Dangerous People
I've been reading about the unholy combination of McCarthyism and MacArthurism that was the toxic atmosphere during the Korean War. Douglas MacArthur's father got his chance to try being Caesar in the Philippines, waterboarding and all, before President McKinley couldn't take him anymore. Harry Truman got a chance to repeat, or rather, rhyme, history, when he had to fire the son of the earlier MacArthur. It is not Shakespearean, but more a Greek tragedy, that this nativist, racist, jingoist strain of characters won't go away. Familiar name from Doug MacArthur's Tokyo sycophants---Alexander Haig. Add Buchanan, Cheney, Rumsfeld. Garnish with the new MacArthur, McCain, who wanted to be Eisenhower. Looked like the same effective mix. (In retrospect, it is a really scary thought to consider the alternative to Eisenhower in 1952, MacArthur. We were lucky.)
The rabid right was not all that happy with Eisenhower, so Kennedy had to out-hawk the hawks, and it trapped him into adventures that we were decades recovering from. I find myself hoping Obama is Eisenhower, with Johnson's domestic emphasis.
None of the dire consequences the rabid right warned of happened, i.e. no dominoes, no global communism, and China buys our Treasury bonds. More recently we had the exquisite embarrassment of our president promising us he would protect us from Saddam's nonexistent arsenal. At least some people notice how wrong this crowd has been, and how often.
This is not to say the saber-rattlers are now disarmed. They can always raise new threats, make accusations of treachery, warn of a future of enslavement and tyranny, and fool some of the people. Unfortunately, more and better record-keeping is a new challenge for the revisionists.
Douglas MacArthur tried it, after being recalled by Truman. He insisted the Joint Chiefs were on his side. Oops, those guys didn't play along. Worse, he tried to downplay his own pronouncements about the Chinese being too weak to enter the war. Someone had taken notes and written up the very meetings where MacArthur had insisted that was the case, in order to quell resistance to his plans to conquer all of Korea. Kind of like Iraqis welcoming us with flowers, Americans were assured our boys would be home from Korea by Christmas. When he finally wound up in front of the Senate, he began to look rather less godlike.
And now we have those inconvenient records of abusive interrogations, torture to most people. We have assertions of Abu Zubaydeh leading us to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, except records show he did so before he got to go swimming without a snorkel. Same for Jose Padilla, who Zubaydeh discussed without the motivation of a refreshing dunk.
These are the people that scare the crap out of other nations, and make them want powerful weapons with which to make our Curtis LeMays think more than twice. Actually, there is no hope of getting that kind of person to think twice; LeMay, famous for firebombing Japan, was always looking for an excuse to start the Big One with Russia, like MacArthur and Time magazine's Henry Luce wanted the other Big One, China, which they thought was the same Big One. Now we get the clash of civilizations again, except it's now Islam, or maybe it's brown-skinned people since Mexicans seem to be part of it.
Fun activity for a weekend---Google the phrase: "They only understand strength." Lyndon Johnson said as much about the Vietnamese, who he considered to be like Mexicans, all right as long as they knew who was boss. This simplistic chest-puffing has been around since long before Caligula's "Let them hate, as long as they fear."
Please, let's evolve out of this. Or at least let's have people other than historians learn from history.
Yes, please.
April 25, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tom, outstanding post mister.It would have taken me years to learn all this history, and you put it together in a few paragraphs, and you did it so well. Who said, "If we don't learn from past mistakes we are doomed to repeat them."? You certainly illuminate that here in this post.Thanks
April 25, 2009 1:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks.
Your quote is George Santayana. I referenced Twain, who said history did not actually repeat, but it often rhymed.
This has been brewing for a while, since I heard my conservative acquaintances echoing Rush re Iraq. The idea was to send a message by forceful action. It was the basis for nuclear deterrence under Johnson and Nixon, Mao felt the same thing regarding Korea, wanting to avoid being considered a helpless giant.
There is a basis for individuals wanting to test each other, the need to know where you stand in the pecking order. Men are still made to need this, and it is one of the big reasons they will always show up when someone calls for war.
But the strategic concept has never been worth anything; only the understanding of what is important to a nation or people will tell you how they will respond. The idiots that argued for force to cow the jihadis forgot about the bigger factor in tribal cultures, revenge.
