What If Wars, What If History (1)
A friend (whom most readers are familiar with) sent me an interesting substack by David T. Pyne, entitled:
Modern Wars the U.S. Should Never Have Fought or Should Have Fought Differently
U.S. Involvement in major 20th and 21st century wars resulted in millions of unnecessary deaths while creating new enemies making the U.S. much less secure.
It’s an obviously timely topic—long overdue for discussion by most Americans. It’s an exercise in What If. Pointless? Not really—not if we can learn from the past and apply it to the future. My intention is to paste in short, digestible, sections over the coming days to let everyone have their say—or not, if this type of exercise doesn’t interest you. And I’ll say this up front—some of what the author says is debatable. I’m not presenting this as gospel truth. Readers may disagree with Pyne’s assessment of persons and events. Another important consideration—the author doesn’t get into the matter of proxy wars, aid to warring states, and regime change. This regime change business—including unsuccessful attempts—has, if anything, accelerated: Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Pakistan .. Russia, China? Readers may wish to raise those issues, too, at various points.
Before we get to the first selection—and it all starts with the Spanish-American War—I’ll insert a brief Twitter update on certain aspects of The Real War as it’s being played out in connection with the Russia - Ukraine conflict.
Here’s something to consider when you see those videos of military hardware supposedly being provided to Ukraine through Poland—how long is the supply chain, undertaken with Russian control of the air?
And then there’s the whole issue of actually getting the stuff to the Ukraine border. This comes via Politico, so, not pro-Russian propaganda:
A bit of humor:
From the monetary front—this train of dedollarization looks like it’s left the station and ain’t coming back:
And finally some provocative questions asked by the late Stephen Cohen. We don’t know what Trump may have said, but we can be sure that the Interagency quashed any nonsense about negotiations. Was it something about peace through negotiating that Trump may have said that got him impeached over Ukraine? Inquiring minds, and all that.
And with that, on to What If Wars, starting with the ones we “never should have fought.” Three should be plenty to start with.
My view is that the Spanish - American War was clearly an imperial venture, intended to cash in on the colonial craze that was current among European nations of the time. Possibly also to stake out our sphere of influence—the Western half of it. OTOH, how about the Philippines? No, not necessary, but … did any good come of it?
Wars the U.S. Should Never Have Fought
Spanish-American War (1898)—Many historians have concluded that it is quite unlikely that Spain was responsible for sinking the battleship USS Maine, which served as the catalyst for the U.S. declaration of war against Spain. U.S. involvement in this war transformed it into a colonial empire as it took control of the Philippines and fought a three-year long war with Filipino nationalists that cost the lives of 220,000 Filipinos. It also resulted in U.S. military forces being stationed in the Western Pacific outside the Western Hemisphere for the first time in U.S. history making an unnecessary conflict with Japan much more likely.
World War One (1917-1918)—U.S. military involvement in this war essentially prevented Britain and France from being bankrupted and exhausted militarily by the conflict and being forced to negotiate a compromise peace agreement that would have prevented Nazi Germany, Communist China and perhaps even the Soviet Union from ever existing, saving up to 120 million lives in the process as explained in this article. With the U.S. tipping the scales heavily against the Central Powers, the result was that Imperial Germany was forced to accept a peace that was imposed upon them upon threat of an immediate French-led invasion and occupation of all of Germany even though it had expressly surrendered upon President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Had the Germans realized the unjust terms that the Allies planned to impose upon them, they likely would have fought considerably longer.
Vietnam War (1965-1973)—The U.S. war in Vietnam had an undeniably just cause which was to defend the Republic of South Vietnam from murderous Communist takeover. However, Vietnam was never a U.S. vital national interest and the loss of 58,000 soldiers killed in action was not justifiable and did nothing to further U.S. national security particularly in view of the fact that the Communist North Vietnam ended up annexing South Vietnam anyway and the Communists took control of Laos and Cambodia anyway. The war in Vietnam proved the worst strategic mistake by U.S. leaders since Truman cut off all military assistance to the Nationalists in 1946 at a time when they were on the verge of winning the Chinese Civil War leading mainland China to fall to the Communists instead.
Regarding Vietnam, I ended up doing a bit of searching re George Marshall and China. I came up with this, which is different than the author’s view, with it’s link to a book by Joseph McCarthy. Marshall Mission. I’m open to the truth wherever it comes from—Wikipedia or McCarthy, doesn’t matter to me. But this is an area I’ve not given any thought to in the past.
What? No reexamination of WW2? Hitler was evil. So was Stalin, perhaps more so if we calculate just sheer body counts. Japan in 1940? We had to bait them a la neocon style w Putin to attack Pearl Harbor and then pretend it was a surprise so Roosevelt could hypnotize Americans into a war fever from which they were clearly resistant hitherto. It's awfully strange that Americans are always being brainwashed into wars to liberate and protect some people thousands of miles away but get skewered here at home by the brainwashers. Isolationism looks better and better. If not for the mass mobilization and shredding of the Constitution by Roosevelt in WW2, we wouldn't have a deep state, DC swamp, or surveillance state.
So starting with the War with Spain, I see statements here about American Imperialism yet nothing at all about Pacific Trade. In those days Coal was the fuel of transport and places to get it, securely, were needed and war on supply lines in the third world was not much different than today but took much much longer to respond to so little islands of influence popped up all over for about everyone. Germany and the US got to the Colonialism Table very late but the US was mostly looking for trade not colonies but Germany was and most all the good ones were taken. In this part of the arena the US was a small new player and got Coaling Stations like Chichi Jima and a hand full of protectorates. Germany was sucking up whatever colonies they could. Cuba was given it's independence in 1902 but with stipulations, the date had been set for the return of Sovereignty in the Philippians but Tokyo interfered in 1941. Many things were taking place and THAT and ALL needs to come into the discussions if this is to be an Objective Look at, not repeat of Soviet anti- Vietnam War talking points, Christ they funded Ho and pushed him to invade then funded the Stockholm Peace Conference and the anti-war movement in the USA, hardly a source for anything. Joe McCarthy had a very legitimate concern, Communists working in the Federal government, if someone has something documented that says otherwise please provide the documentation. He had nothing to do with Hollywood. At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor there were 300 Soviet Agents working for the Federal Government, source: Venona Transcripts. In my Truth Quests I've found common knowledge is not accurate. This could be a very wonderful talk and discussion that could help immensely. 2 Coups not brought up so far, the Shah of Iran and the installation of Diem in South Vietnam. In Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was known to be aligned with the Soviets as well as Britten had their Oil desires and needs. Most of the discussion is based on how horrid the US was to be involved here, most forget that Trueman really thought we could do business with old Uncle Joe, not so at all, the biggest thing forgotten in all this is plain and simple the Communists. But few look at what we were countering.