Guest Post: America, Our Military, and the Roman Empire

 @Old PH2  @LCpl X  @AceP 1987.  I arrive at AF BMT totally color blind.  I was taught by my parents, my peers and my teachers to judge people only on merit.  That was the last time in my life where I can remember thinking our nation had gotten beyond race. 

It's only gotten worse, and significantly worse in the last 3 years.  We're eating ourselves from the inside out.  Who's responsible?  1) the media 2) DC.  Just my take.

 @LCpl X  @Tango9  @AceP More of the Obaminator

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.motifake.com/image/demotivational-poster/0906/obamanator-demotivational-poster-1245087078.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.motifake.com/60669&h=653&w=640&sz=81&tbnid=dG5JLYFIW2PmaM:&tbnh=92&tbnw=90&prev=/search%3Fq%3DObamanator%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=Obamanator&docid=fT7Wvt6JjPH4-M&sa=X&ei=T6aVT-3BMM3C0AHrwtHmBw&ved=0CFYQ9QEwCA&dur=99159

 @LCpl X  @AceP This shit goes on all. the. time.

 @Riceball Good observations Riceball.  A few more tidbits of random Asian cultural stuff.  All the Asian countries tend to look askance at each other with different intensities.  My paternal grandparents came to SoCal from southern Japan (hence my tan) in the 20's and on my maternal side my great-grandfather was one of the first to immigrate to Kauai to work in the sugar plantations.  The Issei (1st generation) and Nisei (2nd generation) had more of the pre-Meiji period values than most modern urban Japanese.  One of their beliefs was that if you adopted a country, then you threw your soul into it so assimilation was fast.  Even during the war in the Pacific, many Japanese soldiers upon seeing Nisei soldiers, often in MI totally understood why they were fighting for the Americans (my dad as 442nd/100th after being sent to Gila Bend with his folks and my mom).  You are right about Japan being a closed culture.  I don't know if things have changed, but at least in college, I knew there were Chinese and Koreans who had lived there for at least a couple of generations yet neither really accepted nor given citizenship there.  My parents were very sympathetic about their plight.  Even in 2000, I saw a Japanese NGK broadcast about the families who came here to work and after a few years went back and the kids were considered outsiders because of their new accents and manners - that was sad to see.  Most Japanese love Americans and are really pleased if tourists even try a little of the language, but we'll never be accepted completely there.  I visited once and found that I had a much harder time since I look Japanese, but because I'm almost 4th generation and studied only two semesters of the language, I often got treated with stares at my outrageously bad Japanese or manners...kind of a disappointment but Japan is a homogenous race and culture.  Although English is considered a second language, many don't realize how many of Japanese ancestry live outside the country.  I'd have more trouble being accepted than most people who look like they're from here.  I always identified w/ Mr. Spock since I grew up post-war here and things weren't always peachy.  I knew what Japan did in both China and Korea and was sympathetic when I'd get older Chinese or Koreans here by my presence, but I wanted to tell them that my ancestors left before Imperial Japan was even an idea.  In fact, the Chinese admired Japan after the Russo-Japanese war for their moxy.  Here, there were three tough periods of time.  The 60s being essentially the minority in an old-fashioned town.  After the Vietnam War there were many vets and families who thought I was a gook (though I'm way thicker than any Vietnamese), the period of time in the early 80s when it looked like Japan would be The economic power (when a young Chinese-American was beaten to death in Detroit by people who were angry at the effects on the auto industry), oops four times.  When I worked in the defense industry we would get classified FBI briefings on industrial and military spy threats.  China was one which is totally known and (U).  Every darned time I'd go into some of the buildings, the half-asleep guards would suddenly wake up and stare hard at me and my badge - no one else.  The last were the LA Riots where I looked like I was the same as an angry Korean convenience store owner to angry people.  I was shot at twice then.  One hit my driver side window exactly where my ear was and sounded like a firecracker.  Muscle memory and training took over and I ducked and blew the KZ.  There was a deep  5" graze on the window and a perfect entry and exit hole on the plastic post which divided the front and small rear side windows on my old Toyota.  Niice.  Oh well, blabbing too long.  "Ooh Rah!" and "Semper Fi" to you riceball!

