IMHO, I think the adoption of the Second Amendment has to be read in the context of a) no standing Federal army; b) Shay's Rebellion (1786); c) slave revolts such as the 1739 Stono Rebellion; and d) the 1772 Gaspee Affair together with 1775 Lexington and Concord. And all the surrounding myths then, later, and now.

Whether any of that history and myth should be controlling today is another matter.

On a public health level, vaccines are not about protecting an individual, but about protecting society. But you can't sell that to a highly individualistic society like the US, especially to a certain wing/faction of that society. Unfortunately.

Throw in politicians desperately trying to turn off the bad news coming out of long-term care facilities, and you get vaccination programs aimed at halting bad news, not at ending the pandemic. The latter would focus shots on disease vectors, not on subjects with comorbidities whose illnesses more often turn fatal - and into bad numbers.

 A few Modest Proposals:

US Senate stays at two Senators per state. Votes in the US Senate are weighted by state population. Call it the "US Senate Weighted Vote - USSWV." John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis each get one USSWV, as they're from Wyoming. Bernie Sanders gets 1.1 USSWV. Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla get 66.1 USSWV each. There are (about) 1093 USSWV; laws pass with a majority of USSWV.

Let politicians draw any odd shape they want for electoral districts, as long as they have uniform populations. If the GOP or Democratic candidate wins with more than 2/3 of the votes cast, they are disqualified and the candidate with the second-highest vote total is elected.

Juries are more or less randomly selected from qualified citizens to determine the outcome of some of the weighiest issues placed before the commonwealth. Let's pick legislators the same way.

Spouses are barred from running for offices previously held by the other spouse.

Book Review: The Longest Winter: The Battle of the Bulge and the Epic Story of World War II's Most Decorated Platoon (Hardcover) by Alex Kershaw

When Kershaw is relating the stories of the members of the I&R platoon (Intelligence and Recon (scout) 394th Infantry regiment, 99th Division, US Army) , drawing on his personal interviews with the veterans, the book is pretty good. At that point, it is a compelling story of men under fire and duress. When he is setting the larger context, drawing on secondary sources, the story is trite and filled with niggling errors.

I also disliked the amount of attention given to Skorzeny and SS Col. Peiper. In particular, Kershaw imples that Peiper was unfairly targeted by "Communists" after the war. Here's the thing: a commanding officer is responsible for the behavior of ALL the troops under his command. It does not matter if Peiper was not personally present at the Malmedy Massacre, or that he did not order the killings of POWs. When atrocities occured, it was Peiper's responsibility to punish those of his subordinates who transgressed. Op. cit. Jadranko Prlić, Rasim Delić, Atif Dudaković, Sakib Mahmuljin - all convicted of war crimes during the Bosnian War (1992-5) for their failure to adequately supervise troops under their command. And Prlić was a politician, not an army commander in the field. (I also met all four after the war.) [N.b.: Dudaković has been charged; he has not been tried as of this writing.]

 Posted (to FB) February 1:

Now that New START has been extended, good next largely unilateral* steps include:

1) Declarative moratorium on nuclear testing and prepare to submit the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) to the Senate;

2) End deployment of and funding for new nuclear warhead designs;

3) End the triad by phasing out land-based ICBMs;

4) Declare a No First Use policy;

5) Declare like-for-like retalitory policy;

6) End "Launch on Warning" policy;

7) Withdraw tactical nuclear weapons from Europe (starting with Turkey!);

8) Re-enter the Open Skies Treaty (technically a conventional step);

9) Begin work on new Nuclear strategy (Nuclear Posture Review);

10) Eliminate (burn as fuel) fissile material from excess "retired" US warheads.

That's off the top of my head.

 

Book Review: Behold, America: The Entangled History of “America First” and “The American Dream” by Sarah Churchwell

An Etymological Essay at Book Length

Churchwell's 2018 book looks at these two tropes, from their origins around 1900, the peak of “America First” in the speeches of isolationist Charles Lindbergh in 1941, to the proclaimed “death” of the American Dream and renewed promotion of “America First” in 2015 by the loser of the 2020 Presidential election. Churchwell examines these two terms through their use in public discourse throughout the 20^th century, focusing on their definition over time. She argues that “The American Dream” is the social contract, a moral economy, that balances liberty and freedom, equality and justice, but that its meaning has been diverted and perverted, especially since the Second World War, to mean the possibility of becoming exceedingly, excessively rich. That America and Americans have redefined Calvinism as “If you are rich, it is God rewarding you for your virtues” and making “The American Dream” synonymous with that redefined doctrine. On the other hand, “America First” and its close relative “100% American” = “100% white” – and Nordic or “Aryan”* white at that. (Lindbergh's public leadership of the “America First” campaign collapsed a few months before the attack on Pearl Harbor after he delivered an anti-Semitic speech in Des Moines.)

