The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants
– Thomas Jefferson
On February 21th, diplomatic representatives of the European Union, the President of the Ukraine, leaders of Ukrainian opposition groups, and Russian foreign diplomats agreed to a compromise to seek a way out of the violent upheaval in the streets of the capital city of Kiev and across the Ukraine. The plan sought a reduction in the current president’s powers and earlier elections then planned for the nation’s federal offices. Solemn remarks of the participants after the agreement suggested it was the only way out of the crisis. The EU’s Polish representative Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski told opposition leaders, “If you don’t support this deal, you will have martial law. the army. You’ll all be dead.” An agreement was signed and the current government had achieved some breathing room. President Yanukovych, the hated focus of the protestors for selling out the Ukraine to Russia after previously agreeing to a stronger relationship with the European Union, was allowed to remain President to the next election.
Apparently no one asked the opinion of the people of the Ukraine.
Revolutions don’t seek compromise, they seek fundamental change. And what was seen as a mob driven protest by the negotiators was instead an overwhelming surge of national conversion, driven by the blood of 100 dead and thousands injured in the violent battles in Maidan Square. Blood was not spilled for compromise, but for liberty, for the country to direct its own future free of Russian domination. The political leaders did not recognize the depth of conversion that had taken place. Within hours of the agreement, the fundamentals of government control began to crumble in the face of overwhelming public pressure. Opposition leaders, explaining the agreement to the masses were shouted down, and the call rose for the immediate resignation of the hated President. The police, sensing the shift, began to side with the demonstrators. The army stood aside as the nation convulsed in determination. Governmental offices were overrun. President Yanukovych, sensing the sand shift from beneath his feet, hurriedly abandoned the capitol for the supposed safety of the Russian speaking city of Kharkiv. What he found in Kharkiv was ten of thousands of more protestors and his ability to exit to Russia blocked. The Ukrainian parliament voted for his impeachment, and arranged the release of his imprisoned rival the previous Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. This incredible 24 hours of events is reported minute to minute by the UK Guardian in a way that current American newspaper organizations could not hold a candle to.
One week ago, President Putin of Russia was sure he had bucked up his satrap in the Ukraine with enough money to use what ever means necessary to maintain governmental control, and Russia’s dominant position in the affairs of the Ukraine. A week later it appears his dream of a greater Russian confederation in the style of the Soviet Union is in tatters. As it turns out, money can’t buy everything.
Maidan Square- Kiev Ukraine voanews.com
The people of the Ukraine have achieved through their blood and determination a chance at a better future. Given the miniscule current backbone of the United States and the European Union, however, it is an uncertain one at best. Putin may yet prove to be a Brezhnev, who 1968 sent his tanks into Prague, or achieved the silencing of Solidarity with marshal law in Poland in 1981. He has suggested on multiple occasions that he sees the inaction of Gorbachev allowing the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991 as the mortal sin of governance. With tens of thousands of dead in the Chechen republic battles he is not about to go “weak kneed” in the face of a few hundred dead in Kiev.
Whatever the outcome, the people of the Ukraine, and less recognized but equally passionate, the people of Venezuela, have determined that casual acceptance of a life under socialist tyrants is not their vision of a livable future. The world, including the previous citadel of individual freedom, the United States, continues to slide in governance to a progressive socialist mediocrity. It is no surprise that large bureaucracies like the EU, felt it important to tell the Ukrainian opposition that, aspirations aside, the agreement for a surrender to managed decline was the best the people could hope for.
The message from Kiev is that the understanding of and desire for Jefferson’s eternally defined rights has not yet been eliminated from the face of the earth.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
On September 7th 1821, General Simon Bolivar stood astride a liberated land colossus of current day Venezuela, Columbia, Bolivia, Peru, Panama and northwest Brazil as President of the republic of Gran Columbia. Born of the age of Enlightenment, and intensely shaped by the American and French Revolutions, Bolivar envisioned the possibilities of his own native Latin America and with brilliant strategy helped by 1825 to eject the Spanish overlords from nearly half the Latin American continent. A fervent admirer of the American experiment and philosophy of Jefferson he none the less differed from the American founders in two significant ways. He was virulently against slavery, and he felt the 400 year Spanish rule of the region had corrupted the capacity for unfettered democracy. He described the Spaniards as having dominated through unholy triad of “ignorance, tyranny and vice”, and that it would take a firm leader to shepherd the people to a point where their own aspirations could be fairly realized.
Simon Bolivar, a son of Venezuela born in Caracas, but father to the hopes and dreams of an entire continent, could not know that his efforts to mold the concepts of the American dream to a Latin American version of paternal guidance, would lead to two hundred years of pretenders, who would corrupt Bolivar’s vision and retrench the concept of master rule.
The nineteenth century of nationalist dictatorships gave way to a twentieth century of military dictatorships, with patchy occasional experiments with democratic process. The new century has found an even more disturbing model in Bolivar’s home, Venezuela. A military coup leader, Hugo Chavez, who in the fine tradition of South American militaries unsuccessfully attempted in 1992 to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela, was elected in 1998 to the presidency of Venezuela, on a
Hugo Chavez
platform of providing the poor with their fair portion of the bounties of the state. After his failed coup in 1992 and brief imprisonment, Chavez was released from prison, and determined to learn from the coup master Fidel Castro as to how to attain ultimate rule. Castro’s unique combination of fascist and socialist tenets, creating one man permanent rule and a progressive destruction through socialism of a nation’s economic fabric, had succeeded in holding Cuba for the Castro family for fifty years. Chavez saw Venezuela as prime for a similar future, with one spectacular advantage Castro could only dream of, Venezuela’s huge oil reserves available to fund the vision. Chavez had learned well from Castro, and declared upon winning the Presidency, “the resurrection of Venezuela has begun, and nothing and no one can stop it.”
