Cliopatria: A Group Blog
Aaron Bady (∞); Chris Bray (∞); Brett Holman (∞); Jonathan Jarrett (∞); Robert KC Johnson (∞); Rachel Leow (∞); Ralph E. Luker (∞); Scott McLemee (∞); Claire B. Potter (∞); Jonathan T. Reynolds (∞)
Michael Kazin has an interesting piece in this week’s New Republic, chastising conservatives such as Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and Charles Krauthammer for misappropriating the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. Kazin notes the comments of such figures praising King’s work, but adds that “such paeans still sound quite bizarre coming from a Right that is opposing even the slightest attempt at stimulating the economy to help people who need jobs, good schools, and medical care.” His essay provides a reminder of King’s left-wing views on economic issues during the 1960s.
In fairness to Bachmann, et al., it seems to me plausible to argue that a political figure can praise King’s commitment to political reform and equal rights without necessarily endorsing his economic vision. After all, many members of Congress in the 1960s who supported the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act didn’t endorse all (or even much) of King’s economic agenda.
There is, however, one element of the contemporary conservative movement that pretty clearly is misappropriating King’s legacy. The National Organization of Marriage, an anti-gay marriage group, has recently attracted attention for a policy pledge, endorsed by all the major 2012 GOP presidential candidates, which includes support for a plebiscite in D.C. to ban gay marriage there. Last year in Minnesota, the group started running ads demanding that Minnesotans receive a right to vote on a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. The preference for plebiscites makes sense for NOM, given that gay marriage opponents skew toward senior citizens and people without college educations, groups represented in proportionally larger numbers in an electorate than in legislatures or the courts.
A NOM radio ad, however, implied that King would endorse such a tactic: “The right to vote, our most important civil right. Martin Luther King said it simply. Yet some politicians in Minnesota want to impose gay marriage without a vote of the people.” (The TV version of the ad showed King, but didn’t quote from him.) NOM’s Brian Brown explained the ad’s rationale: “Just as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. fought for the civil rights of Americans, we echo his words to give people the ballot and let the people vote.
King never had a position on marriage equality, obviously, but it’s hard to argue that he supported using plebiscites to decide the rights of minority groups. During his lifetime, the most significant such effort was California’s Proposition 14, the 1964 referendum that sought to overturn the state’s fair housing law. King not only didn’t suggest that Californians’ “right to vote” on the discriminatory measure was “our most important civil right,” but he argued that approving Proposition 14 would “be one of the most shameful developments in our nation’s history.” King’s stance had little impact: Proposition 14 overwhelmingly passed, and helped sink the re-election campaign of Senator Pierre Salinger, who had vociferously opposed the measure. The Supreme Court invalidated the referendum in 1967, in Reitman v. Mulkey.
So while Kazin might be overly aggressive in suggesting that praise for King’s legacy can’t be reconciled with opposition to King’s economic beliefs, conservatives can fairly be criticized for misappropriating King’s words and work to support the concept of putting minority rights up to a popular vote.
Thanks to 3 Quarks Daily for the tip.
[Cross-posted at Airminded.]
As Alan Allport has noted, Winston Churchill's famous speech of 20 August 1940 was and is remembered for a 'single, unrepresentative sentence', i.e.:
Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
The speech was given during the Battle of Britain, and 'the Few' are universally taken to be the pilots of Fighter Command, the last line of defence against the Luftwaffe. But, as Alan says, Churchill had relatively little to say about the Battle that day -- he did talk about it, but only as part of a general speech on the war situation. I suggested that if you read the line in context, it actually looks like Churchill is talking about Bomber Command, as he doesn't dwell on Fighter Command at all. Here's a fuller extract from Churchill's speech (emphasis added):
The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day, but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate, careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power. On no part of the Royal Air Force does the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the daylight bombers who will play an invaluable part in the case of invasion and whose unflinching zeal it has been necessary in the meanwhile on numerous occasions to restrain.
We are able to verify the results of bombing military targets in Germany, not only by reports which reach us through many sources, but also, of course, by photography. I have no hesitation in saying that this process of bombing the military industries and communications of Germany and the air bases and storage depots from which we are attacked, which process will continue upon an ever-increasing scale until the end of the war, and may in another year attain dimensions hitherto undreamed of, affords one at least of the most certain, if not the shortest of all the roads to victory. Even if the Nazi legions stood triumphant on the Black Sea, or indeed upon the Caspian, even if Hitler was at the gates of India, it would profit him nothing if at the same time the entire economic and scientific apparatus of German war power lay shattered and pulverised at home.
So he gives his famous line, but then says in effect 'yes, yes, the fighter pilots are great, but let's talk about the bomber boys, they're ones who might win the war for us'. As Churchill himself might have said, wars are not won by defence. At most, I think he meant the 'few' to include all Britain's pilots, but the phrase soon narrowed to mean those flying fighters alone. For example, the 1942 film The First of the Few was about the genesis of the Spitfire.
So how were Churchill's words interpreted as he spoke them? The major newspapers all ran leaders on the speech. One which singled out the phrase in question was the Manchester Guardian (21 August 1940, 4):
The work of the R.A.F., both in defence and in offence, has been beyond all expectations and beyond all praise; in a striking sentence he said that "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
So here it is associated with the RAF as a whole, not just one part of it. The Times (21 August 1940, 5) also noted the phrase, in summing up a lengthy paragraph which itself summarises Churchill's comments on Fighter Command, Bomber Command, the Ministry of Aircraft Production and the Empire Air Training Scheme:
our airmen can look forward to attaining numerical parity with their opponents, and so to playing that dominant part in the whole war which their skill and gallantry have deserved. Already they have given us a clear vision of victory, even under the impact of what the PRIME MINISTER called a cataract of disaster. Truly, as he said, "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
So here too the fighter pilots are just one element of the Few.
The other newspapers I've looked at don't mention the Few explicitly. The Daily Express (21 August 1940, 5) barely even alludes to the Battle, saying only that 'the fight which this nation and this Empire is making has increased the respect' of Americans for Britain:
Soldiers, sailors, and pilots are at their greatest strength yet. Canada and America are hand in hand. We hold the seven seas. All this the enemy has to beat. All this -- and more. For we strike, strike, strike through our bombers. And Churchill promises that we shall strike harder yet.
The Daily Mirror (21 August 1940, 5) listed 'several points of real encouragement from Mr. Churchill's review', the first among them (and the only one relating to airpower) being:
Our bombing of military targets in Germany (one of the brilliant achievements of the R.A.F.) is certainly having its effect. And Mr. Churchill realises that this may be the surest of all roads to victory.
