part i.
the notion that human artifice can shape the flow of history is a peculiar and persistent one, give life now and again by a triumph or zeal entirely inexplicable in the face of human history. and, one might add, in the face of intractable and sometime impenetrable human nature. the modern height of this conceit is in carl marx and the notion that not only is history controllable, but that it follows some sort of deus ex machina of inevitable and inexorable process. sort of stick a quarter in, put the penny in the slot and turn the crank, and out pops the flat little copper medallion that informs us of our fates.
naturally, those who would reduce fate to the terms of objective process do so with a religious fervor that they are committed to a process conferring truth, a religious faith strong enough to kill for as a matter of preferred choice, and with no seeming reluctance nor humility at all, and no seeming need to turn to lesser forms of persuasion, such as argument and ballet, to carry the day with their views. a corollary to this fervid process is the marxist “objective” criticism of capitalism, that ignorance that posits that markets can be controlled and economic behavior made to conform to rules, legalism and rigid definition & content, in spite of the eloquent testimony of the members of the world’s oldest profession and their customers, in which the elements of supply, demand and pricing system habitually find their expression on street corners, under dim lamp posts, without recourse to consulting committee. people can, it seems, determine their own economies and decide their own course, if only for the duration of an egg timer on a busy night.
these notions of scientific determinism lay quiescent for decades, out of favor, until reborn in europe in the communist party’s conquest and corruption of the european green movement, while in america it found new voice in the re-emergence of 1960’s radicals as societal elites in government bureaus and university faculties, seemingly as though having just crawled fresh from under a new rock. but, in fact, what they spout is the same old tired platitudes, that have driven the light from many expectant eyes and taken the vigor out of robust economies. but now socialist dogmas reign supreme in societal attitudes, and in the control of key societal institutions, such as the schools and universities, government bureaucracies, the mainstream media and the like. and, scratch aristocratic or inherited wealth, even entrepreneurial wealth, and a socialist is likely to cry out in pain.
just as history is replete with failed efforts to suppress the commercially amorous, so history shall quite likely prove again that marxist conceits simply do not work intellectually, and, more prosaically though no less important, simply do not bring home the bacon economically, and have not provided the path that great quest of the socialist mind, the salvation of universal justice, peace, prosperity & posterity in a socialist workers paradise. pamela geller puts it perfectly, as she would snort in derision at the utterance of the words.
you would think that any kind of a thinking person would know better, would give them some pause before embarking down the path of the same simplifier’s zeal, just one more time. please see my post, on dostoevsky’s grand inquisitor. http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.com/summer_patriot_winter_sol/2009/08/the-grand-inquisitor-informs-christ-incarnate-of-the-coup-why-not-christ-knew-of-his-plans-anyway-no.html .
but, there is something about theory to the thoughtful person (as he would describe himself) that causes him to exclude historical fact from his analysis. (hint: it is religious faith.) those historical facts are hardly niggling, as they establish that no planned or socialist economy has worked in the industrial west, period, since the industrial west was born out of the industrial revolution, and, marxist economies killed 80 million or so of their own citizens (take a guess, does the significance of the killing change very much if it is a low of 50 million or a high of 100 million, as is conceivable) in order to impose universal justice, peace & prosperity on people in the 20th century, whether they wanted that particular form of universal justice, or not. socialism always has a ready hand on the cudgel in its jacket, or the pistol in the waist band.
handmaiden to the notion that history can be shaped, indeed, a precedent faith, is that it can be predicted.
think for a notion about what abraham lincoln said, when he said, “if we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.” lincoln’s remarks are not to be construed as rigid faith in a philosopher’s touch stone, or as a litmus process pertaining to finding historical truth, rather lincoln’s remarks are to be understood as a rather rueful and humble admission that the future is neither very clearly comprehended, nor the ability to shape or master it understood, and certainly not mastered. you doubt my interpretation. consider this observation by albert einstein, “if we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it.” in fact, lincoln’s observations are quite similar to werner heisenberg’s statement of his principles of uncertainty in quantum physics, when you get right down to it. in short, lincoln knew things were problematical.
so there.
people of the left excoriated george bush for not having end games in place to manage the outcome of the iraq war (pick your george bush), displaying a profound ignorance of history while demonstrating more than a little subtlety politically: name a war whose outcome was ever understood, or whose consequences were manageable, or whose end conformed to expectations at its beginnings. for example, a pretty good argument can be made that woodrow wilson’s conceptualization for institutionalizing peace in the league of nations post wwi, caused, not contributed to, the inevitable outbreak of wwii. (i do not believe in such determinism, by the way, but i do acknowledge the attractiveness of the argument, and totally accept the accompanying observation that outcomes are hard to determine.)
yet, humans persist in trying to understand the future. even i. which is going to develop into this next essay, taking up where the preceding essay ended.
even lincoln would have acknowledged that some analysis might give one some basic insight into what may happen in the world, and might suggest paths more probably capable of achieving anticipated goals, than other ways more poorly considered, in shaping future to confer the greatest foreseeable benefit upon the community to which one belongs. phew, i am glad that sentence is done.
these days, we call the reading of chicken entrails, and going to the oracle of delphi, and the reading of bones cast upon the ground to figure out how we shall get along in the world foreign policy.—
leon uris’s “o’hara’s choice,” is not the best book he ever wrote, an easy judgment. but, for our purposes the book is quite interesting, because it concerns the efforts of a tiny coterie of marine officers who seek to grab a strategic purpose for the corps, to keep funding for the service alive, and to anticipate and protect the strategic interests of the united states. to do so, they assign themselves the task of figuring out who the united states might face as an enemy 30 or 40 years down the line, and how the marine corps might best function to fight that enemy.
