Wars Are For Winning, And America Is Losing All Of Them

Wars are not fought to spread democracy, to liberate women, or to depose dictators.  Nor should they be vindictive acts to wreak vengeance.  Nor should they be impressive displays of military might.  They are meant to annihilate the enemy.

There was a purity and singularity of purpose guiding Allied armies across Europe and American forces across the Pacific.  In WWII there were no questions of geopolitical advantage, negotiation, or temporizing.  After Pearl Harbor America woke up from its military slumber and led the campaign against the Nazis and fought bloody, uncompromising, and ultimately victorious battles from Guam to Tokyo. 


                       www.historybyzim.com

All resources were mobilized in World War II.  The American economy was quickly converted to a wartime machine.  American men were recruited from every class and region to fight the Germans and the Japanese.  Washington propaganda which vilified Hitler and Tojo portrayed them as evil, stoked ethnic and racial hatred, and coalesced the country into an irresistible force of might and destruction.

There was no question of bombing enemy cities.  Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were not considered off-limits and no distinction was made between combatants and civilians.  We were at war not only with Hitler, Tojo, and their armies, but with the countries of Germany and Japan themselves.  We made no distinction between the regimes who started the wars and the people who supported them.



All American wars since WWII have been lukewarm and hesitant.  The magnanimity shown by the US to both Germany and Japan in the post-war period leaked into the Pentagon, morphed into versions of American Christian exceptionalism, and led us to fight half-heartedly.  MacArthur had the vision to win conclusively and absolutely in the Korean War but was fired instead of leading his armies into China.

America felt that winning the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese was the key to success, especially when its limited although frightening bombing of the North had little effect whatsoever. We bombed harbors, military redoubts, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, but left the cities, villages, and hamlets alone. 

Escalation of the war and the all-out annihilation of the enemy was never a serious option.  Bombing North Vietnam ‘back to the Stone Age’ was never seriously considered.  Not only did it risk internationalizing the war and engaging a Chinese enemy who was as implacable and motivated as the North Vietnamese; but because our moral philosophy was changing.  Winning at all costs was not an American thing to do if those costs included innocent lives.  The war in Vietnam, then, became one of American attrition.  Long before our military resources were depleted, our resolve was gone, and we were sent packing.



The second Gulf War – the war in Iraq – was questionable at best; but after the decision was made to invade the country, no plans were made to achieve total victory.  In fact, the United States had no real idea what victory was.  Some said ‘regime change’ – rid the country of the evil Saddam Hussein, and Americans would be cheered in the streets as conquering heroes.  Freed from the chains of a hated dictator, the people would embrace liberal democracy and free enterprise.



Others said that the war was about oil, yet another militaristic enterprise to secure scarce world resources.  Others commented that it was George W. Bush’s campaign to finish his father’s war.  And still others considered that a newly democratic, Western-leaning Islamic nation would be a staunch ally in the continuing wars in the Middle East.

Without a clear idea of what victory was, and hamstrung by even more sympathetic notions of protecting civilian lives, the US effort was doomed from the start.  The United States could have invaded, dominated, and controlled every major city in Iraq and established a brutal and uncompromising martial law. It would have been a complete and total defeat of Saddam Hussein, his army, and his supporters.  Looters and dissenters would have been shot.  Merciless house-to-house searches would have been carried out. Public executions of those who violated martial law would have been common.  The American army would have been feared and respected.  Such unsparing and merciless enforcement of the occupation would have eventually led to a more stable and rehabilitated society.  The Romans came, saw, and conquered; but they stayed, and as a result half the world owes culture, administration, law, and infrastructure to them.



Such advance planning – clear definition of goals and objectives; objective calculation of investment costs and liabilities – would have surely prevented the war.  Even if harsh post-war measures were to have been put into place, even the most repressive occupation might not have tamed the wild tribal and ethnic rivalries in the country.

