Sunday, August 14, 2011

A Couple of Things in August


Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, 1961

On vacation, at home, trying to achieve that balance between relaxation/necessary work/creative endeavor. A couple of things have come to mind in the last few days.

First off, we have the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, which took the Western Allies in Berlin by surprise at the time, although it shouldn't have. The situation was very tense 50 years ago in Berlin and this tension lasted, if in a lesser degree, to the time 28 years later when the people brought that wall down. So, what was initiated by a state with with limited popular support (based mostly on a grotesque view of the "other") lasted only as long as the people it was meant to control submitted themselves to that control (that is Weberian social action theory). It took 28 years, but it happened which is the point to remember.

There are also those who argue that the whole thing was overblown, that the Soviet Army would never have attacked, that "all they wanted was peace", or "their economy was going down the tubes" ,or amazingly, that it was our military budgets (spending) which drove the USSR over the edge. It's amazing how so many people see these arguments as believable and at the same time today believe in a Global Jihadist Threat. That is the full spectrum of views in regards to the USSR unite in one simplistic view regarding the Global War on Terror.

So to make it even clearer, the USSR as a qualified threat (actually a potentially existential threat) which required certain changes in our government structure (the establishment of the National Security State after 1947) but virtually none in our Constitutional or legal systems, whereas Al Qaida's actions since 2001 have initiated a whole series of drastic (and sometimes illegal) changes in virtually every aspect of our society? Yet in what way is Al Qaida any sort of threat in the way the USSR was?

Recently a documentary was aired in Germany which addressed the Warsaw Pact plans for the conquest of West Berlin which was in turn the subject of a large East German Army field exercise in 1988, that is a year before the wall came down. It's actually a common element in corrupt elites which are on the verge of collapse, that is the consideration of the use of military power to some how remedy the situation, turn things around, remove the pressure to "reform", that is respond to public pressure. Obviously the government of the German Democratic Republic felt secure enough in 1988 to have this as an option, the people were "manageable" enough in terms of propaganda, fear, incentives and what ever other elements of power/inducement the state could muster.

What made a difference at the end of the Cold War, was of course the top man on their side, M. Gorbachev, who was a great human being, but a lousy Communist. "Communist" defined in terms of perpetuating the interests and power of the Communist elite, much as we would define our own leadership/elite today.

Consider how Eastern Europe with a worn out and discredited social/economic system in 1989 compares to the West - and especially the US - today?

So that's one thing.

The other is a response I got on one of FDChief's threads. I commented this to Andy:

"I think most serving in the armed forces today would disagree with your characterization that they are "imperials." "

Agree, but what is the actual effect of what these American "warriors" are doing? Some would argue this is all about empire, or would you argue that there actually exists a "global threat" which requires our military actions on such a scale as a response?

Are we on the defensive or the offensive? Is the enemy a threat to our "freedom" or simply responding to our depredations? A very basic question from a strategic theory perspective; I suppose it comes down to that . . .


Andy was kind enough to respond:

That's a good point, but these wars aren't "imperial" simply because they are strategically incoherent. If we were installing Viceroy's in Iraq and/or Afghanistan and granting US corporations exclusive rights to territorial resources, then I'd think these would be "imperial" wars. We would have a clear purpose that would, theoretically at least, provide us a clear and material benefit.

What have we gained? What is the purpose? IMO, as I've said before, I think these are now wars of national honor and the reason we are still there is that our politicians think they can't leave without a clear "win" and the American people don't want to suffer the perceived psychological consequences of a Vietnam-like "failure." The sunk-cost fallacy is also at work.

After a bit more thinking, I'll add this to my earlier thoughts: Maybe it's an artifact of the AVF, but for me and most people I know, service is in large part about "serving the nation" and the deal is that if you want to serve the nation, you don't get to pick and choose your wars. Almost everyone today, including me, continue to serve by choice despite misgivings about our current conflicts (obviously, my misgivings are not everyone's). Each individual, therefore, has to balance whether service is worth the downsides, whatever those downsides may be. For most people, continued service is not worth the cost and they either choose not to join at all or serve one or two hitches.

So I guess it strikes me as - not sure how to put this - "unfair" to suggest that the sacrifice these men made is somehow diminished because the campaign they fought and died in didn't rise to someone else's arbitrary level of righteousness. I have a hard time entertaining the notion that the sacrifice of a soldier in WWII who was accidentally killed by by his own troops is somehow greater or more honorable than those guys in the 47, or the soldier in Iraq who dies to save his men. Everyone has their own opinion and I'm not claiming any moral high ground here, but for me personally I feel completely unqualified to make such judgments.


I think Andy's comment very articulate and informative, but communicating something else then what he intended, possibly. I assume no agendas/political views beyond the content of this single comment, rather simply separate and develop the points made.

First, my questions were addressed to a citizen/the citizenry of the political community called the USA, not to the troops who go where they are sent. If these military members serve the nation, then it is the responsibility of the citizenry that the political leadership (in theory our elected representatives) ensure that they are actually operating in the interests of the US. An elite that arbitrarily uses the powers of the state for their own narrow interests is by definition a tyranny.

Second, while the US political purpose is "incoherent" it is not blatantly so - no "Viceroys" ruling in our name - and the series of wars seemingly provide no benefit to the nation at all. That is where this consideration ends, though without considering that the wars in question might actually support the interests of the elite, while providing the nation with no benefit, are in fact contrary to our political community's interests. This of course within a context of constant government deception and propaganda, in effect selling this necessarily ambiguous threat as "existential". This in turn would indicate a very serious state of affairs, the collapse of the concept of citizenship, accountability of elected officials, consideration of the long-term effects of what is carried out in our name, how our policies might actually bring about the "war of civilizations" hornets nest we insist on beating . . . the questions only become more serious as you follow this line of thought . . .

Third, it seems that this view argues that as long as the military assumes the war passes whatever their own subjective smell test is, it will continue, since by continuing the military "serves the nation" and upholds its own "honor". For those military members unable to deal with this, they get out after "one or two tours". That is it is only those career military who actually count.

Finally, arguing against these wars is simply exercising an "arbitrary level of righteousness" against, not the political leadership, they enter into this discussion not at all, but against the military: that is "attacking the troops".

In all I would label his view, "21st Century US militarism" which indicates for me a collapse of all our traditional ideals of the citizen, the political leadership, the military and even the use of state force itself.

Postscript (from one of my comments below):

--We're talking a lot about symptoms, but not much about causes. If we go to the actual root causes then I think we get an idea of the extent of the crisis facing not only the US, but also the West (but to a lesser degree).

Systemic failure due to elites who simply cannot divorce themselves from the Weltanschauung which educated, formed and conditioned them and has been shown to be dysfunctional, incapable of reform or even acknowledging the extent of the crisis.

Obama is a product of the same elite system of education and indoctrination. He vacations on Martha's Vineyard since that is where the East Coast elite go and he wishes very much to signal that he is one with that elite. It's not based on race or ethnic background, but on class and sharing the same background which is the glue that holds the whole thing together.

The same Ivy League idiots who ran the economy off a cliff are retained and rewarded since there are no others to replace them with. This crop would be replaced with the same systems managers who caused the last big crack up.

Ditto with every major institution we have - the military included - the same thinking but from the service academies.

Our elite cannot deal with systemic failure because simply they are NOT even aware they are dealing with a failed system, rather for them this is the one and only "reality" and scary brown people who "hate our freedom" are definitely part of it.

Consider the group reading these words. How many of us are autodidacts, who have been fundamental to our own individual educations? How many of us are by nature critical thinkers? How many of us see the world, not in binary black/white, but in infinite shades of gray? How many of us see that in America today there are no actual conservative or progressive political alternatives?

And there's something else . . .

I think those who see this disaster more clearly also have a coherent system of values. I know that word has been debased for decades, but consider what I'm talking about is not "right" and "wrong" but a coherent structure. This was common in the past, btw, in all healthy societies. Values are not what make us "feel good about ourselves", but give meaning to our world. Many times we have found ourselves not living up to our own values, which is the opposite of the sanctimonious buffoonery (actually narrow self-centered interest) common today. These values reflect in turn our belonging to a larger community, and it is in many cases this poor reflection which discourages us perhaps the most.

The country has changed or rather has been changed, but we have not, nor will we. Imo the growing conflict in the US today is not between "Left" and "Right", or "Liberal" and "Conservative", but between the elite and their stooges (both Obamaites and Right Wing Nihilists), and the anti-elite, which is a diffuse and reactionary movement. Given the disparity of power, the best strategy - as we have spoken about before - is one similar to that taken by the peoples of Eastern Europe prior to 1989 . . .

Essentially we are the anti-elite . . .

--

We need to start with simple definitions. First "Empire" . . .

46 comments:

  1. We have learned in the past two decades that the Soviets since Stalin did indeed not seriously want to conquer Western Europe, much less North America.

    They did have plans and exercises, yes - but every competent military does this (hint- NATO officially declared that it had not developed plans to defend the Baltic until recently!!!).

    There was also a standing order of the central party committee since the 70's to not prepare for a nuclear first strike. It appears as if the 'the Russians will go nuclear on day 1 or 2' myth among NATO forces was really just a myth. It was a myth that was probably meant to excuse our many shortcomings, such as too few reserves, too little ammunition stocks and so on.

    There are still lost of Cold War myths and perceptions that survived till today and keep us partially in fantasy land.
    The Marshall Plan, for example, had a tiny role in European economic recovery. It was cheerleaded because it was a demonstrating of solidarity, but the earlier and the more a country got from the Marshall Plan, the worse was its economic recovery. It did not hurt; instead, it was simply close to irrelevant next tot he market forces.

    There are also strange conceptions about the need for interventions, the utility of 'containment', the need for large nuclear deterrence and the need for high seas naval power that linger till today and lead to massive mis-allocations of resources.

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  2. Sven-

    That the Soviets did not really wish to "conquer Western Europe" is not the same as saying they did not have the military to accomplish that feat, or at least knock out West Germany. The USSR saw their military as an instrument for state policy and had they seen a forced reunification of Germany in their interests and achievable at "acceptable cost" (which is quite different from a Soviet perspective), then it would have been an option and given a certain sequence of events . . .

    I debriefed former NVA/Soviet Army officers as to their military capabilities/functions. Their capabilities, level of military readiness and willingness to follow orders do not count as one of your "myths".

    As to fantasy land, the only one I see - and not really very comparable to anything in the past - is the current Global War on Terror . . .

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  3. Andy's comments were entirely consistent with the sort of attitude I encountered amongst about 70-80 percent of the people I served with and are fairly standard issue. Every U.S. serviceman clings to the idea that they are the spiritual descendants of Washington's Continental Line, that American power as personified by them and their military unit is exercised only for "good", and hate to even consider the notion that they are sent places to kill and be killed for cynical reasons that the Duke of Parma would have been comfortable with. Smedley Butlers are as few and far-between in the U.S. armed services as they are in any military.

    But I don't write here for the armed services, and, thus, that opinion bears no more weight on this issue that any other and less than some.

    For one thing, in a republic the opinions of the soldiery are not only irrelevant but actually dangerous if those opinions are elevated above the instructions of the republic's government. The military's assessment of military conditions is of value to the citizenry as it affects their ability to make good decisions. The military's "will to win", their desire to "continue the mission" is not if it is not shared by the civilian population.

