Chris Rose, of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, is one of the best and most unjustly-unknown writers in the country. Think James Lileks crossed with Dave Barry and Lewis Grizzard, except Rose spends more time in bars than with Gnats (in retrospect, that's a horrible comparison; Chris Rose is just Chris Rose, and his work can stand on its own with no help from me). His columns about a customer revolt involving a long-term waiter at Galatoire's are already legendary in New Orleans, and an utter delight to read, even if you've never been there. They're fall-on-the-floor funny if you know the city at all (I'd link it in a heartbeat if I could find the complete text; here's a tiny excerpt from an old blog page).

Here's a sample from his latest, particularly appropriate for this site:

This scenario is reproduced dozens, hundreds, thousands of times a night in New Orleans. A single drinker at the bar, a touchy-feely couple in a dark corner, an office party in a side booth, a mob of singles clogging up some tony Uptown saloon.

People are enjoying their cocktails, a word so square that it's hip again. The definition of "cocktail" varies, depending on whom you ask and where you look it up and what year you're talking about, but suffice it to say it's a mixed drink, served chilled in a glass, and it packs a punch. This much has been constant since the beginning.

And in the beginning, there was the word.

Although it sometimes seems like New Orleans claims that everything related to poker, music, prostitution and liquor was invented here, the fact is: A lot of it was.

Go make yourself a drink, then read the rest. If this doesn't start your weekend off right, you're doing something wrong.

A while back, I related my belief that John Kerry, while playing to his base and listening to his own East-coast elite sensibilities, has dug himself into a considerable hole regarding foreign policy. Previously, I talked about how Kerry’s UN- and Franco-philic statements are likely to cost him dearly among the general electorate. The other side of that coin, shortly to be held up for inspection, involves Kerry’s reckless public disdain for America’s genuine allies.

Like many on the anti-Bush left, Kerry has gone out of his way to disparage the nations who've stood alongside the US in the War on Terrorism in general and the liberation of Iraq in particular. He's referred to stalwarts like Australia, Italy, Japan, Poland, Bulgaria, South Korea and most of all, Great Britain, as a “fraudulent coalition,” dismissing them and their participation as "the bribed, the coerced, the bought and the extorted." That’s exceptionally nasty language from a guy who can turn around and assert that George W. Bush needs to be ousted so that he, Kerry, can "heal the wounds between our allies and ourselves."

Such statements no doubt play well with the Maureen Dowds and Robert Scheers* of the world, but they’re not going to go over as easily with the public when laid out by Bush during the fall debates:

"Senator, you say we need to repair relations with our allies, but you've spent your own campaign insulting America’s best friends in the world. You may think we really need the help of people who wouldn’t join us when we asked them to, but I'll take allies like Australia and Italy and Great Britain any day of the week. You seem to think we ought to throw our truest friends overboard in favor of governments and organizations that'd rather pursue pacifism and appeasement, or who've made corrupt deals with our adversaries. I think that's a poor choice.

"I also think you owe our real allies, the ones who've fought and bled right alongside our own troops, an apology. It does not befit a United States Senator, much less a president, to refer to the British and Poles and Australians and Japanese and South Koreans and all our other truest friends as 'fraudulent' or 'coerced.' They are free people who have honorably fought at our side, and they deserve our deepest thanks, not your insults."

*Scheer, a leftist LA Times columnist who’s been known to cheerlead for the barbaric Kims of North Korea, dismissed the current coalition, with particular venom directed at the former Warsaw Pact nations, as "a motley collection of nations one can buy on eBay" This juvenile insult probably came as no surprise to the few citizens of those now-free nations who might have had the misfortune to be familiar with Sheer’s work. After all, he never lifted so much as a rhetorical finger to help them when they were enslaved by the Soviets. Why would he be expected to act any differently after they'd thrown off the Communist yoke?

He's tanned, he's rested, he's ready to blog.

If you don't already know Frank Martin from the comments section here at VodkaPundit, then you've been missing out. He's finally given in to popular pressure and started his own blog.

