John Garth in his biography of J. R. R. Tolkien recounts a meeting between the future author of The Lord of the Rings and an Oxford professor at the outbreak of World War I. As a student, Tolkien had taken part in debates over the looming German threat, but was still dismayed at the turn of events. According to Garth, "the Catholic professor responded that this war was no aberration: on the contrary, for the human race it was merely 'back to normal'."
It is the complete rejection of this concept of normality in human affairs that is at the core of liberalism. Though there have been strands of liberalism throughout history, it flowered in the relatively peaceful first decades of the 19th century, following the quarter century of global warfare that had been spawned by the French Revolution and the ambitions of Napoleon.
The disruption of the London terrorist plot to blow up a number of airliners has again raised the "clash of civilizations" issue brought to prominence by Samuel Huntington. But rather than dwell on how Islamic fundamentalism is able to motivate suicide bombers and insurgents, it is more important to look at whether American civilization can still motivate resistance to such assaults. Has liberalism already so weakened society's will to fight back that even leaders and soldiers committed to do so cannot succeed?
Militant Islam's war against the West is not just normal, it is perpetual. If campaigns of conquest are not possible, then ghazi (raiding) warfare is to be conducted. This is more than mere "terrorism." It is the tradition of weakening bordering communities by attrition until conquest is possible. That the London plotters were from Pakistan, whose theater of conflict is Kashmir, on the Indian frontier of Islam, indicates that they see a world war, not a struggle limited to Gaza, Lebanon or Iraq. Many Moslems have been recruited into extremism while living in the midst of liberal societies (like London), having found their surroundings decadent and corrupt. Thus liberalism's much vaunted ideals of tolerance and passivity are seen by foes as a lack of honor and strength.
American society teeters on the edge of military collapse from a lack of will to do what is needed, on a large enough scale for a long enough period of time, to defeat Islamic militants in any theater of current combat.
#5
The decision to nuke Japan was based largely on war weariness. Projected casualties of air/ground operations were: one half million. Truman added it all up, and did the right thing.
There seems to have been a change in the political winds. They've been blowing pretty strongly against George Bush and the Republicans this spring and early this summer. Now, their velocity looks to be tapering off or perhaps shifting direction.
When asked what would affect the future, the Prime Minister of Britain, Harold Macmillan, famously said: "Events, dear boy. Events." The event this month that I think has done most to shape opinion was the arrest in London on August 9 of 23 Muslims suspected of plotting to blow up American airliners over the Atlantic.
The arrests were a reminder that there still are lots of people in the world and quite possibly in this country, too who are trying to kill as many of us as they can and to destroy our way of life. They are not unhappy because we haven't raised the minimum wage lately or because Mr. Bush rejected the Kyoto Treaty or even because we're in Iraq.
They've been trying to kill us for years, going back at least to 1983, when a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed 241 American servicemen in Lebanon. Then they attacked the World Trade Center, the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole in Aden all while Bill Clinton was president. September 11 woke us up to the threat. The political acrimony of 2004 and 2005 and this year made it seem remote.The London arrests reminded us it's still there.
We've had other reminders, too. For four years, Hollywood has seemed mostly uninterested in the war on terrorism in vivid contrast to its enlistment in World War II.
But this year, we've seen the release of "United 93," and, in "World Trade Center," Oliver Stone presents us not with one of his conspiracy theories but, instead, a story of heroism. On September 10 and 11, ABC will devote six hours of prime time to "The Path to 9-11," a fast-paced, bracing docudrama that tells the story of the terrorists and the people who tried to stop them, from the first WTC bombing in 1993 to 9/11 itself. And this will be only one of many commemorations of the fifth anniversary.
As it happens, the London arrests came almost exactly 24 hours after antiwar candidate Ned Lamont, flanked by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, claimed victory over Sen. Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary. The Lamont victory and the rejection of the party's 2000 vice presidential nominee sharpened the contrast between the two major parties.
One, it seems, would withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible without regard for the consequences an initially popular position for those who consider our effort there either misbegotten or hopelessly bungled. The other, it seems, would stay the course until we achieve our goals one that may become more acceptable if people come to think that withdrawal would not make us safe. The London arrests seem to have accelerated this thought process.
