1944, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspects American soldiers on UK soil before they embark to France. On May 7, 1945 Germany surrendered to the Allies in France. Five days earlier on May 2, 1945, 70,000 Germans laid down their weapons to the Russians in Berlin. Two million Americans fought in Europe during WWII.
It’s not merely that “our [US] military is being volunteered by others,”
but that Washington has been happy to volunteer it as
the de facto expeditionary force for the “international community.”...[Such as The Arab League, NATO, the UN] That’s great news.
Who doesn’t enjoy volunteering other people?”
3/28/2011, “The Art of Inconclusive War," Mark Steyn
“Why is it that the United States no longer wins wars? It is tempting and certainly very easy to point out that Obama’s war (or Obama’s “kinetic military action,”…or whatever the latest ever more preposterous evasion is) is at odds with everything candidate Obama said about U.S. military action before his election. And certainly every attempt the president makes to explain his Libyan adventure is either cringe-makingly stupid (“I’m accustomed to this contradiction of being both a commander-in-chief but also somebody who aspires to peace”) or alarmingly revealing of a very peculiar worldview:
“That’s why building this international coalition has been so important,” he said the other day.
“It is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out
missions that are
important not only to us,
but are important internationally.”
That’s great news. Who doesn’t enjoy volunteering other people?
The Arab League, for reasons best known to itself, decided that Colonel Qaddafi had outlived his sell-by date….
How difficult could it be even for Arab armies to knock off a psychotic transvestite guarded by Austin Powers fembots?
But no: Instead, the Arab League
decided to volunteer the U.S. military. Likewise, the French and the British….
American forces have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan for a decade [as of 2011]: Doesn’t that seem like a long time
for a non-colonial power to be spending hacking its way through the worthless terrain of a Third World dump?
If the object is to kill terrorists, might there not be some slicker way of doing it?
And, if the object is something else entirely, mightn’t it be nice to know what it is?…
Libya, in that sense, is a classic post-nationalist, post-modern military intervention:
As in Kosovo, we’re do-gooders in a land with no good guys….Not only is there no strategic national interest in what we’re doing, the intended result is likely to be explicitly at odds with U.S. interests….
Now suddenly he’s [Qaddafi] got to go—
“freedom-loving” “democrats” from Benghazi. That would be in eastern Libya —
which…has sent per capita the highest number of foreign jihadists to Iraq…
If we lack, as we do in Afghanistan,
the cultural confidence to wean those we liberate from their less attractive pathologies,
we might at least think twice before actively facilitating them….
The United States is responsible for 43 percent of the planet’s military spending [as of 2011]….
[Image: James Cagney sings “Over There,” WWI "patriotic" US recruitment song in 1942 movie Yankee Doodle Dandy]
It’s not merely that “our military is being volunteered by others,”
but that Washington has been happy to volunteer it
as the de facto expeditionary force for the “international community.” Sometimes
U.S. troops sail under
U.N. colors, sometimes
NATO’s, and now in Libya even
the Arab League’s.
Either way, it makes little difference: America provides most of the money, men, and materiel. All that changes is the transnational figleaf.
But lost along the way is hard-headed, strategic calculation of the national interest.
“They won’t come back till it’s over/Over there!” sang George M. Cohan as the doughboys
marched off in 1917 [to WWI]….
[Image: US soldier trains with gas mask to go “Over There,” to WWI on orders of US Pres. Wilson: “Historic footage shows American troops preparing for First World War chemical warfare with mock battles and gas attacks in New York camp,” Daily Mail, 7/26/2017: Ahead of WWI deployment, US soldiers practice donning masks against poison gas attacks in Europe, here training at Camp Upton in New York. More than 116,000 American troops died during WWI, 200,000 wounded.…"The most common effects of gas exposure were blistered skin, blindness and scarring of the lungs. Many of those affected by gas during the war did not die until many years later, often from tuberculosis, because of this scarring.”]
- (continuing): “Now it’s never over over there —
not in Korea, not in Kuwait, not in Kosovo, not in Kandahar. Next stop Kufra?”.
— Mark Steyn is author of America Alone. © 2011 Mark Steyn
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Added: More on being "volunteered:" “‘One nation in history has laid down hundreds and thousands of the lives of its sons and daughters and [speaking of WWI and WWII] taken no land, no land from Germany, no land from Japan….This is a great nation. A nation of people who will sacrifice for things bigger than themselves.” (Shimon Peres, 1923-2016). [Of course the late Mr. Peres kindly wasn’t referring to land and resources taken by 800 US military bases or US illegal annexation of one third of Syria]…
“That’s great news. Who doesn’t enjoy volunteering other people [to die in foreign wars]?” (Mark Steyn)
[Image: James Cagney, singing “patriotic” “Over There,” in 1942 movie...Yankee Doodle Dandy.…“Over There” lyrics by George M. Cohan, written in 1917 to persuade Americans to cross a vast ocean to fight and die in World War I because they were “the Yanks,” unique of all people on earth who proved their “patriotism” by leaving their families and dying “over there” on foreign soil. A century later US “wars” are still sold to US rubes by elaborate propaganda campaigns for the benefit of bankers.
““The war should be a tremendous opportunity for America.”—J.P. Morgan, personal letter to President Woodrow Wilson, September 4, 1914.”
“Over there,” lyrics:
Get your gun, get your gun,
Take it on the run,
On the run, on the run.
Hear them calling, you and me,
Every son of liberty.
Hurry right away,
No delay, go today,
Make your daddy glad
To have had such a lad.
Tell your sweetheart not to pine,
To be proud her boy’s in line.
Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there –
That the Yanks are coming,
The Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming
Everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer,
Send the word, send the word to beware.
We’ll be over, we’re coming over,
And we won’t come back till it’s over
Over there
Johnnie, get your gun,
Get your gun, get your gun,
Johnnie show the Hun
Who’s a son of a gun.
Hoist the flag and let her fly,
Yankee Doodle do or die.
Pack your little kit,
Show your grit, do your bit.
Yankee to the ranks,
From the towns and the tanks.
Make your mother proud of you,
And the old Red, White and Blue.
Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there –
That the Yanks are coming,
The Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming
Everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer,
Send the word, send the word to beware.
We’ll be over, we’re coming over,
And we won’t come back till it’s over
Over there.”
Publisher: Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group”
………………………………
Added: Truman established US as #1 global terrorist by dropping not one but two atom bombs on Japan in 1945, 3 days apart: August 6 on Hiroshima and August 9 on Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. The war in Europe was over, Germany had surrendered in May 1945, US had only Japan to worry about. Stalin had offered to help the US but Truman didn’t want to be beholden to Stalin, so he opted for two atom bombs:
“The United States government of today is arguably more Truman’s than it is any other president’s,
one of thoughtless cruelty and mechanized violence,
of lawless, arbitrary power exercised by an officialdom responsible to no one....
Fires burned for days following the bombings, making unrecognizable wastelands
of what had been lively cities.
If words and facts yet have meaning, then
these are among the worst terrorist acts in humankind’s history (perhaps the worst)
and Truman is among history’s most abominable terrorists."
March 20, 2019, “Everything Wrong with the Truman Administration,” David S. D’Amato, libertarianism.org
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Extra: As noted at top, Germany surrendered to the Allies in France on May 7, 1945. I hadn’t known about the Berlin surrender to Russia five days earlier: “On May 2, [1945] the Soviets conquered Berlin. The Associated Press wrote, “Berlin, greatest city of the European Continent, fell yesterday afternoon to the Russians as 70,000 German troops laid down their arms in the surrender that Adolf Hitler had said never would come.””
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