15-6, the Bergdahl Investigation

It is important to understand the timeline and who was where, when.  The Taliban talks and the Afghanistan exit strategy began in earnest several years ago, which places Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, David Patraeus, John Brennan and Bob Gates back in their respective jobs when the ‘Afgan Good Enough’ team was created headed by the now dead Richard Holbrooke was leading the charge to make nice with the Taliban and close Gitmo.

Richard Holbrooke died and he was replaced by Marc Grossman, Hillary’s choice. As the negotiations continued, they often broke down mostly due to leaks and the profound demand of the Taliban for the exceptional choice of the top 5 Taliban prisoner be released. These 5 are so bad that a DC Judge ruled at least two could never be released. A Judge even ruled on what an ‘enemy combatant’ is such that it was a declaration on who is the enemy that America and her allies are fighting in Afghanistan and beyond. Barack Obama ignored both. Barack Obama ignored telling anyone of his actions including the Congress and he ignored getting any of the intelligence files from all of the 16 intelligence agencies that had the goods on the Taliban Dream Team or Bowe Bergdahl himself.

The charges of oath violations are mounting and are at a tipping point at the hands of Barack Obama and his White House Staff.

In case you need more, the New York Daily news summarizes this misguided mission of Barack Obama as ‘Surrender without Honor’. This a short must read.

Not one person in Barack Obama’s inner circle has ever worn the uniform, not one understands the code of the military, yet Barack Obama as Commander-in-Chief seems to ignore the military culture most of all. There are two cases of desertion here, one by Bowe Bergdahl yet the most egregious is by Barack Obama himself.  This is spelled out well by Col. Ralph Peters himself.

http://www.nationalreview.com/ article/379481/why-team-obama- was-blindsided-bergdahl- backlash-ralph-peters.

By Ralph Peters

 

Congratulations, Mr. President! And identical congrats to your sorcerer’s apprentice, National Security Adviser Susan Rice. By trying to sell him as an American hero, you’ve turned a deserter already despised by soldiers in the know into quite possibly the most-hated individual soldier in the history of our military.

I have never witnessed such outrage from our troops.

Exhibit A: Ms. Rice. In one of the most tone-deaf statements in White House history (we’re making a lot of history here), the national-security advisor, on a Sunday talk show, described Bergdahl as having served “with honor and distinction.” Those serving in uniform and those of us who served previously were already stirred up, but that jaw-dropper drove us into jihad mode.

But pity Ms. Rice. Like the president she serves, she’s a victim of her class. Nobody in the inner circle of Team Obama has served in uniform. It shows. That bit about serving with “honor and distinction” is the sort of perfunctory catch-phrase politicians briefly don as electoral armor. (“At this point in your speech, ma’am, devote one sentence to how much you honor the troops.”)

I actually believe that Ms. Rice was kind of sincere, in her spectacularly oblivious way. In the best Manchurian Candidate manner, she said what she had been programmed to say by her political culture, then she was blindsided by the firestorm she ignited by scratching two flinty words together. At least she didn’t blame Bergdahl’s desertion on a video.

The president, too, appears stunned. He has so little understanding of (or interest in) the values and traditions of our troops that he and his advisers really believed that those in uniform would erupt into public joy at the news of Bergdahl’s release – as D.C. frat kids did when Osama bin Laden’s death was trumpeted.

Both President Obama and Ms. Rice seem to think that the crime of desertion in wartime is kind of like skipping class. They have no idea of how great a sin desertion in the face of the enemy is to those in our military. The only worse sin is to side actively with the enemy and kill your brothers in arms. This is not sleeping in on Monday morning and ducking Gender Studies 101.

But compassion, please! The president and all the president’s men and women are not alone. Our media elite – where it’s a rare bird who bothered to serve in uniform – instantly became experts on military justice. Of earnest mien and blithe assumption, one talking head after another announced that “we always try to rescue our troops, even deserters.”

Uh, no. “Save the deserter” is a recent battle cry of the politically indoctrinated brass. For much of our history, we did make some efforts to track down deserters in wartime. Then we shot or hanged them. Or, if we were in good spirits, we merely used a branding iron to burn a large D into their cheeks or foreheads. Even as we grew more enlightened, desertion brought serious time in a military prison. At hard labor.

This is a fundamental culture clash. Team Obama and its base cannot comprehend the values still cherished by those young Americans “so dumb” they joined the Army instead of going to prep school and then to Harvard. Values such as duty, honor, country, physical courage, and loyalty to your brothers and sisters in arms have no place in Obama World. (Military people don’t necessarily all like each other, but they know they can depend on each other in battle – the sacred trust Bergdahl violated.)

