Did Hitler Want War? Yes.

I blogged the other day about the response to Pat Buchanan’s column last week entitled, Did Hitler Want War?  My subject then was primarily the response to his column.  Today I’d like to take up the column itself.

Buchanan, in his column (and in his recently published book, Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World) assigns the primary blame for the war on the British war guarantee to the Poles.  Had they not issued this guarantee, Buchanan argues, the Poles would have been forced to negotiate the Danzig issue with the Germans, thereby avoiding six years of war and 50 million dead.  The evidence, Buchanan believes, shows that Hitler did not want war, nor was he after world domination.

This is manifestly not so.  If Buchanan amended his question to “Did Hitler Want War in 1939?” then, yes, I would agree with him.  Hitler did not want war in 1939.  Beginning in 1935 until early 1939, he had remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria, annexed the Sudetenland, and invaded Czechoslovakia proper, all without bloodshed.  His quest for a pan-German state, for Lebensraum, would not be complete without the re-absorption of the German-speaking sections of Poland and the port of Danzig.  He thought he could achieve this goal in the same manner he’d achieved his previous conquests.  Hitler did not believe the Brits would live up to their war guarantee.  He was aware of the decrepit state of their empire and did not believe they’d risk it over such a silly issue as Poland.  He also knew that in Great Britain it was widely believed that Versailles had been too punitive on Germany; the leadership had actually expressed sympathy towards the German goal of re-uniting Danzig as part of the German state.  Why then would they go to war over the issue?

Hitler views were reinforced by his Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, who guaranteed Hitler that the Brits would not fight.  Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when the British ultimatum was delivered.  From Richard Overy’s classic The Road To War:

When finally of 3 September the British ambassador, Nevile Henderson, arrived at the German Foreign Ministry at nine o’clock in the morning to deliver a British ultimatum there was only Hitler’s interpreter, Paul Schmidt, to meet him.  He took the document over to the Chancellery where he found an anxious party of soldiers and officials waiting for news.  He was shown into Hitler’s study, and in the presence of Hitler and Ribbentrop slowly read out the ultimatum. ‘When I finished,’ wrote Schmidt, ‘there was complete silence.  Hitler sat immobile, gazing before him … after an interval which seemed an age he turned to Ribbentrop, who had remained standing at the window. “What now?”, asked Hitler with a savage look.'

One of the reasons Hitler did not want war in 1939 was that he believed Germany was not ready for a global conflict, neither militarily nor socially.  He expected war though, only he hoped it would not begin until 1942 or 1943.  Then Germany would be prepared to fight the great global conflict that he always knew was inevitable.  From Paul Johnson’s magisterial history of the twentieth century, Modern Times:

Everyone knew Hitler’s aims were ambitious.  The German masses believed they could and would be attained without war, by assertive diplomacy backed by armed strength.  The generals were told that war would almost certainly be necessary, but that it would be limited and short.  In fact Hitler’s real programme was far more extensive than the generals, let alone the masses, realized and necessarily involved not merely war but a series of wars.  Hitler meant what he said when he wrote in Mein Kampf: ‘Germany must either be a world power or there will be no Germany.’ When he used the term ‘world power’ he meant something greater than Wilhelmine Germany, merely the dominant power in central Europe: he meant ‘world’ in the full sense.  The lesson he learned in the First World War and from Ludendorff’s analysis of it was that it was essential for Germany to effect a break-out from its Central European base, which could always be encircled.  In Hitler’s view, Ludendorff had just begun to attain this, at Brest-Litovsk, when the ‘stab in the back’ by the Home Front wrecked everything.  Hence his real plans began where Brest-Litovsk ended: the clock was to be put back to 1918, but with Germany solid, united, fresh and, above all, ‘cleansed’…

…Hitler’s full programme, therefore, was as follows.  First, gain control of Germany itself, and begin the cleansing process at home.  Second, destroy the Versailles settlement and establish Germany as the dominant power in Central Europe.  All this could be achieved without war.  Third, on this power basis, destroy the Soviet Union (by war) to rid the ‘breeding-ground’ of the ‘bacillus’ and, by colonization, create a solid economic and strategic power-base from which to establish a continental empire, in which France and Italy would be mere satellites.  In the fourth stage Germany would acquire a large colonial empire in Africa, plus a big ocean navy, to make her one of the four superpowers, in addition to Britain, Japan, and the United States.  Finally, in the generation after his death, Hitler envisaged a decisive struggle between Germany and the United States for world domination.”

