Johnny Ramone, Phil Spector, The Ronettes, etc.

I recently had a post up about The Ronettes, with a link to a killer You Tube video of the girls in all their glory. I mentioned in that post that my favorite records back as a teenager were The Ramones’ Rocket to Russia and The Ramones Leave Home — and The Best of the Ronettes.

Michael Blowhard is a huge YouTube junkie, like me, and he kindly linked to the Ronettes post. And as it happens he’s a Ramones fan, too. Today he has a Ramones post with much gabba gabba goodness.

In an off-blog conversation we talked about Phil Spector as a link between the Ramones and the Ronettes, and he asked me if I had loved the Ramones album Phil Spector produced. Michael suggested I post my response which, amounts to a hymn of praise to the greatness of Johnny Ramone — one of my heroes — which, in revised and expanded form, follows:

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Happy Fourth

July 2 – Letter from John Adams to Abigail.

Yesterday the greatest Question was decided, which ever was decided in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men. A Resolution was passed without one dissenting Colony “that these united Colonies, are, and of right ought to be free and independent states, and as such, they have, and of Right ought to have full Power to make War, conclude Peace, establish Commerce, and to do all the other Acts and Things which other States may rightfully do.” . . .

. . . Time must determine. It is the Will of Heaven that the Countries should be sundered forever. It may be the Will of Heaven that America shall suffer Calamities still more wasting and Distresses yet more dreadfull. If this is to be the Case, it will have this good Effect, at least it wil inspire Us with many virtues, which We have not, and correct more Errors, Follies, and Vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonour, and destroy Us.–The Furnace of Affliction produces Refinement, in States as well as Individuals. And the new Government we are assuming, in every Part, will require a Purification from our Vices, and an Augmentation of our Virtues or they will be no Blessings. The People will have unbounded Power. And the People are extreamly addicted to Corruption and Venality, as well as the Great.–I am not without Apprehensions from this quarter. But I must submit all my Hopes and Fears, to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the Faith may be, I firmly believe.

He continues to describe how they came to this conclusion:

Time has been given for the whole People, maturely to consider the great Question of Independence and to ripen their Judgments, dissipate their Fears, and allure their Hopes, by discussing it in News Papers and Pamphletts, by debating it, in Assemblies, Conventions, Committees of Safety and Inspection, in Town and County Meetings, as well as in private Conversations, so that the whole People in every Colony of the 13, have now adopted it, as their own Act.–This will cement the Union, and avoid those Heats and perhaps convulsions which might have been occasioned, by such a Declaration Six months ago.

So, implicit in our nation’s birth was a sense of not only man’s flaws but his virtues. We may be subject to corruption & venality, but we are rational beings that, if given time & a cause, can come to rational conclusions through the open marketplace of ideas. And he concludes:

Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in the Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

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The Most Important Person of the Past 25 Years

Dan from Madison makes a pretty good case for Bill Gates.

I really don’t agree. Let me tell you why.

The air raid sirens were tested on Wednesday at noon in my home town, just like most towns and cities in America during the Cold War. I live in Ohio, but it has always seemed odd that Indiana never adopted Daylight Savings Time. I bet kids from there could tell where the border was just by noting how the wailing would start up over yonder while they still had to wait another 60 minutes.

Although no one has ever praised my intelligence, there have been a few days where I was on the ball. I happened to be around a television in 1969 when a news report explained what a nuclear war was and what the sirens were for. Every Wednesday at noon for months afterwards I’d start sobbing when I’d hear that eerie shriek, convinced that the Russians had launched. Let me tell you, being aware of your own imminent death was a hard thing for a 5-year-old to bear.

As a general rule, US administrations from both sides of the political aisle worked to oppose Communism for five long decades. It is wrong to single out one President and claim that they were the sole reason that the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Even after saying that, I’m going to partially violate my own rule and state that Ronald Reagan deserves a lion’s share of the credit.

I was alarmed at Reagan’s economic policies while he was in office, particularly his policy on increased military spending. It is obvious in retrospect that I was wrong, since there is little doubt that the pressure placed on the U.S.S.R. to match us hastened the dissolution of that state by many years. Before Reagan I had been convinced that the Soviets would still exist and pose a viable threat long after I had died and become forgotten. Now it appears that people in their 20’s have a hard time remembering that once it seemed almost inevitable that the Communists would destroy our civilization in a single afternoon.

Don’t get me wrong, the technological advances spearheaded by people like Bill Gates certainly meant that it was just that much more difficult for Communist Russia to match the US in advanced warfighting capabilities. Devoting your life to administering a huge charitable organization and doing good works is also an achievement that should be praised. But Gates didn’t stare down a nuclear-armed police state and refuse to blink. That took someone with balls as big as churchbells. I really don’t think anyone can claim that Gates has that kind of package.

So tell me true. If lives are on the line, which one of the guys below would you want at your back?

gates.jpgreagan.jpg

(Cross posted at Hell in a Handbasket.)

The Somme: 90

Capt Eric Norman Frankland Bell, killed on July 1, 1916, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for heroism:

When our front line was hung up by enfilading machine gun fire Captain Bell crept forward and shot the machine gunner. Later, on no less than three occasions, when our bombing [grenade] parties, which were clearing the
enemy’s trenches, were unable to advance, he went forward alone and threw Trench Mortar bombs among the enemy. When he had no more bombs available he stood on the parapet, under intense fire, and used a rifle with great coolness and effect on the enemy advancing to counter-attack. Finally he was killed rallying and reorganising infantry parties which had lost their officers.

