Out Of Uniform

     This morning, Black Dumpling, a uniquely intelligent and provocative X poster, asks this critical question:

This is the question.

If an invasion fired only arms one out of one hundred of their soldiers is it unethical to open fire?

What if those other 99 are explicitly there to serve as cover and the one out of a hundred only starts shooting after they're deep within your territory… https://t.co/qZsVxSSm33

— BLACK DUMPLING™ (@BlackDumpling) July 30, 2026

     Underneath BD’s question is another: the question of the hour. Considering how critical the answer is to many other questions, it’s a wonder that it hasn’t been explicitly asked.

Are we at war?
How do we decide? * * *

     I don’t know of many periods in recorded history comparable to this one. There have been large-scale migrations in the past, often motivated by political upheaval, famine, or destructive weather. In 1971, an estimated 10 million Bengalis fled into India, to escape West Pakistani forces’ ferocious attempt to suppress East Pakistan’s moves toward regional autonomy. Those events et sequelae touched off a war between West Pakistan and India, and gave birth to the nation we call Bangla Desh.

     But the immense flood of migrants into these United States, mainly pouring over our somewhat porous southern border, can’t be ascribed to any of the “usual causes.” It’s essentially economic in nature: Third Worlders looking for economic opportunity. That motivation even applies to the agents of Mexican and South American drug cartels.

     That flood has been called an invasion… perhaps not always metaphorically. But if it were taken seriously as an invasion, we would be forced to ask Who is invading us? The invaders’ ethnicities are scattered rather than uniform. The great majority bear no weapons and carry no standards. No nation has declared that a state of war exists between it and the U.S.

     Now, just because no government has said that a war is in progress doesn’t mean that a war isn’t in progress. What constitutes a state of war? is a tough question to answer definitively. Time was, for a government to order an armed man across another nation’s borders was deemed an act of war. But once again, the migrants are nearly all unarmed when they wetback our borders. And no government will say that it has ordered them to penetrate these United States.

     We’re in a situation that the usual understandings of war and peace fail to cover. We need clarity desperately.

* * *

     By the most trusted estimates, illegal aliens now make up nearly 10% of the population of our nation. Other estimates are higher still. The destabilization of the American economy, the large increase in robberies and crimes of violence in alien-heavy districts, and the formation of de facto exclaves within our borders have the nation in a state of crisis.

     As Robert Higgs has shown us, a crisis provides an opportunity for a government to increase its powers and exactions. Rahm Emanuel has said so explicitly:

     You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.

     A serious crisis allows The State to act extra-legally, with “necessity” as its rationale. People are sympathetic to the plea of “necessity,” especially if the crisis at issue directly affects them. But as Isabel Paterson wrote, increases in political power to deal with a crisis are seldom entirely retracted:

     The difficulty of taking back powers once granted is illustrated in the repeal of the Prohibition Amendment; although it was demanded and carried by overwhelming sentiment of the citizens, the article of repeal contained a proviso which would retain numerous Federal jobs; it was impossible to make a clean sweep of the pernicious usurped power.

     In that sense, the migrant flood constitutes two kinds of crisis: one that threatens the integrity and stability of the federal and state governments, and another that threatens the freedom, prosperity, and security of the American people.

     Black Dumpling’s question addresses both crises. If the illegal-alien flood into the U.S. were recognized as an invasion, albeit of a novel sort, we would recognize the illegals as non-uniformed invaders. Under the laws of war, they would have no rights. They would be “outlaw” in the old sense of lacking the law’s protections. Shooting them on sight would be perfectly licit.

     The prospect may horrify. But is it worse than the prospect of accepting the invaders – of tacitly conceding that the invasion is beyond our power to counter?

     Those are among the most difficult questions I can imagine. The aliens are much like a swarm of hungry locusts. None of them are wholly innocent; all have broken the laws of the United States. But summary execution is an extreme penalty for wetbacking the border. And granting the federal government permission to militarize the whole country on the strength of the illegal-alien tide would have far-reaching consequences for the future.

     Perhaps we’re not looking at it the right way. Or praying enough. You decide.

Envy And Enmity

     Now and then, there’s a hard but necessary deed to be done. Since World War II, the doer has been the United States of America.

     At such times the U.S. has repeatedly “stepped up.” Have we always done exactly what should have been done? No, not always. But in the great majority of cases, we’ve done what was necessary. We’ve relieved lesser nations of the need to bestir themselves.

     WHOA! Did I just call all the other nations of the world “lesser nations?” Why yes, I did. They are lesser. They cannot do what the U.S. has done repeatedly. And the realization chafes some of them badly:

Dear Donald Trump & America

You are not cool. You are not the good guys. You live in a fucked up Top Gun movie. You believe the self-hype that America is somehow highly revered across the globe.

You are not.

Like any bully, you are despised.

Sincerely,

The Rest of the World.

— The Lucky Heron (@LuckyHeronSay) April 6, 2026

     I feel a certain pity for persons such as the one above. They know they’re inferior: personally, socially, and nationally. That can’t feel good. But rather than strive to match American power and prowess, they prefer to make snide comments. For that I have only contempt.

     Tom Kratman backhanded the above in his trademarked style:

No, moron, we are fully aware that you pussies have bad cases of American penis envy. What you idiots are unaware of is that we're tired of it. We don't care about you anymore. You are not worth the blood of a single redneck private.

So long, sucker.

— Tom Kratman (@TKratman) April 7, 2026

     That had to be said, Tom. Bravo. But I’m sad about it all, for the U.S. bears part of the responsibility for the inferiority “The Lucky Heron” suffers.

     American power has protected Europe and much of the rest of the world for eight decades. In effect, we’ve made it possible for those nations to neglect their own militaries. When a need for intervention arises, they habitually “let the Americans handle it.” It saves money.

     And the rest of the world, observing how tireless we are in dealing with crises abroad, has come to think of us as “saviors in waiting:”

     "There's no food anywhere," said Fanny, a Liberian refugee who had trudged for two days to reach the stadium. "People are dying. The Americans must come. We want peace."

     “The Americans must come.” Why us? Because we always do. That Liberian refugee knew it. We come to the rescue even of peoples that despise us and seek to conquer us. The Christmas Tsunami that ravaged Indonesia was a case in point. Indonesia is a heavily Muslim nation that greatly resented that it owed its relief to a nation of “infidels.”

     We shrug it off. We do what needs doing. We go home with or without the thanks of those we’ve helped.

* * *

     Today at Fox News, we have this striking opinion piece:

     The strategy of the United States toward the Islamic Republic has crossed a threshold that marks the definitive end of a half-century of Western hesitation.
     In a landmark White House news conference, the President — flanked by CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth — dismantled the long-standing policy of "managed stability" in favor of a strategy aimed at the regime’s structural collapse. By confirming the systematic dismantling of the clerical security apparatus, highlighted by the death of IRGC Intelligence Chief Majid Khademi in a joint U.S.-Israeli strike, and signaling an end to the regime’s unhindered control over strategic corridors like the Strait of Hormuz, the administration has moved past the failed diplomatic cycles of 1979 and 2009.
     While mediators may continue to offer the 'off-ramp' of short-term ceasefires, history warns us that for the mullahs, such deals are never a bridge to peace. They are a tactical survival mechanism designed to shield a nuclear breakout. As this new era of clarity unfolds, the lesson remains: leaving any part of this clerical structure in power, even in a state of 'negotiated' weakness, is not a resolution — it is merely a stay of execution."

     Commentator Goli Ameri has grasped the core of the thing: Iran’s rulers were determined to have nuclear weapons, no matter what taqiyya they presented to the rest of the world. Moreover, they didn’t want nukes just to fondle them and preen over having become a nuclear power; they intended to use them. Their first target would be Israel. That’s been well known for decades.

     Donald Trump is unlike any of his predecessors in the Oval Office. He sees clearly; he does not allow anyone to tell him that things are not how they appear. Moreover, he is unaffected by political considerations. What he feels must be done, he will do. And so it is in our conflict with Iran.

