If you are a young man wondering what to do with your life, you may consider enlisting in the military. Don’t. Yes, the military has its appeal, or seems to. You may need a job. The uniform looks good. There can be adventure. You might get laid by Asian lovelies in foreign countries. These things have their appeal. They did for me as a young Marine. But they aren’t worth being mutilated, blinded, or spending the rest of your years in a wheel chair. This can happen. It does happen. And Washington doesn’t give a damn.
Recruiters won’t tell you of this. They are liars. They lied to me. They will lie to you. At the very least, they will talk only about good things that might happen, about college money and job training you might get but probably won’t. They will make you feel welcome. You are joining a team of brothers, they will say. You are a patriot. You are defending your country.
Don’t believe it. The US military does not defend America. The last time it did this was in 1945, at the end of World War Two. Since then, American soldiers were sent for twenty years to Afghanistan. Is Afghanistan America? No. Was it, is it, important to America? No. Then Iraq, Syria, Iraq again,and Serbia, bombing helpless cities. Iraq isn’t America. In my day–I’m an old guy–it was Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, where 63,000 Americans died, and killed huge numbers of peasants who did nothing wrong–for no reason. Washington is now getting ready to start a war with China. China is on the other side of the world.
Let me tell you what the military does to young men, what Washington does. Long ago I was driving a truck near the Marine base in Danang, Vietnam. A bullet came through the windshield. The glass spatter went into my eyes, filling them with blood and blinding me for, as it turned out, several months. I lay for maybe an hour beside the road until a chopper finally came to take me to the Naval Support Activity hospital. For a couple of weeks a Viet nurse gave me a large injection of penicillin every few hours because if the blood got infected, that would be it for my vision.
Across the corridor from me were two Marines whose tank had been hit by an RPG, rocket-propelled grenade. It ruptured the hydraulic lines and the hydraulic fluid had exploded into flames. The two crewmen across from me had gotten out somehow, though horribly burned. I was told they were covered with a plastic sheet that dripped with evaporation from their burns, but I don’t know. The other too had cooked alive, burning, burning, in agony, skin sloughing off, unable to breathe in the flames, desperately trying to find the hatch. The two across from me said they could hear them screaming. It is what the military did to them. It is what the military will do to you.
A recruiter might tell you that I am an old guy, and things have changed. No. They have not. The military still uses tanks, rifles, land mines, bombs, flamethrowers, artillery. Aircraft carriers, important for the upcoming war with China, still carry large quantities of jet fuel and explosives. They are barbecues waiting to be lighted. You can have your bowels blown out, or burn alive, as easily now as then.
Did Vietnam have anything to do with America? No. It’s on the other side of the freaking world. Likewise Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq. So why does the military, why does our government do it?
Answer: So the arms industry can make money. And so Washington can try to control the world. Are you willing to die, to spend your life in a wheel chair, to wear a colostomy bag full of your own shit and never have a date because you were gut-shot–so Lockheed-Martin’s stock shares will go up? Don’t do it. Don’t let the bastards use you.
The wars never stop because the money is sweet, the profits enormous. Washington just finished twenty years of killing in Afghanistan , meaning twenty years of juicy contracts. How did this defend America? Now we have Ukraine, so far costing taxpayers over a hundred billion dollars. Is Ukraine America? The United States is falling apart as anyone can see and Washington sends money to Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians, Russians and Ukrainians, have died there, for nothing. But of course most of that money going to Ukraine is used to buy weapons from the arms companies. Follow the dollar.
For Washington, for the arms industry–they are almost the same thing–long wars in distant places are desirable because companies like Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon can keep selling the Pentagon missiles, tanks, helicopters and simple things like gasoline at jacked-up prices. War is about money. Washington cares about money. It does not care about you.
Don’t let them use you.
I’ll tell you another story. I spent about a year on the eye ward, 4B, at Bethesda Naval Hospital as it was then called, just outside of Washington. In hospital wards you see what the military really does to people. There was a guy blind because a defective rifle grenade detonated on the end of his rifle. Another fellow had taken an AK round through the jaw, shattering the bone. The fragments had to be removed, leaving the flesh where his jaw had been hanging down in a formless blob like a wet sock. He ate through a nasogastric tube going through his nose. We called him Jawless.
Military wards are full of such. The one I most remember was a young Marine from Tennessee, maybe nineteen. One side of his face was grotesque hamburger. He was stone blind. I was nearby when his high school sweetheart, maybe seventeen, came to visit him.
“Johnny…Johnny…Oh, Johnny.”
So much for the marriage, I figured. What young high school senior wants to tie herself for life to a blind horror that she will have to lead around?
