My new piece on Ron Paul and David Petraeus (at Lew Rockwell):
“This past week the buzz has all been about the House testimony of General David Petraeus on the “surge” in Iraq and an inflammatory ad in response that dubbed him General “Betray Us.”
The ad, the brainchild of an antiwar group, ripped the general’s assessment that the increase in manpower in Iraq in 2007 (the “surge”) has been effective. It pointed out that the Petraeus report is in stark contrast to independent evaluations of the situation by the GAO as well as evaluations by the Republican party itself.
At issue is the timing of troop withdrawal.
The antiwar movement (with a large part of the population) wants the troops out immediately and insists that the US presence in Iraq is itself inciting violence and terrorism. Bush supporters, many Republicans, some Democrats, and the rest of the population support staying on. They say that immediate withdrawal could create a strategic and humanitarian disaster.
Whatever we think of the administration, we can safely assume that most war supporters really do believe that the occupation of Iraq is central to US national security and the war on terrorism. Questioning their good faith isn’t necessary. Asking why they think this way is.
Take the language war-supporters use. It suggests that people like Ron Paul who want immediate withdrawal are dangerously unrealistic, not merely unpatriotic.
These critics should take another look and see if it isn’t their ideas that run counter to reality. They give us “withdrawal” and “staying on” as mutually exclusive opposites. But any kind of withdrawal can’t possibly happen without some staying on. The troops can’t simply come home tomorrow, presto, because we want them out. So, the issue really is not withdrawal but different lengths of staying on. A few months or many years? At this point you’ll notice that the troops have already stayed on for four years.
Is all this hairsplitting?
No.
By constantly talking in binary terms (withdrawal/no withdrawal), we play into our brain’s hard-wired tendency to think along the lines of group rivalry. We play into the “mob mind” that loves nothing more than slogans.
Obviously if there is a yes/no, either/or divide, we can safely perch on one side and shove our rivals (and the divide immediately creates rivals) to the other side. Then we can devote all our energies to reinforcing this fictitious model with every shred of evidence and lung power at our disposal. Anyone with a passing interest in psychology will tell you what the result will be. We will get more and more of what we focus on – an impasse. And our model of the world will increasingly diverge from the reality underneath.
Take away the “withdraw/no withdrawal” slogan and something happens.
What you get turns out to be not one question but at least two, both of which require us to look at history, not just ideology.
The prescriptive question is –
How long should we stay?
(The post-mortem version is more accurate, how long should we have stayed?)
And the descriptive question is –
How long have we already stayed?
The second question is more interesting….and quite clear.
We’ve been in Iraq not for 4 years, but for 16. (If we count all the meddling with different groups, we’ve been there even longer – for decades). A baby born when George père halted at the gates of Baghdad would be taking her SAT’s by the time George fils first started showing withdrawal symptoms.
To people who think that getting out now will create a national security and humanitarian disaster, the question we really should be posing is this one:
What sort of national security and humanitarian contingency ever needed a 16-year troop presence half way across the globe that took, all told, around 1.5 million civilian and military lives and around 1.5 trillion dollars?
Seen this way, the issue is no longer the timing of the withdrawal. That’s simply the logistical seal on a 16-year bipartisan strategy that’s already about as big a disaster in humanitarian, economic, and national security terms as you could possibly have without entirely wiping out a country.
The real question is the point of such a disastrous strategy in the first place.
Focusing on the past 16 years (rather than the past 4) tells us where we should be looking for explanations: To the end of the Cold War.
The Cold War, of course, was a boon to the mob mentality. There were all those stark slogans of bi-polarity – us/them, good guys/evil empire, capitalist/communist.
At one level there was good sense in them. Nobody can read Solzhenitsyn or Robert Conquest without being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the horrors in Soviet Russia. Or in Mao’s China. Or under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
It would be easy to conclude from that that what the US did from fear that such communist regimes would expand was always and everywhere justified.
But it wasn’t – because the slogans swept a great deal under the carpet. Some of which was more precious than the painted furniture on top. The label of communism, for instance, failed to tell apart communists and nationalists, communists and anti-imperialists, communists and anarchists, communists and socialists. The real facts of history and politics got washed out in the ideological spin-cycle.
Worse yet, instead of standing firmly on its own individualist, libertarian, and rational principles to counter the evils of utopianism, America – or rather the US government – began to adopt the collectivist methods of its enemies. From a modest republic content with commercial pursuits it transformed itself into a grasping empire of ideologues. Some would say that this has always been the case and that the roots of empire reach much deeper into American history. They could be right.
However, it was really during the Cold War that the non-interventionist principles of the old republic were most thoroughly dismantled. And the sloganeers trying to rally the masses were the primary victims of the sloganeering:
Conservatives started discarding rather than conserving traditional principles of state-craft to pursue a world order made in their own image.
