Category: War

Shock & awe

Shocked!  World leaders are “shocked” by the outcome of the Palestinian democratic elections.  Cable TV’s faux news experts are breathlessly analyzing “what it all means” when people half a world away won’t vote the way we want them to… Let’s  see if we can break it down:  With great fanfare and general acclamation (by those same …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2006/02/05/shock-and-awe/

Political catechism

I had always wondered how our nation’s founders (terrorist insurgents that they were) argued the merits of their rebellion to a profoundly Christian population, so I did a little Googling on the subject.  Turns out to still be a pretty hot topic (732,000 hits).  Anyway, I came across an interesting essay at http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=40.  Near the end …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2005/12/30/political-catechism/

The dead and the mutilated

From Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter’s December 7 lecture:  The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment.  They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm’s way.  The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives.  So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2005/12/09/the-dead-and-the-mutilated/

Border forts

It’s interesting how news about the war in Iraq dribbles out. Today’s local paper has a front-page story about a James Vandenberg, a Little Rock architect who serves in the Civil Engineering Corps, U.S. Navy Reserve Seabees. He recently spent 10 months in the Al Anbar region of Iraq. Here’s the part of the story …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2005/09/29/border-forts/

Trolling for fools

With Trembling Finger By Hal Crowther, circa November 2004   I used to take a drink on occasion with a network newsman famed for his impenetrable calm — his apparent pulse rate that of a large mammal in deep hibernation — and in an avuncular moment he advised me that I’d do all right, in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2004/11/02/trolling-for-fools/

Vanished like the strange times we lived

Strange Days By Jacques d’Nalgar, October 11, 2004   1974 was the year I graduated from ACS. We were one of the last classes from those strange days between the wars of 1967 and 1973 and the horror that almost erased Lebanon, a time and place that 30 years later, still weaves itself into my …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2004/10/11/vanished-like-the-strange-times-we-lived/

War coming

 A talk given at Long Branch Plantation, Clarke County, Virginia, on February 9, 2003… It’s been almost exactly a year since I was here talking about the subject of terrorism. The title of my talk last year was “Terrorism — Some Unconventional Perspectives.” This year I’m going to talk about a closely related subject, but …

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Permanent link to this article: https://levantium.com/2003/02/09/war-coming/