ANOTHER WORRISOME WAR WATCH

By Edwin Cooney

As President Obama administers our national affairs this fall, his most nagging crisis -- tactically, economically, politically and morally -- may well be the war in Afghanistan.

Already, some of those who once patriotically advocated that war in response to 9/11 (including Conservative columnist and author George Will, among others) are now having second, third, and fourth thoughts. Of course, today’s Commander-in-Chief is no longer one of their own political faith, but should that matter? Answer: sure, it matters – even though it shouldn’t.

One of our great American myths is that successful wars make heroes out of presidents. The record, however, looks something like this:

George Washington fought the Revolution as a general not as president,

Andrew Jackson will always be the hero of the Battle of New Orleans while his presidency is subject to critical review.

Abraham Lincoln perhaps came closest to being a presidential war hero, but John Wilkes Booth put an end to that possibility.

William McKinley never reaped any kudos from the 1898 Spanish-American War nor did he seek to do so. (“A full dinner pail” was Bill McKinley’s bid for re-election in 1900 rather than a slogan boasting of “imperial America”.)

Teddy Roosevelt, of course, made political capital of his Spanish-American war experience while running for election as president in 1904, but he was a private citizen, not a president, when he gained and claimed his fame.

President Woodrow Wilson was a political, physical, and emotional wreck after his return from the World War I Paris Peace Conference. (The president would only be a hero to the idealistic once the U.S. Senate defeated our participation in Wilson’s League of Nations).

FDR died before World War II ended thus barring him from enjoying presidential war hero status.

Like Jackson before him, Ike was a military hero rather than a presidential war hero.

Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford all had their fingers burned in Vietnam. President Ronald Reagan found no glory in Beirut, Nicaragua, Granada, or even over Tripoli in 1986. If George Herbert Walker Bush was a presidential war hero after Desert Storm, somebody forgot to tell Pat Buchanan who challenged and critically damaged his 1992 re-election effort. Finally, if young President Bush is a presidential war hero after Iraq, somehow this observer has missed it.

Of course, every wife and mother, every student of history, every citizen, every member of the clergy, and, above all, every soldier wonders why we go to war in the first place.

As Commander-in-Chief under the United States Constitution, the President is responsible for administering a war once it begins, but a declaration of war is the responsibility of Congress.

On our collective behalf, the United States Government has coordinated, funded and led some fifteen foreign wars since George Washington became our first Commander-in-Chief on Thursday, April 30, 1789. Only five of those wars (the War of 1812-15, the Mexican War of 1846-48, the 1898 Spanish-American conflict over the Independence of Cuba, World War I from 1917 to 1918, and World War II from 1941 to 1945) have been declared by Congress. The major reason for that is that modern weapons are so swift and deadly that both the timing and the administration of any foreign conflict can mean millions of lives endangered or lost rather than merely thousands. Thus the intensity, length, and swiftness of wars suddenly beginning or ending appear to be best suited to executive rather than legislative determination.

More to the point, although historians and political scientists offer economics, politics and militarism as the causes of war, I regard these intellectual reasons for war as secondary. The ultimate reason we go to most wars is really very simple. The answer is fear. Fear, as I see it, makes us angry and it is the frightened and angry nation -- not the contented one -- that goes to war.

On that long ago Sunday morning, December 7^th, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt contentedly sat at his desk enjoying his stamp collection. Shortly after 1:00 p.m., however, when Secretary of State Cordell Hull phoned to report that at 12:53 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Japanese air squadrons had begun dropping bombs on our naval base at Pearl Harbor Hawaii, FDR became an angry rather than a contented man. America, shaken by bombs delivered by “the nation of the rising sun,” abandoned its reluctance to become involved in war and became an aroused society.

President Obama thus inherits the worrisome war in Afghanistan as surely as President Nixon inherited Vietnam from President Johnson. However, as I see it, the Afghanistan war will only be truly President Obama’s war when he endorses it through fear and fear’s child — anger.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

JUST FOLLOW HER MUSIC

By Edwin Cooney

The passing of Mary Travers of Peter Paul and Mary fame is somehow more gripping than the recent passing of celebrities of even greater prominence.

I wasn’t a fan of folk music or of that particular trio, however, there was something very real about Peter, Paul and Mary. Other entertainers were more dynamic and sensational, but, professional as they indeed were, Peter, Paul and Mary sang, it seemed, like you and me. They sang songs about magic dragons, hammering hammers, the blowing wind, and love under the lemon tree — ballads of peace, justice, wisdom, and love.

I could imagine sitting in a group with them around a roaring camp fire. We would be singing songs and telling stories as we all ate toasted marshmallows and drank Kool-Aid. As twilight turned to darkness and the crickets accompanied the silence of ever approaching night, we would vow to repeat this happy time again and again.

Peter, Paul and Mary were starkly real. Hence, Mary’s passing becomes starkly personal. Where, we may well ask, is Mary now? Might we one day go where she has gone? If we do, or even when we do, might it be more pleasant and perhaps even more placid because Mary is there?

