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Reading War Nerd

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I was given Gary Brecher’s The War Nerd book as a gift, and it’s great fun. Here, for instance, is an excerpt on Colombia:

The historians I’ve been reading – typical bleeding -heart college professors – all try to say Colombians aren’t really violent. Oh no!  It’s America’s fault, or it’s the United Fruit Company’s fault, or whatever… So how about a little truth for once? As in: Colombians kill. They’ve done it nonstop for 400 years. They’ll do it for another 400. That’s part of the reason it’s hard to explain the current wars in Colombia, because they’re just a little episode in one long war that will never end.

Finally, somebody with something refreshingly reasonable to say about Colombia. And in Mexico,  instead of one long war, you have a periodic flare-up of insane violence. A new century hits, Mexicans start killing each other. By the fourth decade of the century, they get whatever it is out of their systems, it all settles down, and there is stagnation under a benevolent dictatorial power until a new century arrives. And then the cycle repeats. The drug wars and the Americans are just an excuse. And since Americans enjoy being an excuse for the shitty behavior of others, then everybody is happy.

32 responses to “Reading War Nerd”

  1. musteryou Avatar
    musteryou

    Can we get rid of the Western metaphysical fixation that all evil started with Western 19th Century colonialism? This obession really narrows the historical sense to the point that real history disappears from people’s thoughts altogether. Instead we have a silly morality play with the same childish narrative told over and over. Paradoxically, even the 19th Century European colonisers taught a more nuanced version of history than this.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      You just really insulted the XVI th century Spanish colonialism. 🙂 But that’s nothing new. Everybody steps over Spain like it’s do much roadkill.

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      1. musteryou Avatar
        musteryou

        Is there a metaphysical fixation concerning that as well? I mean a morality play?

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      2. Z Avatar
        Z

        British and British colonials hate Spain and say they were better colonizers. Spain does not count because it is not white, etc. They are also very self absorbed and do not realize there was ever any colonization other than what they did … except when they are trying to get Spain’s colonies away from them and so on, of course. 😉

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      3. J. Otto Pohl Avatar
        J. Otto Pohl

        I just finished writing my Early Modern European history final questions and there is one on 16th century Spanish colonialism on it.

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  2. Z Avatar
    Z

    Musteryou, by Western do you mean British 19th century? I have asked before what you mean by this word. Urban, Spanish speaking Peruvian society is and would consider itself, for example, Western. Courses on it would count for a western civilization requirement and not for non western, etc. But from what you keep saying, I think your definition of Western does not include places like that and only refers to a very small slice of the parts of the world I would consider Western.

    In general: on Mexico and Colombia I am reading a very interesting book, https://www.dukeupress.edu/The-Vanguard-of-the-Atlantic-World/index-viewby=subject&categoryid=33&sort=newest.html … at mid 19th C these were laboratories of Republican government in ways nobody else was worldwide, it seems, although this was ended in 1880s. I almost wonder whether current issues do not have to do with this, a similar paradox to the Haitian one (most radical Independence in the Americas, and most screwed up country today). NB Colombia isn’t even at top 10 violent country…
    and finally: does your boy really think Americans don’t kill? What about his own fantasies?

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    1. musteryou Avatar
      musteryou

      It’s people who self-identify this way. I am using a shamanic definition, which means how people set up their sense of self-identity in warlike opposition to other identies and in defence of their interests. Of course this means that the boundaries can never be fully plotted, because people can rise up in defence of their perceived interests at any time and they can even be wrong about the group of people they identify their interests to be lying with.

      In cany case, my point was a fairly narrow one, in historically terms, although very broad in terms of what I understand as mostly an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon (but may be more extensive) to justify neo-colonialism behind a shroud of outrightly condemning the 19th Century colonial practices as evil and immoral.

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      1. Z Avatar
        Z

        OK, so then West is indeed 19th century and British based plus people who join that.

        I guess it really makes a lot more sense in conventional discussions of East and West, Europe and the Orient, etc. Otherwise it does not seem to describe the world very accurately, at least not in a cultural/historical sense. But I think I get what you mean by it now.

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        1. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          Oh well. One could write a lot of papers about what the West is and there is probably a job out there for someone willing to do that. But even my very simple points are so hard to get across in any case, so I don’t think there will be much reception for anything at all complicated. All I am saying is that from my point of view there are some people who identify themselves as guilty in relation to colonialism. I haven’t met them all, I am sure, but I have met a lot of them in Australia and from America. Perhaps some of them are Spanish and feel guilty about inflicting colonialism on people because they are Spanish. I concede that this is quite probable — although I haven’t met them yet. Maybe I will!!

