Category: POLITICS

The anatomy of political scandals in Washington DC, in particular, the ones that take hold versus the ones that rapidly fade are not necessarily predictable.  The elements of outrage usually associated with the temperature of a scandal and therefore its longevity are fickle.  One would assume the age old collection of cardinal or “deadly” sins – wrath, greed, sloth, pride, gluttony, lust, and envy- would be the fundamental constituents of actions considered scandalous from government officials by which the public could not abide, but the reality is that the daily function of large bureaucracies skirt these sins daily without any real concern about admonition. There are instead other sets of considerations that provide the right mix of fuel for a scandal that gives it legs, and these have proved often to be a reflection of their time and the way and by whom the story has been told.  There is every indication that the collective colossus of “sins” present in the current Obama Administration maelstrom of a potential cover-up with Benghazi and abuse of power with the IRS and Associated Press actions have all the elements of the explosive scandals of the past.  As usual, however, the end story will depend on the public’s perception of the extent of the problem, the likability of the culprit, and the media’s handling and interest in investigating of the incident, as to its epilogue and its place in history.

The Shifting Over Time of “Sin” 

For the first 150 years of the American republic, the government was small and non-obtrusive and the private nation was vast and wild.  Scandals were not so much about the private peccadilloes or affairs as they were about advantage- who in private society could win advantages government could provide to overwhelm their competitors.  The crisis in government wasn’t the presence of private marauders like Jay Gould, Andrew Carnegie, or John Rockefeller. Everybody assumed that in the world of cutthroat capitalism, men would do what ever they could to gain advantage. No , the crisis came when government officials personally benefited from the manipulations of such men to gain advantage.  Greed was an accepted sin of private men, not national public servants.  When Jay Gould attempted in 1869 to corner the gold market by using his connections with Abel Corbin, President Grant’s father in law to attempt to influence the President, Grant was forever stained by the association despite history showing that once he recognized what was transpiring he interceded to stop any advantage Gould may have had.  A more direct example was the infamous Teapot Dome scandal of the Harding Administration, in which the Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall was eventually convicted of accepting large bribes to “smooth ” the process of private oil companies to gain oil concessions on public lands, the first cabinet official in American history to serve a prison sentence for official sins.  It additionally may have been the first time  Senate Committee hearings captured public attention by Senator Robert Lafollette’s Senate Committee on Public Lands driving the story through investigation.  Both Presidents Grant and Harding had significant blows meted to their reputations though both used the defense of ignorance of the actions as to explanations as to why the processes continued for as long as they did.

By the 1950s greed was replaced by wrath and sloth, as the Administrations of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower were accused by Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin of passively accepting and abiding the presence of individuals of Communist sympathies or formal Communist ties in the inner workings and strategy development of the United States at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union.  The wrath of McCarthy and the  Select Committee on Government Investigations slammed directly against the sloth of the federal bureaucracy. The obvious problem, described by foreign affairs specialist George Kennan, creator of  the American Cold War Containment strategy, was that “the penetration of the American government from the 1930s onward by members or agents of the American Communist Party was not a figment of the imagination. It really existed, and assumed proportions that, while never overwhelming, were not trivial.  Warnings which should have been heeded, too often fell upon deaf ears.”  The McCarthy hearings became the first to have television take a roll and make the participants actors on the stage of public opinion.  The bombastic McCarthy ever so sure of his righteous position played loose with facts and reputations and made himself an easy mark for character assassination as the villain, ‘ an alcoholic demagogue and destroyer of innocent lives’, and the harried government officials such as Alger Hiss and the legal counsel for the Secretary of the Army Joseph Welch as heroes who were standing up to the Bully’.  McCarthy’s destruction was cemented by a new weapon, the television “expose” when reporter Edward R Murrow on the Sixty Minutes precursor See It Now, took it upon himself to selectively investigate McCarthy’s antics  and profoundly destroy him  in the court of public opinion.  Murrow almost single handedly created the concept of “impartial” investigative reporter hero “above the fray”, who could voice selectively damaging opinions, because their very role as media crusaders could not be impugned.  This model would evolve over the next generation into stratospheric levels with Walter Cronkite pontificating, “and that’s the way it is” at the conclusion of every nightly news broadcast and profoundly effecting Johnson and Nixon Administration actions in Vietnam, culminating in citadel of the reporter as “crusading valorous Knight” in the Washington Post reporters, through an unvetted source “Deep Throat”, taking down a President in the Watergate scandal.

