The best posts of November 5, 2023.
Saturday, November 11, 2023
A few Veterans Day Comments.
Somewhere in Korea.
I wasn't going to post on Veterans Day at all, in part because the overblown hero worship that's been attached to it for some time is really starting to bug me. But then, I've been owly recently anyhow.
But, as predictable (every year the number of posts on this site goes up, this year no exception, which is why I’m considering not posting at all in December) I changed my mind. A few random comments.
Were you in the Army?
My new associate asked me this the other day, as I have the photograph of my basic training platoon up on my office wall.
Funny, I'm so used to it being there, I never notice it.
Military service, regular and reserve, was routine when I was young. Not everyone had it by any means, but lots of people do.
And this was even more so for my parents. My father was in the Air Force, his brother in the Army. My other uncles in the World War Two Navy and Canadian Army, and post-war Navy. The guys my father ate lunch with every day had all been in the service.
Not so much anymore.
November 7, 1983: Able Archer 83, a Close Call
An item from Uncle Mike's fine blog.
I was in the National Guard at the time. Little did we realize how close we'd come to serving in a short, sharp, and probably nuclear war.
As odd as it may sound, I actually had predicted a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact at about this time, a predication that didn't come true, but my reasoning was sound.
Reagan became President in 1981 and as soon as his first military budgets started to take effect, things really were noticeable in the Guard. New equipment, better field training, etc. The Warsaw Pact took note of that and started building up to counter it.
Able Archer, like Team Spirit, and Reforger were all part of the training regime of the time. It was no secret that the Warsaw Pact was trying to respond to it all. In the end, that spending brought them down. They couldn't afford it.
A lesson there to a country that's spending like crazy right now and just got economically downgraded.
Anyhow, my prediction nearly came true with Able Archer, but not for the reason I thought this would happen. I thought it would happen as the Warsaw Pact, or rather the USSR, would reason that it only had so much time while it had military superiority in which to act.
This was a view, I'd note, that was reinforced by playing the military hex and counter war games based on a NATO/Warsaw Pact war. It was pretty clear that it was really hard for NATO to win a conventional one.
Or so it seemed.
We vastly overrated the Red Army and Soviet military equipment, as the war in Ukraine has demonstrated.
Funny, at the same time I recall being assigned A Republic of Grass in college which suggested we surrender to the Soviets before a war broke out.
A note on Reagan
When Reagan was President, I wasn't sure what to make of him. As a Guardsman, we were all grateful for the new equipment and attitude. Carter's military had been a sad sort of thing, as exemplified, perhaps, by the failed attempt to mount a raid to free the Iranian embassy hostages.
But it seemed like we were messing around in Central America an awful lot, which I wasn't sure what to make of. In retrospect, it's clear that the Cold War was being played out there in proxy.
When Reagan was president, I was a university student. It seems to be forgotten now, but most university students weren't big Reagan fans. As noted, I wasn't an opponent, but I wasn't a fan. My father was convinced that Reagan had Alzheimer's which, in fact, he did.
On Reagan and Carter, it's interesting to note that Carter was an Annapolis graduate. Reagan had more of a military career than his opponents claimed, having been a pre-war cavalry reserve officer, but his wartime role was in the branch of the military that made films. That was honorable enough, but Reagan introduced the snappy salute to servicemen which stuck after that, and which I don't like. Presidents saluting servicemen seems really odd, particularly when we get Presidents who've never been in the military.
Anyhow, most of my conservative friends love and admire Reagan. I still am not so sure about him. I can see where he made course corrections at the time which were vital. It was under Reagan, really, that the country got back on its feet after the Vietnam War. And Reagan introduced the brief period of Buckleyite conservatism, which I like, to the government.
He also, however, started the populist smudge which is now a roaring flame by using the Southern Strategy to win, and that's having dire effects. And frankly, I'm not impressed with the starving of the government economically that came in at that time.
On this Veterans Day, don't thank those who served, but ponder those who didn't.
This sounds harsh, but I'm not kidding.
Most veterans don't really want to be thanked for serving. Truth be known, a lot of us served for reasons that weren't all that noble or were mixed. Paying for university was in my mind, for example.
Having said that, in my adult years I've known a few people who avoided serving in the military when there was a time of need. Some of them have real reason of conscience and can and do defend it, on the rare occasions it comes up.
In contrast, we have people who sort of hero worship the military, or who are public figures thanking it, about whom there are real questions.
Donald Trump sent out his thanks today, but he avoided the Vietnam draft on a medical profile. That's never been adequately answered, and in private comments he disdains those who served in the military, which fits right in with his epic level of being self impressed. Biden had draft deferments too, I'd note.
