A Turbulent Time

 

This map, from Texas Beyond History, a public education service of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) at the University of Texas at Austin, developed in collaboration with many other organizations, is useful in illustrating several aspects of Texas and American history. 

The map illustrates Texas near the end of a very turbulent period.(1) A new nation was born in 1836 when it established its independence from Mexico. Mexico's refusal to recognize Texas as independent and Texian expansionism led to Texas invading Mexico in 1841 and 1843 and two Mexican attacks on Texas in 1842.  The second Mexican invasion triggered the bizarre episode of the Texas Archive War. A bankrupt Texas entered the United States in 1845, while the outcome of the Mexican War (1846-48) established the state's southern boundary on the Rio Grande (Mexico claimed it was the Nueces).  The Compromise of 1850 led to Texas relinquishing its claim to what is now New Mexico as far as the Rio Grande, which would have placed Santa Fe and Albuquerque in Texas.  You can read more about this episode at When Texas Invaded New Mexico. Meanwhile, the failure of the 1848 revolution in Germany resulted in a large migration of free-thinking Germans to Texas where most settled in the Hill Country west of Austin.

Though Texas was the largest state in the Union, most of its territory was dominated by Indians;  Comanche and, to a lesser extent, Apache.  The map shows the end point of a couple of centuries of fighting among the tribes.  The southern Great Plains had once been the home of the Navajo.  They were driven westward across the Rio Grande by the Apache.  In the early 1700s the Comanche (and their Kiowa allies) drifted south from Wyoming and pushed the Apache westward and southward.

It was the Comanche presence that caused newly independent Mexico to encourage Anglo settlement in Texas during the 1820s.  Mexico, and its predecessor Spain, had difficulty encouraging settlements from the Hispanic population and turned to the Americans to help form a protective barrier from Comanche raids.

The new nation of Texas still struggled against the Comanche, with one Indian raid in the early 1840s even reaching the Gulf Coast near Corpus Christi.  Along with its dire financial situation it was for protection from Mexico (which also briefly invaded Texas in the early 1840s, see Yo, Adrian) and from the Comanche that prompted the Texian agreement to enter the United States.  The result was the construction of the line of forts by the US Army as indicated on the map.

In areas of Texas, settlement extended beyond the defense lines.  This is a constant theme in American history.  It is the settlers who proceed the government, not the other way around.  In 1763 Britain attempted to establish a settlement line for its American colonies, but the effort failed as settlers moved on their own, in defiance of the government, into Kentucky and Tennessee.  After American independence, the pattern continued with westward expansion, settlers always outpacing the areas under direct government control, provoking conflict with Indians and triggering military intervention to restore the peace and protect the settlers.  You can read many military accounts from this era blaming settlers for most of the conflict.(2)  This was at a time when the U.S. government had little presence in everyday life, outside of local post offices, and maintained a very small military; its capacity a fraction of what we have become accustomed to over the past century.

Comanche raids continued for another twenty years.  In 2019 we visited the ancestral homestead of Lyndon Johnson in the Texas hill country and saw the home where LBJ's grandmother and aunt hid under the floorboards during an Indian raid around 1870.  

And those German immigrants in the Hill Country proved to be Unionists in 1861, leading to years of violent conflict with the Confederate government of Texas. 

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(1) Some would argue Texas has always been turbulent. 

(2) In any event it is difficult to see how any long-term coexistence with the raiding, nomadic Comanche could succeed, in contrast with the tribes in the southeast who adopted American ways and were still expelled. 

Take Five

I've always enjoyed Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.  Recorded in 1959, the song with its distinctive 5/4 time signature went on to become the best selling jazz single of all time after the album was rereleased in 1961.  The Quartet consisted of Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on the smooth sax, Eugene Wright (bass), and Joe Morello on drums. One thing I thought weak on the recorded version was Brubeck's repetitive piano pattern which continued throughout the tune except during the drum solo.

I just came across this 1964 video of a live performance on Belgian TV which is much superior to the recorded version.  Brubeck performs a terrific solo, followed by Morello's remarkable drum solo which is very different from the recorded version.  The whole performance avoids the static aspects of the recording.

Padley Gorge

 

Looks like something from Lord of the Rings. 

Located in England's Peak District, Padley Gorge is officially designated “the best example of the remnant oak-birch woodland that once covered much of the edges of the gritstone uplands of the Peak District.”   Get yourself to the Grindelford Train Station and start your walk from there.  

The photo is by peaklass, who produces calendars and books with her photos.  Unfortunately she does not ship to the U.S.  

A Lie That Won't Die

The upsurge in anti-semitism in the West since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 has been accompanied by a deluge of lies and distortions, one of which is that Israel manipulated the U.S. into attacking Iraq in 2003.  Journalist Nadav Eyal published an article on the subject today, including an off-the-record discussion he had with Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the fall of 2002.

Before getting to that, I wanted to review my own experience on the subject.  In the early 2000s I was reading online the right-wing Jerusalem Post and left-wing Haaretz (1).  One thing I discovered was that while Israel's military and intelligence services were fanatic and effective about maintaining operational security, internal government strategic discussions often played out in the press and what I consistently read in 2002 was while Saddam Hussein was definitely a bad actor, Israel felt Iraq was in a box and the much greater threat to Israel was Iran.  If the U.S. was to go over anyone in the War on Terror, Israel's preference was Iran.

