Guest Post by Patrick J. Buchanan
For the World War II generation there was clarity.
The attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec 7, 1941, united the nation as it had never been before — in the conviction that Japan must be smashed, no matter how long it took or how many lives it cost.
After the defeat of the Axis powers in 1945, however, Americans divided.
Only with the Berlin Blockade of 1948, the fall of China to Mao and Russia’s explosion of an atom bomb in 1949, and North Korea’s invasion of the South in 1950, did we unite around the proposition that, for our own security, we had to go back to Europe and Asia.
What was called the Cold War consensus — that only America could “contain” Stalin’s empire — led to NATO and new U.S. alliances from the Elbe to the East China Sea.
Vietnam, however, shattered that Cold War consensus.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
The far left of the Democratic Party that had taken us into Vietnam had repudiated the war by 1968, and switched sides to sympathize with such Third World communists as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh and the Sandinistas.
Center-right presidents — JFK, Nixon, Reagan — accepted the need to cooperate with dictators who would side with us in fighting Communism.
And we did. Park Chung-Hee in Korea. The Shah in Iran. President Diem in Saigon. Gen. Franco in Spain. Somoza in Nicaragua. Gen. Mobuto in the Congo. Gen. Pinochet in Chile. Ferdinand Marcos in Manila. The list goes on.
Under Reagan, the Soviet Empire finally fell apart and the USSR then disintegrated in one of the epochal events of history.
The American Century had ended in America’s triumph.
Yet, after 1989, no new national consensus emerged over what ought to be our role in the World. What should we stand for? What should we fight for?
What Dean Acheson had said of our cousins in 1962: “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role,” was true of us.
What was our role in the world, now that the Cold War was history?
Have something to say about this column?
Visit Pat’s FaceBook page and post your comments….
George H.W. Bush took us to war to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Soaring to 90 percent approval, he declared America’s new role was to construct a New World Order.
Those who opposed him, Bush acidly dismissed in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1991, the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor:
“We stand here today on the site of a tragedy spawned by isolationism. … And it is here we must learn — and this time avoid — the dangers of today’s isolationism and its … accomplice, protectionism.”
Neither Bush nor his New World Order survived the next November.
Then came payback for our sanctions that had brought death to thousands of Iraqis, and for the U.S. bases we had foolishly planted on the sacred soil of Saudi Arabia — Sept. 11, 2001.
George W. Bush reacted by launching the two longest wars in our history, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and announced that our new role was to “end tyranny in our world.”
The Bush II crusade for global democracy also fizzled out.
Barack Obama tried to extricate us from Afghanistan and Iraq. But he, too, failed, and got us into wars in Yemen and Syria, and then started his own war in Libya, producing yet another failed state.
What does the balance sheet of post-Cold War interventions look like?
Since 1991, we have lost our global preeminence, quadrupled our national debt, and gotten ourselves mired in five Mideast wars, with the neocons clamoring for a sixth, with Iran.
With the New World Order and global democracy having been abandoned as America’s great goals, what is the new goal of U.S. foreign policy? What is the strategy to achieve it? Does anyone know?
Globalists say we should stand for a “rules-based world order.” Not exactly “Remember the Alamo!” or “Remember Pearl Harbor!”
A quarter century after the Cold War, we remain committed to 60-year-old Cold War alliances to defend scores of nations on the other side of the world. Consider some of the places where America collides today with nuclear powers: the DMZ, the Senkakus, Scarborough Shoal, Crimea, the Donbass.
What is vital to us in any of these venues to justify sending an American army to fight, or risking a nuclear war?
We have lost control of our destiny. We have lost the freedom our Founding Fathers implored us to maintain — the freedom to stay out of wars of foreign counties on faraway continents.
Like the British and French empires, the American imperium is not sustainable. We have issued so many war guarantees it is almost assured that we will be dragged into every future great crisis and conflict on the planet.
If we do not review and discard some of these war guarantees, we shall never know peace. Donald Trump once seemed to understand this. Does he still?
No. I’m convinced, as, it seems, just about everyone else on TBP, that there is a small secret group who will not stand down until either the entire world is an ash heap or the world is together as one. One what, is what I’m afraid of.
And after the next ash heap, they get to rebuild and finance it. It will never fully end. Rinse and repeat.
…I dont know how many people can live out the half life of an irradiated ash heap.
Why does Buchanan always end his columns with a question? It’s as if he is trying to goad his reader into reaching the same conclusion as he has without saying it. I don’t think this is an effective technique. How many Buchananites are out there?
Poor ole Pat. The poor man doesn’t know that we put all those guys in power except Franco and those center right presidents were all part of it.
There are those unfortunates who just absolutely cannot allow themselves to see what is and has happened because then what. Their entire belief system will come crashing down and it’s too much for them to contemplate. If you do make them see they will hate you.
Flea, Pat obviously watches waaaay too much TV. Worse, he believes what he sees on the History channel. He hits upon, and swallows whole, every false meme presented on the History channel from WWII to the present day.
What showed me what he’s about is that he’s a descendant of Confederates and he’s also a loyal republican. The old people I knew growing up had a word for Southerners who joined the GOP: scalwags.
