Defeat in Iraq is a very good thing. All those lives of American soldiers will be spared. Hundreds of billions of dollars in military expenses will be saved -- no doubt to be invested wisely in domestic entitlements by the soon-to-be elected Dhemocrat-controlled White House with her House and Senate. The moral authority of the United States will be greatly enhanced. Such moral arbiters as France and Russia, China and Syria will applaud and commend our courage and clarity in joining the rest of the civilized world in giving up our hubris and imperialist ambitions.
My son will be removed from harm’s way.
Frankly I cannot see a downside. It’s a win win win win win situation. Yes. Losing is winning.
As for Iraq, it is none of our affair. We have no business there. There were no WMD -- just a few old dried-out gas bombs and stuff. But even if there had been a hollowed-out mountain full of nukes, we had no business there. Iraq was a sovereign nation, doing no harm to anyone at the time. Saddam was in a box. Who could argue with that? He’d learned his lesson, and any shots fired at American fly-overs was just him saving his Moslem face -- 100% understandable.
The Kurds can go to hell. Are they American? No. Not our business then. Period. We owe them nothing. They might as well be, oh, say, South Vietnamese.
Torture? America is just as bad. Worse, even, since we pretend to be good. Panties on heads and barking dogs may not technically be as bad as rape rooms or industrial plastic shredders, but humiliation is as much a torture as physical violence -- the difference is only in degree.
It’s about time that America confess its insane and greedy addiction for Iraqi oil and stop stealing it and live like the rest of the world. What’s wrong with dirt floors anyway? Toilet paper is its own kind of decadence. It takes 100 tons of water to grow an acre of wheat. Water ain’t just a river in Egypt, you know.
When the Dhems take the White House, they will do what they did with Vietnam. We’ve seen it before. In November of ’74 the Dehms won 49 seats in the House and a month later they stopped all military aid to South Vietnam; in April of ’75 we refused to vote special funds to help our former ally in fending off the North Vietnamese invasion. This was a great benefit to the Vietnamese people, millions of whom got into rafts hoping to sail to prosperity in America upon the peaceful waves of the rolling blue Pacific. Sea voyages are a luxury, and good for the health. Hopefully we’ll see a prudent Dhemocrat left-leaning President embark on such a course again. It’s what Dhems do -- save us from ourselves.
Iraq is definitely Vietnam. The American soldiers who perished in roadside bombings are perfectly analogous to the 4000 US troops killed in the Tet offensive -- which we lost, despite nearly sixty thousand dead enemy combatants and an utterly ruined communist army. Fortunately this time around all the Media is Walter Cronkite -- the voice of sanity and true patriotism, informing us that we have lost. All we need to make this a perfect reprise of the glorious 1970s is the removal of a president -- and that will come not soon enough though. Oh, and then we can elect another Carter! Who needs a Shah, anyway? Ayatollahs are the wave of the future. Catch the wave, so very peacenik, so very bluestate!
Islamists? Who are the islamists? Moslems, that’s all. What have we to fear from Islam? It is the Religion of Peace. If we do not provoke them, they will not be provoked -- despite intimations and evidence to the contrary. So simple and obvious. The only thing we have to fear is ... ourselves. Damn Americans. I hate myself for so many excellent reasons.
What? You think I’ve been insincere and illogical? I'm insane? I’m hopped up on goofballs?
Being insincere, illogical, insane and hopped up on goofballs is a very good thing.
J
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vietnam. Show all posts
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Conflict
Damn right.
“Not many nations get a second chance to show the world and themselves that they are serious after all, that their friends can trust them and their enemies ought to fear them. …we can make clear that 'No More Vietnams' is a Republican slogan. It means that we will never again go back on our word and betray our friends, our soldiers, and ourselves. ... The left had better get this straight: Vietnam was an aberration. There will be no more Vietnams.”
I have a new hero.
Of the Vietnam Memorial wall in Washington, Gelernter points out that "it stands in a scraped-out hole in the ground; a symbolic open grave. Some day we will tear down that wall and fill up the open grave, and rebuild the wall above ground and re-engrave every name, and add two more words at the end. Two words the designer did not see fit to include. Thank you."
Amen.
What is passion for, if not to hold steadfastly to right and set our hearts firmly against evil? What is faithfulness, if there is no risk of pain? What is friendship if it bears no cost? What is valor, that looks only to its own comfort? Why have we been blessed, if not to stand up and step forward and raise the strength of our arms in defense of the oppressed? Let us be fierce, to protect those who are weak. Because there is nobody else who will stand firm. Only us, if we will. Only we have the strength, now, at this point in history, to bring to bear against a mounting anarchy sufficient force to impose order. Is
How, um, patriotic. How idealistic. And how easy, to say. But I have a son, born into my hands a life of blood and paste, and when he came to me I vowed by every ancient righteousness never to fail his need. He’s grown to tall and broad manhood now, and he’s everything a father could want in a son. How could it be otherwise. On his own initiative he joined in time of war the
All of these sentiments have a cost, if we live by them. Our love of honor. The lives of our sons. We would not sacrifice either. To lose one would be to lose our own worth. To lose the other would be to lose everything that has meaning.
God made us capable of loving justice, so that we might fight for what is right. God made us to love our sons that we might better understand God.
