Marginalizing the Family-Friendly Fringe

The World Congress of Families that we are helping as a cosponsor will meet in May in Poland. It's being called a "fringe" meeting, in the attempt to marginalize (!) the participants and speakers, including an assistant Secretary of State, Ellen Sauerbrey, who has been urged by nineteen members of the European Parliament to reconsider associating with such a fringe, a socially-backward one at that, I conclude.

In short, it's all about abortion "rights," homosexuality, and so on, on the one side, and traditional Judeo-Christian morality on the other.  Christianity vs. EU, really:

Proinsias De Rossa, a member of the European Parliament from Ireland, called Sauerbrey's participation in the forum "a diplomatic faux pas."

"What is being promoted by this congress in Poland is directly contrary to the values which the European Union has been promoting for some time, which is tolerance and diversity and inclusion," he said.

I love his compelling appeal to the long and weighty tradition of the EU, a tradition that has been enlightening the Continent at least for "some time." What about several thousand years of Judeo-Christian "values" that the EU now opposes, values without which European civilization wouldn't have even exist? Never mind that; Poland, and Sauerbrey, won't sit down and shut up. So we hope. I used to think Ireland would hold the line.

Comments

[Bill R]

"So we hope. I used to think Ireland would hold the line."

Good thing we didn't hear from the Swedes!

[Judy Warner]

Ellen Sauerbrey is great. She probably lost the election for governor of Maryland to voter fraud and it was a great loss. She is obviously a very principled person.

[coco]

Proinsias De Rossa is from a far left socialist background with histoical links to Marxiam and the IRA. After he came into respectable politics in Ireland, he didn't spurn the quangos (boondggle) on offer from the EU.

During an abortion debate in Ireland, he famously commented that he'd had an aborted chicken (i.e. an egg) for breakfast that morning.

[Ethan Cordray]

Proinsias is a man's name? How is it pronounced in Gaelic?

[coco]

It's the Irish form of Francis. Pronounced approximately "Prunn-shees".

Though everytime I hear about him, I say just say "Sheesh"!

[coco]

And I think it appropriate enough to draw a connection between the Hiberno-Norman name "De Rossa" and "red".

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>During an abortion debate in Ireland, he famously commented that he'd had an aborted chicken (i.e. an egg) for breakfast that morning.<<<

So, his science is as sound as his politics, eh?

[GL]

>>>During an abortion debate in Ireland, he famously commented that he'd had an aborted chicken (i.e. an egg) for breakfast that morning.<<<

So, his science is as sound as his politics, eh?

Not to mention his morals.

[Kamilla]

A British civil servant friend of mine swears Mr. Aherne's title is properly pronounced "Tea-Shop". Sorry, I can't spell it in Irish.

And pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but isn't fringe the correct description for an EU politician that is genuinely family-friendly and not just social-welfare state faux family-friendly?

Kamilla

[coco]

Yup, De Rossa is a pretty stale egg at this stage. He's gone from being unrepresentative of local politics to unrepresentative of the ordinary people of the EUrocracy. What were the chances?

Kamilla, Prime Minister Bertie (Bartholomew) Ahern's title in Irish is 'Taoiseach' and is unpronounceable using English phonemes. The nearest I might transliterate it is: "Tuh-EE-shech", with the "ch" as in German.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Yup, De Rossa is a pretty stale egg at this stage. He's gone from being unrepresentative of local politics to unrepresentative of the ordinary people of the EUrocracy. What were the chances?<<<

You've got to understand that both the European Parliament and the EU Commission are intentionally unrepresentative of the people they allegedly serve. If they did accurately represent the views of the people, the first thing they would do is dissolve themselves.

Understand that the EU is a project by the European elites for the European elites. It's their own little sandbox. Even its ostensible purpose, to ensure that there would never be another general European war through total integration of Europe into a single political entity, has been superseded by events. All that remains is a highly inefficient and undemocratic oligarchy intent on preserving its own perquisites of office at the expense of ordinary Europeans.

[GB]

I find it ironic that De Rossa wants to promote "tolerance, diversity, and inclusion" but will not tolerate the inclusion of a group that has different values than his own.

This reminds me of an episode a few years ago in the liberal town in Illinois where I used to live. The public school board, in the name of "diversity," told the Boy Scouts that they could not meet in school buildings any more. When did "diversity" change from meaning "openness to many groups and views" to "openness to groups and views that toe the "party line"?

[Judy Warner]

Diversity has come to mean that each group within society must be diverse. That is, it must be open to blacks, Hispanics, gays, lesbians, and the disabled. Probably also Wiccans and Muslims. The Boy Scouts have been attacked for not allowing gay leaders; thus they are not diverse. Christian groups have been kicked off college campuses for not allowing non-Christians to be leaders. We know the fate of all-boy schools and all-male colleges. However, blacks, Hispanics, gays, etc., do not have to let others into their groups. It is a one-way requirement.

Note that the interest is only in diversity *within* groups. When every group consists of males, females, gays, lesbians, young, old, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, smart, dumb, beautiful, ugly, sick, well, etc., there will be no diversity within our society since every group will be similarly diverse.

[GL]

Judy,

You have hit the nail on the head and drove it straight into the wood.

[coco]

Stuart,

It's difficult for me to be unremittingly negative about the European project. It has worked wonders for Ireland; the euro is tremendously convenient; some of the environmental and food standard legislation imposed has been badly needed, whether in Ireland or Eastern Europe.

My view is that it's still all to play for. It is in the process of being hijacked, but witness the rejection of the new constitution by Holland and France.

The inclusion of Poland has made a difference to the religious/secular tug-of-war, which may yet tip the question in favour of common sense and away from the ideological secularisers.

Ultimately, if the people get fed up with it, it will disappear in its present form. The same could be said of the US or any other federation.

[Steve Nicoloso]

Ultimately, if the people get fed up with it, it will disappear in its present form. The same could be said of the US or any other federation.

Well, we tried that in the US... and it was put down by extreme violence. It's hard to imagine it being tried again, especially as the centralizing (aka., "dark side of the") force has only become stronger. Tho' I'd happily fight for my state if she choses to secede, or happily not fight to keep another state in.

[Mairnéalach]

Coco, what is your impression of the link between explicit Marxism and the development of the IRA? I just saw the 2006 film "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" (made by a director with leftist commitments) and it is making me scramble for my history books in order to better understand the movement.

[coco]

The IRA of that period was quite a different and broadly popular idependence movement from the re-founded provisional IRA of vintage ca. 1959.

It's easy to see how the European-wide unrest of the late 1960s which fed into the troubles which began in earnest in NI a few years later coloured the provo movement with a Marxist tinge.

"Barley" covers essentially the same ground as "Michael Collins" of 1997, viz., the break-up of the popular independence movement over the treaty of 1921. The anti-treaty faction, much in the minority at the end of the civil war (1923) eventually morphed into the later terrorist thugs but were not Marxist in that or the subsequent generation.