Polls since the London arrests suggest what has been happening. Mr. Bush's job approval was up significantly in the Gallup Poll, usually the most volatile of national polls, and the Democratic margin in the generic question (Which party's candidate for the House would you vote for?) was sharply reduced. There was a similar trend in generic vote in the Rasmussen poll, which is ordinarily much less volatile than Gallup.
Connecticut polls showed Lieberman, running as an independent, ahead of Lamont, with Lamont having strikingly high negatives for a candidate with such limited public exposure. It seems to be a fact remember the Paul Wellstone funeral in 2002? that when most Americans see the hard left of the Democratic Party in action, they don't much like what they see.
Of course, they don't like to see violence in Iraq, either.
But the sectarian killings that flared up in Baghdad in June and July have been reduced by 30%, says ABC News by intensive patrolling by America and, more importantly, Iraqi troops. It's not clear, of course, whether the reductions will continue. Other threats still exist, like Iran's nuclear program.
Earlier this summer, I thought that voters had decided that the Republicans deserved to lose but were not sure that the Democrats deserved to win, and that they were going to wait, as they did in the 1980 presidential and the 1994 congressional elections, to see if the opposition was an acceptable alternative. Events seem to have made that a harder sell for Democrats. A change in the winds.
Posted by: DanNY ||
08/28/2006 06:59 ||
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One can only hope.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/28/2006 12:25 Comments ||
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proving what we already know - the only poll that matters is the election.
#3
The climate of public opinion is changing ever so gradually over the years. Some columnist years ago predicted a general "education by murder", which is continuing to this day.
#4
And the Islamic Crusaders just keep helping Bush out. What's the Law of Unintended Consequences?
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/28/2006 16:08 Comments ||
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#5
DRUDGEREPORT.com > CARVILLE > iff the Dems can't win agz the GOP even despite the current environment, then the whole premise of the Dem Party needs to be examined and redone. * NANCY PELOSI > basically a call for "no compromise/no more compromises" anymore wid the GOP. The SSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHH future CPUS is waiting for America, the GOP-led NPE and Washington to be attacked and destroyed.
An old copy of Forbes ASAP (2/22/99) has an article on supercomputing which includes this quote from a nuclear weapons designer at Los Alamos:
Weapons designers play the societal role of witches in fairy tales--we scare people into behaving.
I've noticed that many liberals talk glibly and confidently about using the threat of "massive retaliation" to deter nuclear attacks by countries like Iran and North Korea--while at the same time angrily denouncing any conventional military operations by the US or Israel that result in any civilian casualties at all. On the one hand, they argue that it is morally unacceptable for Israel to destroy a terrorist rocket facility if there is a risk of civilian casualties. On the other hand, they support a strategy which implies the deliberate killing of millions of civilians. How can these opinions coexist?
I think it's because, in their minds, nuclear weapons belong to the realm of witchcraft, not the realm of reality.
RTWT, including the comments.
Posted by: Phil ||
08/28/2006 00:55 ||
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Yes, but the conventional action of Israel does more to effect the enemy than all the nukes on all the missiles the US has because the enemy knows the Israelis will use theirs and the Americans won't.
A recent article at the Belmont Club, in discussion of an article in the Washington Post, discussed the issue of US combat deaths in Iraq. While it's safer to be in combat in Iraq than it is to be a young, black man in Philadelphia, that doesn't tell us what it means to be a soldier today in terms of the risk of dying in combat.
The WaPo article correctly notes that some occupations in the military are more at risk than others in terms of combat death. A Marine lance corporal in a regular unit has the highest risk of dying, whereas the risk for Air Force personnel is very low. That's not always been the case: in World War II, one high risk occupation was as a crew member in a B-17 or B-24 bomber wing.
The Belmont Club notes further that the risk of dying in Iraq is significantly less than the historical norm. How much less? To look at that, I collected combat death data presented in the post and compared it to civilian population data from this Wikipedia article. I used the closest decile, good enough for our purposes, for each of the twelve major US wars in our history. The graph embedded in this article demonstrates clearly that the three most recent US wars -- the Gulf War, the Afghan War, and the Iraq War -- have among the lowest risk of dying in combat, relative to our total population.
