Talk about a 'forever war'!

When Tulsi Garbard campagined for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, she promised to end what she called our "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Full disclosure: I voted for Tulsi in the New Hampshire primary, and I left her bumper sticker on the Subaru until last year, when I replaced it with Nikki Haley's.)

Now Ms Gabbard is Donald Trump's pick to become Director of National Intelligence. Meanwhile the president wants to take charge of Gaza, the unhappy enclave housing two million Palestinians claiming to be refugees from 1948, when the British-officered Arab Legion and detachments from seven Arab armies tried to destroy the fledgling state of Israel. How does Ms Gabbard feel about that 77-year-old conflict, I wonder?

A tumultuous twelve days

It's very bad of me, I know, but I'm hugely enjoying Donald Trump's return to the White House. He's a circus act, especially after the final half-year of the Biden presidency, as our commander-in-chief melted into obscurity like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only his frown behind.

It's all very deliberate of Mr Trump, I suppose, with each flourish of his signature an upraised middle finger to the New York Times and the Good People who take their opinions from its pages. Meanwhile his cabinet picks slide past the US Senate like so many ducks in a shooting gallery. Matt Gaetz took a dive before before the first shot was fired, so he won't be Trump's -- what was it? Secretary of Defense? -- ah, Attorney General, right. I'd quite forgotten, in all the excitement, and who could blame me?

Good riddance! Good luck!

Good riddance to our 46th president -- more inept than Jimmy Carter, more corrupt than Richard Nixon. And good luck to our 47th, who took the oath of office today. I won't be buying any $TRUMP cryptocoins, and I worry about Ukraine and indeed Taiwan, but overall I remember his first term as both entertaining and rather successful when it came to tax reform and judicial appointments. I suppose things could be worse this time, and I don't look forward to JD Vance's campaign in 2028. But what the hell? If I'm still alive in four years, I'll be 97 and too smug to worry, and if I'm not, I won't know what results from it.

Dear Leader's Kamikazes

The other day I quoted from the diary of a North Korean soldier, who wrote that he'd be happy to die for Kim Jong Un, the "Dear Leader" of his country. Another of his comrades apparently felt the same: Ukrainian troops came across a wounded North Korean soldier in Russia's Kursk province. Much as Japanese troops had done in the Second World War, the lad clutched a grenade to his chest, hoping to kill some of the enemy along with himself. The Ukraine military posted a grisly video of the encounter on its Telegram channel. The Ukrainians say they earlier killed 17 North Koreans in the same area.

Happy to die for Dear Leader

Of the estimated 12,000 North Korean soldiers sent to Russia as cannon fodder in Putin's war, as many as 4,000 have already died or been wounded in combat with Ukrainian troops. Today the Wall Street Journal tells the story of one such youngster, killed with two comrades and leaving a diary behind. “Even at the cost of my life," he wrote, "I will carry out the Supreme Commander’s orders without hesitation. I will show the world the bravery and sacrifice of Kim Jong Un’s special forces.” It's a remarkable piece of journalism, including video from a drone chasing a North Korean soldier.

Drones launching drones

Ukrainians are revolutionizing warfare as they try to hold off their much larger and more ruthless neighbor. Oddly enough, the Ukrainian Navy has been especially inventive, building what seems to be the world's best unmanned surface fleet. Not much is known about these boats, which are entirely homemade. Recently the unmanned boats have been launching unmanned aircraft that have successfully "damaged or destroyed" two Russian mobile air-defense systems like the one that shot down an Embraer passenger jet on Christmas Day. See the video on Facebook as the aerial drone targets and slams into the huge truck-mounted system. And read the story on the Kyiv Independent -- and while you're there, do sign up for its daily email update! It's the first thing I've read each morning for nearly three years now.

Rest in peace, Ágnes Keleti!

Ágnes Klein was born in Budapest, and she died there on Thursday, five days short of her 104th birthday. To be born in 1921 meant living through the Second World War, to be born a Hungarian meant a life scarred first by Hitler's Germany and then by Stalin's Russia, and to be born a Jew meant ... the Holocaust. Hungary, comparatively speaking, was fairly protective of its Jews until near the end. Though a promising gymnast, Ágnes was forced off the country's Olympic team in 1941. She survived the next four years by acquiring the identity papers of a Christian and working as a maid in the countryside. Her mother and sister also lived through the war, but her father and other relatives were gassed at Auschwitz.

Postwar, she changed her family name to Keleti to sound more Hungarian and, though rather old for a gymnast, won gold medals at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 and again four years later at Melbourne, when she was 35. (She remains the oldest woman gymnast ever to win Olympic gold.) While their team was in Melbourne, Hungarians rebelled against the "People's republic" that Stalin had forced on them, until Russian tanks rolled into Budapest and crushed the uprising. Ágnes was granted political asylum and coached Australian gymnasts until emigrating to Israel, where again she coached and taught. Five years ago she returned to Hungary, to become the country's oldest Olympian medalist the following year, and in 2023 the oldest anywhere in the world. You had a rich, interesting, and lucky life, Ánes; may you rest in peace!

Joy to the world ...

What a Christmas season Russia is giving the world! In the early morning of December 25, to celebrate the birth of the Christ child and the first day of Hannukah, Putin's jolly elves launched 184 missiles and drones against Ukraine with a special focus on hitting power plants and depriving civilians of heat and light as the winter intensifies.

Later in the day, Russian air-defense gunners targeted an airliner trying to land at Grozny airport, jamming its GPS system and probably hitting it with a missile, after which it was denied permission to land and sent on a dangerous path over the Caspian Sea. It was hit again once it reached the safety of land, making it the second civilian airliner shot down by the Russian Federation in its brief history.

As the week continued, a Russian oil tanker dragged its anchor over undersea cables in the Baltic Seas, much as a Chinese vessel did last month, and as many as 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed, wounded, or captured as Putin tries to erase Ukraine's lodgment in Kursk province.