Measure, Will Power and Pomposity

Recently Ilario Pantano appeared in a rebroadcast on CPAN. He's a former Marine Lieutenant that was charged with premeditated murder in the killing of two Iraqi civilians on April 15, 2004, charges that were dismissed. I do not wish to ignore this fact and wish no disrespect for the former Marine lieutenant. Pentano has attributes of a gentleman, some respect for debate and is a man of some intelligence. What concerns me here is idea and attitude beyond Lieutenant Pantano.

Before his audience at the Locke Foundation in North Carolina, Pantano stated his belief in will-power, saying that will should dominate circumstance, and members of the audience told Pantano that he was the kind of hero that the nation needed. For someone interested in history this kind of want for a hero should be more disturbing than Lieutenant PanDao.

I don't wish to associate Pantano with Hitler. Pentano is no Hitler. But believing in the power of will and ignoring circumstances was Hitler's point-of-view, helping him to blame his fellow Germans in 1945 for Germany losing the war. Will is important for armies. It keeps soldiers fighting. But this is about will power considered to an extreme, will power beyond the normal determination of individual soldiers in battle. German soldiers displayed an ample amount of will during World War II. So too did Germany's civilians. The German people faced circumstances that overwhelmed will rather than will overwhelming circumstance. Hitler was rationalizing in blaming his fellow Germans for lacking will and making themselves unworthy of his leadership.

Hitler's exaggerated belief in will began as nationalistic conceit. Real Germans were supposed to have a power of will that neighboring peoples lacked -- a part of the inferiority of these peoples. Germans were supposed to be able to exercise their will and others were expected to submit. It didn't work out that way. Circumstances did Hitler in.

We need leaders who have respect for circumstance.

Pantano was outspoken in choosing not to fathom the issue of behavior making one like the enemy. It is a simple issue: we are supposed to fight wars for self-defence but also for a principle. War should be more than an ego contest. War is not a sporting contest.

A sense of measure was absent from Pantano's analysis of the challenges that the United States faces. While president, Dwight Eisenhower, former five-star general, was a man of measure, demonstrated in his bearing and as president when he avoided moves that the rightwing of the Republican Party wanted him to make. General Patton, whom Pantano quoted, was not so much a man of measure. Patton was brilliant in ways but his lack of measure brings to mind his desire to send U.S. forces on an invasion of the Soviet Union in 1945, and it brings to mind the killing of Italian prisoners of war in Sicily in 1943 -- the Biscari massacre. Patton was not responsible for that massacre, in my opinion, but he was fingered as responsible by those U.S. soldiers who had been under his command and on trial. Those soldiers had an inadequate sense of measure. Patton had the job of teaching his troops that they had to kill, but he did not do that while at the same time encouraging measure. War creates hate and hate challenges measure. I am thankful the for the North Vietnamese nurse who saved John McCain from her fellow North Vietnamesse bent on killing him. In my opinion, when U.S. soldiers faced Italian enemy combatants in World War II they should have fired their weapons when necessary but not with a sense of righteous glory and egotism that obliterated the fact that the Italians they faced were also worthy human beings.

Pantano wrote a book, Warlord: No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy. The words in this title are a dangerous pomposity, it's something for primitive egomaniacs, not men of Pantano's character and intelligence. Who wants a friend or mate who could turn into a worse enemy?

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