1Doug1943
I want to propose something to the people who follow this site ... really, to the people on the Left side of the barricades.
Fact: the American Right, in its base, is reflexively patriotic, if not nationalist. This has meant, in the past, that if the President took us into a war, he would be instantly, vociferously supported.
For the same reason, military responses to threats, real or otherwise, from abroad, were the response of choice for the great majority of American conservatives. (There were currents within the Right for which this was not true, such as the people at Pat Buchanan's American Conservative, but they had little influence.)
I believe this is true from my fairly extensive exposure to rightwing social media, debate forums, comment pages. The poeple who take part in these are not a random sample of the base of the Right, but I think they are representative of it.
Fact: the American Left were generally not nearly so enthusiastic for America's wars of the last few decades. Their general reflex was to oppose them. (Afghanistan was a partial exception.)
Fact: The experiences of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last twenty years have changed the attitude of large numbers of ordinary people on the Right. "Experience keeps a dear school ..." etc.
This change is not a change in worldview -- it's purely pragmatic. It's their sons and daughters -- for many of them -- who have been trying to bring Lesbian Outreach Centers to Kandahar, and getting killed in the process ... all for ... nothing.
Now ... I see a great opportunity here. Namely, the possibility to consolidate this attitude -- which I share -- and to build a powerful, cross-party constituency for a restrained -- "non-interventionist" -- foreign policy.
At the moment, on the Right, this sentiment is inchoate, a mood, a reflex without a worked out analysis behind it. So it could change.
That would be a tragedy.
Now if you think about it, it's a remarkable shift. The base of the Right has adopted a central 'liberal' or Left position on a critical issue. No one seems to have noticed.
This does NOT mean that the Republican Party will return to its isolationist roots, or anything like it. The military-industrial complex is strong, there is a powerful collective of articulate academics who hold the America-must-dominate-the-world view, it's the natural attitude of the Deep State, both civilian and military.
But I see an opportunity, an opportunity to bring some focus to this widespread sentiment, to provide those who hold it with intellectual ammuntion which might allow them to consolidate their views, and transform the Republlican Party on this issue. Right now, Mr Trump commands deep loyalty on the Right, and this complicates things, but the opportunity is there.
So ... I would like to know what others think of this obsrevation ... and in particular, would anyone be interested in discussing concrete ways in which what is now a possibly-transient mood might be given permanence.
Fact: the American Right, in its base, is reflexively patriotic, if not nationalist. This has meant, in the past, that if the President took us into a war, he would be instantly, vociferously supported.
For the same reason, military responses to threats, real or otherwise, from abroad, were the response of choice for the great majority of American conservatives. (There were currents within the Right for which this was not true, such as the people at Pat Buchanan's American Conservative, but they had little influence.)
I believe this is true from my fairly extensive exposure to rightwing social media, debate forums, comment pages. The poeple who take part in these are not a random sample of the base of the Right, but I think they are representative of it.
Fact: the American Left were generally not nearly so enthusiastic for America's wars of the last few decades. Their general reflex was to oppose them. (Afghanistan was a partial exception.)
Fact: The experiences of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last twenty years have changed the attitude of large numbers of ordinary people on the Right. "Experience keeps a dear school ..." etc.
This change is not a change in worldview -- it's purely pragmatic. It's their sons and daughters -- for many of them -- who have been trying to bring Lesbian Outreach Centers to Kandahar, and getting killed in the process ... all for ... nothing.
Now ... I see a great opportunity here. Namely, the possibility to consolidate this attitude -- which I share -- and to build a powerful, cross-party constituency for a restrained -- "non-interventionist" -- foreign policy.
At the moment, on the Right, this sentiment is inchoate, a mood, a reflex without a worked out analysis behind it. So it could change.
That would be a tragedy.
Now if you think about it, it's a remarkable shift. The base of the Right has adopted a central 'liberal' or Left position on a critical issue. No one seems to have noticed.
This does NOT mean that the Republican Party will return to its isolationist roots, or anything like it. The military-industrial complex is strong, there is a powerful collective of articulate academics who hold the America-must-dominate-the-world view, it's the natural attitude of the Deep State, both civilian and military.
But I see an opportunity, an opportunity to bring some focus to this widespread sentiment, to provide those who hold it with intellectual ammuntion which might allow them to consolidate their views, and transform the Republlican Party on this issue. Right now, Mr Trump commands deep loyalty on the Right, and this complicates things, but the opportunity is there.
So ... I would like to know what others think of this obsrevation ... and in particular, would anyone be interested in discussing concrete ways in which what is now a possibly-transient mood might be given permanence.
2John5918
Thanks, Doug. I am one of "the people who follow this site" and certainly I'm to the left of centre. I fully support any call to oppose war. However I note that most of your post is about the USA, a call for bi-partisanship on this issue which seems to go against the grain of the current identity-group culture wars in that country which appear to preclude any rational or civilised conversation, and that you phrase it as consolidating an attitude for a restrained "non-interventionist" foreign policy, which is linked to but not identical to opposing war. But it's a start.
Quite simply, war should not be a tool of foreign policy. War is by its nature an admission of failure - it means that other tools have either failed or, as is more often the case, not even seriously tried.
You refer to being "purely pragmatic". Evidence-based academic research which has become available in recent years shows that statistically, nonviolent struggles have succeeded twice as often as wars, and the post-struggle society is far more likely to achieve sustainable peace, justice, democracy and human rights. I often recommend Why Civil Resistance Works by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan. For those who have no objection to a Christian slant, Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the World edited by Rose Marie Berger, Ken Butigan, Judy Coode and Marie Dennis also contains a lot of general resource material.
Quite simply, war should not be a tool of foreign policy. War is by its nature an admission of failure - it means that other tools have either failed or, as is more often the case, not even seriously tried.
You refer to being "purely pragmatic". Evidence-based academic research which has become available in recent years shows that statistically, nonviolent struggles have succeeded twice as often as wars, and the post-struggle society is far more likely to achieve sustainable peace, justice, democracy and human rights. I often recommend Why Civil Resistance Works by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J Stephan. For those who have no objection to a Christian slant, Advancing Nonviolence and Just Peace in the Church and the World edited by Rose Marie Berger, Ken Butigan, Judy Coode and Marie Dennis also contains a lot of general resource material.
3Doug1943
John, thanks for your reply.
I know that you are committed to non-violence as method of advancing human progress. We could argue about this, including that statistical study, but ... another time.
At the moment, I have very modest aims. I want my fellow conservatives in the US, who -- at the moment -- have no stomach for more wars of choice abroad, to consolidate this feeling into a more systematic understanding of why these are a bad idea.
An analogy: if someone runs in the Republican primary, he or she will be asked where they stand on a number of issues that are important to American conservatives: abortion, gun rights, building the wall, etc. If they reveal that they have 'liberal' attitudes on any of these things, they will face a lot of opposition.
