Open Thread

Mark Noonan65 Comments

Well, I’ve got the first bit of feedback on Mirrors which isn’t from a close friend or family member and it is remarkably positive. I’m very pleased with this. Seems that my character Celeste is proving very popular. No spoilers: go read the book and see why. Don’t fret if the genre isn’t one you normally buy: its a story, and I think quite a fun one.

I did a radio interview about it today on The Barrett Brief and Richard Barrett asked me if I was trying to be original. Most emphatically, I was not. I was trying to tell a story of good guys (and gals) placed in strange and dangerous circumstances and trying, by their wits and courage, to emerge triumphant. RSM takes a look at the upcoming and sure-to-be-dreary Terminator sequel and notes:

Oh, wait, guess what the original Terminator had going for it? Yep, a Nordic blonde playing the damsel in distress, functionally analogous to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. It might seem farfetched to compare a schlocky science-fiction thriller to Casablanca, and you might object that Linda Hamilton is no Ingrid Bergman, but from the audience perspective, the theme of the beautiful young woman in peril, with the hero coming to rescue her from danger, is a winning formula. It’s transcendent, the stuff of classics. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, Han Solo and Princess Leia in Star Wars — all variations on this same timeless theme.

My hero is not a Rick Blaine – the cynical but good man. My male heroes are, if anything, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. But the basic formula is still there: St George must defeat the dragon and save the Princess. This is the timeless reality and the basic element of Christian literature. And I wrote it for two reasons. First off, because I’ve wanted to tell a story for a very long time. Secondly, because we’ve gone completely wrong in story telling. Too much Marxist and psychological claptrap. Trying to be edgy by making the hero nearly as much a rat as the villain. Mirrors is my small contribution towards returning popular culture back to sanity – and a bit of fun, for crying out loud.

AOC is accusing Pelosi of racism – you and I should go long on popcorn futures.

Epstein may not be all that rich – this is not surprising. As I’ve said before: my theory is that he’s a pimp and a blackmailer. He’s been deep in with some of the richest and most powerful people in the world for decades but there is nothing in his past which says he’s done something which would result in him being a billionaire. We’ll see what, if anything, comes out. The smart people bailed out on him in 2010 after his first conviction, but plenty of people stayed in. And my bet is because they had to: Epstein had the goods on them.

Millennials are turning to pagan sorcery for their spiritual needs. They just can’t believe that God would become incarnate because that’s so silly…so they believe a fricking crystal will heal them. This will not end well. Paganism can be healthy, but only for a while…if you are worshiping the gods of the field that can be ok…but always, every last time, pagan worship degenerates into either worship of sex or a desire to kill. Or a really twisted combination of both.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Have you bought your copy of Mirrors, yet? A fairly good number have – don’t be left out!

Also, don’t be left out of Matt’s new offering: Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us from Barack Obama’s Legacy.

We’ve been busy little authors, haven’t we? Meanwhile, I’ve already started on Part II of my fiction series, to be titled Secrets. Hope – and I really will work on it – to have it out in January.

The Left is now pointing out that 2 of McConnell’s 8 great-great-grandfathers owned slaves. I guess they are really going to run on this reparations thing. I think it’ll be disastrous for them, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Perhaps there is a majority who think we have to shell out because 150 years ago, some people did bad things.

FredoCon David French is wringing his hands and getting all, “well, I never!” over a survey which claims that Christians – especially white Evangelicals – feel little or no obligation to take in refugees. But, do we have such an obligation? Meaning, does our Christian faith require us to take in everyone who lives in a lousy country? I can’t see how – welcoming the stranger is a requirement, but does this extend to essentially whole nations wishing to leave their homelands? I can’t see how – mainly because it is impossible for us to do so. The lousy nations of the world are lousy – and the good nations of the world are getting lousy – because of a moral failure which goes far beyond whether or not we’ll let a refugee in. Right after WWII the Ruling Class of the world made the determination that lousy people shall be allowed to flourish. That the West – the moral leader of the world – would not exercise its power to force barbarians to be civilized. The result has been very predictable: the barbarians have asserted themselves. We can fix the world – but it would require us to be the world’s overlords. Unless you want to do that, don’t try to sell me the notion that I have a moral obligation to take in each and every victim of barbarism.

