Comments on: Beware of Yanks Bearing Suffering

By: joshua.treviño.at » Filipinos and Fedayeen

joshua.treviño.at » Filipinos and Fedayeen — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 00:11:18 +0000

[...] The online left’s response to my piece on “The Avid Losers” has been rather predictable: reminders of the horrible things that often must be done to win wars — which, to clarify, I largely endorse — and an inchoate protest from an otherwise obscure philosophy professor in Singapore. (As an aside on a secondary point in the latter, the American involvement in the First World War was, in fact, quite justified, and even “noble,” if nobility were grasped by the avid-loser class.) So much for them. [...]

By: bianco

bianco — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 01:32:49 +0000

“The ability of a society to see through grinding conflicts like the Philippines Insurrection or the Boer War augers well for its future,”

yes. mark twain saw through the rationale for the killing in the philipines, just as many in the here and now saw through colin powell’s sales pitch to the UN. is war hysteria ever completely opaque?

By: Crooked Timber » » Ruuuule the Western Sea

Crooked Timber » » Ruuuule the Western Sea — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 14:54:37 +0000

[...] In response to my complaints about Trevino, Hilzoy went and procured an actual historian to comment on the Phillipines Insurrection and – generally – on the advantages and disadvantages of such things for national life. I take the key sentence to be:Once the indigenous resistance was stronger – more politically conscious, better armed and trained – this unspoken calculus no longer applied. Instead, the "home field advantage" came back into play. No longer could small numbers of well-armed foreigners dominate much larger numbers of "natives" on their home soil, as they had been able to do during the 19th century.I have nothing to add, except that Lemuel Pitkin – I loved A Cool Million, too – requests that I tell you what comics to read. [...]

By: Wax Banks

Wax Banks — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 05:42:35 +0000

I am posting a comment solely because tomu’s masterful punchline needs a Doonesbury-style anticlimax.

Done!

By: TomU

TomU — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:50:04 +0000

Your comment is awaiting moderation???

I’m going to a site where my thoughts aren’t sensored.

By: TomU

TomU — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:48:19 +0000

Ok guys altogether! Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. It worked work for the US until 9/11. Maybe your strategy will work again. The only positive thing is that you guys are not reproducing. If conservatives are so unhappy, why do they reproduce at a greater rate.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 06:17:41 +0000

I’d kinda like it if the blogosphere took to calling Tacitus “Tacticus” – the skewed version from Discworld.

It’d help deflate him a bit more.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:36:36 +0000

Why are we arguing over World War I? In parts of the U.S. we’re still disputing the Civil War. We’ll get around to re-evaluating the Spanish-American War by and by.

Consider, though: had it not been for WWI, the Russians would never have been able to win WWII.

By: Ray Davis

Ray Davis — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 05:01:09 +0000

So what would’ve been the right thing to do? From what I’ve read of the period, WWI propaganda all round was a lot more convincing than any war propaganda since. All kinds of sensible people on every side thought it was now or never, and I’m in no position to say they were dumber than me.

Where we might be able to agree is in how the victors’ spoils were handled. But the lesson everyone learned from WWI was to pamper the asshole fascists after WWII rather than offend anyone who might cause trouble. I’m not sure that was a great ethical advance, even if it turned out to be practical.

By: Stephen Frug

Stephen Frug — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 03:12:40 +0000

Do you think the problem with people who think this way is that they don’t read enough comic books, or do they read too many? (I read a lot, so sometimes I worry.) The problem is that they don't read the right comic books.

By: nick s

nick s — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 03:03:55 +0000

This is probably ad hominem, but wasn’t Trevino discharged from the military on account of his mental health? If not, things would have to be bad to accept him now: he’s well down the Kurtzian path to ‘exterminate all the brutes’.

And yes, Ferguson’s thesis (in essence, ‘the British could have chosen to stay out, and should have done so’) is one that he’s held for many years.

By: RobW

RobW — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 02:02:41 +0000

The ability of a society to see through grinding conflicts like the Philippines Insurrection or the Boer War augers well for its future, lest it lose the mere capacity to conquer, and be susceptible to humiliation by any small power with no advantage save mental fortitude.

What’s Incitatus complaining about? That Iraq’s not enough of a “howling wilderness” yet?

By: Doddle

Doddle — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 01:41:30 +0000

Oh my. This is simplistic but then again this is a throwaway observation: for Niall Ferguson the error of WWI wasn’t so much the industrialized bloodlust and destruction but that it produced so little that was useful. If the needs of Empire and especially the British Empire could have been serviced by even the horrors of trench warfare then so much the better. And in that, I suppose, the Great War can still be said to be a noble cause. Such are the bookworm charms of the conservative strategist. It’s also a sentiment that the war eradicated in the most straightforward way. It gunned down many of the adherents. Its return is more farce. While Ferguson is a bit higher caliber than Ollie North they both traffic in the lie that Owen memorialized in one of his poems.

By: Geoff R

Geoff R — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:38:11 +0000

WW I views diverge. In Kimball’s The Betrayal of Liberalism Oz culture-warrior Windshuttle sees WWI as an imperialist war and blames the evil Woodrow Wilson for US involvement.

By: BruceR

BruceR — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 22:07:41 +0000

You’re both wrong about Ferguson. Among other things, he argued that Britain should have acquiesced in the invasion of a neutral Belgium for realist reasons, but that the tendency of British and French armies to capture more prisoners than the Germans was to their advantage in the long run because it encouraged further surrenders, and conversely that the German choice to engage in unrestricted warfare against neutral shipping was incredibly stupid and counter-productive for them, if only because it brought in the U.S.

In other words, that the available moral grounds (the principle of territorial integrity of neutral countries) did not justify British participation,
but that in the end the side that possessed the moral advantage did win, if only because their interpretation of morality had a greater functional utility.

Whether you agree or not, saying that Ferguson was either pro- or anti-WW1 in The Pity of War seems a bit simplistic.