Ending the War on Warriors
Paul Craig Roberts
If you missed the Secretary of War’s speech, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbKeNVV0PX4 [1]
Long overdue.
Secretary of War Hegseth’s speech is the best speech I have ever heard and probably the most important. The same expulsion of woke excrement needs to occur in the media, the police, the medical profession, corporate executive ranks, the universities, high schools, and elementary schools. Otherwise America cannot be made great again.
The Democrats’ DEI policy was designed to destroy the military. Had Hegseth waited any longer, there would have been no institutional base left for a real military.
My concern is whether the assumption or pretense that we have enemies, such as China and Russia, that need “containing” is cover for the neoconservative policy of American Hegemony in the service of Israel. Are we building a capable war-fighting military for our defense or for our hegemony?
In other words, what Secretary of War Hegseth says is true, but is it being done for the right reason?
Neither Russia nor China expresses hostility toward us. Russia has asked to join NATO. Russia has been ignoring our provocations and seeking a mutual security agreement, not war. China just wants to do business. Neither “adversary” is preaching or planning war against us.
Nuclear weapons are an extreme danger to all life, no matter how prepared the military is. A war ready military needs to be accompanied with a war averse foreign policy.
Neither is Iran an adversary. Iran is concerned with being painted as an adversary and in that way being set up for an American attack in the service of Greater Israel. I would have found it reassuring if Hegseth had said something about the US reasserting control over its foreign and war policies.
Too much military strength and too much confidence in it can result in an aggressive foreign policy that leads to war, not to peace.
Hegseth quoted the Romans, a formidable military power. It would have been appropriate for him also to quote President Theodore Roosevelt: “speak softly and carry a big stick.” We need the soft speech as much as we need the big stick.
Western governments are full of insane people. Former British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace is one of them. Yesterday he said that we have “to make Crimea unviable. We need to choke the life out of Crimea. If it is not habitable or not possible for it to function… I think, if we do that, Putin will suddenly realize he’s got something to lose.” Does Wallace think that Putin’s response will be to surrender?
Wallace is a good example that a competent military in the hands of fools can be a death warrant.