I rather liked the opening of Chapter 6, “America First 1920-1923: The Simplicity of Government” which opens with the tale of President Harding, who in “his 1920 'America first' campaign,[] notoriously announced that 'government is a very simple thing,'” further “promising to run the American government like a business.” Now, where have we heard that lately?

Churchwell reminds us of the lasting value of the works of Sinclair Lewis, Walter Lippman, and Dorothy Thompson. All were pronounced anti-Fascists, and their observations hold true today as applied to the heirs of the reactionary “100% American” & “America First” legacies.


* “Aryan” was a term applied to themselves by ancient Indo-Iranian peoples. Somehow I am not surprised that its misapplication as a synonym for “Nordic” was popularized by a graduate of the University of Geneva (who was born in England, raised in France, and settled in Germany), whose B.Sc. thesis was shown to be mystical nonsense.

Book Review:  Imperialism: A Study ... is the iconoclastic 1902 work from British economist J.A. Hobson. Today it is more generally known for having inspired Vladimir Lenin to write his 1916 treatise, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Secondarily, Hobson advanced his theory that the British investor class had "oversaved," with domestic production outstripping domestic consumption, in consequence thereof leading the investors to seek investment opportunities overseas: first in Europe and from 1870 onward in Africa and Asia - the "tropics". A Socialist, Hobson argued that the funds should have been directed homeward by increasing the income placed at the disposition and advantage of the working classes, thereby increasing domestic consumption to match production.

An exhaustive (and exhausting) reading of the text reveals a persistent shadowed motivation: British investment overseas will empower the "black" and "yellow" races, literally imperilling "white civilization." While Hobson is rightfully criticized for anti-Semitism in his earlier book on the Boer War (UK vs ethnic Dutch settlers in South Africa, 1899-1901), blaming the war on "Jewish financiers," such blatant anti-Semitism is missing from "Imperialism." It is beyond curious that modern reviewers of Imperialism so blithely skate past the racism that persists throughout the text.

Hobson supports "colonisation" as opposed to imperialism, which he sees as white families settling in temperate climes - without regard for extant aborginal society and culture.

Hobson's analysis of British imperialism - that is to say, abusive exploitation - of Africa is extensive, cogent and well-supported by citations. (Part II, Chapter IV - "Imperialism and the Lower Races.") Not so the following Chapter on "Imperialism in Asia," which is painted on a phantasmagorical background of an innately corrupt India and a peaceful, wise and complacent China robbed of its innocence and riches by European buccaneers.

Hobson has both an eye and a pen for a good turn of phrase.

Pithy metaphor:

"A coma accompanied by fits." Miss Mary Kingsley on British policy in the West African colonies. p. 128

Insouciant nationalism:

"Probably every one would agree that an Englishman would be right in considering his way of looking at the world and at life better than that of the Maori or Hottentot, and no one will object in the abstract to England doing her best to impose her better and higher view on those savages." (Goes on to accord Belgians, Germans, Nordics the same lack of disrespect, if at a higher step.) Earl Grey on Hubert Harvey of the British South African Chartered Company, p. 167

Outrageous sanctimony:

"Our only programme is that of the moral and material regeneration of the country." King Leopold II of Belgium, referencing the Congo. p. 209

{I cannot praise too highly King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild in refutation of this hypocrisy.}

Damnation of Populism:

They are no longer seriously frightened by the power of the people as implied by a popular franchise, nor are they prepared to conciliate it by further taxes on property; .... 'Panem et circenses' interpreted into English means cheap booze and Mafficking (Mafeking, Siege of: ed.). Popular education, instead of serving as a defence, is an incitement towards Imperialism; it has opened up a panorama of vulgar pride and crude sensationalism to a great inert mass who see current history and the tangled maze of world movements with dim, bewildered eyes, and are the inevitable dupes of the able organised interests who can lure, or scare, or drive them into any convenient course. p. 107

Fake News:

Imperialism is based upon a persistent misrepresentation of facts and forces chiefly through a most refined process of selection, exaggeration, and attenuation, directed by interested cliques and persons so as to distort the face of history. The gravest peril of Imperialism lies in the state of mind of a nation which has become habituated to this deception and which has rendered itself incapable of self-criticism. p. 223

Prophesy:

"[China] may turn upon her civiliser [.] .... [T]here is no consideration, theoretic or practical, to prevent British capital from transferring itself to China, provided it can find there a cheaper or more efficient supply of labour, or even to prevent Chinese capital with Chinese labour from ousting Britsh produce [.] ....