this is where the sterling analytical capabilities of the book’s hero comes in, for he is given the task to write the papers setting forth these notions, and laying it before congressional committees to secure a place in the budget for a service looking to be antiquated, the nature of naval warfare changing rapidly and radically in the setting of the book, the mid 1880’s, and snipers in ships riggings being in short call.
so, our hero and his mentor, a crusty old veteran, set to the task.
they invent the marine and naval academy war college, and invent the sort of strategic analysis needed to read the chicken guts of an “anticipatable” future, and decide that japan’s imperial designs will butt heads in the pacific with the expansionist shipping and mercantile interests of the united states in that region, sometime in the early to mid 1900’s. to preserve the marine corps, they invent a mission unique to the corps, to operate in this theatre and to serve the military interests of the united states, and that mission is the concept of amphibious invasion and conquest, land armies carried aboard ship to strike swiftly at strategic island targets.
our hero leaves the bed of a rich shipping heiress to follow the path of his conception and vision. me, based solely on uris’s description of the heiress, i woulda stayed in bed.
hey, but pretty good historical “guess,” 80 years after the fact, uris.
leon uris was a combat infantryman in the u.s. marine corps in wwii, and a prime target as a radio man, who served at tarawa and guadalcanal, two very bloody campaigns. primitive as fire control was, the radio man was a key element in requesting fire and support, and communicating where and how it was to be delivered, so japanese soldiers eagerly sought to kill radio men: it was not a job assignment for timorous souls. moreover, leon uris was a meticulous researcher, and he had been there, so while his book may have been a fictionalized account, i think we may credit uris with being relatively accurate in his story telling, and the novel probably based on unit records and the memories of people involved in some of the process. i don’t know about the hero, or the heiress.
nations look a long way down the road in fighting wars, at least their militaries do, and at least the ones who have been around for a while and plan on staying.
this process continues all over the world, and militaries anticipate their enemies and their battles and try to adapt to changing circumstances, and the waxing and waning of tide and fortune. for instance, you can bet russian military thinking did a very serious retrenchment after the collapse of the soviet union, and that their strategic analysis accounted for the severe decrease in their strategic reach and ability to project power. it may also interest you to know that the communist chinese are currently planning and executing a marked expansion of their military forces, including the building of a blue water navy capable of confronting the united states, and the ability to develop lift and transport capabilities to provide logistic trains for infantry, including the capacity to defend the same with air power.
as the united states is the bench mark for these things, you may anticipate that the chinese are studying the united states military very closely so as to model themselves after the best, and so that they may defeat the best when they face and fight us. my understanding is that they project being able to stand toe to toe with the u.s. military in about 30 to 40 years: more than one chinese naval cadet sleeps tonight with dreams of engaging an american flotilla, and defeating it.
the chinese intend to fight us for control of the pacific ocean, it is as simple as that.
at least it was before barack obama was elected president, and decided that socialism would sweep away the debris of history and misbegotten and mistaken assumptions of how we should conduct ourselves in the world. i do not know if anyone has thought to ask the chinese if their thinking on the matter has changed materially. might it be worth knowing if they still consider that they will fight us on the high seas?
hold that thought.
well, you might reasonably ask, does the stuff that uris described in his book still go on in the united states military, and amongst our state department types. oh, yes it does. the united states military, all the branches, have what are called appropriately enough given the function of the military, war colleges. the very sort of thinking ascribed by uris to marines long dead before he hit the beaches in two of the bloodiest amphibious landings in history, goes on today. in colleges to train nco’s, to train officers at the senior field commands, and to train general grade officers, these sorts of considerations of trade, commerce, politics, military strategy, still go on daily. they think, and read and consider, what sort of conditions will we face, how will war be fought by our anticipated enemies, and how will we fight them in consideration of these factors. you may think of war as an uncivilized and brutal affair, simply a large sized brawl. it is not. battle has that about it. but, the conduct of war is the function of doctrine and intellectual concept applied to battle, tactical and strategic.
the idea, of course, is to be one step ahead of the enemies of the united states in terms of equipment, reach and tactical doctrine.
at least it was before barack obama was elected president.
well, what sort of things are discussed at these naval and army and marine and air force war colleges.
well, i don’t know. for sure. but, i think i have an idea where you can go to find out.
go to your local safeway, or a & p, or the “best sellers” section of a hastings or a barnes & noble at your local mall, and look for books authored by tom clancy and his consortium: he operates now much as did the dutch and flemish masters of painting and sculpture, doing the foreground and some of the main characters in the larger portraits and sculpted pieces, and letting his hirelings fill in the backgrounds and skies. given the complexity of things, it is not such a bad idea.
buy a clancy. he will tell you what the u.s. military thinks of things. or, at least what they were thinking about, just a little while ago. tom clancy has become a very wealthy man, because sometime in the early 1980’s he tapped into the united states military war colleges, and looks to have directly accessed their strategic and tactical level war gaming. in “the hunt for red october”, for instance, clancy introduces americans to the “crazy ivan,” or the “silly ivan,” a maneuver used by russian sub commanders to shake a tail. we learn in the book, many things we did not see replicated in the movie. for instance, russian nuclear missile submarines regularly accessed the open atlantic ocean by sailing as unobtrusively as possible down in the shelter of deep undersea canyons running from norway more or less into the open atlantic, to escape detection and tailing by american attack submarines: the russian boomers carried nukes, the american subs carried very fast torpedoes to sink russian boomers. usually, the russians picked up a tail, and they knew it, so every now and again they would turn sharply on their own back trail, and barrel down the course just followed directly towards a potential ameican submarine that might have been following. a game of james dean chicken, now known amongst the aficionados of such matters, as the “crazy ivan.”
