zenpundit.com

PRAISE FOR OUR REAL ALLIES

A mood of cautious celebration appears to be setting in as one of the world’s worst regimes slinks off to an ignominous resting place on the ash-heap of history. Before we commence any rejoicing in Saddam’s downfall or death, we who are Americans owe a debt of thanks to those who stood with us in a time of trial when looking the other way or outright opposition was the road to cheap popularity. The Australians and especially the British stood by the United States when few other nations would ( or frankly, could ). It will not be forgotten. Thank you.

A FEW WORDS FROM JOHN KEEGAN

Saddam’s war plan, if he had one, must be reckoned one of the most inept ever designed. It made no use of the country’s natural defences. All advantages the defence enjoyed were thrown away even before they could be utilised.”

Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan

MORE ON TOTALITARIAN MINDSETS a strongly argued essay from Frontpagemag.com

GEITNER SIMMONS has an excellent post on the fantasist nature of Iraq’s dying Baathist regime’s war claims – a segment:

“The Iraqi information minister’s shameless resort to peddling fantasy as truth gives a telling indication about what everyday life is like in authoritarian societies. In Saddam’s Iraq, such incessant disregard for the truth is the norm.

What a burden it must be to try to carry on a thoughtful, rational existence in a society where one’s rulers routinely remove the truth as a normal consideration of life. The pushing out of truth removes the oxygen vital to an honest intellectual life “

Geitner really beat me to the punch today with an important point. This need to impose fantastical versions of reality seem to be part and parcel of totalitarian states ( or their intellectual advocates here in the West). Recall William Shirer’s descrption of life and politics in the Fuhrerbunker in the last day’s of the Third Reich or the dialogue between O’Brien and Winston Smith in the Ministry of Love. As an undergraduate I remember one of my profs during the Glasnost era was a member of a joint American-Soviet historical commission – the Soviets had so revised their records in this instance to conform to shifting Party lines that they needed the help of American historians to sort through the entanglement of lies and deceptions

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

” Check your premises “

– Ayn Rand