Once upon a time, we were good at this sort of thing.
Lady Liberty grasps a sword. In peace, she's often painted as America's girl next door, a doe-eyed waif wrapped in a too-big flag. But in war, she flexes her Amazon muscle and towers to titan size.
World War I produced some of the most dramatic and potent images in the history of American illustration. The Wilson Administration sought the cooperation of the nation's artists and advertisers, and by and large it got them to participate.
What crafted images will endure from the Iraq War? The creative voices of modern America seem to be solidly on the other side. Perhaps the most memorable propaganda production of this war will be Michael Moore's grim, pudgy face on his DVD covers. Neither for America nor for Iraq, but in the end only for himself.
To re-create the propaganda effort of 1917 probably is impossible today. Too much cynicism has flowed under the bridge. Propaganda, now in bad odor through association with the Nazis and the Soviets, was regarded as a positive thing in those days.
But if we are modern Wilsonians, we should learn from them. Surely more attention could be paid to the work of explaining our motives to the world, the Arab and Muslim world in particular. Surely, too, more could be done at home to connect this war with America's historical path.
World War I, like the Iraq War (to those of us who supported it) was a battle joined with lofty idealistic goals, but it was highly unpopular. The America that went to war against the Kaiser held a high percent of German-Americans, in the wake of the recent immigration wave. Cities like Cleveland were almost bilingual, with restaurants printing menus in both English and German. Milwaukee was 64 percent German in 1900, Hoboken 56 percent.
The socialist party also was at its peak of power and influence in America in those years. While the radical socialists opposed the war at once, the mainstream of the party, under the decent and honorable Eugene V. Debs, eventually joined them. Among other prominent opponents was Roger Baldwin, who would go on to lead the ACLU, which traces its roots to the American Union Against Militarism, formed by Baldwin and others in New York in 1914 to oppose American entry into World War I. Baldwin made his mark by founding a Bureau of Conscientious Objectors to oppose the draft.
Congressional opposition to Wilson's crusade was led by Henry Cabot Lodge. The president offered the grand vision of new world order and spreading democracy; the Congressional opposition held up nothing but stay-at-home spirit and narrow interest of a small class of wealthy and educated Americans.
Liberty and freedom. The public mind craves images, and coherent narratives in times of crisis. Now the government concedes that to the anti-war opposition, and the artisans of the arts in contemporary America cobble together fables of "Fahrenheit 9/11." It was not always so. The patriotic propaganda of the Great War connected the great causes, and the public spirit of sacrifice for their sake, with America's past ...
... and with its most present fashions ...
... and even with great "crusaders" of history ...
Who happens to look, in this case, very "Hollywood."
At the center of all this was the Committee on Public Information, which consisted of the secretaries of the armed services branches and George Creel, a progressive muckraker who had shone the light on child labor in 1914. "Creel combined the principles of Woodrow Wilson with the temperament of Teddy Roosevelt. Barely five feet seven inches tall, he boxed with professional prize fighters, married a prominent actress, played the lead role in a western movie, and vastly enjoyed the excitement of politics."
The four member "department" gives the wrong picture. The department was George Creel.Creel hurled himself into the work with his prodigious energy. He hired Chicago promoter Donald Ryerson to organize a program of speakers to give four-minute speeches (many written by Creel himself) about American purposes in the war. Altogether seventy-five thousand "Four Minute Men" were carefully chosen (three letters of recommendation were required). They were trained by speech teachers and evaluated by a corps of inspectors. Creel, who had a passion for statistics, reported that they gave 755,190 speeches to 314,454,514 people in theaters, colleges, and clubs. There were Army FMMs on military bases and junior FMMs in schools. *This war featured conscription, for the first time since the highly unpopular experiments with it in the Civil War. The question of "why we are fighting" thus touched many more people than it would with an all-volunteer army. The answer, from the FMMs, had to be clear and loud.
The war became a great crusade of American liberty, freedom, democracy, and civilization, against militarism, despotism, and barbarism. The American people were told they must join this great movement. Here was a new vision of America's role in world affairs, as the leader of a moral and spiritual movement to save other nations by converting them to liberty and freedom.And that was just one of 18 divisions in Creel's department.
A Film Division produced movies in support of the war effort and generated a profit that supported other ventures. The Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation flooded the country with seventy-five million pamphlets. An Advertising Division distributed copy to newspapers. The Division of News issued a torrent of press releases. More than four thousand historians were recruited to check accuracy and to contribute their own work to the war effort. The Division of Syndicated Features distributed human-interest stories and opinion pieces about the war. Creel recruited the American artist Charles Dana Gibson to head the Division of Pictorial Publicity, which mass-produced an American iconography of liberty and freedom for the war effort.
