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Yesterday a friend of mine emailed that he disagreed with me about the war. I emailed back, “Good heavens, man, it’s over. We won.”
There was no house-to-house fighting for Baghdad. There was no quagmire. There was no World War III. All these things so confidently predicted by those against the war were notable by their absence.
Anyone still trying to argue against the war on the basis of injury to Iraqi civilians needs to read this article by CNN executive Eason Jordan. Crimes committed for decades by Hussein’s regime, far outweighed civilian casualties resulting from the war.
Last week those against the war were commenting that the shock-and-awe strategy hadn’t worked, and that the Iraqi army was resisting our troops more than had been anticipated.
They said the U.S. had been mistaken in expecting the Iraqi army to collapse without a fight. But isn’t that exactly what has just happened in Baghdad?
From Reuters:
Music industry group sues college file swappersLOS ANGELES, April 3 (Reuters) – A music industry group on Thursday said it has filed lawsuits against the operators of private computer networks on three college campuses where it claims the networks are being used to illegally trade copies of digital music files.
The Recording Industry Association of America said its member companies filed suit against two students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and against one student each at Princeton University and Michigan Technological University.
CD sales are down. Everybody in the music business is saying it’s because of people swapping MP3’s over the Net. But it’s really because the music companies got out of the music business.
For 10 years the music biz experimented with taking the music out of music. You don’t write new songs – you just sample old ones. You throw out the melody and harmony altogether, and just rap… or, in the case of thrash and metal music, just scream the harshest sound you can. And you don’t want much sound anyway – you don’t want a lot of instruments playing or anything like that – because it distracts you from the video. Everybody knows movie music isn’t supposed to distract you from the picture.
MTV seemed perfect when it started. The product was the ad; the ad was the product. But then the music started to change to better suit the ad, which meant – less music to distract the eye. MTV was the first to realize something was wrong – they mostly got out of the video business and started airing original shows in their place. But the music biz didn’t figure it out. Instead of changing the ad to suit the product, they minimized the product so it didn’t interfere with the ad.
So without realizing it, the music business got out of the music business and into the video business.
The music biz blames low sales on file-swapping. But why should people spend $18 to buy a CD that’s had all the music sucked out of it?
The music biz can do something about this by finding producers, songwriters, and arrangers who can invent a new pop sound for the millenium. The biz will have to be pro-active, like Berry Gordy was with Motown in the 60’s – like all the great producers, from George Martin to Dr. Dre. They need to build great chord changes, fun lyrics, and big harmonies into every track.
Eminem and Dr. Dre are a good example of this. They’re not sampling old songs – Dr. Dre is writing and producing new music, that sounds awesome. And if you listen closely to Eminem, you’ll notice that the notes he’s rapping on sound really good with Dr. Dre’s music. It’s a secret – don’t tell anyone – but Eminem’s singing.
Liberal Norah Vincent rejects “the ‘Blame America First’ brigade, which was born on 9/12 and instantly became the de facto voice of the left.” She quotes numerous liberal voices who support the war.
The hyperbole has boiled over, prompting critics such as Salon columnist Andrew Sullivan to declare: “Once the left starts equating legitimate acts of war … with the unprovoked terrorist attacks on civilians, it has lost its mind, not to speak of its soul.”But the truth is that a few brilliant voices on the sane left—most notably writers Christopher Hitchens, Nat Hentoff and Paul Berman—are spearheading a long-awaited rebirth of the intellectual left. And they have been doing this all along, if anyone cares to follow their admirable lead.
In October, after more than 20 years at the left’s house organ, the Nation, Hitchens announced his decision to leave the magazine. “I have come to realize that the magazine itself takes a side … the amoral side … in this argument and is becoming the voice and echo chamber of those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden,” he said.
Since then, Hitchens has made a leftist moral case for the war in Iraq, based largely on his contention that using American military power is legitimate if it ends gross human rights violations like those being committed against Iraqi civilians by Saddam Hussein, a sentiment notably absent from most antiwar rallies.
The full article is available here.
test post - actual date: Tuesday June 27, 2006.
Deleted comments will be transferred to this post, which has been dated April 1, 2003, so that it doesn't appear on the home page. The procedure of moving deleted comments here was begun on 5-24-07. The purpose of this procedure is to make it possible to delete comments from threads, while still having them accessible on the site, in case anyone wants to have a look at them and see exactly what they said.