The war in Vietnam was lost, of course, but it wasn’t in vain. It made unimaginable profits for the arms industry. Why do you think American wars last so long? If America wins the war, the money stops flowing. If it loses the war, the money stops. Keep the war going, and the money flows.
This is the military the recruiters don’t tell you about. It is the real military.
-want to know the lousy medical care the Pentagon gives the wounded? An incompetent military eye surgeon managed to destroy my remaining good eye years later. To see the kind of thing that happens, read this at the Unz Review. It will show you what you can expect.
Think what, if you enlist, you will really be doing. Let’s say that you are ordered to fire artillery at some city or village. In your impact zone, a little girl of seven, hit by shell fragments, looks down in surprise as her intestines fall from her stomach, and begins crying, then screaming. This happens, frequently. What do you think hot jagged shrapnel does to a soft young belly. She holds out her arms to mommy for help, this being instinct with the very young, before collapsing from profuse bleeding. Large blood vessels are found in the abdomen. Her mother goes stark bugfuck crazy, desperate to save her daughter but watching her die. It is how we defend America, see.
This is what the military is, what it does. It is what you will be used to do, directly or indirectly.
Those in Washington who will send you to kill people you have never met, and to be mutilated, do not themselves go to war. Rich young men do not enlist. Students at Harvard and Yale do not enlist. The military preys on, takes advantage of, ordinary kids, usually high-school grads, often from the South.
If you are twenty years old, what I am about to say will be ancient history, but I ask you to think about it. The same thing is going on today.
The following men were all of military age during Vietnam, and they now rule the country or did: President George Bush II, Bill Clinton, John Bolton (of whom you have probably never heard, but a major warhawk), Biden, Trump All avoided military service. All now want to send you to wars. To express it clearly, they see you as suckers. Think about it.
I tell you, as one who has been there, who has seen it, don’t let them use you.
Anyone may repost this column without further permission.
You are very cynical.
Another word for cynicism is reality.
Thank you, Fred, for your badly needed cynicism.
I am going to post this whole email of yours on FaceBook.
He’s also very right.
He is 100% spot on. Sad as that may be.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
George Bernard Shaw
You are very cynical!
Those Soviets with their tanks in East Germany were there to frighten you from trying move into territory they controlled with your tanks. At the time, it worked. They went home voluntarily and peacefully when Washington promised Gorbachov that NATO wouldn’t move East. Washington was lying of course.
Fred:
Like him or not and believe it or not, Trump doesn’t seem to want a war. Take him off your list of warmongers.
yours,
John Gilmer
I served too, as a weekend soldier. The Soviets had a lot of tanks in East Germany pointing West. Did I frighten them off? Probably not but they stayed where they were. So it worked.
Then there was Viet Nam. What was it for? I didn’t know then but I do now. There were all of those other wars, attacking little countries; doing it because we could. Now those wonderful politicians want to try it on with Russia and China. But pre-emptive nuclear strikes on Washington and New York would dampen their ardour. That would be personal.
Putting politicians in the front line makes lotsa sense.
A great and factual article.
Thanks for attempting to save young lives.
I think no country should be able to send it’s citizens to war without a citizens vote to do so.
Brian G.
Those Soviets with their tanks in East Germany were there to frighten you from trying move into territory they controlled with your tanks. At the time, it worked. They went home voluntarily and peacefully when Washington promised Gorbachov that NATO wouldn’t move East. Washington was lying of course.
Fred:
Believe it or not and like it or not, Trump doesn’t belong on your list of warmongers.
yours,
John Gilmer (Jolly Olde King George, VA)
There are two types of Trump Derangement Syndrome, or TDS. One afflicts a subset of those who don’t like him; one afflicts a subset of those who do. Among the afflicted, mere mention of his name evokes either foaming-at-the-mouth rage or enraptured paroxysms.
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/03/28/much-much-more-than-trump/
Trump is a loudmouth blowhard, the best thing about him is he is not Joe Biden
“Trump is a loudmouth blowhard, the best thing about him is he is not Joe Biden”
Pretty much, though I’d say that the best thing about him is that he does NOT obviously feel that anti-Americanism is an American virtue. This puts him a notch above the talking heads in show business, news, and politics–but I repeat myself.
Clinton cashed out the Peace Dividend and was handed the Internet boom, which gave him an economic pooch too big for even him to screw, though he tried. He did manage to decimate a military he hated just in time for 9/11. Bush the Lesser, Obama, and Biden all oversaw America’s decline in everything. Trump was the exception, making everything better except the mental health of our homegrown Marxists, who threw a continuous 4-year tantrum.
ALL wannabe Presidents talk about American greatness as though it was a thing they would push for. Trump actually did it. The rest of them will never forgive him for that.