There are real reasons for deferments, but what gets me here is the co-opting of valor, or the bestowing of it on people who don't deserve it. People don't claim that Biden is some sort of hero. But you can find completely absurd illustrations of Trump as a military figure. I don't really see Trump voluntarily serving in any war at any time, and had he lived during the Revolution, I sure don't see him as some sort of Continental Army officer.
So, while it's rude, for at least some thanking veterans "for their service", an appropriate response is "why didn't you serve?".
The real purpose of the day
The real purpose of this day is to remember the dead and badly wounded. That's about it.
Lots of people serve during time of peace in one way or another. We don't deserve your thanks. Yes, I'm sure that I'm personally responsible for keeping the Red Horde at bay, but I didn't get hurt serving. Truth be known, I benefitted from it personally in all sorts of ways, a lot of which are deeply personal. The service formed a lot of my psychology on certain things in a permanent way, all of which are ways in which I'm glad that it did.
A lot goes into a person's personality, some of it more significant than others, and I do have more significant ones. The service was, however, a significant one. Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had not gotten out of the Guard when I did, also for a selection of personal reasons.
So I owe the service thanks. The country doesn't really owe me any. But people whose lives were permanently altered or last? Well, that's a different matter.
Random Snippets. The bitch that bore him is in heat again.
If we could learn to look instead of gawking,
We'd see the horror in the heart of farce,
If only we could act instead of talking,
We wouldn't always end up on our arse.
This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;
Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!
Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard,
The bitch that bore him is in heat again.
Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
Thursday, November 11, 1943. Armistace Day.
It was Armistice Day for 1943.
Japanese American Girl Scouts walking in front of barracks and carrying American flags while incarcerated at Heart Mountain concentration camp, Wyoming, 11/11/43.
The Moscow Conference came to an end.
French security forces raided the homes of President El Khoury, Prime Minister Riad Al Solh, and all but two members of the Cabinet, including future President Camille Chamoun, in reaction to the unilateral Lebanese repeal of the League of Nations' mandate over the country.
High Commissioner Helleu suspended the Lebanese constitution and appointed Émile Eddé as the new President.
The dissolution and unraveling of the French Empire had commenced.
In France, Armée Secrète Resistance fighters led by Colonel Henri Romans-Petit placed flowers at the foot of the memorial for the dead of the Great War in an act of bold defiance of the Germans.
The Red Army took Radomyshi.
Allied bombing of Rabaul ended following a final raid, with nearly every Japanese ship there disabled or destroyed.
Sarah Sundin notes something about that raid:
Today in World War II History—November 11, 1943: In Rabaul raid, US Navy Curtiss SB2C Helldiver makes its combat debut. US Eighth Air Force activates “Carpetbagger” squadrons to deliver supplies to resistance.
The film Sahara, with heroic Allies stranded in the desert, and even a sympathetic Italian character, holding off the Germans, was released.
Three Allied transport ships and a tanker are sunk east of Oran in a major Luftwaffe raid.
Sunday, November 11, 1923. Armistace Day.
It was Armistice Day for 1923. Secretary of War John Weeks, Pres. Calvin Coolidge, and Asst. Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt paid tribute at Arlington to the Unknown Solder.
German police found Adolf Hitler hiding in the attic of his friend with a country home, Ernst Hanfstaengl and arrested him.
Hanfstaengl was a member of German high society and was instrumental in polishing Hitler's early image with the elite. He fell out of favor almost as soon as Hitler came to power, however, and worked for the Allies profiling Hitler's psychology, as an exile, during World War Two.
German Chancellor Gustav Stresemann accepted the return of Crown Prince Wilhelm.
Going Feral: Expansion of Migratory Big Game Initiative
Going Feral: Expansion of Migratory Big Game Initiative:
Expansion of Migratory Big Game Initiative
The USDA announced that it is expanding the Migratory Big Game Initiative successfully used in Wyoming to Montana and Idaho. This allows farmers and ranchers across all three states to access money to protect big game migratory routes.
Friday, November 10, 2023
Wall, eh?
Apparently Vivek Ramaswamy suggested in the GOP debate, which I didn't watch, that we need a border wall with Canada.
Seriously?
Canada may feel it needs a border wall with the US. Indeed, Canadians must feel that they have an upstairs apartment above a large family of meth addicts who are in a knock-out brawl while they set the place on fire right now.
Anyhow, the Great Wall didn't keep the Mongols out. A wall the length of the American border with Canada, which would serve only those with a fevered imagination about an imaginary problem, wouldn't keep anyone out, or in, either.
It's a long border.
No wonder the GOP is an elephant's graveyard right now.
Wednesday, November 10, 1943. Heroes and martyrs.
Catholic priests Johannes Prassek, Eduard Müller and Hermann Lange – and the Evangelical-Lutheran pastor Karl Friedrich Stellbrink were executed by Nazi Germany for treason. Known as the Lübeck martyrs, they had not held their tongues on the Nazis, who were now becoming increasingly murderous towards internal dissent.
