Letter From The Capitol

Sinatra Favorite "GI Jo" Sings Goodbye

Last Wednesday Jo Stafford, whose three-decade singing career spanned the mid-'30s to the mid-'60s, passed on, age 90.  A New York Times obit offers many fascinating nuggets.  Her apex was her World War II singing with the Tommy Dorsey band, and her sterling sweet voice made her "GI Jo" to her soldier fans.  Stafford was cited by Frank Sinatra, then also with Dorsey, as a major influence on the phrasing style developed by Ol' Blue Eyes.  Asked why she resisted comebacks like Rosemary Clooney & Patti Page, Staford quipped: "For the same reason that Lana Turner is not posing in bathing suits anymore."

Two wartime Staford classics were "Long Ago & Far Away" (2:57, by Jerome Kern) & "I'll Be Seeing You" (3:21, by Sammy Fain).  A bonus: "You Belong to Me" (3:16, by Chilton Price & two helpers), which in my youth I thought a doo-wop song--though composed in 1952, it belongs to the Great American Songbook.  Courtesy of YouTube, you now can hear why Jo sold 25 million records.  Now, listen to a 1940 recording of Sinatra singing "There Are Such Things" (3:37--3:00 without the credits,Stanley Adams, Abel Baer & George Meyer) backed by the Pied Pipers, of whom Jo was the leading singer; the clip has a video still montage in which you will see lovely Jo as she looked then.

Lest you think everything the Dorsey band did was ballads, try this: Dorsey's other young rising male superstar was drummer Buddy Rich.  In a 1942 film featuring the band, Rich, though not yet in his prime, sizzles with "Hawaiian War Chant" (3:20), a Dorsey chart number composed to feature Rich and trumpeter Ziggy Elman, with a generous dollop of The Sentimental Gentleman (TD) himself, plus, near the end, a bonus finale with Eleanor "Lady Taps" Powell sashaying sexily in a grass skirt and halter top.

Jo, farewell from a no-longer young fan, as you take with you one of the last pieces of America's Golden Age of great homegrown music and performance.  "Long Ago and Far Away" you may have been but like many fans "I'll Be Seeing (& Listening to) You" in my musical memory until the end.

D-Day + 64: Replaying Reagan

Take a trip down memory lane with the text of Ronald Reagan's legendary "Men of Point du Hoc" speech at Normandy, at the 40th anniversary commemoration of D-Day.  And remember the heroes whose sacrifice saved France, and the civilized world, from the ascendancy of barbarism.  We face a new barbarism today.

Play It Again--and Again, Sam!

My last month's trip made its last stop in Casablanca.  Rick's Cafe (yes, there is one) opened in the city on March 1, 2004, with $1 million raised from American and Moroccan investors by the owner, an ex-US diplomat named Kathy Kriger.  I became the second visitor to play the piano there, playing (naturally) As Time Goes By.  The proprietor, who goes by Madame Rick, jealously guards her 1930s vintage Pleyel grand.  Pleyel was one of France's two hallowed piano manufacturing names, the other being Erard.  In the Paris salon of the 1830 and 1840s, Liszt preferred Erard, Chopin Pleyel.  (To my surprise, it turns out that the firm is still around.  Pleyel's website tells the enchanting story of the firm's history, and is well worth a visit.  (For the history of now-defunct Erard, see this website).

The Casablanca epic begins with the song, written by long forgotten Herman Hupfeld (1984 - 1951), for a 1931 play entitled Everybody's Welcome, which ran over 100 performances, long enough to repay its backers.  Hupfeld wrote two other songs which sold better in the 1930s, but after the movie ATGB surpassed everything he ever wrote, and supported him for the last eight years of his life.  It surfaced next in 1940, in the unproduced play Everybody Comes to Rick's, the original title of the movie.

Music director Max Steiner was a prodigy who had completed an eight-year music curriculum at the Vienna Imperial Academy of Music in a single year, to graduate at age 13.  Already a major force in Hollywood, Steiner had composed Tara's Theme for Gone With the Wind, and scored the music for King Kong.  Steiner hated ATGB, and planned to compose his own ballad, but was thwarted by circumstance: Ingrid Bergman (1915 - 1982), whose presence in one scene was essential if a new song was to be substituted, had already cut her hair short to prepare for the movie part she wanted far more than any other, that of the peasant girl in the film version Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, compared to which she regarded Casablanca as mere trifle.  Thus, her scene asking Sam to play her favorite song could not be re-shot.

Ironically, Bergman was second choice for Ilsa, getting the part because Warner could pay her $25,000, instead of playing first choice Michelle Morgan the $55,000 she demanded.  (Morgan would make but three films, but did co-star with Bogart in 1944's Passage to Marseille.)  Bergman was apolitical (her mother was German); her only satisfaction was escaping Rochester, New York, where her first husband was in medical school.

The movie was made in 1942, starting May 25 and finishing stage work August 3; the script lacked an ending and a precise resolution for Rick and Ilsa until near the end of shooting.  The original play had the sacrifice ending of Ilsa leaving with her husband for Lisbon, but the motive was unclear.  The war provided the larger cause, and the Production Code morality rules provided another reason Ilsa could not run off with Rick.  To allow that, she would have to have been single, which would have entailed revising the Paris flashback, as to why Ilsa leaves Rick.  Also, in the play, Rick is arrested after the couple flees, a finale not conceivable with the war on.

Casablanca opened Thanksgiving Day, November 26, to take advantage of the November 1942 invasion of North Africa, with the city all over the news.  It was nominated for 8 Oscars in 1943--its Oscar eligibility was dated by its initial Los Angeles opening, in January 1943.  Seventh in box office receipts in 1943, it won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay.  This happened despite having at least six screenwriters, with a script half done before shooting started, and one day ahead of shooting for the last third of production.  Humphrey Bogart (1899 - 1957) was the choice of producer Hal Wallis, winning out over Jack Warner's favorite, George Raft.  Raft could have played Rick Blaine's cynical side, but the tender side would, for him, have been a stretch.

The movie made Bogart a sex symbol, which he laughed off, saying: "Anytime that Ingrid Bergman looks at a man, he has sex appeal."  Bogey and Ingrid Bergman, far from being lovers, were cool to each other; Bergman wasn't chummy with anyone.

