Thank Heaven for Little Ghouls
Really interesting wars, Cardinal Richelieu informs me in a dream-sequence recounted in this morning’s “Spengler” essay at Asia Times Online, because they kill off the fathers, and then the sons. Richelieu presided over what we call the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), which reduced the population of Central Europe by about two-fifths, although there have been numerous others, including the Peloponnesian War and 1914 to 1945. Richelieu ” looked rather like the portrait by Phillipe de Champaigne, but sounded like Maurice Chevalier.”‘
Here is the nub of the conversation. For the fun part, that is, instructions on how to conjure ghosts in the sewers of Paris, you will have to refer to the original.
“We are a bit confused about Syria,” I began. “Its leader, Bashar al-Assad, is slaughtering his own people to suppress an uprising. And he is allied to Iran, which wants to acquire nuclear weapons and dominate the region. If we overthrow Assad, Sunni radicals will replace him, and take revenge on the Syrian minorities. And a radical Sunni government in Syria would ally itself with the Sunni minority next door in Iraq and make civil war more likely.”
“I don’t understand the question,” Richelieu replied.
“Everyone is killing each other in Syria and some other places in the region, and the conflict might spread. What should we do about it?”
“How much does this cost you?”
“Nothing at all,” I answered.
“Then let them kill each other as long as possible, which is to say for 30 years or so. Do you know,” the ghastly Cardinal continued, “why really interesting wars last for 30 years? That has been true from the Peloponnesian War to my own century. First you kill the fathers, then you kill their sons. There aren’t usually enough men left for a third iteration.”
“We can’t go around saying that,” I remonstrated.
“I didn’t say it, either,” Richelieu replied. “But I managed to reduce the population of the German Empire by half in the space of a generation and make France the dominant land power in Europe for two centuries.
“Isn’t there some way to stabilize these countries?” I asked.
Richelieu looked at me with what might have been contempt. “It is a simple exercise in logique. You had two Ba’athist states, one in Iraq and one in Syria. Both were ruled by minorities. The Assad family came from the Alawite minority Syria and oppressed the Sunnis, while Saddam Hussein came from the Sunni minority in Iraq and oppressed the Shi’ites.
It is a matter of calculation — what today you would call game theory. If you compose a state from antagonistic elements to begin with, the rulers must come from one of the minorities. All the minorities will then feel safe, and the majority knows that there is a limit to how badly a minority can oppress a majority. That is why the Ba’ath Party regimes in Iraq and Syria — tyrannies founded on the same principle — were mirror images of each other.”
“What happens if the majority rules?,” I asked.
“The moment you introduce majority rule in the tribal world,” the cardinal replied, “you destroy the natural equilibrium of oppression.
“The minorities have no recourse but to fight, perhaps to the death. In the case of Iraq, the presence of oil mitigates the problem.
The Shi’ites have the oil, but the Sunnis want some of the revenue, and it is easier for the Shi’ites to share the revenue than to kill the Sunnis. On the other hand, the problem is exacerbated by the presence of an aggressive neighbor who also wants the oil.”
“So civil war is more likely because of Iran?”
“Yes,” said the shade, “and not only in Iraq. Without support from Iran, the Syrian Alawites – barely an eighth of the people – could not hope to crush the Sunnis. Iran will back Assad and the Alawites until the end, because if the Sunnis come to power in Syria, it will make it harder for Iran to suppress the Sunnis in Iraq. As I said, it is a matter of simple logic. Next time you visit, bring a second bottle of Petrus, and my friend Descartes will draw a diagram for you.”
“So the best thing we can do to stabilize the region is to neutralize Iran?”
“Bingeaux!” Richelieu replied.
This is fantasy, to be sure, but it is far less fantastical than the present thinking of the Obama administration. Never, never underestimate world leaders’ capacity to delude themselves. European statesmen hadn’t a clue about what they were in for on the eve of World War I, as their private correspondence makes clear. Athens thought it would conquer Sicily. George W. Bush thought he would usher in a new era of Muslim democracy. But crack-pipe award for political fantasy goes to the Obama administration, which really believes that the smart exercise of soft power will turn the Pentagon into the camo-clad equivalent of a UN relief agency.
The reality that presents itself in the Middle East — the breakdown and inevitable depopulation of the Arab world — is something that the White House cannot wrap its mind around. McBama and his three witches — Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, and Michelle — have hard-core sympathies for the oppressed peoples of the Third World. Obama spent four of his formative years in Indonesia, with a mother dedicated to defending the locals against globalization, while Jarrett was born and raised in Iran; as for Michelle, well, read her senior thesis at Princeton. They will never, never bring down Iran, because they would rather hold their breath until they drop dead than ruin a Third World nation.
As for Gen. James R. Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence who told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that Iran has not yet tried to build a nuclear bomb, there is a special circle of Hell for those who respond to the question, “How much is 2 + 2?,” with “How much do you want it to be?” And Gen. David Petraeus, Obama’s director of Central Intelligence, not long ago lionized by many conservatives, went along with the charade. That inspires the following variation on an old joke:
Two priests are attending a seminar at a Washington, D.C., hotel, and by accident find themselves in the wrong conference room. It’s an AIPAC seminar, not a Church function. They excuse themselves after a minute and leave. Father Kelly says to Father O’Malley, “Do you know, Father O’Malley, I never knew that the Jews spoke Latin among themselves. I don’t know what it means, but they kept repeating, petraeus fuctus.”
All of the “countries” in the Middle East are extremely “diverse” and “multicultural”. In “diverse” countries, so long as you have a strongman to keep all of the squabbling factions under control, they are able to keep the country together. But as soon as the dictator (Stalin, Tito, Saddam etc.) is gone, the artificial nations Balkanized and collapsed into armed camps and went to war with themselves (over ethnicity, religion, culture, sect, tribal lines etc.). The Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Sudan and countless other examples… They were incapable of living with each other peacefully. As long as they had the dictator who repressed them and kept them in line, these “diverse” countries were able to stay together; but as soon as the dictator was gone the country broke down along ethnic, religious, cultural, tribal lines etc. and the people went to war with each other…
There won’t be peace until the artificial Arab states collapse and the unnatural borders imposed upon the Arabs by European imperialists are discarded.
Let the Arab states collapse and break up into small natural states ruled by homogeneous groups (Sunni, Shia, Arabs, Turks, Persians, Punjabis, Kurds, Alawites, Pashtuns, Balochis etc.).
Great Britain created the borders of Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen and the Gulf emirates. France was involved in determining the borders of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria and Lebanon. Italy was responsible for the borders of Libya. Included within these borders were ethnic, religious, denominational and tribal groups who, throughout history, were often unable to live together in peace.
Mordechai Kedar: Small Homogeneous States Only Solution for Middle East
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=51683
This is where the world is headed. These are the battles of the future. This is the way the world is going. This is happening whether you want it to or not. All over the Middle East we are seeing these battles: Sunni vs. Shia, Arab vs. Persian, Arab vs. Kurd, Turk vs. Kurd, Sunni vs. Alawite, Muslim vs. Christian, Jew vs. Arab etc. The fighting will continue for a long time until there is a solution. We don’t have to “redraw all the maps for ethnic and religious homogeneity” — This will happen — indeed, it is happening — naturally on it’s own… We just have to let the artificial Arab states collapse and the unnatural borders imposed upon the Arabs by European imperialists be discarded, and break up into small natural states ruled by homogeneous groups (Sunni, Shia, Arabs, Turks, Persians, Punjabis, Kurds, Alawites, Pashtuns, Balochis etc.).
A few years back, professor Jerry Z. Muller wrote in Foreign Affairs that World Wars I and II were at root ethnonational wars of Europeans fighting to create nations where their own tribe ruled and their own culture was predominant.
Only when this was achieved in 1945, after immense bloodshed, did peace come to Europe.
Muller predicted that the ethnonational wars of Europe would be replicated across the Third World, as tribes rebelled against alien rulers and the unnatural borders imposed upon them by European imperialists.
Us and Them
http://www.tfasinternational.org/iipes/academics/mullercm.pdf
Let the Sunnis and Shia, the Arabs and Persians, the Arabs and Kurds, the Turks and Kurds, the Sunnis and Alawites fight it out. It is none of our business. Let them solve their own problems. When a “winner” emerges, we’ll deal with them.
Could it also swing the other way – a Caliphate that unites all these disparate entites under one Muslim leader? Would a pan-Islamic empire be more palatable to the world’s Muslims than the current patchwork of European-imposed states?
