Pat Buchanan=92s new book, Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War:
How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, is causing a
stir, which is a good thing. Buchanan argues that both World War I and
World War II were unnecessary wars; that Britain bears at least as
much responsibility for both as Germany; that Winston Churchill was
"the indispensable man" in reducing Britain from a world-encircling
empire to "a cottage by the sea =96 to live out her declining years;"
and that the consequence of the Western civil war that encompassed
both World Wars (I would add the Cold War as well) has been the fall
of the West.
Buchanan is correct on all counts. His book represents a counterattack
in the necessary war, the war to introduce Americans to genuine
history. At present, most Americans know only a comic-book version of
history, one in which Germany deliberately started both World Wars as
part of a drive to conquer the world, a drive stopped when valiant
American armies defeated the German army. And, oh yes, some Brit named
Churchill beat the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Thanks to the
victories of the freedom-loving allies, we now live in the best of all
possible worlds, where everyone can be a "democracy."
Nothing of the comic-book version of history is true, not even the
Battle of Britain bit. Curiously, the key British records from the
Battle of Britain remain classified "secret"; it seems the RAF was on
the ropes. Buchanan goes after the rest of it with spirit and zest,
demoli****ng it utterly. As Colonel House told Woodrow Wilson after
talking extensively with Kaiser Wilhelm in 1915, the Kaiser neither
wanted nor expected war. I have seen the last, desperate telegram he
sent the Tsar, trying to avoid a general European war. He was mocked
for years before the war by many Germans as the "Peace Kaiser" because
in crisis after crisis he backed down. Kaiser Wilhelm knew, as did
Theodore Roosevelt, that a World War would cost the West its world
dominance.
Because World War I was unnecessary, so was World War II, which was
really a resumption of World War I. Buchanan goes further and argues
that had Britain and France not offered a wildly imprudent guarantee
to Poland in the spring of 1939, there would have been no war in the
West. Hitler wanted to fight Stalin, not the Western powers. That too
is true, but Buchanan makes one assumption I am not so sure of, namely
that Germany would have defeated the USSR. As it was, World War II was
fought mostly in the east, and it was the Red Army, not the
comparatively small British and American armies, that defeated the
Wehrmacht. Could Stalin have done it alone? Maybe.
In both World Wars, the U.S. came out a winner because it left most of
the fighting to others. In World War I, Germany was defeated by the
(under international law, illegal) starvation blockade. The French
army bore the brunt of the war in the west. Buchanan=92s debunking of
Churchill is thorough and valuable. Churchill was brilliant, forceful,
imprudent, and often wrong. A howler for war both in 1914 and 1939, he
may not have sought to preside over the dissolution of the British
Empire, but it was his own fault he did so. Prudence, which means
evaluating prospective actions in terms of their probable long-term
effects, is conservatives=92 first political principle, and the debacles
created by Churchill illustrate why. At heart, he was far more Whig
than Tory. Burke would have loathed him.
Buchanan=92s historical revisionism is welcome on several counts. The
neo-cons have elevated an unhistorical Churchill into the patron of
interventionism, selling him in Wa****ngton and elsewhere like saints=92
bones. It is a snare for the simple, with George W. Bush numbered
among them.
Debunking comic-book history and replacing it with the real thing is
vital if America is to avoid the dual trap of cultural Marxism and
Brave New World. As ideologues and totalitarians everywhere have long
known, if you can cut a people off from their past, you can do
whatever you want with them. We need a similar debunking of the comic
book history of the Civil War now fed to Americans, in which it was
all about slavery.
Buchanan=92s relevance comes from the sad fact that America is now
duplicating Churchill=92s central error, imprudence. We have entered
into two wars with little thought for their long-term consequences.
Wa****ngton hands out guarantees, similar to Britain=92s to Poland, all
over the world like penny candy, with no consideration of where they
may lead. We give less thought to the potential future consequences of
our actions than the average Mayfly. All that matters is receiving the
applause of dunces and pleasing the SMEC.
Britain did the same thing twice, in 1914 and 1939. It is perhaps not
too much to infer that Little England will be followed by Little
America.
July 3, 2008
William Lind is an analyst based in Wa****ngton, DC.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind142.html
www.ihr.org
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