Creel's work was not just for domestic consumption; it was aimed at world opinion. He made heavy use of radio -- or "wireless" as it then was called -- and managed to translate Wilson's speeches within hours of his delivering them, and broadcast them in languages around the world. Wilson's somewhat stilted and academic prose did not fit modern advertising techniques, and it was the committee's man in Russia who cabled Creel, asking for a statement of the president's war aims, "thousand words or less, short almost placard paragraphs," so "I can get it fed into Germany in great quantities in German translation, and can use Russian version potently in army and elsewhere."
Creel took this to the President, and pestered him till he submitted to the indignity of writing "slogans and advertising copy," and the result was the famous Fourteen Points.
Creel and his men took them and ran with them, shipped them into Germany, broadcast them from the Eiffel Tower, and "plastered them on billboards in every Allied and neutral country."
The posters and billborads, also reminded Americans, tirelessly, why they were fighting. Not just what they were fighting for -- Wilson's vision of a new, free world -- but what they were fighting against:
The rape of Belgium
An image from the sinking of the "Lusitania" in 1915. No need to explain the mother and child dead in the cold sea, or even name the ship anywhere on the poster. Every American in 1917 knew what this was.
A nightmare vision of the horror that might come. An air raid on America; New York in flames, the Statue of Liberty decapitated.
After a Zeppelin raid in London
"But mother had done nothing wrong, had she, daddy?"
Prevent this in New York
Wilson's words, as well as his images, reached for the deep, strong currents in America. I could wish Bush or someone near him had half that rhetorical ability.
Wilson's war message to Congress almost seems to suit the War on Terror and the overthrow of Saddam better than a war against the Central Powers of old Europe. It lays out a broad and grand purpose for America: to spread freedom and democracy, and in effect to establish a new world order. America's object "is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth ensure the observance of those principles."
In such a struggle, "where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples," and where the threat to civilization comes from powerful autocrats not answerable to anyone but themselves, Wilson said, neutrality was impossible.
But even at its height, Wilsonian policy was not without self-interest. Instead, it merged idealism and self-interest. Spreading global democracy was in America's interest, because democratic nations are inclined to peace. They would be less likely to threaten America.
His call to arms reached a ringing conclusion:We are now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.Hell, Bush should have just read that, verbatim, substituting only "Iraqi and Afghan" for "German."
... It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts -- for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
* [This thought is informed largely by my recent reading in David Hackett Fischer's "Liberty and Freedom." The chapters that cover World War I and the 1920s are among the most insightful in the book. The quotes, unless otherwise indicated, are from that source.]
Actually, I think this one would translate nicely to the present campaign. Perhaps replace Hun with Jihadi, or Zarqari.
I find it ironic that US WWI propaganda would be introduced as a good example of government distribution of information to advance liberty. Official explanations and justifications for US entry into WWI are ripe with fraud. Note that the Lusitania was, it fact, carrying weapons. The laughable notion that USG was defending "Liberty" is easily dispelled by observing the State's resort to conscription, aka SLAVERY.
Yes, Wilson lied. People died. The World is a better place though.
"The patriotic propaganda of the Great War connected the great causes, and the public spirit of sacrifice for their sake, with America's past...."
To Callimachus:
What are the great American causes can you relate to the invasion and occupation of a soveriegn nation?
Once upon a time we were also good at electing leaders who understood when and why America needed to be at war. Unfortunately, today we do not have those type of leaders.
Wilson's war message to Congress almost seems to suit the War on Terror and the overthrow of Saddam better than a war against the Central Powers of old Europe. It lays out a broad and grand purpose for America: to spread freedom and democracy, and in effect to establish a new world order. America's object "is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world . . ."
But in the more recent war, its object was (in part) to wreck "the liberal conceit of safety through international law administered by international institutions" (Richard Perle, 2003-03-21). The Bush (43) Administration's "new world order" is more in tune with Kaiser Wilhelm's than with President Wilson's.
Kathy, I would call the idea of using American power in the interest of spreading freedom and democracy a great American cause.
As Wilson said, "Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own."
Critics scoff at that and call it foolish idealism, whether it's driven by progressive Wilsonians or modern neo-cons, and boast that they can peel back a veneer of high-mindedness and reveal real motives of national or partisan self-interest.
That much was the same in 1917 as in 2005. Hence the parallel. Bush is not a neo-con, but the Iraq expedition often is laid to the credit or blame of the neo-con elements within his administration.Do you mean to say that Wilson was such a leader? How do you discover that America "needed" to be in the war over the issue of Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare?
>>How do you discover that America "needed" to be in the war over the issue of Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare?
Now would probably be the time to mention British Q-ships. Everyone who brings up German unrestricted sub warfare needs to somehow explain away Q-ships.
Speaking of German and British sub and anti-sub warfare in WW One, I wrote a piece three years ago about the sinking of Lusitania and the context in which it occurred within treaties of naval warfare.
Callimachus:
I would call the idea of using American power in the interest of spreading freedom and democracy a great American cause.
Maybe you would, and maybe Wolfowitz would agree with you. But it's not the cause that motivated the administration as a whole, and it's not the cause that secured the support of the United States people.
