MUSIC VIDEO: "Always look on the bright side of life"

Ed. tells me I need to get out of my funk. At least I think "funk" was the word he used... something like that... so I've been searching the Net for something cheerful and came up with this delightful music video. 

This should appeal to President Trump, since I hear he has called a halt to war games with South Korea, in order to show good will to North Korea, whose Dear Leader is (DJT sez) his great and good fiend friend. So let's watch this with great feelings of everlasting comradeship and happy happy joy joy.

 

Wally award for Best Real Name

Agent 3 has forwarded us the link to "Kim Jong-Un rips up plan to reunify Korea, raising fears of all-out war", which appeared in the MSN feed of The Daily Telegraph earlier today.

We are posting the link so you skeptics out there can check out the following quote, should you think Walt made up the name which gets the coveted Wally Award for Best Real Name of the Year 2024.

 Experts such as Chun In-bum, a retired general who once commanded South Korea’s special forces, believe Kim could engage in more limited military aggression now that he has taken the “significant” step to reject the historic common bond between North and South.

Even though we haven't reached the end of January, that looks like a sure winner to me. Congratulations to Agent 3 for having spotted it. Your cheque is in the mail.

Korea - Must we go there again?

There's been a good deal of sabre-rattling in Pyongyang, North Korea, lately. Weapons-displaying too. Like a youngster who has just reached puberty and is unsure about his manhood [Does size matter? See post below. Ed.], the Dear Leader of the world's last Stalinist dictatorship [What about China? Ed.] has paraded his totally tubular ballistic missiles to show the world what he can do to us if he gets mad [as understood in British English. Ed.] enough to use them. If he's not firing blanks, that is.

Should we be worried? Or should we just ignore the kid's strutting and shouting? Dismissing as idle the threat of a Communist invasion of the Republic of Korea (aka South Korea) was what the USA, on the advice of General Douglas MacArthur, did in 1950. Look how that turned out. "Gee, Walt," (I hear you ask), "How did that turn out?" For the answer, read The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, by David Halberstam (Hyperion 2007). Here's an excerpt.

By early 1950 [Kim Il-sung, grandfather of Kim Jong-un] had systematically taken control of all the levers of power. The great problem in his mind was that he ruled only half a country. Above all else, he longed to unleash his increasingly powerful, Soviet-trained, Soviet-equipped, well-disciplined army to invade, and to his mind liberate, the South, where hundreds of thousands awaited his strike. He would turn two Koreas into just one.

Although the West was, through its own ignorance, taken by surprise by the North Korean invasion of the South, Kim I didn't get `er done. But millions of people -- Koreans, Americans, Canadians, Anzacs, Chinese, etc -- "died for a tie", as Mr Halberstam puts it. Unfortunately for us, the vision of a united Communist Korea persists in the alleged mind of Kim III.

Should we sit back and wait, as we did in 1950, to see if he'll actually make good his bunny-brained threats? I say not. I say we should take action, in the form of a preemptive strike, or at least a demonstration of the kind of power that the USA -- aided by Japan, perhaps -- can unleash should such be required. That means more than sending an "armada" off in the wrong direction!

Let's leave war-mongering for the moment and turn to a little-known story from that time -- part of Walt's effort to make you more knowledgeable for reading WWW! This is about the little-known brother of Kim Il-sung's counterpart, Syngman Rhee, President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). Mr Rhee is described in The Coldest Winter as "the most irascible, contentious, and independent of totally dependent clients." But, like many other Asian dictators ["presidents", surely! Ed.] he was indeed the client of the USA. The Truman and Eisenhower governments did all they could to prop him up and keep him happy.

One of the things the US government did was to find a job for Syngman Rhee's younger brother, who aspired to be a journalist. Thanks to the close relationship with the Luces, a position with Life magazine was found for the younger Rhee. When war broke out, the editors of Life sent their only Korean staffer to the battle zone to cover the hostilities "from the local perspective". Unfortunately, Mr Rhee got separated from the unit with which he was embedded, becoming MIA.

Fearing a diplomatic disaster, the US Army mounted a search-and-rescue operation, along the lines of Saving Private Ryan, and finally located the missing Korean VIP in a hotel (???) in Inchon. When the sergeant leading the search party burst into the room where his quarry was found, he burst into song... "Ah, sweet Mr Rhee of Life, at last I've found you!"

Why America must (not?) save the world from ISIS

Not long after posting "US invasion of Syria begins; Walt predicts the outcome", I found on a shelf of my lower level library a dog-eared copy of The B.S. Factor: The Theory and Technique of Faking It in America, by Arthur Herzog (Simon & Schuster, 1973). In the chapter headed "Historical Analogies", the author warns us to beware of dubious lessons supposedly learned from history which lead us -- our political and military leaders -- to make bad decisions for the present and future.

Historical analogies, Mr. Herzog writes, can be reduced to what Aristotle called "the fallacy of accident", which arises when you take an accidental property for an essential one. He gives the example of Vietnam, which General Matthew B. Ridgway thought was a second Korea. "And so did General Mark W. Clark, who learned from Korea, 'The sure way to maintain the peace is to be strong militarily and unafraid politically, and to let the enemy know that we will use that strength to maintain the security of the United States.'

