AcademicElephant's blog
Posted at 4:18pm on Apr. 13, 2008 On Doug Feith's "War and Decision"
By AcademicElephant
Promoted by Dan McLaughlin
[In the interests of full disclosure, Doug is a friend and I am biased in favor of him and of this book - AE.]
Doug Feith’s War and Decision came out on Tuesday. In my opinion, everyone who is interested in the greatest challenge to our country in a generation, the Global War on Terror, should read it.
War and Decision is the first book written by someone who was actually part of the decision-making process in the Pentagon on and after 9/11. Up till now, we have been reading largely second-hand accounts that report on events in which the authors were not directly involved and that are thus heavily reliant on selective sourcing. The result, as we all know, has not been pretty and the debate, particularly on Iraq, has disintegrated into finger pointing and hysteria.
Read On....
Posted in Afghanistan | Doug Feith | Iraq | War | War and Decision | WMD — Comments (41) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 5:55pm on Jan. 25, 2008 Ladies and Gentlemen, Place your Bets!
By AcademicElephant
Earlier today, I had a Redhot exchange with Adam C about the state of Senator McCain's finances. It will surprise no one at Redstate to know that Adam is a McCain supporter while I am pretty firmly in the "Anyone But McCain" camp. So I admit up front to bias against him (McCain that is, not my friend Adam). But I still want to look at this issue in some more detail, because I think it's important. For me it emblemizes how McCain has run his campaign, but perhaps more importantly it also tells us about how future candidates might fund. The precedent he's setting does give this taxpayer some pause.
Posted in Archived | campaign debt | Gambling | McCain | Republican primary — Comments (21) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:00am on Jan. 17, 2008 Senator DeMint's response to the Coburn endorsement
By AcademicElephant
From the diaries, by Erick.
Staunch Romney supporter Jim DeMint sent out the following email today:
Today, Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) issued the following statement upon learning the news that Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) endorsed John McCain for President in Greenville, South Carolina this morning. Senator DeMint has endorsed Governor Mitt Romney for President.
"Illegal immigration and tax relief may not be big issues in Oklahoma, but they are here. Thankfully the people of South Carolina will decide for themselves who will stop illegal immigration and rebuild our economy."
This is getting to be something of a game of inside-the-senate baseball, but the Coburn-DeMint split is a pretty strong indicator to me that we're still far from a "consensus" candidate.
Posted in 2008 | Jim DeMint | John McCain | Mitt Romney | Tom Coburn — Comments (38) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:30am on Jan. 2, 2008 Endorsing Giuliani
By AcademicElephant
Promoted from diaries by Mark I.
Following the example of many of my esteemed colleagues, I thought I'd ring in the new year by endorsing a Republican candidate for President.
My decision-making process in this cycle has been a simple one as on my trump issue, national security, one candidate has the qualities I would like to see in a commander in chief. That candidate is Rudy Giuliani.
Read on...
Posted in 2008 | Republican primary | Rudy Giuliani — Comments (99) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:57pm on Nov. 6, 2007 An address for your Christmas card list
By AcademicElephant
If you're like me, you're facing a growing sense of dread about Christmas cards. I do okay with Christmas dresses, presents, parties, pagaents--but I struggle with the card. Do we have a good recent picture? And if not, is that one from the shore this summer good enough? How long will it take to get them? Will ours have a typo the text (again)? Will I get them out in time? And the hugger: How many addresses am I missing, and how will I find them? Self-recriminations of why I didn't create an address database when doing this last year are fruitless now but still quite bitter...
Posted in War — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:53am on Jun. 6, 2007 A word of explanation...
By AcademicElephant
As you may have noticed, I’ve been on something of a blogging hiatus since I returned from Iraq. In part, this had to do with personal circumstances as I was home for five days before I departed again on a work trip for my “day” job, and I wanted to take a break to absorb the Iraq experience. And another event has commanded my attention: Donald Rumsfeld offered me a job as a research consultant on his staff and I accepted. I started last week.