Soviet paratroopers dropped at Cherkasy, south of the Dniepr, and linked up with partisans, while the Red Army ferried tanks across the river.
We tend not to think much about Red Army paratroopers during the war, but in fact they made a significant number of drops.
The Red Army, supposedly a people's army, introduced two new military decorations. The Victory Order was for officers only. The Order of Glory for lower ranks.
Crash-landing of F6F-3, Number 30 of Fighting Squadron Two (VF-2), USS Enterprise, November 10, 1943. Lt. Walter L. Chewning Jr., the catapult officer of the USS Enterprise, is seen leaping up on the burning blame to rescue the pilot, Ensign Bryon M. Johnson. Johnson would receive hardly any injury.
Saturday, November 10, 1923. The loyal dog Hachikō (ハチ公).
Hachikō (ハチ公) an Akita, was born. The dog would return daily to wait for his deceased owner to return from work for over nine years, living to be eleven years old.
The Saturday magazines were on the stand.
Crown Prince Wilhelm of German returned to Germany from the Netherlands.
Ludendorff was released on parole, demonstrating one of the problems Weimar Germany had with suppressing anti-democratic uprisings. . . the tendency to let those on the right, go.
Thursday, November 9, 2023
Tuesday, November 9, 1943. Humanitarian Efforts.
The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was created
Senate Resolution 203 was introduced, calling for the Federal Government to come up with a plant to save "the surviving Jewish people of Europe from extinction." House Resolutions 350 and 352 were passed calling for the creation of an agency to resettle those survivors to neutral nations.
Marines on Bougainville, November 1943.
The U.S. Marines prevailed in the Battle for Piva Trail. The 3d Marine Division advanced off the beachhead at Cape Tarokina. The U.S. Army's 37th Division began landing on the island.
Gen. Giraud and Gen. Georges resigned from the Free French Committee of National Liberation. Giraud remained its militar commander in chief.
The U-707 was sunk near the Azores by an RAF B-17.
Friday, November 9, 1923. The Beer Hall Putsch Fails and Echoes.
Day two of the Beer Hall Putsch
Lex Anteinternet: Thursday, November 8, 1923. The Beer Hall Putsch.:By Bundesarchiv, Bild 119-1486 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5415949The Beer Hall Putsch, a large scale Nazi Party attempt at overthrowing the Weimar government combined with far right German support, began when Adolf Hitler with 603 members of the Nazi Party surrounded ll, Der Bürgerbräukeller, where Bavaria's State Commissioner Gustav Ritter von Kahr was making a speech to 3,000 people. Hitler declared his revolution was aimed at "the Berlin Jew government and the November criminals of 1918". More Nazi revolutionaries waited in another beer hall, the Lowenbraukeller.
Hitler declared that General Erich Ludendorff would form a new government. Ludendorff was descending into extreme anti Christianity, although he also held animosity towards Jews as well.
Following that, while the Nazi forces grew, they were disordered and without direction. Some were arrested early on by German authorities, and a large Nazi force was turned back by a small Reichswehr and police detail. Both Hitler and Ludendorff would be arrested.
Hitler and Ludendorff's attempt at sparking a Bavaria based insurrection against the German government failed on this date, as the Nazi storm troopers encountered the Reichswehr and police and failed. Casualties were remarkably light.
To the extent there was a plan, the coup was supposed to take over the Bavarian government on this day, after which the Nazis would march on Berlin, as Mussolini had on Rome.
As an element of the failure, Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who had been delivering a speech at the time that Hitler interrupted it in Der Bürgerbräukeller coordinated with Gen Otto von Lossow and police commander Hans von Seisser, all of whom had been in the beer hall, and all of whom were plotting their own coup, to get word out to the government and stop the coup. Von Kahr was later killed in the Night of the Long Knives. Von Seisser retired in 1930 but was sent to Dachau in 1933, which he amazingly survived. Von Lossow died in 1938.
The news, by this time, had spread around the globe, including to Wyoming.
This event has always been one of the seminal events in the tragedy of the mid 20th Century, but it's one of those events which also, as some say, if not repeating, certain rhymes. Hitler tried and in fact did mobilize a section of the Munich public behind him. In the early hours of the coup, it looked as though the effort might succeed in Bavaria, but it all fell apart due to a lack of cogency and organization. Hitler and Ludendorff were arrested, but the penalty imposed upon them was relatively light, and they rose again in short order. Ludendorff dropped out of the scene, and ultimately even ended up disdaining Hitler, but Hitler's far right wing cause would prevail at the ballot box in 1932.
It sounds a warning about current events in the United States.