Trump is a bumptious blowhard, and I wish there were a better version of him available. But he’s, sadly, the best deal America could get.
Too bad there’s no way he’ll be allowed to win again. Never mind that he’ll get 65% of the legitimate vote, Biden will “win” with 66.6
Reality is not aways easy.
It just is what it is.
Back in the say, I would tell a kid who didn’t know what to do with his life to choose a branch, choose a job that’s interesting, get it in writing, and serve a hitch. You would at least have matured a lot, had some life experience, and maybe have a field that you could work in the rest of your life, if you so chose. If you didn’t you go to college or tech school and get the job you wanted. that did interest you, much cheaper than you would have had you not gone.
Now? I tell them, if you see a recruiter, run, don’t walk, in the opposite direction. With the wokesters having taken over, you’re just a piece of meat that they think they can replace. Just stay away.
I’m no where near as cynical as Fred. I understand why he feels as he does though, and I don’t blame him.
“The uniform looks good.” – no it doesn’t Fred! At airports and other public places today’s soldiers are dressed in bulky camouflage gear including combat boots! In 1951-53 when I was in armored battalions in Texas and Germany, we weren’t allowed to leave the base in fatigues.
In summer we dressed in khakis (with a tie) and winter with Eisenhower jackets (and tie).
There was a full length mirror in our 7th Army Medium Tank Battalion orderly room in Germany where we picked up our leave documents. I remember one of our negro soldiers (Truman integrated our battalion in 1952) standing in front of the mirror, adjusting his tie, and saying: “I may not be a so-jer but I’m a sharp MFer”
You are very honest and real – thank you, Fred!
It’s also important to realize the Iraq War was started by the war pigs in Washington to advance their political careers by pleasing the overly wealthy and powerful Israel lobby. ( https://www.ipsnews.net/2004/03/iraq-war-launched-to-protect-israel-bush-adviser/ ) It seems like Iran will be the next war “to keep America free,” since Israel has been saying for the last 20 years or more that Iran is months or weeks away from having nuclear weapons like the Jewish state of Israel has. Israel won’t stop spreading religious violence and war because they’re on a mission from gawd per their Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament.
That is a hard column to read but should be read by all.
What the military was intended for, what the military once was, what it became and what it will become are all different. I have to agree, what it is now must be avoided.
It’s purpose and recent actions are a stain on the world. What the military has become and is used for is not a function of the military, it is a function of our society, our government and the people we elect. But, what it should and must become if we are to remain free, is something worth working on and maybe being part of. War, especially wars of choice (and all recent ones have been a choice) are atrocities composed of all the possible atrocities that people can imagine and many unimaginable.
But war, the threat of war, the need to deter war and to engage in war to actually protect our homeland and our people is a reality, and thus the military is a necessity, and ought to be a duty. Don’t let them use you, but don’t settle for them being able to use you as they have been, for pure greed.
Well, you say that the military has some…drawbacks. But what of the benefits?
Medals,
Visiting exotic, distant locals,
Excitement.
…Did I mention “Medals”?
Remember McNamara’s Dummies? Of course, this is not what government called recruiting/drafting individuals with IQ’s significantly below 100 in order to fill the need for warm bodies in Vietnam. This happened, as reprehensible as it sounds, this was yet another idea of our wonderful government. You can imagine how long such an individual would last in combat.
The commenters, few of whom I doubt have ever been shot at, are missing the point. Yes, the military has good points but in the end soldiers and Marines are cannon fodder. I carried enough of them in body bags in Vietnam and in aluminum shipping coffins on flights to the States along with the people like Fred who came home in blue hospital pajamas. Fortunately, although I was shot at, I wasn’t hit. I am so grateful no member of my family is currently serving in the military. It ended with my son, who got tired of it. I gave them 12 years. My dad flew 30 missions with the Eighth Air Force, my granddaddy was in the Argonne and dozens of my ancestors were in the Revolution and fought with Forrest against Sherman’s invaders. At one time, there probably was a purpose but that purpose ended when war became a business, as Fred is pointing out. His advice is good. Don’t enlist. Go to school and learn a trade. Avoid the military at all costs.
I’m not only cynical but I’m vastly jaded when it comes to the military. TPTB aka the powers that be could care less if you live, become a quadriplegic or die. They don’t care. Money is the driving force. The people on the inside win. The men and women in uniform are and always be the losers. Don’t do it!
“He was the future he was a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future was like. Already they were looking ahead they were figuring the future and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn’t fight. So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret. They knew that if all the little people all the little guys saw the future they would begin to ask questions. They would ask questions and they would find answers and they would say to the guys who wanted them to fight they would say you lying thieving sons-of-bitches we won’t fight we won’t be dead we will live we are the world we are the future and we will not let you butcher us no matter what you say no matter what speeches you make no matter what slogans you write.”
