As a USMC Vietnam Veteran (1968-1970), I applaud your insights. But- extending your point- if the Federal government is in the habitual pattern of lying to us about our foreign entanglements, then how can we have any faith in government pronouncements concerning so-called pandemics?
Yes, and the timing of JFK's death wasn't just a coincidence, as he had given orders for, IIRC, 600 "advisers" to come back home to the US, with *all the rest* to follow within a year. LBJ didn't continue the pullout. H'mmm ...
I agree with you wholeheartedly! Vietnam has most favored nation status and the likes of Nike are made there and sold in America when people are still dying from bad decisions of fighting there many years ago. Our sons and daughters not politicians. As long as it’s somebody else they don’t care.
There has to be a formal declaration of war before Americans are put on ships and planes and sent somewhere else to fight; without this, those with no skin in the game (either their own or one of their sons or daughters) will hang the foreign flag du jour up on their porch and support the war. What should be a grave moral matter demanding much hand-wringing and sleepless nights becomes another political point; your support (or opposition) demands on what party you identify with, and what party controls the White House.
US foreign policy is one of arrogance and corruption. It sacrifices human and financial wealth to be the bullshit bully on the world stage. Vietnam opened my eyes. Three months into my tour I understood our motives. They were destructive. Nothing more. I am thankful I made it home in one piece. Then we lost Korea, overthrew the Shah, and butt f 'd ourselves in Iran and Afghanistan as well as the Ukraine by putting biolabs there. There is no end to our arrogance.
The point you didn't touch on is that there is always lots of US taxpayer money being thrown at these "problems" and the longer they go on, the more money that disappears into some overseas black hole. The questions are, "who are the ones pushing for this, and who are the ones profiting from it, and where is the accounting for all that money?" When you throw hundreds of billions in money out the door, it is real easy to take a fraction of a percent off the table (several times) for the big guy and others, and nobody "notices".
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and a principal architect of NATO, wrote in 1951, “If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project [NATO] will have failed.”
Today there are about 100,000 US troops in Europe.
Ten years later in his farewell address, he warned of the danger of a military/industrial/Congressional/technology complex. He was right on all counts.
My husband and I were born during WWII, 1941 and 1943. My Army sergeant father returned home from Europe in early 1946 when I was 3 years old. It was our first meeting. I remember a few of the little things that we did to conserve in those days after the war, saving newspapers that the Boy Scouts picked up, growing a garden and canning vegetables, and taking a train across the country for my father to get a job. I realize now how hard it must have been for them. I agree, John, that wars should cost everyone something in personal sacrifice if they are worth fighting. These forever wars have had nothing to do with America and should never have happened. I’m hoping that Trump and Hegseth can turn this around!
I have to mention something about President Bush. He is an idiot. VP Cheney was running anything about the war, not Bush. Martin Armstrong tells a story about how he was asked to talk to the new presidential nominated Bush and see how much he knew about economics. But, he was told beforehand that Bush was idiotic and stupid. Martin ask why they would put a stupid person in as president, and the answer is because he had name recognition.
Note that people don't pick presidents; insiders in the establishment do. This is why Trump is hated by the political establishment, he's not one of them.
"This is why Trump is hated by the political establishment, he's not one of them."
He's held in particular contempt by the people running his party because on the three items the Republican Party holds nearest and dearest to its heart (open borders, free trade, and stupid wars), he opposes their positions.
“The American people are, generally speaking, supportive of wars abroad as long these wars don’t demand too much sacrifice from them.”
I think that stopped being the case around 15 or 20 years ago, but especially since the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos. Why do you think the military/industrial complex is so anxious to manipulate perceptions of Ukraine? It’s because most Americans are against squandering our treasure for some foreign country/kleptocracy about which they know or care very little.
if American people could understand just one thing, I would prioritize this. Our escalations of global violence are the cause of mass migrations, inflation, xenophobia, suboptimal prosperity, millions of global casualties, and the aggregation of power in a few bellicose hands. This cycle of war must be broken.
Like Hitler and Goebbels lied to the Germans about losing Stalingrad to the Soviets in the 1940s, "Johnson tried to conceal the bleak realities of Vietnam from the American people and deliberately misled them about the war’s likely duration and cost."
I am a baby boomer and I have been disgusted with U.S. Foreign Policy for my entire life.
WE all should be , see my comments above we should have revolted LONG AGO.
"Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine: The Persistent Failure of U.S. Foreign Policy"
You can rightly add Korea to that list.
And a host of other interventions that have received uncritical (indeed, misleading) reporting treatment from the MSM.
Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Indonesia 1957, Cuba 1961....
As a USMC Vietnam Veteran (1968-1970), I applaud your insights. But- extending your point- if the Federal government is in the habitual pattern of lying to us about our foreign entanglements, then how can we have any faith in government pronouncements concerning so-called pandemics?
Hopefully, by this time, you don't have any faith at all in what the government states about a "pandemic".
Following Murray Rothbard, I'm now a Voluntarist!
