Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

I have excerpted Thornton's article because it expresses the frustration I feel over this media circus concerning Sheehan. Read the whole thing!

Broadcasting Grief

We should remember that misery breeds anger, not wisdom.

by Bruce Thornton

Private Papers

The liberal media is delighted with Cindy Sheehan . This is the woman who lost a son in Iraq and has camped outside President Bush's Crawford Ranch, intending to stay until the President speaks with her or returns to Washington. For the reporters waiting around in the dusty heat of West Texas, Ms. Sheehan is a godsend, a dramatic, heart-wrenching story that gives the media both a telegenic drama and another opportunity for indulging their dislike of Bush and the war in Iraq.
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So yes, a brutal dictator who has murdered hundreds of thousands and is eager to achieve weapons to kill millions more should be eliminated, the suffering that he inflicts and that ruins our dinner stopped — but once the butcher's bill arrives, we change our minds. The same people who castigate us for allowing the slaughter in Rwanda and Sudan and a dozen other venues now chide us for insuring that such brutality stops in Iraq. They chafe at the unforeseen consequences, mistakes, and inadvertent death that always and everywhere has accompanied the use of force. How many tens of thousands died unnecessarily in World War II, the “good war,” because of such contingencies? The tragic truth of action is that we have to accept those risks and accept that to achieve a future good we often have to risk a present evil. The only alternative is never to use force, and pacifism is a juvenile ideal refuted on every page of history. (italics mine)

http://victorhanson.com/index

The Empire of the United States

Today, we see the phrase hegemony or empire directed at the US without knowing precisely what is meant or even whether it is true that there is such a thing. Most Americans are insistent that we are not an empire and have no intentions of becoming one. On the other hand, Europeans, almost to a man, see the US as definitely an empire and rail against it feverishly, to the amazement of Americans. So what is the truth?

By the classical definition of empire we are certainly not one. We do not control a significant group of foreign nations, bound to us by conquest, and directed by our government. We do not manage this group’s economies, nor do we exploit their resources, because the group does not exist. Neither are we inclined at all to annex new lands and peoples for the growth of the US. Where, then, does this notion of American hegemony or empire come from? Will someone tell us who we are?

The first thing that is true is that we are by far the largest economy in the world and have a voracious appetite for raw materials to feed our industries and our population with goods, including, of course oil. Does this fact alone make us an empire? Hardly: we are simply the largest consumer of resources that we do not own, and pay for them year in and year out.

The second thing that is true is that we have the most powerful military ever assembled in the world. It is in fact stationed in many places around the globe, and has over 31 bases having a thousand men or more permanently assigned. This is due partly to the global Cold War we pursued successfully against the USSR for a half century, and partly due to the stabilization and peacekeeping duties we undertook in a number of nations at the behest of and under the umbrella of “legitimatization” from the UN: South Korea, and Kosovo for example.

Our current military efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere are both intended to stabilize these countries under more democratic regimes, and to diminish the Islamofascist terrorists where they are found. There is no plan whatsoever to subjugate these nations to the US, nor even to appropriate their oil. In fact, the sovereign Iraqi government has control of their oil now. We will leave when our stabilization objectives are accomplished.

Does this defacto military dominance we have found ourselves in since the end of the Cold War constitute an empire? Of itself it doesn’t, especially if one gives due credit to the good and even noble intentions of the US. We threaten no nation that is a reasonable international player, whatever their government.

We do threaten Iran and North Korea now because of their suspected development of nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems, and we are joined in this effort by England, France, Germany, China, Russia, Japan, Australia, and South Korea. This is not an empire-building exercise, it is a defensive effort by major nations to reduce the possibility of nuclear war.

Therefore, a worldwide military presence and dominant military capability does not mean a defacto empire in and of itself, if you take into consideration the true intentions of those forces.

