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On Squandered Opportunities:
July 15, 2002:
This essay is not part of my philosophy. My philosophy series
is about a long term realignment of our entire value system. It's
about a return to our traditional human values. In that, I necessarily
want it to be impersonal and outside of current politics as far
as possible. What I want to address now is current and is simply
something which I must point out immediately. I have been biting
my tongue too long.
Everyone who reads my essays must know that I believe out country is in a steep, moral and ethical decline. Recently, however, that decline seems to be approaching a total collapse. I can no longer be silent about it. We are losing on every front. We may not have a chance to try anything new, if we don't act. We need to do something or there could be nothing left to build a recovery on. This decline has even effected our economic situation. I believe this comes out of a lack of leadership which has resulted in a lack of national direction.
The easy solution is to say that the crooks in the corporations are at fault for the economic collapse. Sure, but finding crooks in corporate America is nothing new. American business has always been overloaded with con men, and thugs. It is a rare company which can avoid that taint. It seems to come with size and its correspondent isolation from reality. For reference, I suggest looking up Billie Sol Estes, Preston Tucker, and Charles Ponzi. The current crop are more destructive because of the general attitude of most of our citizens towards greed.
We are no longer a conservative people. We want the get rich quick answer. This makes us vulnerable to the con men who play on exactly that aspect of our mentality. For reasoning conservative people, the alarm bells should have been deafening on all of the dot coms, Enron, and Worldcom. Values just do not increase at those rates. When you look at them seriously, they had to be swindles. I believe there was intent in all of them and I believe that the officers of these companies are felons. They should be in prison, not rest farms, but prisons.
So ,let's put the crooks in prison. Then what? This business shake out is overdue and it does not really trouble me. We can recover from that sort of thing. We have done it before. What troubles me is the lack of direction from our alleged leadership. This is what is hurting us. It is not just the economy, it is in all aspects of our leadership. There is a total lack of positive, effective, decisive action. It is particularly evident in the so called war on terrorism.
On July 6, 2002. The Vice president of Afghanistan was murdered in front of his ten body guards. The two murderers got away. This happened in Kabul right outside of the main government headquarters. The drug cartels are still in operation. El Qaida is still in operation. We have squandered enormous resources and lost too many lives. In all of that, we have had no significant effect.
The situation is no different than it was before we started bombing the place. Terrorists are still free to act at any time. They move about and regroup at will. The government is totally inept. We replaced a fanatic religious extremist regime with a barbarian bandit chief. He is not in control. Instead of a repressive dictator we have anarchy. That is not an improvement.
Our president has bungled the situation in Afghanistan. The situation has not changed since we started bombing. He keeps saying we are at war, but he does not act like it. Instead, he lets his henchmen wage war on Arab Americans. The establishment of a United States military government working toward a democracy in Afghanistan would have done more to stop terrorism than all of Ashcroft's harassment of Arab Americans in Dearborn, MI. and other American cities.
Democracy has to be learned slowly. It does not happen overnight. It needs time to develop as it did in America. One thing most folks do not seem to appreciate is the amount of time democracy had to grow here. For many years, large dangerous oceans separated us from the madmen of Europe. In addition, we already had a tradition of ethics to support that growth. We had a sound ethical base on which to build a democracy.
That situation does not exist in Afghanistan. Bandit chiefs have no ethical base. If the Afghans find an ethical base, it will come from the moderate Muslims. That is what we should be supporting. In addition, unless we create it, they have no time. They are not isolated from their neighbors. The only way we can do that is to install a military governor such as we had in Japan.
In the following weeks, if it is still appropriate, I will post two essay which I wrote near the beginning of this so called war. It is about what should have happened. When the president went off half cocked and began bombing Afghanistan, I bit my tongue, prayed, and archived the essays. I supported the president. I wanted desperately for us to succeed. Now it is clear that we have not done so. I cannot say, I told you so, because I didn't. I bit my tongue. Now, I regret that decision.
The truth is, the president is inept. I am not talking about intelligence. I do not know his IQ and I do not care. I am talking about common sense. The worst part is, he thinks he is clever. Quite simply, he does not know what to do and he is getting some terrible advice from the entrenched party hacks. This country is failing while he goes off in all directions. He is starting brush fires all over the world and he cannot put out the big one in Afghanistan. Those brush fires are a diversion away from his failure in Afghanistan.
Now he wants to start another war in Iraq. There is no current justification for a war against Iraq. It is just a smoke screen to focus attention away from the bungling in other areas. What happened in Iraq was appropriate, right up until the senior Bush interfered. We cannot fix that now. Trying it will not change our direction, but it will alienate our allies.
We squandered an outstanding opportunity to establish a viable democracy in Iraq. It is too late for that now. The really dumb thing is, we promptly squandered a similar opportunity in Afghanistan. I really believe that a viable democracy in that region would be the most effective deterrent to terrorism that we could have. It would take time and cost a great deal. It could even cost as much as a couple of World Trade Towers and a poorly prosecuted war.
The real truth is, the stock market and the economy are in
the toilet because no one has any confidence in our direction.
In fact, we do not have a direction. I hope we can survive until
a new election. I feel the situation has so degenerated that it
will take at least four years to recover after we replace him.
Right now, we desperately need a direction. The country is in
chaos. I don't know how long it will be before this recession,
becomes a full flowering depression. In some future essay, I may
attempt to address the question, would a depression be a bad thing?
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