Category Archives: War

Medieval

Posted on by davald

A friend, and fellow ex-Catholic, linked me to the video on this site, Catholics Called to Witness. It is indeed slick, in a production sort of way, and appeals not to one’s reason but to our limbic system. That is, it’s all about imagery and music. Therefore, it will surely be effective in calling Catholics to November’s voting booths to cast ballots that reflect the Church’s “values,” which are “marriage,” “life,” and “freedom.”

The video, which is positively medieval in tone and visual expression, with a blacksmith pounding out letters that are eventually assembled to spell out the “values,” emphasizes that marriage must be “reinforced” rather than “redefined.” Abortion, of course, must be prohibited in all circumstances. Compelling the Church’s institutions to provide health care insurance that covers contraception is anathema.

Conspicuously absent from this call to arms is any mention of the Church’s social gospel, the teachings found in the Sermon on the Mount, for example. Thus, we hear or see nothing about the plight of the poor and near-poor, roughly half our population, or that 40 million Americans lack health insurance, or the plutocracy that makes paupers of the Rest of Us, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the thousands on death rows awaiting lethal injection. Nothing. Nada. Nichts.

The conspicuous absence is all in the name of our Lord. Damn the Church.

Speaking of duopolies

Posted on by davald

Some time ago I vowed not to cast a vote for Obama’s re-election. I had joined the ranks of the seriously disgusted, folks who had the audacity of hope buried in the shoals of “bi-partisanship,” whatever that means in a country marked by “polarized domestic politics,” as one Chinese observer put it.

But, let’s face it. We live in a duopoly. We have a choice between bad and worse. In simple game theory, the only option is to block the latter, which means, by all means, keeping Republicans in the minority, although my preference is that they disappear altogether.

I can only speculate that the Founding Fathers would be appalled by what their system of checks and balances has wrought. They would surely be horrified by the financialization of factions, wherein we collectively spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to persuade largely ignorant voters (I did not say stupid) to vote for or against a candidate or ballot issue.

And that’s what it’s all about. Up or down for this or that. There are no other options. We live in a politically binary world.

Obama, as it turns out, is hardly the socialist defined by the right. He is very much the “centrist,” willing to compromise at the drop of a hat to secure something rather than nothing. How frustrating that he never negotiates from perceived strength. After all, he is the leader of the free world and commander in chief. Rather, he’s quick to accede, and the feral Republicans know this like they know they’re for god, guns, and guts.

So, we don’t have what many of us wanted, if not expected. We’re still mired in a struggling economy that has brought misery to tens of millions, with scant prospects for full recovery. It’s going to happen, you say, but when, pray tell? There is no longer any mention of global warming and what to do about it. Obamacare is on the ropes in the Supreme Court. Front and center is cutting, where and by how much.

Then there’s our nation’s longest war. Do you see the light at the end of this extended tunnel? How many soldiers have to go apeshit and slaughter innocents before we bring the poor lads home?

Yet, when they do return we may rightly ask, To what? Join the queue outside the unemployment office? Should the veteran manifest symptoms of distress and, well, oddness, will the government come to his or her aid? Or will their disorders be wiped away by a general’s fiat?

However disappointed I may be, I shudder in horror at the prospect of any of the GOP candidates sitting in the Oval Office, especially if the Republicans reclaim majority status in the Senate to go with their control of the House. Don’t we ever learn? It wasn’t that long ago, people, that G.W. Bush ran the show—into the ground, I might add. Can you imagine a Romney and a Ryan and a McConnell and a Cantor and a Boehner joined by the Supremes systematically tearing down the federal government while further enriching the wealthy as they eliminate assistance for the Rest of Us?

Therefore, I rescind my previous vow. Not because I am enamored of Obama. I’m just scared to death of the alternative.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan and more stupidity

Posted on by davald

It’s easy to forget about Afghanistan, so far away and seemingly endless in duration. No one is openly protesting. We’re just in business-as-usual mode, save for the occasional mad acts.

But of course, war is all about mad acts. Mad in purpose. Mad in execution. Mad in justification. Mad in outcome. Yet, the killing continues, costs escalate, and we worry about other things.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd breaks through the willful ignorance with a piece entitled “Heart of Darkness.” She writes:

Congressman Jones directly confronted General Allen on the most salient point: “What is the metric?” How do you know when it’s time to go?

