Song of Wrath
By J.E. Lendon
For those interested in historical trivia, I can save you from reading this book with the following chronicle. From the time of the ‘Age of Heroes’ to 450BC Athens ranked number one. The 30 Year Peace agreement of 450 BC leaves Sparta as number one. The battle of Sphacteria between Athens and Sparta in 425BC signaled a quest for Athens to reclaim hegemony of Greece. Her over reaching and loss, not to Sparta but to Boetea, leaves Athens’s quest an illusive butterfly of illusion. She found supremacy for a brief span of a few years time where inevitably war returned and she eventually lost her grip. Ironically the triumph of Athens over Sparta or vice-versa it never came with terms that held complete sway over all of Greece or the outside world. The lesson learned was it was all in the minds of ego, an ego that was portrayed in this book primarily through the oration of Thucydides.
Comparing Athens-v-Sparta with its 30 Year Peace and USA-v-USSR with its 40 year cold war, finds parallel characteristics. Many proxy wars were waged. With the close of the Athens Sparta drama, Argos gained time and space to reenter the fray for supremacy found in ‘‘TIME’’. With the close of the USA-Soviet drama, the sick old man of Ottoman Empire, seems to have awoke with a bankroll of oil money. In the wake of the fall of the USSR, mankind found room for the resumption of ‘TIME’ to be tested once again between Muslims and the world. Hence we have ominous parallels for any reader of the 21st century.
‘Time’ with an overscore on the 'e' was how the Greeks ranked themselves. It was a measure of their worth. ‘Time’ was thought to give a real, almost physical existence in the world: it could for example be taken by one man from another. It could be captured in war. It was not just a Greek trait. I once heard from my Iranian Muslim friend. “Iranian’s do not want anything more than a seat at the table with world powers”, in essence ‘Time’. He also helped me see that they lost that seat in 646 when Islamic Arabs invaded Persia. The path to war follows these steps: ‘time’, hybris, wrath, revenge. With this undercurrent in the psyche of the Thucydydeian man we find it odd the bloodless way we now write about relations between states and the whitewashed diplomatic language of our ‘time’ have weakened our grasp on the power of emotion and psyche in foreign affairs.
Playing this theme in Lendon's introduction on our current world affairs that pits in my mind Muslim's on a similar path against the West asking the question: does the trail fit the story? If so then would you conclude hybris is at the core of psyche the Muslims or the West? Hybris is defined in this book as the act of essentially thumbing your nose at he who holds ‘time’ over you. Contrarily, it is popular opinion today for Western liberal thought, at least among the Press to acquiesce the allegation of Western hubris, a derivative word. Using Greek thinking, considering the superior standard of living, observing obvious status of Western ‘Time’ or superiority, should not the Muslims be charged with hubris/hybris instead? Evidence of this can be found not in Terrorist agenda, but rather in the Madrassas formulation of the Muslim terrorist psyche. The terrorist's actions are only the result of madrassas rooted in their quest for ‘Time’ where wrath and revenge are their modality.
This book uses the Peloponnesian War, the first ten years, to study foreign policy and statesmanship in examining the causes of war. It is interesting to read that all the States of Greece practiced ‘Time’ in their relationship with each other and as well in their war with Persia. In 570BC Persia was a world leader and was so for 1100 years before surrendering to the Muslim moniker and fall from world leadership. At the time Persians, Zoroastrians by faith, were transformed by Arab Muslims. They assimilated to the Muslims, yet to come to terms with their loss of their Zoroastrian faith they made a diversion and founded the Shiite schism sect of Islam. That schism is as deep today as it was 1600 years ago. Its depths are as great as the schism between Islam and the West. Like the ominous parallel of the Peloponnesian era where Argos stood on the sidelines, Shia and Sunni have still to find their place in ‘Time’ with each other. As a western strategy; is now the time to be engaging them?
With history as an answer, after ten years of war where Athens had the upper hand over Sparta who was not without victory, the belligerents came to a truce. The truce was born not in what victories were inflicted on each other or any slim advantage one side might have, but for the mitigation of risk of losing control over those they once mastered. Athens feared revolt from within her colonies. Sparta feared a loss of her allies. The truce and following alliance made Athens the victor without surrender. Athens' goal was to prove equal to Sparta. Sparta's goal was to prove her superiority. Truce being equated to a draw left Athens a shallow but meaningful victory in Greek terms. That victory was short lived. For within a few years after, inter-state intrigue found Athens an ally of Argos and Sparta an ally of Persia where a sound and thorough defeat was Athens' fate.
In conclusion a reader of this book may be found thinking the following. Look around the world for ‘Time’. Look at India – Pakistan, North -South Korea, Japan- China of the 1930s, France –Germany, dormant at the moment, every North American Indian tribe pre European conquest of North America. This book alludes to that character in “Time” vested in society as a root to war. Its symptoms are civil unrest, either through oppression or through economic stress. Thucydides points out: "Civil strife- stasis is the Greek word - has a fearful dynamic of it's own. Whatever it spark, civil strife burns high and soon consumes within it all the forms of division between men, giving license to wickedness under the cover of party and enforcing by a principle of tit-for-tat escalation to ever more fearful methods. When a person looks to another as superior in any way they might respect that person, but underneath their ego gives way to fear driven hybris of which carries through to wrath and finally vengeance. Is there a deed or a characteristic that he who holds ‘time’ can bestow on the rest those who may be prone to hybris to end the cycle of war? My only answer is transcending ‘time’
Below is my bibliography with nested notes. The last note in particular is worth reading. While I look to find a lesson in all that I read, I would have preferred a different author. I view Lendon as a PhD professor who fully subscribes to the ‘publish or perish” doctrine. And forcing his students to purchase and read his books.
Cool metaphor; not yet the cry of trumpets, but the moans of low bassoons
Bibliography
Page 64 understanding the ethos of alliances first and the in particular the status of Argos and Athens is key to understanding the rest of the mid century war.
Note: Argos held ‘time’ over Athens even though Sparta held ‘time’ over Argos. Since Athens and Sparta were rivals, Athens bent her homage towards Argos if for anything else to have an ally.
Page 81: Lacking in the Spartan victory in 446BC was the crucial psychological component that made victory "stick"- that made the defeated take their defeat, and therefore their inferiority in rank, to heart and therefore behave with lowly deference to the victor.
...it is best not to puff yourself up because of the misfortunes opponents says a speaker much later than Thucydides, "but only be confident when you have conquered their spirits". Said Churchill in response to the German smashing of French will, only they be responded to in kind in 1945, thus drawing to a conclusion of two countries propensity for war for hegemony.
Note: this book notes that it's not so much the sued terms at the conclusion of a war but the actual battle that marks the defeat. Making this point 2500 years later we find examples of Germany's defiance of the world in the 1930's and likewise Iraq thumbing it's nose at the world, the United States in particular, in 2003.
Page 86: What broke out in 431BC is one if the most famous passages in his narrative and one of the most quoted passages from ancient Greek historians today, for it encapsulated the cold principles of the contemporary realist school of international relations. "The truest cause of the war" wrote Thucydides, " was the growing greatness of Athens and the fear that this inspired, which compelled the Lacedaemonians to go to war."... This "growing greatness" more exactly atmosphere increase of Athenian' power, dynamis, was a threat to Spartan and her allies. ... This cause is distinguished sharply from the immediate. Events that led up to the war, which Thucydides terms the "charges" or the "grounds for complaint" (aitiai) and "points if difference" (diaphorai), which are not the “truest cause" of the war.
