U.S. presidents on war and sacrifice

Civil War:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ― that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion ― that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

~ President Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

World War I: 

There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us...  To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.

~ President Woodrow Wilson, war message to Congress, April 2, 1917

World War II:

“It is not a sacrifice for any man, old or young, to be in the Army or Navy of the United States.  Rather it is a privilege.  It is not a sacrifice for the industrialist or the wage-earner, the farmer or the shopkeeper, the trainman or the doctor, to pay more taxes, to buy more bonds, to forego extra profits, to work longer or harder at the task for which he is best fitted.  Rather it is a privilege.  It is not a sacrifice to do without many things to which we are accustomed if the national defense calls for doing without.” 

~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio address after Pearl Harbor, December 9, 1941

 

Korean War:

To do this will require hard work and sacrifice by all of us. I know all of us are prepared to do whatever is necessary in the cause of peace and freedom.

~ President Harry Truman, radio and television report, September 1, 1950

Cold War:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

~ President John F. Kennedy, inaugural address, January 20, 1961

War on Terror:

Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front… This will take time and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure.

~ President George W. Bush, address to the nation, September 7, 2003

Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it?  It is worth it, and it is vital to the future security of our country.

~ President George W. Bush, June 28, 2005, speech at Fort Bragg

 

Iran War:

As we celebrate this progress, we think especially of the 13 American warriors who have laid down their lives in this fight to prevent our children from ever having to face a nuclear Iran… And now we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives.

~ President Donald Trump, address to the nation, April 1, 202

The Economist: "America's attempts to impose its designs on the Middle East have run their course"

America seems to be stuck in the Middle East.  It has no easy way out of its war with Iran.  Yet the conflict, however it ends, will in fact mark something quite different: the moment when America pulls back from the region—in the sense that it finally relinquishes its hegemony there.  For the first time since the great powers dismembered the Ottoman empire a century ago, the Middle East’s overarching order will no longer be imposed from afar.  Will that herald an orgy of score-settling and violence, or a new beginning? 

After three wars, countless covert operations and seemingly endless rounds of diplomacy, America's attempts to impose its designs have run their course.  Like Britain, France and Russia, America will still be involved.  It will occasionally use military force to pursue its interests, including for counter-terrorism.   But it will abandon its role as architect.

The signs of America's looming retrenchment are unmistakable—even as President Donald Trump uses the annual meeting of the UN to threaten Iran with "annihilation" for the umpteenth time.  Two stand out.  Earlier this month America declined to join its ally Saudi Arabia in striking the Houthis in Yemen, who are endangering shipping in the Red Sea.  Instead it held talks behind the Saudis' backs to spare American vessels from attack.  That may seem like a detail, but when a superpower does deals with an insurgent militia, everyone understands it wants to cut its commitments.

The other sign is the expectation that America will limit its presence in the Middle East.  In peacetime it has 30,000-40,000 troops on 19 bases, eight of which are permanent.  However, the war has exposed how vulnerable they are to drones and cheap missiles.

~ "When America walks away: For decades America has enjoyed hegemony over the Middle East. That is about to end," The Economist, September 24, 2026

 

Ben Franklin on investing and compounding

Money makes money.  And the money that money makes, makes money. 

~ Benjamin Franklin

 

Lew Rockwell on how libertarians were right about 9/11

A libertarian must never tire of saying “I told you so.” Nor is there a dearth of opportunities to do so. Before 9-11, for example, it was the libertarians who said that 1990s sanctions against Iraq and broader intervention in the Middle East would inspire terrorism. The libertarians also warned that FAA regulations weren’t really making the airlines secure. The libertarians further saw that hundreds of billions spent on “defense” and “intelligence” weren’t really providing either. 

Thus was 9-11, two years ago, a big “I-told-you-so” moment for libertarians. The hijackers, seething in anger at US policy in the Gulf region and the Middle East, exploited a FAA-regulated system with plenty of loopholes for bad guys, to crash into a major financial center, and the US government, despite all its spending and promises, was powerless to stop it. 

And yet, in this upside-down world, the big message after 9-11 was not that the government and its ways had failed us. Quite the opposite. We were told that the government would save us. It was libertarianism that failed. 

