Empire and Republic

View 782 Wednesday, July 17, 2013

The Hollywood Boulevard robbing spree in honor of Tyron Martin continues. http://hollywood.patch.com/groups/breaking-news/p/lapd-around-20-people-go-on-street-robbery-spree-near-hollywood–highland

Rush Limbaugh has deduced from Martin’s final phone call that Martin had concluded that Zimmerman was a homosexual and should be sent away from the neighborhood. The only evidence is from the telephone call, and the fact that Martin did not run away from Zimmerman but turned to confront him.

Why we stayed in Afghanistan

I am not a military strategist but I would venture that having a military position in Afghanistan gave us leverage over Pakistan without the need to do much beyond the occasional boarder incursion into Waziristan, chasing Taliban. It seems this was being accomplished with minimal effort up until Obama decided that Afghanistan was "the right war". After the Iraq invasion, we should also have been in an excellent position to put pressure on Iran. We "had them surrounded", but we seem to have done little to empress this fact upon the Iranians. All that is purely theoretical of course and now the moment is gone. My fear is that the next time our only strategic option will be to, as they say, "make the rubble dance".

Thank you for all the enjoyment I have gotten from your various writings. You are always interesting and reasoned and make me examine my own reasons especially when I disagree with you. And I have long said that you and Larry Niven are my three favorite living SciFi writers.

Regards

Dean Kennedy

Having a military presence in Afghanistan – having a couple of key bases – did not require occupation and attempt to impose the mayor of Kabul on the rest of the country. After the expulsion of the Taliban it would have been simple to negotiate permission for bases from whomever became the mayor of Kabul while leasing the territory from local war lords. And making clear that while we provided security for the locals around our bases, we were not there as rulers.

As to Iraq, as I said after the fall of Baghdad, originally promised the Iraqi Army “an honorable place” in the rebuilding of Iraq. That would have been enough to preserve order. Anything more ambitious was beyond our ability – and there was no nation of Iraq nor ever had there been. It had been three provinces of the Ottoman Empire glued together to make a kingdom for the senior Hashemite who had been displaced from the hereditary post of Protector of Mecca by the Brits who owed Arabia to Ibn Saud. We might have hired the Brits and French to try to run Iraq for us, but we certainly had no expertise in competent empire. Rather the opposite. We learned little from our Philippine adventure; we incorporated Hawaii into the Republic after that conquest.

Republics suffer when they try to be imperial. We are suffering from our attempt.

Sobering Points on the Navy

As we are a sea power, this video is worth every Americans’ time.  I do not think people have a full grasp of how weak our Navy is and what this means.  I’m sure you’ve noted this over the years and now, finally, an important Congress critter is concerned:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1dD5DrYq034#at=550

You could read more here:

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=hudson_upcoming_events&id=1017

http://tinyurl.com/ppjkg7x

—–

Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo

It is well to be reminded of this. The United States is a maritime power, and our peacekeeping ability is dependent on our Navy. We raise armies when we face war, but small wars have always been the province of the Navy and Marines. Had we had Swift craft in the Mediterranean the Benghazi incident would not have happened. There is piracy along the Horn of Africa and little we can do. Neglect of the Navy is a major defect in the Obama strategy of withdrawal from overseas entanglements.

I approve of the elimination of entangling alliances and involvements in overseas territorial disputes; but as a sea power we also have obligations. I doubt that President Obama has ever read Mahan, and I suspect few of his national security advisors have either. Many of the specific recommendations of Mahan’s advice were greatly influenced by the technology of the time, and some are clearly out of date; but the importance of sea power in maintaining liberty cannot be overstated.

Re: Afghanistan (and Iraq)

As you know, I supported both Afghanistan and Iraq. I still believe that going into Iraq was the right thing to do, but was badly handled — and in retrospect wish that President Bush 43 had gotten a formal declaration of war so that the Democrats would also have owned the consequences. (Even better would have been if Bush 41 had finished the job right the first time.)

In response to yesterday’s email from "paradoctor," the problem is not with the military. The problem in both cases was mushy, open-ended objectives which kept changing over time with the political winds (see comment about Democrat ownership above). A battlefield is no place for political correctness, but as a country we seem to have become incompetent to establish rules of engagement which consider meeting the military objective as a higher priority than the impossible task of leaving behind a friendly populace. (Dare I say that the only ruthlessness from political progressives comes directed towards their conservative/libertarian/Christian political opponents; not towards their country’s opponents on the battlefield.)

Of course invaders have been repelled by Afghanistan itself throughout history, but we should have gone in with simpler objectives, achieved those objectives, and left behind a cooperative government without insisting on Democratic process in a country which has known nothing but tribal authoritarianism for millennia. Ditto Iraq; take out the troublemaker and let the people form their own government(s) afterward. I am a firm believer in the Constitution, but there is probably no more anti-Constitutional form of governance on the planet than rigorous adherence to Sharia law, and no way a liberal (old definition) Constitution can be enforced in a Sharia-adherent dominated society.

Anon

There is never a substitute for victory, but it is always well to know what victory is and is not. Being able to dictate your will to a conquered people does not mean that you will be smart about what you do with that ability. Democracies tend to be either greedy and exploitive imperials, and worse, because of internal politics tend to be incompetent at empire while raising the stakes higher and higher. See the history of Rome after the conquest of Sardinia and Sicily: territories that, unlike conquests of the Republic up to then, were never intended to be incorporated into the Roman State, and were governed without the consent of the governed. The effect on the Roman Army which learned how to govern rather than defend was enormous. Rome eventually had to choose between Republic and Empire and the Army chose Empire.

The way to export freedom is to live as free men.

This is in reply to last night’s View.

Sabre engines seeking funding…Jerry

It seems Reaction Engines Ltd. are looking for the next round of funding (approx £200M) having managed to extract the promise of £60M from the UK government.

See:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23332592

It seems the only functional part of Sabre is the pre-cooler for refrigerating the intake gases.

The history of British Government involvement in space technology is spotty (see the history of the Blue Streak missile

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Streak_%28missile%29 ).

Best regards

Ian Crowe