China might so turn the tables upon the Western industrial nations, and, either by adopting their capital and organisers or, as is more probable, by substituting her own, might flood their markets with her cheaper manufacturers, and refusing their imports in exchange might take her payments in liens upon their capital, reversing the earlier process of investment until she gradually obtained financial control over her quondam patrons and civilisers. This is no idle speculation." pp 329-330

And Condemnation of the "Upper" Class:

" ... vulgar ostentation, domineering demeanour and corrupting largesse to dazzle and degrade the life of our people." p. 158

 Book Review All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War by Paul Jankowski

I'll agree that this is "A narrative [ ], cinematic in scope, of a process." But a history it is not. A proper history is analytical - why and not just what happened. "Delusions of nationalism" is an assertion, not analysis. Overall, the text is merely descriptive, no more so than when he devotes a paragraph to actress Jeanette MacDonald's impression of the appearance of German delegate (and rabid nationalist) Alfred Hugenberg at the 1933 London World Economic Conference.

The narrative itself is crippled by the author's style, which employs a muddled grammar (notably far too many indefinite referents) and odd metaphors that leaves a turgid account, one that had me reading the same sentence or paragraph over and over again until I finally fished out his meaning - or, too often, gave up and moved on.

His discussions of diplomacy are ill-founded. He asserts that the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, a backdrop to the disarmament discussions a decade later in Geneva, resulted from an aspirational verging on delusional attachment to disarmament, and necessitated the concurrent agreement guaranteeing security in China. At no point does the author note that no naval power of the time could afford the fleets they had in being and far less the extravagant armadas being built, that naval disarmament was an economic imperative.

As with understanding of diplomatic motivations, his discussion of diplomatic process is lacking. On the World Economic Conference of 1933, Jankowski states that FDR “never sought authority” from Congress to discuss war debts and tariffs. That's not how it works: the US Executive does not need “Congressional Authority” to discuss an issue, or even enter into negotiations. Congress is involved if the resulting agreement requires legislation to implement, or takes the form of a treaty require Senate consent. Even here, the author later restates the obstacle as instructions to the US delegation to not “sign” agreements without "congressional scrutiny.” And indeed, the author turns to discussions led by the UK and US central banks, in which participated seven other countries, which did reach an agreement including from the US delegation for referral to capitals.

Not worthless, but not worth the time it took to read. It's certainly not The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark.

 Elections - from 19Nov20:

This year, I was assistant head election judge in five (!) elections – two special (bye-) elections to fill a State house vacancy, the Presidential primary, the general primary, and the general November election. For each, I was asked to be in charge of hourly audits and the ballot tally. So what are those, and why do they exist?

Ballot tally

Obviously, we want to guard against counterfeit and unofficial ballots being stuffed into the ballot box. (We use an electronic scanner called a tabulator that scans each ballot, stores a scan of each ballot, and records and automatically counts each vote, but the ballot tally requirement – and the idea of stuffing a ballot box – predates such machinery.) Each precinct is issued a number of ballots appropriate to that location, which are delivered in a locked container – nowadays, the ballot storage area of the tabulator. The morning of the poll, the container is unlocked in view of two election judges/poll workers (hereafter “judges”), and the ballot transport boxes opened. Inside is a set number of ballots – usually twice as many ballots as expected voters. In November, that was 1600, two boxes each with 800 ballots. The ballots are shrink-wrapped in packs of, nominally, 100. As needed, two judges open and count each pack – about 10% of the time, there are 99 or 101 ballots. Both judges initial the ballots. Each voter gets one ballot – unless they make a mistake, in which case they can get a new ballot, in exchange for the old, which is then “spoiled.” At the end of the polling day, the ballots are tallied. Each still unopened pack is counted as 100, to which is added the number of cast ballots (remember the tabulator machine has been counting cast ballots all day – the current number is publicly displayed on each machine, and two judges verified the number was “0” before the polls opened), and the number of spoiled ballots, which have been placed in a specially marked envelope, to be sealed and returned to the city election office. That number should equal the number issued, as adjusted for packs with excess or insufficient ballots. It usually does, unless a voter was able to walk off with their ballot from the polling place, rather than cast it into the machine.

