Commenter James Schipper makes the following comments, first about the US war against Japan in World War 2, and then about all US wars since the War of 1812, which he regards as a necessary war of self-defense. Schipper is a Canadian.
My perspective is different. I did support the war against the Axis in World War 2. My feelings are much more mixed on World War 1. The Spanish-American War and the Mexican War were obviously wars of imperialism. The Civil War may have been justified, if only to free the slaves. My relatives fought on both sides of the War Between the States. Of course, I supported the Union in that war.
I'm agnostic on the Revolutionary War, though cynically I would argue that we have been an imperial power ever since, and seem to have opposed every single anti-colonial war since our own Revolution! Disgusting!
The interventions in Central America and the Caribbean were sheer imperialism. The Wars on Panama and Grenada were preposterous. Iraq War 1 may have been justified to get rid of Saddam. I supported the war against the Serbs in Bosnia and Kosova. The intervention in Somalia was well-intentioned.
The latest Iraq War was one of the most criminal undertakings since the Spanish-American War. The war in Afghanistan may have been justified. Even though I'm a Marxist, the Korean War may have been justified since North Korea did invade South Korea. The Vietnam War and resulting wars in Laos and Cambodia were unnecessary.
Anyway, I thought I would give some space to an anti-war and anti-imperialist point of view. I do support the anti-imperialist argument. Pace Frantz Fanon, imperial powers never relinquish empire until they spill a lot of blood. Sad but true.
James Schipper:
First, Pearl Harbor didn't come as a bolt from the blue. It followed American economic sanctions against Japan and failed attempts at negotiations. The Roosevelt government had put the knife at Japan's throat. The Japanese had two options left: go to war or renounce their emperor. Predictably, they chose the first.
What is amazing in all this is how important American leaders considered access to the pitifully small Chinese market to be. From 1949 to 1975, the Chinese market was hermetically closed to the US, without noticeable ill effects on the American economy.
Second, Japan behaved in exactly the same way with Russia in 1905. After negotiations had broken down, Japan carried out a surprise attack on the Russian fleet in Vladivostok and sank it. Somehow it is not remembered as the Day of Infamy.
Third, American wars since the War of Secession have not been very bloody because they were fought far away from American territory. In the War of Secession, about 2% of the American population perished. Proportionally, that would be 6 million today.
Fourth, every war which the US fought since 1812 was a war of choice. There was no immediate threat to the US and certainly no attack on American territory. It wasn't as if the US had its back to the wall and had to choose between fighting or being overrun.
Fifth, when the aim of war becomes unconditional surrender, the Clausewitzian dictum that war is the continuation of politics by other means is inverted and politics becomes the continuation of war by other means.
Sixth, the aim of war should not be victory but a better peace. Victory in war is rather ambiguous. It is much more useful to think in terms of costs and benefits. The expected benefits of war should exceed the probable costs. If the costs of war exceed the benefits, victory is pointless. It is like recovering a debt of $2000 through a lawsuit that costs $5000.
Seventh, one of my pet distinctions is between a national defeat and an imperial defeat. A national defeat involves having to accept undesirable terms from the enemy. An imperial defeat means a failure to impose one's will on the enemy without having to accept his terms. For instance, in 1940 the French suffered a national defeat. In 1954 they suffered an imperial defeat in Vietnam. Which was worse?
Imperial defeat is a blessing in disguise. It means that the imperial power, whose security is not threatened by the enemy, can go home. What harm did the Americans suffer from their imperial defeat in Vietnam, the French from their imperial in Vietnam or Algeria, the Dutch from theirs in Indonesia, the Portuguese from theirs in Angola in Mozambique?
In all those cases, the imperial power only benefited from the end of the war. It meant the end of loss of life and waste of money.
Down with imperialism.
Showing posts with label US Civil War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Civil War. Show all posts
Monday, September 15, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
The "Screw the South" Amendment
I knew that this amendment was the "equal protection under the law" amendment, but I never realized that this part of the overall "screw the South" Reconstruction thing, which I frankly think was a good idea. It's interesting that it led the way not only to Brown vs the Board of Education, Roe vs Wade, pro-privacy decisions, and all sorts of cool and progressive things.
Section 2 never got enforced too much, so we needed a Voting Rights Act. Section 1 has come back into the news, since it is this section that has permitted the mass insanity of tens of millions of "anchor babies" of illegal Mesoamerican immigrants.
Sections 3 and 4 are not relevant anymore, but they were clearly intended to screw the South bigtime. I never realized that Robert E. Lee had his citizenship revoked. This section is obviously the source of the conservative "giving aid and comfort to our enemies" bullshit during the Vietnam War.
Section 4 is of historical interest because the South claimed that the human property that they owned was capital and they said they needed to be compensated for it. Freeing their human property with paying the slavemasters off was a "taking". Yes, Americans actually had great big arguments about bullshit like this. Hard to believe, huh?
