THE KEY TO WISDOM IS -- THE KEY TO ALL THINGS GOOD!

By Edwin Cooney

As approximately twenty Americans pursue the 45th presidency of the United States, that old issue, war or peace, is back with us once again.  Most would-be presidents try to have it both ways.  They insist that they pray for peace but the only way to achieve peace is to be ready for war.  That’s a non-response, of course, which is why presidential candidates prize that answer so much.

The major issue of most presidential campaigns in my lifetime (that is, since World War Two) has been, in one way or another, the issue of war versus peace.  Everyone (or at least almost everyone) hopes for peace but, since Pearl Harbor, no successful presidential candidate has been an outright  “peace” candidate.  The conventional cry is “Peace Through Strength.”  Hence, at least three times, the American people have stumbled into unnecessary and unwise wars.  Those times were 1964, 1988 and 2000.   

As a student of American history, I’ve concluded that the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World Wars One and Two were the only really “necessary” wars, that is, wars that we had to fight.

The Revolutionary War occurred because English and colonial cultures had grown so far apart that “Mother Britannia” never realized that her American child had grown up and no longer needed her protection or to meet her demands.  Thus, hostility ultimately trumped 18th Century geopolitical family values.

The Civil War occurred because, as is the case with so many marriages, union was no match for individual ambition: the South’s ambition was to retain and expand slavery and the North’s was to retain and dominate the Union.  (Note: northerners and westerners actually voted for Abraham Lincoln knowing that his election would likely mean southern secession, which would inevitably mean war.)

World War One occurred because Germany offered to reward an already hostile Mexican government if she attacked Uncle Sam in a justified war to reclaim her losses during the American Mexican War — a war declared “immoral” by two former American presidents, Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln.

World War Two was the child of the vengeance the victors of World War One inflicted on the people of Germany!  (Had Winston Churchill’s rules of war been followed after World War One (“the war to end all wars”), World War Two would never have been fought!  Those Churchillian rules were: In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.)

We willingly inherited the Vietnam conflict from France when we cast it as a struggle against world communism rather than as an effort merely to unify Vietnam under one government.  

The Gulf One and Gulf Two wars were, like the two world wars, continuation conflicts. However, unlike World War Two, the second Gulf War peeled back the ugly scab, which was Saddam Hussein, to reveal the raw and festering religious infection embedded in Middle Eastern society whether Israeli, Arab, Persian, Christian or Muslim.  Hence, we’ve sunk even deeper than we already were into humankind’s boiling religious caldron.

Decades have passed since I first feared Nikita Khrushchev’s nuclear missiles, Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s Chinese hordes and, of more recent date, Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction.”

Most of our would-be presidents appear to be devotees of the analyses and slogans such as “Peace Through Strength” which have been with us since Harry Truman was president.  Most of the candidates want you to believe that they possess the wisdom to lead us through the perils ahead.  Most of them will tell you that the major international threat to our security is ISIS and, of course, that President Barack Obama has bumbled the crisis from the very beginning.  Some, for the benefit of political sensationalism, will even insist that President Obama created ISIS.

Your challenge and mine is to ask the right questions designed to bring to focus the real crisis --  if indeed such a crisis exists.  Here are a few inquiries I haven’t seen made as yet: When and what was the atmosphere created that made ISIS possible? How do you suppose ISIS is going to achieve its worldwide caliphate?  How can ISIS master humanity any better than the Nazis, the Communists, the USA or even the Almighty Himself?

Therefore, what real value is there in the suggestion of ISIS’s invincibility?  Will ISIS conquer the world by collecting baskets of heads?  What weaknesses, what vulnerabilities, will ISIS have to confront if they are to achieve what no one has ever achieved — namely, world domination?  I could be wrong, but it seems to me that history, after all, draws a distinction between good fighters and good governors!

ISIS appears to be a formidable battlefield opponent. They are quite capable of scaring the wits out of almost every civilized human being.  The question is at least twofold: what people have ISIS ever successfully governed? Do we really believe that freedom rather than intimidation is what inspires people?

The main reason the United States is almost always beset by international crisis is that her leaders historically have been unwilling to realistically and publicly grasp the weaknesses of our ideological opponents as well as their strengths.  Part of every would-be president’s appeal is that there is something out there from which he or she will rescue us.

That being the case, let us at least insist that our next president asks the right questions when making policy decisions by doing exactly that ourselves during the forthcoming campaign!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWINCOONEY