Sounds like you've changed your argument a bit. It was a change for the better, dropping those "nevers" and "onlys". I apologize if I was overly aggressive in challenging you, I'd just been having a very similar argument with someone else and probably unloaded some of that on you.

FTR, I don't feel any different from you when I see or hear those kinds of things ... it took a while for me to catch on because my Arabic isn't good enough to pick up nuances like this (watching the news was supposed to help with that!), but then I got a little over-sensitive to it.

I hope you see that it isn't a 'fine point'. Your comment implied that AJ (and maybe you meant other outlets, I don't know) ideologically mandated (or say, exclusively used) these two words. The facts are otherwise. There's a great deal of argument about these things, word choices and other editorial and reportage topics, on journalistic grounds --- not ideological ones. The arguments have been going on for a while. If you watch, you can see that they have had some impact. I don't have any examples where anyone has achieved perfection.

RE the conference: I really didn't have to make the statement you suggested, since it was made in much stronger language by others. (Not to over-generalize, but once you get a bunch of Arab journos arguing, it can be pretty harrowing) One of those was Mohammed Khatib, whom I mentioned before, because he made a very strong case against the dichotomy and as I said, he made it on journalistic grounds.

Another was the West Bank bureau chief for AJ (A Saudi national, if it matters). She acknowledged that it could be a problem and that she tried to stay on top of 'questionable copy' (not her term, one offered in translation by an American colleague), but pointed, with some legitimacy, to instances where different descriptions were relevant, and in context didn't come across the way we would think they do. I think Shireen made a decent point, and she was very impressive, but I think Mohammed won that argument.

Saw that in my NYT newsletter. Read it but didn't have to, knew what it would say and I was right. Some decent reactions in comments, though.

There should be a law, an Ordinance on Narrow Competencies: Military historians, for one, should be required to refrain from commenting on anything other than military history, and offer neither media criticism, nor political commentary, nor economic theories, etc.

This would take care of Victor Davis Hanson, John Keegan, and others as well.

Nice handle, BTW

Fair enough Re Hanson, though in my defense "Western Way of War" --- which was just, John Keegan looks at the Hoplites --- was Hanson's dissertation, wasn't it? It's the only one of his I've read.

He does have that "I've seen the mountain" way about him, doesn't he?

I thought The Other Greeks was a re-worked version of his dissertation? I could be wrong.

Me too. I went to look it up in 'W3' before posting the last time, but my library's a mess and it's at the bottom of a stack behind another stack. Whatever. We agree he's an ass and subject to the proposed (or perhaps amended?) ordinance ...

Damn it, now I have a big pile of books on the floor, one of which is stuck to the glue board I put out for spiders (see sig) and it's all yours and Planetary_Eulogy's fault.

I didn't read Coup. Maybe I should. On second thought, maybe we should *all* be reading it ... ? :>

Luttwak's thing about air power comes as a result of his trying to be a 'relevant' strategist. It drives one to higher and higher levels of abstraction. More jargon, more maps and operational graphics, more elegant theories. The details as told in muck and bodily fluids don't make for very good working papers or clean PowerPoints.

Kind of a cheap and superficial criticism, I know, but I think it's on target. You could say the same about a lot of so-called defense intellectuals and their output.

Yeah, but why do you hate yourself so much?

You beat me to it on the "whaling wall".

I was looking for a Norway link. :>

BTW, since you've identified your Undisclosed Location in Ohio ... my wife is from Sandusky, her family are all those German Catholics that settled in Norwalk. Her first newspaper job was for the Warren Tribune, covering the economic collapse ov the early 80s. We keep running into other expatriated Ohioans here in GA. It's like you can all spot each other on sight ...

you can't get oil out of the ground with an airplane.

Maybe we could re-engineer the boom on some KC-10s, put a drill on the end. RMP?

Could it have to do with the biggest and most powerful lobby in the US?

Listen, I won't have you talking that way about AARP , y'hear?

BTW, I think my nausea may have just now passed ... maybe ... over that 'butt floss' thing.

Thanks. Infested the military, too, you notice. Wonder where Capt Roxie got her MBA ...

Small world, indeed.

I think it was St. Mary's, would have been probably '75 or '76. Then, Kent State.

You're not a Pere Ubu fan by any chance, are you?

I guess I should have said when it comes to Foreign Policy...

I know, sorry. My sense of humor (such as it is) is like an old toothless shark that must be kept moving constantly, or it will die ...