Posted on 02/05/2024 10:41:28 AM PST by Chad C. Mulligan
We bomb their oil refineries—they will bomb ours. They do not need B-1s or tomahawks. They will just use people smuggled in with bombs or torches—They will call themselves with another name but Iran will foot the bill. We have armies of agents in our land.
President Jefferson sent the Marines to clean up Tripoli as a means to protect American shipping.
If he had done that to protect Danish ships flagged in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands, with crews of Filipinos, carrying cargo from Asia to Europe ... he would have been set on fire on the front lawn of Monticello.
That’s April 1941 when they started.
Right. My memory let me down there.
If he had done that to protect Danish ships flagged in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands.......
Irrelevant. Point is that foreign policy actions don’t require a giant bureaucracy.
You might want to read up on the history of U.S. trade and the predations of the Barbary States in the Mediterranean Sea.
The U.S. had an immediate problem with them as soon as we became an independent nation. The British government made it known across the world that they no longer had any obligation to protect our merchant ships. Under the Articles of Confederation, the Federal government was so weak that it couldn’t effectively manage a navy to deal with problems like the Barbary States thousands of miles away. This situation went on for years, even after the Constitution was ratified and Congress had the authority to fund a navy. During that time, the U.S. government was paying tribute to the Barbary pirates because we simply didn’t have the “bureaucracy” in place to deal with them.
Everything supplied from American factories to Britain prior to the Lend-Lease Act was "cash and carry", and as I recall it had to be paid for in gold, which put a terrific strain on Britain's finances. A pretty bunch of skinflints we were.
But the main point I'm making is that America cannot become a Rand Paul isolationist country without turning our high tech economy upside down. There's a list of raw materials as long as your arm that our industries need, but which aren't found within our borders in sufficient quantities to keep us going. There are no substitutes.
Abandoning the middle east, or Africa, or Taiwan, or South America to our enemies would not prove to be an optimum solution. We either stay fully engaged, or we become an also-ran.
Little anecdote for you: An important but almost unknown factor in the WW2 air war in Europe was the successful invasion of North Africa by the Allies. It cut Germany off from its' source of cobalt, which was (and is) necessary to make steels that will survive as engine exhaust valves, (and later for jet engine turbine blades). Consequently the service life of the engines in Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs was only a few dozen hours. Fast-forward to today - our main sources of cobalt are still in Africa, and now we need it not only for making alloy steels but also for EV batteries.
“We tried isolationism in 1940. War came to us anyway, and it was all the worse for our having delayed.”
Not quite. Roosevelt had an active policy to oppose the Axis and aid the Allies. Remember “Shoot on sight”, “rattlesnakes of the sea”, and escorting convoys in the western Atlantic. One of the reasons Hitler declared war on us. Then Lend-Lease and embargos against Japan.
Once Britain declared war on Japan, that removed any constraints we had to aid Britain.
Only would have been a matter of days before a U-Boat sunk a US ship and we declared war on Germany, even if Hitler didn’t declare war on us.
“Isolationists prevented assistance to Britain for most of that time. The Lend-Lease compromise wasn’t passed until March of 1941.
Who taught you history?”
WTH are you talking about? When the war started, we had the Cash and Carry program. Britain just about bankrupted itself buying armaments from us. That was the main reason for Lend-Lease.
And the Lend-Lease deal was no bargain for Britain. We sent them a bunch of worn-out old four-piper destroyers, some of which barely made the Atlantic crossing. The Brits had to cannibalize some to keep the others seaworthy.
FDR used the example of lending your neighbor your garden hose to put out a fire, and expecting to get your hose back when the fire was out.
Please look up central aircraft manufacturing company. The flying tigers were the militarized version of the AVG. Read Greg Boyington autobiography for further information.
What year did WWII start?
I don’t believe 1937 is the recognized year.
1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria.
” Fast-forward to today - our main sources of cobalt are still in Africa, and now we need it not only for making alloy steels...”
Way to go, retard !
You advocate globalist stupidity such as being dependent on critical alloying elements like cobalt - which will be cut off by China in the event of war. (Since China controls both world cobalt production and heavily influences Congo)
This is the best argument of Isolationism and self sufficiency there is.
You claimed we didn’t help and make it like we didn’t do anything. That’s like one of those old Soviet or Howard Zinn smears against us. We did the 50 destroyers deal, a casus belli if there ever was one. Shipped massive amounts of arms after Dunkirk, escorted convoys, took over occupying Iceland, helped track U-Boats.
So you'd have us revert to a society with a 19th century technology? Which is pretty much where we'd be without cobalt, just to name one critical mineral out of dozens. How's your horsemanship? Like your soda-pop (or beer) in aluminum cans? Can't have any. We've never mined bauxite in this country. No steel cans either, tin for coating the steel hasn't been produced in the USA since before WW2. No solder for assembling electronics - solder is 50% tin. Wind turbines? Forget 'em - they need neodymium for the magnets. We have some, but the technology to mine it and refine it will be gone. Oh, and those big steam turbines that generate base-load electricity? Shut them down, too. The blades need chromium alloy steels or they erode away in months. Suppliers in order are China, Turkey, Kazakhstan and, India, with Finland a distant 5th.
You came to the wrong shop Reverend; I'm a retired manufacturing engineer. I can go on like this for hours.
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