http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ For a while, the eyes still seemed to see them there, perfect straight lines rising into the sky, an empty space on the horizon that your mind filled in without even thinking. You walked past, and thought, “Of course they’re there. They’re always there” and you saw them as they were, grey ghosts of […]
THE FIRST PARAGRAPH GIVES EVIDENCE TO CONRAD BLACK’S IDIOCY: ” I am not one of those whom she can possibly include as making an ad hominem attack on her; I don’t know her, and have never commented on her as a person. She expends considerable space and robust vocabulary attacking “conventional, tightly blinkered historiography” and especially historians from several eminent American universities. Again, this has no possible application to me. I am a stand-alone Roosevelt biographer.”
Wow…no ad-hominem attacks? Is he kidding? In his NRO hissing he did not refute a single one of her assertions but called her “a right wing loopy” who might have “been house trained.” Refined scholars don’t speak that way….maybe convicted fraudsters like him do.
And his comments on Yalta “She ignores the fact that Yalta gave the West all it wanted, including independent and democratic states in Eastern Europe, and that Stalin had to violate that agreement to impose Soviet occupation, starting the Cold War.” He is a historian? No he is a stand alone cur….rsk
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/358122/print
Diana West has exercised her right of rebuttal to the heavy barrage of criticism her book American Betrayal attracted, and mentioned my column in this space on the subject several weeks ago as one to which she was replying. I was deemed to be in the “echo chamber” of a number of critics most of whose comments I have not read. Her book made some startling assertions and attracted severe rejoinders, including mine. I don’t know most of those whom she purports to contradict, and I will not join the minute, line-by-line connection she draws between passages of her book and specific charges by Ron Radosh. I am not one of those whom she can possibly include as making an ad hominem attack on her; I don’t know her, and have never commented on her as a person. She expends considerable space and robust vocabulary attacking “conventional, tightly blinkered historiography” and especially historians from several eminent American universities. Again, this has no possible application to me. I am a stand-alone Roosevelt biographer.
The basic rebuttal process she uses, of miring the exchange in dogmatic argument about the precise meaning of particular words, is a time-honored method of breaking even in the opinion of readers and onlookers by boring everyone in equal-opportunity, no-fault, total-immersion nitpicking. But it is not really successful. Ms. West rises up like a cobra in self-righteous anger at the imputation to her of the opinion that “the FDR administration was ‘run’ by Soviet agents.” But she affirms that “the strategic placement of hundreds of agents of Stalin’s influence inside the U.S. government and other institutions amounted to a de facto occupation. . . . The vast and deep extent of Communist penetration, heretofore denied, had in fact reached a tipping point to become a de facto Communist occupation of the American center of power.”
Precisely these words were among those to which I objected. There were Communist sympathizers and outright Soviet agents in all American administrations from Woodrow Wilson to George H. W. Bush, as there were in all foreign governments (and as there were Western agents in the Soviet government, because naturally and ideologically adversarial regimes do spy on one another), and there were probably more such agents in the Roosevelt administration than in other American governments, which is unsurprising given economic conditions in the Thirties and the common war effort from 1941 to 1945. But there is no evidence, in Ms. West’s book or elsewhere, that they materially influenced policy, any of them, on either side.
http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/09/converted_on_the_road_to_damascus.html The swiftness with which attention is now being focused on collecting and destroying chemical weapons located in Syria has been truly breathtaking. Last Friday 6 September President Obama was waving a joint declaration signed by Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-bawer/911-twelve-years-later/print/
9/11 was a moment of utter moral clarity that has been succeeded by twelve years of moral chaos. Twelve years of duplicity, flim-flam, double-dealing, humbug. Twelve years of timorousness, incompetence, impotence.
Thousands of lives have been sacrificed in vain; inconceivable amounts of money have gone to waste. America’s financial security and its international standing have been imperiled. And all for one simple reason: because, from the very beginning, the powers that be, in both political parties, chose to lie about the nature of the enemy we were up against.
In the years before World War II began, Winston Churchill spoke up again and again in the House of Commons about the danger that the Nazis represented. His colleagues responded to his eloquent, passionate warnings with ridicule. He was considered a bore, a nag. Some of his fellow Tories viewed his preoccupation with Hitler as an embarrassment. But he didn’t waver. He knew whereof he spoke, he saw what was coming, and he did what he saw as his duty.
On September 11, 2001, only a couple of hours after the planes struck the World Trade Center, President Bush went on TV and promised the nation that we’d get the “folks” who did this. “Folks”? Would Churchill ever have called the Nazis “folks”? The tone was wrong, right from the start. Tone matters.
