Veterans day 2019

The First World War nominally ended on November 11th. First celebrated as Armistice Day, it became Remembrance Day for the Commonwealth to honor those who had fallen. In the United States where Memorial Day already commemorated those who died defending our country it became Veteran’s Day to also honor the veterans who came home.

Lord Grey, the British Foreign Minister described the beginning of the war as "The lamps are going out in Europe". The immediate costs in dead and treasure of this ultimately pointless war were horrific. The horror of the trenches scarred the psyche of the Western world. The resulting despair allowed political movements to come to influence and power, which have changed for the worse Western culture, the holocaust and gulag being just the tip of the iceburg. Too many of the lamps are still out.

It is a hard truth that this is an especially appropriate day to remember our veterans living and dead. One of the very few bright spots were the solders and sailors whose dedication, loyalty, and valor shamed the politicians and “statesman” who sent them to war. They should always be remembered.

But also we need to remember that in other wars it was this same dedication and valor that bought our Freedom and Liberty, certainly against the forces released as a result of the First World War.

Enjoy the holiday, but remember to think of and pray for those who served.

In 2007 David Duff objected to the war being called pointless. El Jefe Maximo responded. Their interesting and informative discussion is a must read.

Related posts:

Le Soldat Americain dans Afgaistan

Soldiers are People, too

The Last of the Light Brigade.

The Bivouac of the Dead

Roy Nickerson

11/11/1918 (From Kingdom of Chaos)

Rembrance Day - where They Fell HT:David Duff

Requiem for Tommy HT: Anna Racoon

Labels:WWI and Veterans Day posts

2021: The New Europe - a Wholly German Empire

Niall Ferguson in the Wall Street Journal writing from the vantage point of 2021 tells the story of how the European Union became the United States of Europe. I have no idea if this is how things will turn out, but it is humarous look at the current crisis with good bits information and commentary thrown in.

The euro is still circulating, though banknotes are now seldom seen. (Indeed, the ease of electronic payments now makes some people wonder why creating a single European currency ever seemed worth the effort.) But Brussels has been abandoned as Europe's political headquarters. Vienna has been a great success.

snip

David Cameron—now beginning his fourth term as British prime minister—thanks his lucky stars that, reluctantly yielding to pressure from the Euroskeptics in his own party, he decided to risk a referendum on EU membership. His Liberal Democrat coalition partners committed political suicide by joining Labour's disastrous "Yeah to Europe" campaign.

Egged on by the pugnacious London tabloids, the public voted to leave by a margin of 59% to 41%, and then handed the Tories an absolute majority in the House of Commons. Freed from the red tape of Brussels, England is now the favored destination of Chinese foreign direct investment in Europe.

Snip

And in 2013, in a historical twist only a few die-hard Ulster Unionists had dreamt possible, the Republic of Ireland's voters opted to exchange the austerity of the U.S.E. for the prosperity of the U.K. Postsectarian Irishmen celebrated their citizenship in a Reunited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the slogan: "Better Brits Than Brussels."


snip

. . . European President Karl von Habsburg . . . still known to close associates by his royal title of Archduke Karl of Austria . . .



For the best laugh of the day read the whole article. Is this close to what will happen? Who knows?

Hat tip to David of Duff and Nonsense.

Veterans Day

The First World War nominally ended on November 11th. First celebrated as Armistice Day, it became Remembrance Day for the Commonwealth to honor those who had fallen. In the United States where Memorial Day already commemorated those who died defending our country it became Veteran’s Day to also honor the veterans who came home.


Lord Grey, the British Foreign Minister described the beginning of the war as "The lamps are going out in Europe". The immediate costs in dead and treasure of this ultimately pointless war were horrific. The horror of the trenches scarred the psyche of the Western world. The resulting despair allowed political movements to come to influence and power, which have changed for the worse Western culture, the holocaust and gulag being just the tip of the iceburg. Too many of the lamps are still out.

It is a hard truth that this is an especially appropriate day to remember our veterans living and dead. One of the very few bright spots were the solders and sailors whose dedication, loyalty, and valor shamed the politicians and “statesman” who sent them to war. They should always be remembered.

But also we need to remember that in other wars it was this same dedication and valor that bought our Freedom and Liberty, certainly against the forces released as a result of the First World War.


Enjoy the holiday, but remember to think of and pray for those who served.




In 2007 David Duff objected to the war being called pointless. El Jefe Maximo responded. Their interesting and informative discussion is a must read..

Related posts:

Le Soldat Americain dans Afgaistan
Soldiers are People, too
The Last of the Light Brigade.
The Bivouac of the Dead
Roy Nickerson
11/11/1918 (From Kingdom of Chaos)
Rembrance Day - where They Fell HT:David Duff
Campfires and Battlefields 1884


Labels:WWI and Veterans Day posts

Libya: A Savage Kinetic Action of Peace

Colonel Austin Bay (retired) of Strategy Page presents an operational overview of the Libyan war. While most of the commentary on the war has been on the political aspects and antidotal videos and new reports it was (still is) a military operation subject to the same dynamics of any other action. This is as good an overview as one will find short of looking through (yet to be published?) professional literature.

At the end he touches on a key point. The NATO’s policy of primarily providing air and naval support prolonged the war and increased suffering considerably, but it also means that the Libyans on the ground won the war and can claim it as their own which can help provide a common basis for reconstructing the country.



Related

Libya
Bread and Oil

Veteran's Day -- 2010

The First World War nominally ended on November 11th. First celebrated as Armistice Day, it became Remembrance Day for the Commonwealth to honor those who had fallen. In the United States where Memorial Day already commemorated those who died defending our country it became Veteran’s Day to also honor the veterans who came home.


