On 16 Maijs, 15:20, P=C4=93teris Cedri=C5=86=C5=A1 (Peteris Cedrins)
<cedr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On 16 Maijs, 13:31, hol...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Eugene Holman) wrote:
>
>
>
> > In article
> > <2685c05f-c958-4e7f-b35a-4cd5d0cac...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> >
=3D?ISO-8859-13?Q?P=3DE7teris_Cedri=3DF2=3DF0_=3D28Peteris_Cedrins=3D29?=
=3D
>
> > <cedr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > > On 15 Maijs, 18:10, hol...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Eugene Holman) wrote:
> > > > In article
> > > >
<7eaa172c-f699-4176-80c9-6c6540dae...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> > > >
=3D?ISO-8859-13?Q?P=3DE7teris_Cedri=3DF2=3DF0_=3D28Peteris_Cedrins=
=3D29?=3D
>
> > > > <cedr...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > > > > On 13 Maijs, 22:44, Dmitry <dmitrijsfedot...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > > > > > On 11 May, 10:43, hol...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Eugene Holman)
wrote=
:
> > > > <deletions>
>
> > > > > Western and especially American intervention in Latvia in 1919
was=
> > > > > really awful, too. I mean, British warships killed the people,
and=
the
> > > > > Americans brought food with all of those strings attached. Woe
is =
me.
>
> > > > Back in those days the "bad guys" were easy to identitfy and
elimina=
te. It
> > > > should be clear after some seven years of conflict that
intervening =
in
> > > > Afghanistan is a great way to help some of the people in Kabul but
p=
urely
> > > > dysfunctional as a strategy for containing or destroying
al-Qa'ida.
>
> > > > Warfare with amorphous, supranational, rag-tag, leaderless
organizat=
ions
> > > > whose supporters have no regard for human life, not even their
own, =
is
> > > > quite a different prospect than war with states that have
infrastruc=
ures
> > > > to maintain, populations to feed and protect, and a
technologically
> > > > advanced military to concretely project power.
>
> > > > Regards,
> > > > Eugene Holman
>
> > > And your last paragraph doesn't describe the Bolsheviks? Ask Black
> > > Monk.
>
> > It does indeed. The Bolsheviks, a network of ideologically driven
> > political thugs, were not loyal to a state, but to an idea, the goal
of
> > which was the erosian and demise of states. Living in a world in which
> > states were the dominant form of complex human organization, they had
no=
> > choice but subvert a state and usurp its resources for their own use.
>
> > From the standpoint of political theory, the Bolsheviks represented
the
> > wave of the future when considering the development of so-called
> > fourth-generation or asymmetrical warfare. Being on cusp of the
> > transition, they could only prevail by, ironically, becomong more
statis=
t
> > than the statists. Al-Qa'ida has done a far better job of prevailing
and=
> > frustrating the efforts of traditional states than the Bolsheviks,
whose=
> > heirs were not above teaming up with a rigid and ultraconservative
state=
,
> > Nazi Germany, ever did.
>
> > The Soviet Union, as a rigid and, in many respects, conservative
state,
> > had extreme vulnerabilities, something that Nazi Germany tried to
exploi=
t
> > with its sneak attack and intended Blitzkrieg of June 22, 1941. If the
> > Nazis had concentrated their efforts on taking Moscow rather than
trying=
> > to add insult to injury by utilizing a resource diluting three-pronged
> > attack aimed at insulting the Soviets by taking their two cities at
> > opposite ends of the map named after important leaders, Leningrad and
> > Stalingrad, they might well have prevailed. As it was, the sttack
wound =
up
> > evlving into a traditional symmetrical military conflict of state
agains=
t
> > state and ilitary against military.
>
> > This is quite different from the asymmetrical conflict between the
Unite=
d
> > States and its coalition with their militaries and state-of-the-art
> > technology, and al-Qa'ida's virtually invisible, low-tech, improvised,
> > leaderless, nihilistic, suicidal combatants. They have no state,
> > infrastructure, supply lines, or military to destroy, thus the
quagmire.=
>
> > Regards,
> > Eugene Holman
>
> But back to my earlier sarcasm -- your response to my mention of
> Latvia in 1919 was --
>
> > > > Warfare with amorphous, supranational, rag-tag, leaderless
organizat=
ions
> > > > whose supporters have no regard for human life, not even their
own, =
is
> > > > quite a different prospect than war with states that have
infrastruc=
ures
> > > > to maintain, populations to feed and protect, and a
technologically
> > > > advanced military to concretely project power.