[Mairnéalach]

Hmm-- based on your assessment, I now get the impression that Loach (the director) has overplayed the main character as a sort of proto-Marxist. I'll have to mull on this a bit. Thanks.

[David Gray]

>The IRA of that period was quite a different and broadly popular idependence movement from the re-founded provisional IRA of vintage ca. 1959.

Provos, per se, weren't around till the split with the Stickies in the late 60s, early 70s roughly. All IRAs were vicious murderers, many became quite respectable as the blood dried. Frank Aiken anyone?

[coco]

Mairnealach, the main character's viewpoint is influenced by a mentor (the guy with a Dublin accent) who is a composite of socialist worker leaders like Larkin. I frankly don't know how much the latter were influenced by Marxism, but I suspect they owed more to the late C19 socialistmovement.

David, it would be unfair to tar all the fighters in the period 1918 to 1921 as vicious murderers. The Black-and-tans (WWI vets) sent over to quell the independence struggle committed terrible atrocities on civilians and even horrified the regular British army CIC. This caused the 1916 rebels to achieve more popular support than the executions of 1916 alone leaders might have. Eventually, the whole populace in Catholic areas had had enough of British government: this justified the appelation "war of independence" to the later period 1919-1921. Would you apply the term 'vicious murderers' to colonists who joined the American struggle in the late 1770s?

[Mairnéalach]

Thanks Coco, that squares with a few other tidbits I've gleaned so far, and helps flesh out my understanding. I used the term "Marxist" too broadly; I should have made the more appropriate distinction between Marxism and socialism, as you properly did--although I admit at root I often find the two hard to distinguish.

[coco]

The socialist viewpoint has a creditable basis in seeking a just social arrangement, however questionable its practicality. Marxism is ideology, pure and simple. I like neither particularly, but the distinction is worth making.

[David Gray]

>David, it would be unfair to tar all the fighters in the period 1918 to 1921 as vicious murderers.

Concur but it would not be unfair to tag the IRA as an organization in that fashion.

[coco]

Are you referring to the provos? To ascribe their actions to the men and women of 1916-1922 would be grotesquely anachronistic.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>To ascribe their actions to the men and women of 1916-1922 would be grotesquely anachronistic.<<<

Although Michael Collins did write the book on urban guerilla warfare.

[coco]

So it's said. And the assassinations carried out under his orders were appalling. However, it should be noted that he was a member of the secret organization, the IRB (B for Brotherhood), whose purpose included subverting other organizations for its own prupose.

This is why the Sinn Fein founded by the great and peace-loving Arthur Griffith came to be considered the architect of the 1916 rising. The Sinn Fein appelation was adopted by provisional Sinn Fein in later times in a way that mirrors the old IRA/provo IRA distinction.

[David Gray]

>Are you referring to the provos? To ascribe their actions to the men and women of 1916-1922 would be grotesquely anachronistic.

Not at all. I'm talking about this:

An Irishman's Diary
By KEVIN MYERS

Most politically aware people in the Republic will agree with the Dictionary of National Biography's description of Frank Aiken: northern leader of the IRA, a founder member of Fianna Fail, later Minister for External Affairs - when Ireland was said to bestride the world like a Colossus - and ultimately Tanaiste under Jack Lynch.

Northern unionists know a rather different figure. That Frank Aitken specialised in shooting ex-soldiers in South Armagh, part of a nationwide campaign which mysteriously has never appeared in nationalist history books about the period. And after loyalists retaliated to IRA violence by murdering Catholics, Aiken embarked upon a policy of counter-counter-terror.

South Armagh

After ambushing and killing a B-Special, Aiken's IRA men sealed off the Altnaveigh area in South Armagh. Protestant-owned houses were set on fire, the menfolk murdered. When one woman, Elizabeth Crozier, said to the man who had just murdered her elderly husband, "I didn't expect that of you, Willie," she was shot in front of her young family. Her last words were to them were, "Keep together and look after the little child."

To ensure the surviving young Croziers understood the message, Aiken's men then destroyed their home with a bomb, before moving to other Protestants nearby. John Heslip and his son Robert were taken out and shot dead. The Gray household was set on fire, and the father of the family, John, murdered. Mrs Lockhart protested when her husband and son were being taken from her. Her son turned to speak to her and he too was shot, dying at his mother's feet.

To choose your loyalty, and you choose your narrative accordingly.

The Protestants of South Armagh know all about Frank Aiken's role in the massacre at Altnaveigh and nothing of his reputation within Fianna Fail as a world statesman. The successful creation of a narrative, and the rigid exclusion of detail which disturbs the smooth flow of that narrative, is one of the vital engines in the formation of identity and the acclamation of heroes.

At this momentous juncture in our history, how capable are we of dismantling the narratives which are the moral underpinning of our mutually intolerant political loyalies? At one level, we can say, very capable. Are not RUC officers being trained in peacekeeping operations at the Garda depot at Templemore? Is not Sir Ronnie Flanagan today being awarded a scroll declaring him a gentleman - a sentiment with which I utterly concur? - by the pupils of St Benildus De La Salle School in Stillorgan, with a £200 cheque for the RUC Benevolent Fund? And, most momentous of all, is not Sinn Fein standing on the doormat of power-sharing government in Northern Ireland?

Allowing other people to move is one thing; moving yourself is quite another. Is it still quite beyond the stomach of Fianna Fail to have any of its senior people at the annual Service of Remembrance at St Patrick's Cathedral, as was yet again the case last Sunday?

Tribal shibboleths

Ben Briscoe was there, of course, but then his Jewishness presumably confers a dispensation from observing the more arcane tribal shibboleths of the Fianna Fail identity. How long would any traditional Fianna Failer who was seen in St Patrick's hobnobbing with the crowd from the British Legion survive in South Kerry or Sligo-Leitrim?

Was fear of such vigilant tribal guardianship the reason why RTE did not broadcast the service live? And was the irony of RTE broadcasting instead that great celebration of British stiff-upper lippery, The Riddle of the Sands, lost on the decision-makers? For the author of that particular tale, Erskine Childers, exemplified the perils of mixing your tribal narratives.

Childers, who had successively been an English patriot, a British war hero, an Irish Free Stater and an Irish Republican, was shot by a Free State firing squad. Having been true to so many tribes, he was accordingly reviled by all.

So: if attending an ecumenical ceremony to commemorate the Irish dead of two world wars is too much for the largely constitutional individuals of Fianna Fail, how much real tribal elasticity exists within paramilitary political life? How far can anyone stray from the narrative tribal core without the elastic either breaking, or snapping us back to the centre? And what do we do in the examination of our history? What kind of text can Sinn Fein, Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, the PUP, et alii agree on to describe their, our, history? And where do the likes of Frank Aiken stand in that text?

