A failure to communicate is a Donloe shame

The lesson of "Cool Hand Luke" taught good and hard.

One of my favorite movie scenes is the one where the Captain, having administered some physical punishment to Cool Hand Luke, gives this little speech. “What we got here is a failure to communicate. Some men you can’t reach, that is they just don’t listen when you talk reasonable so you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it, well he gets it, and I don’t like it any better than you men.” See, Luke never gave in to the Captain, or his jailers, even to his last act of defiance. He must have known he had no chance against the men trying to capture him, but that didn’t make any difference. Some things must be fought.

Image: Grok

Stephen Miller, who serves the Trump administration as High Priest of America First, the Pope of MAGA, told Jake Tapper on CNN, that America will have Greenland, for the simplest reason in the world, because we can.

“We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Oh, really, Mr. Miller? Is that true? The powerful always win? Are you so sure of that? Can I help you with some real world examples?

Let’s start with the few million people—Europeans mostly, with some Black slaves thrown in—who inhabited the British colonies in the eastern part of North America in the late 1700s. About a third of them had caught the fever of independence and rebellion against the crown. The rest were either inconclusive on the matter, or more likely, royalists. They only had to keep the most professional, hardened, well-trained soldiers, transported by the world’s biggest navy, supplied by the richest nation on earth, under orders by the parliament and sovereign in London, from quelling their little rebellion.

Last I checked, we won that war. We even continued after the British and Canadians kicked our tails in 1812, burning down the White House. Or maybe it was like another movie, where Han Solo and Luke Skywalker shoot down four measly TIE fighters to escape the Death Star. “Besides, they let us go,” said Princess Leia. “It’s the only explanation for the ease of our escape.” The British signed the Treaty of Paris because they were sick of pouring money and ships and bullets into our unprofitable, stubborn, rebellious laps. They could make far more money in the Caribbean, and in the East, and in the North.

Let me tell you the secret of the world, and of our victory. The defender only has to fight enough for the big bad bully to get sick of fighting. And big bad bullies are nobody’s friend, especially when it comes to other big bad bullies. The British let us Americans off the hook because they were really still fighting the French—we were a side show. And the British made a lot of money fighting the French.

To wit, in 1803, France’s First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, needed to raise a lot of cash (to fight the British, of course), so he decided to sell a big tract of wilderness in North America he had just obtained from Spain, to the United States, but he lacked the credit. No problem! The government of the United States would assume some of France’s debt, through the issuance of government bonds. Who would underwrite the bonds? Why, Francis Baring and Company of London, of course. Barings put the deal together with Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, and set the price at $15 million, or 80 million francs.

Baring, which became Barclays, and Hope, which is now ABN AMRO, made millions on the interest. The British and the Dutch made a lot of money (and still do) financing wars, and other people’s bullying. Hope financed Frederick VI of Denmark in 1814, who had joined the anti-French alliance, along with England and Sweden, who were fighting Denmark and Norway. Norway had the rights to Greenland, which they agreed, a few centuries before, to cede to Denmark, but never formalized it. As part of the Treaty of Kiel, which (mostly) ended the Napoleonic Wars, Norway formally gave up its claims on Greenland (except when it changed its mind in 1931).

Through all of this, the little United States was minding its own business, because we were not invited to the Big Boys table very often.

It took another hundred years before we chose sides in Europe, because the isolationist Woodrow Wilson decided he needed something more than the “equivalent of war” to unify the country into his Christofascist dreamland. We sided with England, because of money, mostly. Wilson sold it to the public by leveraging German U-boat attacks, and the Zimmermann Telegram, a hare-brained scheme to induce Mexico to invade the U.S. Then, naturally, we came in on England’s side in WWII (nobody was dumb enough to side with Hitler, save one sad Italian), and we became the “arsenal of democracy.” We beat the bullies, and stood against the Soviet Union’s bullying for another 46 years. We showed the world how to make money and rule during those years.

Now, full of himself, Stephen Miller thinks we should be the bullies. President Trump thinks the “Donroe Doctrine” gives him some right to conquer all of the western hemisphere. They have learned nothing from history, or human nature, or “Star Wars,” or “Cool Hand Luke.”