The italics above are mine.  In 1939, Hitler was in the second stage of his program.  He was attempting to make Germany the dominant power in Central Europe.  And he thought he could do it without war.  This is where Buchanan errs, by assuming that Danzig was all Hitler wanted.  By 1939, it had become clear to the other European powers that stage two was not the end of Hitler’s program.  They knew then that more was to come and the longer they waited the more difficult it would be to stop him.  Yes, they should have stopped him earlier but now they must stop him.  Not going to war in 1939 would only postpone the inevitable and against an even stronger Germany.  Hitler didn’t want war in 1939 but the Brits, and eventually the Allies, gave it to him, and thank goodness.  We can play the game of ‘what if’ till kingdom-come but going to war, finally, in 1939 against the brutal butcher of Germany was, in my view and most others, the right thing to do.

The Beatles, in mono

When I was around twenty years old I lived in a three bedroom townhouse with my brother.  We rented the third bedroom out to a friend of ours.  Now, my brother and I were both music fans, rock and roll and the blues.  I believe I’ve mentioned previously that our record collection approached 1500 LPs.  Our roommate at the time also had a pretty extensive record collection though it was mostly music I wasn’t interested in.  He had one record though that I treasured – the 45 single of The Jackson Five’s “I Want You Back,” which to me is Michael Jackson’s signal achievement as a recording artist (along with “Billie Jean”, perhaps his only one).  The record was loud, in your face, crackling with excitement.  It captured a sound I’d rarely heard before – I thought it was one of the greatest pieces of rock and roll ever recorded.  I listened to it over and over and over again.

Then the roommate moved out, which was fine with me, but he took the record with him.  No problem. I thought, let me just buy a Jackson Five compilation LP.  Which I did. I put “I Want You Back” on the stereo and waited to hear that enormous sound come wash over me.  Except it didn’t.  The enormous sound was gone.  The record sounded like it had been recorded through a muffler, one designed to drain all the excitement out of the recording, to smooth out all the jagged edges.  The verve was gone.  The record was dull.

It didn’t take me long to figure out the problem.  The original 45 that I loved so much was an original recording, in mono.  The compilation LP had been remastered in stereo.  Hence the difference.  Stereo remasters of songs originally recorded in mono drain all the life out of a song.  Early rock and roll, including rock in the 1960’s, was meant to be heard in mono, i.e. on AM radio.  The producers knew that’s where the songs were headed so they recorded the music with that in mind.  Rock and roll’s ultimate destination was a transistor radio and the producers did all they could to ensure the music sounded alive, exciting, immediate through that medium.  Stereo remasters take sandpaper to those recordings, then throw a blanket over them.  I realized then that much of the music I had been listening to had that blanket thrown over them.  I went back to listen to a lot of the records I had from my childhood, original mono recordings, and realized that, scratches and all, the sound was better, more immediate, more alive, than the stereo remasters of songs from the era.  I’ve been acutely aware of the differences between mono and stereo since.

That is why I am so excited about this.  EMI is about to reissue all The Beatles original albums in both stereo and mono, take your pick.  My pick is clearly mono.  Now, if any band in history was meant to be heard in mono, it’s The Beatles.  The enormous sound George Martin produced for them was perfect for AM radio, as history has proved.  Most of what I have of The Beatles are remastered stereo recordings, except for those five or six original release albums I bought as a child.  Now, I’ll be able to listen to the entire catalogue in exhilarating, ear-popping mono.  Read the entire article about the mono release in the Washington Post Style section by Peter Kaufman.  It’s great.  He explains much better than I the virtues of mono.  