April 25, 2009 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tom, great work. We need more this: historical facts and characters as relevant to today's facts and characters. It makes events and perspectives seem more universal. It also makes solutions and preventions seem within reach.
April 25, 2009 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is reinforced in our popular culture by film and literature. There is glory in war young man!It is not so glorious once your in the trench staring death in the face. When the pecking order is reduced to nothing and you and the men by your side become equal in all ways, the bond of brothers. It's a shame that it takes the specter of death to cause men to embrace life. Will we ever learn natures principal of the harvest, you reap exactly what you sow? Force reaps force,hatred reaps hated, violence reaps violence, love and kindness reaps love and kindness? Applied to anything this principle never fails. Sorry Tom if I wandered off down a rabbit trail.
April 25, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Please, let's evolve out of this. "
Evolve out of what, nature? You sound a bit like a Rapture fanatic in Science garb. I read the blog twice trying to figure out if it was more than a kind of weekend reverie.
Are you calling for the utopia of Libertarian anarchy?
Checks and Balances in government takes the problem of unrestrained power-lust back to way before MacArthur et al, since you mention a desire for people to learn from history. We should ask, if we believe they failed, how did they fail and can we better constrain power without sacrificing too much?
April 25, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Weekend reverie, of course. But the lesson I was referencing is the Toynbee one of invented enemies. It's OK to have them for national cohesion, but when we provoke real ones, like Soviet Russia, it has its costs as a strategy.
I was also hoping the newly reliable record-keeping would force realistic thinking. McKinley didn't know where the Philippines were; Douglas MacArthur and Lyndon Johnson were racists, Henry Luce hoped to regain the privileged life of westerners in 19th-century China. But we know somewhat more, now. We know, much better, the limits of technological warfighting. There are fewer unfamiliar cultures out there. Afghanistan is familiar to Russians and Americans, not just the British.
Mainly I reacted to hearing the tired phrases of right wing, again, and reading them in not-so-distant history.
April 25, 2009 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice comparisons overall, but one nit-I haven't read a lot on Johnson (some and it's been a while), but I know a bit just being from the same area. I find it hard to believe that Johnson could be considered racist.
As they say, those were different times and Johnson was pretty much a political whore when it came to gaining power (besides all Southern politicians professed allegiance to segregation), until civil rights movement came to a head, coinciding with Johnson's ascension. One who did not would find himself out of politics in a blink of their blue eyes.
But Johnson always took "pragmatic" positions (sounds familiar) and played the political game as Senator. Live to fight another day and vote for some abhorrent legislation (not all) knowing there was nothing to do to stop it until he had the power to do so.
But LBJ was well-known for his efforts to help poor African-Americans and Mexican-Americans in Texas, going back to his early years (not a popular position in the twenties and thirties). He was beloved by his students as an elementary school teacher in an all-hispanic school, and he did all he could to help his kids above and beyond a teacher's duty.
I'm not an apologist for Johnson's arm-twisting methods, "pragmatic" politics and back-room dealing, but he was right that it enabled him to ultimately do some very good things.
It may be an open question to historians, I don't know, but it seems dangerous, historically, to label racist the man who signed the Voter's and Civil Rights Acts, created the War on Poverty, appointed Hispanics to his admin, the Great Society and known for compassion towards "people of color."
April 25, 2009 11:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
(Observes nits around Don Key)
oooooh
I loves them!
(pecking madly)
April 25, 2009 11:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now you're just nitpecking...
April 25, 2009 11:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm taking David Halberstam's view, from this kind of evidence:
April 26, 2009 1:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can't argue with that. If Halberstam wrote it, I take it as gospel. I hadn't heard stories like that but people claiming he was racist for his votes in the fifties, which were a mixed bag. Thanks for replying. I sit corrected.
April 26, 2009 2:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tom, was Johnson talking about Mexico's government or Mexican laborers? Can you provide more context? If he's referring to nationality and national ambition, nationality doesn't equal race. And a tendency to take-over would be the political behavior of a nationality, not a race.
If he meant nationality, what other descriptor should he have used? His Vietnamese reference sounded more like nationality than race. The Vietnamese are not racially distinct from many other peoples in the region.
