‹ More on the Likudist Fronts •
I think highly of Ivan Eland as a person and as a foreign policy analyst. His piece on today’s site on the danger of recruiting into the military people with bad records of behavior is on target. On the way to making his points, though, Ivan writes the following:
One problem is that when the U.S. is not fighting a war against what the American public perceives as a dire threat (for example, the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese during World War II) – that is, the war is one of choice, such as Iraq or Vietnam – the nation is unwilling to make the sacrifices needed to win. In World War II, serving more than 12 months overseas was not an issue.
Is he sure that these tours were not an issue? Or could it be that people didn’t dare protest because they feared being accused of being unpatriotic or even feared being punished if they protested? After all, many of them probably knew how Woodrow Wilson had handled dissent during World War I. Maybe they learned the lesson. There is far too much nostalgia about World War II but, interestingly, less so from people who were actually in it. When I was a child in the 1950s and 1960s, I couldn’t get WWII vets to say much about their experiences. Maybe they thought no one would really listen.
But we need to listen. Next time you talk to a World War II vet, make sure you don’t presume to know what he thought and felt.
Two final notes about Ivan’s use of language. First, nations don’t make sacrifices; people do. Second, any war a government engages in is a war of choice. Even if your side is attacked, going to war is still a choice. It might be a good choice, but it’s a choice.
Actually, the length of tours was an issue in World War II. Bomber crews were only required to complete 25 missions — later upped to 35 as the Luftwaffe grew weaker — before they were sent home. From the D-Day landings to the surrender of Germany, 11 months elapsed. That is less than the previous standard tour of 12 months in Iraq, to say nothing of the 15 months now imposed.
Also, all of Iraq is a combat area. There is little real safety. There were no Nazi guerillas harassing our rear areas or supply lines. In France and Italy, for example, there were ample rear areas — basically anything out of German artillery range, about ten miles behind the front lines — where there was no war at all. The local people were generally friendly, or when indifferent, not interested in trying to kill Americans on leave. Units were pulled out of the front lines and sent to rest areas in safe zones as a matter of routine because it was common knowledge that continuous combat burns out troops pretty quickly.
And relatively few people were in combat units. Many of the were rest what Bill Mauldin called “garritroopers” — too close to the front to wear ties and too far back to get shot. Truck drivers bringing supplies to the front were in little danger beyond the normal hazards of traffic, for example. The people running supply dumps worried more about locals stealing the goods than blowing them up. The air force controlled the skies, so air attack was a minor issue.
In the Pacific, the fighting was savage, but usually over in a couple of days or weeks, followed by rest and then the next island. Creature comforts were poorer in the Solomon Islands than in Italy or France, for example, but after the Japanese evacuated Guadalcanal, it became a staging area, far behind the front lines.
The huge fleet trains made it possible for the navy to stay at sea for months at a time, an echo of the days of fighting sail, and there was always danger from submarines. But there were long intervals of no combat — even going from place to place took days in the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean. On islands like Majuro, there were R&R facilities and sailors faced little danger.
Iraq is nothing like that.
Dear Mr. Furey,
Interesting and informative. Thank you so much.
Best,
David
Thanks for that interesting information. We need to distinguish between SERVING overseas and SERVING in combat. An American serviceman sent to the U.K. in spring 1942 might have been overseas for several years but only faced actual combat from June 44 - May 45 and even then only if he was a frontline combat infrantryman. I would point out the complete opposite in the Red Army. They had no system of furloughs or home leave at all. Once inducted you served at the front line with your unit right until the end of the war, or until killed or dismembered.
Re: Tours of duty in WWII, reminds me of Catch 22, etc.
One of my friends in high school had a Dad much older than the rest of us who had been a grunt in World War II. He never wanted to talk about the war and was only willing to tell one story which was how he was abandoned in an ambulance with another wounded soldier as a bombing raid hit the location they were in. As far as he was concerned war was a living hell that he would not allow his son to share, if his son was drafted he would personally drive him to Canada.
…nations don’t make sacrifices; people do.
Worth saying, and well said.
See: The Real War 1939-1945
A little picky about language, although it never hurts to be perfectly clear about the words we choose. “Nation” and “the people of a nation” are frequently used synonymously; in fact, every definition listed in my dictionary under “nation” refers to people or a community of people in some sense. Eland’s use of the word is technically correct.
Concerning choice, I knew a psychologist who argued that there was no such thing as coerced action, only free choice. Were you tortured until you signed the confession? You chose freely. But I think Orwell’s O’Brien was right–there are some reactions that are inevitable and normal that you would not take if offered a real choice. More to the point, a nation wrongly attacked would instinctively react, even if on paper it had a choice, just as you would gulp air while you were drowning, even if you wished to drown. A war of choice simply means a war fought not to defend any of the aggressor’s vital interests but for ungermane, trivial, or foolish reasons.
Hobson’s choice hinges on an hierarchic ambiguity, open to much sophistry and especially popular, as above, among Anglophiles and those with a perverse and supposedly “Christian” cryptotype to peddle. Sartre dealt with another aspect, almost as clumsily.
To say that there is no “choice” among horses in the stable is a different use of “choice” from that between renting what is available or not renting.
The latter has nothing necessarily to do with the particular horse next to the door.
To rent from Hobson, indeed, is not to rent a horse, but to accept Hobson’s functor, in which something that may or may not qualify, from the point of view of the renter, as a suitable “horse” is available.
It is a pity no has pursued the image in the larger economic context. It explains a lot about mass production, advertising, and American “market capitalism”, especially recently, wherein the menu is inceasingly made available as the meal, while becoming, structurally and at the same time, all that is readily available.