Dalton Trumbo – Johnny Got His Gun
The best anti-war book I ever read.
The U.S. was once worth defending. Not today. There is no “we” worth defending. Since the 1965 Immigration and Nationalization, the U.S. has admitted 160 million illegal and legal third-world rejects to this nation. In California, only 21% of its children are now white. The rest of the states are quickly following this rapid demographic replacement.
Isn’t this a harsh and unpleasant characterization of our these migrants? No, it isn’t. The U.S. Justice Department statistics show the lifetime likelihood of a U.S. Black male going to a Federal or State prison is 28.5%. For Hispanics, this is 16.0%. For Whites, this is 4.4%. You might think “we” can live with the 28.5% and 16.0% statistics, but these are “iceberg” indicator statistics. It isn’t the visible part of the iceberg that this the danger, but the larger mass below it that sinks ships. Worse than the locked-away incarcerated felons, are the larger mass of migrants who contribute disorder to this nation, without committing any crime. It is these people who will sink this nation.
Reality is harsh and unpleasant. CNBC, CNN, the NY Times, etc all create nice pleasant psychotic world views to insulate people from harsh reality. They have built up a false but psychologically pleasant world in which most professionals (doctors, judges, lawyers, researchers, etc) are this underclass. Psychologists call living in a world of false narratives a “psychosis.” It leads to delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thinking and disorganized behaviors. Wars, the Defense Department, and Defense contractors are not the cause of problems. Rather, the problem is the media, politicians, and public who create psychotic world views to obscure unpleasant realities. It leads to disorganized thinking and disorganized behaviors. That creates wars and destroys nations.
Fred is right on the mark. Ignore what he says at your peril. War is a rich man’s game and a fool’s game. There’s no in between. My service didn’t protect anything worth protecting. The empire is collapsing which is the best thing possibly that could happen for the safety of everyone in the world who isn’t tied to the globalists, all of whom should be put on trail and facing charges for the crimes they’ve committed against all of mankind.
These cowardly degenerates represent the very worst type of vermin possible so we need to stop trying to make excuses for them and for anyone who disagrees, feel free to join up and put your life and your ass where your mouth is.
I think, from recent figures, that this message is getting through Fred. I hear that the US Forces cannot meet their recruitment targets. I’ve seen interviews with a number of young men saying, in effect “No way, I’m not going to join up and fight for them”. I’ve suspected that this is behind the open borders “policy”, if you can call it that. I suspected from the start that, given so many are military age males, they will be coerced, one way or another, into the Forces, ie, “You’ll get citizenship, a retirement payout, a Uni place” etc etc. I think they plan to use them to flood across the border into Russia. They probably think they can get Russia and then turn on China. And then, lo and behold, I saw the advert on YouTube; “There is nothing that feels so good as wearing an American Forces uniform; if you do, you will deserve citizenship”. Yeah, I thought, just as I thought. And somehow, sadly, I dont think too many of these immigrants speak much English, or will get to know what Fred has to tell them.
A Vietnam recruiting poster
Join The Army
Visit strange and exotic places
Meet intriguing and interesting people
And kill them.
That’s quite funny, tom, but sadly true.
Variation on the theme:
Join the Army
Visit strange and exotic places
Meet beautiful and exotic woman
And catch strange, exotic diseases from them.
Today’s military has its own problems it has to solve, but the way kids’s lives, futures and their families and thrown away, and the way it is used as a business engine, market development tool and greed protector is a political and societal problem that the military cannot solve.
This is a perhaps more high tech version of Aztec human sacrifice, and for the same purpose, to prop up the economy. WWII brought us out of the depression, and we’ve kept the economy afloat by the same means ever since.
None is more hated then those who speak the truth comes to mind. Some Greek philosopher said that I believe. Anyway your article is pretty right on for those that may want to have a thought or two.
I grieve for our once-great nation, now in decline. News outlets constantly remind us of how steep that decline now is, showing us in graphic detail the rampant crime – much of it committed by those too young to vote – and remind us of the mindless greed and malfeasance of our public officials.
I agree with Fred that we should not be engaged in other peoples’ wars, though it’s sometimes necessary to promote our national strategic objectives. I don’t agree that military service is a bad thing, to be avoided at all costs.
Those of us who served have different perspectives. I view my Vietnam tour – 1969-1970 – as a blip in a rewarding military career that spanned 26 years and grades from E-1 to field grade officer. I came not from the South but from rural Maine, from abject poverty in one of the nation’s most economically depressed counties. My hometown had 400 residents and my high school had seventeen students, total, when I graduated in 1954. I enlisted in 1956 and qualified for a commissioning program in 1960. The military gave me an engineering degree and later, through the G.I. Bill, a graduate degree.