If all these formerly centralized states turn into Somalias, there will be a corresponding increase in the number of pirates and bandits preying on the rest of us.
Nice theory that fits a college boy marxist point of view that all things evil in the World are the result of European and American “imperialism;” too bad the facts don’t support it. As far back as we know much about history, all of those “diverse, multi-cultural” places have been under some or another imperial control from Hittites, Assyians, Egyptions, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, the Baghdad Caliphate, the Ottomans, etc. Of all those, probably the ones who were least “imperialistic” in the academically approved pejorative sense of that word were the Europeans. Generally, the Greeks, Romans, British, and even the French didn’t much care what the locals did as long as they didn’t defy the imperial power, produced natural resources, and, in some instances, paid their taxes. Now, if you want to talk about imposing your culture and laws on subject people; lets talk about the two Muslim empires in that list.
Just a couple of observations:
1. Europe ain’t done yet.
2. Letting the Middle East devour itself until the survivors quit out of shear exhaustion is a nice picture. But in an age of nuclear weapons, just how do you keep them playing in their own sandbox and out of our living room?
“But in an age of nuclear weapons, just how do you keep them playing in their own sandbox and out of our living room?”
Not just nukes, re-up on the Pak pharma and biotech industry.
Whoever comes to power in those small nations will turn around and try to conquer his neighbors, “To re-establish historic boundaries.”
bingeaux – you are the best!
Spengler,
Two questions:
1) Would you say that Senator Santorum comes close to having a ‘Spenglerian’ world view on foreign policy?
2) If Santourm is the nominee/President (which would be incredible), is there a chance you would advise him? You have already mentioned that he reads your work….
If Santorum gets the nomination I will vote for Obama!
A Christian scares you that much that you’d rather have a rabid Marxist?
You must have a very guilty conscience.
Then you’re a fool. I’m an atheist and I’ll vote for Santorum over Obama. I’ll vote for Romney over Obama. I’ll vote for Gingrich over Obama. I’d even vote for loony-tunes old Ron Paul over Obama. If the GOP goes into a brokered convention and nominates a stuffed monkey, I’ll vote for the stuffed monkey over Obama. The Won has to go; everything else takes second place to that.
Another HeathenCon here, and I will also vote for anyone but Obama.
Same here; another pagan for ABO.
I think you hit the answer right on the head: there’s political reality and there’s sad violin music. I am a member of a de facto charity dedicated to saving the Third World from itself even if we have to import them all and devalue my currency right into the ground. Assad appears as entrenched as a tick and with hundreds of billions of Russian investment dollars in Syria at stake, it’s unlikely moralizing from Clinton will have any effect. The foreign adventures of the U.S. in the last half century towards little purpose have wrecked America. What the hell does a fork lift driver in Minnesota care about Syria or Mexico for that matter? Let ‘em work it out. They’re “equals,” it’s their right.
When in comes to Mexico I think the fork lift driver in Minnesota should care, and if not the paraphrase of Trotsky is apropos “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Note comment #8 and following comments.
Particularly someone in Minnesota, who by contrast enjoys one of the longest and least volatile borders in human history.
So, your friend Michael Ledeen has his Ouija board for conjuring James Jesus Angleton, and you have magic Bordeaux. Fun, but be careful. Remember King Saul and the Witch of Endor. “Shady” business is exactly that.
I made clear that all of this was a dream. In real life, I wouldn’t think of violating the biblical proscription against consorting with dead people.
Yes, and I thought it was an excellent cover story. Stick with it!
David,
I think it should be obvious to most people why you used this literary form. You regard Richelieu as a seminal figure in Western history, and you are aware that almost no one has any awareness of his existence. You’ve written numerous essays explaining his vital importance, but you’ve noticed that these are little read. Too dry. Too “historical.” Whatever.
Here’s a way to bring the old machiavellian cleric back to life, and get the readers to actually listen to him.
If that’s conjuring up the dead, well, I don’t think God disapproves, any more than casting King David in a modern play about the Psalms would incur His wrath. Chesterton said something about how paying attention to history is a way to give the dead a say in the present. Some dead voices are definitely worth listening to.
Bravo!
I get it, I’m just having some fun.
And what about the NON-kosher wine?
I particularly enjoyed “Bingeaux!”
I seem to recall that the US supported exactly such a foreign policy, supplying equilibrium in the long war between Iraq and Iran. Then Leviathan got squeamish when Sadie gassed the Kurds. As Tocqueville pointed out, long-term foreign policy is one place where democracies are at a disadvantage. The Founders were very clear on the issue, which was not theoretical. Washington used up all his accumulated good will to keep America out of the French debacle.
It is ironic but not accidental that each promotion of democracy abroad brings us in proportion greater failure of republic at home.
Nation-building: more of a threat than a promise.
Well said.
Our foreign policy should be much simpler – basically, “Don’t mess with us, and we won’t mess with you.”.
Of course, we reserve the right to define what “messing with us” means, according to our own best interests. That is to say, we don’t have to wait until bombs land on our cities to fry someone who is up to no good, whether that “no good” is economic or overtly military.
We have never had any business, nor any success, with meddling in the internal affairs of other sovereign nations.
really?
Washington was defeated by a handful of French though:
http://www.fortedwards.org/gwpage.htm
He also appreciated the french help to get rid of the English masters afterwords, but soon forgot it, and renew the US Britain alliance, and deported the french settlers tht didn’t want to forget their language and culture for adopting the english’s !
Defeated in a minor battle as a Lite Colonel in the BRITISH army in command of largely militia troops. Ok, that’s a good argument for French Exceptionalism.
My surname ancestry is French; they came here as LaChance, luck, which means they were probably bastards or outlaws, and got their land in Georgia as a headright grant from the Creek Cession for their services in the Revolution. That said, the French have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Something about that volatile mix of all the “barbarians” that ran through what is now France and their slavish devotion to first Rome and then the Roman Church made the French just not able to compete from the first row. The Germans kept enough of their fundamental barbarism to be more vicious than the French. The English managed to mix the right combination of French deviousness and German/Nordic barbarism to back the viciousness with cleverness. The Americans managed to take a helping of both and add vast natural resource wealth and the strenght and vitality that comes from living on and conquering a frontier. The reason we have Americans who fancy themselves as the elite wanting to emulate you is that those “elites” have never seen a frontier. Those of us in flyover Country, the part of America they hate so much, have.
“Defeated in a minor battle as a Lite Colonel in the BRITISH army in command of largely militia troops. Ok, that’s a good argument for French Exceptionalism.”
yeah like Lafayette and Rochambeau
who had no Chance ancestry from Quebec, that’s where such nicknames are coming from.
hmm the French are a mixture of Celts, of Romans, of Germans, and of Cromagnons, just that they developped a different language, and of course a different culture, they don’t worship a “groupieren” march.
hmm the Roman Church has no more credit since our Revolution
The same problems that exist in Iraq, Syria, all over the Middle East…exist in America — and will get worse by 2050.
Let’s visualize America in 2050. 46% white, 30% Hispanic, 15% black, 9% Asian.
Imagine if China would do to us what you think we should to the Middle East…
Well said.
They will; just as the Soviets tried mightily and with some considerable success to exploit our Black-White racial divide fifty or sixty years ago. And that is probably the best reason we should get a handle on both Hispanic and Muslim immigration to this Country. We were rich enough in the ’60s and ’70s to buy our way out of a race war despite the Left’s best efforts to incite one. The Danegeld for that has left us impoverished and unable to avoid another race/ethnic war; all it will take is the right inciting incident.
Well put. Once upon a time, we had an educational system that taught immigrants how to be Americans.
Today, we have an education system that teaches various “victim groups” why they have been egregiously wronged by America (even if they haven’t), how to be effective victims, and how to take what American “owes” them by using the power of our too-large FedGov.
It isn’t going to be pretty when the largesse ends, as it must.
Israel is also extremely diverse. And will be even more diverse in a few decades.
Imagine if Iran, Saudi Arabia, or the Muslim Brotherhood would encourage/fund the different groups to fight each other.
Chilonim (Secular), Charedim (Ultra-Orthodox), Modern Orthodox, National Religious, traditional…Ashkenazim, Sephardim…Russians, Ethiopians, Eritreans, Sudanese…and on and on and on…
Unlike Muslims, all Jewish currents believe that Jewish life is sacrosanct.
A civil war among Jews would take the form of a shouting match, with each side trying to talk the others into neurosis.
I’ve had an Israeli boss. I don’t find your scenario far-fetched at all.
