Self View:
One can only wonder about what delusions prevail now.
One can only wonder today about the self view of a State Dept which FDR wished would only remain neutral, and captured the likes of Colin Powell, and Condi Rice. Wonder if they view their mission as achieving peace, or the security and advantage of the USA for the benefit of its people.
If we are sympathetic the view of Victor David Hanson and the Greeks, that war is unfortunately a major part of the natural state of man, and that ultimately politics begins with the results on the battlefield (indicating that Bismarck had it backwards) then the purpose of diplomacy is to guarantee that those results are enforced by means short of a return to war, and to discern and advise when that is not possible.
Does anyone believe the State Dept we have will offer such advice, especially to this president?
Today, of course we recognize these utter delusions.I ..."have been specially selected by Providence for the definite mission of helping to preserve the peace of the world" - Sir Neville Henderson, from Munich, 1938, Daniel Faber, a fact fable on how smart people deceive and delude themselves (and a rip snorting read)
"Of all the big Nazi leaders, Hermann Goering was for me by far the most sympathetic."
"Nevertheless, behind all the ruthlessness and brutality which led Goering to shrink from nothing to obey an order or to achieve an end and behind his harmless vanity and love of display, there were agreeable qualities.....he loved animals"
"he gave me the most categorical assurances that, in the event of war with Britain, his airmen would not bomb anything except definitely military objectives."
"My own recollections of Goering will be of the man who intervened decisively in favor of peace in 1938, and would have done so again in 1939 if he had been as brave
morally as he was physically; of the hospitable host and sportsman; and of a man with whom I spent many hours in friendly and honorable dispute and argument."
Sir Neville Henderson, from his own memoir, Failure of a Mission (free download)
One can only wonder about what delusions prevail now.
One can only wonder today about the self view of a State Dept which FDR wished would only remain neutral, and captured the likes of Colin Powell, and Condi Rice. Wonder if they view their mission as achieving peace, or the security and advantage of the USA for the benefit of its people.
If we are sympathetic the view of Victor David Hanson and the Greeks, that war is unfortunately a major part of the natural state of man, and that ultimately politics begins with the results on the battlefield (indicating that Bismarck had it backwards) then the purpose of diplomacy is to guarantee that those results are enforced by means short of a return to war, and to discern and advise when that is not possible.
Does anyone believe the State Dept we have will offer such advice, especially to this president?
1 comment:
Our State Dept may as well be named after Neville Chamberlain.
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