Humility anyone?

David Brooks discusses the humility of our parents and grandparents in 1945 compared to the strutting and trash-talking that goes on today at any contest large or small:

'The allies had, on that very day, completed one of the noblest military victories in the history of humanity. And yet there was no chest-beating. Nobody was erecting triumphal arches.

'“All anybody can do is thank God it’s over,” Bing Crosby, the show’s host, said. “Today our deep down feeling is one of humility,” he added.

'Burgess Meredith came out to read a passage from Ernie Pyle, the famous war correspondent. Pyle had been killed just a few months before, but he had written an article anticipating what a victory would mean:

'“We won this war because our men are brave and because of many things — because of Russia, England and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature’s material. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud.”

'This subdued sentiment seems to have been widespread during that season of triumph. On the day the Nazi regime fell, Hal Boyle of The Associated Press reported from the front lines, “The victory over Germany finds the average American soldier curiously unexcited. There is little exuberance, little enthusiasm and almost none of the whoop-it-up spirit with which hundreds of thousands of men looked forward to this event a year ago.”'


The portrait above is of a five-star general who commanded Eisenhower and MacArthur and planned the greatest victory of American arms in our history, yet you see no pomposity or arrogance in him, George C. Marshall.

T.S. Eliot wrote: "The only wisdom we can hope to obtain is the wisdom of humility. Humility is endless."

What if Roman Polanski was a priest?

Do you think the French government would protest his extradiction for a crime committed in 1977?

For whatever reasons, being an artiste apparently excuses felonious behavior.

UPDATE: David Gibson has published an article called

"What If He Were Father Polanski?"

Notre Dame's quest for respectability

There was time when Notre Dame could do no wrong, at least in the minds of immigrant Catholics who enjoyed watching the Fighting Irish beat bastions of elitist WASP culture from Southern Cal to Michigan to Army. But since the 1960s, Notre Dame has imitated the Episcopal Church better than the Catholic Church in some ways, that is, in trying to impress WASPs and their politically correct cultural heirs who will never be impressed with Catholics who actually believe the Church's teachings about contraception, abortion, stem-cell research, etc.

I read here that the University is pressing charges against "eighty-eight peaceful pro-life activists who protested Obama's visit earlier this year. Among the trespassers was 79-year-old priest Fr. Norman Weslin, handcuffed and dragged away while singing "Immaculate Mary."

I would not think Our Lady approves, though I am not a graduate of her university along the Saint Joseph River in Indiana.

Law professor Charles Rice protests in this letter.

Our Lady of Walsingham

Though Anglican ecclesiastical histories sometimes read as if Henry VIII reformed an unpopular, foreign, and resented Catholic Church in England, England's Catholic history cannot be written off so easily. It was old, established, and venerable, not some Italian or Spanish import that corrupted local English Christianity.

Mark in Spokane posts about veneration of Our Lady of Walsingham in pre-Reformation England.

Blessed Scubillion Rousseau

"Catechist to the Slaves."

What has happened to the "living room?"

Some modern houses don't have one, or a formal dining room either. Our current tastes are more practical as well as faux egalitarian.

Under the Gables is a blog I just discovered about women and their work. In this case, the author's post is in some ways a short social history of the United States.

"Getting Out of the Way"

I have not linked to Tausign in a while, who writes on the humility of listening.

Mary Travers, Requiescat in pace.

I always enjoyed Peter, Paul, & Mary's music. Pentimento has this post.

Nukes, Iran, and Israel

Does not look good for anyone.

And if Iran attacks Israel or the U.S. with nuclear weapons, the left will blame George W. Bush for not destroying Iran's capabilities when he had a chance.

More about the American Pedros...

Danish journalist Camilla Fuhr Nilsson writes about those whose motto is "That Others May Live."

She says:

'The American guys work hard--harder than any other country’s military here in Afghanistan. They are deployed and redeployed all the time and some of the guys here come straight from Iraq with only a few weeks at home in between. It’s difficult to understand how they are able to have families but the majority of them seem to make it work somehow. They must have strong wives back at home who understand that they have chosen a job that requires them to be away for most of the year.'