    And, second, most of us here are primarily civilians, and it is as The People and the putative masters of the nation that I am trying to shape and discuss our opinions. As a serviceman my primary concerns for a war, any war, was how to best prepare my soldiers for it, the most successful way to fight it, and the most likely way for my soldiers to win it. Considerations of the value of the war itself, of whether its objectives were worth the cost to the nation were WAY above my echelon.

    But as a citizen the priorities are exactly reversed. I cannot, and should not, determine how this war, or any war, is fought. Tactics, and even strategy, are way below my echelon.

    But grand strategy, geopolitical objectives? As one of the supposed rulers, a member of the People in "We the People", of the United States those are very much my business. And among those are things like national honor and the decent conduct of my nation among other nations.

    So judging the the wars in central Asia - for their utility, their morality, their benefit to the nation and it's people if they are won (at a certain cost) versus if they are lost (at another cost)...as a citizen, the sort of citizen the Founder and Framers intended to take part in ruling the nation, those are all vital, indeed, crucial concerns.

    (con't)

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  4. (con't from above)

    As you note, this level of citizenship has not just been elided in relation to our recent adventures into political/propaganda war but has been actively discouraged. The "Washington Rules" as applied to the more cynical aspects of imperial war - that is, wars fought at the far edges of the U.S.' corona of hegemony for increasingly incoherent reasons and "benefits" that accrue primarily not to the nation as a whole but rather to the small coterie of military, political, and economic eminences that orbit around Capitol Hill - require that the citizenry explicitly NOT question or demand hard information regarding the rationales, conditions, conduct, prospects, and potential aftereffects of these "little wars".

    The "support the troops" (and, by inference, assigning undue importance to the opinions of the soldiery reagarding the worth of these wars and the value of their own service in them) is just one more part of this shift further away from what popular sovereignty remains.

    But all of this military business is also entirely consistent with the changes in the U.S. government and governance and its relationship with the ideal of popular sovereignty that you note have been wrought by the "War on Terror".

    In a nation where war is peace, where guns are divorced from butter, where Patriot Acts have "secret" Patriot Acts that are too secret to be revealed to the very people that they are spying on and surveiling, where client kings whose thrones are borne on our bayonets are "allies" and foreign rebels who hate those kings and the destruction we wreak on their lands are "terrorists", where we are instructed to support the troops and go shopping rather than inquire as to the whys and the ends of the wars we fight in distant lands for opaque reasons...well, in that nation "21st Century U.S. militarism" is the New Imperialism.

    Smedley Butler, could he see all this, would be looking on with an angry, knowing sneer.

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  5. FDChief-

    Your last response on your thread in question (Publius noticed this as well) addressed Andy's comment well, but I thought I might just get a bit more out of it (and you) and thus we see I have. Nice comment.

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  6. FDChief-

    "In a nation where war is peace . . . "

    That whole paragraph essentially describes our current political dysfunction.

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  7. Seydlitz,

    Thanks, I've been gone for a couple of days and am in the process of catching up. There is much for me to agree with in your post:

    If these military members serve the nation, then it is the responsibility of the citizenry that the political leadership (in theory our elected representatives) ensure that they are actually operating in the interests of the US. An elite that arbitrarily uses the powers of the state for their own narrow interests is by definition a tyranny.

    The only caveat I have here is that I don't think it is tyranny in the case of the US because it's not clear that these wars are not in the "national interest" providing you define "national interest" as the collective will of the governed. There isn't a tsunami of opposition to our wars that our elites are ignoring. Rather, the populace doesn't much care, has its own problems to worry about, and so the elites are, for now, relatively free to act within certain constraints. So instead of tyranny, perhaps a better word is negligence. However, I would have to go further than this since I think the elites are genuine in their fear of public reaction if the US should be perceived as "losing" these wars. So, I think it is that fear which is responsible for the acquiescence of many elites to the status-quo policy in Afghanistan along with the fear that another attack on American soil would inevitably be blamed on the faction that tried to change to a more rational policy. Which brings me to:

    This of course within a context of constant government deception and propaganda, in effect selling this necessarily ambiguous threat as "existential".

    I get what you are saying, and I agree in part, but I don't think the propaganda and deception is the primary factor which prevents the people from forcing the elites to change course. As we've noted here many times, the vast majority of the public has no real stake in these conflicts beyond narrow questions of partisan loyalty and vague notions, based largely in ignorance, of the Islamic "other." Here propaganda does play a role but I'm not convinced it is a decisive one. That said, polling shows that a non-trivial number of Americans believe Islamic-based terrorism is a threat and that the government is not doing enough about it.

    Of course, identifying a "threat" is only part of question since there are various means to combat a threat. Where I think a lot of elites failed is in making the case against the "fighting them over there so we don't fight them here" meme that's come from the right. Here I generally agree with Pat Lang's proposals, but unfortunately ideas on how to do "more with less" are not gaining much traction.

    (cont)

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  8. (cont from above)

    Third, it seems that this view argues that as long as the military assumes the war passes whatever their own subjective smell test is, it will continue, since by continuing the military "serves the nation" and upholds its own "honor".

    As noted before, the military doesn't get to decide. The military leadership and lot of people in the service, based on a small anecdotal sample of people I know personally, did not think Libya was a good idea, for example, but they were overruled, they saluted smartly and went about the business of trying to carry out the policy, as flawed as it is. That is as it should be - we don't want our military deciding which wars it gets to fight for reasons I'm sure are quite obvious.

    When I used the term "national honor" that was my analysis of the situation, not my preference. That is my conclusion after looking at the polling, the politics, the history and various other factors. It's not a conclusion that gives me any joy. We have achieved that goal in Iraq thanks to the perceived success of the "surge" which enabled a political deal to draw down and withdrawal forces - a deal that was politically impossible during Iraq's most violent period in 2006-2007. As I've said before, I believe the President is trying the same thing in Afghanistan but unfortuanetely for everyone I don't think it's likely to work for a host of reasons I won't belabor here. Afghanistan is currently in a stalemate - I don't use that term lightly, nor do I use it out of ignorance.

