September 10, 2008
© Kandasamy M | Dreamstime.com
There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.
Blast from the Past!
A post commemorating THE blast. It hasn’t scarred over yet.
From our early days, originally posted well, you know… and it was titled: “No, I didn’t forget…”
MUDGE’S Musings
I never have, and probably never will.
No, I did not know anyone directly affected by the events of 11-September-2001, but nearly 300million of we U.S. citizens were hit hard that day, and have not yet recovered.
Here’s an image that I found in Entertainment Weekly, oddly enough, in the first issue that NYC based magazine published after Black Tuesday.
I suspect that it’s a composite; even in its earliest days in the Seventies, my recollection is that the WTC was surrounded by buildings, so I infer that the superimposition of Lady Liberty is only (only!) artistic rather than real.
This image makes up the wallpaper on every computer I work with: this one I work with daily (and nightly) at home; and the three (3!) I use every day, or occasionally, at work.
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Posted by mudge
September 2, 2008
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This one got me.
But, in recognition of Republican week, I don’t have a problem with having the infamous George III smirk atop this post.
I might have a problem with the thesis, but it’s worth exposing, since it represents a point of view that had never occurred to yr (justifiably) humble svt.
A Truman for our times
The received wisdom is that President Bush has been a foreign policy disaster, and that America is threatened by the rise of Asia. Both claims are wrong—Bush has successfully rolled back jihadism, and the US will benefit from Asian growth
That George W Bush’s foreign policy has been a total failure is now taken for granted by so many people that one usually hears it stated as a simple truth that need not be argued at all.
It has happened before. When President Harry S Truman said in March 1952 that he would not seek re-election, most Americans could agree on one thing: that his foreign policy had been a catastrophic failure. In Korea his indecision had invited aggression, and then his incompetence had cost the lives of some 54,000 Americans and millions of Korean civilians in just two years of fighting—on both counts more than ten times the number of casualties in Iraq. Right-wingers reviled Truman for having lost China to communism and for his dismissal of the great General Douglas MacArthur, who had wanted to win it back, with nukes if necessary. Liberals despised Truman because he was the failed shopkeeper who had usurped the patrician Franklin Roosevelt’s White House—liberals always were the snobs of US politics.
Abroad, Truman was widely hated too. The communist accusation that he had waged “bacteriological warfare” to kill Korean children and destroy Chinese crops was believed by many, and was fully endorsed by a 669-page report issued by a commission chaired by the eminent British biochemist Joseph Needham. Even more people believed that Truman was guilty of having started the cold war by trying to intimidate our brave Soviet ally, or at least that he and Stalin were equally to blame.
How did this same Harry Truman come to be universally viewed as a great president, especially for his foreign policy? It is all a question of time perspectives: the Korean war is half forgotten, while everyone now knows that Truman’s strategy of containment was successful and finally ended with the almost peaceful disintegration of the Soviet empire.
For Bush to be recognised as a great president in the Truman mould, the Iraq war too must become half forgotten. The swift removal of the murderous Saddam Hussein was followed by years of expensive violence instead of the instant democracy that had been promised. To confuse the imam-ridden Iraqis with Danes or Norwegians under German occupation, ready to return to democracy as soon as they were liberated, was not a forgivable error: before invading a country, a US president is supposed to know if it is in the middle east or Scandinavia.
Yet the costly Iraq war must also be recognised as a sideshow in the Bush global counteroffensive against Islamist militancy, just as the far more costly Korean war was a sideshow to global cold war containment. For the Bush response to 9/11 was precisely that—a global attack against the ideology of Islamic militancy. While anti-terrorist operations have been successful here and there in a patchy way, and the fate of Afghanistan remains in doubt, the far more important ideological war has ended with a spectacular global victory for President Bush.
First thing you have to do when confronting an essay such as this is to consider the source.
Edward Luttwak is one controversial bloke. Even Luttwak’s biography in Wikipedia is controversial.
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Posted by mudge
July 13, 2008
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MUDGE’S Musings
Those looking for the smoking guns on torture and the mishandled war on terrorism within the Bush administration seem to have found them.
Frank Rich has a must read column in today’s NYTimes, reviewing “The Dark Side” by Jane Mayer, to be published July 15.
Seems like the book is going to be a must read, also.
The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008
Op-Ed Columnist | By FRANK RICH | Published: July 13, 2008
WE know what a criminal White House looks like from “The Final Days,” Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s classic account of Richard Nixon’s unraveling. The cauldron of lies, paranoia and illegal surveillance boiled over, until it was finally every man for himself as desperate courtiers scrambled to save their reputations and, in a few patriotic instances, their country.
