War: When Will We Ever Learn

This entry was inspired by the work of The White Helmets written by Raed Saleh.  It is a heart-breaking story of carnage caused by those who only seek their own power, not that of the people.  See
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/opinion/we-have-tried-every-kind-of-death-possible.html

Where have all the flowers gone?  Gone by scorched earth warfare.

Where have all the young girls gone?  Bombed under rubble like the girl pictured in the article.

Where have all the young men gone?  Shot or bombed by somebody who doesn't like the side to which these young men have gone, often enticed by glory rather than defense of their homes.  Often killed by someone in the sky enticed by those who don't like the people that enticed the young men to war.  Someone who probably goes to a safe barracks with a good warm dinner.

Where have all the graves gone?  Buried under more rubble, certainly not to flowers.

When will we ever learn?

Not very soon:(

Slicing and dicing clichés

One of the most used clichés used is “The Media” as if all news programs, all newspapers, and all magazines were all alike and not presenting the views of the speaker.

The use of this cliché is most strange.  Those who consider themselves “conservative” complain about “the liberal media” even though they get their news through the likes of Fox News or the Wall Street Journal.  Those who consider themselves “liberal” complain about “the conservative media” even though they get their news through PBS and the New York Times.

Maybe the truth is that most “media” present a wide variety of news, including what a “conservative” says and what a “liberal” says.  The “media” is “biased” because some of the news includes views that the complainer disagrees with.

And maybe the complainers watch too much TV news and don’t read enough newspapers.  Most papers include a variety of columnists and a large variety of opposing view in their letters columns.

If “The Media” has any bias, it is partly “laziness” and partly lack of resources.  It is rare that we see on the front page “Joe Blow” came in second to a de facto “none of the above”.  That is, Joe Blow received 55 percent of the 55 percent turnout, giving him a “landslide”.  Huh?  55 percent of 55 percent represents a tad over 30 percent of the registered voters; it’s even worse if you consider eligible voters.  Come on, almost 70 percent of the voters didn’t care to vote for Joe Blow, but “The Media” tells us a different story.

“Two party system” is used almost as if it were were written in the Constitution.  It is just a fiction of convenience. If you think about it, we had a de facto “three party system” in the middle of the Twentieth Century.  There were the Republicans, the Northern Democrats, and the Southern Democrats.  The two parts of the Democratic Party came together on many issues, but if the Southern Democrats detected any threat to “States Rights” they were agin’ it.  The miracle was that a Southern Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, broke the log jam.  Now many of those Southern Democrats are Republicans.

Now Southern Republicans and “Tea Party” Republicans have all but drowned out “moderate” Republicans.  “Moderate” Republicans being those who want to work with Democrats to solve real problems.  What’s a “real problem”?  A problem that affects the “General Welfare” as called for in the Constitution.  That is, how do we make government work for all of our people, not just a chosen few.

This impasse many call a “dysfunctional Congress” and blame each and every member of Congress for this problem.  Interestingly, some commentators point out that in almost every district or state, a sizable number of people don’t think their Representative or Senators are part of the problem.

Along with this view many say that “government is the problem”.  But it is “We, the People” who have voted for this government.

However, some of the same people who think government is inefficient think that the United States should and can solve all the problems of the world.  Worse, they think the United States should use force to do so.  Ah, another cliché, “Leader of the Free World”.  Who in the “Free World” outside the United States had a vote in selecting the President of the United States?

When those who want to exercise their will on other countries with military force, they call it “defense”.  But defense of what?  Defense of our homeland?  Or defense of their view of the world?  A thought experiment: if we hadn’t “defended” ourselves in Afghanistan, Iraq, and dozens of other places, would there have been a “9/11”?

“Greedy corporations” is a cliché used often by the “Left” as if all corporations were the scum of the earth.  Interestingly, many of them find out about meetings complaining about corporations on their computers and cell phones and drive to the meetings in their private automobiles.  In other words, they depend on large corporations to complain about large corporations.  It makes me think of a Lenin quote, but I don’t think it quite fits: “A capitalist will sell you the rope to hang him with.”

Just like we have good government and bad government, we have good corporations and bad corporations.  For every hidden recall, how many public acknowledgments of corporate problems do we hear?

