BELLESILES UPDATE: While Emory dithers (and, some suspect, tries to figure out how to sweep the whole affair under the rug) other historians are trying to learn from Bellesiles’ . . . mistakes. Here’s a syllabus on historical methods in which students are to use Michael Bellesiles’ Arming America as a case study.

CYPRUS IS getting tired of a Palestinian “militant” it took in as part of the Church of the Nativity stand-down. Seems the guy is dangerous, causes trouble, and won’t abide by the agreements he made.

Go figure.

(Via Zachary Barbera).

SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE EMAILED ME about this proposal from Frederick Turner regarding the WTC rebuild. There’s an interactive demo, too. I like the roof, best.

JOSHUA CLAYBOURN has thoughts on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

UPDATE: Some suggest that the lesson here is the one that a (horrified) Times writer spelled out: “Kill Americans, and you’re dead meat.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Oops. It’s by Paul Musgrave, not his fellow HR’er Josh Claybourn. Claybourn sent me the link, and I didn’t notice that he hadn’t written the post.

QUAGMIRE ALERT: Eric Alterman is making the Vietnam analogy quite explicitly.

The problem with Vietnam, however, was not that it was a bullying assault on a small, inoffensive country, as some “peace” protesters (who minded not at all that North Vietnam, with the support of the Soviets and the Chinese, was mounting an assault on a small inoffensive country) maintained. It was that we didn’t win. We didn’t win because we weren’t serious about winning, serious enough to depart from business as usual, serious enough to tell the country we were in a war, serious enough to do what it took to win.

We weren’t willing to do what it took to win because we feared (probably wrongly, but who knows?) that the Russians or the Chinese would intervene if it looked like we were going to win big, and they were possessed of huge armies and nuclear weapons.

So, the question raised by the Vietnam analogy here is: Are we serious about winning? And who, exactly, is going to intervene on a massive scale to stop us if we look like we’re going to win big?

RICHARD COHEN IS MAKING SENSE! (Hey, maybe he’ll get a show on MSNBC. . . .) Excerpt:

In 1962 Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser used poison gas in a now-obscure war in Yemen. Twenty years later, President Hafez Assad of Syria crushed a rebellion by bulldozing much of the city of Hama and killing anyone who got in the way. That same decade, Saddam Hussein of Iraq used poison gas against his enemies. The Middle East is a tough neighborhood.

It goes without saying that had Israel fought its Arab foes the way they themselves do, the world would scream bloody murder and bureaucrats at the United Nations would get carpal tunnel syndrome banging out condemnations. What’s more, tasteless references would be made to the Holocaust and how — such irony — the victims had turned oppressor and were using the methods of their one-time enemy.

The fact is, though, that Israel has largely eschewed such methods. It fights hard and sometimes ruthlessly — assassinations, for instance — but it has generally adhered to Western standards of warfare. It has the only army in the Middle East in which reservists have refused to serve for reasons of conscience — an option I wouldn’t recommend to any soldier in any Arab army. Israel, it can be argued, has the “most humane army in the world.”

Now where have I read that kind of thing recently?

JANIS IAN has posted a followup to her earlier piece on Internet music. It’s well worth a read.

My TechCentralStation column for tomorrow also looks into the question of what the record companies are trying to accomplish. I have a bonus Blazing Saddles reference, too. Contest: can you guess which line from the movie I invoke? (Former students are disqualified from participating).

INSTAPOWER, BABY! After repeated requests by this site, Michael Moore is on the Ted Turner case! And he’s even linking the original InstaPundit post. Go get him, Mike. Could Doonesbury be next?

And in a lovely Internet-related event, I first heard about it from an InstaPundit reader in The Netherlands. But of course!

UPDATE: Reader Ian Schmidt points out that Moore has now pulled the InstaPundit link from his post on Turner, and says “Must’ve angered some of his ‘progressive’ readers.” Now I ask you, is that nice? If I were Moore, I’d probably try to claim that pulling the link somehow proves that we’ve descended into Fascism under Bush and Ashcroft. But he can link to whoever he wants. Or not. And I can razz him for it. Fair’s fair.