Lord Grey, the British Foreign Minister described the beginning of the war as "The lamps are going out in Europe". The immediate costs in dead and treasure of this ultimately pointless war were horrific. The horror of the trenches scarred the psyche of the Western world. The resulting despair allowed political movements to come to influence and power, which have changed for the worse Western culture, the holocaust and gulag being just the tip of the iceburg. Too many of the lamps are still out.

It is a hard truth that this is an especially appropriate day to remember our veterans living and dead. One of the very few bright spots were the solders and sailors whose dedication, loyalty, and valor shamed the politicians and “statesman” who sent them to war. They should always be remembered.

But also we need to remember that in other wars it was this same dedication and valor that bought our Freedom and Liberty, certainly against the forces released as a result of the First World War.


Enjoy the holiday, but remember to think of and pray for those who served.




In 2007 David Duff objected to the war being called pointless. El Jefe Maximo responded. Their interesting and informative discussion is a must read..

Related posts:

Le Soldat Americain dans Afgaistan
Soldiers are People, too
The Last of the Light Brigade.
The Bivouac of the Dead
Roy Nickerson
11/11/1918 (From Kingdom of Chaos)
Rembrance Day - where They Fell HT:David Duff



Labels:WWI and Veterans Day posts

This is the 20th 21st Century

My congratulations to the proud parents and best wishes for a long and happy life to the new babies but this item from Gerald Warner of the London Telegraph seems a little irrelevant as political news.

French royalists celebrate the birth of twin sons to Louis XX, rightful King of France.

Veterans Day

The First World War nominally ended on November 11th. First celebrated as Armistice Day, it became Remembrance Day for the Commonwealth to honor those who had fallen. In the United States where Memorial Day already commemorated those who died defending our country it became Veteran’s Day to also honor the veterans who came home.


Lord Grey, the British Foreign Minister described the beginning of the war as "The lamps are going out in Europe". The immediate costs in dead and treasure of this ultimately pointless war were horrific. The horror of the trenches scarred the psyche of the Western world. The resulting despair allowed political movements to come to influence and power, which have changed for the worse Western culture, the holocaust and gulag being just the tip of the iceburg. Too many of the lamps are still out.

It is a hard truth that this is an especially appropriate day to remember our veterans living and dead. One of the very few bright spots were the solders and sailors whose dedication, loyalty, and valor shamed the politicians and “statesman” who sent them to war. They should always be remembered.

But also we need to remember that in other wars it was this same dedication and valor that bought our Freedom and Liberty, certainly against the forces released as a result of the First World War.


Enjoy the holiday, but remember to think of and pray for those who served.




In 2007 David Duff objected to the war being called pointless. El Jefe Maximo responded. Their interesting and informative discussion is a must read..

Related posts:

Le Soldat Americain dans Afgaistan
Soldiers are People, too
The Last of the Light Brigade.
The Bivouac of the Dead
Roy Nickerson




Labels:WWI and Veterans Day posts

Book Review: The Fall of the Roman Empire

Why did the Western Roman Empire fall? The rise of Christianity, corruption, the decadence of the ruling classes, over taxation, changes in military policy? Or was it simply the Barbarian invasions?


The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians


Peter Heather
Oxford University Press, 2007







Peter Heather attributes the primary cause to exogenous shock caused by the barbarian migrations into the Empire in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. If these shocks had occurred earlier the Empire would have fallen and if they had not come the Empire would have lasted several more centuries. The Empire was a stable entity, with internal problems, as has any political entity, but they were within the outer limits of what it could manage and still function. The rise of the Persian Empire in the East in the third century had created a superpower challenge that required heavily reinforcing the eastern borders. This was successfully done, but doing so greatly stretched the resources of the Empire so that it had little surplus resources to handle a new crisis. The migration and invasion of the barbarians provided that crisis.


Heather sees the Empire as a symbiotic relation of several components:

The Landowners were Roman citizens who had a common education and culture that provided a homogeneous “Romanness”. They, more than the residents of the City, were the Romans. Whether they were of the old Roman families or provincials from cities that had obtained Latin rights they spoke and wrote common “Classical Latin”, shared common values provided the civil and military officers that staffed the empire, and provided leadership at the middle levels of society.

The Central Government taxed trade and land and used the revenues to pay and equip the Army. The Army protected trade and agricultural activities against outside threats and internal disorder. With an assurance of safety against outside threat and internal disorder agricultural activities and trade could produce enough wealth to provide higher standards of living and pay the taxes to support the Army. While the system primarily benefited the landowners there it must have also produced enough safety and income to be preferable to the alternative for most of the population.

The Army saw (as did most every one else) it’s first job was to defend the Empire against the Persia. During the fourth century 20 to 25 percent of the Army was directly deployed opposite Persia. The rest of the Army was either in border garrisons defending the long frontier or in the field armies that constituted a reserve to reinforce against attacks on the border or counter attack. While the total army was probably about 600,000 men the maximum field army that was available west of Constantinople to deal with the invasion on the Rhine-Danube line was about 80,000 spread among several field armies belonging to both parts of the empire. When matched against the nations migrating with their full strength, as opposed to raiding and border skirmishes, the numbers available to both sides were similar, and until reinforcements could arrive, could favor the invaders.

The Exogenous Shock.

The Germanic Tribes in the 1st Centuries BC and AD that the Romans came in contact with were economically hunters and “slash and burn” farmers. Every ten or twenty years a village would exhaust its fields and move. Heather thinks that the real reason for the Romans stopped at the Rhine was not the defeat of Varus in 9 AD at Tueutonburger Wald but that the region could not produce enough taxes to support the Army. Though not conquered the Germans learned from the Romans. They developed a stable agriculture, which supported a much larger population than slash and burn farming, and permitted the development of trade and manufacturing. This improved economy allowed them to field larger and better equipped armies. The service of many Germans in the Army had taught them the military skills to use the larger force. In the Late 4th Century the Huns started to invade the homelands of these nations forcing them to migrate and the only place they could go was into the Empire.

