On bathroom fixtures (cont.)
Last week, I asked in this space:
Needless to say, this stray paragraph generated more emails to the editor and comments from acquaintances than all my deep thoughts on the current political scene or the meaning of the American experiment. The newsletter had been out only a few minutes when this email from a friend appeared in my inbox:
And this was followed up by more such communications. We may not be solving the nation’s problems in this newsletter, but I’m glad it at least provides an occasion for recalling incidents of personal misery, the sharing of which I trust is good for readers’ psychological health (and mine!).
***
ADVERTISEMENT
***
A Conversation with David Petraeus
Moving on from less to more serious things, I wanted to let you know that the Foundation for Constitutional Government has just released a new conversation with General David Petraeus on Conversations with Bill Kristol. This is the second conversation with Gen. Petraeus, and I think both are of real value. I found particularly interesting Gen. Petraeus’s reflections on his experiences in command in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on how his academic and battlefield education prepared him for military command. (If you want to take a look at the first Petraeus Conversation, by the way, it’s here. And the Conversation with Gen. Jack Keane (one of my favorites) is here.)
***
July 4th
Conversations on military leadership and war are in a way appropriate for July 4th, which was, as Richard Samuelson reminds us, not just a declaration of independence but a declaration of war, and which required to be effectual not just the signing of names but the fighting of battles.
If you want to read more on July 4th (as you should!), Michael Warren has assembled some relevant material from over the years in The Weekly Standard here, and Amy Kass and Leon Kass collected American classics on Independence Day here. Meanwhile, Jay Nordlinger provides an appropriate selection of Independence Day music here.
So there’s plenty to read and listen to in celebration of July 4th if, as seems likely to be the case here in Washington, your outdoor activities are curtailed by inclement weather.
Today is also the 40th anniversary of the Entebbe raid, when Israeli commandos, in a daring operation a couple of thousand miles from home, liberated Israeli and Jewish hostages being held at the Entebbe airport in Uganda. Yoni Netanyahu, the commander of the operation, was killed (there are many accounts of this amazing raid; one is here). In a remarkable historical moment, Yoni’s brother Benjamin, now Prime Minister of Israel, will be at Entebbe today commemorating the event with the leader of Uganda. When I saw Prime Minister Netanyahu a few months ago, we were discussing terrorism, and, I think because this visit had just been arranged and was on his mind, we drifted into a discussion of Entebbe. I told him that I remembered hearing the news of the rescue on the radio, as I recall while at the tall ships bicentennial event in New York City. I told the Prime Minister that I have a memory of hearing on the radio news broadcast then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan praising the heroism of the Israelis, at a time when (as I recall) other leaders where hesitant to say anything. (I haven’t been able to track this down in a few minutes of googling, and hope this isn’t a case of memory playing tricks and inventing things one would like to have happened.) In any case, the Prime Minister was, as you would expect, somewhat emotional discussing how meaningful he expected the 40th anniversary event to be, and I look forward to reading about it later today and tomorrow.
In any case, today’s leaders could do worse than spend the day pondering the lessons of both July 4, 1776 and July 4, 1976.
***
Onward!
Bill Kristol