I want to make a restrained foreign policy one of those issues. Sadly, unlike the other issues which are pretty much yes/no, it's hard to formulate 'a restrained foreign policy' into a simple yes/no question. At least, I have not been able to do so. (If anyone has any suggestions, they will be gratefully received).
I'm not talking about 'isolationism' -- you can have military alliances and still have a 'restrained foreign policy'. I'm certainly not talking about pacifism. Sometimes you have to go to war, and when you do, you should go all-out to win it.
Basically, I'm talking about having the same attitude towards foreign military involvement that I take liberals to have: generally a bad idea, don't do it. If we had had that stance 20 years ago, how much grief would have been avoided?
There is a more general question here: namely, the belief of the American establishment that it must intervene everywhere, lecture the Taliban (!) about having more women in government, shake our finger at the Chinese for putting the Uyghers into camps, issue condemnations of Cuba for jailing their dissidents ... as if the US was the moral guardian of the world.
We act like it's our mission to bring civilization to the rest of the world, when we cannot even bring it to South Chicago.
Anyway, as a start, I want to find some way to focus the current distaste for more foreign wars among conservatives, and get them talking about the question of what our role in the world should be.
I'm not sure how to do this, I just know that it would be a very good thing if it were done.
At this point, it would be helpful if anyone -- Left, Right, or Center -- who had some ideas about this, even just quick impressions, would post them here.
I know that you are committed to non-violence as method of advancing human progress. We could argue about this, including that statistical study, but ... another time.
At the moment, I have very modest aims. I want my fellow conservatives in the US, who -- at the moment -- have no stomach for more wars of choice abroad, to consolidate this feeling into a more systematic understanding of why these are a bad idea.
An analogy: if someone runs in the Republican primary, he or she will be asked where they stand on a number of issues that are important to American conservatives: abortion, gun rights, building the wall, etc. If they reveal that they have 'liberal' attitudes on any of these things, they will face a lot of opposition.
I want to make a restrained foreign policy one of those issues. Sadly, unlike the other issues which are pretty much yes/no, it's hard to formulate 'a restrained foreign policy' into a simple yes/no question. At least, I have not been able to do so. (If anyone has any suggestions, they will be gratefully received).
I'm not talking about 'isolationism' -- you can have military alliances and still have a 'restrained foreign policy'. I'm certainly not talking about pacifism. Sometimes you have to go to war, and when you do, you should go all-out to win it.
Basically, I'm talking about having the same attitude towards foreign military involvement that I take liberals to have: generally a bad idea, don't do it. If we had had that stance 20 years ago, how much grief would have been avoided?
There is a more general question here: namely, the belief of the American establishment that it must intervene everywhere, lecture the Taliban (!) about having more women in government, shake our finger at the Chinese for putting the Uyghers into camps, issue condemnations of Cuba for jailing their dissidents ... as if the US was the moral guardian of the world.
We act like it's our mission to bring civilization to the rest of the world, when we cannot even bring it to South Chicago.
Anyway, as a start, I want to find some way to focus the current distaste for more foreign wars among conservatives, and get them talking about the question of what our role in the world should be.
I'm not sure how to do this, I just know that it would be a very good thing if it were done.
At this point, it would be helpful if anyone -- Left, Right, or Center -- who had some ideas about this, even just quick impressions, would post them here.
4kiparsky
While I agree that military intervention is in general to be opposed for all sorts of good reasons, and I can agree with people on the conclusion even if we choose different selections from the available possible reasons for reaching it, and I can agree that there is at the moment some anti-interventionist sentiment on the right, I'm not sure there is a viable way to leverage that sentiment.
First let's consider what we might call the "Kumbaya" approach to bipartisanship: voters who oppose intervention make that their primary policy preference, and vote for the candidate who most convincingly opposes intervention, regardless of their party. The result in our fantasy would be: massive disruption of traditional party preferences and a solid anti-intervention majority in both houses of the legislature.
However, as a person of basic human decency, I'm pretty sure I'm never going to vote for anyone who's willing to call themselves a Republican in my lifetime, because in my view, that means allying themselves with a range of policies that no civilized person could possibly support. Once upon a time, we could disagree about fiscal policy and whether the government should tell us what we can do with our unmentionable bits and what drugs we could take and stuff like that. That time is gone, and I don't think it'll ever come back.
Someone who runs as a Republican in 2020 is committing themselves to a party that is fundamentally at odds with, basically, humanity. A Republican is someone who's willing to align themselves with a pro-treason, anti-science party that seeks as a matter of policy to disenfranchise people whose racial background suggests they might not vote the right way, and which seeks to destroy public schools in order to keep a population ignorant enough to go along with all of this, and also favors a policy of enslaving all women everywhere. I couldn't vote for that person, because they have chosen to oppose everything that is America. If they happen to be aligned with me on one policy or another, there is simply no way that would sway me.
I'm pretty sure that a Republican today could make very similar statements about supporting a Democrat. They'd be wrong of course, but that's their lookout, they would still make those noises. So basically, Kumbaya bipartisanship is not going to fly.
Okay, what about a different approach? Let's consider a "both-partisan" approach (rather than "bipartisan"). In that approach, anti-intervention voters would have to be more active in their party primaries, and push that as their required policy to get on the ticket. If you're right about the sentiment on both sides, this should be sufficient to create a natural caucus in the House and/or the Senate which could be expected to reliably oppose the wars which our Republican leaders from time to time wade us into.
Sounds great - but it doesn't work.
The problem with this approach is that Republican legislators do not own their own votes, so it doesn't matter what you as a Republican constituent might care about. Witness the current mess around voting rights bills, for example. I'm absolutely certain that there are at least ten senators who think that Black votes should matter. If Republican legislators were allowed to vote their views, the voting rights acts would have passed easily on day 2 of the Biden presidency with well over 60 votes in the Senate, and there would have been no question at all of filibusters or arcane policy maneuvering, and McConnell and Manchin and Sinema would be off scratching their asses in the corner where they belong. But Republican legislators are not allowed to cast their own votes, on any subject, which means it doesn't matter how anti-war their constituents are.
So, while I appreciate the sentiment, you seem to have badly misjudged your party's willingness to care about what you think. On anything at all, really.
First let's consider what we might call the "Kumbaya" approach to bipartisanship: voters who oppose intervention make that their primary policy preference, and vote for the candidate who most convincingly opposes intervention, regardless of their party. The result in our fantasy would be: massive disruption of traditional party preferences and a solid anti-intervention majority in both houses of the legislature.
However, as a person of basic human decency, I'm pretty sure I'm never going to vote for anyone who's willing to call themselves a Republican in my lifetime, because in my view, that means allying themselves with a range of policies that no civilized person could possibly support. Once upon a time, we could disagree about fiscal policy and whether the government should tell us what we can do with our unmentionable bits and what drugs we could take and stuff like that. That time is gone, and I don't think it'll ever come back.
