| Monday
October 21, 2002
Referring to last week:
Regarding your recent comments:
“And Mr. Thompson has found the book, and I
have ordered a copy.
I also found a wonderful speech by The Lady
Thatcher, very much worth the attention of those seriously concerned about
statesmanship and leadership in this new world.
The Internet is a resource I never
contemplated in my youth.”
I recently completed reading Dante’s Inferno and
it triggered memories of a book I read several years ago, that is
apparently no longer in my library. All I could remember was that it was
loosely based on Dante’ Inferno and that I thought it had been written
by a science fiction author. Searches on Barnes & Noble and the
Amazon.com websites drew blanks, other than references to Dante’s
writings, translations of them or comments on them. A broader search on
the Internet was about the same, although there were, of course, many more
references. By now I was committed; I wanted to read this book again.
Particular segments kept popping into my mind, from the beginning, all the
way to end, where a companion of the hero started the long climb back to
the beginning, to start helping another soul through the inferno.
After about the third day of sporadic searches, it
occurred to me to go to the Library of Congress website at http://www.loc.gov
and very quickly, in my first search, on the third page of results, the
book was listed.
Imagine my surprise when I found the authors to be
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle!
Either I read way too much, or I’m getting old.
Tracy
Well, I hope you like it as much the
second time. It wasn't an easy book to write.
Joel Rosenberg on The Air War in
Europe 1942-1945
My conclusion -- fwiw; I don't have claims to
expertise -- is that the city bombing in Europe probably lengthened the
war, rather than shortening it. Not out of any stiffening of resistance --
just that the bombers and crews and bombs, of which there were many used
up, could have been better deployed during Overlord, and at the fringes of
the advance.
Assuming I'm right -- always a dangerous assumption
-- I'm not sure how useful an insight that is, though. Bomber Harris and
the rest didn't share that opinion, after all, and were going on both
their best available information, as well as their own righteous anger.
Miscellany:
It's *starting* to look like the Fed have bagged the
DC sniper, and his little buddy, although it's too soon to tell.
Have you been following Joel Mowbray's column at
National Review? It seems clearer and clearer that State's "Visa
Express" program in the Saudi entity was even more incompetent than
raging anti-State fanatics like me have been saying. If we're going to
have an Empire, the less incompetent it is, the better, and the nomination
of Maura Harty for head of Consular Affairs is sort of like hiring Arthur
Anderson to run an accounting reform program.
--
------------------------------------------------------------ http://islamthereligionofpeace.blogspot.com
Alas they are no further toward
catching the DC sniper than before. And I agree, if we must have empire,
why can't it be done well?
Dear Dr Pournelle,
"We should be so lucky".
People go nuts trying to reconcile the obvious evils of the British Empire
with the strangely wistful recollection that it was a comparatively benign
institution. Prior to WWI, ordinary Britons felt they had a place in their
country and the world. Not a particularly glamorous or healthful place
perhaps, but a definite place in a society which for all its faults - and
they were many - was making a better world. The Great War changed all
that, but not beyond redemption. I don't know if anyone's interested, but
it's possible to understand how such an apparently evil institution could
be so fondly remembered.
Here is Orwell writing in 1936 on his time in
purgatory (Burma);
"... I was all for the Burmese and all against
their oppressors, the British... I was stuck between my hatred of the
empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who
tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the
British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in
saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part
I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet
into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings like these are the normal
by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can
catch him off duty."
The point of Orwell's squib was that imperial
administrators at best tended to wind up doing the right thing, at least
according to written codes of conduct, for the meanest of motives. Was the
US power structure inclined to the same view? You'd never see the mean
motives in cultural icons of the time, like Lives of a Bengal Lancer, but
I've seen an opinion that such movies were just preparing the good
American people for an empire of their own.
Orwell felt as early as the first world war that the
mistakes of the ruling class had doomed the country to third-rate status -
that the British Empire was not only repugnant but moribund. But it took
the second world war to really drive home to the British not that the
Empire was as good as dead - it's likely that given the proper will it
could have picked itself up again, wheezing and stuttering - but that they
didn't really want it any more. Not only were they tired and poor, with
tremendous local ideological disputes to resolve between the classes, but
on the whole they had adopted the American view of proper and moral
conduct between nations.
