The Imitation Game

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5CjKEFb-sM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra

I would recommend it (of course it was an indep. film), and it was a new angle on the WWII unsung hero story (how nerds/misfits helped win the war in a big way, and struggled with skeptics/haters and big moral decisions).

Reflecting on WWI-WWII, I think it was one of the greatest tragedies in modern history that the Western powers allowed GER to fall into extremism and aggression. Like Russia's revolutions and purges were of course a terrible waste of human capital, but Russia was pretty much a 3rd world country until recently.

For GER, they were world leaders in various scientific and cultural disciplines, and of course had a robust military and industries. Sure they did some bad things during WWI, but they weren't clear "villains", and the punishment imposed on them was unjust - I guess fueled by victor's hubris and other irrationality.

As far as UK-FRA were concerned, they wanted to kick GER down a few notches so they wouldn't ever again be a rival for preeminence in W Eur? But I suppose no one ever considered trying to make GER an ally in order to gain strength and plan for a potential face off with Russia/Bolshevism. Well, WWI and postwar leaders in UK-FRA were not exactly impressive.

Clearly the EU learned that lesson the hard way, but I wonder what history would have been like if the Allies approached post-WWI GER with a Marshall-plan/NATO mentality rather than the typical European to-the-victor-go-the-spoils approach. I know we can't expect those leaders to have implemented ideas ahead of their time, but I'm fairly sure there were some intellectuals who were proposing similar things but getting dismissed. Heck they idealistically made the League of Nations, even though it was terribly flawed.

So you wonder how much better the world would be today if Western powers harnessed GER's potential to advance humanity and modern values, vs. all the resources allocated for WWII activities (and WWII just led to another wasteful military buildup that fortunately didn't escalate). Maybe the same can be said about post-Napoleonic France, but that was still the monarchic period, and leaders were understandably scared of Fr. Revolutionary thinking.   

But all that shows how even advanced nations can so quickly devolve into xenophobia, ultra-nationalism, and barbaric aggression with the proper external/internal pressures and extremist messages from leaders. Trump and white-working-class anger are milder manifestations, and I don't think the US is at risk in the forseable future, but it is a shame any time a world power with so much potential for good strays off the higher path and instead becomes a negative force in the world.

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And re: Alan Turing and Project Ultra, it's very sad but typical that the gov't he worked hard to preserved ended up screwing him and literally killing him (he was outed as gay, and the backward laws/medicine at the time prescribed hormonal therapy with bad side effects - he committed suicide a year after treatment began). And if you're gay and smart, of course you're a commie spy, so life must not have been pleasant for him during the postwar years (esp. since he couldn't tell the world his wartime actions, so no one knew he was a hero).

Imagine all the other great contributions he could have made to society had he not been persecuted to an early death. And in the context of WWII, the conflict is depicted as good vs evil, and tyranny vs freedom. But if you were a woman, black, gay, Jew, or another minority, neither the Axis nor Allies treated you very well. of course the Axis treated those groups worse, but if you were a member of one of those groups, you had to wonder WTF you were fighting for. I guess it's like US blacks during the Civil War too - it's not like they had it so great if the Union won, and Abe Lincoln was probably the most pro-equality president (it took him a while, but he really became a champion) until LBJ and Obama. But they were in a tough position to support the least evil side (but not nec. a good side for them, which unfortunately did not exist).

So a woman who was brilliant at maths but couldn't get a professional job in the UK because of her gender, and a math genius who had to hide his sexuality in the UK, significantly contributed to the Allies defeating the Nazis faster, with potentially millions of lives saved on both sides. That should be a big lesson about what social values we should fight and die to protect, and what harm we cause when we marginalize, exclude, and block our neighbors from reaching their potential (yes I'm looking at you, 2016 GOP).

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Lastly, we know of the WWII folks as the Greatest Generation, and despite their prejudices and ignorance, I really do think they were great in terms of prudence and discipline. As depicted in The Imitation Game, the UK gov't first had to identify a path to victory (partly by cracking the Enigma settings puzzle), then recruit, fund, and trust a team who could deliver in time (a group of "rejects" with unorthodox methods). They had to let them do it their way, and not stifle their creativity with bureaucracy/meddling. Then once the puzzle was solved, they had to keep it a secret and strategically select interventions that had the highest statistical probability to (a) win the war fastest, and (b) not tip off the Nazis that Enigma was cracked. The same can be said of the Manhattan Project, but Ultra was more complicated from a game theory perspective, because there was the element of the German's actions/reactions that they couldn't control but had to predict.