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          1. Clarissa Avatar
            Clarissa

            “All I am saying is that from my point of view there are some people who identify themselves as guilty in relation to colonialism.”

            – And that’s not because they know or understand anything about colonialism but because it’s sweetly self-aggrandizing. And that’s why it bugs me so much! There is no serious discussion.

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            1. musteryou Avatar
              musteryou

              There are people who imply that I ought not to have any sentiments whatsoever toward my childhood past as that makes me a “racist”. There are others who treat me with silent hostility just because I am a child of the colonies from Africa. These people tend to be Anglo-Saxon. We could give them any name, for instance “Cool bananas”, but they would still act the same because they identfy themselves as oppressors and react to my presence in a way that shows they cannot face reality as it really is. They make me out to be a monster, so they do not have to face history in its fine shades of grey on grey. Perhaps there are some Spanish people who would also react to me in this way? They would have to react inwardly in relation to what they think they know about themselves.

              People like Mugabe and Putin of course easily perceive this guilt factor and exploit it. I wonder if they would be prepared to exploit Spanish guilt in the same way and if so how?

              In any case those outside the boundaries of the mass of people and nations with a guilty conscience KNOW they are outside of these psychological boundaries.

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              1. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                “These people tend to be Anglo-Saxon. We could give them any name, for instance “Cool bananas”, but they would still act the same because they identfy themselves as oppressors and react to my presence in a way that shows they cannot face reality as it really is. They make me out to be a monster, so they do not have to face history in its fine shades of grey on grey.”

                – Very interesting. Do the French have this as well? I have no idea.

                “Perhaps there are some Spanish people who would also react to me in this way?”

                – I’m not seeing this love for self-flagellation among the Spanish, and that’s very refreshing. I think the culture of Spain has a much healthier relationship with the history and an a healthier internal image of the former colonies.

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              2. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                The French gave the Pieds-Noirs a hard time. I do not know if this was justified or not. What I do know is that people equate sentiment on my part with racism. That is such an overkill and plainly nonsensical. One can explain this tendency as a mechanism of projection. There must be a tremendous amount of guilt feelings for people to try to expel their demons in this way. I mean, fuck. I got this sort of treatment from the age of 15– I was just a female kid (meaning not powerful at all in my original African cultural terms).

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              3. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                What is it that you say that they react against? Are there any specific memories or feelings that you try to share but people freak out? Or is it more like, you show up, people find out where you are from, and they immediately close up against you because they identify you with something outside of you?

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              4. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                Ah. I’m not sure I can respond to this. But I will say the reason I had to write my memoir is that I had lost the emotional part of myself — the part that would be capable of responding spontaneously and emotionally to anything — because of the ongong censuring and policing. I had to recapture that part of my being. But when I did, it felt like extreme transgression. And still does.

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              5. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                The first time I encountered people who seemed to have a normal emotional range to things was in the Japanese. They treated me perfectly normally. But I was never able to learn the emotional range of the “Cool Bananas” people because of their defensive hostility. I really gained a strange impression of this culture.

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              6. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                A while ago, there was an offer for me to work at a Japanese language school. I spent some time there but realized that if I have to work there, not even a team of psychiatrists will be able to help me. Everybody was too polite and nice there. I just can’t deal. I start developing intense paranoid ideation. 🙂

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              7. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                Hmmm… Japanese are very, very easy to work with. They have a very dry sense of humor about their various predicaments, one being their very work-driven characters. I learned a lot about how to be a human being from the Japanese, but it has taken me about a decade to thaw.

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              8. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                ” Japanese are very, very easy to work with.”

                – For you, I’m sure. 🙂 But I don’t even get anybody else’s humor but my own. Remember that joke about a crane you made recently? I had no idea what it meant until somebody explained. I work best with loud, angry, aggressive people.

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              9. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                Ah. I have another side to me, too, where I actually enjoy a military environment, where camaraderie is reinforced by rude and crude gestures. I certainly have this side. Perhaps I have two sides.

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              10. Clarissa Avatar
                Clarissa

                “I have another side to me, too, where I actually enjoy a military environment, where camaraderie is reinforced by rude and crude gestures.”

