Vacation

I’m going to be gone for two weeks starting today, and I’ll be back August 30th with a whole flock of half-baked ideas to blog. See you then

What’s the matter with Georgia?

Unless you’ve been hiding behind the giant NBC logo shaped rock that is the Olympics for the past few days you’ve probably noticed that we have a splendid little war (or to be more precise a “peacekeeping conflict”) on our hands in Georgia. In case you have been hiding under that rock, on the seventh of August Georgian forces invaded the seperatist region of South Ossetia, breaking an hours-old ceasefire. The next day Russia invaded Georgia to support its quasi-client quasi-state, and chaos ensued.

Then on the 10th of August the Georgians, having realized that they tried to bite off more than they could chew declared a ceasefire and ordered their troops to leave South Ossetia. However, Russia was in no mood for a ceasefire and continued to merrily tear its way through Georgian territory, today moving into Georgia from Abzhakia the other breakaway province under Russian protection. Georgia meanwhile is spiraling into chaos, having declared a state of emergency and recalled its 2000 man deployment in Iraq, the third largest in the country after the US and Britain.

To me with my love for historical allusions this entire situation seems like Korea redux, except this time with the places switched. Just like in Korea Georgia launched a surprise offensive in the hopes of reuniting a split nation. Just like in Korea after a few early successes the aggressor found itself pitted against an intervening superpower that decisively turned the tide of the war, and now just like in Korea the attacker finds itself on the ropes and in retreat.

So it falls on the United States to play its part in this little historical reenactment – that of China. Just as Mao warned United Nations forces not to cross the 38th Parallel, so we should warn the Russians to stop their incursions into Georgia, while allowing them to maintain control over Abzhakia and South Ossetia, and be ready to back up our warnings with force if need be.

Like Vietnam – in more ways than one

Many Democrats love to compare Iraq to Vietnam, usually with the words “disaster” and “quagmire” thrown in. Of course that kind of rhetoric has been toned down a bit as things start getting better, but in a way that improvement makes Iraq resemble Vietnam even more.

In Vietnam by the middle of 1967 things were getting to the point where it was possible for the public to imagine an end to the war, to see the light at the end of the tunnel. A large part of this was due to a new strategy of “attrition” pioneered by a General William Wesmoreland who became a celebrity of sorts, completely identified with the war and its conduct. Sound familiar? It should. Replace “attrition” with “surge” and Westmoreland with Petraeus, and you have a perfect description of the current state affairs in Iraq. The scary part is what came next.

Book Review: The Man with The Iron Heart

The Man with the Iron Heart

Harry Turtledove

Ballantine Books; 532 Pages

The Man with the Iron Heart is the latest book from author Harry Turtledove. Harry Turtledove is the master of “alternate history”, a rather niche genre, but one that I find fascinating. Those who are fans of Turtledove and the genre in general should be able to jump right into this book and enjoy it. Those who are new to the genre might need a bit of an introduction.

The basic premise of most alternate history novels is that somewhere, at some point in our history something changed, and like the butterfly flapping its wings the effects reverberate across history, changing its course. These changes are called “points of departure” (PODs) in alternate history terminology, and in The Man with the Iron Heart the point of departure is the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich a Nazi SS officer who in our timeline was killed by Czech assassins in 1942 but in the book survives as a result of a machine gun jam.