Reply to a Friend's Bush Apologist Letter

I write essays for UselessKnowledge.com, as do several of my friends. One wrote an exceptionally well done apology for the Bush Administration, its war in Iraq, and the attack on Islam it represent for many of that particular creed. I wrote the following response:

"Make no mistake, Ron Lewis is a thoughtful guy. I’M a thoughtful guy, and I’m often wrong, too. More, I can certainly see how Ron can think the way he does. A whole lot of very bright people feel that way. They’re wrong, too.

"You see (and at the risk that I’ve already said it too often), I’m a tactician. It’s what I did – and still do - for a number of U.S. Army generals. Tactics was one of my assignments when I coached the US National Judo Team. I’m a tactician and I know better. Not only do I know better, but most of the former and still active military men I know and talk with know better, too – and they say so. So this (with a couple corrections of my habitual typos and run-on sentences) is what I’ve just written Ron":

"'I certainly share your concern for our kids' future. In fact, I never watch a little kid these days (something I love to do - they're the most precious thing there is) without real sadness. God, are we handing them a mess! As a matter of fact, the foreword in one of the first books I wrote is an apology to young people. I said I knew that one day, as Benjamin Franklin wrote, they would feel like pissing on our graves. I said I wanted them to know that all my life, with every fiber of my being, I fought to prevent what I knew was going to happen to them. When they came to my grave, they might feel like passing by.

“'You are generally right. But I'm a judoman (fifty-five years, more than a thousand organized matches). I know that headlong, unplanned attacks get burned just about every time. I also know that grapplers beat punchers and kickers just about invariably. As a military tactician (actually what I did for several generals), I also know that covert operations multiply their actual, TO&E force many times, and that any offense must be at least three times as powerful as any defense. I know, too, that the classic blunder of military history is the attack over unfriendly or uncommitted territory, or water - i.e., the extended one (Eisenhower knew that, and nearly had a nervous breakdown during Normandy). Russia during WW-2 continually lost huge numbers of troops after breaking pell-mell through the German lines and having the resulting bulge cut off. The latest examples of that classic blunder have been Vietnam and Iraq. To attack successfully under these conditions requires numerical and logistical superiority of at least fifty to one. Even we can never have that.

“'It's the reason we have never, and will never, be invaded.

“'I may have mentioned it here, but my friends will tell you that I predicted exactly (and I mean in detail) what has happened in Iraq, and that two months before invasion. There is simply no way that our military could have been as stupid as it obviously appears to have been. All over the world, military men (and a number I know and correspond with regularly) agree on that and are in dropped-jaw wonder at what we've done. NOBODY IS THIS STUPID. So what's the reason?

“'Well, my friend, in 1938, there were no German generals who agreed with what Hitler seemed intent on doing. When he began to unfold his plan, opposition was everywhere (almost literally) in the German general staff. To attack everyone around you sets up the classic (use that word a lot, don't I?) military nightmare, that of being surrounded. To be at war with an enemy whose industry and supply you can't reach is an even worse nightmare. To be surrounded by enemies whose industry and supply you can't reach is the worst of all nightmares. Still, Germany not only went to war, it went to war knowing full well that the worst nightmare was inevitable. Why?

“'German could have saved itself only one way, and that way is what the people who attempted to kill Hitler with the famous Fuehrerbunker bomb intended. Knowing and confident of our fear and respect for their science and weaponry, to say nothing of the obvious superiority of German soldiers, they intended to put a man they knew the Allies respected, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel in the office of President, then negotiate a peace. Many historians agree that it could have succeeded.

“'Ron, if we continue on our present course, the US will not survive in the state we know, respect, and love. Your daughter will live through both the transition and what comes. The military-industrial cabal that took over - even after President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about and John President Kennedy died trying to stop it - the economy and government of the United States immediately after World War Two doesn't care. Theirs is a psychological and sociological sickness, the deadliest known to man, that of power and greed. That their kind will stop at nothing is the loudest, most certainly of history’s lessons. Need I say with George Santayana and Winston Churchill that 'those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it?'

“'If we don't have the courage, and honor, to withdraw from Iraq within the next two years, your daughter and her fellows will piss on your grave. Provided, that is, that they still live to do it. Think about it.

“'By the way, I decided while I wrote this that I'm going to publish it on UK, verbatim. I care about children, and your daughter, that much.'


"'Hal'"