The Huns were a warlike tribe of nomads that came off the steppes and invaded the area of the German tribes forcing them to migrate. The Hunic economy and political structure did not allow them to settle in one location; they kept attacking westward forcing more dislocations until they were fighting the Romans themselves, though eventually defeated by the Romans the damage had been done.

The Migrations of the Germanic tribes into the Empire to escape the Huns in the 376 and 402-10 started the unraveling of the relationships that held the Empire together. War and invasion would put farms out of production temporarily or permanently depriving the Government of the taxes to support the Army. This made it harder for a reduced/weakened Army to recover lost lands or protect those that were left. Which would result in more land going out of production. The loss of this protection made it expedient for landowners to support the invaders to keep their lands rather than support the central government. Slowly over about 100 years the Western Empire unraveled.


The result

A controversy in recent years asks was The Fall really a fall or just a change in the political arrangements with life going on pretty much as before. Some point out that many institutions survived, there was a definite Roman characteristic in the successor states and there were people who called themselves Romans for a long time after the fall. Heather argues, I think successfully, that while it was a process over time with important survivals, The Fall was really a fall and a hard fall. While for most any one other than poor Romulus Augustus, the last emperor, who was removed on September 4, 476, September Fifth was not much different than September Third; but the Western Europe of 576 was vastly different from the Western Europe of 376 when the migrations started. While some people must have come out ahead the vast majority of the reduced population was much impoverished with far less physical and economic security.


Analysis

This is a well written book explains the story of the Fall of The Roman Empire in a way that treats both the available data and the persons involved with respect and reaches conclusions without forcing the data. While he gives a varied review of the different explanations for the Fall of Rome many support his explanation as part of the reason the Empire was overstretched. Unlike most commentators he believes the economy was able to support the Empire so long as it did not have to deal with extraordinary events. He tells the story of people with ordinary ability trying to control and reverse events that were to large for them to control. One thing I liked was his account ties together the different parts of my limited knowledge of the Roman Empire into a coherent whole.

It will certainly not end the debate over the causes of the Fall of Rome but it is a major contribution to the discussion, whether future historians agree with him or not this is an explanation that cannot be ignored. The book has good pictures and maps that support the text. Strongly recommended.


Related: Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem. Review of a fictional account of the Barbarian invasion across the Rhine in 406/407

Topic: All my Rome posts

Book Review: The Quest for the Lost Legions

The Emperor Augustus looked at the severed head of Publius Quinctilius Varus and cried

“Give me back my legions!”

Varus was long past answering, but for centuries people have pondered the question of just how did he go about losing three legions of professional soldiers to what is essentially a tribal militia. This book describes the latest chapter in the The Quest for the Lost Legions.




The Quest for the Lost Legions, Discovering the Varus Battlefield
Author: Major Tony Clunn
UK Publisher: Spellmount Limited, Staplehurst, Kent, 2005
US Publisher: Savas Beatie, New York, New York, 2005

Tony Clunn’s webpage
Kalkriese Museum
Imperium Konflikt Mythos
Official 2000th Anniversary site.



The Battle of the Teutoburger Wald in the fall of 9 AD, though always listed as one of the most important battles in world history, was an event of some mystery since the location of the battle was somewhere in German Forests and the historical sources are summaries written by later authors. It was known that Varus lost three legions and auxiliaries to a coalition of German tribes lead by Arminius an auxiliary officer in Roman service, the political shock to Rome was tremendous, and precipitated a change of frontier policy by Rome. In 1989 the author Tony Clunn, a British Army officer stationed in Germany, and an amateur archeologist, discovered some Roman coins in the vicinity of Kalkriese in Northern Germany. Additional discoveries proved his theory that this was the location of the Teutoburger Wald battle. This is one of the most significant archeological discoveries in recent times.



The book has two story lines, the discovery of the battle site and Clunn’s other explorations in northern Germany interweaved with a fictional reconstruction of the Battle

The Search.

Clunn tells the story of his discovery, armed with an avocation for Roman history a metal detector and some military common sense, discovers the long lost battlefield. He rather downplays that he had already done the available archive research on the subject, talked with the last person who had found a Roman coin at the site. Using this information and a soldier’s eye for looking at the ground; his selection was an informed estimate rather than a lucky guess.

He provides a good example of how an amateur should work with professional archeologists. First he got required permissions to conduct a survey and then kept the professionals informed. When enough evidence came to light to make this an official project he kept in the background, maintaining an interest and helping but never working at cross-purposes. A major dig is expensive, where as Clunn could just get the permissions and search on his free time. One of his biggest achievements was to do the preliminary searches on his own and find the discoveries that could justify a major project. He also tells of his subsequent efforts to find related sites which will take further searching to confirm his theories.

Clunn’s telling makes the story of the archaeological discovery an adventure.


Reconstructing the Battle.

The principle Roman character is Marcus Aius the Tribune second in command of the Army. (Cloak clasps belong to a Marcus Aius were found in Kalkriese though real Marcus was of a much lower rank.) A professional solider to Varus’s politician he tries to convince Varus to maintain a more combat ready posture and he also suspects that something is wrong and that Arminious is behind it but he does not have the hard evidence that will convince Varus. After Varus and many of his top commanders committed suicide he leads the legions in a last desperate attempt to escape and unknowingly leads them into the ambush at Kalkriese.

The principle German character is Arminius who has been working for a least a year to destroy the Varsus's Army, building alliances with the tribes, giving advice to Varus that leaves the Romans exposed, training his forces and preparing the battle site. He knows the tribes cannot stand in open formation against a Roman legion so he plans to draw them into a route where the Romans can be ground down in many small attacks and ambushes culminating in a major trap at Kalkriese where it will be destroyed. All the while pretending to be loyal officer in Roman Army.