That's the easy count.

Voter receipt audits

Each voter, once they have signed the (now electronic) poll book, is given a ballot receipt, which they take to the ballot judge(s). The judge takes the receipt from them, numbers it sequentially, and gives them a ballot. Every hour, the AHEJ (me!) records the current highest sequential ballot receipt number and compares it to the “public count” on the tabulator – remember that machine has been counting the number of cast ballots all day. The receipt number should (must) match the number of the public count when that count is added to the number of voters still filling out their ballots at the moment the public count is read. For example, the receipt number is 137, the public count is 134, and three voters are filling out ballots. So in this case we're good - the numbers balance. It can be tricky determining how many voters are filling out ballots – not everyone at the booths is voting – some are assisting voters, some are judges. And in our combined precincts (we had two precincts in one space in August and November, as the physical space formerly allocated to one of the precincts was too small to permit social distancing), we had to figure out if a voter was from Ward 1 or Ward 2.

The number is not infrequently off when the initial audit concludes. Usually what has happened is that a ballot judge has misnumbered a receipt - “238” instead of “237” - skipping a number; or “238” instead of “239” - repeating a number. The AHEJ renumbers, by hand, ALL the misnumbered receipts – anywhere from say 6 to 90 slips of paper, depending on when the error occurred and how busy it is. If the numbers stubbornly remain off, we have to call the city election office and let them know, and what we did to try and fix the error. It is also logged into an incident log.

In the special primary, our penultimate voter got upset that there were no Republicans on the ballot – none had filed for the office. Very upset. He tore the ballot into little pieces, and threw them in and around the trash can. If we left it there, it would affect both audits. So clipped the pieces together and put them into the spoiled ballot envelope. But, since one more ballot was issued than was cast, our voter receipt audit was unalterably off. We noted it in the log. And even though we would be physically at the city election office in a half-hour, we called it in, too.

So, what a county canvassing board is supposed to do is NOT ensure that there are no discrepancies in the audits and tallies. Those are going to happen. Nor reject all the ballots from an area if the discrepancies strike them as “too high.” Instead the canvass board is to ascertain the number of votes polled; this is a purely “ministerial” duty, with no exercise of judgment required or indeed permitted.

See, e.g., opinion of Washington State Attorney General, AGO 49-51 No. 385. https://www.atg.wa.gov/.../elections-duties-county...

If a candidate believes the discrepancies indicate an intolerable situation, it is up to the candidate (NOT a member of the canvassing board) to ask for judicial review, and it up to the judge (NOT a member of the canvassing board) to resolve the dispute.

From 26Feb21:  A lot of folks are acting upset that VP Harris is talking with world leaders. 1) That's a routine role for VPs, beginning with VP Nixon under Ike. 2) The VP is a statutory member of the National Security Council. 3) I do wonder whether the same folks getting upset now expressed their annoyance when unelected (and frankly unqualified) Presidential Advisors, not members of the NSC, took the same role. [Yes, Ivanka and Jared, notably.]

I wonder if those folks would be upset to learn that I represented the United States in a key meeting with the President of Montenegro...

As the snow melts from the roads in Minneapolis, I think back on my bicycle commute in DC: home, then in order past: CostCo, DEA HQ, Pentagon, National 9-11 Pentagon Memorial (pace MTG), Pentagon helipad, Arlington Cemetery, through Lady Bird Johnson Park, over Arlington Memorial Bridge, around the south side of the Lincoln Memorial, past Lincoln's gaze next to the Reflecting Pool (yes, the Official bike path runs right through the tourists), skirt the Vietnam Wall, a wave to Albert Einstein's statute hidden in the copse near the National Academy of Sciences, lock my bike, in through the “Joggers' Entrance” of the Harry S Truman building, and in to my office, a quick peak out through the blinds at the Washington Monument before settling into work.

 

Forlorn Hopes, Lost Causes, Bitter Enders, and Gotterdammerung: The Romance of Pointless Defiance

Throughout history – or at least in the tales white European men tell themselves (which until recently was the same thing), there reoccurs stories of defiance, to be lauded and held up as an example of how to act. Often, a dispassionate review shows what happened (or was attempted) to be pointless: nothing was gained, much was lost to no advantage to anyone.

