Matt: I'm leaving for Dallas in about 14 hours, so there won't be any/very little posting this weekend. The biggest battle the US has been involved in since the end of World War Two is on the way, so say a prayer.

Matt: It's amazing the differences that emerge when commanders in the field are interviewed directly. Fox News is doing a great job with its embedded news crews, who often interview captains, majors and colonels in the sand. To most of the media, any shot fired against Allied forces is "stiff resistance". A Marine Lt. Colonel interviewed this morning said that there is no organization to the resistance, which seems to only involve small units.

I'm hearing a lot about why Iraqi TV is still on the air. As you probably know, one of their transmitters was knocked out, supposedly because it hid a military communications post. As I write this, the station is back on the air from another location. My thinking is this: the national TV is a great way to judge the organization of the regime. I would imagine that the military intelligence types are poring over every frame of Hussein and his cronies, looking for signs of stress (or old, heavily-edited video).

Matt: Micheal Moore. Well, well, well. By now, you know that this "documentary" film-maker had some pretty harsh things to say at the Academy Awards last night. He has every right to say what he wants as long as the Academy gives him a forum in which to do it. However, there is something larger at work here, and it's an issue that I have addressed before: the victory of the cynic.

We see it everywhere now, but no more so than in Hollywood and the mainstream media: cynicism is the norm, passed off as a "critical eye" or "balance". Nothing and no one is trustworthy, since everyone is motivated by worldly temptations, namely money and power. People with faith, religious and otherwise, are suckers, ignorant or, worse, lying about their genuine feelings. The only people who are not motivated by greed, power, sex, etc., are the "pure" in our society: artists (or people who like to think they are), academicians and the life-long politician who hasn't been "tainted" by "big business". In other words, only the leftist elite can be pure and stand in judgement of society.

But here's the problem with Moore and those of his ilk: they contribute nothing. The cynic never thinks big thoughts or sees them to fruition; that would be giving into the "man". Instead, he stands in the shadows with his merry band of losers, casting doubts and aspertions on those who take the stand, fight the fight and try to win the race. The truth is that the cynic is really the bitter loser in life who can not face his own shortcomings. After all, it is easier to face the world if you can blame your problems on the President and not on your lack of will or courage. That is why Moore will always have fans: part of them buy the lie and the rest need the lie in order to feel better about themselves.

Oh, and Mikey---go to hell.

Matt: From now on, you will notice that each blog post will start with a person's name or nickname. This is the person leaving the post, since there may now be multiple posters since I "opened up" the blog to some friends as well. This should be interesting.

Say what you will about Oliver North, you have to hand it to the guy for making lemonade with lemons. Anyway, here's the transcript from one of his reports in Iraq with the Marines:

North: Jack, before I go I'd like to give this young Marine a chance to say hi to his family. Let 'er rip, son.

Marine: Hi, Mom, Dad and Jenn. I miss you guys and I'll be home soon. I wrote you all some letters, but there's no post office out here on the back of a camel.

North: Son, there's a post office in Baghdad. You can use that one soon. Jack, back to you in the studio.

John Wayne, call your office.

A Washington Times article claims that Uday, Saddam's oldest son, was killed in the first bombing of the war. I am about to say something very un-Christian, only because Uday is the son known for raping women at will and other atrocities: if he is dead, I hope it was slow and painful. I also hope that the last thing he saw before he slipped into death was the front of an American cruise missile bringing Allah to his father.

I borrowed this from National Review Online. Thanks to my friend Eric for passing it to me.




The Antiwar Movement in My ’Hood
Ruminations on war & peace.