“The Final Days” was published in 1976, two years after Nixon abdicated in disgrace. With the Bush presidency, no journalist (or turncoat White House memoirist) is waiting for the corpse to be carted away. The latest and perhaps most chilling example arrives this week from Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, long a relentless journalist on the war-on-terror torture beat. Her book “The Dark Side” connects the dots of her own past reporting and that of her top-tier colleagues (including James Risen and Scott Shane of The New York Times) to portray a White House that, like its prototype, savaged its enemies within almost as ferociously as it did the Constitution….
In the name of defending against terrorism, the Bush administration has systematically violated the law, and the evidence is finally exposed to the light of day.
Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. “The Dark Side” is scarier than “The Final Days” because these final days aren’t over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president’s narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer’s portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure, and the motives invoked by Mr. Cheney to restore Nixon-style executive powers are theoretically selfless. Possessed by the ticking-bomb scenarios of television’s “24,” all they want to do is protect America from further terrorist strikes.
So what if they cut corners, the administration’s last defenders argue. While prissy lawyers insist on habeas corpus and court-issued wiretap warrants, the rest of us are being kept safe by the Cheney posse.
But are we safe? As Al Qaeda and the Taliban surge this summer, that single question is even more urgent than the moral and legal issues attending torture.
Thus the illustration at the top of this post. In fact, some top administration officials, past or present, have been warned publicly not to travel outside the U.S., due to international war crimes court exposure!
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Posted by mudge
July 5, 2008
MUDGE’S Musings
This is a multiple event weekend. In addition to observing the Independence Day holiday just past, July 5 marks Mr. & Mrs. MUDGE‘s wedding anniversary.
As well it should, this milestone will by necessity minimize disposable time devoted to the art of blogging, so in place of a totally new post, we’ll leave you with one of our favorite efforts. It’s actually quite a shame that it’s all too timeless.
There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.
Blast from the Past!
A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…
From last summer, originally posted September 29, 2007, and originally titled “mm156: There’s a war on, folks, and this must be a military weekend.”
MUDGE’S Musings
So, yesterday’s post on Predator (not the Governator’s flick, the UCAV, silly!) was not impelled by news, but rather by the (semi-) creative gestation process.
Then, today, while strolling through Digg (which this MUDGE must admit has somehow elevated itself over what was happening a few weeks ago — could it be that school is back in session and people are a bit more serious-minded?) found a couple of Navy related stories.
Now, MUDGE and the U.S. Navy go way back. No, never served. Yes, as one interested in the history of technology, and therefore military history, and technology in general, and the Navy has long embodied applied technology at its most dramatic.
This interest apparently was infectious, and this draft evader (in thought if not in deed) was bemused to have spawned MUDGElet No. 2, mentioned before in this space, a proud graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, and distinguished former lieutenant in the Navy’s surface warfare community.
Parents: be careful what you read, and what books and magazines you leave around for your kids to find!
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Posted by mudge
June 19, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
There’s most read, and then there’s favorite. This is a post which yr (justifiably) humble svt is, regrettably, but not regretfully, not at all humble about.
Blast from the Past!
A post we really, really loved to write, and read, and re-read…
From last summer, originally posted September 15, 2007, and originally titled “U.S. Pilot helped clear the fog of war”.
MUDGE’S Musings
Got to tell you, like most of us, I have long since developed war fatigue. And I’m nowhere near the front. All I seem to be able to do is wring my hands and whimper, “Get our soldiers out of this!”
But, I have a soft spot for technology, and this is a technology story, about Iraq. But of course, wars are fought by women and men. And this is even more a story about a creative and determined man who took on as his mission to sell a particular technology to the command structure.
So we’ll take a look.
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Posted by mudge
June 2, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
We have devoted a number of posts in this space to topics military. And why not? We are fighting wars in two far-away nations simultaneously, and have done so for nearly seven years.
That’s quite expensive, and it has been downright draining of our expensively trained manpower.
But, beyond the cost of prosecuting the “global war on terror,” we have been spending overwhelmingly on defense programs that, while lucrative to the home states of the military contractors and their congressional representatives, are impossible for a rational thinker to justify based on the nature of current and future threats.
Making this point most eloquently in an opinion piece in the LATimes was Robert Scheer, of truthdig.com.
Indefensible spending
America’s massive military budget is irrational, costly and dangerous. Why isn’t it a campaign issue?
By Robert Scheer |June 1, 2008
What should be the most important issue in this election is one that is rarely, if ever, addressed: Why is U.S. military spending at the highest point, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than at any time since the end of World War II? Why, without a sophisticated military opponent in sight, is the United States spending trillions of dollars on the development of high-tech weapons systems that lost their purpose with the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago?