This is a possible reconstruction that explains how one goes abut losing three legions. It does a good job of integrating the historical sources and the archeological discoveries. The route he picks seems to be very long but not impossible. The best features of this account are seeing the ground and situation with a soldier’s eye, and giving the feel of a professional army to the Roman command.



The book tells both stories with a clarity that can engage the general reader but still be informative to readers with more background. The photographs add to the story. The maps are adequate. Recommended.




Related:
The Battle That Stopped Rome by Peter S. Wells
Book Review: Rome's Greatest Defeat By Adrian Murdoch
Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem
Friday Snippet


Topic:
Rome

Le Soldat Américain dans Afganistan

From a French soldier serving as a liaison with the US Army in Afghanistan:


“We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while - they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army - one that the movies brought to the public as series showing “ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events”. Who are they, those soldiers from abroad, how is their daily life, and what support do they bring to the men of our OMLT every day ? Few of them belong to the Easy Company, the one the TV series focuses on. This one nowadays is named Echo Company, and it has become the support company.
They have a terribly strong American accent - from our point of view the language they speak is not even English. How many times did I have to write down what I wanted to say rather than waste precious minutes trying various pronunciations of a seemingly common word? Whatever state they are from, no two accents are alike and they even admit that in some crisis situations they have difficulties understanding each other.
Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine - they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them - we are wimps, even the strongest of us - and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.
Here we discover America as it is often depicted : their values are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity and the loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley. Honor, motherland - everything here reminds of that : the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels. Even if recruits often originate from the hearth of American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than to hold high and proud the star spangled banner. Each man knows he can count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line location : books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs him in his difficult mission. And that is a first shock to our preconceptions : the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.
And they are impressive warriors ! We have not come across bad ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French people can be. Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how. Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest. On the one square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top, their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger. No distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days. At night, all movements are performed in the dark - only a handful of subdued red lights indicate the occasional presence of a soldier on the move. Same with the vehicles whose lights are covered - everything happens in pitch dark even filling the fuel tanks with the Japy pump.
And combat ? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all - always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay. That is one of their tricks : they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the ennemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting : they just charge ! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later - which cuts any pussyfooting short.
We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent spirit. A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is - from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.
To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America’s army’s deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers”.







Original: A NOS FRERES D’ARMES AMERICAINS
Translation: Serendipitous Altruism

HT: The Anchoress

Veterans Day

The First World War nominally ended on November 11th. First celebrated as Armistice Day. It became Remembrance Day for the Commonwealth to honor those who had fallen. In the United States where Memorial Day already commemorated those who died defending our country it became Veteran’s Day to also honor the veterans who came home.


Lord Grey, the British Foreign Minister described the beginning of the war as "The lamps are going out in Europe". The immediate costs in dead and treasure of this ultimately pointless war were horrific. The horror of the trenches scarred the psyche of the Western world. The resulting despair allowed political movements to come to influence and power, which have changed for the worse Western culture, the holocaust and gulag being just the tip of the iceburg. Too many of the lamps are still out.

It is a hard truth that this is an especially appropriate day to remember our veterans living and dead. One of the very few bright spots were the solders and sailors whose dedication, loyalty, and valor shamed the politicians and “statesman” who sent them to war. They should always be remembered.

But also we need to remember that in other wars it was this same dedication and valor that bought our Freedom and Liberty, certainly against the forces released as a result of the First World War.


Enjoy the holiday, but remember to think of and pray for those who served.



Labels:WWI and Veterans Day posts

The Hour of Europe Tolls Again

BUT ARE EUROPEAN POLITICIANS UP TO THE TASK?

So asks Anne Applebaumin the July 28, 2008 edition of Slate.


“This is the hour of Europe."

Way back in 1991, when an otherwise forgettable foreign minister of Luxembourg infamously pronounced that sentence, it seemed to portend great things. It meant that in the post-Cold War world, Europeans, not Americans, would resolve the conflicts that were about to become the Bosnian war—and maybe a lot of other things, too. He was wrong.

Snip

In a very real sense, 2009, not 1992, truly will be the "hour of Europe." By that, I mean that if the chancellor of Germany, the prime minister of Great Britain, and the president of France—backed by their counterparts in southern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia—were to walk into the White House on Jan. 21 and propose serious, realistic, new contributions to, say, the war in Afghanistan, the reconstruction of Iraq, the nuclear negotiations with Iran, and perhaps even climate change, the White House would listen.

Or perhaps I should put it more strongly: Not only would the White House listen, the new administration, Democratic or Republican, would immediately offer the Europeans the "leadership" and "partnership" they so often say they desire.

snip

In fact, I'll wager I could find a dozen future members of either administration who would roll out the red carpet and greet them like envoys of a fellow superpower if the Europeans so desired.

Yet at the same time, I'd also wager that I could not find a dozen current members of any European government who have even thought about coming up with any ideas at all. This is the hour of Europe—but do the Europeans even know it?





Whether they know it or not this is a defining hour.

Since the end of the Cold War the US has been maintaining order in Europe’s backyard even though Europe, if it decided to commit the resources, could do it. However the US does this it’s way and not to specifications (good, bad, or indifferent) of Europe. This is complicated by Europe taking a lead in soft power activities so there is a serious discontinuity in general Western policy in the area.

After the withdrawal form Iraq and Afghanistan, it will be politically impossible for a US President of either party to send a large expeditionary force anywhere for at least ten years, and even longer to the Middle East, baring circumstances so extreme we don’t want to discuss them.

But the US is slowly executing a policy of withdrawal from Europe and it's back yard, especially since George W Bush came to office. While lost in the back and forth of the Middle East activities the permanent US presence in European area is much reduced and approaching nominal. Western policy in Europe's back yard will be European or there won't be any.