“When does the Congress have the testimony that someone will say, we have done all we can do?” he asked. “Bin Laden is dead. There are hundreds of tribes in Afghanistan and everyone has their own mission.”

This gets old, doesn’t it. When do we see the light at the end of the tunnel? When do we declare victory and just go home?

The website costofwar.com runs a counter. Right now spending on prosecuting the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is above $512 billion. The counter ticks quickly.

As for our objectives there, Dowd continues:

But most of the politicians seemed resigned to the fact that President Obama is resigned to settling for a very small footprint and enough troops to keep terrorists from using Afghanistan as a base to attack the U.S. or our allies.

The White House seems ready to forget eliminating the poppy trade and expanding education for girls. We’re not going to turn our desolate protectorate into a modern Athens and there’s not going to be any victory strut on an aircraft carrier.

When you’re buried alive in the Graveyard of Empires, all you can do is claw your way out.

It’s salutary, I think, to revisit the costs of war, both in dollars and blood. Consider:

  • The U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan will cost between $3.2 and $4 trillion, including medical care and disability for current and future war veterans. This figure does not include substantial probable future interest on war-related debt.
  • More than 31,000 people in uniform and military contractors have died, including the Iraqi and Afghan security forces and other military forces allied with the United States.
  • By a very conservative estimate, 137,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by all parties to these conflicts.
  • The wars have created more than 7.8 million refugees among Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistanis.
  • Pentagon bills account for half of the budgetary costs incurred and are a fraction of the full economic cost of the wars.
  • Because the war has been financed almost entirely by borrowing, $185 billion in interest has already been paid on war spending, and another $1 trillion could accrue in interest alone through 2020.
  • Federal obligations to care for past and future veterans of these wars will likely total between $600-$950 billion. This number is not included in most analyses of the costs of war and will not peak until mid-century.

I’ve hardly been shy about expressing my belief that this country is, well, fucked up. I don’t know if this condition is chronic, embedded in our collective DNA, or the product of deliberate efforts by elites to suck everything out of the global economy, leaving the Rest of Us with shit.

Did we ever have our act together? Were we ever on the verge of building a more just society, one that didn’t leave so many struggling while a few are so rich that they wipe their butts with $100 bills?

In 1945 Harry Truman pushed for universal care, somewhat like the British have. The federal government would insure everyone. Congress even tried to craft a law to effect Truman’s wish. So what happened?

As usual, monied interests successfully preyed on Americans’ ignorance and fear. Hell, we had just won the Great War, and the Soviet Union was our ally in that effort. Nevertheless, the American Medical Association condemned the proposal as a Communist plot. How goddam stupid are we? Quite a bit it seems, because the measure was repulsed. So now we have rich doctors and over 50 million Americans without health insurance, or one out of six.

Okay, I’ll stop there. My next post is on railroads for public transport. We have few, and they’re mostly lousy. Yet we don’t mind collectively paying millions of dollars a year for the freedom of driving ourselves to work each day. As I said, we’re pretty stupid, when you think about it.

You really don’t know why we’re killing you?

Posted on by davald

A survey of Afghans revealed that 92 percent of the respondents knew nothing of 9/11, the ostensible reason we invaded their country and killed thousands of their neighbors. This from ginandtacos.com:

Last fall there was an astounding piece of public opinion research done in Afghanistan, showing that 92% of the 1000 Afghan males surveyed have never heard of 9/11. Think about that. They have no idea whatsoever why the US military is in their country beyond perhaps a vague notion that we do not like the Taliban. Conducting a scientific poll in a primitive, war-torn country with an illiteracy epidemic presents major challenges, and I have no doubt that the polling agency would allow that the data and sample are imperfect. Regardless, even if 92% is an overestimate the data still underscore the reason that we are not winning and never will win the war there. It is impossible to win the hearts and minds of a population with no understanding of the geopolitical events that started the war. It’s also impossible to win hearts and minds by blowing stuff (and people) up, but that goes without saying.

