"The Day America Died" they call this week's cover story in the Japanese edition. The cover? An American flag in a trash can.
For some of us, there's more of Truth in that flag than in the "holy" Koran. Will we riot, and call for the murder of journalists, as so many Muslims around the world allowed themselves to do toward America at Hizb-ut Tahrir-led rallies?
No; but now Newsweek is joining calls for the death of America too, or rather, asserting it as if after the fact. The "international" edition, less abusive because it is in English, is still highly aggressive.
But the American edition? They don't mention it at all. Cover story this week is on the Oscars.
It would be well to spread this as widely as possible. Newsweek can say what it wants, but it shouldn't get away with saying one thing to America's face, and another behind its back.
This behavior is beneath contempt, cowardly and craven. Zell Miller correctly stated that we would have a better country if journalists could still be challenged to duels, but this behavior is so low as to place the editors of Newsweek beneath challenging. They would, indeed, be beneath notice -- if their behavior were not undermining America's cause, endangering the lives of our soldiers, and the nascent cause of freedom in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the myriad places where reform has but recently begun.
Shame on the scoundrels. What a perfectly worthless bunch of cowards.
Riding Sun: Newsweek: America is dead
Yahoo! Mail - grimbeornr@yahoo.com
I've had a couple of emails today from people trying to help out. They wanted me to pass some information along, so here goes.
SFC Christopher Grisham writes to mention a "soldier support" concert being held this Memorial Day weekend. It's a fundraiser for Adopt A Platoon. There is a story about it here.
Soldiers' Angels is a group mentioned frequently on MilBlogs because of their extraordinary work to support the troops, and particularly the injured. They are trying to put together a welcome for Sgt Brian Currier, returning home after encountering a VBIED. They're planning to "greet this hero at the airport in style," but the email doesn't say when or which airport. If you might want to come out, though, email Patti and ask for details.
Armarillo Spoof By Royal Guard
That, at least is the only lesson I can draw from this video, shot by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards in Iraq. "Ya'll are out of uniform" seems so inadequate as a response.
Hat tip: Daniel.
The Blue Bus is calling us...: USS John F. Kennedy arrives in South Boston
Our friend and regular commenter Lizard Queen has a nice little photo gallery of the USS John F. Kennedy coming home to Boston. They've got a prototype Joint Strike Fighter on the deck. There are tours today, if any of you are in Boston.
Black Five has a post on the coming war against the military by the press. His thesis, which seems all too reasonable, is that the press is likely to rally behind Newsweek instead of the military, and do anything they can to "prove" the allegations of insensitivity. This is, of course, likely to cause harm to the military, the interests of America, and in the long term the interests of a free press. How many nations which currently do not have a free press will be eager to create one, after they watch how ours behaves?
Baldilocks reminds all those soldiers not to cooperate with the media's desire to destroy their reputation. "Some military personnel were Judases for a lousy 900 dollars. I hope they can live with the fallout," she says.
Doc Russia has a link to a page with a photo of a Cuban gentleman prisoner that you won't want to miss. We have enemies in many places, but we also have friends -- often the truly oppressed and downtrodden. It is men like these, and women like those in Afghanistan, who most love the idea of America.
On a topic not directly military, but of importance to MilBloggers and others who believe that this form of media is the wave of the future and a particular strategic advantage to the United States, the FEC is still planning to regulate blogs. Send a letter while their comment period is still ongoing.
It's been a rough couple of days around here for professional reasons, just as last week was pretty heavy. I'll be back to my usual blogging self as soon as things quiet down.
Eject! Eject! Eject!
Bill Whittle has a new essay out. It is long and winding, as they always are, but quite rewarding, as they always are.
The early part of the essay takes on the question of the abuses of the laws of war, and who is responsible for them. Mr. Whittle maintains that the refusal of the enemy to wear uniforms -- their attempt to take cover among civilians, which then requires the military to set aside some part of the protections for civilians -- makes the enemy at fault for all such abuses. That is the correct explanation as a matter of the laws of war, and the essay examines the reasons for that carefully.
However...
I often wonder what options there are for fighters in the current period. "Fourth Generation" warfare isn't something we control: the wearing away of the clear lines between civilian and combatant aren't to our advantage, and in fact the American military could not be better served than by having clear lines. Responding to the challenges posed by these enemy shifts is probably the single greatest problem facing the American military.
