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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, September 25, 2004
Why I'm Not Blogging Much At the Moment I am working my way through dozens of pages of notes and hundreds of photocopies from my trip to Philadelphia. Many of the photocopies were to verify the accuracy of quotes and facts contained in my manuscript. When I first started this project, I didn't photocopy some sources (trying to save money). Now I am going through and verifying every fact and quote. In a very few cases, perhaps five so far, I have been unable to verify a fact, probably because I wrote a page number wrong. Professional historians are given a lot of slack on this sort of thing (especially if they are writing in support of gun control); I have to have everything absolutely perfect--and then the "professional historians" will find some other basis for attacking the credibility of what I produce. Friday, September 24, 2004
Windvane Kerry Flip-Flops Again First he says this: GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz., Aug. 9 -- Responding to President Bush's challenge to clarify his position, Sen. John F. Kerry said Monday that he still would have voted to authorize the war in Iraq even if he had known then that U.S. and allied forces would not find weapons of mass destruction.Then, a month later, this: "GREENSBORO, N.C. — The "only legitimate reason" for invading Iraq was the threat of weapons of mass destruction, Sen. John Kerry said yesterday, less than a month after he said he would have voted to authorize war even if he knew such weapons would not be found." Clear enough? For & Against Concealed Carry I was wandering around Michael Williams' blog recently (where some often very thoughtful materials appears), and found a really astonishing entry detailing his attempt at getting Hawthorne, California, Police Department to issue him a concealed weapon permit. California is one of the relatively few states left that allows sheriffs and police chiefs nearly unlimited discretion in issuing such permits--and for the most part, the people that get permits in the urban counties, where a concealed handgun is a darn good idea, are celebrities with histories of violence, like Sean Penn. The squeaky clean sorts usually have no chance at all. What's really amusing about this particular blog entry are the comments: I just...I just blink my eyes in amazement everytime this crops up - actually watching people feel the need to carry a concealed weapon in public... This, Unfortunately, Is Not Unusual In The Better Universities What makes this news is that a government agency has finally said what is actually widespread in the better universities in America: An English professor at the University of North Carolina illegally subjected a student to "intentional discrimination and harassment" because he was "a white, heterosexual Christian male" who expressed disapproval of homosexuality, the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights has ruled. In Defense Of Unilateral, Pre-Emptive War From the Washington Times, quoting a 1997 episode of "Crossfire": "We know we can't count on the French. We know we can't count on the Russians," said Mr. Kerry. "We know that Iraq is a danger to the United States, and we reserve the right to take pre-emptive action whenever we feel it's in our national interest." UPDATE: Other conservative bloggers are expressing skepticism, since they haven't seen the tape, and a transcript doesn't quite match this. Thursday, September 23, 2004
As Jim Nabors Would Say, "Surprise! Surprise!" This article in Editor & Publisher tries to blame CBS and its inability to recognize an obvious fraud, but I think the problem is a big larger than that: In the wake of the CBS "60 Minutes" controversy, a new Gallup Poll finds the news media's credibility has declined significantly among the public.Look, boys and girls, for the last year, the news media has been bending over forward to make Bush look bad, and the Iraq situation look hopeless. Admittedly, they have had plenty of material to work with on this--but a fair number of Americans now have sufficient variety of news sources to know that the Iraq situation, overall, is not quite as horrible as the mainstream media have tried to paint it. That this is being done for partisan purposes is really obvious. No wonder trust is falling--and as the article points out, not just among Republicans: "One might assume that if the CBS News story were the culprit, that this would be reflected in a disproportionately large drop in confidence in the media among Republicans. However, the data on this is not conclusive. Trust in the news media is typically lower among Republicans, but all three partisan groups show a significant decline in confidence in the media since last year. It did drop by a somewhat greater degree among Republicans than Democrats, however." Empty Riverbeds A great quote that reveals a deeper problem than Turkey joining the EU: BRUSSELS, Sept 23 (Reuters) - French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin voiced misgivings on Thursday about Turkey joining the EU, asking if Europe really wanted "the river of Islam to enter the riverbed of secularism."Hey, guess what? If that riverbed had anything in it, "the river of Islam" probably wouldn't have such an easy time filling the void. I have my own misgivings about this matter, simply because Islam has very different traditions from post-Christian Europe. Yes, once upon a time, Europe was dominated by Christianity. Now places like France, Germany, and Britain have a lot of nice tourist attractions that used to be churches. Marriage Amendment Update Kentucky has one on the ballot this year: as of 9/10, it's winning 72%-25%. Kerry Is In Big Trouble, Electorally This survey shows Bush and Kerry dead even in Maryland 48%-48% (as of 9/20) and Bush a point ahead of Kerry in Oregon 48%-47% (as of 9/22). Margin of error is 3.7% for Oregon and 4.1% for Maryland, so Kerry could still win both states by 7-8% (Bush could actually have 44.