American Opinion and the Confederate Battle Flag.

Posted on by
Reply

In the 1950s and 1960s the Civil Rights movement reached one of its peaks. American public opinion turned against segregation, overt racism, and the violent defense of white dominance. This peak also coincided with the centennial of the Civil War. I haven’t seen (but maybe I haven’t looked hard enough) much scholarly work on how white Southerners sought to commemorate the “American Iliad.”[1] Were little Confederate flags placed on the graves of veterans in cemeteries? Were there speeches on the “Confederate Memorial Day”? Were more streets and highways named for Confederate generals? In any event, I conjecture that a Civil War Movement arose to counter the Civil Rights Movement. One aspect of that appeared in laws incorporating the Confederate battle flag into the state flags of some Southern states or to the displaying of the flag on government buildings.

Fifty years later, much had changed. In late June and early July 2015, the vast majority of Americans (64 percent) opposed having the Confederate flag fly over public buildings, while 21 percent thought that the flag should be allowed to fly over public buildings; and 21 percent weren’t sure.[2] However, most of the 21 percent who favored flying the Confederate flag over public buildings live in Southern states. Two weeks later, a majority (57 percent) of Americans accepted that the Confederate battle flag is a symbolic expression of “Southern pride,” rather than a racist affirmation. However, a majority of Americans still supported hauling down the flag on public property. Among that majority viewing the flag as a symbol of Southern pride were 75 percent of Southern whites. However, 75 percent of Southern blacks saw it as chiefly a racist statement. Deep divisions exist in the South over the Confederate flag.[3] However, lots of Southern whites appear to recognize that what is a symbol of pride to them is also deeply offensive to African-Americans. (See the statement by South Carolina governor Nikki Haley.) This might suggest an important, but hard to define, psychological shift among Southern whites. Still, opinion polls don’t always dig too deep. What did the other 25 percent of Southern whites believe about the flag, that it was a racist affirmation? If so, did they like that or did they hate it?

Why does “Southern” appear to mean “Southern and white”? Is there a regional culture shared by whites and blacks? Looking at Farm Security Administration photographs from the Thirties and Forties might lead you to think so. See the remarkable on-line exhibition at: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bound-for-glory/ So might the history of Zydeco.[4] See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa8vyTfugcI Shooting people in church might fall outside the pale in such a shared culture. Or perhaps it awakens memories of a fire-bombed church in Birmingham, Alabama many years ago.

There is no question of the Confederate flag flying over federal buildings, but each state has the right to choose what flags fly on state government grounds. Another problem left to later generations by the Founding Fathers. What did they expect us to do, figure it out for ourselves?

[1] Charles Roland, An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War, 2nd edition (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2004).

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 3 July 2015, p. 17.

[3] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 17 July 2015, p. 17.

[4] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zydeco

Power Surge.

Posted on by
Reply

In 2003 the United States attacked Iraq. Swift defeat of Iraq’s conventional forces then gave way to misstep after misstep. An insurgency arose among the minority Sunnis deposed from their long dominance by the American invasion. The Shi’ite majority demanded that the Americans leave as soon as possible so that they could get to the business of governing the country and settling scores. Al Qaeda in Iraq sought to foment a civil war that would make Iraq ungovernable and force an American evacuation. Foreign fighters poured into serve with Al Qaeda. By 2007 a disaster of epic proportions loomed before the Americans.

Then things began to turn around. Lower level American commanders began buying-off Sunni insurgents in their areas of operation. Many of the Sunni insurgents got fed up with the Al Qaeda fanatics. Together, these forces led to the “Sunni Awakening” that markedly reduced the level of violence from early in 2007. American special operations troops focused their efforts on killing the Al Qaeda fanatics. Civilian and military casualties began to fall. If only in comparison to the chaos visited on the country between 2003 and 2007, Iraq began to move toward something like a functional state.

