Month: December 2014

US Military Lawyers Should Have Operational Responsibilities

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The US, as a signatory to the major treaties on the laws of war has an obligation to enforce the customary and treaty norms of proper behavior in wartime not only within our own forces but by allied and opposing forces. This is not just a support task but in cases where opposing forces deliberately violate the laws of war, it is an operational responsibility that, when we fail to carry it out, cedes vital military advantage to law breaking enemies and increases the dangers that civilians face within war zones.

It would be interesting to read the operational planning document that lays out how we are supposed to undertake such operations. So far as I can tell, nobody has written such a document. We just don’t view military lawyers as anything other than a support element that helps other units undertake other military operations.

The operations documents are published by the Joint Chiefs, listed in the Joint Electronic Library. Classified planning documents have a link into the non-public JEL+ so the missing document can’t be put down to a problem of state secrets keeping the document out of public view.

Until we reformulate our doctrine and start taking laws of war enforcement as a military operation against enemies that tend to violate these laws en masse, excess casualties will be an inevitability. Most of those casualties will be non-military civilians of whatever country we happen to be fighting in but a significant amount of them will wear US military uniforms.

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limit up

Chicagoboyz take a large cash wheat position in anticipation of price increases.

Theme: Germany’s Descent into Naziism

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The posts in this third “theme” roundup explore different aspects of the question:  How did one of the world’s most advanced and cultured nations descend so rapidly into a state of utter barbarism, which was eventually curable only by the application of apocalyptic violence?

 

Book Review: The Road Back.  This neglected novel by Erich Maria Remarque, best known for All Quiet on the Western Front, is a beautifully-written portrayal of the psychological impact of the First World War.

Western Civilization and the First World War.  Cites some thoughts from Sarah Hoyt on the impact of the war, and excerpts a powerful passage from the Remarque book mentioned above.

An Architect of Hyperinflation.  Central banker Rudolf von Havenstein, “der Geldmarshall,”  although a well-meaning public servant, had much to do with the extreme inflation that proved so socially destructive.

Book Review:  Little Man, What Now?  Hans Fallada’s famous novel follows the experiences of a likeable young couple in late-Weimar Germany.  (see also movie review)

Book Review: Wolf Among Wolves.  Also by Fallada, this is an epic novel with many characters and many subplots, set a little earlier in time than Little Man, during the period of the great inflation.

Anti-Semitism, Medieval and Modern.  Suppose you had historical information from the 1300s showing in which German cities pogroms had occurred…and in which German cities pogroms had not occurred.  Would you think this data would be of any use in predicting the levels of anti-Semitic activity in various localities in the 1920s thru 1940s….almost six hundred years later?

Book Review:  Herman the German.  Gerhard Neumann, who would eventually run GE’s jet engine business, writes about growing up in an assimilated German-Jewish family (more stereotypically Prussian than stereotypically Jewish) during the 1920s and 1930s.

Book Review:  Defying Hitler.   Sebastian Haffner’s important memoir of growing up in Germany between the wars.

Who would be a Nazi?  Writing in 1941, the American author Dorothy Thompson speculates about which of her acquaintances would and wouldn’t “go Nazi” in a “showdown.”  The original post consisted of  links to the Harpers and to a  Chicago Boyz post by Michael Kennedy  with ensuing discussion.

25 Stories About Work – Working In a Maximum Security Prison (Part I)

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I was recently on a plane doodling and thought of some funny / interesting stories from 25+ years of working and traveling. So I decided to write them up as short, random chapters of a non-book with the title of this post. Hope you enjoy them and / or find them interesting. Certainly the value will be at least equal to the marginal cost of the book (zero)…

Joliet Illinois, 1992, at a Maximum Security Prison

When I was an auditor I worked with utilities and governmental entities. These were the least popular clients because they often required a lot of travel and if you left the public accounting firm you generally worked for a client (or a different firm in the same industry) and this would pigeonhole you into working in regulated industries.

When I thought I’d seen the least appealing clients possible, a new low occurred – I was assigned to a maximum security prison. The Joliet Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois. The prison hired an accounting firm to do an audit of their property records and my job was to inventory the physical assets deployed throughout the facility.

The only guards with weapons were in the towers or overlooking the prison walls. Once you were inside the facility the guards had nightsticks but no guns. This was to prevent the prisoners from overpowering the guards and taking their weapons. The prisoners could seize control of the facility at any time and hold the guards hostage but they could not exit the facility because the guards in the towers had rifles and would be able to fire back and would be difficult for the prisoners to overcome.

You entered the facility and went into the armory. From the armory you could take tunnels under the facility and then you could go up into the tower via a ladder. Only within the armory and up the tunnels were the guards armed. This facility was built in the 1860s and it was disgusting in the tunnels underneath with standing water and rats. I would go through the tunnel and yell up and then they would let me into the tower via a ladder and I would climb up a couple stories in my suit with my briefcase. I remember distinctly that the guards seemed somnolent and they had a picture of the warden with a hand drawn mustache and graffiti on it; probably because there was no way he could sneak up there for a “sneak” audit. The guards in the tower always knew that you were coming.

I took an initial tour of the prison with an assistant warden. She was an African-American woman perhaps in her 50s and the predominantly African-American prisoners treated her with great respect. They spoke to her politely and stayed out of our way rather than glaring and intimidating you to move out of their path, which would happen to me later when I walked alone throughout the facility.

The first thing you noticed in the prison was how LOUD it was; everyone was screaming the word “motherf&cker” in about 250 variants. It was a cacophony of yelling and noise and very disconcerting. The prison cells were very small with 2 inmates each; one stood menacingly at the bars and one was usually on a bunk bed (there wasn’t really enough room for both of them to stand). If you walked too closely to the cell they might spit on you; if you walked below the high tiers they might throw urine down on you.

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