Thursday, May 31, 2012

Cruel Hindsight

Map of Afghanistan

In a previous posting I briefly reviewed a book published in the Marxist Regimes series that gave an overview of then Marxist governed Ethiopia.1 In that review I mentioned that The Marxist Regimes series was stunningly oblivious to the signs of the imminent implosion of Marxist regimes worldwide. That the alleged value neutral approach basically led to obliviousness to the serious structural, institutional and economic problems of those regimes and tended towards moral capitulation in the face of evil and atrocity is also clear. The book about Ethiopia by Peter Schwab was an outstanding example of moral obscenity given its celebration of a vicious regime and its fawning over Dictator Mengistu.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Waterloo
A Note on Napoleon’s bad choices for subordinates.

Scene from Battle of Waterloo

The battle of Waterloo is one of the most analyzed, or more accurately over analyzed campaigns and battles of all time. In fact we have an incontestable surfeit of accounts of the campaign and battle.