Military Power, Military Strength Quotes

This is a very interesting quotation in that it began as a bogus quotation. Someone made it up and posted it on the internet. Soon it had been picked up by many of the Internet quotation sites which just “scrape” other sites and do no research themselves. Soon it was all over the internet. When he appeared on Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked him about the attribution. He then embraced the quotation as representing his real feelings. In the area of the Internet, this phenomenon has been possible and in this case actually happened.

At the time, the Russian economy was dominated by and dependent upon their exports of oil and natural gas. The rest of the economy was relatively weak.

Voltaire made this quotation famous but he did not originate it. Roger de Bussy-Rabutin, another ho wrote it over 100 years earlier (See {596505} ). Sometimes the origin is attributed to Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, 1611-1675, a French General.

India built the bomb, and then Pakistan djd at great economic sacrifice.

The Germans had invaded Russia. Most of the world thought the German Army was invincible. Stalin however, was historically right, and with U. S. material and weapons help, the Russians bore the brunt of Allied casualties, but also inflicted more casualties on the Nazi’s and were instrumental in their defeat.

At that time Jews in Palestine were in the minority. The issue of how to obtain the land was hotly debated amongst Jewish groups. Jabotinsky was at one extreme—colonize and take the land just as the Arabs had done to the Jews when there was a Jewish majority. His view did not however prevail. The policy was to buy the land from individual Arabs and Jewish land up to 1948 was obtained that way. In that year the UN partitioned Palestine and 11 Arab armies attacked the new state of Israel and asked the Arab civilians to leave the area so that the Army could cleanse it of Jews. Many did not, and they or their descendants are still on their land or have sold it. The Arabs who left, were suspected of being possible collaborators or terrorists, and they have never been paid for their land or allowed to return. Compensation is still in dispute. At the same time Jews driven out of Arab countries by law and the military have never been compensated or given any right of return either.

Truman had to deal with Stalin for many years. In earlier days he had a much more favorable view of the Russians. See {626410} for his view 22 years earlier.

He was referring to attacking the Barbary States. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640846}.

He was assessing him with the demagogue Huey Long and determining that MacArthur was more dangerous, This was based on his brutal suppression of the Veterans who protested and camped in Washington to get the Bonus that Congress had promised them from WWI but would not appropriate the money, MacArthur’s huge ego and ambition, and his penchant for self-promotion. FDR did not at the time know of course that MacArthur would disobey his orders and almost start WWIII later by attacking China in the Korean War. President Truman fired MacArthur. See {638721} for the way FDR tried to handle him. In 2014, historian Mark Perry, would use this quotation as the title of his biography of MacArthur.

3rd Earl Russell of Kingston. At the time China was one of the poorest nations on earth, with a series of feeble politicians and leaders fighting each other for the ability to rob the people. Their ancient science and virtues had been forgotten and it was thought of by the West and Asians alike as a failed state. However, Russell observed this one characteristic that could be so important when the rest of the world was learning more and more about everything from science to history. The search for wisdom from wherever it may be also gave them an advantage over other cultures who were more chauvinistic about the origin of whatever they did or thought. Less than a century later China was a superpower, economically, artistically intellectually, scientifically and almost militarily. It only lagged democratically.

3rd Earl Russell of Kingston. The military weak nations agreed with him, but the militarily strong ones did not—especially America and England which had the Atomic Bomb when others did not.

Germany had world power aspirations before Adolf Hitler.