But, by the same token, our enemy doesn't control the shift from Third to Fourth Generation warfare either. It's easy to forget that. The fact is that, to a large degree, the enemy is fighting us this way because there is nothing left. They cannot do what the Minutemen did -- compose an army of farmers, stand in a line, and slug it out with British regulars. Stand in a line now, and you'll get a JDAM dropped on your head.
Some of these unlawful acts are indeed atrocities, and they should be condemned even by the very radicals who oppose us. Car bombings or other attacks directed against civilians; the use of atrocities against the innocent, such as beheading civilian hostages, to inspire terror; the use of the mentally retarded as suicide bombers; pretending to surrender and then detonating yourself: these things are crimes, not just against the UCMJ or the "Laws of War," but against the higher and prior laws that underlie those things. Those are truly evil acts, which ought to be abhorred by all people equally.
But the fact of fighting without uniforms is not among those things. It is morally problematic, for the reasons Whittle cites: it undermines the protection of civilians. Yet, how else can they fight us? If not by assassination, sniping, hiding, bombing military targets -- how?
I think Mr. Whittle's answer -- again, the correct answer -- is that they should not be fighting us. We are in the right. We are upholding civilization, the 'society of miracles' that he holds forth on later in the essay. These savages, who behead unarmed civilians in order to inspire terror, are simply wrong and should lay down arms.
Yet it isn't necessary that this should be the case. Consider the question from this angle: What if some future administration were actually doing the things that Democratic Underground charges Bush II with doing?
Let us say that you became convinced, correctly, that this theoretical administration was undermining the Republic and the Constitution, and actually seeking to install itself as a dictatorship -- either openly, or through perversion of the law to make elections a mere show. The elections of 2008 and 2010, say, were illegitimate elections that used outright fraud to install not just a President, but a legislature that would be pliant to him. The military was being used, not just to batter other nations into line and steal their resources, but also against our own people in accord with the administration's interests. The nation's police forces were being fielded to suppress dissent, and to terrorize innocent people who might be a problem. The administration was arresting people without charges, and holding them without trial. It was secretly endorsing the use of torture and murder: not only letting its servants get away with it, but secretly encouraging it from the very top down. Good-hearted people in the military, who try to object, are being driven out, imprisoned, or having their careers ruined. Only officers who agreed with the government were left, or were being installed where they hadn't been, and they were moving to use their units in accord with its goals.
So it's 2011. You honestly believe -- as apparently many of the subjects of Mr. Whittle's essay do -- that new Nazis have taken over the government. Many of you have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution against enemies, foriegn and domestic. Others have not, but feel as strongly about doing so. What do you do?
Pondering this, of course, demonstrates the fundamental unseriousness of the current opposition. What they actually do is hold no-account protests that do nothing but disrupt the workings of people's lives. They sit at home, in comfort, writing screeds. They go to Meet-Up meetings and talk angrily among themselves, over expensive coffee that they can easily afford.
That wouldn't do, though, if these were real Nazis.
Frankly, I think the theoretical example is and can only be that -- I do not believe that the military would enforce those sorts of illegal orders. I think they would stand true to their duty to disobey illegal orders, and would do whatever it took to restore the Republic. The military remains a strong hindrance to abuse of power by any US government. In order for the theory to ever become practice, then, the government would have to engage us in a war -- not like Iraq, but with a genuine threat like nuclear China -- that so involved the military with an actual external threat that its members could not attend to, nor consider resigning from their posts in order to address, serious Constitutional violations at home.
I think, then, that the military would have to be otherwise engaged.
On the other hand, we have seen a real example of a Federal police agency -- the very largest, BATFE -- that has been perfectly willing to be transformed in improper ways. Most of BATFE's activities are against people guilty of procedural violations, and according to a Congressional investigation, seventy-five percent of BATFE prosecutions are constitutionally improper. (See a lengthy debate on the topic, with links, at InstaPundit).
These figures should be humbling, causing the bureau to insist on going about its business more carefully and with a great deal of concern for the proprieties. Yet, instead, BATFE has simply chosen to ignore them and pretend that the facts aren't what they are. One bureau is not an uncorrectable problem, nor even several major agencies if the electoral system continues to function -- but what if it did become broken? What if we did find ourselves in an "illegal war" being used as cover by an administration attempting to engage us in a dictatorship?
It is not utterly impossible that we could find ourselves obligated, by oath and duty, to take up arms at some point in the future, against some administration yet to be conceived. Thomas Jefferson thought it likely. Any American must remember the roots of our nation in Revolution, and remember that revolution may someday again be required of us.