    I don't know what the future holds there. We cannot continue in Afghanistan indefinitely yet the public will butcher any politician who advocates throwing in the towel. I honestly have no idea how this will end.

    Finally,

    Finally, arguing against these wars is simply exercising an "arbitrary level of righteousness" against, not the political leadership, they enter into this discussion not at all, but against the military: that is "attacking the troops".

    This was not my intent at all, my point was quite narrow. It is perfectly appropriate to criticize and agrue against these wars (after all, I am on recording doing just that) and it is even perfectly appropriate to criticize them based on their costs in both blood and treasure (which I also do). What I object to is when someone draws an arbitrary line and divides wars into good ones and bad ones and then implies that sacrifices made by those who fought in the bad wars are somehow not as meaningful because the cause was either unjust or not sufficiently just. When such comparisons are made in the context of one incident and in the context of simultaneously calling those soldiers who served and died in the "bad" wars "imperial" troops, then I will object. IMO all wars are bad, unfortunately sometimes they are necessary.

    The sacrifice is theirs - the risk they took was a choice they made and it is they who bear the burden. If it wasn't worth it to them to take that risk, they wouldn't be there and they wouldn't have taken the risk. We don't know why they decided to take that risk and it is wrong of us to make assumptions or to imply their choice was wrong.

    (cont)

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  9. (cont from above)

    Then there's historical revisionism. We tend to laud the "greatest generation" for their sacrifices in WWII fighting one of the "good wars." Of course, it's not that simple. My Dad fought in that war. He joined the day he turned 17 in March, 1942. He joined because he wanted to go fight and kill "japs" and end the "yellow meance." He passed up pilot training because that would mean almost a year before he'd be able to get into the fight. My Dad was shot down near the end of the war in the Phillipines, managed to evade capture, but was never the same again. He spent the rest of the war in a mental hospital in Florida suffering from what we now know is PTSD. Is his service automatically more honorable or somehow better than those SEALs? Was his service more honorable than mine? After all, I had no racist motivation when I originally joined the Navy. Those are questions that can't be answered IMO and one shouldn't even try to answer them. There is a lot more to service-related sacrifice than what Chief said in the last thread.

    Anyway, Al's comment to Chief in that last thread said most of what I was trying to get across but much better than I did.

    Chief,

    It was never my intent to suggest any of the things you seem to think I suggested. I hope my reply to Seydlitz above clears things up.

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  10. Seydlitz; they had no motivation to unite Germany as a Warsaw Pact member. In fact, they had opposite motivation.

    The GDR was already as much Germany as the Warsaw Pact was able to stand. Its economy was continually leeched on by the Soviet Union, but it was still stronger per capita than any other COMECON member.

    They surely did not want more Germany. It was too difficult to control, to stand, to keep in line with the party line. Eastern German communists were loyal to Moscow until the mid 80's, but the very success of Eastern Germany was a threat to the whole bloc.

    Nobody wants to grow a beast that he can barely control as it is.

    The 'success' of including one or two Western European countries into the Eastern Bloc would likely have been similarly dangerous to them.

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  11. Andy: It was never my intent to accuse you of either bad faith or mistaken beliefs. But I will continue to insist that wars fought far from the national borders, for reasons not integral to existential defense (or the defense of a sworn ally) is an "imperial" war. Whether its fought for prestige (probably a better term than "national honor", since prestige can describe self-image that is objectively less than honorable), for commercial interests, for power politics, to influence the political posture of some distant country are in essence if not in name "imperial" wars.

    You can argue terminology; call them "cabinet wars" if you want, or "Great Power wars"...but the effect is the same; a distant conflict that is waged without the mobilization of, or - as you note - even much interest from, the general public, for reasons not directly or often even at a single remove from national existence.

    And if you re-read the original post that prompted all this you'll note that nowhere in there did I state, or even imply, that the deaths of these young men were meaningless or somehow "less" than the guys who died on Omaha Beach or in the Huertgen Forest.

    First, every death in war is a "sacrifice" of sorts; for the person who dies, it is the sacrifice of everything - life, youth, hopes, the future. And for professional soldiers, who serve for reasons other than wanting revenge against the (fill in the blank - Japs, rebels, Osama...), the prospect of that sort of sacrifice is always implicit in the deal they make when they take the oath.

    But there IS a difference in the relationship between the soldiers' "sacrifice" and the citizens that they make it for - when the citizens make bad choices and send their soldiers forth for bad reasons and on fool's errands.

    I'm not talking about inevitable mistakes; things like the wasted deaths at the Battle of New Orleans, say, that happened because of the pace of global communications in 1814. I'm talking about the failure, or lack, of critical judgements that the citizenry of a republic are expected to make.

    In this case we have a cabinet war that has long since exceeded its writ. A punitive expedition to Afghanistan in 2002 made some sort of sense. A short FID effort to establish a pliant client state in 2005 might have made some sense as well.

    To have major maneuver elements and all the ash and trash needed to support them still fighting in the crap-ass backwaters of central Asia like Wardak Province in 2011? That tells me that the U.S. public "...doesn't much care, has its own problems to worry about, and so the elites are, for now, relatively free to act within certain constraints."

    If I thought that my fellow citizens had really bothered to find out whether the game in the 'Stan is worth the candle, I'd feel differently.

    But they don't.