In the face of such conflict, we must hope and pray and cling to courage. Without it, we must fail.
J
Thursday, September 6, 2007
How to Lose a War
Well we know how to do that. Listen to the mainstream media. When we do that we'll be convinced, as the aim must be from the Ministry of Truth, that our victories are losses and our successful tactics are failures. Yes, Vietnam, again.
All the history you know about that war came from leftists writing in the '70s and '80s. Time has been caught in amber, and such truth does not flow. Right? The hippies are old men now, and many of them don't even wear ponytails. They have become the Man. Up with the Establishment, since it's them -- although America is still bad. Point being, they are as out-of-date as that guacamole in your fridge that used to be yogurt.
Y'see, we have access now to the archives of Moscow and Hanoi. We know the distress that they felt over the victories that our trusted mavens told us were defeats. We can see the encouragement they took from our noble Congress, which did the enemy the great courtesy of informing them of our intentions to betray our treaty commitments. Thus, the Second Supplemental Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1973 broadcast to the enemy our refusal to provide any funds that would "support directly or indirectly combat activities in or over Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam or South Vietnam." And then there was the Continuing Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1974, and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973, which forbade third-party countries that accepted US aid from assisting the South Vietnamese. Because it's really important, when you plan your back-stabbings, to make a thorough job of it. No Good Samaritans allowed.
Maybe you thought the enemy can't read English? They could. They can. We printed up the menu, and we took their orders. Where the dead bodies are, there the vultures gather. Dig in, boys. There are lots of abandoned allies we can serve up.
A significant percentage of Americans hate presidents who wage strategic wars. Truman with Korea left office with an abysmal approval rating. Johnson with Vietnam did not choose to run again. Nixon was driven from office. Bush, with this hopelessly endless quagmire of another hopeless defeat and hopelessly bad awfullness and stuff -- I'm forgetting the exact words the left uses. Well. What do we get when we elect leaders who only know how to follow? What do we get when we take daily opinion as guiding precepts? When gossip becomes gospel, what happens to a nation's soul? Strength is better than weakness.
We abandoned Vietnam and it became totalitarian. Because of this Vietnam Syndrome, we abandoned the Shah and Iran went islamist. We quavered when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, and the mujahadeen gave rise to Osama. Now our cowardice has loosed the malevolent Jinn of islamism, that strides over the world on legs of state and private terrorism. We know how such things happen. We've had plenty of examples. Our enemies themselves have told us, in their archives. We lose wars the same way we create enemies: by being weak, and by lying about victories.
Ah well. There's nothing to be done about it. Except convert. It'll be fine. We'll just have to keep our sins private until we die, then we'll get all those virgins.
J
All the history you know about that war came from leftists writing in the '70s and '80s. Time has been caught in amber, and such truth does not flow. Right? The hippies are old men now, and many of them don't even wear ponytails. They have become the Man. Up with the Establishment, since it's them -- although America is still bad. Point being, they are as out-of-date as that guacamole in your fridge that used to be yogurt.
Y'see, we have access now to the archives of Moscow and Hanoi. We know the distress that they felt over the victories that our trusted mavens told us were defeats. We can see the encouragement they took from our noble Congress, which did the enemy the great courtesy of informing them of our intentions to betray our treaty commitments. Thus, the Second Supplemental Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1973 broadcast to the enemy our refusal to provide any funds that would "support directly or indirectly combat activities in or over Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam or South Vietnam." And then there was the Continuing Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 1974, and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973, which forbade third-party countries that accepted US aid from assisting the South Vietnamese. Because it's really important, when you plan your back-stabbings, to make a thorough job of it. No Good Samaritans allowed.
Maybe you thought the enemy can't read English? They could. They can. We printed up the menu, and we took their orders. Where the dead bodies are, there the vultures gather. Dig in, boys. There are lots of abandoned allies we can serve up.
A significant percentage of Americans hate presidents who wage strategic wars. Truman with Korea left office with an abysmal approval rating. Johnson with Vietnam did not choose to run again. Nixon was driven from office. Bush, with this hopelessly endless quagmire of another hopeless defeat and hopelessly bad awfullness and stuff -- I'm forgetting the exact words the left uses. Well. What do we get when we elect leaders who only know how to follow? What do we get when we take daily opinion as guiding precepts? When gossip becomes gospel, what happens to a nation's soul? Strength is better than weakness.
We abandoned Vietnam and it became totalitarian. Because of this Vietnam Syndrome, we abandoned the Shah and Iran went islamist. We quavered when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, and the mujahadeen gave rise to Osama. Now our cowardice has loosed the malevolent Jinn of islamism, that strides over the world on legs of state and private terrorism. We know how such things happen. We've had plenty of examples. Our enemies themselves have told us, in their archives. We lose wars the same way we create enemies: by being weak, and by lying about victories.
Ah well. There's nothing to be done about it. Except convert. It'll be fine. We'll just have to keep our sins private until we die, then we'll get all those virgins.