Certainly after WWI, something had been lost,
specifically the sense of participation by all classes, but the blow was
far from mortal. The Roman Empire recovered from much worse. In fact the
British were still expanding their rule in areas where the alternatives
were much, much worse - and oddly enough, one of those areas was very
close to Orwell's station in Moulmein.
At around this time the young Chinese left over from
the progressive nationalist revolution of 1911 were writing bitter
criticisms of Kuomintang policy in areas close to the Burmese border where
apparently the Brits so despised by Orwell were nonetheless winning the
hearts and mind of the people in a way the Chinese found impossible to
emulate. I have a copy of "Territoires et populations des confins du
Yunnan", autographed in 1937 by J. Siguret, the French translater of
these complaints by young mandarins, scandalised by the British irruption
into territory they regarded as traditionally Chinese.
This work gives a vivid picture of the sort of
duties Orwell would have been required to perform as a policeman, the
obstacles he faced - one really has sympathy for the poor man - and the
degree to which despite himself he was doing a pretty good job. Sample
(p.113, "Frontière Sino-Birmane non-délimitée", my
translation):
"b) Attitude of the administration toward the
indigenous population. — One may say that the [British] Administration
is benevolent to the general public. The Judiciary and the Police have
given proof of great friendship to the people at large. Wherever they go,
they bring thread, needles, and other objects which they distribute
between clans of the people. They also give toys to children, to win the
hearts and minds of the people [ pour concilier le coeur des habitants ].
By a rigorous system of punishment and reward they encourage people to do
right and avoid evil...."
And so on. To the disgust of the Chinese the horrid
English were not only making progress, they were - according to local
Chinese officials - gaining territory. When these grumbles appeared in the
press the English grinned under their whiskers and piously spurned the
thought of further expansion - "Mr Chang Kia-Pin is not slow in
grasping the advantages to China as a result of the British activities
along the Burmese-Yunnan border, and quite openly declares that the
influence imparted by the British is good and tends to establish
friendship between everybody... it is hardly reasonable that the British
would first enlighten and civilise their comparatively barbarous
neighbours along the Sino-Burmese borders, and then suddenly turn enemy
and wage warfare on a people whom they have taught hygiene and the
essentials of life, not to mention the spirit of friendliness". Does
any of this sound familiar to American ears, seventy years later?
Of course the Chinese were livid. They felt the
Brits were cheating in the Great Game. The British did not measure up to
Orwell's standards, which were their own, but those standards vastly
exceeded what peoples within the Empire had come to expect. And the
Chinese and others are still livid, because the Empire dies hard. It has
simply changed capitals and decentralised a bit.
Regards, TC
-- Terry Cole BA/BSc/BE/BA(hons) (tcole@maths.otago.ac.nz)
System Administrator, Dept. of Maths. & Stats., Otago Uni. PO Box 56,
Dunedin, NZ.
Subject:
RE: The present danger
Date:
Sat, 19 Oct 2002 00:21:03 -0700
"In other words, you believe in leaders who do what they should, not
in a republic or a democracy."
By
Definition, everyone ought to do what they should, including leaders.
They should try to lead, not say, "The people don't want it, so we
won't try to do it," when they know something is necessary.
And
while we're on the subject, last time I looked, the people's
representatives in Congress had just authorized the President to remove
Saddam's regime by force, and 67% in the last opinion poll I saw approved
of the policy. So perhaps I am not the side of this correspondence
who doesn't believe in 'a republic or a democracy.'
"It would have been impossible to win any kind of election in 1936 on
a platform of 'Stop Germany'. It was tried, so I am not speculating.
"It is perfectly clear to you now that we ought to have gone in and
killed a lot of Germans in 1936 so we didn’t have to do it in the
1940’s. Churchill thought so too, but the fact is most of the
English leadership and population did not believe it was clear; so when
you say it was clear, clear to whom?"
I
was speaking of France and Britain, who should have gone into Germany and
killed as many Germans as it took to stop Hitler. Hell, they should
have done it before the Rhineland, the day he first violated the
Versailles treaty.
