I Still Owe the Military Nothing

lewrockwell.com ^ | February 4, 2004 | Brad Edmonds

[JohnGalt]

Nothing is settled in WWII history, and I can tell that like me, you learned your WWII history when the Malta Thesis was very big but then that was the height of the battle for Rommel's place in history, which it looks his defenders, of which I was one, have carried the day.

Two years ago, long after my academic days were over a book was published that claimed Martin Bormann, an inner circle Nazi, was a Soviet operative and that he purposefully insured no help from the Ukraine. That opens a lot of doors for serious history students trying to understand just what happened in Russia.

When you look at the simple statistics of industrial output of Germany, there was really no chance that Germany would be much of a threat, ever, and her riches were mostly plunder and American Wall St credit from the likes of among other, Prescott Bush.

While debating the minutiae of Operation Barbarossa and what went wrong, from the German perspective, the military historians seem to have faded to the background but the central thesis remains, that Hitler gave into OKW and allowed the forces to be split which more or less was U-89's point, that the force that might have finished Stalin was much to weak and divided by the end of '41 that the battle was effectively loss with a front longer than the East Coast.

[Democratshavenobrains]

If this place is so full of neo-cons, how come I see at least 3 new threads everyday about how Bush isn't a real Conservative?

[IYAS9YAS]

True. Today, it would be nearly, if not completely, impossible.

[AnalogReigns]

Probably the silliest thing about this article is the willing ignorance that America's wealth is (and has been) based on world trade. Our military is necessary to keep world peace for world trade. Physical borders are meaningless if a country is isolationist, and cannot defend its interests abroad.

[u-89]

Amry Group North was undermanned from the start and met heavier than expected resistance in the Baltic states. The drive was not up to expected speeds and as they closed in on Lennigrad they had to send two panzer divisions to Army Group Center because they needed the help in the drive for Moscow. As you know neither Leningrad nor Moscow fell. Also the Germans did not have a ready supply of trained replacements ready to fill the gabs caused by casualites further adding to the manpower problems.

You are correct that the invasion was delayed and that the weather hindered them greatly but that only magnified the trouble that they started off undermanned for the job in the first place. However I am of the opinion that had the invasion not been held up (because of the British and the Itlaians) and had the Germans had the forces and muntions lost in the Balkans, Greece, Crete and north Afrika (plus occupation of said areas) availble to them for Russia it is very possible they could have taken out the Soviets or at least met their objectives and built a strong in depth defensive postion by the Urals.

[XJarhead]

Lew Rockwell is "intellectually satisfying" only in the sense that I find myself feeling very satisfied that I'm not a whackjob like the folks who spew there.

Most of the folk over there fall into the same intellectual trap; they confuse acting rationally with assuming that others will act rationally.

The truth is that many people act irrationally, and you have to take that into account when making your own rational decisions. Too often, the ieologues at Rockwell don't do that. They come up with a nice plan, assume that it will work because other people will react to it based on pure reason and self-interest, and then assert that they've solved a problem. But when people are willing to blow themselves up to reach Paradise and 77 virgins, assuming rational responses to rational stimuli is a pipe dream.

[u-89]

>So your assumption is that if Hitler had gained nukes, he only would have used them for good

Please explain how you conclude that from anything I said.

>Remember, Hitler declared war on US.

Please see post #53. And in addition to what's there I'll add that while we were "neutral" we were involved in lend lease to one side of a conflict and had our navy aiding and abetting the Brits in the Atlantic.

[Modernman]

They didn't have long range bombers, fighters or aircraft carriers or a sizable enough navy.

Yet.

Germany posed no threat to the US

Yet.

If the US had not entered the war against Germany, and the Germans had defeated and annexed the USSR, all of Europe and the Middle-East and defeated and/or conquered the UK, the US would have found itself very alone in the world, facing an incredibly powerful and aggresive German Reich.

A war with Germany would have been inevitable. However, if we'd waited to fight them until the 50's or 60's, we would have been at a major disadvantage.

Plus, putting an end to the evils of Nazism was worth fighting a war, no matter what the loss of American life.

[robowombat]

Many of Butler's intemperate remarks made after his retirement are related to his fury at being derailed from becoming Commandant of the Marine Corps. Born to wealth and power as the son of a very senior Republican member of the Penn. House delegation and a prominent Philadelphia Mainline family Butler from the time he was commissioned made few bones of the fact that his eventual goal was to be the CMC.