Air defence is presumably one of the other 'brilliant achievements of the R.A.F.', but it doesn't seem to be worth mentioning for the Mirror.
Complicating this picture is the Yorkshire Post (21 August 1940, 2), which in fact didn't mention the work of Bomber Command at all. Instead it focused on the Battle:
we can fairly claim that in these last dramatic weeks we have at least blunted the edge of that air terror on which Germany's hopes of final victory must largely depend [...] Unless Hitler can soon beat us in the air -- and even now it is we who are beating him -- he never will.
The Glasgow Herald (21 August 1940, 6) split the difference, remarking that
Our Air Force has faced the greatest aerial war machine ever known or imagined, has beaten back its first great assaults with great and disproportionate loss to the enemy, and has harried Germany far more effectively than the Luftwaffe has raided here [...]
So, out of this sample of half a dozen metropolitan and provincial dailies, only one, the Yorkshire Post, gave precedence to Fighter Command when discussing Churchill's speech, and even it didn't relate this to his praise of the Few.
Garry Campion analysed Churchill's speech in The Good Fight: Battle of Britain Propaganda and The Few (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). He notes differing opinions as to whether the Few were just the fighter pilots or all RAF aircrew, both during the war and after. Richard Overy is on the former side; David Reynolds on the other. Campion himself sides with the usual interpretation (as might be guessed from the title of his book). But I think he is too quick to dismiss the idea that the Few included bomber crews too (78):
On this point it is noteworthy that Bomber Command had yet to strike at Berlin, its first attack occurring five days later on 25/26 August [...] It is hard to see at this early point that Bomber Command's undoubtedly heroic attacks had resulted in clear, tangible outcomes -- also capable of being propagandised -- comparable to that of the fighter squadrons.
But as the above quote from Churchill's speech shows, he did claim that there were 'clear, tangible outcomes' from RAF bomber raids, and he clearly was trying to propagandise them. And, as I have argued, Bomber Command's capabilities and effects were wildly overestimated at this time. Campion's is a Fighter Command view of the Battle of Britain. Perhaps mine is a Bomber Command view.
Image source: Spitfire Site.
At the Huffington Post this weekend, Robert L. Cavnar rearranges large portions of the human past to rebuke extremist "anti-government forces" of the kind that criticize FEMA, an agency we finally realize we need just as an "unprecedented" hurricane barrels toward the East Coast of the... Wait, did that already happen?
Cavnar builds his argument on a foundational narrative of history that sees a long string of (triumphant) dead people stacking each brick of progress on top of the last, building toward a perfected condition that can only be impeded by voting Republican; sometimes we move forward in time, sometimes we pull the wrong lever and move back. Tuesday? Better than Monday, 'cause of it happened later. Unless that asshole Bush is still around.
But the details get a little strange: "Many anti-government forces have successfully staked out territory that asserts that the 'free market' cures all ills, which it doesn't. They declare that the government can't do anything right (except for winning 2 World Wars and going to the Moon in less than 10 years), and that it should be shrunk down to the size that it can be 'drowned in the bathtub.'"
See, government isn't like markets, government produces order and progress. For example? Two world wars in forty years. Suck on that, anti-government loons: if we listened to you people, who the hell would have firebombed Dresden? How then Verdun, you anarchists? Let's see you Tea Party idiots build nice straight trenches like that. Burning gas that sears human lungs and makes the blood come roaring up -- where's your hotshot "free market" now, Friedrich Stupidpants Hayek?
The kind of mind that looks at a century full of mass murder and sees a steady accumulation of rational progress also has other blind spots that seem so obvious you'd think he would eventually sort of notice that he can't see that big missing part right over there. So Cavnar tells us this: "Some politicians, notably extreme conservatives, oppose any government intervention." And then he offers Ron Paul's view of FEMA as evidence: "We should be coordinated but coordinated voluntarily with the states. A state can decide. We don't need somebody in Washington."
Ron Paul doesn't believe in any government intervention -- he just believes in potent and well-organized states that coordinate with other states to mutually and voluntarily develop regional responses to emergencies. If you're upset about, say, Chris Christie or Scott Walker being governors, here's your comfort: they don't actually govern anything. They just run, like, big regional clubs. New Jersey: this week only, add on a family member for half price!
While Cavnar turns a century of bloodshed into a miracle of modern engineering, and turns states into NGOs, he also just frankly and plainly reinvents the more-recent past. We're currently in a struggle over basic principles, he writes, "since the government became a target of political ideologues with the stated goal of dismantling essential government services such as was done to FEMA during the past administration."
Now, okay: I was in Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina, flat on my back under a bunk on a concrete floor, laughing at the guy from B Co. who went outside to try to smoke a cigarette. (He lived.) And the thing I remember about the following days is the unbelievable flood of federal logistics, starting with massive convoys of brand-new SUVs with F-E-M-A roughed out on the sides in masking tape. Truck after truck after truck brought ice, and pay close attention to this: When a local sheriff tried to distribute some to sick people who needed to keep medicine cold, he was arrested and (unsuccessfully) prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office. He didn't follow procedure. The ice for sick people to cool their medication? This dude just gave it to sick people to cool their medication. The travesty of local government, people -- is this what you want?
Versions of this story happened everywhere: doctors who rushed to damaged cities to help, but were turned aside by federal bureaucrats. Fire departments from all over the country that rushed crews to the Gulf Coast, where FEMA told them to stand down, stand down, you haven't even finished the proper inbriefings.
And yet somehow Robert Cavnar concludes that FEMA was dismantled during the Bush administration. If only.
Compare this historical model with the narrative Al Gore farted out of his increasingly gaseous head this week: anyone who questions that global warming is caused by humans is like Bull Connor, and their disbelief has to be confronted the way the forces of progress dealt with those who turned firehoses on other human beings. Wonderfully, perfectly, Gore's interviewer jumps in to say that he's not sure racism can be compared to a discussion of global warming, because global warming involves science, so that's different.
But of course, and I'm repeating myself, racism was deeply established in science, and racist views were respectable views. The Letter from Birmingham Jail was a response to educated clergy, who wanted to know why this Martin Luther King lunatic was acting like a goddamn beatnik and getting himself thrown in jail like a common street hoodlum. (Could it be the communists? Could this King fellow be channeling the Peking Line?) The science vs ignorance dichotomy won't work, here: too many of the scientists were on the wrong side. Nor will the other dichotomies.
History is progress; government is progress; science is progress; centralization of authority is progress, and devolution of authority is regression.
None of these claims work without some form of lying.
More later.
Welcome to the August 29, 2011 edition of the military history carnival. It's been three months of solid military history on the Internet, and this carnival is the best of reader-nominated entries. Special thanks to Jonathan Beard, for substantial contributions to this carnival.
