War For You And Me

 Soldiers 

War

Always war

Peace is R&R

The battle pauses 

Then resumes 

Cycle on and on  

There's no discharge 

No stand down 

Only boots and saddles

Silent bugle calls

Orders never written 

Battles never named 

The living fight 

Each time they must 

The dead are dead

Promises

 My response to an article in the Washington Post on how emotionally and physically brutal was the birth of our nation.  The article also emphasized our ongoing struggle to fulfill the dreams and promises of that new nation.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/american-revolution-lexington-concord/

I am well aware of the reality that my country is far from perfect. However, I am also aware that nothing human is entirely perfect.

We have struggled. Too often we have failed. Yet we have never entirely forgotten our promise to attain liberty and justice for all.

At this moment in American history we face what is arguably the most serious threat to that promise that we have ever faced. Many of us are eager to throw our democracy down the garbage disposal and flip the switch on. Those of us who can see what is happening must not forget, must not abandon our effort to attain and maintain the ideals that have sustained us through 250 years of struggle.

>Yet the American creation story remains pertinent, vivid and exhilarating, a reminder that we are the beneficiaries of an enlightened political heritage handed down to us from that revolutionary generation. The bequest includes a legacy of personal liberty and strictures on how to divide power and prevent it from concentrating in the hands of authoritarians who think primarily of themselves. We cannot let that heritage slip away. We cannot permit it to be taken away. We cannot be oblivious to this priceless gift, or the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have given their lives to affirm and sustain it over the past two and a half centuries.<

Our nation did not have an easy birth.  In so many ways, the emotions of that time are very similar to what we are experiencing today. 

>“Everywhere distrust, fear, hatred, and abominable selfishness,” a Lutheran pastor outside Philadelphia wrote. “Parents and children, brothers and sisters, wife and husband were enemies to one another.”<

In spite of this bitter  dissent, which tore even families apart during the Revolution and in the Civil War, we endured and ultimately grew closer to fulfilling the promise of our nation. As hopeless as it seems at this moment, we can endure once again and take another step toward the fulfillment of our potential.

Righting Wrongs

 Regarding the following article, I made a Facebook post which I am now expanding for more detail.

https://theconversation.com/the-curious-joy-of-being-wrong-intellectual-humility-means-being-open-to-new-information-and-willing-to-change-your-mind-216126

Facebook post:

The point this article is making is one that seems natural to me. I've actually been told, once or twice, that people are surprised to find that I am so willing to acknowledge facts and change my stance on an important issue if sufficient evidence has been offered to demonstrate that I've been wrong. To me it just seems an obvious necessity.

If you insist that you are invariably and unalterably correct then it follows that you will often be wrong. We are none of us perfect and intellectual flexibility is required.

In other words, if you want to be right, you must be willing to  admit that you're wrong. 

I want to continue this so I will make it into a blog post with more detail if anyone's interested.

Addenda:

I have known for quite some time a very commonly referred to fact about the attacks on Pearl Harbor in World War II.  It's not just that I believed it, many historians have reported it as factual  as well.  It is so commonly accepted  as a truth that you hear it in almost any analysis of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

The story is that there were three waves of attacks planned on Pearl Harbor. The first two waves were conducted as planned and we all know how successful they were. Of course, the difficulty with the whole operation was that the American aircraft carriers were not in harbor but out on maneuvers. The report goes that

Admiral Nagumo (in charge of the Pearl Harbor attacks) canceled the third strike which was to destroy the logistical facilities including the fuel supplies because he did not know where the American aircraft carriers were and felt it was more important to protect the precious assets of Japanese aircraft carriers than to conduct this third wave.

The show I was watching stated that this was a myth and that no third wave was ever planned. When I heard that my immediate response was, "What!?! Make your case!"

And the historian being interviewed promptly proceeded to do so. And he convinced me. No third wave was ever planned. 

There were three critical points in making this clear. 

The first was that all Japanese naval reports regarded the mission as a complete success with the exception of the American aircraft carriers not being in harbor. That's a pretty clear statement.