Want more?  Arthur "Dooley" Wilson (1894-1953)--his "Dooley" moniker came from his having, early in his career, sung Irish songs in whiteface--could not play the piano; he was a singer who could play a little drums.  Incredibly, the part was nearly turned into a female role, then to be offered to either singer Lena Horne or singer-pianist Hazel Scott.  Wilson's piano part was played, without credit, by Elliot Carpenter (1984 - 1961); Wilson imitated Carpenter, who played a piano off-camera.  (Among those fooled was a nightclub owner who later hired Wilson for a gig, only to discover that Wilson needed a pianist.)

Conrad Veidt (1893 - 1943), who so convincingly played the sinister Nazi Major Strasser, was in fact an ardent anti-Nazi, and married then to his second wife, a Jew.  A British citizen, he donated most of his Hollywood income to British war relief.  Veidt, tragically, was the first major cast member to die, collapsing on the golf course months after the film opened.  He had begun his career as a silent-film romantic lead.  Of Strasser, Veidt said: "This role epitomizes the cruelty and the criminal instincts and murderous trickery of the typical Nazis.  I know this man well.  He is the reason I gave up Germany many years ago.  He is a man who turned fanatic and betrayed his friends, his homeland, and himself in his lust to be somebody and to get something for nothing."

Paul Henreid (1908 - 1992) had an Austrian aristocratic heritage--his father had been knighted by Emperor Franz Joseph--that fit perfectly his role as the Czech anti-Nazi resistance leader.  Yet Henried was second choice, behind Austrian actor Philip Dorn, who could not take the part because he was committed to make Random Harvest.  Henreid (whose anti-Nazi credentials were also  impeccable) disliked his role and the film, whose plot he thought a "ridiculous fairy tale," and also disliked Bogart, whom he thought a mediocre actor and crybaby.  Henreid won co-star billing, but the movie did not do for him what it did for Bogey & Bergman.  His romantic image was tarnished by playing the noble hero, while Bogey's soared due to his being the cynical hero of the film.  He was persuaded to take the role by his agent, the legendary Lew Wasserman, who said that it would cement Henreid's anti-Nazi credentials which, as an Austrian refugee but technically a German citizen, he needed in wartime America.

Peter Lorre (1904 - 1964), a Hungarian Jew, spoke less than 400 words as the sinister Signor Ugarte; his first big American success was as the movie detective, Mr. Moto, a role hardly in character with Lorre's main screen persona.  Sydney Greenstreet (1879 - 1954), who made his screen debut at age 61 in The Maltese Falcon (1941) injected intrigue as Signor Ferrari, the black-marketeer and rival owner.  But Greenstreet had enjoyed a forty-year stage career, prominently featuring Shakespearean roles and comedy, before creating his unique brand of screen menace.  Claude Rains (1889 - 1967), as "poor corrupt official" Captain Louis Renault, had been a versatile actor of screen and stage.  Like Henreid, he was fresh from the finish of the Bette Davis tear-jerker, Now, Voyager.  Lorre, Greenstreet and Rains were the off-camera pals of Bogey.

More than six writers (the exact tally is unclear) worked on the script.  Most of the credit would go not to the play's co-creator, Murray Burnett, whose 1938 trip to Vienna, where he saw anti-Semitism in full ugly flower, and visited a nightclub in southern France that provided him with a setting for his play (as well as a Paris nightclub named, yes...La Belle Aurore).   His co-author, Joan Allison, wanted a Clark Gable type, not Bogey, whom she called "a common drunk."  Howard Koch, last to work on it, would take the lion's share of the credit (more, he eventually came to admit, then he deserved).  But the sizzling dialogue was mostly provided by the irreverent Epstein brothers, Philip and Julie, with whom Koch shared the screenplay Oscar.  While in Washington making documentaries, they wrote the studio and suggested: "[T]ry to get a foreign girl for the part.  An American girl with big tits will do."  Asked by the studio to fill out a wartime loyalty form, their answer to a question asking if they had ever been members of a subversive organization, "yes," and put down as its name "Warner Brothers."  Koch provided most of the film's political slant.  (The Epsteins got their job because the studio's first choice, author Dashiell Hammett, who had done the script for The Maltese Falcon, was unavailable, having signed on for another Warner movie, Watch on the Rhine (1943); its star, Paul Lukas, would beat Bogey out for Best Actor in 1943.  Yet another writer at Warner, Casey Robinson, was brought in to refine the love triangle plot among the three main stars; he shaped Ilsa hoping that a Russian actress named Tamara Toumanova would get the role.  She did not, but later became Robinson's wife.  Producer Hal Wallis wrote the last line, which Bogey recorded in a voice-over after shooting ended.

Director Michael Curtiz (1886 - 1962) was second choice, after William Wyler.  Curtiz was a vulgar slave-driver on the set, hating and bullying actors, save those too big a star for him to do so, like Bogey.  Curtiz, a Hungarian expatriate, barely spoke English, and his malapropisms were legendary.  On one set Curtiz, angered that it had taken too long for a Coa-Cola to be brought to him, said: "Next time I send some dumb son-of-a-bitch for Coca-Cola, I go myself."  But he could be bitingly funny, as with a starlet who was put into a film because she was the producer's lady love.  Her scene flubs ran shooting past midnight, causing Curtiz to explode: "Goddamn it, Rene, you fuck to get in my picture and now you fuck my picture."  But Curtiz treated Bergman regally.  And his camera work was regarded in the industry as tops.

Only two of the original cast remain alive today: Joy Page, the step-daughter of studio co-head Jack Warner, and who at age 17 landed the role of the Bulgarian bride whose husband (played by the late Helmut Dantine) Rick lets win at roulette, so she needn't "Go back to Bulgaria!"; and Madeliene LeBeau, barely past her teens (her exact age is in dispute), who played the French girl Rick jilts, as who was married to Marcel Dalio (1900 - 1983), the celebrated pre-war French actor running the roulette table at Rick's; he filed for a divorce during filming.  The "vignte-deux twice" roulette scene had a real-life precursor: Two months before shooting began, Philip Epstein's wife had lost 25 cents (yes, a quarter) at a roulette table in Palm Springs, California.  She cried so much that the croupier told her to put her money on 22.  She won, and the croupier told her to leave and never return.  Other small but notable roles went to comrades.  Leonid Kinskey (1903 - 1998), the Russian bartender Sascha, was a drinking buddy of Bogey's; S. Z. ("Cuddles") Sakall (1884 - 1955), as Carl the maitre d', was a childhood chum of Curtiz's.

For added color, singer Corinna Mura (1909 - 1965), an exotic belle, did a pair of mood-setting songs in the movie, strumming her guitar; she had performed for FDR at the White House three times, and had her own radio show.  Most roles in the film went to refugees, with only three credited American-born players: Bogey, Dooley Wilson and Joy Page.  This imparted a flavor of mystery to the film American actors couldn't have done.  (In all, counting behind-scenes staff, 34 nationalities were represented in the production--even Australia, via celebrated costume designer Orry-Kelly.)

