My latest in PJ Media:
In a stunning and brave demonstration that he is just like everybody else in the establishment media, and a reliable company man in the nation’s foremost anti-Trump propaganda machine, CNN National Security Reporter Ryan Browne tweeted Monday: “In an unprecedented public attack by a sitting US president on the leadership of the US military, President Trump has accused US military leaders of seeking to start wars to boost the profits of defense contractors.”
Coming on the heels of the media outrage over the false claim that Trump termed American troops “losers,” this is just another manifestation of a quadrennial spectacle: Leftists who loathe the military claiming to love and respect it. But Browne’s central claim was wrong: Trump’s remarks were not unprecedented, and indeed were following one of the most enduringly important statements by a president in modern times.
Trump said at a press conference Monday: “I’m not saying the military’s in love with me, but the soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t, because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy. But we’re getting out of the endless wars, you know how we’re doing.”
In response to Ryan Browne’s tweet, many commenters pointed out that Trump’s words were hardly “unprecedented,” as he was merely echoing an important warning from one of his predecessors, a man who was a general before he was a president: Dwight D. Eisenhower. As Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster discusses, in his farewell address on January 17, 1961, Eisenhower warned against the “military-industrial complex” – a warning that has too often been ignored.
Stung by this criticism, CNN’s Browne huffily responded: “Some folks really ought to read what President Eisenhower actually said in his farewell address. While they are both critical of the military industrial complex, nowhere does Eisenhower actually accuse military leaders of engaging in shooting wars to boost profits for firms.”
There is much more. Read the rest here.
roberta says
Our military has spent nearly 20 years in a country that we could scorch to the ground in 20 days. The President just may be on to something.
Nation building=endless war
gravenimage says
Nation building simply cannot work in Muslim-majority places. Pious Muslims do not want freedom and democracy.
mortimer says
Pious Muslims want democracy for their own sect of Islam, but not for the dirty kafirs, since Allah hates them. Muslims indoctrinate themselves in 17 prayers a day to hate Jews and Christians. They want elitist democracy without full equality.
gravenimage says
Mortimer, Muslims want *dominance* for their sect. This is not actually democracy.
jimjfox says
Democracy for pious muslims? Absolutely not; they want only Sharia which is the antithesis of democracy. All who make the claim are using taqiyya or another of the six approved Islamic lies.
“It’s Democracy, Jim but not as we know it!”
James Lincoln says
gravenimage,
There is no way that a Jeffersonian-style democracy can be imposed by the United States via “nation building” in a muslim majority country.
No way…
Wellington says
Quite true, James, and I expect someone like Barack Obama not to get this, though I have my own doubts respecting just how much Obama himself believes in democracy, but what especially saddens and annoys me is that Bush 43 still doesn’t realize any of this. Bush 43 refuses to learn and this is unforgivable.
gravenimage says
Grimly true, James and Wellington.
I think George Bush 43 is actually a decent man, but he is wedded to this denial of the threat of Islam itself, and that is very dangerous.
Even so, pious Muslims *hated* him for his opposition to Jihad terror, so he was still, with all his shortcomings, generally better than the appalling Obama.
Carl says
I believe bush 43 used the Christian card to become El president. I’m sure, as president, he was well aware of Muslims evil intent.
eduardo odraude says
I’m not sure that the reason nation building cannot work in Islamic nations is that pious Muslims do not want freedom and democracy. Pious Japanese during World War II also did not want freedom and democracy, but we transformed that nation, and the result has benefited the whole world. There were two elements present that made the imposition of democracy possible in Japan. 1) Japan is a single, relatively small nation; 2) in the US there was no significant political opposition to using the US military to impose liberal democracy in Japan. Now compare this to the Islamic situation: dozens of Muslim-majority nations — to transform even one into real liberal democracy, we would have to transform all or most of them, because a single Islamic democracy cannot be indefinitely sustained in a sea of sharia-states or quasi-sharia states. Furthermore, there would have to be political agreement in the US that it is okay for the US military to outlaw the political core of Islam throughout the Islamic world. So the task is much bigger than it was in the case of Japan, and second, there is little US political will to compel the transformation of dozens of Islamic nations.
