The American Justification for War

ndm

-- Few people in western europe forget the American sacrifice in the war, and fewer still - least of all me - would deny its reality. But it was never the disinterested kind of project some tellings of the story might lead you to believe.

Michael Tomasky of The Guardian had a post yesterday in which he wrote:

-- This reminds me of my larger theory, which I may get around to presenting to you sometime, that I believe that Nazi analogies should be more permissible in today's political discourse than they are. Not personal comparisons of Politician X to Hitler, because Hitler remains a unique monster; but analogies to Nazi ideology and tactics, when accurate and appropriate.

-- We stay away from this because the immediate reflex of everybody, when they hear the word "Nazi," is: gas ovens. In this simplistic formulation, then, employing any Nazi analogy seems to mean that the employer is accusing someone of mass racial murder. But the Nazis did a lot of things besides that. If you read, for example, Adolf Hitler's basic stump speeches from the pivotal 1932 election, you'll see that he was often saying things - about the economy, let's say - that are perfectly within the bounds of acceptable political discourse even today. They're right wing, but within the bounds. I say this, obviously, not to make the point that Hitler's economic policies were grand, but to make the point that carefully drawn analogies ought to be fair game.

As the Second World War recedes into history it seems to me that the effect of Nazism on Europeans has been deliberately diminished by the promotion of the idea that the war comprised nothing more than the Nazi extermination of Jews and the defeat of Nazism by the Greatest Generation - a generation which comprised only Americans. It comes as no surprise that those who proselytize the primacy of the Jewish and American experience of the Nazi occupation of Europe are precisely those who ignore, when not outright deny, the effect on Palestinians of the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

Indeed I wonder how the people of Poland would have viewed pro-German commentators in Britain who denied the German occupation of Poland in the same way commentators like Melanie Phillips and organizations like the Zionist Federation of Great Britain deny today that Israel occupies the Palestinian Territories. The people of Nazi-occupied Europe suffered under Nazism, and for the vast majority of them their suffering under the yoke of Nazism is precisely the suffering the Palestinians experience under the Israeli yoke.

Within six years of the German occupation of Poland, Allied Forces had defeated the Nazis freeing Europeans from German subjugation and the remaining Jews from death. The Western Allies have, however, allowed the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories to exist for more than four decades leaving Palestinians subject to Israel in precisely the way the French were subjugated by the Nazis all these years ago. Those who deny that neo-Nazism is the core ideology of the so-called "Settlers" are anti-Semitic racists who, in their ardent desire to forget their suffering, insult the millions of Europeans who suffered under the Nazi occupation of Europe.

I think a lot of people should put down their Orwell, a man who spent the war as a propagandist, and take up Camus who was actually subjected to the Nazi occupation of Europe. I also think we should pay a lot less attention to those who once were of the left but saw the light and now are of the far right - indeed so far to the right that neo-Nazism is all but incipient in their thoughts. They obviously feel a need to be enslaved to some ideology - left or right, as the wind takes them.

ndm

The Larison link is wrong - and it really is wrong this time.

Ed Hall

eh ?

Verity

ndm - Disabuse yourself of popular belief: Hitler wasn't "right wing". The clue is in the name of his party, The National Socialist Workers' Party.

It's the lefties who murder swathes of populations. Pol Pot. Hitler. Mao Tse-Tung. Stalin. Brezhnev. Castro. Ché. Péron. The very fine generals in Myannmar.

Once people get right wing governments (cf India, Mexico, to name but two), they tend to power ahead, to the benefit of all their citizens and national wealth).

Right wing capitalism for all who participate in wealth creation, is a million light years away from the socialism of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, etc.

"Right" is a term of liberty and freedom.

"Left" is oppression, social control, command societies, Five Year Tractor Production projections and the state spying (Stazi) that Britain appears to accept as normal today. Serfs under socialism.

Just so we understand the difference.