     “The Lucky Heron” and others of his sort see American forces dealing with a threat that’s been allowed to loom for too long, and it infuriates them. They know that their pusillanimous governments lack both the will and the ability to do what the U.S. is doing. They know that they personally would never volunteer for such an effort. Indeed, were their statesmen to tell them that their “social benefits” must be reduced slightly to fund such an intervention, their cries of dismay would deafen the world.

     They know that we are not as they are, and they hate us for it.

     The Iranian conflict will take a while to play out. Brace for more sniveling from “The Lucky Heron” and his friends. America will do what must be done.

     May God forever guard and guide these United States of America.

Martial Spirit And The Martial Virtues

     Just this morning I encountered this:

The United States has been at war 233 of its 250 years. That's 93% of its entire existences

In its 250 years it has invaded or bombed 70 countries that's more than 35% of the whole world.

There is no greater threat to world peace than the United States

— The Resonance (@Partisan_12) March 28, 2026

     …to which my friend Tom Kratman replied:

This idiotic meme pops up regularly among the insuperably ignorant, and incarnate idiotic.

Short version: No, in order to get this result you must count as war things more properly categorized as law enforcement and count as years any year in which any violent action, to include…

— Tom Kratman (@TKratman) March 28, 2026

     Take care not to miss this portion of the latter:

     That said, yes, we are warlike, [with] more martial spirit than, most likely, the rest of the planet combined. So tremble in your boots.

     From a practical standpoint, there’s value to be had in having the rest of Mankind fear us. Oderint dum metuant, as the Roman military class liked to say. If we must be hated, let those who hate us remember our martial spirit, and the extraordinary military power that looms within it. But it’s worth a few moments to linger over what tempers that spirit: the martial virtues, completely and properly understood.

* * *

     All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle…. All real men like to fight. – General George S. Patton

     Let’s skip over the “No true Scotsman” objections and ask instead whether there’s any truth to Patton’s characterization. Are “real Americans” that pro-combat? Do we really court war because we love to fight? Do we – or our politicians or generals – court war at all?

     Perhaps some professional soldiers like to fight. It validates their choice of career, at least when they win. But that eagerness to go to war isn’t uniform among the uniformed. Even among the eager ones, it’s tempered by an awareness of the costs of war.

     Sayings about why men willingly go to war are many. One of the more frequently encountered sentiments, at least among those who write about warfare, is that when the bullets are flying, you don’t fight for your country, or your cause, but for “your buddies:” the men next to you, armed as you are, endangered as you are endangered, and who fear as you fear. You recognize them as fragile human beings whose lives could end at any instant. And whether consciously or not, you hope they see you the same way.

     In the wars of the Nightmare Century, most of those who went to war did so under compulsion. Today that’s less often the case. Yet even in full awareness of the potential price, innumerable thousands still sign up. I’m friends with a young woman who did so less than a year ago, and who’s already overseas, serving in a “hot zone.”

     In his movie Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise playing the title character sums up the motivations involved:

     There are four types of people who join the military. For some, it's a family trade. Others are patriots, eager to serve. Next, you have those who just need a job. Then there's the kind who want a legal means of killing other people.

     In recent decades, owing to the end of conscription, the first two motivations greatly outnumber the third and fourth. But that doesn’t imply that those men actually hope to go into combat, as General Patton would have us believe.

* * *

     The first of the great martial virtues is this one:

Strike the necessary blow, but no other.

     Contemporary American forces excel at this. They practice remarkable restraint in the use of force. They’re scrupulous about not targeting noncombatants. They’re merciful in victory; an enemy who surrenders need not fear that he’ll be killed “as a lesson to others.” While American standards aren’t observed worldwide, they are nonetheless admired by the militaries of all nations.

     The second great virtue is conditioned by the first one:

Strike decisively.

     No farting around! Determine what you must do for a swift victory and do it without hesitation or encumbrance. No firing rounds into the air. No bombing because you like explosions. Locate the enemy force, close with it, and defeat it so thoroughly that it and its political masters know and admit that they’ve been defeated.

     Much of the agony of the Vietnam War arose from “farting around.” Military theorists of the era regarded that conflict as an opportunity to test their notions, most prominent among them the idea of “sending signals with force.” Communication with the enemy during wartime is mandatory, but it’s the job of diplomats and statesmen, not of soldiers whose lives are on the line. What fraction of America’s 56,000 Vietnam War dead would have lived had the “signals” nonsense been dismissed and our field commanders ordered to strike decisively?

     Third and last among the great martial virtues is this one:

Do not shy back from what’s necessary.

     This third virtue enfolds the other two. If war is necessary, go to war. If an objective must be taken, then pay the necessary price to take it. If a blow must be struck, strike it with all necessary force, speed, and resolve. That is courage; less is cowardice – and cowardice always costs more lives than courage.

     A head of state may be wrong about whether his nation must go to war. A strategist may be wrong about whether his chosen strategy fits the contest. A field commander may be wrong about whether a particular objective must be taken. Such things can seldom be known with certainty ahead of time. That’s why we must close ranks behind them, for to deny them our sincere support would endanger our nation and our men at arms. Yes, even should the aftermath prove our involvement misguided.

     That’s another of the lessons of Vietnam. Had our politicians marshaled their courage, ignored the carping from the Left and the media, and ordered our commanders to fight the war as it needed to be fought, the Viet Cong would have been eliminated and South Vietnam would have remained free of Communist dominance. Perhaps we should not have allowed ourselves to become involved in the first place. Opinions about that remain mixed. But once we were involved, our forces should have been allowed to fight the war to a decisive victory.

     All other martial virtues – strategic wisdom; tactical daring; courage in the trenches; magnanimity in victory and realism in defeat – are derived from the great virtues above.

* * *

     It all sounds so easy when an armchair blatherer like myself discourses on it. But if great virtue were easy, it wouldn’t be rare. That’s as close to tautology as a proposition can come.

     A nation’s military exists to support the decisions of its government with force. To be effective, it must embody the martial virtues. Ours does. Because it does, even those nations that have had to surrender to us know that we can be trusted – that there will be no looting, no deliberate infliction of humiliation, no destruction for destruction’s sake, no interval for American forces to “rape, pillage, and burn.” What other nation could say the same?

     May God bless our fighting men and these United States of America.

On The Road Again

     That’s America. On the road and making music. Just like Willie Nelson. Though I don’t recall Willie deploying aircraft carriers or F-18s.

     I had a feeling a strike on Iran was coming. I’m only mildly surprised that Israel is taking a hand in it. They’ve demonstrated a knack for tactical air combat in the Middle East. But of course the anti-Israel crowd in the American media is already shouting that this action is being taken in Israel’s interests and not America’s.

     HOT FLASH TO THE SEMI-SOMNOLENT: Iran is the largest single backer of Islamic terrorism worldwide. A hefty fraction of the regime’s oil revenues goes to funding Islamic terror groups and their strikes. The United States is the principal antagonist of Islamic terror. Ergo, eliminating its largest source of funding is very much in America’s interests. And that’s to say nothing of the support for the Iranian people, who’ve suffered badly under the ayatollahs’ rule.

     Iran’s interference with sea passage in its region has become quite annoying too. And I seem to remember a rather unpleasant photo of American sailors being held at gunpoint by Iranian hijackers. The ayatollahs couldn’t reasonably have expected the “Great Satan” to sit passively forever as they kept ramping up their aggressions, could they? Surely they were aware that Donald John Trump, not Barack Hussein Obama nor Joseph Robinette Biden, is now our commander-in-chief! This president doesn’t just talk; he acts.

     This won’t be quite as surgical and sanitary as the enforcement of our invitation to Nicolas Maduro. There will be casualties. And of course, war always costs big money. But I’ll bet you a dollar that the majority of our forces are enthused about the strike and eager to participate.

     War is Hell, but there are deeper circles to Hell than this one. We can get out of this one. The ayatollahs won’t.

