by Col. W. Patrick Lang (Ret.)

The “worm has turned” in the national media.


Five of My Favorite Books
Patrick Lang



Seven Pillars of Wisdom

By T.E. Lawrence
(preferably the 1922 version)


The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam

By Martin Windrow
(Covers the whole French war and the players in depth. The best on this subject.)



The Killer Angels

By Michael Shaara

(A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Gettysburg)


Lancelot

By Walker Percy


(A novel by one of America’s finest writers)


From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East

By William Dalrymple


The author of British best-seller in Xanadu retraces ancient footsteps and composes “an evensong for a dying civilization.”


Also, OUT-OF-PRINT
A Soldier With the Arabs

by Lt. Gen. John Bagot Glubb
(Commander of the Jordanian Army for many years.)
NOTE: BoomanTribune will contact Powell’s to get this book in stock.

Reporters in the field in New Orleans and Mississippi are visibly and audibly enraged at the tragedy and destruction of what is before them. The anger filling all but the most abject media servants of the prevailing incompetence is most impressive.


Nevertheless, the bureaucracy and the ruling politicians are still doing everything they can to “spin” the situation in the way that commanders do in “after action reports” to make themselves look as good as they can manage in the face of evidence of their incompetence, neglect or cowardice.


Their remaining allies in the media are still at it. On a national news show this Sunday morning two participants known for their close government relations, both from the national media, did their best to “blame the victims.”


What was said? In response to a discussion of government failure, indifference and incompetence as a source of the protracted suffereing of the people of New Orleans, both of these people implied that it was the backwardness and injustice of society in these states that formed the background and root cause for what has happened.


We have seen a lot of cynical, methodical manipulation of public opinion in recent years. Some of this has been the fruit of the emergence of a “doctrine” of deliberate “Information Operations.” Falsehood or distortion injected into the “public mind” has become a routine of government. In addition, some of the management of information has been accomplished through the simple mechanism of threatening and intimidating media executives (overtly or implicitly) with denial of access to sources of information.


Not surprisingly, those implicated in the guilt over this present catastrophe are fighting back. Reporters from Fox News have raged against what they saw in New Orleans. The anchor talking to them did everything but disown them. Everywhere the government is defending itself as best it can by blaming state government, by blaming local government.


Now they are going to blame the people of Louisiana and Mississippi.


BELOW: Emory Upton and the “active duty force”


Emory Upton and the “active duty force”

“One lasting lesson that has to be drawn from the Gulf Coast’s misery is that from now on, the National Guard must be treated as America’s most essential homeland security force, not as as some kind of military piggy bank for the Pentagon to raid for long-term overseas missions. America clearly needs a larger active-duty Army.

It just as clearly needs a homeland based National Guard that’s fully prepared and ready for any domestic emergency.”


NY Times, 2 September,2005


Download Upton.pdf


Pat Lang

Personal Blog: Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005 || Bio || CV

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