Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too? by 6ixStringJack

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 1, 2025 20:21
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Wednesday, October 1, 2025 6:34 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Donald Trump Will Never Be a Restrainer

By Stephen M. Walt | September 30, 2025, 7:00 AM

Stephen M. Walt is a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/09/30/donald-trump-will-never-be-a-rest
rainer/?tpcc=recirc_latest062921

. . . The idea of U.S. foreign-policy restraint emerged in opposition to the grand strategy of liberal hegemony, which sought to use American power to spread democracy, markets, the rule of law, and other liberal values around the world, and to bring as many states as possible into institutions dominated by the United States. Restrainers believe that trying to spread democracy with military force is a fool’s errand, and that threatening or bullying other states usually backfires, making adversaries more suspicious and turning allies or neutrals into enemies. For this reason, they believe diplomacy should be America’s first impulse and the use of force its last resort. They are neither isolationists nor pacifists, because they believe that the United States has an interest in helping maintain favorable balances of power in key regions, that allies are useful but should pull their weight, that force is sometimes necessary to defend vital interests, and that well-designed international institutions can facilitate cooperation even as states compete. And while restrainers recognize that the world can be a dangerous place and that the United States has serious conflicts of interest with some countries, they oppose the relentless threat inflation used to justify excessive U.S. military spending and the overuse of force abroad.

Restrainers do not agree on every issue—for example, some favor confronting China more vigorously while others favor greater efforts to accommodate its rise—but they are united in their opposition to the self-indulgent hubris that has characterized U.S. grand strategy under recent Democratic and Republican administrations. Above all, restrainers oppose the capricious use of military force and believe the United States could be more secure and more prosperous if it spent less on national security and used its still considerable power more judiciously.

So why is Trump not a true restrainer? Let me count the ways.

First, Trump continues to favor unnecessary increases in the U.S. defense budget, which recently topped $1 trillion and still dwarfs that of every other country. Even worse, he is diverting some of these vast sums from their true purpose—defending the United States against foreign dangers—and using them to go after fictitious domestic enemies. Instead of deflating threats, Trump is using imaginary enemies at home and abroad to justify expanding presidential authority to dangerous levels. Restrainers have long warned that excessive militarization would eventually threaten civil liberties here in the United States, and Trump has proved them right.

Second, restrainers believe the United States should reduce its military footprint in Europe and the Middle East and adopt a more even-handed posture in the latter region. Trump has had ample opportunity to do both things and has yet to do either one. The U.S. presence in both regions remains largely unchanged, and Trump has doubled down on America’s “special relationships” in the Middle East and refused to engage seriously with opponents there.

Third, although Trump has been wary of committing U.S. ground forces to battle in potentially open-ended conflicts, he is perfectly comfortable using airpower in visible but strategically dubious acts of military theater. Since retaking office in January, he has struck targets in Yemen and Iran, and ordered the military to sink several boats in the Caribbean that were supposedly smuggling illegal drugs. In addition to the dubious legality of these actions, none of them are likely to accomplish any significant or lasting strategic purpose. The Houthis remain defiant, Iran has not ended its nuclear program, and anyone who thinks that sinking a few boats will reduce the flow of illegal narcotics to the United States is living in a dream world. Along with Trump’s tariffs, such pointless military displays are the opposite of foreign-policy restraint, and I can’t help but wonder what the handful of genuine restrainers still serving the Trump administration—and they know who they are—think of these antics.

Fourth, Trump has neither reached a grand bargain with China on economic and security issues—as some restrainers recommend—or made a serious effort to strengthen a coalition to balance China in Asia and prevent it from achieving regional dominance there (as other restrainers favor). Instead, the administration has picked fights over trade with critical U.S. partners like Japan, South Korea, and India; undermined relations with South Korea further by mistreating South Korean workers at a battery plant in Georgia; and is systematically undermining America’s ability to compete with China in key areas of science and technology.

Fifth, a key recommendation of the restraint camp—and especially organizations such as the proudly trans-partisan Quincy Institute—has been to reinvigorate U.S. diplomacy and deemphasize the reflexive use of military power. But as I’ve written before, Trump and his minions are the poster children for poorly prepared, incompetently staffed, inconsistently pursued, and ultimately unsuccessful diplomatic engagements. Trump and Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Marco Rubio have gutted the State Department, discarded the normal interagency process, and turned critical negotiations on Gaza and Ukraine over to a real estate lawyer with no obvious qualifications and some potential conflicts of interest. Is it any wonder that they have achieved so little?