The latest effort at corporate responsibility is by General Mills.  Because of the various sources of grain it has, it makes every effort to make sure its products are what they say they are.  To ensure gluten-free products they use expensive machines to separate wheat from other grains.  As with all human systems, stuff happens.  As soon as General Mills found out about the problem, they recalled supposedly gluten-free products.  Interestingly, it may have been the truck of a small, independent contractor that had the mixed grain.  For more details, see the Star Tribune of 2015-10-10.

To end on a negative note, I’ll fault General Mills for deceptive packaging.  We had Golden Valley Nut Bars as a snack this past Sunday.  The nut bars ended at the border between the clear part of the wrapper and the opaque part.  Even considering the need to seal the top of the package, three quarters of an inch more of bar could have fit in the package.

Also published online in the Duluth Reader, 2015-10-15 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/10/14/6089_slicing_and_dicing_clich_s

Corporations, persons, tools, and fools

Corporations are persons?  Someone said that you know a corporation is a person when Texas executes one.

How did we get to this situation that corporations have “freedom of speech” and many other freedoms granted to actual living individual persons?

Corporations were originally created to give monarchs and other nobility a piece of the economic action.  As the merchant class rose in the cities, the monarch couldn’t tax them because they had no land.  By creating a corporation of a given business, the monarch could insist on a few shares of a corporation and rake in more in profits than he would have in taxes.  Also, by giving a monopoly to a corporation, he protected it from competition.

These monopolies soon expanded far outside the monarch’s country with colonization of other parts of the world.  An example is how British law forbade the American colonies from producing a long list of items or importing goods through any other organization than the British East India Company.  Was the British East India Company composed of Adam Smith’s “order of men” who “were not to be trusted” with proposing legislation?  The Boston Tea Party was an act of defiance against the corporate monopoly enjoyed by the British East India Company.

Is today’s Tea Party a tool of corporations who want to extract minerals without paying the full cost of such extraction?  These corporations are waging legislative, administrative, and public relations campaigns to allow them to operate on corporate terms.  Are these corporations composed of Adam Smith’s “order of men” who “were not to be trusted” with proposing legislation?  Also as the British East India Company was a “foreign” entity, many of the extractors of today are entities from out of state or even out of the country.

Does “Open for Business” or “Business-friendly” apply to locally-owned companies or to large corporations that will move elsewhere whenever they think an area is not bending to their wishes?  Does it mean that large corporations will be given subsidies, including reduced taxes, that aren’t given to locally-owned businesses?  If we want truth in government, maybe we should insist that states and localities that claim to be “Business-friendly” should admit being “Corporation-friendly”.

Can you find “corporation” in the U.S. Constitution?  That was deliberate.  Many of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention remembered well the dominance of a corporation over Colonial affairs and did not want a repeat of that stranglehold.  Many of the national politicians of the time had a vision of craftsman and farmers plying their goods in local markets.

But with advances in transportation, the economic situation changed drastically.  To build canals required capital.  To gather capital, groups of people had to organize to buy shares and/or borrow money.  If the enterprise failed, the shareholders didn’t want to be held individually responsible for the losses of the company beyond their own financial contribution.  Wouldn’t you?  Thus, the limited liability corporation came to the United States.

With the coming of the railroads came ever larger corporations.  The Illinois Central Railroad hired a lawyer to get special privileges for it like breaking unions, hiring foreign workers, and gaining privileges not held by people.  Yep, that lawyer was the “of the people, by the people, and for the people” guy.  Apparently, the Civil War opened his eyes to many things.  This excerpt from one of his letters shows this rather strongly:

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

My, how political parties morph over the generations!  I think only two Republican Presidents have had similar misgivings.

Many decades later another war-time leader worried about the “military-industrial” complex.  But one of his predecessors pulled a corporate branding trick on the American people.  The Department of War was now to be called the Department of Defense.  Now corporations weren’t in the business of selling war machines but were fulfilling “defense contracts”.

One of the political ironies is the political party the claims the federal government can’t do anything right bends over backward to lavish more money on the military-industrial complex.  Do they not know that snafu and fubar are terms coined by the guys in the foxholes?

So, are corporations the tools of the people or are the people the tools of corporations?  If we let the latter happen then we are the fools.

For a lot more about the abuse of and by corporations, see “Life, Inc., How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back” by Douglas Rushkoff.

Mel owns shares in a few corporations and almost always votes against their overpaid executives and boards.