Then and later, considerable energy has gone into myth-making about the turn-around. The commonly accepted—because commonly told—narrative is that the Bush administration belatedly developed a coherent and workable plan for victory in Iraq; General David Petraeus helped develop and then implemented an effective counter-insurgency strategy; and the “surge” of troops greatly enhanced security so that some form of national reconciliation could take place.

In fact, the Bush White House’s “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” had neither substance nor application. “Victory” had been redefined to mean bringing down the level of violence to a point where responsibility could be handed off to the government of Iraq with something approaching a straight face.

In fact, the administration and the Pentagon were in search of a “hero” to revive American morale. They found that hero in General Petraeus, adept at both war and image-management. The buying-off of Sunni insurgents and the increasingly effective work of the special operations forces were well underway before General Petraeus arrived in Iraq. He endorsed and broadly applied the methods already developed.

In fact, although Chelsea Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for giving classified documents to WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden has been hunted across the globe for having revealed NSA spying on Americans, officials in the Defense Department appear to have provided favored authors with a trove of classified documents.

In fact, what the United States achieved in Iraq was not victory, but avoiding defeat. By avoiding defeat the United States has also avoided any honest reckoning with the causes and consequences of a disastrous adventure that spanned two different presidential administrations. “The fraud is that a 20 year military effort to determine the fate of Iraq yielded something approximating a positive outcome.”

So says Andrew Bacevich, a professor of political science at Boston University, a combat veteran of Vietnam, a retired Army colonel, a grieving father to a son killed in action in Iraq, and a bitter and clear-eyed critic of recent American foreign and military policies.[1]

[1] Andrew Bacevich, “Avoiding Defeat,” New York Times Book Review, 10 February 2013, pp. 20-21. Professor Bacevich reviewed Michael R. Gordon and Bernard Trainor, The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, From George W. Bush to Barack Obama (New York: Pantheon, 2012); and Stanley McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir (New York: Penguin, 2013).

Terrorism 1.

Posted on by
Reply

How long will the current war against radical Islamism continue? Can we win? How will we know when/if we have won? These questions don’t get much discussion, so preoccupied are we with each surprising outbreak of insurgency and atrocity. Probably, government officials in democracies are not eager to tell the public that this could go on for a lot longer than the next election cycle. Back in 2009, two books offered counsel that still deserves attention.[1]

David Kilcullen saw a core struggle between radical Islam, on the one hand, and the Unbelievers in the West and Incorrect Believers in many Muslim countries, on the other hand. Swirling around both parties to the core struggle were many local movements that associate themselves in name with radical Islam (Al Qaeda then, ISIS now, something else in the future). The strength and the staying power of the local insurgencies vary greatly. Kilcullen thought that the Western countries had a pretty good sense of how to wage the core struggle against radical Islam, even if they botched the execution from time to time. Where they came up short is in managing the peripheral small wars. Indeed, having the local insurgencies pop-up seemingly out of nowhere is one of the things disturbing the public in the West. More recently, the “lone wolf” attacks in Britain, Canada, France, and the United States add to this unease.

According to Michael Burleigh, history tells us that we can and–almost certainly will—win. Terrorism has come and gone in waves: in the 19th Century, they were Irish Fenians, Russian revolutionaries, and European anarchists; in the later 20th Century, they were malcontent leftists in advanced countries (Weathermen, Red Brigades, Red Army Faction, IRA, ETA) and Third World rebels (PLO, South Africa); today they are radical Islamists (Chechens, Al Qaeda, ISIS). Wherever they go, the terrorists have left a trail of dead, maimed, and traumatized victims. In most cases, however, they had little in the way of concrete political achievements to show for their work.

How to defeat these threats? Focusing on the peripheral wars and insurgencies, Kilcullen recommends policies that protect local communities in remote areas from becoming penetrated by radical movements. This, rather than heavy hammer blows from the military, is most likely to stop an insurgency in its tracks. Problems abound with this solution. A lot of the world’s people live in small communities remote from central government authority. Who can tell where the next danger will arise? Is every Middlesex village and farm to be garrisoned “just in case”? Then, most armies train for conventional war against foreign states or for repression of dissent in unjust societies, not for policing or community protection.

