The Spirit of '76: Remembering America's War Heroes 250 Years Later

To mark Memorial Day and 250 years of America, Andrew and Blake dive into American history with a look at the darkest days of the American Revolution. Author Patrick O'Donnell talks about the battles of Brooklyn, Trenton, and Princeton, when unpaid and shoeless American patriots held on when the country was on the brink of total collapse. Then, Hillsdale's Mark Moyar talks about America's 20th Century military, which mobilized to win two world wars but then was led astray during the years of Vietnam.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
My name is Charlie kirk I run the largest pro
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to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you
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Speaker 2 (00:24):
College is a scam, everybody. You got to stop sending
your kids to college.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
You should get married as.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Young as possible and have as many kids as possible.
Go start at turning point. You would say college chapter.
Go start at turning point, yould say high school chapter.
Go find out how your church can get involved. Sign
up and become an activist.

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I gave my.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Life to the Lord in fifth grade, most important decision
I ever made in my life, and I encourage you
to do the same. Here I am Lord, Use me.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Buckle up, everybody, Here we go.

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Speaker 5 (01:17):
All right, Happy Memorial Day to all of you across
this beautiful country from sea to shining sea.

Speaker 6 (01:24):
Blake, I am with you.

Speaker 5 (01:25):
I think that this as far as like civic holidays
that we celebrate as a country, there is no more
important holiday than Memorial Day.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:34):
I think I think Fourth of July you get more
fireworks out of this one, but I think this is
the one that really reminds us what it took to
create America, build America, defend America, preserve it.

Speaker 5 (01:47):
And it's a solemn day and we celebrate it with
parades and things like that, but there's also earlier today.
You probably saw the wreath laying at Arlington National Cemetery.
It's a somber day. It's a day to reflect on
those who paid the ultimate price for our nation. And
you know, we're grateful and we're grateful to be with

(02:09):
you guys. And you know, we thought we'd mix it up.
We want to have longer form conversations today, not focus
as much on the breaking news, but focus on our country.
I think today is really the kickoff of America two fifty.
Of course, we had the rededicate event in DC where
we're rededicating the nation to our faith and providence and

(02:29):
all of those things, and that we would pray that
Jesus would continue guiding this country into the future. And
that's important. But Memorial Day is really the kickoff. So
here we go, Blake, why don't you welcome our guest here?

Speaker 7 (02:42):
Alrighty, Well, we want to remember, of course, I think
this is especially important two hundred and fifty years We
look back on how do we get here two hundred
and fifty years ago? And of course we had to
win our independence. We had to battle against the most
powerful country in the world at the time to win
that independence. So we thought we should speak to a

(03:02):
historian of that conflict, the American Revolutionary War, and so
and it's also a person who's a who's a friend
of mine. We played in the same Yeah, you guys
did wargame Club Washington, DC. So we are joined by
Patrick O'Donnell. He is a Revolutionary War historian, author of
Revolutionary Snipers of Washington's Immortals, numerous other books. Patrick warr

(03:25):
and stuff on this. Patrick, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
It's great to be here again. It was with Charlie
Kirka in twenty twenty four that we discussed The End Banquished.
It was one of my favorite interviews.

Speaker 5 (03:36):
Yeah, I remember that actually, and it was a fascinating
conversation and people should go check it out because guess what,
we have all of the old catalog with Charlie available
on podcasts. So, yeah, twenty twin when did you release
that book so they can.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Approximate it was in May twenty four.

Speaker 6 (03:54):
May twenty twenty four, so please do best selling book. Yeah, awesome.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
Well let's go back, so we say two fiftieth yes,
but we talked about this recently. It's really almost like
two hundred. You have to go back almost two thirty
two hundred and thirty years when you're understanding the revolution,
and really farther than back than that, because the colonies
governed themselves for one hundred and fifty years before that,
you know, and they created.

Speaker 6 (04:19):
A whole culture.

Speaker 5 (04:20):
You think, one hundred and fifty years, that's a long
time to develop a culture and develop you know, rules
and norms and ways of governing oneself as the colonies.
But take us back, maybe Patrick in the lead up,
here's here's a trivia question. Who was the first American
colonialist to die in what would become the revolution.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
The if you it depends on where you want to
go with that, because the revolutionary begins in the eighteen
in mid mid eighteen sixties, and it begins seventeen sixties.
It begins with the stamp Act, and it's it's it's
here that the colonies go into economic rebellion against the

(05:04):
greatest empire of the time, you know, in existence, which
was the British in the Crown, and they wield enormous
economic power by boycotting British goods. I mean. The real takeaway,
and why this is important today is the Founders understood

(05:24):
dependence and if you are dependent on another nation for
your livelihood or for the goods that you have in
your supply chain, you don't really have any freedom at all.
And that applies today with China and in other places.
But the great, one of the great aspects of the
American Revolution is the non importation Exportation Agreement, which was

(05:46):
an extension of what they initially did during the Stampback,
but it begins in seventeen seventy four. But the revolutionary
war is first about economics, but it's about really ideas
in the the most important ideas in world history are
really founded from the American Revolution, the ideas of liberty

(06:08):
and freedom, which will shake empires to the core and
break them down. And it begins in the seventeen seventies,
and really seventeen seventy three and seventy four, there's a
massive it's here that the political revolution is really kind

(06:28):
of comes to being, and it's in seventeen seventy four,
though in September, on September one, if you're familiar with Somerville, Massachusetts,
right end Cambridge, right outside of Boston, there's what looks
like to be an old windmill there, and that is
the old powder magazine that the colonists had in seventeen

(06:53):
seventy four. And this is where the kinetic revolutionary war
really begins. Its General Gage conducts a covert operation to
take two hundred half casts of black powder away from
that magazine. It's the rate is successful. What happens next
is ten thousand people from the colonies, armed to the

(07:17):
teeth in most cases, descend on Boston Common in protest.
And why do they do that? Because they're about to
be disarmed. It doesn't matter how you know, great your
revolutionary ideas are if you have no weapons, it doesn't matter.
I mean, it's something that's the lesson that's being learned
in Iran right now. And that's exactly what the British

(07:38):
plan to do. They plan to disarm the colonies. And
they did it because they knew that black powder was scarce.
There were weapons laying around from the French and Indian War,
but there was hardly any black powder. And it was
because production within the colonies had been outsourced to India
at the time because it was cheaper. But there are
also royal bands on black powder to keep the counties

(08:02):
in check. But it's the beginning of these raids that
will culminate in Lexington and Concord that will begin the
actual revolutionary war.

Speaker 6 (08:16):
And you guys are Boston massacre that was a little
before that.

Speaker 7 (08:19):
But I guess we have a minute to break here.
But if you were to ask one of those men
who descended on Boston Common or who fought at the
Battle of Bunker Hill, the guys who first joined General
Washington's army, and you asked them even before the declaration
of Independence, what do you think they would have said?

Speaker 4 (08:35):
Why had they joined this Army. What were they fighting for?

