[lit-ideas] Re: Barnett's Blueprint for Action

  • From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 11:45:04 -0700

Judy,

 

I was intending a reduction ad absurdum.  Irene probably missed it as well
but for different reasons.

 

On the other hand, assuming you have a tangent here, the Russians could not
have stopped the Germans without America's supplies.  I know emotion enters
in here and thinks that the colossal loss of Russian life ought to count for
more than American supplies, but it is what it is.  America's productive
capacity was crucial to the winning of WWII.  

 

I have been reading James Bowman's Honor, a History this morning and got up
through the First World War and noted that this war is credited with a
quantum jump in the giving of  honor a bad name -- and war as well.  Bowman
writes on page 142, "One reason for the popularity in the west of policies
of appeasement in the 1930s was that even liberal opinion had largely come
to accept that war was avoidable simply by refusing to fight [an opinion
Irene and Mike seem to hold today].  It was in the year of Munich when C.V.
Wedgwood's magisterial yet popular history The Thirty Years War was
published.  It ends with the severe moral: 'they wanted peace and they
fought for thirty years to be sure of it.  They did not learn then, and have
not since, that war breeds only war."  [Now doesn't that sound like Irene?]

 

If we look at the events of WWI we see that the absurd loss of life on both
sides was due not so much to anything intrinsic in the nature of war itself
as from leaders who refused to come up with tactics to match the modern
weaponry of the day.  No platoon with fixed bayonets was a match for a well
placed machine gun. The solution to the machine gun was new tactics not what
they did in that war: the sending of another platoon with fixed bayonets.
If the tactics had been updated, and each army had skilled leaders who knew
what the updating should consist of (although the stodgy senior military
staffs kept them from being heard), the troops would not have felt their
lives were being thrown away.  That is, with different tactics the troops
would see that they had a fighting chance.  They would not have come away,
those who survived, with the feeling that they were merely canon fodder.  My
point here is that it was poor leadership rather than war itself which
caused the "Lost Generation" and the despairing novels and movies that
created the anti-hero and a different sort of honor that honored the victim
rather than the hero. 

 

I know that if Andreas reads this he will be thinking, there is Lawrence
praising war once again, but that isn't my intention.  My intention is to
criticize the destructive anti-war sentiment that was based on the wrong
things.  Further, the Wedgwood (not to mention Irene & Mike) approach to
wishing war away is absurd and has been proved absurd even though anyone
thinking about it should have been able to see it as an unworkable precept.


 

Also, Andreas should watch the Barnett interview before he criticizes my
opinions about war again.  There are steps that can be taken that offer a
plausible process for the ultimate elimination of war.  But we won't start
out with a Wedgwood-type wishing it away.  We start out strong enough so
that the petty tyrants of the non-integrating gap know that it will not be
to their advantage to war with us.
http://www.booktv.org/ram/afterwords/1005/arc_btv102905_4.ram 

 

Lawrence

 

  _____  

From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Judith Evans
Sent: Sunday, September 10, 2006 9:47 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Barnett's Blueprint for Action

 

LH>You obviously missed the absurdity of Irene's statement

LH> and my drawing attention to it.  

 

I read both posts, Lawrence.  I don't read all the lit-ideas posts,

I admit; some are too long (IMO).  I'm not though sure which

statement of Irene's you meant.

 

Anyway.  My reaction has nothing to do with the context/s of those

of your comments that I singled out (but if you feel the context/s

exonerate them, please say so).  It's all to do with the history of

"Europe"-baiting on this list and its predecessor (a baiting you did not

begin; my anger predates your posts, you will find it in Phil-Lit's

archives).  It's crass, it's unpleasant, it's historically inaccurate,

and when not that, historically ill-informed, it's nasty.  It 

continues in the face of factual correction.  

 

Garry Younge was surprised to find (some) Americans saying

"If it weren't for us, you'd be speaking German now".  ("No",

he's been known to reply, "I'd probably be speaking Yoruba".)

You know what? If it weren't for the French, you'd be speaking 

the Queen's English now.

 

My Polish neighbours moved out about a fortnight ago but not, as they

were going to, to return to Poland; they have a flat there but

are staying in Cardiff, in a smaller house.  They're part of Britain's

settled Polish community. Poland never formally surrendered to

Germany, the Poles fought on inside and outside mainland

Europe, and their Air Force was crucial to the Battle of Britain.

 

My neighbour is somewhat younger than that. He doesn't talk about

that.  He does talk about his liberation by Russian soldiers. 

He speaks of their kindness.

 

Back off.  

 

Judy Evans, Cardiff

 

 

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