USA! USA!

Not that I wanted to break into the argument about MacArthur or anything...But I couldn't help grinning ruefully over this.

(h/t to Sven Ortmann over at Defence and Freedom for the image)

Kings of Battle

I was waiting for my little girl to finish her everlasting evening potty business last night when I picked up one of the books in the commode-side reading basket. It happened to be Jeff Chandler's "Napoleon's Marshals", although, given the catholicism of bathroom reading in our house it could well have been any one of the others tossed in there: a Star Wars comic, "The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove", several Title 9 catalogs, and that paperback where the heroine's genitalia are referred to as her "burning center" (I suspect that Grandma left that one; not our style but very much in hers).

Anyway, as it happens, three things coincided; I was thinking about a piece I'd read earlier about our captain-general in the Hindu Kush, Stan McChrystal, I was also thinking about Seydlitz's earlier ruminations on military genius, and the page fell open to the chapter on Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte: soldier, officer, Marshal of France and King of Sweden.

What it got me to thinking about is the perils of confining our thinking of military genius to the purely kinetic elements of the art of war. First, let's look at Marshall Bernadotte's resume:

Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte
Born 1763
Enlisted 1780 (PVT)
Commissioned 1792 (LT), COL by 1794
Demi-Bde Cdr 1794-1798 (BG) (Theinigen, Passage of Tagliamento)
Ambassador, Austria 1798
Minister of War 1798-1799
Army Cdr 1800-1801 (Vendee COIN) 1801-1804 (Army of the West)
Corps Cdr 1804-1808 (Marshal) (Ulm, Austerlitz, Prussian campaign)
Governor, Hanseatic Towns 1808-1809 (Danish Islands)
Corps Cdr 1809-1810 (Wagram, Defense of Walcheren)
Crown Prince, Sweden 1810-1818 (Grossbeeren, Dennewitz, Leipzig, Bornhoved)
King, Sweden 1818-1844

And, by way of contrast, GEN McChrystal's:

Stanley A. McChrystal
Born 1954
Commissioned 1976
1/504Inf (Abn) 1976-1978 (2LT)
SF Officers Course 1978-1979
7th SFGA 1979-1980 (1LT?)
Off. Adv. Course 1980-1981
UNCSG-JSA S2/3 1981-1982
FSGA (1/19 Inf) 1982-1984 (CPT)
3/75Inf (Rgr) 1985-1989 (MAJ)
Naval War Coll 1989-1990
JSOC J-3 1990-1993 (MAJ-LTC) (Second Gulf War)
2/504 Cdr 1993-1994
2/75 Cdr 1994-1996
JFKSoG 1996
75Inf Cdr 1997-1999 (COL)
CFR 1999-2000 (BG)
82nd Div (Abn) ADC 2000-2001
18th Corps (CoS) 2001-2002 (MG)
Joint Staff J-3 2002-2003
JSOC Cdr 2003-2008 (LTG)(Third Gulf War)
ISAF/USFOR-A 2008-present (GEN) (Occupation of Iraq, XVIIth Afghan War)

The differences jump right out at you, don't they?

First, the Marshal starting as a private, the General as a cadet. Then, of course, the meteoric rise of Bernadotte's career in the chaos of Republican France, no surprise there. The heavy combat experience available in the late 1700's compared to the relative peace of the 1980's and 1990's.

But - look at their "mid-career" trajectory!

Bernadotte is all over the place: Corps commander, army commander, minister of war, governor, corps commander again, then, the weirdest twist of all - prince and king.

McChrystal, the Man Who Would Be King of Afghanistan, on the other hand, makes the typical US Army trot of command, staff and schools. Yes, there's the one year stint as military staffer for the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR). But there's no other exercise of political or geopolitical power. No civilian positions or outside-the-Pentagon political jobs. Minister of war (i.e. SecDef)? Governor? Ambassador?

And, of course, the relative lack of wartime command. Not McChrystal's fault - he didn't have the wars Bernadotte did. But, still...

And keep in mind that Bernadotte was far from being considered even among the upper third of Napoleon's commanders. He had a couple of good outings against the Austrians and Prussians in 1797-1804 and then against his old comrades Davout and Ney in 1813. But he screwed the pooch at Jena and Auerstadt, and his contibutions to Wagram were thought to be meager.

The thing is - all the Napoleonic Marshals' vitae look like this: they were not just troopers. And their enemies were pretty cosmopolitan as well: Scharnhorst and Gneisenau fight in the field, do much of the heavy lifting that reconstructs the entire Prussian Army after 1806, and then conspire to throw off the French occupation after 1812.

Wellington, you know.