Why does Casablanca work?  First, because Rick is finally able to resolve the conflict between his love for Ilsa and his sympathy for the anti-Nazi cause when Ilsa offers to go with him and leave her resistance leader husband.  Ilsa's offer salves Rick's wounded pride--never had he lost the affections of a lady to anyone.  Claude Rains supplies realpolitik spice to the mix, and others (notably Lorre and Greenstreet) add incomparable embellishment.  Top talent took minor roles.  Marcel Dalio starred in two of the most famous films ever made, Jean Renoir's art-film classics, Grand Illusion (1937) and Rules of the Game (1939), but had to re-start his career after emigrating to America, where he was unknown.

The other major factors in the film's super success were its felicitous timing, and the studio system that produced it.  Autocratic in the extreme, even exploitative, the studios used their power to keep actors, directors and theaters in line.  The seven-year contract enabled studios to make actors toe the line, or be suspended.  Films rolled out on or near schedule.  Theaters were made to take films they did not want, in order to get those they coveted.  This practice of "block booking" was broken by the federal government in 1948, on antitrust grounds.  The studio contract was challenged by Olivia De Havilland, and broken by 1954.  Power devolved to the stars and their whims.  Control was thus fragmented.  No integrated artistic product is made at its best with production control sundered.

Since the 1960s, a picture generally gets made only if Big Star wants to do it.  If not, no matter how good the material, it dies.  Hollywood nearly died in the 1970s.  It was rescued by the astounding growth of secondary outlets: cable television, VCRs, DVDs and huge foreign markets.  Today, $7 of $8 in revenue earned by films comes from secondary markets.  In 1982, the original script, re-typed and given its original title of Everybody Comes to Rick's, was sent by writer Chuck Ross to 217 agencies; 85 read it, with only 33 recognizing what it really was; 38 rejected it outright.

At times, the film has been egregiously bowdlerized, too.  In postwar Germany and Sweden all references to Nazis were removed.  In 1976 I watched movies on WPIX (NYC's Channel 11) during the 1976 Democratic Convention.  Casablanca was one of the films aired, without the Paris flashback, so that 5-minute reports on the progress of the Convention could be shown.  Trading Bogey for Jimmy Carter was not what I and other viewers had in mind then.

Sam never did "Play it again, Sam" as in the title of Woody Allen's movie (which holds up well--enjoy especially Jerry Lacey's Bogie impression).  But all in all, it's still the same old story.  "Sam, "Play It!"  At Madame Rick's cafe!!!

References: Howard Koch's Casablanca: Script and Legend (1973) has the full script, plus essays, including Koch's own recollections (later revised, as noted above) plus some comments from college-age fans of the early 1970s.  Frank Miller's Casablanca: As Time Goes By (Turner Publishing 1993) is the lavishly illustrated 50th anniversary edition, and adds delectable nuggets.  Aljean Harmetz's Round Up The Usual Suspects (Hyperion 1992) is the most comprehensive account of the film, with abundant detail on its creation, production and shooting, and its aftermath.  Jazz critic Will Friedwald's superb Stardust Melodies: A Biography of Twelve of America's Most Popular Songs (Pantheon Books 2002) tells the improbable saga of As Time Goes By.

Imperial Chutzpah

In 204, just in time for the elections, a CIA analyst named Michael Sheuer published Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror, doing so under the pseudonym "Anonymous" because at the time he was still with the CIA.  The book is a slashing critique of the Bush Administration's conduct of the war on terror.  The author maintains that even the Afghan campaign was a disaster, that Afghanistan is, in the end, ungovernable and will revert to tribalism no matter what we do, and that bin Laden and al-Qaeda are doing just fine and getting stronger by the day, all the while laughing at our ineptitude.  Further, he argues that the reason behind bin Laden's war has nothing whatever to do with a desire to destroy America and the West, or even Israel, let alone to create a global caliphate.  Rather, he says that the problem is US Mideast policy, and thus the solution is for the US to stop supporting nasty Mideast regimes and to lean on Israel to settle the Palestinian issue once and for all.

But that is not what is most intriguing about the book.  Set aside that there are a number of al-Qaeda missives calling for establishment of the very caliphate the author denies bin Laden desires.  Also set aside that bin Laden's fatwas do not seek implementation of UN security Council 242, but rather the expulsion of the US and the "Zionist Crusader state" from the Mideast.  Ending our dependence on Persian Gulf oil is key to our disengaging.  Bin Laden's reasons for desiring this are religiously inspired: Crusaders and Zionists in his Holy Land.  To be fair, the author also says we should have struck instantly after 9/11 with a massive barrage that might have killed more al-Qaeda, including bin Laden; yet later he says that key leaders left the camps days before 9/11.  And elsewhere in the book the author chides us for lack of ruthlessness; we should, he says, be willing to inflict many more collateral casualties, without compunction.

But what really makes Scheuer's book interesting is what he has to say about Osama.

First, the author compares Osama to Robin Hood (p. 18) and Errol Flynn (p. 18) and (not making this up) Robert E. Lee (p. 19).  (Re Flynn, one thinks of the title of his 1959 autobiography, My Wicked, Wicked Ways; Osama sure has those, and far worse vices than Flynn's.)  But the topper is this passage on p. 168, speaking of Osama's "person and character":

"There is no reason, based on the information at hand, to believe bin Laden is anything other than what he appears: a pious, charismatic, gentle, generous, talented, and personally courageous Muslim who is blessed with sound strategic and tactical judgment, able lieutenants, a reluctant but indispensable bloody-mindedness, and extraordinary patience."  I wonder which adjective--"gentle," "generous" or courageous"--best describes ordering the slitting of flight attendants' throats, crashing planes filled with jet fuel burning at the temperatures of the ovens of Auschwitz, beheading captives, sending juvenile suicide bombers?  In the event, one finds references to gentility and courage in the Boy Scout law and to reverence in both the law and the Scout Oath (scroll down).  Osama did do better than we as to the Scout Motto (scroll down): "Be prepared."  But Osama is not too swift on the Scout Slogan (scroll down): "Do a good turn daily."  Even Hillary gets it, having called Osama "evil" while campaigning in Iowa.

