RUTHFULLY YOURS

We are looking at a permanent structural change in the American armed forces that will not only weaken the nation’s ability to defend itself, but endanger constitutional principles. A year ago in an article titled “Obama’s Generals,” I described an American military increasingly politicized under the current administration. The evidence at the time was already abundant: the military’s refusal to identify the Fort Hood shootings as terrorism, the coddling of Bowe Bergdahl, the relief or prosecution of politically unreliable generals, and unrealistically rosy appreciations of the campaign against ISIS being the major points. If anything, things have worsened since, most especially with the purely political decision to remove all restriction on women in combat, and as noted in a recent AT posts the mostly symbolic but still significant decisions by the Navy to issue “gender neutral” uniforms and to ignore regulations regarding naming ships to honor Democrat politicians and leftwing social activists. Add to this, ongoing and increasingly aggressive recruiting policies that mandate “diversity” and the situation becomes scary.

Arguably there has been some good news here and there, but even that must be taken with a large grain of salt. Last year Congress passed legislation allowing for the soldiers wounded at Fort Hood to receive Purple Hearts, and the Army belatedly acknowledged former Major Nidal Hassan’s terrorist ties, though has yet (to my knowledge) formally remove the “workplace violence” moniker it attached to the shooting, despite the fact that Obama late last year reluctantly acknowledged the Fort Hood shooting as a terror attack.

Similarly, in the Bergdahl case, also after incredibly long delays, the Army decided to try the soldier at a General Courts Martial. This is seen by some as the “old Army” reasserting itself in a case that reeks of liberal political influence. Perhaps this is so. However, the decision to try Bergdahl only came after he badly embarrassed the Army by going public with his account of his desertion and capture on NPR, practically forcing the hand of convening officer, General Robert B. Abrams. Moreover, though the decision to try Bergdahl was made last December (four days after the first NPR appearance), the trial will not take place until August, scarcely demonstrating a hard charging prosecution in a relatively simple case. Even assuming Bergdahl is convicted, his attorneys will argue that Bergdahl has successfully served on active duty for over two years since his release by the Taliban in May 2014, and thus deserving of leniency, undermining the contention he is a bad soldier. This might sound ridiculous to some, but the jury will have to consider it, and it is part of the reason why military prosecutions are usually expeditious, though the Army has not demonstrated any sense of urgency in the case.

Those who harp about “inequality” will talk themselves hoarse over the election season to come, insisting that the gaming of our economic system is the only explanation why some grow very rich and many do not. Just like the poor, class envy will be with us always
According to “Labor’s agenda for tackling inequality,” the Growing Together report, “inequality is at a 75-year high.” Nonsense is immortal in the hands of the left. A fundamental law of capitalism which, heretofore, has received little recognition or exposure is the antidote.

I flirted with calling it Smith’s Law but if it were any good no doubt a somewhat better-know Smith, Adam, would be mis-assigned the credit. Mind you, Smith is such a commonplace name that pseudonymity would probably be suspected. Some years’ ago I got into a heated wrangle on the Liverpool FC website about the worth of the then-coach and was accused by one of my antagonists of hiding behind the obvious pen name of Peter Smith. He clearly regarded my name as akin to Joseph Blow or Donald Duck. So modest sensibly prevails and I will just call it ‘the fundamental or inbuilt law’.

There is a heap of talk these days about rising inequality. It will no doubt be a central issue in the US elections and would be the only issue of note for socialist Bernie Sanders in the highly unlikely event he were to win the Democratic nomination. Jeremy Corbyn is on board the Bernie bandwagon as, without a shadow of doubt, is Labor’s Andrew Leigh (Battlers and Billionaires).

Thomas Piketty, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century, gave the issue (as specious as it is) a literary boost. My review, “The Questionable Equations of Thomas Piketty” in the June, 2014, issue of Quadrant, did a fair job (British understatement) of exposing the flaws in his arguments.

Recall that the Occupy Wall Street movement began in 2011; inspired, in part, by the focus that Piketty and a colleague, Emmanuel Saez, had earlier given to the wealth and income of the so-called “one per cent”. Piketty and Saez were by no means alone. For example, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz (“Of the 1%, by the1%, for the 1%”) is one among a number of prominent ‘socialist economists’ (in itself, by the way, a contradiction in terms) who gave the issue a kick-along.

Obama is weakening U.S. defenses and credibility, but there’s little debate about the growing risk of war.
In this powerful nation with founding principles and latent capacities second to none, politics have become fit for the fall of Rome, the culture is sick with self-destruction, and the rule of law is routinely perverted. Though politics, culture and law are the arch of the nation, the keystone without which they cannot hold is defense. For war transforms whole peoples and threatens their sovereignty and national existence more decisively than any other force.

You would hardly know this from the current presidential campaign. Most candidates seem unaware that the prospects of catastrophic war in the not-so-distant future are burgeoning because of a fundamental change in the international system, driven by accelerating adjustments in relative military power.

Russia, China and Iran have been racing ahead, stimulated by a disintegrating Europe that neither spends sufficiently on its defense nor defends its borders; and by an America, strategically blind in the Middle East, that failed to replenish and keep current its military under President George W. Bush, and now surrenders, apologizes, bluffs, “leads from behind,” and denigrates its military capacities and morale as President Obama either embraces enemies or opposes them only with exquisite delicacy.

As the U.S. allows its nuclear forces to stagnate and decay into de facto unilateral disarmament, Russia has been modernizing its own. The Kremlin has added systems, such as road-mobile, intercontinental ballistic missiles with independently targetable re-entry warheads, that we neither have nor envision. In the absence of “soft-power” parity with the U.S., Russia dangerously relies on a permissive nuclear doctrine and promiscuously rattles its atomic sabers. Its nuclear adventurism, naval and land force modernization, unopposed reintroduction into the Middle East, invasion and annexation in Ukraine, and the ability to recapture the Baltic states in an afternoon, are yet another impeachment of “the end of history.”

With little resistance, China incrementally annexes the South China Sea while embarked on a naval buildup inversely proportional to the smallest U.S. fleet since 1916, and further aggravated by China’s ability, once its naval technology matures, to surge production in its 106 major shipyards as opposed to America’s six. More importantly, China is expanding its nuclear forces to what extent we do not know, because the Chinese program’s infrastructure is hidden within 3,000 miles of tunnels largely opaque to U.S. intelligence. As if China were not a major rival, the Obama administration, ever infatuated with accords, has made no effort to include Beijing in a nuclear arms-control regime. Why not? CONTINUE AT SITE