Nationalizing the oil wealth and reorienting media and government to fit his vision, Chavez ruled for 14 years, progressively organizing the socialist state to permanence, and was stopped only by cancer leading to his death in 2013. Using the Castro concept of “permanent revolution”, he was able to suppress rising discontent from the Venezuelan middle class that had progressively to pay for the brunt of his anti market strategies. Learning from Castro the necessity of fascistic imagery, Chavez put for his charismatic personality in similar form, wearing the uniform of the revolutionary, promoting the concept of an “indispensable” leader, railing against anyone who saw through his cartoon image.
The plan broke down with Chavez’s cancer, and he was forced to find a substitute who would continue the process of centrally dominating the Venezuelan society. His clone was to be Nicolas Maduro, a union leader of bus drivers, who had worked his way up Chavez’s inner group, and had the willingness to maintain the grip on power that would be necessary when the charismatic Chavez was no longer on the stage.
Nicolas Maduro
Maduro has positioned himself to be the natural successor to Chavez’s one man rule, creating laws for the purpose of centralizing military and police power, declaring”economic war”, and requesting emergency dictatorial powers. The typical effect of socialistic management and fascistic cult worship is leading to a historical collapse of Venezuela’s economy, and the people are getting tired of the pretender to the cult. Maduro is no Castro, no Chavez, and definitely no Bolivar when it comes to charisma and is responding to progressive societal unrest with all the subtle reflexes of a union thug. Average Venezuelans have seen the oil wealth squandered to create a price control economy now with an inflation rate of 56%, among the highest on earth, with massive shortages of daily necessities, such as medicine, food, and even toiletries. Maduro has responded to the unrest in the nature of a strongman, using force to suppress protest, resulting in injuries and death, and increased suppression. Like Ukraine earlier this year, Venezuela is heading for a showdown and the cap on significant violence may be uncapped in a horrific way.
Simon Bolivar hoped that eventually the yoke of Spanish intimidation, once lifted, would allow the flourishing of a better life for Latin Americans in a land of immense resources. His problem was that he presumed that the men who would follow Bolivar would be upholders of the Rights of Man, not pretenders to the goals of his revolution. The false promise of the twin deceivers of socialism and fascism is that they exist for the benefit of the people. As the current Pretendiente Maduro in Venezuela, like all before him, has proven, the only ones who will ever see a better life in the socialist reality are the elite, and the rest of us are left to accept their good graces if they so desire.
As for the violent suppression of a people, Washington DC is likely once again to stand silently by. After all, we have our own Pretendiente to consider.
The Obama administration has had a fairly busy month trying to keep a wayward internet site from flummoxing up people’s health insurance coverage, charging inadvertently their bank accounts for insurance they did not yet have, and struggling to maintain the site with a capacity for volume and security remotely consistent with sites one fiftieth as big in scope. Its very stressful, and it absolutely doesn’t help that the rest of the world will not give America a break and allow it the space and time to be converted to a socialist utopia, without forcing international instability on the administration as well. After all, the governmental takeover of one sixth of the largest economy in the world was to be the Magnum Opus of this president, and his entire foreign policy was designed to put international issues behind him, so he could concentrate on domestic revolution.
The Obama Doctrine, removal of the United States as a determining force in world affairs, initiated with the infamous apology tour. the Russian Re-Set, and the extrication of American forces from the hard won military stability in Iraq. With the United States acting more like an absent uncle singularly concerned about the world’s environmental health, respectful and even submissive before all other nations, regardless of their malevolence or darker intent, Obama assumed a period of tranquility that would allow him the time to focus on the real enemy, America’s individualist tradition.
The roll call of untoward responses to this policy is mind boggling, starting with A and the Arab world chaos and ending at Z with Zawahiri and the re-emergence of Al Qaeda, and constituting a myriad of mis-steps in between. After a summer of ineffective and contrary bungling of the Syrian debacle and the dangerous appeasement of the Iranian totalitarians in their desire for nuclear armament, the last thing the President needed was two more cracks to develop in the Doctrine.
The above photo captured an event in Kiev, Ukraine last week but shadowed eerily the events of 1989. An enormous mob decides the period of Soviet dominance has stood long enough and pulls down and destroys the primary symbol of all powerful communist oppression, Vladimir Lenin. Across eastern Europe and even parts of Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, this was an epic and essentially peaceful sight twenty years ago, but this time there is a more ominous pall to this event. The Ukrainian people are not celebrating the demise of a dictatorial foreign oppressor , but rather the re-insertion of it in their lives. The president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, on November 21, announced the reversal of a decades long movement of Ukraine into the European orbit pointing towards the establishment of ties with the European Union and NATO, instead directing Ukraine back into the sphere of direct Russian influence and dominance. President Yanukovych, who since his election in 2010, has succeeded in positioning his family and friends along the lines of a typical Russian criminal oligarchy, syphoning key Ukrainian industries and power into their hands, hoped to “seal the deal” with blessing of the ultimate overlord Putin, who has perfected the format in Russia and seeks to restore old fashioned Russian dominance on former Soviet Republics. The minority Russian population of Ukraine, ~18% of the Ukranian population has felt its influence diminish with independence and supports the president. The great majority of the Ukrainian population has no intention to go back to subservience and demands follow through with impending agreements with the European Union. The BBC has reported on the massive rallies in the Ukrainian capital and this time tearing down Lenin statues in Europe’s second biggest country may not go down so peacefully.
The Obama Doctrine would have suggested that the Russian Re-Set fashioned by the president and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have solved this issue, but no one bothered to tell the Ukrainians that their future might not jibe with the acclaimed Re-Set. Dealing with a more belligerent Russia certainly would be within the capabilities of the United States as long as the Pacific sphere of American influence was to remain – ‘pacific’. Unfortunately, not so much.
