Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): It’s ridiculously hypocritical for westerners to condemn Russia and China for responding aggressively to the US empire building up military threats on their borders, because the last time a credible military threat was placed near the border of the United States, the US responded so aggressively that it almost ended the world.
The best way to fight the strangling tentacles of the US Medusa is to expose it for what it is. Caitlin is one of the few people with a conscience who writes clearly and directly about it. The rest only dance and fiddle around the shenanigans of the Empire never going to its core. Go Caitlin!!!
Sad, but true. Yet I want to believe that not all, not even most, of those who embrace the demented ideologies of empire are unreachable and must be viewed (like so many of those in power who resolutely view us not as their fellow citizens but as their enemies) as our adversaries. But that’s where our hard work of listening and being heard and building understandings among ourselves as “the rest of us” begins, right? Not in speaking truth to unreachable power, but in working through our differences to reach a common agenda, to recreate our solidarity in opposition to power as a human community.
The fact is that although both the US and the Soviet Union were ruled by sociopaths, they were able to moderate their sociopathy to cut some kind of deal in 1962 that allowed their ruling classes to keep ruling relatively prosperous states instead of smoking post-nuclear junk heaps. Someone got to Kennedy and company, and Khrushchev and company, and pointed out that whereas a showdown might be fun in a card game, in the real world everybody loses and loses big time. That these people were also hypocrites is beside the point. Hypocrisy is the respect vice pays to virtue. Thank Dog the hypocrites and not the virtuous were in charge.
That is exactly what the US needs. Another Cuba without involving another country but using submarines off the US coastline. The American people need to know what a nuclear weapon can do in say New York City. Don't fire a shot, just sit there. Just a threatening little token compared to the weaponry, hundreds of bases, troops and subservient other countries that are currently surrounding China at this very moment, as seen on Caitlin's map.
Submarines must be a wonderful tool in today's military climate because the little US puppet, Australia, is spending probably 400 billion dollars (that's Australian dollars of course) designed to add to the serious profits of Biden's military buddies and to make us a continuing part of the US empire game as we were with Korea, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and who knows where else since WWII. (A British empire team member before that). Not one of those countries had threatened Australia.
Good old Australia. You can always rely on them to join any US party, any time. Just yell.
Rumours are that they have applied to be the 51st State of the USA. Just a rumour.
Mind you, by the time the crews for such weaponised submarines are ready to hit the water and join in the US empire games, the current crews in training will be applying for their military pensions, 20 + years from now. But it's all good fun.
On the other hand, the move to BRICS by a lot of countries, (down with the US dollar as the international currency) the need for the US to discontinue its offshore manufacturing and ramp up expensive onshore product making (check out the value of the Chinese Yuan compared to the US dollar.....for wages), we could be in another environment, entirely. Let us hope so. The flow on effects from that scenario will impact every single person in those United States, with the exception of Biden's buddies like BlackRock and the like and the US dictators, Israel.
Interesting days ahead. Pity though for little 25 million population countries like Australia who will not be able to address housing, social security, education, and infrastructure projects because of an almost $20,000 debt for every man woman and child, for some useless US money-making submarines, clearly visible from space and an easy target for a missile.
It's called AUKUS, the death knell for Australia.
If, as Feral has said, that the only language power understands is a "gun to the head", then let us start an international crowd-funding project to buy two submarines and place them off the East Coast of the USA.
The lack of imagination required to comprehend WHY Russia might react strongly to a NATO war camp being built on their border is amazing.
"In this scenario, does anyone in their right mind think the United States would have tolerated this for eight years? Or that they would not have been justified, after years of trying to peacefully resolve the situation, in choosing a military solution?
As a certain decrepit, demented, deeply foul leader likes to say, “Come on, man!”"
Our leaders do not lack imagination in this regard. They know perfectly well why Russia reacted strongly to the NATO war camp and in fact were counting on it.
Gone are the days when pointing out someone's hypocrisy will cause shame and a change in behavior, especially among the minions of the Empire. Hypocrisy is what they do, what they excel at, and they do it with a straight face (and deny every bit of it). We don't live in a world where people take responsibility for their mistakes; hell, they don't even admit they made them.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is my first clear memory. I was only 4, but I remember my parents being scared, stocking up on bottled water and canned goods, and then bundling me into the car and traveling 400 miles north from San Antonio to the Texas Panhandle, where my uncle had a farm and they thought we might be safe from from something called atomic bombs.