Someone who runs as a Republican in 2020 is committing themselves to a party that is fundamentally at odds with, basically, humanity. A Republican is someone who's willing to align themselves with a pro-treason, anti-science party that seeks as a matter of policy to disenfranchise people whose racial background suggests they might not vote the right way, and which seeks to destroy public schools in order to keep a population ignorant enough to go along with all of this, and also favors a policy of enslaving all women everywhere. I couldn't vote for that person, because they have chosen to oppose everything that is America. If they happen to be aligned with me on one policy or another, there is simply no way that would sway me.
I'm pretty sure that a Republican today could make very similar statements about supporting a Democrat. They'd be wrong of course, but that's their lookout, they would still make those noises. So basically, Kumbaya bipartisanship is not going to fly.
Okay, what about a different approach? Let's consider a "both-partisan" approach (rather than "bipartisan"). In that approach, anti-intervention voters would have to be more active in their party primaries, and push that as their required policy to get on the ticket. If you're right about the sentiment on both sides, this should be sufficient to create a natural caucus in the House and/or the Senate which could be expected to reliably oppose the wars which our Republican leaders from time to time wade us into.
Sounds great - but it doesn't work.
The problem with this approach is that Republican legislators do not own their own votes, so it doesn't matter what you as a Republican constituent might care about. Witness the current mess around voting rights bills, for example. I'm absolutely certain that there are at least ten senators who think that Black votes should matter. If Republican legislators were allowed to vote their views, the voting rights acts would have passed easily on day 2 of the Biden presidency with well over 60 votes in the Senate, and there would have been no question at all of filibusters or arcane policy maneuvering, and McConnell and Manchin and Sinema would be off scratching their asses in the corner where they belong. But Republican legislators are not allowed to cast their own votes, on any subject, which means it doesn't matter how anti-war their constituents are.
So, while I appreciate the sentiment, you seem to have badly misjudged your party's willingness to care about what you think. On anything at all, really.
5Doug1943
Thank you for the thoughtful reply.
I agree that putting up 'fusion' candidates, or some sort of electoral agreement where we support the antiwar candidate most likely to win, even if they are running on the other party's ticket, is not on the cards right now.
However, your concept of a 'Both-partisan' approach -- my side votes for our Evil Antiwar candidates, your side votes for your Virtuous Antiwar candidates -- is just what I'm talking about.
You say, no, that won't work because Republican candidates are not allowed to cast their own votes ... because ... and here I don't follow you. I don't actually understand what you mean. Do you mean that they would like to vote for some Democratic proposals, but do not because ... because why?
It's true that many Republican politicians are currently constrained from doing what they would like to do, but the thing that they're constrained about is Mr Trump. The reality is, that there are large numbers of Republican politicians who don't actually like Mr Trump, but they are afraid of their own base, which does.
I want to make them afraid of their own base on this issue as well.
But to do that, the base has to be educated and their distaste for more foreign wars given a concrete focus. They need to start discussing it, hearing debates about it, seeing the argument against interventionism put forth in forums, letters to the editor, Tweets, etc.
The potential is there. I have been closely involved, via social media, forums, etc with the American Right for a couple of years -- I've been monitoring, and taking part in, discussions among all kinds of Republicans ... from small businessmen and professionals, to hard-core militia groups. And the ALL talk as if they had come out of Michael Moore movie, fuming about the big corporations, about American jobs going abroad, about the top military brass whose main interest is their careers. If you knew what these people were saying fifteen years ago -- pro-invading Iraq, pro-free trade -- you would be astonished.
Consider this: suppose a couple of hundred prominent people signed some sort of manifesto demanding a change in our foreign policy -- people from both sides of the barricades. People like Tulsi Gabbard and Jim Webb from your side, and Rand Paul and, maybe, Dan Crenshaw from mine.That would get a lot of attention. It would set the stage for the sort of debate among the Right that I want to see.
I understand that you think my side is Evil. But that's irrelevant. If we co operate on this, we might be able to achieve something very important, that could not be achieved otherwise.
When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Churchill, a hardline anti-Communist, addressed the issue that this presented: how could a democracy ally with a tyranny as bad as or worse than Hitler's? Well, it was necessary. As Churchill put it, if Hitler invaded Hell, he, Churchill, would find a few favorable words to say about the Devil in the House of Commons.
I'm not even asking liberals to say a few favorable words about us. You work your side of the street, we'll work ours. But we have an interest in common.
In the meantime, everyone should read this fellow, who sheds a lot of light on how American foreign policy is made. I thought I had a pretty good idea about it, but he told me something that I didn't know.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/america-as-a-phantom-empire
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/new-book-public-choice-theory-and
I agree that putting up 'fusion' candidates, or some sort of electoral agreement where we support the antiwar candidate most likely to win, even if they are running on the other party's ticket, is not on the cards right now.
However, your concept of a 'Both-partisan' approach -- my side votes for our Evil Antiwar candidates, your side votes for your Virtuous Antiwar candidates -- is just what I'm talking about.
You say, no, that won't work because Republican candidates are not allowed to cast their own votes ... because ... and here I don't follow you. I don't actually understand what you mean. Do you mean that they would like to vote for some Democratic proposals, but do not because ... because why?
It's true that many Republican politicians are currently constrained from doing what they would like to do, but the thing that they're constrained about is Mr Trump. The reality is, that there are large numbers of Republican politicians who don't actually like Mr Trump, but they are afraid of their own base, which does.
I want to make them afraid of their own base on this issue as well.
But to do that, the base has to be educated and their distaste for more foreign wars given a concrete focus. They need to start discussing it, hearing debates about it, seeing the argument against interventionism put forth in forums, letters to the editor, Tweets, etc.
The potential is there. I have been closely involved, via social media, forums, etc with the American Right for a couple of years -- I've been monitoring, and taking part in, discussions among all kinds of Republicans ... from small businessmen and professionals, to hard-core militia groups. And the ALL talk as if they had come out of Michael Moore movie, fuming about the big corporations, about American jobs going abroad, about the top military brass whose main interest is their careers. If you knew what these people were saying fifteen years ago -- pro-invading Iraq, pro-free trade -- you would be astonished.
Consider this: suppose a couple of hundred prominent people signed some sort of manifesto demanding a change in our foreign policy -- people from both sides of the barricades. People like Tulsi Gabbard and Jim Webb from your side, and Rand Paul and, maybe, Dan Crenshaw from mine.That would get a lot of attention. It would set the stage for the sort of debate among the Right that I want to see.
I understand that you think my side is Evil. But that's irrelevant. If we co operate on this, we might be able to achieve something very important, that could not be achieved otherwise.
When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Churchill, a hardline anti-Communist, addressed the issue that this presented: how could a democracy ally with a tyranny as bad as or worse than Hitler's? Well, it was necessary. As Churchill put it, if Hitler invaded Hell, he, Churchill, would find a few favorable words to say about the Devil in the House of Commons.