THE MINUTEMAN says that Kaus is “burying” Krugman — but that if Kaus read more blogs he’d be doing even more damage.

LOBBYIST HATE MAIL! Well, not really. But lobbyist Ken Bryer takes exception to my post below on special Capitol Hill access for lobbyists:

Ah, lobbyists: the one profession even lawyers can bust on.

Have to disagree with you here. We lobbyists have business before the Congress that takes us there frequently. It’s a waste of time and resources to search lobbyists like the vast unknown infrequent guests who come to the Capitol. Should airline pilots and crew have to go through security and customs every single time they de-plane?

I don’t think I have an unrealistic view of lobbyists. I was one myself when I was practicing law in Washington (though my firm delicately called such activity a part of its “Washington policy practice” rather than using the L word). But while it’s a bracingly honest admission to analogize lobbyists to the pilots of aircraft, they aren’t actually supposed to be the ones at the controls.

Bryer makes the absolutely valid point that Americans are represented by lobbyists in lots of entirely productive and reasonable ways. Just about everyone belongs to multiple groups (from the ACLU to the NRA to, ugh, the AARP) that lobby.

My dislike of the special-access provision, I guess, was founded in the belief that security precautions (most of them largely cosmetic anyway) are intrusive enough. If the bigshots get a pass, they’ll never get any better. If Jack Valenti has to stand in line, at least members of Congress will hear complaints out of the mouth of someone whose commands they are used to following unquestioningly. Instead of just from, you know, constituents.

UPDATE: Then there’s this perspective. . . .

HERE’S A REPORT FROM CNET on the NSF convergence report that was the topic of my TechCentralStation column a couple of weeks ago. If my column didn’t inspire you to read through all 405 pages of the report, this piece provides a pretty good summary.

The usual-suspect-critics, like Bill Joy and Jeremy Rifkin, are also heard from, saying the usual things. Leon Kass, however, isn’t mentioned.

RANTING SCREEDS offers a cautionary note about war in Iraq that’s worth reading. I confess, though, that it took me a moment to focus on the substance of his post, so great was my astonishment that a pinpoint permalink on Blogger actually worked.

SPECIAL ACCESS FOR LOBBYISTS? The Hill is reporting that lobbyists want a “frequent visitors’ card” to give them quick passage through Congressional security, and that some members of Congress are interested in helping them out.

TAPPED doesn’t much like the idea, and neither do I. It’s bad enough that so many members of Congress are bought and paid for by special interests. Now they want to skip the lines, too?

Somehow, I don’t think the Republic will suffer if Jack Valenti has to cool his heels waiting to pass through a metal detector.

AL & JOE’S MESSY DIVORCE: Howard Kurtz is loving this catfight, and wonders why the rest of the media isn’t all over this story:

Joe Lieberman, poking his former patron in the eye. Al Gore, elbowing back with a New York Times screed.

Doesn’t get much better than this, folks.

We’re surprised the press isn’t making a big, huge, noisy deal about the finger-pointing between these ex-allies. Maybe reporters are too busy searching for the latest plans to invade Iraq.

How often, after all, does a running mate dis the candidate who picked him – especially when said running mate wants his former partner to bow out so he can pursue the top job himself?

Not very often.

SECOND AMENDMENT UPDATE: Dennis Henigan and Robert Levy are debating the Second Amendment on C-SPAN at the moment. I’ve just watched for a few minutes, but the callers are giving Henigan hell.

MICKEY KAUS has identified The New York Times’ full employment plan. It’s a winner!

MERYL YOURISH takes on a critic from MetaFilter. This is pretty much barrelfishing, but it’s kind of fun to watch. Excerpt:

There was no outrage from Todd on the attack of the bus filled with civilians only a couple of weeks ago. There were lots of posts by him insisting that the poor, downtrodden terrorists are only reacting to the evil wargmonger Sharon and those nasty “religious” settlers. Nothing on a five-year-old girl shot in her bed by a terrorist. After all, she was just one of those damned “settlers.” I believe Damian Penny found the phrase you’re looking for on nazimedia that’s currently in vogue: “future land thief.”