A Brooklyn yeshiva decides that the students need more exercise, so it organizes a rowing team. They lose their first match by 804 lengths. The rebbe sends Yankel to spy on the Columbia team to find out what they are doing wrong. Yankel comes back and says, “Rebbe, I found their secret! They have eight guys rowing and only one guy shouting!”
That joke is all you need to know about Israeli politics…
Why precisely “804 lengths”?
On the eve of the birth of Israel, David Ben Gurion was in a room, and he was certain they would choose the name of the new country to be Israel. It was even predicted in the Bible.
In the next room, there were 3 of his fellow Jews arguing over what the name should be. Many names were offered and argued for. Ben Gurion’s comment while listening? “Put 3 Jews in a room and get 5 strong opinions.”
Of course, in the end, he told them it would be named Israel, and that was that.
The argument was just for fun, it seems. Jews just like to argue, so they can show how smart they are. Being smart is everything in Jewish society. Status is involved. Money matters, but it is just a measure of smarts. Woe unto him who appears stupid, for he is truly shamed.
It reminds me of a tale told about building the continental railroad. 2 Chinese were yelling at each other, hurling insult after insult. The boss listened for awhile. After 2 hours, he asked another Chinese, “Why don’t they just slug it out and be done?” The answer? “Aaah. First one to hit has run out of insults. Lacking intelligence.”
These other approaches are not necessarily wrong. Jews and Chinese have higher IQ’s than Westerners on average. Jews by 15 points.
“…..The argument was just for fun, it seems. Jews just like to argue, so they can show how smart they are. Being smart is everything in Jewish society. Status is involved. Money matters, but it is just a measure of smarts. Woe unto him who appears stupid, for he is truly shamed…….”
hmmn…… I’m thinking of the Trickster ethos where someone thinking you stupid when you’re not, doesn’t help them and it doesn’t hurt you. But then, the Trickster is an outsider and not necessarily an additive member to society……
So I guess it’s remind yourself that not everybody plays by the same rules and that it’s possible to play…… and win, the game a different way……;>…….
Isn’t that all life – human in particular?
Anonymous at 8 is right.
The politics in America are tribalistic. The laws support tribalism. Tribalism is useful to the politicians to play a faction against the other (usually at the expenses of the people of European descent) and extract power in the process. But this can not hold forever. When whites will be unable or unwilling to continue to foot the bill of the privileges of the other groups things will start to unravel.
There can not be a nation divided in tribes one against the other, with different culture often opposed one to the other.
Yes, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” but more importantly, a nation cannot slaughter its next generation and sterilize its current one and expect to survive. It’s not immigration that is making whites a minority, but rather a lack of reproduction.
So you’re saying our future looks like Detroit. I hope you’re wrong …
Well, here’s what Detroit looks like (http://www.google.com/search?q=detroit+ruins&hl=en&sa=N&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=Vz5MT4SXOsLn0QHiw4ngAg&ved=0CEYQsAQ&biw=1069&bih=776).
On the positive side, it does have some of the best ruins in the country. Perhaps they could attract geriatric Japanese tourists and their robot nurses.
They’d be well advised to visit in armored vehicles only. The Morlocks who created those ruins still live among them. Most of them collect welfare checks. And vote.
Actually the Detroit PD precinct in Brush Park used to have an armored car with a ram (for taking out biker/doper compound armored doors) parked in front.
Downtown Detroit itself was fairly safe as there was sufficient police presence to protect the business types and federal workers during the day. At night one could lay down in the middle of the street.
The neighborhoods (except for a few exceptions such as Corktown and Palmer Park were crime ridden zombie zones with decent people hiding indoors between ruined homes.
The bordering elite towns of Grosse Pointe refused to be overrun by Moorlocks and their police (staffed by former DPD) set up choke points to identify unsavory types entering from Detroit.
Detroit’s late 19th and early 20th century architecture is magnificent. There is a park in the river designed by Olmstead. Of course, it is all probably a bit overgrown now. I left in 2003.
Spengler is right about one big thing in the MidEast that fooled the foolish people on the anti-imperialist left for 50 years. They paraded their consciences for years to the broader world in the battle against European imperialism, acting as though turning these countries over to tribal or familial minorities would somehow “improve” the lot in life of the imperial subjects. In fact, it made their lot in life a good deal worse.
Who ruled Syria more effectively and more humanely – the French or the murderous Alawite Baathists? Who ruled Iraq more effectively and humanely – the British or the Sunni Arab Baathists?
The lovely European and American liberals got the so-called “self” determination that they claimed they wanted, and it turned out to be self-determined only for the ruthless sectarian cliques who grabbed and retained power.
In the end, present-day Syria and Iraq most likely will melt down into smaller homogenous entities, none of which will be more than 10-15 million people, and many of which will be in the 2-4 million range. These entities will very much resemble today’s former Yugoslavia, but without the patina of European culture to give them a civilized veneer.
I don’t think the leadership cadre of the “anti-imperialist left” was fooled at all. Sure, the useful idiots and limousine liberals were being misguided do-gooders, but the hard left and the communist block were intent on separating the Western Powers from their sources of natural resource wealth to make that wealth either unavailable to the Western Powers or available to the East Bloc. Those that didn’t have anything the communists wanted or could readily get to were left to stew in their own juices, e.g., much of sub-Saharan Africa. The British and the Russians/Soviets had been contending over India and Persia for centuries. After British Persia became Iraq and Iran, Iraq fell into the non-aligned leaning Soviet bloc and Iran fell to the Soviets until their puppy was replaced by the Shah. After independence, India flirted mightily with the Soviets. Most of the Muslim world was a Soviet proxy. There’s a reason a young Hawaiian communist couple and their young son were in Indonesia in the ’60s; it was a hotbed of communist agitation against a western leaning government. Not so long ago communist riots were “encouraging” the US to grant The Phillipines their independence and, once granted the pressure continued to remove the US naval and air presence there. The time may yet come that we deeply regret giving up Subic Bay. There was intense pressure on the US to divest itself of its Pacific Territories, all described as the fruit of imperialism. That pressure was the sole reason for granting statehood to Alaska and Hawaii, neither of which had a hope in Hell of being remotely self-sufficient enough to be self-governing at the time of statehood. Communist pressure to “liberate” Puerto Rico went so far as bombing the US Capitol, and there’s a reason Bill Clinton pardoned them. That SOB has yet to explain his sojourn in Eastern Europe and it isn’t a coincidence that the Hildebeast wrote her thesis on Saul Alinsky. No, the Left’s “anti-imperialism” wasn’t naive do-gooderism; it was knowingly and purposely anti-Western generally and anti-American specifically and it continues to be so today. They don’t care that turning North Africa and the Middle East back into the Caliphate or the Ottoman Empire will result in the destruction of Israel and a bloodbath for the Christians, other minorities, and the secular apostates there; it will hurt US interests and that is all the Obama Junta and the left care about.
thank you. I learned a great deal in an interesting fashion.
Dear Mr Goldman,
inspired by your example and after some glasses of Schnapps in Nuremberg, I found Wallenstein who was arguing with Schiller. After mentioning loathed Richelieu I had his attention and translated your essay to him.
He noted that currently today’s USA resembled rather to Habsburg Spain than Bourbonic France in depleting its strength in the Middle East already for 10 years like Spain did in the Netherlands and Imperial Germany.
Furthermore, it’s not willing to confront its strategic opponent in open battle, while the American allies, the Arabian Sunni states, find their equivalent in the Catholic League in their dedication to the cause but strategic impotence. Finally, its economy is being harnessed economically by the Asia’s colbertism and mirrors by that the Spanish mercantile fleet being exhausted by English privateers.
Ich glaube gar nicht, das Sie eben mit Schiller geredet haben, u.z. deshalb, weil er sofort erwaehnt haette, dass ich seine beruehmte Dichtung “Shakespeares Schatten” schamlos nachgeafft haette.
Verzeihung, der Kommentar bezog sich nicht auf Schiller, sondern auf Wallenstein, deswegen auch der Fokus auf das politische. Ich habe eher auf einen inhaltlichen Kommentar von Ihnen gehofft. Ich glaube es natürlich auch nicht, aber ich wollte in Ihrer Welt bleiben.
Ihre “Nachäffung” ist übrigens wirklich fabelhaft. Vielleicht sollte Ihr nächstes Buch als Theaterstück erscheinen.
Act Two, Brute?
David – Interesting piece, as are most of the comments here. One thing, though — I thought Germany (not Austria or Austria-Hungary) was a collection of states until Bismark, and not an empire (except for the Holy Roman Empire version, which was not Holy, Roman or an Empire).
