Mencken, Nietzsche, and the onset of WWI

As a diversion from current events:

The Atlantic has posted an old H. L. Mencken article on its website about Nietzsche and the psyche of the German people that was written in November 1914 during the early days of World War I. It's a fascinating glimpse into how at least some in the US must have viewed a European conflict that many of them were certain their country would never join. Mencken is decidedly bullish on the prospects of the new German Empire of the supermen.

Another attempt to post my thoughts on Vimy

I get the sense that so far I've not really been able to convey what I mean by the posts I've put here expressing my skepticism about the commemorations of the battle of Vimy Ridge.

What I want to do is to sort of separate out the gauzy soft-focussed nationalistic version of Vimy from what I think Nietzsche might call the dismal truth (I think it was Nietzsche who used that phrase).

The soldiers who fought World War I went through hell, I cannot imagine it as much as I read about it. The Canadians (including my great-grandfather) fought under severely incompetent British leadership (Sir Douglas Haig) in conditions that boggle one's mind.

I don't think that is uncontroversial.

What does bother me is this proxy valorization of the cause for which the soldiers fought. It was an imperial-powers clusterfuck. I'm sorry, but that's the best way to put it. There was no common cause for freedom or anything (the British were allied with Czarist Russia). While remembering the losses incurred by Canada in that conflict (some 60 000 dead, many more wounded), we need to be conscious of the danger of uncritically accepting a sort of my country right-or-wrong, war-is-a-force-that-gives-us-meaning mentality.

I can feel that sort of ideology is going to be verbalized in some form by you-know-who tomorrow.

Towards a More Mature View of Vimy

I was pleased to see, amid all the drum-and-trumpet coverage of Vimy, Michael Valpy's article, "Vimy Ridge: The making of a myth" in the Globe today. Valpy points out that if the British of the French had captured Vimy, it would have been a footnote in history. The myth Vimy is that it marked some kind of significant turning point, World War I's Stalingrad if you will.

Interestingly, Valpy does not touch on the stupid, enmeshed reasons why we were there in the first place. At Vimy we scored a point for the British in a European clash of imperial powers. That's all we did. The German Empire was hardly ever a threat to Canada, or even Britain. There is substantial evidence that, right up until the start of hostilities, the German leadership assumed that Britain would remain neutral.

I suppose that none of this takes away from the bravery required of Canadians who carried out British Field Marshal Douglas Haig's tragically stupid orders in France and Belgium. Nonetheless, we must be careful and very clear-eyed when it comes to considering exactly what we are commemorating this weekend.

What we fought for at Vimy

I can't help but think that Stephen Harper is going to use Vimy as a platform to promote his open-ended, ill-defined committment in Afghanistan. One imagines - as J.D.M. Stewart does in the Globe today - that he will try to draw a parallel between Vimy and Kandahar. He'll talk about bringing freedom to people around the world.

How nice.

Let's be clear though about World War I was about. It was the collapse of a system of complex secret alliances that were designed to preserve and expand imperial holdings. Canada sent an expeditionary force to Europe not because we felt strongly about bringing "freedom" to Europe or something, we sent our forces because the British Empire made us. Canada did not have an independent foreign policy until 1931. We were ostensibly there to protect Belgian neutrality, but really, we were there because Britain felt threatened by the German Empire's growing navy.

At least in World War I we knew when it was over, the German government - at the behest of the general staff - sought an armistice. One doubts that the Taliban would ever seek such terms with NATO.