A lesson from WWII from Spearhead

Just finishing "Spearhead" by Adam Makos. Excellent book. The ending is distressing because the war in Europe is basically lost in mid 1944, but the Nazi party tells the army to fight to the death.  

In the Battle of Cologne, the Nazi party leaders tell the tank crews to continue fighting against encroaching Allies, and that they, the Nazis, would hold the last bridge for the tankers to escape and then blow up the bridge. The tankers are surprised when the Nazis blow the bridge right after the Nazis exit, leaving the soldiers stranded with orders to fight to their death.

A quarter of all deaths in the Reich happen in the last part of the war when the leaders know the war is lost, but keep throwing away the lives of its soldiers and civilians.

It is vitally important that a country's leaders put their citizens' lives above their own political ends. Sadly in the US this is not always the case.

 The US went to war to punish Afghanistan for harboring Osama Bin Laden. To stage the war the US had to give untold fortunes to Pakistan to gain a transportation route into landlocked Afghanistan. Ironically, Pakistan, the recipient of those billions of dollars, was really harboring Osama Bin Laden.

Support America's Troops -- Bring Them ALL Home!

A Small, Overlooked Opportunity Cost of War

We know that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars cost thousands of American lives, four trillion dollars, and perhaps a million Iraq deaths from the chaos that followed, but there's another overlooked cost.

It's the opportunity cost of the time the President and his staff spend in overseeing the war.  We saw that with the Iraq war.

Instead of spending time on say, monitoring the progress on the health care website, the president was spending time pouring over lists of which bad guys to take out with a missile strikes and deciding how many troops were needed.

Wars can just suck the oxygen out of the room of national discourse.  When serious domestic issues need to be discussed, they are shoved out of the way by decisions to be made on the war front.

Next time our government says we really need to invade a country that has done us no harm, let's just say "no", and instead discuss American health care or infrastructure projects, or education, or how to fund more parks.

What to Learn from Donald Trump Being Elected President of the USA?

For many years the United States government has sponsored the overthrow of foreign governments, whether they be democratically elected like in Iran, or strong men we deemed as tyrants like Saddam Hussein, because America knew how to pick a better government than the foreign countries themselves.

Now with the election of Donald Trump, we can at last lay down that burden.

She goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy

John Quincy Adams, 1821, speaking of America:

"Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. "

"The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....
[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice."

Oh, if our leaders had listened to John Quincy.

What Benefit for the Average US Citizen Comes from being the World's Policeman?

Dan Carlin had a thought provoking podcast about what benefit do Americans gain from our country being the world policeman. We spend 20% our tax monies on our military and "policing" the world. We spend almost as much money on our military as the entire rest of the world. It costs us dearly, but the average American does not benefit from all that money. Would that we would spend some of that money on curing cancer, ending migraines, or finding a cure for Alzheimer's.

Six Trillion dollars for the Iraq and Afganistan Wars

A very brief note on the true human costs of our wars in Iraq and Afganistan here. And a new study showing the total cost of the two wars may be 6 trillion dollars. For what?

Robert Higgs cites an interesting quote from Nazi official Hermann Göring about the benefits of war for the common man.

This account comes to us from Gustave M. Gilbert, the German-speaking prison psychologist who had free access to all of the prisoners during the trials and talked to them frequently in private. On the evening of April 18, 1946, Gilbert visited Göring in his cell, and he later described their conversation as follows:

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Göring shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare war."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. (Nuremberg Diary, pp. 278–79)

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The Truth about Afganistan

Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis has published a report on what is really going on in Afganistan. You can see an overview in BusinessInsider.com, The New York Times and The Rolling Stone. It's worth the read.

Eisenhower's Warning: The Military/Industrial Complex

Knowing that Ike was a career military man makes his warning all the more poignant.

We Meant Well

FreshAir has a great interview with State Department employee Peter Van Burenon on trying to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people (transcript).
Peter talks in his book We Meant Well about the corruption and absurdities of what passes as rebuilding. It would be funny, if "rebuilding" Iraq wasn't costing American lives and a fortune we can ill afford to waste.

TED Talk: British MP Rory Stewart on Afgtanistan

British MP Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan after 9/11, talking with citizens and warlords alike. Now, a decade later, he asks: Why are Western and coalition forces still fighting there? He shares lessons from past military interventions that worked — Bosnia, for instance — and shows that humility and local expertise are the keys to success.

Almost $20 Billion Given to Pakistan in Foreign Aid

Major Source On Iraqi Weapons Of Mass Destruction Admits He Lied

Interesting article on the Iraqi refugee code-named Curveball who wowed the CIA with tales of Saddam Hussein's mobile bioweapons trucks admits he just made up the stories.  His stories were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, even though a careful analysis of his stories would have shown them to be false.  Curveball states he would do it all over again in spite of the 100,000 civilian casualties caused by the war since he hated the regime so much. An account of Curveball is at Amazon.com.

Tunisia and Iraq

The US spent over a trillion dollars and thousands of our soldiers' lives to give Iraq a chance at democracy; Tunisia gets a shot at democracy from free twitter and facebook accounts.  Who knew?

A Lesson from the War of 1812

"We have considered ourselves of too much importance in the scale of nations. It has led us into great errors. Instead of yielding to circumstances which human power cannot control, we have imagined that our own destiny and that of other nations was in our hands, to be regulated as we thought proper." 

Virgina Federalist Daniel Sheffey on the eve of the war of 1812 from The War of 1812 A Forgotten Conflict by Donald Hickey p300.