%3 and Kerry could have 51.7% in Oregon, for example), but that both of these are now swing states is just astonishingly bad news for Kerry's performance. It makes you wonder--how much worse could Howard Dean have done? Of course, Kerry's difficulty here is that he is busy trying to be both Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman on foreign policy. Spencer over at BYU Law Blog gives two completely opposite statements from Kerry about the decision to go to war--one from 9/20, and one from 8/9. I remember both statements, but it's nice to see them in print. UPDATE: It is worse than I thought for Kerry. Bush is ahead in New Jersey by four points. Admittedly, a 3.7% margin of error means that Kerry could still win New Jersey, but New Jersey should be a safe state for a Democrat--I mean, the Mafia largely runs the place. An Astonishing Journal Article About Near Death Experiences I can see why this paper published in the British medical journal Resuscitation didn't get much popular press attention: In a prospective study, we included 344 consecutive cardiac patients who were successfully resuscitated after cardiac arrest in ten Dutch hospitals. We compared demographic, medical, pharmacological, and psychological data between patients who reported NDE and patients who did not (controls) after resuscitation. In a longitudinal study of life changes after NDE, we compared the groups 2 and 8 years later.Death was in most cases measured by the absence of brain waves. They found that while most patients did not have NDEs, there was remarkable similarity in them, and no obvious explanation for why some had them, and others did not. They found that NDE caused profound changes in these people's lives--and I would say for the better. Most remarkable is this: During the pilot phase in one of the hospitals, a coronary-care-unit nurse reported a veridical out-of-body experience of a resuscitated patient: Defining Reckless Sex in Law This proposal by law professors seeks to solve the problem of date rape and STDs by defining reckless sex as failure to use a condom on first-time sex with a woman. The comments on this are mostly along the lines of, unworkable, too much like sodomy laws, treats women like children, and "This is one the stupidest things I've ever read. How about a law against shaking hands without gloves?" Instapundit doesn't think much of the proposal either. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." The corollary to that is, "Whatever your occupation is, your solution to the problem will make use of it." Law professors, of course, think of writing a law. A doctor might solve the problem with mandatory weekly STD inspections (by a licensed doctor, of course). A software engineer would write something for PDAs that would involve both parties making their medical history and previous arrest record available to each other. A condom manufacturer's solution would be a condom dispenser in every hotel room. The clergyman's solution involves more prayer about sin. I don't even want to think what a plumber's solution would be. Here's the core problem: selfishness. Kobe Bryant now acknowledges that what he thought was consensual, his victim thought was not. Maybe Kobe needs to think of something besides himself. Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Remember That Amusing Fraud? 
The one that claims to show what scientists in 1954 thought would be the home computer of 2004? Two readers have already informed me where the picture came from. Another tells me: "That picture is a fraud. It is actually a picture of Col. Jerry Killian with his typesetting system." Entertainment Industry Soaking Kids in Sexually Charged Images I'm sure that has nothing to do with this: MILWAUKEE - An 11-year-old boy was charged Wednesday with raping a 76-year-old neighborhood woman in her home as three of his friends stood watch. Please Prove To Me That Michelle Malkin Made This Up But this fits in with the left's control of the public school teaching establishment way too well: The story about a mock terrorism drill involving a local school district in the Muskegon Chronicle starts out innocently enough:Oh yeah, public school teachers seem to know why homeschoolers are doing what they are doing: More than 25 percent of public school teachers in Washington and Baltimore send their children to private schools, a new study reports. UPDATE: No, she didn't make it up. I can't find the original story, but here's the Muskegon Chronicle's follow up article about it. Labels: terrorism Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Attending Your Own Funeral National Lampoon, some years back, wrote a very funny satire on Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, titled Kehlog Albran's The Profit. One line out of it comes to mind when I read the following news story: "Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funerals." Well, maybe they can: Dane Squires' friends and family all gathered at a Toronto funeral home Thursday to say goodbye to the retired welder. An Amusing Fraud, I Suspect But I still got a good laugh out of it. The steering wheels are the tipoff that this isn't what it claims.
