| Friday, January
26, 2007
Subject: Jabobinism
Jerry:
In reading your writings on Iraq, I thought I had an
idea of what was meant by Jacobinism, but I decided to look it up to be
sure.
Now I'm *really* confused.
I'm coming up with:
- "promulgator of extreme revolutionary opinion."
- Synonym for totalitatian democracy: "a system of
government in which lawfully elected representatives maintain the integrity
of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have
little or no participation in the decision-making process of the
government."
- "In contemporary France this term refers to the
concept of a centralised <file:///wiki/Centralisation> Republic, with power
concentrated in the national government, at the expense of local or regional
governments."
Do any of these match what you meant?
Regards,
Steve
The Jacobins believed that political
ideologies were more important than institutions, and that radical democracy
was the remedy for all social ills. This led to the Terror. Bush has said
that within every human heart there is a strong desire for freedom and
democracy. This isn't based on observation, it is an ideological given.
I use Jacobinism as a shorthand for these
notions. The Wikipedia entry for the Jacobin Club is long but covers the
subject fairly objectively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_Club
It is objectively the case that where you
have strong central government it becomes extremely powerful and
increasingly less sensitive to the views of the populace, and more concerned
with the rights and privileges of those in power. This follows as a special
case of Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy. Ideologies have consequences,
but the Iron Law trumps them all over time. But that's another matter.
Whether or not the neo cons really
believed that radical democracy would save Iraq, the President certainly
talked as if he believed it.
==========
Subj: Iraq: Fallacy of the Excluded Muddle?
With all due respect, it seems to me that the recent
analysis at
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view450.html#Thursday
constitutes a Fallacy of the Excluded Muddle.
Was Korea 1950-53 a Victory? A Defeat? Or something
else?
It certainly wasn't a Victory, if you define Victory
the way Truman, basking in the afterglow of MacArthur's brilliance (and,
let's face it, luck) at Inchon, defined it, to wit: as the reunification of
Korea under a non-Communist government allied to the US.
But was it a Defeat? I think not; I think Defeat would
have been the reunification of Korea under a Communist government allied to
China and the USSR.
So what was it?
And what lessons from that might apply to Iraq?
I invite attention to
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2mail/mail309.html#Monty2
Mail 309 May 10 - 16, 2004
in particular to "Monty's reply". (For some reason,
doing a Find from there on "Monty's" in SeaMonkey doesn't find it, but doing
a Find on "reply" finds it as the second hit. Browsers, ugh!)
I respectfully suggest that there is still a good
chance for a *muddled* outcome in Iraq -- figured out by the people of Iraq,
in time bought with the blood and treasure of both the people of the US and
the people of Iraq, almost certainly at a price higher than we expected when
we started -- that will still constitute a substantial improvement, from the
perspective of the people of the US, over the _status_quo_ante_. In
particular, I contend that the chances of a restored Tikriti Tyranny are as
close to zero as one might wish, that al Qaeda's popularity is about as
close to zero as one might wish, and that the campaign the President
recently announced stands a decent chance of blunting both the Mahdi Army
and the Iranian+Syrian covert intervention. Please note that I say
"blunting" not "ending".
I say "the people of Iraq", in deference to the notion
that there are no Iraqis, there are only tribes and sects and factions. I
don't subscribe to that notion myself, I think it's yet another Fallacy of
the Excluded Muddle. I think there are plenty of people in Iraq who don't
fully understand our ideas of Rule of Law and Liberty Under Law, but who
nevertheless aspire to something better than either Chaos or Just Another
Tyranny. But even if the notion is true, I don't see that it necessarily
excludes a muddled outcome -- in which the tribes and sects and factions
live in some uneasy state of smoldering dissatisfaction and mutual
suspicion, punctuated perhaps by occasional flare-ups of violence on a scale
Americans would consider intolerable -- that leaves us all better off than
we were with Saddam.
I understand that this contribution does not really
respond to the question posed in the above-cited recent analysis, "Given
that Victory is Unlikely, what shall we do now? Is it not time to plan for
that?" If you want to dismiss it as just another neo-Jacobin raving, well,
fine, maybe that's all it is. Or maybe -- just maybe -- not.
