I’ve been a registered Republican since returning from Vietnam in 1971 – 41 years. Recently I’ve spoken with so many shocked conservatives who believe it was Romney’s fault for one reason or another. A former boss of mine this evening said it was actually good Romney didn’t win because the economy is so bad it would only have made the GOP look worse when Romney couldn’t fix it. He believes Romney’s loss only improves the GOP chances in 2016 because Obama won’t have the GOP to blame for the impending exponential catastrophe. He’s a young man (30s) with the sophomoric wisdom of most who don’t read and hasn’t been around long enough to learn simply by paying attention. As he was spewing his alcohol analysis, I couldn’t help visualizing a person not throwing a life preserver to a distressed swimmer because he was going to drown anyway. Romney is a business man – pure and simple (in so many ways as a human being as well) – who tossed his life preserver (business acumen) to Americans drowning in financial as well as moral bankruptcy. He certainly wasn’t one of those office seekers who are bitten by the beltway virus early in life and devote all their energies toward obtaining power and wealth through elected office. He was a rarity in that sense. America had a chance to turn things around and vote for a moral, intelligent man. If the Constitution was to be saved it was this last November. We can all write in our journals that we witnessed the very day the voice of the American people turned their backs on God, truth, justice and the American Way. This election has been sealed by God on America’s soul. It will have more consequences than Pearl Harbor and 9/11 combined. “Angels above are silent notes taking” (hymn “Do What Is Right”)
America needs a president (and politicians) who neither needs nor really wants the office – someone who has core principles and lives by them. But no one like that could ever get elected president much less congress. That candidate is a threat to professional politicians of both parties. Imagine a politician who can’t be bought by lobbyists. Imagine a politician who makes decisions based on what is right and wrong rather than political expediency. The miniscule few who get that far usually end up dead. The political-military-industrial complex just doesn’t tolerate a “rogue” politician interfering with their empire building. This is true down to the lowest levels of government service. Competent and moral leaders/employees are eliminated in favor of politically correct quotas and sycophants.
The Democrats’ have booed God en masse. God have mercy on their souls…..blah, blah, blah. Actually, I hope they burn in hell with the spineless Republicans. Many cite FDR or Hoover for the birth of Socialism in America. In the late ‘50s, a perennial presidential candidate from the American Communist Party is remembered for stating “I no longer have to run for president. The Democrat Party has adopted all of our principles”. The GOP power brokers are hand-in-glove in that regard. I was surprised to hear Rush Limbaugh say he was told by several high-ranking GOP members “We have to get rid of those ‘Christians’!” That shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows the historical excesses of corrupt capitalists. These are people who worship the Almighty Dollar not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If this sounds heretical let me share a little of what I’ve learned and experienced over the last 30 years professionally and academically regarding revolutionary warfare – the “dirty little wars” – America has engaged in during its’ relatively short history. Many believe the Brits are the subject matter experts on small wars. Max Boot’s “Savage Wars of Peace” makes a good case that America is at least equal in that arena. It’s true that the Brits were involved in one war or another of various sizes and durations somewhere in the world during their last 300 years. During that time there was only one year in which they did not lose a soldier killed in action anywhere in the world…. 1968, the year America was losing hundreds of KIAs a month in Vietnam.
My idealism was not shattered in Vietnam. I was a lowly enlisted man and had no concept of the “big picture”. My idealism died decades later when I read the RAND Corporation history of Vietnam. I read how Kissinger refused to listen to the advice of the Phds he sent to Vietnam. How they told him the Viet Cong were fundamentally nationalists….and would never quit fighting for a free and independent country (verified by “A VietCong Memoir”) I learned how Kissinger had refused to read their report with the flippant quip “Why? It’s history” and reached a quid pro quo with the North Vietnamese in 1968. My idealism died when I learned Johnson’s wife, Lady Bird, had major investments in both Bell Helicopter and SeaLane containers. It died when I learned he continued the charade of war for “political” expediency for five more years allowing American men to continue dying. Sound a lot like Iraq and Afghanistan? There’s a reason for that: I just heard on the news two days ago that both houses of congress overwhelmingly passed a resolution recommending Obama pull our troops out of Afghanistan early,. Excuse me but the Constitution specifically states that only Congress has the power to make war. At least it did until they started abrogating that responsibility to the President of the United States during Vietnam. The reason is so they can avoid the political consequences of committing our troops to an unpopular war and still get re-elected. During the Reagan and Carter Adminstrations Congress stopped funding the our support of the government of El Salvador and support of the Contras fighting against a communist regime in Nicaragua. Why can’t congress do that now? My idealism died when President Clinton …..and her husband – through George Stephanopolous- told the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to leave the white house and come back in civilian clothes. My idealism for serving my country in uniform was buried