 @SEAN SPOONTS  

I meant to tread lighter, since I was rebutting a history guy, our Naval history guru here on SOFREP especially.

Glad you fleshed it out more, I thought it was more 700 Club bullshit. Your point makes more sense now.

I think our difference here is interpretation.

To me, this is basic extortion, pirates, the mafia, churches, even states participate in extortion. It's as old as time, what's yours is mine. The entities above have attempted to justify their extortion schemes using all sorts, the Bible, the Quran, white supremacy, my land, etc. etc.

the Mexican Mafia justified their hustle in their early years by making themselves out as modern day Aztec warriors "protecting" la Raza first in prison then out of prison. Same with Aryan Brotherhood.

It's a means to power.

I make a distinction between the Barbary pirates and Al-Qaeda because these guys didn't wanna shake us down, they wanted to fuckin' destroy us, and had a pretty good strategy to do so. I'd argue, given their size and scale, they did pretty well, really well.

Hell, every time I go thru TSA, I look around and actually think they did win.

@ArcticWarrior @LCpl @Riceball My point was the tasked mission of the US Navy which was always expressed as existing first to protect freedom of navigation differs from the Royal Navy which was always the protection of the Island. I suspect that the US Navy was sold as a commerce protection force because Americans were distrustful of standing military forces after the Revolution. Our early Navy did not spend much time in port, it was always crusing the sea lanes.....and still does.

@ArcticWarrior @Riceball My understanding is that the number of Germans brought in from Latin America was less that 5,000 of the 11,000 or so interned. We exchanged about 3,000 with the Nazis who were holding American citizens in camps in Europe. We interned quite a few more Italian than Germans. What you have to keep in mind is that the process was on going. We didn't round everybody up a week after Pearl Harbor. It was a continous process throughout the war. There were large numbers of Japanese, Germans and Italians who were released to go fight in the war. We also had an ethnic segregation in our armed forces to a certain extent. We did not send Japanese Americans to fight in Asia and we did not send German and Italian Americans to fight in Europe if they had close family there or their names were obviously Italian or German. Eisenhower being an exception to the rule obviously.

 @SEAN SPOONTS  @LCpl  @Riceball

 Sean I'll give you the WTC was both symbolic and an attack on commerce. However the Royal Navy, maybe not to the extent it was in the past, was used to keep trade routes open and keep freedom over the high seas. Our Navy probably has covered more water then any other though. Im not up on Naval history so you have to bear with me but the Royal Navy certainly kept the waterways safe for the EIC and ran convoy in both the Atlantic and Pacific in WW1 and 2.

@LCpl X @Riceball You ought to know me better than that. If you check you will find that in 1785 when Adams and Jefferson met in London with the envoy of the Bey of Tripoli and asked why the muslims were attacking American merchants this was the reply of the envoy which they reported back to Congress, in part; "It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave." When Jefferson refused to pay any further tribute to the Barbary States in 1801 the Bey of Tripoli sent armed troops to the US Consulate in Tripoli and chopped down our flag pole which was their customary way of saying; "It's on!" I would argue that piracy then, like terrorism today, is simply the means by which they chose to wage jihad. If you strip 9/11 down to the bare basics it was an attack upon our commerce in hitting the World Trade Center. I would posit that our encounters with the Barbary States(there were three of them) was a defining moment for this country. We decided that America was to be a maritime trading nation and that in order to protect that trade we would need a Navy who's job was to ensure the freedom of the high seas. Our Navy is unique in that role. Every other country has a navy to protect its waterways, only ours exists to protect freedom of navigation and commerce.

 @SEAN SPOONTS  @Riceball

 I thought it was less then 10000 Germans and over 100,000 Japanese and Im certain there was no mass internment of German Americans. And werent most German detainees from Latin America?

@Riceball Actually we did round up between 30 and 50 thousand German and Italian American citizens and resident aliens and intern them.

 @Riceball  @SEAN SPOONTS

 I think that as a whole we really dont get the Eastern Cultures. Ancient as they are we, the average American, dont know a whole lot about them. Guys in stationed in Korea, or Okinawa etc will generally say the same thing. And I think they dont generally understand us and that leads to the usual bag of mistrust.