It's a bit of an open question what would have happened had the coup succeeded in Bavaria, Germany's largest state. A march on Berlin would have occured, but it may very well have failed. Indeed, it's worth remembering that this was the third coup attempt in recent months, the first being by elements of the Reichswehr, the second by the German Communist Party, and now this right wing attempt. A march on Berlin would certainly have brought out the Communists, and Berlin itself was sometimes called "Red Berlin". So far the Reichswehr had remained reluctantly more or less loyal to the government, and indeed it did throughout the Weimar period and then into the Nazi period.
On this day, the German government banned the Nazi Party.
Calvin Coolidge gave a press conference, in which he stated:
The 2023 "Off Year" Election.
October 2, 2023.
And some of them will have interesting topics on their ballots. We start with this one, a Texas right to farm act, that will be on the ballot in Texas.
Texans to Vote on Right to Farm Constitutional Amendment November 7
November 8, 2023
Following the trend of voting to make Americans even more intoxicated and dim than they already are, Ohio voted to legalize recreational marijuana. It also voted in favor of opening up abortion, unfortunately.
Houston is going to have a mayoral runoff.
cont:
Democrats gained control of both houses of the Virginia legislature.
Republicans only barely held the House of Delegates before this, but this can legitimately be regarded as another example of the Trump GOP losing power in an election.
Democrats took the Governor's race in Kentucky.
None of this may be dramatic, but the GOP has a demographic problem, and Trump isn't helping it. Therefore, ironically, there's a fairly good chance that he'll be elected as the next President, but the House and the Senate will go Democratic.
cont:
Democrats won big in New Jersey.
For some reason, apparently it was thought they would not, which is odd.
November 9, 2023
Regarding ballot initiatives in Maine; Maine passed a resolution prohibiting election funding by foreign governments, including entities with partial foreign government ownership or control.
The Pine Tree Power Company initiative decisively failed.
A right to repair initiative requiring vehicle manufacturers to provide access to vehicle on board diagnostic systems to owners and repair facilities passed.
An attempt to allow out of states to gather initiative signatures failed.
Texas, not too surprisingly, had a bunch of initiatives on its ballot. Some of interest here:
A right to farm, ranch, harvest timber, practice horticulture and engage in wildlife management was added to the State Constitution. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor.
Voters authorized an ad valorem tax exemption on medical and biomedical equipment.
An effort to raise judicial retirement age from 75 to 79 (what the heck?) failed, thank goodness.
A resolution to prohibit a tax on net wealth passed.
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Monday, November 8, 1943. Lebanese declaration of independence, Battle for Piva Trail, Albanian landing.
The Lebanese legislature voted to end the French League of Nations mandate. The French would accordingly arrest the government.
Radio Moscow reported only one Jew remained alive in Kyiv out of a prewar population of 140,000.
The two-day Battle for Piva Trail commenced on Bougainville.
From Sarah Sundin's blog:
Today in World War II History—November 8, 1943: US C-53 cargo plane carrying 13 flight nurses & 13 medics of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadroncrash-lands in Nazi-occupied Albania.
She reports they walked out over a period of two months.
Thursday, November 8, 1923. The Beer Hall Putsch.
By Bundesarchiv, Bild 119-1486 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5415949
The Beer Hall Putsch, a large scale Nazi Party attempt at overthrowing the Weimar government combined with far right German support, began when Adolf Hitler with 603 members of the Nazi Party surrounded ll, Der Bürgerbräukeller, where Bavaria's State Commissioner Gustav Ritter von Kahr was making a speech to 3,000 people. Hitler declared his revolution was aimed at "the Berlin Jew government and the November criminals of 1918". More Nazi revolutionaries waited in another beer hall, the Lowenbraukeller.
Hitler declared that General Erich Ludendorff would form a new government. Ludendorff was descending into extreme anti Christianity, although he also held animosity towards Jews as well.
Following that, while the Nazi forces grew, they were disordered and without direction. Some were arrested early on by German authorities, and a large Nazi force was turned back by a small Reichswehr and police detail. Both Hitler and Ludendorff would be arrested.
The revolution failed by midday the following day, but set the stage for Hitler's rise to power as an extreme right wing figure.
The Imperial Conference ended with an agreement that the British Dominions would be allowed to enter into their own treaties with foreign governments, a major concession.
Democrats don't lose elections. . .
they throw them away.
It's the strongest trait of the Democratic Party.
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
A trial strategy.
I once knew a lawyer who was instructed by his client to say something that they knew would result in a sanctioned mistrial. After warning his client that he would say it, but the client had to pay the sanction, he went in and did it.
It had the predicted results.
Just watching Trump and his trial team in New York, my guess is that's what they're angling for. And they may well get it. When the Judge noted that he would "draw every negative inference" if he had to exclude Trump from the courtroom, he likely went too far.
There are things that the Court can do, but it hasn't done them. Getting Trump to shut up, and the trial team not to be an embarrassment to lawyers, probably isn't going to happen.
