Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Posts
All Comments
Today is Nowruz, the Iranian New Year celebration. And also the publication date for a new poetry anthology of poems in support of the current Iranian uprising. One of mine is included.
I urge all and sundry to order their own copy immediately. Show your support! At the link:
I got this YouTube video forwarded by a leftist friend of mine. This guy never discusses politics. So this might be a sign that things are close to the breaking point on the left, in terms of their frustration with the outrageous actions of Trump.
I add my responses.
“America falsified history in order to advance its proud history of pushing its weight around...”
The history of the US is mostly one of isolationism—of avoiding engagement in foreign alliances or foreign wars. This has been the backbone of American polity since Washington. The US avoided empire during the period of hectic colonizing, in contrast to the nations of Europe. It could have owned all of the Western hemisphere.
America became engaged in the wider world reluctantly with the First World War, then reluctantly with the Second, and then with the Cold War; since the British and French were prostrate, and there was nobody else left to defend democracy.
Notably, it is remarkable that over the many decades since 1812 the US has not ever “pushed its weight around” by trying to annex Canada with all its resources. As the Canadian military admits, it could do so in about two days.
“US participation in Vietnam was ‘ignoring allies, ignoring history...’”
The US became engaged in Vietnam in defense of an ally, the Republic of Vietnam. Among allies who fought at their side: France, Australia, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, New Zealand, Cambodia, Laos. They were diplomatically supported by the UK, who had just fought a similar action in Malaysia, and most other NATO countries.
“Millions dead, and they still called it peace with honour."
The US did not start the war in Vietnam, and so cannot be blamed for the body count. There is no way of knowing whether more or fewer would have died in the region without US involvement. Only fewer Americans.
Iraq - "allies begging them not to invade."
Allies who participated militarily in the invasion: UK, Australia, Poland, Spain, Italy, South Korea, Ukraine.
Around 45–49 countries supported the coalition in some way. The worst that can be said is that it did not have official UN approval. Which the UN has only given for military action five times in its history. Hard to get that, with Russia and China having vetoes.
"UN inspectors saying ' look, there's nothing there.'"
UN inspectors did not declare Iraq free of weapons of mass destruction. They onl6 said they had not found any yet. Iraq had been refusing inspections, in violation of the ceasefire. They had finally allowed the inspectors in under threat of war.
Climate change—the rest of the world supposedly tackled the problem while the US "threw snowballs in the Senate."
US carbon emissions fell 20% from 2005 to 2023-- 30% per capita. Not as quickly as Europe, but much faster than other major emitters.
Over the same period, China’s and India’s emissions have been growing sharply.
Claim that “the American government is bringing drugs and crime into Canada.”
This is false, in that he blames the American government, who are not involved. It is true that drugs and crime are flowing both ways across that border, and it is true that there is more coming into Canada from the US than into the US from Canada. That is neither here nor there: the US government is of course more concerned with the flow south. They are cracking down on their borders, and they want Canada to do the same.
Much is being made of the US supposedly bombing the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school in Iran.
Stop and think for a moment. Is there any way it would be in the American interest to bomb a school in Iran? They are hoping for the local population to rise up against the regime. It would be perfect counter-productive, sheerly in terms of self-interest.
If the US is responsible, therefore, it has to have been a tragic mistake.
This certainly might have been a missile misfire, from either side. If a misfire, however, this is intrinsically more likely from the Iranian side, since American and Israeli missiles seem to be highly accurate in finding their targets. Iranian missiles, by their own admission, frequently hit civilian targets in neutral countries by error throughout the Gulf.
It is also obviously in the interests of the Iranian government to bomb a school in Iran, if they think they can pin it on the Americans. If you were going to do this for propaganda purposes, you would choose an elementary school. You would choose a girls’ school. Maximum sympathy, maximum outrage.
Is it too much to suppose the IRGC and the mullahs would do this to their own people?
Why, when they have been shooting them down in the streets?
While empires are obviously a good idea, why is it that the EU is failing, the UN is so ineffective at stopping wars, and the League of Nations a notorious failure? Shouldn’t they be even better at preserving peace than any Empire, because more inclusive and more voluntary; and aren’t they more democratic and equitable?
The obvious answer is that these bodies have no Royal Navy nor Roman Legion nor Mounted Police. They have no enforcement arm.
But that is not the only problem. That said, I would be uncomfortable with the UN or EU having an enforcement arm. They lack moral authority. They are not genuinely democratic, so they lack the mandate of the people. The British or the Roman Empire at least had to answer to their own citizenry; those in power could not run amok. And they lack shared governing values or principles. Without this moral constitution, they become a pork-barrelling among vested interests, inevitably to the detriment of the common man.
To one day have one world government, we will probably first need to have one world religion. Whether or not it is referred to as a religion, that is what it would be: a shared set of values, of principles of government. Confucian values held the large Chinese Empire together. Christian values did well for the Romans, and then Christendom; the Spanish Empire, the Portuguese Empire, and to a large extent the British. Lockean liberal values, as enshrined in the US Declaration of Independence, has done well early for the Brits and in more recent years for the large American confederation. But the attempt to internationalize them has come upon adamant opposition from some quarters, notably the Marxist and the Muslim worlds.
Failing this emergence of one world religion, the next best option is empire; or a confederation of co-religionists.