UPDATE: One reader recognized the console, and pointed to this picture of a DEC LA36 console from 1974. Another pointed me to this submarmine mockup picture. Monday, September 20, 2004
Sodomy As "Icky" If the title hasn't driven you off, the rest of this post may be a bit more explicit in its discussion of homosexual practices than you will feel comfortable reading. This seems to be Professor Volokh's day for strawman arguments, quoting a reader that the objection to homosexuality is: I think the basic problem is simple: many people find anal sex to be gross. Unfortunately, in thinking so, people seem to very carefully overlook the reality that pretty much EVERY form of sex is pretty darn gross from the standpoint of "finer sensibilities."I don't find sodomy "gross." I do find anal-oral contact (which is a part of what some homosexuals do) to be gross, but it's also profoundly unhygenic. You don't even need to be a narrow-minded bigot to find that disturbing, because it provides a mechanism for spreading all sorts of diseases that otherwise would only be a problem if you insisted on drinking sewer water. What I find gross--and I suspect that I speak for a lot of Americans--isn't oral sex, or even sodomy. What we find gross are the other behaviors that are part of homosexual culture. Now, before I start listing them, let me emphasize that not every male homosexual does all of these things. But I would suspect that the group of homosexual men who don't engage in one of these behaviors is pretty darn small (the links are to soc.motss postings in which homosexuals discuss their activities or otherwise acknowledge the importance of the behavior to their culture): coprophilia (sexual pleasure from eating feces or being defecated on); "golden showers" (sexual pleasure from drinking urine or being urinated on); cross-dressing for sexual stimulation of yourself or others; sex so promiscuous that you don't even see your partner's face, much less know their name; exhibitionism (such as being naked and having sex in the middle of a public street); sadism; masochism; bondage and discipline; pedophilia; various forms of fetishism involving objects or leather; fisting. Sure, you can find straight people that do most of these things, but it doesn't take much living in the San Francisco Bay Area to know that perhaps 5% of the straight population does any of these items--but gay men have built a whole culture around these paraphilias. Policing Your Own Professor Volokh points to Jimmy Swaggart making some reprehensible remarks, and says, But it seems to me that decent Christians ought to condemn this defender of murder, who publicly says that he'd violate the Ten Commandments when someone "looks at [him]" the wrong way, while purporting to preach God's word and lead Christian congregations. Tell us, at least, that this supposed Christian — who was once one of the nation's leading evangelists, until he was tripped up by another of the Commandments — doesn't speak for you.If I had been aware of Swaggart's remarks, I would have been quick to condemn it. But guess what? Not many people pay much attention to Swaggart anymore after the incidents with the prostitutes and the police. I certainly wasn't aware of Swaggart's remarks (admittedly, I was in Philadelphia this last week). I do agree that condemning such remarks is appropriate. If Christians were widely aware of those remarks, and said nothing, or made excuses or rationalizations, it would quite legitimate to assume that perhaps Swaggart spoke for a lot of other Christians. So what should we assume when pedophile advocacy groups march in gay pride parades (where they are impossible to miss), and homosexuals either refuse to condemn them, or make excuses for their presence? According to Professor Volokh's standard, it seems, there is a message here. Professor Volokh makes the distinction Christianity is a belief system — not just an involuntary status such as race or ethnicity, but a consciously chosen belief system that is based on certain writings and certain traditions.Of course, not everyone buys that homosexuality is "an involuntary status." We know that about half of homosexuals who are serious about making the change succeed. I've even read remarks by homosexuals who insist that they chose homosexuality (some sort of "I'm in control of my destiny" thing). Isn't it interesting how the same obligation to condemn outrageous remarks by one tiny little subgroup don't apply to homosexuals and NAMBLA? There is, of course, one difference. When the International Lesbian and Gay Organization (which had UN observer status) expelled NAMBLA and their Dutch counterpart some years ago (in a fiercely fought debate), it destroyed the organization--the ILGO lost its funding, and pretty well ceased to exist. Bake Sales For Bombers A friend in Sacramento tells me this story which is both sad and encouraging. It's sad that the military is this short of funds, and encouraging that citizens are recognizing the sacrifices our military are making, and participating in what little ways they can: ... that I cannot find on any local website was on TV Polygamy's Coming This column by Mark Steyn points out that there is a larger constitutency for polygamy than for gay marriage--and those advocates of gay marriage who pretend that one won't lead to the other are being, at best, ingenuous: If you suggest, as some defendants of “traditional marriage” do, that gay marriage