If a mistrial results, we'll see post mistrial motions, a petition for a new judge, etc., that will keep things rolling for months. The strategy may be to get past next year's election, at which he'll use his hoped for Oval Office position, if he gets it, to halt or at least push way back proceedings.
The Federal Government has no control over state courts, but a campaign that's already exploring calling out troops and declaring an emergency, if he wins, is willing to go pretty far.
So, it may not be a lack of control by the defendant or the lawyers, so much as a strategy.
One possible explanation, however.
Wednesday, November 7, 1973. Congress overrides Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act.
Congress overrode President Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act.
The resolution was a direct byproduct of the Vietnam War, with Congress feeling that it had basically been led into war without a proper chance to vote on troop deployments to the conflict, although it had voted on the murky Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The still relatively fresh Korean War was also in mind.
The Constitutionality of the act, which as been questioned, has never been tested by the Supreme Court. So far, however, Congress and the President have generally complied with it, not wanting to test it, even though early on President's would note that they felt it to be unconstitutional. This is discussed further with a link here:
November 7, 1973 – Congress Passes the War Powers Act
Nixon addressed the nation on "The Energy Emergency".
It's fair to ask in a way if the "Energy Crisis" presented a lost opportunity.
Even in 1973, contrary to the way some would like to assert it, there were concerns in the scientific community about climate change. When the Energy Crisis arose due to the Arab Oil Embargo there was a serious effort to look at alternative energy sources, although nothing like there is today, and it was coupled with a massive effort to increase the production of domestic fossil fuels. Solar energy was looked at seriously for the first time. A lot of thought was put into home solar. Energy saving regulations, in regard to appliances, and fuel efficiency standards were put into place as well.
Had the government gone further, and moved towards home solar in a large-scale way, and undertook efforts then to look towards conversion to non emitting energy sources, we may well have avoided what we're looking at today.
The Cape Krusenstern Archaeological District in Alaska was designated.
About the location, the National Park Service notes:
Cape Krusenstern Archaeological District - Designated November 7, 1973
Sunday, November 7, 1943 Sgt. Herbert J. Thomas.
SERGEANT HERBERT J. THOMAS
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RESERVE
for service as set forth in the following CITATION:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the Third Marines, Third Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces during the battle at the Koromokina River, Bougainville Island, Solomon Islands, on November 7, 1943. Although several of his men were struck by enemy bullets as he led his squad through dense jungle undergrowth in the face of severe hostile machine gun fire, Sergeant Thomas and his group fearlessly pressed forward into the center of the Japanese position and destroyed the crews of two machine guns by accurate rifle fire and grenades. Discovering a third gun more difficult to approach, he carefully placed his men closely around him in strategic positions from which they were to charge after he had thrown a grenade into the emplacement. When the grenade struck vines and fell back into the midst of the group, Sergeant Thomas deliberately flung himself upon it to smother the explosion, valiantly sacrificing his life for his comrades. Inspired by his selfless action, his men unhesitatingly charged the enemy machine gun and, with fierce determination, killed the crew and several other nearby defenders. The splendid initiative and extremely heroic conduct of Sergeant Thomas in carrying out his prompt decision with full knowledge of his fate reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.
Thomas had originally enlisted in the Army Air Corps, but transferred to the Marine Corps as his friends were in the Marines.
Task Force 38 is attacked by Japanese aircraft, but they fail to achieve any signficant result.
The Japanese land a battalion to the north of the Marine beachhead.
The last scoreless NFL game was played between the Detroit Lions and the New York Giants.
If we needed any further reason to abolish the electoral college. . .
this would be it.
Lex Anteinternet: The 2024 Election, Part VIII. Speeding toward the ...:November 6, 2023
The latest polls show Trump beating Biden in the Fall election.
Simply amazing.
It'll all come down to five states, and about 100,000 voters, who will decide which of the two ancient men will lead the most powerful, if declining, nation on earth.
Both, FWIW, are showing signs of cognitive decline. This has been obvious for a while, but it was mentioned in regard to Trump for the first time on one of the weekend news shows. He's now getting noticeably confused and increasingly erratic.
Regarding cognitive decline, the fact that these are the nation's choices make it appear as the United States itself is suffering from cognitive decline.
While there will be plenty of it "it's not too late" comments, it pretty much is unless the Democrats dump Biden. The electorate doesn't want him, or Trump. And yet the parties insist on offering both of them. At least with the GOP, it's because their base really does want Trump, as frightening as that is. The Democrats do not want Biden.
Five states are going to decide the 2024 Presidential Election, and there's a good chance they'll end up giving the office to somebody who will receive the minority of the vote and then go on as much of a harrying of his opposition as his appointees will allow.
Voting in a narcissistic oddball is one thing, but actually not voting him and getting him anyway is quite another.