There are of course other important differences that made democratizing Japan much easier than it would be to democratize Islamic nations. Japan’s Shinto emperor worship, so far as I know, was not a doctrine elaborated in sacred scriptures, or at least not scriptures of any length, detail, orthodoxy or popularity comparable to the sacred sources of Islam, which include not just the Qur’an, but hundreds of volumes of hadiths, early biographies of muhammad, as well as massive tafsir explaining each verse of the Qur’an, not to mention who knows how many volumes of Islamic law books based on the Qur’an and on the orthodoxy established by the actions and life of Muhammad. Japanese totalitarianism seems to have been based much more on uncodified, non-doctrinal, mystical sources and something like instinctive social solidarity or collectivism sometimes characteristic of the culture of the Far East. While it was totalitarian, It did not have the same type of rigidity possessed by an elaborated doctrine. So it could be altered in a way that Islam cannot.
gravenimage says
Eduardo–with the greatest respect–there is nothing intrinsic in Buddhism that rejects freedom and democracy. Would that we could say the same about Islam.
eduardo odraude says
Hi gravenimage,
Who was talking about Buddhism? I was talking about Shinto emperor worship in Japan.
gravenimage says
The fact that the Emperor was allowed to remain probably helped in this case, Eduardo.
Liz says
Shastra – Hitler was NOT Christian. He wrote a new “bible” and a his own set of 12 commandments.
“You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?” -Hitler
Do not confuse Hitler working the Christian faith of the German people with him believing in Christ himself.
Reziac says
You neglected the single most important criterion: Japan has an average IQ of 105; Islamic nations have an average IQ of 85. For comparison, the minimum IQ to invent the wheel is about 92 — and no country with a lower average IQ has a truly functional democracy (but they do have higher levels of corruption).
And critically, culture is downstream from biology.
eduardo odraude says
Reziac,
“Culture is downstream from biology” is at best a half truth. Biology is sometimes downstream from culture. Islam is one of the cases where that is the often true. Where Islam saturates a culture for a sufficient time, it makes people stupider because it ties their intellectual hands. You are arguing for biological determinism. The human being, in your conception, is a material reality only. Your view, carried to its logical conclusion, would require you to stop saying things like “I think so-and-so,” and start saying only “My brain thinks so-and-so.”
But in fact, human freedom is real. Choices people make can increase the intelligence of their culture or deaden it. Freedom is real because the “I” is a non-material reality interacting with the body and brain.
Over the generations, IQ is changeable, according to a number of studies. Studies show that IQ has gone up substantially since 1900. And a new study argues that in the last few decades, average IQ has declined.
eduardo odraude says
Shastra,
The United States was very different from Japan during World War II. You make the mistake of thinking that because things are not black and white, everything is the same shade of grey. But in fact greys can extend from the very light to the very dark.
Japan was a dictatorship. The United States was an imperfect democracy.
I am not blaming “religion” in general. I am blaming the totalitarian culture and religion of World War II Japan.
Democracies never, or virtually never, go to war against one another. That cannot be said of any other form of government. If you look at the course of history, by far the largest number of wars have been between two non-democracies. About half that many wars were between a non-democracy and a democracy. And there have been few or no wars between two democracies. This phenomenon is known as the “Democratic Peace” in social science. It is not a theory. It is considered a phenomenon, and the only dispute about it is whether democracies never go to war with one another, or almost never go to war with one another.
Check this out:
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DP.CHART.V19.PDF
eduardo odraude says
correction to my 12:42 pm post:
“about half that many”
should read
“significantly fewer”
Eli says
We can’t fight wars in Islamic nations, while America needs to defeat Islamic Socialists within our own nation, after being led by Obama for 8 years. This is part of the uprising now, with the Marxist BLM. Unless America realizes, this is what is happening in our cities with Socialist Democrats leaders, defunding the police, stifling conservative speech, and shutting down churches, America will face defeat. The rioters, leaders, Schumer, and prosecutors, are paid by a variety of sources. Marxist professors and co founder Marxist trained Patrisse Cullor are teaching civil unrest, in civics internet resource classes, while Lee and Washington University are teaching “How to Overthrow a State.” The goal during this covid threat, was to conquor a state at a time. In 2015, the Obama/Biden Administration (with Dr. Fauci )funded 3 million to the Wuhan Viral Lab, while also, in 2015, Marxist Patrisse had a video, declaring to be a Marxist trained Organizer. Reports share some of these were trained by the former Weather Underground terrorists of the 1980’s. Barr just used the Insurrection Act to arrest about 1,000 criminals across the nation.