Yes, I have heard about the Epstein arrest – hadn’t really paid much attention to that saga. My guess – with limited knowledge – is that he’s a pimp. A procurer of certain products for rich degenerates who then trades on that to obtain great wealth. I’m pretty sure not much will come of it – too many highly placed people are tied up in this. The Left is trying to work it up as an anti-Trump thing but I fully expect Trump to be clean on this as he has been on everything else they’ve tried on him. Trump does like pretty women – but women, not girls. Melania is younger than Trump, of course, but she married the man when she was 35 and is now 49. If Trump was into very young, this would not be what he did.

Barr says he’ll get the citizenship question on the census. I think that Trump should just do it, Courts be damned. It is clearly not something the Courts have any authority over – there is no case to be made that anyone suffers harm by the government asking someone if they are a citizen. People get asked this every time they seek employment, for crying out loud.

99.99% of Americans have no idea who Chandra Bose was – but, he was an Indian nationalist who made common cause with Hitler and Japan during WWII. He is considered a hero among parts of the Indian population. Be that as it may, he did buddy up to Hitler…and AOC’s chief of staff has been wearing a shirt with Bose’s image on it. Not cool.

In Congress, July 4th, 1776

Mark Noonan12 Comments

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…

…We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan16 Comments

So, AOC has been running around claiming the border patrol detention facilities are Buchenwald II…making absurd claims of horrific treatment of the illegals. I’m not quite sure what the plan is. As you would expect, rank and file lefties are taking AOC’s claims as gospel, but how does that really help the left? No one outside the left – and, I suspect, some Never Trump Fredo-cons – are lending any credence to the stories but even if they were true, the people suffering the abuse only have to agree to go back home for it to end. I can only assume the left thinks that if they really push the “Trump is a Nazi” meme, it’ll eventually take hold and a few million white, middle class voters in the Rust Belt will suddenly decide that open borders and health care for illegals is the way to go.

Nike pulled shows decorated with the Betsy Ross flag from production because Kaepernick said the flag was a symbol of slavery. Kaepernick is an anti-American jerk – and if we’re such a lousy country, why does he stay?

Austin, the one place in Texas where liberals are allowed to flourish, has legalized camping on the city streets. The natural result: homeless people are camping on on the city streets. The left wants to make America a Third World dumpster.

Independent journalist Andy Ngo was given a beating by Antifa thugs in Portland – with, from what I can tell, a wink and a nod from Portland’s police department. My view: the feds have to step in. The Constitution empowers the federal government to ensure a Republican form of government: and with the government of Portland allowing political violence, there is no Republican form of government there. Shut the city government down, arrest everyone, and force the people of the city to start all over again.

In an entirely unsurprising bit of news, it is revealed that migrants are buying children to use when they cross the border. You already knew this – because with kids as a “get into America free” ticket, that is precisely what people wanting to cross will obtain.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan40 Comments

Pelosi has agreed to hold a vote on the Senate-passed border bill. Ol’ Nance is in quite a pickle. She’s got a batsh** crazy caucus (at least half her members) which takes its cues from the even more insane upper class white liberal base of the party…and they want Resistance! They want Impeachment! They want war to the death! But, Pelosi isn’t entirely stupid: she knows that going down the route of the Insane Resistance Left means not only Trump re-elected, but likely with a restored GOP House majority. I think that here she’s trying to take a crazy-pants issue off the table. I don’t think it will work.

Supreme Court rules that we can’t have a citizenship question on the census because Justice Roberts (I’m thinking) felt he needed to throw the left a bone so that he’ll still get invited to the prestige parties in DC. It also rule that the State legislatures will continue to draw legislative district maps, in spite of a heavy effort by Democrats to get judges they’ll pick to draw the lines. So, mixed bag: and we need to re-elect Trump. Two more liberal justices are almost sure to leave the Court between now and January, 2025 and if we can get to a 6-3 or 7-2 majority on the Court, then even a squish like Roberts won’t matter any more.