J
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
On Lacking Sufficient Legitimacy
George Bush not so very long ago referenced the Vietnam war, comparing aspects of it to the current conflict in Iraq. The left of course went apoplectic over the analogy, crowing if you will over how insurgencies and civil wars are unwinnable. War hero Lt. Sen. John Kerry said it was an "irresponsible" comparison, and accused Bush of being "ignorant of the realities of both of those wars." Yes. It seems perfectly reasonable to say that the commander in chief is "ignorant" about the war. He must not have sources of information of the same high caliber that are available to US senators. And, per Kerry, it's deja vu all over again, since "more American soldiers are being sent to fight and die in a civil war we can't stop and an insurgency we can't bomb into submission." This is how Kerry supports the troops. Ted Kennedy, a famous senator, stated that Vietnam was lost because its government "lacked sufficient legitimacy with its people." Kennedy of course is famed for his ample legitimacy -- the fact that he can prove his descent from Old Joe is the reason he is a famous senator.
We must never argue about facts. Facts are to be demonstrated. If they can't be, they are opinions, inferences or theories. Yet conflict persists over the meaning of Vietnam. The reason for this conflict, according to Mark Moyar, is that the institutions of the hoary left "chose to rely on outdated historians or their own prejudices. The insurgency in Vietnam was dead by 1971, thanks to South Vietnam's armed forces, America's forces, and a South Vietnamese civilian population that overwhelmingly viewed the South Vietnamese government as legitimate. During 1972, after all American combat units had departed, South Vietnamese forces defeated a massive North Vietnamese invasion with the help of American air power. The so-called Christmas bombing of 1972 bombed North Vietnam into submission, resulting in a peace treaty. Had the antiwar Congress not slashed aid to South Vietnam and prohibited the use of American aircraft over Vietnamese skies, the South Vietnamese probably could have repulsed the North Vietnamese when they violated the peace treaty in 1975."
Certainty is an irresponsible luxury when dealing with might-have-beens. But the reality of what has happened should not be open to dispute. Thus, Cambodia. I've referenced its killing fields on several occasions. If you ever delude yourself into thinking that mankind is basically good, I commend your attention to the Killing Fields, whereby you might be disabused of that misconception. Salient to all this is the statement of Stanley Karnow, author of an old but influential history of the Vietnam War. In 1975, urging the abandonment of our ally, Karnow rationalized that the so-called loss of Cambodia would be "the salvation of the Cambodians." Straight out of the Ministry of Truth: defeat is victory, death is life, betrayal is loyalty. Then-Representative Christopher Dodd said "The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." The Khmer Rouge murdered a quarter of the country's population.
Does history teach us anything? "When America shied from tough military action -- in 1964, 1968, and 1975 -- Hanoi tried to win the war rapidly by military means. When America and South Vietnam employed their military power effectively -- in 1963 and 1972 -- the North Vietnamese developed a serious interest in negotiations." I'm tempted to be vulgar. Enough to point out the greatest lesson the History Channel could teach us -- taught on a daily basis on Animal Planet: predators kill the easiest prey.
Moyar's research shows "that American intervention in Vietnam saved Indonesia from going Communist in 1965. It probably also prevented countries such as Thailand, Japan, the Philippines, and Malaysia from becoming Communist or pro-Communist. Furthermore, American intervention fractured the Sino-North Vietnamese alliance and tamed China." Yes, that might be the luxury of certainty. And after all, who's afraid of the Communists? They're a joke ... now. But they are that joke because the USA stalled them with holding actions until that system of oppression collapsed under its own corruption.
The current problem, of islamism, isn't that ideology's corruption. Holding actions will not do. The familiar historical analogy holds, of opportunistic aggression, but the means of meeting the challenge are different. It just seems like a wise thing to do, to repeat methods that have worked. It seems irresponsible to the point of self-destruction to repeat catastrophic measures. Our betrayal and abandonment of South Vietnam was for us only a tragedy. For those oppressed, primitive and barely human natives of Southeast Asia, our behavior, our cynicism and cowardice had nothing to do with national angst. It simply killed them. Being murdered is worse than feeling a painful emotion, except of course if you're a leftist and it's only gooks or ragheads who are being killed because we left them to fend for themselves against predators. I'm sure that's the lesson I'm extracting from current leftist attitudes. Such an attitude must be correct. After all, me first, right?
If and when we abandon Iraq, the bloodbath that all sides predict will be on our heads. Saddam's murders were organized and had a sort of logic behind them. The mutual genocides ... sectocides ... that the Sunnis and Shiites will work upon each other will make the Baathists look like Quakers. It is not wrong to overthrow tyrants. It is not wrong to spread liberty. It isn't wrong to use force to intervene against a deadly threat. But it is wrong to bring instability and leave chaos.
Sometimes I just get sick of myself, with my painfully obvious moralistic preachments. It makes me feel stupid, to be so obvious.
J
We must never argue about facts. Facts are to be demonstrated. If they can't be, they are opinions, inferences or theories. Yet conflict persists over the meaning of Vietnam. The reason for this conflict, according to Mark Moyar, is that the institutions of the hoary left "chose to rely on outdated historians or their own prejudices. The insurgency in Vietnam was dead by 1971, thanks to South Vietnam's armed forces, America's forces, and a South Vietnamese civilian population that overwhelmingly viewed the South Vietnamese government as legitimate. During 1972, after all American combat units had departed, South Vietnamese forces defeated a massive North Vietnamese invasion with the help of American air power. The so-called Christmas bombing of 1972 bombed North Vietnam into submission, resulting in a peace treaty. Had the antiwar Congress not slashed aid to South Vietnam and prohibited the use of American aircraft over Vietnamese skies, the South Vietnamese probably could have repulsed the North Vietnamese when they violated the peace treaty in 1975."
