Day: August 23, 2018

Closing Thought–23Aug18

Before I start with the meat of this post……they say that blondes make up about 8% of the population and it looks like most of them work for FOX News…….so a comment made by an anchor on FOX makes perfect sense…..

Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt asserted on Thursday that America is “great” because it “defeated communist Japan.”

“We want to know what you think,” Earhardt said. “We defeated communist Japan, radical Islamists. We ask our men and our women to go overseas to fight for our country and sacrifice so much for this great country so that we can be the land of the free, the land of the brave.”

(FOX News)

Have you ever read an article that made you say to yourself….”No Sh*t”!…after reading?

Well the other day I found one that was a big No Sh*t for me…..

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared a “defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the annals of the state of Israel” when the Knesset enacted earlier this month a basic law (having constitutional status in Israel) making the right of national self-determination “unique to the Jewish people” and not applicable to all citizens. The law further enshrined religiously based discrimination, including a clause that points to priority for Jewish-only communities by declaring “the development of Jewish settlement as a national value” and promising “to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.”

The law has been a subject of much controversy in Israel. It passed the Knesset by the narrow margin of sixty-two to fifty-five. Opponents argue that it constitutes a step away from democracy. But this was one more item on the agenda of the ruling right-wing coalition that, given the rightward move in Israeli politics in recent years, the coalition was able to push through.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/israel-not-liberal-democracy-28392

Again….No Sh*t!

Activist such as myself have been saying this for decades and few were listening……now the world is starting to see what I and others having been harping…Israel has NEVER been this shining democracy of the Middle East.

Of course Israel does not subscribe to these rights…….

Why Did Japan Surrender?

As we remember the end of World War Two by the dropping of two nukes on two Japanese cities in August 1945…..there has always been a debate on why Japan surrendered…was it a direct result of the bombs?  Or were there other factors that we may not be aware of?

My personal opinion is……I do not think that the bombs were necessary….and most people think they were so that the US could avoid a lengthy invasion of the Japanese Islands….

There is contentious debate among scholars about why Japan surrendered in World War II. Some believe the Aug. 15, 1945, declaration was the result of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It’s possible that these finally pushed Emperor Hirohito (posthumously called Emperor Showa) to break the deadlock in the Supreme War Council and accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration for unconditional surrender issued by the Allied leaders on July 26, 1945. In that declaration, there was a promise of “prompt and utter destruction” if the armed forces of Japan didn’t surrender. The use of weapons of mass destruction causing the incineration of large swaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in quick succession backed up that threat, highlighting the futility of continuing the war. Emperor Hirohito’s intervention on the side of those favoring capitulation was crucial to winning over those hardliners who didn’t. In this narrative, the dawning of the nuclear age brought peace. It also allowed military leaders to save face, since they could claim that the war was not lost on the battlefield, and agree to surrender to spare the Japanese people from more suffering.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/08/06/commentary/japan-surrender-world-war-ii/#.W3vi48K1uM-

If you, my reader, would like to let us know your thoughts on the closing days of World War Two….then we would appreciate them…..

Starship Troopers–Part 3

The US president is still pushing for a new Space Force or would it be Space Marines or Starship Troopers……the big story is just how this new force, this new branch of the military be financed?

The budget battle looms large……

There are no estimates yet for what it will cost to stand up a Space Force as a separate military service. The Pentagon will request funds in next year’s budget to get the process started but Congress will want to know the full costs.

Some proponents of the Space Force have argued that if portions of the Air Force or the intelligence community are carved out to form a new service that there should be no significant added costs. But that would be a fantasy, said Gen. Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Somehow there is a misconception out there that “this is going to be absolutely resource neutral,” he said on Friday at a Mitchell Institute event on Capitol Hill.

https://spacenews.com/as-the-pentagon-moves-to-stand-up-a-space-force-budget-fight-looms/

The big problem is that the population does not see the need for yet another branch of the military…..

President Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for a new military branch focused on space is apparently not widely shared. Two polls released today show that a majority—and in one poll, a plurality—of respondents said that the Space Force is a bad idea.

The Trump administration plans to cleave Space Force from the Air Force and have it largely in place by 2020. The first step would be to create US Space Command—a joint command within the Pentagon similar to the Joint Special Operations Command and US Cyber Command that would oversee space operations of all the services—by the end of 2018. The Pentagon will also create a Space Development Agency that will pull military space research, development, and procurement out of the Defense Department’s current acquisition system. The agency’s goal would be accelerating the development of new space stuff.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/polls-america-is-meh-about-space-force/

This is a waste of time and money….and apparently the people see it for what it is…..

Our Foolish Wars

It seems that we have been at war most of my life in one Hell hole or another and in my granddaughters case we have…..as I look back at these wars/….Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc…..what has the US gained from these trips down the intervention road?

Raids by U.S. commandos in Afghanistan. (I could be talking about 2001 or 2018.)

A U.S. drone strike in Yemen. (I could be talking about 2002 or 2018.)

Missions by Green Berets in Iraq. (I could be talking about 2003 or 2018.)

While so much about the War on Terror turned Global War on Terrorism turned World War IV turned the Long War turned “generational struggle” turned “infinite war” seems repetitious, the troops most associated with this conflict — the U.S. Special Operations forces — have seen changes galore. As Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ), chairman of the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, pointed out in 2006, referring to Special Operations Command by its acronym: “For almost five years now, SOCOM has been leading the way in the war on terrorism: defeating the Taliban and eliminating a terrorist safe haven in Afghanistan, removing a truly vicious Iraqi dictator, and combating the terrorists who seek to destabilize the new, democratic Iraq.”

https://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2018/08/06/the_legacy_of_infinite_war_112857.html

The problem as I see it is our “Deciders” never take into consideration the consequences of their actions before they jump……

Fifteen years ago, we were still in the early stages of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, “the war that would change everything.” Looking at the Middle East today, I feel an overwhelming sadness as I consider the far-reaching and devastating impact that the Iraq war has had on my country and the region and its peoples.

Neoconservatives had been aggressively pushing the Bush administration to launch a war against Iraq beginning immediately after the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. They argued that America needed to forcefully respond to the attacks in order to demonstrate that we were not to be trifled with. A decisive show of strength, they claimed, was necessary to clearly establish America’s hegemony and to forestall any move toward multi-polarity in the post-Cold War era.

https://lobelog.com/foolish-wars-have-consequences/

Since Neocons run the Pentagon we will continue to have small war after small war and the consequences will be death and destruction and human suffering that few care little about.

The one bright spot is the generation of my granddaughter, the Millennials, could be the answer to a more logical foreign policy….we Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have screwed it up…maybe the next can repair the damage we have done……

As older generations inevitably pass on, new generations with new ideas will shape American foreign policy. Given that the Baby Boomers will be smaller than Gen Z in about a decade, and that Millennials are the largest generation yet, Millennials could determine the nation’s policy soon. For instance, a June 2018 Chicago Council on Global Affairs study found that each new generation is less in favor of military intervention than their parent’s generation, while support for international cooperation remains high across generational lines. So while nothing is guaranteed in American politics, those in favor of peace and non-interventionism should be cautiously optimistic about the future of U.S. foreign policy.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/skeptics/polls-show-millennials-are-more-skeptical-foreign-wars-28752

Can we get a witness?

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