I Rise Again....To Criticize the President

© 2017 by "The State"

For a second time in a week I gladden the hearts of my liberal friends for a tiny fraction of a second by criticizing President Trump.  The good president it seems, is about to start an ill-advised trade war. His economic advisor, Gary Cohn, just quit over the president's threat to place heavy tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum.

Here's the problem. Tariff's are inevitably counter-productive. On this, both the left center and right center agree.  Only fanatics on both fringes support tariffs as a tool of economic progress. Trump''s tariffs will focus initially on metals. The first impact tariffs on metals will have, will be to raise the costs of cars, construction, airplanes, guns, and ammunition. Even soda and beer will go up because of the increase in the price of the cans they come in.

Trump seems intent on finding a way to lose the 2020 election. The inflation that tariffs will cause will effect most, his own base. Beer cars and guns are particularly popular products with Trump voters. This will gladden the hearts of Democrats and dismay conservatives.

Tariffs will manage to undo the positive effects of the tax cuts he accomplished in his first year in office. It's not hard to see why the President seems to like tariffs. Tariffs are punitive in nature and that is how Trump does business. He charges ahead like the proverbial bull in the proverbial China shop. He has always used the tactic of burying those who get in his way with lawsuits. It makes sense that Trump would attempt to make America great again by financially punishing his enemies.

What Trump doesn't understand that other countries do not necessarily play by the same rules as America. Sovereign nations may reciprocate the punishment and jack up tariffs on American goods being sold to them. Trade wars are inflationary. They punish the poor and middle class. A narrow class of industries and labor unions may benefit somewhat, but the flood of inflation and job loss in every other industry and community that is not in the narrow sector that will be blessed with rising profits due to tariffs.

Tariffs also place us at a disadvantage with the rest of the world. American goods will become more expensive not only due to the reciprocal tariffs being charged for them, but will also be more costly because of the increase in the cost of materials like steel and aluminum needed to make American goods like aircraft, cars and guns which we sell elsewhere. Thus, goods made in China, resources obtained in South America, Africa and the Middle East will still cost the same in Europe and Japan while American goods will become more costly. Only American goods will go up in price. Goods coming to the United States will go up in price. Not so in the rest of the world

The result of such tariffs will be that the United States alone will pay the price.  On the international stage, one cannot bully and punish your trade partners in the same way you can sue and run roughshod over your competition in business. There are no world governments you can bribe to give you preferential treatment. There are no world courts where you can file lawsuits against nations that want to compete for trade on a level international playing field with you internationally. Other nations can give as good as they get. They may be smaller, but they can live without you.

In trying to punish the Chinese, I fear Trump may well give the World Markets into the hands of China and win for ourselves another recession only this time with massive inflation as well. I can see negotiating with nations who charge punitive tariffs on American goods. Perhaps a quid pro quo might help there. Same tariff they charge, we charge. It would be a diplomatic tactic designed to achieve a level playing field for American goods. I hope that's what he's doing. Tariffs should never be used to prop up an industry and labor force that's already in trouble and doesn't have the capacity to replace the goods and resources that we are targeting and making even more expensive with those tariffs.

This is one of the reasons I was reluctant to vote for Trump in the first place. Firmness with our allies and adversaries I do believe in, but we must not adopt all of Trump's business practices. Theodore Roosevelt called the presidency a "bully pulpit". He did not mean the term "bully" in quite the way it is used today. I hope Trump will remember that and courageously speak the truth from the bully pulpit. That, he has shown, to be a strength of his. I hope he will not also become an international bully. That, he has shown, to be a weakness of his.

Firm foreign policy such as protects American business from nations that force us to play on unfair playing fields is not what I'm talking about. Expecting fair treatment of our merchants is only right. Arbitrarily punishing all our trading partners is a mistake. Many nations depend on American markets to maintain often massive trade imbalances in their favor with us. A careful application of trade policies on a nation by nation basis could create for us trading partners who are partners indeed. Any nation that can be encouraged to trade with us on an equal footing, should be our fast friend. Any nation which seeks to take advantage of us, we should treat as they treat us.

Please, Mr. Trump, learn something from the brilliant men and women with whom you surround yourself. We need a new form of diplomacy; one that does not appease our enemies and ignore our friends, but rewards our friends and treats our enemies as the treat us. Americans would applaud the withdrawal of foreign aid from nations which commit human rights violations. Americans would cheer should Trump manage to create a fair trade agreement with nations that place prohibitive tariffs on American goods and yet expect favorable trade practices toward themselves.

Please Mr. Trump, negotiate with each nation individually on trade and then explain Americans what you have done. Don't just tell us China's trade practices are unfair.  Tell us in what way they are unfair and what you propose to do about it. Reward our friends. Refuse to bow to our enemies' wishes. If you tell us what you have done, your people are less likely to make an agreement simply for the sake of making an agreement.

That would certainly get Mr. Trump back into my good graces. Not that he cares about that, but he ought to. I'm not the only person who might have voted for him in 2020 who feels that way.

By Tom King © 2018

Did the U.S. Provoke Pearl Harbor and What Does That Have to Do With Jerusalem?

Why did we cut off war-making supplies to Japan in the 30s?
This photo of Japanese atrocities from Nanking were all the
"excuse" we needed to stop supporting them.

I saw the article listed below posted on Facebook today. By the time I'd written down my litany of outrage, the post had been taken down. This monumentally offensive argument that somehow the USA "asked" to be attacked by Japan because we refused to sell them steel and oil and aluminum for their war machine is an argument for the same sort of appeasement foreign policy that Neville Chamberlain conducted with Hitler and we all saw how appeasing that maniac worked. Today it's the same argument for how we ought to appease the Islamic aggression against Israel and the West. Obama did it by bowing to various Kings and potentates. Americans are marching in the street to protest President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The protesters claim that we will "offend" the Arab world. Then suddenly here we get a PhD history professor claiming that doing such things causes people to attack us.