The point is only that IF we are to go to war, we should know why, never lose sight of the goal, and be as potent, dominant, and terrifying as possible in a winning effort.
The war in Afghanistan reflects the same lack of clarity and singularity of purpose. For all intents and purposes the war was to wreak vengeance on the country which harbored Osama bin Laden.



Even a cursory look at recent history would have shown that any armed intervention in Afghanistan would end up badly, especially when we had no clear objectives. Was it to teach the Taliban a lesson? To annihilate them? To set the girls and women of the country free? To establish a liberal bulwark against Iran and Pakistan?

Once again, hearts and minds were foremost, and scorched earth strategies were off the table.  It would not have been inconceivable for an overwhelming American military force to take over and occupy every major city and town in the country, to rule it with relentless severity, and to neutralize the enemy.  If we had considered all this, more than likely we would not have gone to war; but if we were so determined, then the Curtis Lemay approach might have been successful.
This military indecisiveness and hamstrung operations would be bad enough; but US foreign policy designed to prevent war while securing American interests has been just as indecisive and myopic and trapped within an outmoded vision of American exceptionalism and Christian charity.  We have come a long way from the realpolitik of Henry Kissinger and even farther from his historical mentor, Machiavelli.  Even if we could be convinced to act boldly in our self-interest, the current administration cannot figure out what that self-interest is.



There is no doubt that we should have backed the Egyptian military, our longtime political ally and only friend in the Middle East other than Israel.  Backing ‘democratic’ reform would inevitably lead to Islamic militancy, more repressive regimes than the military ever thought of, and further erosion of our influence in the region.

As hard as is to stomach now, we should have maintained our friendship with Assad, a moderate (socio-politically) ally.  Had we finally faced the truth that America’s war is with a determined, amoral enemy – radical Islam – one even more implacable and violent than the Viet Cong, then we would have encouraged the Syrian regime in its attempts to neutralize it.  Had we done so, the civil war would probably never have happened and thousands of lives would have been spared.

Our idealistic notions of a moral foreign policy  reinforced by political rectitude, are behind our weak and pitiful response to Putin and Russia.  We still believe in the the notion of a ‘sovereign state’ even one as corrupt and incompetent as Ukraine.  We believe in the concept of universal democracy, where everyone has a say, and no one is denied a vote.  The rest of the world, with the exception of Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, believes differently.  History did not end as Francis Fukuyama predicted – it simply fractured into thousands of pieces and returned to its former state.  Putin understands history, power, and the fallacy of representative democracy.  He knows that there will always be self-interested enclaves defined by culture, language, religion, and ethnicity; and even if they vote democratically, they will vote to exclude others. 



Finally, we are hobbled by our Christian morality.  We cannot understand how al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram, or Hamas can blow up civilian busses and indiscriminately massacre children. The radical Islamic enemy is evil.

The enemy is not evil or immoral seen within their perspective.  They are simply more explicit about their goals and more determined and ruthless in their tactics.  The ends justify the means, they say; and are no different than our firebombing Dresden and Tokyo or dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  We have ‘evolved’ to what we consider to be a more progressive and humane military policy and thus weakened ourselves.  They have acted no differently than the marauding armies of Genghis Khan or those of the Crusades.  Take no prisoners.

Military strategists talk of ‘asymmetrical warfare’; but they have not considered the skewed geometry of our war with radical Islam.  How can we possibly defeat an enemy if we don’t play by his rules? Enemies from the Taliban to al-Shabab know that we will always keep most of our firepower in the stockade and that we will only fight careful wars.  Not only do we not want to harm civilians, we organize our battles as much to limit American casualties as to wreak havoc on the enemy.


War is hell, and we should do our best to avoid it.  But since this is an utter impossibility, we should only fight wars that are clearly and unequivocally in our national self-interest; fight them to win; and win at all costs.

Unapologetic Promiscuity–‘Welcome To New York’

Abel Ferrara best known for The Bad Lieutenant has made a new film entitled Welcome To New York – the story of a wealthy, powerful, promiscuous French politician who is accused of rape by a New York City prosecutor who later drops all charges.