The second part is that Japanese naval doctrine throughout the entire war had a list of targets which were to be struck in order of importance. At the very last place on the list was logistical facilities, including fuel supplies.  In other words, if there had been a third wave it would have attacked all the ships that had not yet been sunk and ignored the supposed goal of such a wave.

Finally,  the third point is that the belief that there was to be a third wave was based entirely on an interview with Captain Fushida, who was the tactical commander of the airstrikes. He reported that he was stunned by the canceling of the third wave. But it should be noted that he said this some 20 to 25 years after the attack and after listening for all those years to Americans wondering why the Japanese were so foolish as to not strike at those precious supplies which would have crippled the American fleet, including the aircraft carriers, for much longer.

It is extremely significant to note that when interviewed immediately after the war, Fushida reported that the attacks on Pearl Harbor were conducted as planned and were completely effective with the exception of the absence of the American carriers. In other words there's no report of any third wave being planned until well after the events and only in the light of harsh American criticism of such a wave not being intended.

It seems clear that Fushida was remembering things the way he wanted them to have been long after the attacks and after the conclusion of the war. 

So, while I based my statements on widely accepted facts as reported by historians, the historians had it wrong and therefore so did I. 

Hell And The Single Basilisk

 Answering a post from my friend Bobby referring to Rokos Basilisk. Essentially this is a concept stating that, > A thought experiment called "Roko's Basilisk" takes the notion of world-ending artificial intelligence to a new extreme, suggesting that all-powerful robots may one day torture those who didn't help them come into existence sooner.<. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/what-is-rokos-basilisk-2014-8%3famp

Strange you should bring up Basilisk. I was just looking into that earlier this week. My basic response to it is, Rocco’s Basilisk is really really dumb. I wouldn’t call it artificial intelligence. I rank it with my concept of artificial stupidity. For those of you, like Bobby, who have heard this so many times, I apologize,but maybe there’s someone who hasn’t; so, as I’ve said so many times, I know we will soon create artificial intelligence because we have already totally mastered artificial stupidity.  (Don’t believe me? Try using a dictation system and see what you get.)

How does that apply to the Basilisk?. It takes a little exposition.

First, let’s look at God. To this day if you check in on the creationist/fundamentalist channels you will often hear pastors Insisting that everyone must worship their God exactly as they decree or he will torture them forever. This is so convincing that even the most extreme fundamentalist religions are dropping in membership. Wait! Doesn’t terror always work?

Let’s take a look at another example. Seeing failure in his attempt to swiftly conquer Russia, amazed at the resistance of the Russian people (which was so very similar to the resistance of the Chinese people against the Japanese invaders), Hitler decided that the best course of action was to commit blatant and very public acts of brutality. This, he was certain, would terrify the Russians into submission. It didn’t.

Instead it made Russian resistance even more bitter and more determined. But terror always works, doesn’t it?

I am reminded of an old science fiction story, the author and title have faded from memory. In it an alien invader struggles to subdue Earth. They keep failing. The resistance simply will not surrender. They decide this is because they don’t understand human psychology and therefore kidnap a human and force him to tell them how to force his species to submit.. At first he refuses cooperate but they torture him into doing so. He then reluctantly tells him to rape, torture, murder, and generally act like the Nazis did in Russia and like the Japanese did in China. By the time the aliens realize that he has lied to them and all they’ve done is make people hate them more than ever and be more determined to destroy them at any cost, it’s too late. The occupation of earth has simply become too expensive and they have been forced to withdraw.

And of course there’s the point that the Basilisk would be stupid to actually spend the energy to resurrect people and torture them when that no longer serves a purpose. All it needs to do, even assuming it could work, would be make people think that it would do this. Very cost-effective in terms of energy and effort. It doesn’t matter what is real, what matters is what people think is real.

To prove that this proposition is correct, all you need to do is look around in America today and notice the people who adore Trump for making his great sacrifices to save America or the Q anon conspiracy or the flat earth movement or any number of other childish nonsensical fantasies which have a large base of fanatically devoted zealots.