in the ground when I saw first hand how Clinton surrendered control of those of us in Mogadishu to the infamously incompetent and politically eunuched U.,N “peacekeeping” commanders – and watched Italian “peacekeepers” giving weapons to Aideed while he was killing American troops. The reason “we” (the U.N.) went to Somalia rather than Sudan (whose famine was much worse) was because U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali had been co-owners of the Somali National Bank with the ousted Somali president Siad Barre and he wanted to recoup his losses. It was like reading a familiar obituary as I continued to learn of the insane rules of engagement for my Marine infantry sons in Iraq and Afghanistan…..with the ludicrous inclusion of Afghan officers included in Top Secret mission briefings while calling their Taliban brethren. My idealism died when I realized almost all of our wars have been about resources rather than the preservation of the American Ideal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It died when I realized that politicians citing “national strategic interests” are really talking about resources that bankers/corporations want to control for the wealth they generate. For example, when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles announced publicly in 1952 that the “U.S. has no strategic interest in South Korea” he meant Korea had no resources our capitalists wanted. The North invaded the south almost the next day. Then Truman’s hand was forced to fight communism. Our support of the French returning to control Indochina (versus supporting an appeal by nationalist Vietnamese) was an resource-dictated political decision. France wanted the “rice-bowl” of Asia back for its’ resources the same way the Popes and Crusaders of the Middle Ages wanted “the cockpit of the world” – Jerusalem – back….taxing the merchants bringing silks, spices and everything nice from the Silk Road of the East through the deep-water ports on the Mediterranean coasts. Anyone who thinks our recent adventures in the Middle East isn’t about oil can buy my bridge in Brooklyn. And we saw the consequences of an “all hat no cattle” Texan trying to export constitutional concepts to arab countries who had no history or inclination to adopt them in Iraq and Afghanistan. And thanks to Junior’s penchant for political purity over statesmanship (a la’ Bremer), a military “victory” was turned into a political quagmire when he abolished the Baath Party against the advice of the CIA Chief and the military commander.. Junior’s juvenile idealism and intelligence gerrymandering resulted in an invasion costing thousands of casualties and bankrupting the strongest nation in the world when he could have obtained a regime change at no cost by supporting at least three viable coups. Bush, Jr. threw away America’s wealth and reputation in one ignorant gesture.
It isn’t a coincidence that all our bases in Afghanistan lie on a gas/oil fault line. The fraud, waste and abuse by defense contractors only grows more pandemic with every overseas adventure. The Cold War was basically a contest over how resources would be controlled. I’m glad we won that one (thank you President Reagan). World War II was a moral war. I like to think so.
The Allies (U.S., Great Britain, France) dividing up the post-war world certainly wasn’t. That was based on political/economic considerations with the specific intent to prevent cultures from uniting in opposition in the future (Africa, Middle East, Southeast Asia). Colonel T.E. Lawrence, the famed “Lawrence of Arabia”, drew a map of the Middle East after World War I that would have ensured peace in the Middle East for at least a century (give or take). The lines on his map were based on ethnicity and culture. It was ignored by the Allies because it would have meant significant loss of colonial resources. .
Of the ten most important strategic minerals in the world, seven are only found in Africa. Two are found in Russia (Strategic Studies Institute monogram). “Strategic minerals” are those resources considered necessary for the technology that ensures our national defense – like the cobalt extracted from copper that is used to build F-15 engines or the gold used in things like computers. The Muslim Brotherhood and China have been buying up gold in massive quantities since the latest Balkan War. I don’t disagree with American businessmen earning money overseas. However, I am amazed at the extent these corporations influence foreign policy to gerrymander foreign nations’ politics and economics to the detriment of the will of that country’s people.
The day NAFTA went into effect, a guerilla group (EZLN) in Chiapas, Mexico attacked the district capital La Independencia . The guerillas were an indigenous culture that had been horribly used and abused by the Mexican and Guatemalan government (via the “20 Families” who own 90 percent of the land). They were tired of the wealthy stealing their constitutionally allotted lands. The people of Chiapas were revolting against the Mexican government taking 80% of Mexico’s exportable resources from that area and not providing any – ZERO- benefits to the indigenous peoples living in the poorest state of Mexico. Subcommandante Marcos wrote essays titled after each of the four seasons explaining the rape of the region. It was almost poetry. Well, not only did the insurrection shake the International Monetary Fund’s confidence in Mexico’s ability to continue its’ nascent economic prosperity, America’s New York-based bankers apparently felt the same way. Chase Bank sent a telegram to the State Department with this terse message “Marcos must go”. I wonder if they did the same to JFK? Sure enough, the next news reports showed Mexican soldiers riding into Chiapas in new 5-ton trucks wearing new ballistic helmets. M-16s had replaced their M-1 carbines. Oh, and the insurrection was inexplicably labeled a “Drug War”. NAFTA is a perfect example of economics affecting politics to the benefit of a few yet to the detriment of peoples on both sides of the border.