Neo-confederates, Republicans and other nefarious characters have advanced arguments against the 14th Amendment. One was that the Southern states only ratified as they were occupied by Northern troops with Northern-installed Reconstruction regimes in office, hence the votes were fraudulent.
Samuel Alito, a frighteningly reactionary man who was treacherously allowed onto our Supreme Court by wimpy Democrats, hates the 14th Amendment and has called for its repeal. The 14th Amendment is the boogieman of the Southern-dominated Federalist Movement that came out of the Reagan years.
On the more literate White nationalist sites, the Amendment comes in for regular excoriation. It's always been a voodoo doll for the neo-Confederates.
It's nice to understand why.
Section 2 never got enforced too much, so we needed a Voting Rights Act. Section 1 has come back into the news, since it is this section that has permitted the mass insanity of tens of millions of "anchor babies" of illegal Mesoamerican immigrants.
Sections 3 and 4 are not relevant anymore, but they were clearly intended to screw the South bigtime. I never realized that Robert E. Lee had his citizenship revoked. This section is obviously the source of the conservative "giving aid and comfort to our enemies" bullshit during the Vietnam War.
Section 4 is of historical interest because the South claimed that the human property that they owned was capital and they said they needed to be compensated for it. Freeing their human property with paying the slavemasters off was a "taking". Yes, Americans actually had great big arguments about bullshit like this. Hard to believe, huh?
Neo-confederates, Republicans and other nefarious characters have advanced arguments against the 14th Amendment. One was that the Southern states only ratified as they were occupied by Northern troops with Northern-installed Reconstruction regimes in office, hence the votes were fraudulent.
Samuel Alito, a frighteningly reactionary man who was treacherously allowed onto our Supreme Court by wimpy Democrats, hates the 14th Amendment and has called for its repeal. The 14th Amendment is the boogieman of the Southern-dominated Federalist Movement that came out of the Reagan years.
On the more literate White nationalist sites, the Amendment comes in for regular excoriation. It's always been a voodoo doll for the neo-Confederates.
It's nice to understand why.
Friday, July 25, 2008
For Justice, a River of Blood
Or at least a rivulet.
Abimael Guzman, imprisoned leader of the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru, famously said that for the revolution to succeed, "Peru would have to cross a river of blood". Much of the civilized world was horrified by this bloodthirsty statement, but was he onto something?
I would argue that the vast majority of social progress achieved in the past 150 rivers has unfortunately occurred only after rivers of blood were shed. Or at the very least trickles. To but it bluntly, people had to die. They had to get hurt and die.
It's sad that it has to be that way, but it seems that that is just the way it is. Powerful people do not give up stuff just because they wake up in a good mood one day or go to church, find God and start feeling guilty.
Here in the US, Blacks only gained their liberation in the context of a devastating Civil War in which 100,000's of Americans shed their blood and lost their lives. Haitians only got rid of slavery by rising up and killing every single one of 25,000 Frenchmen on the island. For Algeria to blast free of colonialism and to shock the French out of the colonial habit, 1 million people, including 25,000 Frenchmen, died.
Britain only chucked colonialism after British soldiers died in Malaysia, India, Palestine and other places. Does anyone think even a modicum of a Palestinian state would exist had Palestinians not taken up the gun? Without the armed struggle of the Iraqi guerrillas, US troops would have ovverun Syria and possibly Iran by now.
The Basque Country has the considerable autonomy it does today only after 800 Spaniards died in the ETA's armed struggle. Land reform was only instituted in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan after the war to ward off the threat of Communism from North Korea and China.
Apartheid is gone in South Africa and one man one vote democracy is in its place for the most part only due to an armed campaign by the ANC stretching over decades.
US workers only got rights after bloody strikes in which workers were killed by goon squads.
The social market that James Schipper praised in Europe in earlier comments is also the project of massive labor union mobilization in Europe.
I would also argue that it was created by devastating the European Right, first by killing 10 million of them (10 million dead fascists in WW2), next by making rightwing ideology toxic for many years after the war, and finally by revolutionary pressure from the Far Left before and after the war, which led the business sector to seek out a class compromise and a social contract, mostly to ward off revolution.
Even the Swedish model mostly came into play in the 1930's when the nation was wracked by violent, radical and revolutionary labor actions all up and down the land. This so rocked the business and ruling classes that the Swedish model was created as a lesser evil alternative to ward off revolution.
Most do not realize that Swedish society was not very liberal during the 1930's. People are misled by the fact of Sweden's neutrality in the war to think that Swedes themselves were neutral. Most of the middle classes and certainly the business classes were firm Nazi supporters. Furthermore, I understand that Swedish businesses continued to supply the Nazis well into the war.
In Costa Rica, radical pressure helped create Costa Rican social democracy, now deteriorating after Reagan ordered the Costa Ricans at gunpoint in the 1980's to get rid of it.