Note: I made it a reading project to analyze the causes of war using the 20th century Germans. I did not land on Thucydides’ theory but won’t challenge it as I may look back and add the theory to the mix in my thought. Does power and it's cousin "fear of power" underwrite the practical causes of war?
Page 87: ... Thucydides and Hobbs, who translated him into English, are the progenitors if the theoretical realism that abides in today’s universities and think tanks, perhaps more important they have molded the vulgate of age. Power and fear are the tools for thinking about relations between states unreflectively employed in the media. Thus if looking out the window we approve of Thucydides’ landscape, we do so unaware that it was Thucydides who cited the window in the first place.
Note: the different primary causes were not prevalent in Greece, nor if there in the 20th century Europe. Is this a mistake mankind has failed to correct? Or is Thucydides’ theory correct? The Cold War never fired a shot because there was no real fear between the contestants. That is only if you exclude the proxy wars, being the complaint underwritten by the Keannan Theory of 1950.
Page 103: the Spartans in ‘time’ would feel that they were waring to refuse arbitration and that their neglect of this term of the 30 Years Peace Treaty had offended the Gods.
Note: I find this correlating to the Gods parallel at least to the message of Christ, the basis of Christian faith. (Though too often obliterated by religious sects over 2000 years) Thucydides, Hobbs, contemporary think tanks and Christianity are the entire same mind yet they quarrel with each other much like Athens did with Sparta. The quarrel appears to be more for supremacy or in context of the thesis of Thucydides, ‘TIME’. Is the spirit of competition found in the Greek Olympic Games, with it's unintended byproduct transcendent in our modern world? Are the unintended consequences really the cause and not the effect or are they symptoms? Is Marx right? The internal philosophy of a corporation is in deed communal where surrendering to corporate missions is required of it's individual business units. Yet corporations compete with each other. This only applies to economics which is a philosophy with money as the metric. How does this translate to nations in competition? Clearly you see this correlation in the 2011 budget debate where the competition in international currency is central to the American way of life. Very rich people understand this and therefore are willing to contribute to America. But at large the middlemen (politician, press) and their pawns are lost.
Page 168; in 1888 Julius Von Pflgk-Hartung had a passive policy of no clear cut victory. He said to active engagement "No Pericles' plans were well conceived 'strategy of exhaustion' had every prospect of winning the war by wearing out the resources of Athens’s opponents. In fact however Pericles' strategy was one of communication: by carefully judged reprisals for the Spartan ravaging of Attica, by humiliation of the Spartans through attacks on Sparta’s allies and by exaltation of Athens by helping Athen's allies, Pericles planned to impress the rank and renown of Athens upon the Spartans and upon the wider world of Greeks.
Page 206: Slaves were, after all, the natural enemies of all free men in a society that kept them in shackles. In a poor world , too, much of a city's wealth was tied up in it's slaves, because buying slaves and putting them to work was one of the few ways free capital could be invested for profit - capital that would be consumed in the holocaust of a single moment were the slaves to be set at liberty. For men locked in civil strife to bid for the support of slaves, then signaled that an unnatural frenzy had come upon Corcyra: there was nothing the men of the island would not do or waste, if helped them to overcome their foes.
Page 211: Thucydides points out: "Civil strife- stasis is the Greek word - has a fearful dynamic of it's own. Whatever it spark, civil strife burns high and soon consumes within it all the forms of division between men, giving license to wickedness under the cover of party and enforcing by a principle of tit-for-tat escalation ever more fearful methods. It is war itself and the resulting scarcity, says Thucydides that destroys human morals and ideas. “War proves a teacher of violence that brings most men's characters to level with their fortunes." War is why “ancient simplicity into which honor so largely entered was laughed down and disappeared."
Yet Thucydides' diagnosis of the cause of stasis - his argument that domestic strife is usually the child of foreign war - was not true as a rule even in Thucydides' own ‘time’, and was certainly not true in the case of Corcyra, which was untouched by the wider war and hardly, in 427BC, confronted with "imperious necessities"
Note: while the wider war was between Sparta and Athens, there was a civil war between the oligarchs and democracy of Corcyra, where civil strive of that island prevailed over the larger rules of honor held between Sparta and Athens.
Note: Clearly the world witnessed this in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Page 224: in 426 Athens took a new tact on Sparta. Rather than simple revenge, Athens took a posture of Hybris. If Athens neglected Boeotia [an active ally of Sparta] it was not because they considered her a threat. But just as a southern gentleman jostled by another in the streets of Charleston, could coolly decide not to construe the contact as an insult and thus avoid a duel, so did an ancient Greek state in a war over rank, as we have seen, enjoy a certain latitude to fail to "notice" acts of their adversaries - by framing their acts too trivial to deserve revenge.
Page 232: this Greek checkerboard of loyalties in the northwest was no creation of the Athenians or Spartans but simply reflected the hostility of Greek states to their immediate neighbors: thus when one perhaps on the basis of ancient kinship, called the Athenians or Peloponnesians for assistance against a neighbor, that ally naturally allied itself to the other great power. Although Greek in language and habits, for the most part these continent dwellers lived as tribes and clans spread over the land, rather than owing their loyalty to individual cities, as was custom in Southern Greece. They were, then, and old fashioned folk, their men still carrying weapons on their daily rounds, leading to a more forthright, rambunctious, even Homeric notion of mine and thine than prevailed in
the city-states to the south.
Note: oh the ominous parallels of that neighboring track of land from the Middle East through central Asia, post 1919. The fall of the Ottoman Empire has yet to find the civility of the Southern Greek city- state of the forth century BC .
At this juncture of 2011 Barak Obama is making the same mistake as British Prime minister Lloyd-George did in 1919. It was for the same reason: his Empire was war weary and in economic despair. Iraq through the legacy of GW Bush mission and policy will prove to be an oasis of civilization in a sea of 'tribes in turmoil', if history does have a pattern, for the next 20 years. More ominous of historical patterns would be found in the dynamic of US-Sino relationships on a Greek canvas, and the allies of choice of those warring tribes.
Page 275: But the personal hurt of the Spartans and the trampling of the Greek warrior code by the Athenians were not the only forces at play in the Spartan decision to surrender. A singularly Spartan factor also contributed. For Spartans, far more than other Greeks, looked to be commanded in war, and the absence of command [the commanders were killed early in the battle] forced to form a tiny parliament of the wounded to debate their own fate, they proved different men from those, who under orders, were so dauntless. The Spartan authorities had expected their men to behave like Achilles,to choose noble death. But Spartans had not brought up their sons to act like Achilles; they had brought them up to obey orders. Never does the strange contradiction at the heart of Spartan society show so clearly here: Spartans were expected to live the Iliad, but an Iliad set in a totalitarian Sparta.
Page 276: The Spartans surrendered on the seventy-second day after the sea battle in Navarino Bay, in the middle of August, 1 the year 425BC. Thucydides pretends to read the minds of the greater Greek nation as they savored every appalling detail. Luke mere humans, the Spartans had surrendered because they were hungry. They had yielded their weapons to the Athenians: they had not been disarmed and helpless but surrendered with weapons in their hands. They had not fought until they were killed. The root of Spartan power, the martial mystique of the Lacedaemonians that the Athenians had so long both feared to confront on the field of battle and feared to encourage by compelling the Spartans to die fighting, was given a mighty yank halfway from the ground by this surrender. And as for rank of Sparta, the primacy that Athens and Sparta were fighting was over. The answer was obvious to any Greek. “the glory of the Lacedaemonians was cast down," wrote a later author, " because of thei loss of their men on the island."