Forlorn Hope

Technically, a Forlorn Hope is a near-suicidal attack, ordered when more conventional approaches have failed, in the hope that the Forlorn Hope will make an overall victory possible, From the Dutch “Verloren Hoop” or Lost Troop. Colloquially, it is used in American English as a synonym for Last Stand. Compare with the word “Awful”, which should be the superlative for awesome, but has come to mean its opposite.

In 1861, France, the UK, and Spain decided that Mexico's unilateral two-year moratorium on paying interest on the state debt could and should be lifted – at the point of a bayonet or two. The UK and Spain left with their money, the French decided to expand the empire (thus, “Amerique latine or Latin America” a term devised in Colombia in 1856 but popularised by Napoleon III). This ultimately did not turn out so well for Emperor Napoleon III of France – and quite badly for erstwhile Archduke Maximilian of Austria: shot for his troubles (and posing as Emperor of Mexico) when the French were forced out in 1867. But I am getting ahead of my story. So, May 5, 1862 – nope, too far back. Keep this up, and I may sink my readers' interest.

On April 30, 1863, 65 Legionaires of the French Foreign Legion were sent to reinforce the escort of a convoy, itself in support of the French siege of the Mexican stronghold of Puebla, on the way to the capital of Mexico City. The Legionaires found themselves cut off by a stronger force – which kept getting bigger: 250, 600, 1400; by the end more than 3000. French Captain Danjou, surrounded, had his men swear – on Danjou's prosthetic hand! - to fight to the death rather than surrender, in (supposed) imitation of Napoleon's Guard at Waterloo. The Mexicans offered to let the French surrender. Non! Said Danjou, quickly meeting his own death. More Mexicans arrived; another offer to the hungry, thirsty Legionaires. Merde! Exclaimed the remaining sergeant. Late in the afternoon, the Mexicans again offered surrender, now to the last 12 men on their feet. Again no. Out of ammo, the last five (or six) fixed bayonets and charged. Then the final three at last surrendered. The Legionaires had, truly, “fought like demons.” and Danjou's hand is a central relic for the Legion to this day.

Glory without end. But to what effect? The French had early on halted the convoy when they saw the large interposing Mexican force. And ran the convoy through to the siege in prompt order over the next few days. The Legionaires taken prisoner were treated well, and exchanged to the French on Bastille Day, 14 July 1863. Puebla, then Mexico City, fell to the French. But by the end of 1866, France had withdrawn most of its troops, pressured by the United States that had won its own Civil War. Mid-May 1867 Mexico City was retaken by Mexican forces, Maximilian captured, court-martialed and shot on 19 June, a few days short of his 35^th birthday; and thousands of miles from his birthplace in Schloss Schönbrunn in Vienna. The Legionaires's sacrifice was glorious – but operationally pointless. The Legionaires had fought – and died – for Glory and Honor. Nothing less. And nothing more.

Lost Causes

Ah, The Lost Cause! The South Will Rise Again! No, not The Lost Cause. A lost cause. Partly because The Lost Cause is too well known. But mainly because pursuit of The Lost Cause hasn't been anywhere near as futile as one could hope, and certainly doesn't rank as pointless defiance.

Real lost causes did arise in the decades after Camarón. (I forgot to mention that, didn't I? The pointless encounter in 1863 is known as the Battle of Camarón, after the small town near Vera Cruz where it took place.) One such lost cause is The War of the Triple Alliance, or Paraguayan War, (1864-1870) begun by Paraguay against Brazil. Then Argentina and Uruguay weighed in – against Paraguay. While the weight of military force was slightly to Paraguay's advantage to start, in a long war, its isolated position and demographic inferiority led it to doom. Paraguay lost up to 1/3 of its territory, 1/2 or more of its population and nearly every adult male. Arguably, it has yet to recover.

Then there are Queen Victoria's Little Wars, in Africa, Asia, Canada (!), as small numbers of heavily armed soldiers wrack ruin and conquest in service of Her Majesty, glory, empire, and extension of Rudyard Kipling's “White Man's Burden” - that of “civilization” and “Christianity.” Result was – well, two good movies: “Zulu” (the 1964 one) and “The Man Who Would be King” (1975).