If they take Applebaum’s suggestion and come up with any sort of reasonable proposal for a joint policy it will be accepted without too much quibbling over details. Such a policy would cover much more that the Middle East but define exclusive and joint roles so both are happy with areas of primary concern. At a later point, a US President of either party will have more confidence; I think they will find the negotiations harder, especially to protect there interest in areas of stronger US influnce. But if nothing is done in ten years the US will be happy to give verbal support any reasonable activity they undertake, but if it is not part of an ongoing partnership they won't get much else. If they do not come up with a good plan, with or without US participation, events may drive Europe into a corner from which the US may not want to (or even can not) help.


It is their hour, but are European politicians up to the task?

We’ve Been Invaded

News report: EU: America Overrun With Small Invaders


With the demographics of Europe in free fall, some social experts and scientists from Europe traveled to America last week on a fact finding mission to discover why America's population was stable and even increasing. The scientists were shocked to see that America was filled with tiny people wearing diapers and speaking no discernible language.



From the Creative Minority Report provides often humorous comment on serious issues of the day.

Veterans Day

The First World War nominally ended on November 11th. First celebrated as Armistice Day. It became Remembrance Day for the Commonwealth to honor those who had fallen. In the United States where Memorial Day already commemorated those who died defending our country it became Veteran’s Day to honor our veterans who came home.


Lord Grey, the British Foreign Minister described the beginning of the war as "The lamps are going out in Europe". The immediate costs in dead and treasure of this pointless war was horrific. The horror of the trenches scarred the psyche of the Western world. The resulting despair allowed political movements to come to influence and power, which have changed for the worse Western culture, the holocaust and gulag being just the tip of the iceburg. Too many of the lamps are still out.

It is a hard truth that this is an especially appropriate day to remember our veterans living and dead. One of the very few bright spots were the solders and sailors whose dedication, loyalty, and valor shamed the politicians and “statesman” who sent them to war. They should always be remembered.

But also we need to remember that in other wars it was this same dedication and valor that bought our Freedom and Liberty, certainly against the forces released as a result of the First World War and in other wars.


Enjoy the holiday, but remember to think of and pray for those who served.



Label:WWI posts

Note: The bad link is fixed.

Blessed Clemens August Cardinal von Galen

On August 4th 1941 Clemens August von Galen, the Catholic Bishop of Munster, delivered his famous sermon against Acton T4 the Nazi euthanasia program. This was the last stage of a Eugenics program to rid Germany of persons with genetic disabilities. It set the stage for the large scale exterminations of able bodied persons because of their ethnic, notional, or religious background. The publicity forced the Nazi's to officially stop the program though it continued unofficially. Three of his priests were killed in retaliation and von Galen was only spared to prevent him from becoming a martyr.


The Gospel and Sermon of Bishop von Galen on euthanasia delivered August 4, 1941.

The Gospel for the Ninth Sunday, after Pentecost. Luke 19:41-47

And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, "Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation."

And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, 46 saying to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be a house of prayer'; but you have made it a den of robbers."

And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people sought to destroy him.


The Sermon.

Excerpts

In today's Gospel we read of an unusual event: Our Saviour weeps. Yes, the Son of God sheds tears. Whoever weeps must be either in physical or mental anguish. At that time Jesus was not yet in bodily pain and yet here were tears. What depth of torment He must have felt in His heart and Soul, if He, the bravest of men, was reduced to tears. Why is He weeping?

snip

My faithful brethren! In the pastoral letter drawn up by the German Hierarchy on the 26th of June at Fulda and appointed to be read in all the churches of Germany on July 6th, it is expressly stated: ‘According to Catholic doctrine, there are doubtless commandments which are not binding when obedience to them requires too great a sacrifice, but there are sacred obligations of conscience from which no one can release us and which we must fulfill even at the price of death itself. At no time, and under no circumstances whatsoever, may a man, except in war and in lawful defence, take the life of an innocent person.’

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For the past several months it has been reported that, on instructions from Berlin, patients who have been suffering for a long time from apparently incurable diseases have been forcibly removed from homes and clinics. Their relatives are later informed that the patient has died, that the body has been cremated and that the ashes may be claimed. There is little doubt that these numerous cases of unexpected death in the case of the insane are not natural, but often deliberately caused, and result from the belief that it is lawful to take away life which is unworthy of being lived.

This ghastly doctrine tries to justify the murder of blameless men and would seek to give legal sanction to the forcible killing of invalids, cripples, the incurable and the incapacitated. I have discovered that the practice here in Westphalia is to compile lists of such patients who are to be removed elsewhere as ‘unproductive citizens,’ and after a period of time put to death. This very week, the first group of these patients has been sent from the clinic of Marienthal, near Münster.

Paragraph 21 of the Code of Penal Law is still valid. It states that anyone who deliberately kills a man by a premeditated act will be executed as a murderer. It is in order to protect the murderers of these poor invalids—members of our own families—against this legal punishment, that the patients who are to be killed are transferred from their domicile to some distant institution. Some sort of disease is then given as the cause of death, but as cremation immediately follows it is impossible for either their families or the regular police to ascertain whether death was from natural causes.

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No, these are not the reasons why these unfortunate patients are to be put to death. It is simply because that according to some doctor, or because of the decision of some committee, they have no longer a right to live because they are ‘unproductive citizens’. The opinion is that since they can no longer make money, they are obsolete machines, comparable with some old cow that can no longer give milk or some horse that has gone lame. What is the lot of unproductive machines and cattle? They are destroyed. I have no intention of stretching this comparison further. The case here is not one of machines or cattle which exist to serve men and furnish them with plenty. They may be legitimately done away with when they can no longer fulfil their function. Here we are dealing with human beings, with our neighbours, brothers and sisters, the poor and invalids . . . unproductive—perhaps! But have they, therefore, lost the right to live? Have you or I the right to exist only because we are ‘productive’? If the principle is established that unproductive human beings may be killed, then God help all those invalids who, in order to produce wealth, have given their all and sacrificed their strength of body. If all unproductive people may thus be violently eliminated, then woe betide our brave soldiers who return home, wounded, maimed or sick.