More than true.

"Where does evolution leave God?"

Karen Armstrong and Richard Dawkins attempt to answer the question. Ms. Armstrong believes that faith and religion are still a part of the human mystery. Mr. Dawkins claims that God is dead because he was never born, much less needed. I will let you be the judge of who is right as well as who has more humility.

UPDATE: Maclin Horton has a nice post which discusses the problem of materialists who cannot explain what created the material of the universe. Even if the Big Bang set galaxies, stars, and organic matter in motion, Who created the materials that were set in motion?

Michael Yon v. British Media Ops in Afghanistan

If you read about war correspondent Michael Yon's war with the British Ministry of Defence as he tries to cover Afghanistan, it will become obvious that certain officers of the Queen are not serving the Sovereign or her people well. Yon is a straight-shooter if there ever was one. He talks to common soldiers and field officers. He learns their hopes, dreams, and fears. He evaluates strategy, tactics, equipment, logistics, and morale. He loves his country, our troops, and the troops of our allies, and he is fearless. He is what the free press should be.

Yet the Ministry of Defence yanked him from his embed with 2 Rifles. They say that others want to do it, but there is not much of a queue of correspondents hoping for an embed with an infantry company now. If there were, the world would be a better place. What really happened is that Yon reported that there is a shortage of helicopters and other equipment in Afghanistan.

'I do not know the reason for the embed termination. My best guess is that it relates to my sustained criticism that the British government is not properly resourcing its soldiers.

'Before going further, it is essential to underscore the importance of the “Media Ops” in the war. When Media Ops fails to help correspondents report from the front, the public misses necessary information to make informed decisions about the war. Many soldiers in the British Media Ops are true professionals who strive constantly to improve at their tasks and work very well with correspondents. Their professionalism and understanding of the larger mission—ultimate victory—provide an invaluable service to the war effort.

'But there are a few who should not be in uniform and it takes only one roach leg to spoil a perfect soup....

'I had a specific incident with this British Media Ops Major.

'The Major and I were driving in Camp Bastion around midday when it was very hot. A British soldier ran by wearing a rucksack. He was drenched in sweat under the blazing, dusty desert. I smiled because it’s great to see so many soldiers who work and train hard. Yet the Major cut fun at the soldier, saying he was dumb to be running in that heat. I nearly growled at the Major, but instead asked if he ever goes into combat. The answer was no. And, in fact, the Major does not leave the safety of Camp Bastion.

'That a military officer would share a foul word about a combat soldier who was prepping for battle was offensive. Especially an officer who lives in an air-conditioned tent with a refrigerator stocked with chilled soft drinks. Just outside his tent are nice hot and cold showers. Five minutes away is a little Pizza Hut trailer, a coffee shop, stores, and a cookhouse.

'This very Major had earned a foul reputation among his own kind for spending too much time on his Facebook page. I personally saw him being gratuitously rude to correspondents. Some correspondents—all were British—complained to me that when they wanted to interview senior British officers, they were told by this Major to submit written questions. The Major said they would receive videotaped answers that they could edit as if they were talking with the interviewee. (Presumably, senior British officers are avoiding the tough questions, such as, “So, when do you plan to send enough helicopters?”)'

Iran's only AWACS plan crashes...

If it were not tragic it would be comical. Iran's one surviving AWACS plane, its best hope for air defense when the Americans (maybe) or the Israelis (only a question of time) attack its nuclear capabilities, crashed into a U.S.-built F-5E fighter while in formation for public fly-over during a recent parade. The aircraft reportedly hit the ground at the burial site of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

More here.

Afghanistan?

There is no shortage of posts on this blog about Afghanistan. There is a shortage of imagination in Washington, D.C., probably far greater than any shortage among the uniformed personnel, from buck private to general, in Afghanistan. As much as I like a good historical analogy, Afghanistan is too dry and cold to be Vietnam and too big to be Iraq.

