A Just War
The Donroe Doctrine
What Trump just did in Venezuela and now in Iran harks back to a different time. Before the U.N., before the League of Nations, before two world wars.
David French wrote a great historical retrospective in the Times how the world worked before Queen Victoria and after the 2nd World War. So call that 1910 to 1950 ... 40 years. It reads like the chapter of a book, so I will spare you that, but it does touch on two concepts that I wanted to get us thinking about this week.
The first concept, he calls The Will of Power. I prefer to call it Might Makes Right. For a long as small groups of men (or worse, a King) have had control over great armies, there has been a predilection for a strong state, believing war is simply policy extended by means of force, to act like a mob boss. "Nice little country you have there — be a shame if something happened to it." The Egyptians did it to the Hittites. The Romans did it to the Egyptians. The Visigoths did it to the Romans. From the Dark Ages forward, the colonial powers did it to everyone, ending with the the British doing it to China, then India. This has been going going on since the first caveman wanted another caveman's haunch of antelope (or woman). Might makes right.
Our species (or at least the mighty ones) went happily down that road for centuries. Everything changed in 1914. Chariots, spears and swords had been replaced with machine guns, mustard gas and artillery shells. It could be argued that a single Serbian bullet (after being fired into Archduke Ferdinand) killed sixteen million people when it resulted in the First World War. We attempted to block this sort of madness with the establishment of an international institution (The League of Nations) — to keep the peace. The League failed, in part because the United States refused to join. The U.S. Senate was afraid they would be drawn into foreign wars. How funny is that? Queue the 2nd World War. Faster planes, bigger bombs, this time, eighty million died! Of course it ends with the invention of the atom bomb, so someone did the math. How many might be killed in the next one? 200 million? A billion? That might be bad. Right? So, the United Nations is born. No one would argue that the system is perfect. We’ve seen wars of aggression since World War II, but the system has achieved its primary goal. The world has been spared total war. So put a pin in that? Might Makes Right is no longer how we do things. We had achieved what Thomas Aquinas called A Just War Theory.
This is where our racial memory comes into play. Restraint might come from International Law but it also helps if people making these decisions remembers those two World Wars. Korea. Vietnam. Slavery. The Holocaust, The cost in human life? The orange moron has none of that. He's never read a history book. He thinks the military took over airports in the 1763 Revolutionary War (speech in 2019). He took six deferments to get out of going to Vietnam, and functions to this day on the intellectual level of an eight year old. He is a petulant bully who lays in bed until noon each day, clutching his toys and crying for his mommy when people say bad things about him. The world has seen what happens when the will to power dominates world affairs. When its' leaders forget (or never knew) that the most catastrophic conflicts can start from the most modest beginnings.
Venezuela needed Maduro to go. No one doubts that. Iran has been a problem for a long time but let's all remember some basic history. Iran was the largest most stable democracy in the middle east under Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. The problem was he didn't want to give Britain and the U.S. his oil. What to do, what to do?
In 1953, the CIA toppled him from power in favour of the Shah of Iran. A brutal dictatorship followed with 26 years of misery. Where can those poor people turn? In 1979, after a populous revolution, they turned to a hard line cleric who had been living in exile. Enter the Ayatollah Khomeini. He was the Supreme Leader for 37 years until the U.S. murdered him last week. Is it any wonder that the people and government of Iran would rather die, than trust a monster like DJT to look after their interests? You have to wonder what the world might look like if the largest most advanced country in the middle east had been left as an independant democracy for the past 70 years? Instead they got this:
So Donnie already has a name for his ambitions. The Donroe Doctrine. Whereas The Monroe Doctrine was focused on the U.S. telling the world that the Western Hemisphere was under the U.S. sphere of influence and to keep there colonial meat hooks off those nations, Trump has decided that it would be good if the U.S. put their colonial meat hooks on them instead. He has already moved against Venezuela. He has cut off oil to Cuba and is running a tariff war against Mexico. Columbia is on his hit list when he has a moment. Oh and he wants Canada as the 51st state and Greenland as the 52nd. If there is anything more important than getting this guy in an orange jumpsuit, I don't know what that might be? Of course the Dems have begun to squabble over their midterm message.
I will close by wondering aloud; "I wonder what China thinks about all of this when told to keep their hands off Taiwan?"