Free marketers began to believe that the state ought to subsidize their risk-taking.
Capitalists started adopting socialist language and policies.
Liberal democracy – of the particular kind enjoyed by western states in the twentieth century – was now said to be an unconditional good for all states, at all times.
But, as a mad, wise man said, “everything unconditional belongs in pathology.”
So, at the end of several decades wrestling with the unconditional theories of world communism, the US too began to display its own pathology.
This was enough the case that in 1989 when the sloganeers said that the capitalists had defeated the communists, some observers feared that both had lost. They were right. The rivalry between capitalism and communism turned out to have been a race to the bottom. The price of winning the fight against communism was the loss of the principle at stake in the fight.
Liberty holding up the torch of reason to guide the state became liberty torching reason in abject service to the state.
This new liberty was not liberty at all but license. The regulations it effectively dismantled were mainly those that applied to businesses feeding off government contracts that were large enough to rule out the rule-makers. The rest of America was hog-tied with rules. Here, too, employing the slogans of the mob misleads: It turns out you can have too much regulation and too little – simultaneously.
So, while ordinary individuals and businesses are persecuted at every turn by ham-handed bureaucrats, a handful of corporations, especially those connected to the military, banking, finance, and energy, have become a rentier class, deriving their profits not from genuine free enterprise, from value added, innovation, foresight, and risk-taking, but from their special relationship to the government. Entrepreneurs have been displaced by over-paid technocrats, experts, and managers every bit as bureaucratic and wasteful as the state enterprises they claim to be stream-lining.
Even the most sensitive government functions, like intelligence, are handed over to private contractors working hand-in-hand with the state in mercantilist ventures that rely increasingly on war and disaster to achieve their goals. Simultaneously, the life-blood of the economy, its paper money, is subject to continuous manipulation. As more and more of middle-class savings in the bank, in pension funds, and in home equity, are sucked into the financial markets, financiers siphon off the profits for themselves, while government bailouts socialize the costs of their risk-taking.
It is this corrupt “corporatism” that has claimed the mantle of liberty and free enterprise and swindled millions all over the world into believing it is the true face of free enterprise.
Thus, in her new book, “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” Naomi Klein, author of the anti-globalization manifesto, “No Logo,” draws a connection between government shock therapy and human rights violations (echoing a fine essay by Peter Linebaugh in Counterpunch in 2004).
For her, as for many on the left, mercantilism and financialization are capitalism.
But why should we argue the point with socialists when so-called capitalists themselves agree? When the right claims that opposition to torture and war are opposition to the American way of life – isn’t it conceding just this? That capitalism and individualism require endless war and torture?
But suppose, just suppose, the case is precisely the opposite. Suppose it is our slogans that are at fault, not capitalism. Suppose – as it really is – that capitalism and free enterprise best go hand in hand with peace and that the welfare-warfare state we’re so comfortable with is properly called collectivist, not capitalist.
Suppose that the war on Iraq is not a defense of the individualist way of life but the final assault on it – then what?
Then we might notice that the sense of duty that General Petraeus shows – the unquestioning loyalty to the organization he works for, the competitive desire to get the job done, is quite a different thing from that displayed, for instance, by the plain-speaking General George C. Marshall, whose name happens to be on an award given to Petraeus.
Today, plain-speaking is out. Part of the duty the military is to undertake public diplomacy so extensive that it is no more than disinformation.
It is disinformation, for instance, to say that a reduction in troop size of around 30,000 by next year (that is, after the elections) is a withdrawal of troops, when all it would do is return troop strength to what it was before the surge in 2007.
That is not a reduction, it is actually an extension of a surge originally expected to produce a result in 6 months – or be declared a failure.
But should we blame this on Petraeus, who, with a PhD from Princeton in Public Administration, is after all as much a technocrat as he is a general? A technocrat who is intimately part of the financialization and mercantilism of US Govt. Inc. In Bosnia, for example, he was Deputy Commander of the U.S. Joint Interagency Counter-Terrorism Task Force (JITF-CT), specially created after September 11 to add a counter-terrorism capability to the U.S. forces under NATO in Bosnia.
That was at the time when Dyncorp, one of the largest private military contractors in the world, was providing police officers as part of a $15 million annual contract for logistical support.
Two of its employees alleged that several colleagues had colluded in the black-market sex trade of women and children – allegations supported by a court finding that the firing of one whistle-blower was retaliatory and by an out-of-court settlement with another.
Nonetheless, Dyncorp was active again in Iraq, sending out ex-cops and security guards to Iraq to help train a new police force. And again, it was none other than Petraeus who was in charge of that training as well as in setting up Shiite militias (death squads) to go after Sunnis.
Recall, too, that conditions for interrogations involving torture were often set by private contractors unaccountable to government through traditional channels.