A second thing: Thank you for recommending the book, Resurrection. It was quite interesting.
After the Hapsburg, aka Imperial, armies defeated the initial rebellion in Bohemia and a Protestant army led by Denmark, subsidised by France, the Hapsburgs were in position to bring the Princes under heel and create a more centralized state like Richelieu was doing in France. This was unacceptable to France who in response subsidized the army of Gustavus Adolphus to invade Germany. The end result was as you describe the German Reich remained a collection of sovereign states.
There’s a lot of myth in that “not Holy, Roman, nor an Empire” thing. The “bearded ones” south of the Danube and west of the Rhine were as Roman culturally as the Romans; they just lacked the diploma denoting citizenship. From the late 4th Century the influence of the Roman central government waned and especially with the loss of Africa the power of the organized Roman Army waned, but the culture was Roman, the economy remained Roman though it weakened steadily as trade became more and more localized. Education among the laity waned but didn’t go extinct and the Church preserved much Roman learning and language for milennia. By the 5th Century the Catholic Church was organizationally and structurally more Roman than Christian and Christian doctrine was certainly becoming “Romanized.”
Basically, after the Roman Empire melted away, the same Roman landholders still had their land and their way of life but they had to protect that land and way of life without the assistance of the Imperial Army. The villa rustica became the castle. If the owner of the castle and the lands around it were rich and powerful enough he had an independent fiefdom. If he needed more power to defend himself and his property, he allied with other castle owners. In a few centuries, you had feudalism in most of the old Roman territories but it was still based on a Roman social order. The Holy Roman Empire was Holy because the Pope said it was. It was Roman because it was still based on vestigial Roman social and political order and still maintained some hope of restoring the Empire and re-allying with the Eastern Roman Empire, which was still quite lively until the sack of Constantinople in 1204, IRRC, by troops largely from the Holy Roman Empire and yet it still survived in some form another 400-odd years. The Western Empire was never restored to its former scope and imperial power but if an empire is an alliance of states by force or mutual benefit, that of Charlemagne and his successors was Holy, Roman, and an Empire, just not as Roman nor as Imperial as the original.
One little problem rarely mentioned, though-
when Rome could no longer pay her border garrisons, the Goths could read, and read Latin military manuals.
The Arabs could not. So they burnt every library they could find for the next thousand years. (Including Alexandria- Caliph Omar)
Since free trade no longer flowed along the bandit-ridden roads, Syrian olive growers and Irish pottery makers could no longer support large households on their poor soils. Half the known world’s population was lost in famine and war.
Islamic ‘history’ is as fictitious as Mohammed and Quran.
There was no Conquest. They were the camp whores who followed Mongol waves (the Mongols may have been fleeing bubonic plagues that wiped out 90% of China).
Attilla 403 AD, Timor the Lame 710?, Ghengis 1260.
When the Mongols returned home, the Nejjd Bedouin stayed and claimed the victory as their own.
There were no universities. The slaves did everything of note and were given Muslim names. Islam’s only industry is force-breeding mercenaries (who usually run away). Cordoba was razed by Maghreb who declared the one just king wasn’t Muslim enough. 10th century Damascus showed no Arab presence.
There was no Golden Age- the ruthless Abassinids were a short, bloody reign of fratricide; again, the works of slaves were claimed as Muslim.
Salmeen Qurayza was just a minor Meccan criminal who attacked his own family.
He was unknown in the ‘Islamic’ world- not mentioned in any letters for nearly 160 years.
Bhukari and Talabi gathered collected scraps of his tall tales, lies, and rumours in an ungainly pile 100 years after his death; the actual Quran was not written until Uvalve in 333 AH (After Hajira).
Hadith and Sunna were just more BS later attributed to his myth to flesh out the growing fantasy.
His family, his hated enemies, the Qurayza, were a half-breed Jewish tribe that guarded the bazaar shrine where merchants left family totems at the crossroads town near the old Roman copper mine.
You heard that right. Mohammed was Jewish.
His family had simply forgotten how to read.
He did know bits of some of the old stories, and knew a few names, such as Noah, Abel, and Adam. Trying to read Quran is like listening to a rambling drunk. He was just telling tall tales to get bigger concessions for Khadima at the Ramadan autumn fair.
30 Adam stories, 15 Noah stories, 15 Abel stories- none of which make a bit of sense or hold the huge number of cultural archaeology clues that are preserved in the Hebrew scriptures. No Creation story, or even a ‘begin’ or ‘end’. Muslims can quote half a verse here or there, such as the lie about ‘no compulsion’- for your slaves!- but very, very little Quran is coherent.
After attacking his uncle, the leader of the tribe, he fled to the Medina (means “Old City” of the Jews). He tried to get the Jewish elders
to declare him a ‘prophet’; they told him he was nuts and the war was on.
Hint: a pagan would not have asked Jewish authority.
One thing was true: Heaven.
R-and-R camps were set up for soldiers; if you fought for Islam, you could go to “heaven” and get all the little girl and boy sex-slaves you wished, and drink as much wine as you could hold.
Islam’s prophet, book, and history are lies.
Why can’t we constantly rub these dangerous loons in that until they explode?
If you think politics in America are tribalist now – you ain’t seen nothing yet.
In America it is blacks, Hispanics, and women (and gays, unions, government workers etc.) against white males. It is 70% of the country against 30% of the country. Soon it will be 80% of the country against 20% of the country.
If you break it down who is paying the tax dollars in this country – white(s) (males) are paying like 99% of the taxes.
In 2010, whites are 63.7% of the US population; and white males are 31%-32% of the population.
In 2050, whites will be only 46% of the population; and white males will be only 22%-23% of the population.
Who built this country? Why are we destroying the people who built America and turned it into a superpower? In a few decades when the people who built this country are a marginalized, fading, shrinking minority – what do you think America will be like?
Keep it up. Keep attacking white people. Keep attacking white males. See what happens…
China and the Islamic world LOVE what’s happening to America. They are just waiting for America to collapse under it’s own weight/diversity. America will be a 21st Century Yugoslavia. Once America is reduced to a 21st Century Yugoslavia – then China and the Islamists will be able to do whatever they want, and no one will be able to stop them.
You obviously don’t know much about now dead Yugoslavia.
Yea, sure. If only someone will feed them…
Wait until China squares up to Islam. Most whites may not be here to witness the outcome, but it will be pretty spectacular.
“As for Gen. James R. Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence who told the Senate Intelligence Committee last week that Iran has not yet tried to build a nuclear bomb, there is a special circle of Hell for those who respond to the question, “How much is 2 + 2?,” with “How much do you want it to be?”
Isn’t Clapper the same guy who not too long ago said that there wasn’t much to worry about with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt? Now the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists are poised to take over Egypt, tear up the Camp David treaty with Israel, throw American hostages in jail for no reason, and support terrorism against Israel and possibly the world. Tell me again, why does this guy still have a job?
Why does he still have a job? Because he is the best man they have.
Clapper: “The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ … is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam,” Clapper said. – Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/02/10/administration-corrects-dni-clapper-claim-muslim-brotherhood-secular/#ixzz1ncXjJPUC
He’s since eaten a bit of crow.
I’ve not heard him referred to as “general”….I google and find out he is retired air force general.
Around the brouhaha which you reference, I determined he was mentally deficient.
He’s still in there, however, has not been “relieved” of his responsibilities.
He’s doing what the Soros Junta wants him to do; telling the American People that they’re not seeing what they’re seeing. Incompetence and naivete do not explain US actions in North Africa and the Middle East. If it were just incompetence or naivete, the same thing, at the appointee level, we’d be drowning in kiss ‘n tells from the bureaucrats just below the appointee level, even if a lot of them are Democrats. Even Democrat-leaning bureaucrats won’t put up with appointees making a hash of things. A top-level merit system manager will have been through enough changes of administration to know that it takes years to put back in place something some appointee broke in seconds and they try not to let that happen and to stop further damage when it does. No, this is part of a plan and a policy and the upper levels of the merit system have been either eliminated, neutered, or silenced, and Democrats can do that where Republicans can’t. If a Democrat is in the White House or a Governor’s Office, a bureaucrat with a leak is just a disgrunted employee who if noticed at all is derided by the media. If a Republican is in office, a leaking bureaucrat is an heroic whistleblower trying to save truth, beauty, and the American way of life.
