Comments on: Nobody’s Ever Gone Wrong Invading Somalia

By: WRW

WRW — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:11:00 +0000

At least Kristol can actually cite to the Constitution as some tenuous basis for his latest intervention (Art. 1, Section 8.) Of course, none of this piracy has targeted US-flagged vessels (as there are hardly any after we gave away our merchant marine.)

For him, being able to effectively carry out the intervention (an opinion on which we look to the military who would carry it out) is beside the point. “It’s not the having, it’s the getting”–as Garfield might say.

By: Thomas Schiro

Thomas Schiro — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 14:34:55 +0000

I enjoy Mr. Kristol’s cute little article.

I like how his take on bombing Somalia comes after the bit about Bush speaking at elite universities about the ROTC: “And while he’s at it, perhaps he could tell various admirals to stop moaning…”

No, Mr. Kristol. You stop moaning.

By: Philip Giraldi

Philip Giraldi — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:27:21 +0000

Well, actually the Italians did have a problem with Somalia, though the whole area was called Eritrea in those days. It was their base of operations for the attack on Ethiopia in 1895, resulting in 1896′s battle of Adowa in which, for the first time, a European force was decisively defeated by an African army (the British lost battles against the Zulus and Boers but won the wars – Italy did not obtain revenge for Adowa until Mussolini invaded Abyssinia forty years later).

By: MattSwartz

MattSwartz — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:23:49 +0000

Hurrah for learning!

I still think it sounds clumsier than all-get-out, but it’s nice to know that it actually means what he meant it to mean.

I’m often pedantic and I’m often wrong, but rarely do the two coincide.

By: Saoirsí

Saoirsí — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:06:53 +0000

Sorry, sorry, one more and I’ll shut up: “capitulum” is the Latin for “draw up under headings”. As in: yet more talking points?

By: Saoirsí

Saoirsí — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:00:19 +0000

Perhaps he meant “summarize and state again the main points of” every neoconservative narrative for war ever made. Or he meant that the Marines should once again cease to resist an opponent or unwelcome demand from the neocons?

By: Dennis Dale

Dennis Dale — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:48:48 +0000

I think I see what happened. Mr. Kristol wasn’t happy with “reprise” (a tad effete, maybe) so he went looking for a synonym and found its fellow musical term “recapitulate”; perhaps he thought “recapitulate” sounded suitably martial like “capture”, which I presume is a fellow descendant of the Latin “captura.”

By: Dennis Dale

Dennis Dale — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:37:43 +0000

Matt said:
“I’m not going to go to the effort of going to an online dictionary over this, but there’s simply no way that’s a correct use of the word ‘recapitulate’. ”

I couldn’t resist. The usage is marginally defensible, if needlessly obscure, as “recapitulate” also means, “repeat an earlier theme of a composition” or “repeat stages of evolutionary development during the embryonic phase of life”, according to my online WorldNet dictionary (but not Webster’s, as far as I can tell).

Why on earth he didn’t use “reprise” is beyond me.

He’s somewhat mistaken in identifying the US Marine Corps “origins” in the Barbary Wars–the Corps had been created as part of the Navy in 1798 in preparation for hostilities with France. Its first distinction came in the First Barbary War, around 1801, when Marines went ashore near Tripoli (referenced as “…the shores of Tripoli…” in the Marine Corps Hymn).

By: MattSwartz

MattSwartz — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:32:16 +0000

If need be, the Marines would no doubt be glad to recapitulate their origins and join in by going ashore in Africa to destroy the pirates’ safe havens.

I’m not going to go to the effort of going to an online dictionary over this, but there’s simply no way that’s a correct use of the word ‘recapitulate’.

By: mtraven

mtraven — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 02:39:17 +0000

These people treat the state, especially when at war, as if it were God — infinitely powerful, infinitely wise, and infinitely benevolent. The state can have no limits on its power and it can do no wrong, but it can be ill-served by priests whose devotion is not as fulsome as William Kristol’s, such as the moaning admirals.