Here, Michael Burleigh has some equally useful suggestions. Focusing on the core struggle, Burleigh argues that experience shows that winning the ideological debate through public diplomacy; promoting economic development to drain the swamp of poverty that contributes to radicalization; and developing intelligence capabilities before relying on brute force offers the best path forward. Burleigh’s strategy provides the framework for Kilcullen’s tactics. However, long debates in many languages on social media, nudging countries toward social justice and economic modernization, nurturing good governance in countries suspicious of Western meddling, and building language skills and cultural competence in intelligence agencies is going to take time. We’re in for a long war. People need to know this harsh truth.

[1] David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Michael Burleigh, Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (New York: HarperCollins, 2009). .

Man Hunters.

Posted on by
Reply

Before the Second World War the United States possessed intelligence-gathering organizations that were derisory in comparison to those of the great powers. The War Department gathered information on the military capabilities of foreign states from military attaches; the State Department reported on political and economic developments; both War and State maintained signals intelligence (code-breaking) offices. However, the US possessed no “secret intelligence service” equivalent to the British MI-6 or the action services of other countries. During the Second World War, the US sought to make good this deficiency with the temporary Office of Strategic Services (OSS). After the Second World War, America’s new global role and the Cold War demanded an enhanced intelligence-gathering capability. In 1947, Congress created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to fill this role. Filled with wartime OSS veterans, the new agency had a predisposition to clandestine action, not just to intelligence gathering. Confronting the brutal Soviet KGB around the globe, CIA played a rough game. Eventually, CIA fell afoul of changed national values. The Church Committee hearings led to restrictions on CIA action like assassinations. From the mid-Seventies onward, CIA concentrated conventional intelligence-gathering and analysis.

Then came 9/11.[1] The scales fell from their eyes, or they had a Road to Damascus experience, or whatever other Biblical reference occurs to you. An executive order from President George W. Bush overturned the limits on action. CIA agents lashed out at Al Qaeda operatives wherever they came within reach. Some were killed, either by a rapidly-expanded paramilitary arm of CIA or by drone strikes. Some were captured and subjected to “enhanced interrogation.” In 2003, the US attacked Iraq, only to see early triumph turn into a gory insurgency that seemed to have no end. Soon, there came a backlash against both big wars and the use of torture.[2] A new consensus emerged: killing terrorists is acceptable, but torturing them is not. Certainly, it is less likely to get people keel-hauled by a Congressional committee. According to Mark Mazzetti, CIA “went on a killing spree.” Drones and commandos struck Islamists[3] in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. While banning the use of torture, President Barack Obama has continued all the other programs begun by the Bush administration.

Arguably, the results have been as disastrous, if not quite so dramatic, for American intelligence as for the Islamists hit by Hellfire missiles launched from Predator drones. In an Econ 101 analysis, multiple needs compete for finite resources. Resources (money, manpower, attention) spent “man-hunting” can’t be devoted to other needs. Yet the US faces multiple current, latent, and potential threats.

The CIA already suffered from maladaptation between the end of the Cold War and 9/11. Its budget fell as part of the “peace dividend”; spending on new technologies further reduced the resources for human intelligence-gathering and analysis; and its former strengths in Soviet and East European issues could not easily be shifted to new areas. (Pashto and Polish both begin with a P, but there the similarity ends.)

America’s political culture is having a hard time discussing the choice between long-term trends and immediate action. The recent murder of five servicemen by what looks like an Islamist “lone wolf” will only make “man-hunting” seem more vital than ever.

[1] Mark Mazzetti, The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth (New York: Penguin, 2013).

[2] In 2004, CIA’s Inspector General condemned some of the practices as “unauthorized” and “inhumane.”

