General McMaster: Please allow me first to note how I revere our men and women in uniform - and among them most revere the lowest ranks. But on this Memorial Day, I'll have to stop there. These lowest ranking men and women - and their families - have born the consequence of the stupidity of their superiors - both those in uniform and theā¦
General McMaster: Please allow me first to note how I revere our men and women in uniform - and among them most revere the lowest ranks. But on this Memorial Day, I'll have to stop there. These lowest ranking men and women - and their families - have born the consequence of the stupidity of their superiors - both those in uniform and their civilian leaders.
I did not always see it this way. I recall Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and our successful efforts to repel it. It showed the best in us. We used naval combat power to deliver expeditionary combat power to put an end to aggression. And then we came home. I reflexively supported this idea of who America is on the world stage.
In 2001, after 9/11, when we responded to the terrorist attacks, I though we would see a reprise. Kill or capture Osama Bin Laden, cripple Al Qaeda, and then come home. I was, at that time, teaching boys barely out of diapers how to hit a baseball. My mind began to change some 15 years later. These same boys I had taught the game of baseball were starting to enlist - to fight the same war.
It was clear that something was very wrong. If there was a victory to be won, we would have won it by then. Since we clearly had not, nor were we, winning in any sense that would allow us to come home, I had to question my own beliefs and support. On Memorial Day of 2023, here are my answers to those questions:
1) The history of war is the history of money; and the history of money is the history of war. Because we borrow with abandon, and prop up the ability to do so by printing the world's trade reserve currency, no one on the civilian side of these questions has ever suffered any consequences for being wrong. They literally paper over their failures with new money and leave you to eulogize the consequences.
2) We have always had a realistic school and an interventionist school in U.S. foreign policy. When money is unrestrained, the interventionists gain the upper hand. When money is restrained, that restraint enforces foreign policy realism.
3) Terrorism today is merely the Barbary Pirates of old plus digital propaganda. We handled this once before. We used naval combat power to deliver expeditionary combat power to put an end to the threat. And then we came home.
My wife is from Malaysia. She took the oath of U.S. citizenship before me and our two boys in 2010. One of those two boys now works in D.C. When we last visited, my wife was adamant about visiting Arlington. She spoke of how - as an immigrant - it was essential to pay her respects to those who have fought for our way of life. I was honest with her: I wondered aloud how many people are buried there who were taken from us too soon by ill-considered decisions.
There is no better way to honor their memory than to demand we return to our traditions of realism. There are things worth fighting for, and times when we will have to fight for them. But it seems we no longer know the difference because the people who decide those things never suffer when they are wrong.
Again, they leave it to people like you to eulogize the consequences of their failures. But people like me are starting to get really tired of eulogies bereft of the lessons which are needed to help us avoid the mistakes of the past.
General McMaster: Please allow me first to note how I revere our men and women in uniform - and among them most revere the lowest ranks. But on this Memorial Day, I'll have to stop there. These lowest ranking men and women - and their families - have born the consequence of the stupidity of their superiors - both those in uniform and their civilian leaders.
I did not always see it this way. I recall Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and our successful efforts to repel it. It showed the best in us. We used naval combat power to deliver expeditionary combat power to put an end to aggression. And then we came home. I reflexively supported this idea of who America is on the world stage.
In 2001, after 9/11, when we responded to the terrorist attacks, I though we would see a reprise. Kill or capture Osama Bin Laden, cripple Al Qaeda, and then come home. I was, at that time, teaching boys barely out of diapers how to hit a baseball. My mind began to change some 15 years later. These same boys I had taught the game of baseball were starting to enlist - to fight the same war.
It was clear that something was very wrong. If there was a victory to be won, we would have won it by then. Since we clearly had not, nor were we, winning in any sense that would allow us to come home, I had to question my own beliefs and support. On Memorial Day of 2023, here are my answers to those questions:
1) The history of war is the history of money; and the history of money is the history of war. Because we borrow with abandon, and prop up the ability to do so by printing the world's trade reserve currency, no one on the civilian side of these questions has ever suffered any consequences for being wrong. They literally paper over their failures with new money and leave you to eulogize the consequences.
2) We have always had a realistic school and an interventionist school in U.S. foreign policy. When money is unrestrained, the interventionists gain the upper hand. When money is restrained, that restraint enforces foreign policy realism.
3) Terrorism today is merely the Barbary Pirates of old plus digital propaganda. We handled this once before. We used naval combat power to deliver expeditionary combat power to put an end to the threat. And then we came home.
My wife is from Malaysia. She took the oath of U.S. citizenship before me and our two boys in 2010. One of those two boys now works in D.C. When we last visited, my wife was adamant about visiting Arlington. She spoke of how - as an immigrant - it was essential to pay her respects to those who have fought for our way of life. I was honest with her: I wondered aloud how many people are buried there who were taken from us too soon by ill-considered decisions.
There is no better way to honor their memory than to demand we return to our traditions of realism. There are things worth fighting for, and times when we will have to fight for them. But it seems we no longer know the difference because the people who decide those things never suffer when they are wrong.
Again, they leave it to people like you to eulogize the consequences of their failures. But people like me are starting to get really tired of eulogies bereft of the lessons which are needed to help us avoid the mistakes of the past.
āWar is a racketā
Col. Smedley Butler USMC
Yes, indeed: https://www.thomaspaines.blog/p/the-rise-of-corporatist-techno-fascism