interesting, eh?
oh, yes, but what is fascinating is that just about every ocean canyon is the world has been so effectively mapped by the u.s. navy, that american subs can “fly on autopilot” “down” these canyons at full throttle, having the ability to navigate at speed totally blind in the depths. the u.s. navy has listening devices that pick up soviet subs the world over. recently there was a flap when two russian subs surfaced just off the coast of north america. you may rest assured that they were tailed. several years ago, when the big russian sub went down just after clearing harbor, a torpedo exploding for some unknown reason, the russians at first blamed the sinking on the russian sub running into a tracking american attack sub. do you remember that? well, the area that the russians thought a collision might have occurred was either just inside or just outside the russian harbor. the aforementioned listening devices were planted inside such harbors: the russians don’t have many harbors, so it is not difficult guessing which one might be involved.
similarly, almost every square inch of enemy topography around the world is mapped, enabling cruise missiles launched toward targets in the gulf wars to literally cruise down streets shaded from any radar detection homing in on computer and gps located targets, being driven by computer models of the avenues and approached to the target. and, all of it is subject to previous and long standing attack plans, presumably constantly updated.
in “red storm rising,” clancy portrayed a scenario in which the russians punched across the fulda gap and into germany with massed tank and infantry columns, as consistent with their battle doctrine then, and as consistent with their battle doctrine now, so far as i have remained familiar with the topic. that book was published in 1986, and tom clancy introduced the american public, or those that were paying attention, to the stealth fighter bomber. the plane, as described in the book, was impervious to soviet field radar, and in night attacks simply decimated soviet tanks, armor and heavy artillery, because the soviet anti aircraft defense was helpless without radar detection.
but, a switch in clancy’s strategic thinking occurred in the late 1990’s. you may safely assume, it seems to me, that this means that a shift in the strategic thinking of the united states’ military war colleges at the command and general officers level took place at that time.
and, that switch in focus was to the indian ocean, and the emerging military and economic power of china and india. in “debt of honor,” japanese nationalists “declare war on the united states when several capital ships are attacked by japanese submarines, who attack from the stern with torpedoes and taking out the screws and steering gear. the ship is not sunk, but demands are made and concessions considered. for our purposes, it is significant to note that indian naval forces seemingly are in league with the japanese nationalists, and take up stations in the indian ocean in an aggressive manner so as to assert control and hegemony over it, while the u.s. carrier task force is crippled by the loss of a carrier.
in short, the war college war gamed a scenario involving a threat posed by india’s declared ambition to become a world naval power, just as they have done in another english tradition, that being cricket. many fertile minds have contributed to tom clancy’s commercial success, and most of them wear u.s. military uniforms. clancy got information from them, and they were happy to feed it to him as they determined proper, for this reason and that reason, i am sure. but, even more significant than that, is that we can visualize the thinking and concerns of the war colleges shifting focus over the years in terms of focus on potential adversaries and strategic issues. the themes of these novels reflect the ever shifting concerns, and what it takes in order for the military to be able to visualize and to fight the next battles. anything that would jeopardize that process, imperils the nation. so, read your clancy novels, and keep up on what the military is thinking, and what they are concerned about.
and, finally, to come full circle and to show that the u.s. war colleges are thinking along parallel lines with their chinese counterparts, we have in 2002 “the bear and the dragon,” in which the scenario considered is a chinese invasion of siberia, the u.s. helping the russians successfully resist the chinese aggression.
so, what you have, are two nation states who see each other on collision course, contemplating how conflicts might be initiated, and carried out, and what the geo-political and geo-strategic consequences of such conflict might be.
the chinese have the world’s largest standing military, numbering anywhere from 1.2 million men and women under arms, to perhaps 1.5 or 1.6 million soldiers, airmen and sailors. the united states has the world second largest standing military, about 8 or 900 thousand soldiers on active duty, another 6 or 700 thousand on active reserve, and more in strategic reserves. the united states has the clear present advantage strategically in weaponry, but that gap is closing. in short, the two most powerful militaries on earth are looking to square off, and they are figuring and considering the cost/benefit analysis of conflict, and who can take whom know, and how the future might affect or change an anticipated outcome.
it is on such considerations that policies and diplomacy and military planning were made in the past, and it was reasonably assumed that such considerations would be operative into the future.
at least it was, until barack obama was elected president of the united states. my guess is that the foreign policy initiatives followed by his administration, and the various moves of the state department, have caused great consternation amongst military planners. heretofore, their task have been to expand or at least maintain the projection of military power and geo-political influence by the appropriate military posture and preparedness. i do not think that they are fully adjusted to the downsizing of american power that is anticipated, and i doubt very much that they have been favored with the quantifiable and quantified expectations of their civilian masters, those civilian masters on shaky enough ground with the military as it is. given the nonsense that is going on with troop levels and battle assessments in afghanistan right now, i don’t that the military has been favored with obama’s entire conception of what the world will look like to american geo-political goals fifty years from now. or, ten years from now.
what do you think the effect was of obama’s speech, july 2, 2008 in colorado springs, colorado when he spoke of a civilian internal security force, the size, influence and cost of the current american military.