Nationalist narrative

And is it important? Yes. Already, just as the murders of Protestants and ex-servicemen were elided from nationalist narrative after 1922 - though the murders of the Catholic McMahon family in Belfast were emblematically cherished as being unique to Irish nationalists - the recruiting sergeants of the Real IRA are busy on the campuses of Ireland, spinning a narrative which tells of Bloody Sunday, Internment Day and Pat Finucane, not Bloody Friday, Whitecross, Donegall Street, Coleraine or The Disappeared. Republican revisonists are already rewriting the fascist IRA war against unionism from 1970 onwards, transforming it into a human rights struggle.

We told lies about violence in the past; and our reward was more violence. Are we capable of telling the truth now? Or will we comfort ourselves yet again with agreeable tribal falsehoods, idly hoeing today the seedbed of conflict tomorrow?

[Ethan Cordray]

>>Would you apply the term 'vicious murderers' to colonists who joined the American struggle in the late 1770s?<<

Only some of them. Not every action was as picturesque as the the old tea party.

Might there be a parallel between the differences between the 1910's and later Northern Irish IRA's, and the Sons of Liberty and the Missouri-Kansas Guerrillas during the American Civil War? Granted, the American example lacks any organizational continuity, but do any more knowledgeable Irish historians wish to weigh in?

[David Gray]

The parallels between the original IRA and its later post civil war manifestations are stronger than the dissimilarities.

[coco]

David, check out the Wikipedia entry on Aiken. Also be aware that journalist Kevin Myers has been accused of one-sided presentations of history. In this case, however, I'm not disputing the facts he presents: those were very nasty times, particularly in the area that subsequently was crossed by the border.

Aiken was not the worst by a long way, on either side. My point is merely that many who fought alongside him in the old IRA were honourable men.

[David Gray]

>Also be aware that journalist Kevin Myers has been accused of one-sided presentations of history.

Myers has a bad rep among IRA sycophants but I've read him for over a decade and find him to be of exceptional integrity.

>In this case, however, I'm not disputing the facts he presents: those were very nasty times, particularly in the area that subsequently was crossed by the border.

Good.

>Aiken was not the worst by a long way, on either side. My point is merely that many who fought alongside him in the old IRA were honourable men.

Didn't argue that there weren't such individuals, just that the organization was as I characterized it.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Would you apply the term 'vicious murderers' to colonists who joined the American struggle in the late 1770s?<<<

Well, the war in the South got pretty nasty, as it was truly a "civil war" in which brother fought brother. Both Patriots and Tories played the terror game, burning farmsteads, killing civilians, hanging prisoners, and driving out families who opposed their side. Two very good books on the southern campaigns of the War for American Independence are "The Road to Guilford Courthouse" by John Buchanan; and "This Destructive War: The British Campaign in the Carolinas, 1780-1782", by John S. Pancake. In parts of the North, such as New Jersey and Long Island, the war was almost as nasty. See David Hackett Fischers' "Washington's Crossing" (much better than McCullough's overrated "1776").

That said, for the most part the war was fought, as Washington desired, as a conventional conflict between regular armies in stand-up battles. Had it been otherwise, America might have won its independence, but we would be a very different (and probably far worse) country.

[coco]

I can only disagree with your last point. The Irish volunteers, Sinn Fein, the IRB and other groups both good, bad and indifferent formed the old IRA, which subsequently formed the nucleus of the regular army of the Irish Free State, as well as short-lived anti-treaty groups. The IRB disbanded itself ca 1924.

The Provos are a different beast. That's why I quibble with your continued description of a single organization.

[coco]

That last post was in response to David's last.

[David Gray]

>The Provos are a different beast. That's why I quibble with your continued description of a single organization.

Well I didn't say that. I said the similarities outweighed the differences. And the Provos didn't exist still they split with the Stickies so in a strict organizational sense there wasn't just one IRA.

[coco]

All IRAs were vicious murderers

This is the statement of yours that I had a problem with. The IRA that I exclude from this blanket statement is the bulk of the old organization that became the regular Irish army.

I have no problem with you excoriating what came later and individual acts of cruelty that were committed on all sides.

[David Gray]

>This is the statement of yours that I had a problem with. The IRA that I exclude from this blanket statement is the bulk of the old organization that became the regular Irish army.

And as a reference to organizations I stand by it. It was not intended to cover every individual who belonged to the IRA.

[coco]

Well, David, can I tar the whole British army with its actions (as regulars, auxiliaries and Black-and-Tans) in 1919-1921 and on Bloody Sunday (which latter event led directly to a vast increase in support for the Provos in the early 70s)?

Let me see, how's it go:

"All British armies are vicious murderers"...?

The old IRA was a national movement engaged in a struggle for independence. I don't defend the morality of starting that struggle or of many strategies followed.

However, I would qualify the above consideration. Stuart's comments about the situation in revolutionary America with regular standing armies don't apply so well to the situation of a small population resisting the global superpower of the time. And from a distance of 13-100 nautical miles rather than across the Atlantic.

By contrast, the Provos have always been unrepresentative even in the minority community of NI. Between the two exists a gulf of some 45 years and vastly different aims and (in general) methods.

I find it offensive that you don't countenance any recognition of the difference.

[David Gray]

>Well, David, can I tar the whole British army with its actions (as regulars, auxiliaries and Black-and-Tans) in 1919-1921 and on Bloody Sunday (which latter event led directly to a vast increase in support for the Provos in the early 70s)?

Not credibly.

>The old IRA was a national movement engaged in a struggle for independence.

Unless such struggles are pursued by open battle they degenerate into murder (and they easily can anyway). Shooting policemen in their beds doesn't really honorable, is it? Shooting WWI vets missing a limb, not noble, eh?

>I find it offensive that you don't countenance any recognition of the difference.

Why on earth would you find it offensive? Now an attempt to defend the IRA as an organization, that might be considered reasonably offensive. I acknowledged there are differences between the Provos (and the INLA, Stickies, etc.) and the old pre-civil war IRA. Just that the similarities are more marked and meaningful. Try Peter Hart's "The I.R.A. and Its Enemies: Violence and Community in Cork, 1916-1923". You might find it helpful.

[David Gray]

A comment on the Hart book:

"I am researching a PhD dissertation on the British security forces in the Irish insurgency of 1920-21, and of the dozens of books and articles I've read on this subject, Peter Hart's _The IRA and its Enemies_ is unquestionably the finest. Hart's research is incredibly thorough: when I was in Dublin last summer, archivists remembered him and spoke admiringly of his industry. His history of County Cork in the revolutionary period combines two approaches: a social history of a single county, of the sort pioneered by his dissertation supervisor, David Fitzpatrick; and microhistories of individuals, families, and incidents that bring this conflict vividly to life. His first chapter is gripping: by describing the string of murders that began with the shooting of a police sergeant, Hart teaches the reader more about the nature of guerrilla warfare in Ireland than other authors have conveyed in entire books. His book has only one weakness--it has much more to say about the IRA than its enemies. Lucky for me: if Hart had decided to cover the British security forces in the same detail as the Republican insurgents, I would have had to find a new dissertation topic.

