Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

I wrote my senior thesis on that war. I wish I could say that I enjoy seeing some of my points being reinforced by current events. I only hope that we do not face a collapse of the government in the same fashion that France did.

When you're done with that, read Tim Judah's "Kosovo." Follow it with Philipp Gourevitch's "We Wish to Inform You..."

You will despair of the human race.

If you think that's scary, try some of the novels by Yasmina Khadra (a once member of the government armed forces, now exiled in France because his books, although he wrote them under a false name).

At least as long as you feel that reading Balzac tells you more on 19th century bourgeois society than tons of politological literature (as F. Engels once remarked), or reading Chandler tells you more on mid-20th-century USA than many other books.

A great and scary read, even if he was William F. Buckley's prep school roommate.

Don't forget, although "Savage War" is "out of print" as per the US Amazon site, it's still available as a reprint by Pan on the UK Amazon site. The link to the UK site is at the bottom of the page Brad linked.

Many a time a book I can't get stateside I could retrieve from the UK.

- Bob Brandon

And don't forget Fromkin's 'A Peace to End All Peace', which tells the story of How We Got There from the beginning.

Moved and seconded.

Anyone punditing for pay who hasn't read Fromkin, and Horne, is faking it...

In light of the Madrid bombing, France has raised their terror alert level from:
"RUN" to "HIDE".

The only two higher levels in France are:
"COLLABORATE" and "SURRENDER".

Yes it's a joke, but it's based in history. France has been a military joke since the battle of Waterloo.

With an almost two century record of military ineptness, I don't see how it applies to the USA unless Kerry wins in November.

Vietnam, which was started and escalated under Democrats, was only "lost" when the Democrats cowardly reversed their support for that worthy effort.

IF NOTHING IS WORTH YOUR LIFE, THEN YOUR LIFE IS WORTH NOTHING.

Adrian VNEV

Adrian,

Nice Aphorism, but not to the point. The point is, neither you nor President Bush gets to determine what is "worth" my life, or the lives of my loved ones, or what my liberties are, or what is worth the lives of unknown Iraqi civilians. That might be something we should have a huge public debate on, before we commit troops. Like everyone else in this country I think there are many things that are "worth" fighting for, and yes, even worse losing my life for, but I don't agree with you that throwing thousands of other people's lives away is the same thing. And I certainly don't agree that throwing thousands of young american and Iraqi lives away to secure oil for you SUV is one of them.

Kate Gilbert

The classic film the Battle of Algiers (screened at the Pentagon last summer!) is also a must see these days. I got it on DVD from UK Amazon. You'll need a region-free DVD player to watch it in the States.

I, too, read A Peace to End All Peace last summer and am still stunned by how we much we're reliving the British colonial experience.

Here's one of favorite excerpts (Click my name for one of my blog posts on the book):

p. 307: It was evident that London either was not aware of, or had given no thought to, the population mix of the Mesopotamian provinces. The antipathy between the minority of Moslems who were Sunnis and the majority who were Shi'ites, the rivalries of tribes and clans, the historic and geographic divisions of the provinces, and the commercial predominance of the Jewish community in the city of Baghada made if difficult to achieve a single unified government that was at the same time representative, effective, and widely supported.

"The point is, neither you nor President Bush gets to determine what is "worth" my life, or the lives of my loved ones, or what my liberties are, or what is worth the lives of unknown Iraqi civilians...
Posted by Kate Gilbert"

With regard to the first point, our troops are currently all volunteers, however, I believe the state has a legitimate claim on our lives, including yours, if our nation's existance is threatened.

I believe the second point is specious. It was used by the American left to keep us out of WW2 and to allow the murder of the Jews and other "undesireables" until Hitler invaded The Soviet Union.

Adrian

Mr. Spidle,

A million French soldiers died in the trenches of WWI, and the Germans never saw Paris. You owe an apology to every single one of them.

Bill Burns

"A million French soldiers died in the trenches of WWI, and the Germans never saw Paris. You owe an apology to every single one of them.
Posted by Bill Burns"

Military prowess is not measured by dying for your country. It's measured by making your enemies die for their country and, most importantly, VICTORY.