I’ve already told my wife what I want for Christmas this year. 

Vertigo, once more

Remember my Vertigo post? I made the claim there that Hitchock’s so-called masterpiece was not all it was cracked up to be. Indeed, it was somewhat less. Now I have confirmation for my opinion from both Lileks (love the new changes to The Bleat) and one Brian Tiemann, who blogs at a site called Peeve Farm. From James:

It’s a sick, clammy, uncomfortable misfire, and aside from the accidental-documentary tour of pre-Summer of Love San Fran, I don’t like it … As a period piece - fashions, colors, cars, “supernatural” ideas, definitions of “psychological” issues - it’s interesting. As cinema, it’s essential, because Hitchcock is one of those directors around whom argument swirls. (Auteur, or manufacturer of popular entertainment whose technical skill gives the impression of art without the substance?) But its flaws are a direct result of its intentions, and its supposed virtues are imagined by people who regard its flaws as intentional. North by Northwest is crackling fun, carried along by the effortless skill of Cary Grant; Rear Window is Stewart at his best, standing in for Hitch as the observer of the great throbbing meat parade on the other side of the pane of glass. (Window, camera lens - same diff.) Vertigo might be the most personal film, which is why it’s the worst.

Mr. Tiemann is a bit more blunt:

Vertigo is crap.

Read the whole thing and you’ll find out why.

I expect Vertigo will continue to fall in public estimation as the original elite class that dubbed it one of the best movies ever dies off. There’s simply no basis for the opinion. Lileks nails it above when he says “supposed virtues are imagined by people who regard its flaws as intentional.” The people who anointed the film back in the 1950’s were the egg-heads of their time, know-nothings who were attracted by its tragic element. As Lileks also points out, there may have been “a dreamlike gauzy palette that sets it apart from other blaring color movies of the era; at the time, it must have seemed almost impressionistic.” Whatever it was, it is no longer apparent to a modern audience. In other words, it hasn’t held up.

To tell you the truth I find it hard to believe that audiences in the 1950’s regarded the film as great. It was elite opinion that gave the film its reputation in later years. Now that those elites are gone, I expect so too is the general consensus that Vertigo is a great movie.

Again, watch these six movies if you want the best of Hitch. In chronological order:

The 39 Steps

The Lady Vanishes

Notorious

Strangers on a Train

Rear Window

North By Northwest

Buchanan and Hitler

How careful must we be when addressing the subject of Adolph Hitler?  Must we always state up front that we consider him to be evil incarnate or worse?  Must we state it at the start of our comments, then restate it at the end, less we be considered some sort of Hitlerite?  Can we never stop to say that, no matter how evil, he was an extraordinarily gifted man? I thought of this last week when reading responses to Patrick Buchanan’s column noting the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II, Did Hitler Want War?  It caused much commentary and condemnation of Buchanan within the blogosphere.  I have my own quarrels with the column, which I’ll address in a bit, but what caused me to start thinking about the above questions were comments made by the blogger Mætenloch over at Ace’s site.  While condemning Buchanan’s column, Mætenloch pulls out a quote from a book review Buchanan wrote in 1977 as an example of Patrick’s “Hitler-love.”  Here’s the quote in question”

"Those of us in childhood during the war years were introduced to Hitler only as caricature. Either he was a ranting, raving, carpet-chewing Chaplinesque buffoon -- or the anti-Christ, Satan Incarnate, a devil without human attribute who had hypnotized the German people.

Such ignorance is folly. Though Hitler was indeed racist and anti-Semitic to the core, a man who without compunction could commit murder and genocide, he was also an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier in the Great War, a political organizer of the first rank, a leader steeped in the history of Europe, who possessed oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him.

But Hitler's success was not based on his extraordinary gifts alone. His genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path."