Speaker 2 (08:38):
They were fighting for They were fighting for America, they
were fighting for their liberties in freedom. And Revolutionary Snipers,
which I just finished, is a trilogy of three books
on the American Revolutionary where I've spent sixteen years of
my life writing fourteen books, and three of these books

(08:59):
are in the American there's specifically on elite units in
the American Revolution, the Marylanders, the Marbleheaders, which were part
of the original at Lexington and Concord but born the Navy,
and also Road Washington across doorwa and Revolutionary Starpers. It's
here in seventeen seventy four that's really kind of the

(09:21):
precursor of the Declaration of Independence is something called the
Fort Gower Resolves, where these men had just fought against
a massive Native American army and one and it's to
hear that they declare there are allegiance to the Crown,
but with a big butt. It's about American liberty and

(09:41):
freedom and they're willing to fight for it. Incredible thing.

Speaker 7 (09:45):
So again we're talking about two hundred and fifty years
back is of course the year of the Declaration of Independence,
but it's also I think a lot of people are
aware it's the year of the great kind of the
greatest crisis of the American Revolution that I think seven
is the year where we come closest to losing the
whole thing. Can you paint that picture for us. What

(10:07):
was the military situation like two hundred and fifty years ago.
I know this is a big part of Washington's immortals,
for example, is that's the Maryland Line Regiment that basically
saves America, the American cause, from being annihilated.

Speaker 4 (10:20):
Paint that picture for us.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
You're absolutely right. Seventeen seventy six is a is a
great turning point, but it was also the origins of
one of the great crisis periods in American history where
everything could have been lost. And there were several key
inflection points where this occurs. The three books that I've
written are on elite units that are that touch upon

(10:45):
these inflection points, and it's their individual agency that saves
the war in Washington's army. But the first great inflection
point is at the Battle of Brooklyn, and this begins
on the night of August twenty six, twenty seven, seventeen

(11:06):
seventy six, where the greatest land battle up until that
point begins where the British land in Brooklyn Long Island
and they outflank Washington's army. And it's here that you know,
everything could be lost. If ten thousand troops of the

(11:26):
Continental Army are surrounded and annihilated and Washington is captured,
the war is likely over. But it's the efforts of
the men in the three books I've written, especially beginning
with the Maryland Line in Washington's Immortals, where there's an
epic rear guard action near a stone house where they

(11:46):
charge three times with fixed bayonets. They sacrifice themselves to
open a hole in the British lines that allows the
remainder of Washington's army to escape to the fortifications in
Brooklyn Heights. And it's here that Washington has a great
decision to make. Does he stay and fight or does
he retreat? And a massive hailstorm comes in a nor'easter,

(12:10):
and it's in you know, a mansion in Brooklyn Heights
to the three Chimneys, where he decides whether he has
a council of warror and he decides to evacuate Brooklyn.
And it's on the shoulders of the indispensable men from
Marblehead that they escape and this is the American Dunkirk.

(12:30):
This is an incredible story. They gather all the small
boats that they can. They only have literally hours to
gather these boats and gather ninety five hundred Americans, put
them in the boats, and then crossed the East River
over to Manhattan. But oh, they got to do it
in the middle of a you know, a giant twenty

(12:54):
thousand men passion and British Army in their front and
the Royal Navy in the East River behind behind them,
and they somehow have to do it. And initially none
of it goes well at all. The winds are not
favoring them, and suddenly the winds change. But it's on
the backs of the greatest sailors in the Continental Army,

(13:17):
the marble Head men of the fourteenth Regiment and John
Glover that they are somehow able to get across. And
this is a race against time. Blake and Andrew. They
have to ferry the army across nearly a dozen times,
back and forth, and it's a race against time because
dawn is coming and with it, you know, visibility, and

(13:39):
the entire the small fleet of small boats conducting this
American Dunkirk are about to be blown to smithereens by
the Royal Navy. But it's here that God's hand, you know,
shows itself in a fog, miraculously at the right time.
At around five thirty am comes in and screen means

(14:00):
the movement of the rest of John Glover's boats. General
Washington and the riflemen from American Snipers are in that
rear guard. They're the last men on the boats, but
they make it across in one of the greatest evacuations
in military history.

Speaker 7 (14:16):
It's really incredible. You think of everything that's ever happened
in American history, Emancipation Proclamation, winning World War Two, landing
on the Moon, everything we've invented, the right flyer, and
it's all resting on these men who maybe I don't
even know if they've heard the texts of the Declaration
of Independence. Yet it's only about a month old. They're surrounded.

(14:38):
It's an incredible thing. I looked up while you were
describing it. Since it's in Brooklyn, if you want to go,
if you're in that area the scene where this all happened,
it's in Prospect Park of Brooklyn. That's where the monument
to the battle itself is. And of course it's the
waterways nearby that they would have been fleeing across it.

Speaker 5 (14:53):
I love the way you described that, Patrick, the American Dunkirk.
I think that's like for our modern context that really
brings it home.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
It's the American Thermopyla where the Marylanders make this epic stand.
And I will add that the men of the Maryland,
four hundred, most of them, have never two hundred and
fifty six men have vanished to history. It is very
likely that there is a mass grave in Brooklyn of
their bodies and their sacrifice to this day. Many of

(15:25):
them that were also captured, and they may have been
on you know, floating concentration camps in New York Harbor
and just just tossed overboard like bags of trash their bones.
So this is, you know, a story of epic sacrifice.
It's a fitting story for Memorial Day because if it
hadn't been their sacrifice, an hour is one historian of

(15:47):
the time said, an hour more precious in our history
than any other. We would not be here today. But
that I will add, is only one disastrous defeat in
seventeen seventy six it was one after the other.

Speaker 5 (16:03):
How much are life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness
worth to you? This is the question America's founders had
to answer. You see, for more than one hundred and
fifty years, America's thirteen colonies governed themselves until Britain declared
they had no right to self rule. So ordinary people
had to make extraordinary choices and risk their lives, their fortunes,

(16:24):
and their sacred honor to fight for independence, and against
all odds, they won, and in victory they built one
of the most stable and lasting republics in human history.
Now experience the American solution like never before, thanks to
our friends at Hillsdale College. Revolutionary America, a new documentary
from Hillsdale Studios and narrated by Tom Selleck, brings the

(16:45):
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Am telling you Hillsdale has outdone themselves with this.

Speaker 6 (16:54):
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Speaker 5 (16:59):
Frankly, you got to buy tickets to see this film.
So please, please please, It's something you could take the
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At a time when history is often distorted in schools
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(17:20):
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Speaker 6 (17:33):
Hillsdale dot edu slash Revolution.

Speaker 5 (17:37):
To locate a theater near you and buy tickets for
Revolutionary American one more time.

Speaker 6 (17:42):
That's Hillsdale dot edu slash Revolution.

