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.
I second Helen’s good wishes. Have a happy Independence Day.
Even so, I should mention that I am still a little sore that you had to go and secede from such a nice German fellow as George III., of all people. I hope you won’t mind when I sulk a bit while you celebrate.
Fortunately, there’s a cure for that. Please excuse me while I withdraw to provide a substantial stimulus to the American bourbon industry in your honor…
In France we visited the town of St. John Pied de Port. This town is right near the Spanish border in Basque country and has long been a trading post and fortified area due to its strategic location. I found more information about this fortress at this site which is run by an individual with interests in fortresses and siege warfare and I recommend that you review this link for more background and an overhead view of the fortified location.
I have not been to many fortresses but based on limited research this seems to be one of the best preserved locations. The citadel is intact (see below) and the city walls exist along with much of the earthworks.
In researching old, on-line, US Army records on the use of flame throwing tanks and napalm bombs by US Army forces in 1945, Luzon, Philippines fighting. I found a 15 March 1945 report by the US Sixth Army Chemical Warfare officer. He stated that some time between 03 Feb thru 03 Mar 1945 — during the bitter urban fighting between American troops and a combination of Japanese naval base troops and three Imperial Japanese Army infantry battalions of the Shimbu Group — Japanese troops attacked troopers of the American 1st Cavalry Division with hand held and 75mm gun fired chemical munitions.
The Japanese crossed the chemical warfare threshold in World War 2.
See:
Report of the Luzon campaign, 9 January 1945 – 30 June 1945 in four Volumes, Volume III.
REPORTS OF GENERAL AND SPECIAL STAFF SECTIONS
Annex No. 2 Annex 5 to Adm 0 17,
Chemical Plan
ANNEX N O. 2
HEADQUARTERS SIXTH ARMY
A. P. O. 442
0800 15 March 1945
Page 93
1. Enemy Chemical warfare Activities.
Catured enemy toxic munitions on Luzon to date consist of tear gas (CN), vomiting gas (DC), and Chlorpicrin (ps). Isolated instances were reported of the use of tear gas and vomiting gas in the form of self projecting gas candles and artillery shells against elements of the 1st Cavalry Division in Manila. Indications are that the employment of these munitions was against the policy of the Imperial Japanese Army as no large scale coordinated attack utilizing available toxic munitions was attempted. The gas was employed by fanatical suicide squads defending the city. The enemy is capable of using blister gas in chemical land mines only. In case of such action. The contaminated areas must be by-passed as no protective clothing will be carried into the operation.
And American military commanders choose not to retaliate…immediately.
But they did plan to retaliate.
The senior officers who planned Operation DETACHMENT, the invasion of Iwo Jima in Feb 45, had agreed to attack the island with gas first.
It was to be struck by a combination of the naval gun bombardment from landing ships LCI(M) mortar gunboats fitted with Chemical Warfare Service 4.2 inch chemical mortars (US naval guns lacked shells with lethal gas filling) and air delivered M47A1 100 lb bombs carrying phosgene and mustard gas.
This gas bombardment was personally vetoed President Roosevelt, who died two months after Iwo Jima.
When I first read about that Roosevelt veto, I had wondered why it was necessary. The USA had a chemical warfare “No-First-Use” policy in WW2. The American military did not initiate what we call “weapon of mass destruction” attacks independent of specific political authorization then, any more than they would today.
What this Sixth Army document means is that President Roosevelt didn’t veto American chemical warfare _first use_ at Iwo Jima by the US military.
He vetoed American Military RETALIATION.
Politics trickles down while tactics trickles up.
That’s especially true of military factions. Take retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor. Macgregor has three claims to fame:
. It made him very popular with the top brass. As popular as a bad rash.Macgregor is a man who speaks his mind and means what he says. He is an unabashed and unapologetic U.S. Army Armor officer. If you don’t know what an unabashed and unapologetic Armor officer looks like, Macgregor spends over an hour in this lecture at Chicago’s own Pritzker Military Library putting the mind of a U.S. Army Armor officer on exhibit. Macgregor’s variant on the Armor worldview is tactical in that his intra-service politics have become “tacticized” and it’s political in that his tactics have become politicized.
In his lecture, Macgregor strongly implies that the counter-insurgency (COIN) warfare waged in Iraq and Afghanistan is a conspiracy by the U.S. Army’s light infantry against his beloved Armor. This is because COIN requires large numbers of “boots on the ground” which means that resources are being diverted from Armor to the light infantry. An unspoken subtext of Macgregor’s implications are that Armor (and its officers) are losing power to those treacherous light infantry officers.
Since the division of power is the essence of politics, this means that the debate between Armor and light infantry is political even though Armor and light infantry are both Army and they are only distinguished from each other light by their tactical roles. Ironically, a tactical distinction has created a political fault line. This makes the formation of strategy, which has to link tactics and politics, much more difficult. If a chosen strategy favors Armor, as Macgregor advocates, or if it favors COIN, as advocated by Macgregor’s chosen arch-nemesis David Petraeus, the formation of strategy is reduced to sweeping up the debris left over after a vicious struggle between competing factions whose living depends on their particular tactical vision being funded. Strategy ends up being shaped by politics from above and tactics from below, leaving it politicized and tacticized but not strategized.
Of course Macgregor’s advocacy can’t be reduced to purely political calculations. Armor, like any human community, has its own narratives and its own culture. If you drink the Kool Aid they serve at the company picnic for long enough, eventually you’ll start to think like the Kool Aid. Culture is shaped by the nature of an organization, its role, and its need for resources. Narratives that attract resources to their organizations tend to thrive. Narratives that don’t tend to wither away. Macgregor, like any American armor advocate dating back to George S. Patton and Dwight D. Eisenhower (Patton led the first American tank corps into battle during World War I while Eisenhower (much to his frustration) led the stateside armor training at Gettysburg, PA), has learned what sells:
Our colleague Zenpundit got a bunch of us in to a pre-release screening of the film Restrepo. Zen reviewed the film here, and I will offer a few thoughts of my own.
First, the cryptic title. It looks like an acronym, but it is in fact the last name of a young soldier killed in Afghanistan, in the fighting which is recounted in the film. His name was Juan S. Restrepo.. His comrades in arms called him “doc.” His name is pronounced with an accent on the second syllable, reh-STREP-po.
The film was made by the noted author Sebastian Junger, and the photographer Tim Hetherington. (Junger wrote a book entitled simply War about his experiences being embedded with the troops, which Zen reviewed here. James McCormick reviewed Junger’s book on CB, here.)