by Fred Reed
It is curious how little military men know about war. You would think they would think about it more. Yet, oddly, they regularly misjudge practically everything concerning their dismal trade. Their errors are not the sort that inevitably must occur in a contest, as when a quarterback doesn’t pick up a blitz. They are fundamental …
Evolution is the political correctness of science, the one scientific theory that cannot be questioned. Biologists can lose their jobs for doubting it. Droning nature shows on television inculcate from our birth its certainty. we are assured that only snake-handling primitive cristians disbelieve, that all scientists affirm it, which they don’t. Most who wonder have …
by Fred Reed in Ajijic Ye gods and little catfish, Mr. Trump and his merry men have set about deporting “millions and millions” of illegal aliens and promise to rid the country entirely of the rascals. This plays well with many, and the Racial Right, White Nationalists and such, are positively salivating, jumping up and …
A User’s Guide to the Supervision of Morning The View from the Malecón FRED REED • NOVEMBER 25, 2019 • 1,300 WORDS • 52 COMMENTS • REPLY Tweet Reddit Share Share634 Email Print More 634SHARES RSS Share to Gab Lake Chapala at sunrise. It never looks the same twice. Though it is late in the season and should be chill, we do not …
I have just finished reading William Shirer’s Berlin Diary. (This may not fascinate you, but I am coming to something.) I first encountered it in high school. It is of course Shirer’s account as a correspondent in Germany of the rise of the Nazis. Most of it is well known to the educated. The Nazis, who had …
Writing about intelligence is splendid fun if you like watching dogfights among towering vanities. (This assumes that vanities can tower, though I’m not sure how dogs come into it.) On one side you have the politically correct protectors of Appropriate Values. These secretly believe that blacks are less intelligent than whites and live in terror …
This morning when I emerged groggily into something resembling consciousness, I didn’t know that I was going to establish the impossibility of ants. Here was a deep philosophical matter, creeping up on me surreptitiously. The dogs as usual came thundering in to see whether we still existed and, having ascertained that we did, offered to …
During the post-Vietnam uproar over alleged American servicemen allegedly deliberately left behind by the Pentagon as prisoners, a major website wrote admiringly of the assertion to this effect by Sydney Schanberg, reporter for the New York Times. At the time I was a military writer in Washington and deeply immersed in the story, based in …
Ever wonder why the US military can’t win wars? Why a few ragtag guerillas could send it running out of Somalia (Black Hawk Down)? Why one guy with a truck bomb could chase the Marines out of Lebanon? Why the attempt to rescue the hostages in Iran was such a disaster? Why the world’s most …
For a couple of decades I covered the military for various publications, as for example the Washington Times and Harper’s, and wrote a military column for Universal Press Syndicate. I was following the time-honored principle of sensible reporters: “Ask not what you can do for journalism, but what journalism can do for you.” The military …