An excellent analysis by Walid Phares of Iran’s strategy and tactics in the current “hostage crisis”:
Middle East
Drews — The End of the Bronze Age
Drews, Robert, The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca. 1200 B.C., Princeton Univ Press, Princeton, NJ, 1993. 252 pp.
[cross-posted on Albion’s Seedlings]
With the kind intent of keeping my “To-Read” pile at Olympian scale, Lex recently brought my attention to this older book on the “Catastrophe” that hit the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean civilizations some 3,000 years ago.
How the Left Gets It All Wrong
Some long-time readers may have noticed that I am often more interested in intellectual methodology, i.e., the means by which people arrive at certain conclusions, than I am in the conclusions themselves. Methodology trumps conclusion in my view because only by understanding the quality of the methodology can we hope to understand the quality of the conclusions. We evaluate the quality of a methodology by the accuracy of the predictions the methodology produces. Science works this way, and that same concept applies to all other fields of endeavor (albeit with far less precision.)
Working from this perspective, what do 30 years of hindsight about the Vietnam war tell about leftist methodology? In turn, what does that tell us about the quality of leftist policy recommendations in Iraq?
What is to be done?
For those who do not know about the history of the Russian radical movement I should explain that the title was not invented by Lenin. Very little was. This was the title given to an interminably long and boring novel by Chernyshevsky, which outlined in fictional form the ideas of radicalism. One of the great mysteries of the Russian soul is how a novel of such incredible turpitude should have become so popular in a country, which, at the time, boasted some of the greatest novelist in the world.
The big lie or many small lies
Here is an interesting question for all our readers? Who burnt down the Reichstag in 1933? Can you recall the name of Marinus van der Lubbe, the somewhat crazed Dutchman, who actually set it on fire? And even if you can, do you not think that there was somebody behind it all? After all, it could not be just a lone lunatic, could it?
It would be interesting to know how many of those who read the above paragraph nodded and said: “Of course, Hitler ordered and manipulated van der Lubbe (assuming you can recall the name) and then used the fire to get rid of the opposition and to blame the Communists.”
I am willing to bet that nobody said: “Oh yes, it was the Communists and they managed to get away with it because Dimitrov’s trial (assuming you can recall that name) was unsuccessful. Hitler merely took advantage of the event.”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between good and bad propaganda.
The truth is that van der Lubbe did act on his own. This has been investigated and proved by a number of historians. No evidence has been found of anybody else’s involvement. Further, Hitler did take advantage of the fire to do what he had always planned to do and destroy the remnants of German democratic parliament and ban the Communist Party of which the Nazis were oddly afraid. All of that is true.
Now we come to the battle of the propagandists. Everyone, but everyone, quotes Dr Göbbels’s comment about the big lie and compares every would-be spin doctor with him. But who actually believed Göbbels? A large proportion of the German people for a time and some supporters in other countries who wanted to believe him.
As opposed to that, millions of people across the world repeat certain “truths” for which there is “full agreement” without once realizing that it is propaganda first started by that genius of spin doctoring and promoter of the Comintern, Willi Münzenberg, without even knowing his name or comparing any tuppenny-ha’penny press officer to him. Now that is propaganda. Sheer genius. Achieved by a long list of small and medium-sized lies.