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Obama's historical illiteracy is a grave danger to national security
Gerard Jackson
A wise and worldly Roman said that "if you want peace, prepare for war". Then there is another old saying that "history always repeats itself". In fact, both sayings are closely related. It's not that history repeats itself but that people, particularly politicians, keep on making the same mistakes. (Perhaps that should be people with a learning disability keep making the same mistakes).
The great mistake that many genuinely patriotic Democrats are making is to ignore the historical fact that real peace and security can only come through strength. In a truly peaceful world the need for military might would not exist. But we live, as we have done since time immemorial, in a dangerous and uncertain world. One in which powers rise and fall and the weak must eventually submit to the strong. It is when this fact of life is forgotten that a nation allows it's defenses to be run down, which is what Obama is now in the process of doing.
In one sense, American power is unique because it springs from a country that was born into liberty. This uniqueness offers no protection against aggression. That can only come from fear. Make no mistake: might is fear and it is fear that keeps democracy safe. It is fear that keeps potential enemies at bay, not treaties or sweet-talking Chicago hacks. Any treaty between a democracy and a tyranny is only as good as the ability and willingness of that democracy to stand by its principles. Obama is eroding this ability and thus putting America in and the rest of the democracies in grave peril.
Democracies are dangerously pacific. This means that once a democracy runs down its armed forces it invariably becomes politically impossible to raise the funds to restore them to the appropriate level. One need look no further for evidence of this fact. There will always be siren voices telling us that there is no foreseeable danger, which makes as much sense as saying that one should never try to secure property until after it is stolen. The same voices use this fallacious argument to demand that any so-called social spending should always take precedent over defence spending, which is really arguing that defence has no social value.
That these arguments are largely articulated by the anti-capitalist left and its media allies comes as no surprise. This is the same group that considers America an exploitative, racist, sexist, oppressive country. The very same group Jean Kirkpatrick aptly called the "America-stinks crowd". The same crowd that worships at the feet of Obama.
Obama – as I have said before – is a profoundly ignorant man. He is ignorant of his country’s history, its culture and its economy. His political thinking was formed by America-hating leftwing hacks like Alinsky. His only political experience was gained in Chicago’s thoroughly corrupt political culture. Yet this man and his supporters entertain the absurdly arrogant belief that he has the power to successfully bring murderous thugs like Castro, Chavez and the Iranian Mullahs to the peace table, despite the awful lessons of history. This is the sort of suicidal thinking that gave rise to the disastrous 1922 Washington Conference.
The Anglo-Japanese Naval Treaty was to be renewed in 1922. As an alternative, the US government proposed the Washington Conference that would limit armaments. With a little judicious arm-twisting the US government persuaded Britain to abandon the Japanese relationship and sign a US treaty that would limit the capital ship ratio for Britain, America and Japan to 5:5:3. In addition, no new warships over 35,000 tons were to be built and a massive number of existing warships were to be scrapped. To placate the Japanese the treaty denied Britain the right to build mainfleet bases north of Singapore while America was denied the same right to build them west of Hawaii. To make matters worse, in 1930 Hoover managed to persuade, in the name of peace, Britain's labour government to make deep cuts to its naval forces.
The result was to break British naval power in the Pacific. There was no way this ratio would allow Britain to maintain a significant presence in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Gulf, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Something had to give. Moreover, the treaty made it impossible for the American fleet to quickly reach the British if they were attacked. These facts did not elude Japanese militarists who realised that this insane treaty opened up a military window of opportunity for them in Asia.
Thanks to this idiocy the British navy was severely weakened while the American navy became increasingly antiquated. By refusing to prepare for war America and Britain helped bring it about. The rise of appeasement in Britain coterminous with the rise of isolationism in the US persuaded tyrants that the democracies were morally and militarily too feeble to defend their interests. The results were Dunkirk and Pearl Harbor.
Obama is making the same mistake today starting with the F-22, the world’s most advanced fighter. At least the men of the 1920s and 1930s were misguided idealists who literally did not grasp the nature of the totalitarian threat that was gradually taking shape in Europe and Japan. They really thought their actions were contributing to world peace and would help avert another "Great War". They did not loathe their countries or despise their military.
Obama and his gang, however, are the exact opposite. They do not care a fig about their country and they detest the military. To these ideologues it is all America’s fault anyway. Why else do you think this historical illiterate is always apologising for the United States when he is jetting about the world? But why does he hate America? Why are he and his cronies anti-patriotic?
Decades years of 'progressive' ideology has left in its wake the insidious belief that capitalist societies do not deserve to survive — especially the America, the greatest capitalist nation of all. This odious belief is shared by the Democrats' leftwing and America’s treasonous media whose outrageous political bigotry and ingrained mendacity is becoming more and more self-evident by the day.
So how long will it take for Americans to realise that the grave danger the Obama administration poses to national security?
Gerard Jackson is Brookesnews' economics editor
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 27 April 2009