By Mark Goldblatt



he antiwar movement was in my neighborhood earlier this month. So I decided to talk to them; I dusted off my mini-cassette recorder and did a dozen or so protester-in-the-street interviews to get a sense of who goes to these things, and why they do. Here are a few observations:

1) Activists are not deep thinkers. They speak in handy slogans and reason by way of the nearest platitude. (This is perhaps true by definition, no less on the right than on the left; if you can trace the logic on both sides of a divisive issue, you usually can't get worked up enough to take to the streets.) Every single protester I talked to was certain that President Bush's stated cause for going to war — denying Saddam weapons of mass destruction — is merely a ruse; Bush's real objective is to control Iraq's oil. The protesters presuppose, in effect, their own psychic capacities to discern Bush's true intentions while denying Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al., even the possibility of making educated guesses about Saddam's.

2) Most of the protesters believe, in a more general sense, that the United States conducts its foreign policy in a way that deliberately persecutes "people of color." We side with the Israelis against the Arabs, several of them mentioned, because Jews are white. None could quite account for our siding with Bosnians Muslims against Christian Serbs — though one protester mentioned, when I pointed this out, that that was Bill Clinton's doing, not Bush's.

3) On a related issue, every single protester I spoke with concurred that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and, especially, John Ashcroft are irredeemably evil — two of them called Ashcroft a Nazi — but when I asked them their thoughts about Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice their tones softened. They spoke of their admiration for them, conceding only that they were "disappointed" by Powell's and Rice's support of Bush's agenda; most were convinced that Powell and Rice were being muzzled, forced to hide their actual feelings about the war; one protester even speculated that Powell might be being blackmailed. The protesters are, in other words, like many on the political left, backhanded racists, unwilling to forthrightly condemn blacks for the very beliefs and actions they find repulsive in whites.

Even saying that, however, I was repeatedly struck by the decency of the people I interviewed. This is a point that conservative columnists — and I'm as guilty as anyone in this respect — tend to gloss over. To be sure, antiwar demonstrations tend to be sponsored by a pathetic amalgam of racial arsonists of the Free-Mumia ilk, proletarian posers yearning to reenact scenes from the movie Reds, and pseudo-intellectual holdovers from the 60s whose great revolutionary gesture is the determination never to pay back their student loans. But the overwhelming majority of actual protesters are well-meaning people, kind-hearted to a fault, animated by a sincere belief that the threat of global terrorism can be deterred most effectively by negotiating our differences with Baghdad.

They want peace, which is commendable. But they want it now, which is dangerous.

The concept that antiwar activists cannot seem to get their minds around — and here is where their lack of depth is especially evident — is that there's such a thing as a bad peace. (The corollary of this, of course, also eludes them: namely, that people who support the war might themselves be well intentioned.) History instructs us on the cost of a bad peace. The bad peace at the end of the World War I made inevitable an even deadlier Second World War. The bad peace at the end of the Persian Gulf War is now summoning us back to Iraq to finish the job. The worst peace of the last century was, paradoxically, the Cold War. In hindsight, Stalin needed to be stomped into the ground in 1945, but the United States was too exhausted by the defeat of Germany and Japan to do what was necessary; we bought into a policy of containment. True, an outright war with the Soviet Union would have been an unspeakable bloodbath — though an American victory was guaranteed by our status as the world's only nuclear power. In any event, the decision not to go after Stalin, already a genocidal villain of Hitlerian dimensions, freed him to continue his murderous purges of Soviet dissenters; it also paved the way for fellow communist Mao Zedong's horrific Great Leap Forward in China, at a price of 20 million souls, precipitated wars in Korea and Vietnam which killed millions more, and culminated in the Cambodian holocaust, with a body count of another two million. The decision to leave Stalin to his butchery brought peace, of a sort, to Europe in 1945. In the final analysis, the decision could hardly have turned out worse.

The last century should have taught us the price of a bad peace. For antiwar activists, however, "bad peace" remains an oxymoron. Peace is what they want, peace is what they demand, and the prospect of a lasting peace later, rather than a doomed peace now, does not compute. Indeed, it is characteristic of liberals to avoid painful, long term solutions to difficult problems in favor of ill-conceived but humane-sounding stop gaps that make them feel good about themselves. Racial quotas are a legacy of the Left's craving for immediate gratification; so, too, is welfare dependency.