These are lost causes. However, pointless and defiant don't really describe these lost causes.

But the Fenian Raids? Defiant? Check. Pointless? Check.

From 1845 to 1849, the Great Famine ravaged Ireland. Greedy English landlords, backed by the heartless government in London, allowed 1 million to starve to death, while another million fled abroad: to Canada, Australia, Mexico (!). And the United States, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. After the Civil War, thousands of Irish men had military training, weapons, a bit of money, time, and national pride in their Irish homeland. Also a persistent grievance against the English.

Ireland remained an ocean away, strongly occupied by professional soldiers who were demonstrably capable of resisting uprising (1798), rebellion (1803, 1848) and planned insurrection (1865). But Canada? It – actually they (Canada was not a unified colony in 1865) – was near by; just across the border. And heck, the Americans almost took it. Twice (1775, 1812).

Not that the Irish in America wanted Canada. Nah. They'd take it – or at least key points and infrastructure – and TRADE it back to the English for Ireland.

The Fenians began this well thought out campaign in April 1866 with an attack on Campo Bello (now Campobello) New Brunswick. First assembling their men across the narrow strait in Maine … well, that's where it stopped. The British could see what the Fenians were up to and preempted the attack by moving 700 regular soldiers and warships over from Halifax.

In June 1866, the Fenians launched two raids, and this time both successfully got across the border. With the warship USS Michigan disabled by Fenian sympathisizers, something over 1000 Fenians crossed the Niagara River west from Buffalo toward Fort Erie. The next moming, they ambushed a large force of Canadian militia, inflicting numerous casualties and taking prisoners. But with the Michigan back in operation, cutting the Fenains off from supply and reinforcement, and British regulars and more Canadian militia approaching, the Fenians crossed back into the U.S. where they surrendered. U.S. President Andrew Johnson called the Fenians “evil-disposed persons” and said their actions were illegal under American and international law.

Which didn't stop the next raid, the day after Johnson's proclamation. This time just under 1000 Fenians set from St Albans Vermont and briefly took four Canadian villages before being chased off by Canadian cavalry. (To be fair, in 1864 a raid the other direction by Confederates who had escaped from Union POW camps robbed three banks in the selfsame St Albans, making off with at least $88,000 (about $1.5 million today).)

American public opinion favored the Fenians, and they were released and got their weapons back under executive orders signed by Johnson ahead of the November Congressional elections.

Raids resumed in 1870, two in late May. At Eccles Hill, essentially ON the Vermont-Canada border, a brief skirmish quickly dispersed the Fenians. Two days later and some miles west, another force of Fenians is fired upon by Canadian troops and “redeploy” back into New York, where their leader John O'Neill is promptly arrested by the US Marshal.

And one more – my favorite! O'Neill, recently released from prison after a pardon from President Grant, travels to St. Paul Minnesota (!) to plan a raid on Winnipeg. On October 5, 1871 he and three dozen Fenians capture the Hudson's Bay Company post in Pembina. Those of you who know your North Dakota-Manitoba geography well, or have just travelled by car between Winnipeg and St Paul, may be scratching your heads. Yes, Pembina is and was in North Dakota. In the United States.

At this point the Fenians in the United States decided these raids were a little worse than pointless, and started sending money to the Irish in Ireland – and England. Which while no longer pointless did lead to much violence and bloodshed. Another unified and ultimately independent country can however trace its origins to the Fenians raids. The Dominion of Canada began the unification of Canada on 1 July 1867, at least in part in response to the 1866 raids.

Bitter Enders

So, the 19^th Century Pax Brittanica was a facade in Canada. But surely elsewhere it held? The flag never sets on the British Empire and all that? Even before the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Britain had “gone abroad in search of monsters to destroy” in the words of US Secretary of State John Quincy Adams. From 1815 to 1902, Britain was almost constantly at war, but rarely against anyone of white European stock. To the dismay of its settlers, the British made an exception of the Cape Colony in South Africa. A brief Boer (Dutch: “farmer”) rebellion in 1815, described by a partisan observer as "the most insane attempt ever made by a set of men to wage war against their sovereign" was brutually crushed. What followed was almost ninety years of a lethal Mad Hatter's Party, as the British repression and dislike of the Boers resulted in them moving further and further inland. For the Boers, this was the Great Trek. (For English speakers, we picked up a new word.) A partial status vivendi was reached in 1881, when the British lost the three-month-long First Boer War. Then, most unfortunately for the Boers, they found .. GOLD! “Outlanders” - mainly Brits – flooded into Boer lands. In October 1899, the Boers demanded that the Brits leave them alone. British sentiment was led by the likes of Cecil Rhodes (he of Rhodesia and the Rhodes Scholarship), who called for armed defense of “outlander” rights and better treatment for Black Africans (no, really).