The wars with the highest risk of combat death compared to the total population are the three total wars we have fought: the Civil War, World War II, and the Revolutionary War. Not coincidentially, all three had elements fought on our own soil; while both the Civil War and the Revolutionary War involved virtually our entire population.
Part of the reason why our recent wars have such a low death rate is that our total population has bloomed substantially: from less than 3 million for the 13 colonies to nearly 300 million today. We send many times fewer young men, relative to our total population, to war today compared to 100 and 200 years ago.
The demographers will sniff: the graph doesn't exclude women; even though we have women in the military today the risk of a woman being killed in combat is substantially lower than that of men (18% of that of men in Iraq, and much lower than that in past wars). The total population includes children, the elderly and the unfit as well as miliary-age, combat-eligible men. A better analysis, if one is interested in the risk of combat-eligible men of dying in combat, would account for this.
I suggest the graph does serve a purpose: it reminds us of the terrible cost we've paid in the past to secure and preserve freedom. While the number of combat deaths today is very low, each is important to us. We honor them all, and we're thankful that our way of making war today means far fewer of our young men and women will die in combat.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/28/2006 00:00 ||
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Keep reminding the crazies that the great majority of all of those deaths were caused by an armed and hostile enemy. The memory of the dead should be judged by the measure of their sacrifice.
The left wants to use casualty figures against any sitting adminstration as though command caused the deaths not an armed enemy.
I won't let the left's use of American military dead to dishonor their sacrifice or the the mission of those who are and who have been on the line be diminished by the insanity of our fifth column left.
#4
Ah, the answer to THAT, GC, is right at my fingertips (more or less):
Presently, something over 40,000 are killed on our highways every year, and who knows how many injuries....
At the time of the Vietnam war (the one were we lost 55,000 folks, more or less) something close to 55,000 were being killed on our highways each year.
It's a tribute to our great highway engineers, (which business I only fool around in from time to time) that we have (something like) doubled the miles driven but significantly reduced the fatalities.
Unless, of course, it's all due to the 55 mph speed limit....
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/28/2006 10:28 Comments ||
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Disc brakes, radial tires, and better suspensions in small cars and trucks allow us to recover from a variety of traffic incidents without an accident. Also, cars are constructed with survival of the inhabitants in mind. Air bags and compartment strength of the peopled area have also contributed.
Finally, Governor Rendell's removal of the motorcycle helmet law just to get elected has contributed. Phalking democraps. Anybody who votes democrap deserves to choke on a rubber chicken.
#6
Bright Pebbles,
Actually the friendly fire rate in WW2 was fairly high. A study in the 1990's said it was up to 25% of ground casualties. So our casualties in Iraq are substantially less than friendly fire in WW2.
One thing that is true is that being a soldier in Iraq is safer than living in many inner cities in the US.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
08/28/2006 12:24 Comments ||
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Part of the reason why our recent wars have such a low death rate is that our total population has bloomed substantially
But the vast majority of the reason is the capital intensity of our military. We have invested consistently and significantly in equipment and training for those we do send to war. Thus far fewer need to be sent to war to accomplish a given task and they are far liklier to prevail before their enemy has a chance to engage them effectively.
This is also the reason occupation has proven and will continue to be so difficult for us. Occupation is a labor intense activity and the application of capital to it does not yield significant improvements in productivity. The same thing is true of education and, to a lesser extent, health care.
Keep reminding the crazies that the great majority of all of those deaths were caused by an armed and hostile enemy.
Ultimately that is true, but prior to WWII the majority of the deaths were due to poor sanitation, poor food and easily transmitted diseases. Soldiers have traditionally had more to fear from their bivouac than the enemy. The improvement in these factors have also made a significant contribution to the reduction in the lethality of war in recent years.
Note also that the analysis, reasonably, ignores what was probably the bloodiest war in American history, King Philip's War, 1675.
Finally, the wars with the highest death rate have been the ones fought with the greatest religious fervor. If you have not read it, see The Cousins' Wars for a hint of what Islam is getting itself into. Note also the progression of dates of the major wars, 1675, 1775, 1861, 1941; 100, 86 and 80 years apart. Somebody's in for a real asskicking soon.
