The battle of Thames was fought between a vastly outnumbered British force that, upon learning of its naval support's defeat, promptly retreated, barely having engaged the Americans. The bulk of the land fighting, then, was done between the American force and Tecumseh’s force, which held its ground until Tecumseh was killed, and then promptly retreated. But hey, if you want to claim that as a victory that shows how good the American army is, go ahead.
Pat, this is precisely what I was getting at (strangely, an example like Afghans moving into Pakistan support my point, not Blaise’s, but he uses it anyway). I thought of adding that refugees also run to areas with ethnic or otherwise culturally similar populations, but that’s not always the case, so I don’t think it’s a good idea to include it in any “law of refugees.” A perfect example would be so many Tamil refugees ending up in India, despite India’s explicit support for the people fighting the Tamil rebels. India wasn’t the good guy to Tamils, and they were precisely the cultural group against which the Tamils were fighting, but they were nearby and there weren’t gun fights and suicide bombers there (mostly), so it was a safe place. The refugee camps within Sri Lanka were just as far from the center of fighting as they could get.
In short, safety, not who's good or bad, is all that matters to refugees, and as often as not you can't tell anything about who the "good guy" is by where refugees go. But hey, it's a nice little saying.
Except Plattsburgh was primarily a naval victory. The American navy, particularly on the rivers and lakes, faired quite well in that war. They had experience. The American army was a joke.
As for your history lesson about where we got the land, I haven't the slightest clue what that has to do with whether the army performed well enough to earn respect in that war. But I hadn't heard of this Louisiana Purchase thingie before, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Seriously, though, I’ll stop being “obtusely pedantic” when you point to one historical source that suggests that the U.S. army (not navy) became a respected force as a result of its performance in the War of 1812. One source. I’m willing to believe there’s one out there. I’ll wait (and no, telling me an anecdote about your time in Zimbabwe curing polio and killing pirates doesn’t count as an historical source on the War of 1812).
Yeah, one major victory against a significant British force, after the war was over, when the bulk of the British military was busy fighting a much more formidable foe on another continent, doesn't inspire much confidence. I doubt it seriously affected the perception of the U.S. army, particularly since it was fought largely by irregulars: Lafitte's pirates, militia from 3 different states, and Native Americans. I've never seen anything to suggest that after the War of 1812, the American land forces were suddenly respected by anyone, except perhaps anyone thinking of trying to invade U.S. territory while fighting total war half a world away at the same time.
When it comes to humanitarian war (intervention is a nice way of making it sound more antiseptic), at best, you've got afootbridge problem; at worst, burning the forest to save the trees. Libya looks more and more like something in between those two, though it’s inching closer to forest-burning. Whatever massacre we prevented in Benghazi, we allowed something of at least similar scale to happen in Misrata through poor planning and execution. And the folks we’re backing have a nasty habit of offing the loyalists they capture, suggesting that whatever the “peace” looks like when this is over, it won’t be a pretty peace. Which civilians do we protect then?
The difference, I suppose, between liberal interventionists and liberal non-interventionists (and perhaps conservative ones too) is that the non-interventionists fully recognize that negatives like the ones we’re seeing in Libya are an inevitable part of intervention, not something that can be avoided if we just work hard enough and have noble intentions.
BlaiseP’s Law of Refugees: you may always know who is right and wrong in any given war by observing the footprints of the refugees: they run away from the bad guy toward the good guy.
This law fails to explain why refugees almost always run to other countries/regions not participating in the fighting. When they do run somewhere within the territories of the warning parties, they tend to run to the side that offers the most security (e.g., the side that’s doing the bombing, instead of the side that’s being bombed). Maybe the law should read, "You can always tell where there is no fighting or greater security by observing the footprint of refugees,” but that doesn’t sound as pithy and cool, just more accurate. Of course, sacrificing any semblance of verisimilitude for a clever-sounding turn of phrase is the Law of BlaiseP’s Blog Commenting, so whatever.
Not until the end of the war of 1812 did anyone take our nation seriously. What the Barbary Wars had done for our navy, the War of 1812 did for our Army. Where once it was a scraggly, ill-paid and ill-led bunch of state militias, it had become a unified force, capable of beating the British invaders on land.
Hehe...
The war did garner respect for the U.S. in Europe, but the bit about the army is chuckle-worthy.
Except that you've tended to do little more than talk about your team with reference to the other. In fact, that's sort of what calling them teams is about.
