May 17, 2005
INOCCULATED:
Notes on Nationalism (George Orwell, May, 1945)
Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longeur, and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word, we have the thing in considerable profusion. In the same way, there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word "nationalism", but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation -- that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." But secondly -- and this is much more important -- I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseperable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality. [...]
In the classification I have attempted above, it will seem that I have often exaggerated, oversimplified, made unwarranted assumptions and have left out of account the existence of ordinarily decent motives. This was inevitable, because in this essay I am trying to isolate and identify tendencies which exist in all our minds and pervert our thinking, without necessarily occurring in a pure state or operating continuously. It is important at this point to correct the over-simplified picture which I have been obliged to make. To begin with, one has no right to assume that everyone, or even every intellectual, is infected by nationalism. Secondly, nationalism can be intermittent and limited. An intelligent man may half-succumb to a belief which he knows to be absurd, and he may keep it out of his mind for long periods, only reverting to it in moments of anger or sentimentality, or when he is certain that no important issues are involved. Thirdly, a nationalistic creed may be adopted in good faith from non-nationalistic motives. Fourthly, several kinds of nationalism, even kinds that cancel out, can co-exist in the same person.
All the way through I have said, "the nationalist does this" or "the nationalist does that", using for purposes of illustration the extreme, barely sane type of nationalist who has no neutral areas in his mind and no interest in anything except the struggle for power. Actually such people are fairly common, but they are not worth the powder and shot. In real life Lord Elton, D.N. Pritt, Lady Houston, Ezra Pound, Lord Vanisttart, Father Coughlin and all the rest of their dreary tribe have to be fought against, but their intellectual deficiencies hardly need pointing out. Monomania is not interesting, and the fact that no nationalist of the more bigoted kind can write a book which still seems worth reading after a lapse of years has a certain deodorizing effect. But when one has admitted that nationalism has not triumphed everywhere, that there are still peoples whose judgements are not at the mercy of their desires, the fact does remain that the pressing problems -- India, Poland, Palestine, the Spanish civil war, the Moscow trials, the American Negroes, the Russo-German Pact or what have you -- cannot be, or at least never are, discussed upon a reasonable level. The Eltons and Pritts and Coughlins, each of them simply an enormous mouth bellowing the same lie over and over again, are obviously extreme cases, but we deceive ourselves if we do not realize that we can all resemble them in unguarded moments. Let a certain note be struck, let this or that corn be trodden on -- and it may be corn whose very existence has been unsuspected hitherto -- and the most fair-minded and sweet-tempered person may suddenly be transformed into a vicious partisan, anxious only to "score" over his adversary and indifferent as to how many lies he tells or how many logical errors he commits in doing so. When Lloyd George, who was an opponent of the Boer War, announced in the House of Commons that the British communiques, if one added them together, claimed the killing of more Boers than the whole Boer nation contained, it is recorded that Arthur Balfour rose to his feet and shouted "Cad!" Very few people are proof against lapses of this type. The Negro snubbed by a white woman, the Englishman who hears England ignorantly criticized by an American, the Catholic apologist reminded of the Spanish Armada, will all react in much the same way. One prod to the nerve of nationalism, and the intellectual decencies can vanish, the past can be altered, and the plainest facts can be denied.
If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
BRITISH TORY: Britian will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
COMMUNIST. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
IRISH NATIONALIST. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
TROTSKYIST. The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. When Hitler invaded Russia, the officials of the MOI issued "as background" a warning that Russia might be expected to collapse in six weeks. On the other hand the Communists regarded every phase of the war as a Russian victory, even when the Russians were driven back almost to the Caspian Sea and had lost several million prisoners. There is no need to multiply instances. The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when "our" side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified -- still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.
The reason for the rise and spread of nationalism is far too big a question to be raised here. It is enough to say that, in the forms in which it appears among English intellectuals, it is a distorted reflection of the frightful battles actually happening in the external world, and that its worst follies have been made possible by the breakdown of patriotism and religious belief. If one follows up this train of thought, one is in danger of being led into a species of Conservatism, or into political quietism. It can be plausibly argued, for instance -- it is even possibly true -- that patriotism is an inocculation against nationalism, that monarchy is a guard against dictatorship, and that organized religion is a guard against superstition. Or again, it can be argued that no unbiased outlook is possible, that all creeds and causes involve the same lies, follies, and barbarities; and this is often advanced as a reason for keeping out of politics altogether. I do not accept this argument, if only because in the modern world no one describable as an intellectual can keep out of politics in the sense of not caring about them. I think one must engage in politics -- using the word in a wide sense -- and that one must have preferences: that is, one must recognize that some causes are objectively better than others, even if they are advanced by equally bad means. As for the nationalistic loves and hatreds that I have spoken of, they are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one's own feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias. If you hate and fear Russia, if you are jealous of the wealth and power of America, if you despise Jews, if you have a sentiment of inferiority towards the British ruling class, you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can at least recognize that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort, and contemporary English literature, so far as it is alive at all to the major issues of our time, shows how few of us are prepared to make it.
Outside of the intellectual classes America has fortunately never suffered such a breakdown of patriotism and religious belief.
MORE:
Bonhoeffer and the Sovereign State (Jean Bethke Elshtain, August/September 1996, First Things)
[W]e may gain an understanding of just how desperate Bonhoeffer saw his situation to be if we examine certain key themes in his writings: his tantalizing and under-developed notion of responsibility, his concept of deputyship, and, especially, his historical analysis of the growth of modern adoration for sovereignty-of the entwining in the Enlightenment of sovereignty over the nation and the sovereignty of the self. We may even gain from such an examination a general understanding of what, for Bonhoeffer, we must render unto Caesar and what we must not.Posted by Orrin Judd at May 17, 2005 12:00 AMBonhoeffer saw himself as a faithful follower of Luther in his refusal of what Germans were asked to render to their terrible Caesar. Any reduction of Luther's doctrine of the "Two Kingdoms" to a notion that there are two spheres, "the one divine, holy, supernatural, and Christian, and the other worldly, profane, natural, and un-Christian," Bonhoeffer held to be a vulgarization. The modern reading of the Two Kingdoms-a reading shaped (Bonhoeffer would say deformed) by the Enlightenment-unwittingly finalized the separation of Christian concerns from the secular and profane. "On the Protestant side," he writes, "Luther's doctrine of the Two Kingdoms was misinterpreted as implying the emancipation and sanctification of the world and of the natural. Government, reason, economics, and culture arrogate to themselves a right of autonomy, but do not in any way understand this autonomy as bringing them into opposition to Christianity." The Lutheran misunderstanding of Luther contributed over time to the Enlightenment cult of reason and the emergence of the self-mastering self.