The idea that we provoked Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor without cause is a flying load of horse crap! I've heard this stupid revisionist history argument before. It's just one more argument for appeasement of bully nations. Japan was mad at us because we quit selling them steel. They were using the steel to wage war on China, Korea, Southeast Asia and to support their efforts to conquer the Pacific Islands. Can you imagine the war machine we would have face had we kept on selling them oil and steel and aluminum and other war materials? We didn't provoke war with them. If anything we kept if from being worse than it was. They attacked Pearl Harbor in part because they were in danger of running out of American steel before they finished conquering what they laughably called the Pacific Co-Prosperity Sphere. Laughable because Japan would have been the only "partner" in that sphere who wasn't conquered and the only one making any money off the deal.

Claiming that Pearl Harbor was our fault because we didn't try to mollify the Japanese is like telling the 10 year old me that I should make lower grades and stop "provoking" the bullies in my school because my making good grades and makes them look bad.

I utterly reject this incredibly stupid argument. We did the morally right thing by cutting off Japan's supplies of war materials while they were raping Nanking and running roughshod over their neighbors in Korea, Manchuria and Southeast Asia. Japan is a strong-man culture. Note how well we get along with them after we kicked their butts in WWII. Note also that the Arab culture is a strong man culture which is reflected in their religion. It suggests one should adopt a strong approach if you wish to be respected by the Muslim world. Anything less looks weak and vulnerable and strong man cultures believe weakness must by its very nature be exploited.

Trump did right by firmly recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It says clearly - "Hands off Jerusalem. You're not going to ever get it back!" It was the right thing to do. Strength is the only thing they understand in their political system.

Here's the offensive article in case you're interested:

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1930

© 2017 by Tom King

Let's Bring Back a Little Cultural Imperialism

In India the Hindu practice of Sati or Suttee used to be that, if a husband died, they'd throw all his leftover living wives onto the funeral pyre with their husbands - alive. The horrible British, when they conquered India and made it a protectorate, banned this practice. An Indian leader approached the British general who enforced this law and protested.

"But," the Indian leader complained, "This is our custom, our culture, our religion."

"And it is my custom, culture and religion," said the general, "To hang people who throw innocent women onto funeral pyres."

One forgets that several million widows who lived out their lives in the past century, many of who are still living alive and well in India, owe those lives and some thanks to the British whose laws altered the custom and culture so they did not meet a fiery death simply because their klutzy spouse fell off a train or died in a car crash. Some call this sort of thing "Cultural Imperialism." I call it making the world a better place. The Brits did do some awful things in securing their empire, no question. But in introducing British law to their colonies, they did change some pretty awful "cultural" practices. The status of the so-called untouchables in India, for instance, is far better now than it used to be when being an untouchable was worse than slavery. Also, remember, that the Brits outlawed slavery long before we did and outlawed it throughout the empire, ending a whole lot of misery for a whole lot of people and managed to confine this barbaric practice to non British countries and Islamic states, where it is still practiced to this day.

What we need is a president who is not intimidated by ISIS or the threat of jihad. We need leaders who develop a little righteous anger, when told by ISIS mullahs that stoning women who have been raped or who have the temerity to drive a car should be the law of the world. When confronted by people who fling homosexuals from the tops of tall buildings, who find nothing wrong with pedophilia, who murder those who leave Islam for another religion and who behead Christians for their own amusement, we need leaders who don't just shrug and pretend it's not happening. We need leaders who will tell such monsters in no uncertain terms, that it is our American military's custom to protect innocent women, homosexuals, converts to other religions and Christians who have the misfortune to simply live in Islamic ruled countries.

Who knows? Maybe we have such a president. Perhaps we should start taking actual refugees from those countries that Obama, himself listed as threats to our security. But we should first take those who are Christians, abused women, converts from Islam to other faiths and homosexuals, transsexuals, bisexuals and anyone else that Muslims might want to throw off a building. We should put them way up front in the line. Just saying. Refugee status is for people threatened in their own countries and people who want to be Americans so bad they are willing to go through what it takes to get here legally and become American Citizens.

What do you think? Me, I think America's cultural imperialism through our books and movies, our Internet and music, our goods and fashions is a very good thing. English has rapidly become the lingua franca of the world which improves everyone's communication dramatically across cultural lines. You see the way the culture works my precious snowflakes, is that cultures that bump up against each other share the good things and often to everyone's surprise start eliminating practices that appall their neighbors due to their contact with another more civilized culture.

Cultures are meant to appropriate good things from other cultures. Those which do not almost invariable become aggressive and attack their neighbors. The Brits culturally appropriated from everyone. India gave them a taste for curry. India and Southeast Asia gave them a taste for tea. There are a thousand things the British absorbed into their culture and way of life and many positive things that British subjects absorbed from the Brits themselves.

One thing that is not being absorbed by British culture is the vast stream of Islamic refugees pouring unchecked across their borders from the EU. Europe is experiencing an Invasion that is set upon, not learning from European culture, but upon burying it and wiping it from the face of the planet. The Islamic nations have on many occasions invaded Europe seeking to take the wealth of the West for themselves. This time they may succeed.

Our own forefathers came across the sea to escape the government by the nobility nonsense of the Old World and created the greatest nation ever seen on Earth - the wealthiest, most energetic, diverse and peaceful nation every.  America also unique in that government derives its power from the people and not vice versa as it is in the Old World where the Queen or the politburo bestow rights upon the citizenry at their pleasure. This government of the people idea resulted in the rise of the first dominant nation in history to reject the idea of conquering our neighbors to expand our borders. Well, after the uncalled for war with Mexico which wasn't a terribly just war, even though we bought the land we took from Mexico - land that was just about to break away from their Mexican overlords anyway. The Spanish American War did break Spain's stranglehold on Central and South America, but their influence was almost broken already. Probably because we felt guilty about waging that sort of war, we turned loose the territories we had won in that war - those that wanted to go at least.  If Puerto Rico wanted to go, it could have gone independent like Cuba and the Phillipines, but they keep voting to stay an American protectorate.

