I agree 500% with what he said. It is appeasement.
Appeasement is making concessions to an aggressor or potential aggressor in order to preserve peace. (Oxford Shorter Dictionary, 2002) How is talking to an enemy, a government that openly advocates the destruction of the United States appeasement?
The issue here is the Law of the Excluded Middle. The Law of Excluded Middle is this: When you have identified an A then everthing other than A is non-A. On the basis of that you can draw conclusions and achieve or cause an A. If, on the other hand, you see the world as A and B with a host of shades of grey in between then you are unable to draw conclusions and know what to do in order to achieve a particular result or condition of life.
If you want to achieve a condition of life, lets say a condition of PEACE, you have to grasp that there is PEACE, the existence of the condition, and non-PEACE, the non-existence of the condition. Therefore if you want the condition PEACE, any diminution of PEACE is non-PEACE although it may be small skirmishes and not all out war.
(For the purpose of clarification of this point, let's say that we want some middle grey point between A and B. If we can get clear what that point is and of what it consists, then everything that is off that point is not that whether it be darker or lighter.)
So, the first point to achieving PEACE is get evidence that the enemy is willing to achieve peace. This is not merely a statement that they are willing to achieve peace. This is a demonstration with results that they are willing to achieve peace. If they are attacking us or our allies, then there is no reason for us to assume that they want to achieve peace. Sitting down with them grants them all of their premises and we give up ours. In other words, they are attacking us or our allies and then we go to them and negotiate a peace. Except from that position, there is no reason to negotiate. There is plenty of incentive for them to extort from us however. Witness North Korea.
(A bully such as Iran or North Korea bully their people to the point that they don't produce very much. The country needs money so it becomes bellicose and then extorts money from those around them, saying they will not attack them. It is that extorted money that keeps their game going.
The United States clearly would be appeasing Hamas or Iran if it were to sit down and talk. Iran right now is attacking the United States across the Iraq/Iran border. Hamas has attacked Israel after they withdrew from Gaza in order to give them what they wanted. Needless to say these countries are totally "FULL OF IT!"
Now is it possible to see how much a traitor Obama is setting himself up to be by suggesting this? He will be Bush who has done this with North Korea. Wouldn't he be horrified to learn that he had morphed in Bush!! Ohmygod!
Terrorists and sponsors of terrorism believe that force is the effective means of getting what they want. The use it first on their people and then on their neighboring countries. There will never be peace so long as they believe this.
The traditional means, and insofar as I can see the only means, of putting an end to a country's belief in the use of force in order to get what it wants is to show them that the means they have selected will destroy them. Thus overwhelming force followed by the separation of the state from religion, or a doctrine functioning as a religion (Marxism is the primary one), is the basis on which to set up a peaceful country. This worked in Japan and Germany. The places where we have not done this have remained a problem. We allowed Russia to collapse on its own and we didn't set it up to be a success. Consequently, it has been looking for its reason to exist ever since. Cuba was a problem until Russia collapsed and it no longer was rich enough to do anything. Chavez is now trying to buy friends around him so that he can amass an axis that is strong enough to force people, including the USA, under his heel.
If you look at the diagram above, you see that it doesn't help the cause of peace to get on the non-A side of the graph. Once you do, which means the distinction is lost, you cross into an anti-life, anti-human situation and begin the process of slowly descending down the slope.
A country that violates the rights of its citizens and does not protect rights and voluntary actions is actually an outlaw country. It is not a legitimate government as it enslaves its people. Any country that overthrows such a government actually acts on behalf of the people of that country. All people possess inalienable individual rights. There are many letter of thanks from the Japanese to the US for dropping the atom bomb. The United States restored the inalienable rights of the Japanese people once it caused the unconditional surrender of its rogue, criminal government.
Peace follows an action which destroys the validity of a government using force on its people and other countries so long as the aftermath's purpose is to set up the institutions which protect the individual rights of the people. This is the road to peace. Believe it or not, it will never come from selling flowers in airports.
7 comments:
"There are many letter[s] of thanks from the Japanese to the US for dropping the atom bomb."
Really? Can you point us to just one? I'm not sure how you define "many", but for a population of 100 million people you'd have to have a shitload of "thank-you-for-bombing-us" letters before you'd get to "many". In short, I think this claim is counter-factual. There many be Japanese who, in the long run, are thankful that America overthrew the fascist Japanese government, but I seriously doubt that are any (sane) Japanese who are thankful that we vaporized 200,000+ civilians.
I heard this statement from Dr. John Lewis at his Georgia Tech lecture entitled: "No Substitute for Victory." Currently I don't have a source for that, and I have written him via The Objective Standard, a quarterly where he has published articles. When I hear from him, I will publish the source. If I find a source on my own in the mean time, I will publish that when I find it. Thanks for your question.
John, what is the purpose of the word counter-factual? Why not say false or wrong or baloney. Using a word like that has me wonder if you could even consider an idea such as the use of overwhelming force in order to demonstrate to the initiator that force is not the means of getting what you want in a civilized world?