You wouldn’t know it from the most-exhausting-ever presidential primary campaigns, but the 2009 defense budget commits the United States to spending more (again, in real dollars) to defeat a ragtag band of terrorists than it spent at the height of the Cold War fighting the Soviet superpower and what we alleged were its surrogates in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
The Pentagon’s budget for fiscal year 2008 set a post-World War II record at $625 billion, and that does not include more than $100 billion in other federal budget expenditures for homeland security, nuclear weapons and so-called black budget — or covert — operations.
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Posted by mudge
May 26, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
© Sandra Henderson | Dreamstime.com
The last Monday of May in the U.S. is the Memorial Day holiday. Wikipedia says,
Memorial Day is a United States Federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May (in 2008 on May 26). Formerly known as Decoration Day, it commemorates U.S. men and women who perished while in military service to their country. First enacted to honor Union soldiers of the American Civil War, it was expanded after World War I to include casualties of any war or military action.
As U.S. soldiers are fighting and dying daily, totaling much more than 4,000 to date, this opinion piece from today’s Washington Post is worth reflection. It’s author, William Troy, is a general.
Funeral Duty
By William Troy | Monday, May 26, 2008; Page A17
Throughout this war, the Army has maintained the practice of assigning a general officer to attend the funeral of every soldier who falls in service to our country. I’ve had this duty many times. The intensity of each funeral leaves me struggling to understand the enormousness of the sacrifice to which I have been a witness.
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5 Comments | "War on Terrorism", Air Force, Army, History, Iraq occupation, Marines, Navy, War | Tagged: funeral, Gen. William Troy, honored war dead, Iraq, Memorial Day | Permalink
Posted by mudge
May 14, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
Faithful reader (if s/he indeed is faithful) is probably disgusted with this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere© lately, as we’ve been rehashing good old stuff rather than creating good new stuff here.
As I reflect on my lethargic approach to blogging this past week, my analysis finds that it’s partly due to the demands of the bill paying occupation, and partly my failure to extricate from the zillions of new pages popping up every day in said ‘Sphere a nugget of insight upon which to build.
Didn’t really want to write about the Democrats’ Clinton/Obama soap opera. Although, I commend to your attention Eric Zorn of yr (justifiably) humble svt‘s hometown Chicago Tribune on why Sen. Clinton is the wrong running mate for Obama.
So that left me with — what? Reruns, and this during sweeps month, too! 
Tonight though, finally, revelation. Christopher Dickey of Newsweek makes a thought connection regarding the cesspool that is our Iraq adventure that makes such great sense that one is tempted to slap oneself, saying “it’s so obvious — why didn’t I think of that?”
I didn’t. Dickey did. Read and learn.
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Posted by mudge
May 6, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
Well, most of our robotic forces are air forces these days, but we keep learning about “spiders” and the like that are meant to assist ground troops.
It’s not just about protecting precious lives, although heaven knows that should be a sufficient rationale for investing in this sci-fi like technology.
It’s about substituting for Army and Marine ground troops that simply aren’t available.
Fred Kaplan, who writes most cogently on military affairs for Slate.com, has an intriguing analysis.
The Army’s Math Problem
We don’t have any more soldiers to send to Afghanistan unless we take some out of Iraq.
By Fred Kaplan | Posted Monday, May 5, 2008, at 4:56 PM ET
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wants to send 7,000 more U.S. troops—about two brigades—to Afghanistan, according to the May 3 New York Times. But there’s a problem, which the story underplays: We don’t have any more troops to send. The Army is in a zero-sum state: No more soldiers can be sent to Afghanistan without a one-for-one reduction of soldiers in Iraq.
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3 Comments | "War on Terrorism", Afghanistan, Air Force, Army, Geopolitics, Iraq occupation, Marines, Military affairs, Technology, War | Tagged: Afghanistan, Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, Fred Kaplan, Iraq, Kurdistan, Slate.com, troop shortage, war on drugs | Permalink
Posted by mudge
May 2, 2008
MUDGE’s Musings
The more you know about ethanol as a petroleum substitute, the more there is to dislike. This has been a continuing story in this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©, as you can see:
We have spent some time in this space on the subject of water, and its scarcity.
Now, the two concepts: the wrong-headed use for fuel of a key foodstuff; and the menace of the growing shortage of water in the U.S; come together courtesy of a new member of Left-Handed Complement‘s blogroll, fellow WordPress.com blog Optimal Functioning.
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Posted by mudge
Left-handed Complement 