The people supported the war because it was sold to them as a means to homeland security by a president in whom they misplaced their trust. Overthrowing Saddam's tyranny was presented not as a main motive but as a side benefit. The administration's private motives were mixed of course, but the single strongest strand seems to have been the idea of using United States power in the interest of extending United States power.
I think the military should hire or create a advertising brigade that would put out commercials posters and military represenatives to praticipate in the talking heads news cast and such as experts and people who are in the know.
Example:
commercial of a US patrol eating with a Iraqi family "touching the hearts and minds"
or Iraqi kid looking innocent with the caption "we must be strong for thier future as well as thiers" clip over to a picture of like innocent looking 9-11 victims young child.
Clips of news stories showing possible future terrorist attacks and such saying "now are you ready to fight or is this acceptable"
Run of pictures showing World Trade 93', Embasies bombings, Cole, 9-11, bali, ect... caption "were does it stop if we dont fight"
Runs of the many Jihadi Preachers shouting there hate from the podium with translation Hmmm kinda like the runs they always show of Hitler when he is mentioned. This is what we fight our ideas are freedom and peace human rights.
Pictures of free Iraqs and Afghanis caption "they are our allies against the terrorist should we help them fight the terrorist?"
Picture of flashing faces of all the races of the world with the caption "we all deserve to be free and not to live in fear" caption of the terrorist preachers preaching hate
= then bombing, picture of Saddam = picture of mass graves torture chambers, picture of Taliban = picture of women getting beat in the street with freekin 4' cane polls for what.
Commercial with the stats of previous X many sacrifised in WW2 X many a day, X many sacrifised in Korea X many a day, Vietnam ect.... then cut to War on Terror X sacrifised to date with X many a day // then cut over to a group of vetrans shaking thier heads "Freedom isnt free again we must sacrifice to protect our freedom and give others freedom we can do it"
Pictures uncensored of beheaded civilians, bomb victims, 9-11 people jumping out of the 85th floor and up pictures of body parts all around World Trade wreckage. ect..... caption "are you really wondering why we must win"
A pro Iraqi one would be Pictures of Murials of 9-11 then the caption X city Iraq, Picture or even translation of Saddam after 9-11 praising the attack, then pictures of the many terrorist like the 93' World trade bomber hiding in Iraq and Zarqawi medical teatment after Afghanistan, the "Saddam gave 25,000 to the families of Palistinian suicide bombers, supported the radical groups that attacked Isreal, hated america swore vengence, praised 9-11 even made murials congradulating such, gave shelter to known wanted world terrorist, No they are right thier is no hard evidence or open confesions of Saddam and Al Queda together and manybe they were not today BUT do you really believe that would not have changed at first opportunity?"
Many will scream and yell I am sure some will even counter with thier own adds which would show how anti-america they are and how retarted their basic idealogy is. the Dems will say that gov money shouldnt go to political statements. Very simple that if we can fund public announcements about smoking, drugs, racial this or that, and all other manner of other minor sh*t that is rather political I would say winning a freekin active war effort would fit the profile of public need.
Robert, I understand that, and I think what you say is essentially correct, at least insofar as the American people are concerned. Which is one reason the World War I propaganda interests me here. We had even less compelling reason to get involved in a European war, from a pure "what's in it for us" view, then than now. You didn't even have the cynical excuse of getting oil.
And even if Roosevelt had known all about the holocaust in 1941, I doubt he could have gotten Americans, or at least Senate republicans, to go to war against Hitler to save Polish Jews.
And Lincoln never could have motivated Northern industrial workers and farmhands to risk their necks to free black slaves who would then come north and drive down their wages.
And so forth. Through all wars. Even the ones you might approve of, assuming you're not a thoroughgoing pacifist. You have to sell them. Goering knew this; so did Tom Paine. It doesn't make the fact itself nefarious.
But it is possible to make a call to arms for the sake of national self-interest (it seems to me the modern French choose all their military actions this way, without much concern), or to make an appeal to higher national ideals.
Even without Wilsonian rhetoric. Maybe it's best left to the soldiers and the people to make that case in their own words. Think of the phenomenon of Luke Stricklin's "American By God's Amazing Grace."David Adesnik, in the blog cited above, gets to the gist of this:
In Frank Capra's great WWII propaganda film Why We Fight, the first episode has an animation depicting a Nazi invasion of the United States, by way of South America and Canada.
All of which was pure moon juice, as the War Department knew full well. The Germans could not muster enough air and naval power to invade Britain, thirty miles away. The U-boats aside, a couple of US carriers could have sunk the entire Kriegsmarine in two or three days. The idea that Hitler could undertake a trans-Atlantic invasion was beyond ludricrous.
And yet, they felt compelled to include that segment. Apparently the much more accurate depictions of German and Japanese military ambitions, and general brutality, were judged to be insufficient. Too many people like Lindbergh and Wheeler - and Joseph P. Kennedy - who were saying "Hitler poses absolutely no threat to the United States ..."
