Pueblog USa
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Today In History — 1
....is Sir Winston Churchill’s Birthday….
....well. Not exactly. Rather it was last Tuesday, 136 years ago, America’s best ever British friend was born. I just noticed the article.
There’s a great article about him up at The Heritage Foundation.
I had not true begun to appreciate the man until I got an iPod and then found Eucalyptus—a download[much of]-the-library-of-Congress-for-nothing-more-than-the-cost-of-the-app—application.
I recently finished his accounts, as a VERY junior officer in the Royal Army, of the war against the Jihadists in the Sudan and against the war in Afghanistan, c. 1890s. The latter was the most impressive. He took a leave of absence from his regiment to become a correspondent for a London newspaper. From the front he gives interesting and informative reports of his ‘respect’ and ‘disparagement’ of the Afghans as warriors and civilized, respectively. There’s a lot in there about Islam, too, if you read between lines well enough. [Note: That takes some getting used to in this politically correct environment.]
Reading the latter’s first chapter, I realized that EVERY officer in the US Armed Forces, especially the Army—commissioned and non-commissioned—SHOULD if not MUST read this account in order to appreciate the nature of the (1) environment and (2) enemy they are going up against.