i wish tom clancy would fire his helpers in terms of their active writing, and i wish he would sit down and write another book in the next little bit, so that we could find out just what the military thinks about all that is happening in the world, all that is happening inside the pentagon and the military war colleges, how fully informed they are of the radical leftist plans for america’s military future, and how all of that is impacting their thinking and their planning.
i am, in short, wondering if things are not so unstable as to prevent the kinds of strategic thinking it has been necessary to be capable of performing in past years for the united states to prosper and be secure.
in short, does anyone have any fucking idea whither we are tending, these days? or, whither we are withering?-- now that barack obama has been elected president of the united states, and now that the state department has come entirely out of the closets, and revealed itself for being the marxist operatives that they are.
part ii.
generally speaking, in these kinds of books and in these kinds of considerations, you will notice that if there is anything better than being the biggest toughest kid on the block, it is being the two biggest toughest kids on the block, preferably set on and upon the third toughest kid on the block. it is not quite as good to be the first and third toughest kids against the second, but it beats the hell out of being the first toughest kid on the block set against no.’s two and three. it goes without saying that the worst situation is being the third toughest kid on the block going up against no.’s one and two all by yourself.
this goes back to one of the very first posts on this blog, and that dealt with the difference between killing and fighting. If you are in a war, you want to be doing the killing, and you don’t want to be doing the fighting, because fighting is dangerous and you can get hurt in a fight, sometimes very badly.
and, thus, we come to the subject of partnering up, or as we say out n.e. oregon way, picking your friends and not your nose. this is, as they same in erudite places, the science of triangulation. or, put the other way, how to fix it so that you get to kill people with relative impunity and little cost to yourself, while avoiding any kind of a serious fight, or at least a fight that is not a serious fight to you. i will tell you, that the fights in the pacific in wwii, while not of the scale of the horrendous battles that were fought at stalingrad and the like, were every bit as intense, if not more so.
now, i have 3 or 4 marines who call me good friend, and even though we all know that i am not as tough as them, no, i wasn’t a marine, they flatter me by pretending i know how to read, so i am always getting and retaining books about the marine corps, sometimes written quite beautifully by marines. leon uris may not even be the best, and he was a fair hand at a story. but, one of the books i remember very closely and very well, in my own little way, was about the combat by the marines to secure the island of iwo jima in wwii. you say, to this day, “death valley” to a marine, and i would be very surprised if he didn’t know to what you were referring, because he was probably taught that bit of lore when he learned what enfilade means. but, to the point. iwo jima was garrisoned by about 45,000 soldiers, who knows for sure, because the japanese on iwo were on the wrong end of the logistic chain, and it was hard to get troops there, and it was damned hard to keep them fed. i belive the marines attacked with a force of somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 marines, or so. the fighting? when the marines declared the island secure, and it was a long time after they had won the battle, i doubt if there were300 or so japanese who lived through the fight. i think, if i remember correctly, that about 12 to 15 thousand marines were killed or wounded in the battle.
my dear friends, appended to this little book about iwo jima is a complete roster of the marine officer corps and nco’s/sargeants who saw battle, including the officers/non coms who started the battle, their replacements, and who ended up occupying the command slots. some of the slots we filled and refilled three and four times, and the killed and wounded included colonels and captains and not just lieutenants, and corporal’s and sargeant’s slot were filled three and four times, maybe more. such persons were prime targets to the japanese defenders.
during the entire battle, there were no front lines: almost every spot on the island was subject to enemy rifle and light artillery fire. that’s how small the spot of earth that the marines and japanese paid such a price for.
wwii in the pacific started when the japanese determined to displace european colonialism in the pacific. in short, the japanese determined to step into a developing power vacuum, as it were, as the chinese empire decayed in china and manchuria, and as the japanese determined they were stronger than the french in indo-china, and stronger than the dutch in Indonesia, and stronger than the brits in singapore and other places.
nature, and politics, abhors a vacuum. this history illustrates as clearly as anything possibly can, that the precipitous withdrawal of a long dominate power or civilization or heritage of power over a large geographical area creates a vacuum of power and influence, and that whenever this occurs new powers will rush in to try and achieve dominance. a short sided quitting of the field in order to satisfy ideological grounds, even if those grounds are the expectation of peace and decrease of hostility, can in and of itself cause war. ideologues and visionaries do not see this, they see only the image of their own intentions, and they project that upon reality. local powers, on the make, see opportunity for growth and influence.
and so it goes. back to wwii.--
the japanese did not decide to fight these colonial powers in order to liberate their fellow asians from the europeans, and to lift the yoke of american influence, even though they pursued their objective under the rubric of “asians for asians” and under the banner of the “asian co-prosperity sphere.” japan sought conquest, empire, and to be the asian colonialists over all of asia, and they sought membership in and the respect of the european colonialists: they were very taken aback by the hostilities directed to their ambition to belong to the best clubs. they determined to fight. the war started with japanese campaigns in manchuria and china, with devastating impact on the defenders, as the japanese inflicted horrible casualties on civilian and military forces opposing them, alike.
the united states and the west tried to stem this conflict by diplomacy, backed by military might, of course, and imposed an oil and materials embargo/blockade upon japan. as japan’s oil stocks began to run low, the choice facing japan from their view was to give up their colonial ambitions and what they had already gained by conquest, or to fight the united states and the other european colonial powers.
they chose to fight the united states for control of the pacific, and for control of their access to natural resources, and oil.