The organizing image is cunning if also very banal.
Depending on the horse at the door, for example, one might quite sensibly ask whether it might not be better sense to make Hobson an offer he can’t refuse, to wit, half his horse–front or rear.
At any rate, it is instructive to see the sad state of logic and language among those so readily accorded the label “psychologist” nowadays.
corr:”a hierarchic”
corr:”it is a pity no one”
corr: “increasingly”.
Hobson’s choice hinges on a hierarchic ambiguity, open to much sophistry and especially popular, as above, among Anglophiles and those with a perverse and supposedly “Christian” cryptotype to peddle. Sartre dealt with another aspect, almost as clumsily.
To say that there is no “choice” among horses in the stable is a different use of “choice” from that between renting what is available or not renting.
The latter has nothing necessarily to do with the particular horse next to the door.
To rent from Hobson, indeed, is not to rent a horse, but to accept Hobson’s functor, in which something that may or may not qualify, from the point of view of the renter, as a suitable “horse” is available.
It is a pity no has pursued the image in the larger economic context. It explains a lot about mass production, advertising, and American “market capitalism”, especially recently, wherein the menu is increasingly made available as the meal, while becoming, structurally and at the same time, all that is readily available.
The organizing image is cunning if also very banal.
Depending on the horse at the door, for example, one might quite sensibly ask whether it might not be better sense to make Hobson an offer he can’t refuse, to wit, half his horse–front or rear.
At any rate, it is instructive to see the sad state of logic and language among those so readily accorded the label “psychologist” nowadays.
There we go. What is it about an edit function that seems to so elusive on a site such as antiwar?
Many graphic sites, including a number of fly-by-nights, otherwise not known for their veneration of accuracy in posted text, have them in their comment boxes.
Hehe==corr: “no one”–still. One of those days.
The last stage of Anglophone Captitalism perhaps–eat vegemite or die:
http://www.afactor.net/hcf/index.html
Hey mate!!
I respect what you say most times but, DON’T KNOCK OUR VEGEMITE OK
JC
One small anecdote on this topic: My grandmother burned my grandfather’s uniform when he returned from England at the end of WWII. I suppose it goes without saying that she wasn’t too thrilled with the length tours overseas.
Regards
R. Nelson: Henderson’s clarification was in reference to human action, not the definition of the word “nation”:
“First, nations don’t make sacrifices; people do.”
A nation is not an organic entity in and of itself that thinks and acts with a single mind and a single organic body. It’s a geographical territory inhabited by individual human beings–in the case of the USA, hundreds of millions of human beings. And it is these individuals who must bear all the sacrifices that the government that monopolizes said terriroty thrusts upon them, while the individual human beings who operate and manage that government are collecting the benefits of the sacrifices.
Probably that’s what Henderson meant–that people, not chunks of land, make sacrifices. But as previously noted, “nation” usually means people or a community of people, so Eland’s use of the word is still justifiable.
Henderson’s criticism would be stronger had Eland used “country” instead, which does connote geography to some extent. This is all a trivial point, but it was Henderson who brought it up as a point of clarification.
“A nation is not an organic entity in and of itself that thinks and acts with a single mind and a single organic body. It’s a geographical territory inhabited by individual human beings–in the case of the USA, hundreds of millions of human beings.”
Yes, though nations need not be confined to a single geographic territory (Jews, Kurds), and some territories are home to many nations (Russia, China).
It’s too bad that much of what the U.S. Department of Education [sic] pushes about U.S. wars—especially the Civil War (aka, War against Secession), WWI, and WWII (aka, Wilson War II)—is state-worshiping fraud. Of course this is only natural, seeing as how “[m]ost mainstream history texts are nothing more than authorized biographies of government.” In reality, the presidents most admired by mainstream pundits, scholars, and everyday people—namely Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR—were all tyrants who willingly, happily decimated the Constitution and waged unnecessary war. They were as barbaric as their enemy counterparts, and in some cases they were worse.
If you are on the receiving end of an Invasion you better make those choices quickly or else somebody will make them for you.
First of all today is May 9th, the greatest holiday in Russia, the V-day, the holiday that really defines the nation. It was a lethal attack attempt by the West, which was resolutely defeated. Which gives me (and majority of the people in the country the right to look into the future with optimism, and to be able to finally start benefiting from all the wealth that Russia had for centuries. Of course we wonder if the West would allow us another 25 years of peace to finally achieve the status of the 3rd Rome, and there will be no 4th.
So, WWII was NOT a far of choice to the USSR.
But it was for the US. There was no immediate threat, no invasion on US soil, no enemy tanks firing at the capital. Nothing even remotely close.
The reason why US actually got involved into the war was same kind of reason it always got itself into the wars - to prevent POTENTIAL threat from the USSR, since otherwise it would be POSSIBLE that USSR would have to take control over the whole Europe, after defeating the Germany.
On the other hand, judging by total lack of evidence that USSR, headed by Stalin was interested in controlling the whole Europe. Actually, looking into the past realities of the middle-end 20th century - that bipolar construction (like any bipartisan system) was rather stable and desirable. The World is now straggling to regain that level of distribution of World Power, for human World can not function properly with only one center of power. Period.
British Empire, represented by the US now, representing the ill spirit of Roman Empire is again (like 2000 years ago) trying to establish World Domination, the WWII was a result of UK/US actions which created the conflict between USSR and Germany. In reality there is no basis for such conflict.
So not only that war was bona fide “war of choice” for the US, but it took active part in staging that very war. How disgusting - UK/US business - as usual.