If you enjoy this book, you may also want to read David Fitzpatrick's _Politics and Irish Life 1913-1921 : Provincial Experiences of War and Revolution_, Michael Farry's _The Aftermath of Revolution : Sligo 1921-23_, and Marie Coleman's forthcoming _County Longford and the Irish Revolution 1910-1923_. Each of these books, like Hart's, examines the impact of the Irish revolution on a single county (Clare, Sligo, and Longford)."

David Leeson

[coco]

Unless such struggles are pursued by open battle

This is ridiculous. Your double standard is flatly illogical.

I don't need a lecture on Cork, which was burned by British armed forces in a deliberate reprisal directed at the civilian population.

Not credibly? Give me a break.

[David Gray]

>This is ridiculous. Your double standard is flatly illogical.

Then give me an example of a "national movement engaged in a struggle for independence" which does not predominantly pursue its campaign by open battle but still conducts itself honorably? Good luck...

[coco]

The regular activity of the old IRA was ambushing armed forces and attacking barracks. This is, to my mind, credibly pursuing a war of idependence (as mandated by the Dail of 1919) in the circumstances.

Tell me, David, if you had found yourself in the position of an average citizen of the 26 counties in 1919 or later and felt impelled to engage in this unequal battle, how would you have conducted yourself 'honourably'?

Good luck...

[David Gray]

>The regular activity of the old IRA was ambushing armed forces and attacking barracks. This is, to my mind, credibly pursuing a war of idependence (as mandated by the Dail of 1919) in the circumstances.

Myths die hard...

>Tell me, David, if you had found yourself in the position of an average citizen of the 26 counties in 1919 or later and felt impelled to engage in this unequal battle, how would you have conducted yourself 'honourably'?

I wouldn't have felt compelled to be a rebel.

[David Gray]

>Tell me, David, if you had found yourself in the position of an average citizen of the 26 counties in 1919 or later and felt impelled to engage in this unequal battle, how would you have conducted yourself 'honourably'?

BTW that sounds a lot like "murder is okay if you really need to". Please say it isn't so.

[coco]

No more than I'd say that of two sides engaged in a war, one side may credibly be described as 'all vicious murderers' and the other may credibly be described as occupying by such a divine right that resisting becomes the act of a 'rebel'.

Good job you weren't calling the shots in 1776, eh? Unless you favour a return of monarchical rule to the colonies...

Please don't accuse me of justifying murder. It's personally offensive in the way that your blithe dismissal of not-so-subtle historical nuances wasn't. The latter was just offensively ignorant.

[David Gray]

>No more than I'd say that of two sides engaged in a war, one side may credibly be described as 'all vicious murderers'

Didn't say that. Said specifically the opposite.

>and the other may credibly be described as occupying by such a divine right that resisting becomes the act of a 'rebel'.

So now the IRA was not in rebellion?

>Good job you weren't calling the shots in 1776, eh?

Of course that would be an example of how a movement might "pursue its campaign by open battle." Although as pointed out earlier even there things were done which clearly were wrong.

>Please don't accuse me of justifying murder.

I didn't. I did ask you to explain your statement that "if you had found yourself in the position of an average citizen of the 26 counties in 1919 or later and felt impelled to engage in this unequal battle, how would you have conducted yourself 'honourably'" could be read in a way which didn't justify murder. I wished you would do so. I still do.

[coco]

David, it was a question. You didn't reply. Did you understand the question? It was about appropriate modalities of conducting war.

Discussing appropriate modalities of conducting war (where one may presume that there are reasons for so doing) does not imply that killing or war is a good thing, let alone murder.

You'll have to quote for me where you said specifically the opposite of the statement of yours that one party to the Irish war of independence (viz. the IRA) was not included in your blanket statement "all IRAs were vicious murderers".

In what sense is ambusing columns of soldiers and attacking barracks not the pursuit of a campaign by open battle?

What exactly justifies the description of the IRA campaign of 1919-1921 as 'rebellion'? They were mandated by an elected (virtually) national parliament. Think "Congress"...

You seem to be applying that double standard once again. (Recall the previous instance was where the cruelties of one party to war deserve to be reprobated, but the cruelties of the other do not. Not even "credibly", forsooth!)

[coco]

That "was not" in my last post should read "was".

[coco]

David, was the uprising of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto a 'rebellion' against the Nazis?

What's your means for drawing this distinction?

[David Gray]

>David, it was a question. You didn't reply. Did you understand the question? It was about appropriate modalities of conducting war.

I did answer. I would not have considered a resort to arms to be justified so I would not have pursued such a campaign. If the only way I could pursue a campaign was to pursue it as the IRA did I would not pursue it. I hope I fear God more than tyranny.

>("coco") The IRA of that period was quite a different and broadly popular idependence movement from the re-founded provisional IRA of vintage ca. 1959.

>(Gray) All IRAs were vicious murderers

>("coco") The Provos are a different beast. That's why I quibble with your continued description of a single organization.

>(Gray) Well I didn't say that. I said the similarities outweighed the differences. And the Provos didn't exist still they split with the Stickies so in a strict organizational sense there wasn't just one IRA.

>("coco") This is the statement of yours that I had a problem with. (referring to Gray, "All IRAs were vicious murderers") The IRA that I exclude from this blanket statement is the bulk of the old organization that became the regular Irish army.

>(Gray) And as a reference to organizations I stand by it. It was not intended to cover every individual who belonged to the IRA.

>("coco") No more than I'd say that of two sides engaged in a war, one side may credibly be described as 'all vicious murderers'

>(Gray) Didn't say that. Said specifically the opposite.

>("coco") You'll have to quote for me where you said specifically the opposite of the statement of yours that one party to the Irish war of independence (viz. the IRA) was not included in your blanket statement "all IRAs were vicious murderers".

Actually what I specifically said was that I stood by the quote as referring to the organizations. "It was not intended to cover every individual who belonged to the IRA."

>In what sense is ambusing columns of soldiers and attacking barracks not the pursuit of a campaign by open battle?

That was not the primary means by which the IRA pursued their campaign. That was a sideshow as scholars have shown. But as noted above the myth lives on...

[David Gray]

>David, was the uprising of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto a 'rebellion' against the Nazis?

Just to be clear, are you comparing Ireland under Westminster to the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw during the Final Solution?

[coco]

You didn't reply. You evaded the question. Now try replying to the question as posed.

You keep on referring to 'one' IRA. Then you consider the cruelties perpetrated by some members of the old IRA (which you persist in lumping together with the Provos) largely without sanction of the authorities they recognised as tarring the whole organization, yet you deny that the cruelties committed by the British army (acting with a free hand) equally tarnishes its reputation.

The Nazi comparison I posed is of course relative. Denial of liberty is not the same as denial of life. Yet to describe the struggle against illegitimate occupation as rebellion is to deny it legitimacy in an unwarranted fashion. This does not constitute an argument in favour of methods employed in the struggle.