We Americans aren't without sin in our conduct around the world, but we're as close to sinless as any powerful nation has ever come. The Islamic nations know that they must silence the voices in the West if they are going to keep their young people fired up about world conquest and creating a Worldwide Caliphate in order to fulfill Mohammad's prophecy.

I think we should not shut up. I think we should not silence the Voice of America broadcasts, but ratchet them way up and throw in some free TV and Internet programs while we're at it. Let's make some friends and be friendly so that we stand in contrast to the vile power-mongers of the First and Third Worlds. 

 

And like the good general, once in a while let us remind them what American custom is. We think we should kick bad guys' butts. The world paused a bit when we had a genuine cowboy in the White House. They'd seen Westerns and they thought they knew what cowboys were like. Maybe it's time we make them believe we've got another one living on Pennsylvania Avenue. I don't think it's a bad thing that America makes some world leaders nervous.

Maybe that's just me.

© 2017 by Tom King

Why I'll Never Support the Ron Paul Conspiracy Theory-Based Foreign Policy

So quit sending me those danged Youtube links!

One of my Paulestinian buddies asked me, "What's wrong if some Russians living in Ukraine want to be Russian again?

Answer: Nothing. Let them move back to Russia.

Ukraine separated from Soviet Russia by popular vote. The Russians living there moved in under Soviet Communism. Saying the Russian separatists have a right to take Ukrainian land just because they moved there and transfer it back to the motherland is like saying the millions of illegal aliens in the US have the right to take parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California and hook it back up to Mexico. Or maybe the Italians could take part of Brooklyn and give it to Italy. There are enough Irish in Boston to make the town Ireland's western-most county. The idea that immigrants can move into an established country and then just peel off part of a country for themselves is just stupidity. And before you shout "What about Israel?" that was a special UN sanctioned case done for a refugee population that had been displaced by war and in real danger. Russian separatists aren't in any real danger from the Ukrainian government.

My buddy went on to state categorically that we should not do anything to irritate the Russians, like stand up to them. "Nothing," he says, "Is worth the risk of nuclear war, even a limited one."

I've got to ask. What are you, Paulistas anyway? French? Do you have any idea what that would mean as a foreign policy simply to let every third rate would-be dictator with an army to run wild?

It means the same thing it does in a junior high classroom where the teacher is weak. The bully that is willing to be the craziest, most violent, most cynical and evil rules unless someone is willing to get beaten up to stand against him. Back in my junior high, we had one particularly aggressive 8th grader who enjoyed tormenting younger, smaller kids. He once punched me in the face for objecting to his taking a basketball away from a group of smaller kids. I told him to his face he had done wrong and I may have used less than diplomatic language. He cold cocked me.

I stood there and took it and even turned the other cheek, but I did not lose eye contact. When Mr. Pauly, the school principle came out and saw my bloodied face, he asked who had done it, I didn't rat my tormentor out. I said I'd been hit by a basketball and went in to clean myself up. Mr. Pauly let it go, but he knew better. The boy left me alone after that, but I had had to take the risk of being punched in the face to make him stop. Even though I wasn't big enough to survive a fight with him, his own over-reaction to being confronted nose-to-nose and the consequences he endured as a result in terms of general disapproval from the rest of the class and a few words from Mr. Pauly encouraged him to greater self-control in the future. It didn't last. He wound up shooting up a bar, killing some folk and ending his short life in Angola prison's Old Sparky. Those in attendance said he wore a look of surprise on his face as they strapped him in.

My Uncle Art taught 8th grade for years and one year he had this huge gentle boy name Harold in eighth grade. Harold was big and muscular, but he wouldn't willingly harm a fly. He was a friend to all the underdogs in the class. One day one of the school toughs started to torment a younger kid who was a friend of Harold's. Harold approached and instructed the young thug to let the kid go.

 "What are YOU going to do about it?" the bully sneered. He woke up flat on his back with a very bloody nose and the entire schoolyard cheering for Harold. Uncle Art had a strict rule about fighting, but he knew what had happened. He told Harold he'd have to be punished. Harold said, "I understand, Mr. Bell." Uncle Art couldn't bear to give him swats for rescuing a younger child from a bully, but his law about fighting was written in stone. He tried to make it easier on the boy and gave Harold the option of serving detention instead of taking swats. Harold said, "No, Mr. Bell. I knew I'd get swats for it. I'll just go ahead and have those now and get it over with."


Uncle Art didn't go easy and the kids in the schoolyard heard three loud pops clear out in the schoolyard. When Harold walked out standing straight, his jaw firm and steady, he became a legend. Word got round among the bullies that Harold would punch you in the face and take swats for it if you messed with any of the little kids. Uncle Art said bullying disappeared from the school almost overnight.

And that's why I have the attitude I do with regard to isolationism - that and I do read history. I'm never going to change my attitude about it. I'm tired of being called stupid by dim-witted ideologues. I was invited to become a member of MENSA for crying out loud and I do qualify. I have the intellectual chops to figure out what's so and what ain't. I will never support the idea that the United States of America, the only decent country on the planet that anyone can even halfway trust and the only power left that could actually stand up to any sort of geo-political threat, should sit back and let the worlds bully boys have their way. Ain't gonna happen. You Paul-bots are wasting your delusional emails on me. All this conspiracy claptrap and twisted ideology is unconvincing and has yet to survive even half-hearted scrutiny on my part.

What I'm concerned about is that the loony left and the loony right are now the craziest people in the room. My fear is that if we don't some of us stand up to them, they're going to rule and that's when the world will sink back into semi-feudal barbarism.

I would like to thank my Paul-bot buddies for the blog post material, though. You guys stop by often and remind me how stupid I am. I get advertising dollars every time you do.