    And, remember, I WAS one of those imperial grunts for a long, long time. That could very well have been me and my friends getting fried to a crackly crunch out in the back-ass end of West Buttfuckistan for no better reason than that the U.S. public - who should have been treasuring us for the expensive, valuable assets we were (except for SP4 Ahlers, who was the most worthless shitbag who ever walked underneath a red beret...) and been hounding their Congressmen to explain the whys, hows, and wherefores before deciding to commit us to an endless punitive campaign in the 14th Century - had some NASCAR to watch and the lawn to mow and I tend to take that very fucking personally.

    So - again - the meaning of the "sacrifice" rests NOT on the soldiers who died, but on the U.S. public to ensure that the deaths are of real value to the U.S. and not just to grab some Filipino or Mexican land...or to continue to pester a bunch of irritable Asian tribesmen long past their sell-buy date.

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  12. Sven, Seydlitz,

    Well, when you get two opposing ideologies and visions of the world organized into well armed camps the result shouldn't be surprising. I tend to agree (and my bachelor's in in Russian history, so I do know a bit about this) that the Soviets didn't necessarily intend to invade. But the question is why? Would they have acted differently absent NATO and a credible force to oppose such an action? Hard to say for certain given its a counterfactual, but if the fruit was ripe and easy picking.....

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  13. There was an arms race that spiralled, and the Soviets spent much more on the military than they wanted to - they felt compelled by the arms race to do it.

    We could have had several decades with much less risk, much less aversions, much better economies (= more wealth), much less vicious wars and dictatorships in the Third World if the red scare propaganda hadn't exaggerated the threat.

    Maybe we could have had arms control treaties including lots of confidence-builders already back in the 70's.

    Overestimation is always a failure.

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  14. Andy-

    As I've posted I read nothing in to this beyond what you commented which I found honest and coherent. At the same time, given our traditions, I find it quite radical, but it is not a radicalism you seemingly share, but perhaps more "feel".

    "it's not clear that these wars are not in the "national interest" providing you define "national interest" as the collective will of the governed."

    I think it difficult for people to make a rational choice as to what constitutes a threat given the level of propaganda and blatant scare tactics the public has been exposed to. For instance former DNI Dennis Blair raised some very serious questions about our actions in Pakistan and more generally the GWOT, but how much traction has that story received?

    http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/call-off-the-drone-war/

    It is simply not in the interests of the war party, or the corporate media to support this debate, and thus we have no debate. This should be a very serious issue given how long this has been going on and the costs involved going as we are into an election year.

    Also given the limited actual contact most Americans have with the military - A. Bacevich has been hitting on this point for some time as you know - most people don't have any skin in the game, and mindlessly repeating how they "support the troops" avoids having to take a stand or appear "unpatriotic". It costs them nothing. Lack of interest does not constitute support.

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  15. Chief,

    Ok, your definition of an "imperial war" is legitimate even if I don't think it's a particularly good one. Personally, though, I think trying to categorize warfare in such simplistic binary terms glosses over wayyyyy too much. It sounds like a clear-cut definition, but it's not. I could argue, for example, that the governments of Iraq and Afghan are "sworn allies" and since we are defending them then neither of those wars is imperial. I could also be an ass and ask you to go through all this nation's campaigns and label each one "imperial" or "not imperial" along with a clear justification as to why, but I hope you get the point.


    What I objected to, though, (among other things) was your use of "imperial troops." How do you define that? Is it only for those who deploy to fight what you believe are imperial campaigns, or is the guy on the DMZ in Korea an imperial trooper too merely because he is in the same army as Pvt. Snuffy in Afghanistan? Many of the same men who fought in the Mexican-American war (an imperial war, yes?) ended up fighting in the Civil War and then went on to fight in the various Native American wars (more imperial action, right?). So, can soldiers be "imperial" one day and non-imperial the next?


    In short it's a mistake to label the instruments of policy with terms that should be reserved for those who make policy. I wouldn't call a hammer "communist" simply because it was in Marx's toolbox. As Al said, "IMHO, those who serve honorably, regardless of who's "side" and for what "cause" serve honorably." Damn straight. The guys who died in that Ch-47 served honorably and labeling them "imperial" soldiers is using them in a debate over which they have little-to-no control: US policy. If you want to go down that path, then at least go full throttle and start appending "imperial" to all the tools of national power and not just soldiers - not to mention those who actually make policy.

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  16. Swen-

    The Soviet Union kept the Western Group of Forces at the level they did for a reason, this is a fact. I don't have to provide a rationale for what their motivations might have been to dominate Germany, the level and readiness of their forces speaks for itself. As in other wars they waged, it might have been seen as a purely "defensive" move.

    They saw their military quite differently than we do in the West. First, it was a component of the CPSU, that is it was part of Soviet political and economic power; second the system required a continuous war economy to survive, as was shown, and finally Soviet expansion was seen decidedly in military terms. Given the situation in Afghanistan and the correlation of forces in Europe, in say 1987, "War in Central Europe could have been their salvation" (William Odom, "The Collapse of the Soviet Military", p 391).

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  17. Seydlitz,

    I think it difficult for people to make a rational choice as to what constitutes a threat given the level of propaganda and blatant scare tactics the public has been exposed to.

    I don't disagree, but you seem to make this assumption: The American people would see the folly of these wars and oppose them were it not for the propaganda and scare tactics. Is that correct? If so I don't agree that the assumption is the full story.

    I don't have any objections to the rest of your comment. I happen to agree with a lot of what Blair says in the article you linked. IMO more media exposure to alternatives and less propaganda would be helpful but not sufficient. Changing the status quo ain't easy.

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  18. Andy-

    Yes, that is correct since I don't buy the whole GWOT scare. There is no way that this "threat" warrants our continued response and level of resource allocation, not to mention the damage, destruction and death we inflict is making this into something potentially beyond our resources to deal with. We have created an industry around the GWOT with interests in its continuance, but these are not in the interests of the US imo.

