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

Never Again and Again and Again

Never again will Germans kill Jews in Europe in the 1940s.

In the the February 1, 2011 issue of Policy Review, David Rieff looks at The Persistence of Genocide, “Never Again,” again and again and asks an unaskable question. Is it even possible to prevent future genocides?


. . Bluntly put, an undeniable gulf exists between the frequency with which the phrase [never again] is used — above all on days of remembrance most commonly marking the Shoah, but now, increasingly, other great crimes against humanity — and the reality, which is that 65 years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, “never again” has proved to be nothing more than a promise on which no state has ever been willing to deliver. When, last May, the writer Elie Wiesel, himself a former prisoner in Buchenwald, accompanied President Barack Obama and Chancellor Angela Merkel to the site of the camp, he said that he had always imagined that he would return some day and tell his father’s ghost that the world had learned from the Holocaust and that it had become a “sacred duty” for people everywhere to prevent it from recurring. But, Wiesel continued, had the world actually learned anything, “there would be no Cambodia, and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.”

Wiesel was right: The world has learned very little. But this has not stopped it from pontificating much. The Obama administration’s National Security Strategy Paper, issued in May 2010, exemplifies this tendency. It asserts confidently that “The United States is committed to working with our allies, and to strengthening our own internal capabilities, in order to ensure that the United States and the international community are proactively engaged in a strategic effort to prevent mass atrocities and genocide.” And yet again, we are treated to the promise, “never again.” “In the event that prevention fails,” the report states, “the United States will work both multilaterally and bilaterally to mobilize diplomatic, humanitarian, financial, and — in certain instances — military means to prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.”

Of course, this is not strategy, but a promise that, decade in and decade out, has proved to be empty. For if one were to evaluate these commitments by the results they have produced so far, one would have to say that all this “proactive engagement” and “diplomatic, financial, and humanitarian mobilization” has not accomplished very much. No one should be surprised by this. The U.S. is fighting two wars and still coping (though it has fallen from the headlines) with the floods in Pakistan, whose effects will be felt for many years in a country where America’s security interests and humanitarian relief efforts are inseparable. At the same time, the crisis over Iran’s imminent acquisition of nuclear weapons capability is approaching its culmination. Add to this the fact that the American economy is in shambles, and you do not exactly have a recipe for engagement. The stark fact is that “never again” has never been a political priority for either the United States or the so-called international community . . . . Nor, despite all the bluff talk about moral imperatives backed by international resolve, is there any evidence that it is becoming one.

Read the entire article

HT: Arts and Letters Daily


Analysis.

There is trend to call for handling International Law problems with what can be described as a 911 mentality (phone number - not date.)

If there is a problem in a town some one calls the 911 and a policeman is sent, if he can’t handle it he calls for support, if the support can’t handle it perhaps a SWAT team or whatever. AFTER it is over the courts sort it out. The decisions to deploy the first policeman and the reinforcements based on nominal information.

Contrary wise, if there is an international situation that calls for military force, presumable and quite often there is considerable discovery discussion and calculation as to the practical and moral implications of the intervention BEFORE deployment, even if it held behind closed doors. Hopefully the tenets of the International Law Just War Doctrine were consulted.

More and more, there is a call for international problems to be handled on a 911 basis. In this case, the first preliminary reports of a genocide cause troops to deploy. In Rwanda this would have saved mnany lives. But it would be awfully easy for ordinary street riots or civil unrest to be inadvertently or tactically elevated to “incipient Genocide” and force deployed and used only to find out it wasn‘t justified. In a police 911 situation force is deployed in the confidence that the police can deal with any opposition, but applied to the international community it would mean a policy of going to war before asking if the war can be won.

I think there are things that can be done prevent Genocide and move toward it's elimnation, but making a promise of "Never Again" with no intent or willingness to enforce it is useless.

My Genocide Topic

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Author David Rieff is a New York-based writer and policy analyst who has written extensively about humanitarian aid and human rights. He is the author of eight books, including A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis and At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention, and is currently writing a book on the global food crisis
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Roe vs. Wade - Choice

January 22 1973, the Supreme Court decided the case of Roe v Wade -which will in time join Dred Scott, Plessey v Fergusson, Korematsu v. United States in infamy - allowing people to be “deprived of Life … with out due process of law” as guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment in favor of a unstated right to privacy inferred from a tortured piece of illogic.

Screen shot from UTube Video at Rock the Facts 2009 March for Life

If the equivalent of an abortion was done to a convicted criminal - it would violate the Eight Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments.”



