Political History

Margaret Thatcher Passes away

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Margaret Thatcher  the famous Iron Lady of 1980’s Britain and only female Prime Minister in English History has passed away in London from an apparent stroke.  She will be remembered as one of the most effective Prime Ministers in British history.  Not least among her accomplishments was her steadfast opposition to the Soviets in partnership with Ronald Reagan and most notably to me her refusal to bow to Argentina and the way in which she prosecuted the 1982-1983 Falklands War to regain the islands after the Argentine’s invaded and seized them. I hope the British realize what a treasure they have lost and remember her fondly. May she Rest in Peace

Book Review: Dresden: A Survivor’s Story by Victor Gregg

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Victor Gregg’s Dresden: A Survivor’s Story is a short work describing the author’s experience as  POW who got caught in Dresden in February, 1945 when the Allies bombed the city in what would become known as the Firebombing of Dresden.  The attack essentially destroyed the city center and killed an estimated 25,000 German’s.  Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the attacks that also discusses the controversy surrounding them that has grown up since the war.  To sum up the controversy, general anti-war people claim they were a crime and … More after the Jump…

Ralph Peters and Afghanistan

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The Best quote about the failure of COIN I have read so far comes from Ralph Peters in a piece today in the New York Post.

But the simple fact the wise men missed was that killing terrorists works, while trying to buy the love of their fan base doesn’t.

At some point, probably another 20 years into the future when the US has sunk to second rate status we are going to look back and realize the collapse came not only because of economics but also because we forgot that war is about fighting, dying, and killing and that the US spent years and thousands of loves pursuing failed policies when all we really needed to do was concentrate on killing bad guys wherever they are at.

COIN is a failure because it is a strategy that ignores reality in pursuit of fantasy.  Anyone who doubts this should take the time to read FM 3-24, The Counterinsurgency Bible.

Stasi Museum – Leipzig, Germany

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The Stasi Museum in Leipzig, Germany.  For those who have never heard of it, the Stasi was the East German Little brother to the Russian NKVD internal security Secret Police.  The Stasi maintained a network of informers within both East and West Germany during the Cold War and also maintained dossiers on almost every German, even many in the West.  In East Germany (GDR) the Stasi was the government organ responsible for internal security and ferreting out dissidents to the regime.  They did this by doing some things that made the  Nazi Gestapo look like amateurs. Below are some of the photos I took in our hasty tour of the museum before it closed.  

Book Review: The Reagan Diaries by Ronald Reagan

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I read The Reagan Diaries when they first came out and had occasion to reread them not long ago when I had nothing better to do.  I mainly read the book, not because I am a rabid Reagan conservative, although I have been so accused, but because Reagan was president when I was a kid in Junior and High School and he is also the first political figure who I really paid any attention to while they were in office.  I vaguely remember Carter being president, but only because my dad got angry every time his name was mentioned.  I learned some of my first curse words when Carter would come … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

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Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, is one of the best economic histories I have read.  It seeks to be a global history of money and does a good job of it.  It is somewhat tilted towards Europe and Western countries but only because that is where the majority of financial innovation has come from, especially in the last 300-400 years.last 400 years. What I found especially interesting were his explanations of the way sophisticated financial instruments actually work.  It often seems as though investment and investing have a language specifically designed to confuse and confound the layman.  Dr. Ferguson’s explanations of derivatives and other financial instruments were understandable … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Color of War: How One Battle Broke Japan and the Other Changed America by James Campbell

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the publisher for purposes of reviewing it. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] The Color of War is one of those strange history books that seems both bipolar and unified at the same time.   It is the story of the invasion of Saipan and the Port Chicago naval disaster told mostly convergently.   At first the somewhat bi-polar nature of the way the story was told was off-putting but the more I read the book the more the method made sense.   The two different but temporally convergent narratives … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Road to Valor by Aili & Andres McConnon