The war on terrorism is, without question, an exceedingly difficult problem. The protesters sing "Give Peace a Chance," but that's not even a logical stop gap in this case; it's an invitation to our enemies, a baring of our throats, to be followed necessarily by a baring of our talons after our enemies strike again. Nor does the war on terrorism require further study. Sifting through the brew of social, political, cultural, economic, and religious pathologies behind the attacks of September 11, 2001 is an academic exercise; the bottom line of what happened that cloudless morning is that a lunatic fringe of Muslims called America's bluff. Following World War II, American leaders carefully cultivated the idea that, if sufficiently provoked, we would unleash violence against our enemies of biblical proportions. It was a useful bluff; it did keep the Soviets in check until their system rotted away from the inside. The bluff was still in tact in 1991, when Saddam invaded Kuwait. It prevented him, when his army was routed, from responding with chemical or biological weapons.

September 11 changed all that. The lunatics provoked us, and, after initial outbursts of glee on the West Bank, the Islamic world held its collective breath. How would America respond to such carnage on its own soil? But our response, when it came, was utterly proportionate. Yes, we took down the Taliban, the regime that directly sponsored the attack, but we did so with a scalpel, not with a terrible swift sword. We could have decimated the Afghani population; instead, we liberated them.

The Islamic world took note.

We're working to end Islamic terrorism the hard way, over the course of the next several decades. Taking down corrupt regimes. Establishing democratic institutions. Building nations. The Taliban came first. Saddam is next in line if for no other reason than we've got a pretext for going after him: He's in violation of the surrender terms which kept him in power in 1991. And after Saddam? Maybe Syria. Maybe Iran. Maybe the Sudan. The testimonies of Iraqi civilians, after we liberate them, will provide us our next fig leaf for doing what needs to be done. Beyond that, the writing will be on the wall for Libya. For Egypt. For Saudi Arabia. Wherever radical Islam festers, we will go. And we will go in force, and in waves, and with an absolute certitude that the cause of individual liberty and human rights is just.

After a time, the people themselves won't wait for us; they will witness the ordinary miracles of freedom, the better lives of liberated populations, and they will not abide tyranny for long. They will wise up, and they will rise up. No one wants to get caught on the wrong side of history. The Arabic word "Islam" means submission, but submission is meaningless, it is merit-less, unless it is undertaken freely. If in the end free people no longer submit themselves to Allah's will, the religion itself will wither and die.

America is sure to take its share of hits in the meantime. God willing, nothing as cataclysmic as September 11, but American civilians will surely die at home and abroad as radical Islam enters its death throes. What we are doing is unprecedented. But what we are seeking is unprecedented.

It's not a new world order.

It's a new world.

I’m sorry about the dearth of postings this week. Between watching the news and dealing with problems at work (most of my writing is done there), I haven’t had the time or the desire to write.

I have been wrestling with a moral dilemma this week, but I have been hesitant to talk about it because it seems trite in comparison to the news of the world. But life goes on and I find it tremendously helpful to write about the things that bother me.

As most of you know, I am involved with a local computer talk show. I first became at the end of 1998, but after about a year, work and other issues forced me to take a hiatus. I started in again almost a year ago, jumping in with both feet. There are three components to the program: the radio show itself, the e-mail help we give and a chat room that is open weeknights from 8-11pm and during the radio show on Sundays. I mention these components because they will become important later.

The crux of the problem is this: the host of the show is getting divorced after 25 or so years of marriage. At first glance, you may wonder why this is such a big deal. After all, divorces happen every day and, while the situation may be sad or whatever, it’s really none of my business. But therein lies the problem: our beloved host has made it EVERYONE’S business. Last Sunday, before the show, he passed around e-mails that he had “intercepted” from his wife’s AOL account. He then proceeded to play for us the recordings he had made of their conversations. All of this was done, I believe, in an effort to win our support for a battle he is having with another talk show host on the same station. To say that I was uncomfortable is an understatement.