Anyway, I can make a good case that Soros relied on a lot of Muslim money and help to manipulate oil prices and the US economy in order to install Comrade Obama and his Junta. We’re seeing the price of that help in the Middle East and North Africa now. After the election, the Caliphate will be restored and the Zionist Entity eliminated. But, until then, we’ll have Administration officials and their media lapdogs telling us we aren’t seeing what we’re seeing. In a sane world, the CIA under GWB would have seen what Soros was doing and he’d have succumbed to a 9mm brain hemmorhage in a dank basement somewhere.
“Soros relied on a lot of Muslim money and help to manipulate oil prices and the US economy in order to install Comrade Obama and his Junta. We’re seeing the price of that help in the Middle East and North Africa now.”
Absolutely. Soros practiced the technique of currency raids throughout the 90s.
I believe the Clinton years were the Left’s development of financial war to seize or consolidate political power. Stealthy subversion vs. armed patriots.
When Moscow fell, the Democrats saw their chance to seize first position on the communist Mafya pole.
Soros began his raids. Hedge funds became something other than insurance that Kellogs would have enough wheat in the warehouse. This was an evolution of the LBO/mergers-aquisition structure created in 80-81 to launder money through corporate structured finance.
“Deep Capture” began when Drexel-Burnham (Milliken) helped the Genovese family develop trading fronts on Wall St. The Russian Mafya joined in by the late 80′s while creating a new western soviet with the communist parties of Europe.
The Islamic Golden Chain (State-backed Mafyas, paymasters of terror) jumped in in the early 90′s.
Deep Capture is state Mafya manipulation of the markets.
Much of the electronic order entry exchange software was written by communist or islamic programmers- note the HFT algorithms today (microsecond quote-stuffing leading to frequent flash crashes).
The purpose of DC is to layout vast short positions- financial time bombs that can vaporize half the savings of a country in one day.
That’s right, the communists can steal everything you have- who needs bullets?
These posititons are done through a dizzying array of multiple fronts.
Non-profits, unions, and trusts funneling money to the Democrat party, for instance.
I believe the Euro was designed, by these same agents, to fail.
The ‘mortgage-backed securities’ were also deliberately designed to fail.
They had the additional bonus of putting the Key Man in place.
Remember the rage when the first key man, Al Gore, missed his placement?
While Soros types were helping a cabal of dark pool (anonymous) offshore funds perfect these many techniques, and grow the derivatives market, China’s number one spy, Bill Clinton, was preparing a radical takeover. (China had 1000 front companies buying influence and intel in unnoticed, backwater Arkansas alone.)
His cronies raided the state and federal pension funds to give a poor Communist country it’s seed money. (Along with top-secret nuclear codes on hard drives, launch technology, and nuclear plants for North Korea.)
Since the pension funds had gone from slow bleed to outright hemmorage, B.Frank and C.Dodd of Finance and Banking used activist Obama’s ‘research’ and Clinton’s CRA rulemaking to force banks to sell junk mortgage bonds to any possible customer; Pena made sure the Nino loans focused on illegals to keep much hidden, while Raines, Johnson, and hit-woman Gorelick laundered said junk thru Fan/Fred.
This rainmaking funded the New Party takeover of the Democrat party.
The New Party paved the way for the Democrat Socialist Alliance of Chicago to seize control of Congress in 2006-7. 76 of 80 Committee chairs were DSA in the Pelosi-Reid Congress; they controlled legislation and the purse. The President is also a DSA member.
Remember the vast short setups of Deep Capture?
A 5% drop in 15% of the real estate market- Florida and the Southwest- doth not a meltdown make. (The Mexicans were walking out, even they couldn’t keep up the inflated payments.)
The real meltdown occurred when McCain was gaining in the polls.
Somebody- and no individual has this kind of money, only sovereign wealth funds-
some dark pool shorted the ABX derivatives index to the tune of $2 Trillion dollars in Sept. 2008.
Under the 2007 Basel II rules, this reset all the counterparty bets in the world. Today everyone knew what all the bets were worth; the next day, no one knew what they were worth. No bank could trust each other’s assets.
LIBOR (overnite bank lending) froze up. The credit flows (the blood) stalled as banks (the beating hearts) stopped. The world had a heart attack.
Half of America’s savings disappeared- the short side of the bet walked away with those trillions- and the key man took the throne.
A radical faction takes first the largest party, then the congress, then the White House. They then begin taking sectors, such as the banks, medicine, media, manufacturing, and control of the Army and police unions.
Consolidation moves.
How many countries has this happened in?
The left sees the goal line in sight- the pillaging and seizure of the mighty wealth of the West.
They learned how to asset-strip us, break us to servitude, and seize the Army.
Has there ever been a greater prize than our wealth and our military?
Isn’t Soros a proponent of Global Governance?
Trouble is, to the vast majority of Americans, this conversation makes us certifiable if not outright treasonous. I feel like Casandra screaming, “don’t you people realize what you’re seeing?”
Because any remotely competent liar never messes with the answer, “four”. He juggles the equation “2+2=”, with ‘which two would you like?’ and ‘which other two do we have to get to make this work?”. The resulting mess can be divided into four piles of something which sounds good in the next Town Hall Meeting – and you get to keep your job……’>……..
David, the reason why you don’t understand why the Obama administration doesn’t see this is that they, like Assad and Hussein, are also a minority ruling over a majority.
– God, then his Eminence will have lived a good life. If there is a God, then the Cardinal shall have much to answer for…”
As a relatively new spenglerite I find myself clicking on all the old links to Spengler essays. Too much time is lost in the process but it’s worth every second ( and hour).
I do hope Spengler’s wife wasn’t under attack by too many suitors while he was dreaming about Richelieu and french sewers .
It’s terrible to think about what’s going to unfold in middle east, war is always a horror story. One should never forget that iranian children are just as innocent as our own and if there must be war let’s pray for it being as short as possible.
I understand nuclear wars are very short. The only one in history sure was quick. No reason to think that the next one won’t be.
Those children may be innocent, but they do not stay that way. They, too, will grow up and wage jihad.
Richelieu was almost right. Just wall them off and arm them to kill one another. Thus, you kill the fathers and the sons.
The French never recovered from WWI. The birth rate declined dramatically to below replacement rate. It simply took all the spirit out of their men. Only now is some of their sap returning, nearly a century later.
According to our host in his latest and most relevant book (I’m in fact just now in the detailed section on the Thirty Years’ War; it’s all highly recommended), page 134:
And this general development in part inspired his namesake.
There you go making the mistake of projecting your thinking onto the Iranians with One should never forget that iranian children are just as innocent as our own and if there must be war let’s pray for it being as short as possible.
Have you forgotten how the Mullahs sacrificed their innocent children to clear minefields in the Iran/Iraq war?
While you wring your hands in anguish at the deaths of people in violent conflict, they smilingly write them off to martyrdom.
As they have shown again and again, they do not worry about “niceties” to obtain their objective.
Not only little boys with plastic ‘keys to heaven’ on the battlefield,
but the slow strangling of 100,000 little girls in 1979-81.
Muslim ‘hangings’ are not the quick mercy snap used by the Brits, but the
traditional hanging strangulation.
A small Catholic blog posted articles from Iranian newspapers-
grusome descriptions of entire warehouses of these poor kids on milk crates; when kicked away, they dangled for half an hour, toes trying to scrape the floor, faces turning black. Even had drains in the floor so the mullahs could hose away the mess after their bowels had evacuated. Then calling in another thirty. “Next!”
I don’t remember site, but her banner left me with this unforgettable saying:
If you can read, thank a teacher.
If you can read in English, thank a soldier.
If you can read without lifting your veil, thank a Catholic!
Absolutely classic Spengler. My only quibble is that I can imagine only Charlton Heston as the image of Richelieu (http://www.coffeecoffeeandmorecoffee.com/archives/2008/04/the_three_muske.html, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwhSYnrOnCk).
petraeus fuctus – I expect the Sons of Iraq are saying it in Arabic.
I read an anthology of short story Alternative Histories and one involved Napoleon III bringing up the spirit of Talleyrand on how to deal with Bismarck. Napoleon III, unlike Mr. Spengler, did it the fashionable 19th century way of going to a seance. Talleyrand’s spirit came and after calling Napoleon III a idiot for thinking of declaring war against Prussia gave him some good advice on how to deal with the bully Bismarck, including sending his war monger Empress away, and the rest is history.
yet the Prussian war was unavoidable, as it was but orchestrated by Bismark, who wanted to unify the german speaking population under the prussian banner, but and most likely to grab the french iron mines for his new Industry, Germany had the coal mines, France had the iron mines…
http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/saar.htm
Agree that Napoleon 3 wasn’t a master of diplomatic tricks, like Talleyrand was, though Talleyrand in that case would have been forced to a war, soon or later too
Director Asghar Farhadi at the Academy Awards last night when the Iranian film A Separation won best foreign language film..his remarks to the effect that…
…the deep Persian culture (as in the one that spawned Omar Khayyam, Rumi and much else) doesn’t have anything in common with the brain dead morons currently running the place.
Poetry in motion…
“At this time many Iranians all over the world are watching us and I imagine them to be very happy. They are happy not just because of an important award or a film or a filmmaker, but because at the time when talk of war, intimidation and aggression is exchanged between politicians, the name of their country, Iran, is spoken here through her glorious culture. A rich and ancient culture that has been under heavy dust of politics. I proudly offer this honor to the people of my country, a people who respect all cultures and civilizations and despise hostility and resentment. Thank you very much.”
McBama and his three witches — Samantha Power, Valerie Jarrett, and Michelle — have hard-core sympathies for the oppressed peoples of the Third World…while Jarrett was born and raised in Iran; as for Michelle, well, read her senior thesis at Princeton.
I’ve always said our only problem is stupidity.
With ignorance a close second.
I read Michelle (Robinson’s) nearly illiterate thesis juxtaposing Black and White in America, her capital letters throughout. I know from where her supposed “worldview” emanates.
(she is in and of herself the poster child for arguments against Affirmative Action)
Samantha is married to that transnationalist Cass Sunstein, “the most dangerous man in America”, tho’ quiet of late, along with John Holdren, he’s been quiet, too.
That whole crowd realizes it better shut its trap or it won’t get another 4 years to destroy the republic.
Michelle was not an Affirmative Action admit, at least not in the traditional sense. She was admitted because of who her father was. The great myth of the Ivies is that they recruit brains. The reality is they target potential leaders, who as alumni will further raise the prestige of the school. The pure brains can go to MIT. As the daughter of a powerful politician Michelle would have been admitted had she and her father been white.
From the point of view of the Admissions Office, Michelle has been everything they would have hoped for.
Let us not forget how Mr. Robinson and his business partner, Valerie Jarrett, made their money- they owned the infamous Chicago Projects!
All that sincere Democrat concern for poor Negros led to cattle pens.
Too bad the President failed in his bid to sell off Ms. Jarrett’s remaining half to the Olympics for a cool billion.
I totally agree with you Mr Goldman, until I read your explanation of why Obama will not hurt Iran ( a thirld world nation should be left in peace …) :Sorry but there is one specific reason why iran, syria, the muslim brotherhood, the salafist in Lybia and all the anti-western countries like China, Russia are having the best time in their history – and it has nothing to do with naive romanticization of the underdog – You have in the white house a leftist-radical mole who in cold-blooded determination is doing its best to destroy , weaken, the allies of the west ( Israel Mubarak, khadafi , even Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates ) and who succeed to prop up the worst anti-western regime like Iran, Syria, Turkey.. you should qualify Obama ‘ nature by its real name : A mole, and its job :to shipwreck the western world.
The idea that the Party that brought Khomeini to power, is in any way interested in the general welfare of the United States, is laughable.
Not ignorance. Opportunity. Cultivation.
Consolidation moves and further expansion.
Thanks, Olympian, this article was fun!
Wow. If you liked this, please the Asian Times article.
It’s a tad longer, not so much. But Withering. Merciless. What a scream!
(Mitterand… Mitterand? Stop it, Spengler, stop it! I Am Crying, CRYING I tell you)
no doubt that the author admires Spengler, the intellectual inspirator of the third Reich though, while refusing to ackowledge its policy.
hmm about the thirty years war, which was a religion war first, the French weren’t the only participants, Sweden, Danemark, Austria, Spain… were also repressing, killing the german populations, and diseases, such as bubonic plague, made a great deal for the death rating too, and it wasn’t 2/3 that disappeared of the planet, but rather from 25% to 40%
and Richelieu wasn’t even in office when the war started, which was initiated by Habsburg Spain that exploited the French conflict with the Huguenots.
“At that time northern Italy was a major strategic item in Europe’s balance of powers, serving as a link between the Habsburgs in the Empire and in Spain. Had the imperial armies dominated this region, France’s very existence would have been endangered, as it would have been encircled by Habsburg territories. Spain was seeking papal approval for a universal monarchy”
“Richelieu was instrumental in redirecting the 30 Years’ War from the conflict of Protestantism versus Catholicism to that of nationalism versus Habsburg hegemony.”
“He wanted to protect France from the Spanish and the HRE influence and to provide aid to the Swedes, Danish, and Protestants. He participated in the war to maintain political dominance over the Habsburgs and to protect France from invasion. In the end the Treaty of Westphalia was a success because it gave authority to 300 German princes and divided the HRE.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu
I noticed your dislike of France in your many posts, hence your twisted history facts narration
and Richelieu with Maurice chevalier voice is like Bismarck with Sasha Bron cohen voice
Why is that the French never tell jokes about themselves?
sorry, I only understand “black humor”
don’t tell me that that wasn’t a fake dream?
I’ll bite. Why?
it’s corrosive of course !
I don’t think that Richelieu would have said “bingeaux” . I am pretty sure that Richelieu would have explained that trying “stabilization” would not solve the problem for the West. He would have explained that if we (meaning the USA and possibly the UE) would start to “neutralize” Iran all muslim countries and organizations in the Middle East, starting with Saudi Arabia and ending with Syria and Tunisia, would condemn USA and the West. They would increase the price of oil and then they would stop the oil flow completely — to the West but not to China.
Richelieu would have told you that even thought some of the gulf countries will be very happy about that stabilization they would not only condemn it but also will try to do something about “stabilizers”. And he would have reminded you about the arab proberb – “My Brother and I against My Cousin; My Cousin and I against the Stranger” In that case Richelieu would have explained to you that the Stranger is you and the cousins are shia and suni.
I think that Richelieu would have told you to sit down and do nothing.
Richelieu would have never told you that “stabilization” of Iran would help “stabilizing these countries”. He would have told you that such stabilization would have exactly the opposite result. The stabilization would have worked earlier – a year or two years earlier. During the Green Revolution in Iran. Before the “Arab Spring”. But Richelieu would have told you that you missed your window of opportunity.
I think you woke up too early and did not listen well to what he was trying to tell you.
Read it again. R. did not say “stabilize,” but “neutralize” Iran.
I am curious about both David’s and the groups opinion about Mark Steyn.
Just finished his latest book, “After America.”
That man is TRULY a prophet…
Mark Steyn is on the side of the angels. I agree with him about most things but take a somewhat different approach.
Interesting point about Jarrett – but it’s not really accurate to say she was raised in Iran. Her family left Iran when she was five.
Incidentally – remember General Schwarzkopf, who commanded in the Gulf War?
His father, former chief of New Jersey state police, had been commander of constabulary in Iran during and just after WW II, when Iran was under Allied occupation.
What stuck me as odd are the remarks of older expats about the Middle East.
I’ve heard that the ME from the 1950′s to the 70′s was rather open, rather free, trade and tourists from all over the world flowing through; even young Americans could easily find work in the bazaars.
Tehran, Beirut, even Riyadh- “kind of like a mixture of Paris and Las Vegas”, to quote one woman.
What happened? KGB activist trainers?
Certainly the NKVD/KGB and the Comintern were active in the Middle East during and after WWII. Even though Iran was the best entrepot for Lend-Lease aid to the USSR, there was serious conflict there between the USSR, GB, and the US over who had access to and influence over what and after the war, the Soviets mounted a full-court press to bring Irag and Iran, British Persia, into their sphere with enough success that we mounted a coup against the Soviet leaning regime in Iran, the wages for which we’re still paying. It seems lost to memory now but the whole Muslim World except Iran under the Shah and Jordan were de facto Soviet satellites; they used Soviet arms, had Soviet military advisors and used Soviet strategy and tactics, were the primary foreign buyer of Soviet bloc “consumer goods,” had all sorts of Soviet civilian assistance – the Soviets built the Aswan Dam in Egypt, and generally supported the USSR in the UN, though usually styling themselves as being in the “non-aligned nations” bloc, which also included India, Indonesia, Malaysia, etc. – themselves all targets of Soviet ambitions.