And that it was General Petraeus who set up the Shia militias in July 2004 as part of a “surge” that immediately followed the exposure of torture at Abu Ghraib but was immediately displaced by it in the media sensation.
Now, with this new surge in Iraq, three years later, what Petraeus is doing is simply switching his enemies. He is now arming and training Sunni militias to fight Shia.
But he’s not switching contractors. In June 2007 Dyncorp was again chosen by the US army to provide logistical support, this time to the tune of $5 billion a year.
This is the backdrop to Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s falling out with Petraeus this past summer. Al-Maliki, a Shia, demanded that Petraeus stop creating Sunni militia. He wanted an end to the surge and the US out of Iraq immediately.
But why would the administration want to get out when arming Sunni militias provokes Iranian support of the Shia? And when that, in turn, provides a convenient justification for more sabre-rattling against Iran? It perfectly fits a decades old neo-conservative plan to destabilize the Middle East.
Obviously, Petraeus, who did his doctoral dissertation on the impact of Vietnam on the conduct of war, has learned the lesson from it that public perception of a war must be thoroughly managed. Too bad that’s not quite the same lesson learned by one of his best advisors, Col. H. R. McMaster, a soldier celebrated in Tom Clancy’s novels.
McMaster’s book on Vietnam, “Dereliction of Duty,” blames not just the arrogance of Johnson and McNamara for the failure in Vietnam but their calculated deception of the American people. The book is now required reading in the army. Yet, oddly, its author was passed over twice for promotion, while Petraeus shot to the top. That should tell us exactly which lesson from Vietnam is in favor with this government. And what sort of patriotism is popular these days.
Just there lies the difference between the Patriot Acts of this administration and the acts of patriots like Ron Paul, who owes nothing to any organization for his views. Who stands entirely apart from the two-faced one-party system currently in power.
Paul’s patriotism comes from an older time, when someone like “George Marshall could tell the truth and be praised for it, not slandered.
“When General Marshall takes the witness stand to testify,” it was said, “we forget whether we are Republicans or Democrats. We know we are in the presence of a man who is telling the truth about the problem he is discussing.”
The truth-telling of General Marshall and Dr. Paul is what this country desperately needs today. Without it, we face a defeat much greater than anything than we have experienced in Iraq so far. We face a loss whose magnitude dwarfs any loss of security or power that could be feared from withdrawing at once.
We face a defeat of the very values that originally formed and guided this country. The values professed especially by the Republican party – individualism, free enterprise, limited government, and liberty. Ultimately, these values will be discredited simply because they will be seen as part of the discredited policies of this un-republican Republican administration.
For the truth is that to the world the occupation of Iraq is not simply a blunder. It is a neo-colonial adventure of a very savage sort. One that recalls, to many, the carving up of the globe in the nineteenth century by the European empires. And in much of the developing world today, these empires are identified, falsely, with free enterprise and individualism. Colonialism and capitalism are attacked as one.
Which is why severing the ties of enterprise to empire is the crucial task at hand for individualists and free marketers everywhere. A task only a man like Ron Paul can undertake, when all the other enemies of imperialist collectivism are also friends of socialist collectivism.
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As individualists, though, we know better. We know that it is only free markets (and the laws that protect them) that let the poor raise themselves out of poverty. Corrupt governments and crony capitalists can never do it. And if we cannot care for the poor, sheer self-interest should tell us that our commerce too cannot thrive in a world where people are impoverished by war and plunder.
Before defending the blundering of an inept administration this should have been the first duty of Republicans – defending the slandered honor and interests of free enterprise
Instead, today, Republicans have done what a century of communism failed to do. They have let the occupation of Iraq triumphantly resurrect collectivism from the ashes of Cold War defeat. They have given it a credibility its own performance never could.
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Everywhere we look, collectivists celebrates moral victories: the fiery analysis of anti-globalization activists and antiwar activists strips the corporate-state of its last fig-leaf. And rightly so.
What is truly calamitous, however, is that in the popular mind, the free market stands equally stripped as well.
That is why the important question before us now is not who will save Iraq.
For Iraq was lost the day we attacked it without just cause.
The question before us now is who will save individualism and free markets.
The problem is that capitalism and free market economy aren´t the same thing. In some cases, they are the opposite. 😉
Yes. But I call that sort of capitalism, ‘corporatism’.
I think it requires the state to corrupt capital.
To my thinking, without the state, free enterpise will limit the size of corporations naturally.
More work has to be done on the application of Austrian theory to the real world and I read that there is a strong criticism of Mises in that respect. But the fundamental Austrian position seems strong to me. I await correction from anyone with more knowledge…
I think this is a very important subject, as many people with good intentions oppose “capitalism” and tend to welcome goverment intervention, not realizing that they are supporting the opposite of what they think.
