EGYPTIAN AIR FORCE FIGHTER JETS To paraphrase the great military blogger Tom Ricks, the only people not freaking over Libya are those who didn’t like the idea of a no-fly zone in the first place. That noted, the U.S.-led NATO air forces have accomplished what they set out to do in a mere three days. Radar and anti-aircraft missile sites are in ruins and Moammar el-Qaddafi’s air force is effectively grounded. So it’s time for lesser air forces to take over. Like those from the Arab...

If all you have is a hammer — which in this case is the world’s biggest military — then every problem ultimately resembles a nail. ~ WILL BUNCH I have reluctantly come around to supporting the no-fly zone over Libya because, as belated as the action may be, it is in the service of a larger cause — the democratic transformation of the Arab world, warts and all as well as risks and all — as well as putting an end to a humanitarian crisis. This is not to say that...

QADDAFI AND BERLUSCONI MAKE NICE Napoleon famously observed that no Italian state had ever finished a war on the same side as that on which it had started, except when it had changed twice, and no European nation has had a closer if sometimes ambivalent relationship with Libya than NATO partner Italy. Libya became an Italian colony in 1910 and remained so until 1947 when the Italian empire, such as it was, was dissolved. But economic and political ties between Tripoli and Rome have continued...

T.E. Lawrence (to Prince Feisal’s left) at 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The big dude in the back is Feisal’s Sudanese slave and bodyguard. What that Thomas Edward “Ned” Lawrence were alive today to see the changes sweeping the Middle East. While the man known as Lawrence of Arabia seldom showed emotion, he probably would allow himself a smile although, as a teetotaller, not a celebratory toast. Lawrence led the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during World War I and...

While it appears that France and Britain are taking the lead in imposing a no-fly zone over Libya, this dramatic action — growing out of a United Nations resolution — has implications for the U.S. Some random thoughts to kick start a (hopefully civil) discussion: * If you believe that a no-fly zone is necessary, explain why. If you believe that a no-fly zone is not necessary, or alternately a dangerous first step to escalating the conflict between pro-democracy rebels and Libyan strongman...

The New York Times announced today that it will institute a dread paywall beginning on March 28, a decision greeted with apoplexy in some necks of the blogospheric woods, especially readers who apparently have nothing better to do with the time they spend away from their computers than suck face with smart phones. Being an old phart who grew up with the Sunday Times and went on to a four-decade career in newspapers, I would like to bring some of that dread perspective thing to the discussion. As...

The conservative Republican honeymoon with Sarah Palin, now widely reported to be over, never really existed, a mere fig newton of the imagination of neocons with stiffies like William Kristol who believed that the former half-term governor “would change politics as we know it.” Even though many mainstream Republican’s reacted in horror to John McCain’s selection of Palin as a running mate in 2008, they reached for the Zantac and put on happy faces because while she...

With the exception of the year 2000, I have picked every winner in every presidential election since I was old enough to vote for the first time in 1968, and of course the Supreme Court stole that one for Dubya. I did think that John Kerry had a good chance of wresting the White House from him in 2004, but that was before I became aware of how hapless a campaigner he was. My batting average is nothing special when you consider that electoral demographics, as shifty as they can be over the long term,...

Given the enormous problems besetting the U.S. these days and the need for Congress to address them, the hearings being convened by Representative Peter King tomorrow into the perceived threat of homegrown Muslim radicalism would seem to be an unwelcome distraction. Or are they? Becoming curious about what might lay behind the right-wing New York Republican’s insistence that there is a large and growing threat, I burned a few hours searching and cross-checking databases to see how many...

The Founding Fathers got little wrong. With the conspicuous exception of ducking the slavery issue, which would inextricably lead to the Civil War, they constructed a Constitution with extraordinary foresight. But given the sad case of Clarence Thomas, lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices isn’t looking like such a hot idea these days. In granting lifetime tenure, the Founders believed that it would be more difficult for outside parties to influence the high court, but they failed...

Al Weisel, widely known in the blogosphere as Jon Swift, was the best satirist this side of . . . well, Jonathan Swift. Sadly and unexpectedly, Al left this mortal coil one year ago today. Only the good die young, as they say, and he was a mere 46. Al was a tireless supporter of small blogs like mine — Kiko’s House — and I was honored innumerable times to have him link to my posts, usually so he could skewer someone with a faux conservative wit so sharp that some of his victims...

OH, FOR THE GOOD OLD DAYS The rise of the Tea Party amidst the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party has merely exacerbated what some of us have known for many years: America is going to hell in a handbasket. If you, like me, are of the librul persuasion, it is tempting to lay America’s sundry and growing woes — so vividly shown in the chart below this post — at the feet of the Bush administration and the aforementioned ultra conservatives, let alone that Republicans...