Speaker 7 (17:48):
Well, we were discussing the Great Crisis period of the
American Revolution seventeen seventy seventeen seventy six. We just covered
the Battle of Brooklyn Heights and the escape the American Dunkirk.
I don't know if there's another crisis that happens between this,
but why don't you take us to the story and
we know how the year ends? And I know this
is also it's the cover of the Indispensables, another great

(18:09):
Crisis the Washington's crossing of the Delaware to end the
year of our independence absolutely Blake.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
I mean, after the Battle of Brooklyn, the British land
in Manhattan, and it's punctuated by a few victories. For instance,
at Harlem Heights there's a victory over British regular soldiers,
some of the elite units, and it's the men of
the riflemen that actually deal that defeat on the British

(18:37):
as well as they stop a landing where twenty five
riflemen armed with the Pennsylvania long rifle, which is the
sniper rifle of its day. It was path breaking technology.
They stop an entire British invasion at Throg's Neck. But
really after that, it's one disaster after another, and Washington's
army of twenty thousand is in full retreat across Manhattan

(19:00):
up through White Plains. They then cross the Hudson River
and they're going into New Jersey and they're trying as
quickly as they can to get to the Delaware River
and across it to the friendly farms of Pennsylvania and
hopefully safety. But it's at this time there's massive hyper inflation.
The army of twenty thousand is crumbling because the enlistments

(19:22):
are expiring at the end of the at the end
of the year, you know, Washington's army is reduced to
you know, five thousand or so. And it's here that
you know, it's the great crisis point. Washington knows if
he doesn't conduct a counter offensive that changes the course
of things, all will be lost. And it's at Trenton

(19:44):
that he plans, really one of the greatest counter offensives,
one of the great battles in American history, that will
change the tide of the Revolutionary War. And it's a
dangerous and hazardous thing because the tradition their their their
their their allies. The Hessians are outposted across New Jersey.

(20:05):
He chooses Trenton, which is one of the more vulnerable outposts,
but it's manned by the Hessian lion, uh Colonel Rawl,
who's one of their best commanders. But like the Battle
of Brooklyn, they have to cross a river, and you know,
they have to do it secretly because if the plan

(20:26):
is is known, that the entire thing can be blown.
When indeed, the British intelligence did pick up that the
the Washington was coming, but it's a nor'easter that once
again comes in to play. And it's once again that
Washington asked John Glover if he can take the army across,
and he said, don't worry about it, my boys can

(20:47):
handle it. There were three prongs of the attack on Trenton.
Two of them failed. It was only the men of
the Marblehead Regiment that got the army across because the
the tides in the Delaware River were such that there
was floating chunks of ice. There was a massive nor'easter,

(21:08):
snow was coming down. It was impassable to anybody but
the most experienced seamffarers of the Marblehead Regiment, and they'd
make it across and they attack Trenton at dawn. They're
behind schedule, but they surprised the garrison. They were not.
It's like in all the story books out there. These

(21:30):
guys were not drunk and idle. They were actually sleeping
in their uniforms with their muskets in hand and ready
for the American attack. In fact, British intelligence actually tip
them off and I get into the indispensables as well
as Revolutionary Snipers, which comes out in November and in
Washington's and mortals and how that intelligence was relayed. But

(21:52):
an earlier ray as well as the northeaster sort of
convinced Raw that it probably already occurred, and he wasn't
as alert as he should have been. And they attack,
and it's a sniper's rifle that will take down and
mortally wound Johann Ral and will swing the course of

(22:13):
the battle. But this is just ten days in crucial
American history and three battles which will change the course
of world history. And it's all part of Washington's counteroffensive
at Trenton. And then there's a second Battle of Trenton,
which hardly anybody's ever heard about it, but it's a
great inflection point as well, in a key bridge had

(22:34):
to be held and the continentals were across something called
asmp Creek on the other side of Trenton, and it
had the bridge fallen, the army would have been ripped
apart and destroyed, just like the Battle of Brooklyn. But
Washington escapes. They hold the bridge against all odds. The
riflemen literally delay them for about six or seven hours,

(22:57):
chewing up precious daylight as there on their way to
the bridge, and then they hold the bridge. Against all odds,
Washington himself is at the rail of the bridge, you know,
beating its men. I mean that's how just the leadership
is striking across the board, from enlisted men to General

(23:17):
Washington himself, and then they win the surprise battle at
Princeton and change the course at history. And it's it's
about agency. It's about individuals that will change and shape
and bend history. Yeah, so ordinary soldiers.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
Yeah, this is what's interesting to me. Yeah, this is
what's interesting to me, Patrick, is that you've got thirteen colonies.

Speaker 6 (23:42):
Right.

Speaker 5 (23:43):
I understand a lot of this is happening in New
Jersey and you know, Massachusetts, New York, so it was
up north mostly in this particular season. But you've got
because I don't think a lot of people realize nowadays,
how much if you were a colonialist you identified with
your state versus Americans at being an American at this point, right,

(24:07):
what was holding them together in these dark days?

Speaker 6 (24:09):
Like how did they.

Speaker 5 (24:11):
Keep going after defeat defeat defeat? Especially understanding that the
British force was so formidable in the it was, you know,
the greatest force militarily in the world at that point.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
It's what's so remarkable is that it's small groups of
individuals that will hold the army together in its greatest
times of stress. And the American Revolution was an insurgency.
It was our first civil war because not everybody was
on board at all with the Revolutionary War, and they

(24:46):
would jump sides back and forth. And it was also
a conventional war against the greatest power at the time.
And you know, I'll never forget. I asked a number
of Darby's rangers. I've interviewed four thousand World War two veterans,
and you know, throughout the course of my I've been
writing for twenty seven years full time, and I've been
interviewing people for the last forty years or more. And

(25:08):
I asked him, are you the greatest generation? And he
said to me straight up, he said, Patrick, what about
the boys of seventy seven and seventy six? He said,
the men of the cause, the men that believed in
the Revolutionary War. And he is absolutely right. The greatest
generation is this generation because they not only fought the

(25:30):
greatest empire of the time, but also anybody's greatest enemy,
and that would be fellow Americans. And they also have
forged the ideals and ideas of the American Revolution that
would change history and continues to change history. And it's
these ideals and parts of our founding that I think
will are so important now as we're going through great

(25:52):
change as well, and it's so important to look back
at our founding and it's probably what's going to say.

Speaker 5 (25:59):
So they were you know, Blake asked the question, you know,
what were they fighting for? Right, Obviously there was the
stampags and the intolerables, and there was all these things
that were circulating. But again, this sense of home and
that their identity, Like when did Americans start thinking of
themselves as Americans.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
It begins prior to the Revolutionary War, It begins in
that period of you know, over one hundred and fifty
years where they were self governing and they were determining
their independence, and it forms over time of this identity
of being an American. And what you have is at

(26:40):
the very beginning of the American Revolution, there's a sense
that perhaps the king, who many of them still pledge
allegiance to, can somehow resolve their grievances. But they start
to move away and closer and closer to full independence.
And as you alluded to at the beginning a series

(27:00):
of atrocities, you know, beginning with you you go back
to this seventeen sixties and beyond, where the Royal Navy
is impressing, kidnapping Americans from places like Marblehead, and it's
a lifetime of service in the Royal Navy. They never
come home to their to their their families, or they're

(27:21):
killed on board ships or the Boston massacre. You know,
these are things that that will crystallize the the American resolve,
of the American revolution and in the American identity. And
this is where people will put their lives and their

(27:43):
fortunes on the lot on the line for a country
that it yet to be born, which is really remarkable.