Since everything you’ve read in the press about Secretary Rumsfeld is 100% true, he has forbidden me to so much as look at anything but work for the next five years on pain of instant termination (with malice). It’s amazing how accurately our media has portrayed his character. No, really, he has done no such thing and is quite interested in the world of blogs (he even reads Redstate—at least he does now). From a practical standpoint, however, the position involves addressing a wide range of materials on subjects both familiar and unfamiliar to me; in order to do it effectively, not to mention continue my academic career, I will need to focus on it. Perhaps not to the exclusion of all other things, but it will be hard to blog regularly and I do not think it would be appropriate for me to write on issues related to Mr. Rumsfeld.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you--directors, editors, contributors and members--for your moral and financial support of the Iraq endeavor, and to let you know how much I value our online community. I plan to remain part of the Redstate organization, and look forward to reading your work and discussing issues with you all as we head toward ‘08.
Posted in Blogosphere — Comments (30) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 5:38pm on Apr. 18, 2007 Terror and Virginia Tech
By AcademicElephant
There is something magical about a university campus in the spring. As classes draw to a close and the warm weather sets in, the sense of excitement is palpable. Summer plans are made and discussed. Graduating seniors get serious about enjoying their last days as students. Faculty and staff, with the prospect of the summer break from teaching and administrative duties, have an extra spring in their steps. Perhaps the most special thing about this rarefied time is the sense of community, for at its best the ivory tower is just that--a bastion, a world apart. Critics of academia like to point to its other-worldly quality, which can indeed be a drawback when confronting issues best dealt with through the hard logic of the "real world." But at the same time, this quality can foster that very special atmosphere that is the end of the spring semester. Overall, there is a collective sense of a big project, the academic year, being brought to yet another successful conclusion. Sure, there were blips, but the vast majority of the students made it through and most of them actually learned a thing or two.
Posted in Culture — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:36pm on Apr. 3, 2007 From the mail bag: A tale of two houses
By AcademicElephant
This email is circulating--I don't know the source, but it certainly seems to be food for thought:
HOUSE # 1: A 20-room mansion (plus 8 bathrooms) is heated by natural gas. Add on a pool (and a pool house) and a separate guest house, all heated by gas. In one month this home consumes more energy than the average American household in a year. The average bill for electricity and natural gas runs over $2,400 per month. In natural gas alone, this property consumes more than 20 times the national average for an American home. This house is in the South.
Posted in Culture — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 3:04pm on Apr. 1, 2007 The Top Ten Reasons to Send Redstate to Iraq [Updated with photos!]
By AcademicElephant
Jeff and I are thrilled with our fundraising progress -- after only three days we've already crossed the $8000 mark! We're both humbled and honored that so many of our community are willing to give to this cause. Of course, we're not quite there yet and I know there are some of you out there who have been hanging back and waiting for a really compelling reason to click the donate button.
We need you to get us across the finish line, so here are ten.
10. I got four monster vaccinations yesterday. Owie. Don't let my pain be in vain.
9. Jeff really misses the sand.
8. The front page will feature a whole series of posts that do not mention the '08 presidential race.
7. The Kos Kids think the trip some sort of sinister conspiracy. Prove them right.
6. Harry Reid thinks Iraq is a failure. Prove him wrong.
5. Find out who can run ten miles faster, Jeff or me (more on this later).
4. We need to put the "hawk" back into "chickenhawk."
3. Speaker Pelosi seems to be confused about who is our friend and who our enemy in the Middle East. Let us show her by example which country she should be trying to "understand."
And....
1. Because there's so much news out there that The New York Times doesn't see fit to print.
Thanks in advance for your generosity.
Posted in RedState to Iraq | War — Comments (27) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:29am on Mar. 29, 2007 How we got to go to Iraq
By AcademicElephant
There has been a great deal of interest, friendly and otherwise, in how Jeff and I got ourselves included in the DoD blogger trip to Iraq. I think it's great that so many bloggers on both sides of the political spectrum want to participate in the conference calls and trips the DoD is hosting in their effort to get more direct information on the war effort into the hands of the American taxpayers who are funding it. And I'm delighted to report that the way to get yourself into the target group is pretty much as easy as pie:
Posted in War — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:18pm on Mar. 14, 2007 Picture of the day: A blank slate?