Conservative Cabbie

Verity

Spot on. I don't understand how anyone can percieve Hitler or Mussolini as being right wing (aside from their nationalism). Both Hitler and Mussolini were socialists prior to their fascism, and the reason for the shift was that 1930's socialists believed in an international perspective whereas H & M saw socialism through a nationalistic lens. It was American and British progressives and socialists who exhalted particularly Mussolini and it was only when fascism was revealed to be the evil that it was that the western left disowned the two dictators. Of course then they migrated to Stalin as their political idol. They really know how to pick them don't they? Explains their infatuation with I'm a Dinner Jacket.

Conservative Cabbie

I don't think anyone is claiming that America's wars are fought exclusively for the benefit of others but it is undeniable that not only America benefits from these wars.

Grenada and Vietnam were fought to halt the spread of communism. That clearly was beneficial to America but was to many other parts of the world too. It is risible to claim that Clinton fought in the Balkans simply to 'get his name in the books'. At least he acted, which is more than the pathetic Europe did.

As for WWII, you seem to be forgetting lend-lease before the war, and the Marshall Plan after the war. Both actions were deliberate acts to benefit Europe and I for one am extremely grateful that America was there to save us.

That sort of anti-Americanism really doesn't suit you Alex, although, unfortunately, I'm not surprised by it.

AJL

Verity, as an American, I will accept my share of our collective responsibility for polluting the world with blithering, demented idiots like Jonah Goldberg, who perpetuate historically revisionist lies about fascism being a Left-Wing movement.

Here's a hint. In Germany, Hitler's accession to power was opposed only by the Socialist Party. Hitler was supported by their economically conservative coalition partners, the DNVP, and by the Catholic Centre Party, which was culturally conservative.

Here's another hint. After the National Socialist regime fell, part of Germany became the Democratic Republic of Germany. Weren't they ever so lucky to have a democratic republic? Gosh, you can learn so much from a name.

ndm

I think the fact that Americans have been pretty much untouched by war for 140 years has much to do with the lack of pause Americans give to hawks. While American servicemen and women have been impacted by war - a few hundred thousand deaths in WW2 and tens of thousands in VietNam - American civilians have been barely affected. Americans have certainly not been affected in the way Europeans were by the two great wars of the 20th Century.

Absent in American thought is an understanding of the suffering of war as reflected in the European distaste for war.The only real "memory" of war in the American populace is the remembrance of the Civil War. But that memory has suppressed the suffering caused by the Civil War and promoted the mythological life of antebellum planation owners.

Alex Massie

ConCabbie: But I never denied that other peoples have benefitted from American interventions! My point is simply that there is a strain of thinking in American political discourse that discounts america's own interests in these wars and dresses them up instead as selfless sacrifices.

As it happens, I think the idea of a war "for" rather than "against: Iraq was the best argument for the conflict. That is, I was never convinced that the WMD notion was that important but I was, rightly or wrongly, attracted to the notion of a conflict that, if it produced a stable and thriving and democratic Iraq, might in the long-term help transform the middle east. That was always a high-risk gamble and one which, right now, does not look like paying off (though time may tell and nothing is either certain or set in stone).

I agree that Lend Lease was a good thing for Britain (though a bargain extracted on eye-wateringly punitive terms from a British perspective) and that the Marshall Plan was a noble, if also necessary and self-interested project. But the latter also had the consequence of making western europe a client region in security terms - something for which the US was happy to pay for its own reasons as part of the greater struggle against communism.

That was, in many ways, a noble struggle itself but let's not forget that the US has consistently opposed the development of an independent european defence capability. While there are decent reasons, from a British perspective, to be grateful for that it would be wrong to forget that one reason for this American position has been that a credible euro-army would undermine US authority.

Equally, while acknowledging the obvious truth that we would have been kippered but for the Americans in WW2, never forget that the destruction of the British Empire was one of Roosevelt's war aims. That was a price worth paying, but it is a further reminder that American motives were less pure and friendly than is sometimes recalled.