I am myself a bit skittish about Afghanistan, despite my generally hawkish views on foreign policy. "An army marches on its stomach," Napoleon said, and Afghanistan has no ports and poor roads. Nonetheless, we now have the best counter-insurgency army that we have ever had. Afghanistan's population, in most areas, despises the Taliban, even if they do not love us.

Unfortunately, our tactics in Afghanistan today closely resemble our tactics in Iraq in 2005-07: "force protection." That means circling the wagons, peering out, and using brutal firepower when you think you have identified a target. That also means being a target, more specifically, a stationary target.

The Surge in Iraq worked because it followed the first principle of counter-insurgency: know your enemy by living with and knowing the people you must protect. The average 19 year-old American soldier can figure out how to make friends in a country such as Afghanistan. When their commanders trust them to do so, they succeed. When their commanders, including presidents, do not trust them and fear their deaths will result in political backlash, everyone loses.

Here is David Brooks' best column in a while. He says:

'The record suggests what Gen. Stanley McChrystal clearly understands — that only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success. This is a doctrine, as General McChrystal wrote in his remarkable report, that puts population protection at the center of the Afghanistan mission, that acknowledges that insurgencies can only be defeated when local communities and military forces work together.

'To put it concretely, this is a doctrine in which small groups of American men and women are outside the wire in dangerous places in remote valleys, providing security, gathering intelligence, helping to establish courts and building schools and roads.

'These are the realistic choices for America’s Afghanistan policy — all out or all in, surrender the place to the Taliban or do armed nation-building. And we might as well acknowledge that it’s not an easy call. The costs and rewards are tightly balanced. But in the end, President Obama was right: “You don’t muddle through the central front on terror. ... You don’t muddle through stamping out the Taliban.”'

I have written often about how the Democratic Party has deferred or scorned the opportunity in recent years to show any backbone in foreign policy. I am afraid that the Democratic Party of my grandparents has been taken over by those who are clueless about what it means to be a superpower, namely, that resignation is not a viable option. Let me say this: if President Barack Obama commits this administration to winning in Afghanistan and prosecutes the war to a successful result, he will do more to secure a liberal coalition in power than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. If he continues to be as weak as he has projected for the last several months, he will become internationally irrelevant like Jimmy Carter, and his party will confirm all the suspicions that it is the party of Bill Ayers rather than F.D.R.

Vivian Marie Cupp, Requiescat in pace.

My college pastor once spoke to a gym full of grieving students on the occasion of the death of a classmate. He told us, "It's not the duration. It's the donation." I have not forgotten the phrase.

My blogging friend Kyle Cupp just lost his newborn daughter to anencephaly.

Saint Gianna Beretta Molla, pray for us.

Whittaker Chambers' grandson has a blog.

I read Whittaker Chambers' Witness a number of years ago. The opening of Soviet sources has vindicated Whittaker Chambers and largely condemned Alger Hiss, who claimed to be innocent until his death.

What I remember best about Witness, however, is how Chambers discovered goodness, a story not unlike one told by C.S. Lewis. Lewis, like Chambers, was an atheist. However, in reading literature, he became curious about transcendence because he found goodness that could not be explained through any materialistic theory of our existence.

Likewise, Chambers said his first encounter with Christianity was through reading Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. The Bishop of Digne's holiness and charity were Chambers' first encounter with the love and graces of Christian faith. Though he did not become a Christian for many years, he simply could not explain away the power of love he encountered through, ironically, one of France's most anti-clerical writers.

Elena Maria Vidal links to the grandson's website, where he discusses his grandfather and the literature which continues to be written about one of the great fissures in American cultural and political history.

If Richard Nixon had not been the driving force in the exposure of Hiss as an operative of Soviet intelligence, I think it would be easier for the American left to swallow his guilt, but to admit Hiss' guilt is to vindicate Nixon, and that is simply impossible in a large segment of American society, especially in the press and academia. Yes, Nixon was despicable, but in the case of Hiss, he was right.