Certainty is an irresponsible luxury when dealing with might-have-beens. But the reality of what has happened should not be open to dispute. Thus, Cambodia. I've referenced its killing fields on several occasions. If you ever delude yourself into thinking that mankind is basically good, I commend your attention to the Killing Fields, whereby you might be disabused of that misconception. Salient to all this is the statement of Stanley Karnow, author of an old but influential history of the Vietnam War. In 1975, urging the abandonment of our ally, Karnow rationalized that the so-called loss of Cambodia would be "the salvation of the Cambodians." Straight out of the Ministry of Truth: defeat is victory, death is life, betrayal is loyalty. Then-Representative Christopher Dodd said "The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns. And the best way to accomplish that goal is by ending military aid now." The Khmer Rouge murdered a quarter of the country's population.
Does history teach us anything? "When America shied from tough military action -- in 1964, 1968, and 1975 -- Hanoi tried to win the war rapidly by military means. When America and South Vietnam employed their military power effectively -- in 1963 and 1972 -- the North Vietnamese developed a serious interest in negotiations." I'm tempted to be vulgar. Enough to point out the greatest lesson the History Channel could teach us -- taught on a daily basis on Animal Planet: predators kill the easiest prey.
Moyar's research shows "that American intervention in Vietnam saved Indonesia from going Communist in 1965. It probably also prevented countries such as Thailand, Japan, the Philippines, and Malaysia from becoming Communist or pro-Communist. Furthermore, American intervention fractured the Sino-North Vietnamese alliance and tamed China." Yes, that might be the luxury of certainty. And after all, who's afraid of the Communists? They're a joke ... now. But they are that joke because the USA stalled them with holding actions until that system of oppression collapsed under its own corruption.
The current problem, of islamism, isn't that ideology's corruption. Holding actions will not do. The familiar historical analogy holds, of opportunistic aggression, but the means of meeting the challenge are different. It just seems like a wise thing to do, to repeat methods that have worked. It seems irresponsible to the point of self-destruction to repeat catastrophic measures. Our betrayal and abandonment of South Vietnam was for us only a tragedy. For those oppressed, primitive and barely human natives of Southeast Asia, our behavior, our cynicism and cowardice had nothing to do with national angst. It simply killed them. Being murdered is worse than feeling a painful emotion, except of course if you're a leftist and it's only gooks or ragheads who are being killed because we left them to fend for themselves against predators. I'm sure that's the lesson I'm extracting from current leftist attitudes. Such an attitude must be correct. After all, me first, right?
If and when we abandon Iraq, the bloodbath that all sides predict will be on our heads. Saddam's murders were organized and had a sort of logic behind them. The mutual genocides ... sectocides ... that the Sunnis and Shiites will work upon each other will make the Baathists look like Quakers. It is not wrong to overthrow tyrants. It is not wrong to spread liberty. It isn't wrong to use force to intervene against a deadly threat. But it is wrong to bring instability and leave chaos.
Sometimes I just get sick of myself, with my painfully obvious moralistic preachments. It makes me feel stupid, to be so obvious.
J
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Something to Keep in Mind
Yes, of course we know it. America has always been in decline. We can't win a war, without losing it. A few heady years after the Revolution, and then it was down hill ever after. The War of 1812 -- they burned the bloody White House, for cripes sake, and kidnapped US sailors. The Civil War -- rife with outright murder, mayhem, vigilantism, terrorism, guerrilla warfare, state-sanctioned scorched-earth brutality. Cities were razed, counties depopulated, non-combatants summarily executed. Torture and mutilations and beheadings. After the assassination, Sherman openly predicted universal anarchy.
After the Great War, the US plummeted in world opinion. Resentment over war loans fueled bitterness and contempt. In the late '30s, Japan's attack on the USS Panay (cf. here, here) and German attacks on US shipping in the Atlantic and the Red Sea were brazen affronts, committed with effective impunity. FDR's most meaningful response was to assure Hitler in 1938 that "the United States has no political involvements in Europe." Green light, Mien Herr. Der Fuehrer's conclusion? America "was a weak country, incapable, because of its racial mixture and feeble democratic government, of organizing and maintaining strong military forces."
And after WW II -- the next, inevitable Great War -- even in the full flush of utter victory, America was blamed for 'losing half of Europe.' As if the USSR had paid no price of blood. Indeed, a year after victory, no US Army division or Air Force group was rated 'ready for combat'. Our military, in General Marshall's words, was "a hollow shell." By the end of the 1940s there were only 12 battle-ready US tanks in all of Germany. In Japan, every division of the Eighth Army was short by a thousand guns, and the Fifth Air Force had no jet fighters; only 500 U.S. soldiers were stationed in Korea. And, of course, we lost China. And half of Korea.
No wonder there was a Cold War. We were so weak.
