As you know, Pete Hegseth summoned the entire upper echelon of our military to D.C. yesterday so he and his, uh, commander in chief, could harangue our defense professionals with, well, rah-rah speeches that absolutely must have been composed specifically so the news media, political pundits and the rest of the sane world could ridicule and mock them. (We are watching a sort of comedic Grand Guignol written, produced and performed by warped, stupid children, an administration consisting of juvenile bad seeds and their dreadful nannies.)
It happens that I’m reading the last chapters of a great history by Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, And Their War. I have found it remarkably thrilling, exciting, revelatory, even sort of profound.
Remarkable, because until recently my attitude toward war was entirely adverse. I once said to my father, re Vietnam, I couldn’t understand how advanced civilizations couldn’t figure out another way of settling conflicts other than killing people and wrecking whole countries. His reaction was silent contempt. Which did not cause me to quail. It’s how I thought and what I believed: War was mankind’s greatest horror, and apparently its most irreparable glitch.
Then why have war and war history become so important to me? I’m not sure. I am sure, though, that war is a reality — an insupportable reality, sure, but horror at it doesn’t deny its perpetual existence. (Not incidentally, the most solemn place I’ve ever visited is the American Cemetery above Omaha Beach in Normandy.)
So the only way I can recognize war’s eternality is to try to understand it, to understand how mankind somehow designated frequent regimented violence and destruction as a way of the world, so much so that apparent gross contradictions like “war colleges” and “war institutes” are serious advanced educational opportunities.
That’s why I’ve been reading war and why I’m enthralled by Commander in Chief, the most powerful pull in which is the fascinating biographies of the title’s “lieutenants,” their personal lives and characters, and then how each managed his division of the war.
I knew some of the names but not others, and I knew little about any of their actions in the war — except for the culmination — but Larrabee’s writing is so vivid, I found myself in the battles with them and their soldiers.
No war movie has ever been as vivid as this book.
The culture of the military has always been alien to me. We had a couple of uniforms in my family during World War II, but never since. I’ve come to realize many families embrace the culture by admiring their members who wear uniforms, by regarding the military as a high profession, as other families like mine value education, law, medicine.
But now I’m awed at those great high commanders, some of whom indeed had graduate degrees in education, law and medicine. In the history of this country, those guys were something else. In our current lexicon, they were superstars.
Look at the photos of our current diverse military leadership, sitting poker-faced in an auditorium, listening to those two rotting idiots. There is no reason for me to think these stoical people wearing all those medals are less formidable, less intelligent, less integrated or less capable of joining us to save America from fascism than were their World War II predecessors.
I certainly hope so but it seems that Congress would need to be shocked repeatedly out of its stupor in order to pave the way, so the military could resist. Sadly if this insipid Congress were shocked close to death they would never rise to the occasion.