Conspiracy conjecture

Posted on by davald

I’m not a big fan of conspiracy-mongering, save for one: JFK’s assassination. On this I defer to a physicist for whom I worked. No friend of the Kennedy’s, he nevertheless judged it impossible that the fatal shot came from the rear, as in the Texas Book Depository. Rather, it had to have come from the front. However, I beg your indulgence as I pull something out of thin air, with absolutely no facts to warrant my speculation.

It begins with Eisenhower’s warning about the “military-industrial complex,” perhaps overlain with Randolph Bourne’s pronouncement: “War is the health of the state.” I’ll add in a generous dose of petrodollars and, voilà, we have the makings of a conspiracy—or maybe just a constellation of interests.

The last century and a half has been the Age of Oil. Its discovery, extraction, and production have literally fueled the modern industrial economy, the one that demands we all buy things and eat like pigs, if that’s not an affront to the Suidae family.

The United States emerged from the second world war unscathed and superior. We demonstrated our ability to rapidly step up manufacturing so as to fight in two theaters: the Pacific and Europe. And I think the captains of industry liked it, the war that is. But with victory declared, our enemies vanquished, what to do with all this military stuff? Besides, the Pentagon brass must have felt depressed, all dressed up for fighting and no where to go.

Ah, but remember our Russian friends, the ones who squeezed the Nazis from the east? Well, they’re communists, after all, and we loathe communists. But, you know, we probably don’t want to actually kill people. Real war can be downright messy. So, what about a cold war? Yeah, that’s the ticket. We get to build more and better weapons, keep our armed forces well-stocked, soldiers saluting, and uniforms bedecked with colorful badges.

Pretexts are easy. Against the Soviet menace we can manufacture “situations” that demand our attention. And these situations happen to arise in areas vital to our economic interests. Most vital, of course, is oil.

Where is most of the oil? In the Middle East, principally in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi family faces constant threats, so we say to them: We’ll buy your oil then use the money to build weapons which you’ll then buy from us. A perfect triangle of national self-interests. Check.

Leaders of nations, like football teams, must compete; it’s in their nature. With a lock on oil supplies we could focus our attention on “the arms race.” Kennedy, the president mentioned in the opening, liked to talk about “the missile gap.” He wrongly asserted during his campaign that the Soviet Union had more ICBMs than we had. We’ve just got to build more of them to keep up; and build we did.

Meanwhile we conducted numerous proxy battles (the situations), framing them as contests between the Red menace and defenders of freedom. We didn’t have to actually fight in these. We just sold the arms and supplied “advisors.” It seems that the Pentagon got carried away in Southeast Asia, and found that there was no simple exit. Eventually we just declared victory and left. Better not try that again.

Then—wouldn’t you know it?—the damn Soviet Union collapsed. Didn’t see that coming. The boys in the Pentagon must have become apoplectic. Now what? We just lost our perfect foil, the Evil Empire, the mother of all pretexts.

Lurking in the wings, the Muslims, long oppressed, came to the Pentagon’s rescue. Ingenious, however diabolical: commandeer commercial jets filled with passengers then slam them into large buildings and the Pentagon itself. In response the world said that “we are all New Yorkers now.” Revenge was a given. But who is the target?

I guess it really didn’t matter, but that Saddam Hussein is one mean son-of-a-bitch, and he tried to kill the president’s daddy. We’re really going to have to sell this one, since there isn’t a sliver of evidence that Hussein, our former buddy, was involved in the 9/11 attacks. A splendid performance by all. With a thin patina of international approval, we launched a massive air assault on Iraq, which led to invasion and occupation. Well, there’s oil there, too.

Once clearly proven that there were no weapons of mass destruction and no ties to al Qaeda, the U.S. could still say that the world was a better place without Hussein, we’re helping Iraqis build a democracy, and there’s the oil.

Yet, Osama bin Laden, the real evil doer, was alive and presumably well inhabiting mountain caves on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Bush administration had demanded that the Afghans turn him over to us, but the silly people insisted on proof that he did it. Besides, this is a big country and we don’t know where the hell he is. Sorry about that, Kabul, but we’re going to have to invade and occupy your country. That’s how we do things.