The MSM got a picture of two dead illegal immigrants (father and child, it seems) and has posted it all to heck and gone…which I guess is supposed to make us all go, “Orange Man Bad! Impeach!”, or something. While we’re all sympathetic to the dead, the bottom line is that they are dead because the adult involved decided to jump the line. Nothing prevented him from applying for legal immigrant status. Nothing prevented him from showing up at a port of entry to claim asylum status. He decided, with child, to try to cross a river. Any experienced outdoor person (or swimmer) can tell you how fraught with danger crossing a rive is, especially with a child. He bet his (and the child’s) life he could make it. He lost. Meanwhile, plenty of people (me, included) have been shouting about the deaths along the border for years…deaths the MSM never covered because there wasn’t an Orange Man Bad angle.

According to a survey, young Americans are growing less tolerant of homosexuality. This, to me, is a backlash – and it is created because it has been years since the gay rights movement was about securing rights for gays. It is all about punishing anyone who isn’t enthusiastic in approval of anything the most lunatic homosexual activist demands at the moment. And, of course, this was inherent from the beginning.

Oh, to be sure your average gay man out there did just want to be left alone – to be able to live as he wished without risk of losing his job over whom he had sex with. This was a reasonable demand to make. Unless we wanted to start arresting straight people for fornication or adultery, there simply was no justification for punishing someone for having sex with whomever. But the left – and, more accurately, the most insane part of the left – wasn’t after toleration; they were after destruction. Specifically, the destruction of the concepts of “right” and “wrong”. It helped gay people to win by asserting that gay is the same as straight…and regular, non-insane gay people benefited from that victory. But it came at a cost which will now, most likely, be paid mostly by non-insane gay people. Gay people would have been better served by a more go-slow approach as people were more than willing to extend tolerance…but buy forcing a leap from “leave me alone” to “bake me a cake, bigot”, a backlash has been created: people don’t like to be dictated to. (HT: The Other McCain)

Can the USA Stay Together?

Mark Noonan19 Comments

The knitting (yes, knitting) website Ravelry has banned all pro-Trump content. They did this, so they said, to be inclusive of “all”. I noted to them on their Twitter account that “all” has a meaning and they should look it up. I haven’t received a response. But, that aside, we should really think about what they are doing here: they are saying that being pro-Trump (you know, like most of us who come here are, to one degree or another) is inherently evil.

I’m a middle aged man of no particular importance. Just a regular guy, as it were. I’ve got my stack of sins, just like everyone else but I also at least try to do the right thing, as most people do. I’m not evil. That is, I don’t desire evil to happen – I don’t seek it out; I don’t enjoy it; I don’t wish for anyone to suffer evil in their lives. But what of people who wish to silence me because I voted for a particular person for President? Are they good? Or, more to the point, do they and I have the same idea of what “good” is?

That is the really decisive thing in a country, after all. In general, most things, most of the time, have to be agreed to by nearly everyone. If you and I have opposite understandings of what “up” and “down” are, we’re going to find it hard to cooperate in any real sense. We’ll keep having fundamental conflicts with each other as we each try to get the other to do the exact opposite of what is desired. Eventually, we either have to give up and go our separate ways, or one of us must surrender his definition of what “up” and “down” are to the other person. As Our Lord said – and Lincoln reiterated – a house divided against itself cannot stand. It must cease to be divided, or it must fall.

Until just recently, I held firmly to the opinion that it was really no business of mine, at all, what other people believed. But now I realize something: tolerance can only go so far. We tolerated the bizarre ideology of the leftists because we felt ourselves safe – after all, it was ridiculous what they believed and no rational nation would ever allow themselves to be ruled by such lunacy. But the left is no longer a fringe of lunatics we can laugh at. They control the media, the large corporations, the education establishment, the bureaucracy and a large portion of the judiciary. The very craziest leftwing nutjob we laughed at 25 years ago is now in a position to enforce insanity upon us; and they are doing so. We are now forced to watch what we say, lest an unguarded word puts our job at risk. We are forced to fight tooth and nail just to secure the right to be left alone – and even when we win, the left just keeps coming right back at us, never accepting any defeat as anything more than a temporary setback.