Rod Montgomery==monty@sprintmail.com
To which I can only say, I sure hope you
are right. I always have misgivings about an analysis that leads to stark
choices.
As I said and have said repeatedly: none
of us knows what are the real conditions in Iraq. I do know that the new
Iraqi government has acted swinishly in denying Sunni areas of Baghdad the
elementary municipal services such as post offices, security for banks,
garbage collection, etc. It may be that with more troops we can have more
influence in such matters. And it may be that the new Iraqi forces will not
merely be new militias.
I am unsure how we get to even a muddled
outcome.
Perhaps I too am tempted to despair and
need reminding of that.
========
Subject: Iraq
Iraqi need to realize they cannot continue to drive
around fat, dumb and happy while the troubles are going on. Baghdad must be
put under a 24 hour curfew with strict movement restrictions, passes and NO
PRIVATE VEHICLE TRAFFIC. Traffic in and out of town must by convoy only, and
the MSRs need to be cordon sanitaires, where if you come within 500 yards
without a permit they shoot you. State must never be allowed in a country
until the military hands it over. Diplomacy and war don't mix.
Walter E. Wallis
Any chance of more There Will Be War?
WEW
Seems a bit drastic.
The There Will Be War series depended on
John Carr to make them happen. He bullied the authors to get the stories and
did all the editorial work including bullying me to get the introductions
done on time. Alas, the original paperback anthology market declined to the
point that that series and my other anthology work simply didn't make enough
to keep John alive. And I fear I no longer have enough creative energy to
sustain the series. =========
Subject: Politically impossible solutions for the war
in Iraq
Dear Jerry:
Here are some ways to solve the problem of the war in
Iraq that are not feasible because of the politics.
Turn the entire thing over to private military
companies and let them provide the necessary constabulary forces. Lease them
the heavy stuff (helicopters, AC 130s, etc). Take a dollar a barrel in oil
taxes from the oil exported from Iraq to underwrite this program. Tell the
alleged government of Iraq that the whole thing goes away when they step up
and start acting like a government. Pull some of our troops back to Kuwait
as a response force. Send the rest home except for those sent to Afghanistan
to suppress the Taliban (again).
Hire armies by the battalion from any third world
nation that wants access to American training and military technology. Send
their officers to our military education institutions such as Command and
Staff and the War College so that they learn how a democracy can be
supported by its military. The payback is that they have to work off their
tuition under American command in Iraq, but also places with failed states,
like Dafur.
Impose a special excise tax of 50 cents a gallon on
all petro fuels to retire the national debt. Regressive? Yes. Effective?
Also yes.
Expand the U.S. military to Cold War levels. If
necessary revive the draft to fill the ranks, but make NO exceptions for any
reasons beyond health and fitness. Women serve as well as men. No exemptions
for marriage, college, sexual orientation, or religious objections. (The
latter can serve in non-combat support roles or as medics.)
Create a real military for the United Nations. At the
constabulary level. Soldiers from member nations are paid at American rates,
but are carried on the books of their home nations for pension and career
purposes. Maximum tours are three to five years each, with no repeats. Under
UN command during their tours, but not required to act against their home
nation. (Another argument for the battalion plan above). Make genocide "an
act of war against humanity" which demands an immediate military response by
these forces, without the need for any formal resolution by the Security
Council.
Tell Iran that if they ever use a nuclear weapon we
will respond under the MAD doctrine.
As I said, the politics make all of these solutions
very unlikely if not impossible. But we can dream, can't we?
Regards,
Francis Hamit
I fear some of your cures may be worse
than the disease. Kofi Amin with a real army? Look up War Safety Control and
United World Federalism one of these days.
I have a better solution.
which is probably about as politically
feasible.
==========
Subject: Saner Than Most Writing About Mercury
As one who's survived to age 80 without significant
problems even though I may be from the last generation that dared to coat
copper pennies with mercury to make them look like shiny new dimes, I think
I may have finally found someone who speaks sanely in the midst of hysteria.
