Sic Semper Tyrannis 2008

War Against the American People - McClellan Speaks

"...in a chapter titled "Selling the War," he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

"Over that summer of 2002," he writes, "top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war. . . . In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage."

McClellan, once a staunch defender of the war from the podium, comes to a stark conclusion, writing, "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary." "  WAPO

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" "If I had served my God", the Cardinal said remorsefully, "as diligently as I did my king, He would not have given me over.." " (Wiki)

Change a couple of words and this probably will serve as an epitaph for Scott McClellan.  Perhaps if McClellan had had the welfare of his country closer to his heart than the idea of service to his emperor then fate might have been kinder to him.  Or perhaps not; duty is a hard thing.   "Duty is the most sublime word in the English language"   Apparently, McClellan has only recently developed a sense of duty that the epigramist would have understood.

McClellan's book will be believed by those who have known or suspected the truth of the massive and continuing propaganda campaigns waged by the Bushies and the Jacobin flatheads.  It will not be accepted by those who still believe that Saddam hid his nuclear program in a lake somewhere, or in Syria or maybe in Ruritania.  In the end his book will have little impact.  I hope it makes him a few dollars.  He will need them.  In Texas where the easily deceived seem legion, he will find it hard to go home again.

I recommend meditation in the Rothko Chapel in Houston as a kind of way station on his journey to the future.

The administration manipulated the "sources" of public opinion?  Really?  Can that be?  (irony alert)  The administration and its Ziocon allies systematically drove truth speakers out of the public square? Really?  Well, folks, the American people were stupid enough and gullible enough to have allowed that....  Are we to believe that the American people have become smarter and more discerning in the eternity of the last years?

The media?  Has the catastrophe of our foreign policy changed the media?  Let us see how much "play" McClellan's book receives.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/27/AR2008052703679.html?hpid=topnews

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Wolsey

http://www.rothkochapel.org/

"SUNRISE AT OMAHA" Sidney O. Smith III

Like the rest of us, none of these soldiers wanted to die.  None of them wanted to fight a war.  In fact, these men despised war as much as any generation.  In their hearts, they wanted to be back home, in America, with their families and loved ones.  Yet, at sunrise on June 6, 1944, when they crossed the stormy English Channel headed for a French beach code-named Omaha, they certainly knew they were going to their slaughter.  Only God truly knows the anguish of their prayers. But even in this agony, when their landing crafts finally ran ashore and the ramps splashed down into the waves, these Americans did not hesitate.  They all headed straight into a violent death and left us what is now an eternal scene – dead bodies floating in the water, cries of the young dying, and dark red blood soaking the sand.

Yet amazingly, this eternal scene – this passion at Omaha – was just one drop of blood in a generation's sacrifice, for blood was spilled the world over.  The number of casualties staggers the mind.  At Omaha Beach alone, America suffered over 8000 casualties.  By war's end, nearly 300,000 Americans had died – white Americans, black Americans, Americans of all heritages.  France and the British Commonwealth each sustained over 500,000 deaths.  Poland suffered 120,000 battlefield deaths and, incredibly, over 5 million civilian deaths.  And then there was the USSR, where the suffering becomes unimaginable.  20 million killed, 7 million of whom were civilians.  In China, 13 million people died, 10 million of whom were civilians.  And certainly in the heart of this sacrifice was the innocent Jew – 6 million men, women and children gassed.  All told, Allied deaths reached 44 million. 

This kind of suffering is impossible to fully comprehend, but it does establish forever that this generation was one of supreme sacrifice.  Like few others, the WWII generation saw its darkest moment during the prime of youth – a time when other generations enjoy the most life has to offer – weddings, families and careers.  So, some sixty years later, when you step back and see the sacrifice endured, you can't help but wonder if during this most tragic time, when so many good people were dying the most horrible of deaths, their silent cry was, "My God, why have you forsaken me?". 