Is cursive writing obsolete?

Perhaps its utility as a way of writing legibly and efficiently has been surpassed first by the typewriter, then by the computer, and now by the Ipod and Blackberry, but I question whether its practice is useless.

For one, texting and other methods turn communication into cryptic exercises of utilitarian succinctness, hardly of the dignity of John 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

We are teaching penmanship to our daughter because we believe that words are reflections of God's greatest gift of His Son. Thus, learning to write words using a graceful hand is something more than a utilitarian skill akin to tying one's shoes. Here is a piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the utilitarian ethic which drives the curriculum of schools, though the article does not make such a specific and critical point.

Teaching yours kids about 9/11

In Teresa's Two Cents.

Great insight by C.S. Lewis

As quoted by the blogger of the "Great Deception."

G.K. Chesterton on Dan Brown's novels

Not exactly a real interview, but it's funny.

Hat tip to The Ironic Catholic.

Two weeks into homeschooling...

We faced a crossroads this year in our daughter's education. She was admitted to another private school, which asked for a sizeable payment before her other school's tuition was paid in full. Meanwhile, we were trying to pay off our car. We prayed. My wife and I agreed that we were not going to borrow money for the private education of a 4th grader (especially while sending mortgage-sized monthly payments for my student loans). With the recession not bottomed out, we did not want to sign up for any more monthly payments.

My wife eventually asked, "Why don't we homeschool?" We had talked about it when the little one was small, but my wife was a bit nervous about teaching the most basic fundamentals and knew she couldn't forgive herself if her daughter turned into a young nitwit under her personal tutelage. So we sent her for four years to the local Montessori school, which was a good experience overall. Her teachers were excellent, and she became an solid young reader.

About the time we decided we would homeschool, we gave her an annotated and illustrated copy of The Hobbit for her birthday. She devoured it before I could finish reading it to her. I pulled my old copy of the Lord of the Rings trilogy off the shelf for her perusal, the same copy I used in college when Thomas Howard taught a course called Modern Myth. My daughter read each book of the trilogy twice before mid-summer and became an unofficial citizen of Middle Earth. We found ourselves suddenly living with a young girl who could enjoy serious books, and it is a great pleasure for us.

We worked hard to find a curriculum that would challenge her and not be limited to the superlatives of our own learning. We became convinced that the modern idea of education as over-specialization founded upon utilitarian math and science informed by reading in dozens of subjects and modern languages was not the path we would take. We found the Classical Liberal Arts Academy on the web. It is newly begun by a classics teacher who is a revert to Catholicism. He and his family live in the country and are doing their best to be good lay Dominicans. About three hundred students are enrolled in their on-line program.

For the last two weeks, despite an illness for my wife and a busy calendar for me, we have read the morning devotions, Mass prayers and lessons, and vespers from the Magnificat for each day and worked with our girl in her CLAA classes of Grammar I, Arithmetic I, and Catechism I, helped her with penmanship and typing, kept up her practice on the piano, and taxied her to extracurricular activities such as gymnastics and art. (As we become more disciplined we might try full participation in the Liturgy of the Hours.) As my daughter progresses we will add additional CLAA subjects from the Trivium and Quadrivium as well as Geography, History, and others. We have good resources in science and the arts nearby.

If we turn into miserable failures as hometeachers, we will tell you. So far we are making it and believe we have chosen the right way. We are finding homeschooler programs at local museums, science centers, libraries, and parks. In the end, our goal is to educate our daughter as Saint Thomas More educated his, Margaret More Roper.



[Above: Saint Jerome, Saint Thomas More (Hans Holbein), and Margaret More Roper.]