President Obama did this to himself (and to Bergdahl). This beautifully educated man, who never tires of letting us know how much smarter he is than the rest of us, never stopped to consider that our troops and their families might have been offended by their commander-in-chief staging a love-fest at the White House to celebrate trading five top terrorists for one deserter and featuring not the families of those soldiers (at least six of them) who died in the efforts to find and free Bergdahl, but, instead, giving a starring role on the international stage to Pa Taliban, parent of a deserter and a creature of dubious sympathies (that beard on pops ain’t a tribute to ZZ Top). How do you say “outrageous insult to our vets” in Pashto?

Nor, during the recent VA scandal, had the president troubled himself to host the families of survivors of those vets who died awaiting care. No, the warmest attention our president has ever paid to a “military family” was to Mr. and Mrs. Bergdahl.

(I will refrain from criticism of the bumptious attempts to cool the flames of this political conflagration by Secretary Hagel: I never pick on the weak.)

What is to be done? Behind the outrage triggered by Team Obama’s combination of cynicism and obliviousness (Bergdahl was so ill we had to set those terrorists free immediately, without notifying Congress, but now he’s chugging power shakes in a military hospital . . . and all this just happened to come at the peak of the VA scandal . . . ), military members don’t really want to lynch Bergdahl. But they want justice.

Our military leaders need to rediscover their moral courage and honor our traditions, our regulations, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We need a fresh, unprejudiced 15-6 investigation (the military equivalent of a grand jury). We already know, as the military has known since the first 24 hours after Bergdahl abandoned his post, that sufficient evidence exists for a court-martial, but it’s important to do this by the numbers.

It’s hard to believe that the resulting court-martial would not find Bergdahl guilty of desertion (although there will be heavy White House pressure to reduce the charge to Absent Without Leave, or AWOL, status, a lesser offense). If he is convicted, I for one do not want him to go to prison. I’m sure he’s paid and paid for betraying his comrades, quite possibly suffering brutal sexual violence. But if he is found guilty, he needs to be formally reduced to the rank of private, stripped of all privileges and entitlements (the taxpayer should not pay for a deserter’s lifelong health care – Bergdahl’s book and film deals can cover that), and he should be given the appropriate prison sentence, which would then be commuted by the president. Thereafter, let Mr. Bergdahl go home and live with himself.

As for President Obama, how about just one word of thanks to the families of those fallen soldiers you sent out to find Bowe Bergdahl?

– Fox News Strategic Analyst Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and former enlisted man.

——

In case you need more, here is the video released by the Taliban turning over Bergdahl.

Europe has big worries with their security threats when the joy the Taliban embraces this generous gift by Obama, here is the Taliban winning strategy. It is now time for America, her allies and the military to relook at the battlefield, this IS in fact going to be a very long slogging war where the battlefield has expanded and spent blood and treasure was dismissed by the Commander-in-Chief.

The 15-6 needs to be ordered on Barack Obama himself and those that are part of this dishonor, who are part of aiding the enemy, those who have surrendered with no honor.

 

 

 

Next, Pardon a Traitor?

The list of traitors to America is growing and the list includes many within the Obama administration. Remember, traitors are in violation of their oath and traitors joining forces with the declared enemy fall to treason.

Reminder: during the Obama administration we have had three attacks, Ft. Hood, Boston Bombing and Benghazi.

Several months ago, Saudi Arabia announced they were disgusted with the Obama administration over the matters in Syria and Iran. Saudi Arabia part of the Gulf States declared along with Egypt that Turkey and Qatar were no longer going to be part of a new coalition to fight the war on terror given Qatar especially has aligned and allowed Hamas and AQAP a supportive foothold in the Middle East.  Sadly, the United States continues to recognize Qatar as an ally, knowing full well we are sleeping with the enemy.

For three years hence,  U.S. State Department and the White House through Qatar has been negotiating with Haqqani and the Taliban for a misguided truce of sorts such that the United States paid through USAID for the Taliban to have a headquarters office in Qatar. Once that was exposed it fell apart. However, in March of 2012, during the negotiations with the Taliban, those leaders made a major demand of the release of 5 Gitmo detainees and May 31, 2014, the deed was done, Barack Obama fulfilled that request at the peril of future kidnappings, beheadings or worse.

For a real summary review of who the Taliban are historically, click here.