One wonders how many analysts in the bowels of CIA and State share this view of Osama.  Keep in mind that this book was cleared by the CIA before its release.  (Then again, as writer David Frum notes in a piece on Syrian intelligence, the CIA relies on it, despite evidence of its dubious value.)  One also wonders if any of the media folks who lionized the author bothered to read the book.  More likely, it was just another way to bash the President in an election year.  This is not to say that the author may not be proven right about Afghanistan.  The jury is still out.  But it would be interesting to see how widely his view of OBL is shared inside our government.  Do not expect any Administration to investigate this, however.  We wouldn't want another "witch hunt," would we?

Bombs Away: On Your Block

A slim volume published this year is heftier in content than the vast majority of 500-page doorstops masquerading as books that are sold today to customers who assume that a short book means few things to say.  Arms control expert (one of the very best ever) Fred Ikle's Annihilation From Within (Columbia University Press 2006) is both deeply depressing and deeply brilliant.  He writes:

"The greatest threat to the world order in this century will be the next Hitler or Lenin, a charismatic leader who combines utter ruthlessness with a brilliant strategic sense, cunning, and boundless ambition--and who gains control over just a few weapons of mass destruction."

Ikle begins by pointing to a cultural split that was opened during the Enlightenment and has been widening ever since.  He writes: "This widening split is ominous.  It might impair the social cohesion of societies, and of nations, by drawing the human psyche in two directions: to the personal and national identity that resides in acquired beliefs, memories and traditions of the past; and to the promise of greater wealth and power offered by untrammeled technological progress."

Technology may create in but a generation computers more powerful than the human brain.  This will exacerbate the cultural split.  While in civilized countries ethical and religious concerns will limit the research done, in other places no such limits apply.  Synthetic bio-agents may make natural ones seem like a stroll in the park.

Ikle distills five lessons from the nuclear age: (1) benevolence is not enough; (2) deterrence was oversold; (3) we were lucky--so far; (4) nuclear accidents remain a grave danger; (5) beware of "peaceful use."  The last point is most salient.  The greatest impetus to nuclear proliferation was the spectacularly idealistic--and even more spectacularly dumb--Atoms for Peace program instituted by President Eisenhower in 1953.  Intended to spur commercial nuclear power, it wound up diffusing nuclear know-how--for weapons and well as power plants--far more rapidly than otherwise would have been the case.

Ikle warns: "The ineluctable dissemination of technology and scientific discoveries will make nuclear and biological weapons accessible to merciless insurgent movements, small terrorist gangs, secretive anarchist groups, and genocidal doomsday cults."  In event of an attack, our government may not be able to trace it (the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US remain unsolved), and in the emergency after a WMD attack governments must rely on procedures already in place.  Dumb bureaucrats are a big problem: After the US victory in Afghanistan a Taliban Afghan won permission to emigrate to the UK, because he feared (so he said, at least) persecution by the new, democratic government!!

Survival demands, Ikle writes: (1) continuity of government measures in place; (2) a path to resume nuclear non-use after a nuclear attack; (3) global economy focus; and (4) a spiritual restoration.  Ikle's closing note is that our "common emotional bond" with the American Constitution is a vital assets to rely on.  This last point is true only if the Constitution does not become a suicide pact in tying our hands so we cannot head-off a catastrophic WMD strike.

Still, this book still says more in 107 pages than most authors today can say in 1,070.

Accentuate the Punctuate!

Courtesy of a dearest friend I was given a book that combines three things hard to put together in one volume: one that is informative, delightful and compact--an increasingly rare trifecta in an era of books that are uninformative, boring and as massive as an aircraft carrier.  Author Lynne Truss is aptly named for a "punctuation Nazi": she wraps us up in a stylistic truss the better to support clear writing.  Eats, Shoots and Leaves (Gotham Books 2003) takes its title from a panda joke: a panda enters a bar, eats some victuals, fires a gun and departs.  The joke is that without a comma the panda's meal fare is properly displayed; with it, mayhem results.

We learn that punctuation was invented by the ancient Greeks (who else?) to guide actors in breathing while speaking their lines; credit is given to one Aristophanes of Byzantium, ensconced at the Library of Alexandria, around 200 BC.  For the next 16 centuries or so punctuation rules were virtually non-existent and surely non-standard.  Came along then the author's hero, Venetian printer Aldus Manutius the Elder (1450-1515).  The closest thing to a Punctuation Lawgiver, Aldus gave us the first elegant typeface, italics, and also the semi-colon.  Aldus and his identically-named grandson also reformed the ancient virgule, lowering and curving it to create our modern comma.  But Truss says that the critical change made was put in place by Aldus the Younger in 1566.  As books read by the masses were not training for actors speaking lines, breathing took second place to syntax; punctuation's primary purpose since then has been to clarify syntax.

Truss beings with the "tractable apostrophe."  Exploring its many uses, she gives us the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes:  "For every apostrophe omitted from an "it's'' there is an extra one put into an "its.'"  Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation at any given time is constant.  She introduces us to an English columnist's marvelous fictive creation: the Apostropher Royal (for Queen Elizabeth I),  Comparing the period ("full stop" to the English) to the apostrophe,Truss archly theorizes: "In fact one might dare to say that the full stop is the lumpen male of the punctuation world (do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly) the apostrophe is the frantically multi-tasking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burnout from all the thankless effort."

We learn that the English rule for non-possessive apostrophes used with calendar decades is not to use one (1980s) while in America the rule is to insert one (1980's); to me the English are right here, as neither possession nor elision (the Greek root of "apostrophe") is needed and hence the apostrophe can be safely omitted--I can do so whilst being secure that somewhere else one is being needlessly inserted to keep the universe total constant.  Possessive case usage of apostrophes does get a tad pedantic, Truss acknowledges, giving us from Fowler's Modern English Usage the serial gem; use ''s" after modern names and also after foreign names which end with an unpronounced final "s"; use "s'" after ancient names, after names ending in "s" whose last syllable is pronounced "iz" and, last but surely not least, after "Jesus."  To which one can only say: "Sweet Jesus!"

"The fun of commas," she writes  "is of course the semantic havoc they can create when either wrongly inserted or carelessly omitted."  She tells of a hapless reader at a Macbeth reading who reads King Duncan's Act I line to a fallen soldier as "Go get him, surgeons!" instead of "Go, get him surgeons."  (Given medical care in Shakespeare's time the reader may have been wiser than Truss thinks.)  An even better example is found in Theodore M. Bernstein's Dos, Don'ts & Maybes of English Usage (Times Books 1977).  There the author cites Professor Maxwell Nurnberg's paired sentences: "What's the latest dope?" and "What's the latest, dope?"  After meandering around the disputations among grammarians concerning spliced comma versus semi-colon and "defining clause" commas Truss adds a simple rule, borne of exasperation: avoid "stupid" use of  commas, by which she means those that confound the meaning.  Of course, there are no less than 17 uses of the infernal squiggles.