With that triumph came an idolatrous faith in progress that could only result in nationalism-the "Western godlessness" that became in modern times its own religion. In the "apostasy of the Western world from Jesus Christ," a massive defection from our collective recognition of finitude, we abandoned the knowledge that we are creatures as well as creators. This for Bonhoeffer is the backdrop to twentieth-century totalitarianism, a terrible story of what happens when we presume we stand alone as Sovereign Selves within Sovereign States, a terrible story of what happens when individual hubris meets nationalism.
Helpful, but doesn't redeem you.
Posted by: joe shropshire at May 17, 2005 12:17 AMNo, but one can be condemned by one's words.
Posted by: joe shropshire at May 17, 2005 12:31 AMYes, words matter.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 12:37 AMIndeed they do, which is why that particular one shouldn't roll off your tongue quite so easily.
Posted by: joe shropshire at May 17, 2005 4:06 AMnationalism? that's the point.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 7:12 AMI always liked this quote from Orwell
Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.
According to Orwell, those who think America could have stayed aloof from the war in Europe are objectively pro-fascist. And those who were not supportive of Britain when it was defending civilization all by itself from a new dark age, would be against Britain and its struggle to preserve freedom. Not to come to Britain's aid as it fought nazi tyranny would be to "objectively" stab Britain in the back.
daniel:
Fortunately we require no qualifiers, like "objectively", where the interventionists are concerned--they were pro-Stalinist.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 9:05 AMYes, exactly, you and the international socialists are very much anti-nationalism.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 17, 2005 9:47 AMOf course, Christianity is anti-nationalist.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 9:53 AMActually OJ an interventionist would be pro-Britain and pro-Jewish. Which makes you.... well, you know.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 10:13 AMAnti-Nazi and anti-Communist?
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 10:18 AMAnti-Nazi and anti-Communist?
By sitting back and letting one or the other dominate Europe?
You'll really have to explain how a hypothetically victorious Soviet Union, ruling thru puppet Communist parties and having access to the industrial and economic resources of Western Europe would fall sooner than it did.
You'll have to explain how a hypothetical victorious Nazi economy with its more efficient capitalistic base would have collapsed sooner than the USSR in our time.
In both cases please explain how you know either to be factual truth instead of just a dearly held belief on your part. Feel free to actually provide hard data and factual evidence supporting your positions.
Then there is the stalemate scenario (you really have trouble deciding beween the three). You claim that the only reason the USSR survived as long as it did was because the American military threat propped up the Communist regime. In a stalemate scenario, don't the Nazis and Communist each provide a prop to the other as they warily eye each other in preparation for round 2? If not, please explain why not.
And what about the Jews? What are their fates under any of the three scenarios? Do you care what happens to them one way or another?
My guess is that you will once again dodge these questions in a cowardly fashion. I got another example of such cowardice over the weekend when you deleted posts of mine you not could answer or respond to right before the threads went into archive. I wasn't too surprised that you did so since it's not the first time you've done so, like when you deceitfully expurged a post of yours stating a desire to "HAPPILY" kill gays.
So here's looking forward to your response or your cowardly lack of response. Either way I win.
No, neither was capable of dominating. It would have been a perfectly acceptable alternative to fight both. What we did was the least desirable alternative.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 10:58 AMNo, neither was capable of dominating.
Please provide hard evidence supporting this statement.
In fact,history has shown that either would have been capable of dominating continental Europe for many, many decades. The Soviets could have ruled without much imperial overhead costs through puppet Communist regimes. A complete occupation of Germany and friendly cooperation with Italian and French Communists would have made Soviet rule quite easy.
The Nazis had the full collaborationist cooperation of the peoples of Western Europe and planned to exterminate the Slavs of Eastern Europe. This is exactly what the Nazis planned to do in order to open up Eastern Europe for German colonization. Both the Ukrainian famine and the Great Leap Forward showed that this could be done rather easily at a kill rate of about 10 million per year.
Now feel free to actually refute my claims. By "refute" I mean something more substantial than simply making counter statements without supporting evidence.
It would have been a perfectly acceptable alternative to fight both. What we did was the least desirable alternative.
I'm assuming you mean sequentially with an unprovoked and dastardly sneak attack on the Russians sometime after 1945. How is such a war crime acceptable either morally or strategically? How would it be politically acceptable to the American people and Congress?
And would you at least be man enough to explain why you are uncaring about the fate of European Jewry (or perhaps wishing that the Nazis had succeed ther as well). I'm betting you'll be a coward once again and refuse to respond to this question. But I can be patient.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 11:16 AMNo, neither was capable of dominating.
BTW, that brings us back to the stalemate scenario. So I'll ask again the questions associated with that possibility in the hopes that you are capable of answering them:
Then there is the stalemate scenario (you really have trouble deciding beween the three). You claim that the only reason the USSR survived as long as it did was because the American military threat propped up the Communist regime. In a stalemate scenario, don't the Nazis and Communist each provide a prop to the other as they warily eye each other in preparation for round 2? If not, please explain why not.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 11:19 AMI decided over the weekend I will not post again here on the subject of WWII. Really serves no purpose. OJ is the only guy I know who is a troll on his own blog.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at May 17, 2005 11:57 AMdaniel:
They weren't capable of dominating the rump they were left effectively. More would have been worse.
It's not a crime to get rid of the Bolshevik regime. Unless you're a Bolshevik.
we'd already let the Jews die, we needn't have let 100 million others die. A jew is no more nor less valuable than a Hmong.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 11:59 AMdaniel:
Yes, but the war between them was existential, so Cold War was improbable for any significant length of time.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 12:06 PMThey weren't capable of dominating the rump they were left effectively.
The USSR actually did rule its Eastern European rump for about half a century. So please define what you mean by "effectively".
More would have been worse.
This is what I mean by making a counter statement without supporting evidence. Why exactly couldn't the Soviets rule all of continental Europe thru puppet Communist parties? Please provde hard evidence supporting your claim. failure to do so is objectively admission on your part of being mistaken.
It's not a crime to get rid of the Bolshevik regime. Unless you're a Bolshevik.
False dichotomy. Reagan got rid of the Bolsheviks without a shot being fired or a nuclear bomb being dropped.
You also contradict yourself. First you claim that Communism would not survive on its own, and in fact needed (for some bizarre reason yet to be explained) American opposition in order for the regime to survive. Yet such active oppostion is what you are advocating in order to get rid of the regime. You know, that regime that wouldn't have lasted anyways.
we'd already let the Jews die,
Granted our failure to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz was unforgivable, but our intervention did save enough of European Jewry to start the state of Israel. You OTOH would have preferred that America stay out completely so that ALL the Jews would die.
we needn't have let 100 million others die.