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the publisher for purposes of reviewing it. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Road to Valor is the story of one of the many unsung and unremembered heroes of World War II. Gino Bartali was a prewar Italian racing champion and winner of the Tour de France.   Just about everyone has heard of Oskar Schindler and his List due to the 1993 Spielberg movie or Anne Frank.   What is less known are the thousands of others across occupied Europe that worked trying to help Jews and others that … More after the Jump…

Sudeten Deutsch Memorial

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Saw this interesting little bit of history this morning and figure I would take a photo. This has less to do with warfare itself than with the aftermath of war. This is a plaque dedicated to the role that Bayreuth, Germany played in the resettlement of ethnic Germans in the wake of the mass expulsion of these people from their homes in Eastern Europe after Germany’s defeat in WWII. Their is a good piece with a brief history of post war ethnic movements in Europe by the BBC Here: ArticleNo More War or Expulsions

from February to October 1946 the Bayreuth Main Train Station hosted 33 Cargo trains containing 39,281 expellees from the Sudetenland.

The city and county are thankful for the reception

Sudeten German Organisation July 2010

Book Review: Holy Wars: 3000 Years of Battles in the Holy Land by Gary Rashba

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HOLY WARS: 3000 Years of Battles in the Holy Land is one of the better primers about conflict in the Holy Land to appear within the last few years.   It consists of 17 chapters covering the initial Israelite conquest of Canaan in 1400 B.C. to the Israeli offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 1982.   The more recent Israeli-Palestinian conflict is covered in the epilogue.   The work is 288 pages and includes extensive notes at the end of each chapter as well as a well sourced bibliography and index.   The Kindle edition, which is what I have, was mostly free of editing errors and the only … More after the Jump…

Periodic World Craziness Update # 6

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The latest month’s wackiness in the world of international relations, politics, and  brinkmanship. Europe rocked by Spanish banking crisis, Time to Admit Defeat: Greece Can No Longer Delay Euro Zone Exit:  At the top of the news for a week or so was the impending meltdown of the Greek economy and Euro experiment. Greek euro exit looms as G8 gathers:  The question in my mind is not if Greece will leave the Euro, but when and what will be the wider consequences for the EU as a whole?  As I understand it, there is no mechanism for an EU country to exit the Euro without repudiating the EU treaty itself and also leaving the … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe by Steven D. Mercatante

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] At first glance Why Germany Nearly Won: A New History of the Second World War in Europe is another of the rehashing’s of WWII in the East and West that have become so popular since the fall of communism in the 1990’s and the opening of previously closed Russian archives.   That first glance would be wrong.   Steven Mercatante has produced a very well written history of the war in the East that goes to the heart of why the Eastern … More after the Jump…

The Moral Quandary?

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Lately I have been somewhat preoccupied thinking about the geostrategic position the US and even the wider Western world find themselves in.  While I do not believe that the world is on the cusp of some massive catastrophe, it does seem to me that the rise of Militant Islam in the last ten years presents problems that are new or that at least have not been faced on such a scale by Western countries since before the rise of the modern nation state. Essentially, I think that Islam is facing the West with a crucial choice, one the West would rather not have to make as it goes against all … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Military or civilians? The curious anomaly of the German Women’s Auxiliary Services during the Second World War by Alison Morton

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] I was contacted by Ms. Morton about reading and reviewing her book: Military or civilians? The curious anomaly of the German Women’s Auxiliary Services during the Second World War and jumped at the opportunity as the subject matter of the book, German Woman serving with the Wehrmacht is one that has been virtually ignored in English scholarship as she rightly points out in her introduction and demonstrates by including the text of an email she received from the director of the Imperial War Museum in which he demonstrates total ignorance about any female auxiliaries used … More after the Jump…

The Tyranny of the Good Intentioned

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“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” ― C.S. Lewis

 

I could not say it any better myself.  Lord, deliver us from those that think they know better than we do.

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