Yesterday, we learned that a covert operation occurred that Barack Obama used a U.S. citizen, once a PVT, but promoted to Sgt during his defection to the Taliban was at the core of a prisoner swap releasing the top 5 Taliban leadership from Guantanamo to Qatar.  These Taliban had direct action in killing Americans and they were flown by America leaving Gitmo at 2 PM, Saturday, 5/31/14 for Qatar. The al Thani family in leadership in Qatar worked this deal and will keep the released Gitmo detainees under house arrest for a year. Barack Obama rewarded the Taliban and then brought home a defector, the moral equivalence of high crimes and misdemeanors.

There is NO higher proof that Bergdahl was a deserter when even the FBI was brought in to investigate the case. In 2010, the military deemed Bergdahl a deserter. The Obama administration has known for years that Bergdahl defected and Barack Obama used this traitor who left his unit and uniform behind to advance the Taliban, now successfully so.

The happiest man globally is Mullah Omar, and this site is a follower of Robert Bergdahl on twitter, while the father of Beau follows this site. Here is the joy expressed by Mullah Omar. Robert Bergdahl is in full solidarity with the Taliban and continues to work to free all Taliban prisoners.  We can only assume and cautiously so the Robert Bergdahl has been given full immunity for his covert work supporting the Taliban while showing no remorse for the release of 5 Taliban personnel from Gitmo that are directly responsible for American deaths and those deaths of innocent women and children on a battlefield they created.

Beau Bergdahl left his Afghanistan post on purpose, unarmed except for a few knives and water seeking his Taliban friends.  Radio chatter began that the military picked up and so the saga began. Bergdahl did not report for 9 am muster the next morning and the search began for weeks that included drones, exfil teams, search teams and roving land teams. The IED’s went off, the ambushes began and the false leads led to injuries and death of American soldiers all for a traitor.

Prisoner swap

Bergdahl wrote home more than once that he no longer wanted to be an American, he was sick of a country full of lies, so his parents knew he defected. Robert Bergdahl even boasted about working to release all the Gitmo detainees for the sake of the innocent that America had killed prosecuting the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The timing of this swap is more than suspect given the fact the veterans and active military have come forward to expose the malfeasance and corruption within the Veterans Administration and Barack Obama  did nothing for six years. Firing Shinseki was required and larger aggressive measures could have happened under his watch and that of Barack Obama to cure the corrupt VA least of which could have been at the signature of Barack Obama by Executive Order. Now, how is it that the parents of Bergdahl just happened to be in Washington DC over this weekend, the very moment that the son is rescued? This plot was exposed on national TV filmed from the Rose Garden?

Now, Barack Obama says the al Qaeda leadership has been destroyed and the measures to defeat the Taliban is within the grasp of Afghani forces. Given the 5 Taliban senior leadership that Barack Obama released, tomorrow the war on terror will be at least as bad as it was on 9-12-01. The blood and treasure spent in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond has been for nothing now and al Qaeda is on its way to expand and fulfill their mission, defeat America and NATO forces.

The White House knew Bergdahl was a deserter, the State Department knew he was a deserter the military knew he was a deserter, the proof is there given all the cables from 2009, the emails from Bergdahl and the radio transmissions.

There is no single betrayal that is bigger than what Barack Obama approved, releasing top Taliban leadership to get a deserter returned all for regaining political capital.

National Security just went into a crisis DEFCON condition. The Senate was not advised of this covert White House action which is a violation of law. No higher price has America ever paid yet on the war on terror than this single reprehensible mission of Barack Obama.

In case there is any question on why this swap transaction is dangerous beyond definition, one only need to understand a previous Gitmo detainee Mullah Abdul Qayyum Zakir. The Department of Defense has graded Guantanamo prisoners with regard to future threat assessments. Zakir was ranked medium risk and sadly that proved to be wrong.

The matter of being attacked on 9-11-01 has been dismissed by Barack Obama and his conscripts.

Snowden, Truthful Spy

Each week there are media reports publishing additional nuggets with regard to the NSA, Edward Snowden and Obama administration policy alterations. Well at least something is coming out, where we can take these nuggets and go further.

Edward Snowden gave an interview about his job assignments and the fact they he did in fact attempt to raise some hard questions about what the NSA was doing without the knowledge or approval of common citizens.

In the interview he did raise an issue that spoke to the fact he sent an email to the NSA’s Office of Legal Council questioning the legality of USSID18, which is spying on U.S. citizens. Interestingly, this has not been mentioned before where it appears he was in fact seeking a response from the lawyers about the law versus Executive Orders.

Senator Dianne Feinstein confirmed the email exchange of which to date there has been only one released.

On Thursday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence posted on its website what it described as Snowden’s  only correspondence with NSA’s Office of General Counsel. The email does not refer to any concerns about NSA surveillance programs. In the email, Snowden asks about a training session and whether  presidential executive orders supersede federal laws.

The email was sent on April 5, 2013, at least three months after he first contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras and four months after he contacted journalist Glenn Greenwald. Rick Ledgett, the NSA’s deputy director who is leading the internal investigation of Snowden’s leaks, told Vanity Fair the he first illegally downloaded documents in the summer of 2012.

Given the notion that Snowden did try to reach out in some form before he bailed out of the United States does add a new twist to the order of actions.

The_NSA_Is_Firing_Back-80d197ab2724e541a3edcdeb9acc6a49

See full story and email exchange here.

Now we need to look deeper at what USSID18 is.

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

PROCEDURES GOVERNING THE

ACTIVITIES OF
DOD INTELLIGENCE COMPONENTS
THAT AFFECT UNITED STATES PERSONS

This DoD regulation sets forth procedures governing the activities of DoD intelligence components that affect United States persons. It implements DoD Directive 5240.1, and replaces the November 30, 1979 version of DoD Regulation 5240.1-R. It is applicable to all DoD intelligence components.

Executive Order 12333, “United States Intelligence Activities,” stipulates that certain activities of intelligence components that affect U.S. persons be governed by procedures issued by the agency head and approved by the Attorney General. Specifically, procedures 1 through 10, as well as Appendix A, herein, require approval by the Attorney General. Procedures 11 through 15, while not requiring approval by the Attorney General, contain further guidance to DoD Components in implementing Executive Order 12333 as well as Executive Order 12334, “President’s Intelligence Oversight Board”.

Accordingly, by this memorandum, these procedures are approved for use within the Department of Defense. Heads of DoD components shall issue such implementing instructions as may be necessary for the conduct of authorized functions in a manner consistent with the procedures set forth herein.

This regulation is effective immediately.

PROCEDURE 3. RETENTION OF INFORMATION
ABOUT UNITED STATES PERSONS

A. APPLICABILITY

This procedure governs the kinds of information about United States persons that may knowingly be retained by a DoD intelligence component without the consent of the person whom the information concerns. It does not apply when the information in question is retained solely for administrative purposes or is required by law to be maintained.

B. EXPLANATION OF UNDEFINED TERMS

The term “retention,” as used in this procedure, refers only to the maintenance of information about United States persons which ,an be retrieved by reference to the person’s name or other identifying data.

C. CRITERIA FOR RETENTION

1. Retention of information collected under Procedure 2. Information about United States persons may be retained if it was collected pursuant to Procedure 2.

2. Retention of Information Acquired Incidentally. Information about United States persons collected incidentally to authorized collection may be retained if:

a. Such information could have been collected intentionally under Procedure 2;b. Such information is necessary to understand or assess foreign intelligence or counterintelligence;

c. The information is foreign intelligence or counterintelligence collected from electronic surveillance conducted in compliance with this Regulation; or

d. Such information is incidental to authorized collection and may indicate involvement in activities that may violate federal, state, local, or foreign law.

3. Retention of information relating to functions of other DoD Components or non-DoD Agencies. Information about United States persons that pertains solely to the functions of other DoD Components or agencies outside the Department of Defense shall be retained only as necessary to transmit or deliver such information to the appropriate recipients.

4. Temporary retention. Information about United States persons may be retained temporarily, for a period not to exceed 90 days, solely for the purpose of determining whether that information may be permanently retained under these procedures.

5. Retention of other information. Information about United States persons other than that covered by subsections C.1. through 4., above, shall be retained only for purposes of reporting such collection for oversight purposes and for any subsequent proceedings that may be necessary.

D. ACCESS AND RETENTION

1. Controls on access to retained information. Access within a DoD intelligence component to information about United States persons retained pursuant to this procedure shall be limited to those with a need to know.

2. Duration of retention. Disposition of information about United States persons retained in the files of DoD intelligence components will comply with the disposition schedules approved by the Archivist of the United States for the files or records in which the information is retained.

3. Information acquired Prior to effective date. Information acquired prior to the effective date of this procedure may be retained by DoD intelligence components without being screened for compliance with this procedure or Executive Order 12333 (reference (a)), so long as retention was in compliance with applicable law and previous executive orders.

Read more here.

The question remains still on did Snowden and Greenwald cross the Rubicon? It launched a debate globally which is a huge benefit and we have come to learn more about the complicity of all internet tech companies hence. Let the roundtable discussions continue.

 

 

Stop With the al Qaeda Core Crap

Just because Usama bin Ladin is dead does not translate to al Qaeda being decimated, in fact nothing is farther from the truth.

It should make one wonder why the CTC (Counter Terrorism Center) has only released 17 of the documents from the trove of evidence taken from the bin Ladin Pakistan compound. It also should be the question on why drone strikes have suddenly stopped in Pakistan and moved to other locations such as Yemen.

On the heels of the Barack Obama West Point speech yesterday on the foreign policy doctrine, both the White House and the State Department announced a $5 billion global counter-terrorism fund. Ah, why now? Why was there at least a two year delay in placing Boko Harem on the FTO by Hillary Clinton? Why was there a major delay in placing Ansar al Sharia on the FTO, which was not done until January of this year given the proof of their attack on our two locations in Benghazi?

 

aq map

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A Map of All the Countries That Now Have Al-Qaeda Affiliated Terrorist Groups

The United Nations decided late last week to add Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram to its list of terrorist organizations formally recognized as being associated with al Qaeda.

The UN said in its statement that Boko Haram—whose name loosely translates to “Western education is a sin”—has “maintained a relationship with the Organization of Al-Qaida [sic] in the Islamic Maghreb for training and material support purposes.”

Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan has been referring to the group as a terrorist organization since last year and arresting members accordingly. But his country’s battles with Islamism have been launched onto the international stage since Boko Haram abducted hundreds of schoolgirls last month. This has put Nigeria on the map in a way Jonathan would have done best to avoid.

It has also put Nigeria on this particular map of countries with recognized al-Qaeda affiliates.

—–

Obama’s $5 Billion Counterterrorism Fund Already in Trouble in Congress

by Josh Rogin

President Obama’s Wednesday announcement that he wants $5 billion more next year to fight terrorism came as a complete surprise to the congressmen who will have to give him the money, and they reacted Wednesday with confusion and skepticism.

The new fund, if Congress goes along, would be added to the administration’s Pentagon budget request for the upcoming fiscal year, inside what’s known as the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. (That’s the cash that’s supposed to be used to help fight America’s wars, and is not considered part of the Defense Department’s core budget.) Experts and former officials warned that unless the administration comes to Congress with detailed plans of how the money will be spent and why those tasks can’t be completed inside the Pentagon’s already-huge budget, lawmakers are not likely to sign off on the idea. The total lack of administration outreach to Congress so far is not a good start.

At West Point, Obama said he was “calling on Congress to support a new Counter-Terrorism Partnerships Fund of up to $5 billion, which will allow us to train, build capacity, and facilitate partner countries on the front lines”—from Yemen to Libya to Syria to Mali.

Read more here.

Normalcy, America Cannot Retire

Superpowers Don’t Get to Retire

What our tired country still owes the world

By Robert Kagan

 

BHO sleeping

Almost 70 years ago, a new world order was born from the rubble of World War II, built by and around the power of the United States. Today that world order shows signs of cracking, and perhaps even collapsing. The Russia-Ukraine and Syria crises, and the world’s tepid response, the general upheaval in the greater Middle East and North Africa, the growing nationalist and great-power tensions in East Asia, the worldwide advance of autocracy and retreat of democracytaken individually, these problems are neither unprecedented nor unmanageable. But collectively they are a sign that something is changing, and perhaps more quickly than we may imagine. They may signal a transition into a different world order or into a world disorder of a kind not seen since the 1930s.

If a breakdown in the world order that America made is occurring, it is not because America’s power is decliningAmerica’s wealth, power, and potential influence remain adequate to meet the present challenges. It is not because the world has become more complex and intractablethe world has always been complex and intractable. And it is not simply war-weariness. Strangely enough, it is an intellectual problem, a question of identity and purpose.

Many Americans and their political leaders in both parties, including President Obama, have either forgotten or rejected the assumptions that undergirded American foreign policy for the past seven decades. In particular, American foreign policy may be moving away from the sense of global responsibility that equated American interests with the interests of many others around the world and back toward the defense of narrower, more parochial national interests. This is sometimes called “isolationism,” but that is not the right word. It may be more correctly described as a search for normalcy. At the core of American unease is a desire to shed the unusual burdens of responsibility that previous generations of Americans took on in World War II and throughout the cold war and to return to being a more normal kind of nation, more attuned to its own needs and less to those of the wider world.

If this is indeed what a majority of Americans seek today, then the current period of retrenchment will not be a temporary pause before an inevitable return to global activism. It will mark a new phase in the evolution of America’s foreign policy. And because America’s role in shaping the world order has been so unusually powerful and pervasive, it will also begin a new phase in the international system, one that promises not to be marginally different but radically different from what we have known these past 70 years. Unless Americans can be led back to an understanding of their enlightened self-interest, to see again how their fate is entangled with that of the world, then the prospects for a peaceful twenty-first century in which Americans and American principles can thrive will be bleak.