I mention all of this only to demonstrate that some of these guerrilla tactics might very well have to be employed -- that employing them, however distasteful, might be preferable to doing nothing. Bombing a city, even with precision munitions, is distasteful. Indeed, it is horrifying. But there are times when it is better, morally as well as in terms of practical reality, than the alternatives.
If our Islamist enemies believe that they are in such a position, then they have to fight us. Indeed, if the radical Left were serious, it should be fighting us.
We have every right to punish atrocities and terrorism. We should, however, be careful to consider which of their tactics are truly evil, and which are simply necessary. That will allow us to separate the terrorists from the honorable enemies with whom we can negotiate. The ones who behead the weak and innocent in order to inspire terror are evil. The ones who fight our military with rifles, though they do not wear uniforms -- they may not be evil men. They may simply not trust us, and be unwilling to conceed control of their nation to foreigners with rifles and bombs.
With the first sort of foe there can be no quarter. With the second, there can be a genuine peace. It is in our enemy's interest to blur those lines, just as it is in his interest to blur the line between combatant and noncombatant. We must try to keep the lines clear, as much as we can.
An imaginary �scandal� by Theodore Dalrymple
Dalrymple speaks to the philosophy of frauds:
The fact is that people who commit fraud, at least on a large scale, have lively, intelligent minds. I usually end up admiring them, despite myself. My last encounter was with a man who defrauded the government of $38,000,000 of value added tax. I am afraid that I laughed. After all, he had merely united customers with cheap goods. Unfortunately for him, he had been lifted from his tropical paradise hideaway by helicopter and then extradited. By the time I met him, though, his sentence was almost over. He had discovered Wittgenstein in prison.It's even harder for Americans, I think, to be irritated with people whose crime is tax evasion. Boston Tea Party, and all that.
"Did you have to pay the money back?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "though I would have had a shorter sentence if I had."
He had calculated that an extra two years as a guest of Her Majesty was worth it. I shook his hand, as a man who was unafraid: I could do no other.
UPDATE: I wrote that in amusement when starting into the essay. That is the point of such anecdotes -- to draw you in, with humor, so that you will stay for the sermon.
And it is quite an essay. The amusing parts are up front; the deeper you get into it, the more it proves a tragedy. In this way it is like Shakespeare, who happens to make an appearance. Give it a read.
The Adventures of Chester: The End of the Obvious Pseudo-Event
Officer of Marines Chester has an excellent post about the current situation of the global media, and how it impacts the United States' strategic goals. One of the things he challenges is the Defense Science Board's call for a "top down" revolution in conducting Strategic Communications:
No such orchestration is possible, if it ever was, for two reasons:There is a particularly American solution in the offing, as demonstrated by the MilBlogs ring. Several times in the recent past, slanders against the US military have been effectively countered by MilBloggers, acting without orders. While these operators are independent -- which gives them a credibility that official government statements do not have because of the walls of secrecy around government decisions -- they are choosing to coordinate of their own free will. Such coordination can create impressive results. Consider a few of these swarms, which are gathering around Mudville because of Greyhawk's leadership:
1) the mass media has an aversion to being the handmaiden for any government program and
2) the mass media is rapidly being replaced by a decentralized free global and private press that is unprecedented.
A top-down approach will not work if saving America's image is the goal.
On Newsweek. There's a lot to be said about this, but all of it falls under nondisclosure for me, so I won't. What should be noticed, though, is how many independent analyses gathered there.
A response to Bob Herbert's slanders was expanded to this second post. Another media-generated "the military is full of thugs" scandal, unmade by the simple fact that a lot of military men with actual experience now have a voice.
The military's own response in both cases has been muted. Even if there were a top-down authority firmly in place, however, I think Chester's right: it wouldn't be as effective as the MilBlog response, except perhaps as an additional means of raising the challenges to these stories that MilBloggers raise. It can ally itself to them, and give the rubrik of authority to their statements. But it can't do what they can do: the news media will regard any statement from such an authority as questionable simply because it was made in secret. MilBlogs offer transparency.
I don't see any reason a similar set of blogs couldn't be set up by institutions with the courage to do so. If State or CIA officials had the guts to say what General Cartwright said, we'd soon be in a stronger position as a nation. The bureaucracies don't like the idea, however, because it gives underlings a forum for complaints as well as for rising to the defense of the institution. (Consider the DiploMad.) Even this is a selling point, however, for those who are not timid. It is the independence of the voice that makes it credible. If they are free to praise or to condemn, their praise is valuable, and their condemnation can offer useful lessons for the improvement of the agency.