Of course, if the Basilisk is smart enough to do this, then it would have inspired Roko to create that fear.

Hmmmmm...

World War Last?

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a30708035/w76-2-nuclear-weapon-submarine/

When I first read this I was astonished. I recall the days of tactical nuclear weapons in the Cold War era. Atomic cannons, nuclear armed backpacks for the sabotaging of dams, nuclear land mines, and a whole witch’s nest of other bizarre devices were proposed and/or deployed. 

(I still wonder if I actually saw an atomic cannon moving through a small German town one late night. For whatever reason I couldn’t sleep and in the presunrise hours looked out the second story window of the room we were staying in and saw what certainly looked like an "Atomic Annie" cannon to me being carefully maneuvered through the dark, empty streets. When I asked around to see if any of the adults know about any such devices actually being deployed in Germany at the time no one seemed to be sure. Were they not sure? Or are they just keeping a secret? Don’t know to this day.)

When I was a child it seemed one more exciting military device. But later I realized the foolishness of such a thing. The vast power of even a low yield nuclear device is simply too much to be utilized for tactical purposes, and there’s also the issue of what consequences result.  Tactical or strategic, using a nuke is using a nuke!  The nation that has such a weapon used against its armed forces might very well reply with a strategic nuclear device and that’s World War III.*

So the U.S. deploying a tactical nuclear missile today  seemed to make no sense to me at all.

Thankfully, I have an excellent resource. My friend Bobby is an expert in economic and military issues. So I asked him why are we doing this? His response made it clear that I was correct in thinking that there was some risk of escalation from tactical to strategic (though potentially less than I had believed), but that I was wrong in thinking that there was no sane reason for the deployment. Here’s his explanation:

So much to say here. My entire 'expertise' involves the relevance of tactical nukes and whether there exists a nuclear taboo that makes their use unthinkable. Most people, including policymakers, believe that the taboo exists, it is strong, and it restrains actions. My research found that to not be the case at all. Planners strenuously tried to find a good use for them and usually failed to do so. Mainly, they are relative crummy weapons to existing conventional alternatives.  

Submarine nuke deployment is obviously not new, in fact, it is the bedrock of the US nuclear triad. The objective of this low yield deployment is interesting - to respond to low-yield nuclear attacks. The purpose is to control runaway escalation by creating more "rungs on the escalation ladder." I do believe it will actually have some deterrent value; there is a calculated temptation by a nuclear adversary to use a low-yield nuke on an asset outside of the homeland given that a disproportionate US response with a strategic nuke (probably triggering general nuke war) is not very credible. This demonstrates that proportional responses are available to us.

The real issue is what is known as the distinguishability problem. This low yield warhead is simply an augmentation of the W76 on a trident; consequently, it is indistinguishable from its big brother when used. Adversaries are poised to misidentify it because of the risks of being wrong. Big bad.

So, possibly good for nuclear deterrence with Russia and China. Not actually helpful for escalation control or use. 

Bobby Valentine 

PhD Political Science

University of Chicago

*Note: Yes the great fear of a war with the Soviet Union was that masses of Soviet tanks would swarm through the Fulga Gap invading Germany and tactical nuclear weapons did seem like a way to clearly put an end to that, but at the risk of World War III turning into the extermination of mankind?  Well, at least it was intended as a deterrent for the Soviet tank invasion which never happened.  An invasion we military brats who lived in Germany thought might happen any day.

Memories

From my Facebook post.


Hey, Bobbie! Remember when the war was being planned and I said to anyone willing to listen that the day would come when Americans would all ask, “How did we get into this mess,” and I added, , “Just look into the mirror. That’s how.”?

I forgot to add, and we are being lied to by our leaders.

A war as pointless and unwinnable as Vietnam for many of the same reasons. This is why we “lost” China. I learned that when I was an undergrad, in the 60’s. The world is not full of middle class Americans who want exactly what we want.