All the preceding, and that which I observe in young people today, civilian or military, leads me to my firm belief that this nation and its citizens could benefit greatly from mandatory national service of at least two years. It could be military service or some federal commitment like the long-ago CCC – Civilian Conservation Corps (my father, not qualified for military service, joined the CCC around 1940). Perhaps the most valuable outcome of such mandatory service might be instillation of what seems to be lacking in much of today’s youth: a degree of discipline and responsibility, and a recognition that actions have consequences.
YOU middle as lit of sense. SIR.
The current mix of unnecessary wars started with the Presidency of a near “War Hero” POTUS, Bush ’41. Shortly after he became POTUS, the best event of the half of the 20th Century took place: The End of the Cold War and the break up on the Old USSR/Soviet Union.
But, but… form some reason Bush ’41 though it would a good idea to send a female ambassador to present US Interests to Iraq. Saddam called her into the office and asked her if the US would have any objection were Iraq to invade Kuwait. She said, NO! That set the state for Gulf War #1. Theretofore, Iraq and Iran were in a near permanent state of war.
When Clinton came in, he and NATO decided it would be a good idea to support the Muslims against Serbia which had close ties to Russia. This was, in effect, an attempt to re-start the COLD WAR.
It’s not hard to trace what happened since to the current state of affairs. The Cold War has been re-started, Iran has no enemies on its border and NATO is close to having a direct conflict with Russia.
American soldiers were sent for twenty years to Afghanistan.
You may recall a number of airliners were send here from Afghanistan to plow into our buildings and kill a bunch of people, mostly civilians.
The proper response to such a thing is not to wring our hands and dither.
Except that the brains behind the attack, and most of the attackers were Saudis. Why then, attack Afghanistan? Perhaps because the foremost slave trading race in the world ae the USA’s biggest buddies (apart from Israel) in the Middle East? Or does oil have something to do with it?
“The proper response to such a thing [as 9/11] is not to wring our hands and dither.”
The proper response would have been for Dubya to ask Congress that very day for a Declaration of War against Saudi Arabia (which they would have passed almost unanimously, not wanting to be torn to bloody gobbets by whichever American citizens got to them first).
He should have demanded their immediate, unconditional surrender, while warning their subjects to avoid anything that looked like a target, such as cities. He should have opened up domestic oil drilling, advanced nuclear power plants, and told the tree-huggers to emigrate to Saudi if they didn’t like it.
Saudi, meanwhile, would probably have surrendered–if not before losing some infrastructure to MOAB airbursts, shortly thereafter.
This would have made him a truly great (though probably a one-term) President. I will never forgive him for putting that second term (and thereby one-upping Daddy) ahead of American energy independence and impoverishing (and thus civilizing) the Middle East.
War is ugly, whether the war is long or short. Wars don’t end until one side or the other gives up trying to win. A short, maximally brutal war, fought until one side or the other either surrenders or goes extinct, is the least ugly war possible.
When everybody understands that a war will end somebody’s country and countrymen, War won’t seem so attractive to the Scarlet Majors at the base.
NO airplanes were “sent here from Afghanistan” to “plow into our buildings”. And the ringleaders, planners, and chief perpetrators of the attack came from GERMANY (the “Hamburg 4”) with assistance provided by the Muslim Brotherhood from SAUDI ARABIA. And the airplanes themselves came from America, were based in America, took off from American airports.
The endless justifying babble of illiterates and the ignorant trying to excuse our wanton murder of many, many thousands of Afghans who probably didn’t even know where America was in 2001, because of the actions of people who were NOT Afghans, and did not live in Afghanistan, is beyond depraved; it’s sickening.
This is truth. Anyone who questions it is full of shit, either because he’s never seen what war does and understood in whose benefit it is perpetrated, or because he is so propagandized by our sick empire as to have no capacity to research its reality.
Fortunately, this vicious, ugly Capitalist nightmare, the most evil nation in history, is destroying itself and will continue to do so until it crashes and burns.
@paul edwards
sounds like a teenager living in Daddy’s basement, raiding Mommy’s fridge, whining about how skimpy his allowance is, rooting for Socialism to Burn It All Down, By Any Means Necessary…
I have two rods, a plate and twelve screws holding up my head and a trashed lumbar and pelvis. I can barely walk. Though my wife never served, she was conceived when her father, a UH-34 pilot returned from Nam. She was born with several birth defects including scoliosis, a deformity of the spine. She has suffered from arthritis since she was a teenager. She now has, in her fifties, Stage 4 in her right hip and both knees. She walks with her hand up like a baby, hobbling around. There’s more on her list. She and all other children with birth defects as a result of war are never considered. She can’t work and neither can I, so we both live off the 80% disability I get from the VA. She gets nothing from any gov entity.