And it isn’t that we and the left want the same things. We might both say we want “justice” but what they mean by the word and what we mean is entirely different – so different that it is like trying to say “black” and “white” are the same thing. To us, justice means people get what they are due…to them, justice means anyone they hate gets punished. Facts and logic mean nothing to the left – but they mean something to us. And we also know that we can’t have anything without rigid adherence to facts and logic. But the left views it differently – they do think they can, by a sort of incantation, make the world fit their mental image, rather than taking the world as it is. And just how do we get along? How do we find a way to march down the road together when we want to be on the road while the left is insisting that that the cliff is the road and we should walk over it?

In the end, I don’t want us to stay together if it is to be like this – in theory, I want the entire territory of the United States to be intact and for all of us to be patriotic citizens of the same country. In reality, though, it can’t be that way. At least, not right now. And maybe not ever. I can’t live in a nation where it is implied I am evil because of whom I voted for…or that I’m evil because of the skin color I was born with, or that I’m evil because of the religion I adhere to, or that the emblems of my nation must all be torn down. You get the picture. I can’t live with people who don’t see the world largely as I do. And I don’t think anyone else can, either. It might be mere inertia that is keeping us going right now – but I fear that this is a fading quality and a crisis is coming.

It is being provoked by the left – and I honestly don’t think they’re smart enough to understand fully what they are doing – and it could lead to a civil war…wherein either they’d kill all of us or we’d kill all of them. In either case, the nation would cease to be divided against itself. It would become all one thing. I’d prefer what some are calling a national divorce…where we just nearly divvy up the national debt on a per-capita basis and everyone votes, State by State (I prefer county by county, actually) which nation they want to belong to. Each resulting nation would become a nation of people who largely agree – and that is how it has to be, if a nation is to exist, at all.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan53 Comments

We’re winning, guys. Slowly, but surely:

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and has ruled that the 1925 ‘Peace Cross’ Memorial erected to remember World War I dead can stay on public land.

It is insane that any American court even accepted the case – it is not in any way, shape or form an establishment of religion to have a religious symbol on public property. The whole thing about the Establishment clause has been twisted – as we all know, because we’re not dumb and know history, an Establishment of Religion is where the government selects a religion and makes it mandatory – and provides various penalties, large or small, for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the officially sanctioned religion. That is all the Founders were trying to prevent – they weren’t trying to prevent the erection of a memorial cross by a people, at the time, better than 95% Christian (and even today better than 70% Christian). We’ll get more and more like this as Trump’s judges take hold of the Judiciary.

I watched most of Trump’s re-election kickoff rally – I know all our Experts say he’s doomed and its all over and we’re just waiting for the Democrat to win…but, geesh! That was a big, enthusiastic crowd…and I can’t think of a Democrat who can draw that sort of crowd absent a rock star performing at the event. We’re, once again, told that crowd size doesn’t matter…ok, Experts: you say so. I guess we’ll see how it comes out. Oh, Trump raised nearly $25 million in the first 24 hours after his campaign announcement. That’s more than any Democrat, by a lot. Too bad for Trump that a poll is more important than people and donations, right?

If you watched that rally, you saw the themes Trump is going to hammer on over the next 18 months: People Vs Powerful; “I’m for you, they’re for anyone but you”; the economy is booming. That’s a pretty strong message.

Kamala Harris – providing more evidence that Trump is going to win – asserted in a Tweet that Trump’s plan to deport illegal immigrants is an effort to change our demographics. She’s saying that the Real Americans – the people she cares most about – are the illegals! With opponents like this, Trump doesn’t need any friends.

Roger Simon – now resident of Nashville where he’ll be one of the pioneers in the creation of the American Jewish Hillbilly Community – writes about his former home, Los Angeles:

I left Los Angeles for Nashville slightly over a year ago. When I call friends back in my former home (for 50 years), most of them tell me I got out just in time.