The truth is that, as I enter my mid-sixties, I often wonder what experience lies beyond this world for me and for those I know and love. My guess is that you do, too.

Just the other day, I asked two friends what they thought the “beyond” might be like. One of them, a devout Christian, thinks that we’ll join God in the spirit world and that we will be possessed with a sense of awareness. Another friend insists that the “I” of our personhood is immortal and will do as it chooses once our bodies cease to exist. He believes that if our “I” is willing, it will enter another human being, and if it isn’t, it will do as it chooses for as long as it chooses.

Limited in comprehension as most of us are as to what form our mortality may take, what we can grasp, if we allow ourselves, is that our inevitable passing is as natural as our birth was and therefore doesn’t have to be terrifying. We also know that part of our nature is to defend, cherish, and cling to what we know. What we know best is, of course, life and a pleasant life is what we work, struggle, hope, and pray for.

From the time we are children, one of the first mysterious concepts we try to grasp is death. Grandma or Grandpa may suddenly die or, even more frightening to children, a brother or sister may be taken by accident or illness. Parents and even clergy struggle to assure children that there is nothing to fear, but from there on, it seems, these same authorities too often use death as a weapon to threaten and exert control. Hence long before our childhood passes, fear -- rather than acknowledgment or acceptance -- of our mortality can overwhelm us.

Naturally, we seek to preserve and enhance our lives and the lives of those precious to us. We never feel satisfied that people we love and cherish live comfortably enough, happily enough, or long enough. Their lives enrich our own and so we want them to have the best and the very best to us usually means life.

Fifty years ago last February, three young “stars,” met their untimely deaths. The Big Bopper (Jiles Perry Richardson Jr.), Buddy Holly (Charles Hardin Holley) and Ritchie Valens (Richard Steven Valenzuela) seemingly had far to go and much to live for. Young people everywhere wondered why the fiery plane crash that took their lives had to happen and, of course, there was no satisfactory answer. If their passing was demoralizing, their examples undoubtedly energized entertainers yet unborn to live the dreams young Richardson (age 28), young Holly (22), and the still younger Valens (17) never fully experienced.

Mary Travers’ legacy along with that of Peter Yarrow and Noel “Paul” Stookey may primarily be in the music. My guess, however, is that her enduring legacy is the sense of peace her music offers you and me.

As I comprehend the force of nature and “nature’s God” (as Thomas Jefferson might put it), Mary Allin Travers is now back where she was on Sunday, November 8th, 1936, the day before she was born. She resides now and forever in a state without fear, anxiety or pain, and, above all, surrounded by love and peace.

If we would join her when that time comes for us, we need only to honor every remaining day of our lives without fear and, above all, to follow Mary’s music.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

SOMETIMES I WONDER AND SOMETIMES I WORRY!

By Edwin Cooney

“Shame on you” is what I often imagine people are thinking or saying to themselves every time I assert that I like politicians. The truth is that I don’t feel the least bit of shame.

You and I elect people to office because of what we want, don’t want, hope for, or fear. Thus, how can we reasonably complain that they so often pander to us? After all, we vote them out of office if they tell us what we need to know rather than what we want to hear.

The problem, as I see it, is that in recent years the “old style” politician, for whom compromise was once as vital as mother’s milk, has been replaced in the public’s notice by ideologues the most influential of whom aren’t working politicians.

Two ugly incidents involving President Obama occurred this week that emphasize this reality. The first was the vast overreaction on the part of right wing talk show radio and television hosts to the president’s planned address to school children upon their return to class. Their complaint seemed to be that President Obama was about to indoctrinate America’s school children to socialism. As it turned out, all the president had to say was that kids everywhere will be better off if they stay in school rather than wasting their lives away on the streets. The message was suspiciously “red-blooded American,” if you ask me.

The second incident was the angry public outburst by South Carolina GOP Congressman Joseph Wilson during the president’s much anticipated healthcare address on Wednesday night, September 9th, 2009.

“You lie!” shouted Representative Wilson as the president asserted that medical treatment for illegal aliens will not be included in the House health care plan. Congressman Wilson’s bad manners were immediately followed by more traditional bad manners when Democratic members of the House promptly booed him. Congressional booing of presidents began back in 1993 when the newly elected William Jefferson Clinton, during his first State of the Union Address, cited congressional budget figures concerning the national deficit that were at variance with GOP figures. On three other occasions (1995, 1997 and 1998), GOP Congressmen showed their contempt for Bill Clinton during his constitutionally required reports on the State of the Union.

Democrats during George W. Bush’s administration demonstrated that they could be as rude as their Republican cousins. In 2003, President Bush was booed when he asserted that not only was there proof of “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, but also that yellow cake uranium was being obtained by Saddam Hussein. Again, in 2005, President Bush was booed by “guess who” while urging the privatization of Social Security because the system, he insisted, would soon be bankrupt. Each time these incidents occur, presidential opponents invariably excuse the behavior while presidential proponents express their outrage.

