COMMENTS POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT
Trump's Defense
Secretary James Mattis makes passionate case against America withdrawing from
the world
'We ought not to
forget the example of the Greatest Generation,' former general tells young
naval officer in Q&A
I've got news for you, General.
The Greatest Generation is long gone.
It reflected circumstances which no longer exist.
Indeed, if you read some detailed history, that phrase has
been, to a considerable extent, misused even for what occurred during and
immediately after WWII. It could fairly be called a self-congratulatory slap on
the back by pop American historians.
In any case, what we have today in America is something
quite ugly and dangerous. Greatness is not remotely associated with it.
Comparing America in, say, 1941, to America in 2017, is a
bit like comparing Hitler's life as a young boy to his life as a grown-up.
________________
Response to another
reader who wrote “I would be truly impressed with America if it made its own
country a shining example of how a country should be. Should be enough for them
to be getting on with.”
Well said, indeed.
But they cannot think this way.
The current slogan of the American military-security
monstrosity is "full-spectrum dominance" across a range of defined
matters in the world.
It is not the thinking of enlightened or democratic people,
but the thinking of tyrants.
Mattis forgets one of the truest statements ever made, Lord
Acton's dictum on power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely.
I very much believe America has crossed the threshold
towards absolute corruption.
It is fit to lead no one.
___________________
Response to another
reader who wrote “It was not the US that went to war with North Korea, it was
UN that authorized the war”:
You are only technically correct.
The UN was quietly pushed into the effort, just as the US
has pushed and used the UN so many times for its own purposes.
Today, this phony effort to make every American decision about
intervention appear international in character more typically uses NATO, an
organization which today is more pliable and which can almost not be recognized
when compared to its early purposes.
Even inside the Truman government, there was at first a
serious question about whether Korea was worth fighting over.
It was not on the then-current list of places of real
strategic importance to the United States, but America was under the witch-like
spell of anti-communism at all costs and so decided to intervene.
Words like “losing
this or that to ‘the commies’ or ‘the reds’” came quickly to the lips of
various Congressmen and Senators. The atmosphere was poisonous.
North Korea was trying to reunite Korea, on its terms.
Reunification has been a longing of all Koreans, but the US has stood in the
way always, only willing to accept reunification on its terms.
America conducted the Korean War with total ruthlessness. At
the outset, there was the infamous No Gun Ri massacre in which American troops
slaughtered hundreds of civilians fleeing war for the south, including women
and children, claiming later they feared spies and saboteurs.
America carpet-bombed North Korean cities for three years. General
Curtis LeMay - the man who fire-bombed and leveled Japan, and later at the Pentagon
pushed for an overwhelming first-strike against the USSR - later bragged that American
bombing wiped out twenty percent of the entire country’s population.
It was much the same American approach as that which created
a holocaust in Vietnam over the existence of a rump-state run by dictators, but
one friendly to US interests, being re-united with the rest of that country. So,
millions died horribly for that meaningless cause.
Considering all the fall-out over the decades after the
Korean War, it likely would have been better and smarter to leave it to the Koreans
themselves, a good general principle, leaving it to the locals, almost invariably
ignored by America in its many post-WWII wars and interventions.
Under those circumstances, a unified Korea would certainly have
evolved into something new over time, as virtually all communist states have.
And there’s no use talking about dictatorships here because South Korea was
ruled by dictatorial government for decades after WWII.
It is America which keep North Korea as “the hermit kingdom.”
A huge well-equipped American army to the south. Ships
frequently offshore. Deliberately provocative plane flights. Regular war games
on a massive scale. Thermonuclear weapons stored just over in Guam.
No diplomatic recognition. No direct talks ever, even now.
No peace treaty even considered for going-on 70 years.
The US has been powerful and stupid here, as it has been in
so many parts of the world.
________________________
Response to a reader
who said “Mattis must be one of those who simply don't understand just how much
the USA is loathed across planet earth. The vast majority of conflict,
suffering and unrest is solely due to the actions of his country.”
None of America's leaders understands that fact.
When they show up somewhere, it is all pomp and ceremony,
making them feel good, no matter how twisted they or their secret mission may
be.
Look at Nikki Haley.
An utterly ridiculous figure at the UN, embarrassingly preaching
to and patronizing diplomats, who in many cases know far more about the matters
under discussion than she does, yet of course she must be given all diplomatic
courtesies.
The often highly-educated people listening to her truly
ignorant speeches just have to grin and bear it, and, of course, like so many
American diplomats, she actually threatens her listeners with reduced American
financial support to the UN if they don’t agree with what she suggests. A
thoroughgoing bully.
I should add, nor do America’s leaders really care what other
people think. Remember candidate George Bush actually bragging and chuckling about
how he never read the international section of his newspaper? It is a popular and
widespread prejudice in America.
It is the pure arrogance of power, not really different in
any detail to the attitude of great dukes in France in the early 1700s. Their
carriages simply left peasants in their path as "road kill."