As for Trump’s own approach to diplomacy, I suggest you watch his utterly bizarre performance in front of the United Nations General Assembly last week. You don’t have to love the United Nations or dislike Trump to be disturbed by the spectacle he put on there, and what it told the world about our country and its leader. Exceeding his allotted 15 minutes by almost three-quarters of an hour, Trump subjected dozens of world leaders to a rambling, self-pitying, falsehood-filled, and frequently insulting rant that undoubtedly left U.S. adversaries grateful that the world’s most powerful country was in such incompetent hands and left America’s remaining friends worried for the same reason.

So, no, Trump is neither a restrainer nor a realist. There are several other labels that would be more apt, but I’m too polite to list them here.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025 6:56 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You two fags sound pretty scared now.

You're not scared, are you?

You know the generals always had contempt for Trump and Butt-head, his secretary of war. They have more reason after yesterday:

Bulging Biceps Don’t Win Modern Wars

Hegseth’s speech was vile. It was also stupid.

By Paul Krugman | Oct 1, 2025 at 5:34 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/bulging-biceps-dont-win-modern-wars

Why did Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary — he may call himself secretary of war, but Congress has not, in fact, voted to change his department’s name — summon 800 top generals and admirals to Washington? I admit that I feared the worst — that he would demand that they pledge personal fealty to Donald Trump. But no: They were summoned to listen to a speech about “lethality,” followed by a highly political speech by Trump himself.

How do you achieve lethality, according to Hegseth? By telling the military that it’s OK to engage in hazing, sexual abuse and bigotry — he didn’t say that explicitly, but that was his clear message. Also, war crimes are no big deal. And members of the military, including the top brass, must shave their beards, lose weight and do pull-ups.

Hegseth’s speech was morally vile. It was also, however, profoundly stupid. Hegseth seems to have gotten his ideas about what an effective military looks like by watching the movie 300.

I am, of course, by no means a military expert myself. But I read and talk to people who are military experts, and think I have some idea about how modern wars are fought. Furthermore, there’s a clear family resemblance between Hegsethian stupidity about modern war and Trumpian stupidity about economic policy. Modern nations don’t achieve prosperity by emphasizing “manly” jobs; they don’t win wars by having big biceps.

War still requires extraordinary courage from the men and women engaged in combat — courage that, according to officers I’ve spoken with, is rooted in a sense of honor, not swaggering machismo. Combatants also have to be physically fit enough to endure incredible hardship.

But they don’t have to look like bodybuilders — and anyway, only a small fraction of a modern army engages directly in combat. These days, war is conducted largely with machines and ranged weapons, and most of an army’s personnel are employed, one way or another, keeping those machines and weapons in action and providing the intelligence that makes them effective. These noncombatants are every bit as essential to victory as front-line troops.

Actually, this has been true for a long time, at least since World War II. I very much doubt that Hegseth would consider the team led by Alan Turing, which broke Germany’s Enigma code, or the group led by Joseph Rochefort, which broke Japan’s naval code, warriors — even leaving aside the fact that Turing was gay. Yet they contributed as much to victory as any front-line soldier.

And the “warrior ethos” Hegseth touts is even less sufficient, on its own, to win wars today.

We don’t have to speculate about what a 21st century war would look like, because there’s ferocious, dare I say lethal, combat happening in Ukraine as you read this.

Some readers may recall how impressive many politicians on the right found Russia’s army before it tried to conquer Ukraine.

But it turned out that the Russian army was much better at looking tough than it was at actually waging war. All that non-woke masculinity didn’t prevent Russia’s initial attempt to seize Kyiv from becoming an epic disaster.

And while the war goes on, and on, and on, it’s now waged largely with drones and cruise missiles, not well-groomed guys with six-pack abs. As the military historian and analyst Phillips O’Brien wrote in a recent Substack post, technology has turned large parts of the Ukraine battlefield into “kill zones” — sort of like No Man’s Land in World War I, but 40 or more kilometers wide. Sending men into these zones, no matter how tough they look, is just a way to throw their lives away.

The Ukrainians, although outnumbered, have held their own in this new kind of war, not by being tougher than the Russians — although they are awesomely, almost inconceivably tough — but by being smarter, more flexible and more innovative, virtues I doubt loom large in Hegseth’s concept of lethality.

But Hegseth and Trump, not surprisingly, have learned nothing from this story. Here’s how O’Brien summarized it in a note yesterday:

“If you listened closely to Hegseth and Trump, they were basically saying the US military should be more like the Russian military—unaccountable for its actions, using lethality in favor of intelligence, and where training can be used to abuse recruits. And if they do that, I can guarantee you it will be as effective as the Russian military.”

I’d add that a military rife with sexual abuse and bigotry isn’t going to attract the best minds — many of which, although people like Hegseth will never believe it, reside in female and nonwhite bodies.

As I said, all of this is of a piece with Trumpian policy in other domains. Of course a regime that believes it can make America great by defunding science and destroying higher education believes that it can make our military more effective by making it prejudiced and stupid.