much to the surprise of the diplomats and the diplomatic process which was trying to avoid war, the diplomatic process did not succeed in stemming the japanese ambitions to empire, modeled after the european empires. the diplomatic process in the pacific availed as little as the diplomatic process in europe, and the japanese were as little blunted by policies combining appeasement and economic sanctions and embargo, as has been iran, and as was iraq’s reaction, in the middle east. aggressive nations who continually gain the acquiescence of stronger nations to their goals are never satisfied or convinced that the strong nations will fight to preserve its status. in a sense, the united nations and european approach to mollifying japan was just about as successful as the contemporary efforts to impose desired conduct upon iran, by the same parties. you would think somebody would have a book on this, or something.
the japanese kicked off the war proper with the attack on pearl harbor dec. 7, 1941. not as well known, but on the same date or within days, the japanese launched coordinated campaigns in indo-china, in dutch indonesia, and against the u.s. in the phillipines and elsewhere, and around the entire northern pacific. the japanese put troops onto several of the aleutian islands in the bering sea, and much of their disdain for american fighting men came from the bumbling u.s. attempts ot kick them out. finally, the japanese abandoned the islands, before the american could join decisive battle with them early in the war, which was probably good: we were just not very well prepared, early on.
at the end of the war in the pacific, with the dropping of the bombs at nagasaki and hiroshima, though their air forces and naval air forces had lost the cream of their flying corps, and though their navy was no longer a threat as a blue water navy, having lost devastating battles at sea with u.s. naval air power, the japanese still had millions of infantry in the field, in china & manchuria, in indonesia, in malaysia, and in the dutch indies. had the americans not decided to drop the bombs, and had they invaded the japanese home islands, it is rather frightening to consider what the death toll associated with invasion would have been, given the experience at iwo jima and okinawa, where civilian japanese committed suicide in droves to avoid the humiliation of capture. films show japanese citizens on the home islands training to repel invasion with pitch forks and scythes, and they would have used them, and died in the attempt to repel u.s. forces from their soil.
figure out the death toll at the iwo jima and okinawa calculus.
for years such considerations have been weighed in assessing the limits of diplomacy, and especially a diplomacy premised upon one side attempting the avoidance of war based on little more than wishful thinking and a profound mis-assessment o the other side’s motivations and aims. it has long been considered prudent as well to properly assess the other side’s willingness to fight, and indeed, to see if they are in fact not spoiling for that fight. needless to say, a proper lack of intelligence and factual knowledge in assessing these things leads to grievous mis-assessments and ignorance of the other side’s ability to fight, willingness to fight, or intent to fight.
proper intelligence is necessary to make good decisions about such matter. a disdain for intelligence, or an inability or disinclination to gather appropriate intelligence along these lines, leads to a miscalculation that increases the probability of large scale conflict in my view. this was a sin committed prior to world war ii, especially as applicable to the japanese, who were derided as potential adversaries.
in short, the americans and the europeans dismissed the japanese as formidable opponents on racial grounds, and based upon racial and ethnic stereotypes, and not solid intel assessment.
one never wishes to be a racist. it is a cardinal sin, to under estimate one’s opponent based on racial misconception. and, the u.s. and its allies, the europeans, dreadfully misunderstood the intent and capability of the japaness soldier, sailor and flier.
this is the danger of diplomacy and military strategy based upon wishful thinking. and ignorance. the cost of such error is measured in the millions of lives in this ear, given the lethality of modern weapons. to turn one’s back upon the tools necessary to make one’s way in the world, simply because the subject matter or activity is “distasteful,” or does not comport with ones ideological views of the world invited disaster prior to world war ii in the pacific, and it invites disaster now in the middle east. obama and his minions do not conceptualize that the u.s. will be involved in such matters, but if contemporary history teaches anything, it should teach that you can be in a fight whether you want to be or not.
one person seemingly alone, the marine’s marine, the greatest marine of them all, chesty puller was stationed in peking at the american ligation in the diplomatic section, when the japanese invaded first manchuria, and then china. he observed the japanese troops in the field, and saw the discipline of their maneuver, and the hardiness and ability of the japanese soldier to suffer and bear adversity. he compared their battle hardened and blooded fitness and aggressiveness, and their ability to move and maneuver very quickly over the battlefield while maintain group integrity, and he knew that european and american troops would pay a very heavy price in becoming tough enough and good enough to face and best them in the field.
he knew the japanese war aims.
he knew that america had badly miscalculated its assessment of japan, and its capability.
societies and individuals can never entirely be free of such error, it is the nature of complacency, and the natural result of that fallacious sort of thinking that the current and comfortable situation is as a result of right, or natural right, and soon the effort and hard work to achieve favor in the world, and the necessity of it to maintain such favor, is forgotten.
but, this, too, is a well remember factor in politics and in history and in diplomacy.
at least it was, until barack obama was elected president of the united states.
part iii.
what is the desired end of united state foreign policy under barack obama, except the abandonment of american strength and position? can it attain its ends?
let us assume for purposes of argument, that barack obama is a hardened communist, educated and steeped in socialist dogma from puberty on, and nurtured in college on marcuse, and polished in chicago by allinsky into a smooth duplicitous communist operative.
let’s assume for purposes of argument that barack obama is a muslim, educated at birth until puberty as a muslim.
let’s assume for purposes of argument that he aspires to the dream of all marxists to knock the united states off the pedestal of chief defender of, and apologist for, the tenets of free market capitalism.