     As the saying goes, now we wait. Not only for reports from the combat. We also wait for reports of the reactions of Muslims in America. Note that I didn’t say “American Muslims.” A Muslim is forbidden to hold an allegiance to anything but Islam and the worldwide ummah. I don’t expect that to change, unless it’s under the cloak of taqiyya.

     Remember Black Tuesday: September 11, 2001? Muslims in New Jersey were seen celebrating the atrocities. Do you think they’ll celebrate our liberation of the longsuffering people of Iran?

     Have a nice day.

For Armistice Day

     [I first posted this in 2013, when it appeared to me that the world was hurtling toward Armageddon. We survived; we eventually shook off the Obamunists and the Bidenites. The terrors that ravaged the Old World did not visit us. We found a peacemaker and raised him to the Oval Office. For a while, things looked, if not good, at least bearable.
     But what are Mankind’s prospects, really? Given the currents of hostility, avarice, and lust for power plainly visible throughout the world, how do things look to you today? – FWP]

---

     World War I remains the greatest man-made tragedy in all of history: a brutal, pointless, utterly avoidable conflagration that ended a century of peace and destroyed the optimism and confidence that had created the modern free world. Twenty million died during the war proper, including most of the young men of France and Germany. Twenty million more died in the influenza plague that followed.

     Fixated on symbolism, the Allied Powers demanded that the Germans sign the armistice agreement at exactly eleven o'clock on November 11, 1918: The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. One year later, the Treaty of Versailles that supposedly ended the war and established peace proved to be, in the words of General Ferdinand Foch, "an armistice for twenty years." Perhaps it's for the best that no one remembers the "Great War" as a thing of patriotic glory.

     Which is why, on this Armistice Day in the year of Our Lord 2025, I've decided to memorialize it with a poem few can bear to read, and those who’ve read it can hardly bear to remember:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

-- Wilfred Owen, 1918 --

     Pray for peace.

War And Its Law

     Amid all the caterwauling from the Left about how awful it was that President Trump dared to execute Qassem Soleimani, the most fatuous emissions probably came from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who called the strike “unauthorized,” and therefore illegal:

     The Administration has conducted tonight’s strikes in Iraq targeting high-level Iranian military officials and killing Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani without an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against Iran. Further, this action was taken without the consultation of the Congress.

     As it happens, there was authorization that covered the strike, though Pelosi, being rather addled at this point in her degeneration, has probably forgotten it:

     Barack Obama’s former DHS Secretary told Chuck Todd on ‘Meet the Press’ that Qassem Soleimani was a “lawful military objective” and the President had “ample domestic legal authority to take him out.”

     Former Secretary Jeh Johnson leaves open the possibility that the terror general wasn’t a terrorist, but even then, he states he was a “lawful military target.”

     Soleimani and his Quds Forces were declared terrorists by the United States in 2007 and Barack Obama never sought to change the designation.

     So much for that. But beyond that, there is this: Iran has been at war with the United States, by declaration of its parliament, since 1979. During declared war, any recognized combatant anywhere is a lawful military target under the law of war as it’s been understood since the Treaties of Westphalia. Moreover, under those same understandings, which have been codified in the Geneva Conventions, one who makes war on non-combatants is a war criminal eligible for a battlefield execution – and Qassem Soleimani had provably done that on more than one occasion.

     But these observations invite further thought, specifically about the law of war and the principles behind it.

---

     Tom Kratman’s excellent novel A Desert Called Peace, which opens his Terra Nova / Carreraverse series, contains a great deal of pithy commentary on war and its law. The following passage is particularly relevant to the events of the week behind us:

     "As you probably know, there is, over on the continent of Taurus, a fairly new court, the Cosmopolitan Criminal Court, or CCC. This court purports to have universal jurisdiction over certain crimes, much as any nation's courts have jurisdiction over piracy at sea. Without going into the merits of this 'universal jurisdiction' here, let me ask you what the CCC could have done to you, or to the Sumeris, that was one whit worse than what was done here today? The answer, as I am sure you are all aware, is precisely nothing. Courts are for civilized circumstances where people can be deterred by punishment. There is nothing any court can do to anyone, and even what it could do it cannot do very quickly, that even begins to approach what we do to each other in war, routinely. The CCC, or any similar court, is toothless as far as furthering its stated purpose. It might be effective, mind you, at its true purpose which is undermining national sovereignty and the ability of the civilized world to defend itself from barbarism. That, however, is the subject for another day.
     "What is important for this day is that the law of war—customary, statutory, or common—cannot be enforced by any court, ever. Because we live in an anarchic system of sovereign states, and because the stakes in war are so high, the only thing that can enforce the law of war is the law of war itself. To do this it has one recourse: reprisal. Reprisal, which I am sure you are familiar with because Tribune Puente-Pequeño, your law of war instructor, told you about it— I've heard him, is a war crime, or conduct that would ordinarily be a war crime, but which becomes legal and legitimate in order to counter or deter an enemy from violating the law of war. It is all we have, all the world has, to make the law of war work.
     "Thus, I ordered you to reprise for the murder of our men. Thus," and here Carrera stopped for a moment and pointed skyward where three Turbo-Finch Avengers were winging it northward, "I have ordered leaflets prepared, in Arabic, to be dropped ahead of our forces, to let the enemy know what we have done and to explain to him the laws which he must follow in the future if he wishes to avoid a repetition. Thus," and his finger pointed at the pressies, still standing in clueless (which Carrera was certain was their natural state) shock (at being treated with open contempt), "I had those . . . people brought here so that they, too, can spread the word. Let everyone know that if you commit a crime against the Legio del Cid then punishment will be immediate and frightful."

     Perfect from first to last. Note especially Carrera’s observation that “we live in an anarchic system of sovereign states.” I’ve made the same comment:

     The States of Earth exist in an anarchic relation to one another. Each has its own regional code of law, which might differ markedly from all the others. Despite several thrusts at the matter over the centuries, there is no “super-State” to enforce a uniform code of law over them all. More, they view one another as competitors in many different areas; their populations and institutions are often in sharp economic competition with one another. Thus, they are often at odds. They resolve important disputes among them through negotiation or warfare.

     As war is a phenomenon that occurs between or among sovereign states – the key word here being sovereign — there is no alternative to warfare when negotiation fails. In the midst of a war already in progress, war itself is the enforcement mechanism for the law that remains.

     It simply cannot be otherwise.

---

     War, speaking in Westphalian terms, is an organized attempt by one state to impose its will on another through violence. In that regard it can seem distinct from what we call “terrorism,” which often appears divorced from the intentions or actions of any state. Yet the distinction is illusory. An organized force that declares itself, by word or by deed, to be above the penal laws that prevail in a given jurisdiction has declared itself, de facto, to be a sovereignty, and therefore unaccountable to the laws promulgated by others. Under circumstances entirely confined to the territory of the United States, we tend to treat persons who commit terrorist acts as simple criminals. When apprehended, they’re referred to the justice system. When such a force acts beyond our shores, we cannot take that approach. We must regard the actors just as we would a hostile sovereignty, and act accordingly: i.e., according to the laws of war.

     Let the execution of Qassem Soleimani, not the Obamunist kowtowing to and appeasement of those who hate us and wish us ill, serve as the pattern for future dealings with them. Either they will “get the lesson” or they will die – and in either case Americans’ interests will be properly served.

A Lost Commemoration

     If you’ve ever taken an interest in what was once called “The Great War” – it’s unlikely you have, as very few persons seem to know anything much about it – you might be aware of how it was concluded:

     Armistice Day is commemorated every year on November 11 to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918. The date was declared a national holiday in many allied nations, and coincides with Remembrance Day and Veterans Day, public holidays.

     Germany had approached the Allied Powers about an armistice, as with the addition of American and Canadian troops its forces were badly outnumbered, and the naval blockade of its major ports had brought its logistical situation near to catastrophe. The Allies dictated the date, time, and place of the armistice signing for the obvious symbolic value.

     World War I was one of my obsessions for much of my young adulthood. I studied its genesis, its inception, its many twists and turns, and its social, economic, and political outcomes for twenty years. My need to understand it paralleled physicists’ need to understand quantum mechanics and men’s need to understand women. All three are hopeless causes, but some needs know nothing of hope.