In the course of a career marked by numerous acts of heroism and distinguished conduct Butler also displayed a an egotistic streak a mile wide and a talent for intrigue and back stabbing second to none. In spite of his often stated admiration for the rank and file Marine he displayed a willingness to use those underhim in the most callous way to satisfy his ambition or whims. The erection of the (then) professional class football stadium at Quantico MB was a case in point that went far to sink Butler's ambitions to be CMC.

From his academy days Butler was a foootball fanatic. As the cult of football bloomed into a national craze in the 1920's he saw creating a Marine Corps team capable of competing with the best college teams would be valuable publicity for both the Corps , and more importantly, for the creator of such an institution. Smedley Butler was determined he would be that individual by virtue of his position of Commander MCB Quantico.

To showcase his football team Butler reasoned he needed a football stadium worthy of hosting the best in college teams. The problem was that in the cash strapped (for the armed services) interwar era money was not available to build such a facility. This especially was true since by the time Butler came to direct building the stadium the Great Depression had begun and service budgets were better described as starvation rather than austere. Butler's way around this problem was to turn the garrison at Quantico into a huge labor detail working six and sometimes seven days a week on 12 hour days to build the stadium. Funds for materials were obtained by virtually shutting down base operations and using the operations and maintenance funds to purchase construction materials.

In a year or so the combination of soaring unauthorized absentee/desertin rates at Quantico (and this was in the Depresion when those in the services desperately held on to thier positions at all cost) and the complaints by the fiscal and base operations staff made back channel to HQ USMC brought enough high level heat down onto Smedley that his career which heretofore had soared came to a crashing end. There were plenty of senior officers who had endured his ruthlessness and hammy egotism for years and now they were happy to see him slip.

Butler in retirement became a very angry man much of whose venom which with ghost writers such as Lowell Thomas' assistance regularly appeared in national magazines was directed at the armed forces in general and the Naval services in particular. Smedley Butler is definitely one hero with a real dark side.

[SwankyC]

If Germany didn't have the ablitity to subdue England in it's darkest hour, they couldn't manage a cross channel invasion, then there is no way they could have handled a cross Atlantic invasion.

Is that because they couldnt manage to subdue England on their own or because we were already supplying England with lots of Materiel?

[SwankyC]

he believed he had been lied to about the character of the Japanese people, including the military, who were not suicidal at all-- <P.

"were not suicidal at all." you're kidding right? I dont want to insult your great uncle because of the huge amount of respect that I have for that generation but that statement flies in the face of everything the military witnessed over there. That's an absolutely ridiculous thing to say. After seeing that bomb go off up close and personal, who would want to fight any more.

[r9etb]

They come up with a nice plan, assume that it will work because other people will react to it based on pure reason and self-interest, and then assert that they've solved a problem.

I call this the "If everyone would just...." syndrome.

You see it often among "Earnest Young Leftist Protestors," and "Earnests and Idealistic Engineers and Other Technical Sorts." (In my experience, libertarians tend very often to be of the latter sort.)

The basic idea is as you've stated -- they've got this "obvious" solution, and assume that it's as obvious to everybody else, as it is to them.

Neither group seems to understand that people very often do not "just...." In fact, they often do the exact opposite.

[BSunday]

This is weird. Now we have writers bragging (para 2) about how they can't make themselves be understood.

[.cnI redruM]

And the parasites that feast off the partially digested food in Brad Edmonds' gastro-intestinal system owe him nothing either. Mr. Edmonds' statement is true in the sense that we also technically owe the EPA nothing for effectively enforcing the ban on leaded gasoline and plumbing pipes.

However, anyone who thinks that the world would be a nicer place if we came to some sort of accommodation with the next Hitler, the next Tojo or the next Brezhinev, just to save our own hides, needs to be reminded of what happened to the Poles and The Ukranians when the handed over their Jews to appease Adolf Hitler.

And then there is that 'logic' that Mr. Edmonds employs. The argument that we could just show up at the local militia armory with an ODS BFV with FBCB2 connectivity, FLIR3, and TOWPI and just issue it to Billabob any time our country was threatened. No need to concern ourselves about silkworm missiles, all my buddies down here in Texas own rifles.

Oh yeah, and there's no way any of those missiles will successfully fly over an ocean. Mr. Edmonds seems blissfully unaware that most well-trained high school students in other countries can easily resolve basic equations involving the Coriolis parameter f. Maybe he's judging this from the achievements of his own kids attending our Publik Skools.

Why do I answer this deracinated idiot? The fundamental wrongness of his continued intransigent denial should confront him directly every moment his eyes remain open. This man is Dennis Kucinich without the 5ft bongs and the party.