Julie
PS My 103-year-old mother's memory has begun to get
very flaky. No doubt due to her having also played with those wonderful,
heavy, very round drops of mercury that lucky kids somehow acquired back in
the Bad Old Days
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/01/mercury-spill-replay.html
I used to love playing with mercury and my
high school chem lab had a full quart or so of the stuff.
========
Subject: "Dude, why don't you have a forum?"
I'm sure others have said the same, but I like Chaos
Manor just fine the way it is. My willingness to read through the
(admittedly large) quantities of letters and links posted is due in no small
part to the fact that you've already read through it and found it
worthwhile. If I wanted an open forum I'd hang out on Usenet.
~Max Wilson
==========
Subject: It occurs to me...
Dear Doctor,
It occurs to me there are parallels between your
warnings about US policy in Iraq and the prophet Jeremiah foretelling the
end of Judah at the hands of the Babylonians.
Here's hoping the present experience ends differently.
Jon Eveland
Alas it had occurred to me as well. Alas,
Babylon.
==========
I ask your pardon for posting this:
Subject: corruption?
An IQ over 180 and unwilling to post the challenging
email of one whose IQ is merely over 140, and that number was probably too
high.
Let's think about that. Either you are unwilling to
submit your prejudices to the light of day, or your are corrupt. Which is it
"Dr." Pournelle?
Are you really a dilettante wimp? Beginning to seem
so.
Of course, this is your website, so you have absolute
control over its content. But, do you have control over what others say on
other websites about your refusal to engage rational observations?
Ted Cowen [mailto:tedcowen@msn.com]
I have no idea what this refers to. I
get a fair amount of mail like this. One expects that if we set up a Forum
we would have more posted.
Addendum: I found the letter he wanted
posted. I see no reason to post it. You can imagine its contents.
For those who want to disagree with me:
Shouting at me with proof by assertion probably won't appeal either to me or
to my readers. I do try to post letters bringing up valid reasons to
disagree with my views.
==========
Subject: Interesting interview with Thomas Ricks
(Fiasco)
Jerry,
Some interesting comments here, particularly how the
Shia see Bush's troop surge. There are also some remarks on what he has
heard from officers over there. (http://prairieweather.typepad.com/the
_scribe/2007/01/thomas_ricks_on.html):
---- " When I was with Defense Secretary
Gates in Baghdad last month the Iraqi officials hanging around the
meetings would tell you that what they had asked for was that US forces
move to the periphery of Baghdad and basically beat up the Sunnis for
them while they more or less finished the ethnic cleansing of central
Baghdad with the Shiite army.
"....it's my characterization. It's not
quite how they put it! But -- reading between the lines -- that's where
they were going. It's a kind of "donut strategy": you guys get out of
here and be useful chumps while we sort out our internal differences,
finish the ethnic cleansing, and consolidate our hold on power. I don't
think that's where the Americans wanted to go so, while they called this
"Maliki's plan," it's almost the opposite. It's "we're going to send
troops into the middle of the city, double the American presence on the
streets of Baghdad because we don't trust your army."
"My worry about the US insisting on
reconciliation is that politically the Bush administration consistently
has been about 6 to 12 months behind the curve in Iraq from the very
get-go. In military terms, it's called "losing the initiative." We've
been operating off balance -- basically fighting from our heels rather
than our toes since about 2003. The reality of Iraq that they haven't
caught up with, I fear, is that the Shiites have concluded that they've
won. And that's why we're proposing this "donut" strategy. And as you
say, if the Shiites have won, then it has won the civil war, won control
of Iraq. All we're doing is being a useful tool to help them out and
keep the Sunnis off their back while they consolidate their hold."
"The problem here, as you may suspect, is
that two aspects have characterized the American approach in Iraq over
the past three years. One has been official over-optimism in which
institutions fail to recognize the basic reality on the ground. The
second is a rush to failure with Iraqi forces. I think the concern of a
lot of people in the military right now -- especially officers who have
a tour or two in Iraq -- is that the new plan combines both those flaws:
official optimism about what Iraqis are willing to do, and a rush to
failure in pushing Iraqis too soon to do too much. "
"Petraeus is a fascinating character. Just
about the best general in the Army in a lot of people's view. Quite
ambitious. Quite smart. Extraordinarily competitive. Both a combat
leader and the holder of a PhD from Princeton in which he studied the
Vietnam war and its effects on the US military. Stands out --
particularly in recent history -- because he had a very successful first
tour in Iraq in 2003-2004. Really an exception to the rule..... <snip>
.......