     A few years ago, I wrote:

     World War I remains the greatest man-made tragedy in all of history: a brutal, pointless, utterly avoidable conflagration that ended a century of peace and destroyed the optimism and confidence that had created the modern free world. Twenty million died during the war proper, including most of the young men of France and Germany. Twenty million more died in the influenza plague that followed.

     Fixated on symbolism, the Allied Powers demanded that the Germans sign the armistice agreement at exactly eleven o'clock on November 11, 1918: the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. One year later, the Treaty of Versailles that supposedly ended the war and established peace proved to be, in the words of General Ferdinand Foch, only "an armistice for twenty years." Perhaps it's for the best that no one remembers the "Great War" as a thing of patriotic glory.

     The “Great War’s” enervation of all of Europe was the soil from which the horrors of Nazism and Communism sprouted. The Old World wasn’t just war-weary; it was intellectually and spiritually devastated. Both sides had gone to war enthusiastically, in a nationalism-powered frenzy. Both sides expected a quick victory. Indeed, so did the analysts of the day, mostly for economic reasons. The shattering of those illusions, coupled to the war’s physical and demographic devastation, destroyed Europe’s belief in progress, human improvement, and the essential goodness of Man.

     Armistice Day – Remembrance Day, in the British Isles – was intended to honor the millions that had given their lives to the war. Many of those millions were conscripts. They had no choice and no control over their fates. They did what they were ordered to do, often knowing that it would probably cost their lives. The mass attacks of the Somme, Verdun, Ypres, and Passchendaele took lives at a rate incomprehensible to contemporary students of warfare. Those attacks were ordered by telephone, by generals who treated their soldiers’ lives as counters in a ghastly game. Few of those generals lost their own lives to the war.

     Today, we call November 11 “Veterans’ Day.” But we have no living veterans of World War I. No one who fought in that conflagration remains to tell us what it was like. All we have are written records, some photographs, and a few poems.

     I have a special fondness for Australia, for reasons beyond the scope of this essay. At the time of World War I, Australia was not yet politically independent; it answered to the demands of the British Crown and government. Accordingly, as the war dragged on, Australian forces were assembled and dispatched into the conflict at several points, most notably a uniquely horrible flesh-grinder of a battle at Gallipoli, in Asia Minor. Peter Weir’s striking movie about the event captures some of the horror the Australian forces endured.

     On a personal level, that horror is best captured in a song written by Eric Bogle:

When I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murry's green basin to the dusty outback,
Well, I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in 1915 my country said, "Son,
It's time you stop rambling, there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they marched me away to the war.

And the band played Waltzing Matilda,
As the ship pulled away from the quay
And midst all the cheers, flag waving and tears,
We sailed off for Gallipoli.

It's well I remember that terrible day,
How our blood stained the sand and the water
And of how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk, he was ready, he primed himself well.
He rained us with bullets, and showered us with shell,
And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell,
Nearly blew us back home to Australia.

And the band played Waltzing Matilda,
As we stopped to bury our slain,
And we buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
Then we started all over again.

Those who were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire.
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
While around me the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I awoke in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, sure I wished I was dead.
I never knew there were worse things than dying.

For I'll go no more Waltzing Matilda,
All around the green bush far and free
To hunt and to pace, a man needs both legs,
No more waltzing Matilda for me.

They collected the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they sent us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind and the insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And when our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thanked Christ there was no one there waiting for me
To grieve, to mourn and to pity.

But the Band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway,
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.

So now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving their dreams and past glory,
I see the old men all tired, stiff and sore
Those forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question.

But the band plays Waltzing Matilda,
And the old men still answer the call,
But year after year, the numbers get fewer
Someday, no one will march there at all.

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda.
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts can be heard as they march by the billabong
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

     Have a nice day.

The Wherefores Of Warfare

     President Trump’s recent decision to pull American forces out of Syria has the Punditocracy in a lather. “We can’t betray our allies!” rises the cry from those who disapprove. The opposition’s reply of “It’s about BLEEP!ing time” is less well represented. Yes, given the state of political commentary it’s par for the course these days. Yet one who actually thinks about decisions of this magnitude will be irritated by the lack of hard thought behind either position.

     Why go to war, Gentle Reader? Have you thought about it?

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     The seriousness of warfare is so great, and so obvious, that it’s hard for me to imagine a national executive heading into a war without extensive consultations and profound contemplation. But then, there’ve been many not-entirely-serious national executives. Remember what Frederick II Hohenzollern of Prussia said about why he took his nation to war against Austria in 1740?

     “I was young, had a big army, a full treasury, and I wanted to see my name in the newspapers.”

     Does that strike you as serious thinking, Gentle Reader?

     Wars kill people, destroy property, and drain the resources of the warring nations. When viewed from the standpoint of lives ended and general national well-being, they are almost always net-loss propositions. If that’s the overwhelming likelihood, there is only one imaginable reason to go to war: while bad, it would be the least bad of all the possible courses. That is, it would avert an even worse outcome – an outcome guaranteed to arrive should we not go to war.

     Concerning America’s two most recent wars, Operation Enduring Freedom (i.e., our war in Afghanistan) could be rationalized as a least-bad case. We had suffered an assault that reaped twice as many lives as Pearl Harbor and destroyed property valued in the billions of dollars. The architect of that assault, who was being sheltered by the Taliban, commanded a great fortune and many followers. He could have engineered still further attacks on us. Indeed, he had openly proclaimed that as his goal. Taking him out, or at least nullifying his ability to harm us, qualified as a reason to go to war...though our painfully prolonged involvement in Afghanistan cannot be defended on that basis.

     The rationale for Operation Iraqi Freedom was thinner. The Bush Administration regarded Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq as “low-hanging fruit.” Toppling it, Bush’s advisors concurred, could spark a pro-freedom trend in the Middle East, which has long been the province of autocrats and petty satraps. While Saddam was a villain who fully deserved what he got, the consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom were not what the Bush Administration had envisioned. The cost to the United States in blood and treasure was far greater than anyone supposed. In retrospect, it was a bad decision, though it was one a large majority of the public supported at the time.

     Our current engagement in Syria doesn’t qualify as “a war,” though our forces in that theater are “doing the business” of war. Why they’re there deserves scrutiny. Are American forces and resources committed to Syria for a reason we could credibly view as a vital national interest? I can’t see it. Are they there because of a treaty commitment? Definitely not, nor would we expect the Syrians to come to our aid were our situations reversed. What consequences of not being engaged in Syria can we foresee? Would they be worse than an open-ended commitment to supporting the rebel forces there?

     In two of the three cases above, they who argue that America has been too ready to go to war these past few decades seem to have a good point.

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     Allow me a seeming tangent to talk about one of the conceptual foundations for American military employment: our role as “world policeman.”

     I first encountered that phrase in grammar school. I was told that our “duty” to police the entire world arose from our preeminent position among the nations: our wealth, our security, and (of course) our military might. For quite a while the United States Navy had been the de facto police force of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. No other maritime power possessed resources near to ours. As the U.S. was the world’s greatest international trader, the role of suppressing piracy seemed a natural fit. Yet few thought it to be our duty to “preserve peace” or punish “criminal regimes.” That came after World War II, which had left the militaries of virtually all the other nations of the world exhausted.

     It was a noble vision...but not one suited to a republic founded on the principles that undergird ours. Indeed, the word noble itself gives the game away. America has no nobles. Our governments were not anointed by God to ride about the globe enforcing justice. They are – in theory at least – our employees, our servants. They are indebted solely to us who select them and pay them.

     Having said that, let it be observed that “the servants” don’t think of themselves that way. They haven’t since the Wilson Administration, if not before. They’ve yearned for centuries to be regarded as a higher caste, a ruling elite in the fashion of the European knights and nobles of yore. Riding about smiting the wicked and dispensing justice is integral to that self-assessment. And if it’s not their blood and treasure being spilled for that purpose...well, so what?