The three S's of life

As I watch birds and squirrels at our house and cabin, I ponder the three most important things to these critters – shelter, sustenance, and sex.

They need to seek shelter to protect themselves from the weather and from predators.

They need sustenance to keep themselves going.

They need sex to keep their species going.

Some people watch circling birds and think "free as a bird".  But that bird is rarely flying for the sheer joy of it.  It is most likely circling to search for food or moving to where it thinks food may be more plentiful.

Sometimes they band together to repel predators.  A few years ago, I watched dozens and dozens of crows come up from Lake Superior and join a cacaphonous mob in a neighbor's back yard.  The neighbor later told me that they were congregating to intimidate a great horned owl that was roosting in a trellis.  The crows know that great horned owls attack them as they are roosting at night.  How many other wild animals communicate to others that they should organize for defense?

Whither America? Idealism or Ideology?

The following was published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth on 2013-11-14 and can be found at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2013/11/14/2433_party_of_one_whither_america_idealism_or_ideology

Idealism is a set of goals; ideology is a set of rules.  Idealism is a guide to how you act; ideology is a set of rules on how you and everybody else must act.  Idealism takes into account reality; ideology creates its own “reality”.  “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”  This is attributed to Karl Rove or Dick Cheney.  They ignore to our detriment Newton's third law of motion:  "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."  If you create your own reality, then others will create their own reality.  Overwhelming force meets roadside bomb.

The Alworth Center for the Study of Peace and Justice had two recent speakers who addressed these issues.  Robert J. Art, author of “A Grand Strategy for America”, cautiously leaned toward ideology.  Andrew J. Bacevich, author of “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism” and “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War”, is fed up with the “Imperial Presidency” and the “Wise Men” who are getting us deeper and deeper into problems,  thus creating even more problems.

Art states that we must strike a balance between isolationism and being the world’s policeman. Isolationism often means withdrawing from most of the world’s affairs.  This is rather difficult given how intertwined the world economy has become.  We have already seen how often being the world’s policeman causes more problems than it solves.

Art says we have six important interests:

1) Protect the homeland and prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction
2) Keep deep peace among Eurasian great powers
3) Assure assets (oil) for market
4) International economic openness
5) Democracy’s spread and observance of human rights
6) Avert severe climate change

To support these interests, Art gives eight grand strategies, including dominion, isolationism, and selective engagement.  Dominion just won’t work; it will get us into deeper and deeper military involvement.  The U.S. has tried it on various scales for over a century, and our politicians still haven’t learned.  Isolationism has many aspects, but if the U.S. isolates itself from the rest of the world, will the rest of the world help if the U.S. needs help?

Art prefers selective engagement.  Selective engagement is based on fundamental goals, it concentrates on those “regions of most consequence to the United States”, “it maintains a forward-based defense posture”, “it prescribes a set of judicious rules for when to wage wars”, and “it calls for American leadership.”

But the devil is in the details.  It seems to me that this selective engagement has been going on for decades.  President after president, Republican or Democrat, has had a set of fundamental goals, has thought that region after region was consequential, has had “defensive” forces all over the world, has thought his rules for war were correct, and of course, has insisted on being first among “equals”.

In both “The Limits of Power” and “Washington Rules”, Bacevich examines the consequences of strategies like Art proposes.  We have moved to an imperial presidency where the President not only does his best to ignore Congress in “power projection” but ignores the military and diplomatic departments and huddles with his “Wise Men”.  Kennedy did it in the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Bush did it with Afghanistan and Iraq.  Obama is doing it with drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  And often the President doesn’t understand that he, the unelected “leader of the free world” is being manipulated by his “Wise Men”–McNamara, Cheney, and so on.  Bacevich writes about Kennedy’s team, "With the certainty of men unacquainted with the actual use of power, they did not doubt their ability to compel war to do their bidding."  This could apply to just about every inner circle since.
Bacevich sees U.S. leaders having a credo backed up by a “sacred trinity”.

Credo: “The United States—and the United States alone—to lead, save, liberate, and ultimately transform the world.”

Sacred trinity: "an abiding conviction that the minimum essentials of international peace and order require the United States to maintain a global military presence, to configure its forces for global power projection, and to counter existing or anticipated threats by relying on a policy of global interventionism”.