ED.
Right you are. He would become a Protestant before he would leave the scaliwag party.
You don’t need to be a “Buchananite” (whatever that is) to agree with this position.
The USA has damn sure lost it’s way.
Just the fact that I refer to what was once “these united States” as “The United States” indicates how far we have fallen. Everyone should be familiar with George Washington’s farewell address, although we have strayed far from his admonishments to be “… indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our Country from the rest…” to “…avoid the necessity of those overgrown Military establishments…” and that “…There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favors from Nation to Nation”.
It’s worth reading in full, as is Eisenhower’s Farewell Speech where he cautions how “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”.
So much for taking the wise council of our elders.
“With the New World Order and global democracy having been abandoned as America’s great goals, what is the new goal of U.S. foreign policy? What is the strategy to achieve it? Does anyone know?”
“Neither Bush nor his New World Order survived the next November.”
Clearly, Pat doesn’t get ((it))
The goal of US foreign policy is to MAKE ISRAEL GREAT AGAIN!
((Who)) runs USA?
((anon)), your theme is tiresome and it reveals nothing. Really. If green men from Mars controlled all the machinery and pulled all the levers of world governments, what of it? Have you not read in the bible:
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”
This is the meaning of the final scene in Scarface, Tony Montana (the man) has a globe that says ‘the world is yours’ in his atrium. Yet he still gets fucked up, shot multiple times in the chest and one big fucker in the back. He falls face down in the cleansing water.
“The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the LORD”
“As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.”
Little green men?
Is that like a big white guy who lives in the sky and is invisible?
Murray, are you Mormon?
No, I’m not.
I’m also not the one talking about the big invisible white guy in the sky who takes confession.
Little green aliens actually make more sense.
They don’t make more sense but you are more willing to accept that idea. The earth is unique, exceptional even.
The bible says there is no other planet with life on it. Rush Limbo had that story about Mars, that’s hooey. We can’t even make it alive past the Van Allen belts, it’s unlikely our supposed ancestors made it to earth that way.
Zara has another version and so do a few other folks here. I’m only saying that your idea is implausible because of the radiation belts.
Ah, the Bible.
Is this the version known as the Torah, the version approved at the First Ecumenical Council, held at Nicea in 325, the version from the Second Ecumenical Council, held at Constantinople in 381, the Second Council of Nicaea in 787?
Here pick one, so I’ll know which holy inviolable bit of verse it is:
Aldhelm
Bede
Psalters (12 in total), including the Vespasian Psalter and Eadwine Psalter
King Alfred
Aldred the Scribe
Farman
Ælfric
Wessex Gospels
Caedmon manuscript
The Ormulum
King James Version
New International Version
Revised Standard Version
The Living Bible
New Living Translation
World English Bible
New King James Version
New International Readers Editions
American Standard Version
New American Standard Version
Young’s Literal Translation
Plain English Bible
New English Bible
Amplified Bible
Basic English Bible
Translator’s NT
20th Century Bible
Modern King James Version
The Message
New Jerusalem Bible
Hebrew Names Version of World English Bible
Contemporary English Version
English Version for the Death
Good News Version
New Century Version
New Revised Standard Version
J. B. Phillips New Testament, modern English
I’m aware they had several councils, lots of arguments, factions, heretics, etc. Much of the arguments were about the divinity of Christ, whether he was god and man or god alone. You attempt to make me doubt myself and the bible, I don’t put my faith on men or their sophistry. Too bad Stucky isn’t here to set your ass straight. You are only the latest unbeliever to come down the pike armed with the faith of your logic against the foolishness of religion.
If you want to argue religion, we had L4S here a couple of days ago, he likes to argue such things. I simply tell you what I think, what I know. Several here have much to testify on the Angels and Demons article, check it out. They will certainly love to hear your point of view.
“For the World War II generation there was clarity… With the New World Order and global democracy having been abandoned as America’s great goals, what is the new goal of U.S. foreign policy?”
There was “clarity” because America was still a homogenous culture with shared values, which trusted manufactured leaders like Roosevelt and believed the lies of the corporate media. Then as now, “U.S. foreign policy” was controlled by the Rockefeller/CFR. After WW2, they created the United Nations organization, and they have never abandoned their goal of a “New World Order”. Pat failed to mention that George H.W. Bush is a former CFR director.
Today the illusion is a little harder to maintain, and more people can see the men behind the curtain who pull the strings. As Zbigniew Brzezinski of the CFR said: “In earlier times, it was easier to control a million people than to kill a million people. Today, it is infinitely easier to kill a million people than to control a million people.”
We’re not going to stop in Iraq or Afghanistan, we’re going to go into Syria and Iran and Pakistan and Ukraine and we’re going to take back Russia! YeeeHaww!
EC- That’s not even funny….true but not funny. Israhell demands it.
The point is that, like Dean, we shall self-destruct despite our current enthusiasm for war. One EMP can fuck up our technology. Then it’s hand to hand combat against fighters who are really hungry.
Did you see that Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. got his ass beat for 12 rounds without a reply?
This is after he hired a top trainer. Canelo was hungry; Jr. is nothing but a spoiled brat.