The State of the Midterms and War

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All sorts of things are going on and most of you who read my blog know this as well as I do.  You dont need me to tell you this stuff, and I am really averse to repeating myself which I tend to do.  But its also the case that most of us forget what happened when so there is some utility in writing some of these things down.  So a few notes for the future about the state of politics and about war.

The 2022 midterms are weeks away and you can read many analysis and predictions.  The Senate is up for grabs and could go either way.  The Republicans are expected to win the House of Representatives but it could be by a very small margin.  But whoever wins, everyone will be looking closely to see how the Supreme Court decision on Roe v Wade affected things, if at all. Will people vote who might not have voted before?   Furthermore, the pollsters have covered their ass by pointing out that they have consistently underestimated the right wing Republican vote and they have every reason to think that is the case this time.

This disturbs and disappoints me a lot.  The stakes of the midterms are very high.  If the Republicans win then all progress of legislation must stop and they will make life hell for America.  At this point, there can be no lukewarm feelings about politics in this country.  Whatever the long term prognosis for the Republican party, and for the conservative forces in this country, as they are currently represented they seem to want to destroy the country.  I know I can never forgive them.

And then of course the Supreme Court is about to let loose.  Anyone who thinks this court has any legitimacy and is not completely partisan and reactionary will find out shortly how deluded their beliefs are.

 

We have Trump, the theft of classified material, and slave judges and special masters.  Its alternately horrifying and disgusting.  Do we have a functional legal system left?  Prove it.

We have war in Europe.  We have Russia threatening to use nukes if they dont get to do whatever they want.  We have war crimes to make the SS proud.  We have the vindication of initiative and morale and precision weapons.  We have anonymous destruction of energy infrastructure to punish those who would not obey Putin. We have drones galore.  Oh brave new world to have such munitions in it.

Ukraine! Well I am Certainly Surprised

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Of all things, I really did not expect Vladimir the Great to actually recreate Munich before Europe's horrified eyes.  And Vlad knows that whatever Biden does, he can use the Republicans to destroy him and the Democrats and put their stooge in power, just like they did in 2016.

 

 

Rumors of War October 2016

Lets now move beyond the grim reality of the collapse of our political system, and lighten things up around here by considering whether or not we are on the brink of another serious regional or world war. Not only is this a very reasonable time to ask such questions, it also leads into the larger blog theme of “predicting the future”. In this case, no esoteric knowledge is necessary, we can rely on our own knowledge of history and what we can see of world events.

Whenever a war happens, there are always people who say that there were clear signs that the war was obviously going to happen and that either we should have been better prepared, or should have avoided it, or that the government knew it was going to happen and wanted it to happen, or any of a number of other opinions, some of them interesting, many of them completely out-of-their-mind crazy.

Hindsight is 20/20 but in the real world there are always tensions and conflicts that could explode into a major war. But it also the case that there are a variety of “indicators” that a war may be on the horizon. Here are a few drawn from recent history: (a) a nation is pursuing what it sees to be a goal of critical national importance and another nation executes economic sanctions (war) against it, (b) a nation is executing a rearmament of their armed forces as fast as they possibly can, (c) a nation executes an intense intelligence attack on another nation with whom they are at peace of a size that is unparalled in peacetime, (d) a nation insists that it controls another nation's territory or that a formerly public right-of-way is declared to be their sovereign territory, and always has been.

Do we see any of these four situations in the world today? In fact, we see all four of these.

Russia has a centuries long relationship with Ukraine and Crimea. They see that relationship differently than we do. For them, Crimea is the ice-free port that Russia strategically requires. For them, Ukraine is a slavic territory that has been part of Russia for centuries. The very origins of Moscow and Russia can be traced to Kievan Rus in what we might now call Ukraine. The west has imposed sanctions on Russia for the events in that part of the world. Right or wrong, these sanctions are certainly hurting Russia.

Both Russia and China are extensively rearming and reconfiguring their armed forces. The Russian army, navy and air force seem to be rebuilding at a vastly increased rate. China is doing something similar.

For the last decade, China has executed a cyber-attack against the United States of unprecedented scope. The only people who do not know it at this point are people who are really not paying attention (or don't want to know). The US Government has given every indication that it knows and that it wants it to stop. We know that something has been going on in part because our country has begun an immense investment in offensive and defensive cyberwar.

China's actions in the South China Sea are about as aggressive as a nation can be in times of peace. It is a setup for a hot war, and they are arming for it. They want it, they need it, they have to have it. And if we don't like it, we have to fight for it. The problem is not what we want, the problem is what all China's neighbors want and we are in a mutual defense alliance with those neighbors. Probability of war? High, about as high as war between India and Pakistan, for example.