"Dear Hearts Across the Seas" - Memorial Day

“ For 14 hours yesterday, I was at work—teaching Christ to lift his cross by the numbers, and how to adjust his crown; and not to imagine he thirst until after the last halt. I attended his Supper to see that there were no complaints; and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb, and stands before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha.”

Captain Wilfred Owen, The Manchesters
Killed in Action, Nov. 4, 1918

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=4817

LK on "The Butcher's Cleaver"

"Dear Col. Lang -- I've now read "The Butcher's Cleaver." It's both a remarkable and a very unusual book, with those qualities being inseparable, I believe. In particular, there is its pervasive, perambulating, almost dreamlike air -- both in narration and description. That is, everything that Claude takes note of (but not only Claude, Bill White as well) is presented to us as though it were preserved in amber -- estimates of men and situations but also the then-existing "look" of things, natural and man-made. Of course, to capture or evoke the "then-existing" as it was then felt is the great yet elusive goal of historical fiction, and that you have accomplished. In addition, a feel for, or a need to evoke, the "then-existing" implies a no less powerful sense that much of what existed then is lost. It is here, without ever becoming too explicit, that "The Butcher's Cleaver" is -- sorry for term -- so poetic. Again, this is present I feel in the most seemingly ordinary descriptive passages (as time seems to slow down a bit to allow Claude to notice the look of a street, a piece of architecture, etc.). After a while one begins to feel that that all this noticing -- this verbal and visual "touching" -- amounts to a continuous farewell on Claude's part, and not only because he almost certainly knows that his cause and way of life are doomed but also because we know (as he anticipates) what acts Claude himself will bring to pass after the span of the novel itself is completed (i.e. Lincoln's assassination). Two more things: The perambulating, near dreamlike quality of the book comes to a climax of course in the scene where Claude and Patrick observe Pickett's charge. I can't praise the writing here -- and I assume the decisions that lay behind it -- enough. Again, one would think that in the face of such a famous scene of "action" that the tempo of the writing would have to accelerate, but instead, if anything, it slows down a bit more, to convey what probably does occur in the minds of trained men who are observing combat but also to convey, in this case, their awed, horrified reluctance to take in what they cannot avoid seeing. Further, the death of Patrick in the midst of this is a beautifully handled grace note. One suspects that it is coming; one doesn't expect that it will take place almost offstage, as I think it needs to. (Patrick is a beautifully modeled character; his role in the double game the Devereux brothers are playing is at times almost heartbreaking -- in part icular when we are told that Patrick now understands just how Hooker's intelligence staff has come to form accurate estimates of CSA troop strength and that he hopes to put this knowledge to use upon his hoped-for return to Richmond.) Finally -- and this is a shot in the dark -- much that I've said above about "The Butcher's Cleaver" reminds me of a superb short novel by the Austrian writer Alexander Lernet-Holenia, "Baron Bagge" (1936). In that book, the title figure is a cavalry officer serving on the Eastern Front in World War I (as was the case for the author). Riding eastward on a vague, dubious mission into Hungarian territory, under the command of an especially impetuous officer, the Baron and his men come to an enemy-held bridge and are ordered to charge across, which they do under heavy fire, despite the Baron's belief that the order to charge was unwise and merely a function of the commanding officer's need to precipitate something bold and glorious in what all suspect are probably the final days of the war. The cavalry charge prevails, and the unit then moves on into the Carpathians, where (without going into too much detail) a subtle sense of strangeness begins to prevail when they arrive in a welcoming town and are entertained by th e townspeople, and Baron himself meets a beautiful but elusive woman with whom he falls in love -- all this as though the Baron and his men have wandered into another, ideal world. Finally (and while this gives things away, I'm sure anyone who reads "Baron Bagge" already will know this) it becomes clear that the Baron and all his men were killed in their charge across the bridge, and they have been existing for some nine days hence in a kind of dreamlike purgatory that is reserved for men who have died in battle in the way that they have. With all that in mind, while I'm sure that it would be erroneous to literally think that all that follows from the opening 1853 scene in "The Butcher's Cleaver" is more or less a dream and that Claude did not survive the duel, I am sure that the striking of that initial elegiac note is no accident. Again, my congratulations on a remarkable achievement. Best,"   LK

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The picture is of the head of Michael, archangel and patron saint of the Confederacy.  His face looks down on us from the front of an insignificant Catholic Church, the kind of place in which Devereux and his family might worship.