At the very moment the European door is coming off its stable hinges, the Pacific Rim, stable for decades is wobbling dangerously. China, seeing the bent knee nature of American foreign policy evidenced in a tired ‘here-we-go-again’ presidential bow to another tin horn dictator, this time Cuba’s Raul Castro, moved aggressively to declare the South China Sea in its sphere of influence, extending its military defacto control over strategic islands that just happen to be in the sweet spot of oil and gas deposits. Sphere of Influence just happens to be a sensitive subject in these parts, given that the Imperial Japan declared a Co-Prosperity Sphere of Influence leading to World War II, that wasn’t Co anything and was prosperous only for Japan. Japan and South Korea, having more than enough instability from the deranged Chinese client state North Korea, are in no mood for unilateral declarations of influence, and issue is setting up for some serious moments of potential conflict. Earlier this week a Chinese naval vessel attempted to get the US Guided Missile Warship the USS Cowpens to stop in its transit through previously accepted international waters in the South China Sea. This move was clearly designed to intimidate, and forced the 560 foot 10,000 ton craft to perform dangerous avoidance maneuvers. This kind of action, against naval vessels of countries such as Vietnam, Korea, and particularly Japan, may create a tension that is not so easily deflected, given the history of the region. Since the days of the British Imperial Navy ruling the waves, the maintenance of “open sea lanes” has been considered the critical ingredient to world trade and peace. China may see the current guarantor of safe and open international waters, the Untied States, weakening in its resolve. Somebody, somewhere is bound to make a fatal mistake in such a vacuum.
When you own the car, and drive the car, all the passengers are at the mercy of your skill in operating the car. The United States for decades has “owned” the position of guarantor of world stability, and its weaving all over the road, is making the passengers very nervous, and very leery of the driver’s competence. The best we can likely hope for under this administration is, despite their tendency to overt their eyes from the road and spend their time texting while driving, that we don’t end up in a major pile-up. The reality is putting incompetent drivers in charge of such a powerful car is bound to lead to multiple serious fender benders at the least, and nobody is going to want to be along for the ride.
Prime Minister Chamberlain returns from his meeting with Herr Hitler with a Peace Agreement – 1938
On September 30th, 1938 an ebullient Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain spoke in front of an enraptured crowd, having just stepped of the plane from his triumphant visit and negotiations with the once Chancellor now Fuhrer of Germany, Adolph Hitler. Raising a piece of paper above his head he declared that what he had achieved was “peace in our time”.
“The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem which has now been achieved is, in my view, only a prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper that bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains, but I would just like to read it to you – ‘We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.’ “
The ‘Czechoslovakian problem’ was of course the unwillingness of Czechoslovakia to accept unconditional surrender and the takeover of their country by Nazi Germany without a fight. The British and French were caught in a dilemma in that they were obligated by treaty to support Czechoslovakia in any threat to her borders, and now they had to find a way to relieve themselves of their obligations. The ‘way’ was appeasement – they declared Germany had the natural right to assume sovereignty over any territory with a significant German population, and the borders of “a small, far away country over which we know little” seemed immaterial. The concept of appeasement – achieving a country’s martial desires without actual war so as to prevent war – was obviously predicated on the idea that there was a point of satiation to a country’s lust for power, territory, and dominance. It also required a complete willingness to throw one’s own principles and the target country’s existence under the bus.
On September 1,1939, after four consecutive years of appeasement strategy, and 335 days after Chamberlain’s clutched paper declared ‘peace in our time’ , Germany invaded Poland and World War II was underway.
In Geneva in 2013, an eerily similar group of participants, Britain, France, And the United States are having negotiations with a martial country, Iran, which basically will determine the potential existence of another country, Israel, which is of course is not invited to participate. As the BBC reports:
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton told a press conference that there had been a lot of “concrete progress but some differences remain”.
Baroness Ashton said talks would resume on 20 November.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said he was not disappointed with the outcome in Geneva, and that the talks were “something we can build on”.
He said all parties were “on the same wavelength” and “there was the impetus to reach an agreement”.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said: “There is no question in my mind that we are closer now than we were before.”
The considerations of negotiation are whether to determine as to whether Iran can achieve its national interests without a conflict. As Chamberlain discovered in 1938, there was no value in attempting to discuss with Hitler any other nation’s potential interests. It was only if Hitler would be able to achieve what he wanted through non-combat means. The president of Iran indicates a very similar philosophical view:
Again as reported by the BBC:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday that his country would not abandon its “nuclear rights”, which included uranium enrichment.
“The rights of the Iranian nation and our national interests are a red line. So are nuclear rights under the framework of international regulations, which include enrichment on Iranian soil,” he told parliament in remarks quoted by the Isna news agency.
The fundamental reality that is obscured by all the diplomatic language is Iran’s view of its innate destiny. It believes Israel’s existence is an aberration to be eliminated. It believes Islam is not a chosen religion but a means of dominance over individual choice, and there is no room for other opinions, other than submission. It believes the western world has circumvented its national destiny and that as great Persian nations in the past it intends to achieve total control of its sphere of influence. Like another nation did in 1938, it believes it is a nation of racial and cultural superiority that is destined to achieve its goals regardless of any temporary considerations.
The good news for Iran is that the United States, once the bulwark of defense of religious freedom, individual rights, and sovereignty of nations is now led by an administration who feels Neville Chamberlain’s failure was, that he didn’t go far enough.
The battle between the incredible shrinking president and congress plods along with no end in site of any kind of solution that will not involve the requirement to squeeze the tip of one’s nose to eliminate the acrid odor of what will be ‘the deal’. The perspectives of country and principle that at one time inspired and emboldened an nation to consider a permanent memorial to greatness to be etched on the side of a mountain, now leads the midget leaders of that same nation to attempt to block the view of such a monument to greatness with barricades. Well, it is understandable in a certain context. You certainly wouldn’t want people to take a moment to contemplate what they once had, and what they now have.