The first phase of the war went badly for the British. Famously, Lord Baden-Powell was besieged in Mafeking, with only Sunday cricket matches (and concerts) for light entertainment until relieved, with His Lordship going on to create the Boy Scouts. (Nevermind he had been ordered to NOT defend in Mafeking.) Nonetheless, less than a year after the conflict started, the Boer capitals of Bloemfontein and Pretoria had fallen. The regular, stand-up war was over.

But the Bittereinders among the Boers did not give up, their commandos (another new word for English!) turning to guerilla warfare. (Guerilla was not a new word, arising in 1809 from the [Iberian] Penisular War of Wellington against Napoleonic France.) About half of the orignal Boer force stayed in the field as combatants. Those 25 thousand or so commandos were opposed by up to 500,000 British, Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders.Twenty-to-one odds did not suffice, so the British commander ordered a scorched earth policy, destroying Boer settlements and driving the old men, women and children – and Black “servants” – into concentration camps. (TWO new phrases: scorched earth and concentration camps.) 6,189 Boer commandoes died in the field, along with over 22,000 Brits. Over 25,000 Boer women and 22,000 children under age 16 (about 20% of those detained) died, along with uncounted thousands of Black Africans. (See British war aims, above.)

Also decimated was the British budget: “defence” spending skyrocketed from 35 million pounds annually to 120 million – over 6% of GDP. Cheap compared to World War One, but four times what the UK spends today.

Not so much pointless defiance as a bitter end.

Götterdämmerung

In April 1945, the Berlin Philharmonic played its last concerts in Nazi Germany. The musicians played the finale of Wagner's Götterdämmerung , Brahms' German Requiem (requiem: to honor the dead), and Strauss' Death and Transfiguration. For any concert-goers who missed the point, Hitler Youth reportedly passed out cyanide pills.

Eight months earlier, another major European capital was about to fall to an approaching army: Paris. Or would it? In the 1960's there was published a book, followed by a movie, both with the title, Is Paris Burning? - reportedly the words asked with no sense of ironic foreshadowing by Hitler on August 25, 1944 as French and American troops entered the City of Lights. We learned this first through the memoirs – indeed, apologia – of General Dietrich von Choltitz, the last German commander of Paris. There is solid documentary evidence that on the morning of August 23, Hitler had in fact ordered that “The Seine bridges will be prepared for demolition. Paris must not fall into the hands of the enemy except as a field of ruins.” Also known as the Trümmerfeld order. As recounted in the official US Army History Breakout and Pursuit, von Choltitz informed his superior headquarters later that same day:

that he had complied by placing three tons of explosive in the cathedral of Notre Dame, two tons in the Invalides, and one in the Palais Bourbon (the Chamber of Deputies), that he was ready to level the Arc de Triomphe to clear a field of fire, that he was prepared to destroy the Opéra and the Madeleine, and that he was planning to dynamite the Tour Eiffel and use it as a wire entanglement to block the Seine. Incidentally, he advised Speidel, he found it impossible to destroy the seventy-odd bridges.

Von Choltitz was likely being sarcastic, as he had begun the phone call “by thanking Speidel for the lovely order from Hitler.” Nevertheless, in the days and weeks after the surrender of Paris, many (still intact) bridges and monuments did have to be demined. Von Choltitz's motivations are unclear. Hitler's are not: he wanted vengeance. In the same order that he required the destruction of Paris, he stressed the need to hold onto Paris as long as possible, to defend the sites in the Pas de Calais, the base for the V-1 “Vengeance” weapons being launched almost haphazardly against London. When von Choltitz surrendered Paris to the Allies nearly intact on August 25, Hitler struck at Paris. Immediately, 120 Luftwaffe bombers dropped incendiary bombs, killing at least 50 people. The first lethal V-2 missiles are targeted, not on London, but Paris, with 22 rockets fired between September 7 and October 6, largely striking in the suburbs to no military effect whatsoever.