[3] Including the occasional American renegade who declined to surrender himself to more formal American justice.

Pleven Plan.

Posted on by
Reply

You can think of the early Cold War as having had layers.[1] Between 1945 and 1947 the Soviets had it pretty much the way they wanted. The Red Army occupied Eastern and much of Central Europe. Chase away or kill the supporters of democracy in Eastern Europe. Stage a bunch of elections. (Run by guys waving pistols saying “Who is against? Raise your hands.”) The Western European countries were in ruins and bankrupt. The Americans cut off Lend-Lease aid as soon as Japan surrendered and they wanted to bring their troops home as soon as possible. The Communist Parties of France, Belgium, and Italy were under Soviet control, so most of the labor unions were under Soviet control as well.[2] Wait for the Americans to leave, use the unions to wreck the economy and the Communist parties to paralyze government, and march in.

From 1947 to 1950, the Americans changed their minds. You can imagine Henry Fonda going “Hey, wait a minute.” With a combination of money, technology, know-how, a basic decency that we used to possess, and that casual ruthlessness Americans adopt when they belatedly decide that they don’t like you, the US slapped the Russkies silly.[3] The Marshall Plan, the CIA, NATO, the Berlin Air Lift all followed.

Then, in June 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea. Apparently, the Cold War wasn’t just about politics and economics in Western Europe. It also was about being willing to die at a freezing dawn on some ridge in a wide spot in Asia. If it happened in a divided country in Asia, then it might happen in some divided country in Europe—like Germany. The Americans demanded that the Western Europeans prepare to fight the Russkies. If you wanted people who knew about killing Russkies, the natural place to look was Germany.[4] So, re-arm the Germans.

The French (and Italians and British and everyone else) went buggy over this idea. After the Blitz, after Oradour, after the Ardeatine Caves, the last thing any European wanted was the same Germans with new guns.

So, cut to another feature of post-war Western European history: “integration.” By 1947, uniting the nations of Europe “at the peak” hadn’t worked out, so an engaging schemer named Jean Monnet had proposed uniting “at the base.” In 1948 he got the French foreign minister, Robert Schuman, to pitch the idea of a European Coal and Steel Community. Every member country would pool its resources and an international authority would apportion them.

How about trying the same thing with the scary prospect of German soldiers? The Germans put in the soldiers, while the British, French, and whoever put in the officers. Jean Monnet got the French defense minister Rene Pleven to pitch this idea in late 1950. They called it the “European Defense Community.” No one liked it except the Americans. However, they were the ones with the money, so…

Years of negotiations followed. French resistance proved most important.[5] In August 1954 the French rejected the EDC. People said “It’s the end of the ‘European’ project.” Right.

[1] Rather like yon Shrek beastie.

[2] Sorry if this offends any progressive-thinking people. It’s just another “inconvenient truth.” Like androgenic climate change for Republicans. See: Franz Borkenau, The Communist International (1938); Stephane Courtois, ed., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (1999). Just for a hoot, see Paul Hollander, Political Pilgrims (1981). While you’re at it, see Ronald Radosh, with Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File (1983).

[3] There were probably old guys up at Standing Rock wondering what a Russian reservation was going to look like. Maggots in the flour, watering the cattle before weighing them, ministers with Bibles and “boarding schools.”

[4] Of course, Germans also knew a lot about being killed by Russkies, so they weren’t enthusiastic about this idea.

[5] In 1954, the CIA thought about bribing a majority of French parliamentarians to win passage of this EDC, but concluded that French politicians are like beer: you don’t buy it, you just rent it.

Why are the Germans so mad at the Greeks?

Posted on by
Reply

You can’t get blood out of a stone. The Greek debt will have to be “restructured”[1] for the crisis to end. Germany owns the largest single chunk of the debt[2] and is the dominant force in Eurozone decision-making. The Germans are obdurately refusing to restructure the debt, at least until the Greeks show a firm commitment to economic reforms. This position is opening a gap between Germany and other countries like France, and threatens to drive Greece right out of the Eurozone. Why are the Germans so determined to play the “bad cop”? Here it is worth thinking about two factors.   One is German formative experiences; the other is Greek behavior.