Later in the 2000s, I learned that Prime Minister Sharon had conveyed this both directly and indirectly to the Bush Administration and was told in no uncertain terms that Iraq was next after Afghanistan.  Sharon's instructions to his cabinet was, given Israel's dependence on the U.S., it would publicly support whatever decision the Bush Administration made.  In other words, causation ran precisely in the opposite direction from what Mearsheimer and others maintain; it is Israel's reliance on the U.S., not American reliance on Israel, that was the driving force in what happened.

It's actually an example refuting the linkage made between neoconservatives and Israel.  In this case, American neocons urged the Iraq invasion while Israel cautioned against it.  Another division occurred in 2011, when neocons wanted the U.S, to support the Arab Spring uprisings while Israel was much more cautious.

My initial take was reinforced as more information became available about the American decision to invade Iraq.  Perhaps the best summary can be found in Mark Mazarr's 2019 book, Leap of Faith: Hubris, Negligence, and America's Greatest Foreign Policy Tragedy.  Mazarr's book benefits from his access to participants and documents which, with the passage of time, became more available.  The Iraq decision was driven by George Bush and Dick Cheney and was made even as the early stages of the Afghanistan action were underway in late 2001.  The degree of dysfunction in the Bush foreign policy team, including Powell, Rumsfeld, and Rice is appalling, with a lot of passive-aggressive behavior involved on everyone's part.  I didn't think much of Bush when he was elected but felt reassured that steady hands like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Powell would help steer things the right way on foreign policy.  What a mistake!  Nowhere in Mazarr's account does Israel play a role in the decision making.

More recently, I've seen a lot being made of Benjamin Netanyahu's Congressional testimony in 2002, urging an attack on Iraq.  That did occur, but those using the testimony fail to note (no doubt deliberately) the point Eyal makes:

In 2002 he was a private citizen plotting a political comeback. Sharon had taken control of Likud and sidelined Netanyahu decisively. The two camps detested each other. Netanyahu had no contact with Sharon when he testified and did not speak on behalf of the Israeli government.

Eyal's article pulls together in one place, the various threads I've come across over the years on this subject and is well worth reading.  Some excerpts:

I remember his message [during the off the record conversation with Sharon on the flight back from America in 2002] with unusual clarity. Israel, Sharon said, was not lobbying for this war. He told us that he had made Israel’s position explicit in Washington: this was the wrong war. Iraq was not the central threat to the region. Iran was. His concern, as he framed it, was that an American fixation on Iraq would come at the expense of confronting Iran’s growing regional ambitions.

By “wrong war,” he was not advocating the occupation of Iran or a campaign of regime change. At the time, Iran’s nuclear program was still in its early stages — and relatively unknown to the West and Israel. The Israeli preference was for crippling sanctions that would halt it before it matured.

They added that Sharon understood Israel had to stay out of the invasion debate altogether, given how contentious the issue already was in American politics. Sharon — unlike Netanyahu — was meticulous about preserving bipartisan support in Washington. He believed Israel’s strategic relationship with the United States depended on it. For him, even if he had supported the war, lobbying for it would have amounted to a stupid mistake. So he didn’t.

You do not have to take my word for it. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, later recalled that senior Israeli officials warned Washington against focusing on Iraq. “The Israelis were telling us,” Wilkerson said, “Iraq is not the enemy — Iran is the enemy.” 

Eyal goes on to argue that one of the consequences of the Iraq invasion eventually led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza.

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(1) Today I read the Times of Israel and several Israeli writers on X and Substack, though I still have a difficult time understanding the factions and parties in Israeli politics which often doesn't make much sense to me.  I rarely look at the Jerusalem Post and never at Haaretz which is today published for the benefit of those hostile to Israel since its internal very left-wing audience dramatically shrunk in the aftermath of the Second Intifada.  More recently Haaretz has been entangled in scandal as it was revealed that one of its prominent journalists was receiving payments from the Hamas supporting government of Qatar.

Shetland

We are watching Season 10 of Shetland, the murder mystery series set in those beautiful and isolated islands off the north coast of Scotland.  I don't watch many series but Mrs THC convinced me to take a look and I got hooked.

First, a reality check.  After the first few seasons, I calculated the show's murder rate and realized it was considerably worse than New York City at its peak in the early 1990s.  In the real world, Shetland has only two murders in the past 50 years. And most of the characters on the show seem depressed and/or angry.  I  hope it's not like that for real.

Having said that the mysteries are very well plotted, acting is top notch (with one exception), and the cinematography spectacular, making the islands look stunning.  The main character for the first 7 series was DI Jimmy Perez played superbly by Douglas Henshall.  When it was announced Henshall was leaving we wondered if Shetland would continue.  Season 8 kicked off with a new, and possibly temporary, lead character DI Ruth Calder, portrayed by Ashley Jensen, who I knew from the Ricky Gervais comedy Extras.  It got off to quite a rocky start, and the Mrs and I considered pulling the plug, but they got themselves straightened out by the last episode and Jensen has been very good since then, as have the plots.

But we are still not going to the Shetlands for vacation. 

Cold Irons Bound

I'm beginning to hear voices and there's no one around
Now I'm all used up and I feel so turned-around
I went to church on Sunday and she passed by
And my love for her is taking such a long time to die
God, I'm waist deep, waist deep in the mist
It's almost like, almost like I don't exist
I'm 20 miles out of town, Cold Irons bound

 

From 1997's Time Out of Mind album.  This live version is superior to the album cut.  I enjoy seeing how Dylan manages to look ill at ease and like Mr Cool at the same time.  That is one tight band backing him up.