"That Others May Live"

Michael Yon reports on the skilled and brave teams of chopper pilots and medics serving in Afghanistan, sometimes known as "Pedros":

'The pilots swoop in for the patient. There is only one thing that British soldiers love more than mail and that’s Pedro. When I told British soldiers from 2 Rifles that Pedro was going to take me, many British soldiers asked me to say “thank yous” to the Pedros. The Pedros are a great morale booster because we know when we take casualties, Pedro is coming with miniguns and incredible medics. When other helicopters are grounded by bad weather, Pedro goes. When bullets are flying, Pedro comes in with miniguns blazing. They also rescue Danish, Americans, and others, including contractors and Afghan civilians sometimes.'

Click to magnify the photo and read the patch on his sleeve below: "That Others May Live."

This blog was born of 9/11.

I was sitting in my office highrise when the world I knew unraveled. My wife was frightened, and my little girl was a yearling. We had recently moved and did not have cable television, so I went to a church to pray and then to a restaurant, where we watched the towers fall over and over again for most of the day.

For months afterwards, there was not much to do in the office, so I read news and blogs much of the day. The first blog I read regularly was Andrew Sullivan, who at the time was a hawk. I read Glenn Reynolds and many of the other voices you see linked regularly on the blog. I felt helpless and voiceless trying to practice law and rear a child during a world meltdown. I missed teaching, where I felt relevant, and in a limited circle, influential.

This blog is my mad sword stroke at both America's enemies and my own sense of impotence. Yes, it is pitiful, isn't it? Yet, we all have to adjust and do what we have to do to keep our sanity, and from my desk chair I try to keep the faith of the West and remind myself and my readers that God is bigger than any human calamity.

Peggy Noonan writes today about the kids, not infants, of 9/11, those most conscious that the world they had known had imploded with the twin towers:

'"[B]ut I remember having my mouth agape for a minute or two in complete and utter shock. I went to my art period and I remember my art teacher sitting there with her hands on her face just bawling, she was so frightened. My mom picked me up, and I remember walking with her, and I'm saying 'This is Pearl Harbor.'"

'Nine-eleven, he felt, changed everything for his generation. "It completely destroyed our sense of invincibility—maybe that's not the right word. I would say it made everything real to a 12-year-old. It showed the world could be a dangerous place when for my generation that was never the case. My generation had no Soviet Union, no war against fascism, we never had any threats. I was born when the Berlin Wall came down. It destroyed the sense of carefree innocence that we had."'

I'm a bit older, but I share many of the emotions, having been a toddler at the time of the JFK assassination. The oddest thing about 9/11 for many of us is that life goes on. I was a practicing lawyer with a family then, and I still am today. I did not join the JAG Corps, though I strongly considered going in as an old guy, just as my great-grandfather volunteered for service at an older age during the Great War. Nonetheless, I feel myself a failure. The great challenge of our generation we have largely passed on to people a decade younger. I sit at a computer and type out words, little echoes in some cases of profound thought, but little in the larger scheme of things. Moreover, our war, like the Great War, is not over. We are going to be fighting this one for a while. We might not need to be in Afghanistan, but we probably need Afghanistan in order to be reminded that ruthless men seek to kill us and will do so by any means.

So I close with T.S. Eliot's words from "East Coker:"

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Andy Offutt Irwin gets another award...

This one is called the "Just Plain Folks Award for Storytelling Album" for his CD Bootsie in Season. Yes, he is a storyteller and a great guy. If you don't know him, he is worth gettin' to know. He has suffered much and figured out how to laugh. More about him here and in his hometown newspaper.

"How to insure every American"

John Shadegg and Pete Hoekstra state the obvious that obviously is not obvious:

'Government has caused the problems we face in health care. Our tax code incentivizes employer-provided health care, rewards health insurance companies by insulating them from accountability, and punishes those who lack employer-provided care.

'Every night on television there are dozens of commercials from Geico, Progressive, Allstate and other companies offering us better auto insurance at lower costs. But there are virtually no commercials for health insurance. This is because the federal government protects health insurance companies from real competition. Insurers don't have to market to consumers. They only have to satisfy employers. In addition, a person living in New York, for example, is currently only permitted to purchase individual insurance in New York. Allowing competition across state lines would drive down cost tremendously.