After WW2, Costa Rica outlawed the Communist Party, killed 6,000 Communists, instituted a social democracy to buy off social unrest and got rid of the military as a rather interesting way to top it off. Without revolutionary pressure in 1946 and the bodies of 6,000 Communists, Costa Rican social democracy may never have occurred.
Mexico today has some semblance of socialism and a land reform that enables to poor to own small plots and at least survive and eat if they cannot find work only because 20 million Mexicans died during Pancho Villa's revolution that put Mexican feudalism in the grave forever. Most do not realize that Mexico was actually a horrible and truly feudal society as late as 1910. Yet it was.
In the same way, in El Salvador now, one can at least farm a small plot, eat and survive, something often not possible before the Revolution started. For that meager reform, 70,000 people died and Salvadoran feudalism was crushed, possibly forever.
Lenin said power never gives up without a fight. And most social reforms in capitalism have come on the heels, tragically, of a river of blood. Or at least a small stream.
Without pressure from below by revolutionaries and radicals, it is uncertain how many of the progressive social contracts in place in the world would exist.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
Abimael Guzman, imprisoned leader of the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru, famously said that for the revolution to succeed, "Peru would have to cross a river of blood". Much of the civilized world was horrified by this bloodthirsty statement, but was he onto something?
I would argue that the vast majority of social progress achieved in the past 150 rivers has unfortunately occurred only after rivers of blood were shed. Or at the very least trickles. To but it bluntly, people had to die. They had to get hurt and die.
It's sad that it has to be that way, but it seems that that is just the way it is. Powerful people do not give up stuff just because they wake up in a good mood one day or go to church, find God and start feeling guilty.
Here in the US, Blacks only gained their liberation in the context of a devastating Civil War in which 100,000's of Americans shed their blood and lost their lives. Haitians only got rid of slavery by rising up and killing every single one of 25,000 Frenchmen on the island. For Algeria to blast free of colonialism and to shock the French out of the colonial habit, 1 million people, including 25,000 Frenchmen, died.
Britain only chucked colonialism after British soldiers died in Malaysia, India, Palestine and other places. Does anyone think even a modicum of a Palestinian state would exist had Palestinians not taken up the gun? Without the armed struggle of the Iraqi guerrillas, US troops would have ovverun Syria and possibly Iran by now.
The Basque Country has the considerable autonomy it does today only after 800 Spaniards died in the ETA's armed struggle. Land reform was only instituted in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan after the war to ward off the threat of Communism from North Korea and China.
Apartheid is gone in South Africa and one man one vote democracy is in its place for the most part only due to an armed campaign by the ANC stretching over decades.
US workers only got rights after bloody strikes in which workers were killed by goon squads.
The social market that James Schipper praised in Europe in earlier comments is also the project of massive labor union mobilization in Europe.
I would also argue that it was created by devastating the European Right, first by killing 10 million of them (10 million dead fascists in WW2), next by making rightwing ideology toxic for many years after the war, and finally by revolutionary pressure from the Far Left before and after the war, which led the business sector to seek out a class compromise and a social contract, mostly to ward off revolution.
Even the Swedish model mostly came into play in the 1930's when the nation was wracked by violent, radical and revolutionary labor actions all up and down the land. This so rocked the business and ruling classes that the Swedish model was created as a lesser evil alternative to ward off revolution.
Most do not realize that Swedish society was not very liberal during the 1930's. People are misled by the fact of Sweden's neutrality in the war to think that Swedes themselves were neutral. Most of the middle classes and certainly the business classes were firm Nazi supporters. Furthermore, I understand that Swedish businesses continued to supply the Nazis well into the war.
In Costa Rica, radical pressure helped create Costa Rican social democracy, now deteriorating after Reagan ordered the Costa Ricans at gunpoint in the 1980's to get rid of it.
After WW2, Costa Rica outlawed the Communist Party, killed 6,000 Communists, instituted a social democracy to buy off social unrest and got rid of the military as a rather interesting way to top it off. Without revolutionary pressure in 1946 and the bodies of 6,000 Communists, Costa Rican social democracy may never have occurred.
Mexico today has some semblance of socialism and a land reform that enables to poor to own small plots and at least survive and eat if they cannot find work only because 20 million Mexicans died during Pancho Villa's revolution that put Mexican feudalism in the grave forever. Most do not realize that Mexico was actually a horrible and truly feudal society as late as 1910. Yet it was.
In the same way, in El Salvador now, one can at least farm a small plot, eat and survive, something often not possible before the Revolution started. For that meager reform, 70,000 people died and Salvadoran feudalism was crushed, possibly forever.
Lenin said power never gives up without a fight. And most social reforms in capitalism have come on the heels, tragically, of a river of blood. Or at least a small stream.
Without pressure from below by revolutionaries and radicals, it is uncertain how many of the progressive social contracts in place in the world would exist.
Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.
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