Frankly, the better perspective to understand the current batch of leaders is not a monument in stone , but rather, a bobblehead. Small, plastic, and distinctly non-monumental. Something that can shake its head yes and no at the same time. The bobblehead serves as the perfect reflection of the throwaway nature of our society, and its reproducibility of one indistinct forgettable figure after another. Yet, its not that these leaders are not into building monuments. No, they are building monuments every bit as lasting as the granite edifices in South Dakota’s Black Hills. They are taking care to meticulously achieve a lasting memorial to their smallness that will dwarf the achievements of the epic giants we see on Mt Rushmore. The current leaders’ children and grandchildren will not have to travel to the Great Plains only to have their view of a great momument obstructed by a National Park Service barricade. Instead they will see the special immenseness of our modern momuments in their everyday lives, casting an colossal shadow over their every activity, their hopes and their aspirations.
The modern monument to be constructed is made of promises and paper, not granite. The initial plans were constructed decades ago, but were vastly improved by the current architect. The monument will be comprised of trillions of dollars of debt obscuring any shadow of the country the leaders we see in granite on Mt Rushmore felt they were endowing.The current foundation of the mountainous monument is being added to at approxiamently a trillion dollars a year, with a recent slowdown taking into account the wrenching effect on the nation’s economy of such an epic burden. We need remind ourselves of the stature of such a monument. We can gain some perspective if we consider the hundred dollar bill, and project what just one trillion dollars (much less our current 17 trillion in debt) would look like in stacks of one hundred dollar bills:The small figure to the left of the semi-trailer truck is you. The pallet in front of the truck supports a hundred million dollars in one hundred dollar bills. Every day, your leaders add 40 of those pallets to the innumerable pallets to the left that comprise a trillion dollars in one hundred dollar bills. And that huge collection of pallets on the your left is only one 17th of what we currently owe. And estimated to be only one hundredth as high as our unfunded mandates we are leaving our future generations. More owed then the current accrued value of all the economies on earth. This is the monument the current generation of bobble heads are building.
In Washington, the argument is not regarding this ominous future prospect, it is about whether a president gets what he wants. If a president wants the future destruction of a nation, are we obligated to give him what he wants? In a world of little, soft dictators with protruding egos and cults of personality, leading country after country down a path of societal collapse and economic paralysis, are we obligated as a great nation designed to be ruled by law not men, to allow the appeasement of our own leader who fashions himself after such soft dictators? Is the progressive belligerence and police action of previous administrative arms of government as disparate as the National Park Service, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Environmental Protection agency the emblems of this soft dictatorship? If the answer to these questions remains the current neglectful ignorance by the very citizens the country’s founders worked so hard to protect against such action, then I would submit the time is coming where we need to think of building a new granite monument, one to the new generation of leaders whose influence will tower over those that were giants. This monument will be a very interesting engineering and artistic challenge – how to support the bobble that will rest upon the granite shoulders. Like the monument this leader is building, there’s a decent chance it would come crashing down.
In 475 AD, the western Roman Empire received its new emperor, Romulus Augustulus. This particular child, estimated to be about 15 years of age when elevated to the pinnacle of Roman power by his father Orestes to serve as a figurehead, is known to us only because he was deposed by the German chieftain Odoacer in 476 AD, effectively ending over a thousand years of continuous Roman rule. The last emperor, named for the founder of Rome and its greatest emperor, achieved nothing remotely deserving of the name he took, and is lost to history as soon as he was replaced. Such a magisterial name, such an ignominious end to the greatest empire the world had ever known. Neither Romulus or his dominant father Orestes, head of the Roman army likely had the slightest idea they were participating in the end game of a millennia of history.
Such are the times we now live in. For nearly 240 years, the greatest democracy the world has ever known is undergoing cultural implosion, and the elected ’emperor’ has not a clue of the wrenching historical pivot at play. Great nations, so superficially permanent in their appearance, actually are quite transient actors on the historical stage. The magnificent power of Genghis Khan ruling half the land mass of Asia held little solace to the frustrations of Pu Yi, the last emperor, as he met the manipulations of the many European overlords and the revolutionary Sun Yat Sen, ending ignominiously as the puppet leader of the stump state of Manchukuo, and pathetically powerless to be a Chinese balance to the Japanese Emperor Hirohito. The court of Queen Victoria’s Britannia lording over one third of the globe, seemly immortal in its power, finding itself within a century fending off the cries of irrelevance of the monarchial existence on the home island of Britain itself. The mighty Soviet Union, astride the Asian and European landmasses, holding an intense intolerance to any deviation from absolute rule, took barely eighty years to collapse under its own corrosion. It appears no matter how apparently powerful, nothing is forever.
And so one wonders if the American experiment, of a governance ruled by its people, so profoundly the ideal by which all other peoples striving for individual freedom have held up as a bulwark, may be tottering on its own contradictions.
This past week saw the government barricade an open memorial just off the sidewalk on the most public ground in America, the National Mall, as if to say the government, not its people, was the owner of the land, the history, and the symbolic projection. The World War II memorial, was dedicated in 2004, to the citizen commitment to the greatest conflict the country had ever seen, at a price of over 175 million taxpayer and privately donated funds. With the inability of the country’s legislature and its malignantly bull headed chief of executive to come to collective agreement on a continuing resolution to fund the government, the government saw fit not to undertake its moral responsibility and reach a compromise to keep the government services running. This government has exploded the debt of its citizens, turned its back on its warriors, allowed its borders to become sieves, and passed bloated unworkable laws , only to make itself exempted from its malign demands of everyone else. After all that, it now seeks to claim ownership as if it were an entity, not an expression of the will of its people. The World War II Memorial was barricaded by the government to feign compliance with the financial necessities of the closure of government. An open square visited by the very aging warriors that participated in the brutal fight that allowed this form of governance to continue to exist were denied access. Barricades were placed to prevent wheelchair restricted octogenarians and nonagenarians, the true owners of the space and its history access. A government declaring, “Everything is mine, and you will use it at my pleasure.” The Sun King of France would not have been so bold.
