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Friday, April 11, 2003
Ignorance of U.S. history called threat to security -- The Washington Times
Widespread ignorance of American history among students and teachers at high schools and colleges is a major threat to the nation's security, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and author David McCullough told a Senate panel yesterday.
"We are raising a generation of people who are historically illiterate" and ignorant of the basic philosophical foundations of our constitutional free society, the past president of the Society of American Historians said.
"We can't function in a society if we don't know who we are and where we came from."
Mr. McCullough said a group of high school students was asked if they could name the American Revolutionary War commanding general at Yorktown when British Gen. Charles Cornwallis surrendered. "More than half guessed Ulysses S. Grant. More than 6 percent said it was Douglas MacArthur. They were guessing," he said.
"Why is it important if you don't know the facts about Yorktown? It means you have no idea it was the last battle of the Revolutionary War — the longest war in our history except the Vietnam War. Why is it important to know who George Washington is?" he said. "If it hadn't been for George Washington, we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War. Without George Washington, we wouldn't have the Constitution that we have and we wouldn't have the presidency that we have."
Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Colonel T.R. Fehrenbach, by way of Phil Carter
"Americans in 1950 rediscovered something that since Hiroshima they had forgotten: you may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it, and wipe it clean of life--but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud."
Stanley Kurtz
When you take a good hard look at the reality of the Democratic party's position on the war, it is exceedingly difficult to imagine entrusting the safety of this country to the opposition. If you accept the logic of the current conflict, it is difficult to see how the Democrats can be trusted with power. Even a bellicose and overly optimistic democratizing neocon is reformable (or at least controllable). Nancy Pelosi and her constituents are not.
Monday, April 07, 2003
THE SECRET WAR By RALPH PETERS
Much has been written about the seismic effects this war will have on the cruel, moribund states and societies of the Middle East. And we are, indeed, rewriting the region's future.
But we will soon be able to rewrite its past, as well. Access to Iraqi intelligence archives and the interrogation of high-level prisoners will enable us to reconstruct the secret history of the Middle East over the past 35 years.
The secret police, diplomatic and executive archives will hold information on all the region's secret deals, as well as on the private lives and personal corruption of virtually every leader, cabinet member and senior military officer throughout the Middle East. The psychological effects of our access to those archives and to former regime officials anxious to tell all will be even greater than the practical information we accumulate.
No Arab leader will know what was or wasn't in those files. Each will have to fear the worst. President-for-life X will always have to wonder what we know as we sit across the negotiating table.
The destruction of Saddam's regime will result in the greatest intelligence coup in history.
Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq
These are difficult times of jarring, instantaneously broadcast images of friendly fire, civilian casualties, the tragic deaths of brave journalists, accidents, and wrongheaded analyses of discredited politicians and pundits. But if we keep our heads, stay true to our values, and persevere in our military mission, we will get through this final stage fine — and have done a great and rare good both for us and millions abroad.
Sunday, April 06, 2003
The Calgary Sun
France's largest corporation, TotalFinaElf has huge interests in Iraq's oilfields. Total's biggest single shareholder is Montreal's Paul Desmarais, whose youngest son is married to Chretien's daughter. Desmarais Sr., is also a director of Total, along with other ranking members of France's establishment. It's hard to believe the Desmarais/Chretien families haven't discussed their investments in Total, and Total's investments in Saddam's Iraq.
Saturday, April 05, 2003
USS Clueless
What will be revealed about the horror of life in Iraq will more than justify the war. There have been fragmentary stories already, which hint at revelations to come. It seems that every town in Iraq had its own chamber of horrors, which people disappeared into and only screams emerged from. It will eventually become clear that the Baathist regime in Iraq will rank with the Khmer Rouge as among the most brutal and barbaric governments of modern times.
Translator reaches out as an unofficial ambassador
By DENNIS O'BRIEN, The Virginian-Pilot
© April 1, 2003
NASIRIYAH, Iraq -- He is one of the most-wanted men in town.
He is Lance Cpl. James Tillmans -- full-time Arabic translator, part-time U.S. ambassador to Iraq.
Every time this company of Marines comes across a suspicious Iraqi or discovers a stash of documents, the call goes out for Tillmans.
``Get the translator up here!'' Capt. Greg Grunwald yells into the radio several times a day.
