The Senescent Man

The WSJ has a fine piece on President Ford's legacy in today's WSJ which is available free at OpinionJournal.com.  It's a balanced account of a presidency at a rather difficult time in our history.

One point in the piece struck me.  An excerpt:

Congress had trampled over a weakened Nixon, and another Ford contribution was restoring some measure of executive authority. Far more than Nixon, he used his veto pen (66 times in 895 days), blunting liberal excesses after Democrats picked up 46 House seats in 1974. He also deserves credit for resisting the isolationism that was rampant as the Vietnam War wound down. It was a rare period in postwar U.S. history when the public favored spending less on defense.

Democrats exploited the mood in early 1975 to block Ford's funding request for our allies in South Vietnam, as the North began its offensive. Ford pleaded with Congress that "American unwillingness to provide adequate assistance to allies fighting for their lives could seriously affect our credibility throughout the world as an ally," but to no avail. Saigon fell by April, and the boat people and massacres in Southeast Asia soon followed. Thus one irony of this week's praise for Ford as a unifying President: At the time, he was mocked as clumsy and dull, and he was vilified for blocking Congressional priorities. Any of this sound familiar?

Vietnam was a scarring American defeat, but it could have been worse had Ford capitulated to the Congressional stampede. Instead, he fortified U.S. relations with the rest of free Asia, and he sent in the Marines despite liberal howls when the U.S. ship the Mayaguez was taken hostage by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.

But, read the whole thing.

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 3:50 PM

Despite his ghastly and atrocious liberal record, US Senator Jack Reed is a friend of mine. He was my state senator many years ago, and I've met with him on numerous occasions through some conservative Democrat friends I have in Cranston.

A number of years ago I tried to visit the White House. To get passes, my first inclination was to request them from Senator Chafee's office. When his office did not respond at all to my requests, I called upon Jack's office and received them in a matter of days.

Lately he's been one of the go-to US Senators by the MSM. But is it me, or have I noticed a strange phenomenon lately.

Jack has consistently advocated for more troops in Iraq. He and Hillary seemed to have that same theme, despite the chorus of his colleagues to cut, run and blow town.

But lately, the news media headlines on Jack regarding "more troops" has ranged the gamut from "Jack Reed wants more troops in Iraq" to "he's now among those who feel it's time to gradually reduce the number of troops." When interviewed by a major MSM news outlet recently he sounded like he tried to double speak an answer somewhere in between so as not to sound out of step with his remaining colleagues.

So which is it Jack? Are you in or out?

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 5:32 PM

Victor Davis Hanson walks us down the dark alley of history for a glimpse into the rise of modern day Islamic ruthlessness.  Is it the confluence of events or just serendipitous nuttiness? Below, an excerpt

In the 1930s, German-style fascism appealed to Arabs in Palestine and Egypt. Soviet-style communism had sympathetic governments in Afghanistan, Algeria and Yemen. Baathism took hold in Syria and Iraq. The secular Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser promised a new pan-Arabism that would do away with colonial borders that divided the “the Arab nation.” Then there is the more pragmatic authoritarianism that survives in Muammar el-Qaddafi's Libya or in the petrol-monarchies in the Gulf.

Radical Islam may be as totalitarian and as morally bankrupt as any of these past or mostly defunct “isms,” but its current appeal isn't hard to figure out. Unlike fascism or communism, radical Islam is locally grown, and not plagued by charges of foreign contamination. Indeed, Islamists claim to wage jihad against the modernism and globlization of the outside, mostly Westernized world. Such a message resonates in stagnant, impoverished Muslim countries.

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 8:35 AM

Prior to World War II there was a huge resistance by Americans to getting into the war.  So much so that when England had gone through sustained attack and asked for our help, Americans were marching in the streets protesting involvement.

The only way to help our ally was the "lend-lease" policy initiated by Roosevelt.  The rationale for the policy was "if your neighbor's house was on fire, and threatened your own property, wouldn't you lend him a hose?"

It wasn't until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor that we entered the world war.

Tens of thousands of brave American soldiers died in that war, and there were many days where the number eclipsed the entire sum of those brave Americans who have given their lives in the current conflict.

My point here is that though war always has a sting, we are really better off today than in world wars past.  We cannot yield to the enemy because he has greater endurance.

Tony Blair recently reminded us that we cannot let "terrorism defeat democracy."

Americans have a proper distaste for war, and rightfully so.  But sometimes, as bad as war is, and it is hell, there are things worse than war.  William Buckley once remarked, "there is only one thing worse than war, and that is the acquiescence in slavery."  Will we yield only to become appeasers of wild eyed religious zealots who would kill us for our couch-potato culture?  Or will we, as has been done in the free world in history before, painfully put an end to such genocidally insane movements?

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 8:06 AM

Speaking about the Iraq Commission, a few generals had some feedback.  I'm not a big fan of former four-star General Barry R. McCaffrey, but was intrigued by his comments this morning on the Today show.  Here is what he said earlier after the release of the commission report according the Weekly Standard:

Barry R. McCaffrey, a retired four-star general, said in an interview that the overall concept of withdrawing American forces as the Iraqis built up their military capability was sound. But he argued that the specific recommendations by the panel raised a second problem: if American combat brigades were withdrawn from Iraq, the thousands of American advisers who remained might find themselves dangerously exposed, particularly if the fighting in Iraq grew into a full-scale civil war. The advisers could be killed or taken hostage.[my emphasis]

"They came up with a political thought but then got to tinkering with tactical ideas that in my view don't make any sense," General McCaffrey said. "This is a recipe for national humiliation."

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 12:42 PM

The Weekly Standard has already posted an excellent piece by Norman Podhoretz on this remarkable woman. An excerpt:

Jeane Kirkpatrick, then, was a veteran of World War III (or what is more generally known as the Cold War), and I would say of her what the English used to say of those veterans of World War II who had done impor tant and interesting work and had come through unscathed--that she, like they, had had "a good war." And like them, too, she never really found anything afterward that engaged her intellectual energies and her political passions as fully as her own "good war" had done. Back in "civil ian" life after the war had been won, she resumed her academic career, she served on many boards, and as a famous and esteemed public figure, she continued to write and to speak out whenever the spirit moved her (as, for example, in a prescient piece, also written for Commentary, describing "How the PLO Was Legitimized").

But read the whole thing.

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 4:13 PM

I'm trying some new software (offered free through Microsoft) which writes directly into Blogger.  This post is a test.  Thank you for remaining loyal to this Blog.

// posted by The Senescent Man @ 9:14 PM