Pappy was 101st LRRP when that meant something and he warned me off at 18 after signing up with Selective Service.
A HS bud who was shall we say kind of a Gump signed up and proceeded to get jumped and beat down by POC “comrades” over a game of billiards, almost lost an eye in that Barnes is reality moment.
Yankee Puritan cocksucker virtue signaller maggots are your enemy and always will be.
Baizuo are hated by all for a reason.
If you have not served, you have no right to call Fred a cynic. The reality is far worse than he has described.
Dumbest argument ever. EVER. I hope you’ve never voiced you opinions on abortion because unless you’re a woman you have no right.
PER FRED:
“Did Vietnam have anything to do with America? No. It’s on the other side of the freaking world. Likewise Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq. So why does the military, why does our government do it?
Answer: So the arms industry can make money. And so Washington can try to control the world. Are you willing to die, to spend your life in a wheel chair, to wear a colostomy bag full of your own shit and never have a date because you were gut-shot–so Lockheed-Martin’s stock shares will go up?”
PER ME:
Fred, with all due respect, your point of view is extremely myopic and overly simplistic. I cannot provide total overview of the nuts and bolts and wheels and cogs of historical and current US foreign policy, but I am VERY willing to step out on a limb and state a basic truth that I believe sums up the underlying basis for a good deal of it.
SOME BASIC TRUTHS:
The Domino Theory possessed merit
There was valid reason to believe, right of wrong, that a Communist bloc Vietnam would lead to all of SE Asia falling under the influence and control of Russia/China or some fraction thereof
Head on over to continental Malaysia and set one toe into the Strait of Malacca
That body of water sees the passage of 900 cargo containers and oil tankers per day
Think of it as the main vein of the Western economy
If it HAD become a Commie Canal, we’re F**KED!
Don’t believe me?
Look at the difficulties being caused now by the Iranian proxy Houthi at the Bab al Mandab leading into the Red Sea and the Canal of Suez!
Total loss of control of the Malacca Straits would make the present-day Red Sea supply chain pimple look puny.
ditto for the Carribean waterways leading to the Panama Canal!
THAT is why Cuba has known all along to NEVER f**k with Guantanamo
tHE mARINES, rANGERS, dELTA fORCE, 101ST aIRBORNE, 82ND aIRBORNE, 2 mARINE dIVISIONS WOULD BE ALL OVER THEM LIKE STINK ON POOP!
THAT goes a long way toward explaining the long-time US cozy arrangements with Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.
WW2, in the Pacific, Fred, had a LOT to do with whether the Japanese Empire or the American Empire was going to dominate the economic benefits of controlling the resources of the Pacific rim.
All sides to the conflict were screaming out: “Hooray for us and F**K them!
Yes it’s deadly, bloody, horrible, and more.
could it be avoiced?
Maybe.
Are societies willing to make the hard choices and compromises necessary for avoiding wars?
Looks like the answer is a BIG NO!
Sorry, but nonsense. Just one point, that collapses your whole argument (besides the obvious; that Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia actually WERE “conquered by the Communists”, who immediately fell out with each other, because they were all nationalists first).
Exactly where does the majority of “trade” transiting the straits of Malacca go to, or come from? Answer – Communist China, the world’s biggest importer of raw materials and exporter of finished products. With some going to India, which is perfectly capable of defending its own interests without our help, thank you very much.
So tell me again why “preventing Vietnam from being conquered by the communists”, which we didn’t do anyway, but lost over 50,000 people attempting, matters when the Communists control China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia today, and, as you state, “trade is booming”? Even between Communist and non-Communist states.
AND NOW, FOR THE JEW HATER:
“You are very honest and real – thank you, Fred!
It’s also important to realize the Iraq War was started by the war pigs in Washington to advance their political careers by pleasing the overly wealthy and powerful Israel lobby. ( https://www.ipsnews.net/2004/03/iraq-war-launched-to-protect-israel-bush-adviser/ ) It seems like Iran will be the next war “to keep America free,” since Israel has been saying for the last 20 years or more that Iran is months or weeks away from having nuclear weapons like the Jewish state of Israel has. Israel won’t stop spreading religious violence and war because they’re on a mission from gawd per their Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament.”
ME:
Listen here, you disgusting slob,
I take objection to your open and execrable Jew hatred.
First of all, I wish all decent Christians the best on this holy day
YOU, however, are not a decent Christian.
YOU insist on hating us today for the murder of your messiah.