The scandal of the 1990’s flipped the abuse of power concept to the sin of “lust” and clouded further the difficulty of holding a “likable” official accountable for their actions. “Likability” in  the Clinton scandals was not just personal likability but instead professional likability. As the perception of the official as good or bad, progressively developed over time to the media’s perception as to whether the official was “good” or “bad” on a politically conscious level, the argument seesawed around how the story would be framed to a national consensus and began to lead to huge hypocrisies. Feminists who had spent their lives arguing that sexual predatory behavior in the workplace was a crime at the level of rape and who had nearly destroyed the reputation and professional advancement of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court on the basis of alleged remarks in the office place, suddenly closed ranks around a President who stood for their ideals and supported their legislative agendas, while treating women in his workplace like dessert on the menu.  Media that had spent a generation exposing the potential abuses of power by ideologically “bad” presidents like Nixon and Reagan, suddenly made concessions to Clinton as making poor decisions or showing bad behavior as if he was a mischievous school boy rather than the chief executive, chief law enforcement official, and commander in chief of the country who had sworn fealty to the Constitution.  It was left to a new phenomena, the “new” media, a character described as wearing pajamas and providing ‘sourceless’ information, the internet investigator epitomized by someone named Drudge, that stunned the established media and congress into finally performing some semblance of their supposed responsibilities.

The last absurd attempt by the traditional media to be the supreme judge and jury as to impartial investigation was destroyed forever by this new media in 2004, when Dan Rather of CBS News attempted to influence an election by reporting supposed factual documents showing President Bush attempted to use family influence to avoid Vietnam service and get out of National Guard service requirements early, proved by the internet media to be crude fakes within 48 hours.  The obliviousness of the traditional media to their developed bias regarding ideologically “good” versus”bad” Presidents was confirmed in Rather’s stunning cluelessness in later remarks that, although the documents upon which his whole story was based may have been faked, the implications of the story itself were irrefutable.

We are perhaps in the final stage of the development of what stands for the concept of a government scandal in the actions of the Obama Administration.  All the elements of previous scandals are there to be noted.  The use of government finances to influence who will be the winners in private economic markets in the auto industry bailouts and the Solyndra payouts.  The active avoidance of law enforcement responsibilities in current immigrant laws or border security.  The use of cover-up to hide gross negligence in the international theater highlighted by the Benghazi buildup, incident, and aftermath.  The dramatic abuse of power in utilizing the IRS to target conservative groups and individuals to intimidate sufficiently to dis-empower and help swing an election.   The attack on the First Amendment rights to free speech  and the Second Amendment on the right to bear arms. The strong-arming of healthcare industries to “donate” to the government to underwrite the horrendous economic consequences of Obamacare.

We see in this final stage the absurd, oxymoronic argument by the officials of this administration that although an ever growing government is the best vehicle to run impartially all facets of American life, that individual leaders of that government have no knowledge of and are innocent of any wrong doing because the government is too vast for effective management.  We see a media whose credibility has been crushed by several generations of progressive partiality, being forced against their will to shine a light on their political champion from the simple overwhelming evidence of directed malfeasance.  In this President, we have the perfect final stage of scandal, promoted as intellectually brilliant yet apparently ignorant of all the malfeasance beneath him.  The perfect executive who can be trusted with complete control of his society yet who apparently finds out about his administration’s missteps only with the rest of us when reported in the newspapers.  The hands on Commander in Chief who has returned sanity to American foreign policy, only to be an unapologetic no show when a crisis erupts in Benghazi and lives are at stake, chemical weapons are used in Syria crossing the very line he stated was uncrossable, and the people of Iran rise against their dictators in response to his demagogic statements, only to find his support to be thrown to the very dictators he had opined against.

Has the government grown to the point where even sin and morality are passé and marginalized? We are about to find out.