[Ethan Cordray]

>>Unless such struggles are pursued by open battle they degenerate into murder (and they easily can anyway). Shooting policemen in their beds doesn't really honorable, is it? Shooting WWI vets missing a limb, not noble, eh?<<

This Missouri boy concurs whole-heartedly. Just compare the eastern theater of the Civil War with the fighting in my own state.

And may I add my theory of thread hijacking: a thread is most likely to be hijacked when all potential posters agree with the original post and feel that it is complete enough that they have nothing to add. So it's really a sign of respect! :-)

[coco]

BTW, David, would the victims of old IRA cruelty merit inclusion in an updated Foxe's Book of Martyrs?

After all, they were largely Protestant. This seems to be the reason you single out the murderers of these particular victims for special reprobation.

One single reference from you acknowledging any cruelty on the part of the British army would explode this facetious thesis of mine :)

[Peter Gardner]

I must say, this thread is one of the best arguments for pacifism I've ever seen.

[David Gray]

>You didn't reply. You evaded the question. Now try replying to the question as posed.

I did. Read.

>You keep on referring to 'one' IRA.

No. Read. Such as ("I said the similarities outweighed the differences. And the Provos didn't exist still they split with the Stickies so in a strict organizational sense there wasn't just one IRA.")

>Then you consider the cruelties perpetrated by some members of the old IRA (which you persist in lumping together with the Provos)

I don't lump them in with the Provos, Stickies, INLA or anyone else.

> largely without sanction of the authorities they recognised as tarring the whole organization,

Yet people who committed open murder were glorified later with high government office.

>yet you deny that the cruelties committed by the British army (acting with a free hand) equally tarnishes its reputation.

Well the IRA (early version) is noted for only for the one struggle. How it conducted itself is in that struggle is all there is to say. The British army has hundreds of years of history so there is a great deal more to say than just any acts conducted during the struggle against IRA terror. They also get credit for their conduct resisting Hitler for example. So the tarnish is not equal. It doesn't mean there isn't any tarnish but it is not comparable when viewed in context.

>The Nazi comparison I posed is of course relative.

More than that.

>Denial of liberty is not the same as denial of life.

True but as there was liberty in Ireland prior to the Easter Rising that is a bizarre statement to make. Candidates could stand for Westminster to pursue independence such as Parnell and Redmond. And there is every reason for informed people to think that had that struggle persisted that it would have reached fruition. Without the murder.

>Yet to describe the struggle against illegitimate occupation as rebellion is to deny it legitimacy in an unwarranted fashion.

Of course they considered themselves rebels, they just thought it a good thing. And the "occupation" was of long standing and certainly didn't warrant the response given by the IRA.

>This does not constitute an argument in favour of methods employed in the struggle.

This is fleeing your own reasoning. If the only way you can pursue the struggle is by illegitimate means then you ought not pursue the struggle.

Given that you've acknowledged vast dissimilarities between the Warsaw Ghetto and shooting policemen in front of their wives let me address that. The Ghetto uprising was a direct response to Nazi attempts at murder. And it was open battle. Fighting because someone wishes to exterminate you is not even vaguely comparable to fighting because you weren't able to win a vote at Westminster this year.

[David Gray]

>One single reference from you acknowledging any cruelty on the part of the British army would explode this facetious thesis of mine :)

See my discussion above on the relative tarnishing of the British Army and the IRA.

[David Gray]

>BTW, David, would the victims of old IRA cruelty merit inclusion in an updated Foxe's Book of Martyrs?

That is unworthy of you.

[coco]

David,

Sideshow

How many scholars, besides the book review you quoted which pointed out the book's lack of balance with respect to British atrocities?

Ever heard of Tom Barry? Check him out on wikipedia before you mention sideshows again.

[coco]

David,

it's not entirely unworthy to make refernce to religiously-conditioned viewpoints. Catholics were under extreme disabilities at Westminster for a very long time.

You made a blanket statement that could not even in simple logic be agreed with.

I'm glad you made some oblique reference to injustice in other parties. That is more logical, because it isn't a blanket condemnation.

[David Gray]

>How many scholars, besides the book review you quoted which pointed out the book's lack of balance with respect to British atrocities?

Actually that isn't what the review said. And anybody who uses Wikipedia as their reference isn't being very serious. Of course I've heard of Tom Barry. Absolutely a sideshow. If the IRA had relied on conventional campaigning they'd have lost. And if they'd not come to terms they'd have lost.

[coco]

David, I'm recommending Wikipedia specifically to you. It provides a quick summary adequately digestible by one who makes blanket, self-contradictory statements.

How about that list of sideshow-thesis scholars?

[Stuart Koehl]

Hey, guys. It's Ireland. Nobody has a monopoly on atrocities. You're starting to make the Serbs and Croatians look civilized.

[Michael]

>>You're starting to make the Serbs and Croatians look civilized.<<

Whatever do we mean by civilized? I recall a certain empire, the "peak" of Western civilization, I learned about in history class. Something about feeding Christians to lions and crucifying a few thousand slaves along the side of the Appian Way...

[David Gray]

>How about that list of sideshow-thesis scholars?

Given how you dismiss what you've been given thus far I'm not sure that it would be worth the time to sort through the materials I'd compiled.

[David Gray]

As a comment on the conventional capabilities of the IRA I would give you Michael Collins' assessment when arguing whether to sign the treaty or resume hostilities as described by Republican author Tim Pat Coogan:

"Collins had pointed out how few active Volunteers there had been. 'Do you want to send them out to be slaughtered' he asked."

Not a man who has confidence in the ability of the IRA to engage in honest combat as a primary means of achieving an end.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Not a man who has confidence in the ability of the IRA to engage in honest combat as a primary means of achieving an end.<<<

David is absolutely right on that point. Collins won Irish autonomy through his urban terror campaign. But he could not win independence with it, nor could he transition from irregular to regular warfare given the state of the IRA, which is why he accepted the Free State solution--and why he had to die at the hands of his own countrymen. That, and Dev was a turd.

[coco]

Stuart,

Collins did indeed transition from irregular to regular warfare: bu becoming first chief of staff of the regular Irish army of the Irish Free State which was negotiated by the treaty with his former adversaries.

This army was formed from the ranks of the old IRA, which I have wasted much time defending from the charge of being uniformly vicious murderers.

It was a splinter group of those who would not accept the treaty as democratically ratified by the people who were responsible for Collins' death. (Dev's relationship to this group is one of the curious feature of that self-righteous and wily individual. It's fairly clear he didn't wholeheartedly support them though associated with them by rejection of the treaty. And that he genuinely regretted Collin's death).

