Sunday, October 03, 2004
Light-blogging, and a recommendation
I'm off to Ireland and elsewhere for the next few days, all in the cause of stockholder value, so blogging will be light and probably via Blogger's email feature, which I will indicate in the title so that you will forgive me the poor writing and the typos. Of course, Charlottesvillain may ride in to save the day, or I may snap and fork over some Euros for midnight web access.
In any case, if you find yourself at loose ends you should read Wretchard's latest. Noting that European Islamists circulate beheading videos on video cell phones like so much porn, he is amazed that anybody thinks that we are in anything other than a fight to the death. He remembers France in June 1940:
Of course, it doesn't feel like France 1940, but that's precisely the point -- defeat often comes without warning, and the war against Islamist jihad is a sneaky and ambiguous affair, not unlike the Sitzkrieg that came to an end when the panzer divisions crashed through the Ardennes forest. Wretchard's post makes me wish very much that both the Democrats and the Bush Administration would stop dicking around.
In any case, if you find yourself at loose ends you should read Wretchard's latest. Noting that European Islamists circulate beheading videos on video cell phones like so much porn, he is amazed that anybody thinks that we are in anything other than a fight to the death. He remembers France in June 1940:
Herbert Lottman, describing the last days of Paris before it fell to Germans in 1940 describes the strange mixture of urgency and lassitude, of obsession with long term schemes counterpointed by an indifference to the immediate in a nation that had just weeks to live. It was the perfect portrait of a country which did not know it was at war. Not really. The French Communists continued to call for "Peace Government" to mollify a Germany wronged by defeat in the First War. Parisian authorities forbade the private purchase of firearms by citizens anxious to protect themselves. Bread was rationed to 30 grams per meal at de luxe restaurants though 100 grams could be obtained at a bistro meal. The French cabinet pinned its hopes on more aircraft from neutral America as if they had any prospect of receiving any future shipments. Nero fiddled. Rome burned. When the Nazi columns finally marched into Paris, there was a widespread feeling of betrayal and a search for a scapegoat. But they had betrayed themselves.
"It was the end of the world in which Paris was supreme, in which France was alive, in which there was a breath of freedom. There was oil in the blackened air, and soot in the rain, and the wretched city was pressed upon by the lowering sky" -- Eliot Paul, The Last Time I Saw Paris
But Eliot was wrong. It was not the end of supremacy but illusion; and a reminder that you need not ask for whom the video cell phone rings; it rings for you.
Of course, it doesn't feel like France 1940, but that's precisely the point -- defeat often comes without warning, and the war against Islamist jihad is a sneaky and ambiguous affair, not unlike the Sitzkrieg that came to an end when the panzer divisions crashed through the Ardennes forest. Wretchard's post makes me wish very much that both the Democrats and the Bush Administration would stop dicking around.
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