View 717 Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Continuing the previous theme:

From Kandahar embedded writer Neil Shea, just up in The American Scholar

http://theamericanscholar.org/a-gathering-menace/?utm_source=email

Russell Seitz

Fellow of the Department of Physics

Harvard University

Shea of course finds what he is looking for and writes about what he intends to write about, but I expect he was able to find the instances he describes. Some of it is the kind of show that insiders put on for reporters. Some is quite real. It is hardly astonishing. Spend some time hanging around police bars among long term patrolmen who have long been assigned to certain precincts in any big city in America and you might be surprised at what you hear.

The American Way of War has been to maintain a small professional army, a very professional and mostly long term service Navy, and otherwise play things by ear; when there is a war we call up citizen soldiers and put out a maximum effort, win the war, and go back to the business of the United States, which is mostly business and in any event was dictated by liberty not by government directive.

Just as this policy failed in Greece and Rome when the citizens were continually called up to defend the country and eventually became professional soldiers because they never had a chance to become citizens, it was thought to be failing after Viet Nam when the war seemed to drag on and on, and the conscript army used its political influence. The need for a long war of attrition – the Cold War – changed things a lot. Even so, it was possible to continue with citizen soldiers. Even the long term regulars were not subjected to continuous deployment in constant danger. SAC and the deterrent force were subjected to the continued stress of the Cold War, but as SAC proudly proclaimed, ”Peace is our profession.” Those on combat readiness duty were subject to the threat of ultimate violence, and sometimes to operational violence through accident, but there was little actual combat. The navigator of the KC-135 that was scrambled to rendezvous at the North Pole with the B-52’s understood that if this was the real thing, his ship would pump all its fuel into the Buff and be left dead stick over the ice, but he flew the mission, and went home at night to be a citizen again. The artillery brigades that kept watch over the Fulda Gap understood that if the joint USSR/People’s Germany maneuvers were a mask for a real invasion, all hell would break loose and Armageddon would be at hand; but as years went on and the maneuvers remained maneuvers, or the Warsaw powers invaded each other but not the West, it became easier to live with. No one was planting IED’s along the road from the base to the supermarket, and the markets were stocked with the goods you wanted. It was Cold War, but as time went on it was colder rather than more like war.

Viet Nam changed much of that, but tours of duty in country were short, and for most of that tour you weren’t really in danger. And the conscripts had their political influence. This produced the Hollow Army. The Volunteer Army was to change that.

We went to an army of citizen soldiers, but when you have been deployed four times in eleven years you have had precious little time to be a citizen, and the deployment is to a place more like hell than of any Republic you want to be part of. And the budgets were cut, the services were cut, veteran benefits were cut, and it seems that we thought we could treat the citizen professionals as if they were Foreign Legion. “You have entered the Legion in order to die, and the Legion will send you where you can die.” But the Foreign Legion was never intended to be a citizen army, and its members were not considered to be citizens.

The United States has to make up its mind. If we want a citizen army we have to start treating the Army like citizens. They have to be given time to be citizens. You cannot keep them continually on deployment while their children grow up without them, and they become soldiers as the concept of normal life and citizenship fades. If we want an army of Gypsy Joe’s – see Fehrenback’s This Kind of War if that makes no sense – it is possible, but you have to understand what you have when you do that. If we want an army of Joe and Willy, then they have to know that at some point their duty is done; and we have to treat them like citizens when they come home. You can’t run an empire on the cheap. You can’t meddle in other people’s affairs and save money – not unless your goal is simply to go in and loot, and extract tribute from the conquered. We don’t do that.

Note ‘there was a platoon sergeant named "Gypsy" Martin. Martin carried a full canteen and bandoleer, but he also wore a bandanna and earring, and he had tiny bells on his boots. Gypsy Martin hated Chinese; he hated gooks, and he didn’t care who knew it.
In anything but war, Martin was the kind of man who is useless.
In combat, as the 24th Division drove north, men could hear Gypsy yell his hatred, as they heard his M-1 bark death. When Gypsy yelled, his men went forward; he was worth a dozen rational, decent men in those bloody valleys. His men followed him, to the death.
When Gypsy Martin finally bought it, they found him lying among a dozen "gooks," his rifle empty, its stock broken. Other than in battle, Sergeant Martin was no good. To Jim Mount’s knowledge, he got no medals, for medals depend more on who writes for them than what was done.’