Page 337: Bresadis [Spartan], pledging to revolt if he should come to them Amphipolis]. The kindly terms hebhag given at Amphilipolis urged along this movement, as did, the earnestness of his proclamations that he had come to free the Greeks from empire rather
than simply replace Athenians rule with Spartan. For he pledged to leave the constitutional arrangements of the rebels unchanged and to impose no garrisons or governors. After a seven year pregnancy, Sparta seamed finally to have brought to birth a son who was in earnest about freeing the Greeks from Athens, the slogan under which Sparta had gone to war in 431BC and that had brought Sparta such
goodwill at war's beginning.
Cool metaphor; not yet the cry of trumpets, but the moans of low bassoons.
Page 380: At the same ‘time’ as she became more successful at shaming Sparta, Athens also saw her estimation if value of shaming acts, as well as her definition of the make up of ‘time’, prevail in the minds of Greeks. Put positively, in terms of honor rather than shame, the Athenians managed over the course if Ten Years' War subtly to shift the definition of ‘time’, of the rank of states, from a preponderance emphasis on Andrei, the courage displayed particularly in hoplite battle, to place greater value on charis (helping friends and taking revenge upon enemies) and metis ( the cunning display of tactics and trickery). Since metis and charis played to Athenian strengths, while Sparta was supreme in Andreia, this change in the way Greeks estimated ‘time’ was decidedly to Athens' advantage. The war over the definition over ‘time’ chiefly depended not on convincing the Greeks directly but appearing to have convinced the enemy. And so it was that in the eyes of the Greeks, the Spartans slowly yielded the battle over the definition of ‘time’ to the Athenians. This was the legacy of Pericles.
Page 381: (Thucydides') realism is the theory of international relations that considers power, the dread of the power of others, and the quest for power that dread imposes impartially upon all as the primary drivers of acts of states.
Note: This book on page 382 makes a case that war is an idea of man, not of God. The US Constitution, 2000 years later fixed that mistake. 21st century liberal America appear poised to remake that same mistake. Power is not of strength Andreia but of previous combination of dominion over ideas and way of life. If one loses his way of life, liberty, his power is threatened of if not avenged then defeated.
And then in the end out of nowhere, within the pages of this book the author makes war about the complex nature of revenge, leaving the dynamics of ‘time’ and hybris as inconsequential. Lendon aside from the detailed spaghetti of events, is found a maddening author.
Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iraq. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Decision Points
Decision Points
By G.W. Bush
Drinking. A decision Bush made. After reading the chapter he was a robust social drinker. I call him a "Molly Brown" drinker. I suspect you could have put Bill Clinton in that category. The difference is Bush voluntarily took himself to task. In retrospect I asked why was that chapter in the book anyway. I think it sets the tone for all the decisions GW Bush made in his presidency. It was a presidency where a man of great conviction was taken to task, first by a divided country and second by events on par with Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Washington.
In the chapter on the decision to run for president you read how ordinary Bush was. Or you could characterize it as honest. I use the word honest because what comes out is akin to the first decision, in that he reconciled all pertinent decisions of a presidential run with himself. When people take Bush to task on his God orientation, I find that taking your self to task on par with taking yourself to God. Bush didn’t ask God if the decision was right, he went beyond the surface, the rational, to his heart to ask is the decision morally right as well. As a goal for a moniker Bush entered office in 2000 with an aspiration to be the "education president". He teamed up with Ted Kennedy to legislate the No Child Left Behind bill.
On this hyperbole notion that Bush was managed note, you learn that Bush was not a person managed by his handlers that may or may not met the test of conviction. You learn that Bush purposefully sought out a reluctant Cheney as a running mate. In fact the people around him, starting with his father, would not have sought out Cheney. Demonstrating the divisiveness of the GW Bush presidency the reader learns that it was not as simple 5-4 Supreme Court decision as the liberal for years etched on to the memory of Americans. There was first the actual vote count that had Bush victorious by 529 votes. You then have a 7-2 vote that held that the recount was chaotic and inconsistent. Non the less Bush started his first term under an extreme handicap where conviction to stay the course was a requirement
When I contrast Bush's failed nomination of Harriet Meyers to the Supreme Court to that of Obama's first selection; Meyers was not selected because she had no judicial record and she was currently working a close aid to Bush. By contrast, Obama's appointment, Kagan, carried the exact same baggage. Plus Kagan’s sexual orientation gave the view that "political correctness" compromised the clarity required for prudent confirmation. This selection once again demonstrates Bush being his own man in terms of selecting those around him. As it turned out Meyers was not a good decision yet it was Bush who rightly or wrongly saw in Meyers a juror who would not be swayed in Supreme Court decisions by her own personnel agenda and held that as a priority over he lack of bench experience. Bush's convictions did not always prevail.
When I turned to the stem cell chapter I thought why this would be a land mark decision, a test of Bush's conviction. I was unaware that it was this issue above all the rest where the poignancy in his critics struck deep. It was also this issue that galvanized the thick skin required to be the president of the United States. On the stem cell decision, this was his hardest decision, the one decision that was close and personal. He lost a sister where research may have helped. It was the one decision that the Press was most vitriol in Bush as a person. And it had the greatest ‘bash’ affect on him personally. What I did not know until I read this book is that it turns out Bush was right. Science found a way without using government funding, during his term, to harvest the same cells from skin. Killing embryos was then as is now not required for stem cell research. I am amazed at the non-reporting of the science discovery or the lack of any apology from the Press or his opponents.
9/11: Clarification points Bush had been told that a plane flew into the Trade Center when they were walking into the class room. It was not made clear it was a terrorist act. He was told about the second aircraft in front of the children. It was a purposeful decision to not look frantic. This was not for the children sake alone but for the terrorists that would be seeing his reaction on camera. It was a decision of courage. Not of a non-decision of frantic panic. Even Bush's advisors said don't say anything to the public yet. Bush was the voice of America not just the Commander in Chief giving immediate direction to first responders. He purposely made the decision to frame his reaction to that of undaunted. It was his personal and private conviction, confidence in that decision that enabled him to endure the merciless and reckless criticism from the liberal left that insisted on dividing the country for mere political reason.
In War Footing you come to understand the obstinacy and the agenda of the Democrats when Bush was establishing the Department of Homeland Security, the Democrats pushed back in an effort to make sure the Labor Unions that would staff it were sufficiently organized to secure collective bargaining. Let's compare Bush's Patriot Act with Obama's Health Care Bill. When the Patriot Act was signed it had a 98:1 vote of support. Obamacare required a Democrat Partisan cloture vote of 60:40. When the Patriot Act was signed, Democratic senator Patrick Lehey from Vermont and Chuck Schumer from New York both said we read this Act and it is fair and balanced. Nancy Pelosi said after Obama signed Obamacare "we don't know what's in it. But we will figure it out. The Patriot Act proved over and over as a critical component to our nations security. Bush however required conviction to endure the reckless criticism from the liberal left over this decision.
On water boarding; first contrary to the impression the Left including Obama on the campaign trail and the Press for six years implying that water boarding was standard practice to all POWs called it an egregious compromise of American values. I myself, a staunch defender of Bush, fell victim to the Press brain washing. It was not until 2008 that I became fully aware of the scope of water boarding, the whole truth Said Zubaydah one of the THREE people water boarded, "water boarding was a technique that allowed him to reach that threshold, fulfillment his religious duty and the cooperate.".
You must do this for all the brothers," he said.
