in your reasoning.

The Hypocrites' Club

The hypocrites' club | Economist.com

KAL's cartoon | Economist.com

KAL's cartoon | Economist.com

American Rhetoric

American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States

Third Party Watch - Libertarian Presidential Wannabe Roundup

Third Party Watch - Libertarian Presidential Wannabe Roundup

Libertarian Party - Bill Cavala

Libertarian Party—Like the Prohibition Party--Demands Free Promotion of Candidates in California - California Progress Report

Bipartisan Group Eyes Independent Bid

Bipartisan Group Eyes Independent Bid - washingtonpost.com

Declarations - Peggy Noonan

Declarations - WSJ.com: "Bill Buckley once said he'd rather be governed by the first thousand names in the Boston phone book than the Harvard faculty. I'd rather be governed by Donny and Marie than the Washington establishment."

Iraq War Lexicon

IDP - Internally Displaced Person

IED - Improvised Explosive Device

Iraqi government - A joke.

Green Zone - Another joke.

Quotes of the Day

Megan McArdle

Megan McArdle

9/11, al Qaeda and Iraq

9/11 Linked To Iraq, In Politics if Not in Fact

General Petraeus Testifies Before Congress

Here's a question or exchange you won't hear from the committee as General Petraeus testifies before Congress:

Congressman: Some time ago Bush and Cheney sent a well known general to the United Nations to testify on their behalf. They used him to make their case. They knew that with his integrity and the respect he commanded all across the country, people would believe him.

General Petraeus: Mmhmmm.

Congressman: You know who I'm talking about, don't you?

General Petraeus: Tell me.

Congressman: That would be Secretary of State Colin Powell.

General Petraeus: Yes, I knew Colin back when I was a colonel and he was --

Congressman: How do we know Bush and Cheney haven't done the same thing with you?

General Petraeus: I can tell you right now that I wrote my own testimony. No one at the White House wrote a word of it.

Congressman: Colin Powell wrote his own testimony, too.

General Petraeus: Colin Powell talked about our intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons. This argument about war strategy and deployment decisions is different.

Congressman: Not so. The question of whether you're a trustworthy source is what matters here.

General Petraeus: Are you suggesting I'm not trustworthy? I'm here to tell you the truth.

Congressman: Colin Powell thought he was telling the truth. He was a loyal soldier and secretary. He couldn't see that the president and vice-president depended on his reputation for integrity. Now look at his reputation. Bush and Cheney didn't even thank him when he resigned. He left in ignominy while Bush celebrated his second inauguration.

General Petraeus: I've thought about my reputation going into this.

Congressman: Think some more. William Westmoreland and Creighton Abrams both had good reputations before they accepted command of our forces in South Vietnam. Because they served a president who didn't square with the American people, their names are forever associated with failure.

General Petraeus: But that's why I'm here. To point the only way to eventual success. No one in the army wants failure.

Congressman: We've already failed. The only question we have in front of us now is, how can we minimize the cost of our failure? What can we do to regroup and recover?

General Petraeus: My reputation stands with how our soldiers perform in Iraq. If they perform the mission their country gives them, I'm proud of them. I know I'll have their respect.

Congressman: I'm sorry general, but historians aren't going to give a damn about how your soldiers feel, or what they think. We're all proud of our soldiers, you know, and we all respect the hard work you've done over there. But you're going to be judged by the company you keep.

General Petraeus: As I said, the company I keep in Baghdad is the best, because the U. S. Army is the best.

Congressman: You're still having trouble extracting yourself from your military environment. I mean the company you keep here in Washington. Nobody trusts President Bush anymore, so nobody trusts you. That is, no one trusts you unless you prove you're independent of him.

General Petraeus: How do you recommend I do that, congressman?

Congressman: Show that you're willing to be fired. Prove that you're not speaking for the president.

General Petraeus: That's pretty hard. Everyone knows that's just what I'm doing.

Congressman: Well no. You have a chance here to speak your mind entirely. You have a chance here to criticize Bush and Cheney. Can't you see the situation you're in here? You haven't been in Baghdad that long.

General Petraeus: You tell me my situation, congressman.

Congressman: You have a full range of opinion about the war in this room. People have made up their minds about the question of whether the war is a failure or not. People still aren't so sure about the best thing to do, given where we are now.

General Petraeus: Go on.

Congressman: Another thing people are sure about, though most won't say it, is that we need new leadership. Everyone is looking for a new direction from someone who is trustworthy.

General Petraeus: And you've suggested already that our president isn't trustworthy, that we won't receive good leadership from him or his advisors.

Congressman: That's right.

General Petraeus: You think I can give the leadership people need?

Congressman: You're just about the only one at this point, general.

General Petraeus: I serve at the president's pleasure, congressman - I'm not going to deny him in public.

Congressman: That's the problem, isn't it?

General Petraeus: Look, don't you think I should just give my report?