By AcademicElephant
Maybe I'm mistaken, but to my eye, this is a picture of Senators Reid, Biden, Kerry and Levin discussing a piece if paper titled "Plan on Iraq." Problem is that there's nothing else on the paper.
I swear I did no photoshopping. This was the headline photo on War — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 4:17pm on Feb. 24, 2007 A little something from St. John the Self-Righteous
By AcademicElephant
Posted in 2008 — Comments (39) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:08pm on Feb. 8, 2007 Daring to Dream: Why I support R-B in '08
By AcademicElephant
In his end-of-year reflections, Jed Babbin captured the mixed sentiments of many conservatives these days—a rueful wound-licking after the November "thumpin’” exacerbated by a bemused distaste for the current crop of 2008 Republican presidential candidates. The combination has produced an almost palpable malaise (take note, Mr. Carter—this is what a malaise looks like) among our ranks, as 2008 provides no exciting prospect of revenge for 2006. There’s nothing particularly compelling around which to rally, no bright future to anticipate. Instead, we have the prospect of settling for one among a pool of "declareds" all of whom, for various reasons, are fundamentally flawed. It’s not that there’s nothing to admire among them—some are heroic, some charismatic, some strongly principled. Some even have great hair. But none of them bring all those characteristics together in an effective way and we're left squabbling over who is the least flawed.
As an antidote to this malaise, Jed suggested the ticket of Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton in ’08:
I dreamt, for one fleeting moment, about a Rumsfeld-Bolton ticket in 2008. Can you imagine how much Prozac the New York Times editors would consume if that dream came true? R-B in '08?
Jed's fleeting dream brought a wan smile to my face. But as the last few weeks have gone by, as I’ve watched candidates on both sides of the aisle begin to show their hands—and so to reveal what pathetically weak hands they are-—this dream has shown some staying power. Especially after Mark's Al Haig post, in which he made a good point. It might behoove those of us who aren’t too thrilled with either the new political reality of post-2006 Washington or with the prospects we’re being offered for 2008 to cast our net a little wider than the current field--and to look beyond the flash to the substance.
R-B in ’08. Why not?
Well, according to conventional wisdom, the obvious answer would be that both the R and the B were hounded from office after the recent mid-term election—followed by the date of birth of the head of the ticket and the moustache, and all it entails, of the second.
To heck with conventional wisdom. I think those are precisely the reasons we should nominate them.
Let's dare to dream for a moment, shall we?
Read on . . .
Posted in 2008 | Spotlight Blogs — Comments (50) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:15am on Dec. 11, 2006 The ISG v. The Wall Street Journal
By AcademicElephant
Following in mbecker's footsteps, I thought it might be edifying to examine another major daily's take on the ISG report. This time, we have Professor Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University, whose editorial "No Way to Win a War:
Iraq Study Group: A fatuous process yielded fatuous results" appeared yesterday. Professor Cohen does not disagree that fresh perspective is needed on Iraq, but he suggests that an effective presidential commission on this subject would need to be a tougher, leaner and more focused group who carried out their research and deliberations in secret. What we got in the ISG, of course, was something very different, a body that was selected with a eye to other considerations than actually winning this war:
Read on . . .
Posted in War — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:01am on Nov. 13, 2006 Yet more thoughts on Rumsfeld's resignation, this time from the mailbag
By AcademicElephant
Another disappointed supporter of Mr. Rumsfeld writes in:
Speaking as a person with a nephew in the 2/3 infantry, I first want to say that I understand perfectly the president's position in asking for Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation at this late stage, although the timing was bizarre. It would be awfully hard for Rummy to manage the Pentagon from this point forward while spending most of his time in a witness chair through bogus investigative hearings perpetrated by the new congressional leadership. IT will be bad enough as it is. The worst part of it all is the maladroit signal it sends to the troops generally--they are asking, does this mean we won't be allowed to finish the job, that the president is going to abandon the Iraqi people for whom we've been working to solidify a permanent open polity in favor of a "negotiated solution" that won't work and leaves the country open to the whims of Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia?
Posted in War — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