Let me be clear on something: I am not condemning our host for his decision to divorce his wife. I have met his wife and consider her a wonderful woman, but I have no idea what goes on behind closed doors. I am also not a candidate for sainthood. I knew men in the navy who cheated on their wives and I said nothing. I have had knowledge of and participated in actions that only the most free-thinking of you would consider right. But there is something about this situation that bothers me deep down. Maybe it’s maturity or the fact that I now understand marriage a lot better than I once did. Mostly, I think it’s our host’s attitude that I find grating because it lacks the one thing that will cover a multitude of sins: class. As much as I hate to say it, I would still be a willing piece in the puzzle if only he carried himself with a little more reserve and refinement. As it is, he is behaving like a recently freed heroin addict looking for his next fix.

So my choices are this: a) continue doing the radio show, answering e-mail and making the occasional chat room appearance, b) stop doing the radio show, but continue to be an online presence or c) tell our host to go get bent and leave. Right now, I am leaning towards b), for I do truly enjoy helping people solve their PC woes. I am not going to the show this weekend for the sake of my sanity and next weekend because I will be out of town. Maybe the answer will come with time.

There's going to be an anti-war rally today in Louisville. As I listened to the news last night, they interviewed the man organizing the rally. He is the same man who organizes damn near every protest in this city: gay rights, animal rights, anti-police, anti-racism. Could it be that he is making a living at this? Of course not; we all know that everyone who is against this war is motivated by only the purest motives.

Please check out DLP's blog. Evidently, holding an opinion is an application for the thought police. I hope the pay is good.

As most of you know, I was born and raised Catholic. I attended twelve years of Catholic school. My parents are both Catholic, as is my wife. All my siblings are practicing Catholics. So, I have been hearing a great deal about the Pope's recent statements concerning the upcoming war in Iraq. DLP even went to the trouble of quoting His Holiness in his address in Rome today. Therefore, I think it's time for a little Cathecism lesson.

There is a concept of Papal infallibility that is misunderstood by most non-Catholics. When the Pope speaks "ex cathedra" (literally, from the chair) on matters of faith and morals, he is said to be infallible. Please keep in mind that this has only happened three or four times in the history of the papacy. Each time, His Holiness has addressed fundamentals of Catholicism: the virgin birth, the truth of transubstantiation, etc. However, when the Pope talks about political issues of the day (like the standoff with Iraq), he is stating a personal opinion, backed up by his knowledge and wisdom. While Catholics owe him due respect for his position, wisdom and knowledge, we are under no obligation to agree with or take action on his words. Therefore, American Catholics can rest assured that they are committing no sin by disagreeing with our Pope on this issue.

For those of you too wrapped up in your little, everyday existence to truly understand the evil that we are about to destroy, check out this. And now, check out the statements of the truly clueless. I have come to the conclusion that liberals are elected by those who ignore politics until they lose their jobs or until the election is 48 hours away. Then, they make a decision based purely upon emotion. Otherwise, how can they logically defend their choice?


The first automobile to carry the Porsche name was introduced today in 1949. It was called the 356 and was a sport version of the Volkswagen that had been built during the war. By the way, Dr. Porsche spent two years in prison after the war for his affiliation with the Hitler regime.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect."
King Henry the Fifth (1598-1600), Act: III, Scene: i, Line: 1

Thank God Algore isn't in the White House right now.

The commanding general of V Corps addressed the 101st Airborne today. He used a phrase that included "date with destiny". It's a go.


Why do we have to contribute tax dollars to support NPR? Could it be because they could not compete in the marketplace? I think so. When you listen to talk radio, there is no illusion of balance: Dennis Prager, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the like are conservative and they don't mind telling you. But NPR masks its socialist agenda with a facade of in-depth reporting unmarred by advertisement. Meanwhile, they piss away our money promoting an agenda that the majority of Americans do not support. Their coverage in Kuwait borders on seditionary. More on that later, after I've had some sleep.