How did the end of the war in Europe inevitably lead to Communist victories in China and Southeast Asia? And how many millions would die in that nuclear attack you keep having orgasms over?
A jew is no more nor less valuable than a Hmong.
Red herring, nobody said they were. The end of the war in Europe (or any possible end of the war in Europe) had zero effect on Mao's independent decision to ignore Stalin's warnings and proceed with the defeat of the decrepit and corrupt Nationalist regime. How many times do I have to educate you? Mao won on his own without Soviet help. The post war situation in Europe had no effect on his decision or the outcome of the Chinese Civil War.
And how exactly does any end of war in Europe allow the French to hold on to Indochina and prevent subsequent Communist domination in Vietnam, atrocities against the Hmong and the later atrocities by the Khmer Rouge?
Yes, but the war between them was existential, so Cold War was improbable for any significant length of time.
You know this for a fact how exactly? Please define what you mean by "significant length of time". How would such hostility between two totalitarians be any less existential than between democracy and totalitarianism?
daniel;
Ineffectively.
There weren't enough puppets.
Reagan should have used the bomb.
Incidentally saved enough, it was no consideration of the Administration, nevermind the American people.
Irradiate Moscow because we won't tolerate communism/Nazism and the rest follows.
Stalin was no threat to us. He was to Hitler. And vice versa.
Ineffectively
Define please in terms of projected duration of Eastern Europe or all of Continental Europe.
There weren't enough puppets.
Given that Italian and French Communists nearly came to power on their own at the ballot box after the war how can you make this claim with a straight face? The Soviets also found sufficient numbers of puppets in East Germany, why would they not find enough puppets in West Germany?
Reagan should have used the bomb.
How exactly? I was in the USAF during the Reagan presidency. I would love to hear how you would: launch a nuclear strike sometime in the 80s without killing more Russians than the 100 million you mourn as victimes of Communism, and how do you neutralize the Soviet second strike capacity so that American cities remain untouched. Explain exactly how you would prevent the incineration of the northert hemisphere. What SIOP would you employ?
Incidentally saved enough, it was no consideration of the Administration, nevermind the American people.
The American people didn't know about the Holocaust until GIs uncovered the death camps. How does supposition that saving the Jews was incidental to defeating the Nazis negate the fact that only intervention would have prevented their complete extinction? Would you rather that the Jews all died?
Irradiate Moscow because we won't tolerate communism/Nazism and the rest follows.
Mao considered the atom bomb to be a "paper tiger". So how does even a nuclear attack on Moscow (which would make the American president who ordered it a war criminal) prevent Mao from defeating the weak, corrupt and incompetent Nationalist regime? How many bombs would you then drop on China? How many would you kill? 50 million? 100 million? 200 million?
And when America kills more people than the Communists what then is the difference between the two?
Stalin was no threat to us. He was to Hitler. And vice versa.
Then why launch an unprovoked nuclear attack against the USSR? They aren't a threat right?
trying to run an empire left them prostrate before us.
It's not a question of how many Russians die but what they die for.
No, I'd rather you stop pretending that the question of whether to fight the Nazis had anything to do with the Holocaust. your admission in that regard is a positive first step.
It became a paper tiger when we stopped using it.
It's the ends, not the means that matter.
Because the Soviet Union was evil and the Cold War self-destructive.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 1:55 PM"Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
That would make the strategy of containment of the USSR and Reagan's "Star Wars" end game examples of supreme excellence in the art of war.
Except that we broke America too, making it a defeat.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 3:03 PMHow is America broke (as properly measured in terms of national debt as a percentage of GNP)?
Please respond to my other questions.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 3:14 PMIt broke over the Cold War, leading to the election of Reagan who promised to end it.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 3:40 PMIt broke over the Cold War, leading to the election of Reagan who promised to end it.
So you do give credit to Reagan for the fall of Communism.
Funny, I remember gas lines and the Iranian hostage crisis leading to Carter's defeat. I also recall that the military build up actually began under Carter. And voters were generally afraid that Reagan's proposed military build up combined with his proposed tax cuts would actually bancrupt us.
Are you sure you lived in the same America as I did in the late 70s?
Please respond to my other questions, or objectively concede defeat.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 3:51 PMYes, the Cold War gave us the '60s and '70s.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 3:56 PMdaniel:
Yes, I'm deleting all the posts where you refer to others as Nazi-lovers or some variation thereon. And if you can't stop being an Internet caricature I'll ban them all.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 3:58 PMDaniel: Either intentionally or not, you're not grappling with OJ's actual point, as I understand it. Given that the US is morally obligated to save oppressed people and given that the USSR was every bit as bad as Nazi Germany, destroying one while leaving the other in control of half Europe was no better than taking no action at all and a waste of the lives and treasure spent. On the other hand, OJ's preferred result (which he might think we were obligated to undertake) is for us to destroy both regimes, either at the same time or serially.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 17, 2005 4:18 PMYes, the Cold War gave us the '60s and '70s.
Since the counterculture of the 60s was at its heart anti-military, how did this happen?
I don't know about you, but I had a great time in the 70s.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 4:19 PMBecause we had an enormous and wasteful military?
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 4:30 PMGiven that the US is morally obligated to save oppressed people and given that the USSR was every bit as bad as Nazi Germany,
Stalin had no intention of exterminating the peoples of Eastern Europe, Hitler did. Stalin and Communism's death total exceeded Hitler's and Nazism only because it lasted much longer. Had Hitler's regime survived to dominate Europe its death toll would have exceeded Mao's.
destroying one while leaving the other in control of half Europe was no better than taking no action at all and a waste of the lives and treasure spent.
No action at all results in a Europe that is completely Nazi and/or Coummunist. How is that better than what actually happened, a Europe that was half free?
On the other hand, OJ's preferred result (which he might think we were obligated to undertake) is for us to destroy both regimes, either at the same time or serially.
Resulting in a equivalent number dead, the American president that ordered such an attack being a war criminal no better than Hitler or Stalin, and America being no better than Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.
I don't know about you, but I like how things actually turned out. The Soviets were defeated without fighting, showing America and especially Reagan possessed "supreme excellence in the art of war".
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 4:31 PMdaniel:
How many Eastern Europeans did Stalin and Hitler kill respectively?
It shortens the period of totalitarianism for all.
Were FDR and Truman war criminals because they firebombed civilians? I don't remember any trials.
Yes, that's the difference. You accept how things turned out. I find them repellant, not least the 100 million who were killed during your peaceful Cold War .
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 4:37 PMIt shortens the period of totalitarianism for all.
Actually, killing a regime's enemies lengthens the regime's lifetime.