Protected free speech, transparency, and a shift of power away from the state and to the individual: that's the American way. Not only that, but we are the culture in the world most comfortable doing it, which means that other nations won't be able to replicate our success at it: there will be no Chinese MilBlogs ring.
If this distributed media is the wave of the future -- as many think it is, and I see no reason to disagree -- America has a chance to retain unassailably its position of information dominance. The way forward is to lift some of the restrictions on disclosure and speech by individuals who are within organizations, and then protect blog speech under the First Amendment.
Obviously there are places that cannot do so easily -- the CIA, for example, would have to think hard about what rules it might employ before allowing officers to blog. But for those that can, it is a powerful tool.
Gunfighting
As you recall, I missed out on Buy A Gun Day due to it falling on "pay exorbinant taxes day #1 of 4" for contractors. However, my generous wife has offered to dip into her own money in order to consider a firearm purchase for Father's Day, which happens also to be our wedding anniversary (and our son's birthday -- at least some years).
I'm thinking of a Bond Arms derringer, or possibly one of the Cimarron "Thunderer" Sheriff's models. Either could be carried in a pocket, I think, though the Cimarron would be harder -- maybe I can find one to examine at the next gun show out this way.
I'd like a pocket pistol for the summer, and given the short barrel and short ranges involved in such a thing, I'd prefer a heavy bullet like the .45 Long Colt. At the range at which a pocket pistol would be useful, an assailant is likely to get ahold of you or your family if you don't shut him down at once. The only ways to do that are through central nervous system shock, and by dropping the blood pressure sharply -- i.e., by striking the central nervous system itself, or the heart, or the giant arteries just above it. You've got to get through heavy bone to get to any of that.
What do you folks think? I'll entertain alternative suggestions, but I'm especially interested in people who have experience with one of these models.
B-5
I had a good time posting at B-5's haunt during his absence. Unfortunately for me, the weekend saw a spike in the amount of work I've been doing professionally; and my nondisclousure agreement causes me to refrain from blogging about topics I've done work with in that regard. As a result, I had neither time nor material for more than two posts, which you can read here and here if you like.
My fellow guest blogger, Cassandra, therefore had to carry most of the weight herself. Please note that I've added her blog to the "Other Halls" section, which I meant to do last September when we were blogging together at Mudville. If you don't know her site, you might want to get to know it. She's an interesting voice.
Arganti
Back in 1999, a great monster of a hurricane named Floyd bore down on the coastline of the American South. It was the size of Texas when it made landfall, but it had thankfully weakened in the hours just before hitting ground. Not long before it was due, it had been a powerful Category Four.
The city of Savannah, which is twelve feet about sea level at its highest point, was evacuated -- along with the coastline north and south of there for quite a while. I happened to be living in Savannah at the time. When we came back in a few days, some trees were down and the city had endured a thrashing, but there was no severe damage.
However, the evacuation and the storm had occasioned some chaos. I was out surveying the neighborhood in which I lived to see how much damage there was -- the worst was from flooding, and not the only time our home flooded while we were there.
As I turned a corner, I saw a little white kitten sitting alone and forlorn in the middle of an empty sidewalk. She looked up, saw me, and raised her tail straight into that position that kittens use to signal that they've seen their family.
"Uh-oh," I said to myself, and started walking home.
Too late! The little white kitten followed me all the way home, without me so much as touching her or encouraging her. She trotted after me as fast as she could, and walked right into the apartment in which my wife and I lived.
Well, we didn't need a cat. I should say, we didn't need another cat. We haven't had a cat in years, but at the time we had cats already. One of them, a little grey and white coward called Mosqueton, was always sneaking up on this kitten and pounding her. He didn't like her at all.
Fortunately, I had a friend who needed a cat. Unfortunately, she lived in Maryland. Still, once she had seen the pictures, she took a flight down to spend a few days visiting with us, and then when she left she took the cat.
You can see the kitten went to a good home. Happy birthday, Arganti.
BLACKFIVE
I've been asked to guest-blog over at BlackFive, while he's on the road for a few days. Since most of you probably read his site as well as mine -- and since those of you who don't probably should -- I'm just going to be posting over there for the next few days. It will save everyone some time. :) If I come up with anything interesting, I'll post a link to it here so that regular readers can debate it at this site, should you prefer. B5 gets so much traffic that a debate can be harder in that context.