Fehrenbach, This Kind of War

Fehrenbach’s essay was written after Korea, but before we learned lessons from Viet Nam. We ignore his words at our peril. http://space4commerce.blogspot.com/2006/05/proud-legions-by-tr-fehrenbach.html

The military have the preponderance of fact with them as far as Korea was concerned. Korea was the kind of war that since the dawn of history was fought by professionals, by legions. It was fought by men who soon knew they had small support or sympathy at home, who could read in the papers statements by prominent men that they should be withdrawn. It was fought by men whom the Army – at its own peril – had given neither training nor indoctrination, nor the hardness and bitter pride men must have to fight a war in which they do not in their hearts believe.

The Army needed legions, but society didn’t want them. It wanted citizen-soldiers.
But the sociologists are right – absolutely right – in demanding that the centurion view of life not be imposed upon America. In a holy, patriotic war – like that fought by the French in 1793, or as a general war against Communism will be – America can get a lot more mileage out of citizen-soldiers than it can from legions.
No one has suggested that perhaps there should be two sets of rules, one for the professional Army, which may have to fight in far places, without the declaration of war, and without intrinsic belief in the value of its dying, for reasons of policy, chessmen on the checkerboard of diplomacy; and one for the high-minded, enthusiastic, and idealistic young men who come aboard only when the ship is sinking.
The other answer is to give up Korea-type wars, and to surrender great-power status, and a resultant hope of order – our own decent order – in the world. But America is rich and fat and very, very noticeable in this world. It is a forlorn hope that we should be left alone.
In the first six months America suffered a near debacle because her Regular Army fighting men were the stuff of legions, but they had not been made into legionaries.

Republics want citizen soldiers. Republics that play at conquest and nation building need legionnaires. We know how to create that kind of legion (in part by creating auxiliary units which are actually deployed while the citizen army remains behind). There are costs for doing that. What we cannot do is expect citizen soldiers to become legionaries and spend their lives acting like mercenary soldiers under weird rules of engagement and remain citizens, but act like citizens when Neil Shea comes around.

Those contemplating these matters may find this interesting:

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-new-old-lie-7300

Objects and things and the universe

On an entirely different subject: If you have not seen this, http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html be prepared to lose some time when you first look at it. I cannot think anyone reads this place who will not love this.

A sign of the times:

No more printed Britannica

After nearly 250 years, the 32-volume Encyclopaedia Britannica print set will be discontinued.

http://store.britannica.com/products/ecm001en0

Considering the cost of $1,395.00, it’s hardly surprising that sales are down.

I truly regret this switch to digital. One of the joys of using a printed encyclopedia was all the things you discovered in your search for what you were supposed to be looking up. It wasn’t as efficient as the digital format but so much more pleasurable.

(I spent one summer as a child reading the 1957 Grolier Encyclopedia of Science. It was dated then but wonderful!)

Pieter

When I was a child out in Capleville, cut off from the rest of the world, I had two Britannicas, the Eleventh Edition and whatever the current edition was in 1941. I read both. Obviously I didn’t read them starting with From A to Anno and going through to whatever the last volume was named; I would think of something I would like to know more about, start to find it, be tempted by something else I had run across, and eventually find the entry I was looking for. Often enough the next item might also tempt me. I spent a lot of time with the Britannica, and I learned many things that I have found valuable over my lifetime that I probably would never have heard of without the books. Then, as an undergraduate or perhaps a first year graduate student I spent a few weeks in door to door sales of the Britannica. I think I sold one set in all that time. The training in sales, though, was invaluable. My father told me that I didn’t have enough larceny in my heart to be a successful door to door salesman.