In the Times, Mr French closed with; "A foolish world once again endures the high cost of forgetting what it’s like when great powers go to war."
Our Optimum Week
Good clean pantry living continues. I did try the Blue Dragon noodle kit which was just OK for the money. I wouldn't want to pay full price for it. I did two quick laps before SWMBO went away so I'm sitting at $439 with one week to go!
This week, just WOW! No need to look at anyone else's flyer. There are five new long term continuity offers all ending on April 12th. Hit them all for 21,000 points. There is an overall store spend offer. $125 for 12, 500 points. The flyer was great and it is Moredays Event. The best deal, I thought, was the family sized PC Entrees (list above). There are normally $12 or $13 and feed four. They are on for $8 plus $2 back in points! Buy four, thats a lots of food for $24! I routinely urge you wait for the prices to come to you? They have! Spend $500 and come home with supplies to take you into the summer. Here is your list:
We Are Watching
Young Sherlock on Netflix - It's hard for the youngsters to remember but once upon a time, Madonna was bigger than Beyonce. Taylor wasn't born yet. Lady who? Not since Cher was found dating a 22 year old New York bagel maker (18 years her junior) was the world so scandalized as when Madonna married an virtual unknown small firm maker from England! Who (?) screamed the headlines. She saw something in him and I have since become a huge Guy Richie fan. The two best Sherlock Holmes movies in history (which is saying something), a fantastic Man from UNCLE remake, a bunch of great British crime movies and lets not forget .... Alladin which made a billion dollars! I was pretty excited when he launched a new series based on Doyle's characters. It's good. It has that Guy Richie look, which some viewers find frenetic. Colin Firth is miscast as a pompas government envoy but other than that, it is well worth a watch. Three stars.
War Machine on Netflix - Reacher had faded in plausibility since the first season but Alan Ritchson as a hard core army ranger battling aliens had me hoping for something along the lines of Battle Los Angeles? No such luck. Ranger boot camp (which was the first half of the film) has been done better countless times (Officer and a Gentlemen, Full Metal Jacket, Heartbreak Ridge). Our hero is sent out on a training exercise without ammunition. He and his team accidentally run into a giant freakin robot from space. The rest is as predictable as gas after cabbage. Lots of "suck it up soldier", improbable special effects (the river scene) and ends with the requisite giant Stars and Stripes over motivational speech in the airplane hanger. Bill Pullman did that cheese better in Independence Day. Two stars.
... and finally
My Kind Of Town
Chicago has an interesting and violent history. Famous for Al Capone and mobs in the 30's, Sinatra sang about how it was his kind of town in 1957. Jim Croce returned to the crime theme with Bad Bad Leroy Brown in 73 and it has remained a pretty dangerous place to live ...by Canadian standards.
They have been back in the news lately. They have a democratic governor (J.B. Pritzker) who really doesn't get along with Pepto Abysmal. He has been red meat for those who revel in the city’s reputation as a lawless wasteland helmed by liberal politicians. Trump sent in federal troops for "emergency" policing. So with my new subscription to the Chicago Tribune, I see this headline on how murder rates are half of what they were just four short years ago. Oh, really Mr. Google, tell me more? Let the bells ring out and banner fly. They only had 403 fatal shootings in 2025! That's in the greater Chicago Area. Eight million people. The Greater Toronto Area has about eight million people. We had 38. Same population? Say it with me? We live in a paradise.
Postscript
I am not afraid of spiders. I mean some furry giant big enough to f**k a chicken crawling down my shirt is probably not going to work, but I don't freak out when I see one. So last Saturday, in the wee hours of the morning, I'm in bed, mostly naked, laying on my side, watching the F1 Sprint race live from China. Something crawls up between my shoulder blades, over my bicep, down my chest, across my iPad, over the pillow that it is resting on and just carries on, over the horizon? Sort of a smaller Daddy Long Legs. The one that came by five minutes later was larger! Same path, same confident gait. "Just passing through".
The third one was a truly magnificent specimen. You could feel his weight when he walked on you. So he gets to the edge of the pillow, stops, turns around and looks back at me. It felt like he was saying; "Thanks for not squishing my kid or my spouse". "My pleasure buddy! Go live your best life."