is the slippery slope to polygamy and bestiality, the activists roll their eyes and go into “Oh, come off it, you can’t be serious” mode. Like the chichi gay couple from New York who’ve built their dream home in rural Vermont, they don’t want any other incomers muscling in. Gay marriage, they assure us, is the merest amendment to traditional marriage, and once we’ve done that we’ll pull up the drawbridge.Make no mistake about it: you can't strike down homosexual marriage laws because they discriminate and are only based on religious morality, and pretend that polygamy laws will survive that same test. Labels: polygamy I Can't Quite Believe That This Ad Was For Real Over here is a picture of an ad of New York City before and after 9/11, with the World Trade Center towers of course gone: for the online version of El Pais, Spain's main newspaper which belongs to the PRISA group, the pro-Socialist media organization that, together with its sister SER radio network, was behind the agit-prop campaign after the March 11 bombings.The caption, assuming the translation is correct, was You can do a lot in one single day; just imagine what can happen in three months France Is Not An Ally This absolutely amazing news story just flabbergasts me: The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France. Can You Find This Statute? Professor Saul Cornell, explaining that the history of gun control laws in the Revolutionary period demonstrates that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right, makes this claim (on p. 64): The Massachusetts Act for the Prudent Storage of Gunpowder. This is a law that effectively makes it illegal in the city of Boston to have a loaded firearm. To have a loaded firearm in the city of Boston in the 1780s is against the law. The founding fathers were willing to ban loaded guns in the city of Boston.This is a pretty interesting claim, especially because Cornell uses the weasel word "effectively" instead of saying that the law prohibited possession of loaded firearms. When I was at the Hagley Library, I found "An act, further regulating the storage, safe keeping, and transportation of gunpowder, in the town of Boston, together with the rules and regulations of the firewards, relative to the same." published in 1821. This was a Boston city ordinance that was certainly intended to promote "Prudent Storage" of gunpowder. On p. 1, it prohibits keeping within town, on any wharf, or on board ship, more than five pounds of gunpowder, with exemptions for those "on military duty in the public service of the United States, or of this Commonwealth...." To sell gunpowder also required a license from the firewardens. On p. 2, the firewardens are given authority to regulate the transportation and storage of gunpowder by licensed dealers. On p. 7, the implementing regulations prohibited licensed retailers of gunpowder from having more than 25 pounds "in the place or building designated in their license" and no individual container could hold more than twelve and a half pounds. Wholesalers on pp. 7-8 were allowed to store 100 pounds, with detailed specification of containers. Dealers were required to have a warning sign identifying their building as being a gunpowder dealer. All other gunpowder was to be kept in the public magazines (p. 8)--although it appears that this applied only to the licensed dealers, not to private parties having quantities under five pounds in their homes. "No Gunpowder shall be kept, otherwise than as before provided for licensed dealers, at any place within the town, except in the Magazines at Fort Strong and South Boston, which are hereby established as places of deposit for Gunpowder belonging to licensed dealers." (p. 8) I haven't found the 1786 statute to which Cornell refers. I find it easy to believe that if it was similar to this 1821 ordinance, it would be possible for Cornell to read it in a hurry and come away with the impression that no one was allowed to keep gunpowder at home. If you have access to the 1786 Massachusetts statute to which Cornell refers at your library, I would be very pleased if you could get me a copy of it. UPDATE: Professor Cornell provided me a copy of the statute. The preamble explains its purpose: Whereas the depositing of loaded arms in the houses of the town of Boston, is dangerous to the lives of those who are disposed to exert themselves when a fire happens to break out in the said town....The preamble and the first section seem to apply only to loaded firearms left in buildings, not those carried on the person. Remember that Boston at the time had very, very little crime, and it was probably true that a loaded firearm represented far more of a hazard to those putting out fires than the risk of criminal attack was to the general population. I fail to see how this ordinance in any way shows that there was no notion of an individual right to own a gun. UPDATE 2: The more I think about the ordinance, the more interesting it is. It seems likely that loaded firearms discharging during home fires was not an extraordinarily rare occurrence--which would suggest that loaded firearms in homes was pretty common. Consider the intersection of "homes with loaded firearms" and "homes that burn down in any given year." While house fires are pretty common in that time, I doubt that even 5% of Boston homes burned in any given year. Even if a house burned, it seems unlikely that every house fire resulted in a