Intriguingly, General Eisenhower and the Allied high command had not wanted to take Paris. They realized – as any of their professional opponents could also see – that the need to control, feed, and otherwise supply a major city and its civilian population would place a major strain on their logistics, and impair the pursuit and destruction of German armed forces before they could reach relative safety back in Germany. A “field of ruins” would have been a warcrime of pointless defiance.

Why this essay? Why now?

As part of my interest in history is my focus on military history, which inevitably leads to accounts of military disasters. Within that are the “what the heck” moments? Just how did the instigators of this monumental FUBAR think it was going to turn out? The classic FUBAR occurred almost 100 years before the first use of the word, with The Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War. (1854)

To which poesied Tennyson:

Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

And then there was the poster, way back in Spencer's Gifts, under the black lights (ultraviolet). A mouse gives the finger to an eagle swooping down it. “Defiance” is defined in words next to the depiction. Pretty cool poster when you're 16. But over the years, I've spared a thought or two for the poster. And concluded the mouse is an idiot. Not brave. Not even foolhardy. Just stupid. Not only by getting himself into a situation he can't escape. But by just standing there, finger out, not running, he is making the eagle's job just that much easier. A pointless gesture. Heck, even in “Animal House” the Deltas' “futile and stupid gesture” is more productive than this. And there, of course, is the rub: our culture, and notably American culture, has enthroned and enobled the “futile and stupid gesture”, made pointless defiance a virtue. When faced with a host of options, many bad, some worse, why reject the one that gives the best possible outcome? Even if that best outcome sucks, why choose instead the worst result just for some non-tangible, transitory self-gratification? The answer is that culture has transformed pointless defiance, enshrouded it with the myth that, “Hey, maybe you'll win. In spite of everything, even though this act of defiance is misguided and stupid and almost 100% guaranteed not to succeed, you never know if you don't roll the dice.”

Of course we also have Samson: vain, vengeful, homicidal. His act of suicidal vengeance is praised, however, as the result of God hearing and answering Samson's prayers, incidentally beginning the deliverance of Samson's people from his enemies. A hero in spite of himself.

In these four vignettes, at least one actor decided for pointless defiance, for the futile and stupid gesture. In Mexico, the French Foreign Legionaires mimicked Napoleon's Guard - "La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas!" ("The Guard dies but does not surrender!") but in so doing had no effect whatsoever on the French siege then underway. Had they accepted the quarter that was offered to them not once, not twice, but three times they would have lived with no impairment of French Imperial designs. Their commander forfeited his life and that of his men for a legend.

To the north a few years later, the Irish Americans Fenian dreams are something out of Gilbert & Sullivan, a light opera with cannons and rifle fire for percussion and woodwinds. One can talk lightly of the raids, which led to less than five dozen dead (both killed in action and mortally wounded) of 40,000 men engaged in total, and the brief nature of the scattered engagements over five years. The concept of exchanging a kidnapped Canada for a free Ireland was rankest fantasy. But the issues were dead serious, and were not solved or extinguished by the defeat of the raids but returned to their home in Hibernia, with American support, money and latterly weapons.

The Second Boer War (or Boer War to the British, as who wished to forget that they lost the first so quickly and decisively) was fought for notions of liberty on the one side, and imperial domination and gold on the other. For the Boers, the guerilla war was in the near term more tragic than pointless after the British responded with uncommon brutality. When the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910, just eight years after the Boer war, Afrikaner/Boer generals from that war became Prime Minister and War Minister. For the British, the gold gained was oddly tarnished with not just excessive military deaths but civilian blood as well, and pale in comparision to the overshadowing financial cost of the war.

Paris did not burn, but Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Warsaw and so many other cities did, without even considering the devastation wrought elsewhere, notably in Europe and Asia. But Hitler's object in Paris late August 1944 was naked, unadulterated vengeance, unexcused and in fact contrary to any military objective. We have only General von Choltitz's own words for why he did not carry out his orders for pointless destruction and defiance, and his words are sometimes contradictory, often unclear, and always self-serving. We must remain content with the result without false heroism and unwarranted praise.

So, that's why this subject. Why now? The events of November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021 are too fresh to be proper subjects for history. For now, we must be satisfied with journalism. But they will lend themselves to history, soon. And when that time comes, it will be good to reflect on past follies and the trusim that while history does not repeat itself, it does rhyme.

© 2021 Alan J. Carlson Reproduction of this work for personal use permitted as long as the work is not modified and the source of the work is cited.