Congressman: People won't listen to you if they think you're presenting the party line.

General Petraeus: That's a Stalinist phrase, you know, "presenting the party line."

Congressman: That's shows you how far we've come since 9/11, general. People see the folks in the White House as nothing more than a pack of propagandists.

General Petraeus: And I can represent the pack, or speak my own mind.

Congressman: That's it, general. You can't just tell us you wrote your own testimony. If you need to tell us that, you have a credibility problem right at the start. You have to show us why we should believe you.

General Petraeus: Alright, I'm willing to lose my job. I'm willing to receive orders to return home.

Congressman: You know what else you can do?

General Petraeus: What?

Congressman: Appear before this committee tomorrow without your uniform.

General Petraeus: You think that's going to make me more trustworthy?

Congressman: That's how far we've come, six years after 9/11. That's how far we've come.

Ronald Reagan: The Evil Empire

Modern History Sourcebook: Ronald Reagan: The Evil Empire

From Whittaker Chambers to George W. Bush

Excerpt from Sam Tanenhaus in The New RepublicNR, "The End of the Journey," July 2, 2007:

World War II, Chambers wrote, "simplified the balance of forces in the world by reducing them to two." This was more or less what most Americans, including American intellectuals, believed in 1952. But Chambers typically went further, embracing a Manichaean dualism, though even this had its Marxist angle. As a practiced revolutionary, he knew - as did Lenin and Trotsky, for all their fealty to "historical materialism" - that political movements rise to power not on the wings of theory but through the politics of irreducible choice.

This was the lesson absorbed by American conservatives their prolonged moment of ascendancy, which looks now to be ending. The movement's first national experiment with the politics of polarizing choice came in the presidential election of 1964, and the results were disastrous. But four years later Richard Nixon, who until Chambers's his death remained his friend and in some sense his disciple, succeeded in shattering the post-war consensus by rallying a "silent majority" of God fearing, law-abiding citizens to seize the whip from the unbelieving elite - the people who (in Nixon's view, not entirely wrong) had never forgiven him for exposing Hiss. Another master of divisiveness, Ronald Reagan, posthumously awarded Chambers the Medal of Freedom, and more than once startled aides by reciting passages of Witness from memory. The book's tonalities are likewise audible in the scripts that Reagan wrote for his popular radio addresses in the 1970s, when he was mounting his run at the presidency, and also in his notorious formulation "the evil empire," derived from Chambers's description of communism as "the focus of the concentrated evil of our time."

The epithet "evil empire" distressed many in the civilized world when Reagan first uttered it in 1983. But he was speaking in terms the Soviet themselves understood; he gave voice to the binary theology that joined the two great powers in their death struggle. In the 1980s, and Chambersian absolutism was very much in vogue, the official view of the Reagan White House was that the Soviet Union was not only "permanently evil" but indestructible, growing in reach and in charismatic might even as the evidence oppositely pointed to a dysfunctional economy, a political spoils system rotten with corruption, republics seeing with ethnic patriots, satellite countries in rebellion. But when the collapse came, the Manichaean belief that America had singly "won" the cold war seemed vindicated. Our theology had triumphed. Even a conservative such Fukuyama, updating the dialect along Hegelian rather than Marxian lines, credited the triumph to "the realm of consciousness or ideas, since consciousness will ultimately remake the material world in its image." Since then Fukuyama has acknowledged that he and other neoconservatives were wrong.

"The U.S. military will be stepping into a morass. Iraq presents as unpromising a breeding ground for democracy as any in the world." ~ Alina Romanowski, National Defense University, Fall 2002.

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City of Liberty

City of Liberty: New York's leading lights of libertarianism - Brian Doherty

A Failure of Generalship

LT. COL. PAUL YINGLING / ARMED FORCES JOURNAL, MAY 2007

"You officers amuse yourselves with God knows what buffooneries and never dream in the least of serious service. This is a source of stupidity which would become most dangerous in case of a serious conflict."
- Frederick the Great


For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.
These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress.

The Responsibilities of Generalship

Armies do not fight wars; nations fight wars. War is not a military activity conducted by soldiers, but rather a social activity that involves entire nations. Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz noted that passion, probability and policy each play their role in war. Any understanding of war that ignores one of these elements is fundamentally flawed.

The passion of the people is necessary to endure the sacrifices inherent in war. Regardless of the system of government, the people supply the blood and treasure required to prosecute war. The statesman must stir these passions to a level commensurate with the popular sacrifices required. When the ends of policy are small, the statesman can prosecute a conflict without asking the public for great sacrifice. Global conflicts such as World War II require the full mobilization of entire societies to provide the men and materiel necessary for the successful prosecution of war. The greatest error the statesman can make is to commit his nation to a great conflict without mobilizing popular passions to a level commensurate with the stakes of the conflict.