President Johnson told one of his military advisors: "I can't get out of Vietnam, my friends are making too much money." Rinse, repeat...
LBJ POS
Take a look at the interview JFK had with Cronkite Sept '63
He told Cronkite that it is basically THEIR war commenting that full engagement
would not happen
(you can find it on YouTube)
Two months later he was dead
However hardly a shock because in '62 when we were stationed in
Taipei, we were seeing Spec Forces officers at the O club
I asked Dad and he told me 'they were en route to our next war' ie Vietnam
Yes, and the timing of JFK's death wasn't just a coincidence, as he had given orders for, IIRC, 600 "advisers" to come back home to the US, with *all the rest* to follow within a year. LBJ didn't continue the pullout. H'mmm ...
when we heard the announcement JFK had been assassinated Dad said
"WE now become fully engaged"
Dads Know
I agree with you wholeheartedly! Vietnam has most favored nation status and the likes of Nike are made there and sold in America when people are still dying from bad decisions of fighting there many years ago. Our sons and daughters not politicians. As long as it’s somebody else they don’t care.
Persistent Failure:
It's probably the result of what Marx said about politics:
Politics is the art of looking for trouble,
finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and
applying the wrong remedies
That's not Karl, But Groucho!
'Foreign Policy' SHOULD be really simple.......
FOLLOW THE CONSTITUTION!!
This is exactly right.
There has to be a formal declaration of war before Americans are put on ships and planes and sent somewhere else to fight; without this, those with no skin in the game (either their own or one of their sons or daughters) will hang the foreign flag du jour up on their porch and support the war. What should be a grave moral matter demanding much hand-wringing and sleepless nights becomes another political point; your support (or opposition) demands on what party you identify with, and what party controls the White House.
US foreign policy is one of arrogance and corruption. It sacrifices human and financial wealth to be the bullshit bully on the world stage. Vietnam opened my eyes. Three months into my tour I understood our motives. They were destructive. Nothing more. I am thankful I made it home in one piece. Then we lost Korea, overthrew the Shah, and butt f 'd ourselves in Iran and Afghanistan as well as the Ukraine by putting biolabs there. There is no end to our arrogance.
thanks for your service, sir.
The point you didn't touch on is that there is always lots of US taxpayer money being thrown at these "problems" and the longer they go on, the more money that disappears into some overseas black hole. The questions are, "who are the ones pushing for this, and who are the ones profiting from it, and where is the accounting for all that money?" When you throw hundreds of billions in money out the door, it is real easy to take a fraction of a percent off the table (several times) for the big guy and others, and nobody "notices".
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and a principal architect of NATO, wrote in 1951, “If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project [NATO] will have failed.”
Today there are about 100,000 US troops in Europe.
Ten years later in his farewell address, he warned of the danger of a military/industrial/Congressional/technology complex. He was right on all counts.
Amen, John.
I don’t think Washington DC can ever get any credibility back. Everything they do will always be suspect.
My husband and I were born during WWII, 1941 and 1943. My Army sergeant father returned home from Europe in early 1946 when I was 3 years old. It was our first meeting. I remember a few of the little things that we did to conserve in those days after the war, saving newspapers that the Boy Scouts picked up, growing a garden and canning vegetables, and taking a train across the country for my father to get a job. I realize now how hard it must have been for them. I agree, John, that wars should cost everyone something in personal sacrifice if they are worth fighting. These forever wars have had nothing to do with America and should never have happened. I’m hoping that Trump and Hegseth can turn this around!
me too.
I have to mention something about President Bush. He is an idiot. VP Cheney was running anything about the war, not Bush. Martin Armstrong tells a story about how he was asked to talk to the new presidential nominated Bush and see how much he knew about economics. But, he was told beforehand that Bush was idiotic and stupid. Martin ask why they would put a stupid person in as president, and the answer is because he had name recognition.
Note that people don't pick presidents; insiders in the establishment do. This is why Trump is hated by the political establishment, he's not one of them.
"This is why Trump is hated by the political establishment, he's not one of them."
He's held in particular contempt by the people running his party because on the three items the Republican Party holds nearest and dearest to its heart (open borders, free trade, and stupid wars), he opposes their positions.
“The American people are, generally speaking, supportive of wars abroad as long these wars don’t demand too much sacrifice from them.”
I think that stopped being the case around 15 or 20 years ago, but especially since the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos. Why do you think the military/industrial complex is so anxious to manipulate perceptions of Ukraine? It’s because most Americans are against squandering our treasure for some foreign country/kleptocracy about which they know or care very little.
if American people could understand just one thing, I would prioritize this. Our escalations of global violence are the cause of mass migrations, inflation, xenophobia, suboptimal prosperity, millions of global casualties, and the aggregation of power in a few bellicose hands. This cycle of war must be broken.
Like Hitler and Goebbels lied to the Germans about losing Stalingrad to the Soviets in the 1940s, "Johnson tried to conceal the bleak realities of Vietnam from the American people and deliberately misled them about the war’s likely duration and cost."