Once admit the right to kill unproductive persons . . . then none of us can be sure of his life. We shall be at the mercy of any committee that can put a man on the list of unproductives. There will be no police protection, no court to avenge the murder and inflict punishment upon the murderer. Who can have confidence in any doctor? He has but to certify his patients as unproductive and he receives the command to kill. If this dreadful doctrine is permitted and practised it is impossible to conjure up the degradation to which it will lead. Suspicion and distrust will be sown within the family itself.A curse on men and on the German people if we break the holy commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ which was given us by God on Mount Sinai with thunder and lightning, and which God our Maker imprinted on the human conscience from the beginning of time! Woe to us German people if we not only licence this heinous offence but allow it to be committed with impunity!

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My dearly Beloved, I trust that it is not too late. It is time that we realized today what alone can bring us peace, what alone can save us and avert the divine wrath. We must openly, and without reserve, admit our Catholicism. We must show by our actions that we will live our lives by obeying God's commandments. Our motto must be: Death rather than sin. By pious prayer and penance we can bring down upon us all, our city and our beloved German land, His grace and forgiveness.

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O my God, grant to us all now on this very day, before it is too late, a true realization of the things that are for peace. O Sacred Heart of Jesus, oppressed even unto tears by the blindness and sins of men, help us by Thy grace to seek always what is pleasing to Thee and reject what is displeasing, so that we may dwell in Thy Love and find rest in our souls. Amen.


Let Us Pray

Father

We ask for:

The end of Euthanasia and all varieties of Demicide and Genocide.
Eternal life for the victims of Euthanasia
True repentance and thus forgiveness of it’s perpetrators.
That all Bishops and persons in authority follow the example Blessed von Galen.
That everyone oppose Euthanasia as there station and opportunity permits.

We ask this with Blessed von Galen, all your saints, and your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, in union with the Holy Spirit.
AMEN



Related

Death by Government

Never Again and Again and Again
Rwanda and Darfur Compared
Cause Not Harm
Abraham Lincoln on Terri Schaivo
Who Needs a White Sheet

Book Review: Eagle in the Snow

Book Review: Eagle in the SnowGeneral Maximus and Rome’s Last Stand.
Author Wallace Breem
Orion Books, DBA Phoenix books, London, UK 1970



In the winter of 406-407 the Rhine froze solid. The German tribes crossed on the ice into Roman territory. Not a just a raiding party, but a migration of entire nations who’s invasion completely disrupted the Western Empire. The provinces of Gaul never recovered, Britain passed from Roman rule, eventually Hispania, and North Africa and Italy were invaded. This novel is the story of the Roman commander’s account of the defense of the Rhine and his eventual defeat.


Paulinus Gaius Maximus was what we would call an Army brat. Of Equestrian (knightly) Roman stock he was raised in legionary garrisons as his father rose through the ranks to be the Legate of the Legio XX Valriea Victrix. He followed his father into the Army first as an Equestrian Tribune in his father’s legion before moving on to other assignments. From his father and this service learned the ideals of an earlier Rome and Roman Army, a loyalty he will serve the end.

Maximus is the son of a military family that ended up on the wrong side of imperial politics, a pagan when favor was increasingly going to Christians, but talented well above average and apolitical himself he is appointed as the Prefect (Commander) of a cohort at a critical fort on Hadrian’s Wall . A dead end job he will hold for over thirty years but he performs it well and occasionally with distinction. He learns the skills that will do him well on the Rhine

Sometime after 395 Flavius Stilicho, Commander of the Roman Armies in the West, visits Britain, and impressed with Maximus he offers him command of his fathers old Legio XX Valeria Victrix, which he is talking out of Britain to help defend Italy. The XXth has been allowed to run down to the point that is a parody of its old self. Maximus has a year to recruit it to full strength restore it as a fighting force, not the old heavy infantry legion but a modern force with both heavy and light infantry as well it’s own cavalry. A year later when he joins Stilicho he has force of 6000 men including 1500 cavalry disciplined to the standards of the old roman Army and trained for the new warfare.. After campaigning in Italy for five years Stilicho gives him a new mission in Germany. The Rhine is only garrisoned with enough forces to restrict raiding. The German tribes east of the Rhine are being displaced by the Huns and want to migrate into Roman territory, a migration that Rome does not have the ability to absorb. The mission is possible in theory because there is only one stretch of the Rhine from Worms to Koblenz where whole tribes could migrate as opposed to launching raids. This is for only a few months of the year in spring and fall, and without bridges there is a limit to how many can cross at one time. Unless the Rhine freezes.

For a year and a half Maximus struggles to make a backwater command into a fighting force, and uses bluff and bluster to convince the Germans not cross until he has built the army. He gets little willing support from the local governments or from the government in Gaul. Gradually he builds the army, the XXth as the strike force and enough Auxillaries to hold defenses. His single mindedness and integrity win the respect and even some support from the local government as well as the very grudging respect of the German leaders. But then in December 406 the Rhine freezes and on the thirtyfirst the tribes cross. After three weeks of fighting, holding with bravery discipline and skill, losing to numbers and treachery, he makes the last stand. The Eagle of the Legio XX Valeria Victix, which lead the legion for over 430 years, is melted to prevent capture while they await the final charge.


I think a point the modern reader should take away is how fast civilization can dissolve and how terrible the result would be. The introduction begins:

In the deep valleys between the black rain-lashed mountains of the western coast there is little to do of a winter’s night if you belong to a beaten people. Defeated sick of heart and afraid, you sit huddled in tattered cloak round the great sputtering fires and dream of a tomorrow that will never come. The women nurse wailing children and long for warm huts and a world in which milk is always plentiful; the young warriors sharpen their dulled spears and pray for just one victory against the men from the sea; while the old remember a time when no fires betrayed a burning village to the night sky, and there was peace in the lands from which they are now exiled for ever.