>
> ...and my asking about the Bolsheviks was in order to suggest that the
> intervention in Latvia back then was also an intervention that took
> place in what was basically an arena of chaos. There were three
> governments pretending to legitimacy simultaneously: Stu=C3=A8ka's
Soviet
> Latvia, Niedra's German-backed reactionaries, and Ulmanis' British-
> backed Republic. The Republic did not even possess the slightest patch
> of soil for a time (when Ulmanis' government was confined to the
> steamer Saratov). These weren't the only actors, either -- Bermondt-
> Avalov is most often described as an "adventurer," for example, and
> the Russian prisoners of war who formed part of his force were
> essentially apatrides.
>
> Granted, there are profound differences between what is now Latvia at
> that time and Afghanistan or Iraq (just as the latter two are very
> different from each other) -- there are indeed more differences than
> similarities. But that's not what I'm trying to hint at. What I meant
> to suggest is that looking into the cauldron in 1919 in Latvia, few
> would have said that a viable state would, or could, emerge. There had
> never been a Latvia. The infrastructure had been removed or destroyed.
> The land was devastated. White Terror followed Red Terror. Ethnic
> groups appeared to be implacably at odds. The Reds could be as
> fanatical as al-Qaeda. The rampage of Manteuffel's "Blue Devils" was
> described as akin to a raid upon "savages in Africa." Bermondt's "West
> Russian Volunteer Army" set fire to everything in fleeing.
>
> Also, looking into that cauldron, one could not say where the
> sympathies of the population lay -- not until some semblance of order
> was restored and elections were held in 1920, and certainly not until
> the prospect of being returned to the system that preceded war and
> revolution caused the nation to unite against Bermondt. There were
> hundreds of thousands of refugees. There were leaders switching their
> support or withholding it. There was the tendency of looking at
> ideology through a flawed prism -- as I mentioned elsewhere, some of
> the Germans looked at all of the Latvians who weren't pro-German
> reactionaries as Bolsheviks or "half-Bolsheviks."
>
> The thing is that Britain picked the decent crowd, even at the point
> when it rather obviously did not have much support (Britain extended
> _de facto_ recognition to Ulmanis' provisional government even
> _before_ the proclamation of independence on 18 November 1918).
>
> Part of what I'm playing with is -- imagine it now! The _Guardian_
> would be screaming bloody murder, and your buddy Chomsky would have a
> fit. Just as the German generals looked upon even exceedingly
> conservative gentlemen like Ulmanis as half-Bolsheviks -- so the post-
> leftists I call pseudo-leftists like to see everybody in cahoots with
> the great democracies, esp. Uncle Sam (we already know from Karlamov
> that AmeriKKKa is the most evil country ever to have raped the earth),
> as the running dogs of imperialism.
>
> And the reality that emerged in Latvia in 1920? Free elections with a
> leftist plurality. On the other side, the radical land reform would
> certainly be decried by, say, the _Economist_ today (land reform _has_
> been supported by the US and its allies in the past, esp. when the
> landowners were the enemy... in Latvia back then, I suppose that's
> part of why it flew -- there was not too much sympathy for the Germans
> at the time [NB that the minorities in Parliament took the reform to
> court in The Hague, and lost]).
>
> I know your opinions re Iraq, and now re Afghanistan. Put them aside,
> please, and please don't come back with all of the reasons those
> countries or non-countries are different -- I can list all sorts of
> differences, too, from Islamism to more effective weapons. What I'm
> more interested in is the strange deficit in anything positive or
> constructive you and your ilk seem to suffer from. You keep making
> ridiculous comparisons between the occupation of Iraq and the
> occupation of the Baltics by the USSR, for example. That's simply
> absurd -- the US (and the coalition of the unwilling and coerced or
> whatever) never had any intention of annexing Iraq, or incorporating
> it, or flooding it with colonists, or lynching its nationalists.
>
> I will again remind you that I was opposed to the invasion of Iraq.
> What I can't abide, though, is this endless slipperiness -- the
> pretense that democracy is just another ideology, for example, or the
> excuses made for unutterable bullshit like "sovereign democracy" in
> Russia, which is just another name for the lack of democracy Russian
> style. "Back in those days the 'bad guys' were easy to identify and
> eliminate." Yeah, right. It ain't easy identifying Islamism as bad? It
> ain't easy finding people in Iraq who are committed to decency and
> depend upon the support of the coalition? A commitment was made --
> you'd like to pretend that those we committed to are non-existent or
> puppets, or reduce this debacle to a simple rape, or weasel your way
> to the gods no not where. That's my impression.
>
> My mention of the Americans distributing food here isn't an invention
> -- it's what they did. The liberating Polish-German-Latvian army was
> followed by American humanitarian aid. Personally, I don't plan to
> forget that, just like I don't plan to write off the support of the
> British or the French in liberating the Latvia I live in. The
> Georgians recently made a similar statement re the aid Latvia now
> offers Georgia. I think it's a matter of common decency, in the final
> analysis.
>
> Regards,
> /P
>
> http://lettonica.blogspot.com/
The gods _know_ not where, sorry!
/P
|