discharge, simply because a house on fire doesn't necessarily burn the whole house. This ordinance suggests what the evidence generally shows for the period: gun ownership was very common, and apparently a fair number of Bostonians left guns loaded. Labels: gun rights Now, To The Meat of Why I Went To Philly No, it wasn't for a Philly Cheese Steak (but I will be blogging about that as well, later). The university press that last looked at my book sent me a "revise and resubmit" letter, with a number of suggestions for ways to make the book stronger. One of the requests was more unpublished primary sources. About 80% of the footnotes are citing primary sources, but nearly all are published books. My purpose for this trip was to look through papers at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia, and the Hagley Library in Wilmington, Delaware. Lots of interesting stuff, and a few surprises! It is a very strange feeling to be holding ledger books and letters written more than two centuries ago. It makes you very careful when you turn a page, or unfold a letter. The HSP had the papers of William Henry and some of his descendants. William Henry was a colonial gun maker. Contrary to Bellesiles's claim that there were no gun manufacturing operations in colonial America--and that Americans could not make gunlocks until 1848, importing them from Britain--I found an invoice showing that on January 26, 1765, "Mr. John Henry Bought of Simons & Henry" a collection of dozens to hundreds of parts, many of which are clearly gun parts, and specifically gunlock parts. "93 Hamers... 77 Cocks... 81 Cock Pins... 90 Bridles... 79 Tumblers... 2 Groce Gun Bolts... 258 Fuzee Main Springs... 281 Hamer Springs... 263 Cocks... 278 Cock Pins... 305 Bridles... 271 Tumblers... 225 Forg'd Britches..." William Henry was a local politician, and during the Revolutionary War, he was also a one man military-industrial complex. While going through his papers, I found letters between him and the Continental Congress ordering up shoes, belts, bayonets, scabbards, rifles, muskets, cartridge boxes, etc.--and in pretty substantial numbers. While these letters are necessarily incomplete, one example gives some flavor for William Henry's role, and the scale of his operations: A War Office letter of May 10, 1779 thanks Henry for filling the order for 200 bayonet sheaths, 200 bayonet belts, and 200 cartouch boxes. Then they request whatever he has left. Henry's May 13, 1779 reply tells them that he available 243 bayonet belts, 358 cartouch boxes, 54 muskets with bayonets, 300 muskets wanting bayonets. There are gobs of documents from the early Republic period, when he was making guns for the federal government, for state governments, and for individuals. The scale is pretty massive. The Hagley Library had, to my surprise, even more of the Henry family papers, including ledger books for the gun business, and the scale was pretty massive. There are thousands of guns being made each year by the 1830s, some for the American Fur Company (who used them as trade goods to the Indians) as well as a sizeable civilian market for rifles and pistols. There is also an increasing sophistication of the accounting, with calculations of net profit, materials costs, total sales, labor costs, estimated value of tools in the factory, and one amazing "what-if" spreadsheet from 1818-19 showing return on sales for various assumptions of costs of materials. Very interesting. I will be folding these materials into my book, and trying to get it polished up for resubmission in the next two months. I wish that there was a way to make a living as an historian--it's much more fun than being a software engineer. Security and Flying Issues I visited the Liberty Bell Center across from Independence Hall. Entry required an even more careful search for weapons and explosives than you get at airports. It was somewhat ironic that the only place I visited in Philadelphia where I was not allowed to carry a gun was where our Constitution was written. Not impressed with the ranger leading the tour guide of Independence Hall. He was not a spectacularly effective speaker, and gave what I would consider a pretty sloppy and not terribly interesting presentation of the historical significance of the building and the events that took place in it. At the beginning of the tour, he was trying to build rapport with the audience by asking questions about where everyone was from. One young lady said "Thailand" which he clearly mistook for Taiwan. If you ask questions, you need to listen to the answers. On the United flight back, a cocktail napkin imprinted: "Our flight attendants can speak over 30 languages and dialects. Chances are, they speak yours." But the napkin says this in English only! New security measures, at least on United flights: no standing in the galley areas. Observations About Pennsylvania Worth What You Paid For Them Once I left the Philadelphia area, Pennsylvania was beautiful! Some have claimed that a squirrel could have traveled from Maine to Georgia when the Europeans arrived, never touching the ground, by just hopping from tree to tree. I don't know if I quite believe that, but the dense mixed forests of southeastern Pennsylvania are achingly beautiful--especially to those of us who now live in high desert. Now I start ranting. Filthadelphia, however, is another matter. Yes, I know it's a big city. But does it have to be that poor, and that dirty? The