Popular passions are necessary for the successful prosecution of war, but cannot be sufficient. To prevail, generals must provide policymakers and the public with a correct estimation of strategic probabilities. The general is responsible for estimating the likelihood of success in applying force to achieve the aims of policy. The general describes both the means necessary for the successful prosecution of war and the ways in which the nation will employ those means. If the policymaker desires ends for which the means he provides are insufficient, the general is responsible for advising the statesman of this incongruence. The statesman must then scale back the ends of policy or mobilize popular passions to provide greater means. If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means, he shares culpability for the results.

However much it is influenced by passion and probability, war is ultimately an instrument of policy and its conduct is the responsibility of policymakers. War is a social activity undertaken on behalf of the nation; Augustine counsels us that the only purpose of war is to achieve a better peace. The choice of making war to achieve a better peace is inherently a value judgment in which the statesman must decide those interests and beliefs worth killing and dying for. The military man is no better qualified than the common citizen to make such judgments. He must therefore confine his input to his area of expertise — the estimation of strategic probabilities.

The correct estimation of strategic possibilities can be further subdivided into the preparation for war and the conduct of war. Preparation for war consists in the raising, arming, equipping and training of forces. The conduct of war consists of both planning for the use of those forces and directing those forces in operations.

To prepare forces for war, the general must visualize the conditions of future combat. To raise military forces properly, the general must visualize the quality and quantity of forces needed in the next war. To arm and equip military forces properly, the general must visualize the materiel requirements of future engagements. To train military forces properly, the general must visualize the human demands on future battlefields, and replicate those conditions in peacetime exercises. Of course, not even the most skilled general can visualize precisely how future wars will be fought. According to British military historian and soldier Sir Michael Howard, "In structuring and preparing an army for war, you can be clear that you will not get it precisely right, but the important thing is not to be too far wrong, so that you can put it right quickly."

The most tragic error a general can make is to assume without much reflection that wars of the future will look much like wars of the past. Following World War I, French generals committed this error, assuming that the next war would involve static battles dominated by firepower and fixed fortifications. Throughout the interwar years, French generals raised, equipped, armed and trained the French military to fight the last war. In stark contrast, German generals spent the interwar years attempting to break the stalemate created by firepower and fortifications. They developed a new form of war — the blitzkrieg — that integrated mobility, firepower and decentralized tactics. The German Army did not get this new form of warfare precisely right. After the 1939 conquest of Poland, the German Army undertook a critical self-examination of its operations. However, German generals did not get it too far wrong either, and in less than a year had adapted their tactics for the invasion of France.

After visualizing the conditions of future combat, the general is responsible for explaining to civilian policymakers the demands of future combat and the risks entailed in failing to meet those demands. Civilian policymakers have neither the expertise nor the inclination to think deeply about strategic probabilities in the distant future. Policymakers, especially elected representatives, face powerful incentives to focus on near-term challenges that are of immediate concern to the public. Generating military capability is the labor of decades. If the general waits until the public and its elected representatives are immediately concerned with national security threats before finding his voice, he has waited too long. The general who speaks too loudly of preparing for war while the nation is at peace places at risk his position and status. However, the general who speaks too softly places at risk the security of his country.

Failing to visualize future battlefields represents a lapse in professional competence, but seeing those fields clearly and saying nothing is an even more serious lapse in professional character. Moral courage is often inversely proportional to popularity and this observation in nowhere more true than in the profession of arms. The history of military innovation is littered with the truncated careers of reformers who saw gathering threats clearly and advocated change boldly. A military professional must possess both the physical courage to face the hazards of battle and the moral courage to withstand the barbs of public scorn. On and off the battlefield, courage is the first characteristic of generalship.

Failures of Generalship in Vietnam

America's defeat in Vietnam is the most egregious failure in the history of American arms. America's general officer corps refused to prepare the Army to fight unconventional wars, despite ample indications that such preparations were in order. Having failed to prepare for such wars, America's generals sent our forces into battle without a coherent plan for victory. Unprepared for war and lacking a coherent strategy, America lost the war and the lives of more than 58,000 service members.

Following World War II, there were ample indicators that America's enemies would turn to insurgency to negate our advantages in firepower and mobility. The French experiences in Indochina and Algeria offered object lessons to Western armies facing unconventional foes. These lessons were not lost on the more astute members of America's political class. In 1961, President Kennedy warned of "another type of war, new in its intensity, ancient in its origin — war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins, war by ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by evading and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him." In response to these threats, Kennedy undertook a comprehensive program to prepare America's armed forces for counterinsurgency.

Despite the experience of their allies and the urging of their president, America's generals failed to prepare their forces for counterinsurgency. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Decker assured his young president, "Any good soldier can handle guerrillas." Despite Kennedy's guidance to the contrary, the Army viewed the conflict in Vietnam in conventional terms. As late as 1964, Gen. Earle Wheeler, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated flatly that "the essence of the problem in Vietnam is military." While the Army made minor organizational adjustments at the urging of the president, the generals clung to what Andrew Krepinevich has called "the Army concept," a vision of warfare focused on the destruction of the enemy's forces.

