But We Don't Live in Candy Land
At times I wonder if any leftist is firing on all cylinders. Although there is a significant debate in this country about the proper use of the military, a debate which only seems to surface when a Republican is President, to argue as the city of San Francisco supervisors (most notably Chris Daly) have, that there should be no standing military and, ignores I think the realities of the modern world. Even going so far as to reject having the USS Iowa dock there as a museum goes a bit beyond the pale, especially after their senator wasted our tax dollars to get it there.
I had a chance to hear Daly the other day on the radio. Unfortunately, he was speaking with Sean Hannity who wasn't really interested in hearing what he had to say. He mostly attacked Daly as irresponsible and a bit retarded, and those arguments may carry a bit of their own weight. He is a tool of the rather strong socialist agenda in San Francisco, after all. My personal belief is that Daly, although carrying some half-way logical arguments, stands out as being rather naive.
I could see his argument that it is not in the general history and nature of this nation to have a standing military more than a cadre. This is true. Up until the Cold War, the U.S. armed forces always shrunk back to a small cadre after every major conflict since the nation's founding. The Founding Fathers most certainly were not desirous of such a force sitting amongst the people. Professional armies were seen as little more than government-sanctioned brigands. One could argue that, although an Army's purpose is to destroy the enemy, the U.S. Army's role and function after World War II altered dramatically.
What changed that role was the Cold War. It was our first untraditional war and it lasted over 45 years. Although we were not constantly building our armed forces, they were certainly at a greater strength even under the gutting blade of Carter than they had been before the Second World War. The existence of a force in the world, Stalin's Soviet Union, that had seen its chief rival for global domination destroyed with the Nazis, realized that there was one more major impediment to its dreams, the United States.
The looking glass of history, usually a mirky thing, is fairly clear on what happened next. The U.S. was infiltrated by a myriad of spies who went all the way up to Presidential advisors and other highly-placed Executive Branch officials. U.S. technology was stolen and foreign policy was in many areas subverted, like the U.S. dealings with Chang Kai-Shek of China. And, probably the least-reported fact, Soviet agents placed weapons caches, including it is said small tactical nuclear devices, all around the country should the Cold War ever overheat past the norm of proxy battles. The U.S. took over 35 years to get serious about defeating this threat to its existence and finally in the late 80's - early 1990's succeeded with Reagan's economic victory.
The Armed Forces were stripped again under Clinton, again more along the lines of a Carter stripping and not a Wilson or Truman stripping, and became a social experiment playground for the leftists of that administration as well as an international police force to be used at the U.N.'s discretion and on the U.S. taxpayer's dime. The rise of Islamofascism to the point where it could not be ignored, about the time the latest in a string of attacks on U.S. interests culminated in an attack on U.S. soil, renewed the need for a strong military and an offensive posture. The U.S. was again at war.
Those are the facts. The reason for them is still open to debate. Certainly there are those who hold that the military-industrial complex we have been warned about since the 50's just wants to keep making money and thus finds ways, possibly even engineering these conflicts and paper villains, to keep themselves in money. I hold this conspiracy theory at a lot greater length than I used to. I bought into the facts and figures of a corrupt industry further corrupting our government in the early 90's to some degree. Seeing that industry fall to pot in the 90's even with a very militarily adventurous President (Clinton deployed U.S. forces to more spots in his eight years than had been done in the entire history of the nation), it was obvious the only strings they were pulling were in their threadbare pants pockets desparately looking for contracts to keep them afloat. The MI complex is the real paper tiger. It is an industry that has grown bloated and corrupt on the corruption of the federal bureaucracy, not the other way around, and when its funding is cut it is as weak as Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick alibi. I just don't buy it. Could be proven wrong some day, but not from what I've seen to date.
There's also the matter of Republicans just wanting to take us to war, but that doesn't really hold since as previously noted, President Clinton sent our forces into harms way more than all other Presidents to date. Also, WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam were all initiated and primarily conducted under Democratic presidencies. These are the things you miss when you sleep through history class because you stayed too late and the revisionist history antiwar protest.
Let's also consider last that the U.S. is and has been since the beginning of the Cold War a Superpower. Everyone and their grandmother is looking for an excuse to knock us down a peg. When we were just an upstart New World nation and the world powers were all in Europe, that was no big deal. Now that Europe is in serious decline, the U.S. militarily and economically dominates much of the rest of the world, and emergent communist/capitalist fusion nations arise to challenge U.S. supremacy and replace it with their own (read: China) , our place in the world is different.
When we were that insignficant New World nation, we had no need of a large or professional army. A small cadre did fine. With our new place in the world, and Islamofascists carrying on the legacy of the Nazis, China and the emerging South American socialist leaders carrying on the dying embers of communism, a geriatric Europe trying desparately to stay relevant, and the rest of the world just wanting U.S. money and none of its culture, we have a lot of enemies. Most still trade with us and care less what happens in the grand scheme of things. Many, though, would love to see a world where the U.S. didn't exist and the only thing that stops some of them, or at least provides a pause in their plans, is U.S. military might.
Although I have painted a fairly bleak scenario of world affairs, it is by and large an accurate one. The world doesn't exist in a vaccuum, reacting only to us and otherwise wanting to coexist in peace and brotherly love. The world is still driven by power and money and others want what the U.S. has. Whether the U.S. can survive all these challenges remains to be seen, but one thing is clear. The deluded childlike Candyland-dwelling denizens of San Francisco haven't even begun to fathom that reality and likely won't anytime in the near future. To subscribe to their ideas or give them merit in this instance is to be as naive as they are, so it's worth exploring the other side, the correct side, as always.
