DRONING ON

In 1965 I was a senior in High School. I knew we had some people fighting in Vietnam, but wasn’t sure were Vietnam was and this was of little interest to me. I had zero interest in joining the U.S. military. I should have known better. The winds of war were already blowing and I would soon be caught in the path of destruction. On August 2, and August 4, 1964 two U.S. Navy Destroyers, the U.S.S. Maddox and the U.S.S. Turner Joy were allegedly attacked in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. It is still unclear if the attacks actually occurred. However, on August 7, 1964 congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that authorized President Lyndon Johnson to “take all necessary measures to prevent further aggression” by the communist government of North Vietnam. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

That set off a chain of events that resulted in me being notified that I was about to be drafted. I chose to enlist in the Air Force, primarily because I wanted to avoid combat. That almost worked. But, I made some serious career miscalculations and ended learning to speak Vietnamese at the Defense Language Institute. Ultimately I spent most of my Air Force career flying combat missions and frankly I consider myself lucky to have survived the experience.

This was hardly the first time a major war started with a relatively minor incident. Hitler invaded Poland after the Gleiwitz incident. Most people believe this was a false flag operation where Nazi troops posed as Polish nationals and staged an attack on Germany. Regardless of what really happened, the result was the invasion of Poland and World War II was the final result.

On June 28, 1918 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo. I still am not sure why this resulted in World War I, but most historians believe this was the precipitating incident.

There were two occasions where North Korean attacked us in international waters. One was the shoot down of an EC121 on April 15, 1969. Richard Nixon was President and he backed off from attacking North Korea. North Korea actually captured the USS Pueblo on January 23, 1968. This took place a week after Lyndon Johnson gave his State of the Union address and one week prior to the start of the Tet Offensive. There were unconfirmed reports that Johnson seriously considered attacking North Korea with nuclear weapons. Ultimately, he did nothing.

Earlier there was an incident, never reported in the media, where a U.S. fighter pilot reported that his wingman had been shot down, over international waters, by a Chinese fighter plane. Johnson ordered a Defcon 2 and prepared to attack China. Fortunately, there was a U.S. reconnaissance plane in the area monitoring the Chinese Air Force and they quickly notified Washington that China had not shot down that plane. I know this because I knew a Chinese Linguist on that plane. It turned out that the navy pilot had got lost and accidentally shot down his own wingman.

The point is that these types of events are extremely dangerous. They have resulted in major military conflicts. It is impossible for anyone to predict all the possible outcomes. I do know that the most dangerous thing anyone could do under these circumstance is what Democrats did in the House today. They passed a resolution blocking Trump from taking action. This is a meaningless effort, since there is zero chance the Senate will ratify this act of stupidity. However, if Iran fails to realize that Trump has the power to deal with this they may be tempted to do more. Any escalation by them would be almost certain to start some kind of military conflict. Ironically the self-righteous fools in the House are not only making the situation worse, they will undoubted blame Donald Trump if things go south.

If Barack Obama was President and Republicans tried to handcuff him like this Democrats and the MSM would be outraged. They would be right to be outraged. Whether we like him or not, trust him or not, the reality is that we only have one President at a time and he absolutely needs the authority to take whatever action is necessary to protect us. This is further evidence that neither the DNC nor members of the MSM have the character necessary to just do what is right, for once, without regard to the politics. Whether this was done because they are merely stupid or hopelessly biased doesn’t really matter. Either way, we can never risk trusting them with national security. We can only hope that neither President Trump nor our enemies will take this silly and childish act seriously, because the consequences of that could be beyond catastrophic.

This is unfortunately not all that new. Even after Hitler invaded Poland and France there were people in high levels of the British Government who still thought the smart move was to try and negotiate a peace settlement with him. Fortunately the prime minister was Winston Churchill and he knew exactly what to do.

TDM