Were FDR and Truman war criminals because they firebombed civilians? I don't remember any trials.
We were already at war, the methods used were not subject to international law. It's an unprovoked attack that is a war crime. Perps were hung at Nuremberg and Tokyo for doing just that. You would deserve to be hung alongside them.
Yes, that's the difference. You accept how things turned out. I find them repellant, not least the 100 million who were killed during your peaceful Cold War.
How is your proposal any less repellent? How many would have died in Europe as a result of your peaceful America that doesn't intervene and leaves ALL OF EUROPE to the tender merices of ethe Nazis and/or the Communists? What kind of millenia gets ushered in when OJ orders a nuclear war that kills 10s of millions of people?
How are you different than Stalin, Mao or Hitler?
How is your proposal any less repellent?
The proposal, to the extent that one might consider it bad, is a sin of omission, rather than the sin of commission that Orrin believes that we engaged in, and is therefore less odious.
How many would have died in Europe as a result of your peaceful America that doesn't intervene and leaves ALL OF EUROPE to the tender merices of ethe Nazis and/or the Communists?
It cannot be know, but almost certainly far fewer, perhaps only a few million, maybe as many as 10 million... Still a great improvement.
What kind of millenia gets ushered in when OJ orders a nuclear war that kills 10s of millions of people?
As I understand it, Orrin wants a nuclear war in the late 40s, or early 50s, before the huge arsenals had been built up.
Thus, it would necessarily have been a limited nuclear war, killing no more than, say, five million.
Again, a vast improvement over what actually happened.
How are you different than Stalin, Mao or Hitler?
Orrin has no power.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 17, 2005 7:26 PMdaniel:
Not sure I'd agree with Orrin on all aspects of this debate, but if you are informed by: 1) a belief that taking on the Soviets would have been a war crime; 2)a belief that your having personally enjoyed the 70's is indictaive of something; and 3) a geopolitical theory that equates righteousness with simple counts of real and projected dead bodies, you are a lost man.
Posted by: Peter B at May 17, 2005 9:56 PMThe major shortcoming in OJs argument is that he requires decision makers at the time to undertake seismic actions in advance of things that hadn't yet happened, and required a widespread impression of Communism that didn't yet exist.
Further, other countries were bound to pick sides based upon which way the wind was blowing; similarly, political trends in our own country would not have been immune.
A triumphant USSR, or Germany, in Europe, with England emasculated, or worse, would just as likely created a world in which people and nations perceived command economies as triumphant.
This stands in stark contrast to Communism being given the opportunity to fully demonstrate it comprehensive failure.
Daniel--many good points. However, I recommend you visit The Argument Clinic.
It might help you to waste less time on idiocies as "Reagan should have used the bomb."
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at May 18, 2005 7:24 AMJeff:
Yes, my precise point is that FDR was an idiot for not recognizing the nature of Stalin and Bolshevism, which the Right had been right about for almost thirty years by then. I don't assume that he favored killing 100 million people, just that he and his fellow travellers were dupes.
Why not give Nazism a full chance to prove it didn't work? How many have to die before you're convinced that Rationalism is murderous?
Posted by: oj at May 18, 2005 8:52 AMYes, my precise point is that FDR was an idiot for not recognizing the nature of Stalin and Bolshevism, which the Right had been right about for almost thirty years by then. I don't assume that he favored killing 100 million people, just that he and his fellow travellers were dupes.
Let's see, the Russians did most of the fighting and dying in the ETO. In doing so they greatly reduced the number of American combat casualties that would have occured if the Germans were free to send more troops to defend their western front.
In return for all that blood, the Russians get Eastern Europe and the Balkans. These are backward, poor, unimportant regions of no geopolitical importance or value. The Americans get the rich, industrialized western half of Europe.
Using a cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis, it's the Russians that got suckered at Yalta, not FDR.
BTW, here's my new sig:
Kill the Slavs and Asians, not the Jews
How do you like it?
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 18, 2005 10:05 AMother people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseperable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality. [...]
In the classification I have attempted above, it will seem that I have often exaggerated, oversimplified, made unwarranted assumptions and have left out of account the existence of ordinarily decent motives. This was inevitable, because in this essay I am trying to isolate and identify tendencies which exist in all our minds and pervert our thinking, without necessarily occurring in a pure state or operating continuously. It is important at this point to correct the over-simplified picture which I have been obliged to make. To begin with, one has no right to assume that everyone, or even every intellectual, is infected by nationalism. Secondly, nationalism can be intermittent and limited. An intelligent man may half-succumb to a belief which he knows to be absurd, and he may keep it out of his mind for long periods, only reverting to it in moments of anger or sentimentality, or when he is certain that no important issues are involved. Thirdly, a nationalistic creed may be adopted in good faith from non-nationalistic motives. Fourthly, several kinds of nationalism, even kinds that cancel out, can co-exist in the same person.
All the way through I have said, "the nationalist does this" or "the nationalist does that", using for purposes of illustration the extreme, barely sane type of nationalist who has no neutral areas in his mind and no interest in anything except the struggle for power. Actually such people are fairly common, but they are not worth the powder and shot. In real life Lord Elton, D.N. Pritt, Lady Houston, Ezra Pound, Lord Vanisttart, Father Coughlin and all the rest of their dreary tribe have to be fought against, but their intellectual deficiencies hardly need pointing out. Monomania is not interesting, and the fact that no nationalist of the more bigoted kind can write a book which still seems worth reading after a lapse of years has a certain deodorizing effect. But when one has admitted that nationalism has not triumphed everywhere, that there are still peoples whose judgements are not at the mercy of their desires, the fact does remain that the pressing problems -- India, Poland, Palestine, the Spanish civil war, the Moscow trials, the American Negroes, the Russo-German Pact or what have you -- cannot be, or at least never are, discussed upon a reasonable level. The Eltons and Pritts and Coughlins, each of them simply an enormous mouth bellowing the same lie over and over again, are obviously extreme cases, but we deceive ourselves if we do not realize that we can all resemble them in unguarded moments. Let a certain note be struck, let this or that corn be trodden on -- and it may be corn whose very existence has been unsuspected hitherto -- and the most fair-minded and sweet-tempered person may suddenly be transformed into a vicious partisan, anxious only to "score" over his adversary and indifferent as to how many lies he tells or how many logical errors he commits in doing so. When Lloyd George, who was an opponent of the Boer War, announced in the House of Commons that the British communiques, if one added them together, claimed the killing of more Boers than the whole Boer nation contained, it is recorded that Arthur Balfour rose to his feet and shouted "Cad!" Very few people are proof against lapses of this type. The Negro snubbed by a white woman, the Englishman who hears England ignorantly criticized by an American, the Catholic apologist reminded of the Spanish Armada, will all react in much the same way. One prod to the nerve of nationalism, and the intellectual decencies can vanish, the past can be altered, and the plainest facts can be denied.
