Bryan Strawser

As always, Victor Davis Hanson provides a perspective on the War in Iraq that I had not considered:

Second, our very success creates ever increasing expectations of perfection for a postmodern America used to instant gratification. We now look back in awe at World War II, the model of military success, in which within four years an unprepared United States won two global wars, at sea, on the ground, and in the air, in three continents against Japan, Italy, and Germany, and supplied both England and the Soviet Union. But our forefathers experienced disaster after disaster in a tale of heartbreak, almost as inglorious as the Korean mess or Vietnam tragedy. And they did things to win we perhaps claim we would now not: Shoot German prisoners in the Bulge, firebomb Axis cities, drop the bomb — almost anything to stop fascists from slaughtering even more millions of innocents.

Our armored vehicles were deathtraps and only improved days before the surrender. American torpedoes were often duds. Unescorted daylight bombing proved a disaster, but continued. Amphibious assaults like Anzio and Tarawa were bloodbaths and emblematic of terrible planning and command. The recapture of Manila was clumsy and far too costly. Okinawa was the worst of all operations, and yet was begun just over fourth months before the surrender — without any planning for Kamikazes who were shortly to kill 5,000 American sailors. Patton, the one general that could have ended the western war in 1944, was relieved and then subordinated to an auxiliary position with near fatal results for the drive from Normandy; mediocrities like Mark Clark flourished and were promoted. Admiral King resisted the life-saving convoy system and unnecessarily sacrificed merchant ships; while Bull Halsey almost lost his unprepared fleet to a storm.

The war’s aftermath seemed worse, to be overseen by an untried president who was considered an abject lightweight. Not-so-quite collateral damage had ruined entire cities. Europe nearly starved in winter 1945-6. Millions were on the road in mass exoduses. After spending billions to destroy Nazi Germany we had to spend billions more to rebuild it — and repair the devastation it had wrought on its neighbors. Our so-called partisan friends in Yugoslavia and Greece turned out to be hard-core Communist killers. Soon enough we learned that the guerrillas in the mountains of Europe whom we had idolized, in fact, fought as much for Communism as against fascism — but never for democracy.

But at least there was clear-cut strategic success? Oh? The war started to keep Eastern Europe free of Nazis and ended up ensuring that it was enslaved by Stalinists. Poland was neither free in 1940 nor in 1946. By early 1946 we were already considering putting former Luftwaffe pilots in American jets — improved with ample borrowing from Nazi technology — to protect Europe from the Red Army carried westward on GM trucks. We put Nazis on trials for war crimes even as we invited their scientists to our shores to match their counterparts in the Soviet Union who were building even more lethal weapons to destroy us. Our utopian idea of a global U.N. immediately deteriorated into a mess — decades of vetoes in the Security Council by Stalinists and Maoists, even as former colonial states turned thugocracies in the General Assembly ganged up on Israel and the survivors of the Holocaust.

After Americans had liberated France and restored his country, General de Gaulle created the myth of the French resistance and immediately triangulated with our enemies to reforge some pathetic sort of French grandeur. An exhausted England turned over to us a collapsing empire, with the warning that it might all turn Communist. Tired of the war and postbellum costs, Americans suddenly were asked to wage a new Cold War to keep a shrinking West and its allies free. The Department of War turned into the Department of Defense, along with weird new things like the U.S. Air Force, Strategic Air Command, Food for Peace, Alliance for Progress, Voice of America, and thousands of other costly entities never dreamed of just a few years earlier.

Over at Varifrank, we see the meaning of “Unprofessional”:

Today, during an afternoon conference that wrapped up my project of the last 18 months, one of my Euro collegues tossed this little turd out to no one in particular:

” See, this is why George Bush is so dumb, theres a disaster in the world and he sends an Aircraft Carrier…”

After which he and many of my Euro collegues laughed out loud.

and then they looked at me. I wasn’t laughing, and neither was my Hindi friend sitting next to me, who has lost family in the disaster.

I’m afraid I was “unprofessional”, I let it loose -

Hmmm, let’s see, what would be the ideal ship to send to a disaster, now what kind of ship would we want?

Something with its own inexhuastible power supply?

Something that can produce 900,000 gallons of fresh water a day from sea water?