     Many a “noble vision” is really camouflage for appalling vanity.

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     From the above we turn, inevitably, to the reason most nations, including ours, involve themselves in most wars: international status as perceived by governments and promoted to their populaces.

     Time was, the phrase “Great Power” was current in discussions of international relations. The “Great Powers” of the Old World – the British Empire, France, Germany, and the Russian Empire – were those with large militaries and overseas colonies. A “Great Power” was required to possess either a large army or a large navy, and at least one significant extraterritorial possession. Indeed, during the pre-World War I / Congress of Vienna century, despite its large navy and its Philippines protectorate, the United States was not regarded as a Great Power. That lack of status greatly chafed the political elite of our nation. It was part of the impetus to involvement in World War I, though America’s political class would never have admitted it.

     After the devastation of that war and the influenza epidemic that followed it, the notion of Great Powers fell into a shadow. Britain and France had been sadly reduced. Germany was struggling back to its feet after its losses and the heavy burden of reparations that had been laid on it at Versailles. Russia was in a decades-long convulsion, owing to the rise of the Communists and the unexampled ruthlessness of Iosef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili, a.k.a. Joseph Stalin. All that remained of the Great Powers was the United States, the only nation involved in that calamity to escape wholesale devastation.

     America’s political class was gratified...yet it found itself in opposition to the clearly expressed will of the American people. Congress’s rejection of the League of Nations and the elections of 1920, 1924, and 1928 repudiated the globalists of the day. Our army shrank back to pre-World-War-I levels. Americans returned to the business of Americans. Except for our growing international trade and the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922-23, the troubles of the world beyond our borders were of no import to us.

     World War II, of course, changed everything once again. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a globalist of the first water. His most ardent desire was to rule the world’s pre-eminent power. Yet his 1940 campaign slogans included “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars:”

     According to his own official statements, repeated on many occasions, and with special emphasis when the presidential election of 1940 was at stake, Franklin D. Roosevelt's policy after the outbreak of the war in Europe in 1939 was dominated by one overriding thought: how to keep the United States at peace. One of the President's first actions after the beginning of hostilities was to call Congress into special session and ask for the repeal of the embargo on the sales of arms to belligerent powers, which was part of the existing neutrality legislation. He based his appeal on the argument that this move would help to keep the United States at peace. His words on the subject were:

     Let no group assume the exclusive label of the "peace bloc." We all belong to it ... I give you my deep and unalterable conviction, based on years of experience as a worker in the field of international peace, that by the repeal of the embargo the United States will more probably remain at peace than if the law remains as it stands today ... Our acts must be guided by one single, hardheaded thought -- keeping America out of the war.

     This statement was made after the President had opened up a secret correspondence with Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty and later Prime Minister in the British government. What has been revealed of this correspondence, even in Churchill's own memoirs, inspires considerable doubt as to whether its main purpose was keeping America out of the war.

     Roosevelt kept up his pose as the devoted champion of peace even after the fall of France, when Great Britain was committed to a war which, given the balance of power in manpower and industrial resources, it could not hope to win without the involvement of other great powers, such as the United States and the Soviet Union. The President's pledges of pursuing a policy designed to keep the United States at peace reached a shrill crescendo during the last days of the 1940 campaign.

     Mr. Roosevelt said at Boston on October 30: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."

     The same thought was expressed in a speech at Brooklyn on November 1: "I am fighting to keep our people out of foreign wars. And I will keep on fighting."

     The President told his audience at Rochester, New York, on November 2: "Your national government ... is equally a government of peace -- a government that intends to retain peace for the American people."

     On the same day the voters of Buffalo were assured: "Your President says this country is not going to war."

     And he declared at Cleveland on November 3: "The first purpose of our foreign policy is to keep our country out of war."

     That pledge’s expiration date came on December 7, 1941. Many believe that America’s entry into both theaters of World War II was forced upon us. Certainly, we could not fail to respond to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. Yet there is considerable evidence to the effect that our participation in the European theater was discretionary – that once the Third Reich had abrogated the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by invading Russia, Hitler’s regime was doomed whether or not the U.S. entered the fray. While that aspect of the matter remains arguable, the Roosevelt Administration’s participation in the Allied cause through Lend-Lease and other credit arrangements undercuts FDR’s claim that he was interested solely in peace and non-involvement.

     Roosevelt was dishonest on enough other subjects to allow for doubt of his sincerity on this one.

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     Wars since Napoleon have had various geneses, but unforced decisions to go to war have seldom involved a realistic fear for the warmaking nation’s survival. More often than not, the political class of the initiating nation has sought gains it expected to reap from victory...and in the majority of those cases, the rulers have expected those gains to accrue to themselves at least as much as to their nations.

     If those are morally unacceptable reasons to make war – and attempted robbery of one nation by another cannot be morally better than robbery of one individual by another – then what reasons would satisfy a people determined that their government shall adhere to Judeo-Christian moral precepts?

     Here we venture into what the Catholic Church has called “just-war theory.” It’s a subject of some complexity, wherein there remain cases and courses still in dispute after centuries of study and debate. However, in the typical case facing the United States, a fairly simple touchstone would apply:

If Americans’ lives and money are to be expended,
Then Americans’ lives and property had better be at stake.

     And even here, there will always be room to argue.

A Proper Memorial

     Notwithstanding the quibbling over the differences among “wars,” “police actions,” and “operations,” here is a partial list of the military actions in which Americans have fought:

1. The Revolutionary War
2. The War of 1812
3. The Mexican-American War
4. The Civil War / War Between The States
5. The Spanish-American War
6. World War I
7. World War II
8. The Korean War
9. The Vietnam War
10. The Grenadan Invasion
11. The Panamanian Invasion / Operation Just Cause
12. Persian Gulf War I / Operation Desert Storm
13. The Afghan War / Operation Enduring Freedom
14. Persian Gulf War II / Operation Iraqi Freedom

     Those are merely the ones I can remember at this early hour. There have been others.

     Four of the clashes enumerated above involved fighting on American soil. If the fourth is eluding you, it was World War II. Hawaii was an American protectorate even then, and the Japanese did assault Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Archipelago as well. The other ten, and the smaller military operations whose names are absent from the list owing to my inability to remember them, were fought elsewhere.

     Many of the public service pitches about Memorial Day include statements that Americans who fought in our wars did so “to protect our freedom.” Even if we leave aside the question of just how much freedom remains to us in this Year of Our Lord 2019, it is morally imperative that we ask, seriously, and with due consideration both for possibilities that did not materialize and for the feelings of those who lost family members in them:

How do you figure that?

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     America’s armed forces are the finest that have ever existed. The young Americans who populate it, regardless of their individual reasons for taking the oath, are the very best of us. When called upon, they go where they’ve been sent and do what they’ve been told – superbly. In every combat action on record they’ve performed prodigies that have baffled the military minds of other lands.

     We’ve lost a great many of those young lives. If the Civil War be included, the count is well over a million. Any decent person must pray that they were not wasted, in some ultimate sense. And to be perfectly fair, most of the combats in which American forces have taken part were more popular than not. Yes, even World War I and Vietnam.

     But it takes a severe stretch of the terms involved to propose that the World Wars, the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts, and the later actions were “to protect our freedom.” They may have been geostrategically wise, though there is legitimate disagreement about several of them. They may have protected various extraterritorial interests, or the interests of nations allied to us. But they correlate with the diminution of Americans’ freedom, not with its preservation…and certainly not with its expansion.

     If the subject of interest is the motivation behind American engagement in those combats, let it be said, plainly and at once: the protection of Americans’ freedom was nowhere near the minds of those who sent them forth to do battle.

     Over and over, our men at arms have gone forth. They fought, suffered, bled, died – and prevailed. Words cannot express the praise and honor we owe them. But the political classes that dispatched them to foreign combats cannot reasonably be thought to have been concerned with Americans’ freedom.

