Category: HISTORY

     History is a fascinating subject, intrepreted progressively by the relative distance from the event, the collected evidence, and the participants’ memories.  One of the provisos in learning from history is that history is written by the winners, and that the processes that shaped the outcome before the outcome was known is biased by projection of the winner’s view, not the loser’s.   The passionate feelings about states’ rights that built the momentum for the civil war are subjugated to  the victor’s view of the conflict for the preservation of the union and the liberation of an enslaved people.  The acknowledged brilliance of the arguments for separation from Great Britain in colonial times dominate our memory, forgetting that about 30% of the colonists, the so-called Tories, found the arguments uncompelling and hoped for the revolutionists’ defeat.

     The recent events in Iraq encompassed under the moniker of the Iraq War, are an interesting projection of this proviso of history.  Already few remember that almost uniform acceptance of the need to remove Saddam Hussein from power was a bipartisan supported concept, and the formal policy of three American administrations.  The initial military success was overwhelmingly popular, despite the initial surprise of apparent lack of one of the most inciting provisions of the need for invasion, that of the potential presence of weapons of mass distruction in the hands of the dictator, who had a proven record of using them. 

     History is written by the victors, however, and by 2006, the potential victors were the increasingly powerful voices who had opposed the war, and the politicians who saw weakness in the American position and a potential avenue for achieving political power.  General Richard Sanchez, commanding general in Iraq for 2003-2004, followed by General John Abizaid 2005-2006 both followed a policy of a light American military footprint with engagements to be handled progressively by Iraq forces, stabilized by hoped for parallel progression in Iraqi governmental development.  By 2006, with violence spiraling out of control, defeat and withdrawal was felt to be inevitable by both civilians and military advisers of the president.  General Sanchez himself is quoted by Jeff Schogol  in Stars and Stripes on October 13th, 2007 as having ‘slammed the handling of the war and gave a bleak assessment of the current situation in Iraq’ saying,

“There is no question that america is living a nightmare with no end in sight.”

    History, however, is the study of transpired events, not the prediction of them, and General Sanchez proved not to be a prognosticator – the story of the devised strategy described as The Surge, is compelling, unexpected, brilliant, and heroic, snatching a singular victory out of chaos and defeat – and deserves to be told along side all other stories of the victories in the pantheon of American history.  History is the story of the victors, and the story of Iraq will continue to be written and understood, in the voices of the victors who shaped the outcome.   Watch the fascinating story…..

•  
   

   

http://www.understandingthesurge.org/

Understanding the Surge from ISW on Vimeo.

 

 

 

 

     On July 10th, 1940, an armada of planes lifted off from German air bases to begin the epic clash of wills between the forces of liberty and totalitarianism, in what soon would be referred to as the Battle of Britain.   A little known secret weapon, radar, allowed the British air force to have early warning and engage the armada over the English Channel.  The New York Times of July 11, 1940 described that battle in tense and lucid fashion:

        

 “One of the most spectacular air battles of the war thus far, with a hundred or more planes engaged, raged off the Channel coast yesterday. Big formations  of  British and German planes came to the death grip after Nazi airmen had attempted to attack a convoy. “

“The fierce fight over the Channel was overshadowed during the day by intense air activity in which the Germans raided parts of Scotland, England and Wales, killing and wounding civilians here and there and damaging private property. The authorities did not state whether any military targets were hit.”

“In the first phase fifteen German bombers overtook the convoy. Escort vessels sent up an intense barrage of anti-aircraft fire, but the German planes dived through it, showering down numerous high explosive bombs among the ships. A spectator on the cliff said that not a hit appeared to have been scored.

Fighters Join Action

The R. A. F. fighters immediately roared up to intercept the raiders, darting through the haze of gunfire smoke overhanging the Channel with their machine guns rattling bull blast. Soon afterward the first group of raiders was chased off.

The second phase developed ten minutes later. Thirty or more German bombers, protected by fighting planes, droned over the Channel at the 10,000-foot altitude.

Quickly they dropped salvo after salvo of bombs, which were seen bursting near the ships in the convoy while the anti-aircraft guns roared and British Fighters again closed in to attack. At the approach of the R. A. F. planes, more German fighters dived down through the clouds above which they had been hiding and the fight was on with a vengeance.

Three German bombers were shot down in less than three minutes, all hurtling brokenly in vertical dives into the sea. Another had its tail shot off. One bomber and one fighter collided in midair killing each other. Still another German fighter plunged into the sea after a British pilot had poured a stream of machine-gun bullets into its tail. One by one, in rapid succession ,other German planes were sent to a swift end.

Finally the German squadrons broke off the engagement and made for home. Some of them were so badly damaged that it was considered probable that they did not reach the French side of the Channel, according to London reports.

While the battle was going on, ‘the sky was black with planes,’ the skipper of one ship in the convoy related. He added that hundreds of bombs splashed into the sea.”   new york times frontpage 07.11.40

  

   The colorful writing classic for the press in 1940 makes no attempt to hide newspaper’s desire to inform the reading public as to which side was righteous in its actions.  How different is today’s press where equivalence of virtue is the norm and the struggle always required to protect individual liberties is considered gauche and reactionary.  We forget how fragile liberty is, and how vulnerable at times it has been to annihilation.  We expect our current economic and military might to be sufficient to discourage those who would seek to return the world to subservience and darkness.  Hopefully, the remembrance of epic struggles for freedom like the Battle of Britain, where the outcome was so unsure, the dangers so acute, will steel us for what continues to lurk in humanity’s darker nature.

  

 

     On the morning of July 4th, 1863, stillness ruled in two small  American towns where chaos had existed just a few hours before.  Not a peaceful stillness, but an exhausted one.  In the tiny Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, just a few miles above the Maryland border, a titanic battle to determine if the northern states could show the guile and fortitude to withstand the “invasion” of the forces of the southern rebellion and hurl them back, juxtaposed with the mirror opposite in the river town of Vicksburg, where union forces sought to prove to the south it could be permanently cleaved in half.  In Gettysburg the violence was massive and acute; in three days over 50,000 casualties resulted draining both sides further will to conclude the ultimate question of the times.  In Vicksburg, the theatre was on a much more geographically strategic scale, took many months, and thousands of more lives.  In the first, a perfect general, Lee. had proved himself to be human.  In the second, a human and complex man, Grant, proved he was a general. 

     In Washington,  a man who had suffered through over two years of defeat and ridicule holding up not a physical treasure, but ideals for his immediate world to fight and die over, finally had The Day he had been waiting for.   Abraham Lincoln, to whom the concepts of individual freedom and equality expressed in the Declaration of Independence,  the more perfect union expressed in the constitution, and the special purpose of a free people under a deity from the bible, never left his focus in all the preceding hard times. He finally had the day he had been waiting for, and would express it all in words several months later that will never lose their power:

     ” It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who have fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.  It is, rather, for us here to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion –   that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”