As for Vietnam, Washington engaged in 16 bombing pauses and 72 peace initiatives -- which were, in the words of President Johnson, "interpreted by friend and foe alike as evidence not of humanity, but of guilt and lack of righteous conviction." Nixon declared "Peace with Honor. " I remember the speech. It might have been a suicide note, following the ingestion of slow poison. Friend and foe alike were right. It had the effect of a death-bed confession. The fallout?
WW II cost between 30 and 40 percent of the gross domestic product. From the weakness of the late forties, the US military rose in the 1950s to include 3.4 million men on active duty (2.1% of the population), and consumed 10% of the GDP. Today there are 1.4 million Americans on active duty -- less than half a percent of the population, and costing less than 3.5% of the GDP. In 1963 there were a million troops stationed at over 200 bases overseas, compared to one third of that number of personnel currently.
Are we then overextended? The numbers don't bear it out. Projections say that the U.S. economy will be twice that of Europe by 2021; in absolute terms, the US contributes twice as much as China to global output. Are we then in decline?
Citing America's trans-decadal flights from Vietnam and Iran and Beirut and Mogadishu and Yemen, the Prophet Osama observed how "America exited dragging its tail in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing. The extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear." Well, he didn't bother to cite Vietnam. But it's not as if we haven't, more recently, provided all the evidence any enemy might wish to use against us.
Should we criticize ourselves? Yes. It's how we become better. Should we fear decline, and fight it? Certainly. We are, after all, middle aged, and if we look in the mirror and imagine that we see flab and wrinkles, so much the better, that we might exercise and eat properly. Excellence does not come from complacency. Wisdom is not the inevitable product of time. It comes with self-examination. Health is not a birthright, and vigor into old age is the result only of diligence.
Decline? We could be building pyramids and giant seaward-facing statues. Instead, within the span of a mere two years, we transformed Afghanistan and Iraq, contained North Korea, did the hard lifting of counterterrorism across Asia and Africa and South America, kept the world's sea lanes open, and undertook to assuage God's wrath upon Sumatra and New Orleans. We are the offering basket to the world. Why us, and not some other? Are we the only rich country? Is courage lacking outside our borders? Has the spirit of generosity died in the rest of the world?
Germany will be remembered for Nazism. France will be remembered for insouciance, and Great Britain for stoicism. And America? Ah, America, the beautiful. The genius of our spirit is optimism.
J
After the Great War, the US plummeted in world opinion. Resentment over war loans fueled bitterness and contempt. In the late '30s, Japan's attack on the USS Panay (cf. here, here) and German attacks on US shipping in the Atlantic and the Red Sea were brazen affronts, committed with effective impunity. FDR's most meaningful response was to assure Hitler in 1938 that "the United States has no political involvements in Europe." Green light, Mien Herr. Der Fuehrer's conclusion? America "was a weak country, incapable, because of its racial mixture and feeble democratic government, of organizing and maintaining strong military forces."
And after WW II -- the next, inevitable Great War -- even in the full flush of utter victory, America was blamed for 'losing half of Europe.' As if the USSR had paid no price of blood. Indeed, a year after victory, no US Army division or Air Force group was rated 'ready for combat'. Our military, in General Marshall's words, was "a hollow shell." By the end of the 1940s there were only 12 battle-ready US tanks in all of Germany. In Japan, every division of the Eighth Army was short by a thousand guns, and the Fifth Air Force had no jet fighters; only 500 U.S. soldiers were stationed in Korea. And, of course, we lost China. And half of Korea.
No wonder there was a Cold War. We were so weak.
As for Vietnam, Washington engaged in 16 bombing pauses and 72 peace initiatives -- which were, in the words of President Johnson, "interpreted by friend and foe alike as evidence not of humanity, but of guilt and lack of righteous conviction." Nixon declared "Peace with Honor. " I remember the speech. It might have been a suicide note, following the ingestion of slow poison. Friend and foe alike were right. It had the effect of a death-bed confession. The fallout?
The Carter Error. Let us pass over it in silence. But during the Reagan Era -- now recognized as a great resurgence -- while the USSR was feeding the flames it was the USA that was declared to be on its deathbed:* French leader Charles de Gaulle withdrew from NATO's military structure in 1966 and afterwards pursued a separate peace with Moscow.
* Western Europe averted its gaze from the agony of its patron and protector. Not even Britain would lend a hand in Vietnam.
* When Israel called for help and the U.S. answered during the 1973 war, NATO turned its back. Only Portugal would grant overflight rights to U.S. supply planes.
* North Korea openly challenged and mocked U.S. power during the Vietnam debacle. Pyongyang seized the USS Pueblo in international waters and tortured its crew for 11 months, shot down a U.S. plane in international airspace, and, according to Leebaert, "hacked to death two U.S. officers in the 38th parallel's demilitarized zone."
* In the American sphere, Venezuela sided with OPEC and nationalized U.S. firms; left-wing forces ousted a U.S.-backed government in Nicaragua; and Argentina broke ranks and shipped grain to Moscow.
* Even in trying to deflect the declinists, James Schlesinger conceded in 1988 that the U.S. was "no longer economically the preponderant power ... no longer militarily the dominant power ... [it] no longer can achieve more or less whatever it desires."Decline? US decline? Of course. We can always find signs of decline -- as we can always find evidence of renewal.
* "The signs of decline are evident to those who care to see them," declared Peter Passell in 1990, noting that the U.S. had lost its competitive edge and was losing its battle with the Japanese juggernaut.