Oh, did I forget to mention India and Pakistan?  Or India and China?  Or Vietnam and China? Or Pakistan's financing of terrorist groups? The war in Syria and the refugee crisis? Russia's blatant cyberwar against America? N. Korea and its nuclear weapons? Russia and Chechnya (what's left of it)? Or the Congo? Or Somalia? Or Sudan? Or Libya?

So are we headed to world war? Not necessarily. After all, even a hot regional war does not imply a world war.  But if we do end up in a major world war, there will be people who say that there was plenty of evidence that it was on the horizon.

This topic continues here.

Enola Gay Smithsonian Exhibit Disaster Part 1

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I can not imagine why anyone would care what. I think about anything related to the issues discussed in this post, unless they had some interest in the "popular understanding of history by a citizen" or something of that nature.  I recommend you skip this post unless you happen to be specifically interested in the issues discussed here.

I read a book about the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Enola Gay exhibit, a disaster of monumental scale, a nuclear explosion if you will, in which the veterans, the Air Force, the US Congress compelled the Smithsonian to back off from an exhibit which they were far along in creating.   The book is called "History Wars" and it presents the historians point of view on the subject and the larger issues of the interpretation of history.

I expected the book to be a balanced discussion of the issues that also showed that the situation had spun out of control and that the Smithsonian certainly was not planning to do an exhibit that would have presented the veterans or this country guilty of all sorts of nasty things.   But in fact the book did not do that, the book instead presented the very clear point of view that there was one way to interpret history, it was the historians way, and any other opinion was wrong.

So I wanted to write about this book and the exhibit but to do so I felt I had to explain something about the situation that the book describes and to do that is a Vietnam-like morass of complicated issues.  Issues that do not lend themselves to simple sound bites.

And so this post is the attempt to get a basic synopsis of the issues behind the incident.  I am sorry.  Feel free to ignore it and don't think worse of me because of it.   I don't know whether we should have dropped the bomb on Hiroshima or what would have happened if we had invaded the home islands of Japan, or whether the Japanese would have surrendered immediately anyway, or any of dozens of other fascinating and unanswerable questions.   I know that the dropping of the bomb was not a casual decision and I know what the veterans thought about what the sudden ending of the war meant to them and their lives because they were very clear about that topic both at the time and now.

So forgive me, here is the background, and then there will be post on what my impression of the historian side of the story.

The book discussed here can be found on Amazon.com at  "History Wars" 

To recap, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum planned an exhibit about the mission on August 6, 1945 to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The centerpiece of that exhibit would be the Enola Gay, the highly modified B-29 that actually dropped the bomb (there were 7 B-29s on that mission that day, but the Enola Gay carried the bomb itself). It might sound straightforward but it was anything but straightforward and here are some of the reasons.

1. The Smithsonian had the Enola Gay for decades but had refused to exhibit it. It was literally left out to rot in the rain and snow getting progressively more decrepit and rusted. Their actions were perceived for what they were, contempt for the history of this country, contempt for the veterans. The Air Force begged for the Smithsonian to give this historic plane to them so that they could restore it and show it in one of their museums, but the Smithsonian refused. The plane stayed in the rain and snow and rotted.  This did not exactly endear the Smithsonian to the Air Force or the veterans.

2. The dropping of the atomic bomb was an unusually specific event that could be said to end one era and begin another. Usually these transitions are more amorphous and take place over years or decades. But because the atomic bomb either was apparently the immediate cause of the end of WW 2 and the beginning of the cold war and the nuclear age, it presented many difficult historical problems that any exhibit either had to address or ignore, but a decision had to be made about them and no decision could be a decision. Realize also that accomplishment of dropping that bomb was the culmination of at least three different important efforts that we, the United States, took during that war.   Most people know of the Manhattan Project, but the creation of the B-29 and the story of the unit that dropped the bomb was no where near as well known.

3. There are very strong differences of opinion about the value of dropping the atomic bomb and its role in ending the war in the Pacific. But there was no doubt in the minds of anyone in the US armed services in the Pacific that it had ended the war and that it had saved their lives by doing so. But many Americans who certainly know we dropped the bomb that day are not as aware of why the veterans thought it had saved their lives.    (3)

4. The people at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum determined that their exhibit about the Enola Gay and the dropping of the bomb was going to be a "balanced exhibit", in their words, that talked about many different points of view about the event.   From the veteran point of view, this meant that they would be portrayed as heartless killers of children who had dropped a bomb for no good reason. . If America had not had to drop the bomb and if it was an immoral act then arguably America could be accused of committing a war crime in doing so and this was obvious to the veterans who were not amused by this.

