In all actual U.S. wars, the people have been net losers; in each instance, they would have been better off if the war had not been fought.
Ten years ago, in a brief commentary, I called attention to the close association between war and the U.S. presidents ranked as “great” or “near great” in polls of historians. My essay has gained a fair amount of attention over the years. Even the quintessential court historian, the late Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., saw fit to cite it with apparent agreement in a 1997 article in the Political Science Quarterly. After the Mises Institute distributed my essay again on Presidents’ Day this year, it was linked and reposted widely and provoked a considerable amount of comment on the Web.
Although one can hardly quarrel with the close association between the presidents’ intimate involvement in war and their presidential-greatness ranking, one can take issue — and over the years a number of writers have taken issue — with my conclusion that “[t]he lesson seems obvious. Any president who craves a high place in the annals of history should hasten to thrust the American people into an orgy of death and destruction. It does not matter how ill-conceived the war may be.” For the most part, the disagreement pertains, first, to my general argument that many, if not all, of the wars from which the most highly ranked presidents gained their reputed greatness were clearly unnecessary and, second, to my specific indictment of Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Lyndon B. Johnson for “their supremely catastrophic war policies.”
Although we cannot expect to resolve a Great Historical Debate by means of a simple, cut-and-dried approach, we can perhaps clarify our thinking about this particular matter with the aid of a more systematic representation of the relevant issues. I suggest then that we organize our thoughts along the lines laid out in the accompanying analytical array, whose content I will explain. The array displays a slightly complicated, two-by-two cross-classification.
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U.S. Leaders Choose
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Threat to the American People
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At the top, the array shows whether the threat to the American people at large (as distinct from, say, the threat to the government itself or the threat to certain domestic or foreign special-interest groups) is “existential” or “lesser or spurious.” Of course, dividing all perceived threats into only these two discrete classes is a crude way to differentiate them, and dividing them into more than two classes or ordering them along a continuum is conceivable, but for my present purposes, such additional complications are unnecessary.
By an existential threat, I mean one that threatens national survival. During World War II, Americans often described the conflict as a “life and death struggle” or a “war for national survival,” but I do not believe that it actually was such. None of the enemies in that war, whether acting singly or in concert with all of the others, had the capacity to destroy the American nation, “take over the country,” “destroy our way of life,” or inflict a comparable degree of harm. An existential threat can arise, however, and indeed one prevailed for decades during the Cold War, because an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and the USSR would have wreaked such horrifying devastation that the survivors probably would have envied the dead, and economic life would have become, at best, extremely primitive and incapable of sustaining a large population.
In contrast, a threat to the American people may be lesser or spurious — not a risk to national survival or even to national flourishing and perhaps not a real threat at all. Most wars in U.S. history clearly belong in this category: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, World War I, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and both wars against Iraq, for example, not to mention the many minor U.S. military actions throughout the world, from the attacks on the Barbary Coast two centuries ago to the attacks on Serbia eight years ago.
Although the secession of the southern states in 1861 threatened the continuation of the existing political union, it need not have caused anyone’s death, and the War Between the States became the terribly devastating affair that it was only because Lincoln and those who rallied to his leadership refused to accept the secession peacefully.
Like Bruce Russett, I believe that the Germans and their allies did not constitute a “clear and present danger” to the American people at large prior to U.S. entry into World War II, and hence the Roosevelt administration had no compelling reason to provoke the Japanese Empire with a protracted series of economic sanctions, threats, and demands in order to open a “back door” for entry into the war in Europe. I need hardly add that very few Americans, either scholars or lay people, agree with me in regard to World War II, but this question of historical evidence and judgment is not one properly to be decided by majority vote.
Along the left side of the array, the distinction is between whether U.S. leaders do or do not choose to initiate a war. This variable reminds us that “the people” do not make such decisions; only the president and his coterie do so. In earlier times, Congress was deeply involved as well, but even then, issues of war and peace usually could be effectively decided prior to any formal congressional involvement, by means of presidential allegations and by the creation of certain faits accomplis or incidents — alleged Mexican incursions into U.S.-claimed territory (1846), alleged Spanish sinking of the battleship U.S.S. Maine (1898), alleged German plots to aid Mexican recovery of territory lost in the Mexican-American War (1917), alleged unprovoked German attacks on U.S. warships in the North Atlantic (1941), alleged unprovoked North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin (1964), alleged Iranian provision of munitions used to kill U.S. soldiers in Iraq (2007), and so forth. Only an extraordinarily dull presidential clique lacks the imagination to come up with an appealing casus belli.
The focus in the analytical array on the leaders’ decision may also suggest (correctly) that they make their decision in the service of their own interests — and, of course, those of their crucial supporting coalition of special-interest groups — not in pursuit of the people’s interest. Naturally, they invariably declare that all their actions reflect nothing but their unsullied attempt to serve the general public interest. Anyone who believes this sort of nursery tale is sorely in need of deeper immersion in the facts of history, not to mention the discipline of public choice.
Among the many history books one might recommend to those suffering from naïveté about how our glorious leaders make foreign-policy decisions, some of my favorites are Walter Karp’s The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic (1890–1920), Harry Elmer Barnes’s classic edited volume Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Thomas Fleming’s The Illusion of Victory: America in World War I, Fleming’s The New Dealers’ War: F.D.R. and the War within World War II, and James Bamford’s A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies. I also heartily recommend that transcripts of the Nixon Whitehouse tapes be read early and often.