The good news is that America’s officer corps isn’t stupid, at least not yet. The stony silence with which the assembled generals and admirals greeted Hegseth’s and Trump’s rants was eloquent.

But you can now add the military to the list of great American institutions that MAGA is, in effect, trying to destroy.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025 7:15 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The Commander in Chief is not okay.

In Trump’s first term, the president was surrounded by people who ensured that some of his nuttiest—and most dangerous—ideas were derailed before they could reach the military. Today, senior U.S. officers have to wonder who will shield them from the impulses of the person they just saw onstage. What are officers to make of Trump’s accusation that other nations, only a year ago, supposedly called America “a dead country”? (After all, these men and women were leading troops last year.) How are they supposed to react when Trump slips the surly bonds of truth, insults their former commanders in chief, and talks about his close relationship with the Kremlin?

In 1973, an Air Force nuclear-missile officer named Harold Hering asked a simple question during a training session: “How can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?” The question cost him his career. Military members are trained to execute orders, not question them. But today, both the man who can order the use of nuclear arms and the man who would likely verify such an order gave disgraceful and unnerving performances in Quantico. How many officers left the room asking themselves Major Hering’s question?

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/09/trump-hegseth-
speech-incoherent/684421/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025 10:13 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Veterans react to Hegseth’s ‘insulting’ address to generals and admirals

Defense secretary’s speech touching on physical fitness and doctrine of lethality was seen as ‘egotistical’ and ‘dangerous’

Dana Pittard, an author and retired U.S. Army general interviewed by The Guardian, said of Hegseth's speech, "I thought it was insulting." And Pittard, who is Black, said he deeply resented Hegseth's claim that non-white military leaders were promoted based on a racial quota system.

Pittard also criticized Hegseth's "partisan" attacks during the speech as a "dangerous, slippery slope."

U.S. Navy veteran Tamara Steven found Hegseth's "lethality" rhetoric deeply troubling.

Stevens told The Guardian, "Basically, he's saying that we're no better than Hamas because people are joining because they want to break things and they want to kill people. I mean, for anyone that's been in the military, he's not qualified to be secretary of defense. He's barely qualified to be a host on Fox News. But so say these things in front of the preeminent generals and admirals leading our military? Has he no honor, to say that we don’t belong in polite society? Maybe he doesn’t."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/01/pete-hegseth-generals-
speech-veterans-react

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025 12:24 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

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For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025 6:26 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
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--------------------------------------------------

For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Veterans react to Hegseth’s ‘insulting’ address to generals and admirals

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025 7:22 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

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You go get 'em, Che.

--------------------------------------------------

For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025 8:21 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Republican Hoaxes

https://andrewtobias.com/grindr-explodes-at-charlie-kirk-memorial-trum
p-rally/

Trickledown helping everyone
Dems trying to outlaw guns
Dems secretly communist
Dems controlling the media
Climate change not being real
Climate change not man made
Bin Laden/Saddam partnership
Iraq threatening with WMDs
Gays destroying marriage
Gays choosing to be gay
Gays turning other people gay
Obama secretly a Muslim
Obamacare death panels
Obama bom in Kenya
Obama dividing the nation
Obama seeking third term
Dems waging war on Christmas
Dems waging war on God
Benghazi show trials (30)
Hillary being a criminal
2016 election being rigged
Dems wanting open borders
Mexico sending its people
Walls solving all problems
Mexico paying for the wall
QAnon conspiracy cult
Obama spying on Trump
Denial of Russian collusion
Denial of Ukrainian extortion
Democrats secretly racists
Dems both “woke” and racist
Whites being oppressed
Christians being oppressed
Republicans being oppressed
Antifa gangs attacking
Covid being just like the flu
Masks being ineffective
Masks making people slaves
Masks traumatizing children
Scientists lying for money
Hospitals faking Covid #’s for $
Dr Fauci being a villain
Vaccines having microchips
Vaccines making people sick
Vaccines making people slaves
Vaccines not being effective
Unvaccinated mostly Democrats
Hydroxychloroquine curing Covid
Ivermectin curing Covid
“Real science” being suppressed
Legit questions being suppressed
Illegal immigrants voting
Dead people voting
People voting multiple times
Dems stealing 2020 election
Dems suppressing free speech
Dems controlling social media
Dems controlling private companies
Dems orchestrating race riots
Dems getting rid of police
Antifa behind Jan 6 insurrection
Jan 6 rioters just like tourists
Jan 6 not Trump’s fault
Jan 6 riot not a crime
Trump reinstatement dates
Teachers being pedophiles
Teachers turning kids gay
Disney run by pedophiles
Disney turning kids gay
Critical Race Theory in kid’s math books

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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