Rocky Mountain News: Columnists
The Rocky Mountain News has an article on a new ban in Denver, coupled with the seizure of property. The property? People's dogs: seized and killed, because they were born pit bulls.
A uniformed officer arrives at a home. "I'll get him," she announces to her partner. Rather than fight it all, a distraught man emerges, weighs going to jail and a fine, and in the end hands over his dog.The Geek with a .45 wonders how these police happened to know who had a pit bull in the first place.
"I'm definitely sad," he later tells a reporter. "He's like a member of my family."
Later in the day, a woman pleads: "I don't have no dogs!
"There ain't no dogs in the basement!" she yells as the uniformed man and woman, responding to an informant's report of a pit bull, interrogate her. Outside, squad cars filled with police officers wait to see if they are needed.
So, here we have the animal control officers, backed up by men with guns, operating on a tip, and apparently without a warrant.The Geek is making a point about how much this looks like the way government goes after firearms: first it registers them, promising that the registration will never lead to confiscation; and then it confiscates the registered property and destroys it. We have seen this happen over and over again, worldwide.
The only thing we need to complete the scene is a refrain from the Nuremberg chorus.
Oh, wait! Here it is!"I'm just doing my job," the woman officer later laments.
But there are other points of similarity as well.
The article quotes genuine dog experts, to see how much sense it makes to ban pitbulls. Answer: none whatever. The ban -- like the so-called "Assault Weapons" ban -- was written by the ignorant. It seeks to ban something that is scary to people who don't know anything about it.
Another reason, not cited by the article, is this: the ban is breed-specific. Pitbull purebreeds are not dangerous, as I understand it, having lived around and trained dogs my whole life. What is dangerous is crossbreeds, where a pit is bred to an animal of another breed (often a Rottie), with the individual two dogs chosen for being particularly aggressive. That is, you can make a violent animal if you set out to do it. But the pitbull as a breed is playful and gentle (except to my hats -- one pit I know, named Havoc, lept up and stole one right off my head and ran away with it, chewing it merrily).
The other thing is the willingness of the police to use "grey" tactics to enforce these laws. Gwa45 cites the lack of warrants. Here is an article which has a far worse abuse, by the BATFE. The article is about .50 caliber firearms, and while the author is not sympathetic to them, he is horrified by police tactics:
Several years ago, the BATF asked [Mr. Robert Steward, who makes perfectly legal 'kits' for collectors who wish to manufacture a firearm] to stop. He refused. Shortly after that (according to published reports) two men entered his gun shop with an AR-15 rifle, requesting that he adjust the scope mount. He put it on his bench and began to work on the scope. As soon as he put a screwdriver to the gun, the men produced BATF badges and arrested him for working on an illegal machine gun. The AR-15 had been illegally converted without changing the exterior appearance.So how was he to know it was illegal? If he had taken it apart to see, he would have been just as liable under the law -- and the only reason it was in this condition was to enable the police to make him a felon. As a felon, he is forbidden from life from operating his business, as it would entail the possession of firearms.
Mr. Steward was arraigned on June 22nd. Over the objections of the prosecution, the judge released him on his own recognizance. (The prosecution claimed that Mr. Steward must be deemed a threat to his community because of his strong "second amendment views.").... It is a strange world where a federal prosecutor demands a high bail because the accused assumes the United States Constitution means what it says.Can you think of any other case in which having "strong views" on the importance of a part of the Bill of Rights is said to make you a danger to the community?
How about the Fourth Amendment? There are no dogs in my basement. Get a warrant.
How about the Fifth? You can't just take my dog and kill him, without paying me just compensation. That includes compensation for the pain and suffering endured by the three-year-old boy, who has to watch armed men lead his best friend off and kill him.
Invoke either, and you face "jail time and a fine." Your dog isn't popular, you see. We don't like his kind -- or yours.
Print Story: Rice: Gun Rights Important As Free Speech on Yahoo! News
The good doctor said something I agree with today:
Rice said she favored background checks and controls at gun shows. However, she added, 'we have to be very careful when we start abridging rights that the Founding Fathers thought very important.'If only everyone agreed with that last line, the first line would have a different context. If it weren't for the fact that there are almost endless devotees of the principle of disarming Americans, including not just Congressional lobbying groups but the United Nations' entire bureaucracy, we could have a different discussion about "checks and controls."