Having failed to visualize accurately the conditions of combat in Vietnam, America's generals prosecuted the war in conventional terms. The U.S. military embarked on a graduated attrition strategy intended to compel North Vietnam to accept a negotiated peace. The U.S. undertook modest efforts at innovation in Vietnam. Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS), spearheaded by the State Department's "Blowtorch" Bob Kromer, was a serious effort to address the political and economic causes of the insurgency. The Marine Corps' Combined Action Program (CAP) was an innovative approach to population security. However, these efforts are best described as too little, too late. Innovations such as CORDS and CAP never received the resources necessary to make a large-scale difference. The U.S. military grudgingly accepted these innovations late in the war, after the American public's commitment to the conflict began to wane.

America's generals not only failed to develop a strategy for victory in Vietnam, but also remained largely silent while the strategy developed by civilian politicians led to defeat. As H.R. McMaster noted in "Dereliction of Duty," the Joint Chiefs of Staff were divided by service parochialism and failed to develop a unified and coherent recommendation to the president for prosecuting the war to a successful conclusion. Army Chief of Staff Harold K. Johnson estimated in 1965 that victory would require as many as 700,000 troops for up to five years. Commandant of the Marine Corps Wallace Greene made a similar estimate on troop levels. As President Johnson incrementally escalated the war, neither man made his views known to the president or Congress. President Johnson made a concerted effort to conceal the costs and consequences of Vietnam from the public, but such duplicity required the passive consent of America's generals.

Having participated in the deception of the American people during the war, the Army chose after the war to deceive itself. In "Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife," John Nagl argued that instead of learning from defeat, the Army after Vietnam focused its energies on the kind of wars it knew how to win — high-technology conventional wars. An essential contribution to this strategy of denial was the publication of "On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War," by Col. Harry Summers. Summers, a faculty member of the U.S. Army War College, argued that the Army had erred by not focusing enough on conventional warfare in Vietnam, a lesson the Army was happy to hear. Despite having been recently defeated by an insurgency, the Army slashed training and resources devoted to counterinsurgency.

By the early 1990s, the Army's focus on conventional war-fighting appeared to have been vindicated. During the 1980s, the U.S. military benefited from the largest peacetime military buildup in the nation's history. High-technology equipment dramatically increased the mobility and lethality of our ground forces. The Army's National Training Center honed the Army's conventional war-fighting skills to a razor's edge. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signaled the demise of the Soviet Union and the futility of direct confrontation with the U.S. Despite the fact the U.S. supported insurgencies in Afghanistan, Nicaragua and Angola to hasten the Soviet Union's demise, the U.S. military gave little thought to counterinsurgency throughout the 1990s. America's generals assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like the wars of the past — state-on-state conflicts against conventional forces. America's swift defeat of the Iraqi Army, the world's fourth-largest, in 1991 seemed to confirm the wisdom of the U.S. military's post-Vietnam reforms. But the military learned the wrong lessons from Operation Desert Storm. It continued to prepare for the last war, while its future enemies prepared for a new kind of war.

Failures of Generalship in Iraq

America's generals have repeated the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq. First, throughout the 1990s our generals failed to envision the conditions of future combat and prepare their forces accordingly. Second, America's generals failed to estimate correctly both the means and the ways necessary to achieve the aims of policy prior to beginning the war in Iraq. Finally, America's generals did not provide Congress and the public with an accurate assessment of the conflict in Iraq.

Despite paying lip service to "transformation" throughout the 1990s, America's armed forces failed to change in significant ways after the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In "The Sling and the Stone," T.X. Hammes argues that the Defense Department's transformation strategy focuses almost exclusively on high-technology conventional wars. The doctrine, organizations, equipment and training of the U.S. military confirm this observation. The armed forces fought the global war on terrorism for the first five years with a counterinsurgency doctrine last revised in the Reagan administration. Despite engaging in numerous stability operations throughout the 1990s, the armed forces did little to bolster their capabilities for civic reconstruction and security force development. Procurement priorities during the 1990s followed the Cold War model, with significant funding devoted to new fighter aircraft and artillery systems. The most commonly used tactical scenarios in both schools and training centers replicated high-intensity interstate conflict. At the dawn of the 21st century, the U.S. is fighting brutal, adaptive insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq, while our armed forces have spent the preceding decade having done little to prepare for such conflicts.

Having spent a decade preparing to fight the wrong war, America's generals then miscalculated both the means and ways necessary to succeed in Iraq. The most fundamental military miscalculation in Iraq has been the failure to commit sufficient forces to provide security to Iraq's population. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) estimated in its 1998 war plan that 380,000 troops would be necessary for an invasion of Iraq. Using operations in Bosnia and Kosovo as a model for predicting troop requirements, one Army study estimated a need for 470,000 troops. Alone among America's generals, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki publicly stated that "several hundred thousand soldiers" would be necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. Prior to the war, President Bush promised to give field commanders everything necessary for victory. Privately, many senior general officers both active and retired expressed serious misgivings about the insufficiency of forces for Iraq. These leaders would later express their concerns in tell-all books such as "Fiasco" and "Cobra II." However, when the U.S. went to war in Iraq with less than half the strength required to win, these leaders did not make their objections public.

Given the lack of troop strength, not even the most brilliant general could have devised the ways necessary to stabilize post-Saddam Iraq. However, inept planning for postwar Iraq took the crisis caused by a lack of troops and quickly transformed it into a debacle. In 1997, the U.S. Central Command exercise "Desert Crossing" demonstrated that many postwar stabilization tasks would fall to the military. The other branches of the U.S. government lacked sufficient capability to do such work on the scale required in Iraq. Despite these results, CENTCOM accepted the assumption that the State Department would administer postwar Iraq. The military never explained to the president the magnitude of the challenges inherent in stabilizing postwar Iraq.

After failing to visualize the conditions of combat in Iraq, America's generals failed to adapt to the demands of counterinsurgency. Counterinsurgency theory prescribes providing continuous security to the population. However, for most of the war American forces in Iraq have been concentrated on large forward-operating bases, isolated from the Iraqi people and focused on capturing or killing insurgents. Counterinsurgency theory requires strengthening the capability of host-nation institutions to provide security and other essential services to the population. America's generals treated efforts to create transition teams to develop local security forces and provincial reconstruction teams to improve essential services as afterthoughts, never providing the quantity or quality of personnel necessary for success.

After going into Iraq with too few troops and no coherent plan for postwar stabilization, America's general officer corps did not accurately portray the intensity of the insurgency to the American public. The Iraq Study Group concluded that "there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq." The ISG noted that "on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals." Population security is the most important measure of effectiveness in counterinsurgency. For more than three years, America's generals continued to insist that the U.S. was making progress in Iraq. However, for Iraqi civilians, each year from 2003 onward was more deadly than the one preceding it. For reasons that are not yet clear, America's general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government and security forces and failed to provide Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq. Moreover, America's generals have not explained clearly the larger strategic risks of committing so large a portion of the nation's deployable land power to a single theater of operations.

The intellectual and moral failures common to America's general officer corps in Vietnam and Iraq constitute a crisis in American generalship. Any explanation that fixes culpability on individuals is insufficient. No one leader, civilian or military, caused failure in Vietnam or Iraq. Different military and civilian leaders in the two conflicts produced similar results. In both conflicts, the general officer corps designed to advise policymakers, prepare forces and conduct operations failed to perform its intended functions. To understand how the U.S. could face defeat at the hands of a weaker insurgent enemy for the second time in a generation, we must look at the structural influences that produce our general officer corps.

The Generals We Need

The most insightful examination of failed generalship comes from J.F.C. Fuller's "Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure." Fuller was a British major general who saw action in the first attempts at armored warfare in World War I. He found three common characteristics in great generals — courage, creative intelligence and physical fitness.

The need for intelligent, creative and courageous general officers is self-evident. An understanding of the larger aspects of war is essential to great generalship. However, a survey of Army three- and four-star generals shows that only 25 percent hold advanced degrees from civilian institutions in the social sciences or humanities. Counterinsurgency theory holds that proficiency in foreign languages is essential to success, yet only one in four of the Army's senior generals speaks another language. While the physical courage of America's generals is not in doubt, there is less certainty regarding their moral courage. In almost surreal language, professional military men blame their recent lack of candor on the intimidating management style of their civilian masters. Now that the public is immediately concerned with the crisis in Iraq, some of our generals are finding their voices. They may have waited too long.

Neither the executive branch nor the services themselves are likely to remedy the shortcomings in America's general officer corps. Indeed, the tendency of the executive branch to seek out mild-mannered team players to serve as senior generals is part of the problem. The services themselves are equally to blame. The system that produces our generals does little to reward creativity and moral courage. Officers rise to flag rank by following remarkably similar career patterns. Senior generals, both active and retired, are the most important figures in determining an officer's potential for flag rank. The views of subordinates and peers play no role in an officer's advancement; to move up he must only please his superiors. In a system in which senior officers select for promotion those like themselves, there are powerful incentives for conformity. It is unreasonable to expect that an officer who spends 25 years conforming to institutional expectations will emerge as an innovator in his late forties.

If America desires creative intelligence and moral courage in its general officer corps, it must create a system that rewards these qualities. Congress can create such incentives by exercising its proper oversight function in three areas. First, Congress must change the system for selecting general officers. Second, oversight committees must apply increased scrutiny over generating the necessary means and pursuing appropriate ways for applying America's military power. Third, the Senate must hold accountable through its confirmation powers those officers who fail to achieve the aims of policy at an acceptable cost in blood and treasure.

