From War Hero to Provider of Monument Services
Walking along the Port Royal in Paris, we came across the statue of a dashing soldier. Sword in hand, he was leading the charge – on foot.
Confident. Handsome. Audacious. And there, on the pedestal of the statue, was a list of the battles he fought.
It’s a good thing his own people shot him when they did, otherwise there would not have been space to list all his battles.
Neerwinden, Mainz, Neuwied, Winterthur, Hohenlinden … he had faced the enemy at least a dozen times, was wounded three times, and the Napoleonic Wars hadn’t even started yet.
Twelve years and a hundred battles later … at Waterloo, he had five horses shot from under him. Marshal Michel Ney … now there was a soldier! There was a hero!
Marshal Michel Ney, a guy nobody could mess with.
Eventually his own guys shot him by mistake (presumably), but at least he got a statue and is providing monument services ever since
Photo credit: Brassaï
The Martial Instinct
Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo – one of the great battles in history. So today, let us turn away from the gods of money and fraudulent conveyance. Let us turn to Mars, the god of war.
In our DNA appears to be the desire for organized combat. Whence did it come? We don’t know. But it seems likely that tribes of proto-humans had to be able to compete – violently on occasion. Those who lacked an instinct or talent for combat were probably wiped out by those who didn’t.
Mars Ultor (the avenger), the Roman version of the Greek god Ares, second only to Jupiter in the Roman pantheon.
This sculpture was part of a relief in Rome, made in the 2nd century CE.
And so, we arrive in the 21st century, programmed for prehistoric warfare… and ready to fight off the invader. We expect our young men to be willing and able to enter the battle; one who shirks is regarded as a coward.
Today, the martial instinct seems unnecessary. Tennessee, for example, has only been invaded once – and then it was by troops of the Union Army.
But people have the wrong idea about war. They think war is an instrument of foreign policy and should be used rationally – like a tool – and conducted scientifically.
But that is like saying that sex is an instrument of procreation. In fact, it is an end in itself – full of mystery and majesty all its own.
Disgraceful Wars
Since World War II, America’s wars have been disgraceful. In Vietnam, the U.S. promised to bomb peasants “back to the Stone Age.” Instead, the “gooks” kicked our butts.
Thereafter, U.S. warmongers targeted smaller, more defenseless enemies. Grenada, Honduras, Panama – none was in a position to resist. And without a worthy enemy, the whole show is shameful and embarrassing.
Though slightly out of focus, this photograph became a famous illustration of the fact that even a super-power can get its butt kicked … and by a bunch of ill-equipped commies to boot (shortly thereafter, the Soviets found out in Afghanistan that ill-equipped mujaheddin were quite capable of kicking commie-butt). Ever since, war journalism has been transformed, with government these days exercising tight control over what the tax cows will get to see. So if you want to actually see what horrors are perpetrated in your name nowadays, you basically have to wait for Wikileaks to release highly embarrassing videos.
Photo credit: Hugh Van Es / Bettmann / CORBIS
The heroes are phony … and war is nothing more than a grab for more money and power by the elites who start them. And now, we are once again bumbling around in the Muslim world, nearly 800 years after French crusader Louis IX.
As you’ll recall from yesterday’s Diary, Saint Louis, as he became known, at least faced a real, competent army in the Hafsids at Tunis. Our opponents are amateurs, with no real professional training.
King Louis IX of France dies in the 8th crusade during the siege of Tunis. The Hafsids proved to be tough opponents. Wars weren’t like video games at the time.
Painting by Jean Fouquet
Often, you hardly have to shoot them; they blow themselves up. They have little government backing, and only the weapons they have gotten from us. Yes, our war industries have hit the jackpot: They supply both sides.
At huge expense, the U.S. gives tanks, guns, and thousands of Humvees to its lackeys. They promptly run away from the fight, leaving their weapons to the enemy. Then U.S. suppliers get new orders for more weapons.
Our enemy-du-jour, the Islamic State, came on the scene only a few years ago. It is so new that we don’t know what to call it. ISIL, ISIS, ISI, IS – who knows? As for its military capability, it is an ad hoc group of fighters whose strategies an tactics are little more than improvisation.