The 12th Royal Irish Rifles (Central Antrims) were decimated when they went into battle for the first time on July 1, 1916:

German infantry was now filtering in from the flanks and soon the Ulstermen in both battalions were under fire from both sides and their front. The situation was even worse for those fighting grim little actions in the German trenches – they were also in danger of being totally cut off from their only avenue of escape. Nevertheless, the remnants of the Rifles twice re-formed under fire and renewed the attack. Led by the remaining officers they advanced but as the bodies began to cover no-man’s land, all chances of a successful attack melted way.

The men planning the July 1, 1916 attack wanted to take the pressure off of their French allies, who were being bled to death at Verdun. This was a rational strategic aim. The planning, however, was on a scale and of a complexity that they were not yet equipped to handle. Britain’s Army commander, Gen. Douglas Haig, was unable to provide unity of command or proper direction. The preparation for the attack proceeded in an ad hoc and extemporized fashion:

In the weeks before the assault on 1 July 1916 Haig visited all his divisions as was his duty and right. ? He did not pursue to an issue some of the vital and disturbing insights that he gained from these visits. These were that the quality of the infantry’s patrolling was uneven, that some divisions were aware that the pre-battle bombardment was not being effective in destroying the resistance of the enemy to fighting patrols, that some divisional commanders were concerned about the problem of crossing No Man’s Land despite the bombardment and, lastly, that the wide variation in the artillery plans for the actual assault directly reflected the degree of enlightenment of the several divisional commanders on these questions. ?

Some divisions planned a rapid advance with little hard fighting; others prepared to fight their way through the first German defence system. XIII Corps on the right flank and XV Corps next to them were two corps that treated the German defences seriously. They were the only two corps to achieve success. The former reached all its objectives on 1 July.

(From Fire Power: The British Army – Weapons and Theories of War, 1904-1945 by Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham.) Note that the units that prepared properly succeeded. Those that did not, died in droves, like the Irish troops mentioned above. Unfortunately, at this stage, there was not yet a consensus about what constituted proper preparation, and the administrative machinery was not in place to impose consistency, even if there had been.

People derive various “lessons” from the history of the Somme battle, especially its first ghastly day, on which the British suffered 19,240 dead, 35,493 wounded, 2,152 missing and 585 prisoners for a total loss of 57,470. (From Wikipedia.) One is that the officers in command were “donkeys”, incompetents, who blundered in ways that common sense could have prevented. We have been taught to shake our heads in disdain at these dunderheaded officers.

The more modern scholarship tells a more worrisome tale, a tragic tale in which the commanders did about as well as they could have. They were not donkeys, they were not particularly stupid or deluded. They were doing, in most cases, what they believed to be right, and they could usually point to some coherent reason for their thinking. And yet they produced a disaster. Why?

They simply did not yet have the skills and knowledge to conduct war successfully under then-prevailing conditions. The senior officers were in the unenviable position of living at the time of technological revolution in military affairs. Moreover, they were the unhappy recipients of a new assignment from their government after the entente of 1904: Continue being an underfunded, all volunteer, imperial constabularly, but also prepare to fight on the Continent against the massive, well-trained, well-equipped conscript army of Germany. Not surprisingly, they did not do well faced with radical change and an incoherent mission. And their failures cost many thousands of lives

However, a forgotten fact is that the British officers, at all levels, learned from the disaster. Within days, even hours, they were performing better ? those who survived. But don’t take it from me. The German memoir writers demonstrate nothing but fear and respect toward the British, especially their artillery. (See, e.g. Through German Eyes: The British and the Somme 1916 by Christopher Duffy.) The British and Empire forces waxed mightily during the war after the disaster of July 1, 1916. They were constantly learning and improving in skill and training, and introducing novel and deadly weapons. They had become a formidable force by 1918. It was in the main the British Army which ultimately won the war in a remarkable 100 days of aggressive offensives culminating in the Armistice. This was probably the greatest campaign fought by the British and Empire Armies in their history. No one now remembers that 100 days, or virtually no one. Why?

Because of how the war is remembered. Another purported lesson is that the First World War was in general a stupid idea, a waste, a pointless squandering of lives. This view led to a strongly pacifist stance regarding future military actions. But the men who fought in it did not think they were fools who fought for a worthless cause. They believed in the justice of their cause. The British public shared this view for some years after the war, too, believing that Britain had paid an awful price to defeat a great evil. It took a concentrated and persistent propaganda campaign by the intellectual community in Britain to finally get the idea that the sacrifices were wasted to be generally accepted.

The people who actually fought in it were better judges of its meaning. Opposing the German Empire, which destroyed the long Victorian-Edwardian peace of Europe by unprovoked and aggressive war, justified only by power, was a morally just cause. The cost and the methods employed are other questions. But the British were on the morally right side of the war.

What people believe is determined by who writes the history, and what is taught, and what agenda is being served. The entire history of World War I in the English-speaking world has been presented as one continuous First Day on the Somme. It wasn’t. And the men who died in the battle did not die for nothing, but in the service of a worthy cause.

Photos from the Pacific War

I neglected to post this in time for Memorial Day but I think it will still be interesting.

The photos are here.

I know nothing about them beyond what’s written in the brief explanation that appears at the top of the gallery. However, most of the images are self-explanatory.