I wrote for the Britannica a few editions ago. I did an essay on Science Fiction, in which I said we were “Bards of the Sciences”, much like the old Homeric bards who wandered from camp to camp and said “Give me a cut from that roast, and fill my cup with wine, and I will tell you a story about a land where men can fly, and another of a virgin and a bull…” I got a free Britannica for this and ten years of the Yearbook, and my boys grew up with it, using it about as I had.

We will miss the old Britannica, and I do not know what will replace it. Certainly not Wikipedia. You could rely on the old Britannica. We now have access to more information than ever, but we also learn to be skeptical. Perhaps that is a good thing. Perhaps.

And for those wondering about wind power, there is this:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03/07/wind-power-companies-paid-to-not-produce/?test=latestnews

View 717 Tuesday, March 13, 2012

The Magic 43%

The New York Times and the Washington Post report that President Obama’s general approval rating is down to 41%,

All political managers know that no incumbent has ever been reelected to a major office with 43% or less approval rating. When an incumbent’s popular approval falls to 43% it is time for his managers to panic. We see signs of that panic now. We will see many more.

Some of it is odd, such as the renewed attacks on Sarah Palin, who is not a candidate. Some of it is misjudgment of opportunity, as with the Sandra Fluke affair, which set off a reaction that the political pros who planned this had not expected. One effect of the Fluke affair has been to draw attention to just how onerous Obamacare is even in its early phases. It is becoming clear that the government is expecting the general population to pay for more and more services through their taxes, and it is slowly becoming obvious that putting the cost onto insurance companies and employers merely masks the fact that nothing is free: the companies required to give entitled services must pay for them somehow. They raise rates, or they ask for subsidies, or, probably both. I remember from before I was five years old my father telling me that There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. (I know it was before I was five, because I said it to Sister Mary Elizabeth in first grade, and was informed that ain’t ain’t a word we use.

Expect more panic from Democrats. Also note that Republican campaign professionals also know that 43% is the magic number, and Obama is below it: the Republican nominee now presumably will win, unless of course the Republicans continue their record of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

And expect the desperate to come up with desperate tactics.

Kandahar

The President is apparently more upset about the murders in Afghanistan by a career soldier on his fourth deployment in eleven years than he was about the shootings at Fort Hood by the Muslim psychiatrist. He has said that the massacre is “outrageous and unacceptable,” and we take this as seriously as we would a massacre of our own citizens. His reaction to the Fort Hood “shooting” – the word massacre was never applied to it so far as I can see – was that it was “a horrific act of violence”. Given the international implications, the President is tasked with considerably more in the Afghani case than in the Fort Hood murders, and he has a lot less control over the situation. He is making much of his demand for a full investigation, although it is difficult to see what an investigation can reveal. A professional citizen soldier was deployed four times in his eleven years of service. I doubt they will find any warning signs – particularly in comparison to the warning signs displayed by the Muslim psychiatrist.

Incidentally, the official Pentagon description of the Fort Hood murders is “a workplace act of violence.” The word massacre is used in the Kandahar murders. Again, the international implications are considerable here. but one wonders if the top layers of the military understand just what is happening here.

The typical tour of duty in Viet Nam was 12 months, with various incentives given to those who would voluntarily extend their tour. Many of the extensions were taken by personnel in positions that put them in heavily fortified enclaves where they were relatively safe. Of course no place in country was completely safe, but after the end of the Tet offensive campaign of 1968 the native Viet Cong effectively ceased to exist, and the rear areas and much of the countryside in the south was statistically not particularly dangerous and nearly all casualties outside those actual combat areas were due to the same factors that affect people of military age anywhere including in the US. Indeed, accident fatalities were lower in Viet Nam than in many parts of the US due to the superior medical capabilities there. That has not been the case in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Through history there have been many kinds of armies. There are armies of citizens in arms, literally armed men, often peasant farmers, who turn out to fight at need. That was the army of the Roman Republic for most of its history. The Legions were raised by conscription and served for the duration; but they were not paid except for rations and the like, and they expected to go home when the war was over. This lasted until the Gallic invasions caused Marius to raise armies of non-citizens and slaves, who became long term professionals who, if they survived, might hope to be given a patch of land and a chance to become a peasant and citizen, and whose children might be citizen soldiers. In fact, though, the era of the citizen soldier was just about over, and after Marius came the civil wars, the Cataline conspiracy, Caesar, and then Caesar Augustus. The citizen army was lone gone by then; the Legions of the Principate were paid professionals.

