America The Boastful

I like making jokes about how if it weren't for us, all those stuck-up French waiters and hoteliers would be speaking German as much as the next Yankee. But having a Presidential candidate respond to a question about why we're hated overseas by going on about how "our people have shed more blood for the liberty and freedom of other peoples ... than all the other countries put together" just comes across as weirdly defensive braggadocio. Particularly since - as Larison, scourge of American triumphalism, points out - it's probably not true:

Even leaving aside WWI, where the claims to fighting for liberty are a bit more strained (and where all other belligerents lost far more people than America), this claim is demonstrably false. It requires either an amazing ignorance about the past or contempt for American allies in WWII.

Britain and France entered WWII at least officially to safeguard the independence of Poland, which I think gives them some right to claim that they suffered their losses for the sake of the “liberty” of other peoples. In 1940 alone in a war fought on behalf of Poland, the French lost 90,000 KIA, and the British lost over 68,000. The British, Commonwealth and Free French soldiers who died during the war were certainly fighting at least in part for “the liberty and freedom of other peoples,” and the number of their fatalities and casualities was necessarily higher than that of the United States. Our casualties were on the order of 600,000 killed and wounded, while British and Commonwealth casualties (not including India’s 100,000) were approximately 915,000, which does not include civilian deaths in Britain and France. If we were to judge these losses according to the size of the populations of the different countries, the disparity would be even greater. Given how much smaller its population was, Britain’s losses were proportionally over three times as great as ours.

In Fred Thompson's defense, estimates of World War II casualties do vary a bit, and you could argue that his overall estimate looks a bit more accurate if you factor in Vietnam, Korea and Iraq. Except, as Larison says, for the pesky matter of World War I, where the Brits - whose defense of poor hapless Belgium gives them at least as solid a claim to have been fighting for the liberty of other peoples as Woodrow Wilson's "make the world safe for democracy" posturing - took eight times as many casualties as we did, and more than we took in the whole of World War II as well.

Obviously this sort of obnoxious mythologizing isn't confined to Fred Thompson, but it doesn't do him any credit either.

Comments

Another point about WW II is that the war would probably have not been won for the side of liberty without the copious blood shed by the the forces of the totalitarian Soviet Union. Other interests than liberty were involved in that war.

Nevertheless, anyone who has visited the military cemeteries in Normandy and elsewhere in Europe is deeply moved by the American sacrifices for liberty, the central interest of that war.

Thompson, while technically wrong by the numbers, has a serious point, Larison's moralistic scolding notwithstanding.

Posted by Peter Leavitt | September 7, 2007 11:41 AM

I would like to note that I acknowledged the serious point about American sacrifices, and referred later to the national interests of the belligerents. My point, besides "scolding" Thompson, was to say that this kind of talk diminishes the sacrifice of other Allied soldiers and distorts the record to give Thompson a cheap applause line. His serious point would have been better served by being more accurate and by showing respect to Allied war dead.

Posted by Daniel Larison | September 7, 2007 12:54 PM

I like making jokes about how if it weren't for us, all those stuck-up French waiters and hoteliers would be speaking German as much as the next Yankee

why? Next time you're in Manhattan, take a look over the river, just around the southern tip of the island, right next to Ellis Island. I would swear that there's a real good reason standing right there not to be making such jokes (besides the fact that they stopped being funny around Iraq casualty number 500).

Posted by Francis | September 7, 2007 12:56 PM

This reminds me of Tom Brokaw's praise for "The Greatest Generation" as perhaps the greatest generation of people that has ever lived anywhere on Earth, ignoring that their cousins in Britain were dealing with the same twin problems of economic depression and war, only doing it while Germany was dropping bombs on their children.

Not to slight the accomplishments of TGG, but they stand well enough on their own among Americans.

Posted by Brittain33 | September 7, 2007 2:21 PM

When you're right, you're right. This is precisely the reason that so many non-Americans hate your guts.