Afghanistan: Bush closed with "Ultimately the only way the Taliban and al Qaeda can retake Afghanistan is if America abandons the country. Allowing the extremists to reclaim power would force Afghan women back into subservience, remove girls from school, and betray all the gains of the past nine years. It would endanger our security. After the Cold War, the United States gave up on Afghanistan. The result was chaos, civil war, the Taliban takeover, sanctuary for al Qaeda and the nightmare of 9/11. To forget that lesson would be a dreadful mistake. My fear is Obama even with his troop surge, has committed the United States to a deadline to abandon Afghanistan. He set the stage for a mood of American exhaustion on war. And we are witnessing an extreme sentiment now to abandon what was seen only 10 years earlier as a lesson learned. With the reality that Pakistan is very capable of harboring terrorists, we have gone from a conviction of Bush to stand up a free people focused on anything but international terrorism to a political agenda of Obama that will gradually find Afghanistan as equally dangerous as it was on September 11, 2001.
Iraq: on page 234 you read the question put in a way I had not heard before in the context of that time It’s a question that has a person pause. Perhaps be a little less critical. Bush puts it this way, "Letting a sworn enemy of America refuse to account for his weapons of mass destruction was a risk I could not afford to take. That question was asked to a brutal "elected" dictator who simply would not cooperate. UN resolution 687 mandated not only that Iraq be rid of WMD but also be rid of the ability to produce them. I, a pretty tuned in person on this subject, cannot recall from any Press report, the status of Iraq’s ability to produce WMD. I read in Known and Unknown of the official report on WMD, of which got very little press coverage. In that report it stated that Hussein had the capability to convert industrial sites in to WMD factories in as little as two weeks time. While the report said there was no capability for nuclear attacks, it made the following to provocative points. 1. Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qaeda - with world wide reach and extensive
terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States - could perpetrate the type if terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct. 2. In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step if assisting the Islamist terrorist in conducting CBM [chemical or biological weapon] attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him. When asking whether Bush’s ‘conviction” effected his Iraq decision, one must be sure to put that decision in the context of 911 and then ask that critical question: would you take the risk of letting a sworn enemy of America refuse to account for his weapons of mass destruction.
The Mission Accomplished banner was not at any order of the Bush administration. Evidence to this was it was NOT consistent with his speech. He said the major combat mission has ended. And that was true. He also said we have a lot of work left to be done in order to leave behind a free Iraq. And the Press torched him. Contrarily Obama went to the cameras to announce the conclusion of combat in Iraq, with less than proper recognition of Bush, and still to leave behind four thousand combat troops who were still engaged with the enemy. Reports from the Press have become at best second page news. No one Has asked Obama about the combat troops still in Iraq a year later. I raise the contrast to once again examine the convection required of one president compared to his immediate predecessor who was his number one critic, finding his place in the White House specifically through criticism of conviction.
The strategy of the insurgents of Iraq in 2006 said Bush on page 260 was to present an image of Iraq as hopeless and un-win-able, swinging American public opinion against the war and forcing us to withdraw as we had in Vietnam. This lesson that our enemy, enemy in waiting, will wait as long as it takes as a strategy leverage political agendas has yet to be learned by our President Obama. As I read this with the news of Qaddafi murder on the radio, I can only surmise that Obama's campaign stance against Iraq and Afghanistan portrays Obama making the right call. Yet his abstinence to react properly and with full conviction to a crime he is witnessing has positioned America as an accomplice to murder. The mere facts that he has retreated behind the guise of NATO and has used the distant voce of Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State, only further develops the quagmire of international intrigue today versus the clear cut lines ever to be criticized found in Bush
In the events behind the Surge of troops in Iraq, Bush met with the survivors of over 550 fallen soldiers. He also read 14 biographies on Lincoln. He modeled after Lincoln in the midst of the reality of his unpopularity. Underscoring this introspective view Bush received daily briefings from the Situation Room, of the terror inflicted on Iraqi people. He also was apprised of the Iraqi people after realizing the Insurgents were not acting in their best interests, switching sides to the Americans. These were events that the Press chose to play down amidst the anti Bush drumbeat. It took real courage to put it all in the balance and make the right decision for the Surge. Courage and conviction will mark his presidency as even his successor in the announcement of success in Iraq failed to give proper recognition to the courage it took to lead not by popular opinion. I write this on the same day that I read about the UN voting, to restrain Qaddafi from his murderous terror. The difference here is Bush made it clear to the World what his convictions were. Obama simply followed the leadership of a foreign body. Amazingly, Americans once again find no fortitude to fight for freedom of ‘One Man’ as they let a border come between that which unites all men. And we have a president Obama, who like Clinton, who chooses to follow the leaders of Europe. In the end lives are at stake, no matter who leads. A sad note on American values when Obama and Clinton are favored over Bush. What Bush makes real clear in his book is the freedom of ‘One Man’ is the security of all men, including the United States of America.
Bush's chapter called Freedom agenda was a forty page summary of his diplomacy. What came out the ‘trot around the globe’ was a common theme. This is a mark of leadership akin to his father GH Bush, Reagan, Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, Churchill, Wilson. He set a standard and formed a policy around that standard, and he produced a strategy, enabling him to execute on a tactical plan. That standard was an individuals right to freedom. Policy around that standard stated that where there is institutionalized freedom, there is a mitigation of risk on American security. Tactically, where freedom did not ring and those leaders responsible who also pledged eminent danger or threat to the United States were challenged first through diplomacy, and diplomacy's big brother...war. Like his decisions or not, they were clearly vetted, communicated and executed upon. When contrasting to his immediate successor as well as his predecessor I felt more secure in the same way 20th century Americans felt with the aforementioned leaders. This will be Bush’s legacy.
Other challenges:
The Bush presidency sponsored prescription drug programs under a Medicaid reform bill. It was well defined, well debated, and passed with a compromise bipartisan vote. It distributed risk which made it one of the few bills to come in significantly under budget.
Contrasted against Obamacare where a cloture vote along strict party lines against the will of the majority of the people finds the dichotomy in moral fortitude between Bush Republicans and Obama Democrats.
Looking at Bush's failed Social Security reform efforts finds a well stated case for reform and hardened uncooperative Democrats trumpeting that Bush was "privatizing Social Security which was inaccurate. The sad result on this the general public was trained to see Bush as a spender and his reform would have reduced the budget by xxxx and would have fixed the problem instead of passing it on to the next generation , not two generations but the very next one, where it will see it's doom.
The Katrina drama is explained in traditional memoir fashion rose colored lens, or was it? When told- from first person you come away with only criticism of the Press for admonishing a President for playing the role of President in a cast of incompetent leaders in Louisiana. The governor never allowed federal troops in to assist. By day five Bush over rode her. The Mayor did not order the evacuation in time. From a Presidential standpoint Bush admits that his performance was appropriate technically, but his public relations response deserved the outcry it got. Has Obama been guilty of PR gaffs? My first response is the Boston police incident, where he over reacted inappropriately. My second is Libya, where he has enough evidential authority to bring Qaddfi to justice for Lockerbee and does nothing while human beings are being murdered. While the world
looks for a President, Obama once again "votes present." Rather than simply take Qaddfi as a criminal, he abdicates the action to NATO of which the USA is the leading partner. The only fool in the scheme is Obama himself.
I dreaded the challenge of reading the last chapter Financial Crisis. Early on Bush brings me back over to his side. He first puts his personal view of economics forward to set the tone against the noise of the Press and his opponents ranging from Hillary Clinton to Barak Obama to Keith Oberman. Then he sets a few things straight First is our surplus was based on projections of a tech bubble that would continue which didn't. Second 9/11 caused a collapse of that galvanized a recession that was officially under way one month after he was sworn into the first term of office.