[JohnGalt]

In context, the Japanese people he met post-surrender, were not suicidal monsters.

Secondly, it flies in the face of everything the soldiers, the people at home, and the students who learned gubmint history think about the Japanese.

Lastly, I am holding back his stories of why the civilians on Okinawa leapt to their deaths rather than be taken by the American military. They are not pretty stories.

[sergeantdave]

After the conquest of Russia, it's an easy hop into North America via Siberia.

[_Jim]

Another "twelve year old" writes an article at LoserRockwell .com?

"Sweet ..."

[JohnGalt]

The war with the USSR, a ghastly if not more so, regime than Nazi Germany, never came; I am unclear why anyone would think war with 'Nazi Germany' was inevitable. That is simply an ahistorical point of view.

Germany simply lacked the industrial base to put up much of a fight; her strength was her soldiers, and a command structure that allowed incredible freedom for front-line decisions to implement superior tactics.

Stalin had enough useful idiots in the FDR administration and Hollywood to ensure that several generations later, people would still be hyping the German threat and forgetting that the only winner in WW2 was Joe Stalin.

[AppyPappy]

Your defense of the Nazis is rather shameful.

[u-89]

We could debate W.W.II all day and while it's fun it is a distraction I think from a more important issue. Let me take a point of yours addressed to me and then I'll lift something you posted to someone else on this thread.

First:

>I might agree with the author that a policy of isolationism may have been preferable if we'd followed it consistently since the 1800's. But we haven't. Adopting such a policy now, when then clearly are large numbers of extremists who really don't like us, and when Europe looks like it is slowly circling the drain, is dangerous.

The old saying is tired but true " If you want out of a hole, first thing stop digging." I'm glad that you do see some error in our foreign policy over the last hundred years. Most I encounter here on FR refuse to admit that much. Since you do I'll engage. Starting with the term "isolation" that is a wide spread but malicious misnomer which has to be corrected. The founding fathers' and today's libertarians believe in "free trade with all and entangling alliances with none" and " not going abroad seeking monsters to destroy." That is not isolation. It is called peaceful interaction. Isolation is what the hermit nation of Japan was in before we sent some gun boats into Tokyo bay to force them open to our merchants.

>Most of the folk over there fall into the same intellectual trap; they confuse acting rationally with assuming that others will act rationally.

>The truth is that many people act irrationally, and you have to take that into account when making your own rational decisions. Too often, the ideologues at Rockwell don't do that. They come up with a nice plan, assume that it will work because other people will react to it based on pure reason and self-interest, and then assert that they've solved a problem. But when people are willing to blow themselves up to reach Paradise and 77 virgins, assuming rational responses to rational stimuli is a pipe dream.

Self interest is a basic instinct. It factors in everything we and others do. As for reason, yes we are capable of it. Even if others are unreasonable we can, using our reason, logically analyze a situation and plan our activities knowing how to handle others based on their M.O. As for foreigners willing to blowing themselves up that is how they believe, fact of the matter. It's only meaningful to us because they are attacking us. We can not properly proceed to deal with that reality without understanding why they attack us. Well the terrorists themselves said why - because we are stationed on their holy land, we war against their brother Arabs and they do not see us as honest brokers in the affairs of the mid east. The obvious conclusion to our troubles would be to remove our forces from their lands and stop meddling in their affairs. We can do business with them quite nicely without having our troops on the ground, toppling their governments, supporting oppressive regimes and interfering with their lives and culture in any way. But no, we will not do any of that as we have long standing plans of getting more involved in the region. Therefore we decide that the whole area needs to be subdued and the entire culture remade to our standards and values. Let me ask you, does the latter course of action really sound achievable and given the mind set of a billion people over there do you think the likely result from our actions will be anything other than more terror? (they use terror becasue they are not strong enough to directly war agaisnt us).

In summation if we are an economic powerhouse it is in other's self interest to have peaceful relations with us. Our size, geographic location and strength makes us so formidable no one would invade our nation as it is not feasible. While we will never live in a trouble free world our troubles would be reduced to practically nil if we did not have far flung military bases and feel the need to project force and meddle in other countries' affairs (which we frequently do to gain business advantage, see General Smedley Butler's War is Racket).

P.S. Not to mention that being a global meddler and policman is a direct threat to our own liberty. The blow back of our policies - terrorism, results in a greater police and survailance state at home which will only grow stronger with each new attack plus we must suffer the burden of higher and higher taxation, debt and inflation to pay for wars, far flund bases, arms races, action building, occupation and buying allies.