His first week's archives are your homework assignment this weekend.

Porn is good for you.

(Work-safe link, I swear.)

Adopt a sniper.

No, I'm not kidding.

I had a few people email me, to tell me Chris Matthews lost it yet again on Hardball last night.

Anyone have a transcript?

Should Kerry win in November, print this list of linky goodness and save it for four years.

Anyone care for a thorough (and thoroughly funny) fisking of Ted Rall?

Well, here's what the European diplomacy we asked for has purchased us in Iran:

Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani warned that Iran might launch a preemptive strike against US forces in the region to prevent an attack on its nuclear facilities.

"We will not sit (with arms folded) to wait for what others will do to us. Some military commanders in Iran are convinced that preventive operations which the Americans talk about are not their monopoly," Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera TV when asked if Iran would respond to an American attack on its nuclear facilities.

"America is not the only one present in the region. We are also present, from Khost to Kandahar in Afghanistan; we are present in the Gulf and we can be present in Iraq," said Shamkhani, speaking in Farsi to the Arabic-language news channel through an interpreter.

Of course, we already know that Iran (or at least Iranian weapons) is already in Iraq, hand-in-hand with al Sadr.

And why would Iraq threaten a preemptive attack on American forces? Out if impotence:

"If Israel fires one missile at Bushehr atomic power plant, it should permanently forget about Dimona nuclear center, where it produces and keeps its nuclear weapons, and Israel would be responsible for the terrifying consequence of this move," General Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr warned.

Iran would actually have a difficult, if not impossible, time trying to attack Dimona. Better to threaten the Americans, instead.

So they think, anyway.

Ralph Peters is firmly in favor of cutting back our military presence where it's no longer needed:

Regarding the Democrats' claim that we'll lose influence in Europe, the obvious question is, "What influence?" We're not stabbing our French and German "allies" in the back. They stabbed us. And they'll do it again. Our troop posture in Europe doesn't give us influence over the Europeans — it gives the Europeans power over us.

The only way in which the president could improve his plan would be to move more of our forces to Poland and other states in New Europe, where they would be welcome, respected, able to train and allowed to deploy without hindrance.

When it comes to defending freedom, one American soldier in Poland is worth a battalion in Germany.

In Korea, the presence of our ground forces dates to a time when South Korea's military was incapable. Today, South Korean troops could handily defeat North Korea's ground forces. Our presence actually reduces our flexibility in a crisis, since our soldiers would be subject to nuclear blackmail.

And Charles Krauthammer finds the Democrats' opposition a little suspect:

Democrats accuse the administration of politicizing the redeployment by bringing it up as a campaign issue. This truly is precious. The Democrats turned their convention into a four-day teach-in celebrating the Swift boats of the Mekong River circa 1968 -- and then question the legitimacy of raising as a campaign issue for the consideration of the nation the most significant redeployment of U.S. troops abroad since the Korean War.

The president would have been culpable had he not brought it up. Not only is there an obvious policy difference between the two parties, but a president should put it on the table if he is to earn the mandate to carry out so radical a plan after the election.

It's nice to be in such fine company.

Obviously, Thursday got away from me. Here's what happened.

Woke up this morning and put on a turtleneck. Turned the furnace on, too – for the third time this month. It's tough to remember that it's supposed to be August. Considered canceling my next haircut and letting the winter length grow out, or as Melissa likes to call it, "You're vain, sweetie." Well, yeah, there's that, too.

The temp outside was in the low 40s, when it's usually more than double that this time of year. Heard rumor that it might have broken 50 this afternoon, but I'm not buying it. Obviously, we're caught in the Mother of All Albuquerque Swirls. Since you probably don't know, an Albuquerque Swirl is some local weather condition we get in late summer, making it feel like mid-fall. I hate to get all boring and technical, but it has something to do with something else down around Albuquerque that gets our weather all messed up.

Reminds me of when I was living in Eureka, California, and we'd experience a 30-day drizzle called "the Oregon Mist." As in, it missed Oregon, and hit us. Miserable.