Speaker 6 (27:50):
Yeah, I think that's one of the most interesting.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
I mean used to give you sort of a sense.
Let's just you know, we look at modern combat where
people are well paid and well equipped. These men of
the Paws in seventy six, many of them were shoeless. Literally,
their trails of blood as they went to the boats
at Trenton would mark the Army's march to Trenton. They

(28:16):
had poor clothes, frostfight was rampant, they were not paid.

Speaker 6 (28:24):
Blake I'll throw it to you.

Speaker 5 (28:26):
We've absorbed a lot of content here, so I want
to make sure that your brain is reflected.

Speaker 7 (28:32):
I mean, we've just jumped around all over this Revolutionary War.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
We wanted to really.

Speaker 7 (28:38):
Remember it because sometimes I feel it feels odd. Sometimes
it's a forgotten war. We have a lot of World
War two stuff, we have a lot of Civil War stuff.
Memorial Day itself was born out of the Civil War.
But this is the war that actually could have extinguished America.
We've just seen it came very close to doing. So
I want to talk about something Charlie thought a lot

(28:59):
about leadership. We've mentioned General Washington repeatedly throughout this Patrick,
can you create a sketch of George Washington as a leader?
What set him apart? How is he holding this army
together did How is he becoming the man who would
become the father of this country.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
George Washington is the indispensable man of the Revolutionary War.
It's his leadership that is priceless and indispensable in making
things happen, because he understands the concepts of liberty and
freedom and how those need to translate. Not only in

(29:37):
the halls of Congress, but also on the battlefield, and
you know, things like treating prisoners properly. These things transcend
the halls of Congress and the battlefield and they become
part of the American way of war. But he understands diplomacy,
he's able to enter. He's the first general since General
Pershing really to have to interact with an ally. I mean,

(30:01):
after the Battle of Saratoga. The French come in the war,
as well as the Spanish later on. And it's this
understanding of diplomacy and working with allies that he's able
to coordinate that. But he's also dealing with the politics
the day, and it's as ruthless in many ways as
they is what it is today, where you have people
that are that are in the Civil War, that are

(30:24):
that are hardcore loyalists, but you also have people on
the patriot side that you've got to I mean, you've
got a full spectrum everybody, from a Benedict Arnold who's
a great general at the very beginning of the war,
to an amazing to a trader, a full blown trader
at the end of the war, to people that are
just backbiting Washington, buying it for his position. You know,
through all of that and through you know, you know,

(30:47):
not having his men paid or poorly equipped and everything else,
he holds the army together. The thing is, I would
point out that the books that I've written, the three books,
you know, Washington's Dispensables, Washington and Mortals, and now Revolutionary Stipers,
this is about the men of the line, the privates,

(31:07):
the corporals, the sergeants that really hold the army together
in their resilience and to gain their stories, I tapped
in the great oral History Archive of the American Revolution
that until Washington's Immortals that ever hardly been touched, and
that was the pension application files that if you were

(31:29):
a surviving member of the Revolutionary War, you could go
down under oath and swear to a judge what you
saw and did. And in some cases these are the
first person accounts, and they can be very graphic of
what you know these men saw and did. And those
are the stories that are impuwed in the nonfiction that

(31:49):
I write that in many many people have said reads
like fiction. But there's over you know, a thousand end
notes of primary sources that buttress the stories that are
a band of brothers. I wrote the First Band of Brothers,
Washington's Immortals on the American Revolution. It's a very cohesive
story about this small group of men, through their personal agency,

(32:11):
really changed the course of the war.

Speaker 5 (32:13):
I you know, we talk about what was the greatest
generation and that World War two vette pointed back to
the boys in seventy six and seventy seven?

Speaker 6 (32:23):
What was it?

Speaker 5 (32:25):
And I think this is good for modern Americans to
look back on, because you know, we're not raised the
same as they were there, We're not all working the farms.
But you know, what was it about them that set
them apart in the whole sea of humanity and all
of history? What made them special? What was imbued in
their character that made them able to achieve so much?

Speaker 2 (32:48):
Revolutionary Snipers in particular kind of as a throwback to
rugged individualism. And what I mean by that is individuals
that lived on the frontier, and the frontier is the
Appalachian Mountains and beyond. Some of them that lived illegally,
and they had to not only contend with hostile Native

(33:09):
Americans which were there to burn out their houses, and
many of these men their families were executed by Native
Americans and then in some cases they were Native Americans
that were allied to the crown. I mean, but the
story has nuanced where Native Americans also fought with us.
But it's that rugged individual of dealing with the elements,
dealing with massive uncertainty in their lives. But somehow they

(33:32):
have to forge not only a life survival, but they
forge a nation. And it's this, you know, collective effort,
this rugged individualism, this resilience, this belief in freedom and liberty,
which is these are this is a time of you know,

(33:53):
the great kings and empires where you were swearing allegiance
to the ground. This is where subjects speak citizens. It's
a very very important time.

Speaker 6 (34:05):
I think that is I think what you just said,
and these.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Are citizens soldiers I will know too.

Speaker 5 (34:11):
Yes, where subjects become citizens is a really powerful transformative
point in history. And what a what a blessing of
providence that we as Americans are the inheritors of that
point where we transform from subjects to citizens.

Speaker 6 (34:27):
Blake final thoughts.

Speaker 7 (34:29):
I just I want to make sure we shout out
fourteen books. Washington's Immortals, the Indispensables, Revolutionary Snipers, but eleven others.
He's got books on world War two and the Civil
War the Unvanquished. I know you mentioned there, so give
Patrick's books a look A great way to celebrate our
country on Memorial Day. These are the guys who made

(34:51):
it possible. They're the ones who got through the times
that try men's souls. As Thomas Paine put it, so, Patrick,
thank you for coming on the show today and happy
Memorial to It was an honor.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Thank you so much for having me on.

Speaker 5 (35:06):
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Speaker 1 (36:24):
We talked a lot about this, and I'm gonna detail
why America is the greatest country in the history of
the world. First and foremost, it's It was the first
country ever to be founded on an idea, not on
a racial background, not on ethnocentrism, not on any sort
of lineage, but an idea, an idea, very simple, an
idea that we do not get our rights from government,
but we get our rights naturally, whether it be from
a creator, from God, or from some super supernatural being.

(36:48):
So America is the greatest country in the world for
couple reasons. Number one, our diversity, I'll talk about that,
our economic power, our generosity, and our upward mobility.