I'm not even asking liberals to say a few favorable words about us. You work your side of the street, we'll work ours. But we have an interest in common.
In the meantime, everyone should read this fellow, who sheds a lot of light on how American foreign policy is made. I thought I had a pretty good idea about it, but he told me something that I didn't know.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/america-as-a-phantom-empire
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/new-book-public-choice-theory-and
6kiparsky
>5 Doug1943: Is Tulsi Gabbard on my side? I'd no idea, I'd thought she was one of yours!
Be that as it may, in recent years - basically, under McConnell - I see pretty much a lockstep Republican caucus in both houses, with almost no deviation from a platform that certainly nobody actually supports. There have been a handful of dissenters who have stood up to the elevation of Trump to the role of "god-emperor" of the party, and they are being systematically hounded out of the party. There has been no indication of dissent from McConnell's schemes to destroy the integrity of the Supreme Court, there has been no indication of any dissent on the question of enslaving women, there has been no dissent on the question of Black votes and whether they should be counted, there has been no significant dissent, as far as I can recall, at all.
What makes you think that dissent on questions of war would be tolerated in a party that is currently locked up tighter than the CCP?
Be that as it may, in recent years - basically, under McConnell - I see pretty much a lockstep Republican caucus in both houses, with almost no deviation from a platform that certainly nobody actually supports. There have been a handful of dissenters who have stood up to the elevation of Trump to the role of "god-emperor" of the party, and they are being systematically hounded out of the party. There has been no indication of dissent from McConnell's schemes to destroy the integrity of the Supreme Court, there has been no indication of any dissent on the question of enslaving women, there has been no dissent on the question of Black votes and whether they should be counted, there has been no significant dissent, as far as I can recall, at all.
What makes you think that dissent on questions of war would be tolerated in a party that is currently locked up tighter than the CCP?
7Doug1943
>6 kiparsky: They've been "hounded out of the party" by the base, not the top. They're afraid of getting "primaried".
Look, you don't have to like someone, in order to ally with them for a goal you both share.
Here's a fact: there is lots of discussion, argument, debate within the ranks of the Right (which includes non-Republicans of various sorts). Despite the essential truth of this essay: https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/liberals-read-conservatives-watch
Okay, these people are only a fraction of the whole -- just as people like you are a fraction of the Democratic voting base -- but they are probably 'opinion leaders'. In any case, they're what are now accessible ... or one of the pools of people on the Right who are accessible.
Going by Twitter 'Follows' for people like Tucker Carlson -- who would be fully on board with this idea, and who influences millions -- and the subscription base for conservative journals, and the membership of various rightwing forums -- I reckon there is probably on the order of a million people on the Right who are engaged enough in politics to read about political ideas, to argue on line, to write comments in various places. These people are reachable, through the magic of the inernet.
I think you're letting your distaste for the Republican Party affect your judgement here. I've agitated trillions of electrons in arguing with my fellow rightwingers who hold a symmetric view, who think all Democrats are commies who are consciously working to destroy America and render us serfs of a globalist corporate empire. They don't do nuance, they are not sensitive to contradictions, they let their emotional response derail their analytical ability.
We've got to be cold-blooded here, size up the possibilities for doing something constructive, and seize them.
Let me ask you this: if what I'm proposing actually did work ... wouldn't it be Good Thing?
As for Tulsi -- yes, she's not Politically Correct, and therefore doesn't fit into the current lamentable trend on the Left. But I could show you -- in threads on rightwing forums where someone has mentioned her favorably for this reason -- long, passionate denunciations of her by conservative hardliners, showing that she is really a socialist. But yours or ours, she's an asset.
Please have a think about this.
And here's a point: if the GOP is like the CCP, and its officials are all still waiting for the chance to repeat George Bush's brilliant move to bring democracy to the Muslim world, then what I'm trying to do would open up a huge contradiction between them, and a large part of their voters. Wouldn't you like to do that?
Look, you don't have to like someone, in order to ally with them for a goal you both share.
Here's a fact: there is lots of discussion, argument, debate within the ranks of the Right (which includes non-Republicans of various sorts). Despite the essential truth of this essay: https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/liberals-read-conservatives-watch
Okay, these people are only a fraction of the whole -- just as people like you are a fraction of the Democratic voting base -- but they are probably 'opinion leaders'. In any case, they're what are now accessible ... or one of the pools of people on the Right who are accessible.
Going by Twitter 'Follows' for people like Tucker Carlson -- who would be fully on board with this idea, and who influences millions -- and the subscription base for conservative journals, and the membership of various rightwing forums -- I reckon there is probably on the order of a million people on the Right who are engaged enough in politics to read about political ideas, to argue on line, to write comments in various places. These people are reachable, through the magic of the inernet.
I think you're letting your distaste for the Republican Party affect your judgement here. I've agitated trillions of electrons in arguing with my fellow rightwingers who hold a symmetric view, who think all Democrats are commies who are consciously working to destroy America and render us serfs of a globalist corporate empire. They don't do nuance, they are not sensitive to contradictions, they let their emotional response derail their analytical ability.
We've got to be cold-blooded here, size up the possibilities for doing something constructive, and seize them.
Let me ask you this: if what I'm proposing actually did work ... wouldn't it be Good Thing?
As for Tulsi -- yes, she's not Politically Correct, and therefore doesn't fit into the current lamentable trend on the Left. But I could show you -- in threads on rightwing forums where someone has mentioned her favorably for this reason -- long, passionate denunciations of her by conservative hardliners, showing that she is really a socialist. But yours or ours, she's an asset.
Please have a think about this.
And here's a point: if the GOP is like the CCP, and its officials are all still waiting for the chance to repeat George Bush's brilliant move to bring democracy to the Muslim world, then what I'm trying to do would open up a huge contradiction between them, and a large part of their voters. Wouldn't you like to do that?
8kiparsky
>7 Doug1943: I'm not sure what it is you'd like me to do here. The left is already pretty solidly anti-war, the wars that have been started in my lifetime have all been Republican operations and all of the opposition to them has come from the left.
If folks on the right want to agitate for anti-war candidates, I think that'd be marvelous, but there's no way on earth that I'm going to help someone get elected who can stomach running as a Republican in 2022, and I think this goes for any real American today. So what is it that you're looking for from the left, exactly?
If folks on the right want to agitate for anti-war candidates, I think that'd be marvelous, but there's no way on earth that I'm going to help someone get elected who can stomach running as a Republican in 2022, and I think this goes for any real American today. So what is it that you're looking for from the left, exactly?
9John5918
>8 kiparsky:
I thought it was a Democrat, Kennedy, who first sent US troops into Vietnam? But I don't know how old you are, so maybe that wasn't in your lifetime. Unfortunately it was a Labour government that involved the UK in the Afghanistan war and the second Iraq war.