Vladimir Putin thought he could invoke the “iron laws of the world” against Ukraine. The Soviet Union had owned that nation for 80 years. Ukrainians spoke Russian, adopted many aspects of Russian culture, and took pride in their part of slavic heritage and history. But they were not Russia, not since 1991. Putin thought he could march in and take Ukraine and they would not fight. They had not fought in Crimea. They had fought some in the Donbas, but more as resistance. Putin was wrong.

The Ukrainians only have to fight long enough for Russia, which is much larger, with more manpower, resources, money, and deep borders, to decide to stop pouring men, money, and ordnance into their country. Russia seems determined. Remember, the U.S. war of independence against England lasted eight years. Russia has only fought for three years. And before you think that wars involving drones and missiles are so different from George Washington and William Howe and Henry Clinton and their muskets, cannon, and sailing ships, it’s not as different as you think. Winter war in Ukraine is limited by terrain and ice. In the spring, there’s mud. In the summer, there’s battle. The missiles and drones don’t take ground. Five years to go.

Kudos where kudos are due: the United States pulled off a mission for the textbooks. We went in to a fortified presidential compound and plucked the president of Venezuela, and his wife, alive and unharmed, to bring them to the U.S. for trial. Last I checked (just now), the government of Venezuela is still functioning exactly as Mr. Maduro left it. We didn’t beat Maduro’s government. He’s still considered president by his staff. I suppose if we force him to sign some treaty giving America all kinds of goods and rights and privileges, those people in power will change their minds and boot him. The U.S. is not “running things” in Venezuela. We did a mission there, but we’re not in charge.

Or perhaps Stephen Miller and his ilk will talk President Trump into trying to topple Maduro’s government. But if they do it without letting the choice of the Venezuelan people, María Corina Machado, run the country, they’ll learn the lesson Putin learned.

The lesson of “Cool Hand Luke.” Venezuelans are joyful we removed Maduro. But if we decide we own their country, they will fight us. We are not nearly as powerful in the real world as in the minds of radicals who spew threats on CNN.

The treaty that legally yielded Greenland to Denmark from Norway was financed by the Dutch and the British, who through various East India companies, ran most trade from the East Indies to India and China for nearly two centuries. That was real power. The sun never set on the British Empire for hundreds of years. Their influence still lives on in Hong Kong, Mumbai, Singapore, South Africa, Australia, Jamaica, Canada, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, the Bahamas, New Zealand, Fiji, here in the U.S. of A., and of course, the Pitcairn Islands. The Dutch spanned the world from Indonesia to Aruba. The golden age of America Stephen Miller and Donald Trump are trying to reconstruct is a mere tick of Big Ben, and a drop in the bucket in the depths of that rich history.

If Mr. Miller thinks we can just “take” Greenland because we have a big military, lots of ships, and power in the world, he’s more than wrong; he’s delusional. I’ve defended the case that Greenland is part of North America, and in many rational ways, it could fit in with the United States. But Greenland is not part of the United States, and does not naturally belong to us. We’ve taken other territories: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and nearly, Cuba. We ran Panama, carving it out from Colombia. We conquered Mexico City and occupied it for nearly a year, forcing Mexico to cede California and New Mexico to us. We used our military power to build an American empire.

But Greenland will fight us. Denmark will fight us for it. It will be our Waterloo; America will be beset with Wellingtons. We will not be able to simply walk in and twist Denmark’s arm into signing it over. The Europeans will side with Europe, not America. NATO will fracture and crumble. The Swedes, Norwegians, Finns, Dutch, French, and probably the Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Germans, and even the Italians will oppose us. We will become the very bullies we helped defeat in World War II. We will be surrounded by enemies.

There is a way we could, in a perfect world, have Greenland, and that’s to convince the inhabitants of Greenland that it’s in their interest to join the U.S., and then let them decide to secede from Denmark (like Iceland did) and make their own alliances. But that possibility just got flushed down the toilet when Stephen Miller asserted a right to power to simply take the place by force. The Greenlanders will not be conquered, not by us.

If we are bullheaded enough to try, they will teach us the lesson of “Cool Hand Luke.” Stephen Miller should go back and watch that movie. Some things must be fought. And in a war over Greenland, we can never win, because our enemies will never stop fighting for it.

Hopefully, someone can reach Miller and his fellow MAGA Dumbpublican radicals before they destroy everything Americans have fought for since 1775. But some men you just can’t reach.

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