Speaker 5 (36:55):
So is the Charlie Kirk Show here on Memorial Day.
So Happy Memorial Day to all of you. I hope
you are spending this day in gratitude for the gifts
of providence that have been bestowed upon the American people
and the American Republic. And in our one, we spend
a lot of time thinking about the Revolution, the Boys
of seventy six and seventy seven, and that was an

(37:16):
awesome conversation. And now we're going to kind of widen
the aperture and think about some other sacrifices that great
Americans have made throughout the years in different wars and
different eras. So to help us do that is doctor
Mark Moyer Hillsdale College. He's the William P. Harris Chair
of Military History. Doctor Moyer. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
That's great to be with you.

Speaker 5 (37:39):
So you I we have this the first time we've
had you on the show, and it's an honor to
have you. And I said, well, what does he specialize in?
You know, like what eras should we have? He's like
he'll talk about anything. He could talk about any of
the military history, which is what a testament to you,
because there's a lot, there's a lot, But I think
what would be most fascinating because we know we could

(37:59):
do a whole hour on the Civil War. You could
talk a lot about that, you could talk about eighteen twelve,
and there's been a lot of ink spilled, and it's
a really fascinating history. But why don't we advance our
attention up and fast forward to the twentieth century and
what brings us up to now?

Speaker 6 (38:16):
Because I know you've.

Speaker 5 (38:17):
Done a lot of work on the Vietnam War and
the Korean War, but let's start this first segment on
World War One and World War Two. Maybe some stories
of sacrifice of the American story that are just unique
to this country.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (38:30):
Well, World War One is a fascinating case. It's something
we don't tend to know as much about as Americans
that we should. But it was a war that was
fraught with controversy, both as America gets in and afterwards,
which is worth remembering because in fact, most of our
wars have controversy of this sort. But the American military

(38:54):
really was not very well prepared, and this is really
a turning point in our history.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
That we had thought we could be citizen.

Speaker 8 (39:02):
Soldiers and that we didn't need to have a large
standing army. So we send over an army that is
really not well prepared for the war it's about to enter,
and so you have a lot of Americans suffering. The
initial plan for General Pershing was that we were going

(39:24):
to break out of this trench warfare, of which we're
all too familiar with. These horrific conditions, people spending years
in these awful trenches, and the Americans hope to get
out of it, but ultimately we end up having to
fight that conflict, and it really is a bitter one
that does have it does certainly have its share of heroes.

(39:46):
The Americans do get there just in time to save
the Allied cause.

Speaker 5 (39:53):
Yeah, you know, that's a really fascinating dynamic that you
just pinpointed this, you know, because citizen soldiers, this idea
that that we could not have a standing army, and
yet there was an isolationist streak in the US that
was very deep and very profound, and yet we went
off to go save Europe, which was a tremendous sacrifice

(40:14):
on and so many levels. Maybe I'm really curious about
the American psyche at the time.

Speaker 6 (40:19):
Of entering World War One.

Speaker 5 (40:21):
I mean, what kind of country were we and how
controversial was it to send us in the first place?
When I mentioned this isolationist streak.

Speaker 8 (40:29):
Yes, well, it's interesting because the country at the turn
of the century has this resurgence of patriotism. When the
Spanish American War comes, you have a massive amount of volunteering,
and when World War One comes you do still have
lots of volunteers. With that war, you certainly had some controversy.
You had Irish Americans and German Americans who weren't excited

(40:53):
about fighting against their native countries. And yeah, a lot
of people just asking why is this fight concerned us?
And Britain head was blockading Germany and so some American
questions whether.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
That was fair.

Speaker 8 (41:11):
So, but there was certainly an enormous sense of patriotism.
You had a great faith in the nation and its ideals.
We didn't have any of the sort of questioning that
we're going to see you in about five decades or
so within this country.

Speaker 5 (41:27):
M that is it's you know, I think people average
Americans wouldn't even understand what the war was about, which
historians argue.

Speaker 7 (41:37):
About what the war was, and they find them and
they found themselves asking that question very shortly after. I
think an interesting strain in American life is in the
nineteen thirties, it was already very popular asking what what
did we achieve in that? Because over one hundred thousand
Americans died in that conflict, and that's far less than
World War Two, it's less than the Civil War, but

(41:59):
it's a lot more more than we lost in Vietnam,
for example. And if you looked around, yeah, we triumphed,
But Americans started to ask what was the point of that?
And we do find ourselves asking that about a lot
of wars ever since.

Speaker 6 (42:11):
M Yeah, in some ways it was the.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Yeah, that's correct.

Speaker 8 (42:13):
It's there is this this wave of isolationism. A lot
of people look back and say, you know, did we
really fight this for the wrong reasons? Were and there
was some truth to the fact that British propagandists were
exaggerating what the Germans were saying, And you know, there
are other arguments that we were somehow the munition's industry

(42:35):
pulled us in. But you know, we'd have this series
of neutrality acts passed in the nineteen thirties because of
this general unease and this idea that we got sucked
into a war that we didn't necessarily need to. And yeah,
one hundred thousand Americans is an enormous price to pay.
Of course, there's no better time to remember that that
I'm amoral day.

Speaker 6 (42:54):
Yeah, what would you know?

Speaker 5 (42:56):
What was the I guess the you gotta talk about
these new vitality acts. But like I think about the
post Great War era and he takes us into the
booming twenties, right, you had a massive economic growth, the
country industrializes. What were the big lessons learned? I guess,
and what were the ramifications of that war?

Speaker 8 (43:18):
Well, for a lot of Americans, there was this sense
that we didn't really want to get outside our hemisphere.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
We should stay here.

Speaker 8 (43:27):
The Europeans, of course, have had been warning for centuries,
and you know Warren Harmon Harding promise to return to normalcy,
that we were going to get back to our domestic
affairs and not go crusading around the world. And there
was also a general sense that will Woodrow Wilson had
gone too far with his idealism and his talk about

(43:48):
how we have to make the world safe for democracy
and put other countries' interest on a par with ours,
And you had people returning to the to the notion that, yeah,
you know, we like the rest of the world, but
this is our country and its interests come first.

Speaker 5 (44:05):
Man all I'm just it's occurring to me now just
how this would echo, as you said, five decades later,
but even now, how much foreign affairs like this can
really challenge a domestic population of like, when is it
worth it? When is it worth putting American lives on
the line? Lives and treasure. I find it oddly comforting

(44:30):
to know that this is that other generations have wrestled
so greatly with this question.

Speaker 6 (44:34):
So let's fast forward. Now we're World War two.

Speaker 5 (44:38):
How big of a mobilization in the history of the
United States did this represent? And what you talk about
controversy with World War One? How controversial was getting into
World War Two?

Speaker 8 (44:50):
Yeah, there's great questions, and we talked for about what
some of the things people learned.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
One of the biggest problems.