What, precisely, can be argued with here?  How are these basic statements of fact an example of Hitler-love?  Hitler was a soldier’s soldier in the first war, one who exhibited his bravery on numerous occasions.  This is well-documented fact.  From Hitler’s Wikipedia entry:

Hitler served in France and Belgium in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment (called Regiment List after its first commander), ending the war as a Gefreiter (equivalent at the time to a lance corporal in the British and private first class in the American armies). He was a runner, one of the most dangerous jobs on the Western Front, and was often exposed to enemy fire.^[14] He participated in a number of major battles on the Western Front, including the First Battle of Ypres, the Battle of the Somme, the Battle of Arras and the Battle of Passchendaele. The Battle of Ypres (October 1914), which became known in Germany as the Kindermord bei Ypern (Massacre of the Innocents) saw approximately 40,000 men (between a third and a half) of the nine infantry divisions present killed in 20 days, and Hitler's own company of 250 reduced to 42 by December…Hitler was twice decorated for bravery. He received the Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914 and Iron Cross, First Class, in 1918, an honour rarely given to a Gefreiter.

It is also well-established fact that Hitler was a first class political organizer, rebuilding the Nazi party from the near-oblivion it had sunk to while he was in prison for his role in the Beer Hall Putsch.  Under his leadership, the Nazis grew from a local Munich-based party to a national one.  While many of the strategies used to achieve this growth did not originate with Hitler, it was Hitler who chose those with the necessary knowledge and expertise to accomplish the task.  He stepped aside and allowed their strategies to work, a sure sign of a confident leader.  The Nazi party also pioneered many political campaign techniques that are still in use today. 

Granting that, none of these strategies would have been successful without what Buchanan calls Hitler’s “oratorical powers that could awe even those who despised him.”  Who can deny this?   

Finally, as for Buchanan’s contention that Hitler’s “genius was an intuitive sense of the mushiness, the character flaws, the weakness masquerading as morality that was in the hearts of the statesmen who stood in his path," there is little to argue with here.  Hitler had long considered the Western European countries leadership soft, their societies decadent.  He doubted their will to fight and events proved him right, right up until the invasion of Poland.  One by one, Hitler made bold moves that were met with nothing but condemnation, or less, from the west: his rearmament; his introduction of an air force;  his reoccupation of the Rhineland; the Anschluss with Austria; his occupation of the Sudetenland; Munich; his invasion of Czechoslovakia.  All of this occurred without bloodshed and while the English and French sat on their hands.  This was the primary reason Hitler thought the French and English would not fight should he move on Poland.  According to German General Wilhelm Keitel, “In Hitler’s opinion, the French were a degenerate, pacifist people, the English were much too decadent to provide real aid to the Poles.”  Hitler himself said, “our enemies have men who are below average.  No personalities.  No masters, men of action … Our enemies are little worms.  I saw them at Munich.”

So I say, Buchanan’s quote above is perfectly accurate and no example of “Hitler-love.”   I understand Pat Buchanan is suspect when talking about Hitler.  Many regard him as an anti-Semite.  His support for the Arabs and his disdain for Israel has been on full-display for decades now.  While he makes no apologies for his stances, I understand how people can take last week’s column on Hitler as further evidence of these views. (As I said above, I hope to make my own disagreements with the column clear in a future post, hopefully this afternoon.) But the excerpted book review quote can only be cited as an example of “Hitler-love” by those who are willing to view everything Buchanan says in the worst light.  It will not do for adults to hold the view that Hitler must have been a pure maniac, possessed by the devil, in order to do the evil he did.  He was a man, an evil man, but one with extraordinary gifts.  For much of the 1930’s he was a perfectly rational actor on the world stage.  He saw better than everyone else, including many of his generals and advisors, what was available to him and he took it with a number of bold but rational strokes.  His first misstep was the invasion of Poland.