The story is obviously but loosely based on the saga of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund and presumptive President of France who was accused by an African maid of rape.  The prosecutor, Cyrus Vance Jr. overstepped his bounds, apparently motivated by political ambition, and pursued the case against Strauss-Kahn despite increasingly exculpatory evidence.  Strauss-Kahn returned to France, his political career ruined, but because of his financial genius, currently is a well-remunerated consultant.

Ferrara’s story, however, is not a fictionalized account of the long legal process nor a biopic of Strauss-Kahn.  It is the tale of an unashamed philanderer who refuses to be put in the cage of conventional morality.  He is neither proud of nor guilty about his infidelities or sexual appetites.  It is who I am, he says, a self-described libertine whose supposed immorality is other people’s problem, not his.

The real-life Strauss-Kahn was no less defiant.  When he flippantly rejected charges of procuring, he said that he had no idea that the women at a party he attended were prostitutes.  “All women look the same without their clothes”, he said.  “I did no wrong”.The wife of the fictional Strauss-Kahn, played by Jacqueline Bisset, has stayed with her husband for twenty years less out of love than her desire to be First Lady of France.  Her fabulous wealth is not enough,  and only the position of La Présidente will satisfy her ambition.  She knows her husband well, and has tolerated if not accepted his sexual profligacy because it is inconsequential and irrelevant given the intellectual brilliance and political savvy of the man.


                    www.ohreveries.blogspot.com

At the same time Devereaux  – the Strauss-Kahn of the Ferrara film – knows that his wife will never leave him.   He, then, has it all.  He is wealthy and powerful on his own merits,  is awarded even more wealth and status because of his wife’s family, and free to be as licentious and sexually active as he wishes.

The film ends as Devereaux and his wife are about to return to Paris.  He is alone in the apartment and is served coffee by an attractive maid to whom he makes advances.  Even as his political future and reputation are in disarray, and as his wife is now finally ready to divorce him, he still risks pursuing women.  He has not ‘learned his lesson’ because there is no lesson to learn.  He has beaten the rape case because of his powerful New York attorneys, the likelihood that his wife paid off the prosecution, and because of his international reputation. 

Sexual libertinage, promiscuity, or addiction – whatever the press might call it – in his eyes is morally neutral.  Prostitution has always been tolerated if not legal in France, and women are as much commodities as those he has always traded on world markets.   The fact that his sex drive is more insatiable than others is not the point.

The final shot of the film shows Devereaux staring blankly at the camera, perhaps the only suggestion the director makes that despite his arrogance, defiance, and ability to survive and profit, Devereaux is chastened, vulnerable, and aware. 

This is not believable.  The  penultimate scene – that of Devereaux propositioning the maid – is the moral closure of the film.  He is virile, irrepressible, contemptuous of the bourgeoisie and its myopic values, and subversive of them.  He is reminiscent of Fyodor Karamazov, the father of the brothers of Dostoevsky’s novel, who is as sexually driven, condescending, and irreverent.  Both men are attractive in their will, defiance of the meek, timid, and sexually repressed. 

Ferrara’s film is particularly interesting because it was produced in a very politically correct time and dealt with subjects– accusations of rape, infidelity, and sexual ambition -  which are reported in only predictably correct ways.  Devereaux’ legal proceedings and acquittal do not interest Ferrara.  The film is as ambiguous on this score as the claims and defense of the case on which it was based.  Ferrara is only interested in showing an absolutely confident, determined, willful, unapologetic, and unrepentant man in the face of sanctimonious social censure.

The film is especially important because it is an indictment of today’s increasingly Puritanical American culture.   Sex in the name of civil protections and women’s rights has been legalized, sanitized, and nearly considered off-limits unless it is between two consenting, married adults.   Sex for Devereaux was necessary and absolute.  As in the case of most older men, sex with younger women is their only hope of retaining the potency and vitality of their youth.  Although sexual conquest is enough for most men, Devereaux could not stop there.   It was the sex act in all its twisted diversity that mattered.  And what was wrong with that?