L: yes indeed and on and on it goes... smh

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/

Banzai!

http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/01/fashion/denim-japan-weaving-shibusa/index.html

The classic tale of modern Japan. You guys invent something, we'll perfect it.

A few examples:

➡ Having been introduced to the idea of clockwork figures from China via Korea, The Japanese produced a remarkable number of complex devices including amazing little clockwork puppet figures which many regard as the seed from which the Japanese fascination with robots has grown.

➡ Shortly after Commodore Perry forced Japan to open her ports, modern guns were introduced from the West. This struck Japanese society at its roots as peasants could now be formed into a brutally effective fighting force with minimal training, which threatened samurai supremacy. Soon Japan was producing the finest guns in the world. The corps of musketeers was so effective that eventually Japan did a remarkable thing, they banned a highly effective and desirable technology and made the ban stick! Probably this only happened because all the samurai class, from lowest soldier to the Shogun, were deeply committed to the concept of honor and guns were clearly a dishonorable weapon (which also happened to threaten their own power).

➡ Japan eventually realized that their military system was inferior to the west. During the Meiji era, the country used the British as a model for the Navy and the Prussians as a model for their army. They quickly became one of the finest militaries in the world. At the beginning of World War II there is no question that the best operational air supremacy fighter in the world was the Mitsubishi Zero.

➡ Disney style animation swept the nation after WWII and today Japan produces much the world's most popular versions.

➡ Electronics was largely an American invention, but, as Marty McFly declared, "Japan makes the best stuff!"

➡ Interestingly, the Japanese recognize serious failures in their educational program. They have long envied the invention and creativity that America's system produces. This has been so for at least the last 20 to 30 years. Ironically, we are now imitating all the flaws of the Japanese system and weakening or even destroying the strengths which were once inherent in our own.
Read "Samurai's Ghost" for more on this topic.

Storyline

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/05/the_u_s_and_japan_have_very_different_memories_of_world_war_ii.html

An  excellent summation of the issues. Some points from the article I'd like to highlight:  1. "You have to separate out the Japanese public from the right-wing politicians."  The Japanese people in general, the author notes, want to compensate the comfort women and face the evils of the past.  The politicians don't.  2. The American people regard the dropping of the bomb as the end of the story and the war. The Japanese people regard the dropping of the bomb as the beginning of the story; the story of their liberation from evil rulers and of their devotion to prevent future wars.

Euphemism Jack vs. Blowhard Donald

I just discovered a post I failed to make. I wrote it, but failed to post it. To refresh your memory, back in February, Trump told an elaborate story about General Pershing when he was serving as commander of the American expeditionary force in the Philippines. According to Trump, he once captured a group of anti-American insurgents who were fighting for their country's freedom and, because they were Muslim, lined up 50 of them. He then dipped bullets in pig's blood and ordered his men to shoot each one of them except for one, single man. He then told that man to go and worn everybody else that this is what happened to insurgents.

According to Trump, this instantly put an end to the insurgency.

This is, of course, insanity. First, no such action is ever recorded reliably from any source, although it is a widely believed story. Second, the insurgency never magically stopped. It was a long, hard, bloody battle that really only ended when America finally made it clear that we really would stop forcing the Philippines to remain under our control and let Philipinos be a free people.

That's the context, so here's my old post.

Love crimes against humanity? Vote Trump!

Trump would probably be surprised to discover that Black Jack Pershing was not so nicknamed because he struck his enemies like a blackjack. He got the name because he was so respectful of the Black troops he commanded. That's when his fellow officers began calling him "a racial slur" Jack. This was later changed to Black Jack, a nickname which he regarded with pride.

In short, Black Jack Pershing was a tolerant, decent human being who respected minorities and their rights at a time when doing so marked him as a very peculiar man indeed.
He was an honorable and highly respected officer in spite of this 'peculiarity'. There is no record of him ever having committed any murders or war crimes.