Larry K has done me the honor of writing this memorable review of TBC.  There have been a number of memorable reviews but this one captures something of the psychology of the composition.

Writer's of fiction should avoid "explaining" their works to death.  I owe LK a debt.

I have never heard of "Baron Bagge" but am sure I would like the book.  pl

"The Major Won the Croix de Guerre" Alan Farrell

In honor of Veteran's Day I have decided to put up Alan Farrell's story as titled above.  It is one of my favorites.  The unit involved was really a "hatchet company"  of MACVSOG.  pl

Download the_major_won_the_croix_de_guerre.doc

Download the_major_won_the_croix_de_guerre.pdf

"Who Loveth Best" Alan Farrell

I put this on once before but there are now so many new Farrell "Groupies" that I thought I should give you another chance to contemplate the deep symbolism of this neo-Kafkaesque gem.  pl

Download who_loveth_best.pdf

"A Purple Heart and A Dime" Alan Farrell

I thought about writing something today about the looming menace of Iranian ICBMs (quoting the commander guy here) or the irony of the thought that we might bomb Kurds because they are an unruly pain in the tail.  Yes I know.  The PKK are really screwing things up, but it would, nevertheless be an irony perceptible for those who are condemned to ironic contemplation.  Then there is the Syrian boondoggle of the Israeli Air Force.  Why has there been secrecy about the strike?  The Israelis wanted it that way.  Simple.  Occam, Sherlock and the duck rule strike again. (Look it up or someone here will explain it to you)  Not today, folks.

A lot of you wanted to read more of Alan Farrell's musings.  This appeared in "Arion." Have at it.  I have mostly quit expressing Alan's level of skepticism of professional "NAMVETS."  I found that such thoughts are not tolerated by many.  In particular I remember a retired diplomat who said that my lack of "compassion" told him that although I had been near combat I had never actually fought.  He told me that although he had never served in the military, his trauma was a burden.  You never know...  pl

Download arion_odysseus.doc

"Cortez in Darien" Alan Farrell

"The Greeks. The Greeks. In our A-Camp stood, among the weapons racks and jungle plane antenna cables and duty rosters, a biiiiiiiiiiiiig white Kelvinator refrigerator, packed with unrationed Cokes kept cold by an eternally-running 10-KW generator whose cycle-setting (the gauge had been shattered by a mortar fragment one night) we adjusted using a tape-recorder and a Frank Sinatra tape. When Frank's "myyyyyyyyyyyyyy-eyyyyyye waaaaaaaaaaaay" sounded about right, we figured we were on 60 cycles and let it go. One day, shuffling in off sandbag detail with my montagnards to snatch a Coke, I took the grease pencil we tied to the fridge with a string and used to keep track of drinks drunk to write across the upper door of the thing: Andra moi ennepe, Mousa . . . First line of Homer's Odyssey : "Sing to me the man, O Muse..." That evening when I got back from LP and went after yet another Coke, I discovered that someone had written with the same grease pencil in bold black characters beneath my inscription this: . . . polutropon hos mala pola plangthe , ". . . full of ruse and who suffered many woes," the last part of the same first verse of the Odyssey. I spent the remaining months of my tour and the intervening years trying to figure out which of my buddies on that 12-man A Detachment knew Homeric Greek and pierced my vanity. Of course no one would own up to it. Yet, there was another schoolboy there with me. And that shared experience is a debt I owe to the dozens of Unrats and Chippings and Gradgrinds who filled my head with the stuff that saw me through.