Monday, November 6, 2023
Saturday, November 6, 1943. The Red Army retakes Kiev
Today in World War II History—November 6, 1943: Hitler names Field Marshal Albert Kesselring commander of all German forces in Italy. Submarine USS Pampanito is commissioned at Portsmouth Navy Yard, NH.
Sarah Sundin.
The Pampanito is now in San Francisco and may be toured. Well worth doing.
The Red Army took Kiev. Most of the German forces successfully withdrew and avoided capture.
The Greater East Asia Conference, a conference of Japan and its puppet states, concluded and issues a final declaration, which stated:
It is the basic principle for the establishment of world peace that the nations of the world have each its proper place, and enjoy prosperity in common through mutual aid and assistance.The United States of America and the British Empire have in seeking their own prosperity oppressed other nations and peoples. Especially in East Asia, they indulged in insatiable aggression and exploitation, and sought to satisfy their inordinate ambition of enslaving the entire region, and finally they came to menace seriously the stability of East Asia. Herein lies the cause of the recent war. The countries of Greater East Asia, with a view to contributing to the cause of world peace, undertake to cooperate toward prosecuting the War of Greater East Asia to a successful conclusion, liberating their region from the yoke of British-American domination, and ensuring their self-existence and self-defense, and in constructing a Greater East Asia in accordance with the following principles:The countries of Greater East Asia through mutual cooperation will ensure the stability of their region and construct an order of common prosperity and well-being based upon justice.The countries of Greater East Asia will ensure the fraternity of nations in their region, by respecting one another's sovereignty and independence and practicing mutual assistance and amity.The countries of Greater East Asia by respecting one another's traditions and developing the creative faculties of each race, will enhance the culture and civilization of Greater East Asia.The countries of Greater East Asia will endeavor to accelerate their economic development through close cooperation upon a basis of reciprocity and to promote thereby the general prosperity of their region.The countries of Greater East Asia will cultivate friendly relations with all the countries of the world, and work for the abolition of racial discrimination, the promotion of cultural intercourse and the opening of resources throughout the world, and contribute thereby to the progress of mankind.
This entity issuing anything at this point is somewhat surreal, as Japanese fortunes had clearly turned in the war and they were obviously losing.
The participating entities were Japan, Manchukuo; The "Reorganized National Government of China" governed from Nanjing, the Kingdom of Thailand; the State of Burma; and the Second Philippine Republic. Only Thailand was really independent.
The USS Beatty was torpedoed off of Algeria by Junkers Ju 88, resulting in its sinking. The U-226 and U842 were sunk by the Royal Navy in the Atlantic.
Sunday, November 5, 2023
More observations on the Hamas Israeli War. A sort of primer, war aims, and campaign aims. Part I.
War Aims.
A lot of reporting on the Hamas Israeli War, indeed nearly all of it, is devoid of discussion on war aims. Some of it vaguely discusses Israeli campaign aims. None of it so far that I've seen has discussed Hamas campaign aims. Given that, a lot of the reporting is sort of naive.
Hamas, having started the campaign, will be discussed first.
Hamas was formed in 1987 (probably considerably more recently than many suppose. Hamas controls Gaza, Fatah, the political arm of what had been the Palestinian Liberation Organization, controls the West Bank. The two entities have actually fought each other. Hamas started off with the goal of pushing Jews out of the boundaries of what had been the 1948 Palestinian borders, but earlier in the 2000s seemed to lessen its demands.
It seems to have returned to them. As far as can be told, its war aims are to remove the Jews from Israel, dead or alive, and of any age, and create an Arab Palestinian, and seemingly Islamic (not all Palestinians are Muslims) state in its wake. That's what's summed up in the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", which like a lot of slogans is catchy but doesn't really convey the full meaning of what it seeks.
Those are the war aims.
Without abandoning them, Hamas cannot back down, and Israel cannot unilaterally realistically convert the current war into a large scale punitive action at this point. War aims can change, but Hamas shows no desire at all to do so. A limited raid that was not aimed at civilians could have been undertaken if it has some other goal, but it didn't.
The campaign aims are much more difficult to discern. Perhaps it was to spark a wider war in the belief that it could be won, or perhaps it was just a gross act of terrorism in furtherance of its remote, unobtainable goal.
Of course, discerning campaign aims, is often tricky in regard to an entity like Hamas, or even large entities. In spite of long knowledge to the contrary, they may have thought that their raid, if that is what it was intended to be, would scare Israel into submission. Hitting civilians never does that. The British didn't surrender after the Blitz, and the air raids on civilian populations in Germany and Japan, perhaps if we exclude the atomic bomb, didn't cause them to surrender either. Air raids on military targets in North Vietnam which inflicted civilian deaths didn't cause North Vietnam to give up. 9/11 only made Americans mad, it didn't achieve whatever it was that Al Queda thought it would, which seems to have been a hoped for general economic collapse.