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  19. Those of us old enough remember the photograph of the baby crying in the street in Nanking -- the gleaming tram lines, the burning buildings. The photo turned out to be posed, but Americans, decent people in those days, were outraged. Now our military routinely does worse.
    As the war drew to close, some 700 presidents of women's clubs petitioned President Truman to extend rationing. Otherwise, our erstwhile Japanese and German enemies would starve. Truman declined to do so. But where are those Americans now, those humble people who recognized that enemies are, at last, as human as you and I? Instead our contemporaries pretend to mourn the death of Special Forces troops in a helicopter crash –SF death squads, in transit to another of their operations.

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  20. Bad (and ridiculous) news:
    http://www.lbpost.com/life/greggory/12188

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  21. I wrote: "IMHO, those who serve honorably, regardless of who's "side" and for what "cause" serve honorably."

    However, the honor of the troops does not vest honor in those who deploy them dishonorably, foolishly or selfishly. The troops are simply obeying the lawful orders of those appointed or elected to leadership positions above them. Our oaths and commissions simply say "lawful orders", not "enlightened" orders.

    Therein is the obscenity that I see. The population trying to wear the robes of sacrifice that these troops, and these troops alone, are clothed in. Or, as a post I read about it said, "Makes you proud to be an American". Would a similar sentiment apply to the situation at Stalingrad in 1942? !0,000 times more Germans were lost there, so one could be REALLY PROUD to be a German - nicht wahr?

    It is the duty of the military to obey the lawful orders issued to them. It is the responsibility of The People to inure that national policy does not result in orders that waste not only our treasure, but that of any other country. The People have been derelict.

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  22. "ut where are those Americans now, those humble people who recognized that enemies are, at last, as human as you and I?"

    Being ignored by the Lame-Stream Media because it doesn't fit with their Corporate Masters' plans. Why do you think there is a growing right-wing peace movement now? The left-wing peace movement got gutted by Obama and is now a hollow shell.

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  23. We're talking a lot about symptoms, but not much about causes. If we go to the actual root causes then I think we get an idea of the extent of the crisis facing not only the US, but also the West (but to a lesser degree).

    Systemic failure due to elites who simply cannot divorce themselves from the Weltanschauung which educated, formed and conditioned them and has been shown to be dysfunctional, incapable of reform or even acknowledging the extent of the crisis.

    Obama is a product of the same elite system of education and indoctrination. He vacations on Martha's Vineyard since that is where the East Coast elite go and he wishes very much to signal that he is one with that elite. It's not based on race or ethnic background, but on class and sharing the same background which is the glue that holds the whole thing together.

    The same Ivy League idiots who ran the economy off a cliff are retained and rewarded since there are no others to replace them with. This crop would be replaced with the same systems managers who caused the last big crack up.

    Ditto with every major institution we have - the military included - the same thinking but from the service academies.

    Our elite cannot deal with systemic failure because simply they are even aware they are dealing with a failed system, rather for them this is the one and only "reality" and scary brown people who "hate our freedom" are definitely part of it.

    Consider the group reading these words. How many of us are autodidacts, who have been fundamental to our own individual educations? How many of us are by nature critical thinkers? How many of us see the world, not in binary black/white, but in infinite shades of gray? How many of us see that in America today there are no actual conservative or progressive political alternatives?

    Essentially we are the anti-elite . . .

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  24. And something else . . .

    I think those who see this disaster more clearly also have a coherent system of values. I know that word has been debased for decades, but consider what I'm talking about is not "right" and "wrong" but a coherent structure. This was common in the past, btw, in all healthy societies. Values are not what make us "feel good about ourselves", but give meaning to our world. Many times we have found ourselves not living up to our own values, which is the opposite of the sanctimonious buffoonery (actually narrow self-centered interest) common today. These values reflect in turn our belonging to a larger community, and it is in many cases this poor reflection which discourages us perhaps the most.

    Essentially the country has changed or rather has been changed, but we have not, nor will we. Imo the growing conflict in the US today is not between "Left" and "Right", or "Liberal" and "Conservative", but between the elite and their stooges (both Obamaites and Right Wing Nihilists), and the anti-elite, which is a diffuse and reactionary movement. Given the disparity of power, the best strategy - as we have spoken about before - is one similar to that taken by the peoples of Eastern Europe prior to 1989 . . .

    Ok, off the soapbox now.

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  25. seydlitz-

    I would take issue with your closing statement. When sane minds bow to the self-serving rabble and surrender to them the title of "elite", then our culture is indeed doomed. These mutts may be "in power", but they are far from any definition of "elite", which Merriam-Webster defines as "the choice part". There is nothing "choice" about those currently wielding "power" in American society.

    Last night I watched "Mississippi Burning". Based on the "power" wielded by the Klan back then, they would meet the current distorted definition of "elite". Hell, they took lives without a second thought, including the life of my friend and neighbor, Mickey Schwerner. These mutts may have, for a time, held amazing "power", but they were pure and simple trash.

    The real "elite" were the FDR "New Deal" people and the "Rockefeller Republicans" who knew that with status came responsibility towards their fellow Americans. The hell with their motives. They knew that you could not build a sustainable society upon the backs of the masses. It was their actions when in office that set them apart from the Klan.

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  26. Al-

    I understand where you're coming from, but times change and so do elites. If what you are saying is true, where are the current versions of TR, FDR, Everett Dirkson?

    Is not the basic Weltanschauung of the current elite that "money is everything"? That their "responsibilities" come down to maintaining the current system? They are unable to question the sustainability of the system since for them there is only one system possible, the one with them on top . . .

    Does this not adequately explain what has happened with Barack Obama?

    How's Greece btw?, Portugal is hot and muggy.