Finally, the obligatory final note: whatever I said above is not to be taken as evidence that I am pro-Hitler.  He was wicked, evil, vile, etc. etc.  He was the worst person to ever live.  Hell, even Hitler himself thought so:

 

An Affair To Remember

My baby and I are heading to New York City for a few days soon. This time we will be hosting five of our nieces and nephews, along with two of their spouses (actually one spouse and one intended as of two days ago - congratulations N&N!) They are all between 20 and 29 years old and I love them dearly, one and all. My one command of them before the trip is that they know the lyrics to Rodgers and Hart's "Manhattan" by the time we arrive. As I told them, someone has to be responsible for introducing them to the great cultural treasures that is their heritage so it might as well be me. We'll see if any of them listen. I'm betting no but with these very special kids I wouldn't be surprised if they get together and learn the song with the intention of serenading me and my wife as we all walk the streets of midtown.

I also asked them to think of what they wanted to do. It's their trip and my wife and I have seen and done it all in NYC so we are open to anything. Alas, I've heard not a word of suggestion yet. Kids. Oh well. I guess they are expecting that I will be their tour guide, which is fine but I'm always afraid what I find interesting will not interest them.

So a week or so ago I made a few suggestions via email: one, a picnic in Central Park, two, a trip to the top of the Empire State Building at night. I told them if they like the idea of the Empire State Building then they ought to watch two movies before we go, An Affair To Remember, with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, and Sleepless in Seattle, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, two movies in which the building plays an important role. Of course, the second movie could almost not exist without the first, as "An Affair To Remember" provides a vital plot element in "Sleepless in Seattle." Anyhow, I am again doubting whether they take me up on my suggestion but yesterday I took myself up on it.

TCM reran "An Affair To Remember" yesterday at 2:00. I had turned the TV on just to check what time the Red Sox game started and came across the movie just before it started. I'd seen it many years ago but had nearly forgotten the plot except for the ending. It's a wonderful movie, as romantic as they get. Cary Grant is his usual perfection but I was also very impressed with Deborah Kerr. I loved her in From Here To Eternity but have seen little else of her. While I can't really call Ms. Kerr beautiful, there is a radiance about her that transcends beauty. That's what they looked for in leading ladies back then, not beauty, but radiance, that something special that lit up the screen. Katherine Hepburn had it, as did Bette Davis, Myrna Loy, Barbara Stanwyck, and others. (Ingrid Bergman had it too, as did Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn, but they also were classic beauties.) Recently, Emma Thompson has it. Ms. Kerr had it in abundance. You have no doubt from the very first scene that Cary Grant will fall helplessly for her - who wouldn't? That was one of the simple secrets of the old days of Hollywood. Charming leading men, radiant leading ladies, combined with witty dialogue and romantic settings. Charm, delight, effervescence. That's what the old-timers understood was the secret to box office success and they delivered more often than we have a right to expect. "An Affair To Remember" delivers in spades, its slight plot notwithstanding.

Okay, I'm ready to go to New York now.

Bring Them Home

In the ten years that I’ve been reading conservative blogs, perhaps no other issue has caused so much commentary among conservatives as George Will’s calls this week for the U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan and Iraq.  Will, the dean of conservative columnists and arguably still the most influential columnist among the public at large, was an early supporter of both wars.  Not only that, he was a supporter of the democracy project, i.e. not simply the wars but the continued U.S. occupation of both Afghanistan and Iraq in order to help both countries foster free, democratic societies.  He has changed his mind, and many conservatives who support a continued presence in those countries have taken him to task.  To say there has been some outrage is nearly understatement; among neo-conservatives the idea that we should leave before the democracies have been allowed to stabilize is near apostasy. 

I agree with Will, though it was not his arguments that have persuaded me but rather Andy McCarthy’s over at National Review.  In an initial column and then in responses to others on the Corner, McCarthy has laid out a lucid, cogently-argued position that appears to me to trump every argument put forth by those who support a continued presence.  Most supporters of a continued presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq point to the success of the surge in Iraq.  We’ve won in Iraq, they argue, though the job is not yet finished; we should not leave until the Iraqi democratic government is secured.  As for Afghanistan, the generals are now planning a similar surge there.  We should stay, allow the surge to work as it did in Iraq, build up the Afghan army, and only start drawing down troop levels once the Afghans can secure the country on their own. 