Early Modern
Averrones presents "They shot at the skies": soldiers and firearms of 16th century posted at Sellswords, mercenaries and condottieri.
19th Century
Mack Sigman presents Wilsons Creek, Wyeths Painting, and Memory posted at To the Sound of the Guns.
Alan Flower presents The Tsar's Army, an instrument of social mobility? posted at History and the Sock Merchant.
Jonathan Beard presents Excavated Bomb Suggests Early Start for Artillery at Spiegel Online International saying "A pretty good article, well translated. Too bad the line about the Civil War is wrong."
20th & 21st Centuries
Jonathan Beard presents Mysteries of a Nazi Photo Album at Lens saying "Fascinating story"
David Silbey presents World War II Mystery [of Photo Album] Solved in a Few Hours at Lens.
Jonathan Beard presents New Book Claims Hitler Gave Sex Dolls to Nazi Soldiers at Gbooza saying "weirdness from the Reich."
Penny L. Richards presents June brides and D-Day posted at O Say Can You See?, saying, "D-Day and material culture on the homefront"
Craig Swain presents The Naval War in the Falklands, Part 1 | Bring the heat, Bring the Stupid posted at Bring the heat, Bring the Stupid.
Jonathan Beard presents Metal Allies The new face of a faceless global war: drones and the CIA." at Slate.
Naval
Thomas Snyder presents Hospital Ship “Op ten Noort” « Of Ships & Surgeons posted at Of Ships & Surgeons, saying, "I'm particularly proud of this one--the story is, I think, compelling, compellingly sad."
Jonathan Beard presents Berlin Shies Away from Refurbishing Historic Warship at Der Spiegel saying "The Germans have been very, very bad about preserving warships ever since 1945. It seems that defeat took all the wind out of their sails."
Thematic
Will Pratt presents Drugging Soldiers: Bennies and Battle posted at Dustbin Epitaph.
Larry A. Grant presents The Last American to Die posted at PEN & SWORD ~ to each its appointed role.
Jonathan Beard presents Spoils of war at Nature.
Jonathan Beard presents Rape Reporting During War at Foreign Affairs
Jonathan Beard presents Photo Gallery: How the US Military Simulates Iraq and Afghanistan at Flavor Wire.
That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the military history carnival using our carnival submission form. The next carnival will be December 1. The submission deadline is November 28. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.
Technorati tags: the military history carnival, blog carnival.
Carnivalesque LXXVII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Pure Medievalry.
Matthew Price reviews Anthony Brandt's The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage for The National, 26 August.
Rosemary Hill reviews Fiona MacCarthy's The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination for the Guardian, 25 August.
Karen Abbott, "‘Mrs. Sherlock Holmes' Takes on the NYPD," Past Imperfect, 23 August, recalls Grace Humiston's legal and detective work in New York City.
Scott McLemee reviews Cameron McWhirter's Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America for the Barnes & Noble Review, 18 August.
Joseph Epstein, "Kazin's Complaint," Commentary, August, reviews Richard Cook, ed., Alfred Kazin's Journals.
Finally, the Washington Post and Walter Russell Mead point out that the undedicated Martin Luther King memorial in Washington, DC, includes not just one, but two quotations that it misattributes to King. This doubles down on an obligatory tradition of misattribution in civil rights memorials.
In February of 1804, a court of inquiry met in Boston to consider the complaint of a group of field officers in the Massachusetts militia against their commander, Brig. Gen. John Winslow. The complaint was a great damp pile of butthurt, charging Winslow with behavior unbecoming a gentleman and spooling out a list of fourteen specifications that Tina Fey could have worked into Mean Girls pretty effortlessly, if she'd only known about them in time. Article 11 was that, at a brigade dinner, Winslow had identified one particular captain as the best officer in the line, "to the great injury of the feelings of the Gentmn present." The complainants demanded that Winslow be brought before a court martial. Predictably, the court of inquiry appointed to look into the matter yawned itself half to death, and then went to lunch. Curtain falls.
In March, though, Winslow struck back: he filed a complaint against his accusers, charging them with the ungentlemanly defamation of a superior officer; their "groundless and false" complaint, he argued, "has been highly injurious to the harmony and discipline of the Brigade." Let it not be said that nineteenth-century gentlemen didn't have lots of time on their hands.
The record of proceedings from the court martial of Lieut. Col. Robert Gardner and Majors Benjamin Harris, Asa Hatch, and Amasa Stetson contains not a single word of testimony that speaks to the charges against the four officers. Instead, the judge advocate in the case left behind dozens of pages of closely recorded dudgeon and recrimination. (The judge advocate being both the recorder of the proceedings and a participant, he gave himself most of the best lines.)
Speaking for his fellow defendants during Saturday proceedings, Gardner demanded the removal of the judge advocate from the case, since "it was the opinion of many of their friends out of doors" that Capt. Charles Davis had "evinced great partiality" in the same role during the recent court of inquiry that had shrugged off their own complaint. Davis acknowledged that he had looked over Winslow's complaint and offered his opinion about it before Winslow sent it to the governor, but so what? The judge advocate tells us in the record that he "felt far above insinuations of the kind, the gentleman made."
In the courts martial of the time, defendants spoke to the court only through an intermediary, producing written questions and statements that the judge advocate read to the court and bound into the record. Two hundred years later, you can tell how Colonel X was feeling on Tuesday morning by how many times the pen ripped the page of the questions he propounded for the witness, laced in with crumbling twine between two pages in perfect clerical handwriting. But Gardner refused the premise, repeatedly leaping up to harangue the court and refusing to hand written statements to Davis. Again, the record reads like a high school dramedy: Give him the paper and sit down! No, I won't! Give him the paper and sit down! No, I won't! Give him the paper and sit down! No, I won't! GIVE HIM THE PAPER AND SIT DOWN! (Heavy sigh; chair scrapes.)
But finally, the real break would be the moment when Gardner and the majors, finally called to plead to the charges, demanded the right to be represented by a lawyer. The question presented by this demand was hotly argued well into the twentieth century, but the courts martial of the time had a standard answer: any gentleman could sit next to the gentlemen defendants and discreetly advise them, but the court "would not admit and recognize counsel to act openly." Military officers were expected to manage their own cause, yadda yadda manly republican firmness. Gardner warned the court that he and his fellow defendants were considering whether to object to the entire trial. The record is droll: "It was observed the defendants might do as they pleased."
Exhausted by a day of bickering, the court adjourned until Monday morning. Since the courtroom they were using on Saturday would be occupied by the U.S. District Court on Monday, the court martial decided to meet in the chamber of the House of Representatives. Remember that solution the next time your faculty meeting is bumped from the department conference room.