So I spent most of the day in a mistimed November stupor – that same funk I go through after we lose Daylight Savings. Rainy days and Thursdays, apparently, always get me down. Seasonal Affective Disorder, I've heard it called. Whatever it is, I've got to get myself to a beach in Mexico.

Read the news with a complete lack of interest, made some phone calls, lost some money, and took the puppy to the vet for his annual shots. Nothing worked.

Feeling much better now, thankyouverymuch. When all else fails, you can count on biochemistry. First, drink two mugs full of Earl Gray tea that you've let steep for far too long. Once you've got a good caffeine buzz going, smoke half a cigar. Then, mellow that fine new mood with an even finer martini. It's my safe, legal version of following an eight-ball (what does that mean, anyway?) of cocaine with a liter of Jack D.

Time to get back to work.

Put a movie into the DVD player after dinner last night, and -- fell asleep on the couch. First time I've been asleep before midnight since high school, I think.

Anyway, up and and about now. Back once I've read the news.

In Seattle for a business meeting. Checked into my hotel, walked around the corner looking for a cafe with free wireless, and wound up at the city library (brand-new and very nice; I'm typing this from near the Microsoft Auditorium--hopefully I won't get booted out for using an iBook).

The DNC has college kids staked out all up and down the sidewalk. Their pitch to passers by: "Would you like to learn about defeating George Bush?"

I'm not in the habit of giving advice to the DNC, but the thought that keeps coming to my mind is, these guys have forgotten 1996. Remember that one? War hero nominated by the out-of-power party, but that party's entire focus was on how much they couldn't stand the incumbent. And they got shellacked.

Hatred didn't beat Clinton, it didn't beat Reagan, and what the hell, it didn't even beat Richard Nixon.

At any rate, it's sunny and beautiful outside, and I don't have any meetings until tomorrow morning. I'm off to dodge the DNC gauntlet and start enjoying myself.

Ronald Asmus, former Clinton-era deputy assistant secretary of state for European affairs, doesn't like the idea of decreasing our military presence in Europe and elsewhere. Normally, an issue like this one is cause for a civil and reasoned debate – but not the way Asmus makes his case. So let the fisking begin.

Harry Truman must be turning over in his grave.

I'm sure George Washington and Thomas Jefferson turned over in their graves when we put troops into Europe for the long haul. What's your point?

The planned withdrawal of U.S. troops from Europe and Asia that President Bush announced this week, if allowed to stand, could lead to the demise of the United States' key alliances across the globe, including the one that Truman considered his greatest foreign policy accomplishment: NATO.

It could also end the free ride Germany and South Korea have been enjoying for years. It could also reduce anti-American anxieties in those countries, by removing a bunch of Americans from them. Another one of Truman's best decisions was to drop nuclear bombs on Japan. But just because it was a good idea 60 years ago, doesn't mean it's a good idea today. We stopped bombing Japan because they stopped fighting back. We created NATO to defend western Europe from the Soviet Union. Or as kids today might ask, "the what Union?"

The president proposes something that generations of U.S. diplomats and soldiers fought to prevent and that our adversaries sought unsuccessfully to achieve: radical reduction of U.S. political and military influence on the European and Asian continents.

What Asmus doesn't ask himself is, "How much influence have we bought with all those troops?" Not only did Germany stand with France (which has no soldiers based in Germany) in the UN last year, but one poll showed a majority of Germans think Bush knew in advance of the 9/11 attacks. Each year for decades now, South Korean students have taken to the streets to demand our withdrawal. Maybe its time to realize we've made a bad investment, and stop throwing good money in after bad.

Of course, that would be contrary to the entire point of diplomacy, which is to keep things going your way by talking. When that fails, then you send in the Marines. So Asmus has it backwards – taking soldiers out isn't a failure of diplomacy; sending them in, is.

You'd think a professional diplomat would be aware of such simple matters.

The Bush message, delivered at a campaign rally, also smells of political opportunism.