I think I just lost a huge post. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just ordered my "F the French" t-shirt. It should be here in time to be worn to the NASCAR race in Texas. If this screams "white trash" to you, welcome aboard---you prove the point.


You know what? The Dixie Chicks have the right to say whatever they want. But, you know what? They said it in a foreign country (an allied foreign country with troops serving with Americans in the field). And do you know what else? That makes them ungrateful little bitches of the Susan Sarandon/Madonna school. Never, ever, ever, ever go overseas and make deragatory public statements about your country. I want to use the "c" word right now, but I know how offensive that is to the women who read this. Sigh....

Great quote from another blog (it's from an unnamed book): "life isn't about keeping score. it's not about how many people call you and it's not about who you've dated, are dating or haven't dated at all. it isn't about who you've kissed, what sport you play, or which guy or girl likes you. it's not about your shoes or your hair or the colorof your skin or where you live or go to school. in fact, it's not about grades, money, clothes, or colleges that accept you or not. life isn't aobut if you have lots of friends, or if you are alone, and it's not about how accepted or unaccepted you are. life just isn't about that.

but life is about who you love and who you hurt. it's about how you feel about yourself. its about sticking up for you friends and replacing inner hate with love. life is about avoiding jealousy, overcoming ignorance and building confidence. it's about what you say and what you mean. it's about seeing people for who they are and not what they have. most of all, it is about choosing to use your life to toch someone else's in a way that could never have been achieved otherwise. these choices are what life's about."

I've been thinking about Elizabeth Smart today. There is something fundamental missing in all of this. I think that, before it's all said and done, questions are going to surface concerning conditions in the Smart household. Children who are victims of abuse often learn to freeze instead of fighting off their tormentors. I do not believe that an emotionally healthy teenaged girl would've gone for so many months without making a break for it. There is Stockholm Syndrome, but does anyone really think that could be a factor here? Time will tell.


We will be bombing Iraq by Wednesday. My initial date of March 6 was based on the moon, but there was a news story today which actually gave me a military reason to think it will be next week: ten surface combatants are moving into the Red Sea. These ships, normally part of two seperate carrier battle groups, are forming their own group and moving into cruise missile range of Iraq. This is not something that happens very often, for the navy likes to move its ships in organized groups which begin and finish deployments together. This represents a break from that policy, which tells me that they are going into the Red Sea to fire their missiles and then return to escort duty with the carriers. I don't know much about the Army, but I do know how the Navy works. You read it here first.

Today in 1942, one of the darkest events of the 20th century occurred: General Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines and escaped to Australia. The sadness is not in the General’s escape; it is in the fact that his escape effectively ended any hope of rescue for nearly 80,000 allied troops that he left behind. History tells us that MacArthur wanted to stay with his troops and mount a final offensive that would’ve resulted in his demise. We will probably never know the truth of this, but I am willing to grant that the General, on a personal level, was very courageous.

What is so upsetting about the Japanese invasion of the Philippine Islands is the fact that the territory was written off as a loss almost immediately. Soon after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided that a victory in Europe had to be achieved before a victory in the Pacific. Thus, thousands of Americans were condemned to a slow, miserable death at the hands of a ruthless enemy who recognized surrender as an unpardonable sin. I am not naive enough to say that the islands could have been saved; after all, the Pacific Fleet was nearly destroyed at Pearl Harbor. But I have read many books about the Bataan Death March and other atrocities committed by the Japanese, and the one thread that runs through the narration is the constant belief by those Americans that they were going to be saved. It was incomprehensible to them that they would be sacrificed in name of allied fellowship.


On a very different note, I am reading a book entitled “dot.bomb” (J. David Kuo), about the trials and tribulations of Value America, one of the e-commerce companies that was going to change the way we lived. What I find so striking is the arrogance of so many of the people involved. It was as if the rules of economics and business would no longer apply in the “new economy”. What’s even crazier is how many people of all stripes bought into the madness. Even the Wall Street Journal, that dreadnought of the old school, thought that the world was going to change. It would all be laughable if it hadn’t been so damn expensive.