One last point: I'm frankly amazed by all this talk of 'open combat', honourable standing armies and the like. Did the 25,000 who died in the firestorm-inducing bombing of Dresden constitute an example of victims of 'honourable warfare'? War is nasty, no matter who prosecutes it and by what means.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Collins did indeed transition from irregular to regular warfare: bu becoming first chief of staff of the regular Irish army of the Irish Free State which was negotiated by the treaty with his former adversaries.<<<

That, of course, was AFTER he had beaten the British through irregular warfare using tactics pretty much akin to those used by the Viet Cong, the PLO and even al Qaeda. Collins was revolutionary in more ways than one--he created a new form of warfare, one which has come to dominate war since the second half of the 20th century. After becoming head of the Free State Forces, Collins ironically found himself in combat against former comrades using the very tactics that he himself had developed. Collins then became one of the first sucessful counter-insurgency leaders. But make no mistake: his tactics against the hold-outs were as brutal and ruthless as his tactics against the British. Ruthlessness is inescapable once someone embarks on an insurgency. Ask Mao. Ask Tito.

>>>And that he genuinely regretted Collin's death<<<

Only to the extent that he realized, over time, Collins' reputation would grow, while his would diminish.

>>>One last point: I'm frankly amazed by all this talk of 'open combat', honourable standing armies and the like. Did the 25,000 who died in the firestorm-inducing bombing of Dresden constitute an example of victims of 'honourable warfare'? War is nasty, no matter who prosecutes it and by what means.<<<

I'm glad you agree with me that war is always nasty. And that you take a fairly low figure for the deaths at Dresden (though I think, in view of the chaos reigning in the city at the time of the bombing, that a range of 25-40,000 might be more accurate--though nothing like the 75-100,000 of left-wing agitprop (which is ironic, since the bombing was undertaken at Stalin's behest).

Was the bombing "open combat" between standing armies? At one level, yes and at another no. It is inherent in the nature of modern industrial war between nations-in-arms. In those circumstances, the people who man the factories that make the weapons are as much combatants as the people who wield the weapons. The man who drives the locomotive that pulls the train that delivers the munitions is as much a combatant as the man who puts the shells in the cannon. All thus become legitimate targets of war. Unfortunately, in World War II, aerial bombing by definition was highly inaccurate. Even U.S. daylight bombing could only put 50% of the bombs dropped within two miles of the aimpoint (on a good day). By night, the results were about the same. As one RAF veteran told an American flyer, "We conducted area bombing against area targets. You conducted area bombing against point targets" (i.e, the British aimed at whole cities and hit whole cities; we aimed at individual factories and hit whole cities).

So was bombing "open comat"? At one level it was: the bomber forces were organized, uniformed, and about as "in the open" as one can get. They ran a gauntlet of anti-aircraft artillery and fighter defenses, which were also in the open. The combat that took place between them was furious right to the end of the war, and losses on both sides were heavy. To drop the bombs on the target, the bombers had to penetrate the defenses, which is something of a different proposition from putting a bomb under a culvert, bushwhacking a car on a deserted road, or shooting a man from behind as he walks on the sidewalk with his family.

Granted, dead is dead, whether one is killed by a bomb falling from an aircraft or killed by a terrorist. However, there are different psychological factors involved in each, which change our appraisal of them. Aerial bombardment, indiscriminate as it was, did not deliberately target innocent civilians. They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Terrorism, on the other hand, did and does deliberately target innocent civilians, not for material but for psychological impact. It is war without limits, "Shrecklickeit", to use a German term, and it poses a direct threat to the foundations of an orderly society. When one side or the other resorts to terrorism, scars are inflicted on a society that take far longer to heal (if they ever heal, witness the heat of your discussion with David) than the scars inflicted even by industrial-scale warfare.

That is why both George Washington and Robert E. Lee rejected all proposals to wage "partisan war" (a precursor to Collins' form of insurgency, but still very nasty, as a review of the American Revolution in the south reveals), even when it would give them a significant advantage over the enemy. Washington accepted that partisan warfare might be a necessary evil on a limited scale in areas where the Continental Army could not go, but back in 1776, he explicitly rejected Charles Lee's suggestion that the entire war effort be centered around partisan war against British posts and Tory civilians. Charles Lee, in that regard, saw the War of American Independence in the same light as Collins saw the Irish War of Independence.

Robert E. Lee was seriously urged, on the retreat from Petersburg, to disband the army and rely on partisan war against the Yankee occupiers. One of those who advocated this was his nephew, FitzHugh Lee. Bobby Lee rejected this course, recognizing that, given the Union's preponderance of resources, the only result would be a pointless prolonging of the struggle and infliction of even greater devastation on the South. His forebearance ensured that the United States would one day be a single, reconciled nation, just as Washington's forebearance ensured that the United States would not degenerate into a radical mobocracy.

Today, the threat we face from terrorism isn't really material (unless, of course, terrorists get hold of a nuke or two), but rather the psychological damage their actions inflict on a society. One is faced with living in a situation of utter insecurity (think of the whole country, or large chunks of it, being as dangerous as parts of downtown Detroit or Newark) or living as a nation under seige with the imposition of truly onerous (as opposed to merely stupid and inconvenient) security restrictions. This is why terror has to remain outside the pale, why terrorists cannot be accorded the same rights and privileges as "lawful combatants", and why those who resort to terrorism, regardless of their motives, need to be held in contempt.

[David Gray]

More from the most excellent Kevin Myers in the Irish Independent...

We live in a very strange land where murder and failure are seen as a cause for celebration

Thursday April 12th 2007

I FORBORE to write about the commemorations for the 1916 Rising, not least because you probably know what I'm going to say anyway.

But then I saw how even Irish editions of British tabloids referred to the insurgents as "heroes", and how many newspapers referred to last Sunday's ceremonies as "celebrations": so wearily lifting my spade, I return to the much-dug field of clay yet again.

What is there to celebrate about the cold-blooded slaughter of innocent people in the streets of Dublin?

And who gave the insurgents the right to kill their unarmed fellow Irishmen and women? I have asked these questions many times over the years, and I never get an answer to them, only to other questions which I haven't asked. These questions - such as 'Who gave the British the right to make their empire by force of arms?' or 'Who gave the Ulster Volunteers the right to import weapons?' - are perfectly valid, but they are not answers to my questions.

These remain. I ask them again. I ask them particularly of the Bishop of Meath, Dr Michael Smith, the foremost Episcopal apologist for the murderers of 1916.

Who gave John Connolly of the Irish Citizens' Army the right to murder the unarmed police constable James O'Brien outside Dublin Castle at noon on Easter Monday in 1916?

Who gave Constance Markievitz the right to shoot dead Constable Michael Lahiffe in St Stephen's Green a few minutes later? Who gave some unknown gunman the right to shoot Royal Dublin Fusilier John Humphreys in the back of the head at around the same time, fatally injuring him?

Who gave another gunman the right to shoot dead an unnamed woman outside Jacob's factory, at point-blank range? Who gave Volunteer Garry Holohan the right to very deliberately and very fatally shoot a teenage boy named Playfair during a raid at the Phoenix Park magazine?