Johnson's references to showing them who is boss, if referring to national governments opposing US policy, would be a national rivalry for control. If Johnson meant that Americans should naturally be in control of Mexicans and VN because of racial superiority that would be different. I don't get that sense even if Johnson was talking tough.
It seems you would cry racism if an American president said, "That's it. Enough's enough. No more aid to the Israelis until they realize who pays the paychecks!" Isreali and Mexican seem to be nationalistic references, not racial. Correct me where I'm wrong on that.
April 26, 2009 3:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Johnson was talking about Mexican laborers.
Halberstam was using a more general sense of the term in explaining the paradox of men like MacArthur, Johnson, and others who dismissed the challenge of fighting little yellow or brown men. (Continuing the Johnson quote above---"And the next day they'll be right there on your porch, barefoot and weighing 130 pounds, and they'll take that, too. But if you say to 'em right at the start, 'Hold on, just wait a minute,' they'll know they're dealing with someone who'll stand up. And after that you can get along just fine.'" It's a patronizing kind of racism, with many examples of the mentioned people not believing Asians could fight, (unless it was MacArthur pretending so about Chiang's soldiers or South Koreans under Rhee, both having been supposedly trained by him).
This attitude cost both sides lives in the Philippines under McKinley, in the Pacific war, in Korea, in Vietnam.
As to invented threats, communism was real but its global unity never was. There were spies but not the hordes McCarthy invented. China was lost but not by the China hands in the State Dept. or Truman. Chiang never had a chance. The Central American countries were not a threat. Chavez is not a threat. Cuba's missiles were, and they were a response to our Jupiter missiles in Turkey.
Stalin was an evil SOB but never had any plans for attacking Western Europe except in reaction. A country that had been invaded multiple times might be forgiven for being touchy about keeping their own threats deterred.
The one real triumph of the region might be South Korea, which went from despised and repeatedly exploited people to an economic powerhouse with vibrant politics. It took a while, though.
April 26, 2009 9:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tom, I don't see racism in Johnson's comments about the 130 pound barefoot VC soldier standing on one's porch (and they'll take that too). When he says "porch" whether it means his ranch house or the Western hemisphere, it seems to me he is giving them a great deal of credit for determination.
What I would concede on this point is that in order to posture for morale's sake, Johnson was entertaining a false premise that the VC were an imperial force rather than a force in whom the Soviets found an opportunity after US advisors lost that opportunity by remaining loyal to the French installation. In that, the officially propagandized fear-factor to sell the war in Vietnam and covert operations in Cambodia is more or less racist toward Americans if they were gullible enough to expect a Viet Cong invasion soon.
I would also argue that Johnson may have referenced the VC as barefoot and 130 lbs. to emphasize their determination and dangerousness as a 'value-builder' to sell the ongoing war.
As for what lost extra lives in Vietnam, I would put more responsibility on Def Sec McNamara's shoulders in his tolerance of the body-count policy. This aimless approach to the war kept US troops rotating through a meat grinder for far longer than should have been allowed. And that is even questioning whether the US needed to go there.
In the Korean war, I'd suggest that racism is something that sometimes fills a gap of hatred for an enemy that a fighting force doesn't have a natural enmity against. How are you going to motivate the men to kill the enemy? It's not unusual for the enemy's cultural and even racial attributes to come under fire to make them more killable. So the racism isn't the principal crime with these wars, but the ambitious ideologies opposing communist threats to world commercial expansion that considered human life expendable to grease the wheels of commerce were the evil motives to war, whereas the racism was a rationale for the uneducated draftee -- perhaps insulting these young men with patronizing racism while tolerating their state of education at home (& this as illustrated by stories such as those by Mark Baker and Phil Caputo in which snipers picked off civilians for sport (if true) and recent revelations of indiscriminate mass killing incidents launched against North Koreans.
Fear seems to be a tool that shows up time and again, i.e. they'll be on your porch etc. In that I agree with your assessment.
Was Johnson a racist? I don't know. Did he really hate? Or, was he playing the good 'ol boy role to try to win support for the unpopular war? Did Johnson truly regard Mexican Americans or Mexican laborers as inferior? Or did he refer to experiences he had in which he pointed out that they were not pushovers and required someone to stand up to them? Now I may be taking my advocacy too far and there may be more to the story
Given his power, it seems his abuse of their immigrant status, if he did abuse that, would be one of his worst misdeeds (even crimes if they violated immigration laws at the time).