This leads to absurd conclusions. For instance, it is common to blame “capitalism” for the problems of the former DDR (East-Germany) and people applaude politics which make thing even worse.
Furthermore, in the managed economies we have today, the “free market” rhetoric often simply do not apply any longer, as explained in this short essay:
Free Market Thinking: Not Applicable
by Per Bylund
http://www.strike-the-root.com/61/bylund/bylund10.html
It is also, in my view, the major mistake made in this otherwise brillant BBC-Documentary:
BBC – The Trap – What Happened to Our Dreams of Freedom
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=8349032228301471543
Regardfully from Germany
Fabio
Responding to the strike the root piece:
I have some sympathy with the view that what we have is not a free market in the first place.
On the other hand, I am not sure we can argue against the existence of a free market simply because all the choices available to us are less than perfect.
There are really few situations, even if we project some kind of state of nature, where a perfect array of choices exists.
Let’s say I am born in a rather cold, dry region. My choices are already limited by the climate and soil in what we could plant in the ground. I might actually have a dream of growing some kind of exotic tropical fruit like a mango.
Maybe I am even a mango fanatic. But there is no chance – since I haven’t much money to travel that far – of my getting away far enough to do that.
Still — it would be difficult to say I don’t have free market conditions here.
No set of choices in the world contains all possibilities that might cater to all our tastes. However, I would still call it a free market if the limitations did not stem from some other individual’s active restriction of my choice.
So, while I think a libertarian position is neither fully leftist or rightist in the conventional sense — I think it stems ultimately from a sense of the self-possession of the individual. Whether that must necessarily have a basis in religion of some kind, I am not sure. I rather think it might, although I think atheistic libertarians might disagree.
From a reader:
When the soviet empire collapsed, I said, communism has collapsed in the
Soviet Union. When will it collapse in the United States
The time may be at hand. Perhaps George Bush is really like Ronald
Reagan. If Reagan contributed mightily to the collapse of the communist
empire in Asia, perhaps Bush II will contribute as much to the collapse
of the collectivist empire in North America.
It might also be possible that Ron Paul is like Gorbachev. Gorbachev
tried to make communism really work only to see his dream slip through
this fingers. Ron Paul will try to restore the republic and will
probably fail.
Don’t get me wrong, I think both Gorbachev and Ron Paul are great men,
but both have the flawed visions that we can ride the tiger of an
authoritarian philosophy without being bitten.
M
http://www.whatgov.com</p></p>
Lila, Your piece was perfect. If Ron Paul isn’t elected I believe the descent of America will be sealed within 50 years. Peace to You.
RD
Lila, as soon as it is possible, I recommend that you read “America’s Retreat from Victory” by Sen. Joseph McCarthy. You mention “Chairman Mao” in your article. Chairman Mao would have come to a much sooner end had there been no George Caitlett Marshall. According to Marshall, “With the stroke of a pen, I have disarmed 39 divisions of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek’s Army.”
It was George Marshall’s stupid idea to invade Normandy on D-Day rather than take the more logical route through Italy, which was already occupied by Allied troops. (Churchill thought it was stupid too.) Eastern Europe was lost to the Soviets because of this “stupidity;” because it took us longer to get to the east that way, rather than go through the soft underbelly in Italy. But I don’t think Marshall was stupid. I think he had more sinister plans.
The world today is a very ugly place. Thanks in no short measure to George Caitlett Marshall.
-Ray
Hmmm-
The point was not Marshall’s strategic thinking but the qualities that were respected in those days versus what the current political scene demands. Now partisan loyalty is the supreme virtue — perhaps because there is a more fragmented idea about what it means to be a citizen? I don’t presume to know…
Also, while I am no expert on WW II strategy, I believe there was more involved in Churchill’s opposition to Overlord than simply strategy:
From the Churchill center:
Churchill and The Second Front
Question:
When I took Dr. Weigley’ WW II course at Temple University he was very critical of Churchill’s and Alan Brooke’s Mediterranean strategy. This class was extremely popular and Weigley is an impressive teacher. He was always willing to listen to his students and he was always willing to listen to their views. I pulled out my notes again along with Weigley’s “The American Way of War” which was written in 1973. In order to understand his views on the Normandy invasion you might care to read Chap. 14 “The Strategic Tradition of U.S. Grant: Strategists of the European War”. Much of his class notes on the invasion of Europe seem to follow his thinking in this chapter. On page 333 (the hardback copy) he concludes that:
“By way of TORCH they (the British) had diverted the Americans from ROUNDUP, the cross-channel invasion in 1943. If ROUNDUP had occurred, obviously it would have had to be on a considerably weaker scale than OVERLORD in 1944; but the German defenses would also have been weaker than in 1944, (he mentioned this in class) to a degree that would probably have more than compensated for the Anglo-American inability to achieve their strength of OVERLORD as early as 1943. By postponing the cross-channel invasion. TORCH and it aftermath had squandered the opportunity for an early ending of the war (he stated this in class also).