Actually, they’re wrong. I should have gotten out ten or even fifteen years before. The handwriting was on the wall. “California dreamin’,” pace Mama Cass, “was no longer a ray-al-it-tee.” It hasn’t been for a long time.

Read the whole thing – and I can attest to what Simon is saying. I’ve been around Los Angeles since 1970, off and on. I even lived there for a few years after I got out of the Navy. Since about, oh, 1995 or so, it has just started to crumble. The last time I was in downtown LA, I was nauseated…doubly so because LA is my father’s city, and my grandfather’s. And I remember how it was when I was a kid and it’s all been wrecked. It is dirty, it is falling apart, it is overrun with zombie-like people who, per reports, are sh**ting so much on the streets that there is typhus. This is what Liberalism does. This is what they want to do to your city. We have to stop them.

Nuke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em

Mark Noonan10 Comments

There’s been some talk of war with Iran of late – personally, I don’t think it will come to that. The Iranians don’t really want a stand up fight with us, and Trump is just not a war guy. Oh, I’m sure he’d hammer an enemy hard if they attack us, but it seems pretty clear to me that, given his ‘druthers, Trump doesn’t want to have a war, and so will do all he can to avoid one. Iran will continue to use proxies against us, maintaining plausible deniability among their bribed politicians and pundits in the US and Europe, but I can’t see them directly opposing US forces with regular Iranian forces. But, still, things like this do have a way of getting out of hand: both sides might not want to fight, but they might find themselves landed in one.

I keep rolling this around in my head – this risk of war with Iran – and that article about MacArthur and Korea I linked the other day. First, lets run over some facts and figures:

Iran Population: 82.5 million
US Population: 327 million

Iran GDP: $1.5 trillion
US GDP: $20.9 trillion

Iran Available for Military Service: 47.3 million
US Available for Military Service: 144.9 million

Active Iran Military: 523,000
Active US Military: 1.4 million

Iran Reserve Personnel: 350,000
US Reserve Personnel: 811,000

Iran Nuclear Weapons: working on it
US Nuclear Weapons: 4,018

So, the United States is not just stronger than Iran – we are overwhelmingly stronger. Short term and long term, Iran has zero chance of successfully fighting the United States. This is unlike Germany and Japan at the start of WWII who at least had more forces in-being when war began and could hope for victory before we were able to fully mobilize. This is also not like, say, Serbia challenging Austria-Hungary at the start of WWI because they knew they had Great Power backing in Russia. Iran is alone, poor and weak. And yet they still talk tough and commit serial acts of war against us – via proxies – and don’t seem to have the slightest fear of us. Why?

Because all experience since WWII has shown the Iranians – and the world – that the United States simply will not apply its full might against an armed enemy. As that article I linked to the other day points out, we started tying our hands in Korea. After a short while where we were permitted to go to town on the North Koreans, the political leadership of the United States started putting the brakes on American power…essentially surrendering our overwhelming advantage vis a vis the enemy and so turning what would have been a quick and overwhelming defeat of the Chinese into a long slugging match which cost far more lives than we lost utterly destroying the North Korean military.

We refused to let Chiang make a try at invading China – placing our fleet between his army on Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, thus assuring Mao that he could send all this best troops to fight and kill Americans in Korea. We didn’t bomb the Chinese supply and concentration areas…thus allowing the Chinese to build up forces to move into Korea. And it went on and on like that, through all the fights we’ve had since WWII. Don’t hit too hard! Be nice! Maybe they’ll be nice to us if we don’t destroy them! Hey, let’s pretend that if we go all out, other Powers will fight us to the death…as if. 100,000 or so dead in America’s wars since WWII and all we’ve done is be defeated.