...
* Citing America's dependence on foreign sources for energy and "crucial weaknesses" in the military, Tom Wicker concluded [in 1990] "that maintaining superpower status is becoming more difficult -- nearly impossible -- for the United States."
WW II cost between 30 and 40 percent of the gross domestic product. From the weakness of the late forties, the US military rose in the 1950s to include 3.4 million men on active duty (2.1% of the population), and consumed 10% of the GDP. Today there are 1.4 million Americans on active duty -- less than half a percent of the population, and costing less than 3.5% of the GDP. In 1963 there were a million troops stationed at over 200 bases overseas, compared to one third of that number of personnel currently.
Are we then overextended? The numbers don't bear it out. Projections say that the U.S. economy will be twice that of Europe by 2021; in absolute terms, the US contributes twice as much as China to global output. Are we then in decline?
Citing America's trans-decadal flights from Vietnam and Iran and Beirut and Mogadishu and Yemen, the Prophet Osama observed how "America exited dragging its tail in failure, defeat, and ruin, caring for nothing. The extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear." Well, he didn't bother to cite Vietnam. But it's not as if we haven't, more recently, provided all the evidence any enemy might wish to use against us.
Should we criticize ourselves? Yes. It's how we become better. Should we fear decline, and fight it? Certainly. We are, after all, middle aged, and if we look in the mirror and imagine that we see flab and wrinkles, so much the better, that we might exercise and eat properly. Excellence does not come from complacency. Wisdom is not the inevitable product of time. It comes with self-examination. Health is not a birthright, and vigor into old age is the result only of diligence.
Decline? We could be building pyramids and giant seaward-facing statues. Instead, within the span of a mere two years, we transformed Afghanistan and Iraq, contained North Korea, did the hard lifting of counterterrorism across Asia and Africa and South America, kept the world's sea lanes open, and undertook to assuage God's wrath upon Sumatra and New Orleans. We are the offering basket to the world. Why us, and not some other? Are we the only rich country? Is courage lacking outside our borders? Has the spirit of generosity died in the rest of the world?
Germany will be remembered for Nazism. France will be remembered for insouciance, and Great Britain for stoicism. And America? Ah, America, the beautiful. The genius of our spirit is optimism.
J
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Compassionate Warmongering
I've been pondering about Mr. Bush recently. I've observed in myself a drawing away from him -- something that is very unlike me. It isn't the war. I'm for the war. Kill them all. The bad guys, I mean, not the innocent. We have to be careful, because God's not going to sort them out. They're all going to hell. Moslem, you see. Moslems all go to hell. Those 72 virgins in Moslem paradise? They're all seven foot tall sumo wrestlers, and when the martyr gets there, they smile and pull out their beefy penises. It's their paradise, not his. Let's see -- seventy-two burly Japanese virgins ... why, that gives each of them exactly 20 minutes every day, to work on the boy. Allah sure knows his math. But pardon this theological digression. We were discussing Bush.
I'm a little disappointed. He seems to have been serious about that campaign slogan, Compassionate Conservatism. Well, the compassion part, anyway. Compassion for the drug companies and that huge new government medical entitlement a while back. I'm a bit vague on the details. Compassion for illegal aliens. It just doesn't strike me as conservative. At all. But we should have known. He did say during the campaign that he wanted to regularize the illegals. And it does seem that he likes to do what he says he'll do. It's disappointing though. We expected a conservative.
But politics is about disappointment. Even when we get what we think we want, it's government. That means inefficient and bureaucratic. What isn't, though. Not a matter of life and death. Hardly ever.
But the war. The war. It's disappointing that the American people have learned nothing from the cowardice and betrayal of the pols of the Vietnam era. Cut and run worked out to 30 plus years of totalitarianism, in that case. And a poisoning of the American psyche. Well, who doesn't have a poisoned psyche? I do. Must we do it again, though? It's a disappointment to me. If it's not the Torchbearer of Liberty, then America is nothing, nothing but another rich country. A nation of shopkeepers -- or since we're becoming French, I should say une nation de boutiquiers.
It was Bush's job not just to conduct the war successfully, which he finally seems to be doing, if perhaps too late. It was his job to lead American opinion to support and to continue to support the effort. He himself is not an eloquent man. But he has speech writers, and he has a staff, and he had a Congress full of people in love with the sound of their own voices. He should have caused to be organized a counterbalancing campaign, against the flaccid anti-liberty media that blows with the wind but always leans to the left. Leaders need to lead. To lead means to be followed. By this criteria, Bush has utterly failed.
If we tweak the definition, and emphasis not polls and vacillating opinions, but rather the reaching of goals, then as is clear to everyone, Bush's fate depends on success in Iraq. His fate. His fate. Our fate. The world can descend into chaos. There have been Hundred Years' Wars before. The Seventy-five Years' War of the last century, from 1914 to 1989, was a model of irenic stability compared to what might come. This is what's important. I like Bush as a personality. I will damn him to hell if he allows the undertaking of the past years to falter and fail because he could not summon the wherewithal to finish what he started. We do not need another Vietnam.