Callimachus:
Your examples tend to show that, while idealistic motives can add fervour, the necessary basis of a great war effort by a democratic people is a perceived threat to its own interests. What's missing here is not the supplementary fervour but the necessary basis.
Re the Great War: While from 1914 on there was a growing sense in the U.S. people that the ascendancy of such a ruthless and cynical power as Wilhelmine Germany would be a long-run problem, it was the release of the Zimmerman telegram, turning a long-run problem into a short run menace, that swung them behind the war.
Anyhow, this was never sold as a great war effort in the first place. Bush's invocations of "courage" and "sacrifice" were always in the context of business as usual. Joe Citizen was to stay home, applaud from afar the efforts of "our brave fighting men and women in Iraq", and enjoy his tax breaks. It would be hard for him to call for a great war effort now without further shredding his own credibility.
Maybe the Administration should try harder to educate the people how likely the Iraq venture is to go pear shaped, and how bad it might be for the United States if it does. How it does that without discrediting its own record and roiling its political base, I don't know.
"Saddam gave 25,000 to the families of Palistinian suicide bombers, supported the radical groups that attacked Isreal, hated america swore vengence, praised 9-11 even made murials congradulating such, gave shelter to known wanted world terrorist, No they are right thier is no hard evidence or open confesions of Saddam and Al Queda together and manybe they were not today BUT do you really believe that would not have changed at first opportunity?"
I've never understood why that picture of Saddam's 911 mural was never plastered on tv.
The picture of the beheaded Statue of Liberty makes me think of an advert featuring a jihadi actually attempting to behead Lady Liberty.
Callimachus,
the supposed German atrocities, some reprisals against partisans aside, were actually British propaganda. As it happened, many Britons, George Orwell included, later were sceptical about warnings about the Nazis, because they thought that was yet more of this 'Gräuelpropaganda'. The propaganda may be taught as factual history in many American and British schools, but nevertheless it is nothing but propaganda.
As to:I would call the idea of using American power in the interest of spreading freedom and democracy a great American cause.
Power IMHOdoesn't and can't spread freedom and democracy, Callimachus and RM. Those are qualities that grow from individuals' minds and hearts. I believe that the use of propaganda to ennoble people with that end is feasible, but more apt would be our showing those qualities in our day-to-day operations as a nation.
Interestingly in yesterday's op-ed piece Fareed Zakaria dropped a mention of the methods of bribery as everyday necessity in the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia: "That means it can keep the old ways going, bribing the Wahhabi imams, funding the army and National Guard, spending freely on patronage programs." See this article
It is these traditions that do the harm to world, and local, opinion in the Middle East that will give democracy and liberty the attractiveness that will win hearts and minds, if we are showing upstanding qualities in contrast.
As a schoolgirl I tucked dimes into a card that built up a fund for Liberty Bonds during time cut out of class for that purpose. I don't recall ever actually receiving any bond.
My Propaganda Art
I saw the towers tumble before my very eyes. Terror, evildoing is no way to behave.
http://www.tsos.org/lorin.htm
"Air of Competence" is the first sculpture of GW honoring the man who says to get rid of them one by one. "Imperative Determination", bronze #2 honors the decision to fight back to win the war. This is a collectors edition, 22" tall. My next and final goal are three larger than life statues, 10' tall figure on tall pedestal of large video screens created to travel the country with a truth telling production of what terror has in mind for us all and what GW says we are doing about it. This honors the volunteer soldier.
More to come very soon
"The idea that Hitler could undertake a trans-Atlantic invasion was beyond ludricrous."
True, at that moment in time. But the idea that Germany could conquer France in a month was ludicrous in 1935. Underestimating the German war machine was not a good idea. Had the US not entered the war, the Soviets probably wouldnt have had the supplies and equipment to roll back the Germans and the Brits wouldnt have made any progress certainly. Who know what things would have looked like come 1950 when German jet fighters and bombers ruled the air.
So in other words, you are right, but there is still a legitimate argument that taking a long term view the Nazis were indeed a terrible threat to the US.
I have several original WWI propaganda posters framed and hanging on my walls. Including the "Remember Belgium" one. They were fierce and unapologetic back then. That is the kind of attitude that wins wars. The lack of any similar message outside of the web is a sad indicator of what the nation has become. Huge swaths of people, both influential and ordinary, have more animosity toward our own nation and president than toward dictators and terrorists.
To TJ
I would say that if this great nation that bore you is so evil that you should seriously consider leaving the beast. I would be glad to pay for your one-way-ticket to werever you think is better than the US as long as you surrender your citizenship and agree to never return for buisness, pleasure, or any other such reason to the US or her protectorite.
Peace the F*ck out to you and all your ilk!
You should be glad that Bush and our gov are not the devils you claim it to be if they were you and your ilk would be doported in mass. I garantee in short time after you all would be wishing that you were back here with the many opportunities that our forefathers blood have made possible. Nations are full of humans and run by humans that are naturally flawed and make mistakes. The US has done wrongs and mistakes in the past but that is human nature no one or nation is perfect.