Later in the same paragraph Weigley also stated that: “If Marshall and the American planners had not stoutly and persistently demanded it (OVERLORD) in interallied councils, and perhaps if Stalin had not reaffirmed his own demand for it at Tehran, the cross-channel invasion of Europe would not have occurred even in the spring of 1944.”
After reviewing my class notes it seems that Weigley followed the thinking of his book. He called the decision to invade North Africa one of the crucial decisions of the war. He also believes that the decision to invade North Africa was a political decision i.e. Roosevelt’s belief that the U.S. could not stand idly by while the Russians fought the Germans. He also talked about the direct vs. peripheral strategies advocated by the United States and Great Britain. U.S. thinking was based on the strategy of the civil war i.e. to use American economic and manpower resources to overwhelm the enemy while British strategy was based on her traditional reliance on the Royal Navy to fight her enemies and Churchill’s understanding of Britain’s weakened economic and manpower resources. Weigley also went on to say that Churchill’s and Alan Brooke’s reluctance to commit to the Normandy invasion may have also been influenced by the “the ghosts of the Somme” and the desire to prolong Britain’s status as superpower I.e. that superior American manpower in any European campaign would downgrade the influence of Great Britain.
Do the British and Canadian historians also share this view point or are they more supportive of Churchill and Alan Brooke? I did read John Grigg’s “1943: the Victory That Never Was” so I know his interpretation of this topic. (Posted by Frank P. Ferguson )
A Response:
I was a bit surprised to see that Weigley would buy into that whole argument about an invasion of France in 1943. On the whole, I didn’t think that many scholars, of whatever nationality, took it too seriously. Grigg’s book that you mention isn’t very good, and his argument falls apart at numerous points. I would recommend having a look at Michael Howard’s “The Mediterranean Strategy in the Second World War” for a much more balanced view of this issue.
It is of course impossible to say for certain that an invasion of France in 1943 would have failed. But without complete mastery of the air (which was not achieved till 1944 — Grigg & Co. never explain how to overcome that problem), specialised landing craft, etc, it is difficult to see how an opposed landing, attempted by inexperienced American troops and commanders, would have been possible. What made Overlord (or “Roundup” as it was then called) impossible in 1943 was the demands of operation Torch in ’42/43. In other words, it was either one or the other. An invasion of France in ’43 would have meant no Torch in ’42. So a D Day in 1943 would have been the first meeting of American and German ground forces — and bearing in mind the American experience at Kasserine, this might very easily have been a disaster
And even if the Allies DID establish a beachhead in France in 1943, there seems to be no reason to assume that this would necessarily have won the war any sooner or any more cheaply than the strategy that was employed. The underlying assumption of Weigley (et al) seems to be that the war would somehow just automatically end one year after the invasion of France — i.e. if you move this one event forward then everything else would have been moved forward as well. Very convenient, but is there really any basis for such an assumption? By 1943 the Second World War had become a great war of attrition. The German Army still had to be beaten, and it was considerably stronger in 1943 than it was a year later, following further crippling losses in Russia, in North Africa, and Italy. Would a reduced Allied invasion force have made rapid progress against the much stronger German (and Italian for that matter) forces? It seems doubtful to me. How long might the Allies have been restricted to their beachhead in these circumstances? It is easy to imagine Roundup having turned into a campaign very similar to that which emerged in Italy (or perhaps Anzio would be a better analogy), only on a larger scale. In all likelihood it seems that a Second Front in France in ’43 would probably have got bogged down and turned into a prolonged war of attrition similar to what was happening on the Eastern Front
Industrial capacity is not immediately convertible into military strength. The Americans needed time to build up and train their forces before they could hope to engage the full weight of the German Army in France. North Africa, Sicily and Italy offered theatres where they could meet the Axis forces on roughly equal terms, gain valuable experience and divert German forces from the Eastern Front (and later from France.) At the same time, by 1944 Italy had clearly become a strategic dead end, and the Americans were probably absolutely right to have made the British stick to Overlord.
At any rate, this is what I have told MY class on WWII (after alerting them to the controversial nature of this issue, of course).
Posted by: Christopher M Bell
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageID=52
A Reader who sees hope in Ron Paul:
“To answer your question at the end: educated clear thinking individuals will save it. There are a lot of us out there, it is just that before RP we did not have a vehicle.”
LL
Lila, In ref to “Capitalists started adopting socialist language and policies.” – I am surprised at that actually, because I ve always expected the bright power and money grabbers to totally understand what discretion and ability to remain behind the curtains is all about: namely their ability to continue to enhance the power of their controll levers. Socio-communism is, afterall, the ultimate pinnacle of capitalism: socialize the risk, privatize the power/profits.