Something with its own airfield? So that after producing the fresh water, it could help distribute it?

Something with 4 hospitals and lots of open space for emergency supplies?

Something with a global communications facility to make the coordination of disaster relief in the region easier?

Well “Franz”, us peasants in America call that kind of ship an “Aircraft Carrier”. We have 12 of them. How many do you have? Oh that’s right, NONE. Lucky for you and the rest of the world, we are the kind of people who share. Even with people we dont like. In fact, if memory serves,once upon a time we peasants spent a ton of money and lives rescuing people who we had once tried to kill and who tried to kill us.

Do you know who those people were? that’s right Franz, Europeans.

Theres is a French Aircraft carrier? where is it? Right where it belongs! In France of course! Oh why should the French Navy dirty their uniforms helping people on the other side of the globe. How Simplesse…

The day an American has to move a European out of the way to help in some part of the world it will be a great day in the world, you sniggering little f**knob…”

The room fell silent. My hindi friend then said quietly to the Euros:

“Can you let your hatred of George Bush end for just one minute? There are people dying! And what are your countries doing? Amazon.com has helped more than France has. You all have a role to play in the world, why can’t you see that? Thank God for the US Navy, they dont have to come and help, but they are. They helped you once and you should all thank God they did. They didnt have to, and no one but them would have done so. I’m ashamed of you all…”

He left the room, shaking and in tears. The frustration of being on the other side of the globe, unable to do anything to assist and faced with people who could not set aside their asininity long enough to reach out and help was too much for him to bear. I just shook my head and left. The Euros stood speechless.

If that’s unprofessional, I’m afraid of what his definition of “professional” is…

Hat Tip: Lex and many others.

As always, Victor Davis Hanson, expands my mind and launches a broadside at some of the “conventional wisdom” out there in the world:

The U.S. military is habitually slurred even though it possesses the world’s only lift and sea assets that could substantially aid in the ongoing disasters in Indonesia and Thailand. Blamed for having too high a profile in removing the Taliban and Saddam, it is now abused for having too meek a presence in Southeast Asia. No doubt America should have “preempted” the wave and acted in a more “unilateral” fashion. Meanwhile we await the arrival of the Charles De Gaulle and its massive fleet of life-saving choppers that can ferry ample amounts of Saudi, Chinese, and Cuban materiel to the dying — emissaries all of U.N. and EU multilateralism.

All this hypocrisy has desensitized Americans, left and right, liberal and conservative. We will finish the job in Iraq, nursemaid democratic Afghanistan through its birthpangs, and continue to ensure that bandits and criminal states stay off the world’s streets. But what is new is that the disenchanted American is becoming savvy and developing a long memory — and so we all fear the day is coming when he casts aside the badge, rides the buckboard out of town, and leaves such sanctimonious folk to themselves.

Apparantly, Lex isn’t too happy with Ralph Peter’s Editoral in the New York Post which criticizes the recent history of the United States Navy:

It happened because part of us are always at sea. The Navy helps provide security for all the sea lift which brings real combat power to the land fight, and sustains it once there. We keep the sea lanes of communication secure, while buttressing traditional allies in both South Asia and the Pacific Rim - something the Army would have a hard time doing in any case due to the tyranny of distance, and is far too overstretched to accomplish in today’s environment. And when push comes to shove, we shove back. Hard.

Don’t get me wrong, Mr Peters is right in his larger concerns about the nexus of national interest in Asia, and you’ll never hear a word from me in disparagement of the ground forces - they’re doing the heroes’ work right now.

It’s just worth saying that your US Navy has been patrolling the world’s hard places for a long, long time now. Even while other folks were comfortably ensconced in garrison. Your humble scribe did three interbellum deployments to the bad place, and looked the wolf in the eye each time on multiple missions in Indian Country. And this naval officer is by no means feeling relieved that he finally has a mission at last.

Been busy, Mr. Peters. Busy long time.

Thanks for finally noticing.

There’s more - go read it.