Seventy, even fifty years ago one would never see a village burning in the distance, a general peace from the Pillars of Hercules to the wall of Hadrian, from cliffs Brittany to the mountains of Italy. Men who did not join the army did not have to dream of defeating an all to likely enemy, and mothers could be sure they had enough food to have milk or could find a wet nurse. Old men remebered long ago harvests and places they safely gone and returned.

What brought this about? Well many factors but one that is key to the novel is that the upper classes of Rome had stopped believing in the ideals that made Rome. And not believing they did not act. We should not forget the if we lose the ideals that made western society and our country we could be not to many years from a similar collapse.


This is an excellent novel, well set in the larger reality of the time and place. The suspense is not in how it will end, (it’s in the notes on the cover) but in the fight against man nature and events. Maximus is a very believable character; the depictions of events ring true. The author served in the British Indian Army on the North West Frontier in World War II, which brings a strong sense of reality the account of border duty and role of the Auxiliary units. There is a good map that makes the major action clear as well as lists of key terms characters and historical events.

Strongly Recommended.

Related
Book Review: The Fall of the Roman Empire

Book Review: Rome's Greatest Defeat
Book Review: The Battle That Stopped Rome
The Advanced Guard

The Bayeux Tapestry Live

In 1066 King Edward of England died. The Witan elected Harold son of Godwin as the new King.

However, Edward had promised the throne to Guillaume (William) le Bâtard, which greatly exceeded his authority. Harold apparently had also promised that William would inherit the throne.

Harold accepted the throne and William invaded, he defeated Harold at the Battle Hastings and the Witan now elected William King. Thus William got the more respectable name of William the Conqueror.


Williams’s wife Mitilda and her ladies in waiting commemorated the event by creating the Bayeux Tapestry which tells the story in a pictures.


Now YouTube has an animated version of the tapestry of which Mitilda could only dream



E N J O Y !

HT: Adrian Murdoch’s Bread and Circuses

Europe is not the sum of its parts

Spengler of the Aisa Times is one of those authors who, when you don’t agree with him, usually puts up the best argument for the other side. This week he has a very perceptive article pointing out that Europe is not the sum of its parts. That seems obvious to me, but why does he think so, why does he think this is important?


. . .Europe existed before any of its constituent nations, and the unified Europe of Church and Empire created the nations along with their languages and cultures. As individual nations, Europe's constituent countries will die on the vine.

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Why do European nations exist in opposition to Europe? That fact, I believe, is not a measure of Europe's political maturity but rather of its decadence.

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Nationalism as an antipode to Empire did not effervesce from the rising bourgeoisie, or develop out of Protestantism. It was the invention of Cardinal Richelieu during the reign of Louis XIII. As I have reported elsewhere, [1] Richelieu for the first time proposed that the welfare of Christendom could be represented in a single European nation, whose particular interests thus defined the interests of the Christian world. . . . Europe's nationalism of the 19th century was a response to France, specifically to Richelieu's successor Napoleon Bonaparte. . . . Ethnically defined nationalism led Europe into World Wars I and II, from which it has not recovered, and from whose wounds it yet might die.

Snip

But I do not think that is the end of the matter. As I argued last month, Russia has become the frontier between Europe and the Islamic world and, unlike Europe, is not prepared to dissolve quietly into the ummah. [3] Pope Benedict's recent pilgrimage to Turkey, it must be remembered, only incidentally dealt with Catholic relations with Islam; first of all it was a gesture to Orthodoxy in the form of a visit to the former Byzantium, . . . For the time being, Europe's constitution will be stillborn. But Europe is not yet dead. Russia is the place to watch, and the quiet conversation of Catholicism is the still, small voice to listen for.


Read the whole article, and his articles that he links. It is a good assessment of the general problem with the current state of Europe and an interesting take on a solution.


H/T: Orthodoxy Today


Related

Paris is Burning

The Lights go out in Europe

John Bolton and Edmund Burke

Heads We Lose - Tails We Lose

It is hardly news that

A Game of Chicken

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It appears that Iran has or is going to have nuclear weapons shortly. Which is one thing, to take the President of Iran seriously, he intends to use them. That is something else. As Wretchard of the Belmont Club noted in the his comments section, the evidence is much stronger than for Iraq, but every one now has a much healthier respect for the limitations of any intelligence estimate.

John Keegan (HR:Belmont club) has an article reviewing the difficulties of military action to close down Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

America and the EU3 must therefore consider other, harsher methods to restrain Iran. The fact that the United States at present deploys a large army in Iraq is a factor that must give the ayatollahs pause. To stage a second war in the Middle East would not be a desirable initiative at present for America and would certainly be highly unpopular at home and among its allies. Moreover, Iran, as the possessor of the second largest oil reserves in the world and occupier of a strategic position athwart the sea routes delivering oil to most of the consuming world, has its own means of retaliation ready to hand.

Nevertheless, the West cannot simply let things drift. Military action by whatever agency cannot be written out, but will be a last resort. ... For if the West is considering military action, so are the ayatollahs. ... Moreover, while Iran has its own armoury of medium-range missiles suitable for nuclear delivery, the ayatollahs are also known to favour the placing of nuclear warheads in target cities by terrorists travelling by car or public transport. This is a bad and worrying time in world affairs.


Niall Ferguson has a look at the world war of 2007.

So history repeated itself. As in the 1930s, an anti-Semitic demagogue broke his country's treaty obligations and armed for war. Having first tried appeasement, offering the Iranians economic incentives to desist, the West appealed to international agencies - the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council. Thanks to China's veto, however, the UN produced nothing but empty resolutions and ineffectual sanctions, like the exclusion of Iran from the 2006 World Cup finals.


