Notable Passings

[Trooper]

From the CSP Book and Movie Review Forum:
"From The Times
London
January 14, 2009

Colonel David Smiley: Blues officer and MC recipient

When Lieutenant David Smiley was ordered to Palestine with the 1st Cavalry Division in January 1940 his immediate concern was how to dispose of his private aeroplane, two racehorses and Bentley. The next five years were to bring him more exacting problems, but he completed the war as a three-times decorated lieutenant-colonel.

The Life Guards and Smiley’s regiment, the Royal Horse Guards (The Blues), each provided two squadrons to make up the 1st Household Cavalry Regiment (HCR), which, together with two other horsed cavalry regiments already in Palestine and several mobilised Yeomanry regiments, provided the 1st Cavalry Division with the capability to relieve an infantry division in Palestine for service in the Western Desert. Smiley found Palestine interesting but, seeking more active duty, he volunteered to join No 52 (Middle East) Commando under training at Geneifa, Egypt, in November 1940.

Operations against the Italians in Abyssinia in the early months of 1941 gave him his first taste of action, but when 52 Commando was withdrawn to Egypt, after Haile Selassie had been restored to his throne, he heard that 1st HCR had been motorised and was about to go to the Western Desert, so he hastened to rejoin. Diversions of the regiment — to Iraq, during the Rashid Ali anti-British revolt, Syria and then Persia with the force assembled to oppose any German thrust from the Caucasus towards the oilfields — intervened. But Smiley eventually reached the desert in time for El Alamein. Afterwards, while in Cairo under orders for return to Syria, he snapped up an invitation to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE) mission about to be sent to Albania.

Although there was little reliable information on the situation in Albania, SOE hoped to orchestrate partisan attacks on the occupying Italians. A team comprising Major N. L. D. “Billy” McLean, Smiley, Lieutenant Garry Duffy — a demolitions expert — and a radio operator was parachuted into Axis-occupied Greece, where an SOE mission was already established. They crossed the Albanian frontier to find that the communist and royalist guerrilla groups were principally engaged in outmanoeuvring each other in readiness to take control of the country once the Axis forces had been evicted.

However, Smiley and Duffy were able to make contact with a group of communist partisans intent on attacking the Italian garrison in the town of Leshovik. Surprise was achieved, and despite the partisans’ failure to press home their advantage, the Italian burnt down their barracks and withdrew. Impressed by this success, Smiley called for an airdrop of explosives and destroyed a bridge used by recently arrived German troops. The encouraging report he sent to SOE headquarters in Cairo as soon as he rejoined McLean and the radio operator elicited news of the imminent despatch of a brigadier to take control of the Albanian mission. On arrival, the brigadier sent McLean and Smiley — whom he suspected of “going native” — to the coast for collection by the Royal Navy and some leave.

They were recalled from London after news that the brigadier and his staff had been betrayed to the Germans, who had taken over the occupation following the Italian armistice of September 1943. In Cairo they met up with Captain Julian Amery — late of the British Embassy in Belgrade — and all three were dropped directly into Albania.

This second mission began well, as initially the two partisan factions agreed to act jointly against the Germans, but the communist leader Enver Hoxha, Stalinist Prime Minister 1944-54 and in effect his country’s leader until his death in 1985, was to renege on this. Even so, damage was inflicted on German lines of communication and supply convoys. After return from Albania, Smiley was awarded the Military Cross for his first mission and a bar for his second.

While on leave in Cairo in early 1945 he received an invitation from the Thai Prince Subha Svasti, whose family had lived near his in Surrey, to join SOE’s Force 136 in the Far East.

Siam — as the country was then known — was supposedly at war with Britain under Japanese pressure, but SOE was active in promoting anti-Japanese activity in the country. Smiley accepted and was instrumental in organising the repatriation of former Commonwealth prisoners held by the Japanese in Thailand. But in French Indo-China he met obstruction from communist partisans interested only in resisting the return of the French colonial authorities. He was appointed OBE for his work in South-East Asia.

On return to England he undertook a secondment to MI6 to work on proposals for the SAS to assume the SOE role in future conflicts and then, as part of an Anglo-US initiative, he went to Malta to help to brief agents being sent to Albania. (Many were betrayed by the traitor Kim Philby, but some escaped to Greece.)

He commanded The Blues with the Army of the Rhine and then in Windsor from 1952 to 1955. This included command of the Sovereign’s Escort at the Coronation, for which he was appointed MVO (later LVO). Stockholm as military attaché followed on promotion to colonel and as this assignment drew to a close, he and his wife were on the point of buying a farm in Kenya when Julian Amery, by then Secretary of State for War, offered Smiley command of the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces.

The Sultan’s forces — then of limited capability — were unable to deal with a rebellion mounted from the hinterland plateau of the 8,000ft-high Jebel Akhdar. At Smiley’s request, two squadrons of 22nd SAS Regiment, a Life Guards squadron and RAF ground-attack aircraft were put at his disposal and the rebels were defeated, after a heroic scaling of the Jebel by the SAS. Modernisation, expansion and better training of the Sultan’s forces were subsequently instituted.

On leaving Oman in 1961, he was offered command of the SAS Group in England but not promotion to brigadier. By his own admission, he left the Army in a huff and tried to settle down as a restaurants inspector for the Good Food Guide.

He was rescued from this by Billy McLean, his friend from the Albanian missions — then MP for Inverness — who asked him to go to Yemen. There he was to act on behalf of the Saudi Arabian government as military adviser to the Imam commanding the force fighting the republican movement supported by President Nasser of Egypt.

Over the next four years Smiley visited Yemen, travelling the areas controlled by the imam, on foot or by donkey, offering his advice on operations, organisation and training until the Israel-Arab War of 1967 obliged Nasser to withdraw from Yemen and the Saudi Government brokered a compromise truce between the two sides.

Smiley and his wife then farmed in the Alicante province of Spain for 20 years, but he maintained his Albanian contacts. When a coalition came to power in Tirana in 1991, Amery and Smiley were invited to visit as guests. At a reunion in the Bixha Valley, site of the wartime parachute drops, they met their former interpreter, who had endured 17 years’ hard labour for his help to the Allies during the war.

David De Crespigny Smiley was the third son of Major-General Sir John Smiley, Bt, and was educated at Pangbourne Nautical College and RMC College, Sandhurst, from where he was commissioned into The Blues in 1936. He recorded his adventures in three volumes, Arabian Assignment, Albanian Assignment and Irregular Regular published in 1975, 1984 and 1994 respectively.

He was married in 1947 to Moya (Moy), the second daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Lord Francis Montagu Douglas Scott, the youngest son of the 6th Duke of Buccleuch. She survives him with two sons, a stepson and a stepdaughter.

Colonel D. D. C. Smiley, LVO, OBE, MC and Bar, was born on April 11, 1916. He died on January 8, 2009, aged 92."

[Pat Holscher]

Originally posted by Subotai
<br /><font size="3"><font face="Book Antiqua">Greetings All,

The movie "Coming Out of the Ice" which had Willie Nelson in a supporting role, and which came out in the late 70's or early 80's discussed very realistically the plight of Americans in Soviet Gulags. Also was spot on about Soviet brutality.

The protagonist in what is purported to be a true story was arrested when he was 18 and didn't return to the United States until he was 65. His folks had gone to the Soviet Union where his dad was to work in a Ford factory which Stalin had bought and transported to Mother Russia.

Well worth watching.

Jeffrey S. Wall

That's the biography of Victor Herman, which was first a book. I haven't read it.

Herman's father was employed in some capacity by Ford Motors. Ford contracted with the Soviets to build a plant in the Soviet Union during the New Economic Order period. Lenin had realized that Communism was not working, and the Soviets contracted with Western companies for the construction of industrial plants. The idea was to give Communism a jump start, and then the Soviets planned on going back to their original economic views, which is more or less what they did. This is why some smaller WWII vintage Soviet trucks look just like Model As.

They went over in 1931. During this same period of the early Great Depression the Communist Party attracted some sympathy and adherents in the US, particular in certain industrial and intellectual quarters. It's more or less forgotten now, but there actually were a not unnoticeable number of Communists in some sectors. It isn't as if they were a huge number, of course, but they were there. This helped contribute to some sympathy for the Soviets for this sort of project, and it also very much helped to turn a blind eye to what was going on in the Soviet Union. The fact that Americans went over to help build these plants (and not just Americans, the Germans were quite involved with industrial projects in the Soviet Union) should have informed us as to the nature of Soviet repression, but people wanted to put a happy face on the USSR to a degree, and these things were ignored.

Herman was only 16. His mother died while his family was in the Soviet Union, and his father had Communist leanings. His father remarried a Russian woman, and decided to stay there. Herman, for his part, became involved in sport parachute jumping, and set a world record, which started off the process that would lead to his long exile. The fact that he was a notable parachutist involved him with the Soviets, and also caused them to claim him as a Soviet citizen. He refused to renounce his citizenship, which is really remarkable under the circumstances. He ultimately was exiled to Siberia before WWII, and married a Russian woman. He did receive permission to leave the USSR as an elderly man, and upon returning to the US, wrote his memoirs.

Originally posted by Harve Curry
The above posts about the WWII German soldiers and their immigrating to the United States reminds me of one man I knew, Theodore Krein, a Ukrainian school teacher . Ted didn't have a car, he had a team of black Arabians he was proud of. His carriage was a vis-avis(spell?)
Anyway the Germans confiscated the team and gave him two vouchers so he could be paid later. Finally he found a officer to pay him, took both vouchers and paid him for one, told him to be glad he got the one payment and move on. Ted got drafted into the German Army and made a driver for an officer. They were captured by the Russians in about 1943. Ted spent the next 17 years in a coal mines of Siberia.

Now for the part about people to remember.
Years before I'd read in a San Diego newspaper article about the history of MIA's.
So I asked Ted if he ever knew of American GI's imprisoned there.
Ted said "Oh ya da were three. They were not friendly with me (Ted being the enemy). Ones name was Albert" .
It raised the hair on my neck when he told me that.

In 1960 Ted immigrated to NY state where his family had moved to. He would always say "God bless Eisenhower, he got me out". I knew him in Catalina Arizona. He gave me a copy of his manuscript/story and a map of Russia with his marks of where he was imprisoned.

yours,
Bill Weddle
Black Range Mnts.of New Mexico

There's persistently been rumors that American pilots shot down during the Korean War were interned by the Soviet Union, and never released. Also, of course, there were B29 crews that were interned, and I thought that they were, but I might be wrong about all of them coming back. The USSR denied that they had anyone in captivity, but they did keep German prisoners for decades, so it's not at all impossible that they also kept US aircrewmen from the Korean War.

Just this last week a Japanese WWII POW, captured by the Soviets, came to light as he was going back to Japan. The story is unclear, and he's married to a Russian woman. He may have elected to stay there, or maybe not. The same story indicated that there's two other Japanese citizens, captured WWII Japanese soldiers, who remain in Russia, apparently under their own volition.

Pat

I started re-reading this interesting thread as well. It's been very wide ranging.

Anyhow, I ran across this part of the discussion concerning Americans and others who disappeared into the Soviet Union. While this is probably a poor place to mention it, this brought to mind a book for young adults by William Durbin.

I've mentioned Durbin here once before, as he wrote a book entitled The Winter War which is for young adults. It's quite well written, gritty, but not gory, and suitable for young (tween, or young teens) readers, but still engaging enough for adults. After my son read that book, I picked up another book of his, "The Darkest Evening".

My son recently read it, and then over the space of a couple of days I read it. Like The Winter War, it's well written, engaging, and interesting for young adults and engaging enough for adults as well. If you have a tween or teen reader, I'd recommend it.

The Darkest Evening deals with this general topic. More specifically, the story revolves around a Finnish American boy, in his young and mid teens, whose father decides to relocate his family to the Finnish region of the USSR after listening to the siren song of a Soviet Recruiter. The book is well researched, and mentions that something like 6,000 Finnish Americans in fact did this. I won't spoil the plot, but the book does a good job of depicting the unrealistic enthusiasm in some quarters that existed for the USSR in the early 30s, and also does a very nice job of depicting, in novel form, how the dreaded nocturnal visit from the NKVD worked.

[Pat Holscher]

Aarne Armas "Arska" Arvonen, January 1, 2009.

Mr. Arvonen was the last surviving veteran of the Finnish Civil War (1918), and died at age 111. Ironically, Mr. Arvonen was not only the last veteran of the Finnish Civil War, but a veteran of the loosing side, as he served with the Red Guards, and was captured during the war by the Whites. Apparently, later on, he had very little good to say about the Red Guards, and maintained that he'd deserted at the time of his capture.

[selewis]

Horseman Ray Hunt passed away on Thursday, March 12, 2009. His first big success was on a difficult horse named Hondo, with whom he won the hackamore class at the Cow Palace in the early sixties. Mr Hunt rode in the style known today as California Reinsman but his impact on the horseworld extended to all disciplines and many popular clinicians, riders, and horse trainers credit him with having a large influence on their horsemanship. He himself always gave all the credit for his success with horses to his friend and mentor Tom Dorrance, of whom he once said, "When he was around things just went right. I've always wondered if there isn't something beyond skill and learning that some rare horsemen have, something extra. I know I don't have it, but I'd like to know what it is." It is hoped that he has now found the answer to that question. Sympathy and condolences go to his wife Carolyn and family. Age 78 RIP

[Pat Holscher]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090603/lf_ ... ia_soldier

[selewis]

Sam Weller, bookseller:

http://www.sltrib.com/arts/ci_12679556

[Pat Holscher]

Robert McNamara, age 93, who was Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

McNamara's first exposure to military matters came as an ROTC cadet at UC Berkeley, from which he graduated in 1937. He followed that up by graduating from Harvard in 1939 with an MBA. He became a Harvard professor that following year, and taught a program to teach business principals to Army Air Corps officers. He himself entered the Army Air Corps in 1943, where he worked on statistical analysis, including analysis of B29 raids. After WWII he want to work, famously, for Ford Motors.

He became Secretary of Defense in 1960.

In my view, while it is easy to criticize, he was a disaster as a Secretary of Defense. McNamara grossly over estimated the role that technology could play on the battlefield of the 1960s which proved to be in error in Vietnam. He was responsible, at least in part, for the closing of Springfield Armory which had a long and distinguished history of designing rifles for the military. At one point he determined to eliminate the Army Reserve, but political forces kept him from doing so. All in all, his record as Secretary of Defense was a very poor one.

[wkambic]

Robert McNamara, age 93, who was Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

All in all, his record as Secretary of Defense was a very poor one.

+1.

[JV Puleo]

When I was about 9 or 10 my father and his friends got together at least once a week to play chamber music. I clearly remember that one of his chamber music friends (whose name I will not mention for the moment), a violinist, announced one evening that he was moving to Washington in a couple of months because he'd just been appointed an Assistant Secretary of Defense. Among my father's musician cronies it was quite remarkable at least in part because he didn't know any more about the military than they did, which was collectively next to nothing. (My dad, with his 9 years in a RI National Guard Band, was the military "expert" in the group) He was, however, a graduate of an Ivy league school and (I believe I later heard) a brilliant statistician. I believe he's now with the Cato Institute, has written some books on foreign policy and once ran for Vice President as a Libertarian.
I'm afraid that event has colored my estimation of McNamara for the past 45 years as I've learned a lot more about how military organizations work effectively. I suspect he was one of those that decided to use the old ball powder or not to chrome plate the chambers of the early M16s because it would save 15 cents a rifle... all with no thought or regard for the poor sod who had to use it.

[Pat Holscher]

Robert McNamara, age 93, who was Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.

All in all, his record as Secretary of Defense was a very poor one.

+1.

Bill, what does "+1" mean?

[Pat Holscher]

When I was about 9 or 10 my father and his friends got together at least once a week to play chamber music. I clearly remember that one of his chamber music friends (whose name I will not mention for the moment), a violinist, announced one evening that he was moving to Washington in a couple of months because he'd just been appointed an Assistant Secretary of Defense. Among my father's musician cronies it was quite remarkable at least in part because he didn't know any more about the military than they did, which was collectively next to nothing. (My dad, with his 9 years in a RI National Guard Band, was the military "expert" in the group) He was, however, a graduate of an Ivy league school and (I believe I later heard) a brilliant statistician. I believe he's now with the Cato Institute, has written some books on foreign policy and once ran for Vice President as a Libertarian.
I'm afraid that event has colored my estimation of McNamara for the past 45 years as I've learned a lot more about how military organizations work effectively. I suspect he was one of those that decided to use the old ball powder or not to chrome plate the chambers of the early M16s because it would save 15 cents a rifle... all with no thought or regard for the poor sod who had to use it.

That background is a lot like McNamara's.

Robert McNamara was, no doubt, a very brilliant man. But if you look at his personal story, it's a bit disturbing.

He came out of university at exactly the right moment in time. He only worked after graduating for about a year or so, then went right back to teaching at Harvard, where is he was the youngest and highest paid professor in his department (or perhaps the school). World War Two was ongoing in Europe, and the US entered it soon thereafter. He then, amongst his other duties, taught Army Air Corps officers business principals.

While none of this says anything bad about McNamara at all, what it does illustrate is a late Depression Era story that would have not occurred some time earlier. He hadn't really worked much outside of academia, and entered the university level of academia with very little real world experience. This soon translated into entering the Army Air Corps, where he worked as a statistician. From 1946 to 1960 he was a brilliant executive with Ford Motors, but he was still very young. And, while I may well be subject to correction, I have to question the extent to which Ford Motors or General Motors would have been subject to true failure in that time period. They were the dominant American automobile companies, and most of their competition had been utterly destroyed in World War Two. Granted, his performance with Ford was excellent, but that isn't quite the same, I suspect, as a brilliant career with Studebaker or Kaiser would have been. Ford was well positioned at the time (and still is).

With only 15 years in real private industry, his experience was supposed to translate into something meaningful at the Department of Defense. But it really didn't, and in hindsight, I don't know why it would have. He had been discharged in 1946 as an LTC in the USAAF, but he'd never seen combat. His work with statistics should have revealed to him the polar opposite of what he seems to have learned. In the end, the B29 raids did not defeat Japan, unless we include the atomic bomb, and a huge Army armed with a Department of the Army designed rifle had to be sent to fight on the ground. You would think that this would have lead a learned person to suspect that ground fighting, not technological innovation, remained the key for many wars. And you would think that the fact that the US had used Department of the Army designed rifles more often than civilian designed ones would have meant something too. Apparently the lessons were not learned.

But had any lessons been actually applied? All in all, it seems to me that McNamara wasn't really experienced at much. And what he was experienced at would have made him a better Secretary of Commerce, or Transportation, than Secretary of Defense.

[John Tremelling]

During a BBC television obituary article I was impressed with one quote of his during an interview relating to the Vietnam War. He said "you cannot do good without doing evil". Despite Vietnam being a mess, this is regretably very true.

John T

[Pat Holscher]

During a BBC television obituary article I was impressed with one quote of his during an interview relating to the Vietnam War. He said "you cannot do good without doing evil". Despite Vietnam being a mess, this is regretably very true.

John T

I don't agree with that quote, but I think it is revealing in an unintended way, concerning McNamara.

McNamara's only real exposure to the military (outside of his college ROTC) was as a statistician principally focusing on the bombing campaign against Japan lead by Curtis B. LeMay. LeMay is a very misunderstood person, but what is fairly clear about LeMay is that he was fully convinced of the effectiveness of strategic bombing, and that he was not bothered by the use of bombing against civilian urban areas. Like Bomber Harris, LeMay essentially regarded the civilian population as adjunct to a nation's military, and a legitimate target in certain circumstances.

That view was somewhat controversial at the time, and has become increasingly controversial since the war. There's a fair number of current historians who have very quietly concluded that while the Allies war against the Axis was a "good war", the bombing efforts that spread into targeting civilian areas were immoral acts. Indeed, a couple of years ago at least one book came out and defined some of these raids as war crimes.

This almost remains a topic that cannot be addressed even today, as it causes a debate that rapidly gets out of hand. The "moral equivalency" folks leap on such arguments to suggest that all the sides in WWII were equally bad, which is absolutely absurd, given the conduct of the Nazis, Fascists, and Japanese. And the extent to which these sorts of raids were conducted throughout the war is often exaggerated, as they largely were not. The tolerance towards events like this grew as war weariness set in, and there are comparatively few RAF examples from Europe, and then the late war fire bombing of Japanese cities example from Asia.

Anyhow, I'm not intending to raise that here, but to note that McNamara had stuidied LeMay's effort, and therefore he should have known the results. Instead, he seems to have picked up LeMay's absolute faith in technology. LeMay was not really a violent man at all. He truly believed in strategic air power, and thought it's use would lead to a more rapid victory.

But, in actuality, strategic bombing during the war had a very mixed result. German manufacturing capacity was very disrupted, but it went up, not down, during the war. Collateral damage in German cities actually strengthened German resolve, which should have been no surprise to us as it had the same effect on the British when the Germans bombed the UK. Bombing of targets in occupied areas so enraged the population that civilians from nations that we regarded as occupied sometimes killed downed Allied airmen in their rage. All in all, the strategic bombing of German industrial and rail targets was successful, but not hugely successful. There's no way it would have won the war.

Likewise the campaign against Japan had mixed results. Japan had much more limited manufacturing capacity, but it did manage to keep itself running. Turning on the Japanese cities itself was an acknowledgment of that, as it was thought that making the workers homeless would achieve what hitting the factories could not.

I don't know that all of this impressed McNamara in any way, but I"m struck by the fact that he really believed, early in the Vietnam War, that the war could be won through technology. At first it was thought that sensing devices, and the like, could be employed on the ground, through the air, and the war won through the air. This proved to be an absolute folly.

Once the war on the ground got rolling, some of McNamara's concepts showed much more familiarity with civilian industry as opposed to anything else. He was an opponent of the Army Reserve, showing a real short sighted concept of the future of the American military and a faith that the standing military would have to remain very large. Prior to McNamara, three out of the five cartridge rifles used by the Army had been designed as Army projects with one of the civilian designed ones really being a British government design picked up in an emergency. The contrary example had not been a military success. In spite of that, McNamara presided over the closing of the Army's facility, expressing faith in the civilian sector for future military longarm designs. The rifle that replaced the government designed one, over large objections, has remained controversial and ended up being redesigned somewhat by another branch of the military, the USMC.

In the end, the Vietnam War proved to be less of a mess than we currently imagine. While regarded as revisionist, two recent books on the history of the Vietnam War pretty conclusively demonstrate that the US/RVN had the war won once, and had an opportunity to go in the right direction very early on. Lost Victory (a book written by a historian employed by the USMC) shows fairly well, although it isn't a perfect book, that the US blew it around 1965 by having almost no understanding of Vietnamese internal politics and government dynamics, but that otherwise the war was not going badly at the time. This would have really been during the Kennedy Administration, of which McNamara was part. Unheralded Victory, a book written by an American ex patriot now living in Australia, who was an officer in the USMC, demonstrates pretty conclusively, using statistics, that the war was basically won by 1968, but that the RVN still required material support after that, which proved to be missing post 1973. So we could argue that McNamara may have gotten some things right in the 1965 to 1968 time frame.

All in all, however, I think McNamara tragically fits into a category of Cold War characters who probably were well suited to work at strategic defense to counter the Soviets. Sort of the group of folks that might be best defined by the Dulles. But for a hard fought war on the ground in Asia, he was very poorly suited. Kennedy and Johnson would have been much better off with one of the WWII generals that were available at that time, as Secretary of Defense, such as Maxwell Taylor or Matthew B. Ridgeway. Indeed, I think it can be argued that having a Taylor or Ridgeway was almost necessary, as the Secretary of Defense had to deal with a crop of generals who had come up in the post Dec. 7, 1941 context, such as Westmoreland, who might not really have had as good of grasp on things themselves, in some ways.

[Pat Holscher]

In a spirit of total cynicism, I will note that Robert S. McNamara, no matter what his legacy, was an important 20th Century figure. But I'll bet he doesn't get 1/100th of the attention that a certain recently departed pop musician does.

And I'll also guess that no matter what his legacy was, and no matter what his achievements were, or were not, he will not be elevated to the level of some sort of popular hero, and given days and days of fluffy press coverage regarding that legacy either. Heck, the average American probably doesn't know who he was, even though the impact of his thinking continues to impact us all, while the impact of certain pop songs is negligible.

[John Tremelling]

Pat, Cynic?

Surely a cynic is like a pessimist, that which an optimist calls a realist.

Who is the pop idol you refer to?

Thanks for your view, but I would still agree with the quote which I refered to. You talk of the Japan War. Was the Atom Bomb evil? Did it do good?

John T

[Pat Holscher]

Pat, Cynic?

Surely a cynic is like a pessimist, that which an optimist calls a realist.

Who is the pop idol you refer to?

Thanks for your view, but I would still agree with the quote which I refered to. You talk of the Japan War. Was the Atom Bomb evil? Did it do good?

John T

I'd make a distinction between cruel (harsh or hard) and evil. I think that McNamara really meant, as you likely do as well, that sometimes hard, harsh, brutal or cruel efforts have to be taken to achieve a greater good. It's actually somewhat difficult to define in English, as there's really no good word that summarizes it. But the basic gist of his statement was that sometimes extraordinary hard measures have to be taken to achieve a greater good.

Evil, on the other hand, exists for its own sake. Evil may be used to achieve an even more evil goal, but the basic nature is that evil achieves evil, and never good. A true evil cannot be used to abstain a good, because evil is corrupting in its own sake.

I suppose all that is easy to state, and perhaps more difficult in the application, as people do not always agree on what's evil and what's not, in this context. But, once true evils are accepted as allowable to achieve some goal, the evil ultimately consumes the goal. To give a World War Two example, the German population decided in 1932 that enduring the evil of the Nazis would be okay to achieve the good of economic relief (or at least some of them made that calculation), but in application, the evil over road everything else. Put another way, the war to stop the Axis was extremely cruel, as anyone who fought in it would concede. But it wasn't evil. It's popular to say war itself is evil, and moral pacifist believe that. But everyone agrees that war is cruel, which is distinctly different.

On the Atomic Bomb, I think I'll let that debate rest. It's pretty far off topic, and it is one of those topics where the debate tends to get pretty heated pretty fast on a personal level. It's an example of why I think some history can only be objectively written decades after events occurred. I think that the Atomic bomb will only be put in context, really, within the next decade or so. Right after the war it was almost impossible to question its use. During the Cold War, questions surrounding its use tended to actually be about something completely else, which was the then existing nuclear arsenal and its value. Real questions about the A bomb are only now starting to be capable of being debated. The question itself is pretty wide too, as contemporary comments about the bomb at the time make it pretty clear that it wasn't really terribly well understood by everyone in the military at the time, even at high levels. So the question may not really be about the bomb itself, so much as it is about how the bomb was used. Even at that, the question beyond that would be what was in the mind of those who favored, and ultimately ordered, the use of the bomb. And finally, what is realistically known about the vast unknown alternatives that the use of the bomb caused to forever remain hypothetical.

Anyhow, to summarize on McNamara, what I think he really meant is that the country was going to have to really endure some harsh brutality, and inflict some harsh brutality, in order to win in Vietnam. I don't think, however, that he meant that we needed to be truly evil, and the US was remarkably consistent in not tolerating certain acts in the war, in spite of the period claims to the contrary. I think McNamara's language tends to reflect a certain level of careless use of language that was common with Brinkmanship at the time, and which was also somewhat common with the advocates of post WWII strategic air power. The fact that they were careless about this sort of thing is what made them subject to being accused of saying things they never did (No US commander in Vietnam ever said "We had to burn the village to save it", and Curtis B. LeMay never ever said "We should bomb Vietnam back to the Stone Age", although he did concede that it was a technical possibility.) That's also what made them so easy to lampoon and misunderstand, with perhaps the best example of that being the characterization of Air Force officers presented by Dr. Strangelove. The USAF wasn't really fully of folks like the George C. Scott character, or like "Gen. Jack T. Ripper", but their presentation made it easy to suggest that it was.

Who is the pop idol you refer to?

I am assuming that you're yanking my chain here, and just kidding me!

Over the past three or four weeks, three American entertainment personalities have died. First was Ed McMahon. He was up in years, so while this was noted, that was about it.

Following that, Farrah Fawcett died. Right after that, Michael Jackson died, crowding out the Fawcett news.

I have nothing against any of these folks, but none of this is major news. McMahon didn't receive major news treatment. The press was starting to treat Fawcett that way, but then Jackson died.

The whole Jackson story is simply bizarre. The popular entertainment press raised him up to a pinnacle in the first place, and then descended on him like jackals, spending years ripping him down. He may have been really creepy (I don't know, as I never cared for his music or followed the stories about him) but now the same media is elevating him to the level of a hero. The coverage is practically 24 hours a day. For what? Every death is a tragedy, but we are fighting two wars right now. I have to think there's some real news out there.

I am completely confident that the North Koreans could be parading T-62s down the Washington Mall right now, and the press wouldn't notice it. Indeed, the North Koreans could land, try to take over, and then go home in disgust, and the whole thing would remain a secret.

Indeed, right now (I'm wrapping up my lunch hour), in spite of some snarky sarcastic comment I made about it, our staff, which has been off all morning watching the Fair & Rodeo Parade, is now watching the memorial service on streaming video on our office computers. Geez Louise.

Pat

P.S. As a post script, I've enjoyed these discussions, and I hope that John T is too. I know that this stuff can get aggravating to some folks, and that's certainly not my intent.

Well, back to work.

[wkambic]

Somebody just said that MJ was the greatest entertainer of all time. Well, maybe so and maybe not.

I was never a fan, but certainly did not wish the man ill. He was cute as a kid but just got too weird for my tastes as an adult.

Ed McMahon in an clip played a few days ago said he wanted to be remembered as a good Marine (he was a Marine Corps Aviator and flew during the Korean Action, IIRC). IMO he was worth at least a gross of MJs.

McNamara is another one of those characters whose true impact cannot be effectively evaluated for a while, yet. I lived through part of his era and much of his legacy. It was, frankly, a real "mixed bag." His emphasis on statistics and numbers was not all bad, but not all military virtues (or vices) can be reduced to numerical calculations.

[Pat Holscher]

Somebody just said that MJ was the greatest entertainer of all time. Well, maybe so and maybe not.

I was never a fan, but certainly did not wish the man ill. He was cute as a kid but just got too weird for my tastes as an adult.

Ed McMahon in an clip played a few days ago said he wanted to be remembered as a good Marine (he was a Marine Corps Aviator and flew during the Korean Action, IIRC). IMO he was worth at least a gross of MJs.

McNamara is another one of those characters whose true impact cannot be effectively evaluated for a while, yet. I lived through part of his era and much of his legacy. It was, frankly, a real "mixed bag." His emphasis on statistics and numbers was not all bad, but not all military virtues (or vices) can be reduced to numerical calculations.

McMahon was actually a Marine Corps pilot in World War Two and the Korean War. Like Jimmy Stewart, he stayed in the reserves and retired as a general from the Air Force National Guard.

[John Tremelling]

I also enjoy these topics Pat, and, as with other discussions I think that with you and other colonials, our only difference is in the definition of the language, the word 'evil' being the example in this instance.

I always believed it to be Churchill, but others dispute the origin of "Two Nations divided by a common language". Regretably, throughout history, major conflicts have often resulted from misunderstandings, I am however confident that will not be the result of our debates, no matter how robust.

John T

[selewis]

An interesting synopsis by Richard A. Johnson of Robert McNamara's early career during WWII and (primarily) his time at Ford; with insights into his genius, nature, and implications of how he would later handle Defense:

http://www.americanheritage.com/article ... 1_29.shtml