To improve the creative intelligence of our generals, Congress must change the officer promotion system in ways that reward adaptation and intellectual achievement. Congress should require the armed services to implement 360-degree evaluations for field-grade and flag officers. Junior officers and noncommissioned officers are often the first to adapt because they bear the brunt of failed tactics most directly. They are also less wed to organizational norms and less influenced by organizational taboos. Junior leaders have valuable insights regarding the effectiveness of their leaders, but the current promotion system excludes these judgments. Incorporating subordinate and peer reviews into promotion decisions for senior leaders would produce officers more willing to adapt to changing circumstances, and less likely to conform to outmoded practices.

Congress should also modify the officer promotion system in ways that reward intellectual achievement. The Senate should examine the education and professional writing of nominees for three- and four-star billets as part of the confirmation process. The Senate would never confirm to the Supreme Court a nominee who had neither been to law school nor written legal opinions. However, it routinely confirms four-star generals who possess neither graduate education in the social sciences or humanities nor the capability to speak a foreign language. Senior general officers must have a vision of what future conflicts will look like and what capabilities the U.S. requires to prevail in those conflicts. They must possess the capability to understand and interact with foreign cultures. A solid record of intellectual achievement and fluency in foreign languages are effective indicators of an officer's potential for senior leadership.

To reward moral courage in our general officers, Congress must ask hard questions about the means and ways for war as part of its oversight responsibility. Some of the answers will be shocking, which is perhaps why Congress has not asked and the generals have not told. Congress must ask for a candid assessment of the money and manpower required over the next generation to prevail in the Long War. The money required to prevail may place fiscal constraints on popular domestic priorities. The quantity and quality of manpower required may call into question the viability of the all-volunteer military. Congress must re-examine the allocation of existing resources, and demand that procurement priorities reflect the most likely threats we will face. Congress must be equally rigorous in ensuring that the ways of war contribute to conflict termination consistent with the aims of national policy. If our operations produce more enemies than they defeat, no amount of force is sufficient to prevail. Current oversight efforts have proved inadequate, allowing the executive branch, the services and lobbyists to present information that is sometimes incomplete, inaccurate or self-serving. Exercising adequate oversight will require members of Congress to develop the expertise necessary to ask the right questions and display the courage to follow the truth wherever it leads them.

Finally, Congress must enhance accountability by exercising its little-used authority to confirm the retired rank of general officers. By law, Congress must confirm an officer who retires at three- or four-star rank. In the past this requirement has been pro forma in all but a few cases. A general who presides over a massive human rights scandal or a substantial deterioration in security ought to be retired at a lower rank than one who serves with distinction. A general who fails to provide Congress with an accurate and candid assessment of strategic probabilities ought to suffer the same penalty. As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war. By exercising its powers to confirm the retired ranks of general officers, Congress can restore accountability among senior military leaders.

Mortal Danger

This article began with Frederick the Great's admonition to his officers to focus their energies on the larger aspects of war. The Prussian monarch's innovations had made his army the terror of Europe, but he knew that his adversaries were learning and adapting. Frederick feared that his generals would master his system of war without thinking deeply about the ever-changing nature of war, and in doing so would place Prussia's security at risk. These fears would prove prophetic. At the Battle of Valmy in 1792, Frederick's successors were checked by France's ragtag citizen army. In the fourteen years that followed, Prussia's generals assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like those of the past. In 1806, the Prussian Army marched lockstep into defeat and disaster at the hands of Napoleon at Jena. Frederick's prophecy had come to pass; Prussia became a French vassal.

Iraq is America's Valmy. America's generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand. They spent the years following the 1991 Gulf War mastering a system of war without thinking deeply about the ever changing nature of war. They marched into Iraq having assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like the wars of the past. Those few who saw clearly our vulnerability to insurgent tactics said and did little to prepare for these dangers. As at Valmy, this one debacle, however humiliating, will not in itself signal national disaster. The hour is late, but not too late to prepare for the challenges of the Long War. We still have time to select as our generals those who possess the intelligence to visualize future conflicts and the moral courage to advise civilian policymakers on the preparations needed for our security. The power and the responsibility to identify such generals lie with the U.S. Congress. If Congress does not act, our Jena awaits us.

Army Lt. Col. Paul Yingling is deputy commander, 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment. He has served two tours in Iraq, another in Bosnia and a fourth in Operation Desert Storm. He holds a master's degree in political science from the University of Chicago. The views expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of the Army or the Defense Department.