Callimachus, no one who refers to Iraq under Saddam's rule as a "sovereign nation" deserves any sort of response, still less the polite response you gave. If opponents of the war cannot engage in a debate assuming the fundamental correctness of our own national view of the nature of sovereignty -- that it is the people, not any ruler, in which such sovereignty is vested, and that no ruler can be sovereign which holds power by mere brute force, rather than with the free consent of the governed -- then they do not deserve to be heard. This means that no argument against the war from the position that we violated Iraq's sovereignty is worthy of even the slightest consideration. Any argument against the war in Iraq which includes a defense of the former Iraqi regime, whether it's Kathy's comment above or Michael Moore's portrayal of Iraq under Saddam as a peaceful nation in which kite-flying was a common pastime, necessarily contradicts any claim that the one making the argument is in favor of human liberty. Those making such arguments would have been comfortable defending Hitler as well. Don't give them the time of day.
"Kathy, I would call the idea of using American power in the interest of spreading freedom and democracy a great American cause."
To Callimachus:
That's not an answer to the question I posed, "what great American causes relate to the invasion and occupation of another soveriegn nation?" None, is the true answer.
"Critics scoff at that and call it idealism."
No. I think you got your critics mixed up with your heros. "Idealism" is what George W. Bush refers to it again and again, to describe his Middle East policy. True critics call it a venture in democratic imperialism. The hopes of what will happen after the Iraq War enforces that answer of imperialism, the hopes of a friendly autocracy, the withdrawal of the bulk of our military forces, and the West exerting influence on the Middle East from afar.
"How do you discover that America "needed" to be in the war over the issue of Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare?"
By asking me this I have to assume that you think that sinking American shipping and killing American citizens was not an act of war against the United States by Germany?
Yes, absolutely, I agree. But, as in Germany in 1945, power - specifically military power - can keep the wolves from the door, and create a space safe and calm enough for the people to collectively discover the path to freedom and democracy that is rooted in their own culture and their own experience.
Propaganda -- under which heading I include non-governmental material, and so perhaps use the word incorrectly -- is essential in any long campaign that requires sacrifice and a sense of mission. Even if you're doing it all right on the ground, you can be sabotaged by a hostile media. But better to both do it right on the ground and to genuinely associate the cause with the best national, and universal human, ideals. Kathy, it seems TNugent read you right, and you want to hinge this entirely on the matter of "sovereignty." Then I would say that plenty of good national ideals were served by overthrowing the Nazis, but that plenty of national sovereignties were trampled in the process (Iran among them). National sovereignty, however you define it, does not seem to me to be the ultimate good.
I'll leave that one for T.J. Madison to answer. He seems to have the facts at his fingertips and he's itching to use them. Watching anti-war people go to war with each other is always a good time.
I'm no T.J. Madison, but I can google William Jennings Bryan who resigned as Secretary of State for the reason that Germany's actions were not entirely unjustified.
America had taken sides in WWI, just as it did in WWII prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. That Americans don't know this is a credit to great propoganda.
"Then I would say that plenty of good national ideals were served by overthrowing the Nazis, but that plenty of national sovereignties were trampled in the process (Iran among them). National sovereignty, however you define it, does not seem to me to be the ultimate good."
Yes, overthrowing the Nazis was in the interest of the national good. But remember, Germany declared war on us first in 1942.
I'm confused. When did we invade Iran?
Yes, national soveriegnty does not always equate to the definition of being in the "ultimate good". But what nation goes to war defending the "ultimate good" without a direct harmful relationship to its people?
And finally, as a leader Woodrow Wilson stands head and sholders upon mountain tops compared to George W. Bush. With the uncertainty of whether or not the nation would support his decision to ask Congress to declare war on Germany, he did so anyway knowing first, it was his duty as a leader and second, he knew it was the correct decision.
George W. Bush can't even face a grieving mother to answer the simple question, "what cause is worth fighting a war?"
Kathy:
Of course, in 1942 there was no such thing as Iran. That was a creation of the Red Line approach by the Major Powers. Inside the Red Line were the oil producing nations.
Callimachus. Thanks, I'm glad you see the relationship between actual qualities that exist within people and the outcome of their efforts being something (great, I mean) workable - but keeping the wolf from the door isn't quite what happened after the WWI reconstruction program - and yes, I recall that reconstruction was post-Civil War in the states. Didn't work then either.
A corresction, Ruth, if I may. Reza Shah officially started calling "Persia" "Iran" in 1935. Iran and "Aryan" are etymologically the same word, of course. One story is that the suggested name change came from the Persian embassy in Berlin. Persia had been squeezed between Russia and Britain for generations in the Great Game. Its leaders had long been looking for a third power to protect them. Reza apparently thought it would be Hitler, not realizing that Hitler's interest in Aryans didn't included the olive-skinned variety found in Persia.