But now we are told that we have choice!

But then we always had choices.



What’s yours?

In Defense of Medical Malpractice Law Suit Abuse. (Repost)

Note: This is a repost from November 2005 which seems very relevant to the current debate on the National Health Care. Like any law it is not just the text of the law that will matter, but also the administrative and judicial atmosphere in which it will be executed and interpreted. The intent of the sponsors is really unimportant, the pressure to contain costs when there is minimal or no penalty for immoral or even illegal cost cutting will produce the sort of situation noted. This has nothing to do with ideology, it is simply normal organizational behavior.

Dr. R.J .Rummel, Professor emeritus of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, (his Power Kills web site) is one of the world leading experts of mass murder by governments, including but not limited to Genocide. His research has shown the the primary predictor of government sponsored mass murder has is not ideology but simply the unchallenged ability to do it. This proposal will give whom ever administers vast effectively unchallenged authority. My review of Dr Rummel’s indispensable Book Death by Government



In Defense of Medical Malpractice 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 forgettable 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


Related posts

Cause not Harm
Blessed Clemens August Cardinal von Galen
And many more.

From the Holocaust Museum

Handicapped

Book Review: Left to Tell

Left to Tell – Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
Immaculee Ilibagiza
Hay House, 2006
Left to Tell Fund



Most everyone knows in general that in 1994 there was a genocide of over a million people in Rwanda as the world stood by. Numbers so large we lose any sense of individuals. Immaculee Ilibagiza rivets us the events as they happened to her, her family and acquaintances as she was one of the few who was left to tell their story

From the life of a child in a loving family and a student who is only loosely aware of national politics she is suddenly thrown into the maelstrom of a Civil War that turns into genocide against own her people. Hidden in a bathroom for three months with seven other women she emerges to find her family dead, many whom she had thought friends had been part of the killing. She learns that the only way survive as a human being, not just some one who was not killed, means she has to have faith and trust in God and forgive those who killed her family and friends.

The surreal horror is seen in joy of finding a friend she thought dead, and finding out he was hidden by someone who went out every day to join the killers.

This is a riveting well written account that should be mandatory reading for every one.

Many things can be said about the genocide, but is perhaps best to remind ourselves of the teaching of the Catholic Faith that gave her the strength of survive.

Look in the mirror - the person looking back at you is not so very far from being the hero or villain in a similar situation. Pray that Christ’s Grace and Mercy give us all the wisdom to see the difference and the strength to act.


Grant them Eternal Rest Oh Lord, and let your Perpetual Light shine upon them.


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See Also

R J Rummel’s Power Kills Site Most every thing you want to know about Genocide and more.

What is Genocide

Book Review: Death by Government

Genocide/Democide Topic.

Democracy and Peace in a Unipolar World

Read the papers, watch the news, visit the news sites. The world is becoming less peaceful. Right??

Not!


Noted Political Scientists Daniel W. Dezner and R.J. Rummel recently commented on
The first Human Security Report which documents a dramatic, but largely unknown, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuse over the past decade. Published by Oxford University Press, the Report argues that the single most compelling explanation for these changes is found in the unprecedented upsurge of international activism, spearheaded by the UN, which took place in the wake of the Cold War. [Introduction to the report]





Drezner summarizes the data:


The number of genocides and politicides plummeted by 80% between 1988 and 2001.
The number of armed conflicts around the world has declined by more than 40% since the early 1990s.
International crises, often harbingers of war, declined by more than 70% between 1981 and 2001.
The number of refugees dropped by some 45% between 1992 and 2003, as more and more wars came toan end.
The period since the end of World War II is the longest interval of uninterrupted peace between the major powers in hundreds of years.
The number of actual and attempted military coups has been declining for more than 40 years. In 1963 there were 25 coups and attempted coups around the world, the highest number in the post–World War II period. In 2004 there were only 10 coup attempts--a 60% decline. All of them failed. [I've touched on this point before as well--DD.]

Naturally, they offer different explanations for this good fortune.

Neither of then sees the "single most compelling explanation for these changes is found in the unprecedented upsurge of international activism, spearheaded by the UN, which took place in the wake of the Cold War." which the authors of the report claim, perhaps in defererence to funders of the report. The UN is a membeship organization. When the significant members decide to use it as the spearhead for activitism, much can be accomplished, otherwise UN activitism is so much empty motion at best.


Drezner sees this resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and resulting uni-polar international system.