in short, that he wants to bring the united states down. all things considered, that seems reasonable assumptions to me. he wants to destroy what he hates as a muslim, a christian nation, and he want to destroy what he hates as a marxist, the last great bastion of free market enterprise, the last place on earth where the intellectual assumptions underlying economic and intellectual and religious free markets still re understood and discussed, and where they still find jealous defenders, and the last place where they are exercised.
o.k., i understand that. or, i accept all of that as highly probable. do those assumptions or understandings make a whole lot of difference in trying to assess what his apparent goals are to the world and the united states in the conduct of his foreign policy?
no, not really.
assuming those are his goals, would it not still be rational and logical to assume that somewhere in all of this he wants to confer strength, stability, prosperity upon someone else, say his muslim forbearers, or his marxist cohorts.
surely, even if he wants to destroy us, in terms of our power and prestige militarily and economically, then it would still seem that he wants to benefit other somewhere else, in some sort of manner. to establish the socialist’s dream of the workers’ paradise of peace and prosperity throughout the world, … , that sort of thing.
and, surely, even if he wants to destroy the united states as a free market capitalistic system, replete with those standard features of free speech, free association and free assembly that capitalism usually has, … , wouldn’t it be logical that if he wants to take us down from the top, that he wouldn’t want to totally destroy us, so that he could preserve the country enough so that it could confer benefit upon his chosen favorites.
these would seem rational assumptions to make of his underlying motives for his diplomacy, and they would also seem to supply a standard by which to measure his anticipated success in meeting these standards in the next few years, as well as supplying intelligent standard to judge whether the long term attainment of his strategic goals might bear some chance of fruition.
after all, it could not be considered successful for a marxist even though he might bring the united states down, if he did nothing more thereby than to bring misery upon the rest of the world. thus, it seems that criteria of success or failure, or coherency of policy might be assigned to obama, even if we are very, very, very doubtful of the utility of his policies and aims as they might apply to us as americans.
this seems reasonable to me.
and here, i admit quite frankly that i am stumped. i am just stumped trying to understand b. insane obama, and what he intends to achieve in this world, for our benefit (and i doubtful that he is much concerned about this) or for the benefit of the rest of the world’s population (as one might expect a starry eyed radical leftist to be, after taking command of the world’s mightiest nation.)
i cannot understand just precisely who it is that obama wants to confer benefit or position or prestige upon, in any rational or cohesive sense that preserves ordered rationality, or rational order, if you will, amongst the nations or peoples or regions of the world.
i cannot see who he confers favor and benefit upon. i only see the risk that he confers upon all the people of the world. he seems to me dangerous to everyone. i cannot see the rhyme or the reason of anything.
let us examine the cause of my perplexity.
one thing is bothering me tremendously about this. for the life of me, i cannot get a feel for the world view of the person or persons behind this whole cobbled up mess. i just cannot put my hands on the shape of the intelligence behind this approach that the united states is taking to foreign politics, to geo-politics, to the geo-strategic interest of the united states or to anyone else. now, by contrast, i think i have a tremendous feel for the ethos, the world view that runs obama’s domestic politics, and it lies just at the ghoulish pencil pushing social utility fanaticism of the emanuel brothers, the brothers grim who would throw the old folks out into the snow. both high brows. both prisses, one a ballet dancer, the other a death camp surgeon. the emanuels are the lineal descendents of the fascist aesthete leni riefestahl, she who was enthralled by the lithe natural beauty of youth, of its clear unwrinkled skin, its high breasts and muscular chests, its flat tummies and buttocks like bands of steel, which she photographed nude in germany and africa alike. like rahm emanuel, she too started as a dancer, and has the dancer’s aesthetic. and like zeke emanuel, she disdains the sags, the halt lameness of old age, the failing of the faculties, the systemic malfunctions, and they find that repulsive, not fitting with the glorious bronzed image of the fit athelete, and such judgment being made, zeke emanuel possesses the fascist aesthetic to simply eliminate on grounds of efficiency that which does not suit him, that which does not please him. no cleaning of bed pans for the emanuel boys.
but I cannot get any feel for the world view of the long term strategic analyst who conjures up a future world derivative of the trends of this one, and looks ahead 40 or 50 years to imagine who and what will be strong, and how the united states will respond to it, and more precisely from the angel of a confirmed marxist like obama, how the rest of the world will react to each other, and how the rest of the world will either fight or accommodate each other. and, i can get no feel for how this is to be approached, or avoided, or encouraged, or any of it.
all i see coming out of this mess is, … , well, a mess.
if you will read uris’s book, you will get a very firm feel for the world view even of his fictional characters, and you can see the logic of their assumptions and their planning, from the point of view, and their point of view to the service of their nation. if you look at the protagonists and antagonists in the clancy books, you will find the same feel, and you can grasp and manipulate the world views in conflict, and understand why first the united states and russia went to loggerheads with each other, and, why, in clancy’s views (again, our understanding of things before the election of barack obama), the emphasis shift from an analysis of russia vs. the u.s. to china vs. the u.s.
i am assuming, that being a marxist, obama would want to see the establishment of a workers’ paradise on earth, from each according to his ability and to each according to his need. so, to me, it seems initially silly to cripple the economic strength of the very society whose economic dynamism could help establish this paradise on earth, and to seek to destroy the other country on earth likely to produce the science and products efficacious to that end. o.k., let us say obama’s antagonism is so great towards the capitalism of the united states that he simply must destroy us.