I heard from Dr. John Lewis this morning. Here is his response:
Dear Steve;
Thanks for writing. Did I say that they actually thanked us specifically for the
bombing (literally, "Thank you for bombing us")? That would be an overstatement. I was trying to stress the point that the present peace was caused by the victory, and that the Japanese were largely grateful for the result. They did
send tens of thousands of gifts, letters and cards in thanks for American help in rebuilding their lives. A good place to find these is in John Dower, "Embracing Defeat," esp. pp. 229-233. See also posters in praise of MacArthur, pp.76, 228. See a cartoon, with description, in which American planes drop a gift from heaven, "Democratic Revolution" pp.67-68 (as well as the ones I reproduced in the article). They definitely thanked us for bringing a democratic (here, this means "self-government") revolution to them.
(Admiration for MacArthur was so strong that newspapers wrote editorials
claiming that it threatened the Japanese capacity to create a decent government, pp.405-6. Three years after the occupation began, MacArthur still received "fan mail," p. 525, and praises continued up to his departure, pp. 549-551, including crowds of hundreds of thousands when he left.)
There is specific recognition of the beneficial effects of the bomb in the passages I quoted. I've attached for you two pdf's, which are Sadao Asada's
important article, which sees the bombs as producing a shock that led to surrender. At the very end (of part 2), you'll see two quotes that call the bombs "gifts from heaven."
If the Japanese did not actually thank us for bombing them, they did blame themselves for it, and committed to corrrecting the errors that had caused it. They did not react to the defeat by blaming the Americans and pledging themselves to vengeance. They rather set out to rebuild their nation with gratitude to the Americans for their benevolence. It is this undeniable cultural reaction, which has lasted into today, that shows the real effects of the defeat.
I hope this helps--and that I did not overstate the case. Thanks again for questioning this--and for coming out to GA Tech. I like your blog, e.g., "What will I produce today?"
Cheers;
John Lewis
Steve, that is one of the strongest arguments about the nature of force that I've read. The question I have is where does appeasement start? Is it appeasement to talk to a terrorist or terrorist enabler or does the appeasement start when you ask him for his opinion? I think that it starts when you agree to set him on a platform next to you and give him the status of equality with the President of the U.S. Any President who would do this does not understand the nature of our nation as one of laws and rights. He does not understand that a petty dictator who rules by brute force does not have the status of a President of the U.S. who governs through persuasion. He does not understand what it takes to create a society based on freedom...not only is talking to a terrorist a disrespect for the lives that this killer is responsible for but also a disrespect for the decades and centuries that it took to create a country like ours. It says, in effect, that it does not matter to our President that intellectuals argued for years about how to constitute our government, that they studied the annals of philosophy and created a nation where the government was controlled and not the citizens. It disrespects all of the men who fought and died in order to be free...the only thing that matters to the President who would talk to a terrorist is that he can do whatever he wants. This is the mindset of a President who thinks he is a ruler of men instead of a steward of freedom.
It is also the mindset of a man who would probably never volunteer to fight in even a "just" war, who would spend his youth protesting the war, a man for whom there is no just war, a man who would never lay his life on the line for the sake of his own freedom. It is the mindset of a radical and a pacifist who hates the U.S.
Of course, pacifism is consistent with Obama who wants to sweep the past aside and "change" our society. Unfortunately on this issue, what he calls change is good old fashioned appeasement. You have to wonder what else he will sweep aside as part of the past. The Constitution?
Here is a link to the beginning of an article by Dr. John Lewis in The Objective Standard, a quarterly published by Craig Biddle. I have the whole article here at my house if someone locally would like to read it.
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/american-victory-over-japan-1945.asp
Our President talking to our enemies with no precondition is not a good idea.
This from the New York Times, May 22, 2008:
Senior American statesmen like George Kennan advised Kennedy not to rush into a high-level meeting, arguing that Khrushchev had engaged in anti-American
propaganda and that the issues at hand could as well be addressed by lower-level diplomats. Kennedy’s own secretary of state, Dean Rusk, had argued much the same in a Foreign Affairs article the previous year: “Is it wise to gamble so heavily? Are not these two men who should be kept apart until others have found a sure meeting ground of accommodation between them?”
But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. . Kennedy’s aides convinced the press at the time that behind closed doors the president was performing well, but American diplomats in attendance, including the ambassador to the Soviet Union, later said they were shocked that Kennedy had taken so much abuse. Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a disaster.” Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.” The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world. . .
A little more than two months later, Khrushchev gave the go-ahead to begin erecting what would become the Berlin Wall. Kennedy had resigned himself to it, telling his aides in private that “a wall is a hell of a lot better than a war.” The following spring, Khrushchev made plans to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants”: nuclear missiles in Cuba. And while there were many factors that led to
the missile crisis, it is no exaggeration to say that the impression Khrushchev
formed at Vienna — of Kennedy as ineffective — was among them.
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