A sitting president making a major announcement at a political rally – in an election year? We're doomed.

Under pressure but unable to withdraw troops from Iraq, the president has instead reached for what his advisers hope is the next best thing politically -- a pledge to bring the boys home from Europe and Asia.

If there's one thing Americans love, it's taking people out of friendly countries with good beer, while leaving them in countries filled with armed, angry locals and almost no beer. And, yes, Americans are so stupid that when we hear the troops are coming home from Germany, we'll think they're really coming home from Iraq. Asmus has an almost French-scale disdain for the American public.

Whether this is good or bad politics remains to be seen. But there is little doubt that it is bad strategy and bad diplomacy, for which the United States is likely to pay a heavy price.

It might be bad diplomacy – maybe – but is it really such bad strategy?

Pulling troops out of Iraq would send the signal to terrorists that their tactics can make us cut and run. Pulling troops out of Germany sends the message to Berlin that, hey, be careful what you wish for.

Pulling troops out of Iraq tells Iran that they don't have that much to fear by continuing their nuclear program. Pulling troops out of South Korea tells North Korea that our troops won't be held hostage to their nuclear bombs.

Of course, strategic thinking has never been a strong point over at Foggy Bottom.

The reasons are fairly simple.

Let's take this one simple reason – so simple, even an American can understand it! – at a time.

Help ensure that peace and stability on the continent would endure.

Well, as the EU is so fond of reminding us, they've already found the secret to lasting peace and stability: Buy off the bad guys with high-tech weapons so they'll keep selling you oil, and ignore any local atrocities (Bosnia, Kosovo) until those dreadful Americans shame you into letting them deal with them for you.

Have the capacity to support NATO and European Union expansion and project the communities of democracies eastward.

With the exceptions of Belarus and Ukraine, the Eastern Europeans seem to have that whole democracy thing pretty well down already. Besides, since when do American soldiers help expand the EU? Are we threatening to invade Lithuania if they won't sign the European Constitution?

Provide the political and military glue to enable our allies to reorient themselves militarily and prepare, together with the United States, to address new conflicts beyond the continent's borders.

With the exception of the British (and them only just barely), European militaries have atrophied to the point where we can barely train together, much less fight. We might be the glue, but what the hell are we supposed to stick to? How do we stick our GPS-guided bombs to German troops who don't even have GPS gear? How can we adhere to French doctrine, when French doctrine consists of invading former West African colonies, while decrying American unilateralism? What Asmus proposes is a shotgun wedding of Carly Fiorina to a medieval monk – it just won't work, on all kinds of levels.

Each of these goals remains important. . .

. . . to people wedded to an outdated alliance.

Each will be undercut by the president's plan.

When I read that an American President is about to do something to undercut allies like Germany and South Korea, I make a sad face. The same sad face I make after a sip of an especially icy Citron martini, or take a drag off a perfectly-wrapped Cohiba cigar.

With transatlantic relations badly frayed, Russia turning away from democracy and the United States facing the challenge of projecting stability from the Balkans to the Black Sea, Washington should be putting forward a plan to repair the transatlantic alliance, not ruin it.

How does removing the single biggest source of friction with South Korea fray our alliance with them? How does removing troops from Germany matter one whit to Putin's Russia? And how does rebasing two heavy divisions back to the United States, make any difference to the light-infantry street fighting in Iraq?

Alliances are useful so long as they're, well, useful. What utility do we get from having big Army bases in Germany? I think I've shown why we don't get much use out of them anymore – but Asmus doesn't feel any need to explain his reasoning here at all.

In Asia the stakes are just as high and the challenges perhaps greater. There the United States faces the long-term challenge of managing the rise of China as a great power. North Korea's eventual collapse and the unification of Korea will raise the question of that country's future geopolitical orientation. And such seismic events will undoubtedly have a considerable impact on the evolution of Japan's role and orientation as well.