Quote of the day from the North Korean news agency (KCNA): "The U.S. war-like forces should be clearly mindful that although they may attempt to provoke the DPRK as they please, they can never go back alive after mounting an attack on it." You have to love those little, yellow Stalinist bastards.

If you've ever sat through the film 'Apocalypse Now', you know about the scene in which Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) finds Colonel Kurtz's (Marlon Brando) memoirs. Willard flips through the pages and stops to read a passage: "They taught men to drop fire from the sky but they wouldn't let them write 'fuck' on the sides of their planes because it was obscene."

There is some truth to this statement. Today, in 1945, 300 American bombers dropped incendiary bombs on Tokyo, killing 100,000 civilians in the resulting firestorm. The raid destroyed two-thirds of the city and was more devastating than either of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. War has never been more horrible than it was this night.

So here's the other part of the story that doesn't make it into the books: when the B-17 crews who flew over Europe and the B-29 crews who flew over China and Japan came home, the Army Air Corps would often use them for war bond drives. A B-17 crew would fly into a place like Bowman Field in Louisville and let the general public see what a real war machine looked like. The problem was the nose art which adorned many of these planes. In Europe or on Tinian Island, no one cared about what was painted on the planes as long as it didn't get in the way of the unit markings or screw with the aerodynamics. But on the homefront, people were bothered when they saw planes with names like "Strawberry Bitch" (adorned with a, um, natural redhead) or "Lucky" (no nudity here, just a finger telling you that you're "number one"). So, after a few complaints from local ministers and politicians, the Army Air Corps ordered nose art to be toned down before the planes came home.

This seems kind of trite today, but it is very reflective of the times: our boys could be warriors, but they better come home virgins.

Since I work at night in a room that is partially underground, my listening choices are generally limited to one FM and three AM radio stations. Until a month ago, I listened almost exclusively to Art Bell/George Noory. Recently, however, I have been listening to a replay of the Dennis Prager Show, which is broadcast from KRLA in Los Angeles. Prager is conservative, a self-described “Kennedy Democrat” who left the party because the party moved to the left of his position on most issues. Once you get used to his speech patterns, he is intriguing.

On Wednesday, Dennis sent one of his interns to an anti-war rally on the UCLA campus. The day began with a “walk-out”, an act of mass disobedience that immediately raised doubts in my mind as to why the students were at the protest. According to the intern, there were close to 2,000 students at the rally. The on-campus student population at UCLA is about 6,000 (according to the UCLA website), so that’s an impressive turnout. What made the day interesting were the on-phone interviews Dennis had with some of the protesters, including one of the organizers. It seems that most of them were making a correlation between the war and the amount of money being spent on education at the federal level. Supposedly, education in this nation would be much better off if we threw more money into the coffers of institutions such as UCLA and spent less on that big, scary Department of Defense. One of the organizers of the protest, a female Junior majoring in biology, could not name any of the nations that Iraq has invaded. I know she was only eight during the last Gulf War, but don’t you think she might have picked that up somewhere along the way? And, if you’re going to protest, don’t you think it would be a good idea to have some knowledge of the history of the nation whose “sovereignty” you claim we are about to violate?

After reading hundreds of editorials, listening to dozens of interviews and arguing with people who should know better, I have come compiled a list of reasons not to invade Iraq and my responses to these reasons:

1) THIS WAR IS ABOUT OIL. If this were true, wouldn’t it be cheaper to just buy the oil from Iraq, like France and Germany do? And why didn’t we take over the Iraqi oil industry after the first Gulf War? And please name for me one industry in any country we have occupied that was made a national asset of the United States.

2) THIS WAR IS DIVERTING US AWAY FROM THE WAR ON TERROR. This IS the war on terror. Iraq is run by a group of gangsters who have chemical and biological weapons. They have demonstrated a willingness to support terrorism in the West Bank and Gaza. They have used weapons of mass destruction (I’m really getting tired of that term, by the way) on the Kurds in northern Iraq. To me, and to other right-thinking people, Saddam and his cronies ARE terrorists.

3) GEORGE W. BUSH IS ONLY GOING INTO IRAQ BECAUSE HIS DAD FAILED TO FINISH THE JOB. If you make this argument, please go read some accurate history and then get back to me. Allied forces did not go to Baghdad because the UN resolution authorizing force only called for a liberation of Kuwait; there was fear (well-founded, as it turns out) that our coalition would fall apart if Iraq were completely overrun.

4) WHAT ABOUT NORTH KOREA? This is a different situation, and one that is much more delicate. Seoul, the capital of South Korea, is within artillery range of North Korea. The Korean Peninsula is actually one nation that was divided by force after the Second World War. Imagine if the United States had been divided after our Civil War and you begin to understand what’s going on. The only nation North Korea has ever invaded is South Korea. That is never going to happen again. We will have to deal with North Korea, but in a much more covert manner. Foreign policy is not a card game with one set of rules.

5) WE CAN’T AFFORD THIS WAR. We couldn’t afford the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam or the first Gulf War, either. Wars are expensive, both financially and in terms of human lives. But peace is not the absence of war, and our world will be much more costly if we do not stem the tide of tyranny now.
6) BUT MATT, YOU’RE CATHOLIC AND THE POPE IS AGAINST THIS WAR. With all due respect, his Holiness does not have access to satellite imagery from the National Reconnaissance Office. In this case, I believe his reach has exceeded his grasp.

If any of you have any more arguments you would like shot down, please forward them to me. I love a good debate.

This is just a test line. Nothing to see here.

In the interest of full disclosure, my friend Shawn points out that I used the word "un-replaceable" in place of the more acceptable "irreplaceable". My first thought was to use the Algore reasoning that there is currently no covening legal authority which states that "un-replaceable" is improper. However, my friend is correct in his observation. I will endeavour to be more careful with my read-throughs in the future.

I’ve noticed that my post from Tuesday morning has not posted yet. I hope it was not lost to the ether; after all, everything I write is timeless and worthy or preservation for future generations. MMMM....OK.

Speaking of timelessness, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4th in 1861 and 1865 (by the way, the History Channel web site has these dates wrong). In 1861, the Civil War was only six weeks from starting. In 1865, the war was six weeks from ending. We don’t think much about this now, but old Abe spent his entire administration as a wartime president. As poor boy from Kentucky, he did amazingly well.

One thing that amazes me about Lincoln is how eloquent he was. In an era when public figures did not employ speech writers, Lincoln penned some of the greatest words ever spoken by an American president. He was a lawyer by trade, but was not a highly educated man by today’s standards. Instead of being exceptionally gifted, I think Lincoln reflected the elegance of the times. One only has to look at the letters preserved from the Civil War to see how well versed many common people were. Maybe this is due to the fact that the written word was so vital a form of communication then, even eclipsing the spoken word. Maybe it says something about education in those days, although history will tell us that the literacy rate was higher in 1865 than it is today. Maybe the answer is that writing was more an art then; words were chosen more carefully to convey imagery and emotion. Whatever the cause or reason, we have certainly lost it. A quick look at any internet forum will show nearly incoherent writing from highly-educated, well-meaning people. There will be sentences full of “cuz” and “welp” and other fabricated contractions.

I used to have an argument with my friend Peter over language. He maintained that language is constantly changing; we do not speak the same English that King Henry VIII did. While this is certainly true, it can be said that English in the 16th and 17th century was not a “finished” language: there were no standards for spelling, grammar or even punctuation. However, by turn of the 20th century, all these issues had been ironed out. While we continue to add new words to our language, a student from 1901 would recognize a grammar book (are there still grammar books?) from 2001.