Fast forward to the present. We’re still in Afghanistan, our nation’s longest war, though it’s unclear as to whom we’re fighting and what we expect to accomplish. Making good on a campaign promise, Pres. Obama ended our formal occupation of Iraq, although we’ve left behind a fair number of mercenaries and the grandest embassy in all the world. It’s even got a McDonald’s.

Our most recent “situation” is being called “the Arab spring.” After living under generations of tyrants, the people suddenly took matters into their own hands, spawning a series of “spontaneous” revolutions. Oh, and you can bet that we had something to do with these. After all, there’s oil there, too.

Situations don’t typically arise in fields of broccoli. They happen in regions of strategic importance and have everything to do with oil and other raw materials. (Afghanistan is home to a trove of “rare earth” metals used in all those electronic gadgets we obsess over, your’s truly included.)

Noam Chomsky wrote this of the Libyan revolt:

The hope was for a regime likelier to be amenable to Western demands for control over Libya’s rich resources and, perhaps, to offer an African base for the U.S. Africa command AFRICOM, so far confined to Stuttgart.

Now I have no idea if such speculation has even a hint of truthfulness. We’re all free to connect dots to fashion narratives, whether or not justified. If we’re fond of Occam’s Razor, we might say that conspiracies aren’t necessary to explain events; they are what they are.

On the other hand, we can probably learn a lot about what’s going on by following the money and the oil. No need to bother with the broccoli.

The nightmare ends

Posted on by davald

There were surely weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein supported al Qaeda, in particular Osama bin Laden; he was a brutal dictator. In the run up to the war against Iraq, we were treated with phony evidence and wholesale deceit. Saddam, you have 48 hours to leave your country, or else. He didn’t leave, so he got else—big time.

The carnage was wide and substantial, with over 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead in massive “collateral damage.” The U.S. lost nearly 4,500 troops to IEDs, land mines, and gunshots. Museums harboring ancient artifacts were ransacked and pillaged. Cities were bombed, then bombed again and again. We spent over $800 billion for the privilege of witnessing Saddam’s hanging. Oil may have had something to do with it, too.

Today, U.S. involvement in that damaged country is officially ended. Or is it?

Even after the last two bases are closed and the final American combat troops withdraw from Iraq by Dec. 31, under rules of an agreement with the government in Baghdad, a few hundred military personnel and Pentagon civilians will remain, working within the American Embassy as part of an Office of Security Cooperation to assist in arms sales and training.

But negotiations could resume next year on whether additional American military personnel can return to further assist their Iraqi counterparts.

Stay tuned. There’s more killing in our future. “War is the health of the state.”

Tidbits prompted by Harper’s

Posted on by davald

I’m rarely disappointed in Harper’s Index, which extracts the bizarre from the merely mundane. Here’s one from the January 2012 issue:

Percentage of all Americans who consider themselves part of the top 1 percent of U.S. earners: 13

Have you gotten yourself off the floor yet? Using 2006 data, one would need an income of at least $104,000 to be in the top ten percent of earners. To reach the coveted one percent, you’d have to make over $375,000 a year. It follows that the top 13 percent threshold is somewhere south of $100,000, a far cry from the nearly $400,000 to be a true One-percenter.

Here’s another tidbit:

Percentage of workers with only a high school diploma who received employer-based health insurance in 1979: 70

Percentage of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher who receive it today: 66

You see, the Great Divergence yielded lower benefits for the Rest of Us, along with lower wages.

This makes eerie sense, when you think about it:

Minimum number of weapons confiscated from visitors to the Statue of Liberty last year: 11,448

Get it? Liberty = freedom—to bear arms. The uniquely American take on the notion of liberty.

For a sign of the new military, consider this:

Amount the Defense Department has requested for new Gray Eagle and Reaper drones and parts in 2012: $1,908,600,000

That’s right, almost two trillion dollars—for drones. Gosh, the proposed 2012 budget for federal education spending is a bit more than $121 billion. Another example of U.S. priorities.

I’ll leave you with one more:

Date on which Obama said that donations from lobbyists “don’t contribute to the public interest”: 8/4/2007

Minimum amount Obama’s 2012 campaign has so far accepted from bundlers connected to lobbyists: $2,800,000

America, love it or leave it.