Rice said the Founding Fathers understood 'there might be circumstances that people like my father experienced in Birmingham, Ala., when, in fact, the police weren't going to protect you.'
'I also don't think we get to pick and choose from the Constitution,' she said in the interview, which was taped for airing Wednesday night. 'The Second Amendment is as important as the First Amendment.'
A government that took the Second Amendment seriously would enjoy a lot more trust when it thought it proper to regulate the expression of that amendment. Not perfect trust, of course, any more than any of us really trust them to regulate the First Amendment -- everyone from the ACLU to right wing bloggers agrees that the gov't can only be trusted just so far.
Still, even Second Amendment absolutists would probably agree to a national version of the Concealed Carry Permit -- a shall-issue permit that allowed carry anywhere in the United States, but in exchange for submitting to background checks and fingerprinting (at least for the purposes of the check; some states retain and others destroy the fingerprints after the check is complete). Such a government program, regulations based on a recognition that you have a right to keep and bear arms, would be broadly acceptable.
Indeed, it's possible that people might even feel comfortable enough to go further, if they could trust that the government really intended to respect the right rather than trying to regulate it away. Gun manufacturers could view government as a partner rather than an opponent, a force to help them get quality weapons to honest citizens instead of a force trying to run them out of business and possibly send them to prison.
Unhappily, we aren't there. There are too many people whose real interest is in infringing the Second.
Grim's Hall
Got up at 0400 yesterday, and here it is 0100 and I'm still awake. I had to go into Falls Church to take one of those gov't examinations that sensible people left behind long ago, the kind with no. 2 pencils and instructions that have to be read aloud. These things are required for all sorts of duties nowadays, though I'm not sure why: the kinds of things you can easily measure with those sorts of tests are limited, so why not just look at one of the existing tests I have on file? I've taken tons of them; surely by now I'm as well-categorized as I can be. ("V. Good at abstract reasoning; not so good at mathematics involving actual calculation." "Good at analogies. Less good at understanding why it's important that he should take this test.")
I've even taken all the psych tests. I know what my psych profile looks like on every one of the major models. This has only increased my suspicion that psychology is the entrail-reading of the modern world. I see no reason to choose to use these models in making hiring decisions; in fact, I'm not sure it should be legal to do so. I don't suppose it qualifies as a "religious test" for the purposes of the Constitution, but you do have to subscribe to what amounts to a religion in order to put any faith in the models.
Oh, well. Just -- A little interagency cooperation, please? I'll sign the disclosure forms, but please let me retire the little bubble sheets once and for all.
Of course, the regular workload did not decrease simply because I had to take half the day for testing. And, tomorrow is another day....
Well, time to turn in. See ya'll tomorrow.
WOAI: San Antonio News - The Alamo a Symbol of Slavery?
Green, as it happens. From Nickelodeon's segment on the history of the Alamo:
By the early 1800s, most of the people living in San Antonio were white farmers who brought their slaves with them.I guess this answers the question of whether Texas is part of the South or not. From now on, you are -- you've been consigned to the "evil slaveholding" part of America, whose every motive before about 1970 must be assumed to be racism. Having seen this train of thought work itself out in several other places, allow me to assure my history-loving Texas readers that they will require a steady supply of antacids henceforth. You have my sympathies for that, but I suppose you had to be punished for giving American Mr. G.W. Bush.
In 1829, Mexico abolished slavery and what followed was years of conflict between white farmers who wanted to keep their slaves and Mexican authorities.
This conflict led up to the battle for the Alamo.
Hat tip: NRO.
Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / how_good_was_the_good_war
Both BlackFive and Baldilocks have joined the Armed Liberal against Englishman and author Niall Ferguson. Ferguson wrote recently an article entitled "V-E Day: A Soiled Victory," which is subtitled "A look at the WWII Allies' moral shortcuts."
As BlackFive says warriors need to have a clear-eyed view of war. There are times to set it aside -- the anniversary of V-E Day being one of those times. There are times to wave the flag and play the fife and drum, and choose to believe for a little while that all uniforms are dress uniforms. The wise man has room in his mind for both myth and history, because he recognizes that he needs both myth and history. A man, a nation, a society needs its myths to stay healthy.