Speaker 8 (44:58):
We had after the war was there was this notion
that we had fought the end to the war to
end all wars. Now we're going to disarm because weapons
cause war, and so we have these disarmament efforts, but
you know, it turns out the bad guys don't always
play by their rules, and so Germany and Japan start
re arming, and the United States and other countries are late.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
In coming to the game.

Speaker 8 (45:25):
And so just barely is Franklin Roosevelt able to start mobilizing.
And that's not really till after the fall of France
in May of nineteen forty, and the economy really won't
get on a war footing until after Pearl Harbor. But
once it happens, of course, it will be the biggest
military build up in world history. Twelve million Americans going.

(45:49):
You know, a lot of them volunteered, a lot of
them drafted as well, and that does have implication. Because
we have a smaller war, you can rely on a
lot of volunteers. But now we are really digging into
the population in a great.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
Way.

Speaker 8 (46:06):
And so that's partly why we think of this generation
as the greatest generation, because so many of them went
on to serve in the war.

Speaker 7 (46:14):
So one thing that this points to World War One
World War two. We went into both conflicts with a
pretty small military that we massively expanded ever since.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
World War Two.

Speaker 7 (46:26):
We've never really had a small military ever since, we
sort of permanently have a large one. We do draft
a large army again for Korea, for Vietnam, but after
that we go to the all volunteer military. This is
getting a little more philosophical abstract. Did America's identity change
at all from that shift towards having a significant standing

(46:51):
army that is professional and all volunteer as opposed to
a small army of conventional, often drafted, citizen soldiers.

Speaker 8 (47:00):
Yeah, that's an excellent question too. And you know, there
is certainly with World War Two we're going to have
a military on an unprecedented scale. But there is after
World War Two a huge demobilization effort. You go from
a twelve million to I think six hundred thousand very quickly,
and so the country actually will be very unprepared for
the Korean War. And you get to the Korean War,

(47:23):
there's a case of task for Smith, which was sent
to try to stop the North Koreans or in the
early stages, and they lack equipment and lack suitable leadership,
and so this becomes the rallying cry for those who
think we need greater readiness, that we want no more
task for smiths. And so it's really from that point on,

(47:44):
I think you've got this really greater conviction that we,
given our new position in the world, simply cannot afford
to wait until war comes to prepare for war.

Speaker 5 (47:56):
That's fascinating in the identity though, to drill deep and
that you know, this idea that we now inhabited, this
position in the world, that we that we had to
sort of police it, you know, you got you think
back to Eisenhower though, and he's warning about the military
industrial complex. You know, this idea of national identity though.

(48:17):
Did it shift in World War Two? Was it the
after war propaganda, the films you know that glorified these
brave men and women in the fights. Is that all
that kind of contributed to it? Or was it the
war itself?

Speaker 8 (48:29):
The war I think certainly had a very strongly unifying effect.
And you had, you know, a lot of recent immigrant
groups into the country being pulled together, people from different
parts of the country. So I think it had a
unifying and generally positive effect on the country. Now, when
you get to this question of the military industrial complex,

(48:52):
that is is a trickier one. And you know, as
I said, I think Americans were hoping we were going
to have this piece dividend after the war, and there
was expectations the Soviets were going to play nice.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
But it turned out.

Speaker 8 (49:06):
The Soviets had a pernicious ideology that has been on
world domination.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
So we had to counter that.

Speaker 8 (49:12):
But I think Eisenhower realized by the end of his
second term that in doing so, we were building.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
This massive defense establishment, and.

Speaker 8 (49:23):
That when you build something that big, it can be
a threat to liberty, especially.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
When it gets involved in politics.

Speaker 8 (49:32):
And we see this more recently if you look at
the tech giants and how people are concerned about their
influence over politics. But he certainly recognized there was this peril,
as did a lot of other Americans. But at the
same time you have these challenges to deal with, so
it's a very difficult question.

Speaker 6 (49:51):
Yeah, it's interesting too.

Speaker 5 (49:52):
You said twelve million people were mobilized during World War Two.
The US population in nineteen forty from the census was
that we had one hundred and thirty two millions year,
basically looking at about ten percent of the entire population
was activated, specifically to go fight and get you know,
you know, put on a uniform, which is wild to

(50:15):
think about.

Speaker 4 (50:16):
Wild.

Speaker 5 (50:17):
I mean, we all know somebody in the military now,
but like ten percent of the entire population be mobilized
for that, and then everybody back home rosy, the riveters
and everybody throwing in for the war effort. Like I
just don't think.

Speaker 4 (50:29):
There's just no level.

Speaker 7 (50:30):
We've never since had that sort of all consuming mobilization
of the country.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
But we were fighting to win, and it's worth asking,
you know.

Speaker 7 (50:38):
We we mentioned how the country changed, and one of
those things you think is could we do it today?
If we somehow got in a conflict with China. Would
we be able to come out and say, everyone's got
to mobilize, we need to take ten percent of people
into government service.

Speaker 4 (50:54):
Would people be up for it? Would our current bureaucracy
be able to management.

Speaker 6 (51:01):
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Preborn banner at Charliekirk dot com. Let's fast forward to Vietnam.

(52:09):
You know, our modern imaginations have seen all the videos
and you know, all the movies and it, but this
was like a war unlike any other. Maybe you could
say that about World War two is certainly world War one,
but this changed America forever. Just set the backdrop of
what made it extraordinary? And why was it so controversial?

Speaker 3 (52:30):
Yes it is, I.

Speaker 8 (52:32):
Think our most misunderstood war, which is why I've spent
so much time looking at it.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
But when it starts out in the fifties with.

Speaker 8 (52:41):
An American commitment to South Vietnam, there is broad bipartisan
support for helping South Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
As part of the containment policy.

Speaker 8 (52:51):
We have set up a series of anti communist allies
in Asia, fought this South the Korean War to save
South Korea. We're supporting Taiwan, Japan, and so there is
general consensus that Asia is a critical part of the
world and we need allies there. And so it doesn't

(53:13):
really get controversial until nineteen sixty four. And really some
of the controversy starts in nineteen sixty three. There's this
disastrous coup that we support, which is a huge mistake.
But then President Kennedy himself is assassinated just after that,
and so you know Lyndon Johnson coming in and he

(53:35):
is really focused on his re election, and well, this
will come back to haunt him because he talks about
how he's not sending American boys to Vietnam, and then
after he's elected, he will send American boys to Vietnam.
But I think the rationale in terms of protecting the
region from communist influence. I think has stood the time

(53:59):
very well. And if you look in the region we
have today anti communist allies, I think he can make
the case that we actually saved many of those allies
by what we did in Vietnam. But the war itself
was fought in unfortunate way in many respects, and so
a lot of the disillusionment comes with the fact that

(54:20):
the Johnson administration tried what was called gradual escalation, where
we thought we would slowly increase the pressure on North Vietnam,
but it ended up just playing into their hands. But
you know, when Nixon comes in, you know it's been
a war for the Democrats. And Nixon could have thrown
up his hands and walked away, but he said, no,
this is this is still in our national interest, which

(54:41):
I think he deserves a lot of credit for.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
But a lot of the opposition that comes out to
is connected to I.