 

 

 

 

On September 11, 2012, the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in history on the United States, and just under two months before the re-election of President Barrack Obama,  ugly events in Benghazi, Libya resulted in the deaths of four American patriots whose major mistake was they believed they were the forward representatives and projection of the national integrity and interests of America.  As is becoming progressively apparent, they were instead the unfortunate dupes of an administration that saw its survival as the overarching American interest, and that was comfortable sacrificing perhaps the individuals themselves  if it meant the administration could persevere for another term.

The ugliness that is just being uncovered in congressional hearings has echoes of similarity to a long ago scandal, with similar elements of abuse of power and cover up misdirection.  One forgets that the monster scandal that was Watergate, eventually effecting the resignation of the most powerful man in American governance, the President of the United States, was birthed in a minor event of a political dirty trick, breaking in to an opponent party’s political headquarters, that in the short space of two years led to the connections of cover up, IRS abuse, wiretapping, political corruption of the FBI and CIA, eventual whistleblowers, and eventual ties to the oval office itself.  It broke the political back of Richard Nixon, and would have been easily avoided but for the arrogance and defensiveness of the primary participants. The recent statement on May 4th by Presidential spokesman Jay Carney that “Benghazi was a long time ago” may soon be placed alongside President Nixon’s Press Secretary Ron Ziegler who proclaimed Watergate “a third rate burglary attempt“.  The epicenter of all scandals in democratic governments  is not the event itself, as it is the light the event shines on the ongoing arrogant sacrifice of truth and constitutional adherence. The need for truth and integrity in a democracy, may be the eventual positive principle that these brave Americans, who thought they were fighting terrorism, will have sacrificed their lives defending.  The questions and similarities separated by the four decades between these two superficially dissimilar events are provocative echoes that bear further investigation:

1) The Committee to Re-elect the President:      The politicization of a President’s actions are particularly acute in the year they are standing for re-election.  The President typically forms a re-election team that positions themselves to format a theme and strategy that will lead to victory, as the President theoretically has the burden by constitutional oath to act in the nation’s best interests, not  specifically his own re-election needs.  The two motivations can come in conflict with each other, but one presumes the national interest would supercede any potential storyline.  In 1973, the burglary of the Democrat National Committee offices at the Watergate Hotel was ordered by the head of the President’s re-election committee, Jeb Macgruder, to obtain intelligence as to the Democrat party’s strategy to defeat the President.  The bizarre logic that would suggest a very popular president with a huge lead in the polls against his adversary George McGovern would need such information, defies understanding, considering the risk and illegality of the act.   In 2013, after the Benghazi incident, an immediate and concerted effort to change the facts on the ground,  “scrubbing” of the facts and the trail of communications, possible intimidation of participants,  and deception of the voting public by blaming  the event on an obscure American’s unwatched video was present within days.  The scope of such actions would suggest advanced coordination and involvement of powerful people, whose single mission was to protect the presidential re-election story.  Questions that need to be asked, as to who could achieve such widespread actions and who gave the orders for such coordination, raise the obvious implication that the political arm of the President was directing traffic on an issue of national security.

2) Involvement of the highest officials:    The Watergate trail eventually not only showed the corruption of the political arm but also the corrupted politization of the highest executive branch officials, with the direct tie in of such officials as the head of the FBI, the Attorney General of the United States, the Chief of Staff to the President, and the Chief Counsel to the President. It eventually led to the firing of a Special Prosecutor, the resignation of an Attorney General, and prison sentences for two Attorneys General, two Presidential Counsels and the President’s Chief of Staff.  The trail of the misdirection and possible whitewashing of facts to deceive the voting public regarding the events leading up to Benghazi, the terrorist attack,  and its aftermath, is to this point unresolved, but may point to a Secretary of State or the President’s own National Security Advisor. Linkages this high would suggest malfeasance at the highest levels, particularly if it is shown the Secretary of State perjured herself before Congress.  The driver for the truth, and the ultimate destruction of the Nixon Administration, was the appointment of a Special Prosecutor and the establishment of a Select Congressional Committee.  A few more whistle blowers with Benghazi and the investigation may take on a whole new life of its own.