It's probably a mistake to see World War II as a war fought for ideological reasons. That's not to say that ideological reasons didn't play a role, particularly in the war propaganda, but World War II was fought for pretty much the reasons most wars are fought, which is rarely if ever primarily ideology. The Cold War is a little more complicated, but it wasn't just about ideology either (resources, spheres of influence, and what happens when you have two super powers with giant militaries, were more important than ideology).
Koz, under your theory, "Team Blue" has, at the same time, both the pernicious ideology that creates the difference between them and "Team Red" and leads to rampant increases in state power, and nothing but animus. Yeah, there's nothing dysfunctional about your H.S. football approach to politics and policy. Go team!
Koz, you've just expressed precisely the view to which I was referring. I'm not saying there are no differences between Democrats and Republicans, or liberals and conservatives, or however we want to classify these people who make up the two poles of our mainstream political spectrum, but I am saying that separating them into teams, or viewing things as "us vs them" has not simply exaggerated those differences, but made dialogue between the two groups, who for all intents and purposes determine our political representatives, virtually impossible, to the point of it being almost comically (but, given its consequences, also tragically) dysfunctional.
Of course, capitalism is also a response to feudalism, in many ways, as any good Marxist will tell you.
And I suspect any good sociologist or social psychologist would tell you that extremism, whether it's Islamic or othwerise, tends to be a response to perceived helplessness, whether it's the result of strong-armism, imperialism, economics.
Calling them teams, or at least thinking of them as such, is a good way to get into the absolute mess of a political system we have today. Witness Koz.
Bob, right, he's not the boss of me, though I appreciate him calling me comrade like it would bug me! I'm sure you can set him straight on that one.
What do you disagree with Blaise on related to the Cold War? I'm not sure it makes sense to say that Communism (with a big C) was a worse enemy than Nazism, but that's mostly because I'm not sure what that means. Communism certainly lasted longer, and Stalin and Mao killed many more innocents than Hitler, to be sure, but deciding which is worse strikes me as the equivalent of trying to decide which is more deadly, being struck by a several-ton meteor or being struck by a several ton rock from Earth. But the rest of what he said, or at least the general sense that the Cold War led to all sorts of unnecessary craziness on our part, seems pretty true to me.
I do think it's odd to say we got whipped in the Korean War. We got whipped, then we whipped, then we got whipped, all in the first several months, and after that it was a pointless stalemate with no whipping being done by either side (except maybe in the skies). But his view of the Korean war seems like the least egregious of his hyperboles in this thread to me.
Blaise, point to where I've suggested anything but that the 50s economy was pretty darn good, and then you can tell me anything you've just said is relevant to what I've said.
If you must know, I think the 50s were a mess, culturally, though I focused on segregation and the rise of the military industrial complex, rather than your preferred targets, which is not to say that I disagree with you on the Cold War. As I said to Bob, the 50s were the beginning point of a cultural awakening -- the civil rights movement, the counterculture, a new wave of the women's rights movement, etc., that would carry us up to the 80s, and to some extent through today, though I tend to think much of what began there has been lost, at least in the form of momentum (there's my nostalgia). But with the exception of the civil rights movement, those things were mostly seeds or seedlings in the 50s, so the 50s still remained a bit of a social and cultural wasteland. So, if you think I disagree with you on the 50s generally, feel free to argue that. I just don't see what you'd be arguing against, or for.
Chris and the Dense One want to paint me as some Roosky Lover. It’s like watching so many barky chihuahua dogs. Would that either could write his way out of a paper bag, for there are substantive arguments against my points, any of which would be a welcome change from this ill-mannered Poo Flinging.
Haha... It's funny to see you flustered, Blaise. Since I haven't said anything about Russia, and really haven't said anything about the space industry, you've clearly lost it here. But whatever you need to tell yourself to keep going, General. It's also funny to see you bitch and moan about personal attacks in lieu of arguments when you've yet to actually address what I've said about the 50s, instead tearing down completely unrelated claims (like, say, the 50s were perfect).
By the way, I'll say this again, but the only personal comment I've made about you (you've now made several about me), is the suggestion that you might tell a tall tale now and then (you might, if you haven't already, look up Ivolgin). Everything else was directed at your statements here: that they were exaggerated, that they were further and further from the topic (the 50s economy), that they were unrelated to your theses, etc. If you can't recognize the difference between personal attacks (you're a teller of tall tales) and criticisms of what you've said (you haven't presented arguments, and what you have presented is a piss poor substitute for arguments), I don't know how to help you.