It is unsettling to find oneself in complete agreement with Hermann Göring, but the Nazi bigwig was certainly correct when, during an evening conversation in his cell at Nuremberg, he told Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychiatrist:
[O]f course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. . . . [V]oice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
So, given that the people at large and their interests are essentially irrelevant to the decisions the national leaders reach, we are well advised to focus on how those leaders believe war or avoidance of war will serve their own interests.
Accordingly, in the interior of my analytical array, I indicate roughly the expected outcome of the choice in each of the four cells. In each one, the entry in the northern section indicates the outcome for the American people in general, and the entry in the southern section indicates the outcome for U.S. government leaders.
Consider the first cell in the first row — the situation when an existential threat has arisen and the leaders choose to initiate war. I conjecture that the expected outcome is uninviting for both parties because in a war against such a truly grave threat, the likely outcome will be horrible for everybody, notwithstanding that the danger the government is attempting to preempt is a great and genuine one. The only existential threat the American people ever faced was from Soviet nuclear weapons, and fortunately for everyone, those weapons were never used against us, as they would have been, in retaliation, had U.S. leaders chosen to initiate war against the USSR, as General Curtis LeMay and General Thomas Power, among others in the power elite, wished.
The beauty of the Cold War, if one may speak of such a thing, is that the threat of Soviet retaliation served to discipline U.S. leaders, who understood that they might be killed in a nuclear war, and even if they survived, they would no longer preside over a pleasant, prosperous country, but over a radiation-poisoned wasteland populated by desperate, sick, and starving survivors — a situation apt to take all the fun out of preeminence in the ruling class. Thus, the northwest cell in the array testifies to the incentives that made mutually assured destruction (MAD) work. Unfortunately, because of the substantial potential for accidental missile launches, warning-signal malfunctions, and command-and-control failures, MAD itself was fraught with terrifying risks, as any system based on launch-ready, nuclear-armed missiles must be.
Dropping down to the southwest cell of the array, we see the likely outcome if an existential threat exists and the leaders avoid war. Clearly the people at large benefit greatly; they are able to continue their normal lives and do not have to endure the mass deaths and other grave harms that war against an existential threat would probably bring them. The leaders’ outcome, however, is somewhat less obvious. Although they benefit from continued normal life, as the people do, they gain none of the special acclaim and greatly enhanced power that might attend their “winning” a war against an existential threat, assuming that such winning is conceivable.
It was conceivable to General “Buck” Turgidson in the classic Cold War film Dr. Strangelove and to several generations of the U.S. government’s actual nuclear strategists after whom Turgidson and Strangelove’s General Jack D. Ripper were modeled. As John Newhouse writes in War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: “Over the years, the brotherhood of specialists, mostly civilians, who have made a calling of nuclear strategy has grown. They review all of the unknowns — unknowables really — that underlie the deployment of nuclear weapons and any conceivable use of them. They devise scenarios for protracted nuclear war and for limited nuclear war.” Newhouse refers to “the glib manner in which the civilian priesthood discussed plans for using nuclear weapons in combat situations.”
I suppose that relatively few top U.S. leaders have thought they would personally come out ahead by initiating a nuclear war, but leaders undoubtedly have enjoyed initiating wars against threats they falsely claimed might be existential ones, as Bush administration officials insinuated by their “mushroom cloud” allusions to Saddam Hussein’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction.” This fraudulent pretext for unprovoked aggression fooled the bulk of the electorate, made Bush and company heroes for a season (till the chickens undeniably came home to roost during the protracted U.S. occupation of Iraq), and pushed Bush and Cheney to reelection in 2004. Note in contrast, however, the Bush administration’s patient resort to diplomacy in dealing with North Korea, a country whose regime may actually possess a few weapons of mass destruction. Lately, U.S. leaders, knowing that the Iranian regime cannot effectively retaliate directly against them, have been seriously contemplating the use of nuclear weapons against targets in Iran — a scheme that appears to reflect political or personal desperation and complete detachment from reality and human decency.
Moving to the southeast cell of the array, we see again that the people win if their leaders refrain from launching a war even against a lesser or spurious threat. Such wars may still cost a great deal of money, devour many thousands of lives, and entail repression of civil and economic liberties. Moreover, because they allay little or no actual threat to the people, they have no genuine value except to the extent that the leadership’s propaganda can bamboozle the people into imagining a benefit — the war in Vietnam kept the communist dominoes from falling across all of Southeast Asia; the war in Iraq kept Saddam Hussein from “destabilizing” the entire Middle East; blah, blah, blah.
Again, however, the outcome for the leaders is not clear. If they avoid wars against less-than-existential threats, they get little or no credit for doing so, and they sacrifice the enhanced powers, public acclaim, and historians’ credit for greatness that victory in such a war may bring. Worse, their political opponents may blame them for not going to war. Lyndon Johnson, for example, worried that the conservatives would accuse him of being “soft on communism” unless he escalated the U.S. military engagement in Vietnam in a visible attempt to “win the war.”
