Isoroku Yamamoto 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.

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}

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

Months after the Tonkin Gulf incident, the President complained about the reliability of the information he had gotten from the navy, The escalaton of the Vietnam War was the result of Johnson acting on this information.

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.

Without much fanfare, the United States was beginning to deploy naval power internationally.

One difficulty of diplomacy with many Islamic leaders is that the culture produces very aggressive rhetoric and very aggressive actions like Islamic terrorism. This quotation is often cited to demonstrate that it is the Iranians that had decided that America is it’s enemy; that America is to be humbled; and that their weapons development are targeted at America. This along with the most frequent Iranian slogan, “Death to America,” for many argues for preemptive military action or maintenance of a high state of readiness. Given statements like this from the leading soldier of the theocracy, there is little doubt that Iranian nuclear weapons would be a great danger to America. Therefore when Iran complains that America did not object to the fact that other nations have the nuclear bomb, they do not take their own rhetoric into account. No other nation with possible nuclear capability has made America its major military adversity and claims as an objective to humble the United States.

Gingrich, who avoided serving in the military throughout his life, was frequently opining on military matters, tactics and strategy in his speeches, media appearances and many writings. Generally, he was a Chicken Hawk {625110} urging military action and war although he had personally never experienced it. He spent much time in military meetings and conferences, and thought that he had developed some expertise from this and his extensive reading.

Later, when he ran for the Democratic Presidential Nomination had had changed his mind and was a major opponent of the Vietnam War. This was the pattern of so many Americans whose first instinct was to support the government’s decision to wage war, and over time grew disenchanted with the war and ended up opposing the war actively.

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.