If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible. Here are just a few examples. I list below five types of nationalist, and against each I append a fact which it is impossible for that type of nationalist to accept, even in his secret thoughts:
BRITISH TORY: Britian will come out of this war with reduced power and prestige.
COMMUNIST. If she had not been aided by Britain and America, Russia would have been defeated by Germany.
IRISH NATIONALIST. Eire can only remain independent because of British protection.
TROTSKYIST. The Stalin regime is accepted by the Russian masses.
PACIFIST. Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
All of these facts are grossly obvious if one's emotions do not happen to be involved: but to the kind of person named in each case they are also intolerable, and so they have to be denied, and false theories constructed upon their denial. I come back to the astonishing failure of military prediction in the present war. It is, I think, true to say that the intelligentsia have been more wrong about the progress of the war than the common people, and that they were more swayed by partisan feelings. The average intellectual of the Left believed, for instance, that the war was lost in 1940, that the Germans were bound to overrun Egypt in 1942, that the Japanese would never be driven out of the lands they had conquered, and that the Anglo-American bombing offensive was making no impression on Germany. He could believe these things because his hatred for the British ruling class forbade him to admit that British plans could succeed. There is no limit to the follies that can be swallowed if one is under the influence of feelings of this kind. I have heard it confidently stated, for instance, that the American troops had been brought to Europe not to fight the Germans but to crush an English revolution. One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. When Hitler invaded Russia, the officials of the MOI issued "as background" a warning that Russia might be expected to collapse in six weeks. On the other hand the Communists regarded every phase of the war as a Russian victory, even when the Russians were driven back almost to the Caspian Sea and had lost several million prisoners. There is no need to multiply instances. The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged. And, as I have pointed out already, the sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when "our" side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified -- still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function.
The reason for the rise and spread of nationalism is far too big a question to be raised here. It is enough to say that, in the forms in which it appears among English intellectuals, it is a distorted reflection of the frightful battles actually happening in the external world, and that its worst follies have been made possible by the breakdown of patriotism and religious belief. If one follows up this train of thought, one is in danger of being led into a species of Conservatism, or into political quietism. It can be plausibly argued, for instance -- it is even possibly true -- that patriotism is an inocculation against nationalism, that monarchy is a guard against dictatorship, and that organized religion is a guard against superstition. Or again, it can be argued that no unbiased outlook is possible, that all creeds and causes involve the same lies, follies, and barbarities; and this is often advanced as a reason for keeping out of politics altogether. I do not accept this argument, if only because in the modern world no one describable as an intellectual can keep out of politics in the sense of not caring about them. I think one must engage in politics -- using the word in a wide sense -- and that one must have preferences: that is, one must recognize that some causes are objectively better than others, even if they are advanced by equally bad means. As for the nationalistic loves and hatreds that I have spoken of, they are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. It is a question first of all of discovering what one really is, what one's own feelings really are, and then of making allowance for the inevitable bias. If you hate and fear Russia, if you are jealous of the wealth and power of America, if you despise Jews, if you have a sentiment of inferiority towards the British ruling class, you cannot get rid of those feelings simply by taking thought. But you can at least recognize that you have them, and prevent them from contaminating your mental processes. The emotional urges which are inescapable, and are perhaps even necessary to political action, should be able to exist side by side with an acceptance of reality. But this, I repeat, needs a moral effort, and contemporary English literature, so far as it is alive at all to the major issues of our time, shows how few of us are prepared to make it.
Outside of the intellectual classes America has fortunately never suffered such a breakdown of patriotism and religious belief.
MORE:
Bonhoeffer and the Sovereign State (Jean Bethke Elshtain, August/September 1996, First Things)
[W]e may gain an understanding of just how desperate Bonhoeffer saw his situation to be if we examine certain key themes in his writings: his tantalizing and under-developed notion of responsibility, his concept of deputyship, and, especially, his historical analysis of the growth of modern adoration for sovereignty-of the entwining in the Enlightenment of sovereignty over the nation and the sovereignty of the self. We may even gain from such an examination a general understanding of what, for Bonhoeffer, we must render unto Caesar and what we must not.
Bonhoeffer saw himself as a faithful follower of Luther in his refusal of what Germans were asked to render to their terrible Caesar. Any reduction of Luther's doctrine of the "Two Kingdoms" to a notion that there are two spheres, "the one divine, holy, supernatural, and Christian, and the other worldly, profane, natural, and un-Christian," Bonhoeffer held to be a vulgarization. The modern reading of the Two Kingdoms-a reading shaped (Bonhoeffer would say deformed) by the Enlightenment-unwittingly finalized the separation of Christian concerns from the secular and profane. "On the Protestant side," he writes, "Luther's doctrine of the Two Kingdoms was misinterpreted as implying the emancipation and sanctification of the world and of the natural. Government, reason, economics, and culture arrogate to themselves a right of autonomy, but do not in any way understand this autonomy as bringing them into opposition to Christianity." The Lutheran misunderstanding of Luther contributed over time to the Enlightenment cult of reason and the emergence of the self-mastering self.
With that triumph came an idolatrous faith in progress that could only result in nationalism-the "Western godlessness" that became in modern times its own religion. In the "apostasy of the Western world from Jesus Christ," a massive defection from our collective recognition of finitude, we abandoned the knowledge that we are creatures as well as creators. This for Bonhoeffer is the backdrop to twentieth-century totalitarianism, a terrible story of what happens when we presume we stand alone as Sovereign Selves within Sovereign States, a terrible story of what happens when individual hubris meets nationalism.
Posted by Orrin Judd at May 17, 2005 12:00 AM
CommentsHelpful, but doesn't redeem you.
Posted by: joe shropshire at May 17, 2005 12:17 AM joe:
One can't be redeemed by the Nation.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 12:27 AM No, but one can be condemned by one's words.
Posted by: joe shropshire at May 17, 2005 12:31 AM Yes, words matter.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 12:37 AM Indeed they do, which is why that particular one shouldn't roll off your tongue quite so easily.
Posted by: joe shropshire at May 17, 2005 04:06 AM nationalism? that's the point.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 07:12 AM I always liked this quote from Orwell
Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, ‘he that is not with me is against me’.
