Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Still, many thought that globalization made war between the great powers impossible. In 1909, the British journalist Norman Angell wrote an internationally best-selling book, “The Great Illusion,” that argued that financial interdependence and the great growth in credit made war self-defeating, since it would result in financial ruin for both victor and vanquished.
Angell was dead wrong. (Oddly, it didn’t prevent him from winning the 1933 Nobel Peace Prize.) Extensive trade and financial relations did not stop Germany from declaring war on both Britain and Russia, its two largest trading partners, in 1914.
One of the more frustrating things in dealing with General Douglas MacArthur’s World war 2 fighting style was how many ‘will of the wisp’ intelligence, logistical and special forces operations he created and that were buried in post-WW2 classified files in many military services of several nations, located on several different continents. Often times, when you go looking for one of these outfits, something completely different turns up. Such was the case with MacArthur’s High Tech Radar Commandos, Field Units 12 and 14 of Section 22, General Headquarters, South West Pacific Area.
The trail of MacArthur’s Australian Military Force (AMF) Radar Commandos started with the following record from the Fold3 government record digitization service —
“In PT operations, on the 28/29, Alamo Scouts were put ashore on Fuga
Island and natives gave intelligence material abandoned by the
Japanese on Amboengi Idland, in the Little Paternoster Group when they
crossed to the Celebes in native canoes, on 18 July.”
And then a little later on the same page it also stated:
Balikpapan boats landed Australian scouts on Amboengi
Ialand, Little Paternoster Group, site of a reported
radar station. A radio tower was strafed end radio sets
demolished.
So, the Alamo Scout report above resulted in a Balikpapan based American PT-boat (or boats?} arriving at the reported Radar site the next day which Australian scouts photographed, damaged and then called down an 7th Fleet patrol plane air strike on to make sure nothing was salvageable afterwards?
It turns out that first passage from the 7th Fleet War Diary was badly written, splicing two different special forces operations together. As I soon discovered when I checked with the Alamo Scout Historical Foundation.
Places such as Amboengi are in the Little Paternoster Islands (today’s Balabalagan Islands, Indonesia.) are off the southeast curve of Borneo. None of the Alamo Scouts operated in Borneo. Fuga Island was off the northern shore of Luzon where the Alamo Scouts had their last big hostage rescue mission of the war. In July 1945 the Alamo Scouts rescued the President of the Bank of the Philippines and his extended family held hostage there. The banker was a personal friend of General MacArthur.
Ratel (Radar intelligence) No. 5, May 8, 1945 radar coverage map of the Dutch East Indies made with intelligence provided by General MacArthur’s Section 22 Radar ‘Boffins’.
So there my trail went cold. If not the Alamo Scouts, Who are these guys?
The Australian Military Forces (AMF) special forces contingent doing island reconnaissance was large, not well documented by American military records, perhaps not at all, and they operated widely across the South Pacific. They were often deployed using Catalina PBY flying boats, submarines or even by canoe, distances permitting. Having no access to Australian Archives to figure this out, I dropped it.
Last Thursday, I mentioned the administration’s 2012 criticism of Charlie Hedbo’s decision to publish “offensive” cartoons. Comes now presidential spokesman Josh Earnest, defending that administration position and asserting that there will be more such presidential critiques directed toward noncompliant media in the future.
This reminds me of something. Oh, yes…
In the late 1930s, Winston Churchill spoke of the “unendurable..sense of our country falling into the power, into the orbit and influence of Nazi Germany, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure…In a very few years, perhaps in a very few months, we shall be confronted with demands” which “may affect the surrender of territory or the surrender of liberty.” A “policy of submission” would entail “restrictions” upon freedom of speech and the press. “Indeed, I hear it said sometimes now that we cannot allow the Nazi system of dictatorship to be criticized by ordinary, common English politicians.” (excerpt is from The Last Lion: Alone, by William Manchester.)
Churchill’s concern was not just a theoretical one. Following the German takeover of Czechoslovakia, photographs were available showing the plight of Czech Jews, dispossessed by the Nazis and wandering the roads of eastern Europe. Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times, refused to run any of them: it wouldn’t help the victims, he told his staff, and if they were published, Hitler would be offended. (same source as above.)
Obama’s desire to ensure that the media avoids antagonizing jihadis is of a piece with Chamberlain and Dawson’s desire to avoid antagonizing the Nazis.
And I’m reminded of something else Churchill said. In March 1938, he spoke of Britain and its allies descending incontinently, recklessly, the staircase which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad staircase at the beginning, but, after a bit, the carpet ends. A little further on there are only flagstones, and, a little further on still, these break beneath your feet.
The world weighs on my shoulders, but what am I to do?
You sometimes drive me crazy, but I worry about you
I know it makes no difference to what you’re going through
But I see the tip of the iceberg, and I worry about you …
Reading through background material on the UN’s recent request for $16.4 billion in humanitarian aid in 2015, I find that the number of displaced people was already at its highest since World War II at the end of 2013, and has risen by several million since then. Nearly all are somewhere inside or on the perimeter of the Muslim world, with Ukraine the only sizeable exception. My sense, in which I am hardly alone, is that we are reliving the mid-1930s, with aggression unchecked and chaos unmitigated by morally exhausted Western institutions. That “low dishonest decade” ended in global war with a per capita death toll around 1 in 40. A proportional event a few years from now would kill 200 million people.
, by William Manchester.)