I thought it was a Democrat, Kennedy, who first sent US troops into Vietnam? But I don't know how old you are, so maybe that wasn't in your lifetime. Unfortunately it was a Labour government that involved the UK in the Afghanistan war and the second Iraq war.
10kiparsky
>9 John5918: You're correct, of course, but consider my political lifetime as starting with Reagan (technically, I lived through Ford and Carter as well, but the first president I was aware of was Reagan)
WRT British politics I don't make a big distinction between Conservative and Labor, to be honest. Labor has a left contingent, but they seem to be more or less the left wing of a two-sided status quo party. And if I'm honest, Conservatives have a right contingent but they haven't gone fully lunatic. I can still imagine having a respectful disagreement on policy with a British Conservative Party member. Not so with a Republican, since they have committed themselves to a suite of policies which no decent human being could possibly respect.
WRT British politics I don't make a big distinction between Conservative and Labor, to be honest. Labor has a left contingent, but they seem to be more or less the left wing of a two-sided status quo party. And if I'm honest, Conservatives have a right contingent but they haven't gone fully lunatic. I can still imagine having a respectful disagreement on policy with a British Conservative Party member. Not so with a Republican, since they have committed themselves to a suite of policies which no decent human being could possibly respect.
11Doug1943
>8 kiparsky: The 20th Century wars saw the US being led into them by Democrats, with the exception of Gulf War I. I'm not criticizing the Democrats for this ... in particular, I'm very happy that FDR managed to get us into WWII, over the apathy of the American people, by goading the Japanese into firing the first shot.
It is true that the 'drain the swamp' wars of the 21st Century were Republican, under the guidance of the neo-cons.
In fact, our foreign policy since the end of WWII has been very heavily influenced by the arms industry.
The Andrew Coburn had a good piece in Harper's on that: https://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/game-on/
I see you would vote for a pro-war Democrat over an anti-war Republican. It's this attitude I'm trying to challenge: not necessarily your decision to vote straight Democratic no matter what; perhaps the issue of removing exams in math and science that some minorities can't pass is more important to you. But the general attitude of ruling out united actions with people you despise (who are not 'real Americans' -- by which I assume you mean real Americans like the Soviet spy Ethyl Rosenberg, not too long ago honored by the liberal Democrats of the New York City Council) -- it's this attitude I want to challenge.
You don't ally with someone because you like them. You ally with someone because together you can accomplish a mutually-desired goal. The liberal democracies allied with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union against Hitler, and they were right to do so.
How could Left and Right co operate now on the issue of foreign policy?
To tell the truth, I'm not quite sure yet. I want to hear the comments and ideas of others on this.
One idea: some sort of Pledge, for every candidate, to the effect that they will not support attempting to make the US the world hegemon. It's difficult to word this properly -- I'm certainly not talking about unilateral disarmament, nor about abandoning alliances. But I am talking about not trying to maintain the old Cold War posture that the US took -- perhaps had to take -- when the USSR was alive.
We don't need to, and should not, interfere in the Russian/Ukrainian ethnic conflict. We certainly shouldn't push the Ukrainians into a war with Russia, one they would surely lose.
We don't need to sail the Seventh Fleet up and down off China's coast. How would we feel if a Chinese fleet was stationed off our shores, or if Mexico or Canada invited in Chinese troops and missiles, right across our border?
We have an opportunity, which may be fleeting, to significantly affect American foreign policy. If you're okay with current foreign policy, of course you won't want to take part. But if you're not, you should realize that a large section of the American Right is also unhappy with it -- perhaps not, yet, as the result of a deep understanding of the problem, but certainly in terms of no longer having a reflexive pro-military-solution attitude.
It would be a tragedy if this opportunity were missed, because people on the Left don't like Republicans.
It is true that the 'drain the swamp' wars of the 21st Century were Republican, under the guidance of the neo-cons.
In fact, our foreign policy since the end of WWII has been very heavily influenced by the arms industry.
The Andrew Coburn had a good piece in Harper's on that: https://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/game-on/
I see you would vote for a pro-war Democrat over an anti-war Republican. It's this attitude I'm trying to challenge: not necessarily your decision to vote straight Democratic no matter what; perhaps the issue of removing exams in math and science that some minorities can't pass is more important to you. But the general attitude of ruling out united actions with people you despise (who are not 'real Americans' -- by which I assume you mean real Americans like the Soviet spy Ethyl Rosenberg, not too long ago honored by the liberal Democrats of the New York City Council) -- it's this attitude I want to challenge.
You don't ally with someone because you like them. You ally with someone because together you can accomplish a mutually-desired goal. The liberal democracies allied with Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union against Hitler, and they were right to do so.
How could Left and Right co operate now on the issue of foreign policy?
To tell the truth, I'm not quite sure yet. I want to hear the comments and ideas of others on this.
One idea: some sort of Pledge, for every candidate, to the effect that they will not support attempting to make the US the world hegemon. It's difficult to word this properly -- I'm certainly not talking about unilateral disarmament, nor about abandoning alliances. But I am talking about not trying to maintain the old Cold War posture that the US took -- perhaps had to take -- when the USSR was alive.
We don't need to, and should not, interfere in the Russian/Ukrainian ethnic conflict. We certainly shouldn't push the Ukrainians into a war with Russia, one they would surely lose.
We don't need to sail the Seventh Fleet up and down off China's coast. How would we feel if a Chinese fleet was stationed off our shores, or if Mexico or Canada invited in Chinese troops and missiles, right across our border?
We have an opportunity, which may be fleeting, to significantly affect American foreign policy. If you're okay with current foreign policy, of course you won't want to take part. But if you're not, you should realize that a large section of the American Right is also unhappy with it -- perhaps not, yet, as the result of a deep understanding of the problem, but certainly in terms of no longer having a reflexive pro-military-solution attitude.
It would be a tragedy if this opportunity were missed, because people on the Left don't like Republicans.
12kiparsky
Again: if you want Republicans to oppose war, all I can say is it's long past time Republicans got on that train. The disaster in Afghanistan, two wars in Iraq, a generation of clandestine war on Central America, and sundry pecker-lifters in Panama and Grenada - no good has come of the Republican obsession with war and nothing good can come of it.
But, again, again, that's your battle to fight. I'm not going to lift a finger to support someone who hates America and Americans, who thinks Black Americans should not be allowed to vote, who despises human beings for having been born on the wrong side of some asshole's line on a map, and who believes that women should be slaves of the state. Even if they think war is a bad idea, they're never going to do a bit of good for anyone, and there's no way I'm going to help them into even more power.
If, through your efforts, the lying bastard party gains an anti-war contingent, that'd be a fine thing, in some sort of symbolic sense. It'd actually mean something if you could find a Republican with both principles and spine, but unfortunately he died.
But, again, again, that's your battle to fight. I'm not going to lift a finger to support someone who hates America and Americans, who thinks Black Americans should not be allowed to vote, who despises human beings for having been born on the wrong side of some asshole's line on a map, and who believes that women should be slaves of the state. Even if they think war is a bad idea, they're never going to do a bit of good for anyone, and there's no way I'm going to help them into even more power.
