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The Hamfisted Military of America

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Infantry in Viet Nam

Infantry in Viet Nam

The United States has probably the most powerful military in the world—provided, of course, that it is used to fight the battles of the Second World War over again. You know what I mean: Those large set-piece battles with penetrations, encirclements, flanking maneuvers, the whole West Point 101 ball of wax.

Too bad that the wars we have gotten entangled in since the Second World War do not play to our strengths. One doesn’t need a college degree in military science to appreciate the following factors:

  1. Whereas the people of the United States know nothing about foreign languages and cultures, all cultures know a great deal more about us than we know about them.
  2. Because our news media blares all around the world, guerrilla fighters know when the American people are tired of a war and want to end it.
  3. If the “bad guys” a.k.a. “freedom fighters” want to win, they just have to blow up one or two Americans to smithereens every day or so. Just so long as every news cycle has some bad news in it.
  4. The nationals who have allied themselves with the American forces are highly suspect as to their allegiance. The ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam), for instance, acted as intelligence for the North Vietnamese. (Guess why so many incidents of “terror” in Afghanistan are committed by fighters wearing the uniforms of Karzai’s army and police.)
  5. Before long, the American forces will be confined to “Green Zones” or “strategic hamlets” or other fortified places where they could be picked off at will—usually just one or two at a time.

The thought keeps hitting me between the eyes: If we’re so stupid about it all and keep making the same mistakes over and over again, why do we even bother? What do we accomplish?

Infamy as a Way of Life

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Israel’s Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu

Israel has a right to exist. The Palestinians have a right to exist—though no one but a few die-hard Arabs say that Palestine as a nation has a right to exist. I am not sure now that Bibi Netanyahu and his Likud Party, however, have a right to exist.

The path taken by Netanyahu’s Israel is a dangerous one. You could be hyper-aggressive and murderous to the maximum extent, but only insofar as the people are backing your every play. Eventually, you could cross a line where not only the world at large but your own people are tired of infamy as a way of life. What happens then? Can you continue to do the same sort of thing and continue to get away with it? Probably not.

Crusader States

The Arabs see Israel as just another “crusader state.” After the wildly successful First Crusade (1096-1099), much of the Holy Land was divided into a series of feudal states run by the Crusaders. These included the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch, and the County of Edessa. Some of them lasted a surprisingly long time. And they might still be around today if the Arabs were not united under a powerful new leader like Saladin (from Kurdistan of all places), and the Crusaders became ever more disunited and fragmented over the next couple hundred years.

Who is to say that Israel’s continued aggression against the Palestinians and other Arabs will not result in a unified alliance to wipe it off the map? What will our attitude be in such a case? Will we have to send in our army to protect Israel’s right to exist? That would be good for another five hundred years of hatred in the Middle East.

I think the Western World had to keep a tight leash on Israel and do everything it can to stymie the right wing politicians who have been in the ascendant there since the days of Menachem Begin. (At the same, our own right wing will continue to support Israeli aggression and confuse the issue.)

 

 

 

Welcome to Loserland

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Cage ’em up and let ’em ride outside the minivan—on top!

A scant two weeks ago, I still had some qualms about the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Election. Now that all is over but the shouting—and that primarily from the losers and their diehard followers—it’s interesting to see how Obama’s two victims, McCain and Romney, have fared since then.

Romney showed us that he was not about to give “gifts” to anyone but members of his rarefied socio-economic class. He blamed Obama for promising gifts to Hurricane victims, students loaded down with debt, and Hispanic families. In other words, he blamed the President for trying to help out Americans who did not own a string of polo ponies, enjoy firing people or sending their jobs to China, or installing car elevators in their La Jolla McMansions.

McCain, on the other hand, has continued to show himself to be a mercurial old sod in trying to turn the Benghazi affair into a major Democratic liability. Now this Libya fracas occurred on the first day of my vacation this year; so Martine and I didn’t follow the media frenzy that usually accompanies this sort of thing. Two things are pretty clear, however: First, it was a terrorist act; and second, the Republicans had previously cut the budget for the protection of our embassies abroad. (That second thing was the real scandal, if there can be said to be one.)

If McCain or Romney were elected President, that would indeed have been a scandal. Thankfully, even if only by the skinniest of margins, the American voters are still better than that.

Living With the Mau Mau

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Mau Mau Terrorists in Kenya

Things change. I remember during the 1950s reading horror stories of the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya. There were ghastly tales of what the Kikuyu were doing to British settlers. Around the same time, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was taking place. I still remember reading—was it in The Reader’s Digest?—of the Communist Secret Police (the dread AVO) taking captured Budapest prisoners and grinding their living bodies into hamburger meat. For themselves? To feed to their pets?

Not too much time passed before Jomo “Burning Spear” Kenyatta, one of the leaders of the Mau Mau, was named President of an independent Kenya in 1964. Then, after the Hungarian Revolution was ground into goulash by the Russian Tanks of Nikita Khruschchev, Hungarian President János Kádar developed a reputation as being one of the most enlightened Communist satellite leaders—without in any way sacrificing his Marxist/Leninist credentials.

We are perhaps facing a similar situation with the changes wrought by the Arab Spring. Groups that had been associated with terrorism may perhaps turn out to be our Middle East allies of tomorrow:

Amid chaos and uncertainty, the Islamists alone offer a familiar, authentic vision for the future. They might fail or falter, but who will pick up the mantle? Liberal forces have a weak lineage, slim popular support, and hardly any organizational weight. Remnants of the old regime are familiar with the ways of power yet they seem drained and exhausted. If instability spreads, if economic distress deepens, they could benefit from a wave of nostalgia. But they face long odds, bereft of an argument other than that things used to be bad, but now are worse.