On Monday, surely noticing the setting, Gardner went right back to it. Interrupting Davis as he tried to call the first witness, Gardner demanded the removal of a member of the court, a fellow lieutenant colonel, on the grounds that the other man had already discussed the case with him privately before the trial and told him he had committed a serious military offense. The court, bless their hearts, didn't see the point. They directed the judge advocate to keep going, and suggested that Gardner stop interrupting for no good reason. You can more or less see where all this is headed.
Finally, Gardner and the other defendants "requested liberty to retire a short time." The court, and what a shame it is that eye-rolling and heavy sighs weren't noted in trial records, suggested that they hurry it up, already. The defendants marched back onto the House floor a short time later with a handwritten statement that they finally handed to the judge advocate without first putting on a show. Informing the court that they had urgently sent word to the governor that his intervention was needed to resolve the unfolding travesty of their court martial, Gardner and the majors conceded that they had not received a reply. There was, they knew, only one path left to them: "We are constrained to protest against the proceedings of the court, and to decline taking any further part in the trial."
Cue eruption. The president of the court martial, a major general, informed the four defendants that they had made a grossly improper statement that was wrong in every premise: "It is easy to demonstrate were it proper to go into an argument with you, that the ground you have taken is untenable, but I forbear." He was equally stern, and equally vague, about the consequences. "Gentlemen," he warned, "you will consider the consequences of the rash step you are about to take, it is a step, which you cannot retrace. I must admonish you against it, and do now declare to you, that if you withdraw from the court, you do it at your utmost peril." (The entire nineteenth century: too many fucking commas.)
With that, the court ordered the judge advocate to read aloud the section of the militia law that made militia officers amenable to courts martial. "The defendants then left the court while the judge advocate was reading the 35th section of the militia Law." The court adjourned without another recorded word of discussion, as if the record itself was momentarily struck dumb. One suspects that they didn't decide to adjourn using hand gestures.
The next morning, the court resumed its trial, and I'm sad to say that I'll surely never discover what conversations went on that evening: what places, what parties, what words, what tone and gestures. Each member of the court was called in turn, and each answered. Then the defendants, "tho' solemnly called," did not. Having heard no testimony to the charges, but bearing a written statement from the defendants protesting against the fact that they were being tried over the contents of a complaint that they acknowledged having written, the court unanimously convicted all four officers of "unofficerlike conduct," sentencing them to be stripped of their ranks. The majors were barred from returning to military service for ten years; Gardner was barred from recovering the status of a military officer for life.
Hurricane permitting, more tomorrow.
Pure Medievalry will host Carnivalesque LXXVII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, on 28 August. Use the form to nominate the best in ancient and medieval history blogging since 19 June.
David Silbey hosts the next Military History Carnival here at Cliopatria on 29 August. Use the form to nominate the best in military history blogging since late May.
Jacob Heilbrunn, "Introducing Mr. Trevor-Roper," National Interest, 24 August, reviews Adam Sisman's Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography. Euan Ferguson interviews "Peter Ackroyd: 'I just want to tell a story'," Guardian, 25 August, about his six volume history of London.
Steve Donoghue, "Florence & Baghdad: Renaissance men embraced dual perspectives," The National, 26 August, reviews Hans Belting's Florence & Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science.
Owen James Burke, "The Havoc Hurricanes Wreak On Yankee Cities: A Visual History," Atlantic, 26 August, recalls earlier devastation.
Andrew H. Knoll, "Back to the Red Planet," TLS, 24 August, reviews Robert Crossley's Imagining Mars: A Literary History and K. Maria D. Lane's Geographies of Mars: Seeing and knowing the Red Planet.
Working in a field long dominated by the 30-year rule (in which key documents don’t become available in the Foreign Relations of the United States series until 30, or often more, years after the fact), it’s remarkable to see how the internet has increased access to more recent foreign policy documents.
On some occasions, it’s through established sites, such as the National Security Archive or the Cold War International History Project. But in other instances, it’s more haphazard, as in two documents released in the past few days regarding Congress and U.S. foreign policy toward Libya.
The first, which has received some attention, came from WikiLeaks, and involved a 2009 meeting between the Qaddafi regime and Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsay Graham. Lieberman mused about how “we never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi,” while McCain promised to push for increased U.S. arms shipments to Libya. The latter revelation proved embarrassing to McCain given his criticism (and then churlish acknowledgement) of Pres. Obama’s Libya policy.
The second document was referenced a few hours ago in the Guardian live-blog of Libyan events. The paper’s reporter on the ground, Luke Harding, has been going through foreign policy documents recovered from the Qaddafi compound. Harding discovered a strange Libyan effort to broker a Libyan-U.S. cease-fire . . . by working through Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich. (It would be hard to imagine a less influential member of Congress in spring 2011.) The Libyans wanted Kucinich to come to the country as part of an all-expenses paid “peace mission,” but the congressman demurred, citing concerns for his personal safety.
Then, in yet another bizarre misreading of Congress, a Libyan filmmaker named Sufyan Omeish informed the regime, in a “highly important and strictly confidential” document,” that Senate support for Obama’s policy was at such an extent to make likely “a future ground invasion in either late September or October of this year.” This, of course, was the same Congress that featured members of both parties, in both houses, complaining that Obama had committed U.S. air forces to battle without congressional authorization. It was absurd to even consider a U.S. ground invasion ever was possible. Omeish nonetheless informed Libyan officials that “a high-profile US Congressman” would lead the fight against a U.S. invasion.
In the past decade, diplomatic history has increasingly redefined itself as “international history”—for practical reasons perhaps a good idea, since doing so extracts the field from U.S. history, and the preference of hiring committees for U.S. specialists in race, class, and gender. But the McCain and Kucinich documents provide a reminder that, even if the profession would like to believe otherwise, it’s hard to divorce domestic politics and Congress from an analysis of U.S. foreign policy.
Lynda Waggoner, ed., et al., Fallingwater, and Witold Rybczynski, "Falling for Fallingwater," Slate, 24 August, celebrate the 75th anniversary of the remarkable house Frank Lloyd Wright designed for its landscape.
Caroline O'Donovan, "Back to Utopia," The Book, 24 August, reviews Brook Wilensky-Lanford's Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden.
Dava Sobel, "The World's Waistband," Literary Review, August, reviews Larrie D Ferreiro's Measure of the Earth: The Enlightenment Expedition that Reshaped Our World.
Jan Morris, "In Potemkin's Steps," Literary Review, August, reviews Charles King's Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams.