But that interest was part of what led Britain and Russia to unilaterally occupy Iran -- a sovereign nation -- in August 1941, overthrowing the shah and installing his son on the throne. They used Iran as a crucial supply route to the Soviet Union. After America got into the war, it, too, participated in the transportation lifeline, which certainly helped save the Russian front from collapse.
Ruth:
Power IMHOdoesn't and can't spread freedom and democracy, Callimachus and RM.
Agreed, broadly, with the caveat that any oppressed people has the right to call for aid, and any willing country the right to render it.
Cal...:
Sorry, I didn't realize the name Iran even as derivative had been used that early on. Of course, the Red Line drawn around the oil producers was as I understand it the first creation of separate, and map delineated, nations within the middle east, and then the Great Powers divided them up among themselves.
Well, we don't need to comment on the outcome of those efforts to keep the oil pipeline open to the USSR. Which also wasn't called that at the time.
Callimachus: However, there is (happily for us) no comparison between the danger facing Great Britain in 1941, and that facing the United States today.
And finally, as a leader Woodrow Wilson stands head and sholders upon mountain tops compared to George W. Bush.
The Sedition Act of 1918 was everything that critics claimed the Patriot Act was and more. The Sedition Act forbade an American to use "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, flag, or armed forces. People were thrown in jail for doing less than what Michael Moore has done. Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to ten years in jail. Some leader, that Wilson.
With the uncertainty of whether or not the nation would support his decision to ask Congress to declare war on Germany, he did so anyway knowing first, it was his duty as a leader and second, he knew it was the correct decision.
Ah, yes, Wilson violates a direct campaign promise (that he knew he couldn't keep), something that could easily be characterized as "a lie," as could the pretense that we were truly acting neutral before that. Amusing how whether you view something as leadership or lying depends on how much you approve of doing the act in question.
George W. Bush can't even face a grieving mother to answer the simple question, "what cause is worth fighting a war?"
He, of course, did already face her before, as he has met with so many of the mothers of the dead. Why, I might have to say that you're "lying" if you keep that up.
Kathy, Wilson's ability to sucesfully wage war and garner popular support was non unaffected by his ability to put war opponents such as yourself in jail. Not that I'm advocating a return to the Espionage Act of 1917 or the Sedition Act.
I do advocate that the government undertake all efforts to win any war it undertakes, whether I support it or not, short of silencing political speech and suppressing the right to vote.
Wilson, on the other hand, stifled political speech and arrested women suffragettes.
I might be wrong but iirc Wilson was also a segregationist and rather fond of the Klan.
Kathy, the reality is that it literally takes my breath away that you would think that the incompetent, racist and dictatorial Woodrow Wilson would be "stands head and sholders upon mountain tops" above George W. Bush.
PD does not exaggerate when he says that Woodrow Wilson would have had you jailed. The Wilson administration did in fact jail many war opponents and draft protestors including Eugene Debs. Wilson put race relations in this country back a generation.
And I'm baffled why you would falsely claim that President Bush is afraid to face Cindy Sheehan as he already has done so.
I might be wrong but Wilson was also a segregationist and rather fond of the Klan.
You're right. Wilson segregated the White House for the first time since Reconstruction and expressed his admiration for Griffith's remake of The Clansman, Birth of a Nation.
Excuse me, but we're jumping all over some one named Kathy for what? because of a president [Wilson] who brought together a lot of very good international efforts to bring a world back together after WWII, and who was pretty much a reflection of the 'mores' of the time. No, it's not a time we want to go back to -- we should stand against any return to racism, totalitarianism, undermining of freedoms such as...
N.B.: "The FBI apparently had authorized Franklin to give the AIPAC officials the classified information about Iranian threats in Iraq in an effort to "sting" them -- in the expectation that they would transmit the information to the Israeli Embassy, which they allegedly did." - from -
Watch This Spy Story
By David Ignatius
The news media have been worrying this summer about the Valerie Plame leak investigation, which has landed a New York Times reporter in jail. Meanwhile, a potentially far more dangerous threat to the press has emerged in a federal criminal indictment that lists contacts between reporters and sources as "overt acts" in an alleged conspiracy to commit espionage.
The case involves two former officials of a pro-Israel lobbying group, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, and their alleged dissemination of classified information that they received from a former Defense Department analyst named Lawrence Franklin. The Aug. 4 indictment charged that the three disclosed secret information about U.S. policy toward Iran and terrorism to an unnamed foreign power, identified by sources as Israel.
Like the Plame investigation, the indictment is politically sensitive. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where the two lobbyists worked, is one of the most potent advocacy groups in Washington. AIPAC, as the group is known, fired Rosen and Weissman in April, and the group has seemed eager to distance itself from the fallout of the case. Given the stakes, it has received surprisingly little attention so far in the media.
But a careful reading of the indictment shows that this is a very peculiar case, indeed, and one that could have damaging consequences -- both for the news media and for lobbying groups that depend on regular exchanges of information with government officials. If the prosecution succeeds, it could change the way business is done in Washington.