There is a third factor, that of the promulgation of American culture and products throughout the world by means of films, music, TV programs, coke, Macdonald’s and other fast-food operations, and many other products, including automobiles and trucks, and earth-moving equipment. This is certainly a form of "invasion," since with the sales of goods comes the overseas offices of US corporations. But it has only a peaceful, business and trade intent. We are in competition around the globe with other international companies for the same set of products as well. It is business as usual: no empire! So what about economic penetration and the dollar standard throughout the world? Is this a form of economic empire?

At the moment, the US is a debtor nation, and owes in the neighborhood of three trillion dollars to foreign countries. This is hardly a dominant position from which to rule! Empires are said historically to be very solvent indeed, with the empire a net lender to its subjugated nations. So we cannot say that the US has an economic empire, except perhaps within its own borders.

What we are led to is that neither in economics nor military nor culture and products, nor in the intent of the citizens does the US have or want an empire that places us in a dominant and controlling position in the world. Is the potential there? Certainly! But anyone that knows the US also knows that our intentions are benevolent, despite the misguided harangues of anti-American groups in the world. We promote freedom for people worldwide, but this does not rate as imperialism or empire-building.

The USA Has No Empire

This Hubble telescope picture of the Ghost Head Nebula strikes awe in my heart, and wonder in my mind. The immensity of a single nebula of millions of stars is simply stunning to contemplate. How many earth-like planets could be there?

Sacre Coeur

This photo was taken on a overcast and rainy day in April, 2004. I took a taxi there on the last day of our stay in Paris, and proceeded to photograph many scenes in the area.

Contrary to expectations, we were received in Paris warmly, and were treated as honored guests of the country. But, of course, we were not exposed to those areas where demonstrations and riots might have happened.

I must have taken five rolls of film there, especially of Notre Dame, and its surrounds, the Louvre, and street scenes I thought interesting, such as around the Champs Elysee.

It is sad that the spate of French I learned over 50 years ago was in such terrible shape! I was intimidated to speak more than necessary. But the little I did attempt appeared to be very appreciated, as though I, the ignorant American, had at least made a try at it!

Victor Hanson writes on the decision to use the A-bomb.

August 05, 2005

60 Years Later Considering Hiroshima.

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

For 60 years the United States has agonized over its unleashing of the world’s first nuclear weapon on Hiroshima on August 6, 2005. President Harry Truman’s decision to explode an atomic bomb over an ostensible military target — the headquarters of the crack Japanese 2nd Army — led to well over 100,000 fatalities, the vast majority of them civilians.

Critics immediately argued that we should have first targeted the bomb on an uninhabited area as a warning for the Japanese militarists to capitulate. Did a democratic America really wish to live with the burden of being the only state that had used nuclear weapons against another?

Later generals Hap Arnold, Dwight Eisenhower, Curtis LeMay, Douglas Macarthur, and Admirals William Leahy and William Halsey all reportedly felt the bomb was unnecessary, being either militarily redundant or unnecessarily punitive to an essentially defeated populace.

Yet such opponents of the decision shied away from providing a rough estimate of how many more would have died in the aggregate — Americans, British, Australians, Asians, Japanese, and Russians — through conventional bombing, continuous fighting in the Pacific, amphibious invasion of the mainland, or the ongoing onslaught of the Red Army had the conflict not come to an abrupt halt nine days later and only after a second nuclear drop on Nagasaki.

Truman’s supporters countered that, in fact, a blockade and negotiations had not forced the Japanese generals to surrender unconditionally. In their view, a million American casualties and countless Japanese dead were adverted by not storming the Japanese mainland over the next year in the planned two-pronged assault on the mainland, dubbed Operation Coronet and Olympic

More at http://victorhanson.com/index.html (Original Article)

Hanson states the case well in this paper. In the end, war presents terrible options, and sometimes they are all bad. The decision by Truman to drop the A-bombs was motivated by the necessity he saw for saving American lives in the forthcoming invasion of Japan. Japan did surrender unconditionally immediately after the second bomb was dropped. One cannot ignore the context within which he made this decision, however horrible the outcome.