If
the United States Congress couldn't be persuaded to attack Germany (and I
can see little hope of that), FDR should have beat on the preparedness
drum relentlessly, and constantly urged France and Britain to stop Germany
NOW! It might not have worked, but it was what should have been
done.
Whom
was it clear to? The British and French leadership. Anthony
Eden's memo on the Rhineland was painfully clear: 'Hitler would violate
any agreement he made, if he felt he could get away with it.' Having
written this, he proposed Britain make more agreements with Hitler, which
presumably he wouldn't violate because ... that's where it breaks down.
There was no reason to believe any course lay open except surrender or
war, but he, Baldwin, and the rest of them didn't want to make that
choice, so they pretended it wasn't necessary.
May
I remind you of your own definition of insanity, "Doing the same
thing again, and expecting different results?" Prussia/Germany
had been expansionist since its formation. Hitler was preaching
expansion, lebensraum, and the recovery of "German Honor," which
had been lost at the surrender in 1918.
I
have read quite a bit of 1930s history, and I have never, once, come upon
any plausible reason for believing that Hitler desired anything but war.
Lots of arguments about why he ought to desire peace, lots
of wishful thinking about his desiring peace, but no reason to
believe it was obtainable by anything except surrender.
And
when it was finally put to them in those terms, 'Surrender to Hitler's
ambitions, or war,' the public chose war, even though it wouldn't be easy.
(Much of the leadership chose surrender). So I believe the
French and British might have gotten away with an immediate attack on
Hitler in 1936, defended on the grounds 'He renounced diplomacy, its fight
or surrender.'
"As to living under an Islamist regime, where do you stand on
immigration?"
I'm
quite willing to limit or end any immigration by Muslims, if that's what
it takes to keep the Islamists out.
"There is no country that could land a single soldier on American
soil and keep him there for long. No one is going to impose anything
on us, and talk like that makes me wonder what in the world you can be
thinking.
"The
USSR had 28,000 nuclear warheads aimed at us. They had an army that
could overrun Europe. That was a danger."
I'm
sure, if you could go back and whisper in the ears of those who died Sept.
11th, just before the planes crash, that no one could land a soldier on
our soil and keep it there long, they'd be very comforted.
And I sorta wonder how Europe got into this. What was it about the
Soviets conquering Europe that made that an unacceptable danger, but makes
Saddam's conquering the entire Mid-East oil supply acceptable?
What
do I think? I think I live in a world in which the Islamists believe
they defeated the Soviet Union, by the sheer moral power
of their faith and their willingness to die for their beliefs. The
reason I believe this is because they say so, btw.
I
think I live in a world in which these same Islamists declared war on the
United States in 1979, because we are powerful and are 'corrupting them'
with our mass media, our movies, our rock videos. (Insert
cheap jokes to taste.)
I
think I live in a world in which the Islamists believe the West has
no stomach for combat, that we can be intimidated into surrender through
terror.
I
think they have much evidence for this, as the West has repeatedly backed
down rather than confront them: the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, the
bombing over Lockerbie, Somalia, the failure to finish off Saddam in 1991,
the USS Cole, the African embassies, the towers in Saudi Arabia, and the
use of Afghan warlord mercenaries in Afghanistan recently.
I
think I live in a world in which Saddam Hussein has been taking
'irrational' chances for revenge and 'face,' has solved all his political
problems with murder, has sought nuclear weapons and ballistic
missiles since 1978, has invaded his oil rich neighbors whenever he
thought he could get away with it, has cooperated with the Islamists in
launching terror attacks on the West, thinks that he won the "second
half of the Gulf War," and has made many other misjudgments in his
dealings with the United States.
I
think I live in a world in which other Islamist states, such as Iran (and
Libya), seek nukes and missiles, and still others still (like Saudi
Arabia and Indonesia) turn a blind eye to Islamist terrorists as long as
they direct their attacks outward.
And
I live in a world in which people like you think that somehow, someway, there
has just got to be a way of making them leave us alone without making war
on them.
I
don't think so. I think that if we attempt to follow your foreign
policy prescription, Iraq or Iran will soon have nuclear armed missiles.
