Whose Souls Cry Out, and Who Is Awakened?

 

--Nuclear Future, Paresh Nath (UAE)

The tragedy is not that things are broken.
The tragedy is that things are not mended again 
 --Cry, the Beloved Country,
Alan Paton

The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide
would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow,
and for all the fine sentiments inspired
by the memory of Auschwitz,
the problem remains
that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good 
--We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow
We Will Be Killed with Our Families, 
 Philip Gourevitch

   
Bellum ominum contra omnes
(a war of all against all)
--Thomas Hobbes 
_________________________

President Obama recently laid a wreath at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in the presence of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His disingenuous proclamation played well to the crowd, but was so much well-scripted fluff. He said Hiroshima was,

 “the start of our own moral awakening”. We come to mourn the dead. Their souls speak to us, they ask us to look inward, take stock of who we are.”

So let's talk about morals and some dead, of the recent variety. When the United States handed Saddam Hussein over to the new Shia-led government, they set on him like a pack of hyenas, snapping his neck with a rough cow rope in a mosh pit of celebration after an amateur show trial.

The U.S. celebrated in the carnage and joined in the morbid ebullience, despite the fact that Hussein had done nothing to the U.S. to warrant such bloodlust. What had he done that our friends the Saudis or Egyptians do not?

Ditto the grotesque murder of Libyan President Muommar Qaddafi. Our sociopathic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gleefully acknowledged his death-by-mob in the street on commercial television. Her delusions of grandeur were exposed with her petty, "We came, we saw, he died".

And yet life for Libya and its people -- just as for Iraqis post-Saddam -- has grown exponentially worse since Qaddafi was deposed. What, exactly, does  the U.S. have to crow about, and what moral direction can it provide?

But to the Japanese empire circa August, 1945. Hirohito was the divine emperor of an operation in which Koreans were used as labor and sex slaves. U.S. and British Prisoners of War were tortured, murdered and used for bayonet practice. Japanese medical officers used U.S. P.O.W.'s in chemical and biological research. The litany of terror goes on (even ignoring the fact that the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war.)

The point is: the Emperor was a war criminal of the highest order, and yet the U.S. never bothered to treat him as such. [He reigned until his death in 1989.]

What has changed from 1945 to 2016? Do our recent actions speak of "moral awakening"?

Are we listening to the newly dead which we have created, and what do we see when we "take stock of who we are"?

Pay the Fiddler

--U.S. forces landing at Normandy,

6 JUN 1944

____________________

Friday was the 70th anniversary of D-Day, that horrible day when United States troops so bravely stormed the fortress Europe to tackle the gargantuan task of eliminating Fascist powers from the scene.

We know how we did it on the Western Front, but the question is, "Why?" The European Wars I & II were caused by Europeans and the savagery and inhumanity of those endeavors is unquantifiable, so why did the U.S. get involved?

Same-same today regarding Libya, Egypt, the Sinai, Syria, Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East. If there is a concept called "responsibility", why isn't France and England shouldering the burden of the colonial messes they created? Why must the U.S. always carry their water?

It is possible to start with the Crusades and end with the balkanization of the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires following WW I. This created the majority of the fault lines in the Middle East extending to Kashmir, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

The only place the U.S should feel any responsibility is Iraq and mainly Iran, as we created or enabled the sepsis of their society via our interdiction in their national situations. However, war will also not solve either country's dynamics, as Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) clearly demonstrated. The answer to these society's ills will never be settled by proxies on the battlefield.

American security is secured by oceans, intercontinental missiles and our vast military, economic and political structure.

So the question is, why does the U.S. continue to fight other people's battles to the detriment of our own welfare? Is that not why so many Americans died on the beaches of Normandy 70 years and three days ago?

Bronx Red Leg

--World War II M7 105 mm Howitzer, 
the stuff of poetry

_____________________

From a March 15, 2013 New York Times obituary:

"Sheldon Shocket, 90 years young, Bronx native and longtime resident of Rockville Centre, World War II veteran who served in the field artillery observation battalion and could wax poetic about the 105 mm Howitzer.  He successfully charmed all those who were lucky enough to enter his orbit. Husband extraordinaire to Carol for 66 years ... Considered himself a very lucky man, and he was."

Ranger would have enjoyed tipping a glass with a man who could wax poetic over United States Army materiel.  Mr. Shocket and men like him are the ground which makes America great.

May you Rest in Peace, soldier.

Veterans day 2012: Frenemies

--Grief, Dmitri Baltermants

___________________

A former Marine of "Edson's Raiders" fame recently told Ranger, "If we lost Guadalcanal, we'd be speaking Japanese now."

It seemed like a stretch, but it got me thinking about the war fought by the Greatest Generation (men for whom Ranger holds the highest respect and admiration) and asking the question: Was the entry of the United States into World War II valid and legitimate?  (It was that war which predicated later U.S. involvement in Korea and Vietnam.)