'We believe the solution to this problem is patient choice. What appears to be a free market in health care today is not. The health-care market is a stacked deck that favors insurance companies rather than patients.

'We must stop punishing Americans who buy their own plan by forcing them to purchase their care with after-tax dollars, making it at least one-third more expensive than employer-provided care. Individuals should be able to take their employer's plan, or turn it down and select insurance of their own choosing without any tax penalty.'

"Mercy is as mercy does"

Nice piece by Pentimento.

Should you invoice your wedding guests for the bills?

I am pretty traditional, as you might have guessed, but I am an endangered species apparently. We received some generous cash gifts at our wedding, but we did not solicit them. We did not set up a cash bar either.

Because my great-grandmother's portrait stares at me every day from the dining room wall, I'm careful not to dishonor her, tradition being the "democracy of the dead" as G.K. Chesterton said. However, the lifestyle section of almost every newspaper today publishes what are essentially rationales for bad taste.

"Atheists Offer to Care for Pets After the Rapture"

I didn't make this up.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

"Coruscating on Thin Ice"

Peggy Noonan has the ability to evaluate politics and politicians not just in terms of the horse race, but as human beings who bring their frailties before the entire world. She notes of President Barack Obama and his team:

'They are all now busy planning and strategizing his congressional address on health care. It will be hard to pull off well. The president will be talking, essentially, to three groups: the political elites of both parties and the media, his supporters on the ground, and highly informed citizens who are already either for or against the plan but want to hear, ponder and form an opinion on the speech.

'But the great mass of Americans, the big center, will, I strongly suspect, not be listening. Mr. Obama has grown boring. And it's not Solid Boring, which is fine in a president and may be good. It's sort of Faux Eloquent Boring, especially on health care. The president likely doesn't know this, and his people won't have told him because they don't know it either, but Mr. Obama always has the same sound, approach, logic, tone, modulation. He always has the same stance. There's no humor or humility in it. News is surprise, and he never makes news.'

Good point. Since his nomination last summer, has Mr. Obama surprised us once?

Libya as a socialist paradise...

I must admit that I have not thought much about Libya since the 1980s when two U.S. Navy F-14s downed two Soviet-built Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra. Muammar Qaddafi figured out that it is better to scream at the Americans than to actually provoke us into a fight. Since then he appears to be in his own totalitarian world. I have been told that he is a serious drug user. He certainly is one of the sorriest human beings to rule any country in the world today, and more than 5 million unfortunate people have to endure a totalitarian cult for a narcissist.

Michael Totten visited Libya a few years ago and republished this piece he wrote for the LA Times on his blog. It is a great story of endurance.

An excerpt:

'The few men I did see walked or huddled together. They looked sullen, heavy, severe. I felt raw and exposed, wondering what on earth they must have thought when they saw an obvious foreigner wandering around the desolate streets.

'So I did what I could to find out. I smiled at everyone who walked past. You can learn a lot about a people and a place by trying this out. In New York, people ignore you. In Guatemala City, people will stare. In Libya, they all smiled back, every last one of them, no matter how grumpy or self-absorbed they looked two seconds before.

'I never detected even a whiff of hostility, not from one single person. Libyans seemed a decent, gentle, welcoming people with terrible luck. It wasn't their fault the neighborhood stank of oppression.

'Most apartment buildings were more or less equally dreary, but one did stand out. Architecturally it was just another modernist horror. But a 6-by-8-foot portrait of Qaddafi was bolted to the façade three stories up. It partially blocked the view from two of the balconies. The bastard couldn't even leave people alone when they were home.

'The posters weren't funny anymore. There were too damn many of them, for one thing. And, besides, Qaddafi is ugly. He may earn a few charisma points for traveling to Brussels and pitching his Bedouin tent on the Parliament lawn, but he's no Che Guevara in the guapo department.'


