Tag Archives: barbara tuchman

March 25, 2018 · 00:03

The Lights Are Going Out: President Trump’s Appointment of War Criminals as Senior Foreign Policy Advisors

Trump holds a discussion about school shootings with state governors from around the country at the White House in Washington

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

In her book The March of Folly: From Try to Vietnam historian Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“No one is so sure of his premises as the man who knows too little.”

If there is a man who ever embodied the truth of Tuchman’s words it is President Donald Trump.

Over the past two weeks President Trump has removed men from his cabinet who acted to restrain many of his worst instincts and who all were considered the “adults in the room.” The final nail in the coffin for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and National Security Advisor Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster was their condemnation of the actions of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, especially in the killing of Russian dissidents in the United Kingdom. Tillerson and McMaster were also proponents of maintaining the agreement engineered by the Obama Administration and European countries to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions diplomatically and economically. The two had somewhat different approaches to North Korea with Tillerson a proponent of negotiations and deterrence and McMaster more favorable to preventive military actions to stop or delay the North’s nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile programs.  Additionally Trump’s Chief Economic Advisor, Gary Cohn who has advocated more moderate and

Their removal has resulted in a shake up of the national security team. CIA Director Mike Pompeo was nominated by the President to take Tillerson’s place. Pompeo is considered to be a hawk on Iran and opposed to the current accord who has called for strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and openly mused about regime change in both Iran and North Korea. Pompeo, a graduate of West Point and a Congressman had never been in an executive position

To replace Popeo at CIA, President Trump nominated the deputy director of the CIA, Gina Haspel who according to Robert Richer who worked with her has no political agenda. That being said after 9-11 she ran an interrogation site in Thailand that engaged in the torture of detainees and recommending that tapes of those interrogations be destroyed. Her defenders state that she was operating within orders because such measures were authorized at the time. However based on precedent of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials the defense of “just carrying out orders” or defending such actions because they were “legal” at the time is not a defense. At Nuremberg, especially in trials of those who engaged in the torture of military and political prisoners, the tribunals convicted dozens of mid-level and high level functionaries of war crimes for doing the activities and methods used by Haspel and her colleagues.

The problem with Haspel is not her devotion to her service and desire to protect the United States, but in the fact that she was willing to use the rational of present “legality” to use torture in ways that when used against Americans the United States judges to be illegal and immoral. It is no wonder that Senator John McCain who experienced such torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese has his doubts about her. My concern is that since she once engaged in such measures will she do so again if ordered. By the standards of Nuremberg she would have stood trial and probably been convicted as a war criminal, and the President has nominated her to be Director of the CIA. Richer says that he believes that she will abide by the law and speak truth to people in  power. If she is confirmed as CIA Director I hope that he is right, but history demonstrates that civil servants, especially professionals in the police and intelligence services are quite adept at adapting to the methods and dictates of whoever is in power in their service to the state. Thus I am concerned.

Finally, the President replaced General McMaster with John Bolton who has since the 1990s advocated preventive war as the primary means to the end of United States national security strategy. He despises alliances, international agreements, international organizations, and any kind of universal justice. He regularly attacks the International Criminal Court, which is the direct descendent of the Nuremberg and Japan war crimes tribunals, both of which were engineered and led by the United States. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson who served as the head prosecutor at the major Nuremberg War Crimes Trials noted:

“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

Bolton rejects that proposition. In his position as President Bush’s under secretary of state for arms control and international security constantly manipulated intelligence to conform to his views and who worked to discredit colleagues and subordinates who attempted to tell the truth. He was one of the most responsible for the decision to attack Iraq which was according to conservative writer George Will was the worst foreign policy disaster “in American history.” Likewise Bolton still defends the decision to go to war against Iraq and washes his hands of the results of that decision, including the nearly 4500 American military personnel killed and over 35,000 wounded and the exponential help it gave to Iran’s desires in the region.

Bolton also would have been a candidate for prosecution at Nuremberg under counts one and two of the indictment;Conspiracy to Wage Aggressive War and Crimes Against Peace. 