"Eugene V. Rostow, of the Yale Law School, remembered the Soviet-Finnish conflict before World War II, and claimed that if the United States did not maintain its position of dominance in Southeast Asia it would be reduced to the status of Finland -- subject to Russian will.

"Secretary of State Dean Rusk continually compared Vietnam to Munich. An American withdrawal, he said, would lead to further aggression like Hitler's. Lyndon Johnson himself compared North Vietnam's actions to those of the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and believed that the American Actions in Vietnam would be justified on the same grounds as our involvement in World War II."

Mr. Herzog was writing in 1973, before the Paranoid States of America lost the first war in its history. That's if you ignore the War of 1812 and the Korean War, both of which can be said with charity to have been fought to a draw. No such thing can be said about Vietnam. It was a stinging defeat for the USA, the soi-disant greatest military power in the world, inflicted by a smaller gang of ill-equipped but super-motivated Asian peasants.

Did the leaders of America learn anything from the egregious error that was Vietnam? Apparently not. Every president from Bush the Elder right down to POTUS has fallen into the same logical trap, drawing the wrong conclusion -- that the USA is responsible for the security and freedom of the whole world -- from the lessons of history. And so America is doomed to learn the same lessons once again.

Will America never learn? The persistence of bad foreign policy

Almost 237 years ago the United States of America started life through an armed rebellion against established authority -- the British monarchy -- which established a revolutionary new model of government "of the people, by the people and for the people". That remains a great and noble goal, and the fact that it has yet to be fully realized hasn't stopped US governments from trying to impose their model on the rest of the world.

Over the course of the last two centuries, successive administrations have adopted a policy of forcing other countries to adopt the US model, sometimes by persuasion and sometimes by conquest. Walt has a little list.

In 1812 the US Congress thought Canadians could hardly wait to join the new republic. Taking Canada from the British would be "merely a matter of marching", said Jefferson. Two years later, with the White House burned and the country nearly broke, Congress changed its mind.

The Mexican Invasion of the mid-19th century succeeded in annexing to the USA a large chunk of the southwest. For some reason, people from further south keep coming into "New Mexico" and neighbouring states, wanting to keep their language, customs and religion. Some folks, especially in Arizona, think it might be better to give the territory back to the Mexicans.

Then came the War Between the States, in which some states had the temerity to assert the right to leave the Union, a right which they thought had been guaranteed by the Constitution. They learned that once you're in the Hotel America, "you can check out, but you can never leave".

Having got that nasty business out of the way, and realizing that the Hispanics were a soft target, the USA embarked in 1898 on a truly imperial war against Spain. The net gain was a handful of tropical paradises (?) --- Puerto Rico, Guam and Philippines -- but hey, America was now a colonial power, just like Britain! The economic and other benefits were, errr, dubious.

What about the World Wars, I hear you ask. [Yes, what about the World Wars? Ed.] Is Walt saying the USA should have stayed out of the War to End All Wars...and the second War to End All Wars? Didn't America save the world for democracy? Well... No matter how many John Wayne movies you watched, America didn't bail out the Allies singlehandedly. And if the USA had come into the wars at the beginning rather than during the second act, the other colonial powers might have been accomplished faster and at considerably less economic and human cost.

But, you might argue, that's precisely why the USA was so quick to jump into Korea. Sorry, wrong again. Omar Bradley called the Korean War "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong enemy". One lesson that might have been learned (but wasn't) is that if you're going to fight, use both hands!

Douglas MacArthur wanted to cross the Yalu and invade Communist China, possibly dropping the Big One for a quick and decisive victory. But "wiser men" in the Truman administration wouldn't let him, for fear of provoking a war with the Soviet Union, for which China was merely a proxy.

Apparently they didn't consider the possibility that the USSR wasn't as strong as it appeared, and might well have been defeated, sparing the world the 40 years of cold war that followed the Korean truce. Even the willingness to call it a draw may now be regarded as a mistake, for the war, which technically never ended, threatens to go ballistic -- literally -- at any moment.

Which brings us to Vietnam, which Pentagon types will tell you is the first war the US ever lost. (This ignores the War of 1812, but Washington's memory is short.) In The Rise of the Chinese Republic (McGraw-Hill, 1989) American historian Edwin P. Hoyt says:

The Americans did not learn fast. It took them still another war in Asia [Vietnam] to learn that what American leaders had said many years ago was true. No statesman with a lick of sense will let the country get involved in a land war in Asia.

There was another lesson that the Americans May not even yet have learned: Anyone who interferes in an indigenous revolution anywhere is a fool, and such interference is bound to fail. In China and in Vietnam the Americans tried to interfere. These actions cost them billions of dollars and far too many lives, and ultimately the revolutions succeeded in the face of American interference.

Mr. Hoyt wrote that in 1989. Since then we've had the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and (sort of) Libya. These theatres of war are all in Asia, although not the part Hoyt was thinking of. And they're all part of the Muslim world. Walt predicts that 100 years from now historians will lump them all together as "the Middle Eastern War" or "the Great War Against Islam". ("Crusades" has already been used.)

