I recently read Frederick Douglass’s autobiography. I have previously wondered whether the Civil War was worth the human cost to stop American slavery a generation before it would have stopped anyway. I’m sure I’ll wonder that again after the emotional impact of the book has worn off. But in the meantime, I say that no […]
Archive | History
Nothing New under the Sun
Recently, while reading about Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in the early 1980’s, I was struck by the way that Israeli politicians ignored, or cherry-picked, intelligence in order to achieve a political goal. Sound familiar? Israel’s Secret Wars, about Mossad, IDF Intelligence, Shin Bet, and the rest, is an amazing look into the kinds of stuff […]
Civil War (Not Iraq)
The new movie, The Confederate States of America, has gotten some press. I haven’t seen it, and I guess I don’t REALLY care about seeing it (with several reviewers saying that the best thing about it is the concept), but it did remind me of my own weird little questions about the outcome of the […]