Presidents may profit greatly by initiating war against less-than-existential or completely spurious threats. Knocking down a third-rate power and stealing a big chunk of its land, as James K. Polk did in the Mexican-American War, left him ensconced among the historians’ “near greats.” After helping to instigate the war with Spain, Theodore Roosevelt rode to the vice-presidency and thence, after William McKinley’s assassination, to the presidency itself on the strength of his harebrained romp among the corpses strewn across the Cuban hills. Many Americans love him to this day, undisturbed that he was an ambition-addled proto-fascist whose insatiable craving for power over his fellow men expired only when he had taken his last breath. Thus, any threat less than a manifestly existential and personally dangerous one may prove to be an irresistible temptation to U.S. leaders itching for “greatness.”
Surrender to this temptation finds its place in the northeast cell of my array, where the indication is that the leaders win by initiating war, although, again, the people at large lose. In all actual U.S. wars, the people have been net losers; in each instance, they would have been better off if the war had not been fought. Most Americans will dispute this conclusion vigorously, of course, proclaiming above all that World War II was not only just but necessary, nay, unavoidable. As I’ve already observed, I think they are wrong, but I cannot make a compelling case for my conclusion here, and in any event, others, including Russett and several of the contributors to Barnes’s Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, have already done so better than I can. Even if one were to concede the orthodox opinion of World War II, however, the rest of the U.S. wars would remain strong evidence in support of my claim.
In no event will I concede the necessity or desirability of the U.S. government’s going to war against the Confederate States of America in 1861. The usual argument that it did so to destroy slavery does not hold water: Lincoln himself made it crystal clear that his only reason for fighting was to preserve the union, with or without slavery. Although the war did result in slavery’s destruction — the only good to come out of it — it was not initiated for that purpose. Moreover, even that splendid result might not have been worth its cost if, as some serious scholars have argued, slavery in North America would soon have ended anyhow, without violence, as it did in all of the other countries of the New World (except Haiti), where it had been institutionalized for centuries.
Except during the Cold War, when, although top U.S. leaders exposed the country to grave risks, they strove to avoid direct, open warfare with the Soviet Union, the American people have lived for two-hundred years in the southeast and, all too often, the northeast cells of my analytical array. Because of the country’s fortunate location, protected on the east and the west by two broad oceans and bordered on the north and the south by two militarily weak neighbors, the American people did not have to face existential threats prior to the nuclear age. Nonetheless, again and again, their leaders have given in to their personal ambitions for fame and power and initiated wars in which the people at large suffered great losses of economic resources, lives, and liberties — all for benefits that, for the masses, fell grossly short of the sacrifices borne.
Perhaps we ought to admit that many Americans have gained, and continue to gain, great psychic benefit from the U.S. government’s dishing out death and destruction to the foreign devils du jour. Adding that benefit to the calculus, we might have to alter our analysis accordingly, in recognition of the red-white-and-blue savagery. Alternatively, we may insist that despite certain vicious strains in the national character and despite the undeniable presence of a bloodthirsty element in the population, most Americans have simply been misled by their leaders, who sought not the people’s benefit, but gains for themselves and their supporting coalition of special-interest groups. Although the national character may be a topic for endless debate, relatively little doubt attaches to the claim that the leaders, time and again, have sought to attain their own goals by taking the nation to war, however much their doing so might require sacrifices of the people’s lives, liberties, and property.
rhiggs@independent.org
http://www.independent.org/review.html
Read more articles by Robert Higgs
This article seems to be an amazing misinterpretation of history. However, there do appear to be some good conclusions e.g. allow any entity to secede from the union because fighting about it is bad. Allow anyone to enter the country because defending a border is bad. Do not defend against off shore attacks on US interests because it really doesn't affect daily life.
Neville Chamberlain could never have said it better! Guess you don't like that old war dog Churchill either.
Comment by Mickey G | April 25, 2007
A matrix of a different sort:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.TAB1.1.GIF
Comment by sedonaman | April 25, 2007
So, basically, no threat, even an "existential" threat, can possibly justify going to war with another nation, and America has never faced an existential threat anyway, so it makes no difference? Well crafted. Unfortunately, your entire premise is based upon your own highly subjective reasoning, completely divorced from actual history or reality. To dignify it with any further response would be a waste of time. The necessity of the American Civil War and the national benefit of certain lesser engagements could be debated, but your premise is nothing more than typical, hum drum, long-exhausted anti-war rhetoric. Take a left at the Huffington Post and you'll probably find a more receptive audience.
P.S.
Since you really seem to be in desperate need of ego affirmations: Congratulations on having your 10 year old piece quoted in Political Science Quarterly! There. It must be great to finally hear that from someone other than the mirror, huh?
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | April 25, 2007
I am a patriotic, conservative Republican. I also served many years in the military. I know that we Americans are a moral people who strive to promote international justice. But it must be said that this article is basically correct, with a couple of exceptions like the war against the Barbary Pirates and the war in Afghanistan. There are two issues to consider in regard to the propriety of war: 1) was there a legitimate reason to begin it? and 2) considering all things, was it really worth it in the end?
Almost every war America has fought in was based in legitimacy. But the second question is far more broad and, ultimately, is far more important. Since Britain impressed about 10,000 American sailors there was justification to go to war. But in retrospect, it seems that Britain was about to change its policies anyway. At the end of the war our entire capital burned to the ground, we ended up with no gains except some pride in having stood up to Britain. We “won” World War I but what really did we get? We just got a lot of dead people and, as Winston Churchill was quoted as saying in 1936, our entry into the war only really led to bigger problems. Britain and all of Europe would have been better off if we just “minded our own business”. What did we really get out of WWII? More immediate dead, more immediate debt, and a burden to financially, militarily, and politically be rapped up forever in all the world’s problems which guaranteed more dead and more debt in the future as well. We keep saying that we shouldn’t be the world’s police but we keep making the same mistakes again and again.
