2006 – It’s Been Quite The Year

It’s been one year since we left the city for the country and we seem to have taken root here rather quickly. We left a city with over 10,000 people per square mile for a township with 164. The pace of life here is distinctly slower and much more polite.

We have searched the whole year long for a “downside” to our new way of life and have been unable to find it. Though M’Lady now has an hour drive to work instead of 15 minutes she says she can greet the neighbors cows, sheep and chickens every morning, take a drive in the country twice a day and her smile gets wider the closer to home she gets. It’s all in your perspective.

We took the first year to get familiar with our new home at M’Lady’s suggestion and a sound piece of advice it was as I am always the one to quickly implement “grandiose plans”. While I was restrained from making major changes we did manage to get some building accomplished and we became beekeepers in the bargain. Next year there are plans for a large vegetable garden, more fruit trees and chickens. Slowly, but surely, we are making this home into our dream.

Here’s hoping that 2006 was as much a blessing to you and yours as it has been to me and my family.

I wish everyone a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year!

Take This Son, May It Serve You Well

Our young miss e-mailed me about this great podcast she heard with Giles Martin, son of Sir George Martin, and producer of the soundtrack for Cirque du Soleil's "Love". It is a enlightening interview and well worth your time. It has also prompted me to run out to get the CD which is a wonderful remix/juxtaposition of many of the Beatles classic songs.

Blog Of The Week

I have been nominated for "Blog Of The Week" honors at Dancing On Colette's Grave. While this is a somewhat nepotistic honor, I accept it none the less. In return, I have linked to Colette and encourage you to visit her site. As with Truth, For A Change, you will find them to be a change of pace from the postings here.

Quote Of The Day

"Battle, n., A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue."

- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

Get Back On A War Footing

Ralph Peters, the author of "Never Quit The Fight" had a pointed article in The New York Post today about what our new strategy for Iraq should be. Here are some excerpts:

"We need an exclusive focus on the defeat of the foreign terrorists, uncooperative Sunni Arabs and Muqtada al-Sadr's Shia thugs. Our enemies control Iraq with fear. We need to make them fear us more than the population fears them.

"And we must stop reciting insupportable platitudes about every element of government playing a role and the supreme power of negotiations. That's just nonsense. Contrary to pundit blustering, the overwhelming majority of insurgencies over the past 3,000 years have been defeated - by uncompromising military responses."

"Our enemies don't believe we have the guts to pacify Iraq. They may be right.
It would be obscene to deploy more troops and further strain our military unless we're serious about winning. And all half-measures will fail.

"The paradox is that beleaguered Iraqis would welcome a harsh security crackdown - our toughest obstacle would be a global media alliance already patting itself on the back for our defeat. "

Quote Of The Day

In dishonor of the recent ghoulish article from the AP reporting that U.S. military deaths in Iraq have surpassed the number of Americans murdered on 9/11:

"If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast."

- General William Tecumseh Sherman

Merry Christmas

When I walked in the door yesterday I was greeted by the wonderful aroma of freshly baked cookies. M’Lady and our young miss were putting the finishing touches on the latest batch of holiday treats.

The house is decorated, the tree is up, the stockings are hung and the family has gathered.

I think we’re ready.

I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. And please remember our military men and women who are serving away from home during the holidays.

Quote Of The Day

“When we are unwilling to draw clear moral lines between free societies and fear societies, when we are unwilling to call the former good and the latter evil, we will not be able to advance the cause of peace because peace cannot be disconnected from freedom.”
- From “The Case For Democracy” by Natan Sharansky

Yankee Ingenuity

On a lighter note, MSNBC reports the following story:

STRATFORD, N.J. - In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it's the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq. American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq. Before entering a building, troops squirt the plastic goo, which can shoot strands about 10 to 12 feet, across the room. If it falls to the ground, no trip wires. If it hangs in the air, they know they have a problem. The wires are otherwise nearly invisible.

Quote Of The Day

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

The Iraq Study Group Report

This panel is a disgrace. For a group that considers themselves to be "realists" this report has a very "unrealistic" view of our enemies. Castigate the conduct of the war anyway you like; this is definitely not how we should handle the current situation. Negotiate - with Iran and Syria? You must be joking; these people equate talking with weakness. Why aren't we actively undermining Iran and Syria? They are the major "bad actors" in the region, they continue to supply arms to the various factions in Iraq and their regime's are ripe for change. But no - let's talk with the mullahs. I suppose it's asking too much for anyone to remember Munich when we don't even remember 9/11. I will state this as plainly as I can:

Citizens of The United States;

the enemy is right in front of you

and they are building nuclear weapons.