5. It should be remembered that this was no mere article in a magazine somewhere, this was the premiere United States aviation museum passing judgment on the morality of dropping the bomb on the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the event and the end of WW 2.

Before I go further in describing the controversy around the exhibit I want to digress for just a moment on the role of the bomb in causing Japan to surrender and whether Japan knew it was defeated and was planning to surrender anyway.  Both of these issues are fabulously complex and controversial.   Most of all it requires the historian, professional or otherwise, to put themselves into the position of what was known at the time vs what was known later.   And to understand things outside the experience of most normal people (like what is involved in invading the home islands of Japan and what it would mean to delay such an invasion to let things evolve). (2)

6. But drop the bomb we did, and shortly thereafter began a firestorm of controversy about whether the bomb needed to be dropped to end the war. 50 years later, the Smithsonian wrote a draft of the planned exhibit, and that exhibit was leaked both to the Air Force and to various veteran groups. Of course it should have been leaked, it should have been sent for review by those groups. Surely the Smithsonian did not think they could just surprise people with the exhibit and their interpretation of the event?

7. The resultant explosion was everything that could be desired and more so. The veterans went nuclear, so to speak, and called for the Smithsonian's blood. The Smithsonian retaliated by ripping the wings off the Enola Gay and exhibiting it without an exhibition. No interpretation or story at all. It just hangs wingless in the Smithsonian (it has since been moved to the new gallery outside Washington and had its parts restored). The head of the Smithsonian and a few specific historians returned to academia. The veterans got nothing, the historians got nothing, the Smithsonian had completely dropped the ball. 

The Enola Gay without its wings, with one propeller on the wall, and no discussion of what happened

It was an unmitigated disaster for the Smithsonian as they had failed, utterly failed, to represent in any reasonable way the event, the technology, the end of the war, the story of the dropping of the bomb, anything.

A total failure.

But it wasn't over yet.

End of part 1.

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1. The other two are on the origins and legality of the American Civil War and a post on writing the genre of prediction with special reference to lessons learned from Nostradamus, a very misunderstood writer of fiction.

2. There are many, many controversies. A partial list includes: (a) that we were about one month away from the invasion of Japan and we knew this was going to be very bloody (b) that Japan knew we were very close to invading and had every intention of fighting and had worked with initiative to prepare and had done a very competent job of that given their situation at the time, (c) that the bombing of the Japanese cities had caused vast destruction and misery to all sectors of Japanese society and yet had not apparently destroyed their determination to fight and there is no doubt that situation caused many Americans in leadership positions to wonder what exactly was going to be necessary to cause Japan to surrender, (d) that Japan leadership knew they had lost the war but hoped to negotiate an end to the war that allowed them to keep their empire in Korea and Manchuria, although the extent that this is true is certainly debatable, (e) that the American people wanted this war over now, (f) that the USSR having completed the war in Europe was now moving to assist us in the far east in Manchuria and people were sensitive to the role that Stalin and the USSR would play in the post-war world, and some historians consider it immoral for us to consider this issue in the decision to hurry the end of the war by dropping the bomb, (g) and last but not least, unlike Germany, the Japanese armies were undefeated in the field in China and Korea and did not see a terribly pressing need to surrender all that they had been fighting for. Yes, the home islands were suffering, yes in fact they were all suffering, but from their point of view they were far from defeated.

3. It should be no surprise that the average American does not know their own history on this matter, but it is odd that the historians do not. There are those who claim that this is because historians are ignorant of the fundamental issues that they study and there is quite a bit to support that argument. At the time the bomb was dropped, we were in a terrific struggle with the Japanese and people were dying by the scores every day, both Americans and Japanese. We never had a defense against the suicide attacks on ships. They never had a defense against our incendiary bombing of Japan or the unrestricted submarine war on their merchant shipping.

By far more Japanese were dying than Americans, but that was about to change because we were literally within eight weeks of an invasion of the Japanese home islands that would probably make the invasion of Normandy look peaceful in comparison.  Projected casualties varied wildly depending on who did the predictions. When Truman took office after Roosevelt, probably his single most important issue to address was how to bring the war to a successful conclusion with a minimum of casualties.  What you, the non professional, need to understand is that for an invasion of this scope 8 weeks is almost no time at all, its not even a weekend. You should think of it as 15 minutes before midnight. It means that all the ships, planes, munitions, etc are built and in place, and all the men are trained and in position (not quite, but almost, I exaggerate here a little). It means that the hospital ships are built, and the doctors and nurses trained, and most of the medical supplies are ready to go, or nearly so.