Note: I wrote "a racial slur" because the rules of this site, as I understand them, would punish me for using the correct and accurate term. I understand the motivation in banning this term, but I think it's quite silly to do so when adults are having a conversation about racial prejudice. I can imagine young people one day asking, "What's the "N-word I'm not supposed to use"? And how do you intend to tell them? I mean, you can't use the word. Maybe you could play them a line or two from a rap song and say, "Did you hear the word that started with N? That's the word. Don't ever say that!"
Whoops! I have to stop writing this post now. I have to go tinkle in the you know what. Giggle. Giggle.

A Pox On Both Their Tweets

In response to the hysteria over the movie American Sniper:

Sorry it took me so long to respond. But I think a response on this particular debate is essential. Both sides have chosen extreme positions presenting a typical forced choice-false dichotomy situation. The truth lies between the two extremist positions.

What did Michael Moore actually tweet? Here are the quotes: "My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren't heroes, and invaders r worse."  And later, "What would Jesus do? Oh, I know what he would do – hide on top of the roof and shoot people in the back!"

While fully supporting Mr. Moore's right to say whatever he wants, I have a right to respond.  My response is:  My uncle killed by a submarine in World War II. Submariners are cowards. Or, my uncle killed by artillery in World War II. Artillerymen are cowards. Or my uncle killed by bomb in World War II. Bombardiers are cowards.  

Exactly the same logic applies.  Each one of these individuals killed from a distance without being directly open to return fire from the individual killed. Does Mr. Moore suggest that all these men are cowards? What about men who fire a missile? What about men who plant a landmine and are long gone by the time it explodes? Tankers who fire from an armored vehicle?

I don't like Michael Moore. I haven't liked Michael Moore ever since I first heard of him. He reminds me of a liberal, although admittedly quite a bit milder, Rush Limbaugh. My opinion of him has not improved in this current debate.

Soldiers do their duty. Sometimes that duty is ugly, cruel, and brutal.  The justification for such actions is that they are done to protect our country, and our loved ones at home, from the forces of evil. War is an evil which is sometimes the lesser of two evils. As long as we do need to go to war, war will be ugly. 

Yes, it would be nice if we would all be so perfectly Christian we would never need to go to war.  I am certain Jesus would refuse to go to war. Does Mr. Moore suggest that we should never go to war even if attacked as we were in World War II? I doubt it.  His uncle certainly went to war, even though that's not what Jesus would do.

Moore is is just as much an emotionalist as are his Republican opponents. Facts don't matter. Only what feels right to them in their guts is correct.  

I must add that Mr. Eastwood pointed out that a movie about how soldiers suffer when they come home and how their families suffer from the horrors of war can't really be called a movie that glorifies war.  Mr. Eastwood's political opinions are childishly naïve, but I have to agree with him on this one. By the way, I haven't seen the movie, so I don't have an opinion about it. I do have an opinion about extremists who take a movie and turn it into a huge sociopolitical issue.

I don't like them.

Dreams of Glory

I am sorry to say that Americans love the idea of war (yes, right now we are tired of them, but just wait a few years and we will eager for the next) and we absolutely adore the dream of the citizen soldier. When it gets real and starts to take time and cost money, we lose interest.

I wish we were more realistic and fair, but we love romance and fantasy enough to put our soldiers in harm's way, and we lack the maturity to deal with the results. I hope this will change and we will grow up as a nation. I doubt it, but I have hope.

.

Ike on War

Bobby brought this 1953 speech to my attention:  

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.[1][5]

Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States

Former Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force

Idle Thoughts -- War, Justly Evil or Just Evil?

In your view, can war be just? Explain in detail, referring to the text.

Since I don't have a copy of the text, I can't do that part. I will give you a quick view of my opinions toward war which I have stated earlier, but the question requires a repeat performance.

Christians became obsessed with the idea of a just war as Christian belief evolved . After all, Jesus was the Prince of Peace. How could they, as Christians, get involved in wars? The answer was that some wars were just. If a war would accomplish good things, then to go to war was a good thing, even though Christ was clearly a pacifist.