History must tell its tale, but let us look at the precipitating war in Europe.  While both Hitler and Stalin invaded Poland, the U.S. held Hitler responsible, embracing Stalin as an ally.  At war's end, Poland was left worse by becoming a Soviet satellite state.

The British and French were saved through U.S. largess, but it was French colonialism that led the U.S.into a neo-Colonial war in Southeast Asia.  The European continent was left disastrously divided after the war; the concert of Europe was destroyed.

While the U.S. was attacked by the Japanese in the Pacific theatre, we do not ask why.   Why did the U.S. have a fleet in the Pacific?  Why did the U.S. forebear the depredations of French and English Colonial policy, but deny the same objectives to the Japs?  Did we find white European Colonials more palatable than yellows?  How did U.S. policy turn hostile towards Japan in less than a 50-year span?

Why did the U.S. fight to preserve China from Jap occupation, then fight China in Korea less than six years later?  Why do we now protect Japan from the Chinese?  Why did the U.S. allow the Brits and especially the French to reestablish colonies in Southeast Asia after they collaborated with the Japanese? Ditto the French in Europe.

--Jew Killings in Ivangorad, Kiev (1942)

How did our Soviet allies morph into enemies virtually overnight?

My point is, U.S. wars are portrayed as something other than the exercises in futility which they are.  On Veterans day we honor the vets but we never ask, "Why did they fight?", and "Do the proffered reasons clash with the reality?"  We are as driven by slogans and propaganda as were the people we fought.

Here is a novel thought:  Why not honor combat veterans by eliminating future wars?

We entered WWII after 2,000+ U.S. servicemen were killed in a surprise  attack, while the ensuing war resulted in 400,000+ U.S. combat deaths, with another 670,000 wounded.  Millions of enemy soldiers and civilians were killed.

What did the U.S. gain from WWII?  Were the results worth the efforts?  Why is our response to violence always more violence?

War Path -- Part Two

It's a fool's game
Nothing but a fools game
Standing in the cold rain
Feeling like a clown
--It's a Heartache, Bonnie Tyler

When the music's over
Turn out the lights
--When the Music's Over,
The Doors

Ranger Question of the Day:
How can West Point release classified documents
recording Osama bin Laden's last thoughts,
while Bradley Manning languishes in jail for
doing the same thing?
__________________

The United States fought two World Wars in the 20th century, contravening the Monroe Doctrine and its "Spheres of Influence", the earliest U.S. foreign policy document.

The wars the U.S. entered in 1914 and again in 1939-40 resulted from colonial overreach and the resultant blowback, and entangling alliances and treaties, often secret in nature, which set the die. One man was shot in Sarajevo in 1914 and the Western world entered a suicidal paroxysm of senseless violence.

What is interesting is that even though the U.S. lacked treaty obligations in either war, it still became embroiled in both. The Axis pact between Japan and Germany cause the U.S. entry into the WW II European mess. In fact, the U.S. had no historic or rational reason to fight Germany in either war.

Why were the French, Russian and English any better the German, Italians or Austrians? What right did Chamberlain have to negotiate away the country of Czechoslovakia? Why are these questions never raised in our discussions of WWII? Why did we sink the Monroe Doctrine in the blink of an eye?

98 years on, the U.S. has expanded NATO and taken it upon itselfs to fight future wars for the security of places like Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, etc., which makes exactly as much sense as entering a war because an Archduke got killed in Sarajevo.

Now throw into the mix the new U.S. - Afghanistan Security Agreement in which the U.S. obligates itself to the protection and adoption of Afghanistan as a satellite state, without any benefit accruing to the people of America. Why, after 98 years, do we follow a formula of doom and destruction when it is clear that Western civilization began its decline in 1914 from the exact same sets of behaviors?

Simply: We base our security upon entangling alliances even though history has shown that these ultimately lead to wars of unfortunate consequences. If an alliance or a treaty does not offer more than it costs, then it is a fool's venture.

Not Fade Away

Charles Miklaucic

I still remember the refrain of one
of the most popular barrack ballads of that day
which proclaimed most proudly that
"old soldiers never die; they just fade away"
--Gen, Douglas MacArthur
____________________

Ranger must travel back to childhood for this not easy entry.

Charles Miklaucic died September 1, 2010. He was a fine example of WW II soldierly conduct, having served as a Combat Infantryman in the European theatre. He was twice wounded, once in the Battle of the Huertgen Forrest and once while attempting to cross the Ludendorf Bridge on the Rhine at Remagen.

He was the father of one of my best friends while growing up in Cleveland, and I found him to be a role model and a positive influence on all of our young lives. Both of his sons later served faithfully in their war, Vietnam.

Mr. Miklaucic was a quiet, sober, gentle man. He was not a professional soldier but he fought as one, and then returned to his domestic life. Miklaucic was the consummate Citizen Soldier, and the death of these old soldiers marks the passing of an era, both for this country and for a certain mindset of soldier

My condolences to the family.