Perfectly put

From Col. Lang

Tom Brokaw made a reference on MSNBC today to the "commander in chief of the United States."

NO!

The president is commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States, not of the country. We have no emperor. To think of the president of the United States as commander in chief of the country is to make this person the sovereign and we his subjects.

Col. Lang on the VeepStakes

On Joe Biden

His argumentation is logical, passionate and usually (unlike the occasion mentioned,) delivered behind a screen of civility spread across a vast hostility.

On David Petraeus

Petraeus is youthful, well spoken, handsome, intelligent, successful in the war in Iraq, youthful, and youthful. Petraeus has reached the top in his profession. There is no "up" in the Army from full general and theater commander. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Yawn... The professional politicians would probably not like to have Petraeus on the ticket, but his presence there would make victory inevitable.

My money's still on Meg Whitman as the veep choice.

Monday links

• Fertility rate in US on upswing
• This post on Ron Paul from Col. Lang, featuring the lovely line "citadels of exalted brooding". I saw the interview he mentions as well and got the same impression; namely that Russert was trying to rapid fire the questions enough to get him to trip up and say something that could be easily misinterpreted. It's not like Paul is hiding what he believes, or that it's not controversial in his version. Lame. A bit reminiscent of Ace in the Hole.
  
• This Matt Yglesias post on the same interview
• This is a nice web app
  

Patrick Lang smacks generation warfare theory

From this post about the French experience in Vietnam

There is a lot of talk these days about "generations" of warfare. Pay it no mind. The concept of "4th Generation Warfare" is a fraud perpetrated as a marketing device by scholars of warfare for the purpose of assuring senior officers that they are not to blame for their ignorance of military history. The various kinds of warfare (generations) have always existed on a contemporaneous basis (at the same time).

Thoughts working their way out

Col Lang's definition of a neocon as one who "believes in a homogeneous future" has been lurking in the back of my mind for the past few days. It's one of those aphorisms that change entire viewpoints just a bit, just like Thomas Sowell's notion of the constrained vs the unconstrained view of human nature.

More thoughts later.

Monday link roundup

• It's Wiretap the Internet Day - what have we come to in this country. Sigh.
• Entrepreneurial Adages - All quite true. in particular

  Start with nothing, and have nothing for as long as possible -- small budgets give big focus

• Battlefield spy-bot - really cool
• Tribal Minds
• The indispensable Col. Patrick Lang has an outline of what a diplomatic solution to Iraq might look like. I would read all of it. Webbed version of the outline is here.