I think that once one of them has them, it will try to take over the
entire Middle East, with no one to stop them (Europe can't, and you say we
shouldn't). I think that once they have these weapons, they will use
them on the United States, or turn them over to terrorists to use on us.
I've never seen any reason why an Islamist, someone who really
believes Allah is on his
side, and commands that he conquer the infidels,
would not sooner or later nuke a USAmerican city.
"Arab hordes menace North Carolina? Cuba invaded Florida?"
No,
a world in which Islamist terrorists will continue to murder our fellow
citizens, and will sooner or later explode a fission or fusion
bomb in one or more of our cities.
And
when I ask, "What's Jerry Pournelle's plan for dealing with terrorist
attacks," I never get a straight answer. Which leads me to
suspect you have no answer, just a hope that the Islamists will leave us
alone. And leads me to conclude that, as with the politicians of the
1930s, you're lying to yourself about the choices we face, because you
don't like them.
That's
not good enough for me, or the rest of the 67%.
Delenda
est Saudi Arabia!
I publish the above from Mr. St.
Onge to be fair; much of it consists of charges I don't feel like
answering.
I don't really intend an
analysis, but I will ramble on for a bit. My web site, my privilege. I
have given my views often enough, and someone who can with a straight face
say I am lying to myself isn't likely to pay much attention to the answers
anyway, so most of this isn't directed at him.
I will say this at once. Disraeli
warned against wars entered from passion and not from reason. I repeat
that warning. Wars entered from passion may work out well, but even
passionate wars ought to be fought reasonably -- and started for good
reasons.
What we do will affect about a
quarter of the religiously motivated people on this Earth. Religious
motivations are strong motivations, and religious people are more likely
to act on their beliefs -- true or false -- than more cynical people. If
what we do convinces the Muslim world that no one is safe from us -- and
God knows their leaders want to convince them of that anyway -- then I
doubt it will make us safer. Convincing a volatile people that we are
irrational, and may lash out at anyone for no visible or convincing reason
other than that we have been hurt and want to hurt someone in return,
seems to me a dangerous thing to do.
So. What would I do? I wouldn't
start the war. But presume that's not an option, that the war is
inevitable, what then?
First, I would patiently make
the case that Hussein was in fact involved in and condoned the 911
attacks; or at least that we sincerely believe that. Note that we had no
such problems regarding the Taliban. Everyone agreed they'd been involved
in the plot, and would do so again given the opportunity. I suggest that
case hasn't been made against Iraq. It needs to be, lest we convince the
world that the reason we find Saddam Hussein more dangerous than North
Korea has to do with oil and the bounty to be gained from conquest.
Or, we need to make it clear that
our motive is conquest, and that those who have nothing need not fear that
we will come to steal their poverty: that most of the world is safe from
us unless its leaders provoke us, (best case, consistent with republic),
or unless they have something we want (not so good, but consistent with an
empire of limited objectives).
Or, possibly, make the case that we
really do intend to bring liberal democracy, market place economies, and
free trade on the points of our bayonets. That might appeal to some, at
least to the secularists. But in that case we need some thought about how
to do it.
We also need to be concerned with
the world as it is. Pakistan and India already have nuclear weapons. South
Africa probably has a few. North Korea either has them or shortly will.
Iran has been vigorously trying to buy fissionables from the former USSR,
and certainly has the ability to build weapons given enriched uranium or
plutonium. Given their money and their paranoia, I would be astonished if
the House of Saud does not have a nuke or two stashed away somewhere.
Mr. St. Onge's fear that one day
someone will bomb us is reasonable; his solutions to the problem seem to
me not as well thought out: I do not myself want Pakistani generals to
wonder if they're next.
The problem with empires is that
it's hard to know where to stop.
Mr. St. Onge accuses me of being
unwilling to pull the trigger when our enemy is in the crosshairs. I can
only plead that it's not at all clear to me that things are so simple. The
doctrine of just war means at least this: that after the war is done, you
are safer than before. The doctrine of rational war means at least this:
after the war is done, you are better off than you were before you began
it.