While journalists invoke the great post-WWI inflation as an explanation for German insistence on austerity and probity, a more immediate influence may be that of German reunification in 1990. An old Russian joke about Communism held that “they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” The same held true in the former East Germany. Inefficiency went hand-in-hand with feather-bedding. Massive shut-downs of uncompetitive eastern factories followed unification. West Germans bitterly complained of the poor work ethic of the “Ossies.” Unemployment doubled in the eastern territories between 1990 and 1995. Nevertheless, western Germans kept faith with eastern Germans. Wages and pensions doubled in the east,. One informed estimate of the total cost of German reunification between 1990 and 2010 runs to 2 trillion Euros, or 100 million Euros per year for twenty years.[3] Much of this came in the form of subsidies paid from western Germany to the eastern Germany. In the end, however, Germany emerged as the highly-competitive dynamo that dominates the European economy today. No one helped the Germans pay these costs. Two figures in this trauma were Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schauble. Now they have the same prescription for Greece.

In contrast, the Greeks have behaved disgracefully from one end of this long crisis to the other. Anyone who lives in Britain, Canada, Australia, or the United States knows Greeks to be hard-working and entrepreneurial. Those aren’t the Greeks who were left behind by the great emigration. The Greeks of Greece can excite only contempt. They obtained much of the loans through outright fraud. They spent the money on artificially raising living standards (wages, pensions, public employment), rather than on productive investment that would allow Greece to repay its debts. They ignore the fact that a huge write-off of Greek debt already took place back in 2009. They have tried to prosecute the Greek official who revealed that Greece governments had been “cooking the books” for a decade. From first to last, they have resisted carrying out most reforms so that the economy could return to economic viability. They denounce being asked to pay their bills or to work for a living as “humiliation.” Lots of German tourists have seen Greeks ‘”at work”: for example, 2.3 million German tourists visited Greece in 2007.

The Germans are in the wrong on the need to restructure the Greek debt. The Germans fail to realize that Greece today is a much poorer country than was western Germany when it bailed-out eastern Germany by itself. However, the Greeks are just in the wrong. The Greeks of today are not the Greeks of the Peloponnesian War. Resolution, honor and self-sacrifice are not Greek characteristics today. Neither side seems to recognize the truth.

The truth is that the Greeks will not pay. Do the Germans want to destroy Europe and create a “humanitarian” crisis to make a point? What can be saved of and for “Europe”?

[1] The IMF has recommended a 30 percent reduction and a stretching out of the payment period to reduce annual payments and to allow inflation to further reduce the real value of the obligations.

[2] See the chart at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33426328

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reunification#Cost_of_reunification

Inequality 6.

Posted on by
Reply

Does economic inequality matter? Citing Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Neil Irwin argues that there is a “deepening consensus…that rising inequality of income and wealth is an important trend over the last two or three decades.”[1] Eduardo Porter regards these social ills as “an existential threat to the nation’s future.”[2] NB: Is he correct? However, a “trend” isn’t either a problem or a solution. It is just an observed movement. People assign meaning to trends. The meaning assigned reflects the ambitions, fears, and beliefs of the people doing the assignment.

