Archives

You are currently viewing archive for January 2009
Category: General
Posted by: Tocqueville
So warns Tony Blankley of the Washington Times:

President Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he has said of himself: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” (”The Audacity of Hope.”) It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And, as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was shrewdly crafted to perpetuate such confusion.

Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an effort is beyond ingenious - it is brazenly ingenuous.

And it is working. Many of my fellow conservative commentators are embarrassingly eager to search Mr. Obama's words, groveling for hopeful signs that he is not a radical intent on changing the face and nature of our republic. Some of our Tory conservatives have clung to his words (”hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism-these things are old. These things are true”) as evidence of a deep conservatism.

Other smitten conservative commentators take false comfort from his reference to George Washington's “small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shore of an icy river.” Free-market conservatives point hopefully - pathetically - to the first clauses of his words: “Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control.” That “watchful eye” he calls for may be as benign as Teddy Roosevelt's anti-monopoly policies, or it could be as constricting as French Socialism - or worse. Mr. Obama offers philosophical hope to all.

And how easily (willingly?) some of our fellow conservative commentators are seduced to believe the good parts and hope away the bad bits.

(More after the jump . . .)

» Read More

Category: General
Posted by: an okie gardener
From The Telegraph U.K, link from Brits at Their Best.

David Smiley died this month at the age of 92.

Colonel David Smiley, who died on January 9 aged 92, was one of the most celebrated cloak-and-dagger agents of the Second World War, serving behind enemy lines in Albania, Greece, Abyssinia and Japanese-controlled eastern Thailand.

After the war he organised secret operations against the Russians and their allies in Albania and Poland, among other places. Later, as Britain's era of domination in the Arabian peninsula drew to a close, he commanded the Sultan of Oman's armed forces in a highly successful counter-insurgency.

After his assignment in Oman, he organised – with the British intelligence service, MI6 – royalist guerrilla resistance against a Soviet-backed Nasserite regime in Yemen. Smiley's efforts helped force the eventual withdrawal of the Egyptians and their Soviet mentors, paved the way for the emergence of a less anti-Western Yemeni government, and confirmed his reputation as one of Britain's leading post-war military Arabists.
. . .
During the Second World War he was parachuted four times behind enemy lines. On one occasion he was obliged to escape from Albania in a rowing boat. On another mission, in Japanese-controlled eastern Thailand, he was stretchered for three days through the jungle with severe burns after a booby-trap meant for a senior Japanese officer exploded prematurely.


Read the whole story.