OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan -- Ms. Noonan is, as usual, an excellent read.

Cover Story: The Longest War - February/March 2002 A piece in American Heritage that covers the historical span of Western warfighting, and its amazing effectiveness. It reiterates a point that I've made in the past -- Western Civilization thrives because it is the only Civilization that allows itself to be constantly scrutinized, questioned, and argued. It shows in our literature, our art, our music, our politics, our institutions, and our warfare. As a culture, the West doesn't just allow scrutiny, it demands it. And so we become stronger and stronger, relative to our numbers. Another aspect of Western Civ -- we accept ideas from all over, and retain those that are truly useful. In the movie "Mr. Baseball", Hiroki, a Japanese woman, tells the protaganist that Japan takes stuff from the rest of the world, and makes it better. That is true of modern Japan to an extent, but only because at the commercial level, they have adopted the Western Civilizations model for success -- fairly free media and economics, elected governments, etc. -- although now they are suffering economically because they are not changing their economic underpinnings enough to adapt to post-cllapse economic reality, a decidely non-western behaviour. Open, free societies prosper, both because they allow individuals to seek their fortunes, and because in that freedom, they are worth defending.

James Lileks hits a homer.

New York Daily News Online -- Army Capt. Zaps Al Qaeda heh heh heh... J

Max Singer on Iraq & CIA on National Review Online -- The INC vs. the CIA. Gues which one is more reliable?

Robert A. George on Scandals on National Review Online -- an interesting review of the Enron and Boston Archdioces scandals... and how they may relate to potential problems for the Bush administration's handling of public trust. Personally, I think the Bushies are doing a fairly good job, holding the cards when they need to, showing us what they can. All the BS about Cheney's Energy meetings is just that -- BS. The bill they've presented is what should be analysed, not the contributors to that bill. I suspect that the reason Congress and the media get all excited about the contributors is because they are either too lazy to read the bill, or that the congressional leadership doesn't give them time to read the damn bill. This leads me to wonder why -- why must the bill be so huge, and why wouldn't they have time to read the bill? One simple factor explains a lot -- the Congress isoverreaching. Maybe the Energy Bill is a necessary piece of legislation, but Congress has its fingers in so many pies that it can't pull them out long enough to do more than leave blueberry fingerprints on the cover of the legislation. Maybe it's unnecessary, and therefore a waste of time anyway, distracting them from real work. Either way, Congress is fiddling where they shouldn't.

Rich Lowry on Assassination on National Review Online -- Excellent article...

muslimpundit.com has a nice evaluation of the Koran/Quran/Qur'an/Muslim holy text as holy writ. On a related note -- HAs anyone noticed the time lines of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim texts? Note -- this is from memory, and may be inaccurate with respect to the exact time lines. Bear with me, please. It seems to me that the Jews went on a conquest after about 1200-1400 years of existence. They captured Canaan, and much of the Holy Land. Then they (in terms of the religion, not the people), fell from power and were forced to come to terms with a secular state (The Romans, IIRC), and that made Judaism stroinger, because it could survive the onslaught of the external world and still provide a resource for people to come to God. Then came Jesus, and the New Testament. Christians grew in strength for about 1200-1300 years, then, thanks in part to the military losses of the Crusades, they were forced to accept the loss of religious rule, and accomodate the secular State. In the long run, this has made Christianity stronger, similar to the way that the collapse of the Jewish State those thousands of years ago created a need for Judaism to accomodate ther eal world. Now, it's been about 1400 years since the advent of the Koran. And Islam has grown in power for most of that time period. It was damaged during the crusades (like the Christians and Jews suffered through their earlier periods), and eventually fought to a stalemate against the Christian West under the Caliphs. Now, Islam appears to be at the point that Christianity and Judaism reached -- the Islamic world has acquired enough strength to try and break the stalemate. So they're going on a crusade. Maybe not all of Islam, but certainly enough. The Imams exort the masses to an offensive war against the Christians, to reclaim the Holy Lands, to strike at the Christians and Jews and to eliminate the Infidel. The Islamic world is in a similar state to Europe, ca. 1200. The 'kings' are annointed by the Imams (although some appear to be elected, they'd never be elected without the tacit support of those same imams), the Imams exhort their followers to crusade against the Infidels. The religion is similar to Christianity ca. 1200 -- closed off from rational thought. Just as cloistered monks and public priests once only accepted a strict intepretation of the Bible, so the Imams accept only the singular intepretation of the Koran. Islam is close to a Schism and Reformation. I do not know who the brave Martin Luther will be, but I hope he appears soon. Islam needs him.

Give War a Chance -- As I've stated before. Yassir Arafat and the Palestinians are at war with Isreal, a war of extermination. There is no recourse but full war for Isreal. Recall that Isreal was prepared to give up so much for peace... and all it got them was more bombings, the deaths of their children, and vilification from the anti-semitic European media. Now, i hope they lay some smack down on the Palestinians.

In War, Soldiers Die-- From the WSJ's OpinionJournal.com. Something for us to remember as we suffer our first casualties. My favorite line: "The best way to honor our dead is to defeat the enemy." When Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, or Marines give their lives for our security, liberty, and future, we should be ever grateful. We are serious about this war. We are prepared to put our men in real danger to accomplish our mission. God bless them and keep them.

Whew... Post-wedding and honeymoon exhaustion is setting in. We had a week in St. Thomas to relax, then a plane trip back with four and a half hours of some lady's screaming child to tense us back up and to restore us to our usual shaky state. More alter... I'm too tired to post right now...

Hey folks... I'm back.. More Later...