Armas Weekend Reader

11-12 March 2023

Imagine your football team kept it within one score for three quarters, and then lost by multiple scores in the fourth. Now imagine that team fandom celebrates this game for decades to come, on the grounds that it should have been a four-quarter blowout. This is basically the spirit of the Egyptian annual commemoration of the Yom Kippur War, whose fiftieth anniversary comes this year.

This week: America still isn’t ready for war, China confrontation, Hitler at Purim, Oscar campaigning, Phyllis Wheatley’s genius, vanishing Korean children, Milius’s savages, the legend of the F-4, and more. Let’s go —

1) “We are going to lose if we fight like this.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-military-china-taiwan-russia-great-power-conflict-481f7756 

2) “This month marks the 20^th anniversary of the greatest western foreign policy disaster since the Fourth Crusade. It was the pre-eminent modern-day example of folly, driven by wishful thinking, utopianism and a lack of interest in history and how human societies differ. This was mostly carried out by good people.”

Iraq was all about blood

 3) “BBC News is the most trusted news brand in America, scoring slightly above all other major U.S. news organizations.”

Why is the BBC the Most Trusted News Brand in America?

 4) While both sides deserve blame for the crisis, the Biden administration currently holds the power and refuses to designate the cartels as terrorists over diplomatic nonsense with Mexico. Here’s what must be done.”

When Will Biden Act Against The Cartels?

5) “China’s foreign minister warned that the U.S. strategy toward China risked plunging the countries into a conflict in remarks a day after Chinese leader Xi Jinping unleashed a similar verbal salvo at Washington, signaling a deepening rift between the world’s two largest economies.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-foreign-minister-says-ties-with-u-s-risk-going-off-the-rails-d7db20dc