J in Montreal
Did you hear people talk about the health care plan last night?
Business leaders are pushing it….
That’s what I mean.
Bismarckian state socialism
Frankly, the idea that people should be forced to join a medical plan whether they want to or not is deeply repugnant. Does that mean that your medical information is also going to be available to the government?
What if you are very healthy, use alternative health remedies of your own and are perfectly happy to go abroad, self-treat or do without the American health system? Do you have a right to be left alone? What if you just carry emergency insurance so as not to be bankrupted in an emergency but don’t want to participate in certain procedures (eg). repeated x-rays or mammograms because you think they are intrusive and dangerous themselves?
I was happy to see Newt Gingrich objecting strenuously and pointing out to Republicans that they better field some candidates who represent a BREAK with business as usual or prepare to go down before HRC, who is right now looking formidable.
Maybe universal health care administered by Ms. Clinton will be enough to push people over to Ron Paul but I am not betting on it.
Lila,
In ref to “Capitalists started adopting
socialist language and policies.” – I am surprised at that actually, because
I ve always expected the bright power and money grabbers to totally
understand what discretion and ability to remain behind the curtains is all
about: namely their ability to continue to enhance the power of their
controll levers. Socio-communism is, afterall, the ultimate pinnacle of
capitalism: socialize the risk, privatize the power/profits.
Currency trader in
Montreal
Lila,
I wish we could get everyone to read your article. Keep it up.
With your permission , I am copying this article to share with some Republican friends, who are convinced the war in Iraq is about ‘protecting our freedom’.
Thanks again
JC
Ron Paul supporter from Ada, Ohio
More about General Marshall from a reader:
Enjoyed your article, “Saving Private Enterprise,” but I take issue with your description of General Marshall, “When General Marshall takes the witness stand to testify,” it was said, “we forget whether we are Republicans or Democrats. We know we are in the presence of a man who is telling the truth about the problem he is discussing.
“The truth-telling of General Marshall…etc.”
As an example of his “truth telling”, here is an excerpt from his testimony before
The Joint Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack of the Congress of the United States; November 15, 1945 – May 31, 1946:
At a hearing of that Congressional Committee on April 9, 1946, Senator Homer Ferguson (R- Michigan) asked General Marshall, who had been present at the War Cabinet meeting on November 25, 1941, to explain what was meant by maneuvering the Japanese into the position of firing the first shot. The questioning and answering ran as follows:
SENATOR FERGUSON: General Marshall, you have read Secretary Stimson’s memorandum. I want to go to page 12 and ask you if you were notified of this – quoting the Secretary of War:
“The President at the meeting undertook to take an informal vote of the Cabinet as to whether it was thought the American people would back us up if it became necessary to strike at Japan, in case she should attack England in Malaya, or the Dutch in the East Indies. The Cabinet was unanimous in the feeling that the country would support such a move.”
That comes from the diary of November 7.
Were you advised as to that vote?
GENERAL MARSHALL: I have no recollection of it, but I am pretty certain he must have told me, because he was telling me the results of those meetings.
SENATOR FERGUSON: Then I go to page 27 (page 46) of his memorandum. This is on November 25. This is the day before the Secretary of State sent his message to the Japanese. He is quoting the President:
“Then, at 12 o’clock, General Marshall and I went to the White House where we were until nearly half-past one. At the meeting were Hull, Knox, Marshall, Stark, and myself. There the President, instead of bringing up the Victory Parade…brought up entirely the relations with the Japanese. He brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps (as soon as) next Monday, for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.”
Do you recall that discussion with the President?
GENERAL MARSHALL: Yes, sir.
SENATOR FERGUSON: How was it thought that we could maneuver them into firing the first shot? Was that discussed?
GENERAL MARSHALL: I don’t recall the details of that particular phase of the matter.
SENATOR FERGUSON: This takes place before we sent the message of the 26th.
GENERAL MARSHALL: Yes, sir.
SENATOR FERGUSON: Or before you had sent your message to General Short on the 27th.
GENERAL MARSHALL: Yes, sir.
SENATOR FERGUSON: What were we going to do to maneuver them into firing the first shot? What was the plan of operation?
GENERAL MARSHALL: You are talking, I take it, about diplomatic procedure?
SENATOR FERGUSON: Yes.
GENERAL MARSHALL: I am assuming that it is the diplomatic procedure that is being discussed at the present time. We knew our resources. We knew our deployment. It was impossible to change that on any brief notice. We were committed to deployment thousands of miles away from the United States.
So far as the war plan goes, the concern was whether or not the final alert should be given.