We erred very badly when we abandoned the foreign policy established by George Washington. There were other wise Founding Fathers who said we had no business looking for monsters to destroy around the world. Unfortunately, there will always be foreign leaders like Hitler and Saddam but that doesn’t mean we should stick our head in every international tar baby that comes along. We only had to go to Afghanistan because of 9/11 but those terrorist attacks would have never occurred in the first place if our troops had not been stationed in Saudi Arabia in an effort to control Iraq from 1991.
If you think about it honestly, even the American Revolution was probably unnecessary. Every other British colony eventually acquired its independence without war. The course of nature would have led us to independence. We should have been more patient. We tax ourselves far more today than the British Parliament ever did. King George III had more respect for democracy in 1776 than the U.S. Supreme Court does today.
We are being invaded every day by illegal aliens and narcotics. Terrorists can easily penetrate our borders. We are a great nation but we need to bring our troops home and take care of our own business.
Comment by Liberius | April 27, 2007
Liberius:
I think you are being too selective in the outcome factors of the wars to justify your position. For example, you said, “We ‘won’ World War I but what really did we get? We just got a lot of dead people and, as Winston Churchill was quoted as saying in 1936, our entry into the war only really led to bigger problems. Britain and all of Europe would have been better off if we just ‘minded our own business’.”
But all wars produce “a lot of dead people.” How many more would have been killed had America’s entry not put an end to four years of unstoppable war. The people who cause the real international problems are those with an “historical perspective” (see below).
If Churchill really told the US to “mind its own business,” why did he want us NOT to mind our own business and get involved with WW-II when he asked Roosevelt for some American destroyers and the rest of the Lend-Lease help? So, I challenge that statement.
You then ask, “What did we really get out of WWII? More immediate dead, more immediate debt, and a burden to financially, militarily, and politically be rapped up forever in all the world’s problems which guaranteed more dead and more debt in the future as well.”
You always have to compare something with something else. You are comparing what was with what you would like it to have been, not with what would have been likely had we “minded our own business.” In between the two World Wars, the US had nothing to say about European affairs, and within twenty years, Europeans started an even bigger war. Since WW-II, the US has had a lot to say about European affairs, and there hasn’t been another war in Europe in over 60 years. I’d say that’s fairly good results. Europeans like to say that Americans lack an “historical perspective.” “Historical perspective” is code for keeping old animosities alive.
Did you consider that the business of America is business, and when we got involved, we WERE minding our business? Your position, and that of the author, is the quintessential isolationist, which unfortunately is a luxury we can no longer afford, unless you are willing to live in a world in which aggression is rewarded.
Comment by sedonaman | April 29, 2007
sedonaman:
I admit that the Churchill quote is disputed but I believe it was said and, regardless, I believe the substance of it to be largely true. This quote was testified to before U.S. Congress as being said by Churchill during an interview in 1936.
“America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany. If America had stayed out of the war, all these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government — and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives.” Congressional Record (1939-10-21) vol. 84. 686 also found: http://www.forbade.net/Winston_Churchill/quotes.htm
There is no question that Churchill did want us involved in WWII. He may have actually wanted us involved in WWI in the beginning but only realized after the fact that it was a mistake. I’m convinced that our entry into both wars only ended up costing more lives in the end. While I wish peace for all people, I admit that I am far more concerned about American lives. I suspect the world would have been better off allowing the two devils, Hitler and Stalin to knock each other out. The war in Europe began over Poland but was Poland liberated after all the bloodshed? No. Who’s to say they were better being a slave state to Stalin instead of Hitler? Stalin is actually responsible for more slaughter of innocent people than Hitler. I recommend all people read Buchanan’s book, “A Republic, Not an Empire”.
We should drop use of the term “isolationist” is this discussion. It is disingenuous because no one has ever advocated that we be isolated from the world. We all believe in trade, diplomacy, tourism, exchange programs, working together to stop nuclear proliferation, etc. But there is a difference between those things and getting ourselves unnecessarily rapped up in foreign wars. For the majority of our history we knew that. We got lost somewhere along the way. We should return to our roots and to wisdom.
No, I do not want a world where aggression is rewarded. It seems to me that invasion of a foreign country almost always turns out to be a curse in the long run for every country, including ours. But has our interloping really produced good fruits? We sacrificed tens of thousands to liberate France…they hate us. The Koreans burn American flags outside our bases there. I was shocked at the number of Brits who actually resented us as we were their saving them in WWII. Remember their famous complaint about American soldiers? “Americans are over-sexed, over-paid, and over here”.
No one has fought harder than we Americans to promote justice, freedom, peace, and prosperity in the world but we are vilified and mocked in the UN. War only guarantees that many people will die, many things will be destroyed, and much money will be spent. There is no guarantee that any good will comes from it over the long haul.
Comment by Liberius | April 30, 2007
The term 'isolationist" is a pejorative term which has often been used in an attempt to silence those who are opposed to the imperialistic ambitions of the plutocrats in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere , in particular, those who have only dollar signs for dreams and whose morality might very well have come from a dying automobile company's ad campaign of "no rules, no boundaries."