Matthew Lasar, "Mad about metered billing? They were in 1886, too," ars technica, ca 15 August, looks at the early history of American telecommunications.
James Polchin, "Tiny Dancer: What did Toulouse-Lautrec see in Jane Avril's face?" Smart Set, 17 August, reviews "Toulouse-Lautrec and Jane Avril: Beyond the Moulin Rouge," an exhibit at London's Courtauld Gallery.
Rodric Braithwaite, "Dog Days of the Soviet Union," Open Democracy -- Russia, 18-22 August, is the diary of the British ambassador to the Soviet Union during the crisis leading to its collapse: the coup, 18 August; the plot thickens, 19 August; and the plot fails, 22 August. Braitwaite is the recent author of Afghansty: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979-89.
A brief and inelegant update: Boston College received new federal subpoenas, earlier this month, for oral history materials relating to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The August 2 subpoenas, filed under seal on behalf of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and revealed a few days ago by BC's public filing of a motion to quash, demand "any and all interviews containing information about the abduction and death of Mrs. Jean McConville" (see this post for background). McConville's murder has been in the background of the DOJ's efforts all along; this new set of subpoenas makes explicit an investigative effort that was both unstated and pretty clear.
More remarkably, these new subpoenas threaten to expose oral history sources that have so far been protected. While the original subpoenas served on BC in May demanded interview materials from two people already publicly known to have spoken to researchers, the new subpoenas would expose up to two dozen other interviewees whose identities have never been revealed.
The new subpoenas also attempt to turn Boston College into an investigative agency, demanding that BC examine every Belfast Project interview in its possession so it can hand over all of the information it may have in its archives regarding McConville's death. As BC's lawyer writes in his motion to quash, "The second subpoenas would require the university to perform a detailed analysis of all the Belfast Project interview materials to ascertain if they contain information 'about the abduction or death of Mrs. Jean McConville.' The volume of work required to undertake that analysis, and to make determinations about what might constitute such information, would impose a substantial burden on Boston College."
As long as the PSNI is taking shortcuts, they should just ask BC to go ahead and arrest McConville's killers for them. Of course, this assumes that the PSNI actually wants to catch McConville's killers, so never mind.
In related news, this morning's Boston Globe has an op-ed piece from Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre, respectively the director of BC's Belfast Project and its lead researcher on the IRA.
I'm traveling -- more later.
David D'Arcy, "One LA museum hosts an exhibition in the fine art of giving," The National, 23 August, reviews "Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts," an exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
John Sutherland, "Sounds Familiar," Literary Review, August, reviews Gary Saul Morson's The Words of Others: From Quotations to Culture. In "The Book Bench," New Yorker, 22 August, Jill Lepore wonders if you can distinguish the words of Charles Dickens from those of Edward Bulwer Lytton. One would have thought so, but not so fast!
Carlin Romano, "The Prodigy Burned Out. Why Not Blame Mom?" NYT, 23 August, and Daniel Mendelsohn, "Rebel Rebel," New Yorker, 29 August, reviews Bruce Duffy's Disaster Was My God: A Novel of the Outlaw Life of Arthur Rimbaud and Rimbaud's Illuminations.
Andy McSmith interviews the city's historian, "Peter Ackroyd: 'Rioting has been a London tradition for centuries'," Independent, 22 August.
Zachery Newkirk, "Rewrite, Sugarcoat, Ignore: 8 Ways Conservatives Misremember American History—for Partisan Gain," Nation, 22 August, lists the Republicans' offenses against history.
Ian Morris, "Seeds, Germs and Slaves," NYT, 19 August, reviews Charles C. Mann's 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created.
Dalya Alberge, "Twenty-year global project is the last word on Ben Jonson," Guardian, 21 August, anticipates publication of a new edition of Jonson's works.
James Zug, "Green Guerilla," Boston Globe, 22 August, and Robert K. Landers, "Founding Father (of Vermont)," WSJ, 22 August, review Willard Sterne Randall's Ethan Allen: His Life and Times.
Richard Rayner reviews Howard Markel's An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine for the LA Times, 21 August.
Jonathan Yardley reviews Jay Feldman's Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America for the Washington Post, 19 August.
Monica Osborne, "Springtime for Hitler," the Book, 22 August, reviews Rudolf Herzog's Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany.
Marie Arana reviews Hal Vaughn's Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War for the Washington Post, 19 August. See also: Andy Walker, "Coco Chanel: Nazi agent?" BBC Today, 20 August.
Manan Ahmed, "All is well… or is it?" Dawn, 21 August, reviews Maleeha Lodhi, ed., Pakistan: Beyond the ‘Crisis State'.
Ernest Davis, "Information, from drums to Wikipedia," TLS, 17 August, reviews James Gleick's The Information: A history, a theory, a flood.
Patricia Cohen, "As the Gavels Fell: 240 Years at Old Bailey," NYT, 17 August, features "The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913." It is the latest of Cohen's series on the digital humanities. Dan Cohen, Tim Hitchcock, and Bill Turkel discuss the importance of the Old Bailey project.
Robert Irwin, "Pulp orientalism," TLS, 18 August, reviews Reeva Spector Simon's Spies and Holy Wars: The Middle East in twentieth-century crime fiction.
The Smithsonian's Past Imperfect's team of nonacademic history bloggers, Karen Abbott, Mike Dash, and Gilbert King, is off to a terrific start. See, for example: King's "Charles Proteus Steinmetz, the Wizard of Schenectady," Past Imperfect, 16 August, which profiles the brilliant crippled friend of Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, and Nikola Tesla; and Dash's "One Man Against Tyranny," PI, 18 August, which features Georg Elser, who executed one of the less well known plots to kill Adolf Hitler.
Michael Kimmage, "The Interstitials," The Book, 17 August, reviews Robert Vanderlan's Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art and Ideas inside Henry Luce's Media Empire.
Julian Borger and Georgina Smith, "Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down," Guardian, 17 August, looks at newly recovered evidence about the death of the UN's Secretary General.
Thomas Powers, "Too Fast," LRB, 25 August, reviews Manning Marable's Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.
Judith Shulevitz, "Lamarck's Revenge," The Book, 18 August, reviews Richard Francis's Epigenetics: The Ultimate Mystery of Inheritance; and Peter Forbes for the Guardian, 19 August, reviews Nessa Carey's The Epigenetics Revolution: How Modern Biology is Rewriting Our Understanding of Genetics, Disease and Inheritance.
David Starkey, a popular historian of Tudor history and a radio and TV academic celebrity, has come under severe fire for his comments on the London riots, which include the following extraordinary assertion:
What has happened is that the substantial section of the chavs...have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion. Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language, which is wholly false, which is this Jamaican patois that has intruded in England. This is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.
