American “Values”

The wingnuts reaction to the New York Times story on Obama and Ayers that doesn’t find too many connections between the two can be summarized as thus: “The MSM ignored all of Obama’s connections to a terrorist who tried killing Americans!” The ironies here are blinding.  William...

Kathleen Frydl – Is Iraq Another Vietnam?

Dr. Kathleen Frydl, Assistant Professor of History at U.C. Berkeley, draws parallels between the Vietnam War and the current war in Iraq. Related: Der Spiegel interview with Lawrence F. Kaplan: “Before the war, Iraq was an abstraction, an idea. Once you have seen the place you can’t help but be much more...

Quote of the Day: Bitter And Distorted

The Iraq war was probably doomed from the start. And while [Lt. General Ricardo] Sanchez couldn’t have won the war, he could have contributed less to its loss. And this is what Sanchez’s account never grapples with: The proposition that a war likely to fail shouldn’t be fought. That...

The Revisionist

And I thought Norman Podhoretz simply engaged in revisionist history when it came to Vietnam.  But hey, maybe he’s trying to get a jump on this whole 9-11 thing.  You know, kinda how the cool kids always are trying to say they were the first to hear a band before it became popular? In his tribute to...

News Of The Day Redux

I’m hoping today is the last day I have to do these things; there’s a chance my life will return to normality on Monday, but the odds favor Tuesday.  In any case, let’s take a look at some of the headlines that will be driving the news today. -There have been better examples of bad timing...