Adrian

In re Adrian's comments,

France militarily won in Algeria; the FLN was completely defeated and its military wing effectively contained in Tunisia. France lost the political war, as Algerians clearly stopped tolerating French imperial rule and France wasn't willing to bear the costs of winning the war -- i.e., engage in widespread torture, bombing of villages, the relocation (regroupement) of whole populations 2 million + to abyssmal conditions. The Algerian death toll was between 350,000 (the French estimate) and 1.5 million (the Algerian estimate). The French occupation of Algeria ended with a sort of general strike by the population.

The larger point is, how the preservation of the French empire was a worthwhile goal is beyond me, and I suspect beyond most reasonable people these days, that is, people other than the Jean Marie Le Pen crowd. France of course could have kept Algeria, and the US could have kept Vietnam, but as with most geurilla wars (at least of the time, let's hope this one is very different) the metropolitan power winds up killing more and more innocents as identifying the enemy becomes harder and harder.

As far as WW2 and the US left, putting FDR, who did want to get into the war, on the right-wing of political spectrum seems sort of, well, revisionist to say the least. The war was opposed by the Dixiecrats and the Republicans, largely, i.e., the right. Fascist-sympathy was not uncommon on the right-wing (of both political parties) back then. The Communists opposed it after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact only to reverse the position and push for war when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, but they hardly had any members in Congress.

Adrian,

You wrote:

Yes it's a joke, but it's based in history.
France has been a military joke since the
battle of Waterloo.

Verdun was some joke.

You also wrote:

Vietnam, which was started and escalated under
Democrats, was only "lost" when the Democrats
cowardly reversed their support for that
worthy effort.

The only way the U.S. could have "won" the Vietnam War was by killing all the Vietnamese. All colonizers or quasi-colonizers learn this eventually, although the timing, duration and intensity of the lesson will vary.

NM

History lesson:

The French stopped the German advance in World War I within the initial weeks of the war. The front did not appreciably move after that point. The French then neglected to surrender for the next 5 years (I think because they won the war).

In World War II, France declared war on Germany because Germany invaded Poland. The United States cowered behind its two oceans until it was attacked.

Adrian parrots: 'I believe the second point is specious. It was used by the American left to keep us out of WW2 and to allow the murder of the Jews and other "undesireables" until Hitler invaded The Soviet Union.'

No distortion is outside the bounds for Adrian in the cause of Bush-can-do-no-wrong. Robin states the case accurately above, but perhaps he understates the depth of isolationist passions on the American right prior to December 7, 1941. While War on Germany was politically unviable prior to Hitler's declaration of war after Pearl Harbor, due to the isolationists, the left was instrumental in exposing Hitler's activities and opposing Hitler on many fronts. FDR led the effort for increased military budgets and also provided support for Britain.

Everyone else has done such a good job with Adrian that there's no point my joining back in except to say that his model of the state and its claims for the total surrender of my life, and that of every other civilian member, seems suspiciously--hm--totalitarian?

I'd also like to second the recommendation for The Battle Of Algiers. My husband and I just had the good fortune to see it on the big screen and its really worth seeing in that format. I think we would have lost out on one of the key images/issues: the claustrophobia of a war plotted and fought in the urban space of the casbah.

Kate

Adrian Spindle's kind has been around since the dawn of time.

Check out Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic for an earlier avatar....

"France lost the political war,...

As far as WW2 and the US left, putting FDR, who did want to get into the war, on the right-wing of political spectrum seems sort of, well, revisionist to say the least. The war was opposed by the Dixiecrats and the Republicans, largely, i.e., the right...
Posted by Robin"

Well thought out response, Robin. I agree with most of what you said. Just a few points;

1 - Losing the political war is LOSING THE WAR. The US won the military war in Vietnam but lost the political war when the Democrat controlled congress voted to abandon our South Vietnamese allies (courted by JFK & LBJ). To me, that was treason.

2 - In WW2, I actually mant the far left, i.e. the numerous American Communist Party members that infested academia, the media and the arts.

I agree that the Dems under FDR were a much more responsible lot than the isolationist Republicans of that time.

My father was a patriotic and lifelong Democrat who loved our land as I did 'til the Dems abandoned our South Vietnamese allies.

In my mind, MODERN AMERICA HATING FAR LEFT DEMOCRATS HAVE NO RIGHT CLAIMING THE ILLUSTRIOUS AND PATRIOTIC TRADITION OF THE GREAT FDR, HST & JFK.

I well remember my first Presidential vote for Hubert Humphrey (the last Dem I ever voted for) as I was on active duty in the Navy and was extremely worried that I wouldn't get my absentee ballot paper work from NY in time to vote against the evil Dick Nixon.

