September 27, 2005
Supporting the President in the time of war
I protest at the United States' using pressure on Democratic Finland on behalf of Communist Russia. The independence of Finland from Russia twenty years ago was largely an American creation. The name of Woodrow Wilson stands on a score of Finnish landmarks. We set Finland on her feet. The Finns were the only people in Europe who repaid the money we loaned them. Only two years ago this peaceful little nation was outrageously attacked by Communist Russia. Our whole country heralded it as the most heroic stand of democracy since Thermopylae. The Finns, to save something, surrendered a third of their country to Russia. The the Communists drove six hundred thousand Finnish men, women and children from the homes they had held for 500 years without even bedclothes to protect them from the winter. True their armies have gone into Karelia, but that was formerly also mostly Finnish. Can America reproach them for taking the first chance to recover these homes and their former countrymen?--Herbert Hoover, Nov. 4, 1941
(From Addresses Upon the American Road: World War II, 1941-1945.)
One of the first of many, many attacks on President Roosevelt by Republicans in the years 1941-45. Search around, you'll find lots. Note the three uses of "Communist".
Of course, morally speaking Hoover was certainly right. From a realpolitik perspective, he was totally wrong.
Posted by Mac Thomason at 09:55 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 27, 2004
That's so pre-9/11
The Poor Man: Face The Nation 3/5/2000
Gov. Bush: "You know, let me--let me say something to you. People have the right to run ads. They have the right to do what they want to do, under the--under the First Amendment in America."
I'll probably get slammed for hypocrisy, but I agree with Governor George Bush, and strongly disagree with President Bush, who seems to think that political speech by third parties should be outlawed. As for the Swift Boat Liars, they too have the right to run ads. (They don't have the right to slander with claims they know are false, though.) That doesn't mean that they shouldn't be condemned, and that Bush shouldn't stop hiding behind them while claiming to admire Kerry's Vietnam service.
Posted by Mac Thomason at 09:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 23, 2004
Another Tolkien quote
This one's from "On Fairy Stories", and goes out to the guys and gals at PETA:
The natural love of men not wholly corrupt for beasts, and the human desire to "get inside the skin" of living things, has run riot. We now get men who love animals more than men; who pity sheep so much that they curse shepherds as wolves; who weep over a slain war-horse and vilify dead soldiers.
Kind of patriarchal, I know. But fitting.
Posted by Mac Thomason at 12:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 07, 2004
That Clausewitz guy
Clausewitz, ON WAR - Book I-Chapter 1
As I said in the comments to a post yesterday, certainly we can "win" the purely military conflict in Iraq. Certainly we will, in the sense that we are unlikely to actually lose any battles. But if the only result of American military victories is to drive more and more Iraqis into the arms of the extremists and weaken the American military and the nation's international standing, it won't matter that we weren't defeated on the battlefield, because we will have lost.
Anyway, a pretty familiar quote:
24.—War is a mere continuation of policy by other means.We see, therefore, that war is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means. All beyond this which is strictly peculiar to war relates merely to the peculiar nature of the means which it uses. That the tendencies and views of policy shall not be incompatible with these means, the art of war in general and the commander in each particular case may demand, and this claim is truly not a trifling one. But however powerfully this may react on political views in particular cases, still it must always be regarded as only a modification of them; for the political view is the object, war is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception.
Posted by Mac Thomason at 12:04 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 29, 2002
Yet another Tolkien quote
Not from The Lord of the Rings or even The Silmarillion, but from "Aldarion and Erendis" in Unfinished Tales:
"I am in too great doubt to rule. To prepare or to let be? To prepare for war, which is yet only guessed: train craftsmen and tillers in the midst of peace for bloodspilling and battle: put iron in the hands of greedy captains who will love only conquest, and count the slain as their glory? Will they say to Eru: [God - MT] At least your enemies were amongst them? Or to fold hands, while friends die unjustly: let men live in blind peace, until the ravisher is at the gate? What then will they do: match naked hands against iron and die in vain, or flee leaving the cries of women behind them? Will they say to Eru: At least I spilled no blood?
Yeah, Tolkien was simplistic about war.
Posted by Mac Thomason at 05:01 AM | Comments (5)
October 18, 2002
Folkways
"Vimes stopped himself. He was aware that a wise man should always respect the folkways of others, to use Carrot's happy phrase, but Vimes often had difficulty with this idea. For one thing, there were people in the world whose folkways consisted of gutting other people like clams and this was not a procedure that commanded, in Vimes, any kind of respect at all."
Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
Posted by Mac Thomason at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)