In his column and responses, which you should read in full, McCarthy explodes the entire ‘democracy project’ rationale:

There’s no question that the surge in Iraq resulted in the rout of al-Qaeda. For that reason, it has to be counted as a net success. It would have been a strategic disaster to retreat while al-Qaeda was present and fortifying itself.

But then there was the rest of the surge rationale: the claim that we needed to secure the Iraqi population so a stable government, one that would be a reliable ally against terror, could emerge. The same argument now is being made about Afghanistan. Have you taken a look at Iraq lately? We went there to topple Saddam; we stayed to build an Islamic “democracy,” and the result is an Iranian satellite. The new Iraq is a sharia state that wants us gone, has denied us basing rights for future military operations, has pressured a weak American president into releasing Iran-backed terrorists, has rolled out the red carpet for Hezbollah, allows Iranian spies to operate freely (causing the recent ouster of the intelligence minister, who was an American ally), tolerates the persecution of religious minorities, and whose soon-to-take-power ruling coalition vows “not to establish relations with the Zionist entity” — a vow that would simply continue longstanding Iraqi policy, as Diana West points out. If that’s success, what does failure look like?….

….The State Department’s new “democratic” constitutions for Afghanistan and Iraq are a disgrace: establishing Islam as the state religion and elevating sharia as fundamental law. That is not exporting our values; it is appeasing Islamism. It is putting on display our lack of will to fight for our principles, which only emboldens our enemies.

I hadn’t known much of this.   Like a lot of people, I’d lost interest in keeping up with the day to day events of the war.  I had assumed that the government in Iraq was holding back the Islamist influence, that while they were giving a nod to Islam as they must, the leadership was for the most part secular and for the most part pro-American.  From what I’d read in the past I had also assumed that a permanent U.S. base in Iraq was a given.  Most troubling, I also had no idea that the Iraqi leadership was now cozy with the Iranian mullahs.  If all of the above is true, it appears that Iraq, whether we stay for one more day or for another decade, will end up being more threatening to U.S. interests and security that it did when Saddam was in power.  McCarthy further points out that we can stay until kingdom come, the results will be the same because of the nature of Islam:

Islamism is not terrorism. To be sure, Islamism includes terrorism in its arsenal. Still, there is major disagreement among Islamists about when violence should be used and how effective it is. In any event, we must fight the tendency to meld these concepts. Terrorism is a tactic that divides Muslims. Islamism is a belief system that unites tens of millions of Muslims. Abdurrahman Wahid, the former president of Indonesia, estimates what he calls the “radicalized” portion of the umma at about 15 percent. I think he’s low-balling it, but even if he’s right, that would be about 200 million people.

So what is Islamism? It is the belief that Islam is not merely a religious creed but a comprehensive guide to human existence, conformity to which is obligatory, that governs all matters political, social, cultural, and religious, from cradle to grave (and, of course, beyond)….

Why should Islamism matter to us? Because, besides being the ideology that catalyzes jihadist terrorism and threatens our freedoms in sundry other ways, Islamism rejects the premises of Western democracy. Islamists believe that sharia is the perfect, non-negotiable blueprint for law and life, prescribed by Allah Himself. Therefore, Islamists reject the notion of free people at liberty to govern themselves, to legislate in contradiction to God’s law. They reject freedom of conscience: Islam must be the state religion, and apostasy from Islam is a capital crime. They deny the principle of equality under the law between men and women, and between Muslims and non-Muslims. They abjure any semblance of Western sexual liberty: gay sex, adultery, and fornication are brutally punished. They countenance slavery. They encourage polygamy. I could go on, but you get the idea.

This is all horrifying to us, but that is because we are a different civilization. Tony Blair was wrong, as Will has realized in more recent times. Individual liberty and democracy are not “universal values of the human spirit.” And our democracy-building enthusiasts are wrong, and unintentionally insulting to Muslims, when they intimate that the Islamic world will fall in love with our values once they taste a little freedom.