When the Dems abandoned the people I thought were our allies and dishonered my fellow veterans they lost me for good.

Adrian

"Adrian Spindle's kind has been around since the dawn of time.

Check out Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic for an earlier avatar....

Posted by Davis X. Machina"

You are pretty stupid to mispell my name like that, but you are rather perceptive to guess that I align more with Aristotle and his illustrious student than with Plato's version of Socrates.

Adrian

I have suggested to Adrian to adopt a more adult form of discourse, only to have my words distorted and tossed back at me. He seems to glory in bar stool, grade school, talk radio tactics in his comments.

Adrian seems to have the notion that twisting historical facts and the words of those also in the discussion constitutes a useful form of debate. The actual content of the discussion apparently doesn't matter. If it did, he wouldn't behave as he does.

My guess is that, already assured of the rightness of his own views, the only reason Adrian comments at all is to draw a response. I advise against giving him one. Some of us have already tried the "older relative" approach - explaining how things are done in the grown-up world. This seems to have had little impact. Child rearing manuals suggest a lack of response to bad behavior that is aimed mainly at drawing a response. With my own children, that has worked pretty well (they're angels). So, if we stop responding, maybe the behavior will be extinguished. If not, at least readers won't have to wade through digressions in response to Adrian.

"2 - In WW2, I actually mant the far left, i.e. the numerous American Communist Party members that infested academia, the media and the arts."
Uh Adrian, the far left was very much against Fascism and in favor of joining WWII. There was after all the Abraham Lincoln brigade that fought in Soain against the fascists. During the McCarthy period the were accused of being prematur anti-fascists.

Lawrence, as more than a few people have already mentioned, the far left was against fascism until they got different marching orders from Moscow in 1939, at which point they shut up and did their best to keep the U.S. from declaring war on Hitler. But since the Communists had little influence in Congress, I don't think it was them keeping us out of the war.

More substantively, I'm perplexed by these constant references to Vietnam as a colonial war. I mean, I expect that from Chomsky, but at this point it seems like a remarkably naive position to adopt. When South Vietnam fell in 1975, it did not fall to an indigenous insurgency. (The Viet Cong, after being decimated during the Tet offensive, was never a real force on the ground after 1968.) It fell to the invading North Vietnamese Army, no differently from the way Bosnia fell to the Serbs or, for that matter, the way Poland fell to the Germans. South Vietnam had been an independent state -- corrupt and undemocratic, but independent -- for twenty-one years at that point. And it was crushed by its neighbor.

To be sure, South Vietnam was "artificially" created at Geneva in 1954. But so, obviously, was Israel in 1948 -- and so, for that matter, was Pakistan, Bangladesh, and a host of Middle Eastern states. More to the point, South Korea was artificially created after World War II as a result of Cold War politics. Had the U.S. not intervened to defend South Korea from North Korean invasion -- that is to say, had it allowed North Korea to do what North Vietnam was allowed to do in 1975 -- there would be one unified Korean state today, and it would be totalitarian, just as there is one unified Vietnamese state today, and it is totalitarian. By what logic is U.S. intervention against invasion in Korea justifiable but intervention in Vietnam is unjustifiable or colonial? Or would you argue that the Korean War was an unjustified use of U.S. military force, too?

Steve,

Vietnam is a complicated question. For the North, the default position was national elections in 1956 (the agreement at Geneva). Eisenhower acknowledged that Ho Chi Minh would've won . . . The result was just stalled elections. If a majority of the South (and the size of that majority is probably exaggerated) would've backed Ngo, it seems that elections would've gone through.

Yes, most likely, the Commies would've staged a coup d'etat after the elections and the rest, re-education camps, etc.

But for the discussion here--for the Vietnamese, it was a war of national liberation, not for the "dictatorship of the proletariat".

South Vietnam's position would be comprable to Bangladesh, etc., only if the Bengalis wanted to rejoin Pakistan and were doing so by their gov. The analogy may be(have been back then)East and West Germany, except of course that the former was a Stalinist police-state and the latter a liberal democracy. The point being that a large chunk of both societies wanted reunification, however, wisely or unwisely thought out. And it is here that the North qua Germans and the South qua Poles analogy breaks down. The larger issue is of course what to do in these circumstances.

Yes, A Savage War of Peace is a wonderful book, I guess the best on the first Algerian war available in English. It's absurd, or telling, that it's out of print.