Vietnam, as almost everyone needs to be informed, does not stand for an unpopular and unwinnable quagmire. It stands for a failure of will in a matter of dire importance. My middle age may be polluted with the same poison that my youth was, of public, national disloyalty and savage unpatriotism. Antipatriatism, not in a stupid chauvinist jingoism sense, but as a considered and systematic undermining of the long-term greater good. If Iraq is a reiterating second act to the horrid seventies, then I am certain there will be a third act, that defines our era as a tragedy. Tragedies are like comedies, only everyone's unhappy and the heroes end up dead. You know, like if we give up in Iraq.
Well then. Bush isn't much of a speaker. Not much of an actor either. Not much of a director. But he is the author of the play. Let's hope he's a genius. I don't know. Could be. I am, and nobody's ever heard of me. There are two uber-important issues facing America. Bush is an idiot on one of them. Illegal immigration. But we knew that coming in. We can overlook the immorality of his position, if only he'll get the really super-dooper thing right.
No blood for oil? Oil is important, and it's not unfitting that blood should be spilled for it. That's not what this is about. This is about a coming Thousand Year Reich of antinomian chaos and sharia law. How many world wars do we have to fight, before we get it right? This is the fourth. If we lose it, there may be others, but there will be no "we" to fight it. It will be between the Shiites and the Sunnis.
Yeah, I'm no prophet. I'm just sitting here almost naked typing whatever comes into my head. I hope to God that's not what Bush has been doing. If so, I hope Paradise finds 72 obese asiatics eagerly anticipating his arrival.
J
I'm a little disappointed. He seems to have been serious about that campaign slogan, Compassionate Conservatism. Well, the compassion part, anyway. Compassion for the drug companies and that huge new government medical entitlement a while back. I'm a bit vague on the details. Compassion for illegal aliens. It just doesn't strike me as conservative. At all. But we should have known. He did say during the campaign that he wanted to regularize the illegals. And it does seem that he likes to do what he says he'll do. It's disappointing though. We expected a conservative.
But politics is about disappointment. Even when we get what we think we want, it's government. That means inefficient and bureaucratic. What isn't, though. Not a matter of life and death. Hardly ever.
But the war. The war. It's disappointing that the American people have learned nothing from the cowardice and betrayal of the pols of the Vietnam era. Cut and run worked out to 30 plus years of totalitarianism, in that case. And a poisoning of the American psyche. Well, who doesn't have a poisoned psyche? I do. Must we do it again, though? It's a disappointment to me. If it's not the Torchbearer of Liberty, then America is nothing, nothing but another rich country. A nation of shopkeepers -- or since we're becoming French, I should say une nation de boutiquiers.
It was Bush's job not just to conduct the war successfully, which he finally seems to be doing, if perhaps too late. It was his job to lead American opinion to support and to continue to support the effort. He himself is not an eloquent man. But he has speech writers, and he has a staff, and he had a Congress full of people in love with the sound of their own voices. He should have caused to be organized a counterbalancing campaign, against the flaccid anti-liberty media that blows with the wind but always leans to the left. Leaders need to lead. To lead means to be followed. By this criteria, Bush has utterly failed.
If we tweak the definition, and emphasis not polls and vacillating opinions, but rather the reaching of goals, then as is clear to everyone, Bush's fate depends on success in Iraq. His fate. His fate. Our fate. The world can descend into chaos. There have been Hundred Years' Wars before. The Seventy-five Years' War of the last century, from 1914 to 1989, was a model of irenic stability compared to what might come. This is what's important. I like Bush as a personality. I will damn him to hell if he allows the undertaking of the past years to falter and fail because he could not summon the wherewithal to finish what he started. We do not need another Vietnam.
Vietnam, as almost everyone needs to be informed, does not stand for an unpopular and unwinnable quagmire. It stands for a failure of will in a matter of dire importance. My middle age may be polluted with the same poison that my youth was, of public, national disloyalty and savage unpatriotism. Antipatriatism, not in a stupid chauvinist jingoism sense, but as a considered and systematic undermining of the long-term greater good. If Iraq is a reiterating second act to the horrid seventies, then I am certain there will be a third act, that defines our era as a tragedy. Tragedies are like comedies, only everyone's unhappy and the heroes end up dead. You know, like if we give up in Iraq.
Well then. Bush isn't much of a speaker. Not much of an actor either. Not much of a director. But he is the author of the play. Let's hope he's a genius. I don't know. Could be. I am, and nobody's ever heard of me. There are two uber-important issues facing America. Bush is an idiot on one of them. Illegal immigration. But we knew that coming in. We can overlook the immorality of his position, if only he'll get the really super-dooper thing right.
No blood for oil? Oil is important, and it's not unfitting that blood should be spilled for it. That's not what this is about. This is about a coming Thousand Year Reich of antinomian chaos and sharia law. How many world wars do we have to fight, before we get it right? This is the fourth. If we lose it, there may be others, but there will be no "we" to fight it. It will be between the Shiites and the Sunnis.
Yeah, I'm no prophet. I'm just sitting here almost naked typing whatever comes into my head. I hope to God that's not what Bush has been doing. If so, I hope Paradise finds 72 obese asiatics eagerly anticipating his arrival.
