By Edwin Cooney
Ah, morality! Most of us insist that
morality is what our personal lives are all about. That goes for both religious and secular
America! The question is: what about our
history? Has morality played much of a
role in America’s relations with our sister nations or have we reached our
international superstardom absent the wisdom morality provides?
To adequately answer that question, one
must first define morality. While you do
that for yourself, I’ll review a little history which you may, if you like,
apply to your own thoughts on this topic!
Most Americans today appear to believe
that war is immoral — especially aggressive war. The source of that belief is partly due to
our indignation over the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. However, much of it comes from the oratory of
some of our most distinguished leaders.
FDR opined in his last appearance before Congress: “Certainly, I don’t
want to live to see another war!”
President Kennedy declared before the United Nations in September of
1961: “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind!” Winston Churchill, to whom we granted honorary
citizenship in April 1963, regarded war near the end of his life as “squalid”
rather than “glorious” as he had when he was young and ambitious. Richard Nixon from the depth of his Watergate
scandal agony as he resigned the presidency practically begged the nation to
remember him as a peacemaker.
More to the point, an objective analysis
of the reasons we have gone to war throughout our history has nothing or very
little to do with the morality of our cause.
The cry of 1776 “no taxation without representation” was
misleading. If Eighteenth Century
Bostonians and Virginians were taxed without sufficient representation in
parliament, so were most Englishmen.
Adequate representation for Englishmen had to wait until the 1830s to be
corrected. Even as our state and
national governments were formed, there remained outrageous examples of voting
and representation inequities. The cause
of the American Revolution was little more than an interruption of the efforts
on the part of northern merchants and southern planters to make a sufficient
profit.
The War of 1812 was primarily a territorial
squabble between Midwestern congressional hardliners and British intervention on
the Western Great Lakes and the Mississippi which often blocked easy access to
the Port of New Orleans. There was also
that ongoing bitterness on the part of young America over the British policy of
high seas kidnapping and impressment of American sailors into the Royal
Navy. Oddly enough, as outrageous as
that practice was to Americans, its termination was not part of the Treaty of
Ghent which ended the war in late 1814. The 1846-48 Mexican War was nothing
more than a land grab justified by our insistence upon the legitimacy of
“manifest destiny.”
The Civil War was over “states’ rights”
and the ultimate legitimacy of the federal union.
The Spanish-American War of 1898
ultimately had more to do with increasing American imperial and sea power than
it had to do with the right of Cuba to declare independence from Spain.
World War I might not have included
American doughboys had the German government refrained from tempting the
Mexican government to attack us and thus regain the territory Mexico had lost
to our sense of manifest destiny back in the 1840s.
The last war to actually unify
Americans, World War II, although a conflict against Evil, was fought alongside
an ally President Reagan would eventually declare to be “the head of an evil
empire.”
Today we face the prospect of becoming
involved in a jihad, or holy war, with radical Islam as ISIL seeks to establish
a worldwide caliphate. Our potential
enemy is as “moral” ” in its religious faith as the most dedicated Christian
clergyman or Jewish rabbi. Hence, a
possible war with radical Islam would hardly be a war of the moral versus the
immoral, but rather a clash of conflicting moralities. The question might even be, whose version of
Heaven will prevail? Unlike our old materialistic
Communist opponents, radical Islam is certain of its spiritual
superiority. For them, their dead of
9/11 aren’t victims but rather brave and holy martyrs.
I define morality as a set of
principles and values reflecting the conscience of a benevolent and equitable
society. An act of war may be undertaken
in defense of such a society, but war itself is an act of immorality. As such, war is a mere tool of human fear and
desperation.
Last week I asked if practicality or
principle should rule our foreign policy.
For me, the conclusion is obvious.
Practicality requires an objective assessment of the world around us
thus enabling America to wisely and more safely adjust and respond to the
world’s most outrageous challenges! Try this piece of advice on for size:
Comprehend and live in the world as it
is and thus survive. Make a tool out of
your sense of moral superiority as ISIL does and self-destruct.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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