eduardo odraude says
Not in the case of Japan and Germany, among other places. In Japan and Germany, nation building after World War II yielded huge dividends for the US and the whole world. But perhaps you are correct when it comes to Islam. In that case, nation building may be fruitless. On the other hand, while Iraq and Afghanistan are not Jeffersonian democracies, I think the US may have significantly improved their political systems by introducing democratic elements. Whether those elements will tend to weaken sharia culture over the long term, or will in the end be destroyed by sharia culture, I don’t know. By some accounts, Islam is in crisis around the globe because for the first time in 1400 years, the main source texts of Islam are available on the internet globally and are subject to open criticism and debate fostered by a growing number of ex-Muslims and non-Muslims. The result is that many Muslims are abandoning Islam as they find out ugly Islamic facts hidden from them by their imams. Many Muslims are quite ignorant of Muhammad’s life and the hadith, and know little about what the Qur’an says and means. Check out the great videos of David Wood, who has convinced many Muslims to leave Islam. At first they reject his claims, but then they go to the sources and see he was telling the truth. Then they go through a process that leads them eventually to abandon Islam. There may also be many secret ex-Muslims, afraid to publicly announce apostasy, since the penalty for apostasy in Islam is death, and even if one’s own relatives do not kill one, they may disown the apostate entirely: “you are no longer my daughter…” etc. You lose all your Muslim connections and your whole family, and indeed may even get killed by a member of your family, if the family is from the Middle East. But all of that may change faster than we expect. The Soviet Union collapsed with surprising rapidity and hardly anyone expected it. Something rather like that may happen with Islam.
gravenimage says
Even the official government of Afghanistan–which will not stand against the Taliban–has *stoning* back on the books. No democratic elements there, I’m afraid.
And most women in prison there–over 75%–are in for “crimes” like resisting forced marriages and trying to flee forced marriages. No democratic elements in this, either.
eduardo odraude says
I don’t mean to present an overly rosy scenario with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan. But as horrific as they still are with their sharia cultures and laws, I suspect they are not as horrific as they were prior to the introduction of the democratic elements we managed to bring there. Admittedly, such modest improvements, even if they happened, are unlikely ever to prove worthy of the trillions of dollars spent and all the blood spilled.
gravenimage says
Probably so, Eduardo. After all, Afghanistan under the current regime has not so far stoned any women to death–would that this were true of the Taliban.
And good to see you posting again.
eduardo odraude says
Thanks, gravenimage.
mtman2 says
Yes this is the hope worked on daily by Christian missionary’s like
1) RUN Minitries
2) Voice of Martyrs
3) Samaritans Purse
Muslime national’s once “accepting Christv are making fearless inroads in the most Islamic nations.
Charlie in NY says
It is the job of the military to look at international problems through the lens of hard power just as the job of the State Department to look at international problems through the lens of soft power. Resorting more often to a military solution by definition means buying more military equipment. Reducing the use of the military options means buying less. Why does the obvious suddenly become muddled just because President Trump said it. Someone should ask Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren for his view on this topic. I assume they are on the butter side of the famous equation. Politics does make for strange bedfellows.
gravenimage says
Actually, denying the threat of evil–as Sanders and Warren do–seldom leads to peace, either.
eduardo odraude says
The military deals in hard power, true, but a key strategic factor for them is also soft power — winning hearts and minds, because the military knows very well that overwhelming military superiority can sometimes be defeated by soft power, and so they do take it into account. The cynical side of that is called information warfare. The idealistic side is called freedom, human rights, humanitarianism, and democracy. Similarly with the State Department, but in the opposite way – they deal in soft power, but understand (if they are not brain dead), that soft power can in many cases be impotent if not backed up by potential use of hard power.
Also, for Trump and many other conservatives, reducing the use of the military does not mean buying less military equipment. It means buying more, so no one will dare to start a war with you. Weakness is provocative.
James Lincoln says
eduardo odraude says,
From a retired Navy Captain O-6:
“Also, for Trump and many other conservatives, reducing the use of the military does not mean buying less military equipment. It means buying more, so no one will dare to start a war with you. Weakness is provocative.”
That is a correct statement.
The greatest deterrent is a very well trained and very well-equipped military – with state-of-the-art equipment. This shows our strength to the world – without having to engage in endless wars.
Putting our American servicemen and servicewomen in direct harm’s way should be used sparingly – and only as a last resort.
Pres. Trump is correct…
mortimer says
American military leaders are not all greedy investors, surely, but the ones who are (the ones who pushed for new wars) are worthy of blame. That said, the US does have a role to play as the leading democracy which protects and encourages democracy in the world. Wars are mostly caused by countries that aren’t sufficiently democratic.
Islam is perhaps 90% incompatible with democracy. Islam teaches that minorities don’t deserve equal rights, thus, they don’t have an equal right to representation.
eduardo odraude says
Again, Shastra, you exaggerate hugely because you let emotion rather than critical thinking drive your statements. The US government acts out of a mixture of cynical self-interest and the highest democratic ideals.