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     We owe our fallen men at arms a grateful remembrance on Memorial Day. But let us also be mindful of something less praiseworthy: the willingness of old men in suits, seated in comfortable chairs in places well removed from the hazards and terrors of armed combat, to send them forth for reasons about which they have been less than honest.

     The armed power of our nation is not a toy. It consists of lives: mostly young lives, filled with possibility and promise. It ought not to be flaunted or brandished for reasons not vital to our nation. It certainly ought not to be flung about for “prestige,” or to establish or defend a “zone of influence.”

     I have a number of young friends who are at arms. I don’t ever want to read about their deaths, especially not if they were sent forth for “prestige,” or for the protection of some country whose citizens disdained to defend themselves.

     Consider this powerful line from Michael Bay’s movie 13 Hours, spoken by John Krasinski playing security contractor Jack Silva:

     “What would they say about me? ‘He died in a place he didn't need to be, in a battle over something he doesn't understand, in a country that meant nothing to him.’”

     Four Americans died in Benghazi, Libya, fighting to protect the lives of other Americans. Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were former Navy SEALs; Christopher Stevens and Sean Smith were civilians. Imagine the grief of their families. Try, though you must fail, to imagine what their families must have suffered over those deaths in places they didn’t need to be. There have been far too many such deaths, and far too many such families.

     Remember and reflect.

Daggers

     I once referred to myself as Irish-American. Then I ran across this statement by Theodore Roosevelt:

     “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic.”

     For lagniappe, have a compatible sentiment from Woodrow Wilson:

     “Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”

     Very strong words, these. As it is Saint Patrick’s Day, it seems appropriate to reflect on them, and on a few daggers that have been plunged into the American Republic by persons who carry hyphens about with them.

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     Some time ago, concerning a “Puerto Rican Day” celebration in the Big Apple, I had this to say:

     No one gets to choose his parents. (Yes, we’re getting closer to being able to choose our children via genetic engineering, but that's a subject for another tirade.) No one gets to choose where he’s born. Insofar as ethnicity is taken to imply cultural norms and practices, some are exemplary, some are tolerable, and some are most definitely vile. But the norms and practices are detachable from accidents of geography, as the experiences of Man’s “diaspora” demographics clearly demonstrate. Nothing prevents me, with my Irish-Italian parentage and my fiercely American allegiance, from adopting Russian, Iranian, or Indian norms and practices, except for my distaste for them...particularly their ideas about food.

     Pride in one’s achievements is rational and acceptable, as long as it doesn't lead one to denigrate the legitimate achievements of others. Pride in accidents of birth or geography is simple lunacy. It's intended to foster a collectivist mindset that the lightest brush with rationality would dispel...which says a lot about the intellects of those who immerse themselves in such a mindset, doesn't it?

     The same could be said about any accident of birth – and any choice of a creed.

---

     I’m sure my Gentle Readers are aware of the recent mass shootings at two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques. Perhaps you’re also aware that the Islamic mouthpiece groups are trying to fabricate political and social capital from them. Needless to say, any attempt to get an accurate assessment of the 35,000-plus incidents of Islamic atrocities since Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001 is routinely shouted down by those same mouthpiece groups as “Islamophobia.”

     These folks don’t call themselves Americans. At best, they’re “Muslim-Americans.” Note the hyphen.

     One righteous Australian senator has dared to express himself on the subject:

     …and of course was immediately attacked by the Australian prime minister and other custard-headed Aussie politicians for his “racism.”

     Islam is not a race. It is a violent, imperialist ideology whose Koran and other core documents command Muslims to seek to conquer the world – not merely religiously but politically and legally as well. It wears some theological decorations that it uses to gain protection under Western freedom-of-religion laws. But Nazism used essentially the same disguise – the “Aryan race” as God’s chosen people and Adolf Hitler as its standard-bearer – and we don’t confer special respect or protection on that, do we?

---

     At this point all the daggers are unsheathed. There’s no longer any dissembling about the animosities among the races, the creeds, the ethnicities, and so on. Intertribal violence has erupted several times already. We’re likely to see a lot more of it.

     The one good thing about this state of affairs is that it’s bringing a degree of clarity to what’s really been going on: a massive, multi-front struggle for power, from which each tribe seeks to emerge supreme, capable of dealing as it likes with the others, without resistance or repercussions.

     Hearken to the late George Alec Effinger:

     "Good afternoon. This is Bob Dunne, NBC News in New Haven, Connecticut. We're standing here in the lobby of the Hotel Taft in New Haven, where the first international racial war has just been declared. In just a few seconds, the two men responsible will be coming out of that elevator. (Can you hear me?)
     "—elevator. Those of you in the western time zones are probably already—"
     The elevator doors opened. Two men emerged, smiling and holding their hands above their heads in victorious, self-congratulatory boxers' handshakes. They were immediately mobbed by newsmen. One of the two men was exceptionally tall and black as midnight in Nairobi. The other was short, fat, white, and very nervous. The black man was smiling broadly, the white man was smiling and wiping perspiration from his face with a large red handkerchief.
     "—C News. The Negro has been identified as the representative of the people of color of all nations. He is, according to the mimeographed flyer distributed scant minutes ago, Mary McLeod Bethune Washington, of Washington, Georgia. The other man with him is identified as Robert Randall La Cygne, of La Cygne, Kansas, evidently the delegate of the Caucasian peoples. When, and by whom, this series of negotiations was called is not yet clear.
     "At any rate, the two men, only yesterday sunk in the sticky obscurity of American life, have concluded some sort of bargaining that threatens to engulf the entire world in violent reaction. The actual content of that agreement is still open to specu—
     "—or at any later date."
     A close-up on Washington, who was reading from a small black notebook.
     "We have thus reached, and passed, that critical moment. This fact has been known and ignored by all men, on both sides of the color line, for nearly a generation. Henceforth, this situation is to be, at least, honest, if bloodier. Bob and I join in wishing you all the best of luck, and may God bless."
     "Mr. Washington?"
     "Does this necessarily mean—"
     "—iated Press here, Mr. Washing—"
     "Yes? You, with the hat."
     "Yes, sir. Vincent Reynolds, UPI. Mr. Washington, are we to understand that this agreement has some validity? You are aware that we haven't seen any sort of credentials—"
     Washington grinned. "Thank you. I'm glad you brought that up. Credentials? Just you wait a few minutes, and listen outside. Ain't no stoppin' when them rifles start poppin'!"
     "Mr. Washington?"
     "Yes?"
     "Is this to be an all-out, permanent division of peoples?"
     "All-out, yes. Permanent, no. Bob and I have decided on a sort of statute of limitations. You go out and get what you can for thirty days. At the end of the month, we'll see what and who's left."
     "You can guarantee that there will be no continuation of hostilities at the end of the thirty days?"
     "Why, sure! We're all growed up, now, ain't we? Sure, why, you can trust us!"
     "Then this is a war of racial eradication?"
     "Not at all," said Bob La Cygne, who had remained silent, behind Washington's broad seersucker back. "Not at all what I would call a war of eradication. 'Eradicate' is an ugly term. 'Expunge' is the word we arrived at, isn't it, Mary Beth?"
     "I do believe it is, Bob."
     Washington studied his notebook for a few seconds, ignoring the shouting newsmen around him. No attempt was made by the uniformed guards to stop the pushing and shoving, which had grown somewhat aggravated. Then he smiled brightly, turning to La Cygne. They clasped hands and waved to the flashing bulbs of the photographers.
     "No more questions, boys. You'll figure it all out soon enough; that's enough for now." The two men turned and went back into the waiting elevator.

     [George Alec Effinger, “All the Last Wars At Once”]

     That’s what’s coming if the daggers aren’t resheathed. But resheathing them appears to require the segregation of the various tribes into geographically distinct nation-states – voluntarily if possible, but by force if not. In particular, the historical enmity Muslims bear toward Jews and Christians seems beyond any resolution. The deliberately fomented enmity American Negroes bear toward whites may be irreparable as well. Time will tell.