When the bomb was dropped and the war suddenly and unexpectedly ended, there were several million Americans in uniform getting ready to storm the beaches and support that activity. These people to the last person, as far as I can tell from reading mostly secondary sources and a few primary ones, believed that the dropping of the atomic bomb saved their lives because it made it unnecessary to invade the Japanese home islands.   For those who believe that the war was over, and that Japanese knew they had lost, you are invited to learn about the invasion of Okinawa and what that entailed.

But since we did not actually invade Japan, the number of casualties is of course not known, and many people who have studied the issue (but who were not there) have a different opinion of what would have happened had we not dropped the bomb.

The Prophesy of John Hendrix (1865 - 1915)

This post is part of the "Archaeology of the Cold War" series.

From time to time, we will review entertaining stories of anomalous events, events which are unlikely to have occurred but would be very interesting if they had as that would imply unknown physics or stand as examples of phenomena such as time travel, ghosts, predicting the future and so forth. This category is in opposition to another topic of discussion on this blog, which is the creation of entertainment fiction that purports to predict the future. That however is a different topic from the one in this post. This topic is more in the nature of oral history that, if true, would mean that someone long ago had predicted the future.

The story goes something like this...

Once upon a time, in a very rural area of Tennessee, there lived a man named John Hendrix. Mr. Hendrix, who was born in 1865 and died in 1915, became distraught after the death of his daughter and his separation from his wife and the rest of his family. He became very religious and started to report having visions. Supposedly he told everyone about his visions and nobody paid much attention.

As silent as the grave

Hendrix described the vision that was given him as follows:

In the woods, as I lay on the ground and looked up into the sky, there came to me a voice as loud and as sharp as thunder. The voice told me to sleep with my head on the ground for 40 nights and I would be shown visions of what the future holds for this land.... And I tell you, Bear Creek Valley someday will be filled with great buildings and factories, and they will help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be. And there will be a city on Black Oak Ridge and the center of authority will be on a spot middle-way between Sevier Tadlock's farm and Joe Pyatt's Place. A railroad spur will branch off the main L&N line, run down toward Robertsville and then branch off and turn toward Scarborough. Big engines will dig big ditches, and thousands of people will be running to and fro. They will be building things, and there will be great noise and confusion and the earth will shake. I've seen it. It's coming.

Of course no one believed him, John was being just a little crazy, they thought. Well maybe more than a little crazy and it seemed that he was institutionalized for a time. But the years went by and there was no great city in Bear Creek Valley or up on Black Oak Ridge. There was a great war but the war got fought and won without any thousands of people running around in Eastern Tennessee or new railway lines or earthquakes either. John died before what we now call World War I ended and that was all there was to say about the matter until 1942 when the government came to kick the people of the four rural communities of that part of the world off their land.

Army Corps of Engineers picture of the old Hendrix home before they tore it down

About 60 years after Hendrix first started having his visions, the US Army Corps of Engineers began researching potential sites for several very large, experimental industrial plants that needed to be built on a rush basis for some project they would not talk about.   The plants needed to be far enough away from population centers and industrial areas so in the event that they exploded, the damage would be limited. They wanted to find a place that was sparsely settled so that they could quickly evict the people who were there and get started immediately.   They also hoped to find a place that had physical barriers in the case that one plant exploded it would not cause others nearby to also explode.  Access to a dam for water and a lot of electric power was critical.   The further out in the country it was the easier it would be to keep secret.   It needed to be near a rail line and existing road network because that would save time.

So one day the people of the four rural communities in this part of East Tennessee came home to find eviction notices nailed to their door. Some of them were out in the rain within two weeks, some in six weeks. They got a small amount of money for their land, but it was not enough to buy its equivalent somewhere else. And to their amazement, thousands of workers were bused in, a city with hundreds and hundreds of houses and dozens of stores and restaurants was built seemingly overnight, security fences were put up and, strangest of all, very large factories were built behind those fences that had armed guards who promised to shoot you if you did not go away.

These new people chose a name for what was now their community and they chose to modify the name of part of the countryside thereabouts.   They named their town for the same Black Oak Ridge that crazy old John Hendrix had talked about in his visions.  

Only they left out the "Black" and just called it Oak Ridge.

Scarboro?   Never heard of it. 

So as time went by, people remembered crazy old John Hendrix and his visions. You can read more about them in the links below. People marvelled at the amazing story of the man who saw the future and predicted the project that may have won the war.

So what are the possible explanations. On the one hand, Hendrix may have seen the future as described. Who knows, it wasn't particularly written down, it was just something people remembered. Hendrix certainly lived and he was on record for having been institutionalized and people can point to his grave. Maybe he did see the future, or maybe when the future imposed itself so violently on the peaceful citizens of that valley in Tennessee, the pissed-off locals chose to repurpose a member of their community, now deceased, who had truly lived when they said he did and died when they said he did and who had been a little crazy and got put away for a time because of that.  All true, all part of the public record.   Maybe, now that you mention it, this was one of his visions, I seem to recall.

Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, ain't too many people around these days who were around then and would contradict us, so you are going to have to take our word for it, I reckon. And maybe we can make a few dollars selling trinkets and entertaining all those thousands of gullible people who are running to and fro on what used to be our land up there on Black Oak Ridge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/wp-style/2013/09/13/the-prophets-of-oak-ridge/

A Modest Solution to the Syrian Civil War and Related Regional Problems

When the domestic situation looks unsolvable it is a time honored solution to look to foreign policy as a way of distracting the locals from the government-created misery that is their life. Not only is this approach used successfully by governments, it can be used successfully by individuals to help avoid thinking and working on their own problems, a sort-of trickle down "distract the miserable" approach. Thus I have been putting considerable time into the Syria issue and whether we should start firing missiles at that part of the world.

The answer, I am happy to say is, No, we should not fire missiles. Nothing we do there will help the situation, anything that we do could have unforseen results. It is a no win situation for us. I am sorry that the Syrians and their neighbors are killing each other, and I am sorry that some of these people are assholes. But that is not a good enough reason to go to war.

But if you say we must do something, I have a proposal for you. I am sure that the small-minded scum in Washington will ignore my suggestion, but I am used to that. Pearls before Swine if you ask me.

If you want to help that region, forget about bombing Syria, ask yourself why is this region all fucked up (using the technical terms here, "fucked up"). What do the following countries have in common: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq? They were all created out of the former Ottoman Empire which is the country we now call Turkey. Turkey was also created at the end of WWI out of the former Ottoman Empire. This was all set up by the British and the French, mostly.

Since these countries clearly can not handle their affairs, I am referring to Syria, et alia, not England and France, and since this little British and French experiment in nation building is such a disaster, lets swallow our pride, and ask Turkey to come back, and manage the area for us. Forget about Syria, its just a province of the new Ottoman Empire, and better for it.

Bring back the Sublime Porte, the Grand Vizier, the Harem. All of it. I think that the world has given a good shot at letting the people of the region rule themselves, and they have proven to everyone how competent they are at it which is not very competent at all.

Lets admit our mistakes and bring back the Ottomans.

Furthermore, I predict that this will result in a massive increase in employment for certain technical people.  The Ottoman's were well known for the use of Unix, they had Unix everywhere, especially the Harem.

Perhaps the Harem is a problem for you, my sensitive, politically correct, white friend?  You might want to look into the role of women in the near east, first.  The Harem actually had quite a bit of power in the Ottoman empire.  More power than women have in politics in most of the contemporary Near East, I think.

Below we have a photograph of a classic Harem and concept art for a proposed anime-style modern Harem.

Also, the Ottoman's were quite stylish.  Check out the head gear, below.

Suleiman Himself

Map of the Ottoman Empire at its Largest

So in conclusion, by bringing back the Ottoman Empire to that part of the world, and getting rid of the current countries of Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq etc, we have a plan that will reduce violence, increase employment, elevate the role of women in their society, and add to sartorial elegance.  All of these things are good things, good for us and good for the region.

I hope you will support the campaign to restore the Ottoman Empire with your representatives in Washington.

Lawrence in Damascus

I can not think of anything more pointless and certain to backfire than getting involved in the internecine wars between various factions in the Islamic Near East.    May as well shoot yourself for all the good it will do.

And furthermore it will just make one side or another hate us even more.  I admit that in some of those cases they may already hate us as much as they can so it might not do much more harm, but that seems to me to be a very negative way to see the world.

If you have not read a history of the area and you do not yet understand where Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan came from, then stop right now and go read about it.   They were created by the British and the French after WW I out of provinces of the former Ottoman Empire.  We also had something to do with it but mostly indirectly as far as I can tell. We become more involved in the area after WW II.

Lawrence of Arabia enters Damascus in a wood-body Rolls that has been adapted for desert warfare.

So, why, oh why, would we ever get involved militarily in this sewer of shit?  (holding back my real feelings).

It is for one reason and one reason only, as far as I can tell.  There has to be a real cost to using chemical and biological weapons, a cost that even a stupid thug, like the ones that run most countries, can understand and appreciate.   If one does not respond to their use, their deliberate use, then those people now and in the future will draw a lesson from that inaction.

That is the only reason.   I doubt it will help the Syrian's one bit.

It might help some people somewhere in the world, as yet unknown, who would otherwise have such weapons used against them.  Maybe if we act now, some desperate leader of some country or military in the future will not use these weapons.