3) The Establishment of the Select Committee: The Democrats in congress had the most to gain in injuring the President in 1973, but the continuing drip, drip, drip of facts eventually led to increasing participation of Republicans in asking tough questions, as the scope of the cover-up became clear.  One wonders if a bipartisan search for the truth is still possible in today’s blind political obedience, but facts have a nasty way of bringing inevitable conclusions despite the best efforts of some to try to bury or distract.  If the investigation begins to show that involvement of far flung and apparently unrelated scandals are connected by the effort to re-elect the President, such as directed use of the IRS to harass through audit opponents of the President, or the  inter agency manipulations of Fast and Furious, the scope of the scandal will  go in unforeseen directions that may threaten the democrat party’ prospects itself.  That is usually the trigger that brings legislators to “seek the truth” regardless of party, so they are not caught on the wrong side of history.

4) The Hubris of the President:  President Nixon was convinced his entire political life that the political and media elite were out to get him.  The fact that they very well may have been does nothing to obscure the fact that Nixon himself created most of the opponent’s ammunition for his own destruction.  Hubris is defined as extreme pride or arrogance, and the current inhabitant of the White House and the 37th President have much of this flaw in common.  President Obama’s conversion of American international interests as subservient to his overweening desire to “re-fashion” America as a socialist democracy to be cemented through his re-election, is the unspoken driving force behind the tawdry events in Benghazi.  The addressing of previous Benghazi attacks with less, not more security for his on the ground representatives, the apparent sleep through during a direct attack on an  American consulate when the very scope of the attack suggested the need for a reprisal for both safety of the survivors and the integrity of the American prescence, the bold faced lie that a video was the inciting prod for otherwise passive demonstrators to become agitated to the point of violence, fall directly in the lap of the commander in chief.  So many international events that have resulted in the aversion of eyes by this commander in chief suggest instead a more malign neglect designed to progressively weaken America’s position in the world, and risks her safety.  In this particular case, deaths of four Americans punctuated the unwillingness to engage in the very maelstrom he helped create in Libya . We will soon see, I suspect, whether this President can maintain distance from the scandal with the help of his enablers in the media.

Despite the above ruminations, I am not a conspiratorialist, and do not claim that the Benghazi debacle  is a perfect mirror of the more complex Watergate scandal.  Skirting your responsibilities, letting down people who work for you, and being a perfectly awful Secretary of State or President does not rise to the stature of burglary or obstruction of justice.  There is little role in my mind for impeachment committees to form on the basis that the President is crummy at his job.  That is what elections are supposed to be for. The lurking connector out there, though, that becomes the inevitable echo, is if a clear recognition develops that an election was manipulated by the coordinated withholding of crucial information through any means possible, or there exists evidence of premeditated neglect of duty to sacrifice others to save one’s own skin.  Then, the hounds of scandal may be unleashed in unpredictable ways.

 

This week we saw something rare in modern political discourse. The junior Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul, invoked one of those archaic legislative tools from the nation’s past, the filibuster,  to awaken the world to the reality that he was going to have a say about the nation’s future.

The venerable filibuster, the action by which a Senate action can be delayed, adjusted, or withdrawn on the basis of a single individual’s action, has been under attack by the controlling interests in Washington, who have been embarrassed by its quirky nature to upset carefully laid plans for culmination of the elites’ agendas. Elite dominance of the legislative process is nothing new, nor is the concept of filibuster.  Cato the Younger, zealotrous defender of the idea of Rome as a republic, formally initiated the concept to foil Julius Caesar’s manipulation of the Senate by devising long winded speeches that would delay any action on Caesar’s requests until nightfall, where , by edict, the Senate had to adjourn. The United States Senate has been the stage of a filibuster over the many years since its founding, for good or ill, but in inevitably as a device to assure an overwhelming majority of support is present for an action, as it takes 60 votes out of 100 Senators to obtain cloture on the filibuster.

Recently, both Republican and Democrat leaders have considered the elimination of the filibuster, for in a closely divided nation, the ability to push things through the Senate has become considerably more perilous.  The filibuster, evoking the rights of the individual against the weight of the majority, has in reality on many occasions been a delay tactic without structure or inherent value.  It has often looked silly with debate being artificially extended with reading into the Senate record baseball statistics, or names and numbers in the phone book.  Rand Paul took the concept and wrenched it back into its deeper reason for existence, “talking back” Senate action on the basis of principle.  In a carefully crafted recitation on the principle of the rights of the individual and the concept of limited governmental powers,  Paul exploded the idea that elemental ideas that founded the nation were from and for another era, and were immaterial to the way the government currently views itself.