© 2014 byTom King

Channeling His Inner Neville Chamberlain

Streamlining the Military - Different Sauces for Goose and Gander

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's new defense budget proposes to reduce the size of our military to its lowest level since 1939. He makes noises about making the military more stream-lined, flexible and lethal, but one sees little of that in what we've seen so far. What we've seen so far in history is a pattern of Democrat presidents Carter, Clinton and Obama demoralizing and defunding the military every time they have the power to do so. After Carter's disaster in the desert during the Iran Hostage Crisis Clinton's record with the Black Hawk Down incident and the bombing of an aspirin factory, one waits with baited breath to see the results of Obama's gutting of the US military.

I notice the media have stopped counting the number of deaths in Afghanistan since this president came into office. I remember during the Bush years we used to get an ABC special every time we got another death toll magic number.

George W. Bush with the troops

The idea of stream-lining the military is not new. I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military at the very beginning of his administration. He proposed a massive re-evaluation of all systems and equipment and a careful, planned sharpening of the sword so to speak. He believed we should skip a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed and used the funds to speed up technology, which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. 

The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.

But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. President Obama with his confiding to Vladimir Putin that he'd be able to be more "flexible" after his reelection, his hand fluttering and confusing and ineffective responses in Syria, Libya and the Middle-East in general have only convinced the dictators of the world that they can act with impunity. That America is a paper tiger.

Vladimir Putin and Barak Obama have a meetin'.

Unfortunately for our future as a planet which does not glow in the dark, America possesses terrible and destructive weapons. Ask yourself, if someone mistook you for an intruder and were pointing a gun at you, which would you rather have on the other end of the gun: a trained soldier or police officer or a frightened girl who barely managed to release the safety on her 357 Magnum. Criminals know for certain who is more likely to shoot them accidentally and probably hit them where it's painful if at all. They also know who to speak calmly to and not make any threatening moves at because they will likely wind up dead if they do.

We have a frightened bunch of girls in the White House right now with the nuclear trigger in their handbags. At least that's the impression virtually everyone in the world has after Obama's World Apology Tour and his confusing tough talk and no follow-through foreign policy.

Neville Chamberlain and Adolph Hitler making "peace".

The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me eerily of the Nazi incursion into the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlain's sellout of the Sudetenlanders to Hitler for an illusory promise of “peace in our time”. Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm, twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.

Just sayin’

Tom King

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

I remember President Bush proposed stream-lining the military, skipping a generation of weapons and shifting funds from weapons development programs that would be practically obsolete when completed to ones which would give us speed, flexibility, potency and survivability on the battlefields of the future. The Democrats howled like they’d been personally sandpapered and dipped in alcohol. The perfume princes (the guys already planning their post-service consulting careers) in the Pentagon hated it, but it would have given us a lean, affordable and extremely scary military a decade later. Of course, 9/11 intervened and prosecuting a war and squeezing the money for it out of the Democrats prevented his going ahead with his plans for upgrading the post-Clinton military, but it would have worked I think.
But the Democrats hate the military, except when they can use it to throw an international temper tantrum, raise taxes and get soldiers killed to no purpose (see Black Hawk Down and Vietnam). Unless we change the complexion of the Congress and presidency, we’re going to be in the same place the world was in 1939. The current Russian incursion into Crimea and the limp-wristed response by this administration reminds me of the Sudetenland and Neville Chamberlains sellout to Hitler for an illusory “peace in our time”.
Politicians who truly believe they are smarter than everyone else and can, through manipulation and charm can twist others to their will are every bit as dangerous and deluded as the dictators, tyrants and madmen who find them weak and stupid.
Just sayin’
Tom King
- See more at: http://www.ktbb.com/youtellme/2014/02/27/to-be-unready-for-war-is-to-invite-one/comment-page-1/#comment-13331

How We Could Have Prevented Pearl Harbor

But would it have been a good idea?

(c) 2011 by Tom King

I came across this puzzling statement today on a Facebook post about Pearl Harbor. "Japs wouldn't have even bombed us if we gave them the oil we promised for helping us in WWI."

Disregarding the racist slur that came along with the poster's apparent compassion for those who bombed us, I had to ask, "What is it with people thinking that it's our own fault every time some foreign nation bombs us, knocks down a skyscraper or blows up an embassy?"

Ron Paul during the Republican Forum on Fox the other day, blamed American policy in the Middle-East for 9/11 as though somehow we could and should be able to control the behavior of fanatical Muslim terrorists through smarter foreign policy.

This whole idea that we're somehow smart enough to figure out how to control the world's behavior is exactly what got us into all this in the first place.

We thought we could control Japan which was busily trying to create an Asia-Pacific empire at the time. We cut off selling them oil and steel because they were murdering innocent civilians in China by the millions. We thought it would make them stop murdering Chinese. Instead the Japanese got mad because we got in their way by refusing to sell them the tools that would allow them to keep murdering people.  So they attacked us. Chamberlain thought that if he gave the Germans the Sudentenland (which wasn't actually his to give away in the first place), then Hitler would leave the British alone. Next thing he knew the British were up to their eyes in German bombers.

I suppose technically this Facebook goober is correct. If we had just sold them the oil and steel they wanted, the Japanese probably wouldn't have attacked us on December 7, 1942.

If we'd have given them the oil they would have instead gone on to take China, to brutalize hundreds more cities as they did Nanking. Then, when they'd built a huge Asian empire, they'd still have bombed Pearl Harbor (just not till they'd conquered the northern resource areas (Manchuria/Siberia) and didn't need our oil and steel anymore.  It just wouldn't have been on December 7, 1942.  They they'd have attacked San Diego Harbor, San Francisco Harbor, New York Harbor, the ports of Houston, Charleston, Seattle, Miami, Mobile and on and on and on.

And we'd have been surprised because a whole lot of us don't really believe in evil. We think, like the B.F. Skinner behaviorists, that behavior is a result of external conditioning. Lots of us don't really believe in free will. We think everyone can be good if we just give them the right cookies at the right time.

But it doesn't work. You might get your kids to behave for a while, but once they are out of your control, they will do what they want to do - what they choose to do. 

On the international level, if we gave every cent we had to everybody that thought they had a grievance against us, we'd not only be broke, but they would all hate us even more because we were out of money. They'd have come to rely on it.  And, even if we did have unlimited money and gave it to them as fast as they could grab handfuls of it, they'd still hate us just like very spoiled rich kids hate their parents.

You cannot buy peace. Evil is evil. The lust for power exists and those who are evil and who lust for power need no excuse for committing acts of treachery. Oh, they will inevitably make up some sort of excuse, but that's more for you than for them. They will excuse their own behavior because of some sort of perceived slight on the part of their victims and then do or take whatever they want. They'll do it time and again until their conscience will no longer function and they have no sense of guilt anymore. When they stop making excuses you're in real trouble.

And that's pretty much when evil people self-destruct - when they don't care anymore.

The wages of sin, we are told, is death.*

Anyone who raises his hand against another, to take what does not belong to him whether it's money, land or power, commits a sin. The United States is one of the few powerful nations in Earth's history that ever chose to renounce taking the fruits of conquest. The Soviet Union planned an empire. China has never given up the idea. Even Britain still has an empire. In the last century, however, every territory won in battle by US forces has been given back to its people. In some cases, island nations, offered their independence chose to remain US territories. Others chose to be independent. Some chose poorly. Nations which attacked us unprovoked were conquered and not only freed, but we helped rebuild them.

Yet, but it seems, if you listens to the apologists, we are supposed to be the bad guys somehow.  Well, I don't think so. Yes, we've meddled in the Middle East. We helped them build oil fields and become wealthy - at least in nations where the people did not tolerate tyrants and dictators. We did not set up the nation of Israel. That was the British. All we've done is protect its existence. In return Israel has been a friend and ally in the region. We've had friendly relations with many largley Muslim nations, but remember. All Arabs are not Muslim and many are businessmen before they are religionists. We are not responsible if the religious authorities don't like us having a military base in Saudi Arabia. Nations deal with nations, not with churches.

Suppose the Christian church in the US were to demand that all mosques in the US be destroyed or that any Christian who becomes a Muslim should be killed. Would that be right?  Should other nations of the world base their relationship with the US on what the Christian church says or what the US government says.

There is a kind of political schizophrenia that progressive socialists and Ron Paul libertarians get into when talking about the Middle-East. On the one hand, they demand that the Christian church (the majority religion in the US) has no right to participate in, much less dictate US foreign policy. But with the Middle East they tell us that the demands of poorly organized religious authorities (especially the fanatical ones) should be considered above that of the duly constituted political authorities or the citizens of the nations of the Middle East.

With libertarians, the belief is that if we leave everyone else alone, their natural goodness will cause them to reciprocate and treat us well in return. Never mind that it doesn't work with evil people. The proponents of this policy believe that not "meddling" is an effective way to control the behavior of others.

With progressive socialists, it's all part of this same deluded idea that some of us are smart enough to figure out how to make everyone happy, peaceful and cooperative. They've been watching too many episodes of Star Trek in which the peaceful humans have figured out in some non-specific way how to make communism work on Earth. What they miss is the point that it's the power hungry evil planets out there that make the episodes interesting. Even the utopians realize in the end that there is plenty of evil to go around.

We Americans are raised to feel bad about accusing anyone of being bad. We were all raised to be polite. We'd rather so, "Oh, excuse me. My bad." than to have to confront bullies, thugs and evil-doers -even the petty ones. That's why you can watch on Youtube as two girls beat up another in a McDonald's and nobody steps in -- except one elderly lady whose sense of justice was rightly offended. The rest of the bystanders hauled out their cell phones to video tape the fight. Shame on them!

I'm one of those Americans who, though I don't like calling anyone evil, have come to realize that if you don't say or do anything about evil when it presents itself, you are condoning it. I can no longer say, "Excuse me," to some thug that's beating up someone half his size because I'm in his way.  And I don't think our country has any business saying, "My Bad!" when a bunch of nasty evil little minions of Satan fly an airplane full of perfectly good people into a skyscraper full of more perfectly good people.

May those of us who still believe in right and wrong find the courage to stand for what's right. It's no good thinking we can somehow manipulate other nations into doing right. It's a conceit with deadly consequences. It's the difference between the idea that might is right and that might should be used for right only. I distrust those who think their ideology is is powerful enough to manipulate the behavior of whole nations.

We're coming down to a point in history where it may be left to those who stand in the breach to do what is right to to turn the tide of totalitarianism, if it can be turned at all.

Remember the Spartans. Remember the Alamo. Remember Pearl Harbor.

Stand tall and God bless America!

Tom King

*Romand 8:28

To Drill or Not to Drill - Why Aren't They Drilling?

Somewhere in the Pentagon, enshrined in some little folder somewhere you can bet there is a security assessment that lays out a long list of reasons why we ought not to drill the vast oil reserves under our own soil. For a long time, presidents, Democrat or Republican have discouraged drilling homeland oil reserves. We have grown steadily more dependent on foreign oil sources. 

President Bush always said, presidents make decisions based on information that most Americans do not know and that events, themselves, limit what decisions any president makes.  You'll notice, for instance, that President Obama hasn't pushed forward some of his more radical foreign policy pronouncements since his election, drawing criticism from his own supporters for failing to deliver on promises like the one he made to shut down Gitmo, for instance.

I can think of a couple of things which might slow a president's desires to tap U.S. homeland oil reserves. Just guessing, but perhaps that little folder could lay out the threat assessment something like this.

1. The world's population is growing rapidly. 
2. Nuclear weapons continue to proliferate.
3. Foreign oil reserves will inevitably run out some day.  When that happens, third world countries will fall into chaos. Some of those possess nukes.
4. When that happens, someone will have to step up to provide police and relief support.  It is likely that the only country with the military muscle to do that is the United States.
5. In order for the U.S. to maintain some semblance of order worldwide, it will need energy and part of that energy plan will absolutely include oil as one of its elements. 
6. Therefore, the United States needs to hold onto large oil reserves that can be tapped once the rest of the world runs out.

