So Defense Sec. Robert Gates confirms that Malcolm X was right......
Gates warns against U.S. armies in Asia, Middle East, Africa
The White House is not taking the military option off the table with regard to Libya, but it sure sounds like Defense Secretary Robert Gates is, at least in terms of land forces.
"In my opinion, any future Defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as Gen. MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates told an audience of West Point cadets last week.
Gates spoke in terms of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but his theory could just as easily apply to Libya, which appears on the cusp of chaos as Moammar Gadhafi's supporters battle rebel forces.
No one at the White House is talking about the military action -- with the potential exception of establishing a no-fly zone over Libya -- but officials aren't ruling anything out.
"We are not removing options off the table at this point," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
In his speech at West Point, Gates said future conflicts in Asia or the Persian Gulf are more likely to involve air and sea power and not conventional ground forces.
"The odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq -- invading, pacifying, and administering a large third-world country -- may be low," Mr. Gates said, but the Army and the rest of the government must focus on capabilities that can "prevent festering problems from growing into full-blown crises which require costly -- and controversial -- large-scale American military intervention."
http://content.usatoday.com/communit...-east-africa/1
The Ballot or the Bullet
by Malcolm X
April 3, 1964
Cleveland, Ohio
So, you're dealing with a man whose bias and prejudice are making him lose his mind, his intelligence, every day. He's frightened. He looks around and sees what's taking place on this earth, and he sees that the pendulum of time is swinging in your direction. The dark people are waking up. They're losing their fear of the white man. No place where he's fighting right now is he winning. Everywhere he's fighting, he's fighting someone your and my complexion. And they're beating him. He can't win any more. He's won his last battle. He failed to win the Korean War. He couldn't win it. He had to sign a truce. That's a loss.
Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice eaters, he's lost the battle. He had to sign a truce. America's not supposed to sign a truce. She's supposed to be bad. But she's not bad any more. She's bad as long as she can use her hydrogen bomb, but she can't use hers for fear Russia might use hers. Russia can't use hers, for fear that Sam might use his. So, both of them are weapon-less. They can't use the weapon because each's weapon nullifies the other's. So the only place where action can take place is on the ground.
And the white man can't win another war fighting on the ground. Those days are over The black man knows it, the brown man knows it, the red man knows it, and the yellow man knows it.
So they engage him in guerrilla warfare. That's not his style.
You've got to have heart to be a guerrilla warrior, and he hasn't got any heart.
I'm telling you now.
I just want to give you a little briefing on guerrilla warfare because, before you know it, before you know it.
It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you're on your own. In conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up -- planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that's all you need -- and a lot of heart.
The Japanese on some of those islands in the Pacific, when the American soldiers landed, one Japanese sometimes could hold the whole army off. He'd just wait until the sun went down, and when the sun went down they were all equal. He would take his little blade and slip from bush to bush, and from American to American. The white soldiers couldn't cope with that. Whenever you see a white soldier that fought in the Pacific, he has the shakes, he has a nervous condition, because they scared him to death.
The same thing happened to the French up in French Indochina. People who just a few years previously were rice farmers got together and ran the heavily-mechanized French army out of Indochina.
You don't need it -- modern warfare today won't work. This is the day of the guerrilla.
They did the same thing in Algeria. Algerians, who were nothing but Bedouins, took a rine and sneaked off to the hills, and de Gaulle and all of his highfalutin' war machinery couldn't defeat those guerrillas.
Nowhere on this earth does the white man win in a guerrilla warfare. It's not his speed.
Just as guerrilla warfare is prevailing in Asia and in parts of Africa and in parts of Latin America, you've got to be mighty naive, or you've got to play the black man cheap, if you don't think some day he's going to wake up and find that it's got to be the ballot or the bullet.
The White House is not taking the military option off the table with regard to Libya, but it sure sounds like Defense Secretary Robert Gates is, at least in terms of land forces.