According to Orwell, those who think America could have stayed aloof from the war in Europe are objectively pro-fascist. And those who were not supportive of Britain when it was defending civilization all by itself from a new dark age, would be against Britain and its struggle to preserve freedom. Not to come to Britain's aid as it fought nazi tyranny would be to "objectively" stab Britain in the back.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 08:56 AM daniel:
Fortunately we require no qualifiers, like "objectively", where the interventionists are concerned--they were pro-Stalinist.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 09:05 AM Yes, exactly, you and the international socialists are very much anti-nationalism.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 17, 2005 09:47 AM Of course, Christianity is anti-nationalist.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 09:53 AM Actually OJ an interventionist would be pro-Britain and pro-Jewish. Which makes you.... well, you know.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 10:13 AM Anti-Nazi and anti-Communist?
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 10:18 AM Anti-Nazi and anti-Communist?
By sitting back and letting one or the other dominate Europe?
You'll really have to explain how a hypothetically victorious Soviet Union, ruling thru puppet Communist parties and having access to the industrial and economic resources of Western Europe would fall sooner than it did.
You'll have to explain how a hypothetical victorious Nazi economy with its more efficient capitalistic base would have collapsed sooner than the USSR in our time.
In both cases please explain how you know either to be factual truth instead of just a dearly held belief on your part. Feel free to actually provide hard data and factual evidence supporting your positions.
Then there is the stalemate scenario (you really have trouble deciding beween the three). You claim that the only reason the USSR survived as long as it did was because the American military threat propped up the Communist regime. In a stalemate scenario, don't the Nazis and Communist each provide a prop to the other as they warily eye each other in preparation for round 2? If not, please explain why not.
And what about the Jews? What are their fates under any of the three scenarios? Do you care what happens to them one way or another?
My guess is that you will once again dodge these questions in a cowardly fashion. I got another example of such cowardice over the weekend when you deleted posts of mine you not could answer or respond to right before the threads went into archive. I wasn't too surprised that you did so since it's not the first time you've done so, like when you deceitfully expurged a post of yours stating a desire to "HAPPILY" kill gays.
So here's looking forward to your response or your cowardly lack of response. Either way I win.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 10:38 AM No, neither was capable of dominating. It would have been a perfectly acceptable alternative to fight both. What we did was the least desirable alternative.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 10:58 AM No, neither was capable of dominating.
Please provide hard evidence supporting this statement.
In fact,history has shown that either would have been capable of dominating continental Europe for many, many decades. The Soviets could have ruled without much imperial overhead costs through puppet Communist regimes. A complete occupation of Germany and friendly cooperation with Italian and French Communists would have made Soviet rule quite easy.
The Nazis had the full collaborationist cooperation of the peoples of Western Europe and planned to exterminate the Slavs of Eastern Europe. This is exactly what the Nazis planned to do in order to open up Eastern Europe for German colonization. Both the Ukrainian famine and the Great Leap Forward showed that this could be done rather easily at a kill rate of about 10 million per year.
Now feel free to actually refute my claims. By "refute" I mean something more substantial than simply making counter statements without supporting evidence.
It would have been a perfectly acceptable alternative to fight both. What we did was the least desirable alternative.
I'm assuming you mean sequentially with an unprovoked and dastardly sneak attack on the Russians sometime after 1945. How is such a war crime acceptable either morally or strategically? How would it be politically acceptable to the American people and Congress?
And would you at least be man enough to explain why you are uncaring about the fate of European Jewry (or perhaps wishing that the Nazis had succeed ther as well). I'm betting you'll be a coward once again and refuse to respond to this question. But I can be patient.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 11:16 AM No, neither was capable of dominating.
BTW, that brings us back to the stalemate scenario. So I'll ask again the questions associated with that possibility in the hopes that you are capable of answering them:
Then there is the stalemate scenario (you really have trouble deciding beween the three). You claim that the only reason the USSR survived as long as it did was because the American military threat propped up the Communist regime. In a stalemate scenario, don't the Nazis and Communist each provide a prop to the other as they warily eye each other in preparation for round 2? If not, please explain why not.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 11:19 AM I decided over the weekend I will not post again here on the subject of WWII. Really serves no purpose. OJ is the only guy I know who is a troll on his own blog.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at May 17, 2005 11:57 AM daniel:
They weren't capable of dominating the rump they were left effectively. More would have been worse.
It's not a crime to get rid of the Bolshevik regime. Unless you're a Bolshevik.
we'd already let the Jews die, we needn't have let 100 million others die. A jew is no more nor less valuable than a Hmong.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 11:59 AM daniel:
Yes, but the war between them was existential, so Cold War was improbable for any significant length of time.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 12:06 PM chris:
Better work on self-discipline.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 12:09 PM They weren't capable of dominating the rump they were left effectively.
The USSR actually did rule its Eastern European rump for about half a century. So please define what you mean by "effectively".
More would have been worse.
This is what I mean by making a counter statement without supporting evidence. Why exactly couldn't the Soviets rule all of continental Europe thru puppet Communist parties? Please provde hard evidence supporting your claim. failure to do so is objectively admission on your part of being mistaken.
It's not a crime to get rid of the Bolshevik regime. Unless you're a Bolshevik.
False dichotomy. Reagan got rid of the Bolsheviks without a shot being fired or a nuclear bomb being dropped.
You also contradict yourself. First you claim that Communism would not survive on its own, and in fact needed (for some bizarre reason yet to be explained) American opposition in order for the regime to survive. Yet such active oppostion is what you are advocating in order to get rid of the regime. You know, that regime that wouldn't have lasted anyways.
we'd already let the Jews die,
Granted our failure to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz was unforgivable, but our intervention did save enough of European Jewry to start the state of Israel. You OTOH would have preferred that America stay out completely so that ALL the Jews would die.
we needn't have let 100 million others die.
How did the end of the war in Europe inevitably lead to Communist victories in China and Southeast Asia? And how many millions would die in that nuclear attack you keep having orgasms over?
A jew is no more nor less valuable than a Hmong.
Red herring, nobody said they were. The end of the war in Europe (or any possible end of the war in Europe) had zero effect on Mao's independent decision to ignore Stalin's warnings and proceed with the defeat of the decrepit and corrupt Nationalist regime. How many times do I have to educate you? Mao won on his own without Soviet help. The post war situation in Europe had no effect on his decision or the outcome of the Chinese Civil War.
And how exactly does any end of war in Europe allow the French to hold on to Indochina and prevent subsequent Communist domination in Vietnam, atrocities against the Hmong and the later atrocities by the Khmer Rouge?
Yes, but the war between them was existential, so Cold War was improbable for any significant length of time.
You know this for a fact how exactly? Please define what you mean by "significant length of time". How would such hostility between two totalitarians be any less existential than between democracy and totalitarianism?
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 01:14 PM daniel;
Ineffectively.
There weren't enough puppets.
Reagan should have used the bomb.
Incidentally saved enough, it was no consideration of the Administration, nevermind the American people.
