[lit-ideas] Re: Englehardt, Cold Warrior in a Strange Land

  • From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 25 Mar 2006 13:50:21 -0500

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

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