Lewis Thomas Quotes
Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.
Thomas, Lewis. The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. Viking Press, 1974, p. 12.
The so called War on Terror had many lessons. President Obama and many of the military leaders in the Pentagon realized that just as we evolved the concept of a Cold War, a new concept was needed to deal on the long run with the Al Qaeda terrorists. Typically in war, the nation is fully mobilized with the surrender of the enemy the major objective. When peace is negotiated, there is some demobilization and other things begin to take precedence. However, given the non state highly decentralized nature of Al Qaeda, there is no way to ever negotiate peace because no Al Qaeda official can speak for any more than his immediate cell and cadre. They will likely never stop attacking in any foreseeable future since their motivation is ideological and religious. It doesn’t take full military mobilization to protect against individual acts of terrorism, and indeed arguably the large mobilization only gives the terrorists more nearby targets. So American leaders were evolving a state of high protection, surgical strikes and attacks on Al Qaeda leadership and cells, and at the same time a demobilization of many of the overseas ground troops. It is not a state of war yet there will be attacks from time to time against us and attacks by us on Al Qaeda, yet there cannot be an all out war which is de factor non winnable in toto, but is very controllable. For Stein and other hawks, this new state is unfathomable. If there is any attack on Americans or American interests to them we are either at war with full mobilization or have surrendered. The total number of American civillians killed in the 10 year war on terror has been less than 2 months of normal automobile crash deaths or 3 months worth of gun accidents, or one tenth of the deaths caused by flu in a single year.
Patton, one of the world’s best fighting general was somewhat mentally unbalanced and unlike almost all senior officers who are successful commanders but see war as an unpleasant, brutal necessity, Patton loved war and the fighting part of it. His non battlefield behavior was so erratic and atrocious that Eisenhower and his other superiors almost fired him on several occasions. He died in an automobile crash shortly after the German surrender, so the dilemma of what to do with Patton in peacetime was resolved.
The critic observed that the South would not give up their slaves voluntarily and that and that vigorous abolition pressure on the South would lead to war and asked Angelina if she would want a civil war. Grimke’s response was predictive of what happened—the most terrible was in U. S. History to end the most terrible cruelty and persecution in American history. Note that she herself was willing to die to end slavery. See {629094}.
Washington and Green won very few battles as the strategy was, like many revolutionary movements, simply to avoid losing and being wiped out—the strategy that finally won the war.
In the political norms of the 21st century this is a remarkable statement. Here we have the President’s wife, at the end of his first term, stating that her generation has failed. If anyone close to the Obama administration in 2012, after his first 4 years, had stated that we had failed, the press would have had a field day and the minority party would be running the statement day and night as attack ads. “He’s been in control for 4 years and we are still a failure. He is incompetent.” The reality is that political honesty was not punished in the 1940’s as it was in the early 21st century. In 1936 most Americans were not sure we would ever have an economic recovery even though things were getting a little better. It would certainly take over a decade. In reality it took 20 years and a major war. In 2012 many thought that it would be more than a decade to make up for all the lost jobs and standard of living for the average person. But no politician, much less anyone in the administration would ever admit that or even say we had “failed” when that generation of politicians, business and labor leaders surely did.
There were other factors which Stalin did not mention. There was a major factor of revenge and retaliation. The Germans had killed 22 million Russians (many murdered deliberately), and forced millions of others into slave labor. They had looted everything of value, artistically or commercially from Russian, homes, churches and other buildings. Many of the Russian officers believed that treatment of the Germans was only just given the barbaric behavior of the Germans and applauded by most of the German population.
Eisenhower was then the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Forces.
The Congress had applauded his message vigorously.
Unfortunately, the prime minister turned out to be very accurate in his predictions. The Second World War functioned just as he said.
A few American soldiers working as prison guards and interrogators at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq, with poor supervision and mixed signals from the generals and other officers, engaged in a variety of sordid, illegal abuse of Arab. Prisoners ranging from harassment to torture and murder. One activity involved putting a dog leash around the necks of Muslim naked prisoners who were forced to crawl around like a pet dog—hence the reference to a “leash”.
The "Rhenish Republic" only lasted for a few days. Although if the Allies had allowed the Rhinelanders to separate, the Prussians who would also form the backbone of the German military in WWII would have been very weakened, only France was very worried about future German aggression. However the French were more motivated by their desire to obtain the money reparations that Germany was required to pay. If Germany had split up into separate independent states which many Germans favored, then the French worried that they would have much more trouble collecting their reparations in the future as the Rhinelanders and other German subgroups really blamed the Prussians for the German aggression and might not feel responsible to make payments. Therefore the Allies did not insist on the separation and the Prussians and many of the right wing were absolutely opposed to it. Interestingly, Konrad Adenauer, then the Chief Bürgermeister of Cologne and later to be the First President of Post WWII West Germany was an enthusiast for the general German separation and the Rhineland Movement in particular of which he was one of the leaders.
This was one of the statements that he was jailed for during WWI.
Lewis Thomas was an American physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher.