You, on the other hand, have suggested I'm a bad writer (never claimed I wasn't), that I ignore facts that don't conform to my opinions (which facts, I'm not sure, since you haven't given any related to my point, yet), that I resort to personal attacks because I have no argument (see above), that I'm a yappy dog, and I'm sure I'm missing a couple. So, to recap, I've accused you of telling tall tales, and otherwise addressed what I've said, whereas you've done little more, in relation to my point (that the 50s economy was pretty darn good -- again, massive increases in employment, massive increases in GDP per capita, and hell, the creation of the modern middle class, just for good measure) than call me names. What you think is a high horse is really just a toddler's rocking horse, dude.
Blaise, since you haven't argued that the 50s economy wasn't pretty darn good, merely stated it as fact, I don't know which facts I'm ignoring. I do, however, know that you are ignoring one fact: the actual meaning of ad hominem. My comments on you, which are limited to the nickname, aren't related to your argument, and my claim that your arguments are irrelevant to the original point isn't a personal attack.
Blaise, I wasn’t intending, in that particular analogy, to imply that you were lying. The analogy was just that, an analogy: bad arguments are like lies in that you have to keep covering the previous one with a new one, so that you get to the point that you don’t even know what you were arguing for in the first place. I suspect most of us have done that, at one point or another. That you are doing it in this case is evident by the way that nothing you say is related in any way to your original point, or to much of anything.
The hypocorism “General Ivolgin,” on the other hand, does imply…
On point: since we’re only talking about the 50s economy, and since the 50s economy was pretty good by pretty much any measure, especially when compared to the previous and subsequent decades (seriously, a 100% increase in GDP per capita is pretty fishin’ good, by any standard), and since you haven’t suggested any reason to think otherwise (though trashing the space program(s), talking about vaccines in Africa, etc., is a nice way of avoiding doing so), I’m not sure what you think you’ve accomplished. But I’ve wasted time on you when my policy is to ignore you, a mistake for which I apologize to you and myself. I'll go back to letting you tell your tales in peace.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “America, Forever At War”
The battle of Thames was fought between a vastly outnumbered British force that, upon learning of its naval support's defeat, promptly retreated, barely having engaged the Americans. The bulk of the land fighting, then, was done between the American force and Tecumseh’s force, which held its ground until Tecumseh was killed, and then promptly retreated. But hey, if you want to claim that as a victory that shows how good the American army is, go ahead.
"
Pat, this is precisely what I was getting at (strangely, an example like Afghans moving into Pakistan support my point, not Blaise’s, but he uses it anyway). I thought of adding that refugees also run to areas with ethnic or otherwise culturally similar populations, but that’s not always the case, so I don’t think it’s a good idea to include it in any “law of refugees.” A perfect example would be so many Tamil refugees ending up in India, despite India’s explicit support for the people fighting the Tamil rebels. India wasn’t the good guy to Tamils, and they were precisely the cultural group against which the Tamils were fighting, but they were nearby and there weren’t gun fights and suicide bombers there (mostly), so it was a safe place. The refugee camps within Sri Lanka were just as far from the center of fighting as they could get.
In short, safety, not who's good or bad, is all that matters to refugees, and as often as not you can't tell anything about who the "good guy" is by where refugees go. But hey, it's a nice little saying.
"
Except Plattsburgh was primarily a naval victory. The American navy, particularly on the rivers and lakes, faired quite well in that war. They had experience. The American army was a joke.
As for your history lesson about where we got the land, I haven't the slightest clue what that has to do with whether the army performed well enough to earn respect in that war. But I hadn't heard of this Louisiana Purchase thingie before, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Seriously, though, I’ll stop being “obtusely pedantic” when you point to one historical source that suggests that the U.S. army (not navy) became a respected force as a result of its performance in the War of 1812. One source. I’m willing to believe there’s one out there. I’ll wait (and no, telling me an anecdote about your time in Zimbabwe curing polio and killing pirates doesn’t count as an historical source on the War of 1812).
"
Yeah, one major victory against a significant British force, after the war was over, when the bulk of the British military was busy fighting a much more formidable foe on another continent, doesn't inspire much confidence. I doubt it seriously affected the perception of the U.S. army, particularly since it was fought largely by irregulars: Lafitte's pirates, militia from 3 different states, and Native Americans. I've never seen anything to suggest that after the War of 1812, the American land forces were suddenly respected by anyone, except perhaps anyone thinking of trying to invade U.S. territory while fighting total war half a world away at the same time.