The President has now nominated or appointed two people (Haslip and Bolton) who are by the definition of the Nuremberg Tribunal “War Criminals” to be senior foreign policy and intelligence advisors, and a third, Pompeo, who expresses many of the same views but until now has never been in the position to exercise those views or influence the President as to implementing them.

The next six to eight weeks leading to the middle of May will be very significant to the future of the United States and the world. The President has said that he would meet with the North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile programs, and the renewal of the multi-national agreement on Iran, which both Trump and Bolton oppose. The actions of the President, guided by Bolton will decide wether the United States goes to war, possibly on multiple fronts with enemies capable of causing great damage to the United States, our allies, and the world economy. Millions of lives could be lost, including tens of thousands of United States military personnel and quite possibly millions of American civilians, not counting the lives of so many innocent people in the Middle East and Northeast Asia.

As I watch these events unfold I am reminded of the Tuchman’s immortal account of Sir Edward Grey and the outbreak of the First World War:  “Watching with his failing eyes, the lamps being lit in St. James Park, Grey was heard to remark that “the lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them again in our lifetime.”

The lamps are going out both in the United States and around the world, and if one has any ability to use reason and think ethically one has to think of how terrible the results of President Trump’s uniformed, historically ignorant, and morally bankrupt decisions will end.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

 

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March 7, 2018 · 00:05

“The First Duty of Every Officer is to the Truth”

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Most of my readers know that in addition to being a Priest and Navy Chaplain that I am a historian and have taught both ethics and Gettysburg as a faculty member at a Staff College. Many of the men and women that I taught will lead our military as commanders, planners and staff officers. I stay in contact with a number of my former students, including two from South Korea. Now I still write even as I lead the staff at one of the Navy’s largest and most active Chapel programs.

Since I figure that this will be my last duty station before I retire my goal is to help guide those who work with me to success in the military and set them up for success when they leave the military. They are a great group, I could not ask for better and when I have a bad day or seem to be off in some way I have given them permission to ask how I am doing and to ask me hard questions. I give them permission to tell me the truth. A lot of leaders won’t do that, but I try to be transparent and honest with them because I know that they have my back and we do a pretty good job at caring for people and doing the right thing.

As such my first duty, whether it is in teaching, writing or in ministry is to the truth. In fact I quoted Captain Jean Luc Picard, played by Sir Patrick Stewart in Star Trek the Next Generation: “the first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it’s scientific truth, historical truth or personnel truth…” I am not a Starfleet Officer but as an officer nonetheless I have always believed that the truth matters, but sadly I, like so many of us have turned the other way and not spoken out. But the older I get the more I realize that I cannot be silent about subjects that at one time I turned a blind eye to because they were uncomfortable, unpopular or might hurt my career either in the church or in the military.

I have been writing a lot over the past few months about subjects that many people are controversial and as such many people are uncomfortable with those topics. Whether the issue is civil rights, racism, Gay rights and marriage equality, voting rights, religious freedom and religious intolerance, and even xenophobia, or the connection of symbols such as the Confederate Battle Flag to a heritage that goes to a hatred that extends far beyond the battlefields of the Civil War; I am speaking out. Now I am fully aware of that many of these subjects are controversial. I have been asked in comments on this site and on my various social media accounts, particularly Facebook, why I keep bringing up the uncomfortable past. But I have to, I have a duty to the truth and as Oscar Wilde noted “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

The late Howard Zinn, a brilliant historian whose work at one time I discounted, said: “But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is… to tell the truth.” Who would think that telling the truth could or would be a revolutionary act? However, when one lives in a society where the truth is bent, run over and shredded by politicians, preachers and pundits, what I call the Trinity of Evil; when state school boards whitewash history and force their religious views on children in public schools; where corporations and advertisers use the most crass means to deceive customers; and where established science is not met with denial under the guise of “skepticism;” telling the truth is a revolutionary affair.

The honest truth is that I never expected to be a revolutionary in terms of what so much of society, especially the conservative Christian movement that I spent much of my life in expects. Truthfully, upholding tradition, and for that matter defending myth, is much easier when backed by the certitude of an unbending theology and political is much easier than asking the hard questions. Barbara Tuchman once wrote: “The reality of a question is inevitably more complicated than we would like to suppose.” I guess that is why so many people would rather be content with myth than to ask the really hard questions; be they about history, religion, and science or for that matter anything. One of the must uncomfortable things to admit is that truth is always evolving as we learn more, it is dynamic, not static and to attempt to force people to live by the “truth” of our ancestors is disingenuous, dishonest and denies the reality of the universe that we live. Thomas Jefferson recognized this and wrote:

“I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.” 