If, through your efforts, the lying bastard party gains an anti-war contingent, that'd be a fine thing, in some sort of symbolic sense. It'd actually mean something if you could find a Republican with both principles and spine, but unfortunately he died.
13Doug1943
Well, that's very helpful.
It doesn't seem that there are any others here who are interested in developing a serious movement against more foreign wars. Too bad. Perhaps all the progressives here hope that we'll get involved in the inter-tribal war in Ukraine. (The military-industrial complex has its claws in both parties.)
So we'll leave it at that.
But just one personal point: if by the "someone ... who thinks Black Americans should not be allowed to vote" -- which describes no one I know or know of, but perhaps is meant to refer to me -- I will match my efforts on behalf of Black Americans' voting rights, and other rights, against you, or any other sniveling little Lefty virtue signaller, any time.
How about this, Mr Virtue: let's both send MargD, whom I know to be an honest person, a thousand dollars, along with our personal histories in the struggle for Black rights. (Hey, I'm an old white Southerner, how can you lose?) She'll decide who has done more for Black rights, and he gets the money. (I'll use it for causes you'll hate, so be careful.)
How about it? Or are you a coward, all hot air and no action?
It doesn't seem that there are any others here who are interested in developing a serious movement against more foreign wars. Too bad. Perhaps all the progressives here hope that we'll get involved in the inter-tribal war in Ukraine. (The military-industrial complex has its claws in both parties.)
So we'll leave it at that.
But just one personal point: if by the "someone ... who thinks Black Americans should not be allowed to vote" -- which describes no one I know or know of, but perhaps is meant to refer to me -- I will match my efforts on behalf of Black Americans' voting rights, and other rights, against you, or any other sniveling little Lefty virtue signaller, any time.
How about this, Mr Virtue: let's both send MargD, whom I know to be an honest person, a thousand dollars, along with our personal histories in the struggle for Black rights. (Hey, I'm an old white Southerner, how can you lose?) She'll decide who has done more for Black rights, and he gets the money. (I'll use it for causes you'll hate, so be careful.)
How about it? Or are you a coward, all hot air and no action?
14kiparsky
>13 Doug1943: Anyone who is running on the Republican ticket is committing to support that party's efforts to ensure that Black votes are made irrelevant, and to do that they must believe that Black Americans should not be allowed to vote. As to your history, I know nothing about it and for the purposes of this conversation it doesn't seem particularly relevant. If you say you've worked for civil rights, I can't see why you'd then vote for a party that is working to reverse your efforts, but I'll leave that up to you to work out for yourself.
And I'll just keep doing what I do, and I won't try to match your virtue signalling, because I can't imagine a more pointless pissing contest than the one you propose.
And I'll just keep doing what I do, and I won't try to match your virtue signalling, because I can't imagine a more pointless pissing contest than the one you propose.
15John5918
>11 Doug1943: I see you would vote for a pro-war Democrat over an anti-war Republican. It's this attitude I'm trying to challenge: not necessarily your decision to vote straight Democratic no matter what... But the general attitude of ruling out united actions with people you despise
I think you're setting up a false dichotomy here. I'm sure there are many people on both sides who would never vote for someone from the other side for all the reasons that kiparsky sets out. Being against foreign wars is only one important issue amongst many, and if someone is a supporter of many policies and attitudes which you find abhorrent, it would be difficult to vote for them based only on their opposition to foreign wars.
But that doesn't mean that one should despise anybody, and it doesn't mean that elected officials can't work together, united in action, on certain issues. Isn't that what bipartisanship is all about? However at the moment there appears to be a degree of polarisation in US politics in which the party or at least a vocal and at times violent group of its members and supporters victimises anybody who tries to work with the opposition on any issue. Surely the first step is for US society at large to work against this type of polarisation and make it possible for elected officials to join hands across party lines on certain issues? I know that's very difficult in the current climate, but surely no more difficult than persuading people who are committed to one party or the other because of its policies and philosophy to vote for the other party which they find abhorrent?
not support attempting to make the US the world hegemon. It's difficult to word this properly... I'm certainly not talking about unilateral disarmament, nor about abandoning alliances... We don't need to, and should not, interfere in the Russian/Ukrainian ethnic conflict... We don't need to sail the Seventh Fleet up and down off China's coast.
It is indeed difficult to word this properly, but thanks for trying. You're right, the US certainly shouldn't unilaterally interfere, particularly by using military force. But the idea that sovereign nations (a relatively recent 19th century European concept which has probably passed its sell-by date already) can do whatever they like to their people and their neighbours is also outdated. The concept of R2P, Responsibility to Protect, is much discussed in international circles. It is about interfering in sovereign nations. However first and foremost, it does not mean one superpower using its military muscle. It's about those alliances that you mention, but also multilateral organisations such as the UN, IMF, World Bank and various regional bodies such as the EU, the African Union, etc. The international community, which includes the USA, does have a responsibility to protect weaker nations against their neighbours, and the populations of autocratic nations against their governing regimes - but we do it together. But secondly and just as importantly, it doesn't have to mean using military force. Violence begets violence, and even it leads to a "victory", it rarely leads to a good result - look at just about any military conflict in the last hundred years and ask how many of them have really led to a more stable, peaceful and just world. Wars are usually a result of the lack of political will to find nonviolent solutions to impending conflicts long before they become critical, failure to understand and work with internal opposition groups, indeed failure to understand what the conflicts are really about and to envision any mechanism other than military force to bring about a temporary change in the situation at great human and material cost - and, as you rightly say, are stoked by the arms industry. There are a range of diplomatic, political, economic and other nonviolent measures which can be used to to defuse a conflict before it becomes violent, not least creating just and equitable conditions to remove whatever the issues are which are causing the conflict in the first place - but only if the political will, understanding, alliances, resources and indeed patience and perseverance are present at an early enough stage.
I think you're setting up a false dichotomy here. I'm sure there are many people on both sides who would never vote for someone from the other side for all the reasons that kiparsky sets out. Being against foreign wars is only one important issue amongst many, and if someone is a supporter of many policies and attitudes which you find abhorrent, it would be difficult to vote for them based only on their opposition to foreign wars.
But that doesn't mean that one should despise anybody, and it doesn't mean that elected officials can't work together, united in action, on certain issues. Isn't that what bipartisanship is all about? However at the moment there appears to be a degree of polarisation in US politics in which the party or at least a vocal and at times violent group of its members and supporters victimises anybody who tries to work with the opposition on any issue. Surely the first step is for US society at large to work against this type of polarisation and make it possible for elected officials to join hands across party lines on certain issues? I know that's very difficult in the current climate, but surely no more difficult than persuading people who are committed to one party or the other because of its policies and philosophy to vote for the other party which they find abhorrent?
not support attempting to make the US the world hegemon. It's difficult to word this properly... I'm certainly not talking about unilateral disarmament, nor about abandoning alliances... We don't need to, and should not, interfere in the Russian/Ukrainian ethnic conflict... We don't need to sail the Seventh Fleet up and down off China's coast.