A chapter entitled "Air and Graces" covers colons and semi-colons, much of their usage being one of aesthetic judgment.  Some writers hated them; others made promiscuous use of them.  Readers of LFTC know on which side of this argument I stand.  Let a thousand semi-colons bloom!  Re the exclamation point, Truss writes: ""In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semi-colon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark (b. 15th c.) is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly."  To her eagle eye the question mark (b. punctus interrogativus 8th c.; current name given 19th c.) has an "elegant seahorse profile."  Italics are partly "a confession of stylistic failure" (do not tell her about LFTC!).  She blithely instructs us that quotation marks (b. 18th c. as inverted commas) mean that "'double or single' is a question applicable not only to beds, tennis and cream.'"  As for the four types of brackets and the differences between the English and American rules, be grateful you are not studying Arabic.  Saith Truss: " When a bracket opens halfway down a left-hand page and the closing bracket is, giddyingly, nowhere in sight, it's like being in a play by Jean-Paul Sartre."  She terms the ellipsis "the black hole of the universe, surely, into which no right-minded person would willingly be sucked, for three years, with no guarantee of a job at the end."  As for the lowly, perhaps soon-to-be-extinct hyphen (hated by Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill, who did not agree on much else), Truss reminds us that extra marital sex is not the same as extra-marital sex.  (Honey!  the hyphen strayed, not me!!)

Truss gives us her take on the impact of the Internet: "[B]y tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal understanding in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion in global self-publishing.  Thus people who don't know their apostrophe from their elbow are positively invited to disseminate their writings to anyone on the planet stupid enough to double-click and scroll."  But she gives the Net some credit, calling the emoticon "the greatest (or most desperate, depending how you look at it) advance in punctuation since the question mark in the reign of Charlemagne."  Truss looks at it this way: She hates emoticons.

At closing, author Truss is passionate in her core conviction: "We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and allusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places.  Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.  If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable."

All of which brings to mind the classic Johnny Mercer lyrics to Accentuate the Positive; with Lynn Truss, writers had best not be Mr. In-Between.  Oh, and junk those stupid commas.

The Third Mickey: Decade of the Guns?

"Who was it that had called it the day of the guns?  It was back again.  You can't win with scared diplomacy, but a bullet on the way to somebody's gut doesn't know any fear at all and moves too fast to be stopped.  It has a power all its own of changing the shape of things instantly and instituting a propaganda factor that sticks in a person's mind all his life.  They could stand up to words and would hold down a gun themselves, but what they did when the big hole in the end was pointed at them and they saw the hammer go back was a different story entirely and if ever there was a moment of truth it was then, and not in a bull ring."
Mickey Spillane, Day of the Guns, p. 119 (Signet 1964)

On July 17, 2006 best-selling author Mickey Spillane went to his reward at age 88.  After Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mantle, Spillane was arguably the top "Mickey" of the 20th century.  OK, he was not Shakespeare.  So who else was?  Spillane's enduring appeal--he sold more than 100 million books--came from his honesty, directness and what today we would call his political incorrectness.  Imagine the delicious punishment of making the harpies at NOW sit in a room and being forced to read his novels out loud!  Spillane is, above all, very politically incorrect.  Yet while he promotes stereotypical views of male and female roles, his female heroines are in fact quite self-reliant and assertive, if more than a little too much Hollywood for real life.  Which is why they are fictional creations.

Yet we can learn from Spillane's creations.  Easily distracted, we can learn focus and commitment from the last paragraphs of Spillane's first mega-hit, I the Jury:
"'No, Charlotte, I'm the jury now, and the judge, and I have a promise to keep.  Beautiful as you are, as much as I almost loved you, I sentence you to death....'  [Hammer shoots her.]  'How c-could [sic] you?' she gasped.  I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in.  'It was easy,' I said.'"
I, the Jury (E.P. Dutton & Co 1947)

In One Lonely Night, Mike Hammer's sole foray into the Cold War, the hero ascends the stairs of a warehouse, carrying a Thompson submachine gun, enters a room and sprays it, killing the Commie thugs whilst leaving untouched his sexy secretary, Velda, who was strung up  in her birthday suit, shall we say, in the center of the room.  Not bad shooting, even absent distraction.

Yes, the plots were formulaic: (1) the hero chances upon a scene of mayhem or a damsel in distress or both; (2) he embarks upon a search for the truth; (3) he is opposed by the powers that be, either due to political cowardice,  corruption or ideological animus; (4) he perseveres and goes through Hell to achieve his noble goal--albeit by often ignoble means; (5) he relies upon a trusted friend he meets; (6) near the end he has a premonition that something is seriously awry; (7) he learns that the friend he trusted--often female and, if so, always gorgeous--betrays him; (8) he confronts the guilty party; (9) the guilty party tries to buy or bluff his or her way out; (10) the hero executes the betrayer.  About half the time the baddie is a babe the hero loved, and she disrobes while telling him he cannot really mean to kill her.  Yet he does.  That's focus.

OK, as noted above Spillane is fiction.  Spray a room with automatic weapon fire and the hostage escapes unscathed.  We have no super-hero to win the war against Islamic fascism.  No Mike Hammer.  No Tiger Mann (the Hammeresque hero of four 1960 Cold War potboilers, including Day of the Guns, noted above).  But Spillane has a message for us: the certitude that imperfect good deserves to triumph over perfect evil, and that, in the mess world of reality, the choice often is between winning ugly or losing pretty  If this seems fanciful, ask yourself how we won World War II, pretty or ugly--think Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Omaha Beach, Iwo Jima, Okinawa.

We are midway through what Mickey might have called the Decade of the Guns, perhaps the first of many in the 21st century.  Moral certitude--not as to our own purity, a kind of certitude only the other side has--but confidence as to our right, though imperfect, to prevail despite our myriad imperfections--will be needed if we are to survive these decades.  We can learn not to be paralyzed by P.C.  And yes, we will need focus, lots of it, if we are to prevail.