These guys were doing grand tactics, operational art, strategy, grand strategy, even geopolitics. They had to negotiate treaties, bribe allies, threaten enemies, spy, suborn, cajole and encourage. These guys were all-rounders.

What is McChrystal? A highly-trained technician? An overpromoted trigger-puller?

So. I'm not trying to add Charles John (Bernadotte's king name) to the pantheon of military geniuses. But I am trying to get us to ask; we're putting people like McChrystal where we used to put people like Bernadotte. Are we preparing ours today as well as the armies and the rulers of Napoleon's time did theirs?

Being Frank with the dining room table

This is the only way to respond to these idiots. They aren't there to have a "conversation" any more than the KKK wanted to discuss the social implications of integration with African Americans in 1960.

Bag of Tricks

Those of you who have followed my stuff over at GFT, or remember some of the battles I used to have with the guy who went by "MSR Roadkill" (who is, I believe, the same person who still shows up at "Abu Muquwama" as "SNLII") at the old Intel Dump, know that I respect Niall Ferguson just slightly above Reginald Dyer and just below the nastiest, knee-scabbed, clapped-up, $10-a-go Yokohama waterfront whore (since she, at least, returns actual value for the money).

Now, while I understand that being a skeevy jackhole who never met an imperial rule he didn't like has never stopped Niall from being the idol of the Christopithocene Right and Neoconus Erectus Boys Club, I never thought he was actually fucking stomp-down, brain-dead stupid or bug-gobbling whack.

Until now.

Because, dammit, any man who still demands the respect due a thinking adult (much less a tenured historian) after writing "President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky." has got to be one or the other.

And he gets paid for this? Jesus Wept!!

(James Fallows has more, and better, as always)

(h/t to Paul Krugman, who highlighted this nasty little business)

A Thousand Words

In case you were wondering why financial regulation, a public option for health care, an increase in domestic employment and a caesura to foreign adventurism aren't going to happen anytime soon.

Trial before Pilate

The generation of this post came from two very different parents, as should all fertile offspring. The first was a comment on the earlier post at Graphic Firing Table about celebrity culture in general and as it applies to Lance Armstrong, the cyclist, in particular. The other was a part of a long conversation I've been having with a friend, a terrifically bright and vital woman, about perception and truth and the relationship between them.

First, the comment. The poster, a friend of ours who is a cyclist himself and is married to a fitness fanatic and passionate cycling addict, said:

"...your discussion of the Lance's bad behavior was the final straw, and I just took off the yellow bracelet I have been wearing for months...as I read the coverage, and read about Kristin Armstrong I felt less and less happy about wearing the symbol of somebody I increasingly thought of as callous and egotistical. The details of his breakup with Sheryl Crow just crystallized my distaste for Lance's character."

So the revelation of Lance's ruthlessness put an end to both the bracelet and the respect.

The discussion revolved around my friend's concept of Truth as something universal and immutable, a sort of Truth as Godhead, that exists as an object beyond, immune to and unaffected by, human perception.Its a good discussion, and well worth the recounting but beyond what I want to talk about here. But I want to use it as a frame to hang my subject on.

Because in this case the is a central Truth to the matter: the entirety of the personality of Lance Armstrong himself.

This is utterly unknown and, more to the point, unknowable, to any of us; my friends, me, you the reader. We cannot know Lance Armstrong as he knows himself, as his family and friends know him, even as those who are acquainted with the man know him. What he likes, what he doesn't, his strengths, his failings...beyond the crayon drawing of the man presented in the public media we have, like my friend's concept of abstract Truth, no way of understanding LA through inquiry or perception.

We can observe, assess and judge what we see as aspects of the man's personality. And I have, and did; saying that, while I respect the man's athletic skills and his tough struggle back from cancer, his treatment of the women in his life leaves me cold, and less that enamored of him as a husband, fiancee' and lover.

But, that said, those things don't lessen his skill. They don't detract a bit from his courage.

And they don't affect his stated belief, through his Lance Armstrong Foundation, "in life...in living every minute of it with every ounce of your being...in energy: channeled and fierce...in focus: getting smart and living strong. Unity is strength. Knowledge is power. Attitude is everything."

As someone who has been shot at, well, Lance, no, attitude isn't everything - windage and elevation make a difference. But let that pass.

The thing is, the yellow bracelet can mean different things, and I would say that it may mean more, or less, or just different things than the man himself.

If you're wearing a Livestrong bracelet to symbolize your fight against cancer, or someone's hope for recovery and survival...or as a way of expressing support for the man as a cyclist and a champion, then it seems to me that revelations of the man as a man, husband, father, partner really don't dim the brightness of that little rubber band. You can support the man as an athlete, or as a cancer survivor, without admiring or respecting his romantic or sexual ethics.