What has caused the stagnation in most incomes? Since 1973 productivity growth in the American economy has slowed dramatically.[3] That is the principal cause of the stagnation in most incomes. According to the most-recent Economic Report of the President, the failure to maintain the productivity-growth of the pre-1973 period means that the average American family now earns $30,000 a year less than it would have earned. In contrast, the increase in income inequality over the same period accounts for $9,000 a year for the same family.[4]

Regardless of the causes of rising inequality, liberals see a correlation between rising inequality and social problems. The teen-age birth-rate in the United States is about seven times as high as in France. More than one in four children lives with a single parent. More than twenty percent of Americans live in poverty. Seven out of every thousand adults is in prison.[5] A child born to a white, college-educated, married woman has the same chance of survival as does a child born to a similarly-circumstanced woman in Europe. However, children born to non-white, poor, single women have a much greater chance of dying young. Mental illness is more common among poor people than among wealthy people. Between 2009 and 2013, 9 percent of people with incomes below the poverty level reported “serious psychological distress,” while only 1.2 percent of people earning more than $80,000 so reported.[6] NB: Hard to get ahead if you’re mentally ill. On the other hand, 91 percent of people below the poverty level did not report “serious psychological distress.” Why not? Shouldn’t you be all wrought-up over your miserable situation? “People in low-income households don’t live as long [as people in high income households].”[7] By one measure, where there is a great disparity in income, upper income people live almost two days longer for every one-point increase in income disparity. In places with high inequality, you can live eleven days less than in places with low economic inequality. “But what causes the drop in life expectancy is debatable.”

Why this social disaster in the midst of so much other success? The conservative argument offered by Charles Murray and others is that the welfare state itself undermined the character of its beneficiaries. The liberal argument offered by Eduardo Porter is that Americans have been guided by a shared disdain for collective solutions and the privileging of individual responsibility. Therefore, America had relied on continuing prosperity instead of a welfare state. When long-term economic troubles hit, many Americans plunged through the cob-web of a “safety net.”

[1] Neil Irwin, “Things Bernanke Should Blog About,” NYT, 31 March 2015.

[2] Eduardo Porter, “Income Inequality Is Costing The Nation on Social Issues,” NYT, 29 April 2015.

[3] Tyler Cowen, “It’s Not the Inequality; It’s the Immobility,” NYT, 5 April 2015.

[4] This suggests that the policy prescriptions of Bernie Sanders target the smaller source of Americans’ discontent.

[5] That is three times the rate of 1975.

[6] “Noted,” The Week, 12 June 2015, p. 16.

[7] Margot Sanger-Katz, “How Income Inequality Can Be Bad for Your Health,” NYT, 31 March 2015.

Terror stats.

Posted on by
Reply

There were about 7,000 terrorist attacks in 2013. Then the number soared in 2014. Last year terrorists[1] launched almost 13,500 attacks. That is more than an 80 percent increase. The 2014 attacks killed about 33,000 people.[2] It is startling to see this quantified. That averages to about four per day; with fewer than 3 people killed in each attack. Some of them were so successful that they killed a lot of people, then the median death toll must be pretty low.

So, there is this constant drumbeat of “minor” terrorist attacks going on. Where do most of the attacks occur? Not in Western countries. Some 60 percent happened in Iraq (ISIS), Pakistan (Taliban), Afghanistan (Taliban), India, and Nigeria (Boko Haram). All these are places on the front lines of the struggle against radical Islamist insurgencies. The reverse of the mirror is the 40 percent of attacks spread over many countries, gnawing at civil peace.

Take the case of Iraq in January 2014.[3] There were fifteen attacks (some of them at multiple targets) on twelve different days. That averages to almost three attacks a week. The attacks killed 188 people and wounded 473 others. That averages to about 12 dead and 31 wounded in each attack. Only four of the attacks involved suicide attacks. However, 20 non-suicide car bombs were used in the attacks.

Iraq in January sharply differed from the global averages for the whole of 2014. The attacks in Iraq were less frequent and more deadly than the global averages. They were big car and truck bombs more than smaller suicide vests or hand-grenade attacks. This suggests a high level of professionalism on the part of the Iraqi attackers. They have access to larger stocks of explosives. They know how to build big bombs, conceal the bombs in cars, and prepare the cars (probably a matter of appropriate license plates and dash decorations). They have experienced drivers who can penetrate security lines. They have follower cars that pick up the drivers after they park the bomb-carrying vehicle close to the target. This may reflect the accumulated long experience of anti-American insurgents among the Sunnis and the former Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. People who have survived at this game for a long time practice good security habits.