This I knew. What I didn't know was. GW Bush's debt to GDP ratio was a percentage point below the mark of the 20th century average. Additionally to assuage my criticism of his spending, he could not line item veto pork or earmarks. He had to look at a Bill in whole and sign it or not. Oddly enough now that Obama era Republicans in have sworn away earmarks, Democrats who were so quick to criticize Bush on the same now claim earmarks only represent four percent of the budget. I now find the need for an apology first to myself for allowing myself to be drawn in by rhetoric from the left. And then to our 44th president for conceding ground to the left.
On Freddie & Fannie: in Bush's 2003 budget in recognizing that they had morphed into an institution that exceeded it's charter beyond promoting home ownership, he proposed a bill that would regulate the GSE’s. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, ranking Democrats on the Fed Committee with friends, former Clinton administration officials running the GSE's, went on the record and said "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis". In 2005 Bush raised a more alarming call for action and put forth through Senator Richard Shelby a bill to regulate the GSE's. The Democrats blocked the bill from passing. A President can only sign into law bills put in front of
him. Democrats prone to criticize Republicans for not regulating failed to do just that at a most critical point in our nations financial 21st century history. By 2008 Bush called for reform seventeen times before the threat of a credit melt down and the eighteenth call was finely acted on. In 2010 we continue to harangue Wall Street for their role when the house of cards collapsed on failed mortgages which are directly connected to the GSE's and legacy policy of the Clinton administration.
In reading Bush's account I am curious as to how much paper in housing George Sorros and people like him had and sold it short. Could the stanch supporters of the Democrat Party who are so quick to criticize Republicans for failing to regulate have benefited from Barney Frank infamous statement? I believe the right investigative journalist could write a good book on this subject. Keep in mind it would put no one in jail because the Democrats blocked any regulation. But would have a new emphasis on the term full disclosure. One could only pray there is a wiki-leak as the key to an investigation.
By G.W. Bush
Drinking. A decision Bush made. After reading the chapter he was a robust social drinker. I call him a "Molly Brown" drinker. I suspect you could have put Bill Clinton in that category. The difference is Bush voluntarily took himself to task. In retrospect I asked why was that chapter in the book anyway. I think it sets the tone for all the decisions GW Bush made in his presidency. It was a presidency where a man of great conviction was taken to task, first by a divided country and second by events on par with Roosevelt, Lincoln, and Washington.
In the chapter on the decision to run for president you read how ordinary Bush was. Or you could characterize it as honest. I use the word honest because what comes out is akin to the first decision, in that he reconciled all pertinent decisions of a presidential run with himself. When people take Bush to task on his God orientation, I find that taking your self to task on par with taking yourself to God. Bush didn’t ask God if the decision was right, he went beyond the surface, the rational, to his heart to ask is the decision morally right as well. As a goal for a moniker Bush entered office in 2000 with an aspiration to be the "education president". He teamed up with Ted Kennedy to legislate the No Child Left Behind bill.
On this hyperbole notion that Bush was managed note, you learn that Bush was not a person managed by his handlers that may or may not met the test of conviction. You learn that Bush purposefully sought out a reluctant Cheney as a running mate. In fact the people around him, starting with his father, would not have sought out Cheney. Demonstrating the divisiveness of the GW Bush presidency the reader learns that it was not as simple 5-4 Supreme Court decision as the liberal for years etched on to the memory of Americans. There was first the actual vote count that had Bush victorious by 529 votes. You then have a 7-2 vote that held that the recount was chaotic and inconsistent. Non the less Bush started his first term under an extreme handicap where conviction to stay the course was a requirement
When I contrast Bush's failed nomination of Harriet Meyers to the Supreme Court to that of Obama's first selection; Meyers was not selected because she had no judicial record and she was currently working a close aid to Bush. By contrast, Obama's appointment, Kagan, carried the exact same baggage. Plus Kagan’s sexual orientation gave the view that "political correctness" compromised the clarity required for prudent confirmation. This selection once again demonstrates Bush being his own man in terms of selecting those around him. As it turned out Meyers was not a good decision yet it was Bush who rightly or wrongly saw in Meyers a juror who would not be swayed in Supreme Court decisions by her own personnel agenda and held that as a priority over he lack of bench experience. Bush's convictions did not always prevail.
When I turned to the stem cell chapter I thought why this would be a land mark decision, a test of Bush's conviction. I was unaware that it was this issue above all the rest where the poignancy in his critics struck deep. It was also this issue that galvanized the thick skin required to be the president of the United States. On the stem cell decision, this was his hardest decision, the one decision that was close and personal. He lost a sister where research may have helped. It was the one decision that the Press was most vitriol in Bush as a person. And it had the greatest ‘bash’ affect on him personally. What I did not know until I read this book is that it turns out Bush was right. Science found a way without using government funding, during his term, to harvest the same cells from skin. Killing embryos was then as is now not required for stem cell research. I am amazed at the non-reporting of the science discovery or the lack of any apology from the Press or his opponents.
9/11: Clarification points Bush had been told that a plane flew into the Trade Center when they were walking into the class room. It was not made clear it was a terrorist act. He was told about the second aircraft in front of the children. It was a purposeful decision to not look frantic. This was not for the children sake alone but for the terrorists that would be seeing his reaction on camera. It was a decision of courage. Not of a non-decision of frantic panic. Even Bush's advisors said don't say anything to the public yet. Bush was the voice of America not just the Commander in Chief giving immediate direction to first responders. He purposely made the decision to frame his reaction to that of undaunted. It was his personal and private conviction, confidence in that decision that enabled him to endure the merciless and reckless criticism from the liberal left that insisted on dividing the country for mere political reason.
In War Footing you come to understand the obstinacy and the agenda of the Democrats when Bush was establishing the Department of Homeland Security, the Democrats pushed back in an effort to make sure the Labor Unions that would staff it were sufficiently organized to secure collective bargaining. Let's compare Bush's Patriot Act with Obama's Health Care Bill. When the Patriot Act was signed it had a 98:1 vote of support. Obamacare required a Democrat Partisan cloture vote of 60:40. When the Patriot Act was signed, Democratic senator Patrick Lehey from Vermont and Chuck Schumer from New York both said we read this Act and it is fair and balanced. Nancy Pelosi said after Obama signed Obamacare "we don't know what's in it. But we will figure it out. The Patriot Act proved over and over as a critical component to our nations security. Bush however required conviction to endure the reckless criticism from the liberal left over this decision.
On water boarding; first contrary to the impression the Left including Obama on the campaign trail and the Press for six years implying that water boarding was standard practice to all POWs called it an egregious compromise of American values. I myself, a staunch defender of Bush, fell victim to the Press brain washing. It was not until 2008 that I became fully aware of the scope of water boarding, the whole truth Said Zubaydah one of the THREE people water boarded, "water boarding was a technique that allowed him to reach that threshold, fulfillment his religious duty and the cooperate.".
You must do this for all the brothers," he said.
Afghanistan: Bush closed with "Ultimately the only way the Taliban and al Qaeda can retake Afghanistan is if America abandons the country. Allowing the extremists to reclaim power would force Afghan women back into subservience, remove girls from school, and betray all the gains of the past nine years. It would endanger our security. After the Cold War, the United States gave up on Afghanistan. The result was chaos, civil war, the Taliban takeover, sanctuary for al Qaeda and the nightmare of 9/11. To forget that lesson would be a dreadful mistake. My fear is Obama even with his troop surge, has committed the United States to a deadline to abandon Afghanistan. He set the stage for a mood of American exhaustion on war. And we are witnessing an extreme sentiment now to abandon what was seen only 10 years earlier as a lesson learned. With the reality that Pakistan is very capable of harboring terrorists, we have gone from a conviction of Bush to stand up a free people focused on anything but international terrorism to a political agenda of Obama that will gradually find Afghanistan as equally dangerous as it was on September 11, 2001.
