Thinking Citizen Blog — Senator Roger Wicker And The Lessons Of The 1930s
Thinking Citizen Blog — Monday is Foreign Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Senator Roger Wicker and the Lessons of the 1930s
Are we repeating the mistakes of the past? Are we once again asleep at the switch while the bad guys prepare for battle? So argues Senator Roger Wicker in a report entitled “Peace Through Strength.” Wicker is the “ranking Republican” on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The editors of the Wall Street Journal echoed his “clarion call.” Today, excerpts from their editorial. Is Senator Ricker right? If not, why not? What citizen has the base of knowledge necessary to make an honest, non-partisan critical assessment?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
“THE U.S. IS STILL LIVING OFF RONALD REAGAN’S MILITARY BUILDUP OF THE 1980s, AND EVERYTHING FROM FIGHTERS TO THE NUCLEAR TRIAD IS WEARING OUT AT THE SAME TIME”
1. “The Air Force needs to purchase 340 more aircraft above its plans over the next five years to avoid what the Wicker paper rightly describes as a death spiral with 1,000 aircraft retirements planned over the next five yearsl”
2. “The U.S. Navy will have to produce three attack submarines a year to deter Chinese aggression in the Taiwan Strait and grow the fleet from the oldest and smallest in 80 years.”
3. “China, Russia, and Iran are working together against the West in multiple ways. China is providing Russia with enough smokeless powder to produce 80 million rounds of ammunition, and Vladimir Putin is returning the favor with joint naval patrols in the Pacific.”
NB: “Russia is furnishing combat training jets to iran, which is instructing Russian troops on how to operate its drones to pummel Ukraine. North Korea provides missiles to Russia, which helps Pyongyang dodge United Nations sanctions.”
“WHAT ABOUT THE DEFICIT AND THE DEBT?” (Below Senator Roger Wicker, Mississippi, Republican, in office since 2007)
1. “Some $55 billion for defense in 2025 is a fraction of what Congress has blown on social programs over the past three years.”
2. “The Inflation Reduction Act alone is shoveling out subsidies that will total more than $1 trillion for a green energy subsidy-fest.”
3. “Republicans should start a debate about priorities.”
NB: “If Mr. Trump wants to pivot from his guilty verdict, he would be wise to stop focusing on his legal tormentors and start telling Americans what he would do in the next four years. He could pick up Mr. Wicker’s plan as a campaign theme and a contrast to Mr. Biden’s four consecutive years of proposed cuts in the military.”
NEITHER BIDEN NOT TRUMP APPEARS TO GIVE THIS ISSUE THE ATTENTION IT DESERVES
1. “President Biden’s greatest abdication has been his willingness to let U.S. defenses erodd even as American adversaries are on the march.”
2. “Too many Republicans, including Donald Trump, have acquiesced with their silence.”
3. “So it’s worth applauding the marker put down last week by Sen. Roger Wicker that the U.S needs to return to spending 5% of the conomy on national defense to deter these adversaries.”
Opinion | A Clarion Call for Rearmament
https://www.wicker.senate.gov/services/files/BC957888-0A93-432F-A49E-6202768A9CE0
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic) Here is a link to the last four years of posts organized by theme: (including the book on foreign policy)
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest or most important thing you learned in the last week, month, or year related to foreign policy.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in our life related to foreign policy.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is the key to depth of thought.
The prospect of imminent publication, like hanging and final exams, concentrates the mind. A useful life long habit.