And so, I think English has matured and can be considered “finished”. Any maturation beyond this point is, in my opinion, deterioration. I say this because, if we let our language drift much further, we will be reading “great” works in fifty years which contain sentences like this: “Welp, their gonna leeve cuz their pissed. Woot!”

Recent events have made me think about my life in corporate America. I have worked for one of the largest companies in America; I have also worked for a three-man operation. Through it all, I have developed a list of rules to live by if you are going to succeed in the work-a-day world. And now, without further ado, I am going to inflict them on you. Enjoy.

1. Do not assume that your manager/supervisor/overseer knows what he is doing. He may just be there because he’s a lucky bastard.

2. Get to know the people in the mail room. They roam all over the building and, therefore, know all the good gossip.

3. Get to know the maintenance man/people. They have the tools you might need when your cubicle caves in.

4. Get to know the people in human resources. They are sort of like lawyers, but you don’t have to pay for them.

5. Do not get drunk with the owner of the company. The truth will come out, and it’s often ugly.

6. Don’t ever assume that you can’t be replaced. After all, someone filled your space before you did.

7. Don’t disparage your spouse at work or mention your weird sex life. Remember that your co-workers will meet him/her at the Christmas party and immediately think of the two of you naked playing Twister.

8. Don’t assume that your friends at work will still be your friends once you get promoted. Once you start wearing a tie to work, you become The Man...and universally despised.

9. Make yourself the “go to” guy for something. It won’t make you un-replaceable, but it will make everyone think you’re really smart.

10. When you leave the company, don’t be sappy. No one will remember you in a week.

I don't know who Basil King was, but he penned one of my favorite quotations: "Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid." This weekend, while I worried about my fate, a man who owes me nothing took bold action in my name. As a result, the meeting that was to decide my fate will never take place. Instead, the man who has become a thorn in my side will be called on the carpet for his behaviour. In my younger days, I would've felt happy. But now, it saddens me to think that the world is full of people who are so small-minded and angry. But I do promise this: when he retires, as I know he will, I will be there to close the door behind him. More details when I learn them.


I found Dave Robertson tonight. Dave Robertson and I were in the same boot camp company, the same "A" school class and the same Nuclear Power School section. I have not heard from him in 12 years. The last time we talked, I was in Charleston, SC and he was in Balston Spa, NY. I was on the downward spiral to flunking out of prototype when he called me out of the blue. "Dattilo, I flunked my final. This nuclear shit isn't for me." This son of a career naval officer, a man who was my first navy buddy, had given up. Like me a month or so later, he would be cast back to the "regular" navy, that dark hole that killed soft, smart guys like us. Funny thing, though: I got out, but he's still there. His father told me that he is stationed on a tender near Sardinia. I have trouble imagining that. I always thought Dave would've dumped the navy to help lead the "new economy". I thought that, by now, he would be living in some tech center, having made and lost millions, still dangling that cigarette at an impossible angle while he talked out of the corner of his mouth.

I'm not sure what to say when I e-mail him. His father said that he kept asking for extensions on his sea duty, which is almost unheard of. Why would you do that, Dave? Why don't you want to come home? What changed? Of course, I can't ask him any of these questions. I'll write, tell him that I married Kelli after all (he knew all about her) and that I've been out for ten years. I'll tell him that she asked me if I had considered staying in the navy when I told her about Dave's career. I'll tell him that Peter and I are still best friends, all these years later. I'll tell him that I ran into Gorris, Frezell and the Atlantic Fleet's most unpopular sailor, "ditty bags" Salter. That either makes me very ambitious or overly sentimental. Take your pick.

So, on Monday, I face the biggest challenge of my professional life thus far: I have to face down my manager, win, and still keep my job. The first two are assured; the third one is not. I spent most of Saturday in a deep, deep despair, until I realized that I have never been fired from a job. I have quit jobs for fear of being axed, but I have never, ever been canned. We shall see.