I really don't think Western leaders and armed forces of today could have executed a project so well, and made the tough but correct decisions. You see how our "best and brightest" messed up the War on Terror and the War on Drugs - and that is when we enjoy huge resource advantages. But maybe that is the problem, advantage leads to overconfidence. We drank our own Kool Aid too much re: American exceptionalism. For the UK (and WWII Allies overall), the prospect of losing was very real (and they were losing until 1942), and it forced them to rise to the occasion.

Today, the sad truth is our best and brightest do not go into gov't and public leadership. Both the gov't and the individuals are at fault for this, but the gov't more so (reasons? just watch a session of Congress or a GOP debate). Obama and Bill Clinton are exceptions, but the majority of politicians these days do not have the "right stuff" to even make it as a mediocre middle manager or professional in the private sector. They are seriously worthy of ridicule, not admiration.

I would hope that if/when the next WWII-scale crisis arises, our best minds and leaders will participate (and be allowed to participate in the right roles). But the problem is that many of our modern problems are not acute, but slow bleeds, like climate change, injustice, and terrorism. There isn't a sense of urgency for the Zuckerbergs and Musks of the world to enter public service (not that those guys are natural leaders with great moral compasses, but they are very smart/capable, even if their EQs were borderline autistic in their earlier years as CEO). Or they cling to the unproven libertarian belief that the private sector corporate model is in the best position to solve humanity's biggest problems. I disagree; Zuck couldn't even get India to accept his free internet, so there are obvious limits as to how much good one firm (and its army of lawyers, PR, and marketers) can do.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-criticized-in-india-over-free-limited-internet-1453398493

Are US generals helping or hurting war efforts?

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/01/164096479/ricks-firing-generals-to-fight-better-wars

Ricks' recent book describes how less effective US generals are compromising our military and making our current ugly wars even harder to win. Bad managers are not confined to the private sector and politics - plenty of generals are incompetent, selfish, and foolish. It's nothing new - see WWI or the Napoleonic Wars.

In WWII, it was standard procedure to dismiss generals from command for even small battlefield failures, even if they had a track record of good performance. Maybe that policy was too harsh, but there were plenty of other officers to replace them. And often the relieved officer got a new command elsewhere after serving a short penance. 16 such generals were relieved during the 5 years of WWII. Since Vietnam, only one field general has been relieved for combat ineffectiveness. Theater commanders have been "fired" instead: Westmoreland, Casey, etc. - but those moves were more symbolic, from civilian leaders aware of the public's frustration with those wars. In addition, the average duration of American wars has increased, and with worse strategic outcomes. Apart from the Gulf War I anomaly, now the US is engaged in decade-long quagmires, versus less-formidable enemies than the Axis. There are several reasons for this that Ricks postulates:

WWII was a "traditional" war with a clear, existential threat to the US and our allies, with well-defined military objectives. For the nuclear-age Cold War, combat mostly became small and unconventional (keeping the lid on civil wars, counter-insurgencies, nation building, etc.) - situations that generals did not study and were not prepared for.

The relationship between civilian leaders, military leaders, and soldiers has changed. During WWII, in general the priority was to win the war with as little loss of American life as possible. Therefore there was little tolerance for inept generals who put troops under undue risk. As the military-industrial complex grew into its own "special interest", the military strayed from this and became more general-centric. Now war was more about career development for officers, rather than winning humbly and efficiently. Egotistical generals have always cared about their own glory since the dawn of organized battle, but it descended to new lows since Vietnam. Therefore, top brass were reluctant to fire battlefield commanders as a black mark on the fired officers' careers, and also their own. Civilian leaders were also hesitant to fire even inept military leaders, as that could be construed as an admission that the war was not going well or it was the wrong war to fight. So we "stay the course" with inept leaders. Again, US lives took the back seat to political concerns.