Israel's war aims are also simple. Its goal is to destroy Hamas as it views it, correctly, as irreconcilably opposed to its existence and genocidal in nature. Its campaign aims seem to be to occupy Gaza, or perhaps the northern portion of the Gaza Strip, trap Hamas, and destroy it and its infrastructure.
Outright destroying an underground organization, however, is very difficult to do. The US basically did it in Afghanistan, however, so it can be done.
Nobody is talking at all about what's going to become of the Palestinians. Israel isn't addressing it. The Arabs aren't either. Hamas is simply using their own people as human shields and for propoganda.
A cultural existential difference, or Why can't everyone get along?
Cultures play a part in wars, which people in the West are oddly inclined to forget. Jimmy Carter famously absent-mindedly quipped that the problems between the Israeli's and Palestinians would go away if they all started acting "like good Christians", but of course neither group is predominantly Christian.
I've taken some criticism on a more stretched observation in this area recently, so I'll explain a bit what I mean.
This question posed above is really a Western one, filtered through our eyes, which are the eyes of heavy Christian influence. As a South American atheist friend of mine once stated, culturally, "we're all Catholics", even if we often don't behave like it. That's why we're shocked when people don't behave accordingly.
Historically and culturally, that's not necessarily the default human norm at all, which doesn't mean that every non-Christian culture (including the two in question) default to bad behavior. But, as Genghis Khan supposedly noted (often filtered in our culture through Conan the Barbarian in a modified form):
The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.
We don't think that way, and we don't want others thinking that way.
Back to this war, the fact of the matter is that these two groups of people aren't going to get along. The Western concept that somehow they can be made to is simply in error at this point.
It might have been true a couple of times. One was in 1948, just before the first Arab Israeli War broke out, although that's pretty debatable. The second time was when the 1993 and 1995 Palestinian Accords were reached. The big problem is that both times, large numbers of Palestinians simply rejected a future which included Jews within the 1948 Palestinian boundaries.
The 1948 rejection was accompanied by voting with their feet by the Palestinians, a logical choice but one that was taken advantage of by Israel in that it offered the opportunity to truly make the country principally Jewish. Nobody can fault somebody for fleeing fighting, but the fact that it occured meant that a large Arab population removed itself. If it had not, demographics alone would have repeated what in fact occured in Lebanon, where a majority Christian population at that time is now 32% of the population.
Instead of taking that route, the Palestinians first relied on Arab hostility to take the country back for them, and then for the PLO, which ultimately compromised on that, to do so. Now, a certain percentage are relying on Hamas.
Regarding that calculation, relying on it in the 1950s, and even into the 1960s, wasn't irrational. After that, it really started to be. At some point, the land belongs to those who live there. It was Zapata who stated; “The land belongs to those who work it with their own hands”, which is how it should be (and how it's increasingly ceasing to be in the United States) That same analogy pertains to revolutions. It instinctively makes sense for the people ruled by another people to rebel, but not so much a people that had once lived in a land where the majority of the population isn't yours, and the majority of your population wasn't born in that land. Indeed, the fact that the initial Jewish war for independence sort of violated that tenant is part of the reason that many nations around the globe were quite hesitant about supporting Israel early on, combined with the fact that it appeared they'd lose.
Beyond that, as an essay in Minding The Campus has related:
(Professor Mordechai) Kedar, a former officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, has spent his academic life studying Islamic and Arab history and society. He explains that the animus of Palestinians, Arabs, and Islamists against the Jewish state is based on the consensus of Islamic religious thought that believes that Jews as a religion, people, or nation are never to be the equals of Muslims, and so their independent state, Israel, must be “struck down.”
While that can be debated, there's at least something to it, or there has come to be. For the most part, since World War Two, Middle Eastern Islam, which is its cradle, has become increasingly more "conservative", if that is the correct term, and militant over the decades. That was always there, and indeed Saudi Arabia was founded due to the Saud family's alliance with a group so conservative it was regarded as heretical. Islam does not have a real coexistence ethos as we'd understand it towards other religions. It's often noted that it has allowances for "People of the Book", meaning both Jews and Christians, but that tolerance is limited and provides that they are to be second class citizens.
Neither Christianity nor Judaism have something similar towards other religions, which doesn't mean that individual Christian or Jewish societies are de facto tolerant. People tend to generally be intolerant of any group that's different from themselves.
Interestingly, early Middle Eastern governments didn't have this feature to them, or at least not to the same extent. Turkey just celebrated its 100th founding as a modern state, and that state was founded as a secular one. Atatürk suppressed Islam in his country. Jordan has always been a Muslim state, but the Hashemite family that rules it, and once controlled Mecca, has tended towards moderation consistently. The Baath movement that controls most of Syria and once controlled Iraq was a fascist movement early on that included Muslim and Christian Arabs and which sought a secular state in the Middle East. The PLO was a secular organization that leaned heavily on Communist thought. There was at one time a strong sense amongst Arab nationalist that Islam had to be suppressed or, if not outright suppressed, the state's had to be secular. That really began to fall way with the Iranian revolution, and there's been a good deal of retreat from it since that time.