For better than fifty years, this country has participated in various wars and conflicts without the benefit of a proper constitutional mandate, but "what's the Constitution among friends"? We have gotten used to committing troops under the imprimatur of Universalist Containment, or whatever the applicable term for the use of force has come to be, that we have conveniently forgotten the wisdom of the founders: that there is a distinct difference between trading and commerce and becoming involved in the blood-thirsty rivalries of the Old World. We need to review the important principle of Foreign Policy 101: " that nations act in their own self interests", or, as the Bible says, "count the cost" PRIOR to an action, not as we have so often done after the fact.
I tend to agree with the author particularly because the self interest which is offered for justification tends to be for the benefit of the pecuniary interests rather than the country as a whole. There is only one true national interest which would require the use of force and that is if our country were particularly threatened by a hostile and aggressive foreign power bent on our destruction. Some may say that the war on terror is just such a conflict. Fine. Then justify your argument and do it constitutionally. A healthy debate in the Congress followed by a majority vote to go to war is the proper way. Sending our military into harm's way should not be treated in such a flippant manner as that of a continuing resolution as there is no real understanding of the whys and wherefores regarding the reasons for war. And these become muddled over time until no one knows why we are fighting or what the original purpose of the conflict was at the time of our committment. I am not opposed to a just war. I am only opposed to such for the wrong reasons and without a proper constitutional mandate.
Comment by Bryan | April 30, 2007
Bryan:
I take it your post is a response to my post to Liberius.
You say, “The term ‘isolationist’ is a pejorative term which has often been used in an attempt to silence those who are opposed to the imperialistic ambitions of the plutocrats in Washington, D.C. …” which I find interesting because it contains TWO pejoratives itself: “imperialistic” and “plutocrat” which are terms often used by Leftists/Marxists/Leninists/communists to put conservatives on the defensive.
Be that as it may, apparently using the term “isolationist” to silence Leftists, etc., is not working since the LSM is just that, a Leftstream Media. My observation is merely a recognition of the historical fact that an aggressor refuses to be ignored, which is what an isolationist does, hoping the aggressor will go away.
You also state, “There is only one true national interest which would require the use of force and that is if our country were particularly threatened by a hostile and aggressive foreign power bent on our destruction.” But that is only your personal preference. Others go further and use the, “They aren’t invading us” criterion. Most argue the Christian Just War Theory, which lists more than your personal preference as a justification for going to war. Others, like yourself, might quibble that the war was not officially “declared” by Congress, but it is hard to see how this could be a serious ground for objecting to the war from the point of view of the Just War Theory since it was envisioned to encompass all sorts of governments.
“Some may say that the war on terror is just such a conflict. Fine. Then justify your argument and do it constitutionally.”
Did the congress declare war against the Barbary pirates? If we define “the war on terror” as not including Iraq, and having established that and aggressor, in this case al Qaeda, refuses to be ignored (as it was in the 1990s), just exactly what country would you have had the congress declare war against? I agree there might be some measure of constitutionality here, but it seems that the congress has been satisfied with leaving the decisions all up to Presidents Truman, Johnson, Nixon, and now Bush. (This works out just dandy for them because they don’t have to make the tough decisions and can lay the blame elsewhere when things aren’t going so well.) If what each one of these presidents did was so illegal and or so unconstitutional, why didn’t the congress impeach even one?
“A healthy debate in the Congress followed by a majority vote to go to war is the proper way.”
I recall just such a debate late in 2002, and the vote was roughly 3/4 of the Senate and 2/3 of the House. Perhaps you don’t prefer the “Universalist Containment” method, but that’s , but that’s what congress has decided to use.
Comment by sedonaman | April 30, 2007
Sedonaman,
I appreciate your point of view nevertheless, we live in a constitutional republic which contains a specified framework for declaring war. What presidents did or did not do in the past does not change the nature of the Constitution. It is not simply a matter of "quibbling" its either done constitutionally or it isn't. If we want the American people behind the war effort, it would be best to follow this prescription.
As I said, I am not against war per se. I am only in favor of it if it is justified via the methodology which I set forth and which I will fully admit is my own, though I am sure it is one which is shared by others in some form more or less.
Regarding my use of "plutocrat" and "imperialistic" as LSM terms, as a Conservative before I am anythingelse, I grew up in a household where I heard such terms used by my grandparents who were hardly LSM's. They just did not endorse the extension of federal government power beyond what was given it by the founders. Forgive me for putting a point on the matter but unfortunately, our government is dominated by the well-to-do and that might be accurately described as either an oligarachy or a plutocracy. When I vote, I am often faced with either "Thing One" or "Thing Two" when it comes to selecting a president, a senator, or a representative. I truly wish it were different but it is not. Neither of the two major parties, in my humble opinion, are interested in the general well being of the country, just in getting re-elected.
The old containment arguments have their merits and strategies should be adjusted as enemies change. But we should be very careful about how those strategies change us.
Comment by Bryan | April 30, 2007
Bryan:
In your previous post you said, “We should drop use of the term ‘isolationist’ is this discussion. It is disingenuous because no one has ever advocated that we be isolated from the world. We all believe in trade, diplomacy, tourism, exchange programs, working together to stop nuclear proliferation, etc. But there is a difference between those things and getting ourselves unnecessarily rapped up in foreign wars.”