Paul invoked intense discussion on whether the government that currently viewed itself as having an ultimate right to view an American citizen overseas as an enemy combatant and thereby attack him without due process, had the same right to deny an American citizen due process on American soil. The war against terrorism over the last decade has progressively placed American military action on the side of decisiveness rather than discretion, and Paul was having none of it.  Paul’s  almost thirteen hour filibuster to delay a vote on John Brennan, the Obama Administration’s nominee to take over the CIA, on the lack of Brennan and Attorney General Holder’s response to one question, whether the United States government felt it had the right to perform a drone strike on an American citizen on American soil without due process, was a wonder of the concept of principle, logic, and philosophical depth.  This was no reading of the phonebook.  In the end, the Obama administration got their vote on Brennan, but not before Paul stunned Washington by gaining the acquiescence of the administration in formal letter response, that it did not have a constitutional right to such action.

Rand Paul and a new group of citizen legislators are filling a need that a jaded Washington has been too long without, the idea that principle matters, and that the country has not entirely succombed to the concept of having their priniciples bought off.  Dismissed as a “a tea party generated son of a kook” by establishment types when the kentuckian Paul first won  the Senate seat in 2010, Rand has instead projected himself into a modern version of  palatable libertarianism, and with measured, intelligent defenses of the most basic rights endowed in the Constitution, a formidalble opponent to the usual Republican”to win we must be more like them” strategy. The idea has intense appeal among people who feel that government and rights are philosophically constructed, and based on principles, not laws that can be changed on a whim to prevailing winds.  The people that Paul appeals to see the Bill of Rights as a critically  secured set of principles independent of time, read the Federalist Papers to understand the Constitution, conceive the framework of the constitution as the living protector of the basis of why an America exists, and find modern disdain for carefully crafted principles disdainful in and of itself.  Paul is not alone, as Senators such as Rubio, Lee, Cruz, and Johnson are of like seriousness and internal mettle.  The concept of “kookdom” is becoming more and more absurd when the “kooks” are arguing individual rights, state rights, budget discipline, right to life, sanctity of the concept of marriage, and reduced American adventurism, while the modern establishment in the form of progressivism is arguing enforced restrictions on speech, ignoring border stability, global warming, alternative lifestyles, abortion on demand, budgetary obliviousness at the expense of future generations, and drone strikes on American soil.

Whether Rand Paul and his fellow Principlitarians can create a new consensus in the country that a serious discussion of ideas and future actions start with a foundation of principles, not desires, formative policy, not reactionary indulgence, is certainly unclear.  The forces represented by President Obama, that use demagoguery and bribes to convince the voter, has always been powerful, and the fuel of trillions of dollars of persuasion is a devastating weapon against the desire for identifying and promoting  personal responsibility and a freedom in life’s choices.  It appears however in the personage of Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, principles to live by will not go quietly into that good night.

 

 

 

Tomorrow brings one of the great traditions in the ongoing experiment of American democracy, the swearing in of the executive leader of the country to an oath binding them to the formative and enduring principles of the nation.  From General Washington’s first ceremony in 1789 in New York City, to the elevation of the Senator from Illinois in 2009 to the position of President, the ceremony has survived war, weather, national schism, and depression to create a brief coming together of the nation’s leaders and people to celebrate the uniting force of the Constitution’s means of political peaceful succession.

It has produced unique moments of history. William Henry Harrison in 1841, attempting to overcome the caricature that at 69 he was too old for the job, delivered a two hour 8000 word stem-winder of a speech in miserably cold and rainy weather that proved his physical endurance to all present, but managed to inject the pneumonia that lead to his death within a month.  President Lincoln in 1865 created in brevity what Harrison could only dream about in his extended comments, a masterpiece of poetic majesty that has set the standard for all to follow.  The oath of office has been typically delivered by the Chief Justice of the United States, with Chief Justice John Marshall administering 9 oaths from 1801 to 1833, making Marshall the shepard of  Presidents from the founding moments of the nation  through its infancy and adolescence.  The Capitol has been the traditional home of the ceremony, with both the East and more recently the West Porticos creating the backdrop of the immense prestige of the moment.