To be even more frightened, Brad, realize that Ariel Sharon says he keeps a copy on his nightstand. I suspect that so does Arafat and any number of Palestinian leaders, because it's the prototypical anti-colonialist war, and because Sharon is an imperialist.

Horne's lessons and the analogy of the Algerian War don't seem, to me, to be easily applied to Iraq, now, though. I worry very much, and did so before this war, and loudly said so before this war, that the lessons of Algeria for us might not be found in Algerian history following 1954, but in Algerian history following 1991. The replacement of an Arab strongman government, the rise of an elected Islamist popular front (the FIS), a coup by secular natives, and the outbreak of a civil war between the armed Islamists (among them the GIA) and the army and paramilitaries. Oh, and terrorist attacks against the metropolitain, which supported the coup, by revolutionaries.

For a decade. I'm looking forward to it.

Alden, Adnan or whatever: The United States took a tacit position in the Algerian War of 1954-1962, by the way. It supported the FLNA, you know, the Algerian revolutionaries.

By the way, Horne's book on Verdun is good, too. His book on Paris...didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know, and there were errors.

"Alden, Adnan or whatever: The United States took a tacit position in the Algerian War of 1954-1962, by the way. It supported the FLNA, you know, the Algerian revolutionaries.

Posted by Brian C.B."

Booban, Brownan, Brian or whatever: Yes I know that. The USA, not being a colonial power by choice, generally supports former colony's moves for sovereignty.

"The Communists opposed it after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact only to reverse the position and push for war when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, but they hardly had any members in Congress."

Yeah, most of the Communists were in the executive branch.

I really love the semi-daily Journal, not only for Brad DeLong's posts but for a number of the insightful comments on his forums.

But the trolls and nitwits can make it a real drag, both for their inane commends and because they distract some of the non-trolls. There is a real opportunity cost when someone has to give Patrick or Adrian a remedial history lesson, and we end up losing a post on topic.

It would be very nice if this web journal adopted commonplace technologies to require accounts, login to post, and the ability to filter regular trolls.

Steve Carr:

I think the point about Vietnam was not that it was a colonial war, but that it was an inherited colonial war, reinscribed into the context of Cold War "geo-politics". Which is to say, that if one looks for a direct economic or extractive motive for U.S. involvement, I don't think one could find it. But to style the war as a foreign communist take-over of a separate country, is question begging. The Viet Minh were an indigenous group and the U.S.A. had reneged on the Geneva agreement: it was only after intense U.S. military intervention that the southern guerillas were decimated and replaced by NVA cadres and, in fact, the U.S. intervention, as far as I can tell, was motivated by a panic in 1964 as to the extreme weakness of the South Vietnamese regime in the face of guerilla pressure. That stated, the southern majority were probably mostly aligned with Buddhist/peasant currents, rather than with the communists or with the rump-colonial Catholic-dominated regime.

The main point from the U.S. point of view is that one should pick and choose one's battles, as a matter of strategic policy. Vietnam was a war that we could probably not have won, certainly not in the way we went about fighting it, and for which the stakes, realistically assessed, were too slight to warrant the effort, which is to say, that it amounted to a massive and damaging misallocation of resources, based on an ideological delirium.

The case of Korea, by the very same rationale, was clearly different. Not only did it occur much earlier in the Cold War game and with much less discretionary deliberation, but it occurred just after the communist take over in neighboring China and the testing of the Soviet atomic bomb. Most of all, just look at the map and see where Korea is situated with respect to Japan, for which the U.S.A. had assumed primary security responsibility. The only mysteries about the Korean War are why the Soviets boycotted rather than vetoed the U.N. Security Council resolution and why McArthur so badly overextended his supply lines and troop configuration in the face of Chinese threats to intervene.

One iron-butt troll can completely ruin a thread for dozens of smart people, and have lots of fun too! Maybe Brad could give passwords to moderators for banning and deleting purposes.

There is no good reason to participate in this thread in its present state.

Actually, there is. There is, for one thing, the fun of pointing out that Sullivan is making a public moron of himself once again with his implication that FDR's supposed numerous Commie officials managed to dissuade him from backing Britain in WW II (as well as dissuading him from initiating the draft, Lend-Lease, etc.)

I read "A Savage War of Peace" some time ago. I reread it every now and then for the dark humor of it all.

The French had a much stronger hand in Algeria than we do in Iraq, and had more to lose.

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