You might consider me "anti-American" but it's not an accusation that accords with my view of the US (nor, though you cannot know this with how my American friends would view my sense of America). It is a place - and a people - that I love dearly and at its best it remains the famous "last, best hope" for mankind. We haven't seen enough of the US at its best in recent years however.

And, yes, if I criticise the US it is because I love the place and because I want to see it live up to its own ideals and my own view of its better nature. The realities of Great Power Status often make that difficult, but that's a different question altogether...

But, as always, thanks for reading and for your comments.

Conservative Cabbie

Alex

I'm not suggesting that taken as a whole you are anti-American, just the tone of this piece. Whilst I haven't conducted extensive research on the matter (to say the least), and I'm sure you will be able to correct me, I doubt any American President on choosing to go to war, has framed the argument as solely "heroic sacrifice". Maybe some pundits see things in that way, although I would hope you don't include Charles Krauthammer, but to generalise it as "American thinking" takes things too far.

At the end of the day, I would suggest that the motives aren't all that relevant, it is the fact that the world is a safer better place because of Americas military interventions and prowess that matters the most.

With the seeming death of americano, this is the best place for my America fix. Keep up the good work, but please consider some balance, after all the American left and the Democratic Party are hardly perfect.

ndm

I think Alex Massie is spot on in his response about American interest in ensuring that Europe remained military weak. Indeed, I have on occasion made the same point myself in other forums when people complained that Europe did not pull its weight internationally in the post-WW2 pediod.

However, and here Alex Massie may disagree - it is a free Wodld after all - that the Franco-German creation of what is now the European Union is the greatest civic achievement of the post-war era. The sacrifices that these two countries, in particular, have undergone to ensure that Europe remains free is unrecognized in what might be termed the Ango-Saxon axis. Proof of this may be found in looking at the voting statistics of those Eastern Bloc nations which voted simulataneously on joining the EU and NATO. The EU tended to have higher popular support.

Steve

I think you paint with a broad brush. As an American and former serviceman I can attest that we are quite aware of why we've gone to war in the past. I think you fail to give us credit for being able to recognize the dualism of our conflicts. As an example, the Korean and Vietnamese wars were clearly fought to prevent the further spread of communism, which, to simplify things, was a direct opponent of capitalism or to put more bluntly, bad for Coca Cola and Goodyear and other American corporations. But at the same time we viewed, and I would still agree that Communism, especially that practiced by North Korea and Vietnam (at the time) wasn't particularly good for the citizens of those countries. So yes, those wars were fought for American geopolitical and economic interests but there was also a sublayer of reasoning for them, one of which would include freeing an oppressed people or stopping the spread of that oppression. If you asked a Mom in 1968 if she prefer her son die to protect Goodyear rubber plantations in Vietnam or stop the spread of oppressive regimes I'm pretty sure she would say neither but end up picking the second choice when pressed.

Our politicians obviously prefer to frame our conflicts in that nuance as well, we are in Iraq to stop the spread of a despotic regime, free its people and introduce Democracy, oil and revenge and fleeing a father's shadow are not exactly the talking points our government would like to bring up, but, we citizens are quite aware of them. Despite that, we also prefer to remember ourselves as liberators as opposed to defenders of international corporatism or rank tools for the geopolitical dalliances of our elected officials. How does that make us different than other nations/and or people.

Carrington Ward

In response to your question, Steve, just some suggestions:

Michael Howard's "War and the Liberal Conscience" raises many of these issues... it's a good way of approaching the topic.

Also interesting, of course, would be Clausewitz, who has generally been considered a (European) 'continental' thinker and generally disliked in the Anglo-American tradition.

George Kennan's attempt to apply Clausewitzian thought to American diplomacy was, characteristically, frustrated.

Finally, E.H. Carr, Twenty Years Crisis might be taken as pointing out that this view of war is/was Anglo, as well as American.