I'm not much of a blogger--and I'm never going to be one of those thorough and systematic philosophers.  I'm too busy working my day job or creating stuff to be a good scholar.

I look at myself now and see a second rate artist, third rate composer, and a fourth rate scholar-- I'm am amateur at everything... and I guess I don't feel especially bad about it.  I use amateur in the best possible sense of that word, knowing that it has terrible connotations as well.

finished working 12 days in a row this last Friday--and I'm STILL pretty tired!  I think Friday ended up being 13 consecutive hours of labor punctuated by a 15  minute break and a 40 minute lunch.  I can't even remember if we took the last break or not.  it doesn't bother me either way-- we got the job done.  that's the important thing.

I don't see my job as just some mundane or boring thing-- I feel as though it's important to do things well.  I've always tried approaching work as though there's no such thing as an unimportant or worthless task.  if you're there to work, do it well, even if you don't like it.  don't just stand there if you've finished one task, try to go out and find something else--  if there's really THAT little to be done at work I usually head straight for home and work on some music or artwork.

I find myself torn between two desires this weekend-- to start working on some more personal creative projects, or to just bum around the house and sleep!

Phyrric Victory

oh yeah, I ordered a book called "Phyrric Victory:  French Strategy and Operations in the Great War"

most histories of World War One (aka "the Great War") focus almost exclusively on the British.  there are some books that cover the United States and it's delayed involvement in the war--but the vast preponderance of literature is Anglo-centric.  we can't ignore the new influx of German-based books in the English language (Jack Sheldon is probably the leading exponent of improving WWI scholarship in English on this matter)... but the French have been largely ignored.

it's a shame, really, because the French sacrificed more than any other Allied nation during WWI.  certainly it made far more of a contribution than the British or the Americans--and yet, most histories in English act as though it was the British and the Americans that won the war.

the Germans get mentioned, but frequently so as to point out how glorious the Allied victory was.  

the French have generally been cast in a VERY POOR light in modern military history-- but part of the problem with that is that they couldn't have won the war without outside help.  truth be told, NONE of the Allied nations could have done it alone.  England certainly couldn't defeated Germany alone--not when it was being sent supplies and technology from American and France!

I'm rambling--but I'm looking forward to learning more about the French contribution to the Great War.  too much time has been spent rehashing the British and American perspectives at the great expense of the French, Italians, and Russians.

Military History Journal Spring-2009

there's an article called "Lashing Back" by Benny Morris that got me thinking.

it's about the 1947-1948 war between the formative Israeli state and their Palestinian/Arab counterparts.

without delving into the article too deeply there were a few points that stand out:

1.  the Israelis were immigransts.  many of them were urban and educated.  they had a defining 'national' identity.  although many of them spoke different languages and probably had special little 'cliques' or enclaves to seperate them somewhat--they were also 'united' in their sense of "Jewishness" whether they actually practiced the faith or not.

2.  the immigrants had a powerful motive to find a new safe haven, a place to call their own.  they feared (and rightly so) a second Holocaust unless they could secure a land for themselves.  Stalin had already begun purging Jews in Russia--so their fears about the local Arabs and Palestinians was well founded.

3.  the Arab world, although united in their contempt for the Jews (which I use in the most general sense--as surely many of these 'culturally Jewish' people were probably atheists by now) were NOT united together.  which is a significant detail.  sure, they had a common enemy, but many of them also hated each other.  while the Arabs might pledge loyalty to their clan, tribe, or warlord they had no greater sense of community or 'national' identity in the same (albeit artificial) sense that the Jews had.

4.  war is a viciously unpleasant business.  one must create an artificial and even exaggerated conflict of "us against them".  one of the big problems that the Arabs and Palestinians had was that, for lack of a better way of putting it, there was no "us against them" so much as "THEM".  while the Israelis had managed to organize themselves for war--the Arabs could not unite themselves against their enemy.  there was still too much of the rural mentality, I suppose.

I guess what I'm driving at, is comparing the recent elections in America to the Israeli Palestinian conflict-- I see a common thread.  urban vs rural conflict.  however, the comparison obviously fails because all rural Americans still acknowledge that they're part of one nation-state:  the United States of America.  

I was thinking about large cities--where you have millions of people who don't know each other, and really couldn't care less about one another--but they can be unified by this artificial sense of "togetherness" when called upon by the city-state.

they have a larger, artificially-instilled sense of community that goes far beyond mere neighborhoods, or place of employment.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Israelis were able to win because they were better organized, they had a stronger sense of national identity, and were willing to put aside their internal differences to win the war.  I've noticed in my various readings that the Palestinians and Arabs were unwilling to, or incapable of, doing the same thing.

the Arab leadership, although no less self-interested than their Israeli adversaries, apparently couldn't set aside their own sense of benefit and self-preservation.

it's worth pointing out that Benny Morris is a prof at Ben-Gurion University--so he's naturally a bit biased.    still, it's an interesting read.  I could draw this out longer... but that seems rather unreasonable at this point.