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE. Source: IMF via The New York Times

FLIGHT MEDIC SERGEANT TYRONE JORDAN In war, it is widely accepted that helicopters, ambulances, hospital ships and other vehicles displaying red crosses are not to be fired on, and that usually is the case. But just as warfare has changed, so has the ability to save the lives of the wounded and maimed, and the advances made in battlefield helicopter evacuations during the Vietnam War have reached the point that if a GI can be kept alive by battlefield medics, chances are excellent that...

Shock and Awe . . . Toppled statue . . . Mission Accomplished . . . Coalition of the Willing . . . Not enough troops . . . I sometimes wonder what Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Perle feel when they see a photograph like this one. Silly of me, I guess, but it’s my own way of trying to imagine whether they have the faintest understanding of the evil that their little adventure in Iraq unleashed. I suspect that they do understand in an abstract-ish sort of way. Even though their heads...

WHEN THE TRAIN / LEFT THE STATION / IT HAD TWO LIGHTS ON BEHIND / WELL, THE BLUE LIGHT WAS MY BLUES / AND THE RED LIGHT WAS MY MIND / ALL MY LOVE’S IN VAIN. – ROBERT JOHNSON Son House, the great blues singer and slide guitarist, delighted in telling people that when he first met Robert Johnson, he couldn’t play guitar to save his life. But the young man was persistent and after disappearing for a few months was again pestering House, Willie Brown and the other Mississippi Delta...

GEORGE WALKER BUSH: THEN AND NOW I had long planned to post an abridged text of George Bush’s 2000 Republican National Convention acceptance speech closer to Inauguration Day and compare his words with his deeds, but the post-mortems already are flying fast and furious. This includes a lot of revisionist clap-trap from conservative bloggers whose heads remain firmly up their backsides, including drivel to the effect that because Bush “is a kind and decent man” the excesses and...

I keep going back and forth on whether America’s Big three automakers should be bailed out. On the one hand, the collapse of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler would have an immense psychological impact in the depths of a recession, not to mention the loss of as many as 2.9 million jobs, according to one estimate. On the other hand, why reward managers and boards of directors so inept that they couldn’t figure out how to remain competitive over the 30 years since the Japanese Invasion...

I said from the moment it became obvious that Barack Obama would prevail that winning would be the easy part, and I have felt distinctly uncomfortable observing his first interactions as president-elect with George Bush and the Washington establishment. Part of that unease falls into the category of This Is Too Good To Be True, and it will be a while before I don’t wake up in the morning wondering if it is all a dream. The larger part of my unease is the reality that governing — you...

I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. The enemy was in us. The war is over for me now, but it will always be there, the rest of my days. As I’m sure Elias will be, fighting with Barnes for what Rhah called “possession of my soul.” There are times since, I’ve felt like a child, born of those two fathers. But be that as it may, those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again. To teach others what we know, and to try with what’s...

To be an American (unlike being English or French) is precisely to image a destiny rather than to inherit one; since we have always been, insofar as we are Americans at all, inhabitants of myth rather than history. — LESLIE FIEDLER The tears of joy have dried. The stage in Grant Park has been taken down. The celebrations are history. As the dust settles from Election Day 2008 the biggest message is that the 1960s are now officially over. The Baby Boomers have passed the torch. We are finally...

THE MANOR AND THE MAN The people who populate Thrumpton Hall: A Memoir of Life in My Father’s House are eccentric English folk, but not in that lovable way so familiar to Americans from British television sitcoms. In fact, they are for the most part so pathetically dysfunctional that I initially couldn’t bring myself to review this offering by the prolific author Miranda Seymour. But because I was once in love with a house myself and the requited love that Seymour’s father had...

The people between John and Cindy McCain are actually smaller than they appear In principle, there was never anything particularly wrong with the political movement known as neoconservatism, which after all was a reaction to failed policies of the 1960s and 1970s. But neoconservatism had become so discredited by the time that Dick Cheney and others finished wringing the idealism out of it that even Francis Fukayama, the movement’s contemporary intellectual godfather, renounced the Bush Doctrine...

It was just fine with Barack Obama and John McCain that they could pretty much avoid talking about the Bush administration’s kangaroo court military tribunals and its embrace of torture during the presidential campaign. While these aspects of the U.S.’s so-called War on Terror were not a priority for voters who are beleaguered by a collapsed economy and wondering how to pay for their Uncle Leo’s thousand-dollar medications, the candidates also knew that there are no easy answers...

Barack Obama told daughters Malia and Sasha that “you have earned the new puppy that’s coming with us to the White House” during his victory speech Wednesday morning, a promise he presumably will have to keep since billions of people were looking on. A source close to the Obamas says that the new puppy probably won’t arrive until the spring and, when it does, presumably will have to be hypoallergenic. This is because Malia has allergies, so you can rule out a golden retriever,...