Here is an article on the report by Andrew McCarthy for National Review that sums it up quite well:

"The ISG wants us to talk to the mullahs? How can we blame them? That’s exactly the course the administration has chosen for the life-and-death challenge of the jihadist nuke. To mollify “the international community,” for which no evil is beyond “dialogue,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed for an end to the inconvenience of American moral clarity. We should abandon this notion that Iran is an implacable enemy, she insisted. We should join with our “partners.” Let’s reason with the mullahs. Ply them with breathtaking incentives: security assurances; economic aid; high-technology; aviation, energy, telecommunications and agriculture assistance.

"The Bush Doctrine? You’re with us or against us? Unrealistic. No need, after all, to sour the mood by demanding an end to Iran’s terror mongering. And sticks to go with these carrots? No, not to worry. The Iranians would surely be moved to comply, and, if they didn’t, why, surely the Russians and the Chinese would back some sticks … notwithstanding that Iran is into them like a shylock.

"You know, of course, the result. The Iranians laughed at us. So impressed were they by this nuanced display of soft power that … they sicced Hezbollah on Israel, armed up their Iraqi militias, and blithely went on building their nukes.

"ISG Chairman James Baker, a foolish man, looked Congress in the eye on Thursday and explained his master plan. Did it seem foolish to propose negotiations with Iran, our relentless enemy? Sure. But, the “realist” doyen puttered, if we invite them to negotiate about Iraq’s future, and they demur, why, we’ll expose their intransigence for all the world to see.

"Right. They slaughter and abet the slaughter of our marines, our airmen, our sailors, William Buckley, Robert Stethem, William Higgins, and countless others. They tell us their defining goal is a world without America, a world in which our allies are wiped from the face of the earth. But, at long last, we’ll know who they really are … if they don’t show up for a meeting.

"Blue-ribbon panels can afford such juvenilia. They are, after all, unaccountable. What’s the administration’s excuse?

"What makes a superpower super is power. If we don’t use it, what’s left? Iran believes they will destroy us and acts on that conviction every day. We … seek negotiations.

"I’m not a hugger, but I hugged my four-year-old son as I wrote this. We abdicate now. We turn a blind eye as our implacable, insatiable enemies pick off our best and our bravest. We shrink from the duty a quarter century of mayhem imposes. We don’t have the will.

"It will be for my son, and yours, to face down this challenge. A challenge that endures because we offer to talk while they plot to kill."

Quote Of The Day

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Our Unceasing Ambivalence

Shelby Steele wrote a very insightful article for The Wall Journal's op-ed page yesterday about the war in Iraq and our inability to define victory:

"Why don't we know the meaning of this war and our reasons for fighting it? I think the answer begins in the awkward fact that America is now the world's uncontested superpower. If this fate has its advantages, it also brings an unasked-for degree of dominion in the world. This is essentially a passive dominion that has settled on a rather isolationist nation, yet it makes America into something of a sheriff. Whether the problem is Somalia, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea or Darfur, America gets the call. Thus our youth are often asked to go to war more out of international responsibility than national necessity. This is a hard fate for a free and prosperous citizenry to accept--the loss of sons and daughters to a kind of magnanimity. Today our antiwar movement is essentially an argument with this fate, a rejection of superpower responsibility.

" Is it any wonder, then, that we have failed to completely win this war? Since World War II, American leaders--left and right--have worked out of an impossible double bind: They cannot afford to win the wars they fight. Thus the postmodern American war in which the world's greatest power deconstructs its own motives for fighting until losing becomes a better option than winning. And yet the end of the Cold War has made these wars between the West and the Third World inevitable. When the world was clearly divided between the free West and the communist East, Third World countries could play the ingénue by offering their alignment to the most generous suitor. At the center of a market in alignment, they could extract financial support and enjoy a sense of importance.

"But after the Cold War, these countries suddenly became crones without appeal or leverage in the West. And it was out of this sense of invisibility, this feeling of having fallen out of history, that certain Middle Eastern countries found a way to play the ingénue once again. They would not compete with or seduce the West; they would menace it.

"For every reason, from the humanitarian to the geopolitical to the military, Iraq is a war that America must win in the hegemonic, even colonial, sense. It is a test of our civilization's commitment to the good against the alluring notion of menace-as-power that has gripped so much of the Muslim world. Today America is a danger to the world in its own right, not because we are a powerful bully but because we don't fully accept who we are. We rush to war as a superpower protecting the world from menace, then leave the battle before winning as a show of what, humility? We confuse our enemies, discouraging them one minute and encouraging them the next.

"Could it be that our enemies are really paper tigers made formidable by our unceasing ambivalence? And could it be that the greater good is in both the idea and the reality of American victory? "

We need to embrace our heritage as well as our destiny; we are a great nation founded on ideals which represent the highest aspirations of mankind. America is the greater good and we must proclaim this to the world with our deeds. Our failure to do so will have enormous implications not only for us but for all of Western civilization.