I think the largest factor was the fall of the USSR. The lack of a rival superpower to the US means there is little point in powerful nations fomenting wars on the periphery of the rival superpower. The fall of the USSR made the containment and ultimate removal of Saddam Hussein possible, either of which would have been unthinkable before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The USSR would have backed Hussein, who was their client. That would have been that.

The second major change is the forming of the EU. More precisely the alliance formed by formerly vicious enemies France and Germany. The border over which both world wars started this century now doesn't even have passport control.

The major powers seem to be comporting themselves with restraint and reason today. Look at China or France. Both are adversaries and major trading partners of the US. Neither is fomenting wars designed to hurt the US or it's neighbors. The US returns the favor.


Rummel sees this as further proof to the Democratic Peace thesis, that democracies do not or very seldom go to war with each other.

[He says] look at the charts . . . for the growth in democracies in comparison to the great decline in violence.





As the number of democracies increase over the 58 years, they reach a tipping point in 1992 where armed conflict then steeply decline.

I predicted that a decline would occur with this growth of democracies in my 1979 book on War, Power, Peace (link here). For additional evidence of this decline and a related Q and A, see my democratic peace clock (link here) and my blog “Democracies Increase and Ipso Facto, World Violence Declines” (link here) chastising commentators for missing this. Yes, yes, I know, correlation does not prove causation. But, if there is a solid theory, consistent replications, and complimentary evidence, then it is no longer a working hypothesis, but fact. In sum, there is a sharp decline in internal and foreign violence worldwide, and the best explanation for this is the growth the number of democracies. This decline provides more evidence of the power for peace of the democratic peace.



These two ideas do not necessarily disagree with each other. Dezner is looking at proximate causes and Rummel at underlying causes. The break up of the Soviet Union created a number of new states, while many of these are in a transitional stage to democracy rather than democracies it is a move in the right direction. Also with out the threat of the Soviet Union the US became less tolerant of dealing with authoritarian regimes resulting in pressure to reform. The fact that it was the democratic West that one the Cold War provides an endorsement that democracy works.

This is good news. the same conclusions have been published in a number of places but they just are not as exciting as a good war for news coverage. Is the trend certain to continue, no, but it looks good. Peace is more a goal than a default status. It takes constant effort maintain a situation that promotes peace ( a democratic peace) or at least inhibits the chances of war (a balance of power.)



NOTE: The Human Security Report, is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the governments of Canada, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and the U.K. it was formerly located at the Universityof British Columbia and recently relocated at Simon Fraisier University in Canada.

The graphics are from Rummel's website.

The Horror of the Trenches.

We just commemorated the 60th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

A lot of comment of differing quality has been posted on this event. (Two of the best, pro and con, come from R J Rummel
II and Dean Esmay (The Links have died 4/13/11) But it seems that an important piece of background information is being overlooked across the board. Namely the total horror of the trench warfare of the First World War.

In 1914 the armies in France quickly developed a line from Switzerland to the coast. Both sides dug trenches to fortify their positions. Any attack was a suicidal frontal assault against a well dug in enemy. At the time there was no way to break the stalemate. Eventually the French tried a strategy of attrition at Verdun. Once I visited that battlefield. The guide, apparently referencing a known incident, said this is where the XXth Division died in 15 minutes. An area that was barely two square kilometers. The whole tour was one incident after another like that. We saw a bunker where several buses of elderly Germans were stopping to pray and remember. An annual trip to the grave of a nine hundred of their relatives. Members of a regiment that was in bunker when French artillery closed all the exits. On and on and on. The Somme, I’m sure, was the same way. The big American battle was the Muse Argonne, many of the same stories. The 35th division was effectively destroyed in four days. Over a quarter of the infantry were killed, like numbers of wounded or stragglers wandering around the battlefield looking for a safe place.

One result of the trench warfare was there was a firm commitment that this would never never happen again. To the point that normal judgment was warped.

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The advent of the airplane in WWI as a weapon promised a way out of the trap. There were three schools of thought on the use of Air Power.

The first is tactical. Use aircraft as long-range field or naval guns to support ground or naval operations.

The second is strategic. Use aircraft to destroy factories, supply dumps, and similar targets that support the war effort.

The third was terror bombing. Bombing civilians to break the will of the enemy and force surrender. If you have any questions about the horror of the trenches in WWI, consider that the promise that terror bombing could be done so that only the enemy was hurt was persuasive.

To put it another way, military targets strictly defined, military targets loosely defined and often near civilian areas, and terror bombing of civilians.