It is indeed difficult to word this properly, but thanks for trying. You're right, the US certainly shouldn't unilaterally interfere, particularly by using military force. But the idea that sovereign nations (a relatively recent 19th century European concept which has probably passed its sell-by date already) can do whatever they like to their people and their neighbours is also outdated. The concept of R2P, Responsibility to Protect, is much discussed in international circles. It is about interfering in sovereign nations. However first and foremost, it does not mean one superpower using its military muscle. It's about those alliances that you mention, but also multilateral organisations such as the UN, IMF, World Bank and various regional bodies such as the EU, the African Union, etc. The international community, which includes the USA, does have a responsibility to protect weaker nations against their neighbours, and the populations of autocratic nations against their governing regimes - but we do it together. But secondly and just as importantly, it doesn't have to mean using military force. Violence begets violence, and even it leads to a "victory", it rarely leads to a good result - look at just about any military conflict in the last hundred years and ask how many of them have really led to a more stable, peaceful and just world. Wars are usually a result of the lack of political will to find nonviolent solutions to impending conflicts long before they become critical, failure to understand and work with internal opposition groups, indeed failure to understand what the conflicts are really about and to envision any mechanism other than military force to bring about a temporary change in the situation at great human and material cost - and, as you rightly say, are stoked by the arms industry. There are a range of diplomatic, political, economic and other nonviolent measures which can be used to to defuse a conflict before it becomes violent, not least creating just and equitable conditions to remove whatever the issues are which are causing the conflict in the first place - but only if the political will, understanding, alliances, resources and indeed patience and perseverance are present at an early enough stage.
16Matke
>9 John5918: and >10 kiparsky: Technically Republican President Eisenhower sent the first US troops to Vietnam: around 700 went over as “advisors”, thus starting the long slow inevitable slide into the horrible mess that the Vietnamese call The American War. When Kennedy took office that project was drowning, and of course the answer was to throw more men in there.
Please don’t think that others aren’t interested in reducing or eliminating war, and especially US involvement in war. For many of us on the Left, the biggest objection to Hillary Clinton was and is her enthusiasm for armed intervention.
But right here, in microcosm, we see the impossibility of the opposing political sides in the US coming to agreement about anything. Any discussion quickly devolves into vituperation and insults. The animosity and hatred seems impossible to overcome.
I can only speak for myself, of course, but I’m fairly sure that I’m not the only one who is sick to death of the War of Words.
Perhaps that accounts for the lack of response to this thread. Maybe people just don’t want to (virtually) slug it out anymore. I’m also fairly sure that this post will seem holier-than-thou. I don’t mean it that way.
Please don’t think that others aren’t interested in reducing or eliminating war, and especially US involvement in war. For many of us on the Left, the biggest objection to Hillary Clinton was and is her enthusiasm for armed intervention.
But right here, in microcosm, we see the impossibility of the opposing political sides in the US coming to agreement about anything. Any discussion quickly devolves into vituperation and insults. The animosity and hatred seems impossible to overcome.
I can only speak for myself, of course, but I’m fairly sure that I’m not the only one who is sick to death of the War of Words.
Perhaps that accounts for the lack of response to this thread. Maybe people just don’t want to (virtually) slug it out anymore. I’m also fairly sure that this post will seem holier-than-thou. I don’t mean it that way.
17Doug1943
John -- We'll have to agree to disagree about the use of military force. I'm with old Bismarck here: all the great questions of mankind are settled not by parliamentary majorities, but by blood and iron.
But we should resort to war only when we have to, and when we do, go all-out to win.
But short of that, there are a thousand things we could do to promote democracy and respect for human rights in other countries -- although that is worthy of a different thread.
We have created the Russian monster, Putin.
When the Russians withdrew peacefully from the Eastern European countries they had occupied after WWII, we promised Gorbachev -- not Putin, but Gorbachev, the man who deserves a hundred Nobel Peace Prizes -- that NATO would not expand eastward to the Russian border.
We lied. Our arms industries, facing big defense-spending cuts, needed new customers. Thus our going back on our word. This has all been documented by a Lefty, one Andrew Cockburn. https://spectatorworld.com/author/andrew-cockburn/
We treated the Russians with contempt, because they were weak. We interfered in their elections -- quite openly. (Don't believe me? Look here: http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html)
Our banks helped the Communist bureaucrats become oligarchs by buying up Russian industry at knock-down prices. ( https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/how-to-think-about-vladimir-putin/ )
The weak get treated with contempt by the strong. So the Russians backed a man who promised to make them strong, and who did.
Under ordinary circumstances, the ranks of the Right in the US would be dancing to the arms industry's tune, shouting for a robust, masculine response to events in Ukraine. But things have changed. There is little appetite on the Right -- or rather, among the rank and file, the people who disproportionately send their sons and daughters off to our wars abroad -- for more foreign wars.
But it's not informed, yet, by an understanding of what has driven American foreign policy for decades -- the thing that President Eisenhower warned us against, the military-industrial complex. This mood may be transitory.
A historic opportunity to mount a challenge to the military-industrial complex, which has dominated both parties for 75 years... but evidently most people on the Left are only concerned with immediate, narrow, partisan politics. Can they link Trump to Russia? If so, they had better be hard-line anti-Russians.
A tragedy.
But we should resort to war only when we have to, and when we do, go all-out to win.
But short of that, there are a thousand things we could do to promote democracy and respect for human rights in other countries -- although that is worthy of a different thread.
We have created the Russian monster, Putin.
When the Russians withdrew peacefully from the Eastern European countries they had occupied after WWII, we promised Gorbachev -- not Putin, but Gorbachev, the man who deserves a hundred Nobel Peace Prizes -- that NATO would not expand eastward to the Russian border.
We lied. Our arms industries, facing big defense-spending cuts, needed new customers. Thus our going back on our word. This has all been documented by a Lefty, one Andrew Cockburn. https://spectatorworld.com/author/andrew-cockburn/
We treated the Russians with contempt, because they were weak. We interfered in their elections -- quite openly. (Don't believe me? Look here: http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html)
Our banks helped the Communist bureaucrats become oligarchs by buying up Russian industry at knock-down prices. ( https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/how-to-think-about-vladimir-putin/ )
The weak get treated with contempt by the strong. So the Russians backed a man who promised to make them strong, and who did.
Under ordinary circumstances, the ranks of the Right in the US would be dancing to the arms industry's tune, shouting for a robust, masculine response to events in Ukraine. But things have changed. There is little appetite on the Right -- or rather, among the rank and file, the people who disproportionately send their sons and daughters off to our wars abroad -- for more foreign wars.