Speaker 8 (54:48):
Think the baby boom, and you have a lot of
people who aren't really that focused on Vietnam, but they
want to criticize their own country, and so Vietnam becomes
a convenient a whipping boy.

Speaker 4 (55:00):
That's interesting, and it's very possibly right.

Speaker 7 (55:02):
There was a lot of social turmoil and change in
America while this was unfolding. But do you think there's
an unfortunate template that got set with Vietnam? You mentioned
they tried gradual escalation, and what stands out to me
about that is, you don't graduate did America gradually escalate
any other war we fought. I don't think Lincoln tried
gradual escalation in the Civil War. I don't think FDR

(55:26):
was doing anything like that with World War Two. No,
you just you hyper mobilized to win the war, and
if once the war was done, you rapidly demobilize, and
suddenly you have this almost it's like war as a
management consultant would come up with it, which a lot
of the guys who ran that war, Robert mcnuer, I
think he literally was a consultant beforehand, or kind of

(55:46):
that type of person he worked at Ford Motors. Did
we get sort of caught in the wrong loop where
we started to treat conflicts as a thing to be managed,
that you could calibrate.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
You could half fight a war, and we've been doing
that ever since.

Speaker 7 (56:02):
Zac had half fighting the war with Iraq, half fighting
the Afghan War. You got these wars where you can't
easily define what you're actually trying to achieve. You don't
know what victory looks like. We didn't know that with Vietnam,
and we had that same issue with war as we
fought since. Do you think America got stuck in some
sort of doom loop there?

Speaker 8 (56:20):
Yes, And in sixty four and sixty five there is
these sharp debates where you have the military and these
are generals who had fought in World War Two in Korea,
and they're saying, Okay, if we're gonna fight here, we're
gonna give them everything we've got and we're gonna hit
them hard right away.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
But you had McNamara pushing back on that.

Speaker 8 (56:39):
And one of the most sort of pathetic aspects of
all this is that McNamara was very influenced by academic
theorists who were using game theory and these other abstractions
to try to come up with some new ways to
manage conflict, and it just turned.

Speaker 3 (56:58):
Out to be a complete disaster.

Speaker 8 (57:00):
But yeah, he came from the business world and he
he had a strong arrogance. He was also intellectual who
thought that these abstract theories had some place in the world.
But it turned out, you know, human nature hasn't actually changed,
and the ways you fight wars really shouldn't change either.

Speaker 6 (57:21):
How did it change America? You know?

Speaker 5 (57:23):
And because again I have in my childhood and growing up,
I mean from Forrest Gump on where you know, you
get so much Vietnam era content that's been created, and
it feels all very depressing, and you think.

Speaker 6 (57:39):
About the backdrop of it.

Speaker 5 (57:40):
Yeah, you had racial tension and the riots, Watts riots,
and the sixties, and then you had this basic malaise
that started setting in in the seventies. How did it
change the identity of America and the way we felt
about ourselves.

Speaker 8 (57:58):
Yeah, well, it was the first war where you had
a significant part of the population actively disparaging military service. Now,
in other wars, you'd had plenty of people dodging the draft,
but this time you had the baby boomers claiming that
in fact, they were the real heroes because they didn't
go to this war, which they thought was immoral. They

(58:21):
didn't have a great case for that, And so this
spills over into what follows and a lot of the
media depictions. I think one of the worst things that
happens in the Vietnam War. Is that a lot of
these people end up putting the blame on veterans, and
veterans are treated horrifically after the war. You know, eventually
the left kind of figured this out and so in

(58:43):
later conflicts you don't have this same vilification.

Speaker 3 (58:47):
And you know, I think probably makes sense. Everyone needs
to know that it's.

Speaker 8 (58:51):
The you know, politicians who actually make these decisions about
war and not the truth. But you've had this general
I think ever since that time, you've seen much of
the left side of the political spectrum has been hostile
to the military.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
And I think that's also, you know, been problem in.

Speaker 8 (59:07):
Terms of maintaining national unity when you have so many
people who are disparaging this important institution.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
What so.

Speaker 5 (59:15):
You you mentioned the Baby Boomers were different in the
sense that they were prepared to disparage the war effort.
What made the Baby Boomers disparage it? Was it the
fact they were getting drafted? Was it the mission itself?
Was it the the idea that you're you're not killing
other white Europeans, but you're, you know, you're these are
Nam Vietnamese and the Jungles, Like what what was the

(59:37):
central kernel of that drove such controversy.

Speaker 8 (59:40):
Well, I think actually it's was fundamentally about their own
self preservation. Now they tried to dress it up in
more idealistic terms, but you got to remember this was
the most the generation that had grown up in the
greatest degree of affluence, and I think they were rightly
characterized by some of their elders is saying, this is

(01:00:02):
a generation of spoiled brats.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
They've had too much given to them.

Speaker 8 (01:00:07):
And now you know, as we know, spoiled brats tend
not to want to make sacrifices and and do hard things,
and so that was really driving it. You can see
this too, because when the draft ends, most of the
opposition to the war goes away. And so you had
these young people who were self absorbed and they thought
they were so important that, you know, they didn't want

(01:00:29):
to risk their lives in some far away conflict.

Speaker 5 (01:00:33):
So, doctor Moyer, is your perspective that the aims and
ambitions of the war effort were noble, were they rightly
placed or was it a miscalculation?

Speaker 8 (01:00:45):
I think it's the fundamental objective of containing communism in
Asia was spot on, and again we can see the
consequences still today. China's no longer technically communists, but they
are still there are number one threat, and so we've
sustained these alliances. Asia's economy is hugely important, and by

(01:01:07):
making a stand there, we bought time for our allies
to stay. And now it was disastrous the way we
left them in nineteen seventy five, which was the Congress
being petulant and upset at Nixon, partly over Watergate.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
But I think it was tremendously unfortunate.

Speaker 8 (01:01:26):
Although we have benefited from the fact that we've got
so many great Vietnamese who've come to this country, and
our current Acting Secretary of the Navy is actually a
child of Vietnamese who came here. But you've also got
to remember we were fighting against an ideology that killed
one hundred million people worldwide. That's international communism and killed

(01:01:49):
more than fascism. But a lot of people don't talk
about that, but that I think has to be at.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
The center of the conversation.

Speaker 5 (01:01:56):
Yeah, I mean, gosh, you're saying these things, and I
think that they are. For example, Korea, South Korea is
a thriving country now, unlike North Korea because of the
sacrifices of the Korean War.

Speaker 6 (01:02:13):
You know that was a bit of a stalemate.

Speaker 5 (01:02:16):
It's in retrospect history has not judged as a full win, right,
you know, but I think it was a win. Vietnam
it feels a little murkier to me, but you're giving
me something to think about. And yeah, I mean, listen,
the baby boomers, they get mad at me on this show,
and they got mad at Charlie a lot.