Post-9/11 Swamp Fever Syndrome

PNESFS--Post-9/11 Swamp Fever Syndrome, is this war's equivalent of Vietnam's Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSS).  PNESFS (pronounced pin-ness-fiss) victims exhibit several telltale symptoms, readily detectable even by lay folk: (1) a belief in the super-competence of government conspirators, domestic and foreign, notwithstanding substantial evidence that multiple government agencies cannot conspire successfully to make a ham sandwich; (2) a belief that the government conspirators can keep mega-scale plots completely secret from the American and world press--though not secret from PNESFS champions, despite evidence that the press knows everything, including the color of unmentionables, about public figures; (3) a talent for confecting superficially plausible alternative explanations whose rebuttal entails enlisting experts to explain to lay persons the hidden fallacies; and (4) the brass to dismiss refutations as further evidence of an ongoing cover-up in support of the conspiracy.

It is tempting to dismiss the conspiracy literature with a "Who believes this stuff?" wave-off.  But in 2002 a French author published a book claiming that the Pentagon did 9/11 to create a justification for launching future wars.  Thus did Popular Mechanics assemble 300 experts to sort out the various explanations given by PNESFS types as what what "really happened" on 9/11.  The results made for a 2005 article whose online posting has had 850,000 print-out hits.  Comes now the paperback edition, Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theorists Can't Stand Up To The Facts (Hearst Books 2006).  Senator John McCain provides a crisp Forward to the slim volume.

Some of the theories are laughable--claiming the the US government secretly forced the planes to land, loaded all passengers onto United Flight 93 and then dumped the other three planes over the Atlantic while it staged the attacks.  Others rely on superficially plausible arguments, such as those as to why the Twin Towers collapsed, though apparently far more massive than the pencil-shaped Empire State Building that survived a 1945 air crash; or those arguing that steel's melting point is higher than that for burning commercial jet fuel, and that explosive discharge out of windows indicate explosions from within.

We learn that the Empire State Building survived because the B-25 bomber that hit the structure in 1931 was one-tenth the mass of the 767s that hit the towers, traveled at less than half the speed of the 2001 planes and hit a structure that had roughly four times the density of the Towers, which used a revolutionary, feathery steel truss design that actually had a density less than that for balsa wood.  New York's classic 1931 landmark is a masonry fortress by comparison.

We further learn that while steel's 2,750 Fahrenheit melting point exceeds the 2,220 degree maximum burning temperature for commercial jet fuel, that steel begins to weaken at 750 degrees; the jet fuel inferno combined with massive structural damage caused the collapse of the Towers.  Explosives planted inside?  Hardly.  When a building "pancakes" the force of falling upper floors forces air outside, carrying debris with it.  The Towers collapsed in 12 seconds, with the top floors ultimately attaining 125 mph velocity (183 feet per second); hence the lateral expulsion of massive amounts of material.

Fans of conspiracy should sit back and crack open Robert Ludlum's 1983 classic, The Matarese Circle, and learn how a shepherd-boy in pre-World War I Italy rises to become head of a global conspiracy that runs the world's governments, all in just two generations.  If you believe in the shepherd-boy, feel free to believe that 4,000 Jews stayed home on 9/11, tipped off by the Mossad as to the impending attacks.  Better yet, if you are looking for a truly diabolical anti-US conspiracy, why not start with France, which is at least a plausible suspect?

Iraq: Cobra II, Fallujah Lessons

It is already clear that at best Iraq will produce for the Bush Administration a middling result, with disaster still possible and the "Iraq the Model" jump-starting Mideast renaissance long gone.  Mideast democracy may yet succeed, but it will be a medium- to long-haul process, and what it produces may be, if not the travesty of Islamist democracies akin to Hamas, not chummy with us either.   Two important books on Iraq reveal much about what went wrong and why.  They each show flaws at the highest levels, with no one--from the White House to State to Defense to CIA to Congress to the media--exempt from some measure of responsibility.

The books are (1) Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, by NY Times military correspondent Michael R. Gordon & retired Marine General Bernard E.Trainor, authors of a superb book on the 1991 Gulf War (The Generals' War); (2) No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah, by decorated Vietnam Marine & ex-Reagan Defense official Bing West.

To fully flesh out your Iraq picture it is helpful to read three others which I briefly first note: (1) The Generals' War (1995), noted above; (2) The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Crisis of Global Security (2003) by Richard Butler, the Australian head of UNSCOM 1997-1998; (3) One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (2005), by Nathaniel Flick.  The earlier Gordon/Trainor book shows how snafus in a divided command almost scotched the quick victory of the Coalition (it offers nuggets, too, such as how a Saudi F-15 pilot prevented, by a margin of seconds, destruction of a major oil facility).  Butler's book explains why inspections could never provide assurance that Saddam was clean, and recounts how Kofi Annan helped Saddam sink the inspections regime by abolishing UNSCOM in order to curb inspection powers and by sabotaging cooperation between US intelligence and the UN--which helps explain why our 2003 WMD intel was so awful.  Flick's book is a moving narrative of a Dartmouth student who joined the Marines in 1999 to do something important, found himself in Afghanistan and then as a commander in Iraq; it provides a bird's eye view of the training and education of a soldier and a ground's eye view of Afghanistan and Iraq at war.  A point-by-point recapitulation of these works is beyond my scope, so I urge you to read them for perspective on Iraq II.  Now on to the two books on Iraq II.

Cobra II
The authors draw five grand lessons from Iraq II, to explain why our goals have not been realized: (1) misreading the foe; (2) over-reliance on technological advancement; (3) failure to adapt to battlefield developments; (4) dysfunction of US military structures; (5) disdain of Bush Administration for nation-building.  Specifically 43's folks thought: (1) Iraq II would replay the Gulf War, thus missing Saddam's Fedayeen guerrillas; (2) tried to substitute technology and speed for gross troop deployment; (3) did not re-calibrate their plan adequately when guerrilla resistance surfaced (though Saddam did not plan the Fedayeen strategy in advance, being more worried about domestic unrest than a war with the US); (4) used White House and Defense top-liners to circumvent State & Defense mid-level players, and (5) thus failed to prepare for the postwar period.

16 noteworthy nuggets: (1) Rumsfeld imposed his will on planners to shrink force (Rumsfeld, for his part, denies this and says he was prepared to send 400,000 troops, but that Franks declined his offer); (2) Zalmay Khalilzad, now our Ambassador to Iraq, told Iraqi exiles US would run Iraq for one year; (3) the CIA's main WMD intel source, "Curveball," came via German intelligence; (4) the Democrats saw the National Intelligence estimates (NIEs) & said little, although the NIEs, closely read, showed flaws in intel; (5) Joe Wilson's Niger intel re uranium was not a factor, despite Spy Gal Valerie Plame playing a role in producing the CIA's deeply flawed WMD intel; (6) the opening decapitation strike aimed at Saddam struck a site that Saddam had not visited since 1995; (7) none of the top 200 Iraqi leaders was killed by air-strike during the war; (8) on 3/27/03 an Iraqi missile was intercepted 2 miles from a direct hit on our Kuwait HQ, where all top local war brass were meeting; (9)  a 4/11/03 air strike (two days after Baghdad fell) missed Saddam and his two sons by one house; (10) the erroneous announcement that "Chemical Ali" had been killed in an air-strike hastened the capitulation of Basra; (11) when Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1, it was at the urging of Tommy Franks.  And then came the post-May 1, 2003 phase.