President Obama’s first inaugural of 2009 in retrospect foreshadowed the many contradistinctions of this still ill-defined figure.  The candidate Obama had campaigned on the concepts of a “purple” nation, grown beyond the political divisions of “red” and “blue” states to work together to address the nation’s challenges.  Many predicted a speech of elevated and poetic muse to focus the nation, in keeping with the assumed intellectual brilliance of the individual that had just been elected.  His campaign rhetoric had been delivered in epic forums, the most spectacular, the Denver convention acceptance speech, delivered with the backdrop of Olympian columns in front of tens of thousands of adorational listeners, moved to tears by the moment more than the rhetoric.

Instead, the speech exposed the nation to many of the Obamian impulses that developed as his signature.  The use of a teleprompter creating a rather flat delivery, as if the speech was to be read rather than delivered.  The petty trashing of those that had come before him to the responsibilities of the office, as if his mere presence would change the fractious nature of politics. The disturbing repetitive use of cliches and tired language in the speech that created an atmosphere of superficiality and lack of depth of understanding or commitment to real solutions, with clumsy text like “rising tides”, “gathering storms”, “nagging fears”, and “icy currents”.  Claims regarding rock bed personal principles of a new era of responsibility that stood in absolute contradistinction to later actions – “a recognition on the part of every American that those of us who manage our nation’s dollars will be held to account”. The lack of definitive framing of core convictions that would suggest a road map to the nation’s triumph over adversity.

The enormity of accomplishment of the nation overcoming its past in electing a person of color to the highest office lead to a celebration of great intensity in 2009 and resulted in the glossing over of the many flaws of this individual as an executive and constructive leader over the coming years.  The re-election in 2012, while affirming the nation’s victory over prejudice, has re-enforced the collective impulse to forgive amateurish skill sets in this President that are leading to some real calamities.  The ‘responsibility’ President has presided over the greatest spiral of unsupported spending and growth of government in history.  An ongoing tendency to distance himself from the process of political compromise and paint his opponents in ever starker language of division has created an acid environment that threatens the country’s growing need for consensus in overcoming formidable economic challenges.  A thin skin and righteousness about his own supposed superior intellect leaves little room for other intellectual arguments and a healthy diversity of political creativity. A disturbing disdain for the fundamentals of the Constitution to which he has sworn to uphold, has projected itself in neglecting budgetary responsibilities, processes of appointment, and a blatant  avoidance in the enforcement of current laws already approved through the democratic process.

The second inauguration of a President always celebrates the triumph of vision of the first administration of the individual, but notably injects the inevitable waning of persuasive influence of the President as the lame duck status of the political entity is immediate with the oath of office.  President Obama is unique in his view of his position in history and capacities of his office.  Tomorrow I suspect the words he will emote will simply re-enforce my view of him as a detached figure from his nation’s challenges, who seeks to bend the narrative of history to his liking, without outlining a constructive vision and process to the nation’s future that includes all Americans and the unique story of our success.

Nothing would please me more than to turn out to be wrong regarding this man, but I’m not about to hold my breath. The country gets a chance tomorrow to celebrate a great theme of history, but I don’t expect to hear the rhythms and call to unity and greatness that once echoed from that storied spot on the Capitol’s West portico:

“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, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

“To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom—and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.”

“So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.”

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

John F Kennedy  1.20.1961

      The circumstances of revolutionary events brought with the celebration of the new year January 1st, 1991 a sense of a new pragmatism in solving problems.   The concept of a “new world order”, was presented, in which the world, now fundamentally connected by the progressing information revolution, would settle its differences on a rational political, scientific,  and economic basis, shepherded by the two in tune-super powers, the Untied States and the Soviet Union, and with the peaceful assistance of the emerging economic super powers of Germany and Japan.  The progressive collapse of power of the Soviet Union following the dissolution of Soviet dominated eastern Europe and its post World War II Warsaw Pact military arm, however, made the reality on the ground of a U.S. superpower dominant in a multi-polar world.