To understand where America, and the world, may be heading, it is useful to remind ourselves where we have beenof the choices that Americans made decades ago and of the profound, world-changing consequences of those choices. For Americans, the choice was never been between isolationism and internationalism. With their acquisitive drive for wealth and happiness, their love of commerce, their economic and (in earlier times) territorial expansiveness, and their universalistic ideology, they never had it in them to wall themselves off from the rest of the world. Tokugawa Japan and Ming China were isolationist. Americans have always been more like republican Rome or ancient Athens, a people and a nation on the move.

When, roughly 70 years ago, American foreign policy underwent a revolutionary transformation, it was not a transformation from isolationism to internationalism. What Americans had rejected before World War II was a steady global involvement, with commitments to other nations and responsibilities for the general well-being of the world. That was what the so-called “internationalists” of the time wanted for the United States. Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge, Elihu Root, Henry Stimson, Woodrow Wilson, and many others believed that Americans ought to take on a much bigger role in world affairs, as befitted their growing power. The United States had become “more and more the balance of power of the whole globe,” Roosevelt observed, and it ought to behave accordingly. And indeed, following the Spanish-American War and for the first two decades of the twentieth century, the United States did pursue a wider and deeper global involvement than it had ever done before, culminating in the dispatch of two million troops to France. When World War I ended, Wilson, like Roosevelt before him, ambitiously set out to make the United States a central player in world affairs. Beseeched by all the European powers after the warfor American financing aid to steady their economies and for American security guarantees against each otherWilson wanted the United States to commit itself to an enduring global role. The world, he warned Americans, would be “absolutely in despair if America deserts it.” Wilson’s League of Nations (actually it had been Roosevelt’s idea first), although couched in the idealistic language of universal principles and collective security, was meant above all to serve as the vehicle for American power and influence in support of a new liberal world order.

But Americans rejected this role. Disillusioned by the compromises and imperfections of the Versailles Treaty, mourning the loss of more than 100,000 dead soldiers, skeptical about American participation in the league, and spurred on by Republicans eager to defeat Wilson and recapture the White House, a majority of Americans came to oppose not only the league but also the internationalists’ broad vision of America’s global role. This was no absentminded lapse back into nonexistent isolationist traditions. It was a deliberate decision to turn away from the increasingly active global involvement of the previous two decades, to adopt a foreign policy of far greater restraint, and above all to avoid future military interventions beyond the Western Hemisphere. Wilson’s Republican successors promised, and the American public welcomed, what Warren Harding called a “return to normalcy.”

Normalcy in the 1920s did not mean isolation. Americans continued to trade, to invest, and to travel overseas; their navy was equaled in size only by Britain’s, and had fleets in the Atlantic and the Pacific; and their diplomats pursued treaties to control the arms race and to “outlaw” war. Normalcy simply meant defining America’s national interests the way most other nations defined theirs. It meant defending the homeland, avoiding overseas commitments, preserving the country’s independence and freedom of action, and creating prosperity at home. The problems of Europe and Asia were not America’s problems, and they could be solved, or not solved, without American help. This applied to global economic issues as well. Harding wanted to “prosper America first,” and he did. The 1920s were boom years for the American economy, while Europe’s postwar economies stagnated.

To the vast majority of Americans, normalcy seemed a reasonable response to the world of the 1920s, after the enormous exertions of the Wilson years. There were no obvious threats on the horizon. Postwar Weimar Germany was a faltering republic more likely to collapse than to take another stab at continental dominance. Bolshevik Russia was wracked by civil war and economic crisis. Japan, though growing in power and ambition, was a fragile democracy with a seat on the League of Nations permanent council. To most Americans in the 1920s, the greatest risk to America came not from foreign powers but from those misguided “internationalists” and the greedy bankers and war profiteers who would involve the nation in foreign conflicts that were none of America’s business.

This consensus was broad, deep, and bipartisan, and Americans stayed on the course of normalcy for two full decades. They did so even as the world orderno longer upheld by the old combination of British naval might and a relatively stable balance of power in Europe and Asiabegan to fray and then collapse. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931; Hitler’s rise to power in 1933; Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935; Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, and the German and Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War, in 1936; Japan’s invasion of central China in 1937; Hitler’s absorption of Austria, followed by his annexation and eventual conquest of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939all these events troubled and at times appalled Americans. They were not ignorant of what was going on. Even back then information traveled widely and rapidly, and the newspapers and newsreels were filled with stories about each unfolding crisis. Reports of Mussolini’s dive-bombers dropping their ordnance on spear-carrying Ethiopians; Germany’s aerial bombing of the civilian population of Guernica; Japan’s rampage of rape, pillage, and murder in Nankingthey were horrific and regrettable. But they were not reasons for the United States to get involved. On the contrary, they were reasons for not getting involved. The worse things looked around the world, the more hopeless it all seemed, the less Americans wanted to have anything to do with it. The United States, it was widely believed, had no vital interests at stake in Manchuria, Ethiopia, Spain, or Czechoslovakia.

In fact, it was not clear that the United States had vital interests anywhere outside the Western Hemisphere. Even after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, and the outbreak of a general European war that followed, respected American strategic thinkers, priding themselves on “realistic thinking,” the “banishment of altruism and sentiment” from their analysis, and “single-minded attention to the national interests,” advised that, with two oceans and a strong navy standing between America and every great power in the world, the United States was invulnerable.A Japanese attack on, say, Hawaii, they ruled out as literally impossible. Republican Senator Robert A. Taft felt confident in saying that no power “would be stupid enough” to attack the United States “from across thousands of miles of ocean.” Nor would the United States suffer appreciably if Nazi Germany did manage to conquer all of Europe, including Great Britain, which by 1940 the realists regarded as a foregone conclusion. Taft saw no reason why the United States could not trade and conduct normal diplomacy with a Europe dominated by Nazi Germany just as it had with Great Britain and France. As the historian Howard K. Beale put it, nations “do not trade with one another because they like each other’s governments but because both sides find the exchange of goods desirable.”

Holders of such views were tagged with the disparaging label of “isolationist,” but as Hans Morgenthau later pointed out, they believed at the time that they were upholding the “realist tradition of American foreign policy.” The United States should not range “over the world like a knight-errant,” Taft admonished, “[protecting] democracy and ideals of good faith and [tilting] like Don Quixote against the windmills of fascism.” Taft insisted on seeing the world as it was, not as idealists wished it to be. The European war was the product of “national and racial animosities” that had existed “for centuries” and would continue to exist “for centuries to come,” he argued. To make a difference in the war, the United States would have to send millions of troops across the ocean, make an impossible amphibious landing on shores heavily defended by German forces, and then march across Europe against the world’s strongest army. The very thought was inconceivable. Much as they might wish to help Europe, therefore, Americans had “no power, even if we have the will, to be its savior.”

This view was so dominant and so politically popular that Franklin Roosevelt spent his first years in office muzzling his internationalist instincts and vowing to keep America out of another war“I hate war!” he roared in a famous address in 1936. After Munich, however, he grew panicked, sensing that the Western powers, Britain and France, had lost the will to stand up to Hitler. And so he began trying to warn Americans of what he regarded as the coming threat. Yet it was difficult to counter the realists’ hardheaded analysis. Roosevelt could not prove that American security was directly endangered by what was happening in Europe. He was left making a case that really did appeal more to sentiment and idealism than to demonstrable threats to the American homeland.

Even if the United States faced no immediate danger of military attack, Roosevelt argued, if Hitler, Mussolini, and Imperial Japan were allowed to have their way, the world would be a “shabby and dangerous place to live inyes, even for Americans to live in.” America would become a “lone island” in a world dominated by the “philosophy of force.” The “institutions of democracy” would be placed at risk even if America’s security was not, because America would have to become an armed camp to defend itself. Roosevelt urged Americans to look beyond their immediate physical security. “There comes a time in the affairs of men,” he said, “when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments, and their very civilization are founded. The defense of religion, of democracy, and of good faith among nations is all the same fight. To save one we must now make up our minds to save all.”

Such arguments, along with the fall of France and the Battle of Britain, did help convince Americans that they had a stake in the outcome of the European struggle, but it did not convince them to go to war. That decision followed only after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack, Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war, and America’s full-scale entry into the conflicts in both Europe and Asia were a traumatic shock to Americans, especially for those in positions of power. That which had been deemed impossible had proved possible, and long-held assumptions about American security in a troubled world collapsed in a single day.

This view was so dominant and so politically popular that Franklin Roosevelt spent his first years in office muzzling his internationalist instincts and vowing to keep America out of another war“I hate war!” he roared in a famous address in 1936. After Munich, however, he grew panicked, sensing that the Western powers, Britain and France, had lost the will to stand up to Hitler. And so he began trying to warn Americans of what he regarded as the coming threat. Yet it was difficult to counter the realists’ hardheaded analysis. Roosevelt could not prove that American security was directly endangered by what was happening in Europe. He was left making a case that really did appeal more to sentiment and idealism than to demonstrable threats to the American homeland.