slum of Chester, in particular, is inexcusable. If this were 1964, and I looked at a place as depressing, dirty, and decayed as Chester, I would almost certainly have backed the Great Society that President Johnson wanted. But after more than thirty years of the Great Society, what is Chester? A vast slum, and most of Philadelphia wasn't dramatically better. P.J. O'Rourke says that his grandmother once told him, "You're never too poor to pick up your yard." It's true. Chester, and to a lesser extent Philadelphia, were covered in trash, overgrown lawns, and generally evidence that the population doesn't give a damn how trashy their homes look. The roads in most of Pennsylvania were well maintained. What excuse do the Philadelphia and Chester city governments have? Road repairs aren't cheap, but at least you could put some of the unemployed to work doing something useful. Like a lot of other liberal controlled communities, there seemed to be a very dramatic divide between rich and poor, with a lot of wealth, and a lot of poverty. There must be a middle class there somewhere, but it was not much in evidence. End of rant. I spent a bit of time at the University of Pennsylvania, and I was surprised at how clean-cut the kids were. I was there on three different days, walking around campus to get to the library. I looked carefully--I saw one facial piercing--a relatively subtle nose ring on one girl. In Philadelphia itself, I saw the sort of wretched excess that I associate with California colleges--big gaudy rings through the septum (cannibal style), tattoos everywhere, etc. There may be hope for the younger generation--perhaps they are putting an emphasis on school, not exhibitionism. "Roosevelt in 1944" Bumper Sticker I saw this in Philadelphia the other day. It was a campaign style bumper sticker: "Roosevelt in 1944" on a car with a Temple University bumper sticker, and a driver almost old enough to remember Roosevelt. Good analogy: both were governing in the midst of war that started during the term in which they were running for re-election. There was a significant level of really visceral hatred of FDR, based on a perception that traditional liberties were being taken away by an expanding government (although most of this hatred was from before the start of the war, and was related to economic liberties, not civil liberties). There were criticisms at the time that we were not adequately prepared to prevent this surprise attack, and like the criticisms of the Bush Administration not being adequately prepared for 9/11, they have some merit. There were some people back then prepared to believe that FDR intentionally allowed Pearl Harbor to get us into the war, much as there are some today prepared to believe that Bush knew in advance about the attacks, and made no effort to stop them. The same crowd, in both cases, insists on seeing conspiracy or willful failure to stop the attacks, rather than admit that there were assumptions brought to the table that caused them. In the case of Pearl Harbor, racist assumptions about the ability of the Japanese had lulled Americans into thinking that we had relatively little to fear from them. In the case of 9/11, Bush Administration officials assumed that the attacks would be against U.S. interests or allies abroad. One area that shows the difference between then and now, however, is the willingness of Americans to tolerate combat deaths. The D-Day operations turned out to be successful, but there were very serious mistakes that made it very costly for us. There were plenty of individual days with more deaths than we have suffered during the entire Iraq war. Another similarity (although obviously not visible during the 1944 election campaign) was that post-war Germany would remain a significant problem in terms of guerilla attacks and what some saw as misadministration of civil affairs for a couple of years after victory. The level of violence wasn't as high in post-war Germany as in Iraq, but some of the difference was that Hitler's devoted followers seem to have accepted the occupation a bit better than Hussein's followers. Germany had suffered appalling losses in the bombing campaign, and in combat. The far more surgical (although not bloodless) invasion of Iraq left many of Hussein's partisans and fellow criminals alive. Another distinguishing characteristic is that Germany was the heart of the National Socialist ideology, and most other ideological movements of the time were competitors to National Socialism. Once Germany fell, there were no fighters coming in from other countries to continue the struggle. Hitler's death may also have contributed to the relatively light resistance, although I am reluctant to draw the analogy too strongly. It appears that at least some of the foreign fighters (probaly most of them), are not fighting for Hussein, or for Iraq, but against the United States, and for Islamofascism. One other difference between 1944 and 2004: intellectuals and major media opinion makers seem to have been overwhelmingly on the side of defeating the Axis forms of totalitarianism. This does not seem to be the case with respect to Islamofascism. Back From Philly I'll be blogging up a storm this evening. Very, very interesting. I saw the oldest "what-if" spreadsheet yet--from the 1820s. (Obviously, produced on paper. No, I didn't try to see if I could re-create in Excel, and have it match up like the Bush Air National Guard memos!) |