These are the observations of Hussein Agha and Robert Malley writing in the November 8, 2012, issue of The New York Review of Books in their excellent article “This Is Not a Revolution.”

 

Exit David Petraeus

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David Petraeus

I am curiously torn about David Petraeus, who just resigned his post as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) after admitting to an affair with another woman. This is not standard operating procedure in American political life. Usually, it is preceded by a sleazy denial, which nobody believes. And then there is an onslaught from the media, who troll for salacious details damaging to everyone involved, their families and friends.

No, either the General is a compulsive truth-teller or he is afraid of being blackmailed. Let me see, are there any compulsive truth-tellers in the military or political arenas? I suspect not. It’s too radical an idea for now.

As I said at the outset, I am of two minds about Petraeus. On one hand, he was appointed by George W. Bush, which immediately made me suspect him at the outset. At the same time, he is probably the most effective U.S. military leader since World War II. He reminds me of another general, some sixteen hundred years ago, who administered a decisive defeat to Attila the Hun at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in A.D. 451. Flavius Aetius (396-454) was called “The Last of the Romans” for his victory.

Could Petraeus have won in Iraq and Afghanistan? I doubt it, because the enemy is hydra-headed. There are so many warlords and involved parties that, when one was beheaded, others would spring up. Remember when we killed the head of Al Qaida in Iraq? That didn’t accomplish anything in the long run. He was simply replaced. There are plenty more cockroaches-in-waiting to assume the job.

Edward Gibbon called Aetius “the man universally celebrated as the terror of Barbarians and the support of the Republic.”

In general, our times keep reminding me of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Today’s Los Angeles Times predicted that the Chinese economy would overtake us within four years. Oh horrors! (Not that it matters: By then China will be a polluted, smoking ruin from ignoring certain simple responsibilities of governance.) What with global climate change and the staggering world economy, there is an end-times feel to the decade. Not that we won’t somehow prevail in the end by dumb luck or changing our behavior.

Men like David Petraeus are rare in our society. Too bad.

Through the Streets of Los Angeles

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Endeavour Makes Its Way Through 12 Miles of L.A. Traffic

Los Angeles is not a city that has a great sense of community. It is spread out in all four directions, encompassing mountain ranges and flood plains, dense urban concentrations with deserts whose only inhabitants are Joshua Trees. Yet in October, it came together for the most unaccountable of reasons: The space shuttle Endeavour was going to take two to three days to gingerly make its way through twelve miles of L.A. streets beginning at LAX Airport and ending at the California Science Center in Exposition Park.

At first, the impact was negative. Several hundred trees along the route were going to have to be cut down so as not to damage the huge wingspan of the shuttle as it passed by. The City Fathers promised to plant two or more trees for every one that was cut down, but it still left a bad taste in the mouths of many Angelenos.

But that all changed with the majestic progress of the shuttle through the streets. Crowds gathered and cheered while teams of engineers maneuvered the gigantic space vessel past a minefield of trees, wires, buildings, and other potential dangers.

It didn’t all come home to me until I saw a video in stop motion of the Endeavour making its way through Los Angeles and being met with a cheering throng both day and night. The video, on Astronomy Picture of the Day, is well worth watching. Among other things, it showed me a picture of a city celebrating the era of space exploration as one, something that doesn’t happen very often in this sun-drenched clime.

Death for Some

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Anders Behring Breivik

Now that Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik has been ruled sane and sentenced to twenty-one years in prison, I keep thinking about the death penalty. Norway, like most of Europe, has no death penalty. In fact, Breivik will spend as little as ten years in a fairly luxurious prison.

Call me bloodthirsty, but I think Breivik should have been hauled out of the courtroom and executed at once without the possibility of appeal. In a Europe that is reeling into recession, a long prison sentence in a facility with a private gym, laundry service, flat-screen TV, and access to computers and the Internet. Sounds to me as if killing Norwegians is an excellent career choice. And, when Breivik will be freed at some point between the ages of 43 and 54, he can do it all over again—probably with even more conviction.

The idea of rehabilitation, I fear, is a mere ignis fatuus, mere swamp gas. A cold-blooded murderer is not likely to come out of stir smelling as sweet as a petunia. (Certain young offenders who are in for minor crimes, on the other hand, can benefit a small percentage of the time.)

In the United States, much is made of the high cost of execution compared to a lifetime prison sentence. That’s because we allow them to clog our legal system filing endless appeals: We even encourage them to do it. People like Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma City) and James Holmes (Aurora) are definitely guilty of the crimes with which they have been charged. I believe that it is irrelevant whether they are sane or insane. When there is no question of identifying the guilty party of a particularly heinous crime, the result should be summary execution within twenty-four hours without the possibility of appeal.

Most people on death row in the United States, on the other hand, probably shouldn’t be there. Mostly, these consist of poor black or Hispanic males who impulsively murdered someone. Or, more likely, they committed the unpardonable felony of “messing with Texas.” (Over 1,235 men and women have been executed in the Lone Star State, which prides itself on this statistic.)

I hold with former Minnesota Governor Jesse L. Ventura, who wrote in Ain’t Got Time to Bleed:

How come life in prison doesn’t mean life? Until it does, we’re not ready to do away with the death penalty. Stop thinking in terms of “punishment” for a minute and think in terms of safeguarding innocent people from incorrigible murderers.

If I were a Norwegian, I think the only advantage of a prison sentence for Breivik is that it allows me some time to file papers for emigrating to a “less civilized” country.