Longing for the Cold War

Posted on by davald

Eisehnhower’s “military-industrial complex” never had it so good. The Cold War between heathen communists and freedom-loving capitalists served to boost Pentagon spending while not having to actually kill anyone—or be killed. Billions and billions of dollars were pumped into the Pentagon to build the biggest and fanciest new weapons, planes, and ships, moving over and under the water.

At home, tales of Soviet treachery and global domination served to instill the appropriate fear in the body politic, providing ample electoral support for hawks on both sides of the political aisle. No bomb could be devastating enough. No rocket fast enough. No ship large enough. No death-causing technology lethal enough. Indeed, there was never enough. As former defense secretary Caspar Weinberg said, “We cannot afford not to ___.” Fill in the blank.

Then the wall came crashing down and with it the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain. What was the military (and the CIA) to do? We’re sitting on all this war stuff with no target, real or imagined. The panic was mercifully short-lived. Heeding the call for another enemy, one serious enough to warrant multi-year waves of Pentagon budget increases, came fanatical Islamism and Middle Eastern unrest.

First, Saddam Hussein decided to punish Kuwait for siphoning off its oil. This could not stand. The Iraqi army was brutally repelled by a massive U.S. onslaught, but Hussein was left in power—his usefulness to the military-industrial complex had not been exhausted.

Then, like Pearl Harbor, vicious attacks perpetrated against Americans—this time all innocents going about their business in downtown Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. No response could be enough. We were collectively anguished and angered. To whom or what should the rage be directed?

The military knows enough psychology to demonize an enemy. In World War I the Germans was transformed into “Huns.” In the next war, we had the “Krauts” and the “Japs.” Best of all we had Adolf Hitler, devil incarnate.

After the Twin Towers fell so spectacularly, Osama bin Laden played the role of the new Hitler, and he did so with incendiary arrogance. But bin Laden operated in Afghanistan, a vast, sparsely populated terrain of high mountains and parched deserts. Worse, it had no regular army. At best, bin Laden and his band were tattered revolutionaries operating out of hidden caves. We could unleash the entire Army on the country and be quickly engulfed by its size and topography. That won’t work.

Ah, but Saddam Hussein was spared to live another day and provide a suitable object of our wrath. There were problems, of course. No links were discovered between Saddam and bin Laden. Indeed, they loathed one another. Leave it to Pentagon ingenuity, with the devious, diabolical assistance of Mr. Cheney. A pretext for assault and invasion was fabricated.

That war lasted from April of 2003 to the end of this year. Over 100,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. The U.S. has spent at least $800 billion, and the war’s final cost has been estimated to be $2 trillion or more.

Meanwhile, we’re still at it in Afghanistan, our nation’s longest war. Where’s bin Laden? He was thought to lurk in caves and travel between them via intricate tunnels. We persisted, not with overwhelming military might but with sophisticated, unmanned drones. We finally got our man in Pakistan, then quickly dumped his body into the ocean.

Now what? Iran’s always a nuisance, yet evidently not so much as to justify a full-scale invasion.

Well, wouldn’t you know it. Our old nemesis Russia is emerging Phoenix-like. They’re not exactly communists anymore; more like plutocrats. And we understand those, since we’ve got most of them.

An election was held the other day in the former Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin’s return to power was guaranteed form the outset, even if it took massive ballot stuffing.

Up pops Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to accuse Putin of flagrant fraud. The New York Times reported:

“The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” Mrs. Clinton said on Monday in Bonn, Germany, while attending a conference on Afghanistan that included Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.

“That means they deserve a free, fair, transparent election and leaders who are accountable to them,” she said.

A slap in your face, Mr. Putin. He was not pleased, after riots broke out protesting the election shenanigans. The Times:

“I looked at the first reaction of our U.S. partners,” Mr. Putin said. “The first thing that the secretary of state did was say that they were not honest and not fair, but she had not even yet received the material from the observers.”

“She set the tone for some actors in our country and gave them a signal,” Mr. Putin continued. “They heard the signal, and with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work.”

Cold War II coming up. Gentlemen, bring out the Scotch.

