By Edwin Cooney
You and I individually have a lot in common with America the beautiful — rich, powerful, and invariably sensitive! Among many, many other things, we want to be rich, healthy, powerful and especially appreciated for who we are. To the exact extent we aren't any one of these things, we resent it.(I guess in that way, we're all a little like President #45 — and in that sense we can be as dangerous as a Colt 45!)
Back in the 1960s, Paul Harvey used to wonder aloud and most eloquently why the world didn't always appreciate us, especially with its need to be protected from the evil deeds of the Kremlin. At that time, we were awash in Vietnam with few allies and few friends it seemed. Then came the day when Mr. Harvey had the answer. I'm guessing that being a Midwesterner, it's likely that Mr. Harvey may have been an isolationist like Charles A. Lindbergh prior to World War II.
It's also my guess that after World War II his avid opposition to Communism was what primarily fed his support for military actions in foreign policy. However, on this occasion, Paul Harvey asserted that we had become the leader of the world's greatest movement, because we'd managed ourselves so well from our very founding that the entire world was out to imitate us. Nevertheless, Paul Harvey decided that we ought to never become involved in another nation's struggle militarily unless we were willing to achieve military victory.
Our withdrawal from Afghanistan raises that question once again. After all, both the last two presidents have seen the need to end a twenty year war that has cost us trillions of dollars and too many lives. Still, their separate advocates will assign blame to each as they pat themselves on the back for a perspective for which they're proud and not accountable because their perspective is strictly a summing up of a set of circumstances, possibilities, and likelihoods. Last Tuesday, Kentucky GOP Senator Mitch McConnell suggested that, like President Trump, he thought we'd been there long enough, but he found grave fault with the manner in which President Biden had conducted the withdrawal of our forces. Last Wednesday night, President Biden appeared to assure you and me that our forces would continue to be in Afghanistan beyond August 31st until all Americans were safely out of that country.
Partisans on both sides of the political aisle will invariably make the best argument for their case while accusing the other side of everything from appeasement to reckless gunboat diplomacy. Meanwhile, you and I will legitimately wonder who we are and who we ought to be with regard to Afghanistan!
Many people will assert that America ought to stop trying to be the policeman of the world. That was what presidential candidate George W. Bush asserted during the 2000 campaign against Al Gore. However, only a year later in the wake of 9/11, we decided that even though we shouldn't be involving ourselves in "nation building," perhaps it was time we focus on some "nation destruction” with regard to Iraq, Pakistan and maybe, just maybe, even Iran. Perhaps we might even throw in North Korea while doing some nation-smashing!
The first obligation of every government in the world is to protect itself and its people. Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address insisted that no government worthy of its existence possesses within its laws a process for its legitimate destruction. (He asserted that as an answer to those who insisted that the states had the right to secede and thus to destroy the Union.) Our task today is to handle the world in such a way as to enable the American people to exist safely, prosperously, and, lately, healthfully!
Happily or sadly, we live in a world from which we can never be safely isolated or recklessly aggressive. We live in a world we didn't entirely create. However, since at least 1917 when we tried to "make the world safe for democracy," our fingerprints have been all over its creation.
We certainly didn't entirely create this world. However, until significant changes occur for which we have no, or little, part in creating, we're bound to pay whatever price it costs to keep the world as safe, clean, healthy, prosperous and peaceful as we can — however we taxpayers feel about it all!
As the sitting president, Joe Biden knows that he'll have to take the blame for whatever mistakes his state and defense departments make, because he sought election to the presidency so that he might assume great accountability and responsibility. In the meantime, like his predecessors, he will be forced to counter the situation — whatever it is in Afghanistan — so that the best interests of the American people prevail.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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