Tea at Trianon: When American Generals Lie

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, September 6, 2024

When American Generals Lie

From Dr. Sebastian Gorka:

The Wall Street Journal recently published a piece by my former White House colleague, H.R. McMaster, under the title “I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump.” I am not surprised by the self-obsessed and plaintive tone of the article, given my experiences with the former three-star general and National Security Adviser. On his first week in office, as Strategist to the President, I was tasked with briefing the general on the President’s Congressional address that very evening. My job was to inform Gen. McMaster that the Commander-in-Chief would be speaking bluntly about the threat of radical Islam.
When he heard this, the serving General strangely erupted over the use of that term, using a string of expletives as if he were an Obama appointee who deemed “radical Islam” a politically incorrect phrase. It was our very first ever meeting and within minutes this uniformed Army officer was screaming at me using phrases I will never forget, including: “Do you think I just fell off the f—ing applecart yesterday??!” At that point, I had spent 12 years working with the military and never been sworn at. Especially not in the West Wing.
Even more peculiarly, later the same day, after having exploded at me over the phrase “radical Islam,” McMaster urgently requested to see me and begged I help him manage the DC rumor that he was leaking to the Daily Beast from within the White House. This general was hardly an emotionally steady hand at the tiller.
Nor was the three-star a courageous leader of men, given that fact that later in his tenure, McMaster would repeatedly tell the President not to move our embassy or recognize Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Jewish state, fearing the eruption of a regional war. Not only did that not happen then, we had no new wars anywhere for the full 4 years we were in the White House. (Read more.)