You can watch the full video here, and watch an entertaining (if somewhat rambling) riposte by Nabil Abdul Rashid here, which, among other things, asks Starkey to "pick up a book and read it, man". Language Log is, of course, all over Starkey's wild misfire about 'Jamaican patois', and a closed Facebook group calling itself 'Historians Against Starkey' is gathering signatures for an open letter to the BBC to be published next week in a major British paper. (Details are still under wraps, but if you would like to append your signature, you can email your name and affiliation to founder Ben Schiller at historiansagainststarkey@gmail.com). History and Policy rightly exhorts historians, despite it all, not to refrain from comment in the public sphere. Meanwhile, David Starkey is roundly defended by Lancaster tories, which is a revealing alliance, to say the least.
Commentary on the 2012 election has featured unusually prominent (and intelligent) perspectives from political science—most notably from Brendan Nyhan and in Ezra Klein’s Washington Post blog. The political science approach has stressed the relationship between the economy and presidential outcomes, while downplaying the significance of tactical political decisions, campaign rhetoric, or other types of horse-race coverage. And, given the likely economic data for 2012, theories from political science suggest that the President’s re-election chances aren’t all that good.
In the last few weeks, we’ve seen more attempts to apply a historical lens to 2012. Virtually the only positive historical example for Obama comes from 1948, in a scenario outlined by Norman Ornstein in the New Republic.
As an Obama supporter (though, admittedly, one deeply disappointed by his administration’s hostility to due process on campus), I can see the superficial appeal of the 1948 analogy. Like Truman, Obama has been confronted by both a bitterly partisan and extremely conservative congressional opposition. (There were far more moderate and liberal in 1947 than now, but it’s worth remembering that at the start of the 80th Congress, more than 200 Republicans requested membership in the HUAC, while the 1946 Senate freshmen class included Joe McCarthy.) Like Truman, Obama’s relationship with some key elements of the Democratic coalition (such as organized labor) seems based as much on antipathy to the GOP Congress as a common vision. Like Truman, Obama’s congressional opponents—at least based on recent polling—appear to have overreached.
But there are some pretty compelling differences between 1948 and 2012, even beyond Truman’s and Obama’s radically differing personalities. (It’s hard to imagine Obama running as a man-of-the-people populist.) The Republicans almost certainly will be more unified in 2012 than 1948, even if they nominate Mitt Romney. But perhaps most important, an Obama attack on a “do-nothing Congress” will be hard to apply just against Republicans in the House. And even though the age of filibusters has effectively transformed the Senate into a super-majoritarian institution, Democrats control the Senate.
It’s worth remembering that Truman’s 1948 victory coincided with Democratic sweeps in the House and Senate. Both chambers returned to Democratic control. Of the battle for control of the presidency, the Senate, and the House in 2012, it seems to me the safest bet, given the map, is for Republicans to take the Senate. (The Democrats’ 2010 losses in three blue states—PA, IL, and WI—were crippling in this regard.) 1948 was a broad-based Democratic victory in which Truman played a key role. Whatever the outcome, 2012 seems unlikely to be a Democratic sweep.
Contents
19th Century
1. The War List: Overrated Civil War Officers by Gary Gallagher
"Gary W. Gallagher, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, is the author of The Confederate War (1997), Lee and His Army in Confederate History (2001), and The Union War (2011).
"
2. Barry and the Artillery Organization of the Aop: Part 8, Siege Train by Craig Swain
"Continuing with the examination of the initial organization
of the artillery in the Army of the Potomac, I turn now to
William Barry’s recommendation for a siege train to accompany
the army. Barry intended for the siege train to operate …
Continue reading →..."
3. Back Into Port by Craig Swain
"The photo from the boat ride back from Fort Sumter captures
my mood today. End of a long, event-filled vacation. Now back
towards home and to the routine. Blogging was understandably
light in weight during the vacation. The
paragraph-by-paragraph examination … Continue reading →..."
4. Northern Slavery, Public History, and Memory by Kevin Levin
"A few of my readers have requested that I comment on ongoing
and recent exhibits in my new neck of the woods that
concentrate on the history of slavery and [...]..."
5. The Hunley Is Upright by noreply@blogger.com (dw)
""The first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship is
upright for the first time in almost 150 years, revealing a
side of its hull not seen since it sank off the South
Carolina coast during the Civil War." (AP) Read about it
here. Photo gallery is here (AP Photos: Bruce
Smith).Meanwhile, progress continues on preserving remnants
of the U.S.S. Monitor...."
6. An Honest Account of the Sutler's Store by noreply@blogger.com (Ron Coddington)
"Sutlers, or independent traders who sold food and other goods
to the Northern army, had a love-hate relationship with
soldiers. The best provided delicacies and luxuries at
tolerable prices, and became trusted comrades with the men
they served. The worst were known for questionable business
practices, leading one veteran to vent, "Sutlers, as a rule,
were described as a swindling, hard-fisted and grinding
race."An account in the regimental history of the Thirteenth
Illinois Infantry took a balanced view in its
description.Here first loomed upon the horizon of the
Thirteenth that wonderful requisite of army life, the
sutler's..."
World War I
1. Black Death Rain by Brett Holman
"In a discussion of the activities of MI5's Port Control
section during the First World War, Christopher Andrew
mentions German musings about using biological weapons
against British civilians: The most novel as well as the most
sinister form of wartime sabotage attempted by Sektion P was
biological warfare. At least one of its scientists in 1916
devised a scheme to start a plague epidemic in Britain,
either by infecting rats or, more improbably, by dropping
plague bacilli cultures from Zeppelins over ports. The
Prusso-German General Staff, however, vetoed bacteriological
warfare against humans as totally contrary to international
law..."
2. Light Verse of the First World War by noreply@blogger.com (Tim Kendall)
"Vivien Noakes, who died in February this year, was one of the
best editors of her generation. Her variorum edition of Isaac
Rosenberg's poems and plays is a model of good textual
practice, and her anthology Voices of Silence revivified the
canon of First World War poetry by focusing on the work of
'less gifted writers' who created 'a body of rich, exciting,
often deeply moving work that complements the established
literary canon'. Some of her poets risk being undersold even
by that description---Borden, Gibson, Cannan, Service, and
one or two others were significant poets who ought to appear..."
World War II
1. New Caledonia and the New Yorker? « Government Book Talk by n/a
"From time to time I’ve talked about the little World War II-vintage booklets produced to familiarize Army and Navy personnel with various places around the world that the fight against the Axis might compel them to go. Some of those places are still hot spots, like Iraq. Others were obscure then and remain so today, unless you’re a specialist or someone with an inordinate curiosity about things in general (me)."