The heart of the indictment is a conspiracy count, which alleges that "in an effort to influence persons within and outside the United States government, Rosen and Weissman would cultivate relationships with Franklin and others" and then transmit the classified information they obtained "to persons not entitled to receive it." The indictment lists 57 "overt acts" to further this alleged conspiracy.
What should worry the news media is that five of these alleged overt acts involve contacts by Rosen, Weissman or Franklin with unidentified journalists. (A sixth involves a contact with a senior official of an unidentified think tank.) The indictment doesn't allege that these media contacts were illegal in themselves. That's why conspiracy indictments are such convenient catchalls for prosecutors: They can list "overt acts" that aren't illegal as evidence of a conspiratorial plot -- in this case, allegedly to violate the Espionage Act.
One of the unnamed reporters whose contact with Rosen and Weissman is cited in the indictment is Glenn Kessler, a Post diplomatic correspondent. According to a June 3 Post article, the two AIPAC lobbyists jointly called Kessler in July 2004 and relayed information they had received that day from Franklin about possible Iranian attacks against Israelis who were operating undercover in Iraq. Kessler never published an article about the tip.
It turned out the FBI was monitoring the lobbyists' call with Kessler. At that time, Franklin reportedly was cooperating with the government. The FBI apparently had authorized Franklin to give the AIPAC officials the classified information about Iranian threats in Iraq in an effort to "sting" them -- in the expectation that they would transmit the information to the Israeli Embassy, which they allegedly did.
Ironically, Rosen joked in his conversation with Kessler about "not getting in trouble" for transmitting the information and said, "At least we have no Official Secrets Act," according to a partial transcript of the bugged call that was quoted by the JTA (formerly the Jewish Telegraph Agency).
And that's the essential point: We don't have an Official Secrets Act in America that bars disclosure of information except in specific, limited situations -- and that's for good reason. We know that such laws chill the open flow that is essential for a healthy democracy. Explains Kevin Baine, an attorney at Williams & Connolly who advises The Post on this and other First Amendment cases: "If the disclosure of newsworthy information about the national defense to reporters for the purpose of publication can constitute espionage, that places enormous power in the hands of prosecutors, because information about national defense is passed on every day to reporters in this town."
The allegations against Rosen, Weissman and Franklin are serious. The government is right to protect sensitive intelligence about Iran and terrorism from disclosure to foreign countries, even close allies such as Israel. But the indictment of the AIPAC lobbyists crosses a subtle line. It moves beyond protecting information to chilling any discussion of it outside the government's tight circles. Stifling debate about foreign policy is the last thing America needs right now.
davidignatius@washpost.com
Collective righteousness, which Wilsonian war politics encouraged, can easily become ungovernable and cruel. Wilson had had premonitions of this; he spoke of it in 1916, when he was still the peace candidate: "Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. ... The spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into every fibre of our national life."
Wilson was a progressive Democrat. The tendency of progressive Democrats to favor its ideal version of reality at the expense of messy free expression and basic rights is familiar to anyone who follows the PC wars on modern university campuses. But runaway righteousness is a broader problem than that; it is the trap of crusaders.
George Creel at first took the high road in his Committee on Public Information work during World War I. He rallied the nation with positive images of America's best qualities. The artwork he commissioned focused on the enemy as militarism and autocracy, and on its victims. The German people, as Wilson made explicit in his war message to Congress, were not the enemy. Like many Americans, Creel had German ancestry.
But eventually he stooped to lurid attacks on the Kaiser, German-Americans, dissenters, and the opposition press.
He even turned on Congress itself. Congress responded by cutting off his funding stream, which quickly caused his department to collapse. Creel had crossed the line.
Others followed. Intolerance and xenophobia during World War I were far worse than the supposed horrors of the McCarthy era. The Espionage Act (1917) and the Sedition Act (1918) put the screws to the Bill of Rights. The Sedition Act punished expressions of opinion, regardless of their likely consequences, which were "disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive" of the American form of government, the flag or the military. Under it, "Americans were prosecuted for criticizing the Red Cross, the YMCA and even the budget" [Johnson, "Modern Times," p.204].
Wilson, while he was still governing, had the opportunity to curb these abuses, but he did not. After he was incapacitated by strokes, the zealots ran wild, and the witch-hunts culminated in the notorious Palmer raids.
There are lessons in this for modern-day Wilsonians. For one, history shows that, so far from being a new Nazi Germany (as Bush-haters insist), America today is not even as repressive as it was in 1920. The civil rights violations of the Palmer raids were far more serious than anything done or proposed in the name of the Patriot Act. (And at the same time they were far less serious than those of Lincoln's Administration in 1862 or the repression of the loyalist elements in the Revolution.)
But history teaches us that that way lies the danger.