Remember? Hillary Clinton, always exploiting the political moment, said of the efforts to cope on that awful day, “we saw government in action.… It was the elected officials who were leading and comforting.” That’s an odd way to describe running for their lives, prior to seizing power from their bureaucratic bunkers.

Vice President Dick Cheney said, “one of the things that’s changed so much since September 11th is the extent to which people do trust the government, big shift, and value it, and have higher expectations for what we can do.” The triumph of hope over experience! 

George Will wrote that “Sept. 11 forcefully reminded Americans that their nation-state…is the source of their security.… Events since Sept. 11 have underscored the limits of libertarianism.” He is speaking here of the same nation-state that stood by and did nothing as 19 guys with box cutters took down the twin towers.

Francis Fukuyama joined in to proclaim the “fall of the libertarians”: 

[9-11] was a reminder to Americans of why government exists, and why it has to tax citizens and spend money to promote collective interests. It was only the government, and not the market or individuals, that could be depended on to send firemen into buildings, or to fight terrorists, or to screen passengers at airports. 

Albert Hunt of the Wall Street Journal typified this genre of commentary. “It’s time to declare a moratorium on government-bashing,” he wrote. 

For a quarter-century, the dominant public culture has suggested government is more a problem than a solution.… But, as during previous catastrophes, America turns to government in crisis.… For the foreseeable future, the federal government is going to invest or spend more, regulate more and exercise more control over our lives… We will hear much less about the glories of privatization in areas like airport security.… Top Bush administration officials will have to dramatically alter their views on regulation.… Moreover, more muscular authority must be given to the new Office of Homeland Security…Tougher security measures at home are unavoidable.… But there is no real debate over expansion in general. Sept. 11 has underscored the centrality of government in our lives. 

So it went, across the political spectrum. The idea was that the events of that day had somehow refuted all our slogans about cutting government, privatization, personal liberty, markets, and peace. Clearly, they said, it was excessive liberty that had led to this disaster. It was cuts in government, and too little foreign belligerence, that brought it on, while the public sector, from the New York firemen to the military bosses who exacted vengeance abroad, saved us.

~ Lew Rockwell, "Times Change, Principles Don't," Mises Wire, September 11, 2003

 

James Bovard on warnings prior to 9/11

I think if the American people had known how [many] warnings, how many signals the U.S. had ahead of time of this potential hijack conspiracy, there would’ve been far less of a reaction to rally around the flag and more criticism of the president.  Commentators thought it was great in the weeks after 9/11 that trust in government skyrocketed…  People need to keep their minds open.  People need to keep skeptical and critical.

~ James Bovard, C-SPAN Booknotes, September 25, 2003 (aired November 2, 2003)

2003

 

Nassim Taleb on the need for individual business failure

For the economy to be antifragile and undergo what is called evolution, every single individual business must necessarily be fragile, exposed to breaking - evolution needs organisms (or their genes) to die when supplanted by others, in order to achieve improvement, or to avoid reproduction when they are not as fit as someone else.  Accordingly, the antifragility of the higher level may require the fragility - and sacrifice - of the lower one.

[...]

Now, by disrupting the model, as we will see, with bailouts, governments typically favor a certain class of firms that are large enough to require being saved in order to avoid contagion to other business.  This is the opposite of healthy risk-taking; it is transferring fragility from the unfit to the collective.

~ Nassim Taleb, Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder, pp. 74-75

 

Steve Eisman on the AI ecosystem

I think about it like a chain.  So you've got Nvidia selling the chips.  Nothing wrong with selling chips.  You've got the hyperscalers buying the chips.  Nothing wrong if somebody buys the chips.  Where it starts to get squishy is something like 70% of AI revenue of the hyperscalers is just from OpenAI and Anthropic, and that's about 25% to 35% of their entire cloud revenue.  So basically, if you follow the entire chain down, the entire ecosystem is dependent on two companies - to say that they lose billions is a euphemism - and one of them I think is in trouble, which is OpenAI.

~ Steve Eisman, "Stock Picking in Difficult Times with George Noble," The Real Eisman Playbook, 16:40 mark, September 21, 2026