President Bush decried the “cultural condescension” of us democracy doubters. But the shoe of arrogance is on the other foot. Those of us who’ve studied Islam have never doubted its “aptitude for democracy” (to borrow Will’s phrase). The issue has never been one of aptitude; it is about principled beliefs. Fundamentalist strains of Islam, including Salafism, have been developed by extraordinary minds. It is not that these Muslims fail to comprehend our principles; they reject them. They have an entirely different conception of the good life. They believe freedom is not individual liberty but individual submission to Allah’s law. Their very conception of freedom is the opposite of ours. When we talk to them about “freedom,” we are ships passing in the night.

That doesn’t make the Islamists backward. They are convinced that Western liberalism and the Judeo-Christian veneration of reason in faith are corrupting influences that rationalize deviations from Allah’s law and His natural order. They believe, instead, in a pre-ordered, totalitarian system in which the individual surrenders his freedom for the good of the umma — and in which sowing discord (i.e., engaging in what we think of as free speech) is a grave sin, on the order of apostasy. They are wrong in this. Our civilization is superior to theirs, which is why we have flourished and they have faltered. But being wrong doesn’t make them crazy. They don’t want what we’re selling, and they have their reasons….

The fact that Islamists disagree with their terrorist factions on tactics obscures the reality that they heartily agree with the terrorists’ contempt for the West. Most of the places that are sources of Islamist terror do not want Western democracy. They want sharia.

If those who support our continued presence in Afghanistan and Iraq could convince me that the continued presence would affect the final outcome in ways substantially beneficial to the U.S., then I would say stay.  But given the nature of the Islamic mind, the hostility the native populations show towards our continued presence in their countries, the slim chance of our ever setting up secular, pro-democratic, pro-western governments there, I say, enough.  Bring our boys home.

This does not mean I am anti-war or am calling for a retreat from the war on terror.  Again, I’ll let McCarthy speak for me:

Mind you, I’m no dove. I daresay I’m as much or more of a hawk than the nation-building side of the house. I’ve bit my tongue for a long time, and it kills me to write this, because I’ve never bought the nonsense about how you can support the troops but not support the mission. And if someone can convince me we need 40,000 or 400,000 or 4 million more troops in Afghanistan to destroy enemies who would otherwise attack the United States, count me in.

That is what the U.S. military is for: to smash the enemy.  Nation-building is beyond our capabilities in nations that simply aren’t interested.  It is not worth a single extra life of our nation’s finest and bravest to continue an occupation, even for the most benevolent reasons, that will accomplish little of benefit to us. 

Bring them home. 

Mad Men: My Old Kentucky Home

In order for you to fully understand my comments about last week’s episode of Mad Men you must first read Will Wilkinson’s post regarding same (hat tip: Jonah Goldberg.) Will’s main point is this:

I see Mad Men as a show about status and status anxiety in an age of cultural ferment.  

In order to demonstrate this point, Will contrasts the situations of Joan and Peggy.  Joan, as I pointed out last season, is the keeper of the keys at Sterling-Cooper.  She thrives in the man-dominated world at SC, using her charms and looks to get what she wants.  Here’s what I said last year:

She's the ultimate 1950's woman, a woman who revels in being a woman, who loves the attention of men. She'll use her looks to get what she wants without ever questioning whether to do so is wrong. She's comfortable in a man's world. This new beat generation is threatening to her. She's the keeper of the keys at Sterling-Cooper and the world SC thrives in and she doesn't want it disturbed.

Will says something about Joan similar in his post:

Joan is omnicompetent, authoritative, and in full control of her abundant femininity. She has fully mastered the arts of mid-century haute bourgeois womanhood and she knows it.