The US was still dancing the Left’s tune about anti-imperialism in the ’50s and we decided not to support nasty old imperialistic Britain and France when the Egyptians took over the Suez Canal. Then, the various newly “independent” Muslim nations began nationalizing European and American oil provinces and we sat idly by as they expropriated billions of pounds, francs, guilders, and dollars by seizing the developed oil fields and vacating production leases. I don’t know enough about it and it is very hard to learn about it, but the breakpoint seems to be Khaddafi’s seizure of the oil provinces in Libya durning the Nixon Administration; the World changed after that. When I think about it, my mind turns to things like Tri-lateral Commission, Bilderbergs, Rothchilds, and stuff like that, but something happened in there that let the last save Iran large oil province in the Middle East slip from Western control and at about the same time the US dumped huge gold holdings on the market and went to strictly fiat currency, and all this under the most “internationalist” administration we’d had since WWII. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get you.
After that, “Arab” oil money poured into the USSR in a massive arms build-up and we and the French for the first time openly sold and gave modern weapons to Israel. As dramatic as it was, the ’67 Arab-Israeli War was largely fought with stuff from the Army-Navy store, much of it WWII vintage. The Syrians still had Panzer IVs in service and the modified British Firefly version of the Sherman tank was an Israeli stalwart. Only in the air was the equipment somewhat modern but it wasn’t first line. By the time of the Yom Kippur War in ’73, only the first line units of the US and Soviet militaries had better equipment and that war was the first real proxy war on an industrial scale between the US and USSR.
Up until the Yom Kippur War, there was a lively and safe tourism in most of the Middle East other than perhaps the hardcore Baathist States, Syria and Iraq, and to my recollection it was more because they were so militarized and Soviet influenced, not because of radial Islam. The Yom Kippur War was a dramatic military defeat for both the Arabs and the Soviets and Soviet influence waned in the region. I think it is reasonable to conclude that the presence of the Soviet backed armies and the strong-arm governments that resulted kept the Islmamists in check. We don’t really know how peaceful the ‘Stans were under the Soviets, but they definitely were a lot more peaceful than they are now and I think the Soviets would have pacified Afghanistan had it not been for our interference. Frankly, the Soviets and the governments they backed could countenance the necessary brutality to bring even Muslim fanatics to heel; we can’t or at least won’t, and that’s as much because we have to deal with the Left and the Soviets didn’t, as because of any inherent “goodness” we have; the US has never been bashful about making brutal war when left to its own devices.
You need to hit the books.
Too much Fisking for one post…
But the I-Sherman did not use a 17 pounder cannon. It used a FRENCH 105mm cannon. (Google is your friend.)
THe big Arab money was from the OPEC states — which bought their weapons from the WEST.
Soviet weapons were sent ON CREDIT to Syria and Nasser’s Egypt. The only oil exporter to go Soviet was Libya. Iraq, while aligned with Moscow, managed to purchase no small amount of weapons from France and associated goods from the rest of non-American NATO sources. ( esp. 1981 through 1990 )
On balance, Soviet ‘sales’ to the Arabs ended up being military aid, pure and simple, as the ‘buyers’ never paid for the stuff.
We are seeing the same dynamic with Israeli and Egyptian ‘purchases’ today: both get their American arms for free. It’s all part of the Camp David Accord.
You must be on CAIR’s payroll; only the Muslims would hire somebody so stupid and illogical.
Much to digest. Deeply grateful, this is a period and place of great interest.
I look forward to the comments of Art Chance as much as Spengler;
Spengler, curiously, seems more innocent.
Art Chance has had many skirmishes with the enemy.
Modern economics does not account for the most durable aspect of economics-
there is no calculus of corruption.
I, too, have quiet thoughts such as “Trilateral Commission”;
I explain it simply, as such: global supply chains in WWII- when the soldiers came home, did all that business stop?
I feel we’ve developed a stratosphere-class spy economy; almost as if an alternate economy and culture is running in tandem with the visible world.
This Shadow world is only partly visible, yet it’s dark matter gravity unaccountably skews and wrenches our own.
In ancient times, the New religion had to cast down the Old in order take it’s place.
Someday, perhaps, all of this will be reduced to a line in a myth-
for instance, ‘the Olympians overthrew the Titans’, or ‘an angel with swords of fire drove Man from the Ehdeen (because of the Goddess and Snake)-
a reference to the unimaginable asteroid strikes of 2200 BC that shattered the Fertile Crescent ecology; centuries later, Habiru (refugees) simplified hieroglyphs, created an aleph-bet, and began writing down the fragments they had so desperately preserved.
What will our fragments yeild?
http://tinyurl.com/74db8ov
Click for the I-Sherman… Google around for more.
The famous Syrian Mark IV Panzers came by way of Franco — and Spain — and just one ancient battalion at that. It was a reserve unit. Franco talked Adolf into kicking in a ‘free’ Mark IV battalion as payment for sending his ‘Blue Division’ to the Eastern Front. The idea really came from London. It took a full, new battalion of tanks out of the war.
Franco also got some He-111s bombers. One was converted into his personal plane. These are the machines seen in the movie Patton, a film largely made in Spain.
With a few exceptions, the OPEC members bought out American and British interests at reasonable prices. In the case of KSA this process occurred in stages. Further, they cut inside deals assuring their buddies advantages for years to come when it came to the price at the pier. Expropriating is too strong a term for such deals.
And this is where Libya broke the mold. The Duck of Death really did screw the Americans over. Beyond that, he turfed out our Air Force which had SAC bases in Libya. Not too long after that, Kaddafy started funding the IRA against Britain — and just about any terrorist you’d care to name against Israel and the West.
Art, you’ve got some beautiful nonsense in your screeds. So I’ll give you points for style.
However, you’re way short on accuracy. Two terms: Google, Bing. Use them much more often.
And, hit the books.
alazebo wrote: ‘I’ve heard that the ME from the 1950′s to the 70′s was rather open, rather free, trade and tourists from all over the world flowing through; even young Americans could easily find work in the bazaars … Tehran, Beirut, even Riyadh- “kind of like a mixture of Paris and Las Vegas” … .What happened? KGB activist trainers?’
IMHO, Middle Easterners (and all-folks not raised in an affluent, secular suburban cocoon) respect strength and confidence. As those declined in the West a shadow returned in the East.
Thank you- now I understand a 100 year-old sign from Reno, Nevada:
Hangings at 8 AM
Parade at Noon
Confidence. Confidence in the culture.
That old Reno sign author had a way with words.
I thought the new movie version of “True Grit” did a great job of displaying the cultural confidence and moral sanity of 19th century America.
The bingeaux was priceless! Kudos on the whole article.
in a coherent french dialogue, it would be “Bingo !”
We don’t need to speak French, and if it weren’t for us, the French would speak German.
Perhaps true, but the French were very pretty helpful at Yorktown.
That’s true, but even that was more for French interests than ours. We were just a piece on the board that they could move against Britain and only our leaders with little land or money, e.g., Jefferson, saw it any differently. They used us, we used them, and our policy quickly became one of no foreign alliances and no further European incursion in our hemisphere. The latter was largely bravado at the time, but we’d developed enough of a maritime sting that we couldn’t be ignored by either Britain or France.
yeah, hadn’t you furnished the Nazis between the two WW, no legend of the great warriors would have been written ! hey BTW, we would have spoken Russian, and, then, I wouldn’t give a damn of your a*se, since Brest to Vladivostok would have too
Keep telling yourselves that, it will make you feel better about your fathers and grandfathers. On the day the French surrendered, they had more troops, tanks, and airplanes than the Germans; they just didn’t have the will.
and we are impressed by your knowledge of warfare of course,
just that your Minister of Propaganda has more means than ours
The Brits surrendered the first, wheile our troops were protecting their retreat
though the French had only 125 divisions, and 35O0 tanks, fast no planes, most of them were Brits the allies lot didn’t exceed 14OO
the Germans had 136 divisons, 2500 tanks, 3000 planes
Planes made the difference, and we weren’t prepeared for a modern war, unlike the Germans who had previously tested their new tactics of Blitz Krieg, in Poland, in spanish civil war… and experimented new arms in the soviet Union
boff, in your dram, your Navy only became consequent after WW1 !
and Louis XVI genuily blieved in freedom for your country, like he was subsidying La Perouse discoveries around the globe, he was a dreamer, that’s what killed him
http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/2004/acte-358.pdf
and that, when you still were dancing with the wolves !
That is the equivalent of signed confession that you have neaux sense of humor. I am not trying to bleaux you off. Geaux read Rabelais and you will kneaux that the French knew how to laugh.
boff, but you’re is peculiar, there is no parallel elsewhere !
Rabelais certainly wouldn’t have noticed it, though you would be scared if I used his concrete words for depicting sh*ts
ment to write
“yours is peculiar”
Tribal identity is at the core of understanding the middle east. Jews do indeed have a tribal identity which is how they have maintained a unique place in history against the odds. Lacking a land base for 2000 years Jews should have faded into memory as did many other civilizations. The identity overarches all of the differences among Jews. Israel is proof of this.
What puzzles me is the behavior of Palestinians. One can maybe understand that all of the Palestinians scattered in “camps” in Lebanon, Egypt, etc. are treated cruelly by their fellow arabs because they are of another Tribe. This type of adversity should create cohesion within the Palestinian Tribe yet it does not.
Abbas has already said that the exiles will not recieve citizenship in the planned Palestinian state. There will be no right of return as there is for Jews and Israel. Elder of Ziyon today reports on the Fatwa banning Palestinians from visiting Jerusalem, the very place they seem so determined to claim as their own. They cannot create a unified government to the point where the two parties are literally at war. They do not even allow their fellows the dignity of membership in the territories they control and maintain “refugee camps” in Gaza and Ramala.
What kind of people treats its own own members with such cruelty? How can you use your own children as shields and weapons? How can you keep your own people as political pawns on UN handouts for generations instead of creating an economy and decent life?
Golda Meir once said ““We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”
What you have to understand is that the so-called Palestinians are and were REJECTS from the surrounding ‘nations.’
When Zionists first re-entered Palestine to cultivate the land they had to pay top dollar — usually in gold — to get the worst farmland. ( If the land were decent it wasn’t for sale at any price — family tradition and all. )
As the Jews re-learned farming ( all of that urban living meant they started from scratch ) life came to arid soils.
It didn’t take too long for jealousy to kick in. Land prices went up. The imams tried to stop further sales to Zionists.
Nonetheless, the trend continued, and a belt of Zionists filled in the land between the Sea and the River Jordan — particularly up and east of Haifa.
When WWII was winding down, and the departure of the British in sight, the Arabs in Iraq, Jordan, et. al. did everything in their power to eject undesirables ( however determined — think the poor ) into the contested land.
This took the form of either paying their way — one-way; or sending them into exile. ( Shades of Botany Bay: the bulk of the ‘criminals’ were debtors. ) All of this was done WRT ramping up Arab numbers in front of partition.
THIS is the reason why ‘Palestinians’ are second-class Arabs in the eyes of Araby. It’s also why NOT ONE of the Arab lands — empty as they are — are willing to have any Palestinians flow back into their ‘nation.’
The few exceptions: Jordan and Lebanon are stark examples of what troubles they bring.
Black September, the moment Jordan moved against the PLO, blew back against the Israelis at Munich.
And then, there’s the Lebanon Civil War, directly triggered by the PLO and Moscow. ( Arafat was always a Soviet asset.)
=====
And so we have the Gaza Strip. It looks like Waikiki Beach — with gun barrels. Imagine a refugee zone with concrete high-rises aside a vacation beach. Truly bizarre.
debt- bondage migrant slaves
radio zeesen soldiers who lost the battle and wouldn’t (couldn’t) go home
now that’s a historical homeland
Generals saying odd things should not be faulted. Their choice is speak within White House guidance or become a civilian in 24 hours. This has been true since around late 1950. Officers of field grade and above speak freely but do not contradict the White House. Congress and the President decapitated the military in 1948 while creating the independent Air Force. Service chiefs rolled into an advisory body, replaced by civilian Secretaries. Chiefs give advice, but within White House line. Un-modified military opinion is difficult to find.
It’s always been true; ask a succession of US Generals that said or did, especially said, stupid things about Lincoln and US policy in the Civil War. The big advantage Gen. Lee had over all the US generals before Grant was that Lee, at least as good a politician as general, maybe better, had the almost absolute backing of Jefferson Davis. After his experiences with McClellan, Lincoln didn’t really trust or like any of his generals until he seized on Grant and Sherman who saw things his way. Anybody who knew a little military history COULD have figured out the flank attack at Chancellorsville, it differed from Hannibal’s attack at Cannae only in terms of the range of the weapons, but only Lee WOULD risk his Army, actually only part of his Army, Longstreet wasn’t there. Joe Hooker still had a far more powerful army and had actually defeated Lee’s forces on the right towards Salem Church, but Hooker had shot off his mouth to the press about how the Army of Northern Virginia was the “property of the US Army” when he crossed the Rapidan and cloaked himself in bravado. When Jackson turned his flank and his troops ran, Hooker lost his nerve because he thought he was about to lose his army and be sacked, so he chose to “save” the Army in hopes that would save him. It didn’t.
Moving away from the US, look at the Battle of Jutland. That was a stalemate, at best, because the British Admirals and Captains were afraid to lose their ships for fear of the personal and political consequences. I think that goes far to explain British ineffectiveness in North Africa. Churchill went far to set that right with his statement that he wasn’t going to criticise his generals for erring in the direction of the enemy.
And looking to the re-organization of ’48, don’t you just know how much the FDR and Truman White House must have hated McArthur? The US had to have a whole separate and essentially useless Army strategy in the Pacific just to placate the SOB, but he was so well known and so popular that they couldn’t just tell him to sit down and shut up and fire him if he didn’t. The only way he should have returned to The Phillipines was as a tourist after the war, but we fought one of the bloodiest and costliest battles of the war so he could make good on “I shall return” to no strategic purpose. I know government well enough to know that lots of people in the Executive and Legislative branches were thinking “no more McArthurs,” and for that matter no more Pattons when they were reorganizing the military in ’48. Bush I came perilously close to creating popular hero generals with Swartzkoft and Frank as did Bush II with Patraeus. If you’re a President, or even a Governor, you really don’t want somebody out there with their own cult following, and I actually think that’s a good thing. I’ve been one of those people with a cult following, but I also well know that the flip side of a cult following is a cult of enemies.
There’s a good argument that either McClellan or McArthur could have crossed the Rubicon had they chosen. Washington certainly could have, had good reason to in some ways, and our Country owes its existence to the fact that he didn’t. There was even some fear that Sherman would in the disorder following Lincoln’s assassination, and much trepidation about allowing him to march his very effective and, unlike the AOTP, very American army through Washington. Civilian control of the military and absolute military subservience to civilian authority has a price, a price often paid in blood by people who deserve better, e.g., Vietnam and now, seemingly, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the Founders’ fear of a standing army were well founded. Since in today’s world we must have a standing military, I really don’t want crossing the Rubicon to be realistically tempting.
Please stop re-inventing history.
Both Grant and Sherman were NOT career generals. Both re-entered military service SOLELY to preserve the Union.
Both were so sick and tired of bloodshed that they couldn’t wait for peace. Sherman’s attitude towards politics is epic.
Sheesh.
McCleallan was always given a free hand by Lincoln — as he did with all of his generals. He even tore up a memo to Mead ( after Gettysburg ) in which he complained about Mead’s failure to crush Lee before the river flood abated, thus ending the war promptly.
Wilson, FDR, and HST — on the whole — stayed above and out of military decisions. The few times FDR intervened ended up as absolute disasters on an epic scale. ( Like shunting the B-29s to China — single worst decision of the war — caused staggering Chinese casualties vs nil Japanese discomfort. )
The ‘hands-on’ presidency started with KENNEDY and the BAY of PIGS. It never gets any attention — but that’s where and when the LBJ type of hyper-involvement got started. It was a complete fiasco.
This style of management was repeated during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a complete fiasco. Kennedy started the game with Five-of-a-Kind and ended up with a mucked hand. The Press buried the lede. ( Russia had NO EFFECTIVE ICBMs able to hit America at the time — and the Brass knew it. They were still dependent upon the very same rocket they used for space flight. It took 24-hours to make flight ready. They had only three launch pads. You read that right, just three, and they were in Estonia, just down the coast from Leningrad. The entire remainder of their force was limited to Europe. Their atomic bombs were still too heavy to carry to America. Cuba was the ONLY location close enough for their missiles to reach.)
And McClellan DID run against Lincoln in 1864. He was crushed at the polls. As Lincoln remarked:”McClelland’s got the slows.” There was never a time when McClelland ever contemplated marching on Lincoln. The Union officers idolized Lincoln. He was the guy handing out stars right and left. He made HUNDREDS of men generals.
And it was MacArthur who told Truman that his worry ought to be of Ike, not him. Power hungry American generals run for the presidency — and often get it.
It’s not worth it to reply to complete idiots whose whole post is a non sequitur. Sheesh, you’re dumb!
He used a couple of buckets to douse your campfire. He might be worth at least, some inspired invective……’>…….
Not so sure about much of the other stuff, but:
In the words of Churchill, Admiral Jellicoe “was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon”.