Ten of the attacks took place in Baghdad, the rest in a variety of provincial cities. Targets included a police station, a military recruiting office, a prison, a military check-point, and the Ministry of Transportation. These five targets were symbols of government power; the victims soldiers, policemen, and bureaucrats. However, twice as many targets were purely civilians: commercial streets and markets (5), restaurants (2), a teahouse, a bus terminal, a taxi stand, and a hospital. This suggests that ISIS was attacking soft targets and a civilian population. They also were attacking Baghdad ahead of all other targets.   The city is the national capital and in theory, the most heavily guarded place in Iraq. It also allows ISIS to attack Shi’ites from within the Sunni quarters of the city.

Obviously, not many were suicide bombers. Thousands of foreign fighters have streamed to ISIS, but apparently not many of them want to be suicide bombers. Only four incidents in January 2014 involved people willing to kill themselves for a higher cause. At the end of the Second World War, 3,860 kamikaze pilots died in attacks on American war ships.[4] Perhaps the enthusiasm for suicide attacks has begun to wane, while professionalism waxes.

[1] Not just Islamic ones; we’re talking full spectrum terrorism here.

[2] “Noted,” The Week, 3 July 2015, p. 16. Of the dead, 24 were Americans. Two a month, world-wide.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_2014

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze

Waving the Bloody Shirt.

Posted on by
Reply

For many people, the Confederate battle flag is an attempt to distinguish between the heroism of the armies of the Confederacy and the evil cause for which those armies fought.

Fundamentally, the Civil War was about slavery. All you have to do is to a) read the Articles of Secession of the states, OR look at the nature of post-Reconstruction white rule in the states of the defeated Confederacy. (Or you could watch “Birth of a Nation” (dir. D.W. Griffith). See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3kmVgQHIEY Really remarkable.)

Slavery was an evil institution that showed no sign of evolving in a positive direction or dying out on its own. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9JaQy6wfbE No, actually, the clip tells you all you need to know about slavery and the people who experienced it.

The armies of the Confederacy fought heroically and well against a stronger opponent. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1Xu_Jni4V4 Often (although certainly not always), to be a native white Southerner today is to feel oneself to be an heir to this admirable legacy. There is nothing wrong with this sense of identity—unless there is also something wrong with “Band of Brothers.”

However, the armies of the Confederacy fought heroically for the freedom to maintain the racial supremacy of whites over blacks. (Not just slavery, when perhaps 1 in 4 Southern families owned a slave, but the legal and social superiority of any white person over any black person. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbXTl0WX4RE.)

Curiously, Northerners fairly soon abandoned the myth of the victorious cause. Yes, for decades, Republicans politicians were prone to “wave the bloody shirt.”[1] Yes, “Marching through Georgia” was played at the Republican national convention.[2] (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs43o85zot8.) However, the Spanish-American War (1898) is often seen by historians as a moment of national reconciliation. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAYbLdpghRA Certainly, by the 20th Century, the Civil War had lost its power to inspire a sense of identity among Northerners. Today, one rarely sees a Prius with “Grand Army of Republic” bumper sticker or a Chevy Volt with an American flag license-plate holder.

In contrast, during the 1950s and 1960s, visible assertions of identification with the Confederacy in the form of the Confederate battle flag began to proliferate in parallel with the advance of the Civil Rights movement. For example, the Georgia state flag adopted in 1956—two years after “Brown versus Board of Education”–included the Stars and Bars for the first time. For example, the Confederate battle flag became a fixture at the South Carolina statehouse in 1962 in opposition to the civil rights movement.[3]

It is not possible to disentangle the two strands of the Civil War in the South.   It is not possible to claim only one part of the heritage of the South without claiming the other part. They were intertwined.[4] There is no easy way out of this dilemma. All chortling aside, it is a dilemma which Northerners have never faced. So, it is a sense of triumph won without cost.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waving_the_bloody_shirt

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching_Through_Georgia

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America#Display_at_South_Carolina.27s_state_capitol

[4] In the same fashion, it is not possible to celebrate the triumph of the Westward Movement without acknowledging the chicanery, violence, and racism that robbed and butchered the Indians. My ancestors played a part in that and I am heir to its legacy.