These people had risen from their beds that morning, with no notion about the republic or a rising or anything other than getting through the day. Well, that's what they didn't do: but far from referring to the victims when he was speaking about the rising, the Bishop of Meath said last year: "Those who led the rebellion believed in conscience that their planned action was the only way to evoke a hearing. Subsequent developments confirm the validity of this view."

Good. Excellent. So the Irish dead of noon on Easter Monday were made to forfeit their lives simply to enable the organisers of the rebellion "to evoke a hearing".

Just where does it say in Canon Law that human life is sacrosanct, unless Irish republicans want to have a hearing, and then it's really up to individual republicans to decide whom they kill? Never mind that without conscription here, there was more freedom in Ireland than in Britain. Never mind that the electoral laws were the same in both countries. Never mind that, James Connolly aside, not one of the signatories had ever tried to get democratically elected for anything: and he had been roundly defeated in local government elections when he contested the Wood Quay ward.

Of course, those who "celebrate" the rising usually do so around a sanitized narrative, best exemplified in Tim Pat Coogan's dreadful book '1916', which makes no mention of the many early killings by the insurgents, and by name refers just to the shooting of young Playfair - history doesn't allocate him a first name. Coogan doesn't even call it murder - just as one of the "saddest" fatalities. The justification he gives for this evil deed was that the boy was about to raise the "alarm" about the raid. Raise the alarm?

But this was a public insurrection, not a secret one. What "alarm" could he possibly raise, when all over the city armed men were very conspicuously taking over buildings and shooting people?

Needless to say, having almost ignored this wave of murders at the start of the rising, Coogan dedicates page after page to the murders by British soldiers of civilians in the North King Street area at the rising's end.

Yet these final, dreadful killings alone should tell us that there is nothing to celebrate in the Rising. Nothing, absolutely nothing.

It was the start of six lunatic years of civil war: for when Irishmen had finished killing Irishmen and then Britons, it was back to Irishmen killing Irishmen again, before a partitioned, independent Ireland marched into a forty year long cul-de-sac of isolation and poverty.

It was only when we undid the isolationist consequences of the Rising that we began to create a country which could give its children jobs at home rather than one-way tickets on the mailboat to the very land against which the Rising had been fought.

And the Celtic Tiger - an open economy, with free movement of capital, and with the immigration of hundreds of thousands of foreigners - is the very antithesis of what Pearse and Connolly had wanted.

One sought a totalitarian Marxist state, the other a protected Gaelic paradise, in a united Irish republic.

So here is the imbecilic equation of Irish republicanism, like a diseased Irish joke of yesteryear: Murder Failure = Celebration.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>So here is the imbecilic equation of Irish republicanism, like a diseased Irish joke of yesteryear: Murder Failure = Celebration.<<<

When God made the Irish,
He made the Irish mad,
For all their wars are happy,
And all their songs are sad.

[Ethan Cordray]

When I was very young, I asked my father why Irish jigs were so happy-sounding. He told me that the Irish had a sad history, and so they wrote happy music to overcome it. I believe a sad old ballad came on the radio next.

[coco]

David, Stuart,

You won't have seen any effort in what I've written above to defend the 1916 rising (though I did refer to men and women of 1916-1922 to encompass the violent period). For your standing army, look to the Irish volunteers whose leadership refused to participate, though a small minority of rank-and-file did, as a result of IRB infiltration.

When the IRA subsumed the volunteers after 1919, it became a national movement attracting the ordinary decent citizen and mandated by the secessionists they had overwhelmingly voted for in 1918. It is the latter I have been defending (not Collins either).

[James A. Altena]

Particularly enjoyed your long post, Stuart!

And it's intriguing to see David Gray write abouta topic at considerable length, in contrast to his usual aphoristic observations.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Particularly enjoyed your long post, Stuart!<<<

Thank you, James.

I should have mentioned as well the long agonistic tradition of warfare in the Westrn world, which is part of our Greek patrimony. The ancient Greeks viewed war as a contest (agon) which tested the manly virtue (aretas) of the participants. Greek hoplite warfare of the 6th and 5th centuries was hemmed in with all sorts of social and religious inhibitions that tended to escalate the violence of the battle while mitigating the overall effects of war on society.

Though the ancient Greeks were politically fragmented and diverse, socially they were quite homogeneous, particularly when it came to warfare. Sometime in the 7th century BC, the heroic mode of warfare in which gallant warrior-chieftains led their bands against other bands, with individual warriors striving to outdo each other in glorious deeds, was replaced by the phalanx, in which citizen-warriors drawn from the smallholding yeomanry fought shoulder-to-shoulder in serried ranks. The key to the phalanx was solidity and cohesion: as long as all the men stood together, they were collectively safe; as soon as one side broke, the individuals comprising the losing phalanx were individually vulnerable.

This was due to the most distinctive element of the hoplite panoply, the large, round, convex shield (apsis, hoplon). Weighing more than 20 pounds (most of which was supported on the left forearm and shoulder, the hoplon not only protected the left side of the the hoplite's body, but the right side of his neighbor's body as well (consider the line in the Psalm: "I looked to my right hand, there was no one to take care of my life"). Because of its weight, the hoplon precluded flight unless a man tossed it away (hence the admonition of the Spartan woman, "With it [the shield] or on it", meaning "victory or death"). But to do so would render a man absolutely vulnerable to the spears of the enemy, which is why most fatalities occured during pursuits.

Now, because of the weight of hoplite armor and the density of the phalanx, battles could only take place by mutual consent on fairly flat, open fields, which are pretty scarce in mountainous Greece, so battles tended to occur over and over again at the same places. These battles tended to have a semi-ritualized aspect to them: First, the two armies would draw themselves up on opposite sides of the fields. Then the opposing generals would offer sacrifices and check the omens to see if it was a good day to fight. This was essential for the morale of the men, who believed implicitly that the Gods would determine the outcome of the battle. Generals were known to load the dice in the omen department.

Once the omens were favorable, the two sides would approach each other in a close formation some eight ranks deep (though the number could vary, based on the size of the armies and the width of the field). As they advanced they would sing martial songs to bolster their courage and keep pace (flutes were also used for this purpose). At some point, one or both sides would raise their battle cry, the "paean", which had the dual purpose of elevating one's morale and intimidating the enemy. In the last few dozen meters, both sides might break into a dog-trot, and then there would be a massive collision between the two sides. Men in the front ranks would thrust overhand at their opposite numbers, aimng for the vulnerable face and neck, while men in the second rank would thrust underhand, seeking the groin and thighs. Since most of the soldier was protected either by armor or the shield, few men would fall at this point, but those who did would be trampled underfoot or dispatched with the butt spike (known as the "lizard sticker") of the spear. Soon the battle would develop into a lethal version of a rugby scrum, shield pressing on shield, with the men in the rear ranks adding their weight by pushing on the backs of the men in front of them. For the men in the front ranks, it must have been absolutely terrifying. But human physiology being what it is, the situation could not have lasted long. Soon, one side or the other would begin to give way, either because of losses, or because of the superior weight of the opposing phalanx. Interestingly, the phalanx seems usually to have given way from the back forward; i.e., the men of the last ranks, who were least at risk, were the first to flee, partly because only they were free to flee. And, since the best men were usually in the first ranks, those in the rear would be less inclined to stand anyway.