Let’s see if I can predict what Todd would say about those last: “cycle of violence, yada yada yada, despair, no hope, occupation, yada yada yada.”

I’ll pass. It gets tiresome after a while, listening to people like Todd keep making excuses for murderers, and then getting on the case of those of us who refuse to do so. Funny. Gandhi and King made their points and changed their societies without resorting to murdering grandmothers and their grandchildren in an ice cream parlor. And yet, the Palestinians are all given a bye—by reasonable people like Todd.

Tiresome, indeed.

YOUR CHANCE TO ASK THE RIAA SOME TOUGH QUESTIONS: Eric Olsen is setting up a live, online interview.

MY USUALLY-RELIABLE MOLE was reliable again. The Tom Ricks article is now up on the Post’s site and looks to be a page-one story in tomorrow’s paper. Excerpt:

“The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader,” stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy.

“Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies,” said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corporation analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as “the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent” in the Middle East.

The briefing did not represent the views of the board or official government policy, and in fact runs counter to the present stance of the U.S. government that Saudi Arabia is a major ally in the region. Yet it also represents a point of view that has growing currency within the Bush administration – especially on the staff of Vice President Cheney and in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership – and among neoconservative writers and thinkers closely allied with administration policymakers.

One administration official said opinion about Saudi Arabia is changing rapidly within the U.S. government. “People used to rationalize Saudi behavior,” he said. “You don’t hear that anymore. There’s no doubt that people are recognizing reality and recognizing that Saudi Arabia is a problem.”

Read it. It’s likely to be the big story of the day tomorrow.

UPDATE: NZ Bear notes that Henry Kissinger dissents, but The Bear thinks Kissinger’s, well, compromised.

DAVE WINER doesn’t much like the Nick Denton post that I linked and quoted. I think Dave missed a bit of the tone in my reference to Nick “sounding like a warblogger now,” as Nick was, for a long time, rather an anti-warblogger. But, as with Eric Alterman (who at times has been more warbloggerish than the warbloggers) Nick has recognized some unpleasant truths. And if the term “warblogger” means anything at all (and I’m not sure it does) recognizing unpleasant truths about war and self-defense is at the core of it.

Dave isn’t there yet. Nick wrote that the only thing that will change current hardline Arab culture is the humiliation of an unmistakable abject defeat. Dave replies: “Dangerous stuff. Watch out for the humiliation, that’s where holocausts come from.” No. At most, that’s where the desire to perpetrate holocausts comes from.

But the hardline Arabs (who are the ones calling the shots pretty much everywhere) already have the desire to perpetrate a holocaust, as has been made abundantly clear. They merely lack the means. The mentality we’re dealing with isn’t Germany in 1914. It’s more like Germany in 1939. And that Germany was in dire need of abject defeat and humiliation, the sooner the better.

UPDATE: I just noticed that Nick has already replied to Dave: “One could equally well say, to paraphrase Winer: watch out for appeasement, that’s where holocausts come from.”

RECOGNIZING THE ENEMY: One of my generally reliable moles reports that tomorrow’s Washington Post will feature a piece by Tom Ricks on Saudi Arabia as the enemy. Ricks will report that a “top Pentagon advisory panel” has characterized Saudi Arabia as an enemy, and recommends that it be given an ultimatum: stop supporting terror or face seizure of the oil fields and of financial assets in the United States. The report isn’t an official position, but reflects what Ricks characterizes as a view with growing currency in the Bush Administration.

Sounds like someone’s getting a clue.

VICTIMS OF TERROR — a rather moving CNN page. Or, rather, pages.

IS IRAN BURNING? Glenn Frazier is reporting lots of antigovernment violence and disruptions. Not much elsewhere yet. Stay tuned.

JIM HENLEY fact-checks Kurt Loder’s ass, with a little help from The Boss.

LOSS OF PRIVACY DOESN’T TRANSLATE INTO MORE SECURITY, or vice versa, warns TI senior fellow Gene Frantz, according to this report from the Electrical Engineering Times. Thanks to reader Tom Morin for the link.