Though it may have been fuel on the fire, I can see no direct connection between the idealism of Wilson's world-changing course and the repressions that grew under his administration. Rather, the repression sprang from pre-existing domestic fears following an era of heavy immigration and a vague awareness of a foreign menace in the form of "bolshevism."
If anything, the idealism of the president's rhetoric lent itself to the defense of rights. The Wilsonian idealism was a magic mirror held up to the authorities when they pursued repressive policies at home. Walter Lippmann wrote in a private letter in July 1920, "It is forever incredible that an administration announcing the most spacious ideals in our history should have done more to endanger fundamental American liberties than any group of men for a hundred years." Many agreed, and said so in public.
And rights advanced dramatically in America in that decade, for workers and for women. It's an open discussion among historians, whether those advances came more from the efforts of those who embraced the national crusade in World War I than those who rejected it. I tend to come down on the side of the ones who took the idealism and made it their own.
Another lesson in all this is that ham-handed prosecutions eventually recoil in great advances in civil rights. Ever since the Zenger trial in 1735, American civil right have emerged stronger from every attempt to quash them. The authorities may bully, and they may have the strong arm, but eventually the case goes to court, and there the rights win the day.
As long as eloquence can come to their aid, personal liberties will triumph. The outcome of a particular case is no matter. In the 1920s, John Scopes lost his "monkey" trial in Tennessee. But the trial itself turned the hearts of Americans. Our love of liberty triumphs, in a Hollywood ending, over our yearning for order and the fear of the strange.
Provided the courts get to hear the case. Be vigilant of rights, 21st century Wilsonians; one of the tendencies in a highly moral regime is to interpret other systems of morality as enemies. And to see legal appeals as an impediment to progress.
Ruth, we are jumping on Kathy because of her completely ludicrous attempt to claim that a real racist near-dictator like Wilson was better than George W. Bush. Whether from an astonishing ignorance or an outrageous falsehood, that kind of idiotic rhetoric will always receive condemnation from me.
Now I don't think the WoC people will appreciate your cut-n-paste of a copyrighted article.
Ruth, in an earlier comment, mentions Reconstruction, which she says was a failure. I agree; it was. But why was it a failure? Because it was wrong-headed from the start? Or because the Republican leadership gave up on it too soon, declared victory and brought the troops home, when the political cost of sustaining the work grew too great?
Ought it never to have been tried in the first place?
Really, the entire Southern secession involves the insistence on the paramountcy of "sovereign nations" and the fiendishness of "democratic imperialism" in inextricable difficulties. Unless you're willing to go on and say the South was right.
"George W. Bush can't even face a grieving mother to answer the simple question, "what cause is worth fighting a war?" "
He's also the first President to regularly meet with parents of fallen troops in a time of war, Kathy. Think FDR did? How about Nixon? Heck, how about Clinton or Bush Sr? Reagan? Didn't happen.
And as has been previously mentioned, President Bush has already met with Sheehan; why should he allow himself to be verbally assaulted by someone who thinks that HE pulled the trigger that killed her (adult, volunteer, re-enlisted) son?
Calling Cindy Sheehan "a grieving mother" and leaving it at that is like calling Lyndon LaRouche a "fusion power advocate."
Sorry about the insertion of the whole article in #36, and although I think it's particularly pertinent and important, I should have given the link instead.
Very appropriate and thoughtful deliberation on Wilson, Callimachus, in #37. And as to reconstruction, it was wrongheaded in that it sought to beggar the south -and it got a lot of use by economic debauchers under a policy of political dominance by those who were not southerners (who were disqualified because they had fought for their birthplace and traditions - and for an economy that had no power under the industrial north).
Ruth, I think that's why national ideals matter. We always should consider them in our decisions, even if the "what's in it for me" school of thought gets more votes. We should try not to act in opposition to them, at the least, and try to live up to them, even if we're pretty sure the outcome will be more complicated than we anticipate. Wars and campaigns are rat-holes, anyway, you go in one, intending something, and you come out somewhere else entirely.
A purely "national-interest" position in 1861 would have brought the South back into the Union by hook or crook, including the Crittenden Compromise, with slavery intact. Then maybe looked to a long-term emancipation, with colonization of freed slaves in Central America. Which is pretty close to the original position of the Lincoln Administration. Then, gradually, higher ideals began to force their way into the equation. The result was an imperfect emancipation and a flawed step toward racial equality, and a lot of resentment.
But was it worth it, to the slave?
Cynically hoisting standards which claim national ideals while seeking purely political gains - this tactic has done a great deal of damage to those ideals, unfortunately.
In the south, too. As an aside, what do you think Central Americans thought of proposals to resettle freed slaves there, as if the area were not a region of independent countries that deserved some consideration/consultation in political propositions in the States? Heh.
Emancipation was without question worth it, but reconstruction did no good to the freed slaves.
As to slavery: "Mauritania officially banned slavery in 1981. The government has denied accusations that it is still being practised. " This from BBC's brief resume of Mauritanian history. And it's not the only nation in this category.