Americans, themselves, would probably rather be energy independent and have lower gas prices than think long term about keeping the rest of the world from going up in flames.  The generals who create such strategic plans know that part of those flames could be nuclear unless someone takes decisive action..

Personally, I think our country's leaders both Democrat and Republican are working roughly toward the same thing so far as our military, energy and foreign policy is concerned. I think the military-industrial complex is planning to use up the energy reserves of the rest of the world first before we tap our own. When that happens, our government wants to be the last one in an oil-starved world standing on an underground lake of crude. That would put us in the catbird seat and let's face it - that's exactly where governments want to be. Besides it could be argued that such a course would be in the best interest of the American people.

I'm not betting we'll get the go-ahead to drill for oil in our own oil fields until we've sucked up the last drop left out there in the rest of the world.  I'm not the first to predict that. I'm just not sure the motivation is entirely about greedy oil profits.

Personally, I think Jesus will come before that.  Let's face it, it's a stupid idea to exploit our fellow man in that way. It would be nice if we had an honest president who would make decisions because they are right and not because they are expedient, but then president's aren't allowed to make decisions based on guesses about when Christ is coming. 

The upshot is, I don't think attempts to pass legislation to open up drilling in US oil reserves will be successful any time soon whoever's in power. When such legislation does pass, it will likely signal the beginning of very bad times ahead in the world.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King 

Who's a Strategic Asset?

“Let no one draw any wrong conclusions. Any attack against Pakistan’s strategic assets whether overt or covert will find a matching response,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani told the Pakistani National Assembly in a policy statement in response to the US military operation in Abbottabad, May 2 that killed Osama Bin Laden. 

So, the Pakistani foreign minister threatens military action against anyone who "goes after" Pakistani strategic assets.  So let me get this straight - is he saying Osama bin Laden was one of Pakistan's strategic assets?

Well isn't that special?

You Can't Stand on the Rampart and Wait!

In a Military Channel special about WWII pilots in the Pacific, I just heard a carrier pilot say something that, when you think about it is quite profound.

He said, "We all (the pilots) knew what our job was. It was to defend the carrier. If you lose the carrier, you have no place to land, but you can't defend the carrier by standing on the ramparts and waiting to be attacked. You have to go where the trouble started and attack it there."

There in one clear and simple military idea is the reason the foreign policy of the libs (libertarians and liberals) won't work!  We must not forget the lesson we have learned in the past at such a terrible cost in blood, sweat and tears.

Go to where the trouble started and attack it there. 

The Moral Sword - Preemptive War and the Christian Nation

He who hesitates?

Should we ever strike first and how do you define a first strike?

(c) 2011 by Tom King

Okay, what would you do in this scenario.

You are confronted by a man you know for a fact has killed and attacked his neighbors repeatedly. He has what looks like a gun in his side pocket. His hand is in the pocket. The shape of the gun points at you.

Your family is standing behind you. The man says I am going to kill you and all of yours. You have a gun in the back of your pants.

Do you:

1. Stand there and hope he doesn't really mean it when he says he's going to kill you and your family.
2. Stand there hoping he really doesn't have a gun.
3. Ask him to show his gun before you let him shoot you.
4. Snap out your pistol and put 3 shots center mass before he can react and shoot you back.

The Ron Paul crowd and the liberal-pacifists never tire of pointing out that attacking Iraq was immoral because we attacked first, supposedly without warning. Afghanistan, sometimes gets a pass since they were harboring Al Quaeda at the time of the 9/11 attacks, but lately, not so much. They particularly love the "How can you be a Christian and support...." argument.

I realize that as a Christian I am required by God to turn the other cheek if it's just me. When my family is standing behind me and are threatened, the ethos changes somewhat. I doubt many of these sunshine moralists have ever stood unarmed facing a guy with a two by four or an 8-inch hunting knife pointed at their bellies and the look of death in their eyes and been required to "turn the other cheek".  I have.  It's frightening and requires an incredible exercise in faith in your Maker, I'm here to say. I worked with mentally disturbed kids and adults for a couple of decades of my career and this kind of thing happend a lot, so don't tell me I don't understand how to turn the other cheek. When my family is threatened, however, my viewpoint on the matter changes radically. 

My wife rags me constantly on my driving when she's with me. I asked her once how she thought I drove when she wasn't in the car?  She said, "God takes care of you then, but when I'm here, but when I'm in the car, He expects me to do my part."

That's kind of my take on whether to adopt a passive or proactive response to defense. Don't get me wrong, I do trust God to look out for my family when I'm not around. It's just that when I am around, I think He expects me to do my part.

The command "Thou shalt not kill" by all surrounding Scriptural evidence should read more nearly "Thou shalt preserve life". Scripture shows God repeatedly sending his people to war when the lives of the women and children are threatened. He often seems to order a preemptive strike too with overwhelming force, especially when God knows the enemy plans to strike first.

Sometimes God hurls lightning bolts at the ravening hordes on our behalf as he did for the prophet Samuel on one occasion. At other times, he sends David to whack Goliath on the head with a rock. Now David was preemptive. Goliath had not, after all, actually hurled that spear with the 30 pound head and shaft like a weaver's beam. So far he had been nothing but talk and waving a sharp sword around.

When someone acts like he has weapons of mass destruction, denies he actually does, but has a history of outright lying about the subject, then "What do we do?" becomes a tougher question.

On a personal level, that kind of situation requires a personal relationship with God and some coaching on His part to figure out the answer - and I've found that, in such situations, God does present the answers.

On a national level......well I think God guides there  too. 

