[GPSCC-chat] Occupy Memorial Day

Tue May 29 10:26:53 PDT 2012

Below please find a Memorial Day blog I just posed to 
"effectivedefense.org".  Comments welcomed.

*Honoring Our Dead*

Spencer Graves^1 <#sdfootnote1sym>

While visiting a small town in Austria, I was startled to see a 
life-size statue of a young man in a World War II German army helmet. I 
was raised in Kansas in the shadow of an uncle who didn't return from 
that war, and my visceral reaction was clearly different from that of my 
Austrian hosts: To me, that helmet represented Nazi tyranny including 
the holocaust. Many Austrians have a different interpretation, e.g., 
resistance to foreign invasion.

Similarly, there are active controversies in the US today over 
Confederate monuments.^2 <#sdfootnote2sym> To African-Americans and 
"damn Yankees" like me, such monuments symbolize slavery. To 
Southerners, they more likely embody resentment over the depredations 
and humiliations of the war and the Reconstruction period that 
followed.^3 <#sdfootnote3sym>

I'm concerned, however, that we not use the memory of fallen soldiers to 
glorify and promote further use of violence, especially in situations 
where research suggests that there may be more effective means of 
achieving reasonable objectives in conflict situations. For example, 
recent research into the effectiveness of alternative reactions to 
injustice and depredations in the twentieth century determined that 26% 
of the violent change efforts as opposed to 53% of the nonviolent 
campaigns achieved some measure of success. Moreover, the nonviolent 
changes efforts produced on average substantially greater increases in 
freedom and democracy. The successes of both violent and nonviolent 
campaigns were achieved in large part through defections among the 
establishment. This helps explain why nonviolence tends on average to be 
more effective, because people are more likely to defect if the 
challengers are nonviolent.^4 <#sdfootnote4sym>

Similar research into the use of air power has indicated that tactical 
air support of ground troops has been useful, but strategic bombing has 
on average been a waste of resources. One example is the London Blitz, 
which solidified the support of the British public behind their 
government to the detriment of Hitler, who ordered the Blitz.^5 
<#sdfootnote5sym>

A more current example is use of drones by the US in Pakistan, which is 
allegedly "critical" to US operations in that region. Pakistan has 
disagreed vehemently, demanding that the US stop using drones in its air 
space. This Pakistani response suggests that US drone use there has done 
for the US what the Blitz did for Hitler.^6 <#sdfootnote6sym>

The memory of those who made the supreme sacrifice should motivate us to 
seek and support more careful research into the long-term impact of 
alternative responses to threats and attack.

1 <#sdfootnote1anc>Wikipedia, "Memorial Day", "Armistice Day", accessed 
2012-05-29.

2 <#sdfootnote2anc>Mitch Carr, "Reidsville protesters want confederate 
statue back", MyFOX8.com, May 23, 2012, 
"http://myfox8.com/2012/05/23/reidsville-protesters-want-confederate-statue-back/ 
", accessed 2012-05-28.

3 <#sdfootnote3anc>The resentment of the Southern whites following the 
American War between the States seems consistent with the role-reversal 
theory of Roger D. Petersen, /Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, 
Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe/, Cambridge 
U. Pr., 2002.

4 <#sdfootnote4anc>Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, /Why Civil 
Resistance Works/, Columbia U. Pr., 2011.

5 <#sdfootnote5anc>Robert A. Pape, /Bombing to Win: Air Power and 
Coercion in War/, Cornell U. Pr., 1996. M. Horowitz and D. Reiter, "When 
Does Aerial Bombing Work? Quantitative Empirical Tests, 1917-1999", 
Journal of Conflict Resolution, 45: 147-173, 2001.

6 <#sdfootnote6anc>Indira A.R. Lakshmanan, "Pakistan Ends Drone Strikes 
In Blow To U.S. War On Terror", Bloomberg, 2012-03-13 02:22:18Z. 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-13/pakistan-tells-white-house-to-stop-drone-missions-after-disputes-fray-ties.html, 
accessed 2012-05-28.

-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web:www.structuremonitoring.com

-- 
Spencer Graves, PE, PhD
President and Chief Technology Officer
Structure Inspection and Monitoring, Inc.
751 Emerson Ct.
San José, CA 95126
ph:  408-655-4567
web:www.structuremonitoring.com

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