I mean we interned Japanese American citizens during the 40s, we had a camp not far from where I live now. Yet we had German agents caught before they could hatch the terrorist plans they had not far from where I was raised, German U boats off the east coast going after lend/lease ships and no German American camps, sure they were watched but they werent rounded up. Prescott Bush and Charles Lindberg never spoke of sympathy for Japan pre Dec 7th. Maybe we arent over that yet.

* led by

 @Riceball

To add to my fellow Devil Dawg's comment above:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=US7qRyA9n0A

Also, re the Barabary pirates and America. "To the shores of Tripoli", was arguably the first spec ops the Marines undertook, led a former Army officer.

And also, it was not:

"Islamists in Tunis and Tripoli who declared Jihad on infidel America"

We were dealing with Muslim pirates who had no Islamists politics, much less any thought of "jihad" against America. They were pirates forchrissakes and did what pirates do--rape and pillage.

I would argue political Islam, especially political Islam specifically targeting America is a product of the 1990s.

 @SEAN SPOONTS I would disagree, to some degree, about your assertion that a white person couldn't/wouldn't be assimilated into Chinese culture. I'm no expert on the subject but as far as I know the various peoples who invaded and took over China over the centuries were, in numerous cases, ethnically different from the people they conquered and while they may look similar they were regarded as different and, more often than not, as barbarians. But over the centuries they became as Chinese as the people they originally conquered and regarded many outsiders as barbarians.

Where you would never be accepted, regardless of skin color, is Japan, as a culture, they're very unaccepting of outsiders and it's very difficult to nearly impossible for any foreigner (Asian or Western) to achieve Japanese citizenship. You can live there for years and speak Japanese fluently like a native speaker but you'd never truly ever become one of them.

 @Riceball I think the problem is one of classification.  Rome is Rome, China is China and America is America.  In each we are talking about unique and powerful cultures that cannot be contrasted and compared to each other in the way the Swedes and Norwegians could.  Edwardian England was probably more like the Roman Empire than we will ever be.  I do have a quibble with your cultural assimilation point about China.  America is certainly a melting pot.  It is a mix of many different cultures.  A sort of cultural Darwinism has always been at work in this country, where the cultural customs that helped prosperity and assimilation survived and thrived while the  customs that interfered with that progress were cast aside, like native languages.  My family was Irish and Sicilian on my mothers side.  Within a generation their language died. My own grandparents who were 1st generation Americans didn't speak anything but English.  I would submit that there is a major difference between America and China when it comes to assimilation. I could be born and raised in China, but to the Chinese I would still be white, not Chinese.  You on the other hand are as American as apple pie, because non of us have 5,000 years of cultural residence in America.

   America's problems are the problems of all prosperous, wealthy Republics.  We forgot the toil, sweat and blood that preceded that wealth and prosperity.  We forget that it is hard. We forget that others envy our wealth and power, just as we once envied theirs.  After the Soviet Union collapsed America stood at the apex of a history.  Never before had such overwhelming financial, military, scientific and cultural power been concentrated in one place without the entire world freaking about about what we might do with that power and combining against us.  We didn't stand there long by ourselves.  Islam represents the challenge to that American predominance.  Islam views America with jealous envy, and resentment.  We enjoy on Earth what they are told is only obtainable in heaven after a life of privation and misery.  And knowing the purposes they would put power to if they had it, they greatly fear us having it.  As a warning to other readers please don't bore me with "If it weren't for Israel" arguments. The West has been at war with Islam which has been closed and radicalized for 1000 years.  There wasn't any Israel when John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were dealing the with the Islamists in Tunis and Tripoli who declared Jihad on infidel America.

 @ColonelProp  @SEAN While I agree to a certain point I also feel that in some ways we are like China in where the power of our culture tends to absorb other culture into ours. If you look the history of China they've been invaded and taken over by any number of so-called barbarian tribes over the centuries and establish a new dynasty but by the time the next barbarian group comes along the waning dynasty has long become Chinese and view themselves as such and see the outsiders as "barbarians". The same happens here, within 1 or 2 generations the children of immigrants become fully assimilated into the American culture and identify themselves as American.