Victor David Hanson (HT: Dignified Rant) also discusses the possibilies.

Experts warn that we are not talking about a Clintonian one-day cruise-missile hit, or even something akin to General Zinni’s 1998 extended Operation Desert Fox campaign. Rather, the challenges call for something far more sustained and comprehensive — perhaps a week or two of bombing at every imaginable facility, many of them hidden in suburbs or populated areas. Commando raids might need to augment air sorties, especially for mountain redoubts deep in solid rock



We have a nice little game of chicken.

Allowing a regime like Iran’s to have Nukes is dangerous.

-More so to Iran’s neighbors than to the US. If Iran’s leaders are willing to use nukes against the Israel they are probably willing to use them to solve disputes with other neighbors.

-They probably do not yet have the ability to insure that a nuke is an airburst rather than a ground burst, and even it they do they would be very likely to choose a ground burst against Israel to make the destruction more complete. Ground bursts pick up large amounts of surface material as dust, make it radio active, this is what “falls out.” A ground burst could create radioactive fallout that would impact a large area outside Israel, depending on many variables Chernobyl could be a minor comparison.)

Most every country in the area has a strong desire to see that Iran never uses nukes. The theoretical possibility of fallout patterns covering Western Europe probably explains why the EU3 started their negotiation process and why it is a major issue to them. Except for Europe collectively, probably Israel, maybe Russia depending on what still works, and the US, no country has the ability to take out the nukes unilaterally. But many countries from India to the EU member’s individually have the ability to make a notable contribution.

Neither the US nor Israel wants to go it alone. The other countries do not want to contribute if they can avoid it. So it is a game of chicken, will the US or Israel will jump and go it alone. Or will other counties turn aside from their previous course and sign on to a cooperative effort.



Which makes this snippet of an interview of from the German magazine Spiegel interesting. (HT: David’s Medienkritik

SPIEGEL: How concerned are you about Iran?

Rumsfeld: All of us have to be concerned when a country that important, large and wealthy is disconnected from the normal interactions with the rest of the world. They obviously have certain ambitions, powers and military capabilities ...

SPIEGEL: ...and nuclear ambitions...

Rumsfeld: That's apparently what France, Germany, the UK and the International Atomic Energy Agency have concluded. Everyone wants to have the Iranians as part of the world community, but they aren't yet. Therefore there's less predictability and more danger.

SPIEGEL: The US is trying to make the case in the United Nations Security Council.

Rumsfeld: I would not say that. I thought France, Germany and the UK were working on that problem.

SPIEGEL: What kind of sanctions are we talking about?

Rumsfeld: I'm not talking about sanctions. I thought you, and the U.K. and France were.

SPIEGEL: You aren't?

Rumsfeld: I'm not talking about sanctions. You've got the lead. Well, lead!

SPIEGEL: You mean the Europeans.

Rumsfeld: Sure. My Goodness, Iran is your neighbour. We don't have to do everything!

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For the tyrants must come down an' dictators frown
When our Uncle named Sam says "Stop"!
(Poor beggars! -- we're sent to say "Stop"!)


I know responsibilities, wanted or not, come with being the worlds only super power, but IMHO it is someone else’s turn to say “STOP”!.

In Defense of Medical Malpratice Law Suit Abuse.

Say, after years of giving premiums to your favorite insurance company, you need an operation on your prostrate, the doctor knowingly gives you an anti-biotic with known serious side effects, when other antibiotics are available, and he does this without your knowledge to reduce his costs. He does this in response to your insurers policies. The result is you are deaf for the rest of your life.

What happens?

You suit!

First there is no informed consent.

Second the doctor’s duty is to the patient not the insurance company.

Third giving the wrong medicine was a willful act.

Why is it that this seldom happens?

Because the damages that will be awarded far exceed any additional profit the doctor or insurer would receive. Hopefully most do not need this kind of threat to insure reliable medical care, but the threat of a suit tends to keep even the corrupt in line.

Granted there are problems with malpractice suit system, certainly in Illinois where I live. Any thing that can be receipted produces damages for the receipted amount When the question of “mental anguish” or punitive damages is in question there are no receipts and the amount of the settlement is often made by emotion rather than some sort of rational analysis. This produces highly inflated settlements, which is raising the overall cost of medical care. But is also makes it even more imperative that the medical provider run a clean operation. In the example above, since it is a willful act punitive damages are proper. I am not in favor of lawsuit abuse; it should be prevented and punished where it happens. But it is clearly better to have the malpractice suit system even with abuses than the alternatives that are used elsewhere.



Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal tells the story of his grandfather who went to the hospital for prostrate operation in May, was knowingly given the cheaper anti-biotic which left him deaf. What our courts would call “mental anguish” left him despondent and he was dead by November.

So what happened to the medical “practitioners.” Well, I’m sure it was just another forgetable day at the office.

How is the Belgium system different than ours. Basically it is a department of the government not medical persons in private practice. In the US one pays premiums to the insurer, when on gets sick the insurer pays the doctor. The role of the government is the honest broker between the patient and the provider if there any disputes. The government through programs like Medicare is becoming more of an insurance provider than before, but all most all medical personnel are not government employees. There is still enough differentiation of roles that the government, at least in court system, can still be an honest broker. In Belgium the provider of the insurance and the medical personnel is also the honest broker. Since the government also controls the right to suit, the government can just refuse to take the role of honest broker . Paul in his article notes that in Europe like the US the cost of providing health care is rising as a percentage of GNP. Where there is a major cost, there is a need to minimize it. Under a malpractice suit system the way to do this is work smarter and more carefully. With a system with no effective honest broker it is just so much easier to deny the care promised or use second class drugs, equipment and practices.

I do not support lawsuit abuse, but if that is price for a medical system where the goal is to treat the patient, not save the government money, I’ll take it