This is how an insane asylum works. In particular, an asylum run by its inmates. This out of touch government, slouching toward Gomorrah, has the arrogance to keep its government golf courses open for its private use, but shut down the very symbols of freedom, to the men and women who made its continuance possible. This government, that has increased the indebtedness of its future generations by nearly half in only five years, who mines with impunity the personal privacy of every citizen on the sketchy premise it is trying to stop foreign malevolence, that sears the country with intolerable laws and regulations it itself refuses to live under – this government seeks to ‘punish’ us for electing representatives that are trying to stop the runaway train.
An insane asylum, its halls filled with wannabe potentates, mirror gazers, giggling idiots, and irrational self immolators, has infested our beautifully balanced principles of governance. I, for one, don’t care if they ever restore their funding. The longer the lunatics are without their levers of power, the less we will miss them and their paltry contribution to our welfare. Look up, and see if you are truly punished by their inaction, or rather elevated to a new awareness of their true irrelevance to your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
We will need to reform this asylum, before they do any more damage to themselves, and us.
In ancient Greek mythology, sailors determining to traverse the straits of Messina faced an intolerable dilemma. Hugging the northern coast of Sicily led them directly to the cave of Scylla, a sea nymph transformed into a sea monster with a predilection for devouring sailors. Trend to far off the coast to avoid Scylla, and the journey ended just as ignominiously in a ship devouring whirlpool known as Charybdis directly opposite the cave. Thus the ultimate predicament, the effort to avoid one danger simply positions one to meet the fate of the other. The Syrian civil war, hatched out of nonviolent demonstrations against the Assad regime in March, 2011, has evolved into a death match pitting monsters against monsters and drawing in the world’s greatest power into a no win situation.
Syria, the home of some of the oldest continuously inhabited real estate in the world, is now officially a Hades. Estimated deaths in this progressively spiraling war is felt to exceed 100,000 and the means of destruction has escalated to weapons of mass destruction, very possibly used by both sides. The Syrian people have become the ancient Greek sailor trying to navigate, and survive, the impossible situation between the two monsters of a Baathist dictatorship well aware of their fate should they pull back their killing machine one iota, and an opposition that has made a pact with the devil himself in securing an alliance with al Qaeda. The scene now displayed is out of Armageddon, destroyed cities, splattered bodies, roadside beheadings, and chemical warfare mass slaughter.
The world governance has played its usual worthless role in attempting to stop the disaster. The Arab League, a pitiful group of diplomats used to slinging unwarranted slop on the easy target of Israel, has proved incapable of calling into account one of their own. Of course, how could they, when half the members are not so secretly financially supporting the endless continuance of the conflict. The United Nations will likely reveal, surprise, that chemical weapons were used in the conflict, yet do nothing to force accountability when their many treaties are treated with scorn. Well, they actually might do something – perhaps a confirmation as to how all this violence is contributing to global warming. The former great powers of France and England, so involved in determining the original unstable design of the Middle East, crow about the horror of WMD, but find themselves buckling at the knees when they realize their threats to intervene are empty without the capacities of their American partner. The Russians are frankly immune to the concept of savagery, having had a first row seat through Stalinist pogroms, Nazi leviathans, Afghan mujahedeen, and Chechnyan terrorists. Having given as good as they have gotten, the Russians fail to see any shades of grey in a world of black horizons and therefore are willing to support their strategic needs whatever the dirtiness of their partnership.
Of course that leaves the United States. Once considered the last remaining superpower and moral force in the world, the impotent Americans have been driven into irrelevance by leadership that functions at a level of incompetence that would flunk them out of any basic strategy course or even a tough game of battleship. Having displayed a brazen contempt for the hard won victories of the previous administration’s strategic vision, the Obama administration has led a bumbler’s hall of fame game plan over the next five years, putting themselves in their current intolerable strategic corner:
1) The painful investment over 5 years of a trillion dollars and over 4000 lives was required to achieve by 2009 an incredible strategic positional victory with a functioning Arab democracy in Iraq, an incalculably important dominant position at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, complete superiority of the air lanes, and a capable and mobile mobile force separating the two most radical forces for instability in the Middle East, the totalitarian mullahs of Iran and the Baathists of Syria. The residual price to hold this incredible prize was to negotiate a state of forces agreement with the Iraqis, but President Obama felt the undoing of all that was done was more important than the facts on the ground, and gave all the advantages up to remove any trace of America on the Euphrates.
2) The cynical and disgusting abdication of any support for the opponents of the Iranian mullahs when Iran’s people rose in the Green Revolution of 2009 to protest a stolen presidential election and had the dictators of Iran on their heels. The strategic opportunity for a moderation in middle east tensions, possible defanging of the Iranian nuclear threat in a constructive way, death blow to numerous vicious terrorist conduits, and detachment of Iranian malevolence from Lebanon and eventually Syria was all a promising outcome of fairly painless strategic actions. And the Obama administration threw it all away – for nothing.
3) The acceleration of a war commitment to Afghanistan in 2010 at the exact moment of announcing the date of retreat and withdrawal, an absolutely unique martial strategy in world history in its special stupidity, affording any enemy to simply wait out their losses, and any village “liberated” to fail to cooperate in any positive way, knowing their ‘protectors’ were transient, and their ‘warlords’ soon to return. As Napoleon so aptly put, ‘Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake’.
4) The heavy hand of the so called peace president in the Libyan civil war of 2011, providing conclusive armaments and air power that achieved the overthrow of a stable tin horn dictator for a completely unstable cornucopia naïve facebook liberals, tribal warlords, assorted terrorists and gun runners. Libya, once a significant oil producing nation, is now a nest of ungovernable clans and has an economy in complete shambles. The final lesson to the terrorist cults was the President’s willingness to go unpunished the horrific loss and humiliation of a direct assault on US territory and the assassination of its ambassador. The determination to effect the collapse of one regime without the least bit strategic planning of the possible contingencies is foreshadowing the much more massive dilusions of a Syrian intervention.