Our Thought For The Day comes from Steve Centanni, the Fox News reporter freed over the weekend by his captors in Gaza:
"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it."
Before their release, Mr Centanni and his cameraman, Olaf Wiig, had appeared on camera in Islamic robes, sitting cross-legged, and had read from scripts announcing that they had become observant Muslims and asking Bush and Blair to do likewise. "Islam is not just meant for some people. It is the true religion for all people at all times," said Mr Centanni. "I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah."
Earlier, his captors released a statement saying the two men had been offered a choice between a) conversion to Islam; b) the jizya (the tax paid by non-Muslims to their Muslim masters); or c) war. There was no none-of-the-above box. "They chose Islam," said the spokesperson for the group," and that is a gift God gives whom He chooses" even if circumstances occasionally oblige Him to give it to you down the barrel of a gun.
Just as there are rapists who tell themselves their victims are genuinely in love with them, so no doubt there are those who believe that faith can be enforced at the point of a sword. In one of the most indestructible examples of Islamostockholm Syndrome, the British journalist Yvonne Ridley was kidnapped in Afghanistan, converted to Islam, and has stayed converted: she was on Britain's Islam Channel the other day pitching softball questions to the former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed about his plans to destroy the United States.
But Centanni and Wiig's brief interlude as practicing Muslims is revealing in a larger sense. Ever since 9/11, the western multicultural mindset has been desperately trying to swaddle Islam within the fluffy quilt of diversity. It's "just" another religion, like the Congregationalists and Episcopalians. To be sure, it's got a few hotheads, but haven't we all? Sticking with this line requires an awful lot of brushing under the carpet and there's so much under there by now it looks like a broadloomed Himalayas. For a start, you can't help noticing the traffic is mostly one-way: In Dr. Mahathir's country, where a long English Common Law tradition is under sustained pressure from sharia, a lady called Lina Joy is currently enduring death threats and a long legal battle because she committed the "crime" of converting from Islam to Catholicism.
Well, that's Malaysia for you. But how about Michigan? Nazra Quraishi, a kindergarten teacher at a local Muslim school, wrote to The Lansing State Journal last month as follows:
"Islam is a guide for humanity, for all times, until the day of judgment. It is forbidden in Islam to convert to any other religion. The penalty is death.There is no disagreement about it. Islam is being embraced by people of other faiths all the time. They should know they can embrace Islam, but cannot get out. This rule is not made by Muslims; it is the supreme law of God."
That seems clear enough, doesn't it? In 1951, Eric Hoffer, America's great longshoreman philosopher, wrote:
"The manner in which a mass movement starts out can also have an effect on the duration and mode of termination of the active phase of the movement."
Christians and Muslims are both "people of the book." But there's a difference: Christianity started out as a religion of the weak, held by the lowliest in society and advanced by conversion and example, independent of the state. A distinction between religion and temporal power is embedded in its founding narratives. Compare the final words of Jesus to his disciples, on the day of his ascension
"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
with the final words of Mohammed to his disciples:
"I was ordered to fight all men until they say, There is no god but Allah.'"
That's quite a difference. Christ is saying go to the remotest parts of the world and persuade others of what you know to be the truth. Mohammed is saying fight all men until they submit to your truth: It's not a plan for converting an existing empire (as Christianity did) but for establishing a new empire. Islam was born and spread as a warrior's creed and, while that can be sedated, the intensity of anger of today's western Muslims suggests that the Mohammedan fighter endures at the heart of their faith, albeit significantly augmented by greater firepower. Oh, come on, you say, what about the Spanish Inquisition? Well, for one thing, the Inquisition killed fewer people in a century and a half than the jihad does in an average year. But, in the larger sense, it's easy to argue that, numbers aside, it was always an aberration and distortion of Christianity's roots. It's less clear that the jihad in its most violent form is a distortion of Mohammed's message. With Islam, it's the moderate variants of the Balkans, the Central Asian Stans and South Asia that are the aberration. And they're all now fading.
So, if you're pinning your hopes on Islamic reform, the difficulty is that most prominent Islamists are doing no more than Mohammedan karaoke. Here's Osama bin Laden during the post-9/11 Afghan campaign:
"I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Mohammed."