Iraq: on page 234 you read the question put in a way I had not heard before in the context of that time It’s a question that has a person pause. Perhaps be a little less critical. Bush puts it this way, "Letting a sworn enemy of America refuse to account for his weapons of mass destruction was a risk I could not afford to take. That question was asked to a brutal "elected" dictator who simply would not cooperate. UN resolution 687 mandated not only that Iraq be rid of WMD but also be rid of the ability to produce them. I, a pretty tuned in person on this subject, cannot recall from any Press report, the status of Iraq’s ability to produce WMD. I read in Known and Unknown of the official report on WMD, of which got very little press coverage. In that report it stated that Hussein had the capability to convert industrial sites in to WMD factories in as little as two weeks time. While the report said there was no capability for nuclear attacks, it made the following to provocative points. 1. Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qaeda - with world wide reach and extensive
terrorist infrastructure, and already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States - could perpetrate the type if terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct. 2. In such circumstances, he might decide that the extreme step if assisting the Islamist terrorist in conducting CBM [chemical or biological weapon] attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him. When asking whether Bush’s ‘conviction” effected his Iraq decision, one must be sure to put that decision in the context of 911 and then ask that critical question: would you take the risk of letting a sworn enemy of America refuse to account for his weapons of mass destruction.
The Mission Accomplished banner was not at any order of the Bush administration. Evidence to this was it was NOT consistent with his speech. He said the major combat mission has ended. And that was true. He also said we have a lot of work left to be done in order to leave behind a free Iraq. And the Press torched him. Contrarily Obama went to the cameras to announce the conclusion of combat in Iraq, with less than proper recognition of Bush, and still to leave behind four thousand combat troops who were still engaged with the enemy. Reports from the Press have become at best second page news. No one Has asked Obama about the combat troops still in Iraq a year later. I raise the contrast to once again examine the convection required of one president compared to his immediate predecessor who was his number one critic, finding his place in the White House specifically through criticism of conviction.
The strategy of the insurgents of Iraq in 2006 said Bush on page 260 was to present an image of Iraq as hopeless and un-win-able, swinging American public opinion against the war and forcing us to withdraw as we had in Vietnam. This lesson that our enemy, enemy in waiting, will wait as long as it takes as a strategy leverage political agendas has yet to be learned by our President Obama. As I read this with the news of Qaddafi murder on the radio, I can only surmise that Obama's campaign stance against Iraq and Afghanistan portrays Obama making the right call. Yet his abstinence to react properly and with full conviction to a crime he is witnessing has positioned America as an accomplice to murder. The mere facts that he has retreated behind the guise of NATO and has used the distant voce of Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State, only further develops the quagmire of international intrigue today versus the clear cut lines ever to be criticized found in Bush
In the events behind the Surge of troops in Iraq, Bush met with the survivors of over 550 fallen soldiers. He also read 14 biographies on Lincoln. He modeled after Lincoln in the midst of the reality of his unpopularity. Underscoring this introspective view Bush received daily briefings from the Situation Room, of the terror inflicted on Iraqi people. He also was apprised of the Iraqi people after realizing the Insurgents were not acting in their best interests, switching sides to the Americans. These were events that the Press chose to play down amidst the anti Bush drumbeat. It took real courage to put it all in the balance and make the right decision for the Surge. Courage and conviction will mark his presidency as even his successor in the announcement of success in Iraq failed to give proper recognition to the courage it took to lead not by popular opinion. I write this on the same day that I read about the UN voting, to restrain Qaddafi from his murderous terror. The difference here is Bush made it clear to the World what his convictions were. Obama simply followed the leadership of a foreign body. Amazingly, Americans once again find no fortitude to fight for freedom of ‘One Man’ as they let a border come between that which unites all men. And we have a president Obama, who like Clinton, who chooses to follow the leaders of Europe. In the end lives are at stake, no matter who leads. A sad note on American values when Obama and Clinton are favored over Bush. What Bush makes real clear in his book is the freedom of ‘One Man’ is the security of all men, including the United States of America.
Bush's chapter called Freedom agenda was a forty page summary of his diplomacy. What came out the ‘trot around the globe’ was a common theme. This is a mark of leadership akin to his father GH Bush, Reagan, Kennedy, Truman, Roosevelt, Churchill, Wilson. He set a standard and formed a policy around that standard, and he produced a strategy, enabling him to execute on a tactical plan. That standard was an individuals right to freedom. Policy around that standard stated that where there is institutionalized freedom, there is a mitigation of risk on American security. Tactically, where freedom did not ring and those leaders responsible who also pledged eminent danger or threat to the United States were challenged first through diplomacy, and diplomacy's big brother...war. Like his decisions or not, they were clearly vetted, communicated and executed upon. When contrasting to his immediate successor as well as his predecessor I felt more secure in the same way 20th century Americans felt with the aforementioned leaders. This will be Bush’s legacy.
Other challenges:
The Bush presidency sponsored prescription drug programs under a Medicaid reform bill. It was well defined, well debated, and passed with a compromise bipartisan vote. It distributed risk which made it one of the few bills to come in significantly under budget.
Contrasted against Obamacare where a cloture vote along strict party lines against the will of the majority of the people finds the dichotomy in moral fortitude between Bush Republicans and Obama Democrats.
Looking at Bush's failed Social Security reform efforts finds a well stated case for reform and hardened uncooperative Democrats trumpeting that Bush was "privatizing Social Security which was inaccurate. The sad result on this the general public was trained to see Bush as a spender and his reform would have reduced the budget by xxxx and would have fixed the problem instead of passing it on to the next generation , not two generations but the very next one, where it will see it's doom.
The Katrina drama is explained in traditional memoir fashion rose colored lens, or was it? When told- from first person you come away with only criticism of the Press for admonishing a President for playing the role of President in a cast of incompetent leaders in Louisiana. The governor never allowed federal troops in to assist. By day five Bush over rode her. The Mayor did not order the evacuation in time. From a Presidential standpoint Bush admits that his performance was appropriate technically, but his public relations response deserved the outcry it got. Has Obama been guilty of PR gaffs? My first response is the Boston police incident, where he over reacted inappropriately. My second is Libya, where he has enough evidential authority to bring Qaddfi to justice for Lockerbee and does nothing while human beings are being murdered. While the world
looks for a President, Obama once again "votes present." Rather than simply take Qaddfi as a criminal, he abdicates the action to NATO of which the USA is the leading partner. The only fool in the scheme is Obama himself.
I dreaded the challenge of reading the last chapter Financial Crisis. Early on Bush brings me back over to his side. He first puts his personal view of economics forward to set the tone against the noise of the Press and his opponents ranging from Hillary Clinton to Barak Obama to Keith Oberman. Then he sets a few things straight First is our surplus was based on projections of a tech bubble that would continue which didn't. Second 9/11 caused a collapse of that galvanized a recession that was officially under way one month after he was sworn into the first term of office.
This I knew. What I didn't know was. GW Bush's debt to GDP ratio was a percentage point below the mark of the 20th century average. Additionally to assuage my criticism of his spending, he could not line item veto pork or earmarks. He had to look at a Bill in whole and sign it or not. Oddly enough now that Obama era Republicans in have sworn away earmarks, Democrats who were so quick to criticize Bush on the same now claim earmarks only represent four percent of the budget. I now find the need for an apology first to myself for allowing myself to be drawn in by rhetoric from the left. And then to our 44th president for conceding ground to the left.