Not that it will make any difference to the likes of you, but there was a papal ecumenical council in about 1965, and Pope Paul called out your genocidal inclinations for being the abomination they truly are!
but pinheads like you simply won’t let go, will you?
Israel was not helped by the US during her war of independence in 1948
Israel was not helped by the US during the 1956 Sinai War, that reversed the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal
Israel was not helped by the US in the 1967 6-day war, in which Egypt, and Syria, Jordan and a host of other Arab countries sent contingents to annihilate every last Jew.
It was only after Israel,
who after all only wants to be left to live peacefully and to prosper together with her neighbors, crushed all of those savage genocidal mutants in 6 days, that the US suddenly got the idea that Israel might make a useful ally, and be useful in countering Soviet influence in the middle east.
So, you filthy Jew hater, the US Israel relationship was based upon American geo-strategic interests. It was not a fabrication based upon long hook-nosed Jewish cunning, you f**king coelenterate!!
‘Israel was not helped by the US during her war of independence in 1948’
The state of Israel exists due to support from the USA.
Although I am dismayed by Fred’s antisemitism, your use of profane epithets are uncalled for, even if edited with *.
I didn’t attack Fred. I attacked a commentor who went after Israel and all Jewish existence with malice.
See? My paternal grandparents’ families were murdered by Nazis in Lithuania.
My maternal grandparents’ families were murdered in Ukraine by Ukranians (Cossaxks, I believe).
So, I become “exercised” when people like the coelenterate slide out from beneath slippery foul smelling rocks and get their jollies off falsely demeaning Jewish existence.
If you can’t take it, then please tell that cretin, yourself, in a manner that is superior to my crudeness, that what he said STINKS, and that you won’t stand for it. It looks like I am pretty much alone here!
Oh!! By the way, I am a Vietnam veteran too! 1970/ Army.
Uhhh…Israel initiated the 1956 war, not Egypt, and nothing “reversed” the nationalization of the Suez Canal, which is owned by Egypt. And even Moshe Dayan has admitted that the 1967 war was initiated by ISRAEL, not the Arabs. And that Israel initiated “at least 80%” of the incidents in the Golan, not Syria. And the 1948 war is so full of organized Zionist (Haganah and Palmach) aggressions against Arab residents leading up to partition (just look at the 1947 UN map for partition, and what Israel occupied in 1948) that your simplified explanation of what happened is absurd.
Being against Zionism (the desire to conquer and occupy all of “greater Israel” to the exclusion of those that lived there before 1917 and turn it into a specifically “Jewish State”) does not equate with being “anti-Jewish”, no matter how much partisans try to make that slander stick. Many Jews are against the acts of the Zionists as well.
Question for all who believe some past wars were fought to contain communism. If so, how to explain two communist nations are among our most important trading partners, and have been for years. And, they continue to be communist governed nations.
we coopted Communist China and Vietnam.
Or, perhaps, they coopted us.
Keeping the war in RVN going became untenable.
we gave the PRC what they wanted.
they wanted our troops and military hardware away from their border.
i’d estimate that
we wanted shipping lanes unmolested.
we wanted access to their market.
they kept their part of the bargain for some considerable time.
for example.
when communist Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978
we saw that as threatening expansionism on the part of Vietnam
China attacked Vietnam (on our behalf?)
and eventually Vietnam quit Cambodia
I think it was a bloody war.
China had skin in the bgame and they fulfilled their commitment to keep SE Asia stable.
Red China is not doctrinaire, they are managed much like Imperial Germany b4 WWI.
They have a free market as long as the ruling class permits it.
Maybe that is not a FREE market, but it is a facsimile.
Here in the USA maybe we ought to consider dialing back our oppressive regulation.
The oppressive regulation, as I’m sure you know, is produced by doctrinaire types within the US body politic. The environment will NEVER be clean enough or sufficiently protected. If they acknowledged THAT it was, untold throngs of “environmental stewards” in NGOs abdnon profits would have to find actual productive jobs.
Hmmm, yes, indeed. Concur.
Nevertheless, Trump is many things but a warmonger he is not. Scratch him from that list.
[…] (I’m doing something I don’t do. I’m reposting, in its entirety, a post by someone else. Cusswords and all. He said anyone could. The original is found here.) […]
A friend’s grandson came back from the Mideast tour about 8 years ago, plus spent a year at Walter Reed after he sustained shrapnel damage to his lower jaw. When he was released from the hospital, staff gave him a grocery bag full of pills. He thought, is this to allow me to commit suicide? He has chronic pain and survives on loads of thc. Another friend’s son came back with loss of hearing and has chronic headaches. Don’t get me started on remembering the damaged soldiers from Vietnam. When Trump started his first campaign for President he was all about no more wars and then it felt like the Military got to him and pragmatism took over. He needed military backing to get elected. Then, what good did that do as he was blindsided again. Thanks for remembering because we need oral history of the atrocity of war for everyone to know it is real.