On either ground the Afghan War is
justified. The Congress has been persuaded that an Iraqi War is similarly
justified; and despite my misgivings, that decision seems to have been
made, so now the question is what do we do once we have won?
But far from lying to myself about
our alternatives, I think I see them all pretty clearly. I don't much like
what I see.
I do believe that if the US were to
come home and make it clear to the world that we will send punitive
expeditions against all who harm us; otherwise cease to be involved in
territorial disputes; and spend what it takes to build defenses including
better border defense as well as missile defense; and engage in the
R&D to make us energy independent (ie develop sources of hydrogen such
as nuclear electricity and space solar power): if we do that we will, in
my judgment, be a lot safer than if we put armies all across the world.
Incidentally, part of a good defense would be a far better intelligence
system, or in fact multiple intelligence agencies. And all of that would
be cheaper than war.
That may be an incorrect analysis,
but it is hardly vague or "lying to myself." I may be wrong, but
I don't think I am merely stupid, or blustering, or any of the other
things I am accused of.
It is also unlikely we will do what
I suggest. But years ago, when I formed one of the advisory councils I
chair, we made this pledge: we will not self-censor our advice. We will
tell the President and his national security advisor what we think ought
to be done, and the fact that it is politically difficult or unlikely will
not be sufficient reason to refrain from giving the best advice we can. In
our case, the advice was Strategic Defense. Not the most popular thing Mr.
Reagan ever proposed, but, I think, one of the most effective.
On the same score, until the war
begins, I at least, will continue to think of alternatives to the war, and
to advocate what I think would be best for the republic. I don't think I
have much longer to do that, so this discussion is likely to end soon
enough. Soon enough the question will be, now that we are in the war, what
shall we do to win? And having won, how do we get back to a more normal
world?
One final note on Europe in 1936:
certainly the world would be a better place had someone stood up to Hitler
in the Rhineland. I suppose I first wrote that in a high school history
paper, and in a dozen places since, and I have never had any reason to
believe differently. But the world would also be a better place had
someone injected Hitler with cyanide, or given him polio, or had God
Almighty struck him down with lightning. Alas, given the state of the
world in 1936, any of those events was at least as probable as that France
would fire the fifty cartridges it would probably have taken to have
halted the march into the Rhineland. That is what I meant; perhaps I
didn't make that clear. To blame the US for the disaster that came
about in 1938 is to ignore the historical realities of the time. Indeed,
Roosevelt's actions during the Munich conference may have helped persuade
the British that they had no option but to sell Czechoslovakia down the
river; but that's another story for another time. The point is that to say
"England and France should have stood up to Hitler" is likely
true, but it is on a par with saying that Hitler ought to have kept his
word that he had no more territorial ambitions in Europe. Yes the French
and British should have known better, and Churchill in fact did know
better; but if the eloquence of Churchill couldn't persuade in those
times, it's no likely that anyone else could.
So: to summarize what I would do
were I in charge:
Begin to develop the means of energy
independence. That includes new nuclear power plants (which need no
R&D), and a vigorous R&D program to make access to space
dependable and cheap. Use space access to develop an ICBM defense proof
against a dozen or so missiles fired at us without warning.
Build up the Border Patrol and get
actual control of the borders. Build up the Customs Service to make
smuggling mass weapons into the US more difficult. Build up the
intelligence services.
Make it clear that an attack on the
US will bring retaliation against the ruling class of any country that
encouraged it, or failed to discourage it. The Afghan example is clear enough.
Staring bringing our armies home,
and minding our own business: the above program will be cheaper than a
war, but it's not free and it will need considerable attention and
management. But if we make it clear we are no threat to those who leave us
in peace, we remove much of the incentive to those who would invest
resources into destroying us -- and we give a lot less incentive to their
potential allies in the US itself, and alas, there are many of them, all
more likely to help the enemy if they think us immoral and dangerous.
Will that bring about perfect
safety? I don't know. It seems as likely to work as would conquest, and it
has the merit of being something justifiable on both moral and expedient
grounds.
Will we do that? Not likely.
Will what we will actually do make
us safer? We can pray so. My analysis is that it will not; but I am
hardly omniscient.
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