I think God placed G.W. Bush where he was at the time he was needed. For that matter, He also placed LBJ where he was for a specific purpose - probably Civil Rights legislation which no Republican president could ever have pulled off with a Democrat majority in congress. I think Vietnam was allowed, in order to teach us a lesson about arrogance in how we use our strength. In Vietnam we poured out American blood in order to test war toys (which coincidentally made wealthy arms dealers and ex-congressmen and senators and generals wealthy too). We learned from that never to go to war unless you fight to win. The Gulf War taught us not to quit till the job is finished. Iraq and Afghanistan may be about simply opening up the middle east to the idea of democracy, if only long enough to provide a window for God to rescue His people from among the soldiers of the evil one.

Scripture talks about the angels holding back the winds of strife at the very end of Earth's history. I suspect they're having to rope and hog tie those winds right now and that when they let them go, a horror will descend on this planet the likes of which we have never seen.

The United States, for all its flaws, has been a tool in the hand of God and the President's heart is, as the psalmist says, "In the hands of the Lord."

Doesn't mean I won't worry about this president. It doesn't mean I won't question the president or argue with him if I believe what he is doing is wrong. All it means is that I'm confident it will all work out as it should in the end.

Thank God for that.

Tom

Onward Christian Soldiers!

How does a Christian relate to war and military service.

(c) 2011 by Tom King

My good friends who like Ron Paul's foreign policy approach are a stubborn lot.  They keep sending me articles and weblinks, Youtube videos and links to documents in an effort to convince me to accept the apparent core doctrines that they hold. The main ones I've heard are

1. "George W. Bush was evil"
2. "We ought to withdraw all troops back home. No one would dare attacks us here because there's too much water separating us from them. Besides we're too big to attack."
3. "If we leave the world alone, they will love us again and everything will be hunky dory." 

Oh, you mean like detente'?  I don't remember that working out so well for us back in the 70s.

I carefully read the latest piece by a former Air Force pilot turned priest out of respect for my friend. It supports, of course, the idea that we ought to have a military, but just not use it and that Christians should probably not participate in the military at all. 

I was doing okay until he blithely cited some revisionist history about World War II and our use of nuclear weapons.  He stated flatly that Japan wanted to surrender, but would just wouldn't accept it.  He ignores the account of Japanese Army officers' attempts to kidnap the emperor to prevent him from announcing the surrender on the radio. This was after two nuclear strikes on the homeland. I have read accounts by Japanese officers and historians much closer to the action that make it clear that a last ditch, hedgerow by hedgerow fight for the homeland was, not only planned, but embraced by soldiers and civilians alike. It seems pretty obvious to me that the specter of dying uselessly in a nuclear blast, unable to take an enemy with you, completely unmanned the Samuri in the officer corps sufficiently to convince them to accept the ignominy of surrender.

 

The thing that colored the writer's opinion most, I believe, was his military experience.  The war in which he served was Vietnam - a US foreign policy disaster if ever there was one. Eisenhower warned us of the power and dangers presented by what he called the military-industrial complex in his final speech as president. He was right. Vietnam little more than a corporate war run by war profiteers and supported by both the Democrats and Republicans in Congress. It was about field testing new equipment and experimenting with "limited warfare" as a form of diplomacy by other means. Our soldiers were mistreated, hamstrung and placed in an impossible situation where most still managed to serve with honor despite the horrific conditions into which they were thrust.

 

Limited warfare is always a bad idea. War is a blunt instrument that should only be used in extreme circumstances. It is almost never used effectively by the U.S. because we are so damned ambivalent about it's use.

Were we to use total war selectively and with a clearly conceived policy behind it, we would be a far more effective "global force for good" (as the new Navy recruiting commercials put it). Orson Scott Card's fictional "Ender" novels outline what such a strategy might look like. His books are read at West Point by soldiers studying policy issues related to warfare. Card's hero, Andrew Wiggin reacts to any attack with sudden and overwhelming force and insures his attacker can do him no more harm.  The policy implications are something I could get behind. I
Extrapolated to the world stage, the policy would go something like this:

 

1. Leave your neighbors in peace. Treat others the way you would like to be treated.
2. If attacked, respond instantly and with overwhelming force instantly. Go after the instigators of the attack and remove them. Do not stop till they are no longer able to wage war against you.
3. Help clean up the damage caused by the war. Help those caught in the middle to rebuild their lives.

The writer* of the piece I read, incorrectly credits President Reagan with almost starting a nuclear war. Reagan did no such thing! He built our own military to a high state of readiness. It was the Soviet Union's leaders, seeking to preserve their own power and position that were pondering starting a nuclear war. They did not because they knew we would fall on them like a ton of bricks if they did. There was no way for them to win, so they did not fight. We came far closer to war when our nation was engaging in detente'. We looked vulnerable and the Soviets assumed they would eventually find a way to take us down.
 
Reagan wasn't always able to consistently follow his own policy. Political expediency forced him to focus on those he considered our most dangerous enemies and compromise with the diplomats and Democrats in other cases.  That intense focus on the mission at hand, he successfully eliminated an entire class of very dangerous nuclear weapons and made a "first strike" attack by either side almost impossible.

 

It is a shame that diplomat types went back to the same old confused military strategy after he left office.

 

The Hebrew language in the Old Testament's Ten Commandments probably reads less like "Thou shalt not kill" and more like, "Thou shalt preserve life". Others have suggested "Thou shalt not murder." Whatever it says, the Old Testament often suggests killing as a political solution for a nation state when it is under attack. God, Himself, wiped out whole cities. Based on my knowledge of God's character, I suspect such drastic action was done in the interest of preserving life. There was a time in recent history when a nuke on top of Hitler's mountain hideaway would have saved a lot of lives. 

The Jews did a lot of killing at God's instruction.  Sounds terrible, but remember that many of the pagan cultures of the time were slaughtering tens of thousands of innocents on pagan altars and in innumerable raids on their neighbors and wars of conquest. Israel became known for cleaning out the corrupt and evil inhabitants of the land as they settled Canaan. That's why there was a huge mixed multitude. Many of those inhabitants, like Rahab and her family, recognized that things would be better without the corrupt kings, sleazy priests and evil gods and joined the Hebrew nation and joined up with Israel.

