Civilization and its Costs
A return to reality: Freedom Isn’t Free; it’s Expensive. But Less Expensive than we have been Pretending
The costs to the civilized world of Houthi rebels attacking shipping far outweigh any advantage they bring to humanity or the world (1). Their shore batteries and base camps immediately should be turned into melted sand, and global shipping return to being uninterrupted.
Contrasted with the declining cost to our enemies of asymmetric warfare and our increasing costs in blood and treasure from it, nukes are far less expensive than B21s, F35s, thousands of expensive missiles and artillery shells, and do far more - lasting - destruction, which is the purpose of weaponry. And they already are paid for... (2)
A “defense” budget of nearly a trillion dollars is a trillion dollars wasted - annually - on nothing productive, nothing preparing our children for their future, nothing improving the lives of anyone in America or in the 189 countries in which our forces, absurdly, are stationed.
“How many schools did that bomber cost?” - President Eisenhower.
If America is at all serious about stopping these people and their fellow terrorists attacking the civilized world, that seriousness must be demonstrated. Only - only - nukes can do so.
We have proved since Korea, 1950, that we are not willing to defeat enemies conventionally. There’s a name for continuing to do the same thing and expecting different results: insanity.
We are paying a trillion dollars a year for insanity; tell me how that makes sense
Gunpowder weapons are weapons of combat; nuclear weapons are weapons of war; war is politics by other means. All wars are political. Political weapons must be used to fight wars. If we are unwilling to fight our optional wars (all of them) seriously, we should not fight them at all.
If we are interested in peace and in freedom of the seas, this conventional tit-for-tat, “proportional response” infantilism will be ended and these terrorists simply, cheaply, instantly vaporized, warning anyone else considering attacking the civilized world and its commerce at the same time.
It can be exciting to watch YouTube videos of bad guys getting smoked; fun reading of the accomplishments of the supermen that are our Special Operators, but it’s the opposite of General Lee’s dictum: “it is good that war is so horrible or we should grow to love it too much.”
We HAVE grown to love war too much; that’s why we entertain ourselves with death on YouTube and in video games. We must again make war horrible to make it stop. Make it so horrible we will refuse it. Nuclear weapons do exactly that: make war so horrible that we no longer want to do it - and that no one even considers warring on us.
We must return to a world respecting our strength and refusing to challenge it… because they know we will use that strength, AND a world in which we don’t stupidly invade every country that looks at us cross-eyed or annoys our bankers.
If we want to reduce defense budgets, reduce stupid wars, reduce anti-civilization factions, and remove the stranglehold on our government of the Military-Industrial Complex, nuking these rebels and re-instituting Ike’s foreign and defense policy of Massive Retaliation (3) is the only solution.
(1) https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/maersk-halts-red-sea-transit-after-container-ship-hit-missile
(2) https://nationalinterest.org/feature/shrinking-cost-war-threatens-western-militaries-208177
(3) https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dulles-announces-policy-of-massive-retaliation