If any administration (and I include the congress) would follow George Washington’s advice to “avoid foreign entanglements,” it would have been the ones immediately after his. And the young country was doing just what you suggested: engaging in trade, diplomacy, tourism, etc., when it was faced with the Barbary pirates who preyed upon American shipping, enslaving both crews and passengers; and Jefferson and Adams inquired of Tripoli’s ambassador to London what the US had done to justify their hostilities, they were informed that “it was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their (Moslems’) authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Moslem should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” Of course, there was a way out: paying protection money, which Adams favored and the US did for some years. But like all extortionists, the pirates upped their price for peace. Now, suppose you were President Jefferson in 1801; what would you do? It seems to me that what you and the author of this article advocate would be for the US to withdraw from the Mediterranean. In other words, isolate itself.
“…our government is dominated by the well-to-do and that might be accurately described as either an oligarchy or a plutocracy. When I vote, I am often faced with either ‘Thing One’ or ‘Thing Two’ when it comes to selecting a president, a senator, or a representative. I truly wish it were different but it is not. Neither of the two major parties, in my humble opinion, are interested in the general well being of the country, just in getting re-elected.”
Wishing a rich person not to be powerful is wishing for the impossible; they are powerful simply because they are rich. Everybody votes his pocketbook. People on welfare vote Democratic because they think they can get more benefits out of Democrats than Republicans. The only difference between the rich and poor, as far as voting, is the amount of money involved. I heard a businessman once posed the question, “How do you, as a businessman, justify being involved in politics?” He replied with, “I either get involved in politics or get out of business.”
So whose fault is this? For a possible answer, I turn to Beyond Politics by Mitchell & Simmons in the chapter called “Pathological Politics”:
“…Because voters are rationally ignorant (the costs of gaining particular kinds of information are greater than the benefits since one vote is essentially meaningless), politicians must employ a language designed to evoke emotion – enough emotion to motivate the right people to turn out and vote. Thus, politicians rarely speak with precise meanings, marginal calculations, or logical reasoning; instead they manipulate affect, raw emotions, group identifications, and even hatred, envy, and threats. Because premature commitment to an issue can cause one to end up in a minority position, successful politicians equivocate, hint, exaggerate, procrastinate, ‘straddle fences,’ adopt code words, and speak in non-sequiturs. Understanding the politician is therefore extremely frustrating for those who value precise statements. But note that this problem is not the fault of the politician; it is rooted in the rational ignorance of voters, the distribution of conflicting sentiments among voters, and the nature of collective endeavor. What all this means is clear: Political communication is rarely conducive to rational or efficient allocation of scarce resources. This does not mean that the individual politicians are irrational in their choice of language and symbolic activities. Waving the flag and kissing babies are practiced because of their tactical value in an activity that is at once a rational game and a morality play; in that conjunction lies the endless fascination and frustration of politics.” (Emphasis added)
To get elected, a politician must get his message out because voters, being "rationally ignorant", aren’t going to vote for someone they never heard of; and getting a message out takes money. Where is the potential candidate going to get the millions to buy media time/space to get his message out to a voter who knows his one vote is "essentially meaningless"?
Another place we could turn to for an answer to who is to blame for the ‘Thing One’ or ‘Thing Two’ is de Toqueville’s Democracy in America. In his tour of the US in 1830, he observed that the House of Representatives consisted of the most devious scalawags imaginable, whereas the Senate consisted of the best statesmen. He attributed this to the fact that the Senators were indirectly elected, and predicted that the country would move more toward indirect elections. He was incorrect in his prediction, of course; the senators are now popularly elected.
Comment by sedonaman | May 1, 2007
Sedonaman,
Presidents are after all human beings and human beings can and do err. A declaration of war on the Barbary States would have been the proper way to go. If my memory serves me right, we ended up paying more tribute to the Arabs after our excursion there than before.
The point is military action should not "be entered into unadvisedly or lightly" (with apologies to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer) and we are obliged to follow the constitutional mandate for such, otherwise we will fall into the pit of a quasi-dictatorship which E. L. Masters so chronicled in his book on Abraham Lincoln. Here are Lincoln’s own words in a letter to his old law partner, Herndon, concerning a speech he made in Congress in 1848 dealing with President Polk’s usurpation of war powers:
“Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can any limit to his power in this respect…If today he should choose to…invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You might say…’I see no probability of the British invading us’, but he will say to you, ‘Be silent, I see it, if you don’t…’ The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress was dictated [because] kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars. [The Founders] so frame[d] the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”
While I am personally no fan of President Lincoln, in 1848, he was at least correct on that point.
As to your citation regarding the antics of politicians in hoodwinking the public, that was an interesting read. Still, they know that they are deceiving the public and they take full advantage of John Q.'s lack of knowledge (which you are right, people do not often take the time to become informed) but that is only part of the equation. The willingness to deceive coupled with clandestine receipts of money from those who possess such (Plutocrats) was and is scandalous (witness the Abramoff Trial and further back Abscam) and should not be tolerated and largely because "money talks". So I would not give the politicians a pass simply due to the ignorance of the electorate. I guess the old "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" remains in vogue.
Oh, and yes, De Toqueville did get it wrong, but he made many interesting observations of American life which were on the mark.
Comment by Bryan | May 1, 2007
sedonman:
You are a bit mixed up. I was the one wrote that isolationist was a “disingenuous” term (although Bryan said something similar). Also, I specifically gave the Barbary Wars as an example where war was entirely appropriate and I doubt that Bryan disagrees.
