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Thursday, November 4, 2021

The Bomber Mafia - book review and a reflection on politics and face to face democracy

 I always enjoy reading Malcolm Gladwell. He takes a pile of information from other people, and puts it together in a way that is more interesting. It's always a good story, and there is always something to think about. This book, The Bomber Mafia, did that to me once again. But I would bet that Mr Gladwell did not draw the conclusions that I did - but I could be wrong. Let's see if he has a search algorithm up to find book reviews!  Hmm? The full title of the book helps a bit with the context: 
The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War.

I just finished the Kindle version which I borrowed from the local library - and since I returned it, you can now go and borrow it! It's a great read. It is all about belief and commitment, as told through the philosophy of waging a bombing war. The more committed you are to a belief or principle, the more difficult it is to let go of it. IF you plan to read the book, I would skip ahead at this point to my Reflection, because I have a few spoilers.  Go ahead - skip the next bit- The Insight. Thanks.

Belief and commitment

The Bomber Mafia is the name given to the group of airmen that formed the initial corps of pilots and crews for the United States Army bombers. The book explains the development of the Norden bombsight - a remarkable story all in itself. The bombsight was an analog computer, made up of moving parts and dials and settings, that could greatly improve bombing accuracy. The bombsight was a work of genius, using mechanical settings to adjust what the bombardier could see through the scope so that all of the variables could be offset. This included the speed of the bomber, wind speed, altitude, temperature and humidity, the curvature of the earth, and the earth's rotation speed and direction. The promise was that using the Norden bombsight, a plane could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet. In fact, the data showed that the "creep" from the desired target was a circular area of about 75 feet wide - still pretty amazing at the time. 

Given this technology, the early pilots and officers of the eventual U.S. Air Force had long discussions about the proper use of bombing as a war tactic. The Bomber Mafia group was committed to doing the right, the ethical, the moral thing with these terrible weapons of destruction. Their idea was to use precision bombing to disable the enemy's war potential by destroying only strategic targets. For instance, a ball bearing factory is essential to the development of every kind of engine. Destroying steel plants and oil refineries and similar targets could completely disable the ability to engage in war. And the amount of collateral damage and civilian deaths would be minimized. 

It was a wonderful, highly ethical, very well developed theory or belief about how bombing should be conducted. The Bomber Mafia had faith in this doctrine, and they were committed to it. On the other side, British bombing crews were focused on civilian carpet bombing. The basic idea was to demoralize the general public that they would rise up and demand that the war be stopped. British aviation held to this belief, even though Germany had tried to accomplish that very thing by bombing Great Britain. And it did not work. If anything, the British people were even more committed to the war effort as a result of the German "atrocity" of civilian bombing. 

The book describes the many efforts to make this strategy work, introducing the reader to the key generals and commanders that worked hard at it. Curtis LeMay was one of the key players - but not personally a member of the Bomber Mafia. He was more focused on pragmatics than any moral theory. He wanted something that worked. The book tells many stories of disastrous bombing missions that were simply unable to make the strategy work.

The final war in the Pacific was a very important part of the story. At great cost, U.S. forces had gained control of the Mariana islands and built large airbases there in order to bomb Japan. The first commander of this facility was a member of the Bomber Mafia, and he was committed to destroying strategic targets in Japan to disable the war effort. The obstacles were formidable, and the attempts were heroic - with great loss of life and planes. The conditions, the distance, the weather, the wind, made it actually impossible to ever implement the theory of strategic bombing. But they could not let go of their commitment to the moral principle and belief that strategic bombing was the only ethical and effective way to wage a bombing campaign.

When Curtis LeMay became the commander of the Marianas, he had already had several disasters in trying to make the strategy work. Intead, he chose what he saw as the only other strategy available to him - incendiary bombing of Japanese cities - starting with Tokyo. Napalm had been invented just for this purpose, and the book describes its effect in graphic terms. The description of the fire bombing of Tokyo is very moving - it made me stop and think. 

The natural obstacles made it impossible for strategic bombing of Japan to ever be successful. Curtis LeMay understood that - and he adopted the only other strategy he had. Explaining it to the pilots and crews was a major challenge. When he committed the first night time, low altitude, fire bombing assault on Tokyo, he stayed up until the planes returned, because he had no idea whether or not it would be successful. Most of the planes survived, and most of Tokyo was destroyed.

This same faith or strategy that this was the moral way to conduct a war also affected the choice of cities to be targeted by the two bombs - Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman specifically directed that the capital of Tokyo NOT be targeted. It felt like the correct ethical decision. 

Most of the US air command was so committed to this belief that strategic bombing was the best and only ethical way to conduct war, that they could not let go of it, even in the face of a total failure of that strategy.

In retrospect, as Gladwell reports, many individual Japanese leaders thanked the United States forces for using atomic weapons to bring about the end of the war. They felt that the Japanese commitment was so strong that only unprecedented destruction could have worked. An invasion would have cost many more lives on both sides. And Japan was on the verge of starvation when the end of the war enabled General MacArthur to provide food relief. 