                   Salem witch trials www.totallyhistory.com

Infidelity, always the object of derision in America, is only a sidelight in Ferrara’s film.   It is of absolutely no consequence in the arranged marriage of the Devereaux and no consequence at all within the context of individual will.  Nietzsche is famous for his Superman; but he was right in his statement that the only validation of the individual in a meaningless world is the expression of his will.   Devereaux is a perfect Nietzschean Superman.  Men always cheat on their wives because sexuality is the defining characteristic of human nature; and lovers, the variety of sexual experience, the roll call of conquests, and the loosening of the traces, make us – especially men - what we are.

Fyodor Karamazov is often dismissed by modern critics as an unduly authoritarian father, for his emotional dismissiveness of them, and for his all-consuming selfish desires.  Yet Fyodor is the most attractive character of all the Karamazovs.  He wants no part of Alyosha’s religiosity or of Ivan’s academic atheism.  Dmitri is weak, susceptible, and morally suspect.  Only Fyodor – like Nietzsche’s Superman and Ferrara’s Devereaux – follows his own instincts as an expression of will, a scorn for bourgeois society, and an understanding that dismissiveness and pleasure are all that count in a world that amounts to very little.

Sharp edges, moral imperfections, and stubborn sexuality are all universally condemned in American progressives’ desire to reform the world.   Great statesmen– FDR, LBJ, MLK, Thomas Jefferson, and many others – are now judged more for their personal rectitude than their political leadership.  Jefferson’s sex life with slaves; Martin Luther King’s Lothario lifestyle, Roosevelt’s longtime mistress; Clinton’s dalliance with an intern are now judged alongside of war and peace, social reform, justice, and equality.



Of course ambitious and intelligent men will do just about anything to get what they want; and since power breeds even more  marital and social infidelity, no one should be surprised at their stretching the truth, evasion of accountability, and amoral pursuit of their goals. 

Our lenses have become distorted by sanctimony and idealism.  The world is no different than it was in the days of empire and long before.  Men and women are just as territorial, protective, violent, and ambitious as in the days of Henry VI or Elizabeth I.  Humanity is not progressing, but acting as it always has. Welcome to New York is a film for our times.

                             

Suspension Of Disbelief–Fantasy, Conspiracy, And True Believers

A recent book called Lactivism Courtney Jung punctures the myth that ‘Breast Is Best’ and contends that a practice that has little benefit for American mothers has rather unnecessarily restricted their economic opportunity, tethered them to house and home far longer than required, and created a cult of arrogance, shaming, and guilt.   Lori Gottlieb reviewing the book for the New York Times (12.20.15) says:

Never mind that according to Jung’s rigorous reporting, the belief that “breast is best” was largely based on inconclusive science. Culling an impressive array of research, Jung learns that the supremacy of “liquid gold” has driven commerce and public policy in ways that have little to do with the true needs of mothers and babies — and may even be harming them.

                              www.nytimes.com

The benefits of breastfeeding for women of the developing world are considerable.  First and foremost exclusive breastfeeding avoids contact with a highly pathogenic environment.  Dirty bottles filled with powered formula mixed with contaminated water are a major cause of diarrhea and death.  The immunological properties of breast milk when delivered exclusively can afford unique benefits to infants, and the nutritional properties of breast milk are uniquely suited for the growing baby.
Iowa, however, is not Chad or Ethiopia.  Hygiene and sanitation are the rule not the exception.  Commercial breast milk substitutes have been formulated to very closely approximate the real thing, and the bottle allows women the freedom to return to remunerative employment – the economic benefits for the family far outweigh the supposed health and nutritional benefits to infants.

