The great, forgotten book Advance to Barbarism: The Development of Total Warfare from Sarajevo to Hiroshima by the British jurist FJP Veale is more than just a critique of the Nuremberg war crimes trials (In which the Allies tried the Germans for crimes that they were not willing to apply to themselves). It’s also an analysis of war tactics, particularly as it pertains to the British decision on May 11, 1940 to begin bombing German civilian targets, a decision which broke 250 years of “civilized warfare” agreements that had been in place in Europe. This passage is particularly striking:

On the 10th May 1940, the Germans launched a great offensive along the whole front int he West from the North Sea to Switzerland. On the 13th May, troops belonging to the army group commanded by General von Kleist, having occupied Sedan on the right bank of the Meuse the previous day, crossed the river in pneumatic boats, stormed the French pill-boxes on the left bank, and by the evening, had established a bridgehead south of Sedan, about four miles deep and about four miles wide. During the night of the 13th the work of repairing the bridge at Gaulier, a mile west of Sedan, building pontoon bridges, was pushed forward in desperate haste in order to reinforce with tanks and artillery the infantry precariously holding the bridgehead. Obviously it was a vital matter for the Allies to prevent this being carried out: a critical situation for both sides had arisen.

Veale notes that an attack on the Gaulier bridge was carried out by British and French bombers throughout the 14th May. 170 bombers attempted to destroy the bridge, but failed. Veale goes on to say that;

We now know that 96 heavy bombers were at this vital moment available to join the attack. While this supreme effort was being made to cut the communications of the German tank spearhead advancing towards the English Channel, these 96 heavy bombers were waiting passively on nearby airfields in preparation for a mass attack on the factories and oil plants in the Ruhr which had been planned to take place on the evening of the following day.
This mass attack, the greatest air raid which had ever taken place down to that time, duly took place.

This terrorist attack failed miserably. 96 heavy bombers were used in an illegal, unethical, and immoral attack on civilian targets, while they could have been used to stop the Wehrmacht from expelling the Allies from Europe through Dunkirk. Veale asks ‘what might have been?’;

One extra load of bombs on the crossing over the Meuse by Sedan-let alone ninety-six loads-might have made all the difference between victory and defeat as General Billotte pointed out at the time. Had the supplies of Guderian’s Panzers been cut off, he would have been brought to a halt from lack of petrol and then forced to surrender when his ammunition was exhausted. The great German offensive in the West upon which Hitler had staked the survival of his regime would have ended with a humiliating disaster. Hitler’s prestige, the product of an unbroken succession of diplomatic successes, would have been ruined. The German General Staff which had undertaken this offensive with many dire forebodings would have compelled his retirement: the National Socialist movement would have collapsed. Britain and France would then have been in position to dictate terms of peace. No doubt these terms would have been a repetition of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, but at least the war would have ended in a peace settlement in which some regard would have been paid to the lofty principles of justice and humanity which the victors professed.
In short the clock would have been put back two decades if the first military campaign launched by Hitler had ended in early and complete disaster.

The attack on civilian targets in Germany continued unanswered by Hitler until 3 months had passed. Unable to negotiate a cease-fire with the British government, Hitler answered their terrorism in kind. The Allies set their cease-fire terms at unprecedented levels-unconditional surrender-which must have been designed to bring about the goal of the total industrial, human, and cultural destruction of all of greater Germany. Indeed when viewed from this perspective, the European side of the Second World War should be viewed as an attempt by both sides, begun by the British, to virtually wipe out the other side’s population-in short, a war not for political conquest, but for genocide.

Reason magazine Senior Editor Brian Doherty discusses his incredible achievement: Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement with Antiwar.com’s Doug Bandow on C-SPAN. A great interview to watch and perhaps even pass around. Doherty’s eloquence in describing libertarian principles as he retells the history of the movement allows for deep explanation in a very accessible way.

Note: The book is not Conservatives Against the Drug War. It is Radicals for Capitalism and that is deliberate. Dig it?

I have met Brian a few times through my dear friend, and his lovely bride, Angela Keaton (and once interviewed him as well), and have always been incredibly impressed. His book, This is Burning Man was a trip and dammit, I’m just in favor of a man who makes sure to work in what a rat-bastard Woodrow Wilson was whenever he gets the chance.

I have Radicals for Capitalism on my desk, but haven’t had the chance to get past chapter 2 yet. It is incredibly engaging, I’m just busy as hell. I promise to have him on the show just as soon as I can.

Read Brian Doherty’s Reason articles here.

