Walter C Uhler » Military History
American Militarism: Part One (Rachel Maddow)
On April 14th my better half and I dined with another couple at Tre Scalini in South Philadelphia before scurrying over to Irvine Auditorium on the University of Pennsylvania campus to listen to Rachel Maddow speak about her book, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power. Ms. Allyson Schwartz, currently a member of the U. S. House of Representatives and a recently announced candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania, gave Ms. Maddow a glowing introduction. So, too, did Philadelphia’s Mayor, Michael Nutter. Although she charmed her audience with wit, humor and a velvety-fisted critique of the many idiocies that pass for policies in the Republican Party these days, one might guess that the people who actually came to hear Ms. Maddow speak about her book were disappointed. After … Read entire article »
Filed under: Book Reviews, Current Events, Military History
Israel’s Bomb, Iran’s Pursuit of the Bomb and U.S. War Preparations (Part 2 of 3)
One person possessing the courage to admit guilt for his role in producing the bomb was Albert Einstein. Some five months before his death in late 1954, Einstein declared: “I made one great mistake in my life, when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made, but there was some justification – the danger that the Germans would make them.” [Karpin, pp. 358-59] Another person, David Ben-Gurion, reached just the opposite conclusion about the bomb. Notwithstanding the role that Zionist settlers played in stirring up Arab hatred in Palestine, in the wake of the Arab attacks on Jews in Jerusalem in August 1929 and the “Arab Revolt” of 1936, Ben-Gurion told friends in Jerusalem, “The danger … Read entire article »
Filed under: Book Reviews, Foreign Policy, History, Iran, Military History
Israel’s Bomb, Iran’s Pursuit of the Bomb and U.S. War Preparations (Part 1 of 3)
Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Harvard University Press, 2005, $29.95 Five Days in August: How World War II Became a Nuclear War, by Michael D. Gordin, Princeton University Press, 2007, $24.95. The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What that Means for the World, by Michael Karpin, Simon & Schuster, 2006, $26.00. Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change, by Scott Ritter, Nation Books, 2006, $25.95. Four years ago today, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell played a major role in persuading a gullible, stupefied and craven American news media and public – but not a cynical world – to support the Bush administration’s illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq. He did so by presenting … Read entire article »
Filed under: Book Reviews, Foreign Policy, History, Iran, Military History
The 60th Anniversary of VE Day, Bush’s Visit to Russia and America’s Hypocrisy about “Spheres of Influence”
As President Bush prepares to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the May 8–9, 1945 surrender of Nazi Germany to American, British and Soviet forces, Americans might well use the occasion to finally acknowledge the preponderant role played by the Soviet Union’s Red Army in ensuring Germany’s defeat. It may have saved Western civilization. As historian Robert Service acknowledges in his recent biography of Joseph Stalin, were it not for the Soviet victory in World War II, “perhaps Germany would permanently have bestridden the back of the European continent.”1 True, Stalin’s overtures to Hitler and the consequent signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop nonaggression pact on 24 August 1939 facilitated Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which … Read entire article »
Filed under: American History, Military History, Russian History
America’s Pursuit of the Ultimate Weapon
Originally published in Defense News “The obsessions of the technological utopians derive equally from the deeply and quaintly American belief that all human problems have engineering solutions, and from the profoundly unAmerican … post-Vietnam search for technological silver bullets that will permit U.S. forces to wage war without suffering – or perhaps even inflicting casualties.” ~MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray, “The Dynamics of Military Revolution” “Every military weapon ever built has instigated another weapon to counter it.” ~Helen Caldicott, “The New Nuclear Danger” Earlier this spring, within the space of four days, the Washington Post and the New York Times printed articles about America’s national missile defense program that spoke volumes about the technological utopianism and recklessness of President George W. Bush’s administration. On April … Read entire article »
Filed under: Bush Administration, Military History
Misreading the Soviet Threat
Originally published in The Journal of Slavic Military Studies (London) Review Of: Noel E. Firth and James H. Noren, Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950-1990, College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1998. Pp.xix + 291, appendices, notes, references, index. $49.95. ISBN 0-89096-805-5 Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Pp.viii + 232, appendix, glossary, bibliog., index. $24.50. ISBN 0-271-01791-0 Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Pp.604, notes, index. $30. ISBN 0-684-81081-6 Frances Fitzgerald, Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Pp.592, glossary, notes, index. $30. … Read entire article »
Filed under: American History, Book Reviews, Military History, Russian History
The Nation: Editor's Picks
- The Case for Hope May 20, 2013 Rebecca Solnit
- The Obamas Need to Help Fix the Fashion Industry: Here's How May 20, 2013 Elizabeth Cline
- Chicago Board of Education Votes This Week Whether to Shut Down 54 Schools May 20, 2013 Allison Kilkenny