Japan and South Korea, as anyone who reads the news already knows, are growing increasingly frustrated with having American troops around all the time. Asmus needs to explain how keeping our most important Asian allies – two countries well-able to defend themselves – permanently pissed off at us, aids our diplomacy.

In regards to China, our main concern is keeping Taiwan free. So long as we are able to surge carriers to the Formosa Straits, what need do we have a huge troop presence in Japan or Korea? And if Asmus thinks it takes an American presence to maintain anti-China sentiment anywhere in Asia, then he really ought to read some history. Chinese presence does the trick all by itself.

U.S. diplomats will have their hands full over the next decade or two trying to win the war on terrorism and help manage these multiple strategic transitions -- and will need every ounce of U.S. political and military leverage and muscle if they are to get it right. In an act of diplomatic hara-kiri, the president proposes to destroy one of the key pillars of U.S. influence just when this kind of leverage and influence is likely to be needed the most.

Again – what leverage have our troops bought us? This is the key question, and the one Asmus refuses to answer. South Korea hates us; Japan doesn't need us; the Germans are useless to us – and 50 years of American boots on the ground in those countries hasn't changed the current strategic picture one bit.

The president's plan is unfortunately further evidence of the strategic myopia that has afflicted this administration and is undercutting the United States' standing in the world. At a time when we should be mobilizing and reinvigorating our alliances in Europe and Asia, we are dismantling them. Instead of creating multilateral structures to mobilize the world in a common struggle against terrorism and new anti-Western ideologies and movements, we opt for a unilateral course that leaves us with fewer friends. As opposed to balancing the political and military requirements of a new era and coming up with a new troop deployment plan that meets both needs, the administration allows the Pentagon to ride roughshod over broader U.S. strategy and diplomacy and destroy the work of generations of diplomats and soldiers.

Again – what leverage? And as for the Pentagon riding "roughshod" over policy – it's the State Department which has kept us from killing Muqtada al-Sadr, while undercutting Iyad Allawi. But then, the Pentagon is filled with brutish types in combat boots, while State is filled with Georgetown types in bespoke shoes.

Is there room for reconfiguring the U.S. military deployment plan overseas and modernizing it for a new era? Of course, there is. But such a review must also be part of a new strategic approach to alliance-building to confront the new threats we face. It must take into account our political and military requirements and the views of our allies. The president should have given a speech in Ohio on how he planned to repair the United States' alliances for the future -- and our new global military posture should reflect that goal as well. Why has no administration official come forward with any ideas on repairing the United States' alliance relationships?

They have. We asked Europe to take the lead in defanging Iran's nuclear ambitions – and they've failed. We asked Europe to take the lead in stopping the genocide in Sudan – and they've signed big oil deals with the killers. We asked South Korea to help us deal with the North – and their best plan involves paying more protection money. We asked Japan to get their financial affairs in order – and their response was to do, essentially, nothing.

Sen. John Kerry has recognized that the lesson of Sept. 11 is that the U.S. need for allies is going up, not down.

But he has yet to detail how he'd garner any new support, how much we'd have to give up to get it, or why France's oil interests in Iraq are more important than our interests in building democracy there.

He has pledged to make the reinvigoration of U.S. alliances a foreign policy priority.

Good to know that, when there's a war on, John Kerry is more interested in gaining friends than killing enemies.

He has claimed that his election would allow for a "fresh start" and close a remarkably divisive chapter in relations with many of our close allies.

See above.

There is little doubt that Kerry's election would be enthusiastically welcomed in both Europe and Asia.

Last I heard, Europe and Asia don't get to vote in American elections.

But it is time for the senator to take the next step and lay out a concrete plan for how his administration would reverse the damage done by President Bush and reinvigorate the United States' alliances to meet the dangers we face.

See: Oxymoron, definition of.

Part of that plan should be to freeze and review the ill-conceived plan the president put forth this week in Ohio.

Well, there's nothing like starting off a brand-new Administration with a little old-fashioned kowtowing.

I've got a fisking to perform. The latenight blogging will be later than usual.