I remember asking who these Russians were and my mom telling me they used to be our allies and how it was a shame this was happening. I remember seeing Titan missiles sticking up out of the Texas prairie, steam venting from them.
I remember the farm, good food, and a day where all the adults relaxed and then the drive back.
This time, instead of missiles, there were grazing cows. To this day I associate cows with peace. It was this experience which drove me to learn all I could about the Russians, and Cubans, for that matter. And why countries did such things. It never made much sense until I read Marx. THEN I understood why.
One of my uncles built a bomb shelter (it's still there) and had food growing in it. It actually was quite impressive. The problem is you can never leave even if you somehow survive you are doomed to never see blue sky or the sun again in your lifetime!
Hahaha I remember when my dad stocked up on bottles water and food for Y2k, nowadays that's considered to be paranoid schizophrenia, and its a wonder how incredibly good they were at making people believe something that is common sense and true to be mentally ill for a while there but everybody else knew that those were lies for war propaganda and gaslighting.
That was a very different situation. The danger of the Cuban Missile Crisis was as real as it gets, and it was a VERY near thing. Had it not been for that Soviet Commissar on the submarine, you would never have been born.
Y2K was more of a little manufactured angst that benefited battery makers, that's for sure!
I was under McCarthyism even though it was clear as day that my name is not on the CP list. Havana syndrome and bunch of weird stuff they did to torture me on the inside. Freaky deaky ass people
Though some relatives of mine are running on a populist platform. They had to do the best they could to save me from an early grave. I had no charges against me but you know how war is when it gets out of control 20 something years after 9/11 and mountains of corpses which were homeless people probably too and you know how people in the U.S. just walk right past it like it's not some clear and present danger. Anyway, these aggressive idiots got so addicted to it, it clouded their judgement. I did try to reach out to some members of the communist party bc those people were almost the only ones who believe you the unimaginable torture the military industrial complex can do to your body without even having to touch you but I'm not even allowed to talk to those people at all.
A very good essay, as usual. Just finished reading An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. It starkly illustrates that the founding principles of the US and the much worshiped "founding fathers" weren't laudable ideals but war-making and genocide. And here we are, 250+ years later, with ossified, sclerotic principles. Shameful.
Kennedy invited some kind of hostile response by supporting the initial stages of the Bay of Pigs operation. Fortunately he came to his senses before something really bad happened. Too bad he was not equally perspicacious with regard to Indochina.
And the Cuban crisis was a one-off precipitated by Western nuke instalments right on Russia's borders- and they were quietly and diplomatically removed - for a while. Quite unlike the total encroachment of Russia by NATO since 1991. Our famous "values" come in two distinct packages: one for how others must act toward us, and a totally different set on how we can quite legitimately and with a halo over our heads - treat them.
"Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" by Stephen Kinzer is a must read. If one's blood doesn't boil reading how the US handled those countries (Central America and Iran seem to stand out) then nothing would help.
The problem is most don't know the history in such detail, and they won't care to know for the reasons described by Caitlin in this post.
That's just it! I have seen "Coup 53" at least 3 times and it is completely disgusting how this continues to be standard procedure for these Mass Murdering Sociopaths! When I have tried to get friends and family to watch (they have no time) <<funny right and when I push it for a real discussion I get told flat out "they don't care"! I can't even communicate with the remaining family member I have because clarity of truth can no longer be shared. That's about the best way I can describe the distance between us.
Washington practices one of the most laughable hypocrisies ever. It claims the whole world as it "sphere of influence," while it grants other nations none--- and that is the essence of the war in Ukraine. As a matter of national security Russia had to intervene in Ukraine with a fascist Western puppet state on its border.
A minor scuffle in Africa is considered a "national security threat." Of course this and more become transparently fraudulent pretexts for war on the world.
We might also conclude Washington suffers from acute paranoia .
The interesting thing about propaganda is that it is often not the Contant of the message itself that determines whether the message is propaganda, but rather the context in which the message occurs.
For example, if government A which in recent memory has killed 1 million people says, “oh my God, government B just killed 1000 people they are pure evil!“ I would argue they are engaging in propaganda because intrinsically they are asking you to make a moral judgment of government, B’s behavior absent the critical context of their own behavior.
