Victory is unacceptable?

I've been working on my thinking, which will result in an essay here soon, on the necessity of causing "non-combatant" deaths to actually win wars -- then I see this clear statement of the exact opposite:

Directing military force in such a way that it kills hundreds of civilians is unacceptable behavior, and any group, tribe, or nation that does so loses all moral standing.

No war can be won on this advice. So is military victory immoral? Only if you assume no war is worth winning. Which is an alarming point of view -- especially after 9/11, which gave us a taste of the mass death the Islamic totalitarians are working to bring upon us.

NYC "Stand with Israel" rally, 7/17/2006

The NYC rally a few days into the latest Israel-Hezb'Allah war was much larger.

NYC pro-Israel rally, 7/13/2006

I would have liked to have been there. It's a good feeling to stand up, literally, for your core values.

A picture of thousands of words

Charles Petzold has put up a snapshot of the draft of his next book, which I will buy when it is published. Again, this is one of the things I love about the Internet and especially blogs: connecting, however slightly, with the minds and lives of interesting strangers in a way previously impossible. Some might think there is nothing about Mr. Petzold to be found in a picture of some papers lying on his floor, but I would disagree. I find this to be a fun, viceral glimpse beyond the manufactured lifelessness of the pressed tome I might pick up at a bookstore in a few months. I enjoy seeing the intense mental labor that went into this book, it primes my appreciation for it.

Keepers

Proud to say, my gals are keepers:



Dahlia is 10-weeks now, and she's brilliantly interactive and animated. She loves to be smiled to, and usually rewards such with big beautiful smiles, laughs, and coos. It's hard to describe how great it is to be the honored recipient of these things, the world would be jealous if it only knew.

She's grinning for a friend here:



It's oddly difficult to capture the laugh of a baby with a camera and have it look like a laugh, hopefully we are doing better with the camcorder.

Happy 4th

We continued our tradition of having family over for grilled salmon on the 4th, this year with two babies, Dahlia and cousin Henry, and Elias (a little boy now) to entertain us. We didn't see any fireworks because bedtime came too early, but I'm finding my favorite snapshots on the web this morning.

Manhattan:


The Iwo Jima Memorial in D.C.:


But the best fireworks display was in Florida. This is on my short list of things to get the children to see when they are old enough to remember: