The North Coast times-eagle., October 01, 2003, Page 15, Image 15

NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , OCTEMBER2003
HOW TO MAKE 1 WHITE FLAG OUT OF 5 U.S. NATIONAL FLAGS
t
The white stripes of 2 U. S. Flags (C & B) can replace the red stripes and the canton of Flag A and
still leave half a white stripe for further use. As every Flag has two sides — obverse and reverse —
2 more Flags are required for the other side, making 5 Flags necessary altogether
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while in their 17 victories they suffered 50,900. In the War of the
Spanish Succession (1701-1714), the total for French casualties
in their victories was 36,700 as against 25,700 in their defeats.
More impressive is a comparison of casualties in the Napoleonic
Wars. Although Napoleon won most of his battles, he paid more
for them as far as casualties are concerned than his enemies,
losing on average twice the number of men than the armies he
defeated.
Once bereft of morality and justice, the victor is vulner­
able to all sorts of calamities like corruption, the disillusionment
of its young generation, a rapid growth of cultural hypocrisy and
so on. Then comes the burden of too many responsibilities. The
victor has to take care of his own country as well as that of his
opponent. If the burden of ruling one country alone is so heavy
as to cause many governments to collapse, the burden of ruling
two countries, one of them shattered after a defeat, is not too
difficult to imagine. The victor has to take care of his opponent's
economic situation, of his police, his army, his industry, his
education, his foreign affairs, his transport, his everything. The
victor can never say, “Sorry, I have troubles of my own." He
is the victor, and victory means responsibility. Victors have no
choice but to rule and govern.This opens a vast range of possi­
bilities and opportunities for the vanquished. Horace proved a
keen sense of observation when he stated that, “when Greece
had been enslaved (by the Romans) she made a slave of her
conqueror and introduced the arts into Latium, which was still
rough.”
The problems of governing a vanquished enemy are
complicated since they depend to a great extent on future
confrontations and on future enemies. “Throughout the history
of war," says Major General J. F. C. Fuller, “it is noticeable how
frequently enemies and friends change sides in rotation. There­
fore, once you have knocked your enemy out, it is wise to set
him on his feet again, because the chances are that you will
need his assistance in the next conflict." As the White Flag
Principle is not designed to assist the victor, we will not go
further into this. We will only point out the difficulties that
confront the victors in dealing with their vanquished enemies.
The most difficult economic, administrative and sociological
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tasks and problems have to be carried out and solved by the
victor under unfavorable conditions, while the vanquished are
free to fend for themselves.
A typical example of how happy life under foreign rule
can be, is shown by the description of Arab life under Crusaders’
occupation in the 12th century by Ibn Jubayr:
“We left Tibnin by a road flanked throughout its length
by Moslems who lived in great prosperity under the Franks —
may Allah preserve us from similar temptation! The conditions
imposed on them are the surrender of half their crops at the time
of harvest and the payment of a poll-tax of 1 dinar 7quirats, as
well as a light tax on fruit trees. The Moslems are masters in
their own dwellings and order their affairs as they think best.
Such is the constitution of the farms and big villages that they
inhabit in the Frankish territory. Many Moslems in their hearts
wish to settle there when they see the condition of their brethren
in districts under Moslem government, for the state of these
latter is the very opposite of comfortable. It is unfortunate for the
Moslems that, in countries governed by their co-religionists, they
have always to complain of the injustices of their rulers, whereas
they have nothing but praise for the conduct of the Franks, on
whose justice they can always rely."
PAGE 15
The balance of corpses was upset once Napoleon
started losing, however. In the battle of Leipzig in 1813, when
Napoleon was routed, he suffered 50,000 casualties as against
75,000 of his opponents, 7,000 against 9,000 in the battle of
Paris (1814) and 4,000 against 7,000 in the battle of Toulouse
(1814).
In the battle of Port Arthur in 1905, which opened
the bloody wars of the 20th century, the victorious Japanese
sustained 71,000 casualties as against the 60,000 of the
Russians. At the battle of Verdun in the First World War,
the Germans launched a “large scale offensive which began
in February 1916 It was marked at first by distinct success,
but ultimately resulted in an Allied victory with huge German
losses" (New American Encyclopedia, 7963).What were these
German losses? The same source, but in another entry, gives
the losses of the German army as 427,000 against 535,000 of
the victorious French. Taking the result of the whole war into
account — not just the result of one isolated battle — we find
that the total losses in the First World War (1914-1918) were
4,779,900 for the Allies (United States, Britain, France and Italy,
plus conscripts from African and Asian colonies), and 2,650,000
for the vanquished Central Powers (Germany and Austria).
Similar results are obtained when we add up losses in
the Second World War. These are approximately 14,500,000 for
the defeated Axis (Germany, Italy and Japan), and 36,236,276
for the victorious Allies (primarily the U.S., Britain and Russia).
It is not difficult to explain why the vanquished suffer
less than the victor. A military disaster may be one of two kinds:
a defeat or a surrender. In the case of surrender there is no
reason for the vanquished to suffer, since soldiers who
surrender are protected by international law and by custom.