I wish someone would tell me how it was to our advantage to sacrifice our blood and treasure in the Spanish American War, the Philippines insurrection (involving more dead than Iraq), WWI, WWII (in Europe), Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Panama, Haiti, the Balkans, Somalia, and Iraq. I know the standard lines they teach in elementary school but none of it really stands up to scrutiny. Europe had 60 years of peace because WWII finally caused them to grow up and realize how disastrous war was. You cannot assume that they would have gone back to war had we not put our noses in everything. And even if they did resume war, it need not (and should not) have involved us.
“Business” you say? It is better business to avoid war whenever possible. Our investments in war have been disastrous. We only planted seeds for more catastrophes in the future. We have gone out of our way to get involved in military and political quagmires and by doing so we only made other people’s problems our own. As a result, we are trillions of dollars in debt, we live in daily fear of Muslim terrorism, and most importantly are the priceless American lives that were lost and will be lost by these interventionist policies.
I bet one very significant reason we got involved in the Balkans was so we could score points with the Muslim world by siding with them against the Christians of Serbia. [The long-time instability of that region is mostly the fault of historic Muslim invasions of that area]. And now there is serious evidence that the so-called “Srebrenica genocide”, which was used as justification for our involvement in the Balkans, was a just a hoax. See http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55467.
I bet helping the Muslims in Somalia was also designed to score points with the Islamic world (perhaps to off-set all the hatred from our staunch support of Israel). Anyway, 9-11 was the thanks we got for assisting all those Muslims.
We can’t seem to break away from this line of thinking that the U.S. must always take sides in every dispute on the planet. We really squandered a golden opportunity to withdraw from the madness when the Soviet Union disestablished in 1991. We should have let Arabia deal with the problems of Arabia. Saddam would have sold us the oil even more assuredly than those other anti-democratic, Middle Eastern tyrants that we deal with now and with whom we have always done business.
In part we are lead astray by leaders who cannot resist the temptation of trying to control world affairs through our military power. Maintaining our huge military is not only expensive but it also creates this temptation that we continually give into. Look to the Founding Fathers for wise words about keeping a huge standing army. The other half of the problem is that we are being suckered by “internationalists” whose primary loyalty is not with the United States (e.g. Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Scooter Libby, etc.). They use our military and our money to do what they think is best for Israel (my opinion of course). That should have been clear a long time ago but it should be even more clear after George Tenet’s recent revelations. We Republicans must liberate ourselves from those so-called “neocons”. They hurt us bad in 2006 and they will kill us in 2008 if we don’t throw them out now and get out of Iraq. We will do better without their dirty money.
Comment by Liberius | May 1, 2007
OK, so I guess Bryan does disagree about the Barbary Wars except that his premise is a bit off. There were two such wars. I believe the highest payments were made before the first war (almost 20% of our national budget). The Barbary States resumed their pirating soon after the initial threat dissipated but the second war was highly effective in finally putting an end to it. Again, the Barbary Wars are among the most justifiable of all our wars.
Comment by Liberius | May 2, 2007
Liberius:
“You are a bit mixed up. I was the one wrote that isolationist was a “disingenuous” term (although Bryan said something similar).”
My confusion is a result of people sometimes don’t say who their comments are addressed to. I’m guilty of the same thing.
I don’t agree with anything you have said. The world just doesn’t work as you would like. Let me just say one last thing, and that is my take on our involvement in Somalia and Srebrenica is that they were a result of Democrats’ obsession with race: all hints of racism must be immediately stamped out regardless of the costs.
Comment by sedonaman | May 2, 2007
Liberius,
You hit the nail on the head with that last paragraph particularly with regard to the expense. We are horribly in debt as a country and more spending of any kind, whether it is for the military, Social Security, etc. will be just another nail in our national coffin.
The idea of deficit spending is an old issue which dove-tails nicely here because in order to project power globally, the federal government requires loads of cash. Its principal means of supply, thus far, has been through deficit appropriations…by borrowing against the credit of the United States (which the Constitution provides for but which the founders would have a fit over if they could see how that provision has been abused).
To paraphrase an colleague of mine, "Good ideas will kill an enterprise" and that is true because you have to divert more and more monies away from the original endeavor to fund the "new ideas". And the federal government looks upon itself as the proverbial "neverending story" when it comes to life expectancy. So, when you combine that with the ability to borrow against its everlasting status, it will eventually implode. The Bourbon king, Louis V's words are a telling comment which nearly mirrors the views of our current officeholders concerning public spending: "It will survive for my time, then afterward the deluge."
Comment by Bryan | May 2, 2007
This author is hedging when he defines existential threat as a “clear and present danger” and then goes on to conclude that there was no threat to America or our way of life which justified entering WWII. Yet, he’s also correct in a literal interpretation of the facts, there was no “clear and present danger” just prior to December 7th 1941. But, his viewpoint is political rather than military and, being solely political, is short sighted and ultimately incorrect.
Based on the post-war writings of those in the War Department, the military planners and the Joint Chiefs, a lot of thought was in fact given to whether there was an immediate threat versus a longer term strategic threat by the Axis powers. And, this being America, there were honest differences of opinion on the extent of the threat. To understand that disagreement, it’s necessary to examine the global military situation at that time, not how it looks today with the benefit of hindsight.