Irradiate Moscow because we won't tolerate communism/Nazism and the rest follows.
Stalin was no threat to us. He was to Hitler. And vice versa.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 01:25 PM Ineffectively
Define please in terms of projected duration of Eastern Europe or all of Continental Europe.
There weren't enough puppets.
Given that Italian and French Communists nearly came to power on their own at the ballot box after the war how can you make this claim with a straight face? The Soviets also found sufficient numbers of puppets in East Germany, why would they not find enough puppets in West Germany?
Reagan should have used the bomb.
How exactly? I was in the USAF during the Reagan presidency. I would love to hear how you would: launch a nuclear strike sometime in the 80s without killing more Russians than the 100 million you mourn as victimes of Communism, and how do you neutralize the Soviet second strike capacity so that American cities remain untouched. Explain exactly how you would prevent the incineration of the northert hemisphere. What SIOP would you employ?
Incidentally saved enough, it was no consideration of the Administration, nevermind the American people.
The American people didn't know about the Holocaust until GIs uncovered the death camps. How does supposition that saving the Jews was incidental to defeating the Nazis negate the fact that only intervention would have prevented their complete extinction? Would you rather that the Jews all died?
Irradiate Moscow because we won't tolerate communism/Nazism and the rest follows.
Mao considered the atom bomb to be a "paper tiger". So how does even a nuclear attack on Moscow (which would make the American president who ordered it a war criminal) prevent Mao from defeating the weak, corrupt and incompetent Nationalist regime? How many bombs would you then drop on China? How many would you kill? 50 million? 100 million? 200 million?
And when America kills more people than the Communists what then is the difference between the two?
Stalin was no threat to us. He was to Hitler. And vice versa.
Then why launch an unprovoked nuclear attack against the USSR? They aren't a threat right?
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 01:48 PM trying to run an empire left them prostrate before us.
It's not a question of how many Russians die but what they die for.
No, I'd rather you stop pretending that the question of whether to fight the Nazis had anything to do with the Holocaust. your admission in that regard is a positive first step.
It became a paper tiger when we stopped using it.
It's the ends, not the means that matter.
Because the Soviet Union was evil and the Cold War self-destructive.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 01:55 PM "Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
That would make the strategy of containment of the USSR and Reagan's "Star Wars" end game examples of supreme excellence in the art of war.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 02:23 PM Except that we broke America too, making it a defeat.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 03:03 PM How is America broke (as properly measured in terms of national debt as a percentage of GNP)?
Please respond to my other questions.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 03:14 PM It broke over the Cold War, leading to the election of Reagan who promised to end it.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 03:40 PM It broke over the Cold War, leading to the election of Reagan who promised to end it.
So you do give credit to Reagan for the fall of Communism.
Funny, I remember gas lines and the Iranian hostage crisis leading to Carter's defeat. I also recall that the military build up actually began under Carter. And voters were generally afraid that Reagan's proposed military build up combined with his proposed tax cuts would actually bancrupt us.
Are you sure you lived in the same America as I did in the late 70s?
Please respond to my other questions, or objectively concede defeat.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 03:51 PM Yes, the Cold War gave us the '60s and '70s.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 03:56 PM daniel:
Yes, I'm deleting all the posts where you refer to others as Nazi-lovers or some variation thereon. And if you can't stop being an Internet caricature I'll ban them all.
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 03:58 PM Daniel: Either intentionally or not, you're not grappling with OJ's actual point, as I understand it. Given that the US is morally obligated to save oppressed people and given that the USSR was every bit as bad as Nazi Germany, destroying one while leaving the other in control of half Europe was no better than taking no action at all and a waste of the lives and treasure spent. On the other hand, OJ's preferred result (which he might think we were obligated to undertake) is for us to destroy both regimes, either at the same time or serially.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 17, 2005 04:18 PM Yes, the Cold War gave us the '60s and '70s.
Since the counterculture of the 60s was at its heart anti-military, how did this happen?
I don't know about you, but I had a great time in the 70s.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 04:19 PM Because we had an enormous and wasteful military?
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 04:30 PM Given that the US is morally obligated to save oppressed people and given that the USSR was every bit as bad as Nazi Germany,
Stalin had no intention of exterminating the peoples of Eastern Europe, Hitler did. Stalin and Communism's death total exceeded Hitler's and Nazism only because it lasted much longer. Had Hitler's regime survived to dominate Europe its death toll would have exceeded Mao's.
destroying one while leaving the other in control of half Europe was no better than taking no action at all and a waste of the lives and treasure spent.
No action at all results in a Europe that is completely Nazi and/or Coummunist. How is that better than what actually happened, a Europe that was half free?
On the other hand, OJ's preferred result (which he might think we were obligated to undertake) is for us to destroy both regimes, either at the same time or serially.
Resulting in a equivalent number dead, the American president that ordered such an attack being a war criminal no better than Hitler or Stalin, and America being no better than Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.
I don't know about you, but I like how things actually turned out. The Soviets were defeated without fighting, showing America and especially Reagan possessed "supreme excellence in the art of war".
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 04:31 PM daniel:
How many Eastern Europeans did Stalin and Hitler kill respectively?
It shortens the period of totalitarianism for all.
Were FDR and Truman war criminals because they firebombed civilians? I don't remember any trials.
Yes, that's the difference. You accept how things turned out. I find them repellant, not least the 100 million who were killed during your peaceful Cold War .
Posted by: oj at May 17, 2005 04:37 PM It shortens the period of totalitarianism for all.
Actually, killing a regime's enemies lengthens the regime's lifetime.
Were FDR and Truman war criminals because they firebombed civilians? I don't remember any trials.
We were already at war, the methods used were not subject to international law. It's an unprovoked attack that is a war crime. Perps were hung at Nuremberg and Tokyo for doing just that. You would deserve to be hung alongside them.
Yes, that's the difference. You accept how things turned out. I find them repellant, not least the 100 million who were killed during your peaceful Cold War.
How is your proposal any less repellent? How many would have died in Europe as a result of your peaceful America that doesn't intervene and leaves ALL OF EUROPE to the tender merices of ethe Nazis and/or the Communists? What kind of millenia gets ushered in when OJ orders a nuclear war that kills 10s of millions of people?
How are you different than Stalin, Mao or Hitler?
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 17, 2005 04:51 PM
How is your proposal any less repellent?
The proposal, to the extent that one might consider it bad, is a sin of omission, rather than the sin of commission that Orrin believes that we engaged in, and is therefore less odious.
How many would have died in Europe as a result of your peaceful America that doesn't intervene and leaves ALL OF EUROPE to the tender merices of ethe Nazis and/or the Communists?