I first debunked this pathetic lie 11 months ago (a few days after Bush unveiled it):

While President Bush was threatening Iran on Monday, he blamed the Iraqi Shiites and Iran for the insurgency. According to the AFP, Bush said that:

“Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing Shia militia with the capability to build improvised explosive devices in Iraq.”

I know what you’re thinking: President Bush is so stupid that giant mistakes like this should just be taken with a grain of salt. Even if he’s lashing out at Iran for intervening in the affairs of the Iraqi Shia, surely he’s not blaming the “improvised explosive devices” that are killing American soldiers and Marines in Iraq on the Shia. … Wrong. That’s exactly what he was doing.

“Asked about the linkage to Shiite forces, two US officials who declined to be named pointed to previously reported ties between the government of Iran and radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.”

The first problem is that the next day General Pace said he had no evidence whatsoever to back up the president’s false assertions and Secretary Rumsfeld just dissembled. The second is that the last time al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army was in violent conflict with the US was back in August of 2004 and the roadside bomb was not their tactic, those have been the tool of the home-grown Sunni insurgency which is led by the ex-Ba’athists and the recently under fire foreign fighter jihadist types.

Though al-Sadr has openly threatened war if America were to bomb Iran, he had been known as the leader of the least Iran-loyal faction among the Iraqi Shia, denouncing the federalism in the new constitution, and insisting on Iraqi nationalism regardless of religion and ethnicity. Recently, his political fortunes have been said to be on the rise, and though that may be in conflict with some genius’s plan to spread the war, a leader of the Iraqi insurgency he is not.

Is it possible that Iran is supplying bomb material to the Sunnis, seeing advantage in keeping America bogged down in its fight against the insurgency and forced to allow for expanded Iranian influence in Iraq? Sure, as far as I know, but I’ve seen no evidence of that, and it wasn’t the accusation in this case.

Professor Juan Cole thrashes that lying, tape recording, Judy Miller-wannabe, Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times about this same garbage today:

Over all, only a fourth of US troops had been killed Baghdad (713 or 23.7 percent of about 3000) through the end of 2006. But US troops aren’t fighting Shiites anyplace else– Ninevah, Diyala, Salahuddin–these are all Sunni areas. For a fourth of US troops to be being killed or wounded by Shiite EFPs, all of the Baghdad deaths would have to be at the hands of Shiites!

The US military often does not announce exactly where in Baghdad a GI is killed and so I found it impossible to do a count of Sunni versus Shiite neighborhoods. But we know that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was running interference for the Mahdi Army last fall, and it seems unlikely to me that very many US troops died fighting Shiites in Baghdad. The math of Gordon’s article does not add up at all if this were Shiite uses of Iran-provided EFPs.

So the unnamed sources at the Pentagon are reduced to implying that Iran is giving sophisticated bombs to its sworn enemies and the very groups that are killing its Shiite Iraqi allies every day. Get real!

Moreover, there is no evidence of Iranian intentions to kill US troops. If Iran was giving EFPs to anyone, it was to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr Corps paramilitary, for future use. SCIRI is the main US ally in Iraq aside from the Kurds. I don’t know of US troops killed by Badr, certainly not any time recently.

Do ya’ll think that anyone in congress besides Dr. Paul understands what any of this means? The Democrats’ new head of the House Intelligence Committee doesn’t even know what Hezbollah is or that al-Qaeda is made up of radical Sunnis. Could these idiot so-called “representatives” of ours even assemble a coherent thought on this topic in their tiny little brains? Coherent enough to counter the Cheney regime on the eve of war?

Update: MSNBC reports:

“The U.S. officials said there was no evidence of Iranian-made EFPs having fallen into the hands of Sunni insurgents who operate mainly in Anbar province in the west of Iraq, Baghdad and regions surrounding the capital.”

Okay, Iran is supplying bombs to who then? Not, they admit, to America’s enemies in Iraq – the “Sunni Insurgency” – but,

to what the military officials termed “rogue elements” of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He is a key backer of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The U.S. officials glossed over armaments having reached the other major Shiite militia organization, the Badr Brigade. It is the military wing of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political organization, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leaders also have close ties to the U.S.

So: Iran is arming the AMERICAN-BACKED SHI’ITE GOVERNMENT.

S0-F%#*ing-what?!

And how do we even know this much is true?

“‘We know more than we can show,’ said one of the senior officials, when pressed for tangible evidence that the EFPs were made in Iran.”

We have to trust them because they have secret information we don’t know about.