Totten describes the Stalinist conditions in Tripoli, and they sound like Pyongyang. Imagination in architecture, art, commerce, technology, literature, politics, economics, and education has been banned so long that boredom has surpassed suicide as the number one cause of death. Even the national flag is a plain green ensign without stripes, borders, or insignia. It has less imagination than the graffiti in a vacant lot, and it reflects sickly the tastes and limitations of the local despot.

What do you call this?

The radiation of the rotor blades is so beautiful, especially if you are a U.S. or British soldier under fire in Afghanistan, that Michael Yon thought it deserved a special name. He calls it the "Kopp-Etchells Effect" after two fine soldiers, one an American and the other a Brit, who gave their lives in Afghanistan this summer.

Yon's stories remain among the best being told about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but the British Ministry of Defence has cancelled his embed.

Photo to the right is of Corporal Joseph Etchells of the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland. He asked that his remains be cremated and sent into the air with fireworks above a park where he played as a child.

I have intended to write a substantive piece about the Afghanistan war this summer. The fact that I cannot gain the confidence to write tells me that the subject is complex and that I am too busy for the task. Nonetheless, those in the know such as Yon have predicted trouble in Afghanistan for more than a year. Iraq by comparison is a cinch: Mesopotamia has been successfully conquered and occupied dozens of times in history. Its people are used to being ruled by foreigners, and Iraq has the roads, cities, ports, and airports to support an occupying army.

Afghanistan has not been completely subdued by the Persians, the Macedonians, or the Ottomans, much less the British, the Russians, or the Americans. Its people refuse to trade their local independence for central government, much less for rule by foreigners. The country is huge, and its population exceeds that of Iraq, though no census has been conducted in decades. Its elevations and terrain are daunting. It has no ports, few airports, poor roads and infrastructure, and a very small middle class on which to build modern institutions. Its cash crop is opium. With less than 100,000 troops, we control nothing but our own bases and Kabul. Our in-country logistics are carried on by helicopters because the Taliban and other militia armies control the roads and the passes.

For this reason, I question our stamina to fight this war in Afghanistan, not the stamina of the servicemen of the U.S. and our allies, but of the President and the Congress. A war far from home which requires dozens of logistical personnel for every soldier on combat patrol in the theater will need a president who will put his rhetorical skills and his personal reputation on the line in order to win. He will need to risk taking ownership of the entire campaign. If he does not, nobody on his team will either.

September 2, 1945

I just googled "Where were you on VJ Day?" There were more hits than I can link.

After we dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 and the second on August 9, the Emperor himself favored surrender, though he had to head off a palace rebellion of those who would hold him under house arrest so they could die for him. The Emperor announced the surrender on August 15, though it was still August 14 in parts of the U.S. The documents of surrender were actually signed on September 2.

When our soldiers and Marines landed to begin the occupation, we feared treachery so we landed tactically as if we were carrying out the invasion plans. My late uncle, a U.S. Marine who had fought at Saipan and Tinian, landed with his platoon on a beach which would have been a killing zone if the defenders had resisted. His three children, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren have much to be grateful for.

September 1, 1939

Vladimir Putin this week made a half apology for Russia's non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939.

If he cannot admit that Joseph Stalin took advantage of a helpless nation and cynically divided it with Europe's other most infamous dictator, Putin should stay home and keep his mouth shut. Russia can be proud of its triumph over the Wehrmacht in World War II, but there is no shame in saying that evil Soviet leadership in 1939 resulted in the rape of Poland. (It also paralyzed the left around the world in resisting Adolf Hitler because the Comintern instructed Communists around the world not to criticize the Nazis until the Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.)

The photo above is of a Soviet officer with two Wehrmacht officers in 1939. The link above is to the "Doomed Soldiers," those Poles who resisted both the Nazis and the Communists. The motto of Polish soldiers, as can be found at monuments such as the one at the Allied cemetery near Monte Casino, is "For Our Freedom and Yours."