Posted by Pithlord | September 7, 2007 2:52 PM

We didn't enter either WW1 or WW2 until we were attacked. What is Thompson thinking about? "Grandiloquent BS" is my guess.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 7, 2007 3:57 PM

No wonder politicians give up and rely on scripts; this kind of henpecking the details and failing to engage on the larger point that Fred Thompson counts himself an unapologetic patriot who generally sees the US foreign policy as good. I'd think his judgement could be addressed on that point without dithering about body count.

Having said that, we should count the 600,000 dead in the civil war.

Posted by Béziers | September 7, 2007 6:47 PM

Having said that, we should count the 600,000 dead in the civil war.

Considering Thompson's market niche, I do not believe we are expected to do that.

Posted by Brittain33 | September 7, 2007 7:24 PM

Britain were dealing with the same twin problems of economic depression and war.

The economic contraction during the years running from 1929-32 was in North America (and, I believe, the Southern Cone of South America) far more violent than that which occurred in any European country. The challenge of the Depression was qualitatively different in a locale where you saw declines in the rate of industrial production on the order of a third (the U.S. and Canada) versus a locale where they were on the order of five or six percent (Britain).

---

All of the principal combattants during the First World War were constitutional states, with Russia the least liberal-democratic in its practices and (perhaps) France the most. Viewing it as a battle for liberty requires a florid imagination (which Pres. Wilson seems to have had).

Posted by Art Deco | September 8, 2007 7:20 AM

Considering Thompson's market niche, I do not believe we are expected to do that.

I doubt subscribers to Southern Partisan are part of his niche. No consequential candidate appealing to that niche has run for President in the last 35 years.

Posted by Art Deco | September 8, 2007 7:24 AM

We didn't enter either WW1 or WW2 until we were attacked.

We had disputes with Germany in 1914-17 over the reckless sinking of commercial ships (e.g. The Lusitania in 1915) and their seedy diplomatic maneuverings (e.g. the Zimmerman telegram), but their was no discrete attack.

Posted by Art Deco | September 8, 2007 7:28 AM

Art, while the economic crisis of 1929-1933 was more severe in the U.S. and Germany than anywhere else, you must also consider that Britain experienced a prolonged economic slump in the 1920s at the same time that the U.S. was booming. The U.S. fell further, faster, because it had further to fall. Meanwhile, Scotland and the North of England experienced two decades of want and extreme unemployment characteristic of the Depression. The Jarrow Crusade (in which a whole city's worth of shipbuilders walked to London to ask for work) and what Orwell describes in The Road to Wigan Pier are illustrative.

Posted by Brittain33 | September 8, 2007 9:35 AM

I agree, I didn't mean to tar Thompson by association with extreme racists. However, he is marketing himself to the large slice of white Southerners who think of the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. While they don't support slavery or think they should secede, they still celebrate the "heritage" symbolized by the battle flag and do not want to hear about how the Union fought for the noble goal of securing the freedom of others. It clashes with their own ideas of what the war did to their freedom.

Posted by Brittain33 | September 8, 2007 9:39 AM

The U.S. fell further, faster, because it had further to fall.

Neither Britain or the United States stood at some 'natural' rate of output from which they could 'fall'. The contraction in the American economy was larger because it suffered from a series of liquidity crises between the end of 1930 and the beginning of 1933 to which the response of the central banking authorities was otiose; some 40% of the banks in this country failed and the resultant contraction of the money supply was stewed through the real economy with wretched results.

I am aware that Britain the had more dysfunctional labor markets prior to 1929. As for the American boom-time, there was an economic contraction in 1921-22 a good deal more severe than any recession we have experienced in the post-War period and a briefer and milder recession around 1927. The agricultural sector in this country was in parlous condition from about 1922 onward. As for regional phenomena, financial intermediation had nearly disappeared in the Great Plains-Rocky Mountain zone by 1932, which, at a time when the rest of the country had begun recovering economically, was then hit with an ecological catastrophe. (As memorialized by John Steinbeck, among others).

I agree, I didn't mean to tar Thompson by association with extreme racists. However, he is marketing himself to the large slice of white Southerners who think of the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. While they don't support slavery or think they should secede, they still celebrate the "heritage" symbolized by the battle flag and do not want to hear about how the Union fought for the noble goal of securing the freedom of others. It clashes with their own ideas of what the war did to their freedom.