Germany controlled most of the continent of Europe; Japan had an army/navy sufficient to control all of the East Indies, Manchuria and eastern China. What alarmed some strategic planners on the verge of our entry into WWII was the economic power Germany and Japan would amass with control over such vast territories. The concern was that given the militaristic tendencies, not to mention the chauvinistic tendencies (Master Race or Yamato Spirit) of Germany and Japan, such tendencies would eventually create a situation where America, isolated and alone, would face superior military and economic powers.
Germany and Japan formed a political rather than a military alliance (Italy, Hungary, Rumania, etc. were unimportant enemies), but there was no guarantee that the alliance would remain strictly political. Hitler wanted Japan to attack Russia for obvious reasons; fortunately Japan saw the ploy for what it was and preferred to focus on the material resources of the East Indies. But, we didn’t know that at the time. The concern was not only with what they could do in 1941, but with what they could eventually do if they continued to build forces unchecked for several more years and supported by an industrial base in their domestic and conquered territories equal to our own.
Some military planners did assume an immediate threat, not only from Germany, but Japan as well. Looking at Germany first, there was an assumption floated that Germany would attack us by crossing the Atlantic from West Africa to Brazil. This was the shortest route from the Old World to the New. However, it was pointed out to the alarmists, the route on to New York and Washington via West Africa/Brazil, was geographically longer than if Hitler simply attacked across the North Atlantic. Nevertheless, we did offer (in fact strongly urged) South American countries the protection of our military forces. Particularly Uruguay, which had a thriving domestic Nazi party, and appeared in danger of having their legitimate government undermined. Ultimately, and unknown to us, Hitler was determined to deal with Russia first and had no immediate designs on America.
With Japan, the situation was different. Military planners saw the threat to Australia/New Zealand, French Indochina, Singapore, the East Indies and India. Japan could eventually confine our Navy to the Pacific regions just off our west coast if they could cut the communications routes to the Far East. Ultimately, Hawaii would have been isolated forcing America into a coastal defense role plus protection of the Panama canal zone, while ceding the Pacific to the Japanese. Some alarmists saw a concerted attempt to invade California and Alaska also, but the Japanese couldn’t project military force to that extent in 1941 and 1942, nor did they wish to.
American military planners were foremost and always “America First” in their thinking; we even had a war plan to deal with England should they fall under Germany’s thumb and attack us. But, unlike this author, the military planners could separate “clear and present dangers” from long term threats.
If we assume a scenario where America ignored the military threat because there was no “clear and present danger”, what might have happened? In the European Theatre, Germany and Russia would have fought on like two wolves with a death grip on each other’s throat. The outcome would (almost certainly) have been the defeat of Germany with the Russians on the Atlantic coast of France by 1946.
Many American historians have come to accept that the Russians may not have needed our help to defeat Germany. Certainly the Russian people were truly amazing in the manner in which they recovered from the initial German invasion, moved their war industries to the east, produced ordnance under extremely unpleasant conditions and then learned to outfight the Germans. A telling statistic is that over 95% of all German military casualties were solely the result of Russian efforts up until D-Day, June 6th 1944. By D-Day, the Soviets had pushed the German armies into a continuous retreat from the Russian heartland and heading back into Central Europe.
Would we have been the first to develop the atomic bomb or have even attempted to develop it? Probably Britain would have been politically subverted into a Peoples Republic of England if the Soviets had won. Of the major Allies, the Commonwealth countries were the weakest militarily and, despite their gallantry, would have been unable to withstand unaided either Germany or Russia should one or the other have emerged victorious. The most probable scenario was a Russian empire extending over Europe and England at the final shot of WWII if American participation had been withheld. Of course, only God in His wisdom can know the actual outcome, but America facing a Soviet empire stretching over all of Europe and most of Asia in 1946 is not a pleasant thought, even if we had defeated Japan.
The author is correct in characterizing Roosevelt as a schemer and a liar; with the help of his cabinet members and a Democrat majority in Congress, he probably and deliberately provoked Japan into the attack on Pearl Harbor. There is only circumstantial proof he did that: no direct evidence. And, Japan was certainly no innocent victim either, their fanatical war faction did in fact control their government. However, as much as Roosevelt’s duplicity may infuriate many Americans, was Roosevelt wrong to trick us into WWII? Can we separate the political process from military necessity and condemn Roosevelt for his political methods while praising his military foresight?
The strength of our political system is that mistakes can be corrected; we’re not subject to the errors of a president for life like Fidel Castro. We can peacefully and lawfully change leaders once we’re convinced their course of action is wrong. But, we’re also subject to temporary manipulation by those same leaders. As Sedonaman suggested previously, the world is not a simple place and there is no black and white answer to whether Roosevelt was wrong. Certainly Roosevelt and the American people played a pivotal role in WWII and subsequent world history may have been considerably different had we waited out the war in comfort while the rest of the world destroyed itself. Had we not acted as we did, I believe America would have been eventually dragged into a war of self defense against the post WWII Soviet Empire with deaths far higher than we actually experienced in WWII.
Comment by Pat Skurka | May 7, 2007
Pat Skurka:
Good post. What most peace-at-any-pricers also conveniently forget is what one of their infallible leaders (JFK) once said, that the time is past when we can wait until there is a clear and present threat to the nation, for then it will be too late.
Comment by sedonaman | May 7, 2007