So the bottom line on Petraeus with a lot of
officers now is "look -- this situation is pretty bad, it's pretty bleak out
there -- if anyone can do it Petraeus is probably the guy who can try best."
But even then, what I'm hearing, is they don't expect it to succeed."
CP, Connecticut
===========
Subject: Book recomendation
One more thing to add to your reading list, Barry C.
Lynn's "End of the line, The rise and fall of the global corporation". The
author points to the vulnerability of global trade to physical and political
catastrophe in far away places, and the lack of redundancy in the system.
Yet another way in which civilization's going down the tubes and little help
to be expected from politicians, the left having been jacked by
pointy-headed theorists, and the right by the finance industry.
Tim.
==========
Subject: American Hegemony
Article continues past the point I've quoted, and
discusses several things I thought you'd find worthwhile, including what it
would take to get the US to act like the Roman Empire and what it would take
for the world to accept it.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/on_going_roman.html
"They have made a desolation, and they call it peace."
-Tacitus Much in the way of criticism of the United States comes in the form
of accusations of imperialism. According to this view, echoed by everyone
from Harold Pinter to Noam Chomsky to the Arab press, the U.S. has for
decades run roughshod over the globe, in defiance of agreements and
civilized norms. Enforcing its policies unilaterally and always for its own
benefit, the U.S. has effectively colonized huge swathes of the planet, if
not through direct military action, then by economic exploitation or
diplomatic chicanery. No one dares raise a hand against this; any show of
independence is met by cruise missiles at the very least, if not armored
divisions or carrier battle groups. Today it's Iraq, tomorrow... who knows?
America is the third-millennial Rome, brutal, implacable, infinitely
corrupt.
Domestically, this takes the form of hegemonism <http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/12/seeds_intellectual_destruction.html>
, with the U.S. viewed as the primal source of global iniquity.
Internationally, it's a major component of anti-Americanism, in which the
U.S. is taken as the embodiment of an overpowering modernity, in whatever
form - economic, political, cultural -- the onlooker finds most threatening.
In such a context, anything and everything can be labeled "imperialist",
from military bases to McDonald's fast-food joints to tourism. Intent and
results are meaningless; all U.S. actions are evil, since all are viewed
through the lens of imperialist activity.
It's difficult to match any of this with the actual
record. The America that takes on the dirty jobs, the jobs no one else will
touch - Serbia, Kuwait, Somalia - the country that comes to the rescue when
disaster strikes, as with the Indian Ocean tsunami or the Pakistan
earthquake, either goes unmentioned or has its actions attributed to
somebody else (as in Kofi Annan's taking credit for tsunami relief
operations in his farewell speech).
Regarding defiance, within certain limits crossed only
by the Taliban and Saddam Hussein (and not yet by Ahmadinejad or Kim
Jong-Il), it comprises one of the safer bets for any ambitious third-world
demagogue, as Chavez and Morales plainly reveal. It's a solid career move --
there is no danger of any comeback (as long as you don't actually act on
your rhetoric), and you gain plenty of sympathy and support from the
international left, including its American branch. The myth of the U.S. as
Rome has proven useful on all sorts of levels.
But the world's anti-Americans should take care that
their fantasies don't catch up with them. Myths have a way of coming true.
If believed in long enough, and hard enough, and by enough people, they can
come to pass, if only by limiting the possible responses of the subject in
question. Tell someone they're an oppressor often enough, and they may
become an oppressor, out of spite, or anger, or simple weariness. Useful the
Roman stereotype may be, but it can prove very dangerous.
How did Rome get that way in the first place? The Rome
we know is seen through the lens of the later, corrupt empire -- brutal,
heartless, and tyrannical. We see the Romans as dour, arrogant, living off
the intellectual capital of older civilizations, slowly falling victim to
their own worst impulses. But was Rome always like that? Did Rome start out
that way? Was Rome ever young?
