Eric's Beijing Diary

I was talking with a few Chinese Americans the other day, and one of them asked me what I thought about Hilary's chances for being elected president of the United States in the next election. I said that I thought she has a good chance to be nominated by the Democratic party, but I think she would have lots of trouble in a national election. The reason for this is that, while the US government imposes strict spending limits on candidates who accept matching funds, there are no spending limits imposed on nonprofit organizations who create attack adds designed to keep a given candidate from being elected (such as the add in 1988 showing Dukakis riding around in a tank). Hilary is likely to generate these kinds of adds, because she holds views that are scary to people who espouse family values. Both in China and in the United States, many families have to deal with the issue of child care, because both parents work. In China, most children whose parents work are cared for by their grandparents. In America, they more often end up at some kind of day care. Hilary believes that children should be cared for by large government day care centers. She elucidates this view in her book, It Takes a Village to Raise a Child. I am quoting loosely now, because it has been a long time since I read it, or I should say had it read to me (it was a book on tape), Imagine a country where children are playing happily in large government day care centers. This may seem too good to be true, but I have seen this kind of thing in France." I, for one, do not think such a thing is too good to be true. I think it is too horrible to imagine. But Hillary believes that children should be raised by the community proper, rather than the family. This and other such views make her a prime candidate for attack adds paid for by organizations who identify her as the person they love to hate.

The other issue that will give Hilary trouble in 2008, though is Iraq. She voted for it, so she won’t be able to say that she opposed it, and she will have a hard time presenting herself as someone who can get in there and solve the problem. Iraq is becoming more and more depressing all the time. I have been concerned about Iraq from the beginning, because I believe that America’s reasons for getting involved were not valid, and history has never been kind to an emperor who makes war without an honest justification. But once you get involved in something, you have to finish it. There is only one thing more frustrating than the way the US got involved, and that is the way the Americans are fighting it. Several times I have heard Bush say, "I will send more troops to Iraq as soon as the generals ask for them." With all due respect to Bush (and I do respect him in many ways), this kind of talk is disconcerting. Since when do generals know anything about how to win a war? Read history. Generals tend to be defeatist by nature. General Douglas MacArthur always used to say, "Councils of War breed defeatism." He was quoting his father, who made his name as a 19 year-old lieutenant planting the Union flag on Missionary Ridge as part of an impulsive charge by a group of courageous soldiers.

The reason America is losing this war, is because the commander in chief is following the generals instead of leading them. For the past 14 years (since 1992), America has been led by draft-dodgers (Clinton and Bush) who managed to avoid combat. It was Vietnam; I don’t blame them for not wanting to get involved. But they can’t have it both ways.

Consider the American Civil War. The North did not defeat the South because they had better generals. The crème de la crème of the West Point officers were from Virginia. They went South. I can’t say this without giving credit to Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the Army, who was from Virginia, but fiercely loyal to the Union. Technically, Scott is not an exception though, because he was not from West Point, but I mention him because it was his loyalty and dependability that enabled Lincoln to take command at such a dark and perilous period in American history. But my point is that North did not win because if it’s superior officers. The North won because the North had a commander in chief who was second to none. Lincoln had the opposite problem to Bush. The first commander of the Army of the Potomac was the pompous McClellan, who kept asking Lincoln for more and more troops, but was afraid to use them. Lincoln at one point said, "Sending troops to McClellan is like shoveling flies across a barnyard." He was forced to remove McClellan. It took almost the entire Civil War for a general to emerge who would take on Lee without becoming overawed by his greatness. And Grant only survived because Lincoln refused to listen to the voices of his detractors in the Army and out. Grant was railed as an incompetent drunkard, and Lincoln was told that he had to "do something." Lincoln decided that he had to act. His order was terse and straightforward, "Find out what brand of whiskey he’s drinking, and give it to my other officers."

Or consider the grave situation facing America during World War II. F.D.R. was not exactly a military man, although he had been in the navy, but he was blessed with commanders both in the Pacific and Atlantic who were men of extraordinary capability, and he had the good sense to let them do their jobs. In the Pacific it was MacArthur, who defeated the Japanese, and called for 10,000 missionaries. Can you imagine what would happen today if Bush called for 10,000 missionaries in Iraq? We don’t do that anymore. We have decided that democracy is the new savior of mankind. The key commander in the European theater was Winston Churchill. This may surprise some people, who are not accustomed to thinking of Churchill as a military man. But he was. He made his living as a battlefield correspondent, not as a soldier, but he was a military man by training. Churchill did not go to Cambridge or Oxford. He went to Sandhurst, the British equivalent of West Point. Churchill’s decision to go to Sandhurst was made by his father, and the story is told that he made this decision after watching his son playing with toy soldiers in the nursery. But the story as usually told is a bit simplified. This is not the case of a kid playing with a few soldiers. Little Winston had arranged fifteen hundred toy soldiers in perfect battle formation. It was Churchill who talked of the exhilaration of being shot at without result. If I start telling stories about Churchill, this will become a book rather quickly, so I will stop. But I mention him to point out that World War II was won not just by generals, but by leaders who had a clear perspective, and the will to fight it out. The common thread that tied these three men together was a tough old Massachusetts pioneer woman by the name of Sarah Barney. She was MacArthur’s great-great grandmother, and she was the great aunt of both Churchill and F.D.R. So MacArthur was Churchill’s eighth cousin, and F.D.R.’s sixth cousin once removed.

After World War II, troop strength both in occupied Europe and occupied Japan was overwhelming. The allies weren’t taking any chances. Does anyone dare to imagine what might have happened if they had put in a minimal force such as the Americans are doing today in Iraq? It’s a frightening thought. MacArthur ruled Japan like a dictator for five years. Aoyama-san told me one time that his monthly salary before World War II was 1 yen. One yen was a fair amount of money in those days. The common currency was called "sen." One yen was one thousand sen. Post war hyperinflation moved the value of the yen down to the point where the sen was irrelevant. When I was a kid, the exchange rate was 360 yen to the dollar. So 1 yen was worth less than a third of a penny, and the sen was out of circulation. You just never saw them. But you could buy them at the pawn shop. And you could also buy the old one yen notes. Every one of those old one yen notes had the following statement in English: "The Government of Japan agrees to pay the bearer on demand one yen in silver." It was signed by General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur ruled Japan as a dictator for five years after World War II. The Americans went in with an overwhelming military force and pacified the country. The generals in Iraq keep talking about how if we do that in Iraq, it will be harder for the Iraqis to take over. So this half-hearted effort is somehow better? It’s depressing. But there is one person in Washington who has consistently called for more troops. There is one man who bemoans the half-hearted effort and insists that the Americans need to put enough soldiers in Iraq to do the job properly. His name is John McCain. Interesting. Stay tuned.