Granted, this is over-simplifying it a bit, but I think the principle is pretty easily and intuitively understood and applied. If governments A and B are engaged in some sort of a geo-strategic conflict, then their behavior relative to one another, becomes even more critical.
But they’re special. Repeat that a thousand times? Not needed. You’ve heard it a thousand times from them. Not that there should be any dispute. Look at their health care and social outcomes. They didn’t have to handwash or wear masks for Covid. That had nothing to do with their leading the world in Covid deaths and cases. Nooo. Covid didn’t dare attack the great, at least not that much. Covid is no dummy.
There is now no health or social outcome I can find where the US is not last in the west. Dead effing last. (For rape they’re neck and neck with the Australians). But it’s worse than even that. For longevity, several Third World countries have zipped by them. Ecuador, Panama, Cuba,…even China, even though 40% of Chinese still smoke the cigarettes the American Tobacco Company addicted them to 100yrs. ago in a targeted campaign. And Americans now pollute twice as much per cap as anyone else. And why not? You don’t really believe their greatness deserves treatment equal to the lesser forms, do you?
But who cares about such trivia when you’re special. Very special. They specialize in being special. And really let’s be honest, God chose them to be special because they were special to begin with. It was their due. Any talk otherwise is just envy and meanness. And the health outcomes are just vicious lies from the envious. Sure the Japanese now outlive Americans by almost 10 yrs, but so what! Ten more years of eating rice? Ugh! So for 330 million Americans who forgo ten years of life to be American , that’s 3.3 billion life years lost and if life expectancy is 75-ish that adds up to 50 million lifetimes lost. That’s a number dwarfing any recorded Holocaust. But who cares when you had one death occurring in the genocidal terroristic Jan 6 coup-rebellion? Right?
They’re great and there’s just no denying their greatness. To deny that you have to lie, like about their pathetic social and Health outcomes. Did I say they were great? Well you can’t say it often enough. They’re great and no moral code or international law should apply to the truly great. So stop the bleating serfs who can’t recognize greatness. And donate what you have to make them even greater. Don’t make them have to take it by force. Yuppers. Great and special. Look if you want to say specially great or greatly special, I think it’s ok but will check. The Australians likely already have.
Timmy Taes: Given the classified Military Occupational Specialties of many aboard the Sultan, had she surrendered, the United States would have no doubt blown us out of the water, blamed the Soviets and turned the incident into a propaganda coup. In those days, it wasn't just infantry and artillery traveled by troop transport. It was every enlisted MOS and officers from captain down (though the commissioned officers and warrant officers were of course spared the tides of vomit that defined the troop bays). However it obtained, it would have been a substantial victory for the Soviets, because in 1962, all our senior NCOs were WWII and/or Korean War combat veterans, and even amongst troops who have never been tested by live fire, there is a vast difference in combat-readiness between raw recruits and those of us who have already completed most if not all of our active service (two years for draftees and; three years for Regular Army enlistees, as I was;. I don't remember the active-duty requirements for warrant officers or Reserve Officers Training Corps [ROTC] and Officer Candidate School [OCS] graduates with reserve commissions, but I think it was three years). Plus in '62, those of us on the Sultan homebound from Korea, nominally a 13-month tour of duty, had been extended there in place at least three months (in some instances, depending on MOS, as much as twice that) due to the Berlin Crisis. So none of us were FNGs, i.e., greeenies. In other words, the loss of those aboard the Sultan would have been comparable in impact to the losses of seasoned personnel at Pearl on 7 December 1941.
Loren Bliss: Thanks for the informative comment. Do you know why the Sultan didn't have an escort, say, a destroyer at least? I still wonder why the USS Indianapolis in WWII didn't have an escort. And then there is the USS Pueblo disaster as well as the USS Liberty.
The US Navy has a bad habit of leaving vulnerable ships unescorted in dangerous waters and times.
Great comments. Intelligent readers here. Added layer of irony that the US is not just 'allowing' but actively facilitating the current invasion at its own borders while it is perpetrating a "proxy war"? against border encroachments elsewhere. Cooperating with the same " bad actors" here while opposing similar actions abroad. Hypocrisy on steroids...its only ever OK when Amerika does it.
One of the little-known details of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the international magnitude of the Soviet preparations for war. As I was returning from Korea in August 1962 via the USNS Sultan, we were shadowed by a Soviet submarine from the moment we left Pearl Harbor – I don't recall the date -- until we entered San Francisco Bay early in the morning on 4 September 1962. Initially we saw only the Soviet sub’s periscope, but as we drew closer to the U.S., she would surface to charge her batteries and run along our port side maybe 1000 yards distant. Eventually we were waving to one another, the sub's crew on deck for a breath of fresh air and those of us going home aboard the Sultan behaving as if we were on a sea cruise. Years later, when the entire timeline of the crisis was declassified – when it became clear the Soviets were installing the missiles in August -- I realized why that sub was there. Had the proverbial balloon gone up, they'd have torpedoed us -- somewhat more than 4,000 trained and service-seasoned officers and enlisted personnel aboard an unarmed (and therefore utterly defenseless) WWII troop transport -- which would no doubt have killed us all and given them a pivotal (and utterly demoralizing) naval victory.
Loren Bliss: The Soviet sub may just have had your USNS Sultan surrender. You don't know what the orders were for the Soviet sub though it would be interesting to know.
The best way to fight the strangling tentacles of the US Medusa is to expose it for what it is. Caitlin is one of the few people with a conscience who writes clearly and directly about it. The rest only dance and fiddle around the shenanigans of the Empire never going to its core. Go Caitlin!!!
All true, but it is fruitless to point out the hypocrisy of a sociopath.
Force, a gun to the head and the sure knowledge that you will pull the trigger without hesitation, is the only language power understands.
Sad, but true. Yet I want to believe that not all, not even most, of those who embrace the demented ideologies of empire are unreachable and must be viewed (like so many of those in power who resolutely view us not as their fellow citizens but as their enemies) as our adversaries. But that’s where our hard work of listening and being heard and building understandings among ourselves as “the rest of us” begins, right? Not in speaking truth to unreachable power, but in working through our differences to reach a common agenda, to recreate our solidarity in opposition to power as a human community.
The fact is that although both the US and the Soviet Union were ruled by sociopaths, they were able to moderate their sociopathy to cut some kind of deal in 1962 that allowed their ruling classes to keep ruling relatively prosperous states instead of smoking post-nuclear junk heaps. Someone got to Kennedy and company, and Khrushchev and company, and pointed out that whereas a showdown might be fun in a card game, in the real world everybody loses and loses big time. That these people were also hypocrites is beside the point. Hypocrisy is the respect vice pays to virtue. Thank Dog the hypocrites and not the virtuous were in charge.
Yes. But their hypocritical acquiescence is in itself ultimately insufficient.
It seemed to be sufficient in the case mentioned. On another occasion, it might not have been, so I hope for more and better hypocrisy.
Feral
That is exactly what the US needs. Another Cuba without involving another country but using submarines off the US coastline. The American people need to know what a nuclear weapon can do in say New York City. Don't fire a shot, just sit there. Just a threatening little token compared to the weaponry, hundreds of bases, troops and subservient other countries that are currently surrounding China at this very moment, as seen on Caitlin's map.
Submarines must be a wonderful tool in today's military climate because the little US puppet, Australia, is spending probably 400 billion dollars (that's Australian dollars of course) designed to add to the serious profits of Biden's military buddies and to make us a continuing part of the US empire game as we were with Korea, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and who knows where else since WWII. (A British empire team member before that). Not one of those countries had threatened Australia.
Good old Australia. You can always rely on them to join any US party, any time. Just yell.
Rumours are that they have applied to be the 51st State of the USA. Just a rumour.
Mind you, by the time the crews for such weaponised submarines are ready to hit the water and join in the US empire games, the current crews in training will be applying for their military pensions, 20 + years from now. But it's all good fun.
On the other hand, the move to BRICS by a lot of countries, (down with the US dollar as the international currency) the need for the US to discontinue its offshore manufacturing and ramp up expensive onshore product making (check out the value of the Chinese Yuan compared to the US dollar.....for wages), we could be in another environment, entirely. Let us hope so. The flow on effects from that scenario will impact every single person in those United States, with the exception of Biden's buddies like BlackRock and the like and the US dictators, Israel.
Interesting days ahead. Pity though for little 25 million population countries like Australia who will not be able to address housing, social security, education, and infrastructure projects because of an almost $20,000 debt for every man woman and child, for some useless US money-making submarines, clearly visible from space and an easy target for a missile.
It's called AUKUS, the death knell for Australia.
If, as Feral has said, that the only language power understands is a "gun to the head", then let us start an international crowd-funding project to buy two submarines and place them off the East Coast of the USA.
Cailin's map only displays 3 US of aggression flags in AU the real number should be 18.
The lack of imagination required to comprehend WHY Russia might react strongly to a NATO war camp being built on their border is amazing.
"In this scenario, does anyone in their right mind think the United States would have tolerated this for eight years? Or that they would not have been justified, after years of trying to peacefully resolve the situation, in choosing a military solution?
As a certain decrepit, demented, deeply foul leader likes to say, “Come on, man!”"
https://open.substack.com/pub/ourimperialpress/p/a-simple-analogy-for-the-war-in-ukraine?r=nv5i&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Our leaders do not lack imagination in this regard. They know perfectly well why Russia reacted strongly to the NATO war camp and in fact were counting on it.
Ya but Putin bad. He was headed towards world domination!
Gone are the days when pointing out someone's hypocrisy will cause shame and a change in behavior, especially among the minions of the Empire. Hypocrisy is what they do, what they excel at, and they do it with a straight face (and deny every bit of it). We don't live in a world where people take responsibility for their mistakes; hell, they don't even admit they made them.
Ever so true , no empathy for others.
The Cuban Missile Crisis is my first clear memory. I was only 4, but I remember my parents being scared, stocking up on bottled water and canned goods, and then bundling me into the car and traveling 400 miles north from San Antonio to the Texas Panhandle, where my uncle had a farm and they thought we might be safe from from something called atomic bombs.
I remember asking who these Russians were and my mom telling me they used to be our allies and how it was a shame this was happening. I remember seeing Titan missiles sticking up out of the Texas prairie, steam venting from them.
I remember the farm, good food, and a day where all the adults relaxed and then the drive back.
This time, instead of missiles, there were grazing cows. To this day I associate cows with peace. It was this experience which drove me to learn all I could about the Russians, and Cubans, for that matter. And why countries did such things. It never made much sense until I read Marx. THEN I understood why.
One of my uncles built a bomb shelter (it's still there) and had food growing in it. It actually was quite impressive. The problem is you can never leave even if you somehow survive you are doomed to never see blue sky or the sun again in your lifetime!
Hahaha I remember when my dad stocked up on bottles water and food for Y2k, nowadays that's considered to be paranoid schizophrenia, and its a wonder how incredibly good they were at making people believe something that is common sense and true to be mentally ill for a while there but everybody else knew that those were lies for war propaganda and gaslighting.
That was a very different situation. The danger of the Cuban Missile Crisis was as real as it gets, and it was a VERY near thing. Had it not been for that Soviet Commissar on the submarine, you would never have been born.
Y2K was more of a little manufactured angst that benefited battery makers, that's for sure!
I know, you'll be accused of being a Communist if you agree with that. You risk death even just to admit that in the U.S.
I am a Communist in the US so I'm used to it. Hasn't killed me yet, though, LOL.
I was under McCarthyism even though it was clear as day that my name is not on the CP list. Havana syndrome and bunch of weird stuff they did to torture me on the inside. Freaky deaky ass people
Though some relatives of mine are running on a populist platform. They had to do the best they could to save me from an early grave. I had no charges against me but you know how war is when it gets out of control 20 something years after 9/11 and mountains of corpses which were homeless people probably too and you know how people in the U.S. just walk right past it like it's not some clear and present danger. Anyway, these aggressive idiots got so addicted to it, it clouded their judgement. I did try to reach out to some members of the communist party bc those people were almost the only ones who believe you the unimaginable torture the military industrial complex can do to your body without even having to touch you but I'm not even allowed to talk to those people at all.
A very good essay, as usual. Just finished reading An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. It starkly illustrates that the founding principles of the US and the much worshiped "founding fathers" weren't laudable ideals but war-making and genocide. And here we are, 250+ years later, with ossified, sclerotic principles. Shameful.
I was there!
81 now thanks to JFK!
I think quite a few have called him a coward for "backing down". Today's crop seems to think they should push through to correct that "mistake".
Kennedy invited some kind of hostile response by supporting the initial stages of the Bay of Pigs operation. Fortunately he came to his senses before something really bad happened. Too bad he was not equally perspicacious with regard to Indochina.
You should really research what was going on behind the scenes back then. It's way more complicated than you think.
He sent advisors to Viet Nam but refused to declare war. Hence, the bullet to the brain.
What difference would that have made? It doesn't seem like anything worth a whole assassination.
Thanks Caitlin for expressing thoughts and feelings I've held for many years.
Wait until Cuba joins BRICS in early 2024. Hell hath seen no fury like an empire scorned.
0.0
And the Cuban crisis was a one-off precipitated by Western nuke instalments right on Russia's borders- and they were quietly and diplomatically removed - for a while. Quite unlike the total encroachment of Russia by NATO since 1991. Our famous "values" come in two distinct packages: one for how others must act toward us, and a totally different set on how we can quite legitimately and with a halo over our heads - treat them.
"Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq" by Stephen Kinzer is a must read. If one's blood doesn't boil reading how the US handled those countries (Central America and Iran seem to stand out) then nothing would help.
The problem is most don't know the history in such detail, and they won't care to know for the reasons described by Caitlin in this post.
Hope a lot of people take note - Ignorance is rife in the West. Maybe the Global South will administer a dose of reality?
I wonder if BRICS will accept individuals' applications for membership... I'd like to be on the "winning team" for once instead of the town bully's.
Yes, it would be nice for a change- it's a terrible burden to be identified with people you actually despise.
Me too!
That's just it! I have seen "Coup 53" at least 3 times and it is completely disgusting how this continues to be standard procedure for these Mass Murdering Sociopaths! When I have tried to get friends and family to watch (they have no time) <<funny right and when I push it for a real discussion I get told flat out "they don't care"! I can't even communicate with the remaining family member I have because clarity of truth can no longer be shared. That's about the best way I can describe the distance between us.
Washington practices one of the most laughable hypocrisies ever. It claims the whole world as it "sphere of influence," while it grants other nations none--- and that is the essence of the war in Ukraine. As a matter of national security Russia had to intervene in Ukraine with a fascist Western puppet state on its border.
A minor scuffle in Africa is considered a "national security threat." Of course this and more become transparently fraudulent pretexts for war on the world.
We might also conclude Washington suffers from acute paranoia .
The interesting thing about propaganda is that it is often not the Contant of the message itself that determines whether the message is propaganda, but rather the context in which the message occurs.
For example, if government A which in recent memory has killed 1 million people says, “oh my God, government B just killed 1000 people they are pure evil!“ I would argue they are engaging in propaganda because intrinsically they are asking you to make a moral judgment of government, B’s behavior absent the critical context of their own behavior.
Granted, this is over-simplifying it a bit, but I think the principle is pretty easily and intuitively understood and applied. If governments A and B are engaged in some sort of a geo-strategic conflict, then their behavior relative to one another, becomes even more critical.
Nebulus P. McCrotty: Any government, and I mean ANY government, including the Vatican, that talks about morality is Full of Shit.
Certainly should be taken with a massive grain of salt.
But they’re special. Repeat that a thousand times? Not needed. You’ve heard it a thousand times from them. Not that there should be any dispute. Look at their health care and social outcomes. They didn’t have to handwash or wear masks for Covid. That had nothing to do with their leading the world in Covid deaths and cases. Nooo. Covid didn’t dare attack the great, at least not that much. Covid is no dummy.
There is now no health or social outcome I can find where the US is not last in the west. Dead effing last. (For rape they’re neck and neck with the Australians). But it’s worse than even that. For longevity, several Third World countries have zipped by them. Ecuador, Panama, Cuba,…even China, even though 40% of Chinese still smoke the cigarettes the American Tobacco Company addicted them to 100yrs. ago in a targeted campaign. And Americans now pollute twice as much per cap as anyone else. And why not? You don’t really believe their greatness deserves treatment equal to the lesser forms, do you?