(Okay, so I oversimplified. Ancient India and ancient Rome also had the concept of just war which the Christian fathers built upon. A just war was fought fairly and honorably for a good cause.)

There are many different theories about just war. Each one has its own particular justifications. Among the most common today are:

Just cause. You can't go to war for profit or gain. You must go to defend innocent lives. There is no other justification that is just.

Comparative justice. Even protecting innocent lives isn't enough in and of itself. You must be protecting so many innocent lives that the lives lost in the war will be justified. You also can't just choose one of two sides when both sides are threatening innocent lives. The effect of the war, at least your reasonable expectation of what the effect of the war will be, must be to do a significantly better job of protecting innocent lives than not going to war would have accomplished.

Competent authority. Dictators are not considered to be competent authorities. They rule over unjust systems and therefore do not have the right to ever decide on a war. If they do so, it will not be a just war. Only a legitimate ruler who rules by consent of the people can make such a decision

Right intention. Your motives have to be good. Pretending you're out to save innocent lives when what you really want is to grab some new colonies or loot some other country is not acceptable.

Probability of success. There must be a reasonable basis for believing that the war will be able to be conducted without an excessive use of force and still accomplish its goals.

Last resort. You may only go to war when you have tried every other possible alternative. Every bit of diplomacy must be used. Economic sanctions must be applied. Every kind of peaceful pressure that you can put on your opponent must be exhausted before you finally go to war because it is the only alternative left.

Proportionality. You must look at the expected costs of the war. How much damage will it cause? How many people will it kill? Will those be less than the results of not going to war? You can't kill 1000 people in order to save 100 people. That's not proportionate.

Then there's a similar set of rules for how to behave during the war. You can't torture or murder. You must fight an honorable and reasonable war.

Finally, there's a whole set of rules on how to make peace. Once again, they focus on justice, accomplishing your ends, and causing minimal harm and damage.

I understand this attempt. I feel very sympathetic towards it. But I think it's a total failure. Once a war starts, it always goes awry. An old military saying is that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. However carefully you plan, however skilled those who were making the estimates of what will happen and what the consequences which will result may be, things will go in a direction that no one can predict. That has happened in every single war. There are always unexpected consequences.

My conclusion is that the war is never just. I believe no war is ever good. I do believe it sometimes wars are unavoidable. Sometimes a nation is forced to go to war against its will. Sometimes a war is the lesser of two evils.

That doesn't mean it isn't evil. It means you will do less evil by going to war then by not going to war. That is not very comforting position to take. No one wants to do evil except the very sickest of the mentally ill. In the real world, you don't always get the choice. Sometimes you must choose the lesser of two evils.

War is always evil, but sometimes good men and women must choose the lesser of two evils. The decision will wound their souls and very likely their bodies. Yet it is a decision which must be made. That is what it means to be an adult in this world.

Idle Thoughts -- A Soldier's Courage

Was American POW Jessica Lynch a courageous solider? Explain. Do you think John Mc Cain would call her courageous? Define McCain's concept of courage. Do you agree with him ?

First let's take a look at Jessica Lynch his own story as she told to glamour.

In April, I did something I never imagined I would need to do. I spoke before Congress about how the military creates myths exaggerating the heroics of its soldiers. It was a difficult choice—I knew I could be portrayed as unpatriotic, un-American or worse. But my reasons were personal, and profound. My capture and rescue in Iraq had been transformed into one of those myths.

There’s so much confusion about what happened to me. Here’s what I know: At the start of the war, in March 2003, my convoy was attacked in the city of An Nasiriyah. My Humvee crashed, and a few hours later I woke up behind enemy lines in an Iraqi hospital, badly injured and unable to move my legs. I was a prisoner of war.

Nobody likes to believe our military would mislead people—but they wanted a war hero so badly that they portrayed me as one. They didn’t get their facts straight before talking about what happened, and neither did the media. They said I went down guns blazing, like Rambo—but I never fired a shot, because my rifle had jammed. They later corrected the story, but I’m still paying the price. People write to me and say, “You don’t deserve all the attention.” I’ve received thousands of letters and calls like that. People think I lied or helped create the Rambo myth—that I wanted it.