It cannot be know, but almost certainly far fewer, perhaps only a few million, maybe as many as 10 million... Still a great improvement.
What kind of millenia gets ushered in when OJ orders a nuclear war that kills 10s of millions of people?
As I understand it, Orrin wants a nuclear war in the late 40s, or early 50s, before the huge arsenals had been built up.
Thus, it would necessarily have been a limited nuclear war, killing no more than, say, five million.
Again, a vast improvement over what actually happened.
How are you different than Stalin, Mao or Hitler?
Orrin has no power.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 17, 2005 07:26 PM daniel:
Not sure I'd agree with Orrin on all aspects of this debate, but if you are informed by: 1) a belief that taking on the Soviets would have been a war crime; 2)a belief that your having personally enjoyed the 70's is indictaive of something; and 3) a geopolitical theory that equates righteousness with simple counts of real and projected dead bodies, you are a lost man.
Posted by: Peter B at May 17, 2005 09:56 PM The major shortcoming in OJs argument is that he requires decision makers at the time to undertake seismic actions in advance of things that hadn't yet happened, and required a widespread impression of Communism that didn't yet exist.
Further, other countries were bound to pick sides based upon which way the wind was blowing; similarly, political trends in our own country would not have been immune.
A triumphant USSR, or Germany, in Europe, with England emasculated, or worse, would just as likely created a world in which people and nations perceived command economies as triumphant.
This stands in stark contrast to Communism being given the opportunity to fully demonstrate it comprehensive failure.
Daniel--many good points. However, I recommend you visit The Argument Clinic.
It might help you to waste less time on idiocies as "Reagan should have used the bomb."
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at May 18, 2005 07:24 AM Jeff:
Yes, my precise point is that FDR was an idiot for not recognizing the nature of Stalin and Bolshevism, which the Right had been right about for almost thirty years by then. I don't assume that he favored killing 100 million people, just that he and his fellow travellers were dupes.
Why not give Nazism a full chance to prove it didn't work? How many have to die before you're convinced that Rationalism is murderous?
Posted by: oj at May 18, 2005 08:52 AM The proposal, to the extent that one might consider it bad, is a sin of omission, rather than the sin of commission that Orrin believes that we engaged in, and is therefore less odious.
OJ wishes to commit mass murder in a sneak attack. How is this commission a sin of omission?
I was speaking to your point about abandoning Europe to be fought over by Germany and Russia.
If you cannot distinguish the difference between killing 10 million in war, and allowing 100 million to die due to oppression and proxy war, then indeed they may seem equally heinous to you.
Keep in mind, however, that there is no course of action that involves no dying - you either have to allow that there may be some merit to duking it out with the USSR, or you have to endorse the results of not doing so.
Nazis plans for Eastern Europe post-barbarossa called for genocide of the Slavs at the rate of 10 million people per year. A succesful preparation for German colonization out to the Urals would have resulted in more than 100 million dead Poles, Russians and other Slavs. This is an improvement how exactly?
You assume that Germany would have been able to successfully carry out this strategy, which is rather doubtful. Exactly what massive population of Germans was going to colonize Eastern Europe to the Urals within ten years ?
This was more likely some pie-in-the-sky proposal, on the order of PNAC.
Since OJ has stated that Reagan should have nuked the Russians in the 1980s you understand wrong.
Rather, I'm more familiar with Orrin's pet themes.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 18, 2005 10:10 AMOJ wishes to commit mass murder in a sneak attack. How is this commission a sin of omission?
I was speaking to your point about abandoning Europe to be fought over by Germany and Russia.
If you cannot distinguish the difference between killing 10 million in war, and allowing 100 million to die due to oppression and proxy war, then indeed they may seem equally heinous to you.
Keep in mind, however, that there is no course of action that involves no dying - you either have to allow that there may be some merit to duking it out with the USSR, or you have to endorse the results of not doing so.
Nazis plans for Eastern Europe post-barbarossa called for genocide of the Slavs at the rate of 10 million people per year. A succesful preparation for German colonization out to the Urals would have resulted in more than 100 million dead Poles, Russians and other Slavs. This is an improvement how exactly?
You assume that Germany would have been able to successfully carry out this strategy, which is rather doubtful. Exactly what massive population of Germans was going to colonize Eastern Europe to the Urals within ten years ?
This was more likely some pie-in-the-sky proposal, on the order of PNAC.
Since OJ has stated that Reagan should have nuked the Russians in the 1980s you understand wrong.
Rather, I'm more familiar with Orrin's pet themes.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 18, 2005 10:19 AMWhoops, sorry about that 10:10 post.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 18, 2005 10:23 AM"Naziism was inefficient and surely would have collapsed" = Nazi-lover ???
There's only one here who is arguing that Nazi Germany would have been capable of controlling Europe from the English Channel to the Ural mountains, while also simultaneously killing 25 times more than were killed in concentration camps between '39 and '44, and also "colonizing" all of Eastern Europe with good German stock.
Believing the above may not indicate "love", but it does seem to be an unwarrented level of respect and faith in Germanic/Nazi ability.
Mussolini was a Fascist, and he couldn't even control Italy.
Command economies cannot compete over the long haul.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at May 18, 2005 10:33 AMThe dead cannot distinguish the difference.
As for the Germans being able to succesfully carry out their plans for Eastern Europe, history shows it would have been easier than the actual Holocaust they did commit.
The man-made Ukrainian famine of 1932-33 killed about 14 million people. China's "Great Leap Forward" killed even more per year. Both genocides used simple techniques compared to the high tech, industrialized Nazi death camps. Man-made famine requires not capital costs (the camps, gas chambers, ovens, guards, staff, etc.) nor the transportaion costs (the cattle cars that carried Jews to the camps). Death rates from famine and subsequent disease sweeping thru malnurished population remnants would have easily achieved kill rates in excess of 10 million per year - without the overhead costs.
Modern urban areas are only three days away from starvation. Combat troops freed from operations against a defeated Russian enemy could easily throw cordons around a major city to prevent food from entering or refugees leaving. Within weeks, the urban population is reduced to cannibalism and rat eating. Again, disease finishes off the remnant.
This too was part of Nazi post-operational planning. When it came to mass murder and genocide, the Nazis were nothing if not thorough, well planned and detail oriented. It would have been frightenly easy for the Nazis to depopulate eastern Europe in about a decade.
Posted by: daniel duffy at May 18, 2005 10:36 AMIn return for all that blood, the Russians get Eastern Europe and the Balkans. These are backward, poor, unimportant regions of no geopolitical importance or value.
As I said earlier, this always comes down to hatred of the Eastern Europeans.
Posted by: oj at May 18, 2005 10:53 AM