It must have been at one time. Rome was once a
republic, and must have possessed a republic's virtues. How could it ever
have accomplished so much otherwise? "
A Serving Officer
My Reply
I'm not anti American. I just want us to stay home and build things.
Forwhat we spend on overseas adventurism we could be self-sufficient in just
about everything.
Didn't think you were. I thought the article, has
utility for the American Hegemony story you were thinking about a couple of
years ago, and for the Rise of Empire story I've suggested for Sparta.
I also thought the article points out that the attempt
by anti-Americans to paint us in unflattering ways would be an unpleasant
self-fulfilling prophesy.
Now I think that you overestimate the value of staying
at home, but I do agree that we have been hit hard by the law of unintended
consequences in our economic and political moves of the past 60 years. I'm
reminded of the comments you've made in fiction and non-fiction that our
politicians and business leaders don't think more than a couple of years
ahead, the next economic decision or election to come, and we really need
somebody do do some long term planning for the human race, other than the
fruitcake thinktanks who do that sort of thing, seeing as how that is how we
got our education system, among others.
Just this morning I was reading a blog which has a
main writer I like and a periodic writer I don't. The latter was responding
to a discussion of racism on the site and wanted to talk about the
definition of racism, since it was being thrown about in ways that didn't
match the others' usages. He included the comment that his father and
grandfather believed what he called scientific racism, that blacks had lower
IQ's than whites. He went on to add that scientific consensus has thrown
that on the trash and no longer believes such wrongness. Facts be damned,
what should be is more important than what is.
I've always said that what is truth is truth, whether
I believe it or not. It remains truth. Therefore it behooves me to attempt
to find such truth, even if I don't like it when I find it. I don't like the
idea that different subsets of humanity, on a racial basis, have different
IQ scores on a statistical basis. However, if I hold my breath and stomp my
foot, it won't change the facts of the matter.
==========
Subject: Installing Visual Studio 2005 pro after the
demo version
Dear Jerry,
I downloaded the demo full version of Visual Studio
2005 pro sometime ago (about 4 months). It was a 90 day trial. I since
bought the VS 2005 pro product and now I am not sure what I need to do
before installing the bought full version.
I wondered if perhaps someone of your website visitors
might have some advice for that. I am guessing you wouldn't know since I
doubt you use VB or any other Visual Studio product.
Best, Marty Stephens
I used to do a good bit of programming in
Visual Basic but that was years ago. Anyone?
==========
Subject: Pentagon study narrows down Iraq options
Go big, go long or go home
This echoes your own analysis. Note also that at least
one Republican (McCain) is advocating the massive force you astutely point
out to be required for "victory". Except they don't realize that going big
and going long are BOTH required if you want to try and "win".
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070125/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070125/ap_on_go_co/us_iraq>
"A Pentagon review of Iraq has come up with three
options _ injecting more troops into Iraq, shrinking the force but staying
longer or pulling out, The Washington Post reported. The newspaper quoted
senior defense officials as dubbing the three alternatives "Go big, go long
and go home."
The secret military study was commissioned by Gen.
Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and comes as
political and military leaders struggle with how to conduct a war that is
increasingly unpopular, both in the United States and in occupied Iraq.
McCain, a front-running GOP presidential hopeful for
2008, said the U.S. must send an overwhelming number of troops to stabilize
Iraq or face more attacks---in the region and possibly on American soil.
"I believe the consequences of failure are
catastrophic," said McCain. "It will spread to the region. You will see Iran
more emboldened. Eventually, you could see Iran pose a greater threat to the
state of Israel."
There you have a possible scenario as follows:
President Bush keeps trying at the current level the rest of his term.
McCain gets the nomination, the Democrat's nominate a likely loser in either
Senator Clinton or Obama, and President McCain then initiates the "Go Big"
option. Where he would get the troops, I don't know. But he certainly says
he wants to try it. He also seems quite interested in doing something
serious about Iran.
I'm supporting Giulani. McCain is crazy, and a bit
like Bremer: in over his head. At least Bremer knew he was incompetent.
McCain truly believes he knows what he is doing.