Over at Znet, we can read more moonbattery from the likes of Paul Street:

Well, gee, but it seems that Iraq and the Islamic world has soldiers of the United States Empire flooding in, “intent on killing” Iraqis and Arabs in general. This is indeed very much the intent that is drummed into the heads of US soldiers in their boot camps, where they are encouraged to mercilessly butcher “sand-niggers” and led to believe that they will be avenging 9/11 in Iraq even though the Iraqi people, including Saddam Hussein, had nothing to do with the jetliner attacks. Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed because of this racist war indoctrination ordered by the imperialist War Pigs in Washington D.C. Insofar as al Qaeda now has a presence in Iraq, of course, this is pretty much entirely due to the illegal and murderous US occupation of that once sovereign nation.

The bloody war masters in the White House, the Pentagon, and the Justice Department will not mind, I hope, if impartial observers deem the American invaders to be illegal combatants and therefore fit to be murdered, tortured, and imprisoned indefinitely without right to counsel or even formal charges.

I was unaware that we were training our sailors and soldiers nowadays about “sand niggers” and drumming that intent to kill into their heads in training.

Good god!

I’m surprised that CNN and the New York Times hasn’t picked up this story yet.

I was having a rather shitty evening yesterday for a variety of reasons - and then I went back and read this recent post by Dooce about pooping at work:

Internet, I was a work pooper. Now that I work from home I am still a work pooper, but that doesn’t really count. I once dated a guy who refused to go poop in a public place including work, and if he had to go poop he’d take a fifteen minute break, drive home, poop, and then drive back to work. That relationship didn’t last very long for several reasons, one of them being his poop policy (if he felt that way about pooping, he’d never get used to my farting), and another reason being that he always, and I mean ALWAYS, asked if I had come yet within the first 20 seconds of initiating sex. I understand the meaning of “hurry it along,” but show me a woman who can come in less than 20 seconds and I’ll show you a liar.

If you are a woman and you can come in less than 20 seconds PLEASE SHARE WITH THE WORLD YOUR SECRET, YOU BITCH.

I always found it funny as well when I would enter the bathroom at work and someone would STOP PEEING in the middle of their pee session, as if I hadn’t ever heard the sound of pee hitting porcelain in my life and would be offended by the sound of it IN A BATHROOM. Are coworkers arrogant enough to think that we don’t know they pee and poop? JESUS TOOK SHITS, PEOPLE. And, I know this will be hard to believe, but so does Oprah.

Nothing like some poop conversation to cheer one up…

Over at Castle Argghhh is a post about Tom Friedman’s December 23rd Column in the New York Times that I believe clearly lays out what the stakes are in Iraq:

There is much to dislike about this war in Iraq, but there is no denying the stakes. And that picture really framed them: this is a war between some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world who - for the first time ever in their region - are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution versus all the forces arrayed against them.

Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.

As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, “These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age.” They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It’s time we called them by their real names.

However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.

Friedman goes on to conclude:

We may lose because our Arab allies won’t lift a finger to support an election in Iraq - either because they fear they’ll be next to face such pressures, or because the thought of democratically elected Shiites holding power in a country once led by Sunnis is anathema to them.

We may lose because most Europeans, having been made stupid by their own weakness, would rather see America fail in Iraq than lift a finger for free and fair elections there.

As is so often the case, the statesman who framed the stakes best is the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Count me a “Blair Democrat.” Mr. Blair, who was in Iraq this week, said: “Whatever people’s feelings or beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror. On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want to have the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq.”

I believe whether you supported the decision to goto war or not - if you can’t see and understand the stakes before us in Iraq then you don’t understand at all the world that we live in today.

For all of the criticisms of the United States for being “stingy” - for wanting to build an empire - for spending too much on our military - for only donating $350m to relief efforts - for spending more in a day of the war on terror than we donated to the relief effort - how can you not look at these pictures of the sailors of the United States Navy rendering aid in East Asia and see through all of that rhetorical smokescreen?

We’re only able to provide aid like this because we have invested in the military that we have today. Had we drawn down as far as some other countries have - we wouldn’t be able to provide this sort of aid.

Only $350m? What’s the pricetag for the carrier group and the amphibious group that are over there now?

Take a look at the faces of the these men and women. They are there to help - there’s no intent or desire for “empire” in their eyes - no matter what the Socialist Alliance or Claire Short has to say about it.