all right, i could understand that, hate and envy and spite are great motivators, thoroughly human and comprehensible and to that extent, why wouldn’t he behave to saddle our economy with debt, and push us into a debt induced depression.
but, what is the world view, what is the purpose of a united states foreign policy that seems to encourage antagonism at every turn, just as his race baiting, racist, and open grab for dictatorial power promote that antagonism at every turn in our domestic policy.
just very, very briefly let us see try and comprehend how the foreign policy positions of the obama administration confer the workers’ paradise of peace and prosperity to the people of the world 50 years from now. again, this analysis is that he will continue to vitiate and destroy u.s. military and strategic power in the next coming years.
in the pacific, it seems to me that if we withdraw our strategic interests there, especially the united states navy, we through the free exchange of goods and services from the far east, from asia, that has driven the economy of the world in the last epics. and, it seems to me that it creates a geo-strategic situation that is exactly parallel to the geo-strategic situation in asia before wwii. except that china become japan, and, to a limited extent, japan becomes pre-wwii china.
if we leave that area in a power vacuum, china will vie for dominance, and though she cannot exert in now, in twenty or twenty five years, she will have the military to exert tremendous force and authority over the region. but, china is in the same fix that japan was before wwii. china has tremendous energy needs, which are increasing, and she does not have the resources to satisfy them. there is one rival in the region, and a not inconsiderable one, and that is india. and, india will guard her influence in the south china sea and the indian ocean with great fervor.
my guess is the geo-political and war planners from china and india are considering the risk benefit analysis of war between the states right now, and that they both consider war between each the other an inevitability. they will both want to exert considerable pressure on japan to partner up, because although japan has not the demographics or birth rate to be involved in all out war, and will want to avoid it at all cost, she can contribute considerable scientific and industrial skills and experience to whichever sphere she will be drawn into. there will be no neutrals in asia.
i do not see the crippling of american power nor the withdrawal of american power as contributing to any sort of peace and stability in the pacific.
i see war.
if i were chinese I would see war, if no longer between indian and the united states versus china, then china versus india.
if i were indian, I would see it the same way. simple, straightforward, clean, analytical, who is the biggest tough kid on the block. is, was, and ever shall be. simple as that.
since this is likely to be the biggest conventional warfare fight on the globe, let us consider the role of the russians in all of this. whoever if facing the chinese, and that is going to be india, will want the russians on their side. and, the russians, will want to partner up with whoever faces off against the chinese. the russians, i do not believe, can square up against the chinese in the yalu basin nor in siberia, should the chinese lust after them for resources, which the chinese will. the –stans and the caucus may want to kick in which china, simply from an historical animosity to russia, and georgia and ukraine may want to line up with russia, or may not have any choice but to contribute to a beleaguered country that will forcibly conscript her neighbors to fill gaps in her service requirements that she cannot produce herself by her own birth rate.
a fairly respectable conflagration, if it can be contained to just that extent. by the time this rolls around, china & india & russia will have the ability to kill people in droves.
as to africa, i do not see black africa having any geo-political or geo-strategic consequence at all in the foreseeable future, except to provide bureaucrats to the united nations, and to tell the industrialized nations how to run their economies, given their own expertise in such matters, e.g., telling people what to do, not producing things. as to africa, i do not see white africa existing at all.
i understand russia versus china, i think. that is an antagonism of history and cultural dimension, and a fight to control vast resources in siberia, a huge stake.
but, again, i have no feeling for what obama and his strategic planners think about russia, and i cannot place their approach to russia in any coherent scheme or geo-political view of the world. a world view seems completely lacking here, and the policies in place with russia seem to engender conflict.
oh, i would not let hillary clinton or george mitchell negotiate the purchase of an outhouse for me.
the russian approach, if you can call it that.
in the past several months we have seemingly put russian back in the position of world power. it might make some sense if obama and his little band of zealots wanted to use russia to triangulate china, and keep china under some reasonable limit. but, we are tossing in the towel as a world power. what difference to us do it make if china asserts that position, our scraggily white imperialist asses are out of that game.
so, giving away the store on strategic missile negotiation and missile inspection makes no sense to bolster russia in order to have russia help us. it especially makes no sense to decrease our own strategic initiative if we are concerned in some way about confronting china, and that would be the only reason to bolster russia’s strength against our own.
to my mind, it is horribly inconsistent, making no conceivable sense at all, and having absolutely no discernable coherence to me.
and, then there is the matter of the muslims.
i have written often about the radical left in europe and the united states making the muslims at 39 flavors at baskins & robbins. i am going to link it, as i consider it the absolute best analysis of “changing course: a new direction for u.s. relations with the muslim world,” issued by the george soros front, the u.s.—muslim engagement group, pimped by madeline albright. i don’t expect anyone to read it, but hope springs eternal. http://wintersoldier2008.typepad.com/summer_patriot_winter_sol/2009/06/a-muslim-compatible-america-obamas-vision-a-reprint.html
obama, the american left and the swishy euro commies have all chosen islam, and the diplomatic support and the money pouring into the middle east is staggering. it is obvious that the u.s. and europe have decided to side with the world’s 1.5 billion muslims as against the world’s 12 million jews. to me, it is an abject, craven and cowardly renunciation of 3500 years of religious heritage and civilization, and makes no rational sense that can be adequately defended in a values based analysis, e.g., heritage, culture, civilization, arts, science, humanitarian and just plain good looking women as relevant matters to continue. (you can have your blond give me a dark eyed jewish lady any day.)
but, that is what they have done.