So did Bush. They're both Jacobins.
Petronius
===========
Subject: Generation ships
>> It's all in the numbers. But suppose we set out
to settle the galaxy with generation ships traveling at 1% of the speed
of light. Build two generation ships. It takes 1,000 years to go from
star to star. When you get there, it takes 1,000 years to build a
civilization capable of building two more star ships. That's 2,000 years
doubling time, with each generation ship building two more. I leave the
resolution of this exponential to the readers, but you can see why
Freeman Dyson says there is only one intelligent race per galaxy. <<
I think you're an optimist. Although recent
astronomical discoveries say that many stars are likely to have planets, the
likelihood of a suitable Sol-like star having a suitable Terra-like planet
and lying within ten LY is pretty small. You might have to extend your
sphere to 100 LY and your travel time to 10,000 years to reach a really good
planet. Even then, and even assuming that the generation ship survives such
a journey, many apparently suitable Sol-like stars would turn out for one
reason or another to be unsuitable, although in many cases that could not be
determined until the generation ship had already arrived. Scratch one
generation ship.
Furthermore, some proportion of the generation ships,
presumably a relatively large proportion, would encounter disasters during
the trip or soon after arrival that would kill most or all of their
passengers. Even if everything went as planned, the number of people that
would fit on a generation ship are a pretty fragile start for a new
civilization. If they run into stobor, they might be wiped out or have their
skill sets reduced to the point that it would take them far, far longer than
1,000 years to develop to the point that they'd be ready to produce
generation ships of their own.
I guess I just think the galaxy is a much larger and
deadlier place than you and Dr. Dyson do.
-- Robert Bruce Thompson thompson@ttgnet.com
Fiddle with the numbers as you will,
exponentials are exponentials: in a billion years the galaxy will be
populated under the most pessimistic assumptions. It isn't, so there were no
intelligent species a billion years ago. Probably none 100 million years
ago. Unlikely even a million years ago...
=========
Subject: Populating the galaxy
Dr Pournelle
Robert Bruce Thompson finds fault in the argument on
the technical side: likelihood of each ship finding a Terra-like planet
smaller than expected; radius of required flight greater than expected; time
required for each colony to achieve industrial capacity to replicate the
adventure greater than expected. As you point out, this merely protracts the
outcome: the curve will still go asymptotic.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in
ourselves. What race has the will to maintain a policy of populating the
galaxy for millions of generations? Ain't gonna happen.
Time is the great leveller. When we go to the stars --
I believe -- we are unlikely to find another race to share the galaxy with.
But -- I believe -- we are very likely to find the artifacts of races long,
long dead.
BTW 1% C is fast! At 1% C a ship would fly from the
Earth to the Moon in under 13 seconds.
Sincerely h lynn keith
=========
Dear Jerry:
The current conversation on Iraq puts me in mind of a
grim joke that made the rounds in M.I. about the perfect solution to win in
Vietnam. It went like this:
Step One: Put the entire "friendly" population of
South Vietnam on ships in the South China Sea.
Step Two: Carpet bomb the entire country until nothing
is left standing.
Step Three: Sink the ships.
Regards,
Francis Hamit
Is the point of the joke to show how
little intelligence there was in Military Intelligence? After Tet we had won
the war, and everyone but the New York Times understood that; surely MI did?
And after 1972-1973 it should have been obvious to everyone that (1) there
was no civil war, (2) South Viet Nam was about as well governed as any
nation in that region -- certainly as well as Taiwan and approaching
Singapore, and no worse than South Korea under the early regimes following
the Korean War's termination, (3) the only threat to South Viet Nam was
invasion from the North, and (4) invasion from the North could not succeed
if we gave the Army of the Republic of Viet Nam the supplies needed and air
support.
As to Step Three, why the hatred of our
allies in the South? They asked us for help. Kennedy had their leader, the
man who had sent the Emperor abroad and declared independence, murdered
along with much of his family; and despite that particular bit of perfidy
they were developing a government that could govern. Surely MI knew this?
Heaven knows the Company knew it. Most of us in analysis knew it. I thought
most of the troops in the field knew it; are you saying that MI had no more
smarts and less vision than the New York Times?