So why do I write? I write so that we never forget or push aside the great evils that human beings are capable of committing: The Holocaust, slavery and Jim Crow, the extermination of Native Americans by the millions in the name of God and Manifest Destiny, the enslavement, exploitation, and sometimes the extermination of whole peoples by colonialism; the witch trials, the religious wars of the Reformation, the Inquisition, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Stalin’s purges, the Tuskegee experiments, the Japanese barbarity in the Rape of Nanking and other places in Asia, the Srebrenica genocide and the Rwandan genocide, just to name a few.

All too often the perpetrators of those events and their descendants as all too willing to last the past lie dormant. But at what cost do we do so? Do we sacrifice justice on the altar of prosperity and peace; do we sacrifice uncomfortable truth in order to remain undisturbed and comforted by myth? Do we condemn our descendants to live under the myths of our ancestors? Would we sacrifice the truth and justice in order to ensure obedience? Howard Zinn correctly observed, “Historically, the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

President John F Kennedy spoke these words at Yale in 1962: “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”

Personally I would rather ask the questions and confront the past so we might have a better future, because though I am a realist, I also believe in my heart that humanity is capable of overcoming hatred, prejudice and ignorance. The problem is that times get difficult those attitudes can overcome our better nature. As Spencer Tracy’s character in the movie Judgment at Nuremberg said:

“But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary – even able and extraordinary – men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat through the trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen. There are those in our own country too who today speak of the “protection of country” – of ‘survival’. A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient – to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is ‘survival as what’? A country isn’t a rock. It’s not an extension of one’s self. It’s what it stands for. It’s what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.”

That my friends, is why I write: for justice, truth, and the value of a single human life.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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January 3, 2018 · 01:01

Who Has the Bigger Button?

North-Korea-Kim-Jong-un-nuclear-Starfish-800967

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Over the past 24 hours we have seen two very emotionally and intellectually stunted, narcissistic and sociopathic authoritarian leaders continue to threaten each other and the world with nuclear war.

As I watch this drama play out I am reminded of the words that Albert Speer wrote of Adolf Hitler when he unleashed the Second World War by invading Poland:

“I do not think that in those early days of September, Hitler was fully aware that he had irrevocably unleashed a world war. He had merely meant to move one step further. To be sure, he was ready to accept the risk associated with that step, just as he had been a year before during the Czech crisis; but he had prepared himself only for the risk, not really for the great war.”

When I think of the statements, tweets, and comments of President Trump and Kim Jong Un I am reminded of what Speer said about his Fuhrer, Both men are thumping their chests and speaking of their nuclear weapons and military power as if they, like middle school boys were comparing the size of their penises. Both men threaten each other and their nations with nuclear armageddon but neither seem to understand what war really means. Likewise there seem to be other American leaders apart from the President who appear think that a nuclear war, even a “limited” one will be not have major repercussions around the world. Kim, Trump, and their most devout supporters are perfectly prepared to assume the risks of war, but not for its consequences.

I think that we are standing at the edge of the abyss and that President Trump, Kim Jong Un, and their supporters are not nearly as prepared for the consequences of their words and machinations as they think that they are. Sadly those who go to fight in their wars and those who happen to be in the way of war, those who will be war’s first victims won’t live long enough to get a say in the decisions made by these men.

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 6, 2017 · 23:58

The Harder Alternative

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The past few weeks I have been pondering something that to most people that I know is a major war on the Korea Peninsula that will spread throughout that region and may not leave the continental United States untouched, as well as the strong possibility of a conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran that would naturally end up involving the United States as an ally of the Saudis. If both of these conflicts began around the same time they could become the progenitors of a world war, the likes of which has not been seen or experienced since the Second World War.

As I look around it seems that most people regardless of their political beliefs, be they liberal or conservative, or the radicals who seem to have pushed aside the traditional mainstream conservatives and liberals; do not seem to think that anything really bad is going to happen. In the Middle East the Sunni-Shia Muslim Civil War is about to explode while in the long developing North Korea standoff we have a North Korean dictator who is not going to back down from his quest for fully operational ICBMs facing off against an American President who seems to be chomping at the bit to get his chance to eliminate the North Korean threat.

In each theater the actors seem to be pushing the operational and strategic envelope leaving little chance for diplomatic maneuver and increased chances of a miscalculation that could result in wars that are just not conceivable to must people following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact, and the end of the Cold War.

As a historian and a career military officer I not only can imagine it but can see it coming and what frustrates the hell out of me is that so few people I know can se it and even fewer are prepared for the harder alternative of what has to be done when things go to shit. The fact is that most people, military and civilians alike live in a Cloud-Cuckoo-Land where wars remain small, manageable, and involve relatively few casualties. The wars of the past two decades have blinded us to the fact that the coming wars will be unlike our generation has seen and will be as disruptive to the global system as was the First World War. Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.”

Because I can see the disaster unfolding I am doing my best to prepare myself and the men and women who I supervise or work with, physically, mentally, professionally, and spiritually for what is coming but I feel like I voice in the wilderness. I would hope to be proven wrong by events, but I don’t see that happening as governments on all sides are moving closer to war. As the pressure continues to build and preparations, exercises, and shows of force become a substitute for diplomacy and the careful use of all elements of national power to contain these crises we should not be surprised when we wake up and find that the unthinkable is now reality.

Anyway, that’s all for tonight. Until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 6, 2017 · 23:58

The Harder Alternative

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The past few weeks I have been pondering something that to most people that I know is a major war on the Korea Peninsula that will spread throughout that region and may not leave the continental United States untouched, as well as the strong possibility of a conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran that would naturally end up involving the United States as an ally of the Saudis. If both of these conflicts began around the same time they could become the progenitors of a world war, the likes of which has not been seen or experienced since the Second World War.

As I look around it seems that most people regardless of their political beliefs, be they liberal or conservative, or the radicals who seem to have pushed aside the traditional mainstream conservatives and liberals; do not seem to think that anything really bad is going to happen. In the Middle East the Sunni-Shia Muslim Civil War is about to explode while in the long developing North Korea standoff we have a North Korean dictator who is not going to back down from his quest for fully operational ICBMs facing off against an American President who seems to be chomping at the bit to get his chance to eliminate the North Korean threat.

In each theater the actors seem to be pushing the operational and strategic envelope leaving little chance for diplomatic maneuver and increased chances of a miscalculation that could result in wars that are just not conceivable to must people following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact, and the end of the Cold War.

As a historian and a career military officer I not only can imagine it but can see it coming and what frustrates the hell out of me is that so few people I know can se it and even fewer are prepared for the harder alternative of what has to be done when things go to shit. The fact is that most people, military and civilians alike live in a Cloud-Cuckoo-Land where wars remain small, manageable, and involve relatively few casualties. The wars of the past two decades have blinded us to the fact that the coming wars will be unlike our generation has seen and will be as disruptive to the global system as was the First World War. Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.”

Because I can see the disaster unfolding I am doing my best to prepare myself and the men and women who I supervise or work with, physically, mentally, professionally, and spiritually for what is coming but I feel like I voice in the wilderness. I would hope to be proven wrong by events, but I don’t see that happening as governments on all sides are moving closer to war. As the pressure continues to build and preparations, exercises, and shows of force become a substitute for diplomacy and the careful use of all elements of national power to contain these crises we should not be surprised when we wake up and find that the unthinkable is now reality.

Anyway, that’s all for tonight. Until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 6, 2017 · 23:58

The Harder Alternative

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The past few weeks I have been pondering something that to most people that I know is a major war on the Korea Peninsula that will spread throughout that region and may not leave the continental United States untouched, as well as the strong possibility of a conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran that would naturally end up involving the United States as an ally of the Saudis. If both of these conflicts began around the same time they could become the progenitors of a world war, the likes of which has not been seen or experienced since the Second World War.

As I look around it seems that most people regardless of their political beliefs, be they liberal or conservative, or the radicals who seem to have pushed aside the traditional mainstream conservatives and liberals; do not seem to think that anything really bad is going to happen. In the Middle East the Sunni-Shia Muslim Civil War is about to explode while in the long developing North Korea standoff we have a North Korean dictator who is not going to back down from his quest for fully operational ICBMs facing off against an American President who seems to be chomping at the bit to get his chance to eliminate the North Korean threat.

In each theater the actors seem to be pushing the operational and strategic envelope leaving little chance for diplomatic maneuver and increased chances of a miscalculation that could result in wars that are just not conceivable to must people following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact, and the end of the Cold War.

As a historian and a career military officer I not only can imagine it but can see it coming and what frustrates the hell out of me is that so few people I know can se it and even fewer are prepared for the harder alternative of what has to be done when things go to shit. The fact is that most people, military and civilians alike live in a Cloud-Cuckoo-Land where wars remain small, manageable, and involve relatively few casualties. The wars of the past two decades have blinded us to the fact that the coming wars will be unlike our generation has seen and will be as disruptive to the global system as was the First World War. Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.”

Because I can see the disaster unfolding I am doing my best to prepare myself and the men and women who I supervise or work with, physically, mentally, professionally, and spiritually for what is coming but I feel like I voice in the wilderness. I would hope to be proven wrong by events, but I don’t see that happening as governments on all sides are moving closer to war. As the pressure continues to build and preparations, exercises, and shows of force become a substitute for diplomacy and the careful use of all elements of national power to contain these crises we should not be surprised when we wake up and find that the unthinkable is now reality.

Anyway, that’s all for tonight. Until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 6, 2017 · 23:58

The Harder Alternative

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The past few weeks I have been pondering something that to most people that I know is a major war on the Korea Peninsula that will spread throughout that region and may not leave the continental United States untouched, as well as the strong possibility of a conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran that would naturally end up involving the United States as an ally of the Saudis. If both of these conflicts began around the same time they could become the progenitors of a world war, the likes of which has not been seen or experienced since the Second World War.

As I look around it seems that most people regardless of their political beliefs, be they liberal or conservative, or the radicals who seem to have pushed aside the traditional mainstream conservatives and liberals; do not seem to think that anything really bad is going to happen. In the Middle East the Sunni-Shia Muslim Civil War is about to explode while in the long developing North Korea standoff we have a North Korean dictator who is not going to back down from his quest for fully operational ICBMs facing off against an American President who seems to be chomping at the bit to get his chance to eliminate the North Korean threat.

In each theater the actors seem to be pushing the operational and strategic envelope leaving little chance for diplomatic maneuver and increased chances of a miscalculation that could result in wars that are just not conceivable to must people following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact, and the end of the Cold War.

As a historian and a career military officer I not only can imagine it but can see it coming and what frustrates the hell out of me is that so few people I know can se it and even fewer are prepared for the harder alternative of what has to be done when things go to shit. The fact is that most people, military and civilians alike live in a Cloud-Cuckoo-Land where wars remain small, manageable, and involve relatively few casualties. The wars of the past two decades have blinded us to the fact that the coming wars will be unlike our generation has seen and will be as disruptive to the global system as was the First World War. Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.”

Because I can see the disaster unfolding I am doing my best to prepare myself and the men and women who I supervise or work with, physically, mentally, professionally, and spiritually for what is coming but I feel like I voice in the wilderness. I would hope to be proven wrong by events, but I don’t see that happening as governments on all sides are moving closer to war. As the pressure continues to build and preparations, exercises, and shows of force become a substitute for diplomacy and the careful use of all elements of national power to contain these crises we should not be surprised when we wake up and find that the unthinkable is now reality.

Anyway, that’s all for tonight. Until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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November 6, 2017 · 23:56

The Harder Alternative

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The past few weeks I have been pondering something that to most people that I know is a major war on the Korea Peninsula that will spread throughout that region and may not leave the continental United States untouched, as well as the strong possibility of a conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran that would naturally end up involving the United States as an ally of the Saudis. If both of these conflicts began around the same time they could become the progenitors of a world war, the likes of which has not been seen or experienced since the Second World War.