Fred, Thank You
You claim that “The US military does not defend America. ” I agree, however, you claim “The last time it did this was in 1945, at the end of World War Two” Where was this?
I was led to believe the last time the American military defended its borders was from England in 1812.
Joe, you may recall Japan conducted an act of war at Pearl Harbor. That was within the borders of the USA. True, Hawaii was not a state then, but it was still USA territory, which was enough justification for the USA to enter WWII.
[…] By Fred Reed […]
Senor Reed is a communist….like most “journalists”. He hates America and like his
commie associates will do anything to weaken and harm America. Part of that is to
try and weaken our military so that when the time is right the communists can finish
destroying America. And he’s doing this from the safety of another country where he
likely won’t face any personal respect for his hatred or America.
I am not so sure you are right; I think instead he has sampled too much of the Mexican Brew.
“Senor Reed is a communist….”
No doubt you can cite evidence to back up that assertion? Such as Fred Reed calling for or supporting the abolition of private ownership of land or industry?
His support of Red China is evidence.
Nonsense. Our government is “weakening our military” all on its own, Thank You Very Much, and needs no help from anyone else. Sending people to fight, and die, For Nothing, will discourage volunteers, and now, thanls to the internet, people actually have an opportunity to see what is actually going on, and decide for themselves. I am a 26 year veteran, retired as a LTC, and I actively discouraged my children from even considering the military.
Breaking point for me; the disaster in Somalia; sending highly motivated, patriotic young rangers on a stupid, meaningless mission that was poorly planned and incompetently supported (General Garrison should have been shot for incompetence, despite all the neocons trying to blame this on the white house) and then, after 15 were killed, many many more horribly wounded including those blinded and amputees, deciding that “well, we gave it our best shot, let’s pull out now”.
Despising those in the Pentagon, State Department, Congress, Intelligence Agencies, the white house, and the national media who ALSO won’t “face any personal responsibility” for THEIR cowardice and incompetence doesn’t make one “anti American”. Just anti-parasite.
I served 20 years in the Air Force beginning in 1964. Best thing that ever happened to me. Didn’t go to Nam and all my assignments were good. I would step up today to fight for my country, not for the politicians, not for Ukraine, but for my country. But after many years and paying attention I think it is worse than Fred says. I honestly believe that there are some in our country and some in the rest of the world who wants to, needs to purge the strong intelligent free thinking middle class. The next war will be used to enlist as many of the best American men possible and send them off to the meat grinder somewhere else in the world. While at the same time bringing in the more compliant voters from Africa and god knows where to replace those men. Do not join up when the next “planned” 9/11 happens and they want to send you to some god forsaken shit hole country to die. And to the American women this is for you too, pay attention. They intend to purge your sons, your husbands, your boyfriends, your future boyfriends, all the basket of deplorables and you will be stuck with someone who thinks women should be beaten and have their face covered in black clothes. This will be a purge and a complete takeover of your country. So, young men, go to a trade school to learn a trade let the “newcomers” join the cannon fodder patrol. Refuse the draft, choose to only fight to protect your country. It’s gonna happen, don’t be suckered into the trap.
… and your idiot superiors give you illegal orders, no matter how mundane – you can screw it up.
If you implement it, that’s the problem, if you don’t, then it is. If you try to do it properly?
The court-martial is for sure, and you don’t stand a chance there.
You’ll be lucky to meet a commander you can look up to. An endangered, rare breed.
And if you manage to become a real good soldier who understands, loves and does what you need to do well – you will be fired for the first reason, or you will be forced to resign, because the mediocre and the incompetent will never forgive your talent and quality.
Your superiors and other crooks steal and cut corners wherever they can, saving on your equipment, salary, food, health and life. When in the end you realize that it is impossible to properly fulfill your service obligations, then you become a “soldier”.
If you break the rules, you’re bad. If not, then also.
Forget the army.
This world, this Western “civilization” does not deserve to sacrifice your life, your health, or even your time.
Live your life as you can, while you can, give as little as possible, accept what you get and enjoy it – while you can.
Fred, thank you. Every thing you say is true and good advice for young people.
[…] Guest Post by Fred Reed […]
Excellent article.
There’s a reason that patsy and patriot are so close to each in the dictionary.
[…] Keith Preston on April 17, 2024 • ( Leave a comment ) By Fred Reed March 29, 2024Military, Politics, […]
Any white guy that fights for America is majorly naive. Whites, (especially by a wide margin) have been scorned everywhere and in every institution in America. You want to sacrifice your life, limbs, for people who loathe you?? Come on man!