When that day of celebration is suitably past, however, we have to return to the clear-eyed view. We will set it aside again at the appropriate time in the future, but we should be able to consider it now. If Ferguson can't provide it -- if his piece seems "tainted," to use his own words -- perhaps others can. Yet who else is interested in doing so?
Consider this piece from the Boston Globe, by Englishman Geoffery Wheatcroft, entitled "How Good was the Good War?"
Some of these legends are more obvious than others. The French suffered a catastrophic defeat in 1940, and the compromises many Frenchmen made with their conquerors thereafter ranged from the pitiful to the wicked. More Frenchmen collaborated than resisted, and during the course of the war more Frenchmen bore arms on the Axis than on the Allied side. Against those grim truths, Charles de Gaulle consciously and brilliantly constructed a nourishing myth of Free France and Resistance that helped heal wounds and rebuild the country.We can see that this is true -- and I don't think we hold it against de Gaulle. This is what I meant when I said that a nation needs its myths to remain healthy. You can't build a nation on a recognition that yours is a society of collaborators. That is what de Gaulle would have had to have done, if he had not made myths. So, he made myths; and he was wise to do it.
One may ask why the English authors are so eager to unmake these myths, at this time. The answer is obvious: the rise of anti-war politics in Britian, which has split both their left and right political wings. The recent elections have only heightened the tensions, and so the business of scorning all wars -- even "the Good War" -- is on the minds of some.
The English are not alone. The Germans have an interest in it too. Here is a piece from Sign & Sight called "The Mongol Devastations":
The historic fires in San Francisco, Hamburg and London had nothing in common with the procedure whereby in only 17 minutes (Würzburg) or 21 minutes (Dresden), cities were showered with hundreds of thousands of incendiary bombs. These sparked thousands of fires, which within three hours became a flaming sea, several square kilometres wide. Large natural fires normally have a single source, and are driven for days by the wind. But war statistics showed that such winds played a minor role in fires caused by bombs. The real destructive power was not in the wind that drives the fire, but in the fire itself, which unleashes its own hurricane on the ground.The Germans have their reasons for wishing to teach this lesson as well. Much has been written about the experience of Nazism, and what it has done to the German conscience -- I have written on it before myself. But, as I wrote in an email to someone on the topic of the new Pope's wartime activities. My correspondant felt that the young Pope's resistance was not sufficient, and that he should have been part of the active resistance:
Neither buildings nor people can escape the logic of the elements of fire and air. A fire starts, it sets the air in motion, fire and air form a vortex extinguishing life and all that belongs to it: books, altars, hospitals, asylums, jails and jailers, the block warden and his child, the armourers, the people's court and all the people in it, the slave's barracks and the Jew's hideout, the strangler as well as the strangled. Hiroshima and Dresden, Tokyo and Kassel were transformed from cities into destructive systems.
The moral landscape of WWII Germany is not nearly as clear as it appears to Americans in retrospect. For a German citizen -- enduring both the experience of Nazism, but also the Dresden firebombings -- it would have been entirely reasonable to choose no side, but to withdraw and pray for the end. It would have taken real faith, not in God but in America, to believe that a nation that [could carry out the bombing of Dresden] was one you should aid by force of arms. We Americans naturally feel that faith, but I see no reason that a German should.We Americans do naturally feel it, and it is right that we should. America is our mother, and it is right and natural that you should love your mother even if she is a grizzly bear. Indeed, if your mother is a grizzly bear you have no better friend in the world. You can laugh and play when she overturns boulders and rips open beehives. Neither her claws nor her strength should frighten you.
Not so, the man who finds himself between her and her cub!
Not, that is, unless he is a berserker -- a "bear-shirt," who fears neither fire nor iron, because he is also a bear. Such men are myths, but they are not only myths. It is through living the myth that the road to health lies. I mean that literally. She's twenty-five feet away. The man who has convinced himself that he is living in a myth will find the strength of will to do what he must: to use his pepper spray, or his rifle, against the eight-hundred pound giant charging down on him at thirty miles an hour. Try that if you are concentrating on a "clear-eyed" view of what she's going to do to you when she gets here. There are times when "rational" and "wise" are not the same thing.
The mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, spent part of last week waving around the blackened fingernail of an atomic bomb survivor -- the word is hibakusha in the Japanese. The Japanese say that theirs is the only nation of hibakusha. That prompted the Koreans to form an organization of "Korean hibakusha," who had been kidnapped by Japanese imperialists and forced to work in Hiroshima until the American bomb blew it away.