2. World War II: Daring Raids and Brutal Reprisals by n/a
"In early 1942, as the Axis powers pursued their war aims,
Allied forces were still reeling but working on a wider
strategy. Japan swept through the southern Pacific,
conquering Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore,
and the Philippines. Germany regrouped on the Eastern Front,
holding off several Soviet attacks and preparing for a summer
offensive. But during this time, American bombers
successfully struck Japanese targets in a daring,
morale-boosting raid led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle, and
British forces destroyed an important dock facility in
German-occupied St. Nazaire, France. Most of Doolittle's
raiders landed in China, receiving..."
3. World War II: the American Home Front in Color by n/a
"In 1942, soon after the United States entered World War II,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order
creating the Office of War Information (OWI). The new agency
was tasked with releasing war news, promoting patriotic
activities, and providing news outlets with audio, film, and
photos of the government's war efforts. Between 1939 and
1944, the OWI and the Farm Security Administration made
thousands of photographs, approximately 1,600 of them in
color. OWI photographers Alfred Palmer and Howard Hollem
produced some exceptional Kodachrome transparencies in the
early war years depicting military preparedness, factory
operations, and women in the work..."
4. World War II: Guy Gibson Born by n/a
"August 12, 1918 - Wing Commander Guy Gibson (right) is born
at Simla, India. Entering the Royal Air Force in 1936, Guy
Gibson became one of its most highly decorated pilots of
World War II. A bomber pilot by trade, Gibson transferred to
Fighter Command in late 1940 rather than rotate to a training
unit for six months. This thirst for action marked the
duration of his career. Returning to Bomber Command, Gibson
led No. 106 Squadron in 1942 and early 1943. Though only 24,
he had won multiple Distinguished Flying Crosses and the
Distinguished Service Order when he was promoted..."
5. Body Horror in the Blitz by Brett Holman
"Fears of poison gas attacks during the Blitz don't receive
much attention from historians, and with good reason: not
only did they not take place, but the evidence (for example,
the number of gas masks being carried about) suggests that
most people were complacent about the possibility. But not
all. On 2 September 1940, a Mass-Observation investigator in
London heard the following from a woman in her mid-30s:
There's a nasty rumour going around that Hitler's going to
start using a gas this week that's going to penetrate women's
bodies through their sex organs. Women will have to..."
6. Tobruk Diaries: ‘We Are Targets Day and Night’ by Carlie Walker
"Bryant’s Diary: Friday 8th August 1941 The camp isn’t so bad.
The surf and beach are good and it is a lazy life. We parade
for an hour in the morning and once in the afternoon for a
swim. The canteen service is good and a fair picture theatre
operates. The place improves with time. [...]..."
7. Berlin Serial Killer Caught! by Charles McCain
"Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3At this point I will say that one of
the eight men was the killer. The police work had been
excellent. But who? Surely it couldn't be the handsome Aryan,
Paul Ogorzow. In addition to being a hard worker, Paul was
married and had two children. And he was a wholesome young
lad since he belonged to the Nazi Party and was a member of
the SA. (The Nazi Party storm troopers or Brown Shirts, most
of whom were drunken thugs.)After an initial interview, the
police struck Paul off their list of suspects. It..."
8. German Propaganda Posters - Antibolshevism Exhibition by Charles McCain
"Tad found a great collection of Nazi Propaganda that has been
collected by a college professor in Michigan, Randall
Bytwerk. I've shown plenty of WW2 propaganda posters but the
majority have been from the Allied side of the war and I'm
using this opportunity to showcase the types of propaganda
used by the Germans and will be highlighting some of these
posters over the next few months.
In an effort to promote the Nazi Party's campaign against
other peoples and ideologies, the Reich's Ministry of Public
Enlightenment and Propaganda created posters in an attempt to
sway public opinion. One action..."
9. German Propaganda Posters - Another Antibolshevism Exhibition by Charles McCain
"Tad found a great collection of Nazi Propaganda that has been
collected by a college professor in Michigan, Randall
Bytwerk. I've shown plenty of WW2 propaganda posters but the
majority have been from the Allied side of the war and I'm
using this opportunity to showcase the types of propaganda
used by the Germans and will be highlighting some of these
posters over the next few months.
In an effort to promote the Nazi Party's campaign against
other peoples and ideologies, the Reich's Ministry of Public
Enlightenment and Propaganda created posters in an attempt to
sway public opinion. After the..."
10. &Quot;We Shall Never Be Beaten&Quot; by Charles McCain
"+Berlin's Unter den Linden in the 1930's.
It was heart-breaking, but it seemed true, when a German
officer, at whose side I was strolling down Unter den Linden
in the first spring of the war told me: “Look around you,
Herr Smith. Nowhere a sign of war. Not the slightest
difference from two years ago. Is that not the best argument
for our strength? We shall never be beaten.” (The first
spring of the war would be the spring of 1940.) German
officer to CBS Radio News Correspondent Howard K. Smith as
quoted on page 38 of..."
Cold War
1. Diary Entry 113: Saigon, Friday Night, 7 January 1966 by noreply@blogger.com (J.R. Clark)
"Saigon Friday Night, 7 January 1966This is briefing week for
me. So far I’ve been on the platform for briefings to
[Brigadier] General [John D.] Crowley [Assistant Chief of
Staff for Logistics (J-4)], the Deputy Chief of Staff
([Major] General [Richard S.] Abbey [U.S. Air Force]), the
Chief of Staff ([Major] General [William B.] Rosson), the
Deputy Commander ([Lieutenant]General [John A.] Heintges) and
the J-3 ([Brigadier General [William E.] DePuy). Sunday I
must brief General [Frank S.]Besson (four-star) who is
commander of the Army Materiel Command and who was formerly
the Chief of Transportation. On..."
2. Diary Entry 115: Saigon, Monday Night, 10 January 1966 by noreply@blogger.com (J.R. Clark)
"Saigon Monday Night, 10 January 1966 General Frank
Schaeffer Besson, Jr., Commanding General, U.S. Army Material
Command. (Photo courtesy U.S. Army) Home late again tonight
so things are back to normal again. Result of General
Besson’s briefing yesterday: My part went so well that right
after it was over General Crowley decided that I should
replace the regularly scheduled J-4 briefer for General
Westmoreland tomorrow, Tuesday 11 Jan. Although it was made
clear that I already was in preparation for a special
briefing for him on Monday (today), General Crowley said
never mind, he would get the dates changed..."