It's hard to argue direct quotation is a "distortion" of the "religion of peace." The respective statements of Jesus and Mohammed are, to say the least, indicative of disposition. The embrace of Christianity by the state power in Europe was the final stage in a process of pacific conversion. Whereas, at the height of its power in the eighth century, when the "Islamic world" stretched from Spain to India, its population was only minority Muslim, and it suited the Caliphate to keep it that way: fiscally speaking, a subordinate infidel population paying the jizya (the special tax for non-Muslims) was a critical component. Islam was less a proselytizing faith than a rationale for political authority. And today's jihad has far more in common with a conventional imperial regime than with any religious evangelizing.
Which means there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that Islam will soon be able to enforce submission-conversion at the point of a nuke. The good news is that any religion that needs to do that is, by definition, a weak one. More than that, the fierce faith of the 8th century Muslim warrior has been mostly replaced by a lot of hastily cobbled-together flimflam bought wholesale from clapped out European totalitarian pathologies. It would have struck almost any other ruler of Persia as absurd and unworthy to be as pitifully obsessed with Holocaust denial as President Ahmadinejad is: talk about a bad case of Europhile cultural cringe. But in today's mosques and madrassahs there is almost as little contemplation of the divine as there is in the typical Anglican sermon. The great Canadian columnist David Warren argues that Islam is desperately weak, that it has been "idiotized" by these obsolescent imports of mid-20th century Fascism. I'm not sure I'd go that far, but, if Washington had half the psy-ops spooks the movies like to think we have, the spiritual neglect in latter-day Islam is a big Achilles' heel just ripe for exploiting.
Posted by: DanNY ||
08/28/2006 07:02 ||
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"I was ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and his prophet Mohammed."
Here is the true heart of the religon of peace, yet the media and our elected officials still try to put the muslim wolf in sheeps clothing.
Steyn is a bright boy.
#2
sadly - there is no denying this. Even a moderate Muslim would have to agree that what Steyn writes here is true.
The real question is what are we - as a peaceful society going to do to stop them from coverting us all by the sword. "Fortunately" for Steve Centanni, he was not a Christian and he did not have to be concerned - he simply pretended to convert and came away with his life. He also didn't seem to mind that forever more the world will show video with him laughing and allowing Nasarallah, a brutal, evil, terrorist, to be his gracious benefactor. Eech. But for Christians and Jews who believe in their religion, pretending would not have been an option.
I'm not as critical of Centanni as I may sound. And I'm glad he's home. I'd like to think I'd be stronger than him and not willing to cave as he did - but I haven't been tested. I can only pray that God would give me great strength should I ever find myself in his position. I wish him (and Wiig) only the best.
#5
"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint. Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it."
like not to argue with a gun pointed at your head.....
#8
"We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint.
Islam is a really great religion, isn't it? The islamos have that in mind for us if nothing else works. Anyone in their right mind would run as fast as they can from that religion(?).
#9
values reflected by action...
son we get 800 bucks if you go boom....
you get to live with virgins....
daughter.....you disgrace our house by the presence of that new doo....but daddy its just hair!, We wont have it! we will Place/sell you to achmed where you'll learn to coverup or else.....
anyway....Liberty and free Speech the things we prize are unwelcome attachments to theocratic hegemony....
#10
It's shame these guys won't come out now and renounce their "conversion," adding a few personal thoughts about what it's like being kidnapped by the ROP and being told to convert at gunpoint. Perhaps they could say how they'd never believe in a religion that forces people under penalty of death. Perhaps they could say how any religion that asks its people to behave in such a way is simply perverted. Perhaps they could express their disgust with the depravity, and moral bankruptcy, of islam.
#11
PlanetDan, hell, if you just got away from some Islamonutz after being held hostage for a month, do you think you would immediately go and provoke them yet again? I wouldn't.
But it would be rather nice if someone else pointed out this forced conversion crap in the MSM (yeah, I can dream, can't I?), instead of the constant trumpeting of how some poor wittle Muslims are being humiliated by airport security....
The world, it seems, has passed this way before. The summer's events in south Lebanon, Iraq, London, Afghanistan, North Korea and, above all, Iran, have filled the air with a sense of foreboding that few except the very oldest among us have ever felt. We appear to be teetering on the edge of a catastrophe so vast and terrible that only the evocation of similar upheavals in the past is able to do it justice.
Over the last few months pundits and politicians have been competing to be among the first to bring us the bad news in the hope we will hail them as prophets and reward them with our trust. Yet it is only a few years since Francis Fukuyama declared with similar confidence, as Soviet communism finally imploded, taking with it the last skirmishes of the Cold War, that we had reached the End of History. How inadequate his diagnosis reads today as we contemplate the apocalypse.
History provides endless precedents which might help us better understand our feelings of unease. But, if history is truly repeating itself, which episode is most appropriate?
Are we within earshot of the Guns of August that in Barbara Tuchman's 1962 account of the opening of World War I heralded the slaughter of a generation of callow young men in the mud-filled trenches of the Western Front?
Or are we, perhaps, again witnessing the Gathering Storm evoked by Winston Churchill, who in sonorous tones presented incontrovertible evidence that if left unchecked the ideology of the Nazis would bring our way of life to a bloody end?
Both suggest that Armageddon is upon us. But two other slices of history might serve to illuminate our present plight and suggest ways to avoid losing in "the clash of civilizations," evident in Iran's proxy war against the West in south Lebanon and the mullahs' rush towards nuclear independence.
The first is a period which is little remembered because it was cloaked in wartime secrecy and because its outcome was so quickly overshadowed by unprecedented human disaster: the race to make the first atom bomb.
Attempts to unlock the devastating power of a nuclear doomsday weapon began in earnest from the moment Albert Einstein deduced that splitting the atom would unleash unlimited energy. As World War II clattered towards its conclusion, the German nuclear team was well advanced in rocketry, raining down V1 and V2 (for Vengeance) unmanned bombs on London much as Hezbollah has been showering Israel with arbitrary missiles, and Nazi scientists were making good progress, too, with their experiments in nuclear fission.
But the success of the Allied invasion of Normandy and the Red Army's helter-skelter advance on Berlin brought not only the swift demise of Hitler but the end of his nuclear program. The recruitment of dozens of Axis scientists famously personified by Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove into America's Manhattan Project hastened the perfection of the Allied atom bomb and abruptly cut short the war against Japan.
Iran is currently making rapid progress in its quest for a nuclear weapon, though unlike the Germans and the Allies who had to pioneer a new science, the mullahs' boffins have been given a flying start by our ally Pakistan in the manufacture of a hydrogen bomb and by the pirate state of North Korea in developing a rocket capable of reaching Paris and London as easily as Tel Aviv. The slow tick tock of U.N. diplomacy is granting Tehran valuable months in which to perfect its murderous technology.
Which leads to the second glimpse of history that can help us better appreciate our current dilemma: Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler at Munich. Chamberlain's mission was well intentioned and honorable, just as those who today advocate engaging President Ahmadinejad in dialogue are well meaning. By negotiating with Hitler, Chamberlain hoped to avoid a resumption of the daily massacres of the Great War.
But Hitler, like Ahmadinejad, was playing for time. And Hitler, like Ahmadinejad, had no intention of abandoning his genocidal mission. He needed to involve his enemies in jaw-jaw to gain a valuable breathing space to bolster his munitions and gather his forces before unleashing war-war upon the rest of Europe.
On Tuesday Secretary-General Annan will follow in Chamberlain's footsteps as he journeys to Tehran to persuade the mullahs to abandon their nuclear dreams. He will no doubt return bearing a promise that Iran has only peaceable intentions when they, the world's fourth largest producers of oil, ask for a little more time to perfect their nuclear power program.
Like his predecessors, Mr. Annan is familiar with the lessons history can provide. On his return from Iran, the ever accommodating secretary-general will be careful not to hold aloft a worthless scrap of paper at the airport, nor repeat Chamberlain's forlorn hope of "peace in our time."
Posted by: DanNY ||
08/28/2006 06:54 ||
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Hmmm, I tend to agree with his central premise, but I really think this guy needs to make a few corrections to his article...