Bacevich suggests an alternate credo: “America's purpose is to be America, striving to fulfill the aspirations expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as reinterpreted with the passage of time and in light of hard-earned experience.”

He proposes a new trinity:

“First, the purpose of the U.S. military is not to combat evil or remake the world, but to defend the United States and its most vital interests.”

“Second, the primary duty station of the American soldier is in America.”

“Third, consistent with the Just War tradition, the United States should employ force only as a last resort and only in self-defense.”

Bacevich quotes Reinhold Niebuhr frequently:
“[H]e warned that what he called ‘our dreams of managing history’–born of a peculiar combination of arrogance and narcissism–posed a potentially mortal threat to the United States.”  “The Irony of American History”, 1952

Niebuhr predates Pete Seeger who said it more simply, “When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn.”

Heroes or victims

Nation after nation makes heroes of those who fight in the wars these nations engage in.  But it is rare that those who do the actual fighting made the decision to go to war.  The decision makers are far behind the lines, exhorting even more to join as fighters.

Often a war is cloaked in patriotic terms as defending the country against foreign enemies, but the war is often not fought on the land of foreign enemy or even the land of the country claiming defense.  The war is fought on lands either loosely allied with one side or the other or even on lands that would rather be neutral.

Those who are opposed to these wars are often called unpatriotic, but they may really be the patriotic ones who see the folly in expending lives and treasure.  These "unpatriotic" may be executed or imprisoned in some countries or may be sidelined or ostracized in more "gentle" countries.

Some wars are instigated for conquest and masked as being for the greater glory of the nation.  Anatole France, commenting about past French wars in "L'Île des Pingouins" could just as well have been predicting Adolph Hitler.  A visitor stood in front of a statue of Trinco.  Trinco has conquered and lost half the known world in thirty years of war.  The guide finishes a description of Trinco's victories and defeats with, "Mais il nous a donné la gloire."  The visitor responded "Il vous l'a fair payer cher!"  And the guide responds "La gloire ne se paye jamais trop cher."

"But he gave us glory."
"He made you pay dearly."
"One never pays too dearly for glory."

Some wars are fought for a "national interest" but cloaked as a defense of freedom.  The national interest could be protecting shipping, access to resources, or some other interest for which the greatest beneficiaries are nowhere near the front lines.  Ironically, to protect freedom the freedom to protest the war is the first freedom to go.

The true test of the value a nation places on its heroes is how the veterans of war are treated when they return.  Is the country willing to raise sufficient funds to fully treat all physical and psychological injuries?  Think of Ira Hayes, fêted as a hero until he lost his usefulness as a war bond promoter.  Think of the dismal state that Walter Reed Hospital was in a few years ago.  Think of all the homeless vets who just can't make it on their own.  Until a government fully addresses these issues, many of its heroes are victims of the folly of war.

Iran - Questions for American hawks

First, a little history.  In 1914 the Archduke Frantz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, Serbia.  The Austrian government gave an ultimatum to Serbia, of which Serbia agreed to most terms except allowing Austrian police to participate in the investigation of the assassination.  Rather than negotiate, Austria attacked Serbia.  The consequences were as bad as all the participants believed they would be and worse.  We are still living with those consequences nearly a century later.

Now many demands are being made of Iran concerning its nuclear ambitions.  Many in the U.S. and Israel are ready to go to war against Iran if those demands aren't met.  Have these hawks considered ALL the possible effects of such a war?

Let's ask some "trivial" questions first.

Many of these hawks want low taxes.  If taxes are low and kept low, where is the money to come from to wage a new war?

Many of these hawks want low oil prices.  If Iran is attacked, what will happen to oil prices?

Many of these hawks want to protect the unborn.  If Iran is attacked, how many unborn children will die?  Do you really think only soldiers will die in any modern war?

Now let's look at some more global issues.

If Saudi Arabia feels threatened by Iranian nuclear ambitions, shouldn't Saudi Arabia be the country to act?  After all, the U.S. has sold them many, many advanced military aircraft.  Shouldn't Saudi pilots be able to operate these aircraft efficiently and effectively?  If not, why sell the aircraft to Saudi Arabia in the first place?

If the U.S. attacks Iran, this will be the third Muslim country the U.S. has invaded in a generation.  What will be the reaction be of many Muslims throughout the world?  Will there be a rush of Mujahideen to Iran?  What side will various Muslim governments take?