I took a discussion of this kind – at least I take it now – was a discussion of the diplomatic procedure involved, having in mind that it was the accepted thought in all our minds at that time, that if we were forced to take offensive action, immediate offensive action, that it would be a most serious matter as to its interpretation by the American people, whether we would have a united nation, or whether we would have a divided nation in getting into a world conflict.
SENATOR FERGUSON: But this-
GENERAL MARSHALL: The planning they are talking about is the discussion that came later, as I understood.
SENATOR FERGUSON: You would take it that Mr. Stimson has in mind that we were going to maneuver diplomatically into a position where they would be compelled to fire the first shot?
GENERAL MARSHALL: No, I don’t mean to imply that. I mean the expression he is using relates to what would be the diplomatic procedure we would follow, so we would not find ourselves in a dangerous position where we had to do something initiating a fight. He was not trying to provoke the Japanese to fight.
SENATOR FERGUSON: Let’s take his language:
“The question was how we should maneuver them into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”
GENERAL MARSHALL: That is exactly what I said, sir. When you are sitting back and the other man is doing all the maneuvering, you are in a very dangerous position. The question and the desire at that time was to delay in every way possible a rupture in the Pacific.
Now, if they were going to attack, it was very important-
SENATOR FERGUSON: Right there, General, may I interrupt to ask, were we of the opinion at that time that they were going to attack?
GENERAL MARSHALL: That was the general opinion, that they were going to attack, definitely, in the Southwest Pacific.
SENATOR FERGUSON: And we wanted to lay our course diplomatically so that we would make sure that they would fire the first shot?
GENERAL MARSHALL: So that we would make sure that we would not be in such a dangerous position that we would be forced to fire the first shot ourselves. That is another way of putting it, but that is what he is talking about.
SENATOR FERGUSON: That is one of the things that led to this restricted language in the message of the 27th [to General Short in Hawaii].
GENERAL MARSHALL: So far as the first shot is concerned; yes, sir.
SENATOR FERGUSON: And also as to – well, the first overt act is the same thing as the first shot.
GENERAL MARSHALL: Yes.
SENATOR FERGUSON: And that was leading up to that message; is that correct?
GENERAL MARSHALL: No, this was leading up, as I understood it, and as I recall it, to what the diplomatic procedure was to be. The alert, to a certain extent, you might say, is a routine. Not in one sense that alert for war is ever routine, but the arranging, the phrasing of that alert to fight. What the diplomatic and political situation was, was another matter.
SENATOR FERGUSON: (reading from Stimson’s diary) Now, was this discussed at the same meeting?
Mr. Stimson said, at the bottom of page 47:
“I pointed out to the President that he had already taken the first steps toward an ultimatum in notifying Japan way back last summer that if she crossed the border into Thailand, she was violating our safety, and that therefore he had only to point out (to Japan) that to follow any such expedition was a violation of a warning we had already given. So Hull is to go to work on preparing that.”
Now, I take it he was talking about the memorandum and the conversation he had on the 27th [17th] of August. That is when the President returned from the Atlantic conference.
We had taken, as Mr. Stimson defines it, the first step in an ultimatum, and that if America wanted to, we could rely upon that particular message as saying:
We have warned you. Therefore if you do anything you take the first step and fire the first shot.
Is that correct? Is that a fair analysis?
GENERAL MARSHALL: I think that is the rough idea of the thing; yes.
SENATOR FERGUSON: And it says then:
“So Hull is to go to work on preparing that.”
What did he mean by “preparing that?” Have you any idea?
GENERAL MARSHALL: You are having me act as both Mr. Stimson and Mr. Hull.
SENATOR FERGUSON: Well, the reason I am asking you, General, is that you were supposed to be at this meeting.
GENERAL MARSHALL: Yes. As I said, they were trying to arrange a diplomatic procedure, rather than firing off a gun, that would not only protect our interests, by arranging matters so that the Japanese couldn’t intrude any further in a dangerous way, but also that anything they did do, they would be forced to take the offensive action, and what we had to be prepared for the President by Mr. Hull. It was not a military order. It was not a military arrangement…
Source: , President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War 1941 by Charles A. Beard (Yale University Press, 1948) pp 517-523
My Comment:
Maybe so. But there is a difference between a certain amount of silence or prevarication about specific military manouevres and strategies and an overall assessment. Public diplomacy, espionage, and secrecy have always played a part of war (which is why we should not be getting into wars unless there is absolutely no other way to defend ourselves) — but the extent and the purpose are at question here.
A reader takes exception to describing the constitution as having universal appeal:
You wrote “But the Constitution of America – whatever its alleged and
real flaws (and it isn’t free of them) – has been a guiding light to
this nation and countless others not because it is a tradition but
because the principles it embodies are rational, in the highest sense of
the word, and because they are worthy of emulation. The Constitution is
universal in its appeal. But it is universal because it persuades by its
reasonableness, not because it imposes itself over the breadth of the
globe as the law of an empire.”
