Category Archives: War

UPDATE II: Don’t Apologize To McMussolini, Donald Trump

John McCain, Military, Neoconservatism, War

The neoconservative warmongering John McCain finished 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy and lost five jets. As IQ ace Steve Sailer once quipped, “To lose one plane over Vietnam may be regarded as a heroic tragedy; to lose five planes here and there looks like carelessness.”

Now, his equally dim daughter, whose mental prowess I exposed in “A Cow Is Born,” is defending him against the impolitic Donald Trump, who called out her sacred cow of a father for being worshiped for naught.

To bring you up-to-date: The Donald said, while speaking at a forum in Iowa:

“[McCain’s] not a war hero. He is a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, okay?”

Take down John “McMussolini,” and you begin to take down the neoconservative cabal.

UPDATED I: Ann Coulter, who worships every military sacred cow—one has to in order to please Republicans and conservatives—concedes Donald said a dumb thing about McCain. Nonsense. Donald spoke the truth. It is also true—OMG!—that those men of the military who died invading Iraq did not die for our freedoms. Ditto those murdered by marauding Muslims on American soil. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news and simple reason.

UPDATED II: As for Donald Trump’s stand against wars, so far, Vietnam included: It’s good and very libertarian of him.

Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes

Ann Coulter, Federalism, Founding Fathers, History, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Race, States' Rights, War

“Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes,” now on WND, offers a brief history lesson about the Confederate Battle Flag. An excerpt:

Fox News anchor Sean Hannity promised to provide a much-needed history of the much-maligned Confederate flag. For a moment, it seemed as though he and his guest, Mark Steyn, would deliver on the promise and lift the veil of ignorance. But no: The two showmen conducted a tactical tit-for-tat. They pinned the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia on the Southern Democrats (aka Dixiecrats). “I’m too sexy for my sheet,” sneered Steyn.

It fell to the woman who used to come across as the consummate Yankee supremacist to edify. The new Ann Coulter is indeed lovely:

Also on Fox, Ms. Coulter remarked that she was “appalled by” South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s call “for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol.” As “a student of American history,” Coulter offered that “the Confederate flag we’re [fussing] about never flew over an official Confederate building. It was a battle flag. It is to honor Robert E. Lee. And anyone who knows the first thing about military history knows that there is no greater army that ever took to the battle field than the Confederate Army.”

And anyone who knows the first thing about human valor knows that there was no man more valorous and courageous than Robert E. Lee, whose “two uncles signed the Declaration of Independence and [whose] father was a notable cavalry officer in the War for Independence.”

The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia—known as “Lee’s Army”—is not to be conflated with the “Stars and Bars,” which “became the official national flag of the Confederacy.” According to Sons of the South, the “first official use of the ‘Stars and Bars’ was at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis on March 4, 1861.” But because it resembled the “Stars and Stripes” flown by the Union, the “Stars and Bars” proved a liability during the Battle of Bull Run.

The confusion caused by the similarity in the flags was of great concern to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. He suggested that the Confederate national flag be changed to something completely different, to avoid confusion in battle in the future. This idea was rejected by the Confederate government. Beauregard then suggested that there should be two flags. One, the national flag, and the second one a battle flag, with the battle flag being completely different from the United States flag.

Originally, the flag whose history is being trampled today was a red square, not a rectangle. Atop it was the blue Southern Cross. In the cross were—still are—13 stars representing the 13 states in the Confederacy.

Wars are generally a rich man’s affair and a poor man’s fight. Yankees are fond of citing Confederacy officials in support of slavery and a war for slavery. Most Southerners, however, were not slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a “War for Southern Independence.” They rejected central coercion. Southerners believed a union that was entered voluntarily could be exited in the same way. As even establishment historian Paul Johnson concedes, “The South was protesting not only against the North’s interference in its ‘peculiar institution’ but against the growth of government generally.”

Lincoln grew government, markedly, in size and in predatory boldness. …

… Read the rest. “Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes” is now on WND

#JonStewart Shames The Shameless #JudithMiller

Foreign Policy, History, Iraq, Journalism, War, WMD

Jon Stewart makes short work of Judith Miller, who is on a “rehab tour,” concerning her role in the ramp-up to war on Iraq. He dismantles her mindless lies, methodically. The fact that others were on board is not exculpatory, he tells her. Idiocy is bipartisan. Not everybody got it wrong, he tutors her (your truly and like-minded libertarians never count to these two).

Now if only Stewart applied the same rigor to gratuitous wars waged by the Obama-Hillary posse.

Miller is one of those disgusting specters American journalism spits out ever so often, as are her Fox News cheerleaders.

The Myth of Munich

BAB's A List, Britain, History, Neoconservatism, War

This is as good a time as any for a history lesson from Barely A Blog’s resident all-rounder.

The Myth of Munich
By Myron Pauli

To some, “Munich” is identified with Oktoberfest; however, to many it refers to what I call the Myth of Munich’—that Neville Chamberlain could have merely snapped his fingers and singlehandedly destroyed the Nazis, but, rather, chose to “appease” them and thus is responsible for the 55 million dead of World War Two. That myth has been invoked to oppose the Nuclear Test Ban and all arms control treaties; rapprochement with China, Cuba and Iran; as well as to start and continue wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, etc.

Britain was exhausted by an idiotic murderous war over an obscure dead Austrian archduke; a war that netted her 1 million casualties and insurmountable debt. One so-called “principle” from World War One was that of “ethnic self-determination,” but Britain and France chose to break up the new Republic of German-Austria by giving the Sudeten Austrians to a new mélange of Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks and a few Poles and Hungarians called Czechoslovakia.

To its credit, Czechoslovakia was a democracy and its largest political party, in the 1935 elections, was the Sudetendeutsche Partei, representing 3 million pro-Nazis who clamored to join Hitler’s new hell. Having swallowed up Austria, Hitler was now demanding to “liberate” Sudetenland. The British and French agreed to a plebiscite in principle but Hitler wanted to just grab it – hence they had a meeting at Munich and a pinky “promise” by Hitler not to ask for any more territory.

Not only was British public opinion overwhelmingly against going to war to prevent Sudeten Nazis from unifying with German Nazis but the British military was skeptical. The pessimistic view was that Germany would crush Czechoslovakia overnight. The “optimistic” view was that perhaps the Czechoslovaks could hold out a few months and then the French Army would attack the Germans from the Maginot Line!

General Hastings Ismay, in charge of British Homeland Defense (London was bombed from the air during World War One), wrote that he thought war was inevitable but it should be postponed until air defenses (recently invented radar and new fighter airplanes) were in place to protect Britain. However, contemporary warmongers expect Neville Chamberlain to have rejected public opinion and that of his own military because Hitler’s “promise” to stop with Sudetenland was nonsense.

Six months later, Hitler broke his “promise” and used Poles, Hungarians and Slovaks to carve up Czechoslovakia. British public opinion moved overnight from pacifism to militarism, and issued a guarantee to Poland. Hitler responded with an agreement with Stalin. Thus, 11 months after Munich, Poland was invaded and Britain was at War with Germany. Neville never got a Nobel Peace Prize like his older brother, Austen.

The “inevitable” war did not commence well – Poland was crushed from two sides, France collapsed quickly, the puny British Army barely escaped from Dunkirk, and Chamberlain fell – but he recommended Churchill over the accommodationist Halifax as his replacement. Those silly radars and fighter airplanes that Chamberlain funded won the Battle of Britain. Britain did not fold in the year she stood alone. Having “given peace a chance” at Munich, the British kept a stiff upper lip during the bombings.

One might speculate that had Britain gone to war with shoddy air defense over the principle of keeping Sudeten Nazis apart from German Nazis, and that earlier war had its own Dunkirk (so much for the British Army!)—there might have been the equivalent of a Vichy Britain. However, for warmongers, peace (even with rearmament) is never worth a gamble and war (regardless of realistic limitations) should always be option number one.

Thus, “The Myth of Munich” lives on with Khe Sanh, Phnom Penh, Fallujah, Kandahar and Benghazi. Anything short of war, even sanctions, is “appeasement” and every two-bit thug is the “next Hitler.” America has seen the massive regional chaos and the elevation of Shiite power engendered because “The Myth of Munich” was evoked against Saddam “Hitler” Hussein. The McCains and Grahams will continue to evoke “The Myth of Munich” against anything resembling action short of war – and the warmongering media will pick it up without question. Bad wars, like bad history, leave a terrible aftertaste.

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.