Over time the differences between citizen soldiers and long term professional soldiers has been closer or looser depending largely on wars and deployments. Some professional soldiers became palace guards, citizens in all but name and sometimes in reality, even though their units had begun as imported mercenaries. Sometimes the professionals were kept in barracks when not actually deployed, in part to keep the citizens safe from them, but also to protect them from the citizens. There were the periods in the late middle ages and renaissance when mercenary soldiers dominated. Machiavelli argued in favor of citizen soldiers with conscription. Professional armies, he argued, could ruin you by losing a battle, or by looting the paymaster. France developed a three tier system, with the Foreign Legion that would never set foot in European France, a professional army of long term service, and conscripts. Switzerland kept the professional component of its army small by rigidly enforcing universal male conscription and requiring a very long term of compulsory reserve service after conscription. Sweden employs much the same system to this day (as does Switzerland with some modification). Between the World Wars the United States had regular forces, but the troops were generally kept in barracks and not expected to mix in with the general population; and of course the regular army was small. In World War II the entire nation took arms for the duration of the war, and quickly disbanded when it was over. Conscription continued until after Viet Nam.

When the United States went to an all volunteer service there were diverse opinions about its makeup. The old British regular army consisted essentially of long term volunteers – at one point two four year terms ending with an invitation to a further 12 year hitch. Britain had an empire to govern, and it needed all kinds of soldiers.

Students of military history have always understood that Republics, which typically had short and intensive wars interspersed with long periods of relative peace, need a different kind of army than does an Empire, which needs Legions, but most of the fighting is left to Auxiliaries. The US had such need during its imperial periods following the Civil War and particularly during the Philippine pacification.

It takes a different kind of soldier to withstand long periods of war and danger in hostile places, as opposed to the long term citizen soldier who lives among the population and is often indistinguishable from the citizen. Machiavelli was generally correct, citizens make the best soldiers for a Republic, but he also knew that the professional condottieri and their troops – such as the English Sir John Hawkwood who saved Florence in exchange for a memorial stature – could be very effective. Some like the Sforza became the leaders of the state and made the office hereditary. Hawkwood was unusual in that he was a man of his word. (Florence determined that while it was grateful for Sir John’s service, it could not afford a bronze or granite statue, and Sir John had to settle for a painting of his statue on the wall of the local cathedral. It’s still there.)

The Kandahar massacre will and should be punished; but it was predictable. Of course the Afghani will ask for the head of this soldier.

The ability to endure long term service in a hostile environment under constant danger is not often coupled with the temperament of the citizen soldier, long term husband and father and expected to take part in civic life. Professional soldiers may in theory know they may be deployed four times in eleven years in hostile and unpleasant environments, restricted in action by rules of engagement imposed by bureaucrats over the objections of their officers – they may in theory know that when they volunteer, but few think it can or will happen. When it does, some of the best will crack. It is inevitable.

This kind of war is not the kind of war that can be fought by a long term professional citizen army. Conscripts won’t do it well, but conscripts in a Republic have political means of protesting the situation. The Constitution of the United States never really contemplated the kind of service that we have been demanding of the troops since we ended conscription. We had no business sending a large army into Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, just as we had no real mission in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The United States was fortunate to have good results following World War II, in which our occupation armies were citizen soldiers, most of them volunteers but not long term professionals; but the circumstances were very different. We have forgotten the horrors of our Korean occupation in the period after the Japanese surrender and before the invasion of the Inman Gun in 1950, and few Americans will remember that period. For the most part the occupations elsewhere went well because the occupied countries had been thoroughly defeated, we had trained companies of military government specialists, and the Cold War soon threatened occupiers and occupied alike with something a lot less pleasant than a US constabulary. Much of the hostility toward America in Korea ended after June, 1950, and did not reemerge until much later.