That I think is the idea here.

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Footnote.

Because people always seem surprised when they get into a war and discover that it is expensive, that there is history, that people hate each other, that it goes on longer than it should, etc, I wrote a list of "things to consider before getting involved in a war that is in any way discretionary".  Some wars are not discretionary but some of them are and, where possible, it is wise to remember that discretion is the better part of valour.

I can not, not, not believe we are about to get involved in another middle east conflict.

Some Points to Consider Before Starting A War

What Really Happens to Priceless Artifacts in War-Torn Countries

The following pattern has now happened at least three different times in the recent past. The press and the public are told that priceless ancient documents or artifacts are stolen or destroyed by thieves or stolen by an invading army or militia. 

The press reports all this as true and the world wrings its hands in despair and raises its eyes to heaven. 

How could this be allowed to happen, some angry academic screams in the media.

But three different times, that isn't what happened.

Not in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded.  Not in Iraq when the U.S. was accused of standing idly by while hooligans looted and burned Iraqi museums.  And not in Mali when Islamic militants occupied Timbuktu where ancient Islamic documents had accumulated.

In Afghanistan, the priceless artifacts turned out to be in the back of the bottom vault of the Bank of Afghanistan where some smart people from the national museum had stashed them, and then conveniently neglected to tell anyone.   Hey what happened to all those priceless gold artifacts ?  Oh, those artifacts, they would say, we don't know, they just disappeared.  Maybe the Soviets took them, they would say.   The Soviets say, what artifacts?    Then, mysteriously, 20 years later, they look in the back of the vault and they find these mysterious trunks.

Anybody seen that big gold thingie ?   You know, the one with the dragons and weird guy with the circle on his head?

In Iraq, it turns out that all most of the allegedly stolen artifacts were in the basement of the main museum.  Where they had been put.  Then when people did come by to loot the museum attendants would say, gee, someone must have already taken them.  Better ask the Americans, they would say, its all their fault.

And finally in Timbuktu, we discover that the priceless manuscripts were smuggled out of town in an operation described in the Washinton Post, see "A Daring Rescue in Timbuktu"

What is going on?

What is happening is that when a country or city is occupied by foreign troops, a militia, or descends into chaos, responsible people who love their country's history put the items away, secretly, for safe keeping. Then when the bad guys show up and ask for the stuff, they are told that someone already destroyed them, or stole them, or that they are no longer there. 

And of course the press reports them as stolen or destroyed because (a) that is what they are told and (b) the last thing you want to do is to tell everyone where they actually are because then they might actually be stolen or destroyed.

So the next time you hear about some cultural disaster, be concerned, but do not despair. There is a good chance that things will show up again, eventually.

But one footnote.  Although it would be a shame if a document were lost, how could it be that they had not already been scanned and put in a dozen libraries around the world?  That is the real story, don't count on reading that story in the press anytime soon.  Way over their heads.

Also see:

Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Afghanistan
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/afghanistan-treasures/

The Mexican Suitcase

In 1979, the brother of a famous photographer wrote a note about his late brother's work on the occassion of that work being featured in the Venice Bienalle, arguably the world's most famous art show, held every two years in Venice, Italy.

He said

In 1940, before the advance of the German army, my brother gave to one of his friends a suitcase full of documents and negatives. En route to Marseilles, he entrusted the suitcase to a former Spanish Civil War soldier, who was to hide it in the cellar of a Latin-American consulate. The story ends here. The suitcase has never been found despite the searches undertaken. Of course a miracle is possible. Anyone who has information regarding the suitcase should contact me and will be blessed in advance.

Four years earlier, in 1975, a colleague of the photographer wrote the brother and explained that he had taken the negatives out of Paris in advance of the Germans and had entrusted it to a Chilean he had met in the street in Bordeaux who promised to take it to a Latin American consulate. Nothing more was ever heard. It was assumed that the photographs were lost forever and presumably destroyed.

But it turns out that somehow, no one knows how, the suitcase, unopened, ended up in the possession of a the Mexican ambassador to Vichy France in 1941, General Francisco Aguilar Gonzalez. General Gonzalez returned to Mexico with the suitcase in his possession and passed away 30 years later, in 1971, possibly without having ever opened it. The suitcase was in the possessions of a woman who was the aunt of a Mexican documentary filmmaker. He inherited the suitcase, opened it, and reviewed the negatives. He realized that they were of the Spanish Civil War and contacted a professor at Queens College who studied the history of the conflict. The professor realized whose photographs these were, and contacted the brother of the late photographer.