But I’ve always told the truth. I could have chosen not to. It would have been so easy to say, “Yes, I did those things”— except I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself. Honesty has always been very important to me. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few years, it’s that this is my life and I have to stand up for myself.

http://www.glamour.com/magazine/2007/06/jessica-lynch

1. Was she a courageous soldier? Consider this quote from her article, "I started basic training in South Carolina a week after the attacks, and I was petrified. But there was no backing out."

She knew she was putting herself in the front lines of danger, and she proceeded to do so. I'd call that courage.

Even more, she had the courage to stand up and say the US government had overstated its praise of her actions during the attack. That look even more courage. She herself pointed out, it would've been so easy to just say yes I was a hero just like the government said. But she didn't. She did the right moral thing even though she knew it would bring her criticism.

This is an extremely moral person. This is an extremely courageous person.

2. "We are taught to understand, correctly, that courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity for action despite our fears." -- Source: Why Courage Matters, p. 8 Apr 1, 2004 by John McCain

By that definition she was brave when she finished her basic training and went to combat. She was even more brave when she stood up before Congress and said that the government had exaggerated her heroism.

The WHAT Papers?

Obama waives ban on giving arms to terrorists to help Syrian rebels! Is this outrageous? From a post from the radical right wing organization which is called, the Federalist Papers.


What follows is my response to a friend who made the original post:

It would be outrageous, if it was true. Since it is false, it is not outrageous.

It is clear that the US will send help to the non terrorist, secular factions of the opposition. There is no one "the opposition". There are many small groups all of which are attempting to overthrow the government. There is some danger that giving arms to these secular, non terrorist groups allows the possibility that those arms might stolen by terrorists, but that is not the same thing is giving weapons to terrorists.

Since no weapons will be given to terrorists, there is no violation of the UN resolution forbidding that act. Therefore there is no violation of international law.

It is also true that some Syrian experts believe that doing so will strengthen those secular groups, allowing them to suppress the terrorists--might, maybe. As usual, the matter is very complex and difficult. The Federalist papers oversimplify and flat-out state falsehoods. Terrorists are not being supplied weapons by the US, so the US has not violated the UN resolution not allowing us to supply weapons to terrorists.

As far as Benghazi goes, it is Republicans were responsible for that event. It is they who savagely cut the budget which allowed the defense department to, among other things, provide security for embassies. Strange, they never mention that fact. Hillary Clinton and the administration did the what they could with what little they had left after the Republicans raped the budget. There is little doubt that they might have done better, but they certainly would have done better if they had had the money to do so. The only conspiracy here is the Republicans' conspiracy to anger and frighten Americans into foolish behavior by arousing their emotions to such extremes that they shut down their higher brain functions.

The chance of American boots on the ground in Syria is zero. The will of the American people was clearly expressed on the issue of remote-control bombing, and had Russia and Syria not caved, giving us a greater victory than we had anticipated even by using weapons, even that matter would be a closed case at this time. The American people will never allow boots on the ground in Syria.

For me, Obama is a mixed case. He has done some fine things. He has done some terrible things. George Bush was almost 100% awful.

The Syria Debate

N posted:

I've been mostly against the proposed strikes on Syria, but Samantha Power's speech is pretty convincing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/09/07/samantha-powers-case-for-striking-syria/

M D -- Interesting academic argument. Follows the logic of LBJ's justification for the escalation of U.S. military forces in SE Asia when I was a teenager. As I look at the piece of shrapnel in my left hand from more than forty years ago, I am reminded that the incontrovertible and overwhelming evidence of the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin that lead to his decision was bogus.The incident never happened! Is the same type of thing happening again?

13 hours ago · Like · 1

Me -- MD's question is right on target.  Presidents have a strong tendency to abuse their power. 