Relations between the White House and Pentagon have changed too. Lincoln and JFK's "team of rivals" concept was very much at play during WWII. FDR and George Marshall probably didn't like each other very much, but showed enough honesty, respect, and patriotism to listen to conflicting opinions when it was best for the nation. Most war failures result from incorrect information, improper assumptions, and other possibly preventable errors of judgment. FDR and Marshall did their best to make sure those mistakes were avoided. This isn't just nostalgia for the Greatest Generation, and the Allies made plenty of goofs during WWII too. But their "HR" system was more sound - contrast it to the Iraq War and Bush's team of yes-men neocons, total liar "expert advisers" like Chalabi, and sycophant generals. Now we go to war based on hunches and ideologies. It's the opposite of the dispassionate, data-driven, risk-averse decisions we should be making.

The decline started around Vietnam, and possibly coincides with the trend of US presidents being less and less likely to have served in the military. The relationship between LBJ and Westmoreland was a joke. The two kept info from each other, tried to avoid disagreements, and only told the other what they wanted to hear. I am not sure how Obama deals with the military today, but seeing how many of his policies are quite Bush-like (and definitely not worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize), I bet he is kowtowing more often than giving tough love - which is his job, his duty, and what the citizens expect of him. Part of this is due to the "cult of the military", where we overly venerate the institution. It's schizophrenic, because on one hand we skimp on veteran's care and don't want a draft, but on the other we have to "support the troops" no matter what, with nearly limitless funding. It's verboten to criticize the military, maybe even at the highest levels of government. Sometime criticism is the highest form of patriotism. Just ask Lincoln and FDR. Look how much of Romney's candidacy is about fellating the military. He wants to grow military spending to 4% GDP AFTER we have wound down two ground wars. Even at the peak of it's power, the British Empire didn't spend that much. Ricks finds this especially shocking from a former CEO who made his fortune cutting costs and giving tough love to struggling companies. We should always support our troops, but we have to stop coddling the generals and the institution if it's not serving the interests of the people.

Also there was the gradual phasing out of the draft. When the 1%'s kids were no longer in harm's way, US soldiers quickly became more expendable. All sorts of waivers were granted for the rich during Vietnam, so really the war was fought by the poor and uneducated. That trend continues today, as the volunteer military tends to attract those without much civilian career prospects. A volunteer army also concentrates war suffering on a minority of the citizenry (the segment of society that is already marginalized), so the rest of us are less inclined to care if the war is going poorly and led by bad generals. Tying into a previous point, the causes we are fighting for after Korea are more murky and controversial. Therefore it's hard to get the whole country behind the war effort and engaged with the daily progress enough to hold under-performing commanders accountable. Most of us can't even name an actual combat general serving in Iraq and Afghanistan now, and have no idea what they're doing. National security secrecy and lack of free press access aren't helping either.

Despite the fact that our current volunteer military is mostly comprised of the lower classes, they are actually some of the most professional and high-performing troops the US has ever had (on average). That is both a blessing and a curse. Like a high-performing department with a bad manager, it masks the incompetence of the manager. Bad generals in Iraq and Afghanistan "get away with" more incompetence because their troops sacrifice and struggle so much to accomplish objectives in spite of their leaders. And since the generals know their troops are quite good, they ask too much out of them. They subject them to more risk and strain instead of thinking harder and devising better strategies. Stop-loss is an obvious example. Lazy command, dereliction of duty, lack of concern for the men under your command.

Some other interesting facts about past wars and dispelling some myths:

- MacArthur may be the only general in human history who was insubordinate to 3 national leaders. And yet he had dreams of the White House. Some believe that we should have let MacArthur "finish off" North Korea when he had the chance (or even fight China), but if he had his way, it would have been a disaster. Just for that, Truman goes down as one of the great C-in-C's of US history. Chinese forces were waiting in ambush at the border to slaughter any Americans who pushed too deep. It would have escalated the war, and Mac wanted authorization to use "about 35" nuclear weapons to destroy China's military capability, and then let the Taiwanese come in for mop-up duty. Of course I don't have to explain what a moronic idea this is, but to humor you: the USSR clearly wouldn't just sit idly by while 2 major Asian communist nations got wiped out. They would have conquered Europe, and we probably couldn't have stopped them because we committed forces to the Pacific. It would have led to WWIII. And I don't think even the Taiwanese would have been comfortable with the task of occupying mainland China. As WWII hero General Bradley said, it was the wrong war at the wrong time with the wrong enemy. Unfortunately we repeated the blunder in Vietnam.