The brother was Cornell Capa, founder of the International Center for Photography, and these were the rumored missing negatives of his brother, Robert Capa, arguably the most famous photographer of war in the history of photography.

But Capa was unable to contact the filmmaker who had found the negative and they were never received. Finally in 2004 a special effort was made to locate the person who had inherited the negatives and in 2007,  at the age of 89, Cornell Capa finally received the contents of the suitcase his brother had packed in Paris when the Germans attacked in 1940.

The 126 rolls of black and white negative are still being scanned and the ICP will hold an exhibition for them when they are prepared.

The guy in the center is a journalist named Ernest Hemingway

We must all be grateful that Capa and his friends had used film, of course. Had they been digital, no doubt they would not have survived. The storage media would have completely disintegrated over 60 years, it would be like trying to read a 1,000 miles of punched paper tape.

The complete story of the history of the Mexican suitcase can be found at the following link, at the International Center of Photography website:  http://museum.icp.org/mexican_suitcase/

Magnum Photos, the famous international photography agency, has a discussion of Capa at

http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535353

Imaging Resource Article on the Suitcase:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/04/05/famed-photojournalist-robert-capa-and-the-mystery-of-his-mexican-suitcase

Some Points to Consider Before Starting a War

[Revised 1-12-2013]

I wrote this silly essay not because I am a genius who knows everything, but because it sounds to me that people around me (and people in Washington) do not know much about this very complicated and emotional topic: what it is you should expect if you start a war.  Since I think I know a lot of what you can know about the subject from reading history, and because I keep getting irritated by some of the things I hear and read which sounds appallingly naive, I have written down a short list of things that I think everyone should know, more or less, before advocating a military solution (e.g. attacking Iran, Syria, etc).  In other words, if the things I describe below do not happen, you should be pleased.  But if they do happen, you should not be surprised.

Why can't war be fun, like on television?

1. Wars are generally easier to start than to stop.

History is filled with examples where some nation (or kingdom, whatever) was able to start a war, but having started it, discovered many reasons why it was a mistake, but could not disengage. Things had spun out of control.   

2. Wars are very expensive.

Very expensive indeed.  In all the ways we might define the term "expensive", e.g. money, lives, civic discord, etc.   Historically, nations have underestimated these costs, sometimes willfully, sometimes because they are hard to predict, and other reasons.  But at the end of the day, when a nation reviews a war after it is over, rarely do they say that it came in under budget. And these costs continue long after the fighting stops.

3. People die and get hurt in a war.

Well, golly, you may say, that's pretty obvious.  But I swear that there are people who do not know this.  They think they can have a war in Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever and somehow people won't be killed.   But that's what happens in war.  You throw a lot of munitions around and they explode and kill people. Some of those people are in uniform, and some are not in uniform, and some of the latter are civilians and some are not.     You try to mostly kill soldiers and kill as few civilians as possible. Sometimes you end up killing your own people by mistake or carelessness. It happens all the time.

4. Mistakes happen during a war.

Wars are barely controlled chaos with real opposition and all sides using what are essentially dangerous prototypes and throwing bombs at each other.   Ever watch any of those videos on youtube from aircraft talking to people on the ground?  Notice how often they are yelling?   They're not yelling to be heard (well, maybe they are yelling to be heard), but they are also yelling because it is really stressful where they are.  People make choices and make mistakes.   People go the wrong way, people get the wrong coordinates, some people did not get the word, people got excited when other people were shooting at them. Mistakes happen.

Sometimes they are not mistakes, sometimes they are only mistakes after the fact.  Oh you blew up a wedding where a lot of the bad guys were going to be?   I see.  Maybe that was an intentional mistake, or maybe it wasn't.

But nothing makes me laugh harder than the civilian quarterbacking after the fact.  Why didn't they do this?  Why didn't they do that?  That sure was stupid.  Easy for you to say.

5. The laws of war are more guidelines than laws.

Not all cultures agree with the so-called laws of war. Not all nations have signed the Geneva Conventions. Even those that have signed them have a lot of leeway on how those laws or conventions are applied on a case-by-case basis.  So don't go throwing around words like "war crimes" without spending a lot of time figuring out what it is that people mean by this today, because you will just sound like an asshole, which you may very well be. 

6. When the war is over, the war isn't over.

Win or lose, someone has to clean up the mess. And someone has to pay for it. Win or lose, if you get into a war it is likely that you will have some obligations or costs going forward however it turns out.  