"
When it comes to humanitarian war (intervention is a nice way of making it sound more antiseptic), at best, you've got afootbridge problem; at worst, burning the forest to save the trees. Libya looks more and more like something in between those two, though it’s inching closer to forest-burning. Whatever massacre we prevented in Benghazi, we allowed something of at least similar scale to happen in Misrata through poor planning and execution. And the folks we’re backing have a nasty habit of offing the loyalists they capture, suggesting that whatever the “peace” looks like when this is over, it won’t be a pretty peace. Which civilians do we protect then?
The difference, I suppose, between liberal interventionists and liberal non-interventionists (and perhaps conservative ones too) is that the non-interventionists fully recognize that negatives like the ones we’re seeing in Libya are an inevitable part of intervention, not something that can be avoided if we just work hard enough and have noble intentions.
BlaiseP’s Law of Refugees: you may always know who is right and wrong in any given war by observing the footprints of the refugees: they run away from the bad guy toward the good guy.
This law fails to explain why refugees almost always run to other countries/regions not participating in the fighting. When they do run somewhere within the territories of the warning parties, they tend to run to the side that offers the most security (e.g., the side that’s doing the bombing, instead of the side that’s being bombed). Maybe the law should read, "You can always tell where there is no fighting or greater security by observing the footprint of refugees,” but that doesn’t sound as pithy and cool, just more accurate. Of course, sacrificing any semblance of verisimilitude for a clever-sounding turn of phrase is the Law of BlaiseP’s Blog Commenting, so whatever.
"
Not until the end of the war of 1812 did anyone take our nation seriously. What the Barbary Wars had done for our navy, the War of 1812 did for our Army. Where once it was a scraggly, ill-paid and ill-led bunch of state militias, it had become a unified force, capable of beating the British invaders on land.
Hehe...
The war did garner respect for the U.S. in Europe, but the bit about the army is chuckle-worthy.
On “Nostalgia & Freedom”
Yeah, that's insane. I don't usually use that word, but that is.
"
Yeah, one dimension.
Also, the Ryan plan? Seriously?
"
Except that you've tended to do little more than talk about your team with reference to the other. In fact, that's sort of what calling them teams is about.
"
Or put it another way, if we leave Team Red to its own devices, there will still be a United States in 20 years.
I'm genuinely saddened, for you, that you believe that. Marcuse feels vindicated though, I'm sure.
On “America, Forever At War”
It's probably a mistake to see World War II as a war fought for ideological reasons. That's not to say that ideological reasons didn't play a role, particularly in the war propaganda, but World War II was fought for pretty much the reasons most wars are fought, which is rarely if ever primarily ideology. The Cold War is a little more complicated, but it wasn't just about ideology either (resources, spheres of influence, and what happens when you have two super powers with giant militaries, were more important than ideology).
"
And Truman.
On “Nostalgia & Freedom”
Koz, under your theory, "Team Blue" has, at the same time, both the pernicious ideology that creates the difference between them and "Team Red" and leads to rampant increases in state power, and nothing but animus. Yeah, there's nothing dysfunctional about your H.S. football approach to politics and policy. Go team!
"
Koz, you've just expressed precisely the view to which I was referring. I'm not saying there are no differences between Democrats and Republicans, or liberals and conservatives, or however we want to classify these people who make up the two poles of our mainstream political spectrum, but I am saying that separating them into teams, or viewing things as "us vs them" has not simply exaggerated those differences, but made dialogue between the two groups, who for all intents and purposes determine our political representatives, virtually impossible, to the point of it being almost comically (but, given its consequences, also tragically) dysfunctional.
"
Of course, capitalism is also a response to feudalism, in many ways, as any good Marxist will tell you.
And I suspect any good sociologist or social psychologist would tell you that extremism, whether it's Islamic or othwerise, tends to be a response to perceived helplessness, whether it's the result of strong-armism, imperialism, economics.
"
Calling them teams, or at least thinking of them as such, is a good way to get into the absolute mess of a political system we have today. Witness Koz.
On “Political Compass Open Thread”
It's calling me a damn dirty hippie too:
Economic Left/Right: -8.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.85
I like the older version of this better. This one felt a little forced.
On “Nostalgia & Freedom”
Bob, you made the General out Ivolgin himself.
"
Bob, right, he's not the boss of me, though I appreciate him calling me comrade like it would bug me! I'm sure you can set him straight on that one.
What do you disagree with Blaise on related to the Cold War? I'm not sure it makes sense to say that Communism (with a big C) was a worse enemy than Nazism, but that's mostly because I'm not sure what that means. Communism certainly lasted longer, and Stalin and Mao killed many more innocents than Hitler, to be sure, but deciding which is worse strikes me as the equivalent of trying to decide which is more deadly, being struck by a several-ton meteor or being struck by a several ton rock from Earth. But the rest of what he said, or at least the general sense that the Cold War led to all sorts of unnecessary craziness on our part, seems pretty true to me.