I'd say the Johnson quotes you've offered would definitely be no-no's today, but that in part is because of the sensitivity of those who would be ready to take it personally or racially even if that was not Johnson's intent. That Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights Act seems unlikely if his 'racism' was as represented. He could have put in less effort on getting it done, let it languish some, and then make a show to let the legislation die. I suppose conspiracy theorists or extreme cynics could argue that Johnson worked to push the legislation through to cover up any appearance of ambition or difference with a murdered boss.
April 26, 2009 8:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's a reflexive racism that discounts the capacities of the people in question, whether Mexican or Vietnamese.
I was not generous is supporting my impressions with explanation. When I said the racism cost lives, I meant that the commanders like MacArthur and his sycophants discounted the opposition soldiers would face. The soldiers, while tending to dehumanize the enemy in the normal way, also considered the Chinese formidable fighters. Their superiors did, too. It was Corps-level, mainly, that was living in a fantasy.
This discounting was present during the Huk rebellion in the Philippines, too. And its prevalence during the Vietnam war meant soldiers were asked to do impossible things. Then we had to do stuff like lie about progress to maintain our image, and assassinate and torture to compete with the national devotion we faced.
April 27, 2009 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
One more question, Tom. Without trying to label anyone or divine their motivations, I’m seriously wondering, how historians view slave-owners like Washington and Jefferson, in context of course. Not to excuse racism, but I tend to look more at what one ultimately does, rather than says, and in the context of their time (i.e. Truman integrated the military, but annihilated civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). As a child in '50s Texas, I recall the "views" of many whites.
Without drawing equivalencies, didn’t Lincoln advocate segregation and consider African-Americans inferior? Didn’t FDR (aside from Japanese internment) acerbate the racial divide with New Deal programs? But what they accomplished overall tells a different story, does it not?
I’m not defending LBJ, the man, who many say was one of the biggest assholes ever to reside in the WH. But sometimes public figures are more complicated than their bios indicate. My mother, a strong advocate of civil rights, was employed in one of the War on Poverty programs, which gave her the chance to help others besides feeding a large brood of kids who sometimes spent days living on Wonder bread because the milkman delivered on credit. I’ll always be grateful for that.
I despised LBJ for Vietnam. It was reported in underground papers that Gulf of Tonkin had been staged, and I still remember shaking my young head at his domino theory. But I didn’t know then that Johnson had actually pushed JFK to take civil rights head on.
Many celebrated when LBJ chose not to run for re-election. But, with the assassination of RFK who seemed to have followed Johnson’s lead in becoming an advocate for civil rights and anti-poverty, we got Nixon. Was that better?
April 26, 2009 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Can you mention some invented enemies which you consider to have been okay?
"We know, much better, the limits of technological warfighting. "
Oh?
tired phrases? I'm really tired of hearing the bullshit torture tired phrases from what passes for the progressives.
April 25, 2009 7:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right eds. Damn we must spoil your fun. You should get to torture all you want without that pesky moral LOGIC being thrown your way.
Serious question. What in the HELL is wrong with you. Please take time over your answer.
Thanks.
April 25, 2009 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, I fergot this.
?
Figure it out smart guy.
April 25, 2009 7:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
"What in the HELL is wrong with you."
What's your problem, Bwak? Ruffled feathers, can't deal with truth, what?
As for LOGIC, that would be funny in another context. What gets thrown is mostly impotent illogical trash.
April 25, 2009 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
You aren't dealing in either truth or logic here, eds. You are being rather derogatory and superior for no good reason, and everyone is tired of it.
The lack of communication is on you. If you hadn't noticed, no one gets what it is you are saying. "Logically" that points to a lack of effective communication on your part.
Suck it up. You blew it. Bigtime.
Try again, later.
April 25, 2009 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
No actually, a few people do seem to get it. You're just being perverse and rude, again.
If something I say it opaque to you, you are free to drop your insolence and discuss it.
April 26, 2009 2:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM&feature=related
April 26, 2009 12:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
What truth?
April 26, 2009 2:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, I did ask Bwak a question about that. So what?