7. People care passionately about what happens in war both during and afterwards.

I use the story of the Smithsonian exhibit on the Enola Gay to explain what I mean by "strong opinions".  As far as I can tell, by far most soldiers in uniform at the time the nuclear bombs were dropped believe/believed that those bombs saved their lives by causing Japan to surrender.  Now it turns out that maybe that is true and maybe that is not true.  People will be debating that for a very long time and we may never have a definitive answer that makes everyone happy.   But the people who were in uniform at the time, of which very few are still alive, have strong opinions on the topic.  And when the Smithsonian tried to do an exhibit which was so-politically-correct about whether or not the bombs caused Japan to surrender, they were torn to pieces by the veterans.   That's what I mean by "strong opinions".

Therefore do not start a war unless you are willing to have people around afterwards who have very strong opinions on the topic that you may or may not agree with.

8. Do not have a war unless it is OK with you that people will hate each other.

One of the most irritating recent issues regarding the war in Afghanistan was the investigation to find out if one of our soldiers had urinated (e.g. pissed) on a dead enemy to show his disrespect.  How could that be!  That's not very civilized!  War is not very civilized, either.  War is about killing people and being killed, about people being betrayed and dying. And about hate. Therefore do not go into a war and expect that people are going to be completely dispassionate. No offense or anything, but that would be extremely unrealistic.

9. Some people do not appreciate our good intentions.

Its hard to believe, but some people do not want Americans to come in and "show them how its done". They do not care that having a base in the desert saves us a lot of money. They don't trust us. If something happens that they don't like or don't understand, they are very likely going to think that we are doing something evil, or that we planned it, or otherwise take the worst possible point of view on the topic because, as I said, they don't trust us.

And other nations, watching what is going on somewhere else, maybe also doubt our intentions and maybe fear us because we went to war in order to "fix things" and they may wonder if they are the next to be "fixed". 

10. Some people have longer memories than you do.

America as a culture has a selective and self-serving amnesia and tends to disregard other people's history, or history in general, as unimportant.

Americans may have neither known nor cared that the French were in Vietnam before we were, but the Vietnamese certainly did.  I know many of my fellow citizens who neither know nor care that Israel exists because of events in Europe over two millennia, but the Jews who live in Israel know this very well.  Most people I know may not know or care that the Grand Army of the Republic raped, murdered and burned its way through the South (1), but the people who live in the South do. 

Other people know their history, whether or not you care to know their history.  Maybe you don't agree with that history, maybe you think they got it wrong.  That doesn't really matter, what matters is what they think their history is.

11. Do not get involved in someone else's problems without thinking twice.

I think this one should be self-explanatory but obviously not.  If you break it, you buy it.  I am not sure we were much responsible for Iraq being a nightmare of problems before we got there, but we sure are involved now.   Afghanistan is an amazingly complex, historically rich area (note, not country, area) and we did have something to do with making it what it was before 2001, but not as much as some people think (2).  But the Sunni and the Shiites in Iraq are at each other's throats, again, and that is not going to stop anytime soon.  The people who live in the place we call Afghanistan are never going to stop growing and selling opium as long as there is a demand for it. And they are never going to stop being corrupt in our eyes, because in a deep and fundamental way they don't see it as corruption or they don't care what we think.   And the rich of Kandahar will famously "keep" little boys for sex as they have for a long time and you wont stop them unless you kill them all. And I don't think we should kill them all, personally.

12. Be careful what you ask for and think about what happens next.

Saddam Hussein ruthlessly suppressed his Shiite majority in Iraq, I hear.  Those Shiites are the cousins of the Shiites that rule Iran with an oppressive, women-hating, Jew-hating, Sunni-hating theocratic dictatorship.  You get rid of Hussein, the Shiites who are a majority in Iraq come into power, and wish to ally with and maybe imitate that lovely theocratic Iran next door.  Good move, boys.

13. Wars do not always go the way you want or expect.

Many Americans are used to believing that a war will go their way, that they will be victorious in some sense of that word.   This is sheer delusion and ignorance.  First, Americans have not always won wars but many wars end with ambiguous results.   Second, you can win and lose a war at the same time.  Third, you can win every battle and still lose the war.   Fourth, wars have a life of their own, and unexpected things happen.  A small war may become a big war and a big war may become an annoying small war.   You will not know for sure going in.

Therefore and in conclusion, if a war is discretionary, and not all wars are, think real hard before you start it. All of the points above apply now and in the future. And if somehow one or two of them do not apply, then consider yourself lucky.

Now, are you really, really sure you need to start that war?

__________________________

1. Sherman's "March to the Sea".

2. Read Steven Coll's "Ghost Wars" about our involvement in Afghanistan after the Soviet Invasion.  We did support the resistance against the Soviet Union, but our involvement was always with the Pakistani's and the Saudi Arabians, and they have had much more to do with what transpired than we did, in spite of our self-image as being all powerful.   We were one of many players in that episode.
http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/0143034669