Soldiers who flee from the battlefield in defeat also have no
reason to suffer since they are usually faster than the victors
who are pursuing them. Fugitives flee faster because they are
less burdened with equipment. They have no booty; even their
weapons are often thrown away. The pursuers, on the other
hand, have to hold onto their spoils and to their weapons.
These heavy burdens make them slower in pursuit. (There is
a possibility, however, that the vanquished may be utterly liqui­
dated. This happens only in a certain strategical configuration.
If the vanquished do not wish for their troops to be liquidated
they can avoid such configurations.)
Victors not only suffer greater casualties on average
than the vanquished; they are also more deeply humiliated and
degraded. In the 19th century most European generals who were
repeatedly defeated by Napoleon managed to remain politically
and militarily active and were always able to draft new armies
for new wars, but for Napoleon himself, the supreme victor, one
defeat was sufficient to send him to Elba, and another (Waterloo
in 1815) to end his military and political career in Saint Helena.
Generals who lose are often promoted to higher rank. After his
defeat by Frederick the Great in 1757, Prince deSoubise was
promoted Marshal of France. Victorious generals are often
dismissed and degraded, as happened to Belisarius, or in more
recent times, to Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding after the
Battle of Britain, or to General Douglas MacArthur after his
victories in Korea.
A more important question has still to be asked: Is
defeat superior to victory not only in war (which is only one kind
of human conflict) but in conflicts in general? This is a serious
question that was only partly answered in our explanation of the
unparadoxical nature of the term “power of submitting.” How­
ever, the more general aspects of the subject are outside the
scope of this discussion.
Magazine and newspaper cartoonist and columnist, also
writer of travel books, cookbooks and children's books, Shimon
Tzabar was born in 1926 in Tel Aviv, Israel. The White Flag
Principle was taken from his book of the same name.
WAR PROFITS SHOULD BE TAXED
BY ROBERT LANDAUER
Congress did it in World War 1.
And in World War 2.
Again in the Korean War.
Why not now?
The United States is at war in Iraq, in Afghan­
istan e id globally against terrorism. President Bush
confirms the ventures’ seriousness by asking Congress
for an extra $87 billion of military- and reconstruction-
related funding plus $41.3 billion for the Department of
Homeland Security.
Daily counts of our casualties tell us that the
costs are not only economic. The expense will rise
because, the President says, U.S. resolve is firm, and
we won't quit until the job is done.
It is deeply puzzling in this context why the
President asks the nation to sacrifice for the war while
allowing so many to profit unduly from it.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed
precisely this issue in 1940:
“We are engaged in a great national effort to
build up our national defenses to meet any and every
potential attack. ..It is our duty to see that the burden
is equitably distributed according to the ability to pay
so that a few do not gain from the sacrifices of the
many. I therefore recommend to the Congress that the
enactment of a steeply graduated excess-profits tax, to
be applied to all individuals and all corporate organiza­
tions without discrimination."
A long, troubling list of companies, including
the firm that Dick Cheney led before resigning to
become Bush’s Vice Presidential running mate, have
been awarded immense no-bid contracts to perform
war-related services.
The campaign in Iraq is a two-wave offensive,
say some antiwar groups. In their view, first comes the
military, then come the corporations. This opinion is
harsh, but it contains kernels of truth.
So it is valid to ask — as young Americans
are killed and wounded — whether favored businesses
should be able to profit limitlessly from the increased
spending that wars force government to undertake and
the larger debts that taxpayers must support in higher
taxes or in reduced services.
Opponents of controls say, not without merit,
that the chance to earn large profits is a huge motivator
of innovation and entrepreneurship. These have set the
United States apart from military and commercial rivals.
So why ration or dilute the fuel that drives the national
economic engines?
In other U.S. wars, though, a national consensus
developed that it is obscene to profiteer—to prosper
outrageously, scandalously — on the patriotic sacrifice
of others. Cartoonists’ caricatures of this type of corpo­
rate Croesus changed remarkably little in the century
between the Civil War and the Korean War. He was
portrayed as a homburg hatted, boutonniere vested,
gold pocketwatch flaunting, cane waving, cigar chomp­
ing, porcine plutocrat — a self-dealing gouger.
His profits, it was realized, come out of tax­
payer's pockets. In three of our nation's 20th century
wars, Congress and Presidents agreed that the national
emergency did not justify allowing the gougers to pick
and strip the public pocket. (We also had a windfall
profits tax on oil companies during the early 1980s
gasoline shortage.)
Excess profits taxes were enacted. Precedents
in the United States and overseas show that the special
tax could be applied to the profits that greatly exceed a
firm's peacetime earnings or it could be applied to all
profits higher than a politically set earnings rate.
During World War 2, the excess profits tax
raised about 23% of U.S. government revenue; by the
end of World 1, it raised 59% of government revenue.
It is particularly appropriate now — with the
Declaration of Independence Road Show visiting the
Oregon Historical Society in Portland (in September)
— to reflect on a declaration that followed soon after.
The U.S Constitution's Article I, Section 8 states that,
“The Congress shall have Power... To raise and support
Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall
be for a longer Term than two Years."
An excess-profits-tax bill should be introduced
to the House of Representatives and acted on without
delay No war-related contract should be awarded or
extended without provisions indicating that the deal will
be subject to any excess-profits ceilings that Congress
enacts.
This article is reprinted from The Oregonian