- Patton was actually a mediocre to poor battlefield commander, and obviously a very poor leader in terms of "people skills". But what he was really good at was getting a plodding armored fighting force to cover large distances quickly in pursuit of a retreating enemy, or to relieve a besieged position. So the brilliant foresight and talent management skills of Marshall and Ike knew that Patton wouldn't be really "useful" until the end of the war. They coddled him and tolerated many of his issues until they let him loose in , to do what he was best at.

- Ike was a fairly unproven, junior commander going into WWII, but Marshall picked him to be the combined Allies leader because he was diplomatic, patient, and knew how to work well with others (a rare trait for egotistical generals). Marshall and FDR realized that this was a new chapter of warfare, and the Allies would ultimately beat the Nazis, not just the Americans (and let's be honest, the USSR did most of the heavy lifting anyway).

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A follow-up with Tom Ricks: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201211140900

He had a good point on the sex scandal - for YEARS in Iraq, hundreds or even thousands of people were dying under incompetent generals, but none of them were fired, demoted, or even had to get chewed out by a civilian committee. But a general sends some flirting emails to a floozie socialite (after years of "drought" serving in combat zones in conservative Muslim nations) - HEADLINE NEWS!!!! NATIONAL OUTRAGE!!!! My only criticism of those generals is their HORRIBLE choice in mistresses. At least learn from Charlie Sheen and Tiger.

For the record, Ike had an affair with his female driver during WWII, and he later became president (I think that was Petraeus' ambition too). But that was the pre-Twitter, integrity in journalism era.

I'm not defending the generals' actions, but let's prioritize our criticism.

Israeli collective punishment on the families of "terrorists"

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92398760

"If we have to destroy houses then we must do so, and if we have to stop their social benefits, we must do so." - Ehud Olmert

Earlier this year, a gunman opened fire at a religious school in Israel, killing several. He was an Israeli citizen of Palestinian descent. Recently, a Palestinian Israeli drug addict and construction worker rammed his bulldozer into other vehicles, killing 3 and wounding 30. His mental state and motives were unclear, though of course PM Olmert immediately declared the tragedy a terrorist act. This has prompted calls in the Israeli Parliament for new laws to punish the families of Israeli citizens who commit violent acts of terrorism, by destroying their residence, cancelling benefits like health care and unemployment insurance, etc. They hope it will deter terrorists from striking, if they know that their families will suffer because of their actions. Critics say that this proposal is racist, because they wonder if the punishments will also apply to Jewish Israelis who go on rampages against Arab Israelis or other Jews (and it has happened plenty of times in the Occupied Territories, as well as the Rabin assassination). But that is basically the equivalent of Japanese internment by the US Government during WWII. Collective punishment and guilt by association shouldn't be practiced by civilized societies. Moral arguments aside, this "deterrent" may not even be effective, since Hamas or other organizations would probably compensate the families for their losses at the hands of the Israeli Government, in order to score propaganda points.

Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have major travel restrictions on them, so they have very little ability to harm Israelis, apart from firing pop gun rockets over the security barrier. But when Israel annexed the predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem after the 1967 War (a move deemed illegimitate by the UN, and most everyone else but the US), they granted Israeli legal status to the people there (not sure if they are full citizens). Although they can't vote, those Palestinians can travel freely in Israel and enjoy state benefits as Jewish Israelis do. A fifth of Israel's population is non Jewish Palestinian-Arab, and they are growing at a faster rate than their Jewish compatriots. But now Tel Aviv is wondering whether the "enemy from within" is a security threat to them, especially after the last two highly-publicized attacks (even though the majority of Arab Israelis are law-abiding and some even serve in government). So apart from imprisoning or killing terrorists involved in attacks on Jews, they also seek to punish the terrorist's family.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0721-31.htm

Similar to my previous emails on the issue, is this really about defense, or is it humiliation and revenge? Sadly, this "family punishment" proposal in Israel is eerily similar to NAZI tactics during WWII. Many conquered European nations resisted Nazi occupation, from France to Ukraine. The Nazis knew that the resistance/partisans/terrorists/whatever-you-want-to-call-them were happy to give their lives in battle. But maybe they would think twice if their families would suffer and ancestral villages were razed in retaliation. Maybe the occupied peoples would discourage resistance among their ranks, because they feared Nazi reprisals. But in practice, punishment as counterterrorism failed miserably. Nazi atrocities against locals as payback for resistance only served to outrage previously neutral parties and galvanize resistance. In fact it increased subsequent attacks on Germans, which prompted even more outrageous retaliation, and the cycle of violence continued. In fact, some in the Nazi High Command warned Hitler that this would happen and discouraged the use of collective punishment for resistance, but they were overruled.