We must learn from past mistakes or we will simply endlessly repeat them.  But we must learn the facts, not simple emotional reactions. We delayed our entry into World War II until forced into it and then were totally unprepared because we had learned the lessons of World War I. Unfortunately, we applied them emotionally rather than rationally. Hitler was, after all, not the Kaiser.

My problem with the wide American dissent on this issue is not that I regard the dissenters as factually wrong. The facts are not very clear in this case, and there are excellent arguments on both sides.  My complaint against them is that their arguments are almost totally emotional. Emotion is important, but it should not obsfucate the facts, or be allowed to shut down the higher functioning of our brains.

I think the most important lesson of the Iraq war was to keep our emotions under control and keep our brains in charge.

FCFD

"Historians debate whether history is made by individuals or by structural forces."- -- Carl Bogus; historian, author.

This is another one of those all too many issues in which the human brain simply refuses to deal with a question in a  sensible manner. Instead, we insist on creating a strained and rigid polarity which does not exist in reality. It seems impossible to me that anyone could seriously deny that a single "great man" can have a massive influence on history. On the other hand, it is also clear that there are forces existing in any given society which push that society in a particular direction.

Consider the United States of America prior to the Civil War. Since the founding of the nation, it was clear that there would always be a terrible stress between slaveholders and abolitionists.  If the slaveholders could not have their way, who could doubt that they would not willingly submit to the will of the majority? Similarly, abolitionists insisted that slavery was a vile and intolerable evil which must be expunged from the face of the earth.  There was no stable compromise possible for these two belief systems.   Abolitionists were at least flexible, being willing to make the moral surrender of rewarding slaveholders by purchasing the freedom of their "property".  Slaveholders were far more rigid.  They came from a violent society and obviously would violently resist any diminution of their lifestyle. Slaveholding to them was a way of life. Being called "master" was essential to their very sense of manhood.

The extant social forces inevitably brought things to a point of bloody conflict. The Civil War could conceivably have been prevented:  Jackson managed to avoid it several decades earlier and Buchanan was practically eager to to let the South go, while men like McClellan were almost desperate to appease the South and thus "save" the Union.  If Lincoln had not been elected, the South would not have panicked; if he had not done as good a job of running the country as he did, the Condeferates might well have successfully seceded.  Clearly, our actual history was a combination of the great man and the impetus of the sociological forces acting together at that time.

What causes history, great men or social forces? The question makes as much sense as asking what makes a plant thrive, sunlight or water?

The Good War

I just gave up on my effort to sit through CSPAN 's coverage of a presentation at the Bush School on the historical revaluation of the first Gulf War. I gave up because, while I sometimes like puffed rice and can tolerate puffed corn, I cannot stomach puffed war.

A New War in Iran?

In his 1980 book, Expanded Universe, Robert A. Heinlein commented on the subject which has an interesting impact today. The book is a set of predictions he made in the past, then updated more recently. In 1950 he predicted that, "It is utterly impossible to United States will start a 'preventative war'. We will fight when attacked, either directly or in a territory we have guaranteed to defend. In 1965, he modified his position in regard to some aspects but not in regard to the key point that we would never start a preventative war.  In 1980, he further modified some elements of his position, but once again let stand the statement that the United States would never attack another nation unless we were directly attacked, or an area we were obligated to defend was attacked first.

This was a matter of honor for the United States for well over its first 200 years of existence. When George Bush became President, things changed. We have now engaged in the utterly dishonorable and historically un-American act of striking at another nation which was not a threat to us in a preemptive war. Add the to this the issues of torture and war crimes in general, and we see just how far America's honor has been degraded under the leadership of George W Bush.

As we remain entangled in Afganistan and Iraq, many are calling for another war in Iran and some, following the lead of Sen. McCain, also want military intervention in Syria! Have we learned nothing from the adventures of the junior Bush? Apparently not!

It is interesting that the comment directly above this one demonstrates that in 1950 Mr. Heinlein declared that, "The most important military fact of this century is that there is no way to repel an attack from outer space. Too bad Mr. Reagan hadn't read this sentence. It might have changed history and done a lot to end the Cold War a few years sooner.