Random Thoughts 9/12/07

• There's good reading here, as Ralph Peters lays out some good info. He says, "…al-Qaeda is suffering not only a massive defeat but also a strategic humiliation." With the Sunni Arabs of Anbar, "We're not the enemy anymore." That's amazingly good news, the kind of good news you hear and then realize that your grandchildren will read this news in history books yet to be written.
• In the same article mentioned above, Peters says, "In war, alliances and goals evolve, often surprisingly. Gen. Petraeus' current strategy, outlined to me during an office visit, might be summed up fairly in three goals: al-Qaeda shattered, Iran excluded and sectarian violence reduced to a level that would allow the Iraqi government to function. On the first count, the progress has been startling. On the second, U.S. forces are holding the line. As for reducing sectarian feuding, that, too, has been a success story — to the point where some U.S. officers believe that we'll soon transition from a counterinsurgency role to less intensive peace enforcement and peacekeeping operations."
• The boys have me swooning with joy. They are so well behaved we can often postpone or entirely cancel the after-nap, pre-dinner spanking. Yesterday Shannon and the boys picked me up at the office to take me to lunch and Elijah talked my leg off. They were all so good and so cute and so polite… in fact, I wonder if they're not up to something. Hmmm…
• I'm still working my way through the AFI top-movies list, with several movies in the queue on my Tivo. I'm looking forward to my first Charlie Chaplin movie, Modern Times (1936), especially after enjoying my first Buster Keaton movie, the General (1927). I didn't think I'd like a silent film comedy but I was wrong. Sometimes the older films are just better. All the King's Men (1949) is a sharp, Oscar winning film, and probably the second best politically-centered movie I've ever seen, while the remake, Sean Penn's All the King's Men (2006), ranked as the #1 worst film of '06 according to Ebert and Roeper.
  
• More comments on Petraeus' testimony here and here. Also here at the Long War Journal. By the way, I was really impressed with Ambassador Crocker too.