by Janathan Carp
http://c4ss.org/content/26839
The First Casualty
Recently we heard from Ukraine of a flyer distributed by Russian separatists in Donetsk. The flyer ordered the Jews of the city to register and pay a fee as a penalty for the support of Jewish leaders for the new government in Kiev. The flyer was denounced by American secretary of state John Kerry and widely discussed in the Western press as evidence of just how alarming the Russian separatists in Ukraine are. Of course, it was also completely fake.
Deception is commonplace during war, but the vital role lies play in fomenting war is not as commonly understood. We would like to believe that our “leaders” approach decisions of war and peace with great seriousness, and so some of us are willing to see the lies that lead us to war as exceptions, or mistakes. However, the pattern is so prevalent that the exception becomes the rule.
The story is of course very familiar to us – a tyrannical regime committing a litany of atrocities against defenseless civilians, remorselessly grinding them into a bloody pulp and committing an ever-increasing array of horrors against the population. Men are killed, women raped, even infants are murdered. The story is so familiar in becomes a motif, a motif that is recurring now in Syria and has occurred and reoccurred many times before.
The most famous instance is perhaps the “rape of Belgium.” The German invasion of Belgium was Great Britain’s rationale for entering the Great War, but the simple violation of Belgian neutrality was not enough for the British public. So, they were instead fed a steady diet of atrocity stories, luridly embellishing the very real horrors that accompany any invading army, with particular focus on sexual violence. Many atrocities were invented outright, such as tales of Belgian nuns tied to the clappers of church bells and crushed, or of the Germans using the bodies of dead Belgians to produce lubricants for machinery. To be clear, the German Army in Belgium committed grievous sins, as indeed do all invading armies. The concerted propaganda effort, however, removed these sins from their context, added further horrors, and focused the attention of the press on endlessly telling and retelling these tales.
In a more modern context, many readers will remember the famous testimony of one Nayirah before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This young woman bore agonized witness to the terrible image of Iraqi soldiers removing Kuwaiti babies from incubators and leaving them to die on cold hospital floors. Her testimony was corroborated by supposed testimony from evacuees and her story backed by none other than Amnesty International.
After the war, Nayirah was revealed to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, and her testimony coached by a public relations firm hired by the Kuwaiti government, Hill & Knowlton. No evidence was found to support her lurid tales; Kuwaiti patients had indeed died, but due to their abandonment by Kuwaiti doctors and nurses fleeing the Iraqi invasion. No babies were thrown to the floor. Nayirah’s testimony is remembered; the reality of her role as a public relations flack spinning tales to outrage Americans is not.
And so today we are greeted with horror stories from eastern Ukraine and from Syria. Are terrible things taking place in these countries? Of course. But anyone who claims to know exactly what is happening and exactly who is responsible is either a dupe, or is trying to dupe you.
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The Ukraine is a mess and I doubt any intervention would make it less of a mess. But it was not the United States who murdered so may millions of people in the Ukraine in the Soviet period (and John Kerry is hardly a flag waving American patriot – indeed he personally cooperated with anti American disinformation efforts back in the 1970s – and introduced then young Comrade Barack to the world at the 2004 Convention).
The waving of Soviet era banners and honouring of statutes of “Lenin” (and other vermin) by the activists in places such as Donetsk shows all one needs to know about such activists. At least John Kerry and Barack Obama are not so in-your-face about their background (indeed they do their best to cover it up). But the situation is so bad (with large pro Russian elements as far west as Odessa) that I still think the Ukraine is best avoided.
Never undertake a military operation unless there is a decent possibility of VICTORY (for which “there is no substitute”).
Reinforce existing allies on the Russian borders (Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and so on), do not overextend into unknown areas (such as the Ukraine).
As for 1914.
There are two mistakes to be avoided concerning the First World War.
The first is the “Haig: The Educated Soldier” mistake – the absurd idea that the First World was well fought and their was nothing basically wrong with how the army brass conducted operations (actually they made lots of horrible tactical mistakes – and Haig’s whole view of the military situation was fundamentally wrong).
The other mistake is the idea that the war could have been avoided entirely.
The idea that the Germans would have been satisfied with Belgium and northern France.
Slaughtering civilians and using the population as slave labour may have been a lot of fun for the Germans – but it is was NOT the reason the Germans invaded.
The Keiser (and the academic-political establishment of Germany as a whole) wanted Germany to be a WORLD power (see Ludwig Von Mises on this)..
To become a world power (of the sort the German elite wanted to be) Britain had to be knocked out.
So “let them have Belgium and northern France” would not have worked – war would have come anyway.
Just with the resources of a united Europe directed against this island.
“But why should Americans care?”.
Americans should care because the United States does not exist on some on other planet.
A German dominated world meant exactly that – hence the extensive German operations in Latin America and the United States itself (indeed Imperial German operations inside the United States were far more successful than Nazi German operations were during World War II).
Certainly propagandists “over egg the pudding” (and that is a terrible MISTAKE – as when people find you have made stuff up they will jump to the conclusion that everything you have said is made up), but the fundamental national security case against the operations of Imperial Germany (in relation to both Britain and the United States) was TRUE.
The Rothbardian idea that Imperial Germany and National Socialist Germany should have been ignored by the United States (as there was no real world threat) is counter factual – radically counter factual.
Just as the Rothbaridian idea that there was no real world threat from the Communist powers after World War II is counter factual – radically counter factual.
And it must be remembered that this was not even a “fortress America” point of view – with Europe and Korea (and the rest of Asia) being allowed to fall (to concentrate all resources on turning the United States into a vast fortress that could withstand being besieged by the combined resources of an entire planet united under the socialists – and remember in the SHORT TERM economic calculation problems do not actually bring down socialist regimes).
The Rothbardian point of view seems to have been that there was no real enemy threat at all.
Again a radically counter factual point of view.
I am well aware that Ludwig Von Mises was a harsh critic of German “War Socialism” during the First World War – arguing that (for example) the (relatively) less statist French approach to the economic side of war in the First World War was more successful.
However, in the short term state control does not lead to actual collapse – and there may even be short term gains.
For example, the British ran more trains (and so on) on the train network (with state control) in both World Wars – at the price of leaving a railway network that was a total mess (due to capital consumption – lack of repairs and so on) after the war.
The French Revolutionaries (Carnot and co ) took control of factories and so in France (making a nonsense of the Marxist claim that it was a “capitalist” revolution) and ran them round the clock – in order to maximise war production (at the price of capital consumption).
Of course this “war on the limiters” (as the Soviets later called those who said one can not operate factories without repairs and so on) could not work in the long term. Indeed Napoleon later allowed private ownership and control of factories (just as Napoleon restored a gold coinage – because the fiat money system was breaking down).
But in the short term statism can (sort-of) “work”.
And, in war, the short term may be al that is needed.