Let Us Remember - In honor of Ensign James Ruemmeli McKelvey (RIP) - The Errors of financing our enemies

[TGHusker]

During my lunch hour today, I decided to take a quiet walk at Memorial Gardens Cemetery near my work in Tulsa.  A quiet place for prayer & meditation. During my walk I came across a large memorial to a WW2 vet that touched me & made me think of our current situation wt Russia invading Ukraine as you will see by the quote below.

Details:   

Ensign James Ruemmeli McKelvey 

Born: June 9, 1922 (just about 100 years ago from today's date of 3/2/22)

Wounded in Action  May 3, 1945 off Okinawa on LS MRL(R) 195        Story of its sinking here:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_LSM(R)-195   

Died:  May 25, 1945 at Guam

On Ensign McKelvey's memorial was this inscription (this followed a detailed description of his education and training in the military)

Quote:

And thus prepared to fulfill life's responsibilities to the glory of God & fellowman, he gave his todays that you and you might have your 

tomorrows.  Be on guard that never again shall we deliberately commit the folly of furnishing materials of war to a nation know to be in the 

process of waging war against us. 

Seeing that quote, I immediately thought:

Dictators will be Dictators

Communists will be Communists

Despots will be Despots.

A leopard can't change its spots nor the zebra its stripes.  It is indeed folly to think otherwise.

So how does that fit today?  Let's go back to Nixon - the desire to open up China for trade. Fast forward to 1989-1992 - The beginning of the new 

world order.  Bamboo wall has fallen. The Iron Curtain has fallen.  Open trade with everyone and the free world has as a result purchased via trade & financing for 

China and Russia 2 of the top militaries in the world - this is esp true of China.  Their rise in power can be seen in the rise of them becoming the supplier of the

world via free trade.  Russian, a country that has not much to give to the world but oil and gas, has financed its military through the sale of O&G to Europe and 

other countries. 

So that begs a question or two that I would like to hear from others on:   

Is open free market trading with potential global enemies worth the risk?  

Should our export/import business be with democracies only?

Should we change the world order now and pull jobs from Communist countries & reinvest those jobs in Central America (thus lessening the immigration issue as workers find new jobs in a Nike plant in El Salvador  instead of in China)?

Will doing so create more division & rivalry between the world superpowers and make the world more dangerous?

I don't want to go to Trumpian nationalism - that is dangerous in itself.  But perhaps in thinking a leopard could change its spots and a communist could become a capitalist & embrace democracy, the West has greatly errored.

 

[TGHusker]

Nationalism and isolation - trumpian errors - will take us to the same place Putin has taken Russia. 

Perhaps Europe is seeing the error of becoming reliant on Russian energy sources.   

Maybe trading with those on the opposite end of our values must be done in degrees.  In a way that give the people and 

opportunity to see the good in a free market democracy without financing that country's military or propping up the dictator.  

Not sure how that would be done - that is for smarter people then me.  I'm just brainstorming in this post and the original post.