Peggy, on the other hand, was a virtual non-entity in that world. Shy, not particularly attractive, she was noticed by the young men at SC early in the show’s run only for her status as a potential sex-partner.  Once she got fat (during her pregnancy) she became the butt of their jokes.  Only Don noticed her talent.  But change is clearly in the air.  Peggy’s story has dominated the last two episodes and in ways that make it clear she is to be the embodiment of the social and cultural changes that take place in the 1960’s: two episodes ago it was her new-found sexual freedom, last week it was her experimentation with marijuana (“My name is Peggy Olson and I want to smoke some marijuana.”)  Her growing confidence is shown in other ways also, as when she scolds Harry during the diet soft drink commercial auditions, telling him to remember he was only a guest there.  Will again:

She is anxious and awkward about how she stacks up in the world of women and she is anxious and awkward about how she stacks up in the world of men. But she is toughly confident in how she stacks up as a creative worker. The new willingness of the world to reward her for what she does rather than for what she is grants her a power to independently realize her ambitions unavailable to perfect, normatively realized women.

Peggy, show by show, is realizing that the world is opening up for her.  By the end of last week’s episode she is assuring her old-school secretary that she should worry about her: "I am going to get to do everything you want from me." 

For others, however, the curtain may be closing.  Joan is perhaps one of them.  She’s doing what is expected of her: she rose as far as she could expect at Sterling-Cooper and now she has married a dreamboat doctor, Greg.  However, the dreamboat was unsupportive of her when she was proof-reading the television scripts last season (something she clearly loved) and he later forced sex on her in Don’s office, implying that she must have done it before.  Last week during their dinner party for the chief of surgery she discovers quite by accident that Greg may not be so hot a surgeon after all – it comes out that he blundered an operation.  To cover his embarrassment, he forces Joan to take out her accordion and sing for their guests.  She sings Cole Porter’s "C'est Magnifique," which should be the perfect song for Joan.  But the look in her eyes betrays her sadness.  It’s a heart-wrenching scene. 

Last week’s episode made it pretty clear that Roger Sterling and his type are not long for the world.  I was more than a little uncomfortable with how Roger was portrayed in the episode, perhaps because I like his character so much.  His devil-may-care, don’t take the world or yourself too seriously attitude gives the show a breath of fresh air but those days seem to be over, which. for me, is too bad.  I suppose I see nothing wrong with this quintessential 1950’s rake.  They meant no harm.  They just wanted to have a good time.  But the show last week made it clear that Roger is to be a fool – Don actually tells him he’s foolish, echoing my comments last week that Roger was now seen by others as frivolous.  Perhaps Roger’s sin is that he has started taking himself seriously.  He’s searching for happiness, the middle-aged man’s excuse for leaving your wife for a younger woman (though Roger’s ex-wife Mona is much more attractive than Jane.)  I thought last season he was ready to give it all up for the prostitute Vicki (played by the gorgeous Marguerite Moreau).  Instead, he threw over Mona over for Jane, to whom he is now married.  In last week’s episode, he and Jane give a reception at their country club.  But I think the show over-stepped with his black-face routine.  Would a man as worldly as Roger Sterling not know in 1963 how grotesque this appeared?  Remember, as the show itself made clear, this was a gathering of Rockefeller (read: liberal) Republicans.  They were pro-civil rights.  There was much talk of civil rights legislation and there were marches going on all over the country.  Roger Sterling is an ad man on Madison Avenue.  It’s his job to know what’s going on in the world.  It is impossible to believe that he was not aware of the cultural trends that would make the black-face routine an abomination.  Likewise, I also found it hard to believe that everyone but Don Draper would laughingly approve of such a thing.  I think the show got the cultural zeitgeist of the time wrong (perhaps this was plausible in 1953, but not in 1963) but what is worse is that they could have gotten the point across – that Roger and his type are dinosaurs on their way to extinction – in a much subtler way. 

The less said about the storyline with Sally and her grandfather, the better.  I’ll mention one thing.  The book Sally is reading to Gene is Gibbon’s “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”  This must be considered another hint at where the show is going.  New York City is in decline, the man-dominated world of the 1950’s is on its way out, another world and other cultural types are on the way in.  That’s the direction the show is going.  I may have more to say about this later in the weekend but I’ll leave it here for now.