The first option was held mostly in services that could never afford large bombers, or the services air section would have no purpose if it was not tactical.

The third option came to dominate the thinking of the RAF with the approval of most the involved civilian leadership accrues the board.

US Army Air Corp thought they could win with the second option, though there was a minority of officers and civilian leadership support in favor of the third option.

Neither the RAF, nor the Army Air Corp put much pre-war effort into tactical bombing.

So when the US and UK entered WWII there was a strong commitment to strategic and even terror bombing in parts of the Air Forces and in the Civilian leadership. Massive amounts of resources were committed to this at the governmental level. The Manhattan project was simply an extension of this program.


The terror bombing option was the result of what happened in the trenches in WWI. The memory burned so hard that even terror bombing looked like proportionally less evil than going back to the trenches. An attitude that would have been unthinkable before WWI and is becoming more so again. When we look at things like the RAF de-housing campaign in Germany or Gen LeMay’s fire bombing of Japan or the decision to use the Atomic bomb, it was made in a context where they saw a far greater evil. (Ironically the targeting of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was made with much more reference to military value than General LeMay's firebombing.) Captain Truman was an officer in the 35th Division noted above. When President Truman was looking at the decision to use the atomic bomb, he was comparing a known horror burned in his memory that would have been repeated when Japan was invaded, against an abstraction of the results of an unproven weapons system. Something that I’m sure weighed on his decision in a way we can’t comprehend.

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Looking through hindsight, it was the tactical operations that proved the greatest contribution to the war effort; and it seems that the tactical element has consistently proven of greatest value.

The strategic bombing was really beyond the technologies of the time, but did make some contribution to victory, but some commentators have suggested the assets would have been better directed into a few more ground divisions and tactical air support. The development of smart bombs that can actually hit the target, and consistently avoid nearby civilian targets is giving this option more promise.

The terror bombing was always counter productive, creating no real change in war production but galvanizing enemy determination. It does not seem to been applied by any major power since then, and WWI being a memory long superseded by the memory of Hiroshima it will probably not be tried again, though every now and they you hear some fool advocate it.

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A thought.

What in the name of "Hiroshima - never again" will we accept?

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Note 1: The point of this post is not to justify or condemn, just explain. Much comment is pro and con is devoid of solid knowledge of the events in 1945. The issue is to important for the ignorant comments that come from both sides. This is, I hope a minor contribution to informed discussion.

Note 2: The decision has to be evaluated on the information available to the decision makers and a reasonable evaluation of the consequences of all options. It seems to me that, in August 1945, and at the end point of a number of poor decisions, based on the best information available, using the Atomic bomb appeared to be the option that would end the war fastest with the least additional loss of life. Including information not available to them reinforces this conclusion.

Personal note: When US troops landed in Japan, they were not sure what to expect so they landed in assault formation. My father led a rifle platoon in the first wave. In the normal course of these events, if the landing was opposed, he would have died five years before I was born.

Update: 7 September 2005, 13 April 2011

Dr Rummel considered some new information and modified his position (Link Dead)

Imagine

John Lennon’s song Imagine proves he is a much better song writer than a philosopher. He sings:

Imagine all the people
living life in peace

. . .

You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one,

Well R.J. Rummel, Professor Emeritus of Political Science is imagining peace with good science and hard data rather then poor philosophy and dreams.

His life professional work was uncovering the root causes of war, and Democide which is detailed on his Power Kills web site. His major thesis is that the incidence of war and governmental mass goes down with the level of actual democracy in a country.

This week on his blog Freedoms Peace he has two here and here posts about visualizing (or imaginings) this concept graphically.


This regression analysis chart shows that as freedom (x axis) increases, insecurity decreases.

A major thesis of Dr Rummel’s is the Democratic Peace - that genuinely democratic countries do not go to war with each other. (Andrew Cory at at Dean’s World provides a good short summary.) A while back I checked the data on Rummel’s web site. If one takes the strictest definition of democracy his data showed a statistical 99% confidence level for this thesis. (Actually no exceptions is 100% but I would leave room for some weird case coming up.) Depending how much doubt one would accept for the borderline cases it would be a 90 to 95% confidence level. Political Science is a social science; this level of confidence is very atypical. His data agrees with what I know and could verify on the subject. While I do not have his fondness for categorical statements, I would have to consider the Democratic Peace thesis as well established as anything in the Social Sciences and better than most.


It seems that John Lennon might have got something right.


NOTE: I decided I did not like some of my word choices and edited it, The point is the same. 07/21/05