On Freddie & Fannie: in Bush's 2003 budget in recognizing that they had morphed into an institution that exceeded it's charter beyond promoting home ownership, he proposed a bill that would regulate the GSE’s. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, ranking Democrats on the Fed Committee with friends, former Clinton administration officials running the GSE's, went on the record and said "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis". In 2005 Bush raised a more alarming call for action and put forth through Senator Richard Shelby a bill to regulate the GSE's. The Democrats blocked the bill from passing. A President can only sign into law bills put in front of
him. Democrats prone to criticize Republicans for not regulating failed to do just that at a most critical point in our nations financial 21st century history. By 2008 Bush called for reform seventeen times before the threat of a credit melt down and the eighteenth call was finely acted on. In 2010 we continue to harangue Wall Street for their role when the house of cards collapsed on failed mortgages which are directly connected to the GSE's and legacy policy of the Clinton administration.
In reading Bush's account I am curious as to how much paper in housing George Sorros and people like him had and sold it short. Could the stanch supporters of the Democrat Party who are so quick to criticize Republicans for failing to regulate have benefited from Barney Frank infamous statement? I believe the right investigative journalist could write a good book on this subject. Keep in mind it would put no one in jail because the Democrats blocked any regulation. But would have a new emphasis on the term full disclosure. One could only pray there is a wiki-leak as the key to an investigation.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Churchill's Folly
Churchill’s Folly
by Christopher Catherwood
This book is a history book spanning a short three-year period of time in the Middle East following WWI. The title suggests there is an agenda to foil the reputation of Sir Winston Churchill. It suggests that history should blame Winston Churchill for the boarders and subsequent 80 years of turmoil culminating to our situation in Iraq today. As Catherwood lets the pedals of his story unfold, the bloom of his story finds the British Prime minister pulling the strings rendering our poor Churchill a puppet of shortsighted policy. This is not to let Churchill entirely off the hook; as his prime agenda was British centric with sole aim to reduce British financial Mesopotamian exposure. This stands out as his Achilles Heel and there is a corollary lesson to be learned in today’s Iraq. It is a lesson that Senator Barak Obama is blind to and Senator McCain, gives his full appreciation. But let me ask you, which title would sell more books’ Lloyd George’s Folly, or Churchill’s Folly.
Catherwood creates a backdrop to the “folly” first by describing a snap shot of history of the Middle East beginning with the family Ur. I get no further than the 2nd page and I learn the word anachronism and the family Ur, the beginning lineage of Abraham began in Iraq, is in opposition to Michener’s book “The Source” where Ur began in Israel. You also learn that the Fertile Crescent is limited to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and Israel has nothing to do with Fertile Land. By page 38 the reader is briefed on the history of the Middle East, which I found pretty concise. Added to the backdrop is a brief dossier on Churchill where the reader is then is introduced to Churchill’s fallibility. The son of a politician, he began as a liberal, and switched parties a few times in the early part of his career. Causes were more important to him than party. He is known to have had key failures leading to political exile. The first prominent one was Galapoli, which draws in Lloyd-George and haunts him throughout the book. I found it interesting to read in this book that in 1919 Britain was the largest Muslim power in the world. Finally Catherwood addresses what I call counter history where he disputes other historians including Sir Lawrence of Arabia.
Churchill was basically sent to the Middle East to settle on boarders for the area of land designated to Britain in 1919 as their sphere of influence (see my review on 1919). His mandate was to withdraw from the region with limited exposure. His challenges were first the Sykes-Picot Agreement when exposed appeared colonialist to the Arabs. Second was imperialism, as much with Feisal’s imperialism as British/French. Feisal was in import dictator. A case is made for the British to divert the alleged betrayal of the Arabs by the West on to Kemal Ataturk, who abolished the Caliph rule in the new Turkey. While not the main focus of the book the Greek-Turkey and the Palestine situations were also included as distractions to Churchill’s decisions in Iraq.
The appointment of Feisal as ruler of Iraq set in motion a minority rule of Sunni over Shia. The irony in today’s problems as portrayed in this book is there were ''democratically '' appointed Sunni Caliphs and Shia were not. Catherwood suggests installing a democracy goes against the majority within the boarders yet to be settled on. Outside the book however we find Iran is also ruled from a democratic foundation, albeit heavily influenced by Shia Umma. The reader learns that local leaders Naqib and Sayyid had aspirations to rule Iraq and this would have been in the interest of Iraqi’s. However this would have gone against the promises made to the Arabs that spawned from the British – France Sykes-Picot Agreement and perpetuated through the agenda Sir Lawrence of Arabia.
Pressure on Churchill for withdrawal came from five directions. First was Churchill’s penchant for an appointment to be the Exchequer of Britain, hence his overbearing conservative fiscal focus. Second a case is made for Churchill to appease the people of Mesopotamia as Britain was stretched too thin after the war. This plus the social discord and fighting in Britain was much the same as today. Britain walked away from an unsolved problem that they perpetuated. In 70 years what has changed both internally in any World Power country and internationally amongst the World Powers? Will we ever learn?
The third force in Churchill’s folly was Lloyd George second-guessing the decision to fight Turkey in 1914-1915 in Iraq. Had we left Kurdistan to Turkey, imagine its oil wealth Turkey, a democratically ruled and Western leaning country would hold today. Imagine that oil wealth in a democratic nation striving as hard as they do to be a part of the E U. That is indeed what is hoped for today in Iraq. Forth, in 1914-15 the prevailing world strategy was centered around colonialism, hence the Suez Cannel, hence Egypt. Fifth it was Sir Allenby and Sir Lawrence that pushed Hashemite rule in 1915 and on through this book. These five cards happened to be the only hand Churchill could play. He came to realize he was playing a losing hand while he was playing it. Hence the title of the book, Folly, which is as unfair as conceded in the letter Lloyd-George wrote to Churchill after he dealt the cards.
With Churchill’s dealt hand he formed a commission referred to by historians including Catherwood as Forty Thieves. Catherwood portrays Churchill’s task of bringing a consensus in Cairo in what was cast as a fate accompli as dictated by 10 Downing Street. It was a fate accompli giving Iraqi rule to the Hashimites’, Abdullah and clan. Israel was brought into the mix as well as Kurdistan only to represent distraction to Churchill in this book. At that time there were ''the people'' and a cause, and a rationale in both regions; but their was no leader to take immediate control and provide economic relief to the money thrown at the collapsed Ottoman Empire.
Churchill’s consistent refrain in Cairo was money driven. He had aspirations to head up the Exchequer in London so he sought all ideas that got Britain out of Iraq ASAP. Other factors contributing to the folly of decisions made in Cairo were France’s need for Aslace-Lorainne, a strong consideration for inclusion of Kurds into Iraq was to accelerate a reduction of British forces in lieu of Kurds to fend off Turkey. I have to make a note in the irony of the Kurds being commissioned by Turkey to exterminate Armenia only to be later met with Britain using the Kurds against Turkey and finally the Kurds being left with no sovereignty. I guess crime and violence that comes with being a “hired gun” doesn’t pay.
It was also interesting to read when the Allies liberated Arabs from Turkish rule; they also entitled them to a new rule over Kurds and Mesopotamians. They complied with Wilson’s 14 Points and violated them at the same time. Churchill’s did contemplate but did not execute on withdrawal plans to Basra that would have put in to affect the same partitions in Iraq as what Joe Biden proposes today, excluding a sovereign Kurdistan. Is there a final justice to be found in this equation? Imagine a Western leaning Turkey with expanded boarders to include Iraq’s northern providence, southern Kurdistan. Turkey would have oil wealth, but would they welcome in the large voice of the Kurds? Would the international voice accept this? All of a sudden Biden’s idea, while worth a closer examination, has question marks.
