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To the presumable distress of dictators near and far, the “Arab Spring” appears to be rumbling on, even if its name is more and more awkward, chronologically. As of this week, it seems safe to say that at the very least, Qadaffy’s prospects for hanging onto power are just-above nil. And fears that foreign intervention would prove both messy and ineffective, both, are now giving way to sighs of relief. And, inevitably, to questions about what to make of all this.

Juan Cole has basically said, “this was a valid mission, pursued appropriately and can, up to this point, be called good,” and his opinion carries a lot of weight with me. I find the arguments raised by Cole (and others) as to why this should not be regarded as “Obama’s Iraq” convincing, on their own merits, and I think the established fact that Cole is far from unwilling to criticize Obama is worth something, as well.

Meanwhile, though, I have seen examples of leftish, and libertarian, criticisms of the mission in Libya for further-eroding our Constitution. And my own attitude is rather mixed, on this point.

On one hand, I believe in Constitutional government and, more specifically, in legislative approval before the commander-in-chief can order military action. And more generally, I believe that Obama is by no means perfect, and that measured criticism is valid and indeed important, even from progressives; we can’t let “our guy” off the hook automatically if we’re to stand for anything other than ourselves.

On the other hand, well, reality check, gang. When it comes to presidents circumventing congress to send “troops” abroad, Barack Obama’s contribution has thus far been both minor and very, very late in a historical context. (more…)

Hey! I just remembered something today. Obama is a “war president!”

Funny, I had completely forgotten this. But so far as I know, members of America’s armed forces are still stationed in foreign lands where they are certainly in harm’s way at times, which per currently-prevailing definitions seems to be the definition of a war.

So I guess that Barack Obama’s a war preznit I mean, war president, too.

And so he’s exempt from any serious criticism (i.e. “treason”), and certainly exempt from being unseated by electoral challenge, even if he still goes through the motions of a re-election campaign for form’s sake.

Gosh, how silly of me to have forgotten this. Here I was almost starting to take this talk of “challengers” seriously, when obviously Obama can just point out “I’m a war president” and that’s that.

I don’t know what everyone’s going to talk about for the next year and a half. Hope there are some good movies or something.

The years go by and one after another source of precious joy in this life becomes troublesome for a body past its sell-by date (which seems to be somewhere around 23).

Meanwhile, read a few books in May; one year since these reviews began.

War Like the Thunderbolt, Russell S. Bonds. I’ve reviewed this in detail elsewhere, already. In brief, a decent and very readable account of the Battle of Atlanta, though not quite the riveting narrative which was Bonds’ earlier Stealing the General.

Go Down Together, Jeff Guinn. A recent biography of Clyde Barrow and his paramour, Bonnie Parker, better known as the legendary Bonnie & Clyde. An absolutely fantastic work, rich in absorbing detail. Definitely the best of the month.

I’m far from being an expert on Bonnie & Clyde, so I can’t evaluate this against any other works on the pair. But it certainly seems like Guinn did a lot of research, and used it to very good effect. Unsurprisingly, there’s no Hollywood glamour in the story; yet for a tale of two largely inept, ineffective small-time criminals, it’s a remarkably dramatic and even moving story.

The element of inevitable doom in Bonnie & Clyde’s tale probably contributes a lot to this, and while Guinn makes it a very real presence, he hardly had to invent it; throughout much of their brief criminal careers, B&C knew there was only one possible ending to their story, and were often completely frank and casual about it.

Perhaps the most effective and surprising ramification of this, though, is how Guinn convincingly calls into question just how much Barrow and Parker ever really had a better alternative. The story of their dead-end world in Dust-Bowl Texas, and particularly of the Barrows’ utterly dispiriting poverty, comes across as just unremittingly bleak. Unless the prospects for a young person in Depression-era Dallas slums were significantly brighter than Guinn’s account suggests, one has difficulty seeing any reason Bonnie & Clyde would have particularly preferred lives of impoverished drudgery to brief careers as famous criminals, even allowing for the deglamorized reality of the latter.

In all honesty, though written as a biography of two celebrated bandits, Go Down Together is one of the most effective works of social criticism I’ve read in a long while. (more…)