"Dead Certain" a review by Richard Wolffe

"Draper emerges with a treasure trove of detail and anecdotes, but he often doesn't delve -- or isn't allowed to delve -- into the deeper questions. Early in his book Dead Certain, he tells the story of Bush's failed bid for Congress in 1978. Against all the best advice, Bush decided to run against a conservative West Texas Democrat, Kent Hance. He lost badly, but not embarrassingly. Explaining his decision to Draper, he said, "You can't learn lessons by reading. Or at least I couldn't. I learned by doing. I knew it was an uphill struggle. But see, I've never had a fear of losing. I didn't like to lose. But having parents who give you unconditional love, I think it means I had the peace of mind to know that even with failure, there was love."  Wolffe reviewing "Dead Certain."

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Wolffe is a very clever man.  He and Olberman "play" well together.  Wolffe remains essentially European in his manifested attitudes.  His casual dismissal of the behaviour of Royal Navy and Royal Marine people in Iranian captivity as "meaningless" had much about it that most Americans would not approve.  We would not tolerate that behavior in our forces.

Nevertheless, his review of this book points to a couple of interestin' thangs about Dubya.

Bush's insistence that he reads a lot and his statement that one can not learn from reading are mutually exclusive, I think.  I am reliant on a few things the Army taught me.  One of these was the Myers-Briggs personality indicator classification system.  This system has been useful to me in understanding people I meet and work with.  Dubya hates tests like that and also hates talk about it.  That is a typical reaction of several of the grous classified under the test.

I don't think he is lying in the ridiculous statement about "learning."  I think that he is (in MB terms) A "Sensory-Perceptive" (SP) type.  This groups typically does not learn much by reading and is quite capable of holding two mutually exclusive views at the same time.  About 50% of the American public belong to this broad group.  Look it up.

Then there is the matter of "unconditional love."  There is very little of that in the world.  Rational beings may SAY that they love without condition, but it is not usually true.  I suppose there are parents who will love a child who is a sadistic child molester and murderer, but they must be few.  In fact, only dogs love unconditionally, at least until they meet Michael Vick.

That kind of statement from Bush reveals how much he needs to be loved.  that probably points to something less than "unconditional love" in his past.  Perhaps that is why he needs to surround himself with adoring women.

This "biography" of Bush reinforces my belief that he will never, never, never give up in Iraq.  Never.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090602376.html

There ought to  be a lot of room in this post for enraged comment by loving parents and defenders of Her Majesty' Forces.

Thanksgiving in the Field - 1863

One of my pre-oocupations is a cycle of novels about the American Civil War that I have been writing at for a long time. In one of the books, there is the story of a French professional soldier (John Balthazar), an officer with much service in Africa, who is sent to Ameica to "observe" Lee's army for his government. Once here, he becomes ever more involved until he ends by being to asked to form a provisional battalion of infantry from men nobody else knows what to do with. Line crossers, men from broken units, disciplinary problems, etc. He sets out to do that. In these passages we see his battalion going into Winter Quarters in November, 1863 south of Culpeper. Virginia. They have just just made a long withdrawal to the south, away from the disastrous field of Rapahannock Station. Pat Lang

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"Throughout the army, soldiers started to construct their winter quarters. They had lived so long in the forest that they could build solid little houses of sticks and mud if they had a couple of weeks in which to work.
Small towns rose in the woods, filling up the forests from the foot of Pony Mountain away to the northwest. Soon smoke drifted in the wind, eddying and streaming, bringing an acrid bite of wood taste in the air. Oak and hickory, maple and poplar, the smoke brought the smell of their little communities, so like those their ancestors had made in the beginning of their new life in America.
The men thought of Thanksgiving; some reached out beyond that to remember Christmas.
Balthazar watched his troops build their winter town. He had never seen soldiers do such a thing. In Europe, soldiers on campaign lived under canvas, or in requisitioned houses.
He thought their skill a marvelous thing, and told them so."

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