April 26, 2009 3:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
eds, it's one thing to play Devil's Advocate. Sometimes that can be helpful. It's another thing to disagree with everything. Why are you doing that?
April 26, 2009 10:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't disagree with everything!
Some people don't like Occam's Razor or similar instruments of fine distinction. Dunno if they think it's an instrument of torture supplied by the devil to his advocates or they're simply deluded or neurotic.
To be fair, I think people tend to jump to conclusions and take some unnecessary inference as being THE implication of a remark. That is, they project errantly into the words of the writer. Instead of asking or engaging sincerely, they turn discussion into a food fight or spitball contest. Now I'm not talking about a particular person here, but it's a reasonable inference that some people here do that from time to time, it's part of being human.
Fine distinctions are irrelevant for those who practice "us vs. them" thinking, also known as "black and white", or lacking nuance. It's true that excess nuance can become obfuscation, but in fact most allegations of obfuscation are small-minded defenses.
Enuf?
If not, please be specific about what you see as an excess on my part in the prior parts of this subthread, and I'll be happy to engage a reasoned criticism which is also reasonable.
April 26, 2009 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
"(In retrospect, it is a really scary thought to consider the alternative to Eisenhower in 1952, MacArthur. We were lucky.)"
Yes. Lucky the memory hole was more shallow in 1952.
The Bonus Army
A legend in his own mind, MacArthur never was any good at obeying orders.
April 25, 2009 7:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dwight D. Eisenhower was a Major who was working for MacArthur in breaking up the Bonus Army.
April 25, 2009 8:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
But it's the generals, not their subordinates, that get all the [?]glory.
April 25, 2009 9:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amazing. I have worked in the area for years and had never heard that the US used CW agents on US territory. Where did your citation come from?
April 25, 2009 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wikipedia. This is not controversial material, but it is something of which I had never heard.
Thanks, Emma. A fascinating historical tidbit and relevant.
April 26, 2009 2:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. There are thousands of such interesting historical tidbits in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s Age of Roosevelt trilogy.
For example, that the 1933 inauguration parade route was lined with machine gun nests. Even so Hoover and Roosevelt shared a ride in an open car just a few weeks after an assassination attempt on Roosevelt that mortally wounded Chicago's mayor.
We are such wusses compared to those that went before. A fair share of the blame for that lies with the Dangerous Men from Tom's post who have succeeded too well in creating a fearful, cowering populace.
April 26, 2009 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oops. Sorry. I screwed up the link. Here it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_army#The_U.S._Army_intervenes
April 26, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
I read and rec'd this earlier, Tom, but it was so "complete" that I just didn't have words. Still don't. Your interests and fund of knowledge always amaze me. Once again!
April 25, 2009 9:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
What she said! (and I thank you Tom!)
April 26, 2009 12:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Just an average blog for you, Tom. That means it is very good.
April 25, 2009 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
McCarthur wasn't much of a political threat in 52.He flamed out in the early primaries (Wisconsin and New Hampshire). At the convention it was Taft who created the small amount of excitement.
While Ike played Colin Powell to McCarthur's Cheney it's possible to be too generous in retrocative assessment.In particular , he began the process of dismantling the progressivity in our tax system, which will have to be reversed if we intend to deal with the entitlements other than by declaring what would be in effect natonal chapter XI.(granted the Xmas tree of exemptions has so starved the IRS of revenue that the Right can legitimatally argue than restoring progressivity wouldn't go nearly far enough)
What isn't important in evaluating Ike is his service as a major in confronting the bonus marchers.While "I was only following orders" may not be an invulnerable defense , in most cases it is and ought to be.
April 26, 2009 12:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tom you write:
"None of the dire consequences the rabid right warned of happened, i.e. no dominoes, no global communism, and China buys our Treasury bonds."
The above is wrong in a number of ways. First, it wasn't only the Rightists of that time which worried at the advance of Sovietism. It was also the Leftists who acquired offices in-the-know and acted against Soviet expansion (which was real).
The Obama presidency is similar in its shift away from extreme leftist utopianism (utopian ideologies tended to mass bloodshed). Are not Taliban positions being bombed by drones by Obama's order?