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Diaries reveal Reagan to be smarter than we thought

THERECORD.COM | INSIDER | Diaries reveal Reagan to be smarter than we thought

The Crossed Pond

The Crossed Pond

Something for Everyone

“I always wanted to be somebody, but I should’ve been more specific.” ~ Lily Tomlin

“A commone mistake people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” ~ Douglas Adams

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Pearl Harbor Attack

Nixon vs Kennedy, 1960 Presidential Election

Well done!

ABC News: Funnies: A Pooh Press Conference

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Real Time

Bill Maher: "NBC is bringing back 'The Bionic Woman.' Which is about a woman who is half human, half robot and everybody loves her. And the people over at the Hillary Clinton campaign, this is a good omen for them."

Late Night

Conan O'Brien: "Today at the White House, President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair held their last joint press conference. Yeah. In other words, it was the last time they played Christopher Robin and Pooh."

U. S. News Political Bulletin

USNews.com: Political Bulletin: Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Ron Paul, Rising Political Star

Ron Paul, Rising Political Star, The New Republic: Libertarian's Debate Remark Draws Some Fire, But Plenty Of Praise - CBS News

Diaries reveal the real Ronald Reagan

Diaries reveal the real Ronald Reagan - Michael Reagan

Reagan Diaries Reveal President's Faith - U.S. - CBN News

Reagan Diaries Reveal President's Faith - U.S. - CBN News

The diaries record Reagan's thoughts about the events of the day and other parts of his life, including his family and often with his characteristic humor.

For instance, he wrote, "Insanity is hereditary you catch it from your kids."

The diaries also show the president's faith. He wrote this entry several days after he was shot by John Hinckley on March 30, 1981.

"Getting shot hurts. Still my fear was growing, because no matter how hard I tried to breathe, it seemed I was getting less and less air. I focused on the tiled ceiling and prayed.

"But I realized I couldn't ask for God's help while, at the same time, I felt hatred for the mixed up young man who had shot me. Isn't that the meaning of the lost sheep?

"We are all God's children and, therefore, equally beloved by Him. I began to pray for his soul and that he would find his way back to the fold. Whatever happens now, I owe my life to God and will try to serve him in every way I can."

Jeff Simon: Ex-presidents don’t talk like this

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Newsbusters - The Reagan Diaries

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The Liberty Papers - Don Corleone: Libertarian ?

Fresh Intelligence : Radar Online

Fresh Intelligence : Radar Online

Reason Magazine - Revising Ronald Reagan

Reason Magazine - Revising Ronald Reagan

Will the real Ronald Reagan please stand up?

Will the real Ronald Reagan please stand up?

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Famous Quotes and Quotations at BrainyQuote

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Borosage argues that Reagan's conservative ideology "is at the root of Bush's failures." A deep, deep misunderstanding! Borosage will never change his mind, but what if others see Bush and Reagan in the same way?

Here is what John Ridley said about power, about achieving a position from which to sway public debate: "All that matters is accomplishment. The very pinnacle of ascendancy is the ability to live and work without regard for the sentiments of others and with, as Sister Rand would tell us, a selfish virtue."

I couldn't place the reference to Sister Rand, figuring she was someone like Sister Souljah or someone else I didn't know about. Then I realized Ridley was referring to Ayn Rand!

Long live individual autonomy and self-reliance! Where can I get John Ridley's e-mail address?

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The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger

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John Ridley: The Manifesto of Ascendancy for the Modern American Nigger | The Huffington Post

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"The President Has Effectively Gone AWOL"

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John Nichols quotes several military officers in his article written after President Bush's May 1 veto of Congress's war funding bill:

The problem with Bush's "I'm-so-above-politics" line is that he has been disregarding advice from military commanders since before the war began.

Consider the response to his veto from top military men who commanded troops in Iraq.

"The President vetoed our troops and the American people," says retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste. "His stubborn commitment to a failed strategy in Iraq is incomprehensible. He committed our great military to a failed strategy in violation of basic principles of war. His failure to mobilize the nation to defeat world wide Islamic extremism is tragic. We deserve more from our commander-in-chief and his administration."

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton: "This administration and the previously Republican-controlled legislature have been the most caustic agents against America's Armed Forces in memory. Less than a year ago, the Republicans imposed great hardship on the Army and Marine Corps by their failure to pass a necessary funding language. This time, the President of the United States is holding our Soldiers hostage to his ego. More than ever [it is] apparent [that] only the Army and the Marine Corps are at war -- alone, without their President's support."

Retired military commanders associated with the Washington-based National Security Network have been blunt about their sense that Bush is not just wrong about Iraq but that he is failing the troops he purports to support.

Some make historical comparisons.

Says retired Lt. Gen. Robert Gard: "With this veto, the president has doomed us to repeating a terrible history." President Bush's current position is hauntingly reminiscent of March 1968 in Vietnam. At that time, both the Secretary of Defense and the President had recognized that the war could not be won militarily--just as our military commanders in Iraq have acknowledged. But not wanting to be tainted with losing a war, President Johnson authorized a surge of 25,000 troops. At that point, there had been 24,000 U.S. troops killed in action. Five years later, when the withdrawal of US troops was complete, we had suffered 34,000 additional combat deaths.