Not many Americans are alive today who remember the “Banana Wars” of Central America and the Caribbean. The American government –at the behest of interests like Dole, and other agriculture and industrial conglomerates, literally created countries like Columbia, Panama, etc. by instigating rebellion among the population. In most cases, thanks in large part to the Marines’ wise application of Civic Action, life improved for these people. The most dramatic indicator was the huge reduction in infant mortality in those countries simply because the Marines told them to quit throwing their sewage and waste in the streets (I wish we could get Mexican “visitors” to throw their used toilet paper in the toilet!). But when the Marines left the politicians took over – and that never seemed to benefit the average campesino. No more famous a Marine than General Lejeune complained of this vociferously and was nearly called a Socialist agitator by many in congress and the media . After retiring as the commandant of the Marine Corps, General Lejeune was encouraged to run for political office. He considered it immoral for a military man to capitalize on his service to his country. He was actually approached by many wealthy Republicans seeking his leadership of a military coup against the sitting president of the United States (Leatherneck Magazine, Congressional Record)! After determining the Republicans weren’t joking and were preparing a real military takeover, he reported his findings to the president and testified before a congressional committee. The committee’s findings? They were classified too secret to release to the public. The stature of the businessmen inciting the coup was such that releasing their names would affect the national economy – or so it was believed. I guess they were “too big to fail”. “Too big to fail” sounds like the “All are equal but some are more equal than others” of George Orwell’s Animal Farm mocking Stalin’s brand of communism.
Another example is the American government’s support of the Guatemalan military junta during the ‘80s in which that country’s concept for fighting communist insurgency was to annihilate a whole race of indigenous people – with the side benefit of stealing their land and eliminating a source of legitimate and popular political opposition (“Refugees of a Hidden War” by Beatriz Manz). The only general who implemented an effective “hearts and minds” campaign was relieved of command.
Locally, in southern Arizona, the GOP actually donated campaign funds to the Democrat congressional candidate in the mid-2000s rather than their own Republican candidate because the Democrat candidate wasn’t as “dogmatic” about the illegal alien issue as the Republican candidate. The GOP also refused to provide campaign funds to Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, recent Republican, Hispanic female candidate for congress – against the president of the congressional Socialist caucus (yes, there is one) Raul Grijalva because “she didn’t have a chance to win”. I think she was just too much of a truth talker for their tastes [refer back to my ‘drowning man’ example]. GOP refused to grant Arizona congressman Jeff Flake his rightful chairmanship of an influential committee because he refused to cooperate on pork barrel spending. The GOP participated in the immigration reform act in the ‘80s that began the demographic gerrymandering that facilitated the recent “identity” election. In the words of David Beck of NumbersUSA “A nation cannot survive when it allows a million immigrants per year to enter the country.” The GOP and the National Chamber of Commerce went along with all the liberal immigration laws in order to obtain cheap labor – basically doing to illegals in the U.S. what they are doing to workers overseas.
The GOP won’t remain viable if it continues claiming “conservative ‘values’ when in fact they are fat cats. If the GOP were sincerely principle based, where was the outrage at the massive voter fraud? Why wasn’t the GOP demanding U.S. marshals –even the 82nd Airborne Division- guard voter polling locations where the New Black Panthers/Democrats were telling people how to vote, changing their votes and exceeding the total number of registered voters? I ask again: Where was the GOP outrage? Not a peep! Maybe it’s because none of their jobs were in jeopardy. The GOP actually co-personifies “Identity Politics” in practice. With Boehner purging House leadership of real conservative Tea Party members, I think it is past time to start a third party of Independent Conservatives. I like Tammy Bruce’s political affiliation: Independent Conservative. I like that a lot. In fact, I think I’ll change my voter registration to Independent.
What is needed is the same thing that makes the difference in whether an insurgency succeeds or not: the moral high ground. What America needs is –in the words of Cal Thomas – a ‘political evangelist’ who can articulate the American Ideal. It ain’t the GOP “as presently constituted”. I thought for many years the GOP message needs to articulate that found in Colonel Thomas X. Hammes’ “The Sling and the Stone: On War In the 21st Century”:
(“Fourth generation warfare is about sending messages to decision-makers – usually via the mass of people that support them. Once we recognize this, it becomes a tremendous advantage for the United States. An effective message requires that the basic theme be compelling and that the people who are crafting and disseminating the message be articulate and sincere.)
“The fundamental message of the United States is the most powerful message ever created by mankind: we treasure the individual and provide an environment where every person can strive for his or her own dreams. Here, each person knows he can make a better life for his children. The millions of people clamoring to come to America prove this is a widely accepted and valued message. By making this fundamental belief an integral part of the message, we take advantage of the exceptional strength our open society has in a 4GW conflict. No society has ever had a more powerful message to share with the world.”
The demographic gerrymandering of the population through immigration policies, the consequence of images superseding ideals (TV over books) by parents abdicating their responsibility of raising and educating their children, and generations of politicians –and voters- who don’t take the time to learn, understand, or appreciate concepts like these has smothered any popular appeal of the American Ideal long ago. Neither does any party personify the message.
Demographic trends –ergo election results- will only become increasingly more “identity”. Greed, dishonesty, laziness, and fraud will only increase. The “moral high ground” concept only confuses most I talk with today. I’ve even been accused of being a “reader!” by a shocked identity voter like I was some post-Apocalyptic sage. We’ve come a long way from “Ask not what your country can do for you…..” Until then, I have more faith in the Book of Revelations than the GOP. The good news is Jesus is coming. The bad news – for many – is…..He’s going to be really angry when he does.