     I wrote a foreboding about one element of this some time ago. It seems unnecessarily limited and restrained today. The internecine slaughter in George Alec Effinger’s story has come to seem more likely if the tribes – racial, creedal, ethnic, what-have-you – don’t agree to go their separate ways. Doubt it if you like; I can’t.

     While I continue to pray that the tensions will somehow be dispersed and we all return to something approximating mutual tolerance, I will tell you frankly, as few others will: should it come to blows, I’ll be with the white Christian American patriots, and I’ll be shooting. I’ll have no choice, as it will be a matter of survival.

     Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

The Original Dream

     I found this on Gab and had to steal it:

     That was the original idea. George Washington himself said so: “Steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.” Thomas Jefferson echoed the sentiment: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” The Old World, whence America had been born, was a quarrelsome, strife-riven place. The New World had the potential to be free of that nuisance – but only if it could remain aloof from the Old World’s quarrels.

     So what changed? What was it that caused the United States, once referred to by European statesmen as “the Great Neutral,” to immerse itself in the troubles of all the nations on Earth? Never mind the wars we’ve fought; we operate military bases in dozens of other countries. Uniformed Americans stand posts around the globe. How did this come to pass?

     Harry Browne is of the opinion that by 1914, America had developed a governmental class, or power elite, that was eager to be recognized as such by the power elites of other nations:

     By then, the U.S. government resembled the typical old-world governments, and was anxious to take its place as a “world power.” This was facilitated by entry into the European “World War.”

     In passing, I will note that as august a figure as Winston Churchill stated on at least one occasion that there was no need for America to enter World War I, and should have stayed out of it.

     When World War I was over and the disastrous Versailles Treaty had been imposed upon defeated Germany, Americans’ natural “mind your own business” instincts reasserted themselves. We reduced our Army back to pre-War levels and remained aloof from the League of Nations. And of course, the eight Harding / Coolidge years were a time of great prosperity and optimism. But as I’ve written before, in the contest for power he who wants it above all other things will have a natural advantage over those who merely see it as a service to be rendered to the nation. And so we had the rise of “The Great Engineer,” Herbert Hoover, and the never to be adequately damned Franklin D. Roosevelt, men who worshipped State power and were eager to expand it – as long as they were at the helm, of course.

     The growth of State power inevitably involves militarization. The 1930s’ explosion of fresh conflicts in Europe and the Pacific could provide our governmental class with a perfect rationale for regrowing a “world power’s” military. However, Americans’ memories of sacrifice in World War I and disdain for involvement in the troubles of other lands remained dominant until the attack on Pearl Harbor – so much so that FDR had to promise, as part of his 1940 campaign for re-election, that “Your boys are not going to be sent to any foreign wars.” As anyone with a modicum of historical knowledge is aware, that was a flat-out lie.

     War has always been an engine by which to expand the State and its powers over private persons and their undertakings. A war that leaves half the world in a state of enervation and defenselessness offers even greater opportunities. Robert Higgs develops this thesis further in his masterwork Crisis and Leviathan.

     And so today we have the largest, most widely spread military in all of human history. Paradoxically, as it’s grown these past few decades, its traditional military capabilities have shrunk. We can no longer dominate other First World nations in conventional wars. (It’s fortunate for the U.S. that there’s no current need to do so.) Our possession of a large arsenal of weapons of mass destruction – almost entirely nuclear – is what makes us a “hyperpower.” While other nations fear to displease us, it’s mainly for our economic potency rather than our ability to invade them.

     The crowning irony is that there’s no going back, at least in the foreseeable future. America’s gigantic military has become a necessity owing to our involvements around the world, many by treaty, from which we cannot easily extract ourselves. Worse, two other large militaries, those of Russia and China, constitute threats that must be counterbalanced, and there’s no one else to do it. Perhaps worst of all, hostility to the U.S. within our own hemisphere is such that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are no longer sufficient protection against invasion. Consider the mess at our southern border in that light.

     I’m acquainted with a number of military men, both veterans and in current service. They’re honorable people doing a necessary task; no odium attaches to them. Indeed, they’re among the best of us. But it would be nice if the need for their service, and all that goes with it, were less than it is. And as I write those words, a great many aphorisms about the pointlessness of wishing come to mind.

Hard Cases Make Bad Foreign Policy

     It’s commonplace to hear or read pronouncements – sometimes elaborate ones that amount to proposed replacements – on an administration’s “foreign policy,” especially by opinion-mongers who disapprove of what the administration did most recently. Time was, I held such discussions to be critically important. Indeed, I held them to be so important that I read rags such as Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy cover-to-cover, practically the instant they arrived in my mailbox. (At the time I was deep in my studies of strategic-weapons planning and defense postures. So sue me.)

     As my Gentle Readers have already divined from the previous paragraph, I no longer think so. Indeed, I think the notion that an administration can have a “foreign policy” is a bit naive. And of course, this being the loudest and most opinionated of all loudly opinionated blogs, I’m here to tell you why.

     Why now? Syria, of course. Specifically, the alleged use of chemical weapons at Douma a few days ago.

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     Like it or not, the determination of how the nation should act toward other nations is the president’s duty. Congress can constrain him to some degree, mainly by its exercise of the power of the purse, but when the U.S. confronts a decision about whether or not to use military force, the nation’s sword is in the president’s hand. He and he alone will wield it.

     Let’s look at a trying scenario or two. Here’s Scenario #1: Another continent is convulsed in a devastating war. It’s gone on for years and appears likely to go on for years more. The president’s sympathies lie strongly with one side, but the nation is firmly opposed to involving itself in the troubles of other lands, and he’s fully aware of it. Indeed, his re-election campaign made a big deal out of his unwillingness to stick America’s nose into that conflict.

     The president discovers that he can contrive an excuse for sending an expeditionary force to assist his preferred side. Moreover, he knows that should he do so, the country would rally behind its men at arms, as it nearly always has. He acts accordingly – and dooms the world to a still greater conflagration only a couple of decades down the river of Time.

     Now, Scenario #2: Another continent is convulsed in a devastating war. It’s gone on for years and appears likely to go on for years more. The president’s sympathies lie strongly with one side, but the nation is firmly opposed to involving itself in the troubles of other lands, and he’s fully aware of it. Indeed, his re-election campaign made a big deal out of his unwillingness to stick America’s nose into that conflict.

     The president discovers that he can contrive an excuse for sending an expeditionary force to assist his preferred side. Moreover, he knows that should he do so, the country would rally behind its men at arms, as it nearly always has. He acts accordingly – and is hailed as the savior of Mankind for having brought an end to an unspeakable horror and having contrived an enduring peace.

     What’s that you say? The two scenarios are the same, so how could the reactions of the electorate be so greatly at variance? Well, yes. That was the point. The reaction of the electorate to Woodrow Wilson’s insertion of the U.S. into European War I differed radically from its reaction to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s insertion of the U.S. into European War II. The detail differences in setting that evoked the dramatic differences in reaction are what mattered.

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     Probably the determinative factor in whether a nation’s people will approve of its executive’s decision to make war is whether the contest can be given a moral cast. In European War I (a.k.a. World War I and The Great War), President Wilson (“He kept us out of war”) had no such hook on which to hang his decision. He had been inclined to involve the U.S. practically from the outset. His rationale for doing so was contrived from the sinking of the Lusitania and the famous Zimmerman telegram. While one could certainly argue that the implied threats to American lives and interests expressed by those two events constituted a casus belli, one could just as credibly argue that they constituted reasons for the U.S. to cease its shipments of war materiel to Britain. Had Wilson followed the latter course, European War I would probably have petered out after a negotiated settlement of claims between the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. It’s possible that European War II (a.k.a. the European theater of World War II) would not have occurred, though given the vagaries of national sentiments that’s far from guaranteed.