At times I wonder if any leftist is firing on all cylinders. Although there is a significant debate in this country about the proper use of the military, a debate which only seems to surface when a Republican is President, to argue as the city of San Francisco supervisors (most notably Chris Daly) have, that there should be no standing military and, ignores I think the realities of the modern world. Even going so far as to reject having the USS Iowa dock there as a museum goes a bit beyond the pale, especially after their senator wasted our tax dollars to get it there.
I had a chance to hear Daly the other day on the radio. Unfortunately, he was speaking with Sean Hannity who wasn't really interested in hearing what he had to say. He mostly attacked Daly as irresponsible and a bit retarded, and those arguments may carry a bit of their own weight. He is a tool of the rather strong socialist agenda in San Francisco, after all. My personal belief is that Daly, although carrying some half-way logical arguments, stands out as being rather naive.
I could see his argument that it is not in the general history and nature of this nation to have a standing military more than a cadre. This is true. Up until the Cold War, the U.S. armed forces always shrunk back to a small cadre after every major conflict since the nation's founding. The Founding Fathers most certainly were not desirous of such a force sitting amongst the people. Professional armies were seen as little more than government-sanctioned brigands. One could argue that, although an Army's purpose is to destroy the enemy, the U.S. Army's role and function after World War II altered dramatically.
What changed that role was the Cold War. It was our first untraditional war and it lasted over 45 years. Although we were not constantly building our armed forces, they were certainly at a greater strength even under the gutting blade of Carter than they had been before the Second World War. The existence of a force in the world, Stalin's Soviet Union, that had seen its chief rival for global domination destroyed with the Nazis, realized that there was one more major impediment to its dreams, the United States.
The looking glass of history, usually a mirky thing, is fairly clear on what happened next. The U.S. was infiltrated by a myriad of spies who went all the way up to Presidential advisors and other highly-placed Executive Branch officials. U.S. technology was stolen and foreign policy was in many areas subverted, like the U.S. dealings with Chang Kai-Shek of China. And, probably the least-reported fact, Soviet agents placed weapons caches, including it is said small tactical nuclear devices, all around the country should the Cold War ever overheat past the norm of proxy battles. The U.S. took over 35 years to get serious about defeating this threat to its existence and finally in the late 80's - early 1990's succeeded with Reagan's economic victory.
The Armed Forces were stripped again under Clinton, again more along the lines of a Carter stripping and not a Wilson or Truman stripping, and became a social experiment playground for the leftists of that administration as well as an international police force to be used at the U.N.'s discretion and on the U.S. taxpayer's dime. The rise of Islamofascism to the point where it could not be ignored, about the time the latest in a string of attacks on U.S. interests culminated in an attack on U.S. soil, renewed the need for a strong military and an offensive posture. The U.S. was again at war.
Those are the facts. The reason for them is still open to debate. Certainly there are those who hold that the military-industrial complex we have been warned about since the 50's just wants to keep making money and thus finds ways, possibly even engineering these conflicts and paper villains, to keep themselves in money. I hold this conspiracy theory at a lot greater length than I used to. I bought into the facts and figures of a corrupt industry further corrupting our government in the early 90's to some degree. Seeing that industry fall to pot in the 90's even with a very militarily adventurous President (Clinton deployed U.S. forces to more spots in his eight years than had been done in the entire history of the nation), it was obvious the only strings they were pulling were in their threadbare pants pockets desparately looking for contracts to keep them afloat. The MI complex is the real paper tiger. It is an industry that has grown bloated and corrupt on the corruption of the federal bureaucracy, not the other way around, and when its funding is cut it is as weak as Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick alibi. I just don't buy it. Could be proven wrong some day, but not from what I've seen to date.
There's also the matter of Republicans just wanting to take us to war, but that doesn't really hold since as previously noted, President Clinton sent our forces into harms way more than all other Presidents to date. Also, WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam were all initiated and primarily conducted under Democratic presidencies. These are the things you miss when you sleep through history class because you stayed too late and the revisionist history antiwar protest.
Let's also consider last that the U.S. is and has been since the beginning of the Cold War a Superpower. Everyone and their grandmother is looking for an excuse to knock us down a peg. When we were just an upstart New World nation and the world powers were all in Europe, that was no big deal. Now that Europe is in serious decline, the U.S. militarily and economically dominates much of the rest of the world, and emergent communist/capitalist fusion nations arise to challenge U.S. supremacy and replace it with their own (read: China) , our place in the world is different.
When we were that insignficant New World nation, we had no need of a large or professional army. A small cadre did fine. With our new place in the world, and Islamofascists carrying on the legacy of the Nazis, China and the emerging South American socialist leaders carrying on the dying embers of communism, a geriatric Europe trying desparately to stay relevant, and the rest of the world just wanting U.S. money and none of its culture, we have a lot of enemies. Most still trade with us and care less what happens in the grand scheme of things. Many, though, would love to see a world where the U.S. didn't exist and the only thing that stops some of them, or at least provides a pause in their plans, is U.S. military might.
Although I have painted a fairly bleak scenario of world affairs, it is by and large an accurate one. The world doesn't exist in a vaccuum, reacting only to us and otherwise wanting to coexist in peace and brotherly love. The world is still driven by power and money and others want what the U.S. has. Whether the U.S. can survive all these challenges remains to be seen, but one thing is clear. The deluded childlike Candyland-dwelling denizens of San Francisco haven't even begun to fathom that reality and likely won't anytime in the near future. To subscribe to their ideas or give them merit in this instance is to be as naive as they are, so it's worth exploring the other side, the correct side, as always.
posted by Rob Beck | 10:22 PM
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