We were not prepared for the kind of war that we undertook in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we never did prepare for it. Our citizen soldiers did wonders considering the enormity of the task. It is a wonder that we have not had many more instances of horror.

We have lost a citizen soldier. The Afghans have lost women and children. There are no winners here.

What You Lose When You Sign That Donor Card

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204603004577269910906351598.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

"Organ transplantation—from procurement of organs to transplant to the first year of postoperative care—is a $20 billion per year business. Average recipients are charged $750,000 for a transplant, and at an average 3.3 organs, that is more than $2 million per body. Neither donors nor their families can be paid for organs."

Just follow the money. Of course they mean well, unless you getting chopped up.

Phil

There is far more here than meets the eye. I await comments; I’ll have my own shortly.

View 717 Monday, March 12, 2012

I have to go bleed at the lab in a few minutes.

The story unfolds, but still isn’t complete. A Staff Sergeant from Washington State has apparently – there seems to be little doubt of it – left his base in Kandahar in the middle of the night carrying weapons. He walked a mile or so from the base and began systematic execution of Afghan civilians, mostly women and children. There is also a report of “burning the bodies” which may or may not mean he set their residences on fire. He then returned to base and surrendered.

The sergeant has not been identified, but it is reported that this was his third (one report says fourth) deployment, first in Afghanistan, the previous deployments being in Iraq. The average Army deployment is supposed to be one year, but the effective deployment period has been 15 months since 2007. That is a long time to be in a combat zone. In World War II once one was sent overseas it was generally for the duration, but there were some periods of relief from combat: not just R&R away from the front – there was, after all, a front – but in transport between operations. There were some secure zones in Italy and later in France, because by that time USAAF had established effective air superiority, and the civilian population wasn’t hostile. In Iraq and Afghanistan even our fortresses and enclaves are not really safe. Being in one of our enclaves is not quite the same as being in a trench in the Battle of the Sarne, but it is certainly more stressful than being in operations out on some lonely atoll during our Pacific war in 1943.

Stress and its results are among the costs of long wars fought with professional soldiers. Conscripts in a democracy generally can’t be kept deployed that long. Volunteer troops can be and are. Long term deployments in danger zones are stressful.

In World War I the “shell shock” rate among troops in the trenches was about 10% although after some of the more intensive battles the rate could be as high as 50%. “Battle fatigue”, the term used in World War II for what was called shell shock in WW I, had lower but not drastically lower rates. We don’t have much data about stress disorders among the long term professionals of the Roman Army or the Thirty Years war. There is some literature about the problems of veterans of the English Civil War as well as of our own, but the records are not all that good. We do know that the long term effects of deployment out on the western frontier during the Indian Wars resulted in a generally unfavorable view of returning veterans among the civil population and opinion makers; and we know what Kipling had to say about Tommy Atkins.

Shell shocked veterans are a major cost of long wars without clear objectives. They always have been and they always will be.

I note that one of the answers given to Congressional inquiry on justifications for deployment of US troops without a formal declaration of war is international authorizations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5zNwOeyuG84 Of course this has been true since the Korean War.

The American way of war has been all-out effort after a war is declared. That view was reinforced after our experiments in the Philippines – a nation building effort that was partially successful, but at a very high cost. “Let him never dream that his bullet’s scream went wide of its island mark, Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.” We returned to the American War of War after that, but the return was eroded after Korea under what was perceived as the new international condition. The Cold War continued, but when it ended we found ourselves in the Balkans, with the troops unable to know who were the good guys, who the bad, or what the devil we were doing over there, and why the United States. We widened the gap with Russia, but for what object we never knew.

President George H W Bush rightly understood the costs of a long term involvement on the ground in the Middle East. I thought the first Gulf War a mistake – better we should spend the money developing our resources and winning independence from the Middle East – but at least we got in and got out again.

Then came the second Gulf War and the occupation of Iraq, followed by victory in Afghanistan and following that quick victory a long expedition without clear objectives. Yesterday’s massacre was almost predictable, but we do not seem to have a policy of how to deal with this tragedy; and tragedy it is. The Afghans have lost men, women, and children. The United States has lost a citizen soldier. Who has won?

More another time. I have to go.