Most of us would agree that collective punishment is wrong (don't tell that to Bush, McCain, and even Obama who are calling for more sanctions on Iran and Zimbabwe). Even the "wrathful God" of the Old Testament said he would spare a sinful city if there was but one just person living there. A family can exert only so much control over one of their own, so why should all of them have to pay for the crimes one person committed? Many Palestinians in East Jerusalem kept to themselves and weren't political, but after 1967 they suddenly found themselves living "inside Israel". They never asked for Israeli citizenship, yet never advocated or participated in Israel's destruction either. I am sure that many Arab Israelis disagree with some of the decisions of their government, just as many Americans disagree with Washington. This is what happens (and should happen) in a democracy and free society, and doesn't mean that those people are security threats. Unfortunately, some citizens do abuse their freedoms and lash out in violent ways against their perceived enemies. But why involve the rest of the family? That is petty and barbaric actually. Even the Mafia and other criminals show enough honor to heed the basic rule of gang violence: the families shouldn't be harmed. Did the US destroy Tim McVeigh's home and revoke citizenship/benefits for all his relatives?

As commander of a Nazi einsatzgruppen death squad in occupied Poland, Dr. Werner Best came to believe that the most effective response to terrorism was collective punishment. After the fall of France he went on to draft the Third Reich's counterterrorism policy for countries occupied by Germany. Towns where acts of "passive" resistance such as the cutting of telegraph cables had taken place were placed under curfews, fined and slapped with travel restrictions. "Active" resistance--the killing of a German soldier--would be met by reprisal killings of local civilians... Convinced that collective punishment was failing because it wasn't severe enough, the führer issued a September 1941 order to use "the harshest measures" against civilians in areas where the Resistance was active. Arguing that "only the [collective] death penalty can be a real means of deterrence," Hitler ordered that 50 civilians be executed for each German soldier killed.

- Ted Rall, CommonDreams.org

The 4th Geneva Conventions of 1949: Article 33. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. Pillage is prohibited. Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

"A War Worth Fighting"

http://www.newsweek.com/id/141501?tid=relatedcl

Dear Newsweek,

In the recent article "A War Worth Fighting," I was bothered by Christopher Hitchens' side comment that after the Allies discovered the horrors of the Final Solution, it somehow retroactively justified their carpet-bombing of German cities. I for one still believe in "The Good German", and do question the wisdom and morality of such a policy, where innocent Germans who may have even been opposed to Hitler's wartime leadership were indiscriminately made to suffer, even though they played no active role in the Holocaust apart from voting the Nazis to power in 1933. The Nazis won but only gained 49% of that vote, so clearly there were plenty of Germans who disagreed with Hitler. So in no way could that result be construed as a nationwide endorsement of the secretive Final Solution that was to come a decade later. It is possible that many German civilians were cruel to Jews and other persecuted peoples, but the punishment for bigotry is not murder.

I suppose some Allies felt that the Germans deserved to see their cities burn after the Blitzing of England and atrocities on the Eastern Front. But American journalist Oswald Garrison Villard said, "What was criminal in Coventry, Rotterdam, Warsaw, and London has now become heroic first in Dresden and now in Tokyo." So not only was the hypocritical bombing of German civilians excessive and irrelevant as punishment for the Holocaust, it also made the targeting of population centers during wartime more "acceptable", especially for the US against Imperial Japan (at least 500,000 dead). Horrible barbarism by the Axis and Allies during WWII probably opened the door for future wartime atrocities against civilians during the Cold War, and more recently, in the Balkans and Iraq.

http://japanfocus.org/products/details/2414

Also I thought this Newsweek article on Churchill, Chamberlain, and the political myths of appeasement/confrontation was interesting:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/141502