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  27. Al-

    Also I don't see the KKK in the South of the 1960s as being any sort of "elite", nor considered so by the white Southern elite of the time. They were seen as useful muscle, but hardly an elite, rather the opposite. I remember Walker Percy's recollection of what his father told him while they watched a KKK march in the 1920s or 30s, "look at their shoes". They were poor, uneducated white folk for whom the color of their skin was the only value they possessed.

    Gene Hackman's character's story about his father and the mule goes along with this as well.

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  28. I don't find much to disagree with in Al's and Seydlitz's comments. The elites certainly are a big problem and it's yet one more reason that I'm anti-partisan.

    I wish I knew how this ends. I think we can all see the unsustainability inherent in the status quo, but tipping points are notoriously hard to predict.

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  29. You guys keep dancing around the elephant in the room.

    Cui bono!

    It explains a lot of our behavior in the last 60 years. People don't like to talk about it. Even Eisenhower only mentioned it as he ducked for the door.

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  30. Ael-

    Your elephant is just a symptom imo.

    Cynicism and greed for power and $$$ are there, but that was true in the past as well. What most distinguishes our current reality from 1933?

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  31. seydlitz

    The KKK were big fish in many small ponds, to include towns like Philadelphia, MS. If you were white, you were either with/tolerated them or you suffered. If you were "colored" you simply suffered. My comparison is based upon "elites" who can only envision holding their status at the expense of others. And, even the "white southern elite" were willing to keep segregation in place, even if they didn't don white sheets.

    The "real" elites were secure enough to stand up for the least among us.

    Andy-

    I guess what concerns me as well is that "tipping points are indeed hard to predict". And when Mitt Romney can say, "Corporations are people", you have to wonder, don't you? A lot of the population is "fat, dumb and happy". When enough are just "dumb", it's going to interesting, as dumb people are capable of even dumber things than just electing their intellectual equals.

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  32. That's a big question, Seylitz, what distinguishes our current reality from 1933. Just from my own memories of St. Louis, which are fragmentary before 1940, one difference was the heightened sense of community. Families were more closely integrated between generations and geographically, gossip was a powerful means of social control, and neighborhoods were organized along ethic lines.

    When among strangers, one assumed a certain formality. Many, if not most working men, wore suits and ties on the bus and changed into their work clothes on the job. It was important to teach boys to shake hands with the correct amount of firmness. Elders and company execs were addressed as "Sir."

    There was much more concreteness to life then, or so it seemed. Men worked and sweated. On a more abstract level, things were not so benign.

    Political and police corruption were norms. My father laughed at hearing an election judge say, "Ah, Pat, you're late! We already voted you."

    Anti-semitism ran deep and Blacks were beyond the pale. Until Pearl Harbor, the German-American Bund marched down Cass Avenue behind swastika flags.

    Now we assert many of the right attitudes but have less humanity, isolated from one another in our automobiles and in our digital dream worlds.

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  33. At risk of backtracking too far I think it's worth mentioning the neo-conservative approach to "developing" post-war Iraq. This (unrepentantly biased) 2004 Harper's article (http://harpers.org/archive/2004/09/0080197) says it beautifully:

    "Iraq was to the neocons what Afghanistan was to the Taliban: the one place on Earth where they could force everyone to live by the most literal, unyielding interpretation of their sacred texts. One would think that the bloody results of this experiment would inspire a crisis of faith: in the country where they had absolute free reign, where there was no local government to blame, where economic reforms were introduced at their most shocking and most perfect, they created, instead of a model free market, a failed state no right-thinking investor would touch."

    Re-engineering an entire society cannot help but be an imperial venture. Its very nature requires forcing a foreign system of values on a population. We may honestly judge some of those values (e.g. greater emphasis on women's rights) to be good things, but that does not change the underlying dynamic.

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  34. Al-

    MLK wrote this about the KKK in "Stride Towards Freedom":

    "The KKK is virtually impotent and openly denounced on all sides, although to some extent opposition to the Klan is simply a convenient screen, since the White Citizens Councils have taken over most of the KKK's major objectives." p 179

    "This resistance to the emergence of the new order expresses itself in the resurgence of the KKK. Determined to preserve segregation at any cost, this organization employs methods that are crude and primitive. It draws its members from underprivileged groups who see in the Negro's rising status a political and economic threat. Although the Klan is impotent politically and openly denounced from all sides, it remains a dangerous force which thrives on racial and religious bigotry. Because of its past history, whenever the Klan moves there is fear of violence." pp 185-6

    We are talking about the KKK from the mid 1950s till even today, not that of the 1860s or 1920s. So, not an elite organization but a potential tool of the white elite of the time, although they didn't wish to get too close. Also, civil rights was an old problem in the 1960s, so had been in fact the ""real" elites secure enough to stand up for the least among us."?

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  35. Paul-

    For the people you describe a loss of moral and material cohesion within the society, the loss of a coherent structure of values, but also the end of blatant and widespread racist attitudes, but how do the elites compare? Then and now?

    Thanks btw for the link you sent me. I think you will find my upcoming paper interesting.

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  36. Nick-

    "Re-engineering an entire society cannot help but be an imperial venture. Its very nature requires forcing a foreign system of values on a population. We may honestly judge some of those values (e.g. greater emphasis on women's rights) to be good things, but that does not change the underlying dynamic."

    Good point, agree. Our strategic goal was the establishment of a new Iraqi political identity, implemented by force . . .

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  37. seydlitz-

    Yes, the Klan has been a useful tool for white bigots of all stripes. In 1980, while assigned to the Cuban Refugee Assistance Task Force at Ft Chaffee, AR, the Klan showed up on several occasions, often standing side by side with local law enforcement officers outside the gates to the post. There were two "riots". The first simply resulted in about 300 refugees being pushed out of the bounds of the reservation. They were all easily policed up, and that's when the Klan began manning the gates.

