Posted on 05/31/2015 1:12:59 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
What ?
We have no Intel - our allies can’t bring anything to this administration.
What ?
Who is behind the propaganda pieces on TV assuring us that our Army and Navy, in particular, are strong and stand resolutely between us and our enemies? The rest of the time we are assured that they are a force for good, like super social service agencies.
Institute for National Strategic Studies - National Defense University: Chapter 12: The Moon: Point of Entry to Cislunar Space
China is Now Positioned to Dominate the Moon ".....It appears that while America continues to pursue the chimera of a human Mars mission at some future (but always unspecified) date, China is moving ahead with cislunar space dominance. They have systematically and carefully planned a logical pathway to the creation of a permanent space-faring capability. They have not yet achieved it, but looking at their progress to date, there is little doubt that they will. As virtually all of our space “applications” (i.e., communications, weather, remote sensing, GPS) assets are positioned in the various locales of cislunar space, we should be cognizant of evolving Chinese capabilities and intentions. Are we allowing ourselves to be outmaneuvered in space? Despite the happy talk of many in the space community, it remains a dangerous world."
Well, who’s going to respect a country that begs forgiveness from the very people seeking to destroy it while it’s allegedly at war with them?
I partially agree with this. We have to use our resources more wisely. We cannot go willy-nilly entering every tribal religious sectarian conflict on the planet (ones that have gone on for thousands of years and do not have anything to do with us and doubtless will go one thousands more years).
We are basically spending billions of dollars and far too many lives to create and then prop up phony ‘democracies’ that have zero chance of enduring because of time out of mind cultural and religious belief.
We are dividing our strength, our resources and the resolve of the American people by continuing on this path. We need to maintain a very strong, capable military. But we need to use it wisely. If we don’t and we continue on the path we are on, pretty soon it is going to undermine the military itself. And that is the true danger we face.
The author’s point is not that our military is not the strongest in the world ... it is that our strength is being divided in too many directions.
Is this a Google translation of a comment written in a foreign language?
Frankly, I gave up on the article when the first sentence contradicted the headline.
“America still has the world’s strongest military—by far.”.........
A tool box full of tools is only an asset if you have someone who can use them. With the mass elimination of many of our top military leaders, it won’t be long and indeed, we no longer be the “strongest military in the world”.
If you want to be the strongest, speak softly but carry a damn big stick, unfortunately for America, odumbo is out seeking a small twig.
This article is convoluted beyond anyone’s ability to fully decrypt but that’s not important. The real message here is nothing new: hate America, hate freedom, hate the historical American Imperative to defend freedom, cheer the decline of America, cheer the decline of freedom. All else is obfuscation and lies.
The Founding Fathers provided us with a Constitution to prevent usurpers from becoming President. Sadly we ignored that Natural Born Citizen part twice already this century.
>>>We are on target to be another third world hell hole with fifty languages and an ignorant populace; no industry but clean air. Then we will fall like the Romans did. Perhaps we can reestablish ourselves elsewhere, but we’ll all learn Chinese to do it.<<<
Maybe. Or maybe we’re in the same place as the last years of the Roman Republic, in a culture beset by civil war, elites who had abandoned tradition in exchange for a power and money, and a population who had wholesale exchanged their traditions for the beliefs of the Greeks.
At the end of the chaos while the republic died, the Romans recreated themselves as a dictatorship, in which Augustus did a great job spouting conservative values while remaining emperor, and after a brief bit of trouble with Nero and Caligula, they finally created a system with smooth succession, economic power, civil peace, and a centuries more of rule.
I can easily see this as the path we’re on. At this point, we’re in chaos, and the world is teetering on disaster. I can see a time when the troubles might be so great that the world will beg for the Americans to return to be the great arbiter of their disputes. Likewise, I can also see the United States becoming a military hyperpower after a nuclear attack on an American city. (In this metaphor, the two world wars and the Cold War is like the long war between Rome and Carthage.)
So I am not ready to write the epitaph on the United States. The Romans eventually lasted about 2,000 years (counting the eastern Romans). I’m no prophet, but the emergance of a American fascist-style military power following the decline or destruction of the republic is just as probable as American extinction. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Right. Bush ignited war in the Middle East. Because it was such a peaceful place before that.
The author is not to be taken seriously given that total lack of historical perspective. However, there are some points that can be gleaned from this turgid narrative. It baffles me when "peace studies" types call loudly for actions that are unmistakably imperialistic so long as those actions fit their current agenda and scream loudly about them if the results aren't what they expected. The only cure for the former is a good case of selective amnesia, say, on the order of Kerry, Hillary, et al suddenly rediscovering their anti-war antecedents as soon as the war they voted for could be blamed on Bush.
We addressed this question yesterday, IIRC: there is no such thing as a world policeman, benign, malign, or neutral, superpower, hyperpower, or simply one of a collection of Great Powers. There are no laws to selflessly enforce. There is only the application of force in pursuit of national interests. High ideals such as Wilson's 14 points or the UN charter or any other stylish compendium of social or economic "justice" are nothing but a thin veneer over the reality of force. Because they are a thin veneer they maybe and are (see above) discarded like a soiled coat when convenient; what remains is the reality of force that cannot be discarded. I cite the astonishingly incompetent, self-destructive, counterproductive mess that is recent U.S. Middle East policy as a case in point. The ludicrously-named "Arab Spring" that was going to sweep Middle East authoritarianism away in a mighty wind of democratic enthusiasm has left us with Libya in despotic hands, Egypt clearing away its own near-disaster at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria in flames and with poison gas being tossed about by both sides, Yemen shattered, Iran merrily pursuing nuclear weaponry unopposed, and ISIS performing Dark Age atrocities in Iraq, all without a single national interest of the United States remotely at stake unless it be the personal enrichment through international bribery of one former Secretary of State. My question for the good Professor is simply: given a State Department staffed with Peace Studies graduates and an unlimited budget, what does a hyperpower do about all of this that is in any way more successful than the policies of Genghis Khan? I do not choose that example idly - there is a fellow who really did manage hyperpower status and who successfully used it to prevent rivals from exercising their own national interests in opposition. He did not succeed through international conferences and Nobel Prize awards ceremonies, he did it through naked, brutal, overwhelming force.
Short of that - and I presume that it isn't a first priority option for a Peace Studies matriculant - short of that, the entire superpower/hyperpower model is not only overblown, it's completely detached from any congruence with real-world facts. If you don't like empire, and don't want to run one, then don't call for one.
As the State Department spokesbabe told us, all these poor lost terrorists need is a job.
But he is just a tool of much more sinister people hiding in the shadows, deniably using him and his propaganda for their own purposes, mostly to drive the acceptance, in America, that we have betters, who are born to rule us ("born booted and spurred", in our Founder's words) and to measure out our lives, even in foreign languages and for purposes we are not even to guess at.
U.S. national interest and policy has been, since the Monroe Doctrine, more an institutionalization of the children's game, Let No Man Stand," more than "King of the Mountain."
We've tended more toward warring down would-be Masters of the Universe like Santa Anna, Kaiser Wilhelm and his krautjunker saber-academy nobility, Adolf Hitler and his supermen, and Japanese warlords. Punks like Saddam Hussein are a dime a dozen, but that isn't an argument for their preservation.
Oh, and Gen. Powell was wrong about the "Pottery Barn Rule". There is no requirement that we buy what we've broken.
One need read no further than this idiots title.
L
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