in that sense, what bolster russia at the expense of the muslims. they are inherently going to come into conflict over the –stans, and iran, and now that turkey has thrown in with the arab muslims at the south end of the med, the russians and the arab muslims will come into conflict over influence and ties to georgia and the ukraine.
and, it is hard to figure out how the issue of russia’s demographics sits with this mysterious entity that guides the obama administrations strategic thought, because of the difficulty in grasping his or her world view, but russia’s declining birth rate, her public health issues with tuberculosis and alcoholism, and std’s is just staggering. it remains a truth in modern industrial societies, just as in their agrarian predecessors, but a declining birth rate will not support an advancing economy, any more than a shrinking economy will support an advancing birth rate. you want growth, you gotta have growth. you want kids, you gotta be healthy enough to breed ‘em up, healthy enough to be interested in breeding ‘em up.
so, maybe you just prop up the ruskies long enough to humor them, let the missiles rot in the ground and let them just collapse. who knows?
but, absent that little bit of cynicism, who knows why the obama administration is working as cross purposes any way you want to look at russia.
i do not analyze israel’s strategic position in this, because israel has no strategic relationship that the united states will rise to protect. the united states, to our everlasting shame, has abandoned our heritage, or religious heritage and our civilization to appease a religious fervor that is our sworn enemy. what can one say about a depravity and cowardice so deep and fundamental, except to say that it begs intellectual credulity, and shame. i cry.
if israel wants to exist, she will do it on her own nickel. best for her to partner up with india, or perhaps china, but i don’t think china has the reach to be of much help to israel, not yet anyway. best with india, build some medium size carriers and subs, station then in the indian ocean, fly the crews in and out, and hope for the best. no help will be forth coming from the u.s. government.
which brings us to the swishy euro commies, past and present.
my guess the old eastern bloc will fall in with the russians rather than deal with the effeminate euros. the old eastern bloc countries do not look as susceptible to russian domination as in the immediate post wwii era, and the soviets don’t look so domineering, given their pathetic performance in georgia. better the russians, i think, than the muslims, will be the eastern bloc thinking.
which again, brings into stark relief the wisdom of strengthening the russians with the various missile give aways and other examples of out and out ass licking. it makes no sense.
the swishy euro commies?
since this weenie greenie bunch of commies gets along so well with our own radical left, what with al gore, jimmy carter and barack obama getting all the prizes, and the other americans winning nobels, and us doing so well at the canne film festival year in and year out, you’d think that the euro’s would benefit from our foreign policy.
but, we exposed them to missile attack again, with the russians no less. and, we have chosen the muslims over the euro’s. you read “changing course,” setting out our foreign policy objectives with islam, and you will not notice a single reference to the swishy fuzzy euro commies: if you notice some, please write and tell me what an idiot i am.
will there be war between states in europe?
i think not. euro politicians have decided to eschew life and existence in return for a war free existence: the politicians have chosen to be bayoneted in their beds, or cowering in the corners, or having one last go with the muslim mistress
will there be civil war in europe?
yes, i think perhaps in italy, in the low lands, sweden, germany and perhaps england, now that the english people have come out of the wood work. they must be like cicadas or something, coming out every 17 years.
will anyone be able to intercede to stop the slaughter of the muslims who have finally pushed just too fucking far. no, who would.
other european states sending troops or police? oh, come now. the people in france and norway are so comatose and beaten they cannot even defend their own countries from incessant attack from the muslims. they are not gonna hop in buses and go die in another european country, when they will not even rise in defense of their own.
the dutch are going to help the belgians? perhaps.
but, i see a very good possibility of civil war in europe, and also a potential brake up of the euro union, as the euro states devolve into stinking cess pools with further muslim immigration. it is a mystery to me, but it seems that at some point european leftists and politicians are going to notice that there have no countries left to govern in their haughty superiority. now, maybe that is what they desire, the destruction of the hated capitalistic state, the weenie dicked idiots, but at some point isn’t it gonna come to them that arab rule isn’t gonna be too great either. at any rate, maybe i will have the satisfaction of seeing them fall to the knives of islam. blood thirsty little devil, aren’t i.
as to south america.
what about them? oh, yes. venezuela is going to get one nuke, and run the whole thing. except for the matter of nukes, i really don’t see any nation in south america developing strategic significance. they might get enough stuff to kill each other in limited exchanges, but i don’t see them have strategic significance.
it might still be a nice place to retire, the pampas. argentina, uraguay, paraguay. they like to stay up late. so do i. maybe fausta wertz can teach me how to tango, or rumba.
john jay @ 10.21.2009
p.s. one more very short article to follow. then, that’s it, for this.
THE SECOND COMING**
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
--William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
it says at the web site where i picked up the text of the poem that it is one of the most published poems in anthologies, and the like. if it is read so much, why is it understood and regarded so little? must be the rhymes, huh?
friends:
this should be understood.--
to the marxist ideologue, e.g., b'obama, the emanuels grim, zeke & raham, there are two categories of people:
1.) marxists, and
2.) just worthless scum, in historical & analytical terms, who need to die to make way for paradise.***
for the marxists, dacha's. it is not an american word, yet.
for the scum, the snowbank, and starvation.
it is pretty much that simple wherever they have ruled. i checked it out. see emma goldman, "my further discontent with russia," and dostoevsky, the soliloquy of the grand inquisitor in "the brother karamozov."
***just around the corner, coming soon to a neighborhood near you. [hint: plant potatoes and corn, lay in on the rice and pasta. potables.]
john jay
milton freewater, oregon usa