Compared with formula-fed infants, breastfed infants experience less acute and chronic otitis media, bronchiolitis, diarrhea, meningitis, and necrotizing enterocolitis. Children who were breastfed during infancy suffer less recurrent wheezing…and develop insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus less frequently than those who are fed formula (Ball and Bennett, 2001, Science Direct).

Earaches are common and easily treated with antibiotics.  Diarrhea is rare in infants reared in the hygienic conditions of the United States.  Meningitis is rare in the US and there is now a vaccine against it.  Type 1 diabetes is relatively rare and genetic factors cannot be overlooked. 

The purported link to IQ is specious at best.  Tests to determine intelligence have been shown to be flawed, socially-biased, and unreliable.  The difference of a few percentage points on a discredited test is meaningless.

Furthermore, breastfeeding advocates have championed the practice for its emotional and psychological benefits.  Breastfeeding promotes intimacy and maternal bonding that are beneficial for both babies and mothers.  Yet, there is no evidence that earlier generations of Americans for whom the bottle was the preferred option to infant nutrition suffered.  Vaccinations, improved sanitation, and better overall nutrition had a far greater impact on child mortality and morbidity than breastfeeding. 

For years breastfeeding militants fought Nestlé's tooth and nail, vilifying them as complicit in millions of child deaths overseas and manipulating American women to enrich their corporate coffers.  Nonsense, said Nestle’s.   Infant formula is a way to free Third World women from the bondage of husband, hearth, and home; and besides, if it is environmental pathogens that are the cause of infant mortality, then governments and private volunteer organizations should focus on them, not formula itself.


                   www.symbolphotos.blogspot.com 

No such arguments could blunt the advance of the breastfeeding juggernaut.  The attacks against Nestle’s took on virulent anti-capitalist tone.  It was once again the One Percent enriching themselves on the backs of the poor.  Women who did not breastfeed were the enemy.

If you’re a parent with young children, you’ve likely encountered a sanctimommy. Sanctimommies, of course, are that modern species of sanctimonious mothers who liberally dispense parenting advice laced with the subtext, “I’m not saying you’re a bad parent, but. . . .” Smug in their maternal superiority, they crusade perhaps most vehemently against moms who choose not to breast-feed.

After a certain point facts were no longer an issue.  Radical breastfeeding advocates still took to the streets regardless of the indicting evidence increasingly published.  In fact they became even more committed and passionate about their cause.    Their political sunken cost was such that they couldn’t admit that their policies were as enslaving of women as those of pre-Feminist America.  

Women have never been  more slaves to biology and traditional female roles than in the modern breastfeeding era.   In order to comply with the authoritarian rules of the breastfeeding establishment, they have to exclusively breastfeed for six months; and if they can't, then should resort to the breast pump – an ignominious 19th century mechanical contraption that takes unnecessary time, effort, and inconvenience for very little.  In fact, it removes one of breastfeeding advocates’ most heady promises – the emotional bonding of mother with child.

At some point both women and breastfeeding advocates crossed a line.  Breastfeeding – the most natural act in the animal kingdom – simply had to be good, they said; and from then on willingly suspended rational judgment.  The economic, social, and cultural facts that mitigated against exclusive breastfeeding were staring them in the face.  So were its negligible and contested benefits (as above, epidemiological evidence, antibiotics, etc.). What were they thinking?

Suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief is a term coined in 1817 by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative (Wikipedia)

              www.inamidst.com

In other words, people tend to suspend their rational judgment – in the case of breastfeeding hard cost-benefit analysis – because the ‘fantastic tale’ is appealing.

Conspiracy theorists are perhaps the best example of this suspension of disbelief.  No matter how much evidence is offered to prove that President Obama was born in America, there are many who flatly refuse to believe it.  Fluoride conspiracists not only refuse to reject the notion that it is harmless but that the widespread fluoridation of drinking water was a Soviet program to weaken the resolve of capitalist Americans.  Millions more believe in alien visitation, an international Jewish cabal, and the imminent coming of the end of the world.  


     www.anime.freemoviech.com

In an excellent article on the origin of conspiracy theories in The Psychologist (July 2010) Viren Swami and Rebecca Coles have detailed the sociological and psychological determinants of conspiracy theories.  There are an astounding number of conspiracy theories that abound today; and for just about every current event, there are many who believe that some dark cabal is behind it. 

