ABRAHAM LINCOLN BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Ten quotations with the values and ideas from the man that founded America. Each quotation is explained to deliver ... of his sayings. (MINI BIOGRAPHIES Book 12) by Austin Brooks

Author:Austin Brooks [Brooks, Austin]
Language: eng
Format: azw
Publisher: UNIBOOKS Digital Publisher
Published: 2016-05-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”

It was 1755 when a very young George Washington learnt a lesson he would never forget. The British had put General Edward Braddock in front of an expedition to the Forks of Ohio and Washington, who had decided to serve voluntarily, was his aide-de-camp. The French & Indian wars had started, and he was willing to fight for victory and honor without thinking twice. But the events that would take place on July 9 would really put him to the test.

That day, by the banks of Monongahela River, the French and Native American allies struck Braddock’s column with no mercy. Hours of fighting led to hundreds of deaths and exhaustion, until the General gave the order to retreat. And before he could guide his men out of the battle, a bullet sealed history forever, leaving Braddock on the field and Washington in charge of leading the survivors.

Years later, Washington would write about this episode that changed his perception of war and marked him for life. He never forgot the suffering, the pain he got to witness in that struggle, the ugly face of war behind the glory and the triumphs. He then knew fighting could be a necessity, it could be a matter of great importance for a nation’s freedom and growth, but that none of that would come without a great deal of pain and human loss. It was to be kept as an extreme resource.

He did, however, believe in being prepared as a way to tell the enemy that the nation would fight if necessary, a silent but obvious form of dissuasion. This has been a policy that the country has kept through its history. About 200 years after Washington, shortly before becoming president, John F. Kennedy reaffirmed this in his speech at the Civic Auditorium of Seattle: “I can imagine no more hazardous course than for the United States to gamble on its defenses, to take a chance that the Russians and the Chinese Communists will follow a peaceful role if we disarm here in the United States, or if we fail to maintain our strength. If we are strong, then peace will be our reward, and that is the doctrine that we preach in the year 1960.”

At that time, Robert McNamara, the United States Secretary of Defense, declared the MAD strategy that we still support today. Mutually Assured Destruction is part of the national security policy. Based on the theory of deterrence, it uses threat to make other countries refrain from attacking the U.S. with nuclear weapons, as it assures an equal response and the complete annihilation of both parties. MAD was the result of a long stage of highly destructive weapons development, from the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused by the U.S.A. to the hydrogen bomb designed by the U.S.S.R. in the midst of the conflict between capitalism and communism that involved both countries. The Cold War caused the U.

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