Even if the United States faced no immediate danger of military attack, Roosevelt argued, if Hitler, Mussolini, and Imperial Japan were allowed to have their way, the world would be a “shabby and dangerous place to live inyes, even for Americans to live in.” America would become a “lone island” in a world dominated by the “philosophy of force.” The “institutions of democracy” would be placed at risk even if America’s security was not, because America would have to become an armed camp to defend itself. Roosevelt urged Americans to look beyond their immediate physical security. “There comes a time in the affairs of men,” he said, “when they must prepare to defend, not their homes alone, but the tenets of faith and humanity on which their churches, their governments, and their very civilization are founded. The defense of religion, of democracy, and of good faith among nations is all the same fight. To save one we must now make up our minds to save all.”

Such arguments, along with the fall of France and the Battle of Britain, did help convince Americans that they had a stake in the outcome of the European struggle, but it did not convince them to go to war. That decision followed only after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack, Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war, and America’s full-scale entry into the conflicts in both Europe and Asia were a traumatic shock to Americans, especially for those in positions of power. That which had been deemed impossible had proved possible, and long-held assumptions about American security in a troubled world collapsed in a single day.

Then there was the global economy. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, the United States had sought mostly domestic remedies for the Great Depression, raising its own tariffs, choking off lending abroad, refusing to join other nations in a common monetary policy, and generally protecting the American economy while ignoring the world economy. By 1941, however, Roosevelt and his advisers had concluded that both America’s prosperity and its security depended on a healthy world economy. Poverty and economic dislocation had played a major role in the rise of both Hitler and Bolshevism. The United States bore much of the blame, for although it had been the world’s leading economic power in the 1920s and 1930s, it had failed to play a constructive and responsible role in stabilizing the global economy.

Finally, there was the issue of American public support for global involvement. In the 1920s and 1930s, Americans had been allowed and even encouraged by their political leaders to believe that the United States was immune to the world’s troubles. They could not be allowed to fall back into such complacency. They could no longer regard events thousands of miles away as of no concern to them. To Roosevelt, assuring public support for a larger and more consistent American role in the world was going to be among the greatest challenges after the war. Americans had to understand, as Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in April 1943, that “the world problem cannot be solved if America does not accept its full share of responsibility in solving it.”

That share was to be sizeable. convinced that World War II had been the result not of any single incident but rather of the overall breakdown of world order, politically, economically, and strategically, American leaders set out to erect and sustain a new order that could endure. This time it was to be a world order built around American economic, political, and military power. Europeans had proved incapable of keeping the peace. Asia was entirely unstable on its own. Any new order would depend on the United States. It would become the center of a new economic system that would encourage open trade and provide financial assistance and loans to nations struggling to stay afloat. It would take a substantial and active part in the occupation and transformation of the defeated powers, ensuring that some form of democracy took root in place of the dictatorships that had led those nations to war. America would also have to possess preponderant military strength and when necessary deploy sufficient power to preserve stability and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Military force played a central part in the calculations of Roosevelt and his advisers as they set out to establish and defend the new liberal world order. “Peace must be kept by force,” Roosevelt insisted. There was “no other way.” He anticipated that an American occupation force of one million troops would be necessary to keep the peace in Europe, for at least a year and perhaps longer. During the war, the Joint Chiefs envisioned establishing military bases around the world in “areas well removed from the United States” so that any fighting would take place “nearer the enemy” rather than near American territory.

That share was to be sizeable. convinced that World War II had been the result not of any single incident but rather of the overall breakdown of world order, politically, economically, and strategically, American leaders set out to erect and sustain a new order that could endure. This time it was to be a world order built around American economic, political, and military power. Europeans had proved incapable of keeping the peace. Asia was entirely unstable on its own. Any new order would depend on the United States. It would become the center of a new economic system that would encourage open trade and provide financial assistance and loans to nations struggling to stay afloat. It would take a substantial and active part in the occupation and transformation of the defeated powers, ensuring that some form of democracy took root in place of the dictatorships that had led those nations to war. America would also have to possess preponderant military strength and when necessary deploy sufficient power to preserve stability and security in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Military force played a central part in the calculations of Roosevelt and his advisers as they set out to establish and defend the new liberal world order. “Peace must be kept by force,” Roosevelt insisted. There was “no other way.” He anticipated that an American occupation force of one million troops would be necessary to keep the peace in Europe, for at least a year and perhaps longer. During the war, the Joint Chiefs envisioned establishing military bases around the world in “areas well removed from the United States” so that any fighting would take place “nearer the enemy” rather than near American territory.

 A must to continue to read here.