5) The vacuous understanding and ham handed handling of Egypt, from dithering as to whether to back Mubarak, then clumsy support to an increasingly totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood, followed by insensitivity to the intensity of the Egyptian population’s revolt, and the indecisive yet irreverent lecturing of the military coup leaders has led to an America trusted by no one of any persuasion on Egyptian soil. Literally no one.
6) Now, the dilemma in Syria, ignored for two years, allowed to proliferate into a potentially explosive international conflict. The dithering so emblematic of this administration has reached its zenith. The lack of strategic overview. The red lines that aren’t. The transfer of armaments in a non influential way. The lack of coordination with allies. The lack of firmness with its strategic competitors. The announcement of formal action at the same time of announcing the decision to use will be in the hands of others. The complete unwillingness to lay out a strategy in which the fundamental ‘winner’ should be the government and people this administration is supposed to represent.
On Tuesday September 10th the President is supposed to finally come before the American people and explain that, while he has managed to unfold the record of strategic incoherence presented above, the American People should be willing to support him unreservedly in the misadventure he has managed to find himself mangled in.
It had better be one powerful message. The next day is September 11th, and his enemies have on many occasions used that anniversary to send a message of their own, to us. Sad as the disaster in Syria is, the unfolding disaster of a pitiful giant helpless to find its way, is just as tragic to the world of free people.
The reports of the past week suggest that Syrian government forces used chemical weapons against rebel strongholds on the suburbs of Damascus . As the Syrian conflict goes from bad to worse to intolerably worse to indescribably worse, the extent of the damage incurred by the United States of having a ‘no policy’ policy is becoming ever so abundantly clear. From the moment President Obama in his 2009 Cairo speech re-framed the historical perspective of Islamic world instability and turmoil as a direct outgrowth of western imperialism, suppression of arab democracy, and the age old whipping boy, the Palestinian -Israeli conflict, and declared a ‘new’ American attitude of understanding and hands off policy to the region’s internal contradictions, the capabilities of promoting the positive and suppressing the negative in the region have disappeared into irrelevancy. Like the turtle above, having walked out on a precarious ledge and now facing unpleasant choices, the United States is concluding in turtle fashion, that maybe pulling inside your shell and hoping everyone just goes away is the last best policy.
This is what happens when you don’t know what you are doing, and you do it anyway.
From Iraq’s defeat in the Kuwaiti desert in 1991 to the forced overthrow of Saddam in 2003, an intense world discussion as to the incendiary qualities of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of unstable regimes gripped most of the international consciousness. Of all of Saddam’s crimes against his people the one that stood out particularly to the international forces arrayed against him was his use of chemical weapons upon his own people, the Iraqi Kurds. The world, so scarred with the 20th century use of such weapons indiscriminately for destruction, felt that zero tolerance was the only capable deterrent to further use. World bodies monitored nuclear proliferation, signed chemical and biological weapon elimination treaties, and aggressively inspected Iraq for signs of continued interest in WMD development. With the defeat of Hussein’s army in 2003, the world gasped and cringed at the lack of evidence of supposed WMD supplies, and despite a several decade history to the contrary, declared the U.S. as having created a false narrative regarding the threat. Rumors that Hussein simply redirected his stockpiles to Syria were never taken seriously. Now, with accusations of both sides of the Syrian conflict having potentially used chemical weapons, the source of these weapons becomes ever more curious.
If what is alleged is true, the use of chemical weapons would indicate a complete lack of concern on the user’s part as to potential consequences. President Obama declared in August of 2012, a “red line” beyond which the United States would find intolerable and a direct threat to its national security, and that was any use of weapons of mass destruction. This was added to the “red line” warning Iran that any development of nuclear weaponry would be considered intolerable and a direct threat to its national security. The proliferation of red lines and the crossing of them without punishment, exposes the U.S.’s internal contradictions and has only emboldened the worst elements of the region to risk further escalations. It dramatically highlights the arab suspicion that was only briefly extinguished by the U.S.’s 2003 smackdown of Iraq the the U.S. is an empty suit when it comes to acting decisively.
In an effort to absorb blame for its actions and promise to act more “constructively” , the U.S. has sown the seeds of a dramatic proliferation in its potential need for involvement. The abandonment of an onsite military presence in Iraq has emboldened the dictators of Iran and Syria to act with impunity. The declaration of disproportionate ‘blame’ by the United States for perceived injustices has led to a propagation of the idea of the United States as weak and without conviction.
So what now? What do you do when you have a policy that stands in tatters and progressive fractures are developing in your capacity to contain dangerous weapons of mass destruction? Having managed to destabilize Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and Syria in five short years, the U.S. – is now focusing its destabilizing efforts on its one ally in the region, Israel. The tortured logic has returned that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the “sore” that prevents the peaceful resolution of arab turmoil, and Secretary of State Kerry is working hard to see if he can draw Israel into the American web of defeatism. I must say, even if you don’t know what you are doing, its the height of folly to think that 1300 years of Islamic strife, the schisms that lead to Indian muslims to bomb Hindis, Egyptian muslim brotherhood to kill Coptics, Syrian Alawites to gas Schia, Iraqi Schia to kill Sunnis, Palestinian Hamas to kill Fatah, and Taliban to kill everybody, originates with a 65 year old, 40 mile wide sliver of land that stands as a local gash to Arab pride.
Arab culturists have long warned against projecting the appearance of indecisiveness and weakness to an insecure society that despises weakness. Well, the sequelae of that strategy are upon us. Violence everywhere, strengthening of radical and terrorist influences, and the unsheathing of weapons of mass destruction are the seeds of an inevitable expanded conflict. So much for this administration returning “smart power” to Washington. What to do now? There are no good options. But this time we really did do it to ourselves. We deftly managed to become a turtle in a world full of alligators.
I’ve always had a rule when thinking about presidential politics. It has kept me from the mindless speculation and useless musing that infects so many others, years from any serious vetting for an election.
The rule has been: We have a President.
Elections are meant to matter in a functioning democracy, and a national election for chief executive is meant to matter most of all. In 2012, the country voted to maintain in a position of leadership, Barrack Obama, and 2013 notes we are only in year one of a four year cycle in which the election results stand. The winner should be respectfully allowed to lead the country with the general support of the population, and without the whining and fawning over others who aren’t the elected leader. Its a democracy after all.
And yet, with this President, I find myself breaking my rule, whining about this leader and fawning over others who aren’t. The President’s unique style, so oxymoronically referred to as ‘leading from behind’, goes through me like fingernails on a chalkboard. Permit me a brief rant on this particular style. Promoting a huge increase in government stimulus spending, and when it fails to stimulate, suggest more stimulus. Passing a massive overhaul of healthcare that no one has vetted for value, much less read, then as it begins to fall apart before it has barely initiated, suggest no corrections other than further protections for your favorite government employees against its worst attributes, leaving the rest of the nation to fend for itself. Indicating the necessity for a more ‘humble’ position for the free world’s leadership in a dangerous world, then stand back as essentially every hot spot in the world progressively unravels in the vacuum of leadership you created. I could go on and on and on – but I already have so many times before. Thus the need to daydream about 2016. And I don’t mean longing for Hillary – please(!) .
Lets stay with the right side of the aisle, and as far away from Washington as possible. As much as the Capitol building is full of those that look in the mirror and see themselves as next in line to the throne, the missing factor needed to stabilize this wobbly republic is adult executive experience. The nation has a nearly fatal attraction to pop celebrities, but the hard work of effective leadership is more often than not learned in the nuts and bolts of state governance. Thankfully while the media attention has been on electing the One over the last two election cycles, some pretty effective governors have been showing the skill sets of leadership so absent at the nation’s capitol. I have no idea of whether any have actually given a run for President serious thought, but the list of those who deserve a look is extensive:
Mike Pence – Indiana Bobby Jindal – Louisiana Rick Snyder – Michigan Chris Christie – New Jersey Susana Martinez – New Mexico Tom Corbett – Pennsylvania Nikki Haley – South Carolina Rick Perry-Texas Scott Walker – Wisconsin
Each of these effective executives have shown skills that are sadly lacking in the current chief executive. Bobby Jindal is a truly visionary executive that understands how large bureaucracies work and can be effectively reformed. His national profile has suffered from his initial difficulties in the media spotlight, producing a bland caricature that has proved difficult to shake, but no one doubts his intellectual chops. Tom Corbett has propelled Pennsylvania into the fracking revolution, and along with North Dakota, made Pennsylvania a leader in the nation’s energy renaissance. Though not currently popular in his blue home state, the continuing juxtaposition of an energy successful Pennsylvania against a floundering New York, which has ignored its equal access to the Marcellus Shale, continues to impress. Nikki Haley has long been on list of up and coming female executives, promoting unwavering conservative fiscal policies, that continue to drive her southern state’s entrepreneurial attitude about economic vitality. Mike Pence has continued the revolution in state government management devised by his predecessor Mitch Daniels and has national government experience as a congressman known for secure principles not easily dislodged by a newspaper editorial. Three years is a long time and any from this paragraph could rise to the national position. But I prefer to focus on the current big hitters in the middle of the lineup, because my whining about the current President has left me fawning for a winner:
The Dark Horse – Rick Snyder is on no one’s current list but should be. Blessed with an intellect on par with Jindal, he was college graduate, CPA, MBA, and law graduate from the elite University of Michigan by age 23. He was CEO of the Gateway computer corporation and head of Michigan’s Economic Development Corporation. Part of the 2010 electoral revolution, he won election in the blue state of Michigan, home to the private industry most powerfully in the grip of union recalcitrance, and managed amazingly to effect the conversion of Michigan to a right to work state. Pulling this important state out of economic somnolence, restoring fiscal sanity, carefully sheparding the state’s most important city, Detroit, out of the catastrophic mess it finds itself in after 50 consecutive years of democrat mismanagement, will make Rick Snyder the kind of no nonsense executive the country may want after nearly twenty years of fiscal slovenliness.
The Bull Dog – Chris Christie has the unique characteristic of not really caring if someone is offended by his version of the truth. Smacking straight into the teeth of entrenched liberal special interests strangulating New Jersey government, he showed the moxie needed to accomplish change in the bluest of states and an underappreciated skill in using executive powers move the process forward. After winning conservative accolades, Christie, sensing an Obama victory, took a significant left turn just before the national election of 2012, and has continued to walk a careful line between liberal and conservative blocks before he stands for re-election for the New Jersey governorship in 2014. If he wins again in the bluest of states, he will have secured a powerful block for national projection as a “bridge” candidate so popular with the nation’s media. Will conservatives forgive him his wobbles? As Winston Churchill once said so eloquently, “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”
The Feminine Mystique – Having succeeded at pulling across the finish line the first “black” president, the nation’s media is anxious to crown the next fracturer of the glass ceiling, the first “female” president. The choice of the entrenched powers is the infamous Hillary Clinton, despite her abysmal actual record of performance. This myopia regarding Clinton disserves many talented and effective female politicians on both sides of the aisle. Of particular note is Susana Martinez, who would bring a boatload of “firsts” to the presidency, first female, first Hispanic, and first female Hispanic democrat turned republican that was willing to assert that the principles she believed in, were not found in the party she grew in: ” we talked about many issues, like welfare, is a it a way of life or a hand up? Talked about the size of government, how much should it tax families and small businesses? And when we left that lunch, I looked over at (my husband) Chuck and said ‘ Ill be damned. We’re Republicans’.” A popular governor in a purple state, tuned into the issues of border politics, and balancing budgets in a time of budget stress, Martinez is a potential key for the lock that the national media has placed on the door to national success for females who by the media must serve the liberal mantra to be accepted as having the ‘necessary gravitas’.