But it simply isn’t true that it has a universal appeal and is worthy of
emulation. In fact many constitutions took its aims and its outcomes to
heart as an awful warning, things to avoid, most importantly for the
Federation of Canada with the horrible example of the US Civil War so
near to hand and fresh in memory.
To suppose that the aims are universal and only the outcomes flawed is a
slippery slope, one that leads to precisely the flawed missionary spirit
so visible today. Paraphrasing Burke on a related matter, the thing
itself is the problem. But the thing itself was written by people with a
complete incomprehension of what Burke had learned.
Yours sincerely,
PL
Australia
And my response:
Your point is well taken but I think I conceded it already.
I think there is no slippery slope between an appeal and the use of force. Bach has universal appeal – I have yet to hear of anyone using force to spread his music,
Of course, there are things to quibble over. I admit that the constitution is a flawed document but its words have enormous resonance. And while I am an admirer of Burke I have to say his response to the French Revolution showed some lack of understanding that there is also a crucial moment when traditions have to come to grip with reason.
Kant – much maligned as a universalist – still understood that. I know our current democratic liberventionists also appeal to Kant and force of arms….but that doesn’t have to be so.
From Kant you get the constraint of international law just as you get it from the Catholic just war tradition.
That would be a proper mediation of universalism and particularity which would not necessarily result in a global police state either Euro-American or multicultural.
There is also the question of what language is best suited at any time. I think whatever its flaws, using the constitution as a kind of regulative ideal is still much better than raw appeals to state power.
Thank you, this was an excellent article. I had a comment on one of your comments above: “So, while I think a libertarian position is neither fully leftist or rightist in the conventional sense — I think it stems ultimately from a sense of the self-possession of the individual. Whether that must necessarily have a basis in religion of some kind, I am not sure. I rather think it might, although I think atheistic libertarians might disagree.”
As an atheistic libertarian myself, I think if one wants to believe that one’s rights are Creator-given, that’s fine. So, then, are mine, by the same token. (I shouldn’t have to believe I am a child of God to be extended the courtesy by self-identified children of God.)
However, praxeology points the way to an entirely secular ethic. Murray Rothbard was able to divine an entirely secular ethic based upon the extension of the axiom of human action, self-ownership, and thus, property rights (see Ethics of Liberty). If the concept of acting man is correct (and Hoppe correctly points out that one cannot argue the fact without thereby proving it), then everything else flows, strictly from the nature of Man, without resource to Man’s Creator (which may well have been a nondivine process–that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).
Thanks very much. I think we are actually in agreement, though.
I used the term “religion” to mean any belief that is essentially a leap of faith. I think you need a leap of faith to make self-possession the basis of an argument. You could come to it just as well from an atheistic perspective as from a religious (in the sense of holding a dogma or belief of a traditional kind).
I think one should distinguish my first use of the term religion from what I think you are referencing, which is an exclusionary and dogmatist position (i.e. I am a child of God exclusively and not you). But such exclusionary and dogmatist positions (foundationalist) don’t necessarily have to be religious at all. The neoconservative position on democracy, for example, seems to me to be thoroughly secular and to be foundationalist as much as any theocratic position.
By the way, as an “Easterner” I do not find an unbridegable gap between theism and atheism or any variants thereof.
They are just words indicating a reality which is always incompletely referenced by them. I do, however, think we should have more reverence for the traditions from which we come and need to use language that doesn’t entirely discard them. If that involves a translation — so be it.
Most religions – including Christianity – have monotheistic, polytheistic and atheistic strands in them and to say one is a Christian and believes and one is also atheistic is not altogether incompatible.
I might perfectly accept science on the nature of time, and yet, if some one told me “time stood still” I would also prefectly understand what they meant by that.
Just my thoughts…
LR
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ChenZen,You are ignoring the fact that the USA foguht and won 3 Wars in Iraq.The first was the war against Saddam Hussein. That was won in a few weeks. The US moved more troops across more enemy territory faster than anyone else in history. With the tragic loss of less than 200, despite a force of some 200,000 against a force of 400,000.The second war was the war against Al Qaeda. In this war, the battle of Iraq was won, although the war does go on. However, the US & allies eliminated several tens of thousands of Al Qaeda fighters from the field. The third war was the war against Sunni & Shia Militias. This is the war for which the surge was required. And remember, the surge was not merely a troop build-up, it was also a drastic change in rules of engagement.The surge was not needed to defeat Saddam. The surge was not needed to defeat Al Qaeda. The surge was needed to knock down and win over the Sunni and Shia Militias.A year or two years earlier, the situation was not such that it could have worked.Just as we could not have invaded Normandy in 1942 or 1943.Your analogy is false.