The Japanese are now allies, who still yet may not have an army or a navy because their own nationals will not vote for a change in their constitution. The Koreans rage against everyone, Chinese, Japanese or American; they build nuclear bombs, both North and South Korea having admitted to clandestine enrichment programs in the last year. The Germans are pacifists. The English rush to cast away the mantle of victors, and to assume the mantle of victims: shame-filled creatures, made so by their fathers, whose sins they feel they have inherited. The French -- well, we have seen much of them in the last few years. They sputter like madmen, unable to decide if they are anti-warriors or imperialists, morally against American "mercenaries" or morally eager to sell arms to China.
This is what comes of breaking myths. The English want to help us break ours, even as the Koreans wish to break those of the Japanese. Thank you for the kindness, but we should prefer our myths intact.
The human mind needs both myth and history to be healthy. I am aware of all these facts, and can use them at the appropriate time, in the appropriate way. That way is this: to understand the events of today, where they are rooted and why; and to find there reasons for compassion for and fellow-feeling with the Germans, the Koreans, the Japanese. I see their anguish, and I sympathize with it. I wish to soothe it. I want them to know health, and strength, again: to be men, and even myths.
America remains healthy. It does so not because it remains strong -- it remains strong because it is healthy. It is healthy because so very much of it still retains its myths, though we are great consumers of works of history: witness any bookstore.
Raise the flag, and play "The Star-Spangled Banner." See how many American men lack for tears in their eyes. There is myth, and joy, and pride.
Take your clear-eyed look at war, and take it boldly. But look also at those who have dwelt upon the abyss, and what it has done to their hearts. Myth and poetry are the gifts of gods who love us, to bear us up and soothe our souls. There is greater health in the Iliad than in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The modern world needs both. The wise man neglects neither.
Musings of The GeekWithA.45
Congrats to The GeekWithA.45 for getting those items off his checklist. Meanwhile, Doc Russia has been doing CPR. And ParaPundit has sniffed out yet another job being done by "the invisible hand of the market."
Busy hands, all.
Marine Corps Times - News - More News
The Marine Corps Times has the story:
The Marine Corps issued to nearly 10,000 troops body armor that government experts urged the Corps to reject after tests revealed critical, life-threatening flaws in the vests.Won't stop 9mm pistol rounds! I've seen Sunday papers that would stop a 9mm round. I'm sure we all remember the photo of the guy whose tooth stopped one.
In all, the Marine Corps accepted about 19,000 Interceptor outer tactical vests from Point Blank Body Armor Inc. that failed government tests due to “multiple complete penetrations” of 9mm pistol rounds, failing scores on other ballistic or quality-assurance tests, or a combination of the two.
The officer in charge of Marine Corps Systems Command obviously knows this is bad, bad trouble. You can tell by the way he's taking full responsibility onto himself. Lt. Col. Gabriel Patricio is his name. One thing you will never see is a corporate or civilian government employee standing up to take a hit like he is doing. Can you imagine an FBI or CIA officer standing up and saying, "Yes, this was my responsibility, and I am the only one to blame"?
Pity we can't. Those agencies would be a lot better off if they were staffed with men like this. Every government agency must sometimes say that "mistakes were made." Not enough, not nearly enough, have men willing to say, "I made them."
Hat tip JH(G)D.
BLACKFIVE: Marine's Take Care Of Their Own
BlackFive has a story about a fallen K-9 Marine, and his escort out. When a Marine dog dies, he isn't buried in some shallow ditch, as a dog might be.
I am part of an organization that believed it was important enough to send two helicopters and their crews, into harms way in order to retrieve the body of one of its fallen. It made no difference that the Marine killed in action was a dog and not a man, what does matter is that each one of us involved felt the same.The Air Force treats its dogs well, too. I would be surprised to discover that any American military unit did not. It is a high demonstration of the civilization we defend, and of why it is worth defending.
To us, not only was it a warranted and reasonable utilization of Marines, Marine Corps assets and resources, but the risk to eight Marines and two aircraft was far outweighed by a pervading sense of honor, commitment and espirit de corps. Why else am I here, if not to go get a boy and his dog - both of whom are fellow Marines. Few things here have been as important as that mission to me, and to my crew as well.
The Adventures of Chester
The Adventures of Chester has an interesting piece of commentary on the subject today. Chester, an officer of Marines, examines the failure to capture bin Laden in this light -- but also several important, and less public, successes.