The American Pathfinder – Rick Perry came on the national scene in 2011-12 and popped like a weak balloon. But to underestimate him on the basis of his hesitant performance would be a mistake. Struggling through a terrible back condition and subsequent surgical recovery, Perry stumbled, and looked overwhelmed. This won’t happen again. Feeling better, and equipped with a record of guiding Texas through a spectacular period of growth and economic vitality, Perry takes a backseat to no one in the understanding of what America is deficient in currently and the path to economic resurgence. In 2012, the nation was willing to overlook economic incompetence on the part of the president in order to not upset the cultural victory of overcoming past prejudice he represented. Four more years of floundering around like a halibut out of water, however, is likely to make the country yearn for someone who has “dun it” over time, and Rick Perry has “dun it”. Unburdened with any state responsibilities with his retirement in 2015, and with the wind in his sails of the second most populous state in the electoral college, Rick Perry, is going to be a lot harder to ignore the second time around.
The Eisenhower Dejavu-er – When World War II started for America, no one had heard of a non-descript lieutenant colonel who functioned as chief of staff for the celebrated general MacArthur. Within three years, everybody knew who Eisenhower was. The Kansas farm boy brought an incredible steadiness under stress, mature absorption of constant backstabbing and attack by others who felt they were more worthy, and an overwhelming competence to the job as Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe. In Wisconsin, a non-descript former county executive who never graduated college, has shown a level headedness, backbone, and superb competence at each step of the ladder, and is progressively being mentioned as Presidential timber. Scott Walker achieved a principled reworking of state government, restoring the power of the taxpaying citizen of the state, balancing the budget of a state with a heretofore unsolvable budget deficit, and did it under the most withering attacks any governor has had to absorb, with money fueled attacks to overcome his judicial and legislative support, and finally, a direct re-call upon himself as governor. Like Eisenhower at the Battle of the Bulge, he stayed true to his strengths, never let the bluster or temporary advantage of his opponents distract him from his path to victory, and an overwhelming victory it was. The first governor to successfully fight off a re-call, he has led the state of Wisconsin to budget surpluses and markedly improved position as a state to bring businesses, all while forming a record of conservative successful governance that leave principled conservatives in other blue states in awe. If Walker succeeds at a 2014 re-election, making three consecutive affirmations in four years in the most politically volatile of states (see US Senators Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin), Walker may follow Eisenhower’s path to the White House, as the competent supreme commander of the most powerful nation on earth.
The governors are out there waiting for the rest of the nation to get over itself, and look for a return to what we do best. We are going to have to wait three long years. All this whiner and fawner can say at this junction in our nation’s history is …hurry up. Please, Hurry Up.
The dog days of summer are upon us. Not a particularly hot summer but it had its moments. The persistence of a warm day absorbs our energies and makes the worries and concerns of a complicated life seemingly remote. Try as we might to keep our eyes open to the issues of the times, the comforting rays of the late afternoon sun beckon a state of somnolence and ennui. A good nap is in order.
This phenomena is not restricted to my window facing the southern exposure. Washington DC is full of the desire to forget, leave town, and have a nice siesta. The President in particular is exhausted from his summer of fighting phony scandals, the collapse of his navel gazing foreign policy, and the tendency of his driver to find the rough. After a non-illuminating 9 question press conference to gloss over any particular responsibility for his myriad troubles, he is determined to get away from it all in the rustic village of Chilmark, Massachusetts. He has selected a quant little cottage to start to restore his karma:
Aerial View – Obama VacationObama Vacation Home in Chillmark – Forbes
Though certainly no one denies the President the utmost in privacy for his getaways, it remains an interesting phenomena that the last two democrat Presidents looking to escape Washington continue to look to exclusive Martha’s Vineyard as their “home” away from the White House. Now unlike President Clinton, President Obama actually owns a home in Hyde Park, Illinois:
Obamas home Chicago
One might remember that then community organizer and recent State Senator Obama in 2004 managed to achieve the securing of the mortgage of this million dollar property due to a large book advance from a publisher for a yet unreleased autobiography and additionally have his privacy assured when convicted felon Tony Rezko’s wife secured and closed the adjoining lot’s mortgage coincidently on the same day. The property apparently has little relaxation value to the President as he rarely finds a reason to return.
Thankfully Martha’s Vineyard provides that “going home” vibe to relieve the dog days. He can kick back his feet and slow the chaos down with some ‘on the porch’ reviews of the country outside of Washington with the local residents of Chilmark, such as actors Ted Danson or Jake Gyllenhaal, among others, who live on homes with the highest property values in Massachusetts. As much as he felt Trayvon Martin could have been his son, the President will not have the capacity to easily interact with other Trayvons as the current population of Chilmark is 866, 97.7% Caucasian, and only 0.36% black leaving only approxiamently four residents who would be able to provide a diversified experience at any community gathering.
The dog days sap the energy for problem solving. It can hardly be expected for the President to secure the many unstable features of his administration during such days. Items that will have to wait for the cooler days of autumn and beyond include bringing to justice those pesky street protestors who, incensed by a video, managed to destroy a consulate in Libya and murder among others a US ambassador. Patience will hopefully be gained on vacation by the President to still the outrage he felt when he learned that the country’s tax collection authority, the IRS, had a few rogue agents that prejudiced their position of power to undermine conservative groups who intended to organize against the President’s policies and re-election. Cool ocean breezes will thankfully calm the President’s disappointment in a country that continues at an unemployment rate that remains 50% greater than its predicted value 4 years after the biggest government stimulus investment in American peacetime history. Those lovely ocean views on the golf course will likely suppress the anger the President feels toward Vladimir Putin for providing the traitor Snowden asylum resulting in the need to cancel a perfectly good trip to Moscow in the fall.
So many issues. So many challenges. So many decisions needing a decider. Thank God for vacations that let the world be put aside for awhile. Al Qaeda, the economy, the Egyptians, Obamacare, the Russians, the Congressional investigators, and tea party zealots can all just wait. Its time for another nice summer nap…