But it's not informed, yet, by an understanding of what has driven American foreign policy for decades -- the thing that President Eisenhower warned us against, the military-industrial complex. This mood may be transitory.
A historic opportunity to mount a challenge to the military-industrial complex, which has dominated both parties for 75 years... but evidently most people on the Left are only concerned with immediate, narrow, partisan politics. Can they link Trump to Russia? If so, they had better be hard-line anti-Russians.
A tragedy.
18John5918
>16 Matke:
Thanks, Gail, for the correction. It's good to see you posting here again - a voice of sanity and moderation!
>17 Doug1943:
Yes, the list of things that you mention (deceit, arms industry, economics, electoral interference, treating people with contempt) all contribute to creating the conditions for conflict which could perhaps have been avoided with more foresight, more political will, and indeed listening to many of the lonely voices from civil society and elsewhere who gave early warning. In Churchill's The Second World War, he recalls being asked by Roosevelt what this war should be called. His unequivocal response is "the unnecessary war", and he spends much of the introductory part of his book explaining the missed opportunities to prevent it, starting with the Treaty of Versailles and the inordinately harsh conditions imposed on the defeated Germans after World War I.
But we should resort to war only when we have to, and when we do, go all-out to win
Well, yes and no. There are laws governing what is licit and what is illicit in warfare. Unrestricted warfare in order to "go all-out to win" is generally considered both illegal and immoral. But it's also a rather simplistic slogan. What does one mean by "win"? During the years of Mutually Assured Destruction (the acronym MAD is very appropriate here), after going "all-out", one might "win" by destroying more of the opponent's nuclear weapons, population and country than they did of yours - but would the radioactive remnant of the USA surviving during a nuclear winter really have "won" anything just because the radioactive remnant of the USSR surviving the same nuclear winter was smaller and weaker?
Thanks, Gail, for the correction. It's good to see you posting here again - a voice of sanity and moderation!
>17 Doug1943:
Yes, the list of things that you mention (deceit, arms industry, economics, electoral interference, treating people with contempt) all contribute to creating the conditions for conflict which could perhaps have been avoided with more foresight, more political will, and indeed listening to many of the lonely voices from civil society and elsewhere who gave early warning. In Churchill's The Second World War, he recalls being asked by Roosevelt what this war should be called. His unequivocal response is "the unnecessary war", and he spends much of the introductory part of his book explaining the missed opportunities to prevent it, starting with the Treaty of Versailles and the inordinately harsh conditions imposed on the defeated Germans after World War I.
But we should resort to war only when we have to, and when we do, go all-out to win
Well, yes and no. There are laws governing what is licit and what is illicit in warfare. Unrestricted warfare in order to "go all-out to win" is generally considered both illegal and immoral. But it's also a rather simplistic slogan. What does one mean by "win"? During the years of Mutually Assured Destruction (the acronym MAD is very appropriate here), after going "all-out", one might "win" by destroying more of the opponent's nuclear weapons, population and country than they did of yours - but would the radioactive remnant of the USA surviving during a nuclear winter really have "won" anything just because the radioactive remnant of the USSR surviving the same nuclear winter was smaller and weaker?
19kiparsky
>17 Doug1943: we should resort to war only when we have to, and when we do, go all-out to win.
There seems to be a lot packed up in this, particularly in the latter half of it. The idea of "when we have to" is of course subjective, and largely determined by our political predilections. As for "all-out to win", this of course harks back to the idea that we failed to "win" in Vietnam because our troops were "fighting with their hands tied", and that we could have somehow had a different (and, presumably, "better") outcome if we'd had more My Lais, more napalm, more of something or other.
Of course, the idea that there was a "better" outcome never includes the possibility that "no military incursion by the US into Vietnam" would have been a better solution, and the best possible resolution at any given moment would have been for the US to withdraw military forces and start investing in repairing the damage we'd done. That's never on the table at all.
Did we not "go all-out to win" in Afghanistan? Was there any sort of "winning" that could have been accomplished by our military there? I don't think so. Anyone reading the recent NY Times reporting on the drone attacks and bombing raids in Afghanistan and Syria will know that the military did not shy away from slaughtering the civilians we were there to "protect", so it's not clear what more we could have done to go "all-out to win" there.
The idea of "all-out to win" seems to assume that military force can always achieve any ends we set, if we simply license sufficient brutality. Reality contests this: slaughtering more people does not create a more just society, installing puppet governments does not lead to docile, pro-US populations, military force is not sufficient to create a localized pocket of just society.
There seems to be a lot packed up in this, particularly in the latter half of it. The idea of "when we have to" is of course subjective, and largely determined by our political predilections. As for "all-out to win", this of course harks back to the idea that we failed to "win" in Vietnam because our troops were "fighting with their hands tied", and that we could have somehow had a different (and, presumably, "better") outcome if we'd had more My Lais, more napalm, more of something or other.
Of course, the idea that there was a "better" outcome never includes the possibility that "no military incursion by the US into Vietnam" would have been a better solution, and the best possible resolution at any given moment would have been for the US to withdraw military forces and start investing in repairing the damage we'd done. That's never on the table at all.
Did we not "go all-out to win" in Afghanistan? Was there any sort of "winning" that could have been accomplished by our military there? I don't think so. Anyone reading the recent NY Times reporting on the drone attacks and bombing raids in Afghanistan and Syria will know that the military did not shy away from slaughtering the civilians we were there to "protect", so it's not clear what more we could have done to go "all-out to win" there.
The idea of "all-out to win" seems to assume that military force can always achieve any ends we set, if we simply license sufficient brutality. Reality contests this: slaughtering more people does not create a more just society, installing puppet governments does not lead to docile, pro-US populations, military force is not sufficient to create a localized pocket of just society.
20Matke
>19 kiparsky:
Thank you for expressing my similar ideas in a concise and cogent manner.
Thank you for expressing my similar ideas in a concise and cogent manner.
23librorumamans
From the sidelines of this discussion — where I intend to remain — I will point out that "when we do [go to war], go all-out to win" is an easy phrase and one largely empty of meaning.
Shock and awe have failed everywhere they've been attempted, certainly recently, and I remember John Kenneth Galbraith's assessment that the fire bombing of Hamburg in July, 1943 had actually been counter-productive, likely increasing German war production rather than hindering it.
Of course it's easy to dodge and point out that going all out doesn't need to mean implementing shock and awe but instead being smart and creative and tactical. Which is why I suggest that the phrase makes no point at all but merely indicates posturing.
Shock and awe have failed everywhere they've been attempted, certainly recently, and I remember John Kenneth Galbraith's assessment that the fire bombing of Hamburg in July, 1943 had actually been counter-productive, likely increasing German war production rather than hindering it.
Of course it's easy to dodge and point out that going all out doesn't need to mean implementing shock and awe but instead being smart and creative and tactical. Which is why I suggest that the phrase makes no point at all but merely indicates posturing.