J
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Something Important
Fred Barnes tells us that there may be a Christmas present in store for us. Not this Christmas. Next. After what appears to have been dithering with a feckless policy, something has caught Mr. Bush's attention. The loss of Congress has been a great bracer, it seems. Nothing like searing pain to focus one's mind.
So. A plan for Victory in Iraq. About bloody time.
No retreat, not exit strategies, not peace with honor. Victory. Which means throwing the ISG report into the slop bucket for the unwashingtoned pigs to squabble over, and stepping out of the looking glass back into the real world. The plan, then -- the one that could work -- is to destroy the Sunni "insurgents," secure Baghdad and then work out into the troubled province of Anbar.
How? No, stupid, not by taking troops away. Sending more in. Fifty thousand, who will act as warriors, not gatekeepers. Clear out the bad neighborhoods and then actually stay, rather than running back to homebase and letting the badguys regroup. War is not an endless game of tag. As Barnes states, "Earlier efforts had cleared many of those sections of the city without holding them. After which, the mass killings resumed." Bloody hell. No. Stay and stomp on the cockroachs every time they crawl out of their holes. They will bring their disease, but that mustn't justify allowing vermin to propagate.
"The Keane-Kagan plan ... is an application of a counterinsurgency approach that has proved to be effective elsewhere, notably in Vietnam. There, Gen. Creighton Abrams cleared out the Viet Cong so successfully that the South Vietnamese government took control of the country. Only when Congress cut off funds to South Vietnam in 1974 were the North Vietnamese able to win." Bloody hell.
Security first, then negotiations. Duh. The US military budget is bigger than those of the forty next largest combined. Hmm. What ever shall we do with this gigantic military? Hmm. Shall we impress ourselves by marching it up and down Main Street like a gay pride parade? Shall we secret it away in Alaska and Okinawa and Guam, just in case someday somebody might attack us and we'll have an army then and be safe cuz they'll be ascared of us oh wait we've already been attacked hmm I wonder what went wrong with that plan? Shall we bussle our boys into enemy territory and have them shake their fists from behind the battlements? You might very well think so. But I should think we might actually use our hard gigantic military for the function that nature designed it. What function? It is a sort of fucking the enemy, but it's the opposite of procreation.
There is a new cliche abirthing. Let's go Roman on them. War is about blood. Hopefully that of the evil doers. Sometimes ours. But it's about blood.
We do not, however, enter into the fray without counting the cost. My son is in a job in Baghdad that is as serious as a job could be. When I speak with him, it isn't my place to pry -- pray, rather. If he wants to talk about it, I will make it implicitly clear that I'm safe to talk to. But it is a solemn thing. My point? Doing what is right has all kinds of costs, not all of them in blood.
Winning wars is about dead enemies, though. I will not justify the statement. Search through these pages for "Beslan" and figure it out yourself.
J
So. A plan for Victory in Iraq. About bloody time.
No retreat, not exit strategies, not peace with honor. Victory. Which means throwing the ISG report into the slop bucket for the unwashingtoned pigs to squabble over, and stepping out of the looking glass back into the real world. The plan, then -- the one that could work -- is to destroy the Sunni "insurgents," secure Baghdad and then work out into the troubled province of Anbar.
How? No, stupid, not by taking troops away. Sending more in. Fifty thousand, who will act as warriors, not gatekeepers. Clear out the bad neighborhoods and then actually stay, rather than running back to homebase and letting the badguys regroup. War is not an endless game of tag. As Barnes states, "Earlier efforts had cleared many of those sections of the city without holding them. After which, the mass killings resumed." Bloody hell. No. Stay and stomp on the cockroachs every time they crawl out of their holes. They will bring their disease, but that mustn't justify allowing vermin to propagate.
"The Keane-Kagan plan ... is an application of a counterinsurgency approach that has proved to be effective elsewhere, notably in Vietnam. There, Gen. Creighton Abrams cleared out the Viet Cong so successfully that the South Vietnamese government took control of the country. Only when Congress cut off funds to South Vietnam in 1974 were the North Vietnamese able to win." Bloody hell.
Security first, then negotiations. Duh. The US military budget is bigger than those of the forty next largest combined. Hmm. What ever shall we do with this gigantic military? Hmm. Shall we impress ourselves by marching it up and down Main Street like a gay pride parade? Shall we secret it away in Alaska and Okinawa and Guam, just in case someday somebody might attack us and we'll have an army then and be safe cuz they'll be ascared of us oh wait we've already been attacked hmm I wonder what went wrong with that plan? Shall we bussle our boys into enemy territory and have them shake their fists from behind the battlements? You might very well think so. But I should think we might actually use our hard gigantic military for the function that nature designed it. What function? It is a sort of fucking the enemy, but it's the opposite of procreation.
There is a new cliche abirthing. Let's go Roman on them. War is about blood. Hopefully that of the evil doers. Sometimes ours. But it's about blood.
We do not, however, enter into the fray without counting the cost. My son is in a job in Baghdad that is as serious as a job could be. When I speak with him, it isn't my place to pry -- pray, rather. If he wants to talk about it, I will make it implicitly clear that I'm safe to talk to. But it is a solemn thing. My point? Doing what is right has all kinds of costs, not all of them in blood.
Winning wars is about dead enemies, though. I will not justify the statement. Search through these pages for "Beslan" and figure it out yourself.
J
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