In 2021, on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, NJ.com asked its readers how they intended to “commemorate the 20th anniversary.” Here’s the answer I gave. I’d forgotten it until Facebook called it up today as a “memory.” I think it holds good today, about 9/11, about 10/7, and about much else that for lack of a better word, we “commemorate.” Continue reading
Tag Archives: warfare
Force and Fraud on Campus
So much falsehood has been offered up in the last seven months that it seems futile to single out a discrete claim as a particularly egregious example that absolutely demands rebuttal. But one claim happens to combine egregiousness, absurdity, and in my case, proximity in space and time, in a way that really does demand a response.
I’m sure most readers are aware of the recent demonstrations on college campuses in defense of Palestinian rights. I happen to live in Princeton, New Jersey, not far from Princeton University, and have visited Princeton’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment a dozen times in the last six days. Two students were arrested on campus on Thursday, April 25th, and thirteen were arrested on Monday, April 29th, for a total of fifteen arrests. Continue reading
War with Iran
I’m gratified to tell you that I have no interest whatsoever in blogging right now about Israel’s recent attack on Iran’s diplomatic complex in Damascus, or yesterday’s Iranian attack on Israel, or the Biden Administration’s pledge of “ironclad” support for Israel, or the years-long “shadow war” that preceded the current altercation. For now, I’ll just remind you that back in 2020, I wrote a series of twenty-four posts about Donald Trump’s contribution to US-Iranian hostilities. Biden’s recent contribution is just a continuation of Trump’s, itself a continuation of several decades’ worth of Western policies aimed at Iran.
Continue readingBlathering at the Abyss: Bret Stephens on Ukraine
It’s said that you should never judge a book by its cover, but there’s a lot to be learned about a piece of writing from how it begins.* The opening to a piece of writing often marks out what the author takes to be uncontroversial, and in so doing, reveals the assumptions that structure his thought.
This column by Bret Stephens (back in September) is intended as a cautious defense of the presidency of Joe Biden. It opens with this apparently uncontroversial claim—or set of claims–about the war in Ukraine.
We are inflicting a strategic humiliation on Russia by arming Ukraine without putting American forces at risk.
A single sentence can assert several propositions at once. The preceding one asserts at least three: Continue reading
From Apartheid to Genocide: Israel in Gaza
Blood on all our hands
We cannot hope to wash them clean
History is mystery
Do you know what it means?
Motorhead, “Brotherhood of Man“
In an earlier post, I wrote:
Whether I end up keeping the resolution or not, and barring some extraordinary event that absolutely “demands” comment, my aim is to keep my counsel for the next full year, from now until the beginning of November 2024.
That “extraordinary event” is here. Israel’s open, unapologetic attacks on the medical system of both Gaza and the West Bank are a conclusive indication that we’ve reached a macabre turning point in this “war.” Continue reading
Teaching Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to the Americans”
I’m told that Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the Americans” is currently trending on TikTok, and that some people have encountered my short pedagogical paper about it from the Winter 2017 issue of Reason Papers.
The paper began life as a presentation to the 2011 conference of the Association of Core Texts and Courses, which explains the somewhat cryptic references in it to “dialectic” and “the Core” (“dialectic” was, if I remember, part of the official theme of the conference). The presentation later became a contribution to RP‘s “Afterwords” section, where it was called “You’ve Got Mail: Teaching Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to the Americans,‘” Reason Papers 39:2 (9 page PDF). Continue reading
The Most Dangerous Game
For a moment the general did not reply; he was smiling his curious red-lipped smile. Then he said slowly, “No. You are wrong, sir. The Cape buffalo is not the most dangerous big game.” He sipped his wine. “Here in my preserve on this island,” he said in the same slow tone, “I hunt more dangerous game.”
–Richard Connell, “The Most Dangerous Game“
Anyone who favors intervention in the war in Ukraine owes it to themselves to read about the emerging consensus on nuclear war over Ukraine. A year ago, anyone who brought the subject up was dismissed as a pacifist, a scare-monger, a defeatist, or a crank. Now, a little over a year later, the idea of nuclear war is being normalized in military circles in both the United States and in Russia. Sober, respectable, mainstream strategists are now beginning to speak and write as though nuclear war was just another one of those things that’s headed our way, and will just take a bit of getting used to. Continue reading
The Past Is a Foreign Country
Why, according to Bret Stephens, must we remain involved in the Ukraine war? Because if we don’t…
China would draw the lesson that, if there are limits to what America and our allies are prepared to do for Ukraine (which fights for itself and shares a land border with NATO), there will be much sharper limits to what we are prepared to do for Taiwan.
Apparently, we get no belligerency credits for having fought and defeated Imperial Japan, for dropping atom bombs on it, or for having militarily occupied it. We get no credit for having defended South Korea against a North Korean invasion, for having fought the Chinese themselves in North Korea, or for having stationed troops in the DMZ since 1953. And we get none for spending a decade-plus defending South Vietnam against the North at the cost to us of some 58,000 deaths. Continue reading
David French on Ukraine: A Demolition
It hasn’t yet been a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the beginning of the US-led proxy war against Russia, and already American support for the war is slipping. Last year’s promises about never-ending aid have quietly been toned down, as have last year’s predictions about Russian defeat and collapse. Predictably, the more stalwart supporters of the war have popped back up to accuse us, yes, of a “failure of will,” a brand of moral weakness to be contrasted with the Stoic hardiness required to sit in front of a computer and demand that the war continue. Continue reading
Jenin: Collating the Wages of Death
The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it: for being cognisant of all that can, at least obviously, be said against him, and having taken up his position against all gainsayers…he has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.
–J.S. Mill, On Liberty
In my last two posts, I’ve been discussing the rising tensions in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Events are taking place too quickly for me literally to blog them as they happen, so if you’re after a real-time chronicle, or event-by-event commentary, you’ll be disappointed. That’s not something you’ll find here, at least in my posts. Continue reading
