Lyndon B. Johnson Quotes

Military men tend to rely so much on military history that they are almost always fighting the last war. Soon air power would supplant sea power as the critical factor. Then nuclear power, and then nuclear weapons became too severe for actual use and yet wars still continued with no consensus as to that will be in the future.

Koxinga had an overwhelmingly superior force, and wanted the Dutch to surrender and avoid bloodshed. The Dutch with their typical European colonial attitude, had great difficulty surrendering to “natives” even if outnumbered. Finally, the Dutch Commander agreed to surrender. Koxinga then established a Chinese Government on the Island and became a great hero of the Ming Dynasty. Note the graphic of the statue to him which is one of the very few Chinese memorial statues to a military hero showing him in action—very similar to European statues. Already Koxinga’s massed wooden junks with small cannon and fire torches had sunk one of the Dutch warships (they were not iron but had some iron plates on the deck to protect the gunners) and there were so many junks that the other Dutch ships sailed out to sea to avoid the Chinese huge number of junks.

The sloop Margaretta was escorting 2 small merchant vessels came into the port of Machias, Massachusetts to purchase some lumber and firewood. However the commanding officer of Margaretta did not like the terms of the negotiations and threatened the town. An aroused and angry group of patriots then boarded and attacked the two merchant ships. The commander of Margaretta then maneuvered out of the port having lost the two small ships. But the Patriots were angry with the commander of the sloop and being excellent seamen who knew the local waters, used one of the merchant ships and a small local vessel to chase down the Naval sloop. They then boarded and captured Margaretta and fatally wounded the commander, James Moore. While Lexington was the first land victory for the patriots, this was the first sea victory and the Margaretta was the first British warship that was captured by the Patriots.

This quotation was the beginning of a struggle between Congress and the Presidency over war powers. In this case, President Jefferson had sent a squadron of American ships to protect American Shipping from Arab Corsairs who preyed on shipping and captured crews and passengers of all nations to hold for ransom or put into slavery. The American ships, instead of only providing defense, attacked some of the ships of the Bey and freed a captured American frigate and crew. Jefferson acknowledged that the act was a grey area and asked for authority more authority for the Executive Branch to initiate action. The balance of authority for war and/or defense has been struggled over ever since.

There were few military thinkers at that time who would agree with Goebbels on this point.

Xerxes ignored her advice and attacked the Greek fleet at the Battle of Salamis. As Artemisia had predicted, the outnumbered Greeks routed the forces of Xerxes’ coalition preserving “The West” from dominance by “The East.” Artemisia’s fleet was the only one in the coalition to enjoy military success in the battle. See Xerxes {45633}. Artemisia is one of the first female military leaders and the only female naval commander until the end of the 20th century. She was 2500 years before her time.

Stockdale was then a Navy pilot flying over the scene. It was a supposed attack by North Vietnamese PT boats against our ships that was President Johnson’s justification for escalating U. S. involvement in the Vietnam war. Some argue that the President acted on the basis of insufficient and uncorroborated information while opponents believe that the administration trumped up an excuse to escalate the war.

This document was used at the trials of the Japanese War Criminal at the end of WWII. However, MacArthur would not allow the prosecution of all who were guilty of murdering helpless crews of Allied ships after they were disabled. He just wanted a few examples and even would not try the Emperor whom he felt was more useful in his position than as a criminal.

In 1930, Japan, Britain, and the United States had signed an agreement that submarines would not sink merchant vessels without having first placed passengers and crew in a place of safety. However, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and bombed civilians as well as military and had a pattern of bombing and shelling civilians in China, the U. S. took the position that Japan had abrogated all treaties and therefore abrogated the 1930 treaty. It was more of a symbolic gesture as at the time the American forces were in no shape to attack Japanese merchant shipping though later in the war, it became material. By that time, the Japanese had murdered American prisoners of war on the Bataan Death March and elsewhere and had slaughtered civilians in the Philippines and all the other territories that they invaded. The niceties of the 1930 treaty was one of the first casualties of Japanese aggression.

The president had publicly stated that two American ships—Turner Joy and Maddox—had been attacked off the coast of North Vietnam. The ships returned fire an “drove the attackers off”. This incident was the justification of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which authorized the American military to bomb Hanoi and the rest of North Vietnam. The NSA had issued a secret report stating that there was no evidence of any attack at all even though the ships had fired their guns. One theory was that the very sensitive radar the shipps carried had detected a large school of flying fish, many of whom were out of the water at any one time. The President, who had escalated the war to respond to this “attack”, privately gave this explanation.

Most Americans do not realize that our naval forces were disbanded after the Revolution and even the Constitution did not require a navy. We had some Federal revenue cutters to interdict smugglers but no warships and no permanent sailors or officers. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640850},86703,{640846} & {640848}