3. Diary Entry 118: Saigon, Sunday Night, 16 January 1966 by noreply@blogger.com (J.R. Clark)
"Saigon Sunday Night, 16 January 1966
General Creighton W. Abrams, Jr., U.S. Army (Image courtesy
U.S. Army) The briefing went pretty well this afternoon for
General [Creighton W.] Abrams [U.S. Army Vice Chief of
Staff]. And right after it was over, I just sent the charts
back to the office and took the rest of the day off. There
wasn’t too much risk to it as General Crowley had departed
for Honolulu at 1:30 p.m.Lieutenant Colonel Price who works
in J-4 (and who was another briefer) and I went first down to
the Hong Kong BOQ and celebrated..."
4. Profile 56 - ????? as Flown by Ken Dahlberg by wily1@mac.com (JSM)
"Today was the first time in two weeks where I could really
sit down and indulge myself in this particular airplane. I'm
sorry I can't report more details at this time, but I hope to
shortly.In the meantime, this gorgeously brutal P-47
Thunderbolt of the 354th Fighter Group will likely be
finished this weekend. I just have to mask-in the tail and
even out the lighting on the hard-worn fuselage. And redo the
skull.Not too many photos of Ken's P-47 exist, but enough do
of the 353rd Squadron's flying-skull nose design. As a little
kid..."
5. Profile 57 - "Nothing Much" as Flown by Don Erickson by wily1@mac.com (JSM)
"Today is August 15, 2011. In case you're not the history geek
that I am, this date marks 66 years since the surrender of
the Japanese forces. Can you believe it?! And WW2 continues
to hold a fascination over people worldwide. And get this -
every day, the more and more of those people will never have
known anyone who experienced those critical months between
September 1, 1939 and August 15, 1945.But there's also
additional significance to this date - albeit small
significance. See that photo on top? It's likely that the
photo was taken pretty close to that August 15..."
6. Profile 57 - "Nothing Much" as Flown by Don Erickson by wily1@mac.com (JSM)
"Don flew two models of the P-51 - the C model and the D
model. He asked that I do The D. And so it will be.Did you
have a look at the photo in the post below? The black-tailed
Mustangs look more like sharks than they do their horse
namesake.Funny about the sharks, however - a Shark was the
squadron's mascot. The shark is a logical choice, too. Most
people have seen the white-toothed P-40 fighters of the
American Volunteer Group (AVG) - that group was originally
a bunch of mercenary pilots who were hired by the Chinese..."
Misc/Thematic
1. On War, Guilt and ‘Thank You for Your Service’: Elizabeth Samet - Bloomberg by n/a
"But today, a woman or man in military uniform dining in a restaurant, sitting on a bench in Central Park or walking up Broadway constitutes a spectacle. I have witnessed this firsthand whenever one of my military colleagues and I have taken West Point cadets to the city to attend a performance or to visit a library or museum. My civilian clothes provide camouflage as I watch my uniformed friends bombarded by gratitude."
2. The Epitome of Awkward | Kings of War by n/a
"I have yet to figure out the “appropriate” response to the “thank you for your service” refrain and I fear I live up to the title of this post. I am admittedly surprised to hear it personally as much as I do, living so close to an Army post where I’m hardly novel."
3. The History of Torture—Why We Can't Give It Up by n/a
"The 20th century saw military forces around the world torturing prisoners as a matter of operational policy, some at a scale that might have shocked Genghis Khan or Vlad the Impaler. Americans tortured and slaughtered prisoners in the Philippines. Japanese raped, tortured, and murdered captives by the tens of thousands in China and dissected Allied prisoners on Pacific islands. German military units were ordered to treat Soviet POWs as subhuman slaves, transferring some to be experimented upon by state-employed medical doctors. In more modern conflicts of every size and type—Korea and Vietnam, the Belgian Congo and Liberia, the Algerian civil war and the bitter Yugoslav split, Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and American-occupied Iraq—soldiers tortured soldiers on the orders of their superiors. "It has reached a scale that dwarfs even the darkest Middle Ages," wrote British foreign affairs columnist Jonathan Power in his 1981 history of Amnesty International."
Rebekah Higgit hosts the history of science carnival, The Giant's Shoulders #38 -- A Georgian Special, at the Board of Longitude project.
Pure Medievalry will host Carnivalesque LXXVII, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, on 28 August. Use the form to nominate the best in ancient and medieval history blogging since 19 June.
David Silbey hosts the next Military History Carnival here at Cliopatria on 29 August. Use the form to nominate the best in military history blogging since late May.
Ian Thompson, "The Sugar Barons," Guardian, 2 April, Andrea Stuart, "The Sugar Barons," Independent, 6 May, John Gimlette, "The Mark of Cain," Spectator, 14 May, Leslie Mitchell, "'The Dunghill of the Universe'," Literary Review, August, and J. R. McNeill, "Sugar in the Raw," WSJ, 13 August, review Matthew Parker's The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies.
Dwight Garner, "Brooklyn Takes a Bow as a Town of Writers," NYT, 16 August, reviews Evan Hughes's Literary Brooklyn: The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life.
Barry Gewen, "Can It Have Been Right?" The Book, 16 August, reviews Wilson D. Miscamble's The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs, and the Defeat of Japan.
Mike Dash, "The Body on Somerton Beach," Past Imperfect, 12 August, re-examines a 63-year-old unsolved case in Australia.
Edward Docx, "Postmodernism is Dead," Prospect, 20 July, previews "Postmodernism—Style and Subversion 1970-1990," an exhibit opening at London's Victoria and Albert Museum in late September.
Karen Abbott, "If There's a Man Among Ye: The Tale of Pirate Queens Anne Bonny and Mary Read," Past Imperfect, 9 August, tells the story of two pirate queens.
François Furstenberg, "Real Estate and the American Revolution," Slate, 15 August, reviews Willard Sterne Randall's Ethan Allen: His Life and Times.
Mary Anastasia O'Grady, "The Lost Century," WSJ, 13 August, reviews Enrique Krauze's Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America.
A Symposium on The Help:
Manohla Dargis, "‘The Maids' Now Have Their Say," NYT, 9 August
Association of Black Women Historians, "An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help"
Valerie Boyd, ""The Help," a feel-good movie for white people," ArtsCriticATL.com, 11 August
Lauren Kientz Anderson, "Anyone seen/read ‘The Help?'" U.S. Intellectual History, 12 August
Tomiko Brown-Nagin, "‘The Help': Historians Criticize an Autobiographical and (A)historical Novel, Legal History, 15 August
David Denby, "Maids of Honor," New Yorker, 16 August
Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
James Wright, "Bearing the Cost of War," Foreign Affairs, 8 August, argues that taxes should have been raised to sustain the cost of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wright is, I think, undoubtedly right.
