- Spitfire List - https://spitfirelist.com -

A Lesson from History . . . .

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained HERE [1]. The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by the fall of 2019. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more.)

WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE [2].

You can sub­scribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE [3].

You can sub­scribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE [3].

Please con­sid­er sup­port­ing THE WORK DAVE EMORY DOES [4].

COMMENT: Many have for­got­ten the reas­sur­ing prog­nos­ti­ca­tions by the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion con­cern­ing the inva­sion of Iraq and the boun­ty that would flow from that mis­ad­ven­ture. With Grover Norquist [5] craft­ing much of the plan for the post-inva­sion Iraqi econ­o­my, we were assured that pro­found eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits would accrue from that oper­a­tion.

The analy­sis turned out to be pre­ma­ture.

Per­spec­tive can be gained [6] on this coun­try’s (seem­ing­ly end­less) for­eign mil­i­tary adven­tures from Impe­r­i­al Japan’s addic­tion to inva­sion and war. ” . . . . Great quan­ti­ties of trea­sure came from each vic­to­ry, but quick­ly van­ished into the usu­al hid­ing places, so Japan’s rul­ing elite became very much rich­er. Mean­while, the pub­lic trea­sury was exhaust­ed by mil­i­tary expen­di­tures, and ordi­nary Japan­ese were squeezed to make up the deficit. In short, the under­ly­ing prob­lem of a cor­rupt rul­ing elite was only aggra­vat­ed by infu­sions of stolen trea­sure. . . .”

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 44. [7]

It was fail­ure in Manchuria that caused the Japan­ese to invade Chi­na, and fail­ure in Chi­na that caused them to invade South­east Asia. In each instance they thought expand­ing the war zone would solve their prob­lems. How can vic­to­ry mean fail­ure? The answer is sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple. Great quan­ti­ties of trea­sure came from each vic­to­ry, but quick­ly van­ished into the usu­al hid­ing places, so Japan’s rul­ing elite became very much rich­er. Mean­while, the pub­lic trea­sury was exhaust­ed by mil­i­tary expen­di­tures, and ordi­nary Japan­ese were squeezed to make up the deficit. In short, the under­ly­ing prob­lem of a cor­rupt rul­ing elite was only aggra­vat­ed by infu­sions of stolen trea­sure. Dis­as­ter lay ahead, but in a cul­ture where con­spic­u­ous patri­o­tism is the bot­tom line, few dared to speak out. Get­ting bogged down in Chi­na removed all restraints on mil­i­tary spend­ing, so both the army and navy gam­bled on advanc­ing far­ther south. . . .