Re: [Salon] The day the bombs rained down in Laos

Earlier today, I highlighted passages of these chapters from Daniel Ellsberg’s book “Papers on the War” (attached, see below). Which as apparent from the underlining, I have closely read, a few times over the years, and recommend others read in its entirety! I saved the newly highlighted files, but the new highlights were not saved. But, the chapters should be read in their entirety anyway by those here who are not overly “reading challenged,” as they remain completely relevant to today, on the “American Way of War.” Regardless of which “Phase” we’re in, in the different “theatres of war” of our Perpetual War, with the primary ones being Russia, China, and Iran, as we all know, leaving aside the continuous “Low-Intensity Conflicts” making up U.S. foreign policy in general throughout the world (another case of obtuse Americans deliberately blinding themselves to.)

The other day, I wrote here that Daniel Ellsberg was beyond a “mere” Whistleblower, and antiwar activist, but rose to the level of a “Political Theorist,” in the Hannah Arendt, Sheldon Wolin, and Carl von Clausewitz manner (“Prophet” might be too strong of a descriptor for Ellsberg, but maybe not). (In the case of Clausewitz, he “explained” the phenomena of the psychological nature of war, as “Theorist.”) Wolin wrote most perceptively on “Inverted Totalitarianism,” beginning in 2003 with this article: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/inverted-totalitarianism/, which too is of immense importance to know, as few deliberately obtuse Americans want to recognize.

In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War and calls for “Civil Rights,” Wolin wrote an article, "Political Theory as a Vocation," which is attached. Before one says WTF is he sharing this crap for, I will note that in fact, “Conservatives,” such as Willmoore Kendall, Leo Strauss, Samuel Huntington, Carl Schmitt, all seeing themselves a “Political Theorists” too argued of the need to engage in the vocation of the political theorist. But they should not be compared in any way to Arendt, Wolin, Clausewitz (I’d attached Paret’s description of Clausewitz as “Theorist” the other day) or Ellsberg. But these right-wingers only represent that a “political theorist” is not exclusive of being ideologically biased, as right-wing advocates as the foregoing all were, for example. As Marx argued that “philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways,' . . . 'The point however, is to change it.'” That’s where an understanding of the “political theory,” informing their “weltanschauung,” is absolutely necessary to “distinguish,” so as to "judge,” the theory and the “theorist,” to take notice of “how they want to change it.”

While Wolin used the term “epic theorist,” that isn’t to say they would necessarily want to change the world in an “epic manner,” but only that they see a crisis as a “problem in the world” which needs to be remedied. Which Arendt, Wolin, Ellsberg, and, yes, Clausewitz, all saw as a "war crisis,” the Americans from our aggressions, Clausewitz from the point of view of a citizen and military officer of a country trying to stave off disaster from Napoleonic aggression. The others named here, saw the “crises” as insufficient U.S. military aggression!

But here is a summary of what a Political Theorist was to be engaged in:

"The assumption of the epic theorist has been of a different and contrasting kind. He has been preoccupied with a particular magnitude of problems created by actual events or states of affairs in the world rather than with problems related to deficiencies in theoretical knowledge. To be sure, problems-in-the-world and problems-in-a-theory are often interconnected, but the former has taken precedence among epic theorists and has been determinative of the latter. The shaping experience problematic emerges when political life is experienced either as a threat or as a promise. Most of the important theories were a response to crisis; they have reflected a conviction either that political action might destroy certain civilized values and practices, or that it might be the means for deliverance from evils, such as injustice or oppression. These polarities can be illustrated by the contrasting responses of Burke and Paine to the French Revolution, or of Tocqueville and Marx to the events of 1848. The point is not that theories come in pairs, or that the "same" events can be viewed very differently and equally persuasively; but rather that epic theories issue not from crises in techniques of inquiry, but from crises in the world. In the language of theory, crisis denotes derangement. One form of derangement is the re-sult of forces or conditions beyond control, e.g., the plague which hit Athens during its struggle against Sparta and, according to Thucydides, weakened the vital conventions governing Athenian political life. Other kinds of derangement are closer to what Aristotle called contingent matters, that is, matters about which men can meaningfully deliberate and choose. These kinds of derangements are the result of certain types of "errors" or "mistakes": errors in arrangements, in decisions, and in beliefs (as with the Vietnam War, the continuing threat of nuclear war, with the “polarity” being the right-wing theorists advocated the used of nuclear weapons by the U.S., and the non-right-wing Americans opposed wars which could lead to nuclear annihilation). Obviously the three types are often interrelated and combined: mistaken beliefs may produce faulty arrangements and foolish decisions; an unwise decision, e.g., one which over-extends the resources of a society, may encourage mistaken beliefs, such as the illusion of omnipotence.

. . .

"In a fundamental sense, our world has become as perhaps no previous world has, the product of design, the product of theories about human structures deliberately created rather than historically articulated. But in another sense, the embodiment of theory in the world has resulted in a world impervious to theory. The giant, routinized structures defy fundamental alteration and, at the same time, display an unchallengeable legitimacy, for the rational, scientific, and technological principles on which they are based seem in perfect accord with an age committed to science, rationalism and technology. Above all, it is a world which appears to have rendered epic theory superfluous. Theory, as Hegel had foreseen, must take the form of "explanation." Truly it seems to be the age where Minerva's owl has taken flight.”

That is as it was in 1968, and remains so today. The common “crisis” of each period was U.S. military aggression. Opposed to Daniel Ellsberg’s response to the “crises” of U.S. military aggression, and the prospects of nuclear war, then, and now, was the “Conservative Movement,” which advocated and supported all the U.S. wars then, and now (notwitstanding a narrow disagreement today of “should we attack Russia first, or should we attack China first). Which Ellsberg addresses in many of his writings in explaining how the “China Lobby” of conservatives (the McCartyites clustered on the masthead of National Review as the founding “Conservative Movement’s initial PsyWar platform, as the CIA officers would have seen it themselves, having been engaged in that work for the CIA) ) did so much to demand we get into Vietnam, and to stay there. And accused those, like Ellsberg (and today, Snowden, Assange, Hale, . . . ) who opposed that of “stabbing us in the back,” just like libertarian/conservative favorite H.L. Mencken’s favorite German, Ludendorf, did after WW I, in collaborating with Hitler to bring the Nazi’s to power.