                – Oh, I love military environments. My best childhood memories are all about marching in formation and singing military songs. I have no idea where this is coming from since we never had any military people in the family. I even say “fifteen hundred hours” when civilians 🙂 ask me time and then have to correct myself.

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              11. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                Ah. When I look at it my father’s side was totally a mlitary family, although not career soldiers. Oh well. It is the most healthy cultural environment for me.

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              12. musteryou Avatar
                musteryou

                I’m reading our mutual friend’s philosophy again (if you recall him) and it strikes me, in relation to his philosophy, that my situation has been one of being locked out of primeval narcissism. People assume that one has to struggle to get out of it, from the inside out, but I have always been, it seems to me, on the outside of it, stuck in a world of abstraction and disembodied detachment. I’ve had to work really hard to acquire a healther, more narcissistic orientation, to put myself at the centre of things and make myself the weight that stabilizes reality around me. I don’t know why I’ve lacked this primeval narcissism that is considered by some people to be automatically present in all and ubiquitous, apart from that our society was very duty-bound and also the female gender role in Rhodesian society was epitomised by selfless idealism. My self was very diffused into the environment, but also rigid and duty-bound. And not located in the body at all, but outside of it. Therefore I never had enough wherewithal or defensive tools to defend my “identity” (such as it was or construed to be) from anybody with a hostile motive. I really had to learn and learn to centralize myself and to feed back more of my energy toward my own interests. And indeed to discover my own interests. None of this came easily to me. What is common between the Japanese and mlitary personnel (one being polite and the other aggressive) is that they both have this decentralized attitude in relation to the self. That kind of culture makes things very easy for me. I’m fundamentally a very impersonal person who needs to work hard to contain and keep hold of primeval narcissism. I alll too easy let it go — or when I’m tired I have the most disturbing out of body experiences where I’m really not connected to anything.

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      2. Z Avatar
        Z

        Hm, guilty in regard to colonialism. In US I run into a lot of people who feel guilty in regard to slavery, but not colonialism. Spain, I would bet even less. But I see the mechanism you described originally in those who feel guilty in regard to slavery.

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        1. musteryou Avatar
          musteryou

          I see. In any case my paradigm is conceptual, not positivistic. There is a place for a positivist or historically described paradigm, but mine is not that. It’s more akin to a paradigm describing processes, like an engineering structure. It’s limits are not defined by facts but by the appearance of certain processes.

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    2. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “does your boy really think Americans don’t kill? What about his own fantasies?”

      – War Nerd is great in that he manages to write two or sometimes even 3 pages without mentioning Americans. That is very enjoyable. It gets old seeing how Americans have to be the measure of everything in existence 100% of the time. I’m thinking, if we can reduce it to 98% of the time, that already will be huge.

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      1. J. Otto Pohl Avatar
        J. Otto Pohl

        I have written hundreds of pages without mentioning Americans. 😎

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      2. Z Avatar
        Z

        Yes, lots of people do. I mean there is actually good and well informed writing that doesn’t. And he is someone who wants to blow things up, and not in all in a position to complain about anyone else.

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      3. Z Avatar
        Z

        But here is the thing: Brecher is this nationalist interested in war, who wants US to be in more wars and win, and who gives very US based views, as above. Yours also, typical Western gaze to use musteryou’s phrase, utterly uninformed historically, repeating Western prejudices. How this is having a point of view from somewhere else, beats me.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          The most typical Western prejudice I know is, “Whatever is being discussed, let’s switch to discussing Americans. ” I find that very frustrating.

          As for War Nerd, all I know about him are the articles I’ve read and loved, which is why this blog ‘s reader kindly presented me with this book. This is a very talented journalist whose writing reeks of intense psychological health. That is enormously refreshing. He managed to find the right tone to discuss war, and his writing is very cathartic.

          From what he wrote on ISIS, it’s clear that he doesn’t want the US to be in that war. I will post more on the book as I keep reading.

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          1. Silva Avatar
            Silva

            The War Nerd is nowhere near healthy in any sense of the word, and knows it. The reason why he writes so well about fucktards is that he’s a partly recovered fucktard himself. Same for his fellow Mark Ames, actually.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              “The War Nerd is nowhere near healthy in any sense of the word, and knows it. The reason why he writes so well about fucktards is that he’s a partly recovered fucktard himself. Same for his fellow Mark Ames, actually.”

              • Envy is eating you alive. It’s very funny to watch.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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