And still the USA cannot or will not learn. Now the Prez -- no Muslim he? -- is making noises (again) about taking action (nature unspecified) in Syria to overthrow a tyrannical dictator, make it safe for democracy, yada yada yada. Haven't we seen this movie before? (Canadians need not feel all smug and superior. "Call me Steve" Harper and his bumboy Baird are very vocal in their willingness to hold America's coat...at least until Uncle Sam's nose bleeds.)

Edwin Hoyt again:
The United States has run out of gas politically and philosophically. Any nation that converts from a dynamic economy to a service economy...finds that it loses that precious quality of initiative. The American government is still posturing itself in the world as the defender of the status quo. It is hard to consider a less dynamic and less appealing posture for a nation that once boasted of its revolutionary spirit.

The Kim is dead! Long live the Kim?

So, farewell then, Kim Jong-il. In an early gift to political pundits around the world, North Korea's barking mad Dear Leader went to the Socialist Workers Paradise yesterday. The new emperor [Ed., please check] will be the teenaged [Ed., please check] Kim Jong-un. Mr. Kim is shown here reacting to news of his father's demise.

The "Great Successor" -- Kim's new title -- is apparently delighted that it's now his turn to play with the trains and wooden soldiers. However, North Koreans, and the country’s neighbours, are apprehensive.

Once all the forced and melodramatic mourning for Kim Jong-il is over, the challenge that will come fast for the younger Mr. Kim. How will he explain the next big failure to a people desperate to see their lives improve? In a country where propaganda is truth, the regime Kim Jong-un now leads needs either some proof that the country is indeed strong and prosperous, or someone to blame for falling so far short.

It’s easier to fire blame [rockets, surely. Ed.] towards South Korea, Japan and the United States than to reform the broken system your father and grandfather built. And provoking a military crisis might help Kim Jong-un convince his father’s generals that he is the right person to lead them.

Or maybe not. Walt offers 3-2 that there will be a violent upheaval in North Korea -- call it a Korean spring roll -- by Christmas 2012. Place your bets at the usual place -- the barbershop around the corner and up your block. Lifetime pct .980.

Why we keep losing wars

President Al O'Bama (seen here in a 1980 photo) has announced that he's going to "draw down" 10,000 US troops from Afghanistan. What, Walt wonders, does "draw down" mean? Years ago, when you were approved for a loan, you could draw it down. But we're talking about a war, not a financial deal.

I believe the Prez means he's going to bring the troops home. Or we could say he's going to "withdraw" them. Or we could say he's going to take them out of the war. Or we could say "retreat".

The fact is that the Excited States of America hasn't won a war -- with or without the help of other countries -- since 1945. Korea was a stalemate. Vietnam was a quagmire which ended in an ignominious evacuation. The First Gulf War was hardly a war at all and never really got finished. Iraq is still dragging on, much to the boredom of all concerned.

And Afghanistan? No matter how brave a face Hussein tries to put on it, 1000s of lives and billions of dollars have disappeared into the sand with nothing whatever to show for it.

What's the problem? It's not lack of resources. Although it's evident that the money could have been spent better at home, dollars have been found to pay for mercenaries, equipment, bribes to the "friendly" Afghans and so on. America has the best tools money can buy but can't seem to pacify a bunch of towel-headed Muslim fanatics armed with home-made bombs.

No, gentle reader, the problem is not that we can't win. It's that we WON'T win. What is lacking is the political will to hit the perceived enemy with everything we've got.

It started just after the defeat of Japan, when Truman wouldn't heed MacArthur's advice to stop the Communists before they got started. Then in Vietnam, Curtis LeMay said we should just "nuke [Charlie] back to the stone age". Walt doesn't agree with this, but LeMay was right in that if we really wanted to win, dropping the big one would have done the trick.

Vince Lombardi said that winning is not everything, it's the ONLY thing. Walt says, if you don't intend to win a war, don't start one.

Latest Asian Christian Martyrs

AsiaNews has another disturbing report from Vietnam. On July 26th, in the northern city of Vinh, Father Peter Nguyen The Bin was savagely beaten by police and gangs acting on their orders. The priest was beaten into a coma, then defenestrated -- thrown from a hospital window.

On the same day, Father Paul Nguyen Dinh Phu was taken to a hospital in Dong Hoi with broken ribs and head injuries. A statement from the Diocese of Vinh denounces police and gangs of thugs for their savage attacks on anyone who dares to do as little as wear a cross or other Catholic religious symbol. When we say "anyone", we mean even women and children. In one gruesome incident, thugs savagely beat a woman, Nguyen Thi Yen and her child, aged only 9 years.

TESTIMONY OF AN EYE-WITNESS -- Read Sister Emily Nguyen's report from Vinh diocese, Catholic World News feature story.

Meanwhile, in North Korea, a female member of an evangelical Protestant sect has been executed for the heinous crime of distributing Bibles.

Let it be remembered that Vietnam and North Korea are both totalitarian communist regimes. It is communist policy -- thus the policy of the governments of those and other communist countries -- to destroy Christianity. And they are doing it "one Christian at a time".