Pro Commerce

Does America Always Lose the War?

We may have a very distorted view of our own history.  Do we always lose our wars?

Independence

Start with our War of Independence. Did we win? Britain gave up. Really France won. The Treaty of Paris 1783 makes it clear.  France as the winner was given Senegal and Tobago by Britain.  The Colonies agreed to leave the Crown but share access to the Mississippi with Britain and accepted convivial conditions of trade with Britain. The American Colonies didn’t WIN.  They got partial independence with their co-victor, France. 

How can you lose a war of independence? You can’t. France won and the colonies took advantage of it.

Twenty years later Britain reminded the Colonies that they gained independence but never defeated the British military.

1812

America lost the War of 1812 decisively. Total loss. Britain with only one war to fight won overwhelmingly. Britain destroyed whatever they wanted to destroy.

Civil War

Did the Union Army win the Civil War? In deed only --The Confederacy signed a peace treaty. Lincoln’s priority—shared by Grant—was “to bind up the nation’s wounds” and unite the country together again as a functioning democracy under the Constitution.  Lincoln’s plan for reconstruction of the South and help for the blacks didn’t get very far.  

Lincoln was assassinated days after the peace treaty, by a Confederate supporter. Vice President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat supporter of slavery, became president and did little to carry out the reconstruction plans.  

Reconstruction only began two years later when Grant became president.  The ostensible losing side, the Confederate states resisted Reconstruction and it was defeated within twelve years, totally. From 1877 forward, blacks lost their economic and political rights and the whites from the Confederacy regained nearly all their rights and power. 

Seventy years later blacks were still being lynched by the KKK, couldn’t buy homes in white neighborhoods and were rarely employed in white businesses. The Southern Wing of the Democrat Party by 1965 had been in power for thirty-five years.  

One hundred years after the end of the Civil War, there was no victory celebration. None. Because the Union didn’t win.

Spain

There were battles in the late 19th century with Spain but no real battles over the four months of active Cuban hostility.  The U.S. gained control of Cuba, Guam, and the Philippines by paying Spain $20 million.  Nothing resembling a victory occurred from a nearly non existent Spanish military. 

WWI

World War I saw America enter the War late, the American president demanded a peaceful settlement at the end of the war.  The war ended because of influenza. 

The influenza hurt the German side the most because the German soldiers had to ride in trains back to their homeland for food and treatment, while the French went home on weekends during the war.  The Germans agreed to the American proposed peace treaty, but the French and British dictated the actual terms without regard to the Americans.  President Wilson had many strokes as the Treaty of Versailles was being worked on and was unable to have any influence on the outcome.

WWII

World War II was an absolute military victory for the Allied troops.  But the final outcome was determined by the Yalta Conference in February 1945. By the previous Fall president Roosevelt was medically weak, could not stand and by April of 1945 he died.  At Yalta, the USSR designated the meeting place, and the USSR demanded control of all of Eastern Europe.  Roosevelt conceded and asked for democrat rule of the area the USSR controlled.  Didn’t happen. Berlin was divided in half and the USSR demanded that the Allied half be divided among France, Britain and the U.S.  The USSR also took all of Siberia and Mongolia in return for a promise to send troops to fight Japan.  The USSR never did help.

The American military victory in WWII led to the United Nations. A seventy year failure for the U.S. The United Nations are united 150 to 1 against the U.S. most of the time.

Korea

The war in Korea was a settlement with an armistice much to the favor of North Korea, which is still a belligerent.

Vietnam

The Vietnam War was militarily won by the U.S. and then completely abdicated by the U.S. Democrat Congress which refused to help the South Koreans as the U.S. promised in the peace treaty. U.S. lost entirely.

Iraq and Afghanistan

Iraq and Afghanistan.  Not much to say. The first Iraq war was a complete loss, Saddam Hussein remained in power. The second dragged on for more than twenty years with no end, no cessation of hostilities.  Afghanistan was another complete loss.

America often wins the major battles but loses the war. 

And now the losers of Afghanistan, the Biden Democrats, are advising Israel to lose its war against the Gazan terrorist government.

For the Record

When Republicans controlled the Presidency and Congress we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the end of the Civil War.

I tried to get the nation to celebrate the 100th and 150th anniversary of the Civil War and the 14th Amendment but nothing happened because Democrats controlled both the Presidency and Congress.  Sorry folks I contacted Black leaders (many of whom I knew personally) and the D.C. government; no response. 

Its a fact.

This image is the 50th Anniversary parade with veterans of both sides of the Civil War.

We Vibrate

Humans vibrate.  There appears to be two types of vibration.

One is the vibration that is the speed at which one lives one’s life.

I know this from the large number of women I have dated and spent intimate time with.  This type of vibration is very subtle but very real. If it were measured on a scale around 10 as the mean of a bell curve, most people one can live with are 9’s and 11’s if one is a 10.

I found I could spend only a weekend with 8’s and 12’s. Otherwise we were not comfortable together. I did take a long trip with one woman who was a 12 but we had to spend much time apart.  She eventually married a karate teacher.

I know one woman who is a 13 or 14.  I can’t even walk with her; she moves too fast in everything she does.

There is another kind of vibration which is just the constant motion of one’s own body.  This is visible in people who can’t sit still, people whose legs vibrate and they can’t restrain themselves. It is visible in children who can’t be still and children who hop, skip, and jump all the time.

I can detect this kind of vibration when I sit intentionally motionless early in the morning before the sounds of the City begin to vibrate me.  I sit in a Zen style meditation with my legs crossed on top of a pillow. After sitting awhile, I no longer vibrate very much and have no desire to move.  I am also aware of the vibration of others.

Two types of human vibration, about which I know very little and about which I see little or no cognizance by other people.

The Real Nakba and Colonialism

Somehow the world needs a good lesson in Middle Eastern history.  Palestinians and a million other misinformed people think that when the newly founded state of Israel was forced to fight off five well-established and well-armed Arab enemy nations, that the Arabs living in the new state of Israel were driven out.

Absolutely false.  The resident Arabs were told to leave by the ruling Muslims and the attacking Arab nations. About half left both the new Israel and the United Nations created Palestine.   A small number left out of fear of local terrorism which at the time was decades old.  The new State of Israel always permitted them to return.  This Arab exodus is referred to as the Nakba.

The real Nakba occurred over the next decade.

More than twice as many Jews, close to 850,000, were driven out of Arab lands with their possessions and wealth confiscated.  Most were settled in Israel with no compensation or support from any Arabs or international bodies.

The comparable misinformation about the history of the region has to do with settlement and the absurd term ‘colonialism.’  One hundred fifty years ago when Jews first began the modern settlement in Israel, there were about equal numbers of Jews and Arabs in the small area that became Palestine, under the rule of the Turkish Empire. The Jews had been there since Roman times. The Arabs had been wandering desert tribes with temporary settlements in the area. The Jews lived in small ancient towns. The Arabs were wandering tribal traders attracted to the area by the Jews creation of new jobs.

Jews had been settled in the entire Middle East for millenia.  Jews had well-established communities  in Persia, especially in Isfahan, and were long settled in Babylon the center of the Middle East, eight hundred years before Mohammed was born in the 6th century.  Islam is recent.  Jews are very ancient.

None of this is contested by decent people who have access to myriad documents and artifacts from the area.