     By contrast, in European War II President Roosevelt (“Your boys are not going to be sent to any foreign wars”) had excellent arguments, moral and practical, for involving the U.S. One was the German alliance with Japan, which had already committed an overt act of war against the U.S. by striking the naval base at Pearl Harbor. The second was Germany’s declaration of war against the U.S. on December 11, 1941, which was swiftly answered with an American declaration of war on Germany. The third was the mass of horrific reports about Germany’s genocidal pogrom against European Jewry, which we now call the Holocaust. Those events were sufficient to animate the American people in favor of war. Indeed, it’s possible that any one of them would have been sufficient even without the others. And despite the rise of the Soviet Union, the imposition of the Iron Curtain, and the immense costs European War II inflicted on the U.S. – far greater than the costs we suffered from European War I – both popular sentiment and the opinions of historians remain quite strongly in favor of our having taken a hand in it.

     In neither case could we say that a predetermined “foreign policy” had anything much to do with it.

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     And now to Syria and the use of chemical weapons at Douma. At this time it is unclear who deployed those weapons. It’s also unclear what interest whoever did so thought to advance by using them. The arguments are raging on all sides. Currently, President Trump appears inclined to believe that the regime of Bashar al Assad is to blame. Moreover, he seems inclined toward punishing that regime with an air strike. Here are my questions, none of which I can confidently answer from available reports:

1. Who decided to use war gases?
2. What did he hope to accomplish by using them?
3. Does the use of war gases justify American action against their employer?
4. Would American action, if taken, conduce to further American involvement in the Syrian conflict?

     ...but I contend that no matter what the answers might be, the president’s decision will have more to do with Americans’ sentiments concerning the proposed action than with his previously declared “foreign policy” of treating military action as a last resort. If the preponderance of popular opinion is that he should act against the putative miscreant, he probably will; otherwise, he probably won’t.

     The sword does rest in the president’s hand, but under current circumstances he cannot be confident that what his intelligence sources – domestic or foreign – tell him about the gas attack is true-to-fact – and he knows it. Indeed, it’s a large part of what got him elected. Therefore he must rely principally on popular opinion. It’s a more reliable gauge than any dictum that emanates from the State Department, the DIA, the CIA, or any foreign intelligence service. And it might well cause him to wield the sword in a conflict in which the U.S. has no obvious stake.

     Foreign policy decisions are like that.

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     The above flows from a cynical realization:

In every nation, the diplomatic, military, and intelligence communities are in business for themselves.

     The implication is plain. It always has been. The president cannot merely assume that what the State Department, the intelligence agencies, the military, and self-interested foreign actors are telling him is the truth. He knows, from both theory and practice, that those entities have agendas of their own. Sometimes those agendas will prove harmonious with the real national interest, but sometimes they won’t. In the usual case it will be impossible for him to tell.

     The notion that a predetermined foreign policy can remain “in force” is ludicrous. Every such decision will be represented to the president by at least some of the interested parties as a good reason to depart from his prior posture. Moreover, he would be well advised to listen attentively to everyone involved – but not because what they tell him is trustworthy.

     I could go on. I could discourse at length about the internal dynamics that give rise to contentions over foreign policy decisions, especially those about the use of military force. I could tease out why it’s wise for the president to listen closely to all the arguments, to compare them with what he knows of the institutional agendas of the proposers, and to contrast their emphases with one another. But this screed is already at a reasonable stopping point.

     More anon.

Asymmetric Warfare: Some Thoughts

     It’s everywhere these days. It colors many aspects of our world, yet it often goes unnoticed. And it has some valuable lessons for us.

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     Something deep and primitive in the human psyche urges us to go head-to-head against the enemy, whoever he is. When the fight-or-flight reflex kicks in, he who chooses to fight almost always goes straight at his opponent, even if the opponent is much larger, stronger, and better equipped. And in most such cases of unequal ability and / or equipment, we may celebrate the little guy’s courage, but seldom award him a victor’s laurels.

     We learn slowly, but we learn. It might have taken millennia and losses innumerable, but eventually, military tacticians learned not to pit strength against strength: to look for and assault weak points at which they might create breakthroughs. That development was one of the few intellectual advances from World War I.

     Yet the primal urge to go straight at ‘em remains powerful. Consider these two passages from On Broken Wings. In the first, Louis is training Christine to fight:

     “Combat is about advantages and how fast you can use them. Everyone has both strengths and weaknesses: you, me, those creeps who came here for you. You never pit strength against strength. You always look for weakness. If you can concentrate your strength against your opponent's weakness before he does the same to you, you have the advantage, and you win. Otherwise, you lose.”
     “You make it sound like a game.”
     “It is a game. There are no rules, and the stakes are your life, but aside from that...”

     In the second, later passage, Christine has just seen her lover murdered before her eyes:

     Her new love stared sightlessly up at her. She crouched over him, felt for his pulse, found none, and began to scream.
     It was a scream of loss and pain, but it was more. Rage swelled within her, pure and lethal, until her universe could hold nothing else.
     It was the call of a predator who has summoned all his powers and challenges his enemy to come forth from the forest to meet him in a final trial of strength and ferocity. It echoed from the buildings and gathered itself to pound against the dome of the sky. It foretold a great battle and a river of blood. It promised death and destruction in a universal tongue. No creature that heard that howl could do other than flee.

     This brilliant, superlative fighter, a supreme master of the arts of combat who’d been trained by the greatest warriors in human history can think of nothing but plunging straight at the biker gang she thinks responsible for the murder. She would have done it, too, if she hadn’t been delayed long enough to receive some all-important counsel from one of her teachers. That’s how basic the go straight at ‘em impulse is.

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     Great fury tends to neutralize the higher reasoning centers. When that happens, the go straight at ‘em impulse will be unchecked. Only if the raging one is fortunate enough to be delayed, such that his rationality can return before he does something rash, will deeper analysis of the tactical situation prevail.

     Occasionally, a government will incorporate enough delaying mechanisms to enforce the return to cool reasoning in the aftermath of an attack. Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001, illustrates how important such a delay can be. Had the United States been under the rule of an absolute hegemon, he might well have lashed out at the entire Islamic world with nuclear weapons. If you were alive and awake when the 9/11 atrocities occurred, that might have been your immediate impulse as well. (Yes, it was mine.) It certainly would have been emotionally satisfying, but whether it would have been the best choice of responses is doubtful.

     Among the terrors of today is the potential for an unanticipated, unannounced attack by a weapon of mass destruction. Had the 9/11 atrocity in Manhattan been committed with a nuclear weapon, President Bush would have had a harder time resisting the impulse to bathe the entire Muslim Middle East in nuclear fire. He might have resisted or been restrained nonetheless, but the impulse would have been near to overwhelming. The magnitude of the sense of violation matters.

     If you’ve read Freedom’s Scion and Freedom’s Fury, reflect on how fortunate it was for the Loioc that Althea Morelon wasn’t carrying a planet-buster when she was attacked with the nanites the Loioc used to render their men non-sentient. Put yourself in her place, and load a couple of notional planet-killing weapons into the hold of Liberty’s Torch. (The starship, not the website.) Would you have been able to resist the genocidal urge?

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     It’s my hope, as an amateur of strategic thinking, that Mankind will learn more and better techniques in asymmetric warfare as we progress. We need them. Consider, if you will, the ravagings Muslim terrorists are inflicting upon the peoples of Europe. The Islamic campaign to conquer Europe has two principal prongs:

• Terrorist strikes;
• Reproduction.

     Clearly, the First World cannot and must not attempt to use those tactics in response. Neither would it suffice to deploy any other conventional law-enforcement or military tactic. The nations of Europe must develop a new tactic with which to reply: something just as asymmetric to the Muslim invaders’ tactics as the invaders’ ploys are to conventional nation-against-nation warfare.

     I cannot foresee that tactic. It probably won’t be military, though that’s not guaranteed. It might be economic; it might be religious or philosophical; or it might be something wholly outside historical experience. But the necessity is plain.

     The inverse of go straight at ‘em is hit ‘em where they ain’t. The First World’s military strategists and tacticians have grasped that. The time has come for the rest of our institutions to follow suit.

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     If you’d like to supplement the rather somber article above with a little levity, consider this: I got the impulse to write about the topic from reading this article. Enjoy your laughter, to be sure, but reflect on the commonality of the principles, as well.