And up rolls Tillmans' four-man translation team in their specially designed intelligence-gathering vehicle -- with ``Jolly Roger'' written in Arabic on the side. Tillmans says he interviews between 30 and 40 Iraqis a day.
UNION JACK 'PROTECTION
"The troops want British flags for identity purposes to ward off US planes," Charles Ashburner, managing director of United Flag Traders, told the newspaper.
"We had a load of them (British troops) in before the war and they seemed more scared of the Americans than the Iraqis. They didn't want them just for show - they wanted them for protection," he said.
"After all, they are killing more of our boys than the enemy," he added.
Friendly fire, isn't. How many allies can America really count on? Not enough to be killing them by accident. The American way of war values aggressivenesss, independence, and delegation of authority to the commander on the scene, consequently we have a higher tolerance for blue on blue casualties than the other forces with which we share the battlefield. We do not burn our trigger pullers when they screw the pooch because we want them to keep pulling those triggers, but we gotta do something to keep from whacking good guys. My solution: require the commander of the individual who put the ordnance on the friendlies to go to that unit and ritually amputate a finger and put that finger in a little box and formally present it to the friendly unit commander.
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Prouder Than Ever
The decency, the humanity, the intelligence, the sheer raw competence and training of American soldiers conducting the most technologically complex military campaign ever conducted is simply dazzling. This is about which the world should be experiencing true shock and awe.
BBC NEWS | Europe | French plea as cemetery defaced
The defaced Etaples cemetery is one of the biggest in northern France. Around 11,000 fallen British soldiers are buried there. It lies near the site of several wartime hospitals.
First Baghdad, Then Paris
"Rest in Peace", we say. R.I.P. adorns many gravestones. Thousands of English-speaking soldiers who died in France to defend it, or to liberate it, apparently cannot rest there in peace. Their very presence is resented; cold and silent, drawing no breath, they speak loudly and deliver a message that the French do not want to hear, against which there are no arguments.
They bear mute testimony to the fact that the French could not defend themselves. Because of their presence and their inability to speak, they puncture French pretensions to greatness. They represent irrefutable proof that the French have had to rely, again and again, on us for salvation, but we have not had to rely on them. In the last 200 years, no English speaking nation has ever required French help to defend itself.
Tens of thousands of Aussies and Canucks and Yanks sleep forever in the cold soil of France. But there are no French military cemeteries in Australia or Canada or the US.
For this crime, for speaking the truth about French weakness and decline so eloquently by not making a sound, not even our military dead can be tolerated; the French must lash out and punish even those who gave everything they had for France.
Our war dead have been targeted because they can no longer fight back.
There can be no greater demonstration of the blackness of the French soul than this desecration.
Monday, March 31, 2003
NEALZ NUZE
To many on the left, victory over the Republicans in 2004 is more important than victory over Saddam Hussein in 2003. They know that a coalition victory in Iraq will strengthen President Bush. Another feather in the cap of a Republican president is too great a price to pay for many on the left for a liberated Iraq. Democrats are watching the polls carefully. When their pollsters tell them the time is right, that Americans are weary of the losses and the war, they will most certainly turn on President Bush with relish. They're just waiting for the right moment. Most of them, that is. There are some eager-beavers like Charles Rangel who are already out there saying that American troops are being sent to Iraq to "kill women and children."
Battlefield Europe
Think of France as a kid who loves and knows basketball -- how to dribble, shoot and make plays as well as anybody in the world -- but who stopped growing at 5 feet, 5 inches. France loves the game of power politics, and it wants to play in the big leagues, but it's too short for prime time. France hopes the European Union will grow into a superpower that, under French leadership, will challenge the U.S. for world leadership.
A pro-American EU is France's worst nightmare.
France is Not a Western Country Anymore
Six million Muslims live in France, at least ten per cent of them are radical Islamists poised on the edge of violence. And these radical Muslims have allies on both the extreme Left and the extreme Right. France is not a Western country anymore, it is now the leader of the Arab/Muslim world. Israel has to know France is its main enemy. The United States has to understand they have nothing to expect from today's France except nastiness, treason, and cheating.
David Horowitz
The war in America’s streets is not about "peace" or "more time for inspections." It is about which side should lose the war we are now in. The left has made crystal clear its desire that the loser should be us. Even if the left had not made this explicit, a "peace" movement directed at one side makes sense only as an effort to force that side to retreat from the battle and lose the war. Which is exactly what the Columbia professor said. If this is patriotism, what is treason?
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