I'd been trying to read Heinz Magenheimer's "Hitler's War," but I've finally decided to give up. One would think that an Austrian writer, cognizant of the scepticism with which others are likely to view his opinions on the Third Reich's armed forces, would bend over backwards to be as detached and as critical of the "home team" as possible, yet Magenheimer raises the old canard of a supposedly "imminent" attack on the Third Reich by the Soviet Union, allegedly forestalled only by Hitler's launching of Operation Barbarossa. If a writer cannot be trusted to stick to the truth on such an issue, why should one trust his pronouncements on other matters? If I'd wanted to read a fictional treatment of World War II, I'd have picked up a novel, plain and simple.

I recently finished Celine's "Journey to the End of Night," and I must say that it left me feeling rather depressed, even if Celine's cynicism is leavened throughout with quite a bit of humor. What makes the book so depressing is the way it nails the sheer pettiness and squalor of human nature at its' most typical.

Man is the only animal capable of forgoing a moderate portion of happiness in the here-and-now for the sake of something better down the line; the big problem is that this "something better" is just as likely to be the "One True Love," a "Jew-Free Palestine," the dream of "Greater Israel" or some other such madness, as it is to be something genuinely worth waiting for. As the saying goes,

"the hearts of men are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterwards they join the dead ..."

This is from an article in today's New York Times:

A senior diplomat here explained the conviction among some Palestinians that only violence can work. This diplomat said he had tried for weeks to persuade Israel to cut down the number of military checkpoints in the West Bank that are "particularly humiliating to the Palestinians."

"I wanted them to reduce the number by three, four, five," he said. "Nothing happened. Then the Palestinians started shooting at the soldiers at the checkpoints. Four were killed. And Israel closed 40 checkpoints right away. So that's why Palestinians believe that only violence works."

A female suicide bomber strikes in Jerusalem - a 16 year old girl!

More stupidity in the Middle East, as Ariel Sharon bans Yasser Arafat from attending the Arab League summit, despite American entreaties. I find it impossible to believe that Sharon did this for any reason other than to wreck the prospects of the summit's success. It appears that Sharon cares almost as little about Israeli suffering as does Arafat himself.



It is tempting to argue that Ariel Sharon was simply attempting to put pressure on Arafat to do something about the Palestinian's terror attacks, but this is, to put it mildly, less than credible. There can be no doubt that Sharon knew that the net effect of his refusal to let Arafat attend would be absolutely nill, as far as terrorism is concerned. Where Sharon's chosen course of action would be certain to have an effect would be in the boost it would give to Arafat's prestige amongst the Palestinian populace, the opportunity it would give Arafat to play the victim, and the resultant pressure it would exert on the Arab populace to resist any such concessions as might have been offered at the Lebanon summit. For Ariel Sharon, instigator of the second Intifada and relentless builder of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, nothing would be less welcome than an offer of piece for land so attractive that his own populace might be tempted to accept it.

It is interesting to follow the ongoing "dialog" - if one can call it that - on the malign electoral effects of social conservatism, between Instapundit (see also here) and National Review's Corner. NR's Ramesh Ponnuru makes a decent stab at discrediting Glenn Reynold's arguments, but is ultimately unconvincing, as far as I'm concerned. There is a contradiction between social conservatism and economic libertarianism, and talking about the results of a few electoral campaigns does nothing to resolve the tensions between the two. Why is one kind of freedom a good thing and the other evil? In any case, it is simply shoddy reasoning to attempt to generalize from one or two data points, especially when there are so many other variables to be controlled for.

This is my first posting to what I hope will (eventually) become an avenue for me to put forth my views on various matters to the general public. Watch this space!