Exceptionally weird dreams the last two nights. A sampling; make of it what you will:

Picture a long wooden table on top of a vast, wind-swept plateau, not unlike the one in the movie of "The Two Towers." Seated around the table are the members of Aerosmith, dressed in heavy, ornate robes and furs. At one head of the table is Moe Syzlak from The Simpsons, but Moe isn't a cartoon; he looks a lot like one of the lizard guards from "Den" in "Heavy Metal." Moe's voice-over says, "And now for another edition of, Ask Aerosmith!"

Moe asks a philosophical question (I can't remember it exactly) of Brad Whitford, who's wearing a dark blue fur-trimmed robe. There's a large, nasty-looking knife embedded in the back of Whitford's high-backed chair, just to the left of his head. Whitford does not answer to Moe's satisfaction. Moe picks up an identical thick-bladed knife and hurls it at Whitford with an epithet. It thunks into his chest, and Whitford flips backwards out of his chair and off the edge of the plateau, falling hundreds of feet to the valley floor below. Then Moe turns to Steven Tyler, seated at the far end of the table.

And I wake up.

I am not an Aerosmith fan. Go figure.

Then there's last night. I'm watching a documentary about a country-bluegrass-mariachi-tinged trio (possibly related to my seeing BR549 and ZZ Top a few hours earlier, in waking life). They're not bad, either. Not great, but not "ugh, let's go somewhere else" bad. Mildly entertaining, in a kitchy way. After listening to them play for a bit, the story focuses in on one of the members, a stout, balding Mexican guy who plays some kind of funky accordion. We see him cleaning up a large, dingy, industrial-looking bathroom. Perhaps this is his day job?

But then we see him applying vast amounts of a gooey soap to some kind of dispenser on the wall, meticulously cleaning it out with a dirty rag. His face is twisted in painful concentration. Then we see him standing on a sink, reaching up into an overhead air vent. He begins to pull out wiring, metal ducts, plastic parts, vast amounts of old hardware strapped together in a large, precarious column.

Eventually, we realize that he is an obsessive-compulsive, driven to take apart and clean these fixtures madly. His hands are slashed to ribbons by his efforts, the blood mingling with water and thick liquid soap as he scrubs parts in a filthy sink.

Then the dog had a dream, too, and his whimpering woke me up.

For a criminal psychopath, Adolf Hitler could sometimes be strangely legal-minded. Yeah, he started a bunch of wars, but in his warped brain, he always had a good reason.

Believe it or not, Hitler wanted war with Czechoslovakia. "Plan Grün" was Hitler's plan for the invasion of that country – and he would have gotten it, too, had Neville Chamberlain not intervened and handed the country over to Germany, gratis, at the Munich Conference. Privately, Hitler was furious that he didn't get his war. And why did he want war? For the "legalistic" reason that Czechoslovakia's Sudeten region was full of ethnic Germans, and thus ripe for the picking.

Poland's situation was near-identical to Czechoslovakia's. Germany had lost its Posen province, and bits of Silesia and Pomerania to Poland after the First World War. There was also the "Free City" of Danzig – historically Polish, but by 1939 mostly-ethnic German, and under de facto Polish control. So there were lots of German nationals living under "intolerable" Polish rule – thus making Poland ripe for the picking.

Truth is, Hitler never wanted war with Britain or France. Well – at least not with Britain. Hitler certainly wanted Alsace-Lorraine back from France, but he didn't expect the French to fight for it – much less to fight for Poland's sake. However, having gotten war with the Franco-British alliance, he wasn't shy about invading any countries he felt he needed to in order to beat them. The list included Norway (to protect his Swedish ore imports from the RAF and Royal Navy), Denmark (as a bridgehead to Norway), and Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg (as bridgeheads into France, north of France's defensive Maginot Line).

In each case, Hitler felt he had a legal justification for war, even when the justification was something as flimsy as his silly Master Race theories.

Russia was a special case.