What Catherwood suggests in conclusion is that the job done right would have Churchill looking for a legitimate leader in the eyes of the people with a keen sense for a national identity coalesced around a.) A united international cause, b.) A shared enemy, c.) Separation of church and state, d.) Democratic process, or e.) Revert back to Ottoman style of local government, which is essentially to teach western city government, f.) Teach world humanities, g.) Focus/unite on economy, h.) Re focus on people assets. From 1921 to 1958 the government changed hands 58 times. Today in 2008 we need to be complete and on purpose this time or we may just be that common enemy.
by Christopher Catherwood
This book is a history book spanning a short three-year period of time in the Middle East following WWI. The title suggests there is an agenda to foil the reputation of Sir Winston Churchill. It suggests that history should blame Winston Churchill for the boarders and subsequent 80 years of turmoil culminating to our situation in Iraq today. As Catherwood lets the pedals of his story unfold, the bloom of his story finds the British Prime minister pulling the strings rendering our poor Churchill a puppet of shortsighted policy. This is not to let Churchill entirely off the hook; as his prime agenda was British centric with sole aim to reduce British financial Mesopotamian exposure. This stands out as his Achilles Heel and there is a corollary lesson to be learned in today’s Iraq. It is a lesson that Senator Barak Obama is blind to and Senator McCain, gives his full appreciation. But let me ask you, which title would sell more books’ Lloyd George’s Folly, or Churchill’s Folly.
Catherwood creates a backdrop to the “folly” first by describing a snap shot of history of the Middle East beginning with the family Ur. I get no further than the 2nd page and I learn the word anachronism and the family Ur, the beginning lineage of Abraham began in Iraq, is in opposition to Michener’s book “The Source” where Ur began in Israel. You also learn that the Fertile Crescent is limited to the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and Israel has nothing to do with Fertile Land. By page 38 the reader is briefed on the history of the Middle East, which I found pretty concise. Added to the backdrop is a brief dossier on Churchill where the reader is then is introduced to Churchill’s fallibility. The son of a politician, he began as a liberal, and switched parties a few times in the early part of his career. Causes were more important to him than party. He is known to have had key failures leading to political exile. The first prominent one was Galapoli, which draws in Lloyd-George and haunts him throughout the book. I found it interesting to read in this book that in 1919 Britain was the largest Muslim power in the world. Finally Catherwood addresses what I call counter history where he disputes other historians including Sir Lawrence of Arabia.
Churchill was basically sent to the Middle East to settle on boarders for the area of land designated to Britain in 1919 as their sphere of influence (see my review on 1919). His mandate was to withdraw from the region with limited exposure. His challenges were first the Sykes-Picot Agreement when exposed appeared colonialist to the Arabs. Second was imperialism, as much with Feisal’s imperialism as British/French. Feisal was in import dictator. A case is made for the British to divert the alleged betrayal of the Arabs by the West on to Kemal Ataturk, who abolished the Caliph rule in the new Turkey. While not the main focus of the book the Greek-Turkey and the Palestine situations were also included as distractions to Churchill’s decisions in Iraq.
The appointment of Feisal as ruler of Iraq set in motion a minority rule of Sunni over Shia. The irony in today’s problems as portrayed in this book is there were ''democratically '' appointed Sunni Caliphs and Shia were not. Catherwood suggests installing a democracy goes against the majority within the boarders yet to be settled on. Outside the book however we find Iran is also ruled from a democratic foundation, albeit heavily influenced by Shia Umma. The reader learns that local leaders Naqib and Sayyid had aspirations to rule Iraq and this would have been in the interest of Iraqi’s. However this would have gone against the promises made to the Arabs that spawned from the British – France Sykes-Picot Agreement and perpetuated through the agenda Sir Lawrence of Arabia.
Pressure on Churchill for withdrawal came from five directions. First was Churchill’s penchant for an appointment to be the Exchequer of Britain, hence his overbearing conservative fiscal focus. Second a case is made for Churchill to appease the people of Mesopotamia as Britain was stretched too thin after the war. This plus the social discord and fighting in Britain was much the same as today. Britain walked away from an unsolved problem that they perpetuated. In 70 years what has changed both internally in any World Power country and internationally amongst the World Powers? Will we ever learn?
The third force in Churchill’s folly was Lloyd George second-guessing the decision to fight Turkey in 1914-1915 in Iraq. Had we left Kurdistan to Turkey, imagine its oil wealth Turkey, a democratically ruled and Western leaning country would hold today. Imagine that oil wealth in a democratic nation striving as hard as they do to be a part of the E U. That is indeed what is hoped for today in Iraq. Forth, in 1914-15 the prevailing world strategy was centered around colonialism, hence the Suez Cannel, hence Egypt. Fifth it was Sir Allenby and Sir Lawrence that pushed Hashemite rule in 1915 and on through this book. These five cards happened to be the only hand Churchill could play. He came to realize he was playing a losing hand while he was playing it. Hence the title of the book, Folly, which is as unfair as conceded in the letter Lloyd-George wrote to Churchill after he dealt the cards.
With Churchill’s dealt hand he formed a commission referred to by historians including Catherwood as Forty Thieves. Catherwood portrays Churchill’s task of bringing a consensus in Cairo in what was cast as a fate accompli as dictated by 10 Downing Street. It was a fate accompli giving Iraqi rule to the Hashimites’, Abdullah and clan. Israel was brought into the mix as well as Kurdistan only to represent distraction to Churchill in this book. At that time there were ''the people'' and a cause, and a rationale in both regions; but their was no leader to take immediate control and provide economic relief to the money thrown at the collapsed Ottoman Empire.
Churchill’s consistent refrain in Cairo was money driven. He had aspirations to head up the Exchequer in London so he sought all ideas that got Britain out of Iraq ASAP. Other factors contributing to the folly of decisions made in Cairo were France’s need for Aslace-Lorainne, a strong consideration for inclusion of Kurds into Iraq was to accelerate a reduction of British forces in lieu of Kurds to fend off Turkey. I have to make a note in the irony of the Kurds being commissioned by Turkey to exterminate Armenia only to be later met with Britain using the Kurds against Turkey and finally the Kurds being left with no sovereignty. I guess crime and violence that comes with being a “hired gun” doesn’t pay.
It was also interesting to read when the Allies liberated Arabs from Turkish rule; they also entitled them to a new rule over Kurds and Mesopotamians. They complied with Wilson’s 14 Points and violated them at the same time. Churchill’s did contemplate but did not execute on withdrawal plans to Basra that would have put in to affect the same partitions in Iraq as what Joe Biden proposes today, excluding a sovereign Kurdistan. Is there a final justice to be found in this equation? Imagine a Western leaning Turkey with expanded boarders to include Iraq’s northern providence, southern Kurdistan. Turkey would have oil wealth, but would they welcome in the large voice of the Kurds? Would the international voice accept this? All of a sudden Biden’s idea, while worth a closer examination, has question marks.
What Catherwood suggests in conclusion is that the job done right would have Churchill looking for a legitimate leader in the eyes of the people with a keen sense for a national identity coalesced around a.) A united international cause, b.) A shared enemy, c.) Separation of church and state, d.) Democratic process, or e.) Revert back to Ottoman style of local government, which is essentially to teach western city government, f.) Teach world humanities, g.) Focus/unite on economy, h.) Re focus on people assets. From 1921 to 1958 the government changed hands 58 times. Today in 2008 we need to be complete and on purpose this time or we may just be that common enemy.
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