I do think it's odd to say we got whipped in the Korean War. We got whipped, then we whipped, then we got whipped, all in the first several months, and after that it was a pointless stalemate with no whipping being done by either side (except maybe in the skies). But his view of the Korean war seems like the least egregious of his hyperboles in this thread to me.
"
Blaise, that got a chuckle. Thanks.
"
Blaise, point to where I've suggested anything but that the 50s economy was pretty darn good, and then you can tell me anything you've just said is relevant to what I've said.
If you must know, I think the 50s were a mess, culturally, though I focused on segregation and the rise of the military industrial complex, rather than your preferred targets, which is not to say that I disagree with you on the Cold War. As I said to Bob, the 50s were the beginning point of a cultural awakening -- the civil rights movement, the counterculture, a new wave of the women's rights movement, etc., that would carry us up to the 80s, and to some extent through today, though I tend to think much of what began there has been lost, at least in the form of momentum (there's my nostalgia). But with the exception of the civil rights movement, those things were mostly seeds or seedlings in the 50s, so the 50s still remained a bit of a social and cultural wasteland. So, if you think I disagree with you on the 50s generally, feel free to argue that. I just don't see what you'd be arguing against, or for.
"
Chris and the Dense One want to paint me as some Roosky Lover. It’s like watching so many barky chihuahua dogs. Would that either could write his way out of a paper bag, for there are substantive arguments against my points, any of which would be a welcome change from this ill-mannered Poo Flinging.
Haha... It's funny to see you flustered, Blaise. Since I haven't said anything about Russia, and really haven't said anything about the space industry, you've clearly lost it here. But whatever you need to tell yourself to keep going, General. It's also funny to see you bitch and moan about personal attacks in lieu of arguments when you've yet to actually address what I've said about the 50s, instead tearing down completely unrelated claims (like, say, the 50s were perfect).
By the way, I'll say this again, but the only personal comment I've made about you (you've now made several about me), is the suggestion that you might tell a tall tale now and then (you might, if you haven't already, look up Ivolgin). Everything else was directed at your statements here: that they were exaggerated, that they were further and further from the topic (the 50s economy), that they were unrelated to your theses, etc. If you can't recognize the difference between personal attacks (you're a teller of tall tales) and criticisms of what you've said (you haven't presented arguments, and what you have presented is a piss poor substitute for arguments), I don't know how to help you.
You, on the other hand, have suggested I'm a bad writer (never claimed I wasn't), that I ignore facts that don't conform to my opinions (which facts, I'm not sure, since you haven't given any related to my point, yet), that I resort to personal attacks because I have no argument (see above), that I'm a yappy dog, and I'm sure I'm missing a couple. So, to recap, I've accused you of telling tall tales, and otherwise addressed what I've said, whereas you've done little more, in relation to my point (that the 50s economy was pretty darn good -- again, massive increases in employment, massive increases in GDP per capita, and hell, the creation of the modern middle class, just for good measure) than call me names. What you think is a high horse is really just a toddler's rocking horse, dude.
"
Blaise, since you haven't argued that the 50s economy wasn't pretty darn good, merely stated it as fact, I don't know which facts I'm ignoring. I do, however, know that you are ignoring one fact: the actual meaning of ad hominem. My comments on you, which are limited to the nickname, aren't related to your argument, and my claim that your arguments are irrelevant to the original point isn't a personal attack.
"
"word phrase" is a really funny typo, by the way.
"
Blaise, I wasn’t intending, in that particular analogy, to imply that you were lying. The analogy was just that, an analogy: bad arguments are like lies in that you have to keep covering the previous one with a new one, so that you get to the point that you don’t even know what you were arguing for in the first place. I suspect most of us have done that, at one point or another. That you are doing it in this case is evident by the way that nothing you say is related in any way to your original point, or to much of anything.
The hypocorism “General Ivolgin,” on the other hand, does imply…
On point: since we’re only talking about the 50s economy, and since the 50s economy was pretty good by pretty much any measure, especially when compared to the previous and subsequent decades (seriously, a 100% increase in GDP per capita is pretty fishin’ good, by any standard), and since you haven’t suggested any reason to think otherwise (though trashing the space program(s), talking about vaccines in Africa, etc., is a nice way of avoiding doing so), I’m not sure what you think you’ve accomplished. But I’ve wasted time on you when my policy is to ignore you, a mistake for which I apologize to you and myself. I'll go back to letting you tell your tales in peace.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.