Still, wouldn’t it be a treat to see David Petraeus – who betrayed national security by giving vital documents to his mistress – redeem himself by leading a charge against ISIL?
He could ride a tank … waving a sword to direct fire … encouraging his men forward in a dramatic sweep to victory. It would be even better if he managed a wound – perhaps a patch over his left eye, like Israeli war hero Moshe Dayan.
A More Dangerous Enemy
But rather than face its new enemies in the field, the U.S. military assassinates their leaders. In today’s news, for example, there is a report that a U.S. drone strike killed a top al-Qaeda chief in Yemen.
Al Quaeda’s leader in Yemen, Nasir al-Wuyashi, a.k.a. Abu Badir, gets droned in the Yemeni desert – this time for real, as the organization has confirmed his death. No problem one might think, as the world is very likely slightly better off without him. The only problem is that this was approximately the 17th time he was killed. So who died on all those other occasions?
Photo credit: AFP
This strategy has the benefit of not putting U.S. troops in the line of fire – especially when drones carry out operations. But it is obviously futile. It is more or less the same barren approach the U.S. and Colombian governments used to fight the “war on drugs.”
They targeted the cartel leaders – notably, Pablo Escobar. But taking out the leaders was like cutting down big, old trees – it allowed the sunlight to shine down on dozens of saplings.
After the Colombian cops gunned down Escobar on the rooftops of Medellín, for example, competition in the cocaine business increased… with the rise of “drug federations” and “baby cartels.”
Getting rid of the old guard merely gives the new guard – with more energy, new ideas, and innovative methods – a chance to flourish. That is how ISIL came into being: U.S. forces first took out Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist Party apparatus. Then they assassinated many in al-Qaeda’s leadership, too.
What was left – the young fanatics who had learned, evolved, and mutated into a more dangerous enemy. You can best appreciate the dumbness of targeting leaders simply imagining what it would do in the U.S.
Suppose some enemy was able to take out the president, his Cabinet, and the entire U.S. Congress. Would that be a bad thing?
Except for those few directly affected, it would probably not reduce the happiness or wealth of anyone. New leaders would take over. It is hard to believe they would be worse. More on Waterloo … Marshal Ney … and war … tomorrow.
Many drone strikes do end up reducing the happiness of people somewhat. Here are the remains of a droned wedding party in a Yemeni village. The actual target, a mid-level Al Qaeda operative by the name of Shawqui Ali Ahmed al Badani, was nowhere near the wedding. No-one in the village even knew him, which vastly reduced his chances of getting invited.
Image credit: NBC News
Image captions by PT
The above article originally appeared at the Diary of a Rogue Economist, written for Bonner & Partners. Bill Bonner founded Agora, Inc in 1978. It has since grown into one of the largest independent newsletter publishing companies in the world. He has also written three New York Times bestselling books, Financial Reckoning Day, Empire of Debt and Mobs, Messiahs and Markets.
“Would a Drone Strike on Congress Be a Bad Thing?”
Yes! But only due to the fact that if the aforementioned drone is NOT equipped with a nuclear-tipped warhead …there just might be SURVIVORS.
No. Next question.
I like Bill Bonner but his view of some things is out of focus. Vietnam was a badly conducted war, directed by venal, stupid political leaders in Washington. That said, it was hardly immoral. Any war fought against a Communist enemy is honorable, if not necessarily wise, timely or likely to succeed. The men who fought the Vietnamese Communists were engaged in a noble – if flawed -undertaking.
As for the Crusades, they were an entirely justified response to brutal Muslim aggression against what had been at one time Christian territory. The Muslims murdered, plundered and otherwise oppressed the Christian inhabitants of the Middle East and threatened all of Europe. The Crusades, however many sins were comitted in Christ´s name, were a shining moment in the history of the West. The current state of the Middle East is sad testimony to that.
Drone strikes are far to impersonal for our supposed leaders. What they deserve, along with their owners/masters is a piano wire necktie preceded by hours or even days of chaos and uncertainty as to their ultimate fate at the hands of the taxpayers they betrayed. You know, sort of like the chaos and uncertainty Ambassador Chris Stevens experienced only worse.
