Monthly Archives: January 2018

We Can Help

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And we should.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has pledged to step up defense spending to defend the self-ruled island’s sovereignty in the face of China’s growing military assertiveness in the region.

A good start would be to sell missile defense systems to the Republic of China along with modern aircraft—both air defense, like updated F-16s and F-15s, and ground attack, like F-16s and A-10s.

We also should resume sea and air patrols of the Taiwan Strait, something we’ve not done for far too long.

A Caliphate Has Collapsed?

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That’s what Renée Rigdon, Tristan Wyatt, and Karen Leigh would have us believe in their recent Wall Street Journal piece.

It’s true enough that the Daesh—that JV team of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) estimation—ran through the Iraqi “army” a few years ago, exploded through Syrian territory, and wound up controlling a significant fraction of Iraqi and Syrian land.  Their physical expansion was stopped in the immediacy of the situation only by Iraqi Kurds and the confused and fractious condition of Syria.  It’s also true that under President Donald Trump, a US-refurbished Iraqi army allied with those Kurds and local militias, with the support of an unleashed US-led coalition of air forces, recaptured nearly all of Iraqi territory in very short order while that same coalition of air forces supported a US-led coalition of rebels (albeit of at best dubious provenance) have disinfected most of Daesh-held Syria.

However, it’s naïve to suggest that the Daesh’s “caliphate” has crumbled, as the article’s title claims.  The Daesh, like its forerunner al Qaeda, is a polity that is first and foremost a network entity.  It has physical nodes existing parasitically in a broad swath of nation-states, ranging from western People’s Republic of China through northern Africa.  It has cells throughout Europe and in the United States.  These nodes and cells are connected via the Internet and the world’s cell phone network.

All that’s happened with the physical rollup of the Daesh in Iraq and Syria is that this terrorist polity has been freed from the shackles of geography.  Now our battle must shift to the virtual world; it’s far too soon to cry Victory.

Heads up.  Be very heads up.

Happy New Year

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Originally published in 2012, I repeat it here.

This blogger hopes for increasing prosperity for all in the new year just begun.  Following are some additional thoughts, from those better than I.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
–William Makepeace Thackeray

New Year’s Resolution: to tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
–James Agate

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution.  Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise, and thou art happy.
–Akhenaton

Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.
–Cavett Robert

And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,
And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury –
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
–Thomas Hood

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.
–Ellen Goodman

New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions.  Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
–Mark Twain

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve.  Middle age is when you’re forced to.
–Bill Vaughn

This bit of ’70s-style wisdom:

A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.
–Phil McGraw

And finally,

Let our New Year’s resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.
–Goran Persson