I'll grant you that some cultures tend to assimilate themselves quicker than others, Asians are a good example of quick assimilators, and while on the other hand there are some native born people that end up forming their own sub-culture overall the American culture proves stronger and, sometimes, to the dismay of parents, the children of immigrants adapt and become American at the expense of their parent culture. Just look at the European immigrants like the Irish of the turn of the 20th century and how they're simply just Americans now, or the Chinese who worked on the railroads during the 1800s, or the Japanese who fought for the US against "their own kind" during WW II. Hell, American pop-culture is still hugely popular overseas, some American movies make the majority of their money overseas even while taking a beating in domestic box offices, and our culture is probably our true number 1 export and it doesn't rely on the value of the dollar and no tariffs can touch it either.

@ArcticWarrior @SEAN SPOONTS Yes - just as the Eastern Roman Empire operated...

@SEAN SPOONTS Excellent points all, exactly why I feel we are more like the Eastern Roman Empire. My belief is that we are the younger empire out of the British empire really. We are tending down the multicultural path very quickly though.

 @SEAN SPOONTS  @ColonelProp

 As long as we recognize our issues and try to make good on them. The author of the article rightly says we have a lot of differences with Rome but we have some scary similarities. Sean you are correct in the Bush, Kennedy, Adamses but are we heading in that direction? We almost have a Patrician class now in professional politicians. We have no succesio plebis for us, we the normal folk answer to a different legal system then the people of DC, Wall St and Hollywood.

@ArcticWarrior @LCpl I think the failure of Persian and Iraqi culture to thrive had to do with the rise of Islam which became a giant roadblock to their cultural advance. Iraq and Persia were cut off from the West by the muslim middle east which chose to try and conquer the West rather than trade with it. The Crusades were actually a counter attack against conquering Islam. There was a war between Islam and Christiandom that didn't end until the late 1500s. I don't think it was coincidence that the Renaisance occured as the muslims were driven out of their European conquests.

@LCpl X I want to revisit your point here after gving it some thought for a while. You asked; "What is our frankencense?" in the context of what do we produce that the world wants. I think we produce three main things; 1) The US Dollar. Our dollar is pinned to the value of our economy and the productive output of its workers. When we followed sound fiscal policy and kept our dollar stable it was the most sought after currency on the planet. The relative poverty of China and the USSR I think were directly tied to their attempts to manipulate their currency into something it wasn't, a piece of paper with real value behind it. One of the reasons that Russia and China are such big arms dealers is because they don't make anything else that has a US dollar value that other countries want. You don't think Russia took Iraqi Dinars for all those tanks, guns and planes do you? They took payment in US dollars because you couldn't exchange the Ruble for a penny. The debasement of our own currency by the Fed could end up doing serious harm to us in the short term. At some point the bond buyers may decide that they will not buy US debt anymore because the government can just print money and destroy any profit they expect to gain. Then the party is over. The government will not be able to borrow money and will default. 2) Technology; Once upon a time, when you thought of German technology you were thinking about cars. When you thought of Japanese technology you were thinking about electronics like phones and stereos. But when you thought of American technology you were thinking about Space Ships and probes that ranged out into the solar system. That represents a huge difference in the technology trees possessed by so called industrialized nations in relation to ours. So the Germans can make BMWs that look very cool at the country club? Great. Well, we just landed car on Mars and drove it around for months. What the world marvels at is the breadth and scale of our technological knowhow. We attract the worlds best engineers and scientists because this is where all the amazing things are happening. In effect, we drain the brain power of other countries because their best and brightest come here to innovate and invent. I know we have quit space as a government program but we did open it up to private business. While the Chinese, the Russians and the Japanese still have to fund their space programs with tax dollars, we are turning ours over to private business men. Think of what that means. It means that aerospace engineers are so common in our country that private companies can provide employment for them better than the government. You may not see that as an advantage but I do. I don't think the government is always the most capable agent for getting things done. Originally, we went into space with tech provided by private companies like Grumman, Lockheed, Boeing, Motorola, Litton and hundreds of others and we weren't nearly as wealthy a country then as we are now. Now there are private companies that have the money to launch their own space craft. It's amazing when you think about it. 3) We are percieved as winners by the world. We have only 5% of the worlds population but we produce 25% of the worlds goods. We produce enough food to feed the entire planet in our own country. We take on a world talent pool of something like 6 billion people with just 300 million and consistently win the most of the Olypmic medals. We excel at almost everything we do and the world notices. The people of the world who don't want to be losers want to join us. As long as we are perceived to be winners we will draw talent which will ad to our success as a culture and a country.