Eisenhower and Kennedy were both Cold Warriors not because they enjoyed the war rush that armchair warriors obscenely get off on, but because they were both actual warriors themselves and appreciated the Soviet global strategy. They also had access to the intelligence. Neither Eisenhower or Kennedy normalized relations with the USSR during their terms.
As for today's PRC, it would control global trade if it could. And it might, soon.
April 26, 2009 3:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Mike - justify this:
"As for today's PRC, it would control global trade if it could. And it might, soon."
i read the same kind of stuff coming from Genghis. To me it is what passes for unsubstantiated conventional wisdom. And 'dangerous', in Tom's sense...
April 26, 2009 7:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
From this piece:
http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/26/straszheim-china-cic-oped-cx_dhs_1227straszheim.html?feed=rss_popstories
"It is understandable that foreign governments are guarded, given that explicitly stated policy in Beijing is to develop centrally owned state enterprises into positions of global dominance. It is hard for many to accept that CIC would have a less-expansive or less-strategic view."
April 26, 2009 8:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for that Mike. Though a bit thin. It'll take a bit more before I'm convinced. for one thing that excerpt looks from the surrounding context to be a bit of Forbes unsubstantiated editorializing. But more generally it's just my experience from living and working in the Far East and at the UN that people in the region are much more suspicious of the US or even Japan than China. Bad history and all that. Anecdotal, yes, but it's all I got. thanks again.
April 26, 2009 8:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obey, actually the piece is by a China expert whose investment firm must win business among the Chinese. He put that passage in as a concession because those more conservative on China pose a threat to his business, however he knew that all were aware of the PRC's ambition.
You may also look to this excerpt at the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=E1_TDDGQVDT
April 26, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
thanks again! But I still don't see anything insidious - they're seeking 'global leadership' in diverse sectors much like all countries and their big firms (think France and Airbus or Elf, US and Exxon or Halliburton). When they start invading foreign countries to gain market share like, hmmm some countries, instead of making mutually beneficial investments, then I'll worry.
April 26, 2009 9:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Obey, yes, leadership, but more than that: dominance.
The insidious part is that they're nothing close to free market. It's a government infiltrated commercial system from finance to widgets. Union organizers get their heads split open; there are no lawsuits of consequence that challenge state industries; there's little accountability for the sovereign, and the sovereign is the ultimate owner.
April 27, 2009 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
See above reply.
April 26, 2009 9:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tom: What you have identified -- and written about so succinctly and eloquently -- is the singular shift in thinking that must be made if there is to be sanity in the world.
What you have written is also a balm for every veteran of every war, as well as for all of us who, as small children, were required by these men (or those who thought like them) to cower under our school desks or in corridors as "defense training" for "the Bomb." (speaking of insanity...)
You've stated the case so clearly -- of course we have a choice between Bomb and balm.
Thank you for personally demonstrating what power looks like, and sounds like, when it is evolved.
April 26, 2009 3:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
There have been times when fighting is necessary, and we all descend from successful fighters. We also descend from successful cooperators.
It is the looking-for-a-fight stuff that pisses me off. It is the men that have reached a pinnacle of power, and need someone else to challenge, that bear watching. (Think McCain.)
April 26, 2009 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I may just be cynical, (*note to self to check with mechanic on Monday), but I'm starting to think the real movers behind the chest thumpers are those with financial interests at stake. I don't know what MacArthurs financial investments looked like during his military career, but he went to work after leaving the Army with Remington Rand Corp. so it's not a great leap to assume that he had a 'relationship' with the company before as well.
April 26, 2009 3:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Gen. Smedley Butler had something to say about that after WW I.
April 26, 2009 9:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
How can you not admire a Quaker General? The concept alone, is interesting, to say the least.
April 26, 2009 11:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
There was that other Quaker, Richard Nixon.
April 26, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
LOL, (I can do that, now that we're 30+ years out). I suppose one's cv doesn't necessarily reflect all the salient aspects of one's personality.
April 26, 2009 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen! But if we are to have others learn the lessons, they must be taught. History, like much else in public education, is not well taught by any measure in our schools. Thus, it is easy for people to repeat the mistakes over and over and over. One mistake... "I was just following orders" has more traction than it should for this very reason, though I have confidence that the right thing will be done in the end despite that ignorance and lack of appreciation among a certain slice of the population.
April 26, 2009 12:30 PM | Reply | Permalink