As President Obama labors to fashion a workable health care reform bill in Congress, he is being set upon by left wing and right wing broadcasters, print journalists and internet bloggers. These ideologues insist that they know more about what works than the president. They themselves seldom seek election for their domain is opinion. Opinion is never subject to the riggers of accountability and workability, but only to the less demanding whimper for plausibility.

Hence President Obama’s dilemma. Right wingers want him to admit that he’s a socialist after which he should shut up. Left wing bloggers and commentators want him to first shut up and then take orders. He must (they insist) name call and dehumanize as they do rather than invite practical cooperation. Rightist and leftist opinion makers insist that their world of conjecture and theory is the real world. They believe that their world of ideological prefabrication and doctrinaire-oriented self-reinforcement is where it’s at.

As for Congress, it, like the president, is accountable. Members of Congress represent a hodgepodge of heterogeneous constituencies, most of whom face day to day challenges which do not respond to canned solutions. Often it takes longer than is convenient to find workable answers, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t working at it. Patience, not rudeness or panic, will ultimately get it done.

A generation ago, it was largely the Liberal ideologists who choked the political life out of Jimmy Carter hoping to replace him with the questionably electable Ted Kennedy. The result was Ronald Reagan, two Bush presidencies, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, and so on.

Every time ideologues of either the right or the left seek to dehumanize one another, they weaken the authority on which their hoped for political power may rest one day. That authority is ultimately constituted in the Office of the President of the United States.

If Liberals won’t get behind President Obama’s genuine attempts to bring forth progressive government over the next three plus years, be assured that Sarah Palin waits expectantly in the wings.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

FREEDOM—THE GOLDEN TREASURE OF THE SOUL

By Edwin Cooney

My first introduction, as a boy, to the concept of freedom, was the final line in the first verse of the American hymn “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.” The words, of course, are “let freedom ring.”

As Americans debate the various components of health care reform in this first year of the Obama administration, from all points of the political spectrum there come cries for “freedom.” The ideological left insists that American corporatism and its rich right wing constituency, in order to line their own pockets, are perfectly willing to oppress the worker, the student, the single mom, and even middle class citizens. Right wing ideologists, on the other hand, insist that health care reform, especially if it brings about an increase in taxes or limits the prerogatives of “the free market,” will bring about the enslavement of free citizens by a “socialist-oriented” liberal government. Hence, the solution for both sides of the debate is, you guessed it, freedom.

The question, therefore, is whose freedom matters? Whose unbridled liberty to control our options for jobs, education, or health care benefits will ensure the citizen’s freedom or liberty in the future?

Few “red-blooded Americans” will contest the idea that freedom or liberty -- choose your word -- is essential to the continued economic, social, and spiritual well-being of this republic. Nonetheless, newspaper columnists and editorial writers, radio and television talk show hosts, corporate executives, and certainly politicians are perfectly willing to transform “freedom” from being the common goal of a united people to the divisive weapon of a hot political issue.

Although I am anxious for health care reform and believe that properly constructed health care reform will ease the financial and economic burdens too long suffered by too many Americans, I do not believe that any American is consciously interested in limiting anyone’s freedom. Conservative-minded Americans insist that they want to be free to assist the less fortunate among us rather than being forced to do so by government. They insist that such compulsion is legal thievery. Liberals, meanwhile, insist that affordable health care is a human right not a class privilege.

From strictly a socio/theological standpoint, conservatives and liberals often seem to be arguing the opposite side of their stated core beliefs. Conservatives, especially Christian-oriented Americans, often assert their belief that mankind has fallen from grace and therefore can’t be trusted to make responsible political and especially spiritual decisions. Yet these same Christian spiritual and political leaders insist that regulation of social activities not only is unwarranted, but evil by dint of being socialistic. Liberals, on the other hand, insist that humankind is basically good and yet they distrust and even label as selfish and greedy even the most civic-minded elements of private enterprise.

When you think about it, it’s hardly surprising that freedom means different things to different people. Freedom “from” is quite a different matter than freedom “to”. Freedom “of” offers different rewards and responsibilities than does either freedom “from” or freedom “to”. Again, there’s hardly a fair-minded American who will deny that a prime ingredient in freedom is responsibility. Therefore the inevitable question is: whose job is it to insure responsible behavior by free men and women?

The traditional or conservative answer to that question is that the protection of freedom is everyone’s responsibility. Ah! But what is our most powerful resource for that protection? The answer to that question, for many, is as true as it is unsettling: the answer is spelled “GOVERNMENT!” After all, the same “founding fathers” who wrote the second amendment also established the judiciary system where we freely and lawfully litigate our differences.

The final question here is: When are we “free”? If the prosperous banker, businessman or woman feels less free when taxed too highly, why is it so hard to understand when the less prosperous worker and consumer feels less free if not sufficiently paid or when costs for essential needs such as healthcare are too high?

Freedom is powerful, precious and invariably vulnerable to outrageous fortune. As such, freedom is not the sole property of either the rich or the poor. Freedom is the legitimate golden treasure of everyone’s soul.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY