Author Archives: eladsinned

+ = Who, me, envoy? No disrespect intended to Mr. James

One reason why a democracy cannot survive empire, and why empires are increasingly short-lived things, is that citizens of conquered and occupied nations, and cultures, half a world away, thereby become people to whom the leadership of the imperial power is answerable, in one way or another: “The Americans know everything, they can do everything,Continue reading “The Ever-Expanding Expansionist Compact”

Owing to the difficulties with America, no progress has been made in developing the oil…If we remain, shall we not be answerable for defending their frontier? How are we to do this if the Turk comes in?–Winston Churchill, writing to David Lloyd George, September 1922 When we have made Mesopotamia a model state there isContinue reading “The Deep Pockets of Denial”

But the most ingenious excuse ever made for St. Bernard is to be found in his life by Geoffroi de Clairvaux, where he pertinaciously insists that the Crusade was not unfortunate. St. Bernard, he says, had prophesied a happy result, and that result could not be considered other than happy which had peopled heaven withContinue reading “Support the Truth”

Funny the things you find out there.I came across this on the blog of a man I served with, way back then. Ben Hanson, Canadian immigrant, naturalized U.S. citizen, veteran, patriot, and still, apparently, with a camera permanently affixed to his shooting eye. For some reason Ben deleted the comment I left on the post.Continue reading “I Was Young Once Too”

President Bush is not handing a war off to the next president. He is handing him, or her, what will likely become the most humiliating defeat this nation has ever known. The first President Bush famously declared the “Vietnam syndrome” dead after the first Gulf War. If he became the nation’s hubris, his hapless sonContinue reading “Siege of the Emerald City”

A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth. But a man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it. –Mr. Dryden, Lawrence of Arabia If you haven’t bookmarked George Washington University’s National Security Archive you should. The website is dedicated to publishing declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.Today’sContinue reading “PowerPoint Postmodernism”

According to the president, if we set a date for withdrawal from Iraq the al Qaeda franchise there (apparently this month’s “top enemy” working against the occupation, replacing April’s Persian peril, which out-charted previous number-one with a whole lot of bullets, Sunni insurgents [now allies against the first], who displaced…) will simply “wait us out”Continue reading “The Nefarious Effects of Timetables”