Iran shouldn’t be bragging and insulting us. They should live in deathly fear of offending us in the slightest. They should have whole teams of staffers editing official speeches and documents to ensure that nothing but kind words are said about the United States. On the world stage, they should from time to time be backing a US foreign policy initiative to build a bit of good will with us – for fear that if we perceive them as an enemy, we’ll destroy them. The power relationship between the two nations can’t be interpreted any other way – absent a firm alliance with another Great Power willing to go to war with us on their behalf, Iran should be quiet and respectful of us. But it isn’t that way – because they know what will happen. We’ll attack, devastate them and then quit after a while. Its all we’ve done since WWII.

This must end – and those in our military and foreign policy Establishment who still want us to hold back have to be removed. If we go to war, we go all the way to war. Nothing is off the table. Yes, not even nukes. Why in heck, for instance, should we allow a non-nuclear power to concentrate, say, a 100,000 man army against us if we’ve got a nuke handy to wipe it out? No, you wouldn’t use nukes to clear out a town infested with terrorists…but an army is a legitimate target. Why not destroy it, easy? And getting back to that town – if it is infested with terrorists, we can’t be too finicky about how we clear them out. Anyone blood shed in such a situation is the moral responsibility of those who placed terrorists in a town…and its stupid to send our guys house to house to be clay pigeons for a couple guys with AK’s hiding in the building when a bit of artillery takes care of the building and the terrorists.

War is a serious, deadly business. It is cruelty and it cannot be refined. The American way of war is to hammer the enemy mercilessly until he quits, and then offer him a hand up. We don’t seek conquest. We aren’t in this for glory. But if we have to fight, we don’t propose to drag it out, nor to have a re-match. It is one and done and we do whatever it takes to finish it as fast as possible. And here’s the thing: we’d only have to do it once. Make an object lesson of the next country to attack us, and all of a sudden those who are thinking these days that you can fight America risk-free will reconsider.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Ace rips into a new, Feminist hero brought forth by the MSM for Pride Month – she left her husband and kids to become a lesbian. She was 36 when she made the discovery. Ace has a few words to say:

Today’s Feminism-Forward Woman

She can be anything she wants to be — including an irresponsible tweener girl, when she feels the pangs of young romance moving through her.

Which is pretty much it. I’ll say something that is probably pretty unpopular: no one is born gay. Not in the sense that it is meant these days – that it is something so integral to your personality that you must express your desire for same-sex attraction. That some people have a very deep-seated attraction to members of the same sex cannot be doubted. Given what we know of genetics, there probably is some genetic role in such an attraction. But, you’re still human: you only must be born and die. Other than that, its all a choice. And this particular lady choose to break her promise and make her life an almost inevitable train wreck.

Lest anyone think I’m merely picking on the lesbian lady, another story along these lines caught my eye. It was recently announced that Father Morris – a long time commentator on Fox News – is leaving the priesthood so that he can get married. Which immediately made me wonder just how galactically stupid his future bride must be. The man is proposing to break a promise he made to God in order that he make a promise to a woman. How likely is it he’ll keep his second promise?

The lady wasn’t born to be lesbian, Morris wasn’t born to be married. They are each making a choice: and a wrong, wicked, evil choice as their choice starts with breaking a promise. Such is the sad state of our world that both of them will be accepted as normal, upstanding members of the society even though they are both demonstrating they can’t be trusted.

Donald Trump decided to name his Mrs “Melania T”, our replacement for “Jackie O”. Naturally, the left melted down. And that’s a good thing.

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) has a new book out about Social Media and how lousy it is. I’m going to get it because Reynolds does pay much more attention to tech stuff than I do.

Something interesting:

Progressivism’s perversion of our ruling class’s ideas about war and peace began at the turn of the 20th century. It prevailed in the winter of 1950-51 when this class, having committed the armed forces to war in Korea, decided to order them not to defeat an enemy that had already killed some 15,000 of their number, but rather to kill and die to “avoid a wider war,” and to foster an international environment pleasing to itself and allied governments. Since then, the U.S. government has won no wars. More important, it has not sought to win wars. Instead, our foreign policy establishment has spent some 100,000 American lives and trillions of dollars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in pursuit of world order, multilateralism, or collective security. It has cited as a badge of superior wisdom its trashing of Aristotle’s notion that victory is war’s natural objective.

Read the whole thing.