Others offer a straightforward assessment of Bush's failure as the commander-in-chief. "By vetoing this bill and failing to initiate an immediate and phased withdrawal, the President has effectively gone AWOL, deserting his duty post, leaving American forces with an impossible mission, suffering wholly unnecessary casualties," argues retired Lt. Gen. William E. Odom.

John Edwards Feeling Pretty

Modern political campaigns with YouTube are merciless!

Southern Avenger

Southern Avenger

No Smoking Comrade

Main Page @ nosmokingcomrade.com
See the YouTube video at this site.

Ballot Access News

Ballot Access News

Reagan Sheds a Tear at Rosie’s Resignation

Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy » Reagan Sheds a Tear at Rosie’s Resignation - Phillip Ellis Jackson

General says Bush 'AWOL' on Iraq

General says Bush 'AWOL' on Iraq:
"To put this in a simple Army metaphor, the commander in chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is 'absent without leave.' He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge." ~Lt. Gen. William Odom (Ret.)

The Blogometer: 4/26: The Next Reagan?

The Blogometer: 4/26: The Next Reagan?

Watching the ship go down

Watching the ship go down - David Ignatius
"This is the most incompetent White House I've seen since I came to Washington," said one GOP senator. "The White House legislative liaison team is incompetent, pitiful, embarrassing. My colleagues can't even tell you who the White House Senate liaison is. There is rank incompetence throughout the government. It's the weakest Cabinet I've seen." And remember, this is a Republican talking." ~David Ignatius

The Black Reagan?

The Black Reagan? - Sean Higgins
"Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead." ~Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic convention

Miller Center of Public Affairs - Presidential Recordings Program

Miller Center of Public Affairs - Presidential Recordings Program

Miller Center of Public Affairs

Miller Center of Public Affairs

Pentagon Challenged on Lynch and Tillman

Pentagon Challenged on Lynch and Tillman - New York Times

Senate Majority Leader Says the War is Lost

The inside story of the Soviet downfall

The inside story of the Soviet downfall - Wes Vernon:

"The fact is that the first Reagan administration adopted, designed, and successfully implemented an integrated set of policies, strategies, and tactics specifically directed toward the eventual destruction (without war) of the Soviet Union and the successful ending of the Cold War with victory for the West." ~Norm Bailey

Warrior Politics

Warrior Politics - Andrew Bacevich

Libertarian Meetups

Libertarian meetups at Meetup.com

Difficult Times

For young men accustomed to success - to getting what they wanted by hard work, as well as by privilege - the powerlessness was lonely, isolating. It was also maturing.

~ Susannah Meadows and Evan Thomas in Newsweek

Fame

Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease...
Make your best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

~ John Keats

'Your Iraq plan?' is a pointless question

'Your Iraq plan?' is a pointless question - Andrew Bacevich

Candidates should acknowledge that Bush's war is a failure and look beyond Iraq.

It's up to Congress to end game in Iraq

It's up to Congress to end game in Iraq - Eric Eidsness

Be-Think

Be-Think - Betsy L. Angert

Right Yearns for New Reagan

Right Yearns for New Reagan - Matt Stearns

The popular conservative president offered clarity, humor and grit many say the '08 GOP hopefuls lack.

Two Quotations

"Power does not corrupt men. Fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power." ~ George Bernard Shaw

"Great necessities call out great virtues." ~ Abigail Adams

A Time For Everything - Is This Rudy's?

A Time For Everything - Is This Rudy's? - Star Parker

One of Reagan's great sources of appeal was that he didn't seem to need the presidency to make him someone. He already was someone and this seemed to be the job he was cut out to do.

Best News and Commentary

The New Republic

The Huffington Post

OpinionJournal - from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page

Slate

Salon

The Washington Post

unity08

unity08

The Cook Account

The Cook Account - Jeremiah Cook

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post

Pursue All Options But Be Prepared

Pursue All Options But Be Prepared - Jeremiah Cook

Libertarian Party Vision

Libertarian Party

Libertarian: The only party that keeps the government out of your bedroom and out of your wallet.

That's an updated view of Reagan's famous statement: "Government isn't the solution to our problems. Government is the problem." We've heard that quotation so often that we can forget what it actually means. It means that to live better, we dismantle our government. We weaken it. We constrict its ability to do things. We don't look to it for help. We ignore it. We make it leave us alone.

No politician since Reagan has argued for this vision. No leader has given us credible hope of moving toward it.

Roosevelt or Reagan? USA Needs to Choose

Roosevelt or Reagan?
USA Needs to Choose - From a speech by John Mariani

The writer behind Reagan

The writer behind Reagan's speech in Berlin: Peter Robinson and "Tear down this wall!"