I see the scare quotes around "friendly"
but I don't understand them. My experience was that after Tet most of the
population of the South was friendly. They didn't love us, but they
understood the need for allies. Cao Dai and Hoa Hao didn't love us because
they wanted to govern, but again they understood what would happen to them
if we bugged out (as indeed eventually happened).
My late friend General Dan Graham
understood these matters. Now he was head of Defense Intelligence Agency,
and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, so one would presume that he
was hip to what was known by MI; but perhaps not?
Have you just given us the reason for the
collapse in Viet Nam after our victory there? Local MI didn't understand
what they were doing and were just as infected with the information diseases
circulating in the Metropole as was the press corps? Why would we want to
slaughter our allies as worthless? For indeed that was the attitude of the
press corps. I hadn't known it was the attitude of our Military Intelligence
on the ground.
======
No Child Left Behind:
"Perfect and tweak."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2007/01/03/AR2007010301617.html
-- Roland Dobbins
Aaargh
========
Subject: M.I. and Vietnam
Dear Friend Jerry,
I have some knowledge on the attitude of U.S. Army M.I.
at the end of the Vietnam War.
Some background: I enlisted in June of 1974, five
months after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords that ended our direct
participation in the Vietnamese war. I was tested and found to be of
sufficiently high aptitude (IQ and other measures) for assignment to M.I.
for training as an interrogator. I was sent to Fort Huachuca for training at
the U. S. Army Intelligence Center and School. There I met other new
recruits as well as older soldiers returning for refresher courses or
retraining. Many of the latter had served in Vietnam, as had most of the
instructors at the school.
One of the first classes we had was a legal overview
of what M.I. could and could not do within the bounds of the law. The class
was taught by a Reserve officer who was a law professor at an Ivy League
School doing his two weeks of annual JAG service. I asked him in a Q. and A.
session what would happen if the North Vietnamese broke the Paris Accords
and assaulted with full force. His reply was that there was zero chance the
U.S.A. would do anything other than protest verbally. He said the
determination had been made nationally that we were done with Vietnam. This
class was held about one month after Nixon resigned the presidency.
I asked several of the other students about this
particular matter, and was surprised that the most vehement agreement with
the professor was among the M.I. people who had been in Vietnam. They almost
invariably had a low opinion of the Vietnamese government and military, yet
they also expressed great admiration and liking for the Vietnamese as a
people.
As near as I could parse the situation, it seemed to
me at the time (and still today is my opinion) that there was a lack of
empathy among the M.I. people for the fact that the South Vietnamese
government and military were not all liberally educated, high I.Q. wonks
like the average M.I. "puke", and instead insisted on acting like members of
a Confucian society that had been given a patina of French bureaucracy over
the underlying Mandarinate governing style.
I was at Defense Langauge Institute for language
training when the collapse of April, 1975 came. No one even blinked among
the younger recruit students, and the older troops at the school, most of
whom had been in Vietnam, just said "To hell with it", "Good riddance" and
similar statements.
M.I. at that time was full of "soldiers" who had
contempt for warriors, felt they were superior in every way as a class, and
basically felt like the Army was merely a way-station on the way to
something bigger and better (either the Company or a think-tank or
University). The "career" M.I. people were the exception: they tended to be
senior NCO's and Warrant Officers who were tired, bored to tears most of the
time, and just wanted to get their twenty in and go fishing somewhere.
That's why "jokes" like that were common in M.I. at
the time. It was the sin of despair.
I hope, with some evidence to believe in the hope,
that things are somewhat better in M.I. now. However, M.I. by design and
nature looks for and attracts people who think they are "smart cookies", and
arrogance is a real danger with them. I was one of the worst in that regard.
You taught me a lot about the danger of that when I discovered you about
that time in the pages of Galaxy magazine. What wisdom I have gained since
then, little or none, is from the recognition of that arrogance gleaned from
reading contrary views from such as yourself on matters such as Vietnam.
Thanks for that!
Oh, and I do not mean in any way to tar Fances Hamit
with any of my comments above. He's a fine and homorable person, and I heard
that very same joke about 1974 myself.
Petronius
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