Let me add, I have not one bit of sympathy for the so-called Muslim extremist “leaders” who are being smoked by Predators every day. They are primitive scum and they would gladly strangle us with our own entrails. Do not waste pity on them.
A little off topic… Over at the Daily Sheepe… an article reads AMERICA IS ADDICTED TO DEBT. Nice simple summary of the biggest threat to our national security.Worth reading .
A drone strike on Congress would change nothing. We can blame the global elite, their lackeys in the news media, Hollywood’s sickoes or the man on the moon, but the truth is that we are mis-ruled because a plurality of Americans are fools.
Southern Sage, do you see no lesson in the fact that previously communist nations, undefeated in war, now have their own stock markets?
How many men, women and children do you propose to see die in order to Not Change History?
DC’s right of course. We have met the enemy and he is us. I’d still vote for a drone strike as long as it would get Boehner and Eddie Munster (Paul Ryan).
Southern Sage says:
Let me add, I have not one bit of sympathy for the so-called Muslim extremist “leaders” who are being smoked by Predators every day. They are primitive scum and they would gladly strangle us with our own entrails.”
I’d be totally on board with that except for three things: 1. Da Gooberment is the primary source of info on these people and a VERY LIMITED slice of THAT info is given to selected MSM mouthpieces to parrot until we fall in line and chant USA! USA! USA! 2. We are invading sovereign nations to kill them even if that means killing innocent women and children in the process. 3. We created these terrorists because the bankers always need a boogeyman. When it’s convenient for our owners, we fund them, train them and equip them. When it’s inconvenient for our owners we sacrifice our children to kill them.
You may be right in that these extremists want to strangle us with our own entrails but wanting to, and having the ability to do so are two different things. That’s a significant difference in a nation that supposedly believes in rule of law.
How about we just leave them all the fuck alone? No food aid, no medical aid, no tech aid, nada. Stop importing them and get us and all our shit out of their countries and allow them to live the 5th century existence they hold so dear.
Southern Sage says: “Any war fought against a Communist enemy is honorable, if not necessarily wise, timely or likely to succeed.”
Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!!!! You’d make a fine McCarthyist. Communism is simply a word for a few psychopaths controlling the destinies of millions of serfs. In other words government. They all suck, period. We can argue the degree. But going to war, killing those very same serfs, just to satisfy the whims of the psycopaths is not fucking honorable. I don’t care if you’re fighting “communists,” “fascists” or “seventh-day adventists.”
War is honorable when throwing off a tyrannical government, when freeing others from a tyrannical government, or when defending one’s home from invaders. That’s it. Blowing up some dirt farmers in Vietnam in order to somehow fight the spread of communism was not only immoral but colossally stupid.
@Drud: Agreed x 10. We had no business invading SE Asia. They didn’t attack us, and THAT should be the acid test for declaring war, period. Southern Sage, you’re out of your mind!
“Let me add, I have not one bit of sympathy for the so-called Muslim extremist “leaders” who are being smoked by Predators every day. They are primitive scum and they would gladly strangle us with our own entrails. Do not waste pity on them.”
I myself have not one bit of sympathy for the brainless morons who support their government’s deployment of cowardly drone bombs worldwide. Drones that we ALL KNOW are mostly effective in taking out wedding ceremonies, birthday parties, beachside soccer games, hospitals, factories, and other innocent victims. For every REAL ‘terrorist’ they kill, 100 innocent bystanders go to their graves unknowingly, unjustly. Even WORSE is the primitive scum rationale of the aforementioned morons and their propensity for subsequently labeling ALL of their victims as “terrorists”. People with BALLS physically drag their asses over to confront their enemies in order to make sure they’re getting the right people. NOT lobbing explosives indiscriminately at crowds from 7422 miles away.
Cowards, cowards, cowards.
Anyway, guess what Southern Sage: now your precious drone-loving government thinks YOU’RE the TERRORIST.
Enjoy!!!
Sage, what the Mohamed learned of Empire expansion and barbarity he learned from the Crusaders. Get the facts , before passing the gas.
The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land
Mohammed didn’t learn anything from Crusaders. He died about 300 years before the 1st Crusade.