But if you're wearing it as some sort of general show of affiliation or association with Lance Armstrong the man, well...

...then you're probably wearing it for the wrong reasons.

Lance Armstrong is no different from any of the other strong, glib and pretty people we "meet" through the electronic media. His strength cannot strengthen us, his prettiness gild us, or his fame enhance us. His intelligence doesn't make us wiser, his wealth make us richer. We are who we are regardless of our wish to cover ourselves with a tiny corner of the mantle of his celebrity.

Sadly, we live surrounded by the notion that none of the realities in the above paragraph are true, but we are smaller and lesser for believing them. When Pilate asked "What is truth?", he meant to pose a conundrum, not state a contemporary confusion. But more and more, I believe that we in 21st Century America are truly confounded separating our perceptions from reality, belief from fact, and the cold truth from warm and inviting lie.

(crossposted from GFT)

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night......

and suddenly, through the driving rain appeared a small, sporty car that wheeled into my driveway and stopped abruptly in front of the garage. Out stepped my visitors for the evening, the contentious and always interesting Ranger (http://www.RangerAgainstWar.com) along with his sidekick and co-blogger, the estimable Miss Lisa.

Their arrival wasn't a surprise. They live only a couple of states away and we'd long been discussing an in-person meeting. At least one such planned encounter fell through a couple of years ago, so I was pleased we were able to make it happen this time. Our visit did not disappoint. Ranger is about what I'd gathered from his body of work, a big, tough guy—in every way what one would expect from a fellow with his military chops—but also someone who, unlike many of our contemporaries—has continued to grow in his post-service days. I like to think I've done the same and I must say it's a real pleasure to be in the company of such a man.

Lisa is also about what I expected. She's slight, perhaps even frail-looking, but is also tough as nails. She doesn't let Ranger push her around, and she sure didn't let me do it. She's a formidable woman and is also a pleasure to be around. I always find these women of my daughter's generation to be very interesting. They're the first generation of women that grew up without many of the stereotypes of the past; they were accordingly able to take advantage of many educational and employment opportunities previously denied them. I hate to generalize, but from what I've seen, the women are often turning out better than the men, probably because they're more focused and more aware that one has to fight for one's rights.

They both have very interesting life stories, but I'll leave the details to them. One of my favorite expressions is, "There are eight million stories in the big city" (if you watched TV crime dramas in the 60s, you should remember that one), something I originally adopted as a sarcastic rejoinder to a whiner or to someone making excuses for poor performance, but it's also appropriate when observing the infinitely rich stories possessed by our fellow humans, or at least by most of the thinking ones. I got two such stories a couple of nights ago and was fascinated. I now know a lot more about what makes Ranger and Lisa tick; presumably they know the same about me. I think this will aid us in understanding each other.

The point I want to make here is that I find this whole area of human life experiences and behavioral patterns particularly relevant to what we're trying to do with this blog. This all began with a military blog, begun by an Army reservist lawyer, and it's now morphed into something much different. At those times when I may start to feel somewhat frustrated because we seem to be straying from that military-centric ideal, I catch myself, realizing how enriched and refreshed I am by hanging out with my co-bloggers and those who take the time to make comments. Something else I'm finding as well: I'm getting a little bored with much of what's in some of the long-running popular military blogs. "Yes," I find, it's really kind of neat having some talented folks whom I trust discussing something other than military issues. So I like our
"doctor, lawyer, Indian chief," approach. I think it may wear well over time.

We discussed myriad topics during our evening together, which included dining alfresco on grilled chicken and consuming adult beverages (Ranger and Lisa are light drinkers, so I did most of the consuming) on my patio, which, fortunately has a large protected area. I'm not going to get into a lot of detail other than to say that I think we're of like mind in most important areas. As old soldiers, Ranger and I of course had to go through our military backgrounds and see if we had any friends (or enemies) in common. Actually, when one thinks of how large the Army is—and it had a lot more troops during our time than it does now—it isn't really surprising that we each toiled away at the same time without ever running into each other or having friends in common. This is even more understandable when one considers that each of us dwelt in a small, insular community essentially closed off to Big Army. To get some good insight into their thoughts, I suggest perusing Ranger's excellent web site. Neither he nor Lisa is exactly shy about letting one know their thoughts.

I guess bloggers getting together isn't all that uncommon, but this was the first time for me. It was very gratifying to find that even while the mysteries of these folks I'd deemed admirable from afar were being stripped away, they became even more admirable in person. I hope I get a similar opportunity to meet the rest of you some time and I expect the same results.