Bring back the communists

Posted on by davald

Now that I’ve gotten your attention, hear me out.

An article reprinted in today’s Seattle Times chronicles the ultra-conservative Bradley Foundation, whose contributions to right wing causes and candidates dwarf those of the Koch brothers. Over the last decade they’ve tossed around more than $350 million in grants to various conservative institutions, some of whom insist on being called ‘think tanks.’ Mixed with today’s brand of conservative, I see an oxymoron in there.

The Bradley brothers, high-school dropouts, helped found an industrial colossus, Allen-Bradley. They built a fortune manufacturing electrical controls. Lynde Bradley died in 1942. Harry Bradley, a fierce anti-communist and supporter of the right-wing John Birch Society, died in 1965.

It occurred to me upon reading this excerpt that the Bradley Foundation and its beneficiaries exist to fight someone or something. The foundation started out fighting communism, rabidly so. My guess is that they provided significant financial support to Wisconsin’s Senator Joe McCarthy, who carried his outrage to an extreme and himself into shameful oblivion.

I suspect, but am in no position to prove, that the anti-communist fervor provided cover for progressives, liberals, and their initiatives. Congress could get behind enlightened legislation while the Right was focused on the “Masters of Deceit,” from the title of J. Edgar Hoover’s book. There were reds everywhere, lurking in the dark, even under people’s beds. The beauty of opposing communism, from the Right’s perspective, is that not only were its ideological adherents operating here at home and in the halls of Congress, the entire Soviet Union and China were officially communist. Thus, we could really beef up Pentagon spending as we operated a massive anti-communist apparatus within the states under the aegis of the FBI, led by J. Edgar.

However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its east European satellite countries the communist cover evaporated, revealing, well, progressives. Since the Right’s raison d’être is to be antagonistic, it needed to find another suitable enemy. Hey, how about all “those liberals.” Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Because “those liberals” support government-funded social programs, higher taxes on the wealthy, national health care, a clean environment, financial regulation, and—horror of horrors—science, those to the left of conservative idiots and their “European” ideas are now fair game. And that’s a pretty big chunk of the population.

So the Right now has its domestic enemy, what about a foreign candidate? Stepping up to the plate is “Islamofascism.” There are terrorists everywhere, just like the old communists. After a brief period of post-Soviet angst, the military-industrial complex has resumed its drooling. No army is too big, no weapon of mass destruction too powerful, no invoice too large.

Sweet.

So, where is Karl Marx when we need him—again?

The monster

Posted on by davald

From Hullabaloo:

Republicans have managed to muscle their way into power in this country by carefully nurturing a poisonous, nonsensical and unrealistic view of the world among somewhere between 30% and 40% of the American public. Like a foolish comic book or B-movie villain, they thought they could keep that monster in check to use for their own ends. In reality, that monster now controls their destiny.

A big part of me wants to know how that many Americans developed this “poisonous, nonsensical and unrealistic view of the world.” Why so many willfully ignorant people in this country?

Huge swaths of the American public are vulnerable to the most dastard and utterly false propaganda, and it’s been this way for quite some time. Consider what happened before the U.S. entered World War I. Most Americans favored neutrality. Indeed, Woodrow Wilson won re-election on the promise to “keep us out of war.” But he changed his mind, if he was ever sincere in the first place.

He appeared before Congress, had only said a few words, and the assembled body manifested instant bloodlust. You want war, Woodrow? By all means, yes, yes, yes!

Still, Americans appeared to have better things to do than volunteer for the army or scream “Kill the Huns.” As Chris Hedges tells us in his book The Death of the Liberal Class, Wilson established what became known as the Creel Commission. It very quickly turned around public opinion, from disinterest about the European battles to full throated enthusiasm for vanquishing the German military.

The propaganda effort could not have succeeded if more Americans possessed what Noam Chomsky calls “intellectual self-defense.” That is, it’s important to develop a b.s. meter. But too many of us must love this b.s., because we can’t seem to swallow enough of it.

By the way, one of the people behind the Creel Commission (known officially as the Committee for Public Information) was none other than Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and the father of both advertising and propaganda. Indeed, George Creel wrote a memoir after the war was long behind us. It’s title was How We Advertised America.