In the same TV address, Bush asked everyone to join him in a moment of silence. But it was not a time to bow one’s head in silence. It was a time to be enraged, to speak the facts firmly and clearly, and to plan appropriate retributive action. It was time for a moment of truth.
But nobody wanted to speak the truth.
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/why-bombing-syria-will-not-help-israel/print/ One of the more familiar arguments for bombing Syria is that it will help Israel. Israel doesn’t need that kind of help. Israelis successfully destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. During the Syrian Civil War, Israel has carried out a number of strikes against Syrian targets. If anything, NATO intervention will stifle Israel’s […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/mark-tapson/subverting-the-cultural-occupation/ In a recent National Review piece, Jim Geraghty pondered the alliterative question, “Can Conservative Comments from Celebrities Change the Culture?” He’s worried that by touting two celebrity quotes that espoused conservative values, the right is wading into the shallow waters of pop culture and degrading the serious business of politics. His concern couldn’t be […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/bruce-thornton/fifteen-minutes-of-foreign-policy-malfeasance/print/ On the eve of the 12th anniversary of the terrorist strikes on 9/11, President Obama last night addressed the nation and reprised every delusional and bankrupt internationalist idea that contributed to that disaster. The current Syrian crisis––merely the latest Middle Eastern example of Obama’s incompetence––exemplifies more thoroughly than the rest just how politicized, incoherent, […]
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324094704579066774128762480.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
What could be worse for America’s standing in the world than a Congress refusing to support a President’s proposal for military action against a rogue regime that used WMD? Here’s one idea: A U.S. President letting that rogue be rescued from military punishment by the country that has protected the rogue all along.
That’s where President Obama now finds himself on Syria after he embraced Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to take custody of Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons. The move may rescue Mr. Obama and Congress from the political agony of a vote on a resolution to authorize a military strike on Syria. But the diplomatic souk is now open, and Mr. Obama has turned himself into one of the junior camel traders.
What a fiasco. Secretary of State John Kerry, of all people, first floated this escape route for Assad on Monday in Europe where he was supposed to be rallying diplomatic support for a strike. The remark appeared to be off-the-cuff, but with Mr. Kerry and this Administration you never know. In any case before Mr. Kerry’s plane had landed in the U.S., Russia’s foreign minister had leapt on the idea and proposed to take custody of Assad’s chemical arsenal to forestall U.S. military action.
The White House should have rebuffed the offer given Russia’s long protection of Assad at the United Nations—a fact noted with scorn on Monday by Mr. Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice. Instead Mr. Obama endorsed the Russian gambit as what “could potentially be a significant breakthrough.” The Senate immediately called off its Wednesday vote on the military resolution. By Tuesday Assad had accepted the offer that he hopes will spare him from a military strike.
Obama Holds Fire on Syria, Waits on Russia Plan
President Presses Case for Syria Strikes but Asks Congress to Delay Votes
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324549004579067002690675662.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEFTTopStories
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama told Americans Tuesday he would pursue a newly energized diplomatic course to try to resolve the standoff with Syria, but he insisted that the U.S. must conduct military strikes, if needed, in response to the Assad regime’s alleged use of chemical weapons.
Mr. Obama said in a televised address that he asked Congress to postpone a vote on a resolution to authorize military force, which he looked likely to lose. Instead he said he would reserve the option of military strikes while pursuing a Russian proposal for Syria to hand over its chemical weapons under an international agreement.
“It’s too early to tell whether this offer will succeed,” Mr. Obama said, “and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments.”
Mr. Obama’s address, which showed no immediate sign of changing minds in Congress, came on a day of fast-moving developments in which U.S. lawmakers and officials from France, Russia and other nations scrambled to develop proposals under which Syria would relinquish its chemical weapons.
Syria for the first time directly admitted that it possesses chemical weapons and said it would cease their production and disclose the locations of the stockpiles to the international community, including the United Nations and Russia, which is at the center of the negotiations.
http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2013/09/jihadism-resurgent/?utm_source=Mosaic+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=2e3e8bd7a8-Mosaic_2013_9_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0b0517b2ab-2e3e8bd7a8-41165129 “I didn’t join the navy to fight for al-Qaida in a Syrian civil war,” read one sign posted on Facebook. US servicemen are being photographed holding signs to hide their faces. This new form of Anonymous protest is addressed to their president. “I didn’t join the navy to fight for al-Qaida in a Syrian […]