Speaker 6 (01:02:35):
But I think there's some truth.

Speaker 5 (01:02:36):
I mean, listen, if you grow up with the war
dividend and this massive amount of wealth and this optimism,
and then all of a sudden you get drawn down
back into sort of a foreign conflict and a war overseas. Yeah,
I think they had a good point. You know, you
don't want to go have to fight a war in
far flung places. But was the overall objective, noble, you know,
to stop communism. It's tough to argue your point there,

(01:03:00):
all right, Like we were having a conversation and doctor Mourray,
I'm wonder if you would agree with it, but you
were saying as you wrestled through Vietnam.

Speaker 4 (01:03:09):
I just think about with Vietnam.

Speaker 7 (01:03:10):
What made me so sad about it is if you
look at the people who signed up to go fight
for that war. There were drafties, but there were many volunteers, uh.
And it was one of the actually a great generation
of Americans who were incredibly patriotic, incredibly pro America, incredibly
anti communists, wanted to serve their country, and they had

(01:03:31):
a leadership of this country that told them this is
crucial for America's security.

Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
This is a war.

Speaker 7 (01:03:36):
That is as important as anything we've ever fought, and
we have a plan to win this. And it feels
like a huge tragedy to me in that I feel
that a lot of those men who went and many
of them died, that they were kind.

Speaker 4 (01:03:50):
Of lied to. They were lied to both about.

Speaker 7 (01:03:54):
The nature of the war itself, but also especially having
a plan that we had leaders This is the first
big case of us getting into a war where we didn't.

Speaker 4 (01:04:02):
Have a clear cut idea of how to win it.

Speaker 7 (01:04:05):
And even after it was clear, they didn't have that idea,
that the war was sort of perpetuated because it had
inertia to it, like it would be politically costly to back.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Out pot committed.

Speaker 4 (01:04:16):
Yeah, I think about that.

Speaker 7 (01:04:17):
It's similar with like Afghanistan, for an example, where you
have US troops continuing to die because Lindsey Graham has
decided I am a tough war on terror guy.

Speaker 5 (01:04:30):
And that means this war must continue. I'm curious about that,
doctor Morier, because Vietnam was the politicians leading it, were
World War two vets, right, they had fought in this
triumphant war. Was the approach this like gradual escalation? Were
they trying to adjust for the traumas of World War

(01:04:52):
Two that they I mean, were they trying to avoid
some of that? What's the like? Where does that come from?
When you were so triumphant and so victorious that you
would then go and lead men to battle in this
kind of haphazard way.

Speaker 8 (01:05:05):
Well, the idea of limiting the war and gradual escalation
comes mainly from macnamara, and he pushes it with Johnson,
who was barely at all in World War To me,
he's in it for a brief moment, and he flies
on airplane once and tries to make into.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
A big deal.

Speaker 8 (01:05:22):
But they are petrified of nuclear war. Now, the Joint
chiefs of Staff, they are coming up with some alternative
strategies which actually I think would have won the war.
One is to invade North Vietnam. One is to go
into Laos and cut the Ho Chiman trail. One is
to step up the bombing of North Fetenom. And they
kept recommending these things, and Johnson and McNamara kept saying, oh, no,

(01:05:46):
we can't do that because we're going to bring the
Chinese and the Soviets in. Now Richard Nixon will end
up doing some of those things. And it turns out
Chinese and the Soviets sat on their hands. So there's
this terrible miscalculation and things are going better in the end.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
And had it not been.

Speaker 8 (01:06:04):
For Watergate, I think the South would have been would
have held on. But one of the most important things
to know about Vietnam veterans is that by large majorities,
they they believe that the main problem in Vietnam was
that the politicians would not let the military win the war,

(01:06:24):
which is something you know, you don't hear the mainstream
media and moving and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
They don't want you to get that message.

Speaker 8 (01:06:30):
They want to say that this was some unwinnable conflict.
But as someone who's spent decades looking at this, I
can say that that's definitely not the case. That there
were strategies that would have succeeded had we not been
so petrified of what the Chinese or the Soviets might think.

Speaker 5 (01:06:50):
You know, that's a great place to end it, because
it takes us kind of up into our present moment
where President Trump has said, hey, the war on terror.
You saw this in Trump one point zero, where he
unshackled the US military to really achieve objectives, to use
the full force in might of the US military. It
seems like, you know, we've almost come out of this

(01:07:12):
really bad you know, I would say it's like fifty
years of kind of really tough lessons. Do you predict
do you predict that we've learned our lessons from this era?
I mean, because we have the bravest men and women,
the most awesome military on the planet, but we also
don't want to fight dumb worse right, we don't want
to keep this foreign adventurism. I guess in the final

(01:07:34):
minute and a half two minutes we have here, have
we learned our lessons? Are we in a better place now?

Speaker 3 (01:07:39):
Well? I think this country is.

Speaker 8 (01:07:42):
It's not always one of our fortes of learning the
right lessons. Of course, there's a lot of lessons you
can learn from history, and one of the big problems
you have is that sometimes we try to apply the
lesson of one place in another. And so when we
wanted to Iraq and Afghanistan, a lot of people who
supported those are saying, well, we can democratize these places

(01:08:03):
because it worked in other countries. Well, it turns out
Iraq and Afghanistan our Islamic states with different cultures. I
think that is the biggest reason why we failed in
those places. Now, I do think we've learned. If you
look at what people say about Iran. Now, I think
we recognize, well, we've now tried in Iraq and Afghanistan

(01:08:24):
to turn them into democracies. Didn't work, and so probably
doesn't make a lot of sense to send hundreds of
thousands of troops into Iran and try the same thing.

Speaker 4 (01:08:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:08:34):
I mean, we could disagree till we're blue in the
face about Iran, or you could agree with it, but
boots on the ground in a nation of ninety million
with sectarian splits, in a deeply ingrained regime, you know,
thankfully we're not doing that, and hopefully we won't ever
have to do that. Doctor Moore, it's been a pleasure,

(01:08:55):
what a breadth of knowledge you possessed.

Speaker 6 (01:08:57):
I literally didn't I didn't.

Speaker 5 (01:08:59):
Even tell the folks that we were working to coordinate this,
how we were going to do it. And I was
just told you could, and boy could you. So hats
off to you. Thank you for joining us on this
Memorial Day special. We pray that you have gratitude for
what the men and women have done to preserve this nation,
and thank you for joining us today.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Thanks great to be with you guys.

Speaker 6 (01:09:19):
Yeah, Hillsdale College is the best. We love those guys.
Happy Memorial Day.

Speaker 5 (01:09:23):
Be grateful for the sacrifice that was made on your
behalf to enjoy the greatest country in the history of
the world.

Speaker 8 (01:09:33):
For more on many of these stories and news you
can trust, go to Charliekirk dot com.