Will a U.S. attack on Iran bring about the fall of many pro-U.S. Muslim governments.  If so, which side will the new governments take?  If the government of an oil-producing nation falls, will the new government continue or cease oil deliveries to the U.S. or to European countries?

What will the reaction of Pakistan be to an attack on Iran?  Will the current generals do nothing?  Will they be replaced in a coup by more hawkish officers?  Officers who will be quite willing to aim nuclear weapons at U.S. forces or even U.S. territory?

There are more Muslims living in India than in Pakistan.  Would Indian Muslims stage a coup and join in resisting a U.S. attack on Iran?  India also has nuclear weapons.

What side will Russia and China take?

If Iran is attacked, what will North Korea's reaction be?  It has been unpredictable and is not known for acting in its long-term interests.

I think it is safe to say that if the U.S. (or Israel) attacks Iran, many people will die who have nothing to do with the current Iranian government or its nuclear programs.  Also, I think it is safe to say that the negative repercussions of an attack will last for at least two generations and maybe even a century.

Meanwhile, for over two generations the U.S. has called the largest offensive military force in the world "defense".  At the same time. those who have been the biggest proponents of the military have done their best to sabotage a true defense - energy independence.  They have opposed many efforts for alternative fuels and for greater energy efficiency.

"When will they ever learn?"  "The answer is blowin' in the wind."  They didn't.

Who needs armies?

Who is going to invade the United States?  What would they gain by doing so?  Who is going to invade Europe?  Who is going to invade Russia?  Who is going to invade China?  None of these countries or regions have any serious military threats, yet they all have very large military forces.  Most if not all call these defense forces, but defense against whom?

North Korea feels or claims that South Korea and the United States are threats to its security.  Ironically, any threat to North Korea will be because of its own bellicose behavior.

Pakistan feels threatened by India with some cause.  They have had at least three wars since their independence from Great Britain.  Pakistan was founded as a religious state, and as such it has a bit of paranoia against the secular state it split from.  Ironically, there are more Muslims in India than in Pakistan.

Israel feels threatened by almost all of its neighbors, sometimes with reason, sometimes because of its own actions.  It definitely could use more imagination in the carrot department instead of overuse of the stick.

What need does Egypt have for a large army?  The large army led to a military dictatorship that, despite the downfall of Hosni Mubarak, still wields a lot of political power.

What need does Libya have for a large army?  Despite the antics of Muammar Gaddafi, Europe was content to buy Libyan oil without feeling the need to invade it.

These last two countries show one of the downsides of a military that is larger than any foreseeable threat. Someone in the military decides to overthrow the government, legitimate or not, effective or not.

This is one of the reasons many of the writers of the U. S. Constitution were leery of a standing army.  They saw how many of the European countries used standing armies for foreign adventures and control of the people.

Unfortunately, they were overridden and shown to be prescient about foreign adventures and control of the people.  Let's see, Cuba, Philippines, Iraq, Panama, Granada, and many, many more.  The Army was called out to put down many strikes.  General Douglas MacArthur and Colonel Dwight Eisenhower had brought out machine guns to forcefully breakup the unarmed Bonus Army camps in Washington DC.  The Bonus Army was made up of unemployed World War I veterans who felt they had been promised a bonus for their service.

Afghanistan - Doing too much for too little?

Fareed Zakaria thinks that the fight against the Taliban is overreach with little result.  He likens it to fighting Italy after Germany has been defeated.  See "Fareed Zakaria Criticizes 'Disproportionate' Afghanistan War on CNN".

We should also look at the reverse situation.  How many Americans would fight a foreign invader?  Suppose there was an Anti-China League that started hitting Chinese targets.  The Chinese, tired of the "American" terrorism, would invade the U.S. with overwhelming force.  Many Americans would resist, even if they did not like the Anti-China League.

For what many call a "Christian" nation, we seem incapable of following the second greatest commandment - do unto others what you would have them do unto you.

Also, why does the Afghan army need so much training when the Taliban has such minimal training?  If the U.S. can't beat the Taliban with all of its sophisticated training and weapons, will an Afghan army beat the Taliban with the same sophisticated training and weapons?  Either a sufficient number of Afghans are opposed to the Taliban to fight the Taliban on similar terms or too few Afghans are willing to risk their lives against the Taliban.