You say the US has no right to interfere in the internal matters of other countries. That is naive. All countries interfere with the internal matters of other nations. Some interference is a bad idea, some interference is a good idea. Some interference is with good motives, some with bad motives, and often a mix of motives is involved.
For example, when the Soviet Union was imprisoning Anatoly Sharansky or the physicist Sakharov, it was right for other governments to “interfere” by protesting to the Soviets, and it was right for the US to put economic sanctions on the Soviet Union. You make the mistake of thinking that the nation state is what should be absolutely sovereign. But the individual is more important than the any government. If a nation state is a dictatorship that murders its own citizens because they peacefully criticize Islam or because they criticize any other ideology, that nation state should be interfered with, just as the Soviet Union was interfered with. If a government forbids women to get an education, hangs homosexuals, or beheads or imprisons people for blasphemy, that government should be interfered with.
Rarely says
Interesting concept but the problem is always where and when to draw the line. The toppling of the Guatemalan government in the 1950s over its nationalizing of various companies is a good example of going over that line. Was there even any line at all vis-a-vie Vietnam? What line was crossed when it was decided to invade Iraq?
To much of the World “democracy” just means the “tyranny of the majority”. We throw around terms like “democracy”, “freedom” , “human rights”, “slavery” etc. as if they have universal meanings when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. As an example, the “freedoms” guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution are hardly “universal” outside the U.S. and its territories. Also, there is even disagreement in the U.S. as to what each of these freedoms mean (e.g. Freedom of Speech”) and yet there are those who wish to impose them elsewhere regardless of any ambiguity or any cultural differences.
So where, when and how is it appropriate to intervene in another country’s internal affairs?
eduardo odraude says
Responses to Rarely.
His statements are in quotes below, and my responses follow each quote.
“Interesting concept but the problem is always where and when to draw the line” [on when it is right to intervene in another nation’s affairs].
Yes, a difficult question.
“The toppling of the Guatemalan government in the 1950s over its nationalizing of various companies is a good example of going over that line. Was there even any line at all vis-a-vie Vietnam? What line was crossed when it was decided to invade Iraq?”
I don’t know enough about the Guatemalan and Vietnam situations. It seems to me there were decent arguments made about resisting the spread of communism — though perhaps the arguments against the US actions were better.
Overthrowing Saddam was probably legitimate, based on numerous circumstances at the time, as enumerated for example by Victor Davis Hanson. Of course, that is debatable. The real error was not necessarily overthrowing Saddam when we did, but rather to think that a nation-building democracy project could have significant success and be worth the immense cost in lives and treasure.
“To much of the World “democracy” just means the “tyranny of the majority”. We throw around terms like “democracy”, “freedom” , “human rights”, “slavery” etc. as if they have universal meanings when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.”
Nothing could be further from the truth? Talk about overstatement! There is pretty strong consensus in the world about what liberal democracy is. The differences are only around the edges about details. Of course if you ask a dictator of North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Russia, or China, they may tell you some nonsense propaganda about what “real” democracy is. But such propaganda should not be taken as authentic belief. In fact the reputable human rights groups are in broad agreement about which nations are most and which least democratic, and which are in the middle.
“As an example, the “freedoms” guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution are hardly “universal” outside the U.S. and its territories. Also, there is even disagreement in the U.S. as to what each of these freedoms mean (e.g. Freedom of Speech”) and yet there are those who wish to impose them elsewhere regardless of any ambiguity or any cultural differences.”
The fact that freedoms guaranteed in the US are not universal says nothing about whether or not there is a “universal meaning” of democracy. When communist rulers called their systems “people’s democratic republics” that did not mean they actually believe their systems are democratic. The communists and other dictators know very well they are lying for propaganda purposes. They know very well what a democracy is. They know, for example, that communist elections are shams and that it was a lie that 99% of Russians voted for Stalin or Brezhnev. The same goes for the other dictators and dictatorships. You greatly exaggerate the “ambiguities.” There are local differences in how to define and implement democracy, but those differences are marginal and should not be exaggerated.
“So where, when and how is it appropriate to intervene in another country’s internal affairs?”
Yes, that is a complex question that no one can answer with certainty. The best one can perhaps do is to look to serious thought on “just war”, starting perhaps with Augustine.
eduardo odraude says
Shastra says, “if you think japan has become democracy why the hell do you people still have US army in japan.” Because the Japanese government wants us there, to counter China and North Korea. Trump has been threatening to pull US troops out of Japan if Japan does not pay more for US troops to be there. Japan is a liberal democracy with an independent press, freedom of religion, and regular, genuine elections. Freedom House rates Japan as “free.” See
https://freedomhouse.org/country/japan/freedom-world/2019
gravenimage says
+1