Other than the Volga Germans and some old-time German communities in the Ukraine, Hitler didn't have any historic reason to invade the Soviet Union. But he certainly had a Master Race excuse. Germans, Hitler felt, needed lebensraum in order to take their rightful place as a great power. Lebensraum translates literally as "living space," but my high school German teacher, Doctor Albert Kalmar, always jokes that it meant "elbow room." Germany's natural frontiers simply couldn't hold the 300 million Germans that Hitler envisioned running the world – but tacking on the territory of European Russia would have done the trick.

NOTE: Some of you, I'm sure, are scratching your heads at the phrase, "Volga Germans." Fact is, before WWII, there were German farming communities all across Ukraine and southern Russia. The largest concentration was around the "Russian" cities, Saratov and Engels. So concentrated, that under the Soviet Union's ethnic republic formulation, there was a "Volga German" autonomous area, right up until 1941. When Germany invaded, Stalin either killed or deported all the native Germans of the region, even though the large majority of them never fought against Moscow.

And since Russia's Slavic peoples were untermenschen, that made the Soviet Union ripe for the picking, too.

Now then. Imagine for a moment it's the fall of 1940, and you are Adolf Hitler. Poland is gone from the map yet again, divided with Stalin in (what should be called) the Fourth Partition. Czechoslovakia is a dim memory. Norway, Denmark, and the Low Countries aren't digested, but they are still yours. France is beaten, and endearingly collaborationist. Great Britain stands defiant, since your air war failed to neutralize either their air force or their fleet. It's time to turn your direction east, to Russia.

You want a spring offensive, giving you six months to prepare. You need every advantage you can get. Finland is on your side, if only because they're already fighting their own war with Stalin. The choicest bits of Poland are yours, and Russia's other western border (as defined by Romania) has come to your side. You have 1,000 miles of contiguous front with the Soviet Union, and yet. . .

. . .and yet, the thing you need most, and the thing Russia has the most of, still lies over 1,500 miles from the frontier. That thing is oil. It's in the Soviet Caucasus, around the Azerbaijani city of Baku. You need it, they have it, and there's a whole lot of hostile territory between you and it.

But Baku, oil capital of your enemy, lies only a couple hundred miles from Turkey's eastern border. If you could deploy just one Panzer Corps in Turkey, you could seize Russia's oil fields in under a month.

Hitler must've sprung a little Füehrerwood, just thinking of what he could have done with a couple of bases and some stockpiled materiel in eastern Turkey.

In real life, Hitler never invaded Turkey. Instead, he launched his Spring, 1941 campaigns against Yugoslavia and Greece. Before invading Russia, he wagered, he'd better secure his Balkan flank against British adventurism out of Greece. Since the Yugos wouldn't allow Hitler to move through their territory on his way to smashing the Brits in Greece, he decided the Yugos were ripe for the picking, too.

Fact is, Britain could never have launched a great Balkan offensive from Greece. The logistical problems were near-insurmountable, and Britain didn't have the manpower or the logistics. So instead, let's pretend that Hitler invaded Turkey.

The going wouldn't have been easy. Sure, Istanbul would have fallen within a week, thanks to Germany's ability to launch the invasion from Bulgaria. After that, Hitler would have found it harder going. Turkey's Anatolian heartland consists of a lot of mountains, and river valleys all traveling in unhelpful directions. Getting supplies across the Black Sea, or even over the Dardanelles, would have been a major headache. The fighting would have been kind of war Hitler didn't like to fight – very un-lightning-like, and perhaps even protracted.

Nevertheless, Turkey probably wouldn't have held out for more than 3-6 months. Between Nazi Germany's military prowess, and Turkey's own Hitler-friendly Fifth Columnists, effective resistance probably would have ended in April or May of 1941, assuming a D-Day of January 1.
The assaulting divisions would have needed time to rest, recoup and retrain. Let's give them six weeks or so – which still gives us June 22, 1941 as D-Day for Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union. (For you non-history buffs, if you've read this far, that's the day Hitler invaded Russia in the real world.)