The truth’, the TV show The X-Files told us, ‘is out there’. Millions of people worldwide seem to agree, disbelieving official accounts of important social and political events. In the United States, for example, scholars have noted a steady increase in the number of poll respondents who believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing John F. Kennedy.  In the wake of 9/11, commentators highlighted the proliferation of conspiracy theories about the event, with polls suggesting that more than a quarter of respondents believe the US government knew in advance, participated in, or took no action to stop the attacks.

So why do people go off the logical rails and look for answers in the realm of fantasy? Some of the earliest work on the subject in the 60s was by Hofstadter who suggested psychopathology:

The paranoid style, Hofstadter argued, was a result of ‘uncommonly angry minds’, whose judgment was somehow ‘distorted’. Following this vein, some scholars came to view conspiracy theories as a product of psychopathology, such as extreme paranoia, delusional ideation or narcissism… In this view, the delusional aspect of conspiratorial beliefs was thought to result in an incapacity for social or political action.

Later researchers turned to what they felt were more compelling social factors.  How, they argued, could psychopathology be the principal cause of conspiracy theories when there were so many of them?

A belief in conspiracy theories is more likely to emerge among those who feel powerless, disadvantaged or voiceless, especially in the face of catastrophe. To use a contemporary example, believing that the 7/7 London bombings were perpetrated by the British or Israeli governments may be a means of making sense of turbulent social or political phenomena.

These are but two of many explanations for widespread conspiracy theories; but whatever the reasons, they are alive, well, and increasing.

Even more legitimate activists such as those against climate change pass a certain threshold of belief-disbelief.  After so many years of warning the world about the coming disaster of global warming, they simply have to continue their dire predictions no matter what.


                         www.dailymail.co.uk

A recent BBC World Service round-table discussed the ‘post-human’ era, where the engineering of human DNA and the complete interface between mind and computer would completely alter the nature of human life.

One important implication of this rapid evolution will be Man’s complete control of his environment.  No amount of global warming, Ice Age cooling, or variant climate change will be of any consequence.  Just as agriculturalists are genetically modifying plants to be resistant to drought, pests, and soil depletion; so will human engineers be able to modify our genome to adapt to current environmental conditions.   Cities will not have to be changed to accommodate global warming.  Human beings will change.  The ability to thrive in water, to breathe different compositions of air, and to live well in either colder or warmer climates will be easily programmed.  Environmentalism will die as a movement, and human modification will be the focus of all attention.

Yet environmentalists refuse to accept human adaptability – either Darwinian or engineered – as a viable alternative.  To admit any alternative premise would be apostasy and heresy. 

Some wags attribute all this conspiracy nonsense to the Santa Claus myth.  Hardly. Every Christian child believes in Santa Claus, and most turn out just fine.  The fact that we all share a willing suspension of disbelief throughout our adult lives and are given to the most irrational and nonsensical convictions has nothing to do with Santa Claus per se.  It probably has much more to do with our inability to use more than a tiny fraction of our brainpower.

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, “It’s not the unknowns we need to worry about, it’s the unknown unknowns”.   There is simply too much complexity around – too much unknowability – for us to make sense out of anything.   Not only conspiracy theorists are flummoxed by the world.


                            www.stylesixty.com


So perhaps we should give La Leche League, The Environmental Defense Fund, PIRG,  Occupy Wall Street and the thousands of other true believers a pass. We should go easy on Biblical fundamentalists, creationists, and social anarchists and cut Area 51 trans-human advocates some slack.  There is so much suspension of disbelief around, why be so fussy?