Like all considerations for an ideal cooperative spirit, there was some tidying up to do.  The U.S. had used the new world order concept to achieve a spectacular alliance comprised of such disparate participants as Syria and Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, France and Great Britain, to eject Saddam Hussien’s Iraqi forces from Kuwait. After an unprecedented “smart bomb” air campaign, 100 hours of on the ground power in February was sufficient to get the job done, and the United States looked to link this spectacular triumph at the Madrid Conference to finally achieve a comprehensive world solution to the Palestinian – Israeli conflict.

It turned out of course the world was not ready for leaving behind its calamitous martial past for a more cooperative future.   The final dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 left the United States without a state foil, and the many countries reliant on the USSR for support without a “protector” on the world stage.  The result of collapse of a bipolar checks and balances has left the world with twenty years of a new reality, economic instability and bloody local conflicts, and 2013 will likely see the culmination of all that has been wrought in A New World Disorder.

The mistake was likely the idea that the world’s societally under developed nations would accept the concept of ‘Roman citizen’ to the United States as Rome (no matter how understanding this Rome would be).  The two pronounced examples of the collapse of the theorem was the presentation of the Palestinian Israeli conflict solvable in a negotiated fashion.  The aforementioned Madrid conference of 1991 saw Israel and Palestinian representatives seated at the same table, and following secret direct Palestinian Israeli talks, the infamous Oslo accords.  No handshake between former avowed enemies  was going to break the radicalization of the conflict now that balanced super power restraint was absent, and the radicals abhorrent of the idea of rational progress and enamored with the idea of Islamic triumphalism saw their historic opening.  From the duplicitous Arafat’s own Intifada to Bin Laden’s orgiastic terror tidal wave to Hussein’s Iraqi Armageddon in the desert, the lack of world order mechanisms to suppress the worst was absent.  No comprehensive grand alliance or respect for UN resolutions, so much a tenet of the new world order, were available to the second George Bush to remove Saddam Hussein in 2003.  Rather, the cumulative world response to the horrors of 09/11 were empty rhetoric, allies who sought to undermine the U.S. , and a feeble and friable ‘coalition of the willing’.   The equally spectacular destruction of Hussien’s forces and eventual capture and eradication of Hussein and ultimately Bin Laden, has led to none of the hopes of the post-conflict new order theoreticians like Francis Fukuyama, Strobe Talbot, and Brent Skowcroft.

The world as it now exists is a far cry from the hopes and aspirations of the forward thinking leaders of post cold War 1991.  The United States in its role as the modern Rome is the Rome of 379 AD, and  President Obama the modern re-incarnation of Emperor Theodosius I.  Theodosis sought to put  Rome’s outlying responsibilities into the hands of forces who saw each abdication of responsibility as another indication of Rome’s terminal illness.  Internally directed by progressively weakened infrastructure, finances, and collapse of will for the burdens of global direction,  our Theodosis has put forth the oxymoronic concept of “leading from behind”  and the gaping hole that is left is being rapidly filled with the modern Visigoths, Islamic radicals.  The premature withdrawal of U.S. forces by Obama from Iraq, has left the hard won stability of 2007 in tatters, and the radicals again on the rise.  The carefully orchestrated leadership of the first President Bush to achieve a peaceful dissolution of the Warsaw Pact is in stark contrast to the epic fail of the Obama administration to shepard the Arab Spring, leading to the catastrophic handling of Libya epitomized by Benghazi, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and the calamitous  destruction in Syria.   The over 50,000 casualties in Syria with no end in site is the pie’ce de resistance of the end of the dream of the new world order concept to solve the world’s disharmony.  A United States true to its need to lead from behind has no influence on the conflict.  Russia, living the fallacy of former capacities in backing the Assad regime, can only watch its death troughs.  The egos and pride of the regional powers of Turkey and Iran are progressively, personally and dangerously tied to the outcome, and Israel watches from its border as the calamity will inevitably involve them.

The result of twenty years of  ineffective diplomatic and collective will accompanying a United States in decline has lead to the vortex of global danger in the Syrian conflict, and 2013 may see the world unable to control its inevitable conclusions. Theodosis I proved to be the last Emperor of Rome as a unified confederation, and the world was hurled into a thousand years of turmoil and rejection of the concept of citizen and civilization.  The pull of history to revisit itself is strong, and the seeds for real chaos is out there.  Watch Syria in 2013. The world’s rational impulses may be put to ultimate test in the 5000 year home of the land of Sargon.