Once the opposing phalanx began to run, it would be chased by the victors, but they could not go far, because unlike the losers, they were still encumbered by their shields. The pursuit would be short, but most of the enemy would get away. At this point, the winners would police up the battlefield, strip the enemy dead of their armor, and erect a trophy (monument) to their victory with it. A short while later, representatives of the losers would come to the winners and ask permission to reclaim their dead for proper burial. And since the Greeks all shared a common piety regarding treatment of the dead, this was usually granted (not to do so would be a gross violation of societal norms, something only "barbarians" would do). Reclaiming the dead was a tacit admission of defeat. The losers would go home to nurse their grudge, while the winners would return to hymns of victory and commemoration of their deeds.

This system only worked so long as everybody voluntarily abided by it. There was relatively little use of cavarly until the late 5th century, and little use of light infantry until the half century after that. The choice to rely on the shock of contesting phalanxes as the main, if not sole means of waging war among Greeks remained intact until the Persian wars exposed the pragmatic and inventive Greeks to new forms of warfare. And since the Persians were barbarians, there was no dishonor in using their own methods against them. Except that when Greek took to fighting Greek again in the Pelopennesian Wars, they brought their newly found tactical sophistication with them. Phillip and Alexander of Macedon completed the transition from ritual war to war of annihilation, but certain elements of the agonistic approach remained.

As part of our legacy from the Greeks, we, too, believe that war is a contest that tests the will and the character of the opponents ("War is a contest of character", says Clausewitz), fought between regular armies according to a prescribed set of rules enforced through the law of reciprocity and the threat of retaliation. This was true in the Middle Ages, and right down to the modern era, with an hiaitus in the 16th-17th centuries for the Wars of Religion.

Periodically, contestants in a war will attempt to break out from the rules, but almost invariably fall back into them because of internal and external pressure to conform. Thus, most Western countries conform to the laws of war. Gas warfare, widely used in World War I, caused such revulsion that it was never again used by the West. Prisoners were usually well treated, even by the Nazis, except in the case of Russian and Polish prisoners caught up in Hitler's racialist (and most un-Western) ideology. The Soviet Union, rejecting the Western heritage altogether through its adoption of Marxist ideology, likewise treated prisoners with a most un-Western savagery.

The flip side of this is a total revulsion at those who violate the accepted norms. This would include partisans who fight without uniforms, who rely on ambush and sabotage, and who engage in acts of terrorism. The French encountered this in Spain in the Napoleonic Wars, and reacted with incredible brutality to the admittedly brutal acts of the Spanish Guerrillas. The Prussians in France in 1870-71, were horrified by the "Francs Tireurs", and this in turn led them to commit atrocities in Belgium in World War I (even though most apparent "franc tireurs" were actually Belgian troops separated from their units). The partisan wars in Yugoslavia and Russia were incredibly brutal, too.

For our part, the actions of the Japanese in the Bataan Death March, their repeated use of feigned surrender, and the sheer terror invoked by their indifference to death caused American troops to view the Japanese as sub-human and not to be taken alive (this changed a bit towards the end of the war). This explains why the West can view with considerable sang froid the obliteration of a city through aerial bombardment (as I noted earlier, at one level a "clean" fight between two regular military forces in open combat), while acting with horror and contempt to a terrorist incident that kills a couple of people in a marketplace with a car bomb. It's the context, not the magnitude of the slaughter that matters to us.

This heritage is completely lacking in most non-Western military cultures. For them, the agonistic aspect is lacking, and there is no inherent tendency to accept the verdict of the battlefield, or to limit war to a clash of armies. The enemy's whole society is the target, and if the best way of destroying the target is to ignore armies and attack civilians, that's what they do. It's found in Sun Tzu, and its found Mao Tse Tung. It constitutes a fundamental difference between Western and non-Western warfare, which at its roots reflects fudamentally different notions about the ordering of society and government.

Victor Davis Hanson addressed this in his book, "The Western Way of War". According to Hanson, the Greek polis was an association of smallholding farmers. This was true all over Greece, in almost every city state. These were the people who owned enough land to purchase a hoplite panoply, and these were the men who stood in the ranks of the phalanx. All were roughtly equal, since there were not enough "aristocrats" to field a substantial number of cavalry. Since there was a congruence of values across the entire Greek polity, they tended to view war in the same way. None of them wanted a war that threatened the very existence of a polity, nor did they want an extended war that would take them away from their farms for a long time. Thus, the ritualized nature of classic hoplite war: one polis would invade the farmlands of another, trampling crops and burning the olive trees (both very hard to do, so real damage was minimal). This would be an affront to the honor of the invaded polis, which would then muster its phalanx to challenge the invaders. They would meet at a convenient field, and the war would be settled in an afternoon, with minimal destruction of property or loss of life. Both sides tended to accept the results of the battle, because there would always be another day. But this situation only pertained because everybody refrained from fielding a large cavalry (which could outflank the phalanx and run down fleeing hoplites) and light troops (who could harrass and disorder the phalanx with arrows, javelins and sling stones). The Phalanx reflected a broad-based oligarchic political system (true democracy arose when Athens chose to rely on a navy, and thus had to enfranchise tens of thousands of rowers drawn from the urban proletariat).

In constrast, Eastern states were absolute monarchies, and often religious monarchies at that (i.e., the king was either deified or was the chief priest with direct access to the all-protecting deities). Greek poleis had citizens; Eastern kingdoms had subjects, who were the king's to dispose of as he saw fit. Thus, if he needed to wage war for an extended period, he did so, and the subjects' farms went to hell. If he wanted to wipe a city off the map, so be it--the people and property therein were his, anyway. With human being viewed mainly as objects to be exploited, and armies composed of levies with little stake in the battle other than plunder, small wonder then, that battle was not as central to the Eastern way of war as raiding, ravaging, sieges and depopulation. The Greeks learned about wars of annihilation from the Persians, and being Greeks, raised the art to its most perfect expression. With few exceptions, the West has maintained its military dominance over the East from the third century BC to the present day. The West only loses when its armies are led by hopeless incompetents, or when it loses the will to resist. Invariably, though, it comes back from its defeats, having learned its lessons, and utterly crushes whoever had the impudence to oppose it. Thus, until the last couple of decades, the only real threat to the West came from within the West. Ironically, today the main threat to the West still comes from within the West, but in the form of a moral decay that has rendered a large segment of the West incapable of rousing itself to its own defense.