no Shahab refers to the shahab attack
(see e.g.
https://www.dw.com/en/al-shabab-attack-on-us-air-base-in-kenya-signals-resurgence/a-51905819
)
even foggy bottom and pentagon got worried, aside from the casualties a
direct hit on a US facility is new, by any standards-
On the Spratly I'd be inclined to disagree, but the US Navy is prone to too
many accidents, imho.......
Kerem jojjenek maskor es kulonosen masho
palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 7:21 PM Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Adriano,
As to the Spratley’s, I don’t think at this point the U.S. needs to take
the lead in any of the ongoing disputes. Vietnam has a contract with
ExonMobil to explore and produce gas from one of the islands by 2023, for
example. If China were to interfere, Vietnam has more at stake than the
U.S.; although the U.S. has a history of supporting American overseas
ventures. For a long time the Marine Corps was used for that purpose.
China set up an anti-aircraft missile site on one of their islands. Maybe
the U.S. naval forces in the region need to be careful. I don’t see a
multi-billion dollar war arising from the region, but I haven’t been
keeping up with the news as much as in past years so maybe I’m missing
something.
By “war against Shahab” are you referring to Iran’s Shahab missiles? In
the November/December 2019 issue of *Foreign Affairs *is an article
entitled “America’s Great Satan, the 40-year Obsession with Iran” by
Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon. Yes, Trump seems bellicose in regard to
Iran, and Iran did send some missiles toward U.S. troops . . .
But “Iran’s support for terrorism . . . has diminished substantially in
the last 20 years. And although Tehran and its proxies still occasionally
pull of a successful attack, such as the 2012 bus bombing in Burgas,
Bulgaria, their attempts are of a smaller scale than before, and many of
their recent plots have been absurdly ineffective. In 2011, for instance,
an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington was
doomed from the outset because the Iranian agent approached an informant
for the Drug Enforcement Administration to carry out the killing. And in
2012, Iranian terrorists in Bangkok accidentally set off an explosion in
their own safe house. When Thai police arrived at the scene, one of the
Iranians threw a grenade – which hit a tree, bounced back at him, and blew
off one of his legs.” The fact that their Shahab missile attack didn’t
kill anyone is consistent with the afore-mentioned level of competence.
The article writers say “In balance-of-power terms, Washington’s obsession
with Tehran is absurd. Iran’s population is one-fourth the size of the
United States’, and its economy is barely two percent as large. The United
States and its closest allies in the Middle east – Israel, Saudi Arabia,
and the United Arab Emirates – together spend at least $750 billion
annually on their armed forces, about 50 times as much as what Iran
spends. Both Israel and the United States can produce state-of-the-art
weapons, as well as reconnaissance, surveillance and battle-management
technologies. Iran cannot. Its industrial base is aged. Its air force
and navy field outdated weapons systems. . . .”
I don’t get a newspaper or have TV so perhaps I’m missing something. ????
Lawrence
*From:* lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *adriano paolo shaul
gershom palma
*Sent:* Thursday, January 23, 2020 8:01 AM
*To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [lit-ideas] Re: Thoughts on being warlike
it may be difficult to compare Ostrovsky with the Korean police operation.
That said, the whole ideology of being a global police force is harder and
harder to sustain.
For instance, take the war against Shahab (thousands of US sf are
involved.) I have honest doubts that
many, or even most, US citizens know what the stakes are or what the
troops are fighting for.
The much publicized war in Afghanistan goes on, and it went on for the
longest span of time in republican time (i.e. post colonial time.)
I wonder who of the candidates (Trump? Warren? Klobuchar?) would convince
their electoral base to spend unknown numbers of billions and/or unknown
numbers of lives to fight for and in the Spratly.
But I'd like to hear Lawrence's voice on this, semper fi
*Kerem **jojjenek **maskor **es kulonosen **masho *
palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 4:52 PM Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
No doubt the U.S. is viewed in the rest of the world as being very
war-like, but that is not how we view ourselves most of the time. Our
first president, Washington, marshaled enough force to defeat the British
and win our independence, but just barely. And he passed on to his
successors the advice, “don’t get involved in foreign (meaning European)
wars.” Thus, the majority in the U.S. didn’t not want to be involved in
WWI – because it was a European War. Wilson promised that he would not get
the U.S. involved in that war, but then he did. And after that war, Wilson
was repudiated and the U.S. went back to being an isolationist nation.
The Germans and Japanese didn’t believe that the U.S. would fight, but if
the U.S. did send troops to face them, the more warlike Germans and
Japanese believed they could easily defeat them. All the Germans &
Japanese feared from the U.S. was their ability to make a lot of things,
especially military things, very quickly.
And so it was an ongoing surprise that the Americans, primarily the
all-volunteer Marines were as warlike as the Japanese soldiers. The
Japanese were surprised in battle after battle.
The Army we sent to Europe was another matter. It was made up primarily
of draftees. Churchill is generally seen as being correct in opposing the
American leaders who wanted to immediately establish a second front in
France. He thought the Americans needed experience and their initial
ineptitude in North Africa and Italy bore that out.