(12) Paul Bremer, proconsul of the Coalition Provisional Authority, froze out Zalmay Khalilzad, the Administration senior official most knowledgeable about Iraq, based upon ZK's extensive prior dealings with them, so as to consolidate his own absolute power; (13) Bremer first disbanded the Iraqi Army, then relented but would not pay them.   (14) That was one crucial mistake Bremer made, according to Marine warrior-Gen. James Mattis, the other being that Bremer nullified early local elections for fear his preferred candidates wouldn't prevail.  (15) Baghdad streets were safer in 2003 than in 2004 and later.   (16) Hilariously symbolic of the top leadership's cultural disconnect re Iraq's postwar was Rumsfeld's proposed New Iraqi Corps--NIC for short; it was never made clear to Rummy that "NIC" pronounced in Arabic sounds like the Arabic word for--yep, you guessed it--"fuck."

No True Glory
Bing West's book neatly complements Cobra II, giving a ground-eye view, with periodic zoom-out to see the larger picture, of the titanic and pivotal struggle for Fallujah in 2004, which featured two major battles: April and November.  Fallujah I was halted days short of victory because mendacious propaganda aired by pseudo-news network al-Jazeera caused Iraqi leaders to demand a pullback and Western leaders to buckle under intense political pressure generated by the inflammatory, often false, coverage.  Fallujah II went to the Marines, because the Iraqi government saw that dealing with terrorist and radical Islamic leaders was not working, and because the Iraqis had closed down al-Jazeera in August.  The second battle was far more destructive in terms of loss of life and property than was the first, but with few cameras it did not create pressure for the Marines to stand down once again.

The author identifies four phases in the Fallujah campaign: (1) counter-insurgency, April 2003 - March  2004; (2) siege, April - May 2004; (3) reversal, May - October 2004; (4) attack, November - December 2004.  On July 17, 2003 General John Abizaid, overall CENTCOM force commander for the Mideast, informed his superiors that a "classic insurgency" had begun, but SecDef Rumsfeld continued to see disturbances as nothing but "dead-enders." Fallujah forced the senior civilian leadership to face up to the fact that there was an insurgency.  The first battle ended with the Marines an estimated 48-72 hours from victory; that battlefield command assessment was not passed to the White House by senior military leaders.  The interregnum between the first and second battles saw corrupt and traitorous elements turn the city over to the insurgents and allowing it to be a transmission belt for spreading terror throughout Iraq.  In all, the US lost over 150 killed and over 1,000 wounded in the two battles (about 1/8 our total Iraq II losses up to that time).  Only 4 of 600 Iraqi volunteers joined us in the second battle.

Mattis summed things up perfectly, saying that the Iraqis had never won a battle or lost a negotiation.  West summed up by saying that the US political leadership imprudently committed the Marines to take Fallujah before laying proper groundwork with the Iraqis, failed to allow for Arab media lies and Western media bias and failed to psychologically defeat the Sunnis who, thus emboldened, intimidated families into not cooperating with the Americans.  West informs us that no counter-insurgency has ever been won by an occupying force alone.

Summing Up
Neither author covers the disastrous decision by Bremer (oft-noted in LFTC) to adopt a nationwide party-list proportional electoral system, which unlike a first-past-the-post federal system confers more power upon minorities than their share of the popular vote would entitle them to wield; this is how radical thug Moqtada al-Sadr is a legitimated power broker in Iraq.  Add to that allowing terrorist Islamist factions to keep bullets while trolling for ballots is another grave mistake.  Add to this the blunders chronicled credibly in these two magnificent books and it is a miracle that the US is even in the game in Iraq, and not already licking the wounds of a catastrophic defeat like Vietnam or Somalia.  Scarily, this could still happen.  On the evidence here, it needn't have.

Ten Lessons for Future American Quasi-Imperial Adventures
Iraq may yet end so badly that no further American quasi-imperial enterprise will be possible for a generation.  In the hope that still it turns out tolerably and we do not simply fold, here are 10 key lessons for the future:

(1) Never "bet the company"--American position & prestige--on a best-case outcome;
(2) Never "bet the company" on the cheap--send more troops & spend more money than leaders guess we need, & do not count on allies committing blood and/or treasure;
(3) Listen to local commanders and be prepared to adjust, even at the expense of sacred cows (e.g, re insurgency)--"humint" (human intelligence) tops "sigint" (signals intelligence) in many local situations, the "Revolution in Military Affairs" (high-technology) notwithstanding;
(4) Win decisively enough to psychologically disarm adversaries--in rough neighborhoods, too soft is worse than too hard;
(5) Establish post-combat order rapidly--if necessary by prompt use of overwhelming force;
(6) Establish unified command for military & civilian operations ASAP after initial combat triumph--whether military or civilian supremacy is preferable depends upon security status;
(7) transfer political power to locals rapidly, building from local levels, adapting structures with rules that favor moderates & freeze out radicals (e.g., no bullets + ballots--one or the other; no national party lists), i.e, the end goal is liberal, not illiberal, democracy;
(8) embed media where helpful & freeze them out when harmful (i.e., try to stay as close as possible to WW-II practice--do not hesitate to prosecute egregious, unlawful media abuses);
(9) communicate globally & domestically, clearly & often--against weak adversaries, anticipate media compensation favoring underdogs, plus enemy exploitation of media as a conduit;
(10) distinguish between opportunistic & serious critics, listening with an open mind to the latter, whether they favor or oppose your position--you may still reject their recommendations, but your positions will be vetted more thoroughly as a result.

Fallaci's Fight--and Ours

Make no mistake about our peril.  Hudson Institute President Herb London argues persuasively that our war against Islamism is in its 1940 phase and that we either rally or will suffer defeat.  The assault on Bush, at home and abroad, has so weakened him that his Mideast democracy program is in retreat everywhere, with attendant diminishing of US prestige.  At this parlous time, enter nonpareil Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci.  Her newest book, The Force of Reason, warns in the fiery, non-P.C. language that is her hallmark that Islam is on the march and bids fair to prevail over a West in retreat.