As World War II clattered towards its conclusion, the German nuclear team was well advanced in rocketry, raining down V1 and V2 (for Vengeance) unmanned bombs on London much as Hezbollah has been showering Israel with arbitrary missiles, and Nazi scientists were making good progress, too, with their experiments in nuclear fission.
As far as I know, the V1/V2 groups had nothing to do with the 'nuclear team', and as the payload on a V2 was about 1000 kg, and Little Boy weighed 4000 kg (Fat Man = 4630 kg), they would have had to do some rather nifty miniaturisation to make it work.
I'm not sure that the Germans were progressing well with their fission work either, perhaps due to the lack of heavy water from the successful Telemark raids. I seem to recall an American investigation after the War that concluded the Germans were not very far down the road to nuclear weapons.
But the success of the Allied invasion of Normandy and the Red Army's helter-skelter advance on Berlin brought not only the swift demise of Hitler but the end of his nuclear program. The recruitment of dozens of Axis scientists famously personified by Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove into America's Manhattan Project hastened the perfection of the Allied atom bomb and abruptly cut short the war against Japan.
Huh? Now I'm really sure that captured Germans were not in the Manhattan project. The Trinity shot was on July 16th (3 months after the fall of the 'Thousand Year Reich') and the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs were used less than three weeks later.
If he means the German rocket scientists, White Sands missile base and Strangelove = von Braun, well then that's ok.
Finally,
Iran is currently making rapid progress in its quest for a nuclear weapon, though unlike the Germans and the Allies who had to pioneer a new science, the mullahs' boffins have been given a flying start by our ally Pakistan in the manufacture of a hydrogen bomb and by the pirate state of North Korea in developing a rocket capable of reaching Paris and London as easily as Tel Aviv.
So Pakistan has H-bomb technology now? I thought the ones tested were boosted fission weapons?
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
08/28/2006 8:47 Comments ||
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According to the available info I have, India has the H-bomb and Pakistan only has the A-bomb.
German physicist Heisenberg had made some fundamental errors in his calculations. That's why they went with heavy water research. Our first reactors used much, much cheaper and available carbon for the moderator and thus acheived criticality alot sooner.
#3
Re gathering storm: the cumulative effect of high gasoline prices is manifest in up to a extra $50 billion dollars in Iran's pockets this year alone.
Should we allow the Ayatollahs the opportunity to spend that money? As I have said before here, September could be either one of America's best months ever, or worst. I believe that the President has determined that we cannot co-exist with the Ayatollahs. Unless they are eliminated, and not by yet another worthless ground war or air bombing with concrete-bombs (used in part in the Baghdad liberation), a death warrant against future generations of Americans will have been signed.
#4
We appear to be teetering on the edge of a catastrophe so vast and terrible that only the evocation of similar upheavals in the past is able to do it justice.<
As I have said previously (not an original thought however), one of these donks is going to light the fuze on a nuke, and it will be Katty by the door.
But Hitler, like Ahmadinejad, was playing for time. And Hitler, like Ahmadinejad, had no intention of abandoning his genocidal mission. He needed to involve his enemies in jaw-jaw to gain a valuable breathing space to bolster his munitions and gather his forces before unleashing war-war upon the rest of Europe.
On Tuesday Secretary-General Annan will follow in Chamberlain's footsteps as he journeys to Tehran to persuade the mullahs to abandon their nuclear dreams. He will no doubt return bearing a promise that Iran has only peaceable intentions when they, the world's fourth largest producers of oil, ask for a little more time to perfect their nuclear power program.
Like his predecessors, Mr. Annan is familiar with the lessons history can provide. On his return from Iran, the ever accommodating secretary-general will be careful not to hold aloft a worthless scrap of paper at the airport, nor repeat Chamberlain's forlorn hope of "peace in our time."
Annan already is the Chamberlain of our time, regardless of any outcome in Iran.
#8
Attempts to unlock the devastating power of a nuclear doomsday weapon began in earnest from the moment Albert Einstein deduced that splitting the atom would unleash unlimited energy
Leo Szilard first deduced it - while waiting for a traffic light no less - and filed for a patent in 1934. Initially rejected - LOL. Einstein kick started the project with his letter to FDR. The letter was instigated by anyone....anyone...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