As I said, a good read - and there are more stories in there around this point. When in doubt, double down!

The Insight - U.S. Democracy is past its prime.

Gladwell does a fine job in laying down a premise, and then building you up to the climax in the last chapter. Since this document is not a piece of literature, I am going to do the reverse - here's my insight, and then I will give you the foundation for it that I drew from this book and elsewhere.

Democracy in the United States is past its prime. Some of our fearless elected officials have figured that out, and they are making hay while they can. They are not crazy or irrational. They have given up on the idea of democracy, and are trying to extract the most wealth and power they can from the wreckage.

I, on the other hand, until this point, have been suffering under the delusion that democracy is the only moral, ethical, practical way to organize human affairs. That may be true in some theoretical domain, it may have been true in the United States at some past time - but it is no longer true. Democracy in the United States of America no longer works. I am not sure it ever worked. The sooner we can let go of that and be about a new program, the better it will be for all of us. 

I cannot find any great research in support of this, but I think that democracy can only flourish in a certain mix of culture and values. Some remarkable British writers and philosophers formed the idea. Some remarkable British leaders in their new country beat it into a survivable form and gave birth to one of the very first truly democratic nations. Today, it seems to flourish in the Scandinavian countries. Canada and Japan and Australia seem to have peculiarly resilient forms of it. On the failing side we have the United States, Great Britain, Italy and most of the former members of the USSR. Virtually all of Latin American countries are failed democracies, with the possible exception of Costa Rica. There is no way that the democratic governments which the US imposed on Iraq and Afghanistan have any chance of surviving. All of Africa is a similar disaster area. Some parts of Asia may be able to pull this off - Japan does seem to be working well. 

Democracy seems to demand a certain mental model, a certain set of implied values and commitments, which people hold dear. The general populace has to be committed to this enterprise, or it simply does not work. 

WHAT New Strategy?

I am having a terrible time letting go of that belief. I really need a NEW strategy. Where are the political philosophers with new ideas today? All of the ones I read lament that our democracy seems to be not working. How do you tell them to let go of that, and come up with a better idea? 

Face to Face Government

We have all manner of new technologies. We have all kinds of new class and income structures, relationships that cut across the lines of nation states and cultural heritages. But I am persuaded that humans operate best when they see, feel and hear each other as directly as possible. They can read the other person. They can develop a bond of trust and friendship - even across disputed boundaries and ideas. What if we use this strength, and adopt a type of town hall meeting, which occurs twice monthly in every precinct in the nation?  In this model, we only vote for people we can actually meet and see, and then have them to select the person on the next tier up.  I wrote that up originally in 1997 and rewrote it here: https://carlscheider.blogspot.com/2013/06/face-to-face-democracy.html

I see this as kind of a stack of town hall meetings, where people in a neighborhood gather on one night, and elect their fearless local leader, and give that person some sense of direction. I think a group of 30 people might work - 50 would be too many. Think of caucuses with no party affiliation. That person goes to the next tier up - which meets the following week, and so on. When the group represents a legislative district, the person they select is the newly elected representative. I would set a normal period of 4 years to require a refreshing of the stack. Two years is too short a period, 6 too long.

When someone is selected to move up, that person is replaced by the group that originally named them. People are active members of only one group. They only need to monitor the group that elected them. That keeps the multiple group membership thing from becoming too crazy. People are only voting members of one group, electing just one person to the next tier up. 

The groups continue to meet - bi-weekly, monthly, whatever works.They send messages or requests up the ladder, and replies come down. The elected official can always poll the group for their input. If they want, they can set up a survey for the whole tower of town halls that support them, and get a reading very rapidly on where their constituents stand on any issue.

At any time, a group can recall the person that they elected to the next group by a supermajority vote. This means that the top guy can only be recalled by the final group. But they have to work to keep all of the groups in their geographical segment happy! Talk about term limits! If you do not keep your neighborhood happy, you are out of office.

I think this approach basically gets rid of political parties, it gets rid of campaigns and advertising and corporate influence. And it requires people to meet and talk on a regular basis, to create some sense of common understanding and trust. If there are no sides - just a problem to solve - could that even work?

This whole thing remains committed to geography - local bodies. If we extended it to electronic groupings, it would be much more flexible, but letting people choose their groupings simply will not work. They could choose by moving their residence, and a certain amount of that goes on right now. I can also see the old political parties doing their best to influence their "members" in these groups. I am hopeful that meeting face to face in small groups will eventually overcome any party affiliation and loyalty. 

Only Those Who Show Up Have a Voice

One major benefit of this is that you have to show up to have a voice. People who do not appear at their local meeting, ever, are not counted, ever. There would have to be some participation rule - if you miss three meetings, then it takes 3 more before you can vote. We need some form of local registration to verify that people live within the geographical boundary of their local group - but that is about it. 

I have not been able to find much research or even opinions about this kind of approach. I am clearly open to suggestions. Please - provide a comment or two.

Copyright 2021 Carl Scheider