CrISIS 3.

Posted on by
Reply

Robert H. Scales (1944- ) grew up in an Army family, went to West Point, went into the field artillery, served in Vietnam, won the Silver Star for his actions when an NVA attack over-ran his fire-base, and then climbed the greasy pole to the rank of Major General. This involved a combination of education (Ph.D., History, Duke University); field commands (South Korea, Germany); staff appointments (V Corps, Training and Doctrine Command); and teaching (Artillery School at Fort Still, Army War College at Carlisle Barracks). He is the author or co-author of six books. Two of those books are Certain Victory: The U.S. Army in the Gulf War (1994), the official history of the Army in the First Gulf War; and The Iraq War: A Military History (2003), a history of the initial military defeat of Iraq in 2003.

General Scales has thought a lot about warfare in the Arab world, so his opinions are worth consideration. Some of them are at odds with the dominant beliefs that appear to have led to a series of disasters, so they are worth careful consideration. You never know. We might learn something. Stranger things have happened.

He has argued that Arab armies don’t do “modern warfare” very well.[1] Western armies (Britain, France, Israel, United States) have beaten up on Arab armies a whole bunch of times. So far, “Westernized” Arab armies (Syria, Iraq) have not performed well against ISIS. General Scales is NOT arguing that Arabs lack courage or ability as soldiers. Rather he argues that Arab culture differs markedly from Western culture. Arab culture centers on powerful loyalties to “family, tribe, and clan.” The “nation” is a more remote concept. As a result, Arabs fight best when organized in groups based on sub-national loyalties. He cites the example of the long defense of Ramadi against ISIS (October 2014-May 2015), although Western media focused chiefly on the final ISIS victory. In Scales’ view, such troops fight best on defense and markedly less well on offense. However, the Egyptian attack across the Suez Canal in the 1973 Yom Kippur War shows under what conditions Arab conventional armies can be successful. The Egyptian attack set limited, specific, and achievable goals; it relied on careful training of troops and rehearsal of movements; and it accumulated over-whelming fire-power on a circumscribed battlefield.[2]

General Scales offers his advice on future operations in Iraq against ISIS. The next campaigning season starts in April-May 2016. What needs to be done? First, stop trying to build a “Western” army for Iraq. Acknowledge the power of sub-national loyalties. Build an army that includes militias based on the real loyalties in Iraq. Second, the attack on ISIS cannot be a drawn-out battle of attrition. It has to be prepared on the model of the Egyptian 1973 offensive. Third, the Americans are going to have to commit an immense amount of airpower to support this attack. Air support will have to be on the level of Operation Desert Storm. Fourth, the objective must be to break the will to fight of ISIS, not merely to retake territory.

All this sounds persuasive. Still, a couple of questions arise. First, if Arabs fight best for “family, tribe, and clan,” then why is ISIS doing so well? If Arabs don’t fight well on the offensive, how has ISIS over-run so much of Syria and Iraq? Second, sub-national loyalties can also be anti-national loyalties. Is defeating ISIS still going to lead to the disintegration of Iraq?

[1] Robert H. Scales, “The Iraqi Army Can’t Be Westernized,” WSJ, 26 June 2015.

[2] For the Egyptians, that meant a lot of surface-to-air weapons to negate the Israeli air superiority over the battlefield and a lot of anti-tank weapons to negate the Israeli armored advantage on the battlefield. The Egyptian offensive went awry when they moved out of the reach of their air defenses, when the US poured in aid to Israel, and when the Israelis proved exceptionally resolute.