Let's assume that the rest of Operation Barbarossa was launched according to schedule – minus the 18-24 divisions (that's my best guess as to what Germany would have needed to defeat the Turks) now based in Turkey, rather than on the Nazi-Soviet border.

Maybe Hitler's spearheads into the western Soviet Union wouldn't have been quite as successful as they were in actuality – killing or capturing "only" a million Soviet soldiers, instead of two million. But what Hitler could have achieved, had he been able to open the war, from Day One, with a Caucasian Front. . .

Within six weeks of the start of the campaign – by August 3 – Stalin would have been cut off from his primary source of oil. Thanks to Russia's scorched-earth policy, Hitler probably wouldn't have been able to use any of those captured oil fields – but that wouldn't have mattered. Hitler never captured Baku, yet still almost beat the Soviets. Had Russia been denied her oil, she may well have been forced out of the war before the first winter.

With Baku captured, there would have been no Battle of Stalingrad to destroy the German 6th Army. Without Stalingrad, there would have been no Battle of Kursk, to cut the heart out of the German panzer corps. Without those two battles, there would have been no Russia to stop the German onslaught. And without Russia, there would never have been an allied victory in World War II.

So why didn't Hitler invade Turkey?

In Hitler's mind, he had no just cause. Turkey had no German minority to bring under his regime. Turkey offered Germany no lebensraum. And unlike Britain or France, Turkey was never "dumb" enough to declare war on Germany. Essentially, the psychopath who was bold enough to envision wiping 100 million Slavs and Jews from the face of the earth, lacked the imagination to come up with an excuse to invade the one country who could have guaranteed him success.

For that, we can all be thankful.

Especially women's beach volleyball.

(Clicking "Read More" might not be entirely work safe.)

Larry Sabato doesn't think New Jersey's McGreevey Situation will put the state in play for Bush -- but it might just have national repercussions for the Republicans:

The Democrats may have New Jersey locked up, except in the very unlikely case of a Bush landslide, but the Republicans can squeeze some advantage out of the messy McGreevey matter in some of the key battleground states. Here's how. As of now, it appears that there will be referenda in eleven states on the subject of gay marriage, held simultaneously with the November presidential election: Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, and Utah. You'll notice that this includes the swing states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon. Missouri has already had its referendum on primary day on August 3, and the results were stunningly one-sided: 71 percent in favor of keeping marriage between a man and a woman, only 29 percent in favor of permitting same-gender marriage.

We'll bet the referenda pass everywhere, even in liberal states, and by large margins in most places. This helps George W. Bush. For one thing, it stimulates gigantic turnouts by conservative Christians, who overwhelmingly favor Bush's reelection--and whose absence from the polls in large numbers may have cost Bush the popular vote in 2000. (Gays will also have record voter turnouts, but the numbers aren't there in most states to match the increased conservative participation.) Second, this hot-button social issue has the potential to equal the emotion being generated by Iraq. Just as Kerry benefits from the anti-Iraq fervor, so too will Bush profit from the gay marriage issue.

As longtime readers here know, I strongly favor gay marriage. But I'm afraid that New Jersey's gay governor has done more to set back the cause than George W. Bush ever will.

Bruce Bridges forwarded an Amir Taheri column to me, but he didn't have a link. I couldn't dig one up, either, but here's the good part:

According to officials in Athens, the number of Muslim women participating in this year's game is the lowest since 1960. Several Muslim countries have sent no women athletes at all; others, such as Iran, are taking part with only one, in full hijab. And state-owned TV networks in many Muslim countries, including Iran and Egypt, have received instructions to limit coverage of events featuring women athletes at Athens to a minimum.

Where is the feminist outcry?

I'll post the whole thing under the "Read More" button until I can find a link to the original article.

UPDATE: David has the link from the New York Post.

"We have better hair," John Kerry said five weeks ago.

Well -- you get what you pay for.

*My just-woke-up hair is better than Kerry's. Just sayin', is all.

Is this thing on? Looks like it finally is. Bad internet connection most of Monday, but we're back in business now.

Time for a cocktail and a look at the news.