Which takes us to the current highly conservative (again, if that is the right word) Israeli government.
The current Israeli government is the most conservative, again if that's the word, one ever. It follows part of the global drift towards far right populism. Prior to the Hamas attack, it was receiving a good deal of pushback from Western nations and internally, in no small part due to an effort to subordinate the Israeli supreme court to the Knesset. In the irony that all such conflicts create, that's all been forgotten now. At any rate, a sharp turn to the right by Israel made it pretty clear that any current Israeli desires to really find a mutual solution to the problems now being fought over just weren't there.
All of which leaves us with this.
Hamas has attacked and made it clear that it thinks it can murder its way towards achieving its goals, a sort of accelerated variant of the 1939-1945 lebensraum at this point. Israel can't allow that to happen.
There are paths to a lasting peace here, but nobody involved, or even with influence, is going to try to bring them about, so the question is whether the warring parties, or more precisely Israel, can bring it about by force.
Friday, November 5, 1943. Task Force 38 at Rabaul, Marines at Bougainville, Red Army in Ukraine, US and British Armies in Italy, Somebody's air force over the Vatican, A Martyr
Task Force 38's aircraft attacked the Imperial Japanese Navy squadron detected the day prior, resulting in the Japanese sustaining damage to 4 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 2 destroyers. Ten American planes were lost.
Ground based B-24s hit Rabaul and the squadron later that day.
The 3d Marine Division defeated a counterattack on Bougainville by the Japanese Army's 23d Regiment.
The French Resistance set off bombs in the Peugeot factor at Sochaux. The target was regarded as France's third most important one by the British Ministry of Economic Warfare due to its production of machinery used for tank turret production.
The Red Army began to encircle Kiev.
Offensive operations by the U.S. 5th Army on the Reinhard Line in Italy fail. The British 8th Army captured Vasto, Palmoli and Terrebruna.
Also on the Italian peninsula, four areal bombs hit Vatican City. IT was never clear whose air force was responsible, but a RAF crew had released bombs after developing engine trouble while not quite knowing where it was.
A gendarme on duty reported:
I distinctly heard the continuous noise of an aircraft flying at low altitude. I could not see it, prevented by the darkness. From the noise of the engine it seemed to me that the aircraft was coming from the northeast. It flew over the Vatican Railway Station and then went a little further away and immediately turned back. I almost immediately heard a hiss and a prolonged burst that gave me the impression of the almost simultaneous explosion of several bombs. The first of them fell on the escarpment near the boundary wall of the Vatican City State on the side of St. Peter's Station; the second one fell on the terrace of the Mosaic Studio; a third one behind the Governorate Palace and a fourth one in the Vatican Gardens in a location that I could not identify at the moment.
Sarah Sundin notes:
80 Years Ago—Nov. 5, 1943: Capt. Clark Gable leaves England, having flown 5 missions with the US Eighth Air Force, with footage for his documentary, Combat America.
The U.S. 56th Fighter Group, flying P-47s, became the first Eighth Air Force fighter group credited with 100 enemy aircraft destroyed.
German Catholic Priest Benhard Lichtenberg, 67 years of age, died while being transported in a cattle car to Dachau. 4, 000 mourners attended his funeral in Berlin.
An outspoken anti-Nazi, he was beatified in 1996.
Congress passed the Connally Resolution, which stated:
Senate Resolution 192-Seventy-Eighth Congress, November 5, 1943
Resolved, That the war against all our enemies be waged until complete victory is achieved.
That the United States cooperate with its comrades-in-arms in securing a just and honorable peace.
That the United States, acting through its constitutional processes, join with free and sovereign nations in the establishment and maintenance of international authority with power to prevent aggression and to preserve the peace of the world.
That the Senate recognizes the necessity of there being established at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, and open to membership by all such states, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security
That, pursuant to the Constitution of the United States, any treaty made to effect the purposes of this resolution, on behalf of the Government of the United States with any other nation or any association of nations, shall be made only by and with the advice and consent of the Senate of the United States, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur.
The German submarine U-848 was depth charged and sunk by an American aircraft off Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Guadalcanal Diary was released.
One Year Until The General Election.
Ugh, there's a time when that would have seen like a long time.
And it still should. Would that it would have been only 90 days prior to an election that anyone could even announce.
A full year of watching the clock count down.
A full year of pundits like Robert Reich telling you can't vote for a third party, and must vote for one of the two absurdities that are the current majority parties.
A full year of bizarro weird diction from Donald Trump.
A full year of two really old men compete for the votes of voter less than half their ages.
Nifty.
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