Ah, Iran. So beautiful, especially this time of year. But what to do about the pesky alternative energy plan the peaceful mullah's are working on? The LA Time's Robert Scheer has some thoughts about that, mostly along the lines of how stupid the President is, and good ol' Johnny W rips him a new one. For example:
Robert Scheer: Bush's Blind Spot on Iran
WE DON'T respect or understand any religious or nationalist fervor other than our own. That myopic distortion has been a persistent historical failure of U.S. foreign policy, but it has reached the point of total blindness in the Bush administration.
Here we go again. America is stupid and clumsy, always. I've been hearing this as long as I can remember. And what has happened to those clever countries we were so much stupider than when I was young? Gone. Either changed drastically, overthrown, declined into impotence... but the US goes from strength to strength. Funny how that works, us being so stupid and all...
It's a good fisking worth your time. Have a peek.
And while you're at it, maybe follow John's link to a post of his about the Battle of Manilla in which the Imperial Japanese Army massacred over 100,000 before we kicked their asses out of the Phillipines. Even I, an official WWII buff, had never heard of this:
In February 1945, a woman now dying of lung cancer grabbed two of her children and jumped out the window to escape Imperial Japanese Marines crashing through the door intent on bayoneting everyone in the burning house. Finding no one, they went on to the next house to continue their massacre on a street not far from the Rizal Memorial ballpark, where Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth both played in sunnier days before the forgotten Battle of Manila. The 100,000 civilians who died in the largest urban battle of the Pacific War -- more than at Hiroshima -- are not remembered in beautiful candles floating down darkened rivers or in flights of doves soaring into the blue sky; there is no anti-American significance to their deaths. But they still live in the fading memory of that woman, who hid for two days in the smoldering ruins of the neighborhood until the first American patrols came into view...
That cut is actually from John's cut of the Belmont Club, but as usual JW has some good stuff to add.
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