Fallaci's book, recently published in English, has attracted a fusillade from the usual gaggle of Leftists, Islamists and the like.  Writing in NRO, Mike Ledeen rises to defend Oriana Fallaci by saying that critics of The Force of Reason miss the forest for the trees.  Her broad thesis, that the West is too cowed to prevail in a struggle against militant Islam, is chillingly plausible.  Wesley Pruden writes that we fight an ideology at war with centuries 12 through 21.  (Actually, they are at war with centuries 7 through 21, but WP is close enough for government work.)  WP also doubts that we have the nerve to fight on against the "madness" that grips radical Islam.

Fallaci's book is as bracing as was her 2002 philippic, The Rage and the Pride--equally rashly politically incorrect, at times over the top but mostly "right on" as an antidote to the "Religion of Peace" bromides from the White House and European ministries.  Fallaci begins this time with a warning calculatedly drawn from Winston Churchill's celebrated 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech at Fulton, Missouri ("From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent."--text: "The Sinews of Peace"--March 5, 1946 ):

"From the Strait of Gibraltar to the fjords of Soroy, from the cliffs of Dover to the beaches of Lampedusa, from the steppes of Volgograd to the valleys of the Loire and the hills of Tuscany, a fire is spreading.  In each one of our cities there is a second city.  A city superimposed and equal to the one that in the Seventies thousands and thousands of Palestinians set up in Beirut installing a State within the State.  A government within the government.  A Muslim city, a city ruled by the Koran.  An Islamic expansionism's stage.  The expansionism that no-one has ever managed to overcome.  No-one.  Not even the armies of Napoleon.  Because it is the only art in which the sons of Allah have always excelled, the art of invading and conquering.  Their most coveted prey has always been Europe, the Christian world...."  (p.35.)

She then harks bark to a boast made in 1974 by an Islamist leader: In 1974 Algerian strongman Hoari Boumedienne baldly stated his view of  Islam's jihad strategy: "One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one.  But not as friends.  Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children.  Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women."  (p. 56.)

And finally she quotes Dr. George Habash, one of the founders of the modern Palestinian terrorist movement, on the scope of Islamism's struggle:
"The Palestinian problem is not an aside problem.  A problem separated from the Arab Nation's realities.  Palestinians are part of the Arab Nation.  Therefore the entire Arab Nation must go to war against Europe and America.  It must unleash a war against the West.  And it will.  America and Europe don't know that we Arabs are just at the beginning of the beginning.  That the best has yet to come.  That from now on there will be no peace for the West.....To advance step by step.  Millimetre by millimetre.  Year after year.  Decade after decade.  Determined, stubborn, patient.  This is our strategy.  A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet."  ( pp.131-132, emphasis in original.)

Fallaci, for all her gloom, thinks we will somehow prevail.  But to do so we must understand the war we are fighting.  Placating Islam by apologizing for cartoons, Crusades and the like is a loser.  Islam has more to apologize for if the historical scorecard between Islam and Christendom is honestly tallied.  We will not win by letting Islamists lie about us while being reluctant to defend our values--free speech, etc.--in the face of Islamist intimidation.

Three aspects of our war with militant Islam are of particular relevance at this juncture in our struggle:  (1) It is not a war for ideology.  (2) Co-opting terror groups into democratic processes is highly likely to fail.  (3) The global elite media are the biggest assets the terrorists have, which the Administration grasps but cannot effectively counter.

1.  Radical Islam aims neither for hearts nor minds, but for nether parts--it aims to compel rather than persuade.  By contrast the USSR, while using those weapons, had as well an ideology with genuine world appeal for most of the 20th century.  Well into the late twentieth century communism posed a formidable competitive threat, seducing many millions.  Italy flirted as late as 1977 with an "historic compromise" coalition including Communists.  It was only when the US economy took off and America re-armed during the Reagan years, and a charismatic Pope energized Eastern Europe's revolt that the weakness of totalitarian systems was exposed definitively.

2.  We cannot allow terror parties to combine bullets & ballots:  This is the classic political co-optation trap--made also in Lebanon.  Terrorists who are invited into the democratic process can accept any gains legitimately made and when denied power can return to the gun.

3.  We face a hostile media that denies us clandestine tools of great value and in the sacred name of "our values" holds our sins high whilst minimizing those of our adversary, more often than not; and the Administration cannot cope with this, nor might its successor manage to do so.  Thus we cannot reprise the CIA's 1947 triumph in Italy.  But Iran merrily works the other side.   The raid last weekend by Iraqi security forces that angered many Shi'a was portrayed as a raid on a mosque, when in fact it was not; a minaret was found inside, but there were not advance indications.  We will not be cut slack for such misunderstandings.  We will be impeded by multiculuralist P.C. from telling the truth about Islam and Islamic countries, while Islamists can lie about us with impunity.

Fallaci is wrong: We can lose. We can lose by failing to vigorously defend ourselves.   Mark Steyn, with his sharp stiletto, calls timidity in the face of assertive pan-Islamism the "Aretha Franklin Doctrine: R-E-S-P-E-C-T"; how right he is.  He quotes UK PM Jack Straw, whose constituency includes many Muslims and who responds accordingly:

"Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, gave a typical Western government official's speech the other day explaining that 'a large number of Muslims in this country were -- understandably -- upset by those cartoons being reprinted across Europe and at their deeply held beliefs being insulted. They expressed their hurt and outrage but did so in a way which epitomized the learned, peaceful religion of Islam.'

"'The learned, peaceful religion of Islam'? And that would be the guys marching through London with placards reading 'BEHEAD THE ENEMIES OF ISLAM' and 'FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS WESTERN TERRORISM' and promising to rain down a new Holocaust on Europe? This is geopolitics as the Aretha Franklin Doctrine: The more the world professes its R-E-S-P-E-C-T, the more the Islamists sock it to us."

Compare this to Australian PM John Howard,, who said after 9/11: "This is not time to be an 80 percent ally."  Continues Howard: You can't find any equivalent in Italian or Greek or Lebanese or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad. There is really not much point in pretending it doesn't exist."  Says Aussie Foreign Minister Alexander Downer: " "Multilateralism is a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator." Aussie Treasurer told Aussie Muslims tha tif they want to live under Sha'ria law they can try Saudi Arabia or Iran, not Australia.

Islamists interpret whiny statements from Western leaders professing "respect" for "peaceful Islam" as code words for graduated retreat, and they will advance accordingly.  Osama's famous quote should haunt us: "People prefer a strong horse to a weak horse."  Right now the portents are not auspicious.