As I look around it seems that most people regardless of their political beliefs, be they liberal or conservative, or the radicals who seem to have pushed aside the traditional mainstream conservatives and liberals; do not seem to think that anything really bad is going to happen. In the Middle East the Sunni-Shia Muslim Civil War is about to explode while in the long developing North Korea standoff we have a North Korean dictator who is not going to back down from his quest for fully operational ICBMs facing off against an American President who seems to be chomping at the bit to get his chance to eliminate the North Korean threat.

In each theater the actors seem to be pushing the operational and strategic envelope leaving little chance for diplomatic maneuver and increased chances of a miscalculation that could result in wars that are just not conceivable to must people following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact, and the end of the Cold War.

As a historian and a career military officer I not only can imagine it but can see it coming and what frustrates the hell out of me is that so few people I know can se it and even fewer are prepared for the harder alternative of what has to be done when things go to shit. The fact is that most people, military and civilians alike live in a Cloud-Cuckoo-Land where wars remain small, manageable, and involve relatively few casualties. The wars of the past two decades have blinded us to the fact that the coming wars will be unlike our generation has seen and will be as disruptive to the global system as was the First World War. Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.”

Because I can see the disaster unfolding I am doing my best to prepare myself and the men and women who I supervise or work with, physically, mentally, professionally, and spiritually for what is coming but I feel like I voice in the wilderness. I would hope to be proven wrong by events, but I don’t see that happening as governments on all sides are moving closer to war. As the pressure continues to build and preparations, exercises, and shows of force become a substitute for diplomacy and the careful use of all elements of national power to contain these crises we should not be surprised when we wake up and find that the unthinkable is now reality.

Anyway, that’s all for tonight. Until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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October 6, 2017 · 23:41

Political Folly and the Lust for Power

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Note: this was inadvertently posted in incomplete for late last night as I closed up my iPad thinking I would complete it today. This is the completed article.

I have been to war. I have been shot at and had rockets pass over my head. I have seen the wounded, and I have seen the devastation caused by war. Likewise I have also trained and prepared for worse worse than I served in. Back in the 1980s the unit that I commanded, the 557th Medical Company (Ambulance) had the mission of helping to support the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment on the Fulda Gap. They and we were expected to take 75-90% casualties if the Soviets came over the border. I have to tell you that you haven’t really had to contemplate the reality of war if your neighborhood is not in the fallout pattern of nuclear weapons or the contamination zone of chemical or biological weapons. Mine was, thus ever since I was a young Army Lieutenant I have had a tremendous appreciation for what could happen if all hell broke loose and a worse case war scenario developed. For me it is not that hard to imagine worst case scenarios.

Sadly, that does not seem to be the case with President Trump. He seems hell bent at forcing the military to provide him with expressly demands faster military options for whatever he is planning; he mocks his Secretary of State’s efforts to use diplomacy to defuse the growing crisis on the Korean Peninsula, a crisis that he has made worse by taunting the North Korean leader; he is about to end an agreement with Iran which with the cooperation of our allies has been relatively successful in spite of Iran’s other provocative actions in the Arabian Gulf, in Syria, and in Yemen.

Despite the President’s rhetoric there has been no significant strengthening of the military since he took office. In fact the President’s policies are further stretching a force that spent the better part of a decade and a half wearing itself out in counterinsurgency campaigns that knew no end and cannot be won without the host nations being stable and secure enough to address the underlying causes of the insurgency. Now those forces are being tasked to go back and get ready for potential high intensity conflicts in Europe, Northeast Asia, and the Middle East.

The military is not the solution for every situation. This is something that those of us with significant military experience in peace and war, and who have studied the fundamentals of strategy and strategic thinking using history, economics, political science, geography, science and technology, diplomacy, and information know this. Sun Tzu wrote: “He who relies solely on warlike measures shall be exterminated; he who relies solely on peaceful measures shall perish.” It is in choosing which elements of national power to gain advantage without war where true success lies, as Sun Tzu noted “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

There are a host of elements of national power, and for the President to be enamored with just one, the most costly and the destructive is foolish. Barbara Tuchman wrote:

“Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as “the most flagrant of all the passions.” Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise. Business offers a kind of power, but only to the very successful at the top, and without the dominion and titles and red carpets and motorcycle escorts of public office.”

One can see how the lust for power infected President Trump and how business was not enough to satisfy that need, and how even the domestic power of being President is not enough. To me it appears that the President like so many before him sees glory in war conquest and does not consider the cost. When he told reporters that they “could be watching the calm before the storm” and when asked what he meant said “you’ll find out,” not just once but a number of times going into the next day it was unnecessary and unnerving.

Honestly it seems to me that the President through his words and actions is sowing the wind and that in time we will reap the whirlwind unless sane and wise counsel prevails. I do see that senior military leaders are stating their differences with the President on policy matters and one hopes that they if no one else will be able to restrain the President who cannot stomach criticism, attacks his opponents and seems to desire affirmation and not information.

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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September 4, 2017 · 10:09

Of Hubris, Hurricanes, Hydrogen Bombs, and Harder Alternatives

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I got five mile walk in with my dogs Minnie and Izzy along the Potomac River and has a good amount of time to enjoy them, to take in the woods and wildlife, and to do some thinking. As I walked in the quiet with my girls I thought about what I wrote yesterday about the blessings of solitude. Going out with them meant that I had time to think and ponder a number of crises that have the possibility of impacting all of our lives in major ways and the hubris, arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence of the so called leader of the free world. Max Hastings description of Kaiser Wilhelm II is frighteningly descriptive of President Trump: “a brittle personality whose yearning for respect caused him to intersperse blandishments and threats in ill-judged succession.”

First, there was the catastrophe of Hurricane Harvey with the massive destruction to Houston and much of East Texas to which despite two visits to the region the President still seems emotionally untouched by. Then, after North Korea tested a missile that could hit the United States I conducted a test of its largest nuclear weapon to which after he made his obligatory angry tweets to North Korea, President Trump then both threatened and scolded South Korea.

Now there is the real possibility of another natural disaster as Hurricane Irma bears down of the Southeastern or Gulf Coast of the United States as a major, possibly category four or five storm capable of massive destruction and loss of life, and the realization that we have a President that only seems to see these crises in the light of self-promotion and how they make him appear, and the realization that most people do not prepare themselves for worst case scenarios.

This is nothing new, Barbara Tuchman wrote of an earlier generation “One constant among the elements of 1914—as of any era—was the disposition of everyone on all sides not to prepare for the harder alternative, not to act upon what they suspected to be true.”

Likewise over the weekend I have been doing a lot of reading. I finished Max Hastings book about the opening months of the First First World War, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War, Bradley Gottfried’s annotated atlas of the Battle of Antietam, The Maps of Antietam, which was helpful as I walked the battlefield on Thursday, Meg Groeling’s The Aftermath of Battle: The Burial,of the Civil War Dead, and Breaking Point of the French Army: the Nivelle Offensive of 1917 by David Murphy. All three books to some extent dealt with the hubris of leaders and the human cost of war. Likewise, my walk of the Antietam battlefield was a good way for me to put both hubris and the human cost of war into perspective.

While natural disasters cannot be avoided they can certainly be mitigated if leaders and people are willing to do the hard thing prepare for worst case scenarios. What happened with Hurricane Harvey is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to repair and even for the region to partially recover. Houston will rebuild, and recover but many of the poorer small towns down the Gulf Coast of Texas will not. As I write this the potential damage and loss of life to whatever section of the East Coast or the Gulf Coast that Irma hits will be substantial.

As for North Korea, it seems that the President is determined to provoke the already tense situation on the Korean Peninsula by not only threatening North Korea, but our ally South Korea as well. I don’t know about you but my training as a young officer on the Fulda Gap during the peak of the Cold War taught me to prepare for the worst and I don’t see the leaders of our country or for that matter most people planning, or even thinking about how bad this could get. My motto is that of Hannah Arendt “Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes,” to which I would add be flexible.

My hope is that Irma will turn away from land and head into the vast reaches of the North Atlantic, but with every new update I see the possibility that as with Harvey, millions of real people are going to have their lives upended. The same is true if the situation on the Korean Peninsula comes to war. It’s just the way I think, and I would rather be ready and have done my best to prepare for the worst case scenario hoping that it never comes to pass, than through a lack of planning, inaction, and careless words or gestures make things exponentially worse.

So anyway, until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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