But who cares about such trivia when you’re special. Very special. They specialize in being special. And really let’s be honest, God chose them to be special because they were special to begin with. It was their due. Any talk otherwise is just envy and meanness. And the health outcomes are just vicious lies from the envious. Sure the Japanese now outlive Americans by almost 10 yrs, but so what! Ten more years of eating rice? Ugh! So for 330 million Americans who forgo ten years of life to be American , that’s 3.3 billion life years lost and if life expectancy is 75-ish that adds up to 50 million lifetimes lost. That’s a number dwarfing any recorded Holocaust. But who cares when you had one death occurring in the genocidal terroristic Jan 6 coup-rebellion? Right?
They’re great and there’s just no denying their greatness. To deny that you have to lie, like about their pathetic social and Health outcomes. Did I say they were great? Well you can’t say it often enough. They’re great and no moral code or international law should apply to the truly great. So stop the bleating serfs who can’t recognize greatness. And donate what you have to make them even greater. Don’t make them have to take it by force. Yuppers. Great and special. Look if you want to say specially great or greatly special, I think it’s ok but will check. The Australians likely already have.
Timmy Taes: Given the classified Military Occupational Specialties of many aboard the Sultan, had she surrendered, the United States would have no doubt blown us out of the water, blamed the Soviets and turned the incident into a propaganda coup. In those days, it wasn't just infantry and artillery traveled by troop transport. It was every enlisted MOS and officers from captain down (though the commissioned officers and warrant officers were of course spared the tides of vomit that defined the troop bays). However it obtained, it would have been a substantial victory for the Soviets, because in 1962, all our senior NCOs were WWII and/or Korean War combat veterans, and even amongst troops who have never been tested by live fire, there is a vast difference in combat-readiness between raw recruits and those of us who have already completed most if not all of our active service (two years for draftees and; three years for Regular Army enlistees, as I was;. I don't remember the active-duty requirements for warrant officers or Reserve Officers Training Corps [ROTC] and Officer Candidate School [OCS] graduates with reserve commissions, but I think it was three years). Plus in '62, those of us on the Sultan homebound from Korea, nominally a 13-month tour of duty, had been extended there in place at least three months (in some instances, depending on MOS, as much as twice that) due to the Berlin Crisis. So none of us were FNGs, i.e., greeenies. In other words, the loss of those aboard the Sultan would have been comparable in impact to the losses of seasoned personnel at Pearl on 7 December 1941.
Loren Bliss: Thanks for the informative comment. Do you know why the Sultan didn't have an escort, say, a destroyer at least? I still wonder why the USS Indianapolis in WWII didn't have an escort. And then there is the USS Pueblo disaster as well as the USS Liberty.
The US Navy has a bad habit of leaving vulnerable ships unescorted in dangerous waters and times.
Great comments. Intelligent readers here. Added layer of irony that the US is not just 'allowing' but actively facilitating the current invasion at its own borders while it is perpetrating a "proxy war"? against border encroachments elsewhere. Cooperating with the same " bad actors" here while opposing similar actions abroad. Hypocrisy on steroids...its only ever OK when Amerika does it.
One of the little-known details of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the international magnitude of the Soviet preparations for war. As I was returning from Korea in August 1962 via the USNS Sultan, we were shadowed by a Soviet submarine from the moment we left Pearl Harbor – I don't recall the date -- until we entered San Francisco Bay early in the morning on 4 September 1962. Initially we saw only the Soviet sub’s periscope, but as we drew closer to the U.S., she would surface to charge her batteries and run along our port side maybe 1000 yards distant. Eventually we were waving to one another, the sub's crew on deck for a breath of fresh air and those of us going home aboard the Sultan behaving as if we were on a sea cruise. Years later, when the entire timeline of the crisis was declassified – when it became clear the Soviets were installing the missiles in August -- I realized why that sub was there. Had the proverbial balloon gone up, they'd have torpedoed us -- somewhat more than 4,000 trained and service-seasoned officers and enlisted personnel aboard an unarmed (and therefore utterly defenseless) WWII troop transport -- which would no doubt have killed us all and given them a pivotal (and utterly demoralizing) naval victory.
Loren Bliss: The Soviet sub may just have had your USNS Sultan surrender. You don't know what the orders were for the Soviet sub though it would be interesting to know.
See below; somehow it didn't appear where it was intended to appear.