After WWII was over, after both Germany and Japan unconditionally
surrendered, American politicians and the majority of American population
wanted to go back to being isolationist. We had two oceans to protect us
from invasion. Let that be enough. But the Cold War changed that. The
Marines and Army sent to oppose Communist North Korea were equipped with
left-over weaponry from WWII.
It was during the Cold War that it became American policy to fight it by
opposing Communist expansion wherever it occurred; so our weaponry improved
dramatically.
That policy of opposing Communist expansion wherever it occurred wasn’t
understood or appreciated my most Americans. Perhaps it was okay to defend
South Korea, but what we did in Vietnam was never understood or appreciated
by a majority of Americans. Thus, after we abandoned Vietnam, perhaps a
majority in America wanted to go back to being an isolationist nation. We
didn’t do that, but later on when Islamists evaluated us, their opinion was
very like the Japanese and Germans before WWII. They thought we wouldn’t
be willing to fight.
Now, in the world today, perhaps the U.S. is seen as the most willing to
fight. That probably isn’t true. A president can start a small war and
call it a “Police Action” as President Truman did in regard to Korea. But
the President must sell his decision to congress in order to get a war
financed adequately.
If the president who replaces Trump were to decide that America should
once again be an isolationist nation, and if he were to pull troops out of
all the other nations were American troops are stationed (something that is
considered in the ongoing TV series *The Messiah*), I suspect that Russia
would be able to do whatever it liked against the EU. NATO without the
U.S. wouldn’t be very effective.
Samuel P. Huntington’s *Clash of Civilizations *is still seeming a good
assessment of how military actions will play out in the future.
But the president who replaces Trump won’t be able to turn the U.S. into
an isolationist nation. He will be worried about an ongoing Islamist
threat. He will also be worried about China. We have a treaty with
Taiwan. Will we honor that treaty and go to war with China if it invades
Taiwan? The Taiwanese aren’t overly confident about that, and Americans
who want to support the Taiwanese aren’t overly confident either.
We spend more on military equipment than any other nation in the world.
But the Islamists scoffed at that saying that we wouldn’t send soldiers to
oppose them and bleed, but I’m not sure anyone is saying that any longer.
Lawrence
*From:* lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *adriano paolo shaul
gershom palma
*Sent:* Wednesday, January 22, 2020 9:16 PM
*To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [lit-ideas] Re: On receiving
Lawrence's experience is interesting.
my own view is that none of the urgency of what "made the steel" was ever
available, e.g., in the US.
the reasons are many, one of the crucial ones is that war has always been
popular, while the position of the Russian autocrats in ww1 never was of
any interest to anybody who was there from slavofile to narodniki.
similarly what happened in a second generation
(bets reading IL GIOCO DEI TRE REGNI, by C. Sereni)
*Kerem **jojjenek **maskor **es kulonosen **masho *
palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 3:04 AM Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
From page 43 of *The House of Government:*
“’Strange as it may sound,” writes Kon, ‘the years I spent in prison were
the best years of my life. I did a lot of studying, tested my strength in
a long and bitter struggle, and, in constant interaction with other
prisoners . . . It was in prison that I learned how to judge my own life
and the lives of others from the point of view of the good of the cause.’
Osinsky and Bukharin cemented their friendship when they lived ‘in perfect
harmony’ in the same prison cell, and Platon Kerzhentsev, who had defeated
Osinsky in the high school debate on the Decembrists, ‘studied thoroughly .
. . the literature of both Marxism and populism and left prison – the best
university of [his] life – as a Bolshevik.’ Iosif Tarshis’s (Osip
Piatnitsky’s) time in prison was ‘a university’ because he ‘studied
systematically under the guidance of a comrade who knew Marxist
revolutionary literature . . .”
Years later in 1959, in the midst of the Cold War, I graduated from
college and went to work in engineering at Douglas Aircraft Company. Alex
D., a longshoreman and classmate took to coming to my house regularly
hoping to convert me to Communism – sort of. He wasn’t very forceful or
sure of himself, but he had been influenced by a very intelligent, forceful
older longshoreman (whom I never met) and believed what he said. He
presented arguments to me and books to read, he told me, to get my opinion
on what his Longshoreman mentor was teaching him. In reality I suspect he
was hoping to sway me to the Communist position. I knew very little about
Communist ideology when Alex’s visits began, but I took the opportunity to
read all his materials and hear the arguments (second hand) of his
longshoreman mentor. When I would criticize a particular book and give it
back to him, he would always have another handy. This was *my*
education, but the effect wasn’t what Alex (and perhaps his mentor) hoped
it would be. Alex was never very good at debate and he several times
wanted me to debate his mentor. I was willing, but the mentor was not. I
don’t know why.
Alex didn’t realize that I had honed my debating skills on my mother who
was a follower of the millenialist, Herbert W. Armstrong of the World Wide
Church of God. Just like Alex later on, she would become flustered and
take my arguments to one of the church elders. She also tried to get one
of these elders to “convince me of the truth” (I think is the way she put
it).
Lawrence
