Douglas MacArthur Quotes

Kennedy was an admirer of Hitler and convinced that democracy was finished in England. His views—see also {610121} and {610122}—destroyed his own political career in the United States, and he thereafter maintained his political aspirations through his children.

Clinton was one of the leaders of the anti-war movement of the day. He even ran for President on the new “Peace Party.” New England, New York and many people in the Atlantic states thought the war of 1812 absurd. In reality, while the law was good for American morale and national pride, the casualties we suffered and the cost was far greater than what we were losing in our dispute with England. In actuality, France (under Napoleon) was offending America and seizing our shipping more than England. Note that Clinton was advocating negotiation even AFTER we would be attacked. This is in a way the complete opposite of the George W. Bush doctrine of preemption—attacking a hostile state BEFORE it has attacked us so as to prevent the casualties of an attack. The Bush doctrine was a great blunder in its only implementation—Iraq did NOT have the weapons of mass destruction that Bush and his administration claimed they had to justify the preemptive war.

Shortly after, he backed off the notion of having a bloodbath removing protesting students.

The Falkland Islands were very close to Argentina and far from England. The Argentineans had offered the few Islanders large sums of money to become part of Argentina, but this was rejected. Argentina was a military dictatorship with a terrible record of human rights abuses. The Falklanders preferred their traditional British style of government and affiliation. The Argentinean generals assumed that if they invaded, once they controlled the Falkland Islands, they could negotiate with the British over issues of sovereignty. They misinterpreted the American UN Delegate and concluded that America would not support Britain in a military response; they also assumed that while the British would complain in the UN, they would never go halfway around the world to invade the islands, now occupied and reinforced by Argentina. Thatcher would not negotiate unless the invaders left the islands. They did not do so voluntarily. The Argentinian military had been abusing their own citizens for so long that they had an inflated concept of their fighting ability. Britain freed the islands militarily, and Argentina was humiliated. The military government fell bringing democracy to Argentina—the only good that came out of the Faulklands War.

The so called War on Terror had many lessons. President Obama and many of the military leaders in the Pentagon realized that just as we evolved the concept of a Cold War, a new concept was needed to deal on the long run with the Al Qaeda terrorists. Typically in war, the nation is fully mobilized with the surrender of the enemy the major objective. When peace is negotiated, there is some demobilization and other things begin to take precedence. However, given the non state highly decentralized nature of Al Qaeda, there is no way to ever negotiate peace because no Al Qaeda official can speak for any more than his immediate cell and cadre. They will likely never stop attacking in any foreseeable future since their motivation is ideological and religious. It doesn’t take full military mobilization to protect against individual acts of terrorism, and indeed arguably the large mobilization only gives the terrorists more nearby targets. So American leaders were evolving a state of high protection, surgical strikes and attacks on Al Qaeda leadership and cells, and at the same time a demobilization of many of the overseas ground troops. It is not a state of war yet there will be attacks from time to time against us and attacks by us on Al Qaeda, yet there cannot be an all out war which is de factor non winnable in toto, but is very controllable. For Stein and other hawks, this new state is unfathomable. If there is any attack on Americans or American interests to them we are either at war with full mobilization or have surrendered. The total number of American civillians killed in the 10 year war on terror has been less than 2 months of normal automobile crash deaths or 3 months worth of gun accidents, or one tenth of the deaths caused by flu in a single year.