Lawrence, I re-read your post and have some comments: basically, your position is that we're isolationist. That is a position that is not valid anymore. It died out with Reagan. Today the reality is globalization. There is a global upper class and a global middle class (the poor don't count in economics; the middle class is the engine of capitalism.) The global upper class is composed of Americans, Mexicans, Canadians, Saudis, French, Germans, Russians, Australians, English, Japanese, Brazilians, etc., probably even including Chinese. The middle class is worldwide, in countries such as China, Brazil, Russia, India. Until now, the preeminent middle class of the world was in the U.S. Today, however, middle classes are rapidly increasing in places like China, etc.; the middle class in the U.S. is on the wane. The global upper class, the elite of the world, needs the U.S. because the U.S. has a nice military to defend their interests. To do this they invoke "national interest". Hence the oil wars of the 21st century (run to the hills, Saddam has WMD!). The U.S. of today is limping along sustained by military Keynesianism in terms of weapons production (the third of a trillion dollar a year figure doesn't take into account the stuff buried in "energy", etc. as pointed out in the article). Except for its military and heretofore purchasing power of the middle class, the U.S. is becoming irrelevant. Nearly all manufacturing is done overseas; jobs are increasingly exported from this country overseas by Bill Gates, Dell, Wal-Mart, Citibank, and on and on. Nations exist to support the afo rementioned global elite. If you don't believe it, just look around your house and find something manufactured in the U.S. Let me know what you find. ----- Original Message ----- From: Lawrence Helm To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: 3/23/2006 11:39:20 AM Subject: [lit-ideas] Englehardt, Cold Warrior in a Strange Land If this guy is a military historian, I feel sorry for the people who took his classes. One can intuitively know he is all wet by three facts. 1) He implies we?ve got wall-to-wall troops covering the planet but we by no means have the largest army on the planet. We didn?t have enough troops to do engage in an ?overwhelming? invasion of Iraq. Rumsfeld was faulted for not using more troops, but notice that there weren?t troops standing by with nothing to do. Notice that our existence troops had to serve two and three tours. Did they serve these multiple tours while zillions of Marines lived it up on Okinawa? 2) The U.S. has a history of isolationism. We never used to have much of a military and we paid for it more than once. We were ill-equipped in WWI and cover the ill-preparation with the fact that certain units fought well, especially at Bealleau Woods. But after that war to end all wars we disarmed, through our weapons away, and so were in no position to deter either Japan or Germany. You?d think we would have learned from that, but we were anxious to disarm after WWII once again. Englehardt hints at that when he speaks of the rapid rearmament beginning in 1947, but I enlisted in the USMC in 1952 and we had nothing but WWII weapons. If we had started rearming in 1947, it wasn?t with any weapons that were handed down to the Marines. However, during the Cold War we did learn our lesson and resolved never to disarm again. It is about that that Englehardt complains. 3) Englehardt describes the trillions of dollars we spend on defense but then says that our weapons aren?t particularly good, and that other nations have built better ones. These two criticisms of the Pentagon are essentially contradictory. I worked with people in the Air Force who wanted us to consider how the latest scientific discoveries could be turned to military use. Not all of them were, but there were very smart people at the Pentagon asking all the right questions. A huge variety of studies were authorized and any new weapon had to not only prove its effectiveness but compete of a line-item in the military budget. What other nations could match this procedure? If a nation happened to build a weapon that was better at some particular action, it probably wasn?t because we hadn?t thought of it. It was probably because we had thought of it but decided on a different approach. Englehardt is taking a cheap shot and I can?t help but wonder why he is taking it, this hippy want-to-be who wishes he had joined the anti-war movement? Five more points: 1) I wonder what sort of a military historian he was if he doesn?t know that the Pentagon is supposed to war-game all potential threats to the U.S. He is appalled and surprised that the Pentagon did this. I?m appalled and surprised that he didn?t know this. He seems an isolationist at heart. He has the mindset that would have us surprised by military attacks and threats again and again. 2) Having just read a book by a better military historian, Bevin Alexander, I know it is now common knowledge that we can?t win a war where we invade and successfully stay in a weaker nation that is hostile to us. The guerrillas of a weaker nation can always wear down and outlast a stronger nation. It can be said by way of explanation that we thought we would have popular support in Vietnam, that there was a way to win the ?hearts and minds? of the South Vietnamese, but our enemy was better at that than we were. We fought the North Vietnamese with the same tactics the French used. We hadn?t learned a thing from their defeat, but we have since. Better military historians than Englehardt have taught us the lessons we needed to learn. 3) When I was in the Marine Corps we led rough lives. After Vietnam, the draft was dead; so the alternative was to attract people into the military. Pay, living quarters, base facilities became much better. You didn?t need to join the military to fight. You could join to get an education. This is a recent occurrence (since the 70s). 4) One of the most prolific and visible historians arguing that the U.S. is an empire is Niall Ferguson. I?ve read some of his books and heard him speak on C-Span. I think there is nothing wrong with our being an Empire if that is what we are, but right after arguing that we are an Empire, he spends the rest of the time describing how we are doing everything wrong from an Imperial standpoint. The fact is we are not an Empire. The very term doesn?t fit the modern situation. It is from an earlier era when there were kings and emperors. You don?t have kings (at least not working kings) or emperors in the modern world and it serves little purpose as far as I can see to invoke a term from an earlier era. Perhaps it would have died out had Lenin not written Imperialism, the highest form of Capitalism. But as Andreas has mentioned we now have globablism, the IMF, and the World Bank. Not only that, the predilection of the average American citizen is still that of an isolat ionist. He wishes things could be as they once were when we could leave all those war-like Europeans to their own wars as long as they left us alone. 5) In order for the U.S. to be an empire, the people of the U.S. would have to have an Imperial mindset (as a majority once did in Imperial Britain), but that is never likely to be the case. Witness for example Bush?s recent speeches. He realizes that the majority of the people in the U.S. don?t understand what he is doing in Iraq. They don?t understand for two reasons, 1) the Media hasn?t provided a balanced view of the situation in Iraq, and 2) Bush hasn?t explained his strategy well enough. He knows there is a minority that is dead-set against him. He wouldn?t bother giving speeches to those people, but the majority who in another era might have an Imperial-mindset is another matter. In this era these people are isolationists at heart. They want to be convinced that their security is going to be improved by what is going on in Iraq. Bush is now explaining that to them and I suspect his approval rating is going to climb. We may have weaponry suitable for an Empire, but we don?t have the heart or the people for it. Lawrence