 @LCpl X Depending on whether they're Chinese living here or Chinese from abroad Chinese typically study one 3 basic subjects: law, engineering, medicine. Of course Chinese from overseas are not likely to be studying law and would probably be focusing on engineering with the rest studying medicine or some sort of science.

It may be stereotyped but it's pretty much true that Chinese, and other Asian nationalities too, like their kids to go to college and study only to become doctors, lawyers, or engineers; no other field of study being considered acceptable. This is why you have so many Asian lawyers, engineers, and especially doctors. Forget about being an English major, history, or (God forbid) art and joining the military is flat out. Of course I managed to escape all of those stereotypes and majored in art and joined the Marine Corps Reserves after college.

 @ArcticWarrior we mostly get middle eastern exchange student from Saudi, Jordan, Iran.

 @LCpl X Our physics dept does most of it's research in thin films, which is pretty established.  And I've met most of the current grad students, none of which are Chinese.

 @LCpl X I taught mostly just labs from 2000-2002 then we moved to Vadnenberg (wife PCS, I got out in 2000).  Didn't start teaching again at UCCS until 2011 so I can't tell you.

 @Tango9  

T, did you get a bunch of Saudis post-9/11, supposedly we opened our schools for them after 9/11 as a means to bridge the "misunderstanding", ironically brought upon by an Egyptian who went to school a bit north from you in Greeley, CO--Sayyid Qutb.

Also, how about the Chinese and what are they studying? Cold fusion, hyper sonic, nano tech, what emerging technology are they interested in?

 @ArcticWarrior actually it's about the same now as it was 10 years ago, from my perspective.  But this is all anecdotal and based only on what I teach (physics). 

And believe it or not, the freshmen I get for calc-based physics are more prepared than I would have expected (in most cases... some fail miserably).  I do spend a lot of time in that Physics I class making sure they know conversions and all that, and about half are pretty weak in geometry.

 @Tango9

 Do you or have you seen an increase in students from developing countries?

 @ArcticWarrior My grad degree is in space ops (engineering).  Unless it flies in 4 Kelvin I'm not qualified lol

UCCS is actually a pretty strong math/sciences/engineering school with more graduate degrees in those areas than in "poetic window licking"

 @LCpl X  @SEAN SPOONTS

 Lot of good points. Tango could probably fill us in on what a typical engineering class is comprised off and we may not like the answer.

 @SEAN SPOONTS  @LCpl

 Rome couldnt feed itself as well, it relied on the Egyptians for grain. Egyptian culture was far older then Roman who evolved out of the shadow of the Etruscans.

But that being said Iraq(Mesopotamian) and Persian culture were also far more advanced then Western for a long time, how did they fade and never reset is a point to look at.

 @SEAN SPOONTS  

I prefer this take on Roman collapse. Silk was also held closely by China. So the question is what's our Frankencense? It doesn't have to be one. Is it Detroit cars, NYC finance, Hollywood films, Silicon Valley tech, small town manufacturing? combination of all these?

Many have proposed that it's our schools, not Falwell's Liberty University or Robertson's Regent University or University of Phoenix type correspondence school bs which many vets are wasting their GI Bills on, but our traditional schools which have produced all these ideas again and again.

As fucked up as Saudi Arabia is they know they'll either run out of oil or we'll stop buying eventually, their most serious investment? Schools, paying good money to populate their schools with the best educators and researchers. Same with Qatar. Shit the Chinese are sending thousands of their professors and teachers here to figure out how to balance creativity and knowledge

That's our Frankencense and Silk, American schools (and it's home schooled, independently acquired version, Good Will Hunting type ingenuity). Reverse the stupidization of America, take care of health care and stop eating crap, stop industrialized food, feeding dead chicken or dead cows to cows is retarded, so is injecting them with chemicals and medicine, we are what we eat--we gotta start valuing our brains again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnL3JAjXT0g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMfSGt6rHos