  

Ecclesiastes suggests there is a "time to kill and a time to heal". It is difficult for a Christian to decide which time that is. It is why many Christians adopt a noncombatant role in conflict. Some Christians do, however, feel called to participate in defending our country. That's why so many join up in the aftermath of events like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. We feel the call to protect our nation. Since we are not the president or congress, we have to rely on God to guide those men in their decision-making and do our best to serve as best our conscience dictates.

  

I know a lot of folk would like hard and fast, black and white rules that apply all the time and in all circumstances. God gives us 10 basic ones. Jesus whittled them down to two. Then God surrounded those nice black and white principles with hundreds of pages of interpretation, necessitating that a Christian spend his entire life on his knees with that book and in prayer trying to figure out how to apply what he has learned in the real world.

  

I don't know all the answers. I know from experience how to deal with thugs and bullies. I know from experience that being the one who stands in the breach and deals with those thugs and bullies can very easily turn you into one yourself if you're not careful.

 

Two presidents, I think, made an attempt to move our military policy in the right direction. They were both dragged down by politicians and pundits and never able to fully implement the kind of effective military policy that might have brought us peace. Ronald Reagan understood peace through strength and reminded the Russians that "trust but verify" was their own old adage. He defeated a real enemy and almost made them our friends if later politicians hadn't messed it up. We should have shared what we learned during our SDI program with the Russians as Reagan promised. I think we'd be better friends now. Instead, political backbiting killed SDI and left us with only the marginally effective Patriot missile system when we needed it in the Gulf War. 

 

The other president who got it, was George W. Bush. His dad didn't. When Sadaam overran Kuwait, Bush did exactly the right thing. He gathered a coalition and took back Kuwait and gave it back to its people. His mistake was not striking back with overwhelming force and eliminating Sadaam Hussein. Had we done so, there would have been relatively little further bloodshed. The Iraqi Army was defeated and unwilling to fight any further. They knew they were in the wrong and I believe that we could have taken Iraq, set up a new government and been out of there before the end of the century.

  

Instead, we reinforced a lunatic's belief that he, personally, was invulnerable. We abandoned those who revolted against Sadaam and left them to slaughter. We encouraged fanatic jihadists and made ourselves a target instead of a trusted friend. We absolutely missed an opportunity.

  

George W. knew we had to take out Sadaam and the Taliban in order to prevent a wholesale jihad against the U.S. spurred on by the successful attacks on 9/11. It was messy and not as effective as it could have been had we finished the job the first time around.

 

George W. and Donald Rumsfeld attempted to lead the military to a new "leaner, meaner" design structure which emphasized special ops troops (highly trained nation builders) over massed armor and huge formations. They tried to skip a generation of weapons and go straight to weapons that were faster, cheaper and more deadly.

 

Again, the congress, the political generals at the Pentagon (David Hackworth's "perfume princes") and the military-industrial complex launched a campaign to discredit that whole idea, continued to waste money on big ticket projects and to move massive formations around the battlefields like so many chess pieces.

  

We had an opportunity and we missed it because the powers that be in congress were addicted to a big, expensive, awkward military that spent tons of money in their districts for big defense contracts. Rumsfeld and Bush took the blame in what was, in essence, a blizzard of a snow job by big defense contractors and the stooges they support in the Congress. We could do better, but, so long as the military is run by self-serving "perfume princes" instead of warriors in service of the people, boys will die needlessly in half-cocked, ineffective fights all over the world.

 

Why do we put up with Somali pirates, for instance? A few Seal teams riding on a few ships so that the pirates didn't know where they were, could obliterate any attacking force. How long would it take for word to get around that if you wanted to spin the old "wheel o' luck" and attack a ship in the Gulf of Aden, there was no chance you would leave the scene alive?

 

Remember what Reagan did after the attack on our servicemen in Germany by the Libyans? He bombed Ghaddafi's flippin' house. Remember what happened when a couple of Libyan fighter planes decided to play chicken with US Navy Tomcats and popped off some shots at them? The Libyan Air Force was suddenly missing some planes. Remember how quiet Ghaddafi got after that? Remember how anxious he became to restore good relations with the US when our tanks rolled into Baghdad?

 

We should not play around with evil men. Removing evil people can be "destabilizing", but if done consistently, evil men become much more well behaved after only a few examples.

 

Americans, however, and Christians in particular, have no stomach for this kind of warfare. We're peaceful people and we live in hope that we can rap the knuckles of bad boys and reform them It never has worked well with bullies in our public schools it doesn't work with international bullies.

 

I saw this played out on the playground once. Eight grade thugs were making the lives of the smaller kids in the junior high school miserable. A very large young man, Charlie, who wasn't part of the "in":group anyway, was sympathetic with the oppressed kids. The got sick of it and next time it happened, he placed himself between the kids and their tormentor and politely asked them to stop. One of the bully boys laughed and took a poke at our hero. When the dust settled, he was stretched out on the ground with two black eyes, some assorted bruises and a total disinterest in persecuting his fellow many any further. Charlie took three licks from the principle for fighting. When he walked back out onto the playground, the smaller kids were his devoted followers. The bullies slunk quietly away. Word got around that Charlie would take licks if he had to in order to defend his friends and that getting a beating from Charlie was very painful. Charlie's "foreign policy" led to a very peaceful school year for everyone.

  

Maybe, that's a simplistic solution, but I do think it would work.

 

Sadly, I don't think a Pax Americana is possible in this world. Too many bullies and too few brave men and women. Thank God, Jesus is coming to rescue His own.

 

Incidentally, from my reading of Scripture, what happens to the bullies when He comes back will not be an exercise in detente'.

 

Just my opinion.

 

Tom King

 

*Making War: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.