"In my opinion, any future Defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as Gen. MacArthur so delicately put it," Gates told an audience of West Point cadets last week.
Gates spoke in terms of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but his theory could just as easily apply to Libya, which appears on the cusp of chaos as Moammar Gadhafi's supporters battle rebel forces.
No one at the White House is talking about the military action -- with the potential exception of establishing a no-fly zone over Libya -- but officials aren't ruling anything out.
"We are not removing options off the table at this point," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
In his speech at West Point, Gates said future conflicts in Asia or the Persian Gulf are more likely to involve air and sea power and not conventional ground forces.
"The odds of repeating another Afghanistan or Iraq -- invading, pacifying, and administering a large third-world country -- may be low," Mr. Gates said, but the Army and the rest of the government must focus on capabilities that can "prevent festering problems from growing into full-blown crises which require costly -- and controversial -- large-scale American military intervention."
http://content.usatoday.com/communit...-east-africa/1
The Ballot or the Bullet
by Malcolm X
April 3, 1964
Cleveland, Ohio
So, you're dealing with a man whose bias and prejudice are making him lose his mind, his intelligence, every day. He's frightened. He looks around and sees what's taking place on this earth, and he sees that the pendulum of time is swinging in your direction. The dark people are waking up. They're losing their fear of the white man. No place where he's fighting right now is he winning. Everywhere he's fighting, he's fighting someone your and my complexion. And they're beating him. He can't win any more. He's won his last battle. He failed to win the Korean War. He couldn't win it. He had to sign a truce. That's a loss.
Any time Uncle Sam, with all his machinery for warfare, is held to a draw by some rice eaters, he's lost the battle. He had to sign a truce. America's not supposed to sign a truce. She's supposed to be bad. But she's not bad any more. She's bad as long as she can use her hydrogen bomb, but she can't use hers for fear Russia might use hers. Russia can't use hers, for fear that Sam might use his. So, both of them are weapon-less. They can't use the weapon because each's weapon nullifies the other's. So the only place where action can take place is on the ground.
And the white man can't win another war fighting on the ground. Those days are over The black man knows it, the brown man knows it, the red man knows it, and the yellow man knows it.
So they engage him in guerrilla warfare. That's not his style.
You've got to have heart to be a guerrilla warrior, and he hasn't got any heart.
I'm telling you now.
I just want to give you a little briefing on guerrilla warfare because, before you know it, before you know it.
It takes heart to be a guerrilla warrior because you're on your own. In conventional warfare you have tanks and a whole lot of other people with you to back you up -- planes over your head and all that kind of stuff. But a guerrilla is on his own. All you have is a rifle, some sneakers and a bowl of rice, and that's all you need -- and a lot of heart.
The Japanese on some of those islands in the Pacific, when the American soldiers landed, one Japanese sometimes could hold the whole army off. He'd just wait until the sun went down, and when the sun went down they were all equal. He would take his little blade and slip from bush to bush, and from American to American. The white soldiers couldn't cope with that. Whenever you see a white soldier that fought in the Pacific, he has the shakes, he has a nervous condition, because they scared him to death.
The same thing happened to the French up in French Indochina. People who just a few years previously were rice farmers got together and ran the heavily-mechanized French army out of Indochina.
You don't need it -- modern warfare today won't work. This is the day of the guerrilla.
They did the same thing in Algeria. Algerians, who were nothing but Bedouins, took a rine and sneaked off to the hills, and de Gaulle and all of his highfalutin' war machinery couldn't defeat those guerrillas.
Nowhere on this earth does the white man win in a guerrilla warfare. It's not his speed.
Just as guerrilla warfare is prevailing in Asia and in parts of Africa and in parts of Latin America, you've got to be mighty naive, or you've got to play the black man cheap, if you don't think some day he's going to wake up and find that it's got to be the ballot or the bullet.
__________________
No comments:
Post a Comment