    The second riot resulted in five buildings being torched. As the crowd was moving toward the front gate and the waiting police and Klan, our Provost Marshall asked his MPs for volunteers to be placed on "pass" along with him. He knw that once the Cubans reached the highway outside the main gate, Posse Comitatus would prevent soldiers from protecting the Cubans. They deposited their weapons, helmets and fatigue shirts in a 3/4 ton, and built a human wall. The police and Klan attacked the soldiers as well as the Cubans. Local elected officials supported the actions of the police and Klan. Once the Cubans realized what was happening, they allowed the "off duty" MOs to herd them back onto military property and safety. Later we learned that the highway was actually federal land for which the local and state authorities had been given policing authority. That covenant was quickly rescinded.

    Five years later, the Klan had its state rally in Barling, AR, just outside Ft Chaffee. Other than selected officials in Little Rock, there was very little grumbling in western Arkansas. When the local National Guard commander heard about the planned rally, he changed his training schedule to have their monthly drill that weekend, so he could turn down any request to use the facility. The city fathers of most of the local municipalities berated him, but he stood his ground, with support from the AG.

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  38. Al-

    I suppose my point is that the KKK is simply a symptom as well, to use that term. In the 1920s it was a real power and controlled the governments of several states (not all in the South), but since the 1950s? Not that much to compare, and also something of a distraction from what the real problem is which your story points out - political corruption.

    If anyone is interested in an aspect of racism in the US that gets little attention, check this one out . . .

    http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntowns.php

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  39. seydlitz-

    Your question about "empire" - it is interesting that the Right claims to champion "freedom" and "democracy", yet their approach is to try to impose their "values" both domestically and abroad, rather than set such shining examples that their "values" might be adopted. Thus we have denial of foreign aid for birth control, forced "liberation" of Muslim women, cries for Constitutional Amendments against abortion and same sex unions and the like. So, if the imposition of a group's will upon others is a form of "empire", then the right sure sounds like empire builders.

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  40. Al-

    My next post will use Herfried Münkler's book "Empires" as a source. Have you heard of it or read it?

    http://www.polity.co.uk/book.asp?ref=9780745638713

    I'll present an ideal type for empires and one for states which can then be compared with reality as we see it. I think you'll find that many of the values we consider to be American, are in fact imperial as well.

    I'm interested, what do you think of my concept of an "anti-elite"? What would be the characteristics of such a group?

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  41. seydlitz-

    I remember Nelson Rockefeller talking about "elites" at a cocktail party way back when I lived in Tarrytown, NY. He said something along the lines of the notion that it wasn't the "power elites" that would lead the nation to greatness, but the "pragmatic sophisticates" who could. He said that ideology was simply a cover for an unwillingness or inability to come to unselfish, rational solutions or to mask self interest.

    It is interesting to note that he served in the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower administrations, so his acumen in public administration definitely was not purely along party lines. His service as Governor of NY was quite exemplary, and he pushed numerous programs to benefit all the residents of his state, without caving to vested interests or pandering to anyone.

    That's my definition of "elite", and it's difficult to see anyone of that calibre on the public stage today.

    So, yes, based on today's self proclaimed "elite" who are far from my concept of same, I would have to say that in the current context, I am "anti-elite". I am tired of ideological bullshit, vested interest, selfishness and disinterest for the well being of the population at large.

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  42. Seydlitz:

    A fundamental difference between 1933 and today is the proportion of GDP that the government occupies.

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  43. I think that we're looking at a very familiar meme; the wealthy and powerful people (which now includes those corporation-people that Mitt Romney talks about) who had to give up some of their wealth and power between 1933 and 1980 are pushing back, as they always have in U.S. history (in world history, when you think of it...)

    And the place they want to go is also pretty familiar. Think about it; cut taxes, cut services, cut the "safety net", deregulate all and sundry...and you end up, where?

    The Gilded Age.

    I mean, why not? If I'm a magnate, why shouldn't I pine for the days when people like me, John D. Rockefeller, Andy Carnegie, like the Mellons and the Hannas, pretty much had the run of the place? Government - what there was of it - and business, wealth, and power walked hand-in-hand; it was a sort of Randian paradise.

    And let's not kid ourselves - it worked then, and it could work now. Just because we've been living in the post-GI Bill, post-Great Society mass democracy doesn't mean the U.S. HAS to work that way. It worked fine (if you were in the right place) as a pretty-much open oligarchy between 1870 and 1930.

    But...and here's the big "but"...

    I think that the elites haven't thought this one through. Because the huge difference between 1911 and 2011 is that

    1. 100 years ago this nation was a manufacturing powerhouse and
    2. there was still a lot of "open" land for the taking, and
    3. a hell of a lot of work was in agriculture.

    All three of those "safety valves" are gone. If the Great Recession and the thirty years of deregulation, outsourcing, offshoring, downsizing, and deunionization have proved anything to the people Who Matter in business and politics, it's that Henry Ford's old paradigm - pay the workers better so they will buy more stuff - has been broken. The "old economy" here in the U.S. is tanking, and I don't think anyone knows how to put all those people back to work in any sort of work that pays a living wage.

    So if the good folks (mostly on the Right, exclusively in the teabag Right) who would like this neo-Gilded Age get what they want, I think that they will find that they will spend a hell of a lot of time, energy, and money controlling the jobless, hopeless horde that sees no choice beyond a fairly wretched life on the dole and Soylent Green...

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  44. Chief: The "old economy" here in the U.S. is tanking, and I don't think anyone knows how to put all those people back to work in any sort of work that pays a living wage.

    Surely not Rick Perry, who's "Texas Jobs Miracle" actually increased the proportion of people working for minimum wage as well as the numbers of unemployed. However, living wages are not necessary for corporate profits.

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