My great-grandmother was a vociferous despiser of Abraham Lincoln, but her family had been invested in the Confederate cause to an unusual degree. (She also died a very old woman, nearly sixty years ago). In forty-odd years of residence in this country, I've heard the term "War of Northern Agression" pricisely once. The utterer was a Southern relation of sorts, and he was being ironic.

Let me hear your stories about Mrs. Pumphrey and Skeldale House.

Posted by Art Deco | September 8, 2007 10:54 AM

Neither Britain or the United States stood at some 'natural' rate of output from which they could 'fall'.

But you cited the sharper decline of the U.S. economy over this time period to counter my point that the average Briton faced the same sort of economic challenges that the average American did. That only tells half the story if the U.S. of 1928 had, as an aggregate, a healthier economy than that of Britain.

There were sectors of the U.S. that were faltering in the 1920s, just as southeastern England prospered even while the north and Wales were suffering massive unemployment. I think it's meaningful to say that both Americans and Britons suffered from severe economic dislocations in the 1930s--and it both cases, the average American and the average Briton did have a job, as unemployment never topped 50%.

Going back to the original point, do you think that Americans born in the 1910s and 1920s faced greater challenges than Britons born in the same time period?

Posted by Brittain33 | September 8, 2007 3:00 PM

Going back to the original point, do you think that Americans born in the 1910s and 1920s faced greater challenges than Britons born in the same time period?

As a rule, since 1914, I think they have, and by a considerable margin. There are exceptions pertaining to certain realms.

1. The economic problems of the inter-war period were on balance more severe over here (Less so, 1918-29, much more so, 1929-39).

2. Up until about 1990, I think there was more physical safety and psychological security in mundane life in Britain, and if I am not mistaken, homicide rates there are still a third of ours here.

3. I think there was likely a period extending from around 1950 to about 1966 when very tight labor markets and a more elaborate welfare state made working-class life in Britain less anxiety-prone concerning purely material well-being than was the case here (though British workers were certainly less affluent).

Posted by Art Deco | September 8, 2007 4:36 PM

Sorry, I can't think of Jarrow without the reference to the "Party political broadcast"
of Monty Python" Look the Brits lost a whole
generation of young men in the fields of the Somme and Verdun so that cast a pall over any economic statistics. After that there were sporadic losses in the NorthWest frontier with the 3rd Afghan War in Waziristan, and the anti-Faquir campaign; as well as the trouble in Mesopotamia, Egypt/Sudan and Ireland. The Brits disengaged from the former in 1947; after 100+ years there much like we disengaged from Cuba and Nicaragua in the 30s; with predictable bad
results. The Frontier Constabulary and the ISI first under Marshal Cawthorne; proved unreliable proxies. The Irish statelet that arose after 1922 with DeValera likewise devolved by 1969
with reintroduction of troops; for the second deployment that ended just recently. With Egypt the Brits withdrew their forces formally in 1922
but World events drew them back by the 40s until
Nasser expelled them in the 50s. Likewise with
Iraq; retreating to the calls of "Get out of Mesopotamia movement in the late 20s, led to the
rise of the Golden Square movement and the Ghailani coup which in turn led to the '41 expedition.

The point in all this, is that the US bailed out the Brits, formally in the ist and 2nd WWs, similarly with the French and we supplied the Russian with the resources to carry out their German campaign; which was really due to the failure of their Comintern policy in the 20s and 30s that backed the Communists explicitly and
the Nazis implicitly over the Social Democrats and we saw how well that worked out. Sadly the
way things are going in Londinistan and the Parisian branch of the Maghreb we'll need to bail them out again, for a forth time; considering the
Cold War as the 3rd instance

Posted by narciso | September 9, 2007 9:02 AM

panace splenotomy coistrel archsacrificator caudotibialis proconservationist sheerly allorhythmia
http://www.kieffernaturestock.com/ >Kieffer Nature Stock
http://www.biscor.com/

Posted by Shonda Ramsey | November 21, 2007 8:33 AM