The two wars that broke America
Unless the political center takes hold in both parties and restrains the excesses of the left and the right, the nation’s course is tragically predictable.
thehill.com
I thought this piece made some good points in tracking back some earlier mistakes and failures of leadership which led America to where it is now.
The mood in America is bitter.
Hyper-partisanship has sabotaged governance and government. Extremes of left and right have infected politics and turned citizens against each other on virtually every issue. Anger and resentment now inform what passes for political dialogue.
How did the U.S. arrive at a condition where more than 70 percent of the public does not want either of the two likely presidential candidates on the ballot? About the same number are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the state of the nation.
The answer rests in two wars that broke America.
The first was Vietnam. Sixty years ago this August, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution with only two dissenting votes that committed the nation to war. At that point, more Americans believed and trusted in the government and largely supported it.
That figure has reversed since the Vietnam War. Both Democratic and Republican administrations lied about the war beginning with the Tonkin Gulf crisis, in which North Vietnamese boats did not attack two U.S. Navy destroyers operating in international waters, as had been alleged.
This is a key point. The article notes that prior to the Tonkin Resolution, the general public mostly believed and trusted in the government and largely supported it. Once the government was caught in a lie, people started wondering "Well, what else has the government been lying about?" Rumors of political malfeasance and conspiracy theories started to circulate and become more readily accepted. The anti-war movement itself was also a major social upheaval which had a ripple effect across the entire culture.
The fall of Saigon in April 1975 marked the ignominious defeat of the world’s most powerful and technologically advanced military by a peasant and guerrilla army that won through perseverance, ingenuity and willpower. The assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Watergate, a weak Carter presidency and violence over racial issues were contributors.
Not sure why he blames Carter for the fall of Saigon, since he wasn't elected until 1976. Maybe it's Ford's fault. I've heard it said that if Nixon had not been impeached and forced to resign, the outcome in Vietnam would have been different.
That's also something would undermine faith in the government - not just the lying, but also the losing.
It was also in the aftermath of the Arab oil embargo and subsequent quadrupling of oil prices, leading to runaway inflation - all of which made America look all the more weak and impotent. The Iranian Revolution and ensuing US Embassy hostage crisis pretty much killed off any sentiments towards peace which might have existed 10 years earlier. The 70s were an interesting transition where we started off the decade with "Love is all you need," "Give peace a chance," and "Imagine" and ended it with "Life in the Fast Lane" and "Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran!" (And the counter-culture moved from pot-smoking and rock-and-roll to cocaine and disco, just like we made the switch from glass bottles to plastic.)
The writer then jumps over the 1980s and 90s and cites the 2003 Iraq War as the second war which broke America.
But what formed the trigger for the political nuclear ingredients that would ultimately explode was the second Iraq War, launched in March 2003 and rationalized on another set of falsehoods and lies.
Not long after Sept. 11, 2001, the George W. Bush administration began planning for an invasion of Iraq. The focus shifted from the failed assault on Afghanistan to capturing or killing Osama bin Laden and destroying al Qaeda to ending the regime of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
The argument was to alter the geostrategic landscape of the greater Middle East by imposing democracy on Iraq that would expand to other non-democratic states. In the process, Israel’s security would be guaranteed permanently as Arab/Islamic autocracies and monarchies would be replaced by democratic governments.
The casus belli would be Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction that Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, predicted could lead to a “mushroom cloud” bursting over American cities. Except, just as North Vietnam never attacked the U.S. destroyers, Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction. But the damage would be irreversible.
Of course, the second Iraq War would not have happened if there wasn't a first Iraq War. Or, it could also be argued that if they had gotten rid of Saddam Hussein back in 1991, that also would have prevented the second Iraq War, so why wasn't that their primary objective? Just like no one ever came up with the idea of invading North Vietnam and occupying Hanoi. It's as if our leaders no longer wanted to win wars; they just wanted them to continue indefinitely. But "not winning" is often viewed as the same as "losing," and it's on that basis that America's prestige has been tarnished and weakened in the eyes of the world and by the U.S. public. No matter what kind of mealy-mouthed spin the State Department or the Defense Department puts on these things, losing is still losing. ("Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.")
Another key event was the Iran-Contra affair, when Reagan made America look weak in the eyes of the Iranians by paying ransom for hostages. That was not only a defeat on that front, but the proceeds from the arms sales went to the Contras, which was another absurdly failed bit of interventionism that went nowhere. The Sandinistas are still there, but where are the Contras?
The writer goes on to correctly point out that the Bush Doctrine (which was basically a rehashing of the same basic doctrine which existed during the Vietnam era) turned out to be a failure, as it continued to be when Obama continued the same basic policy.
Bush’s doctrine profoundly changed the geostrategic landscape of the Middle East and the rest of the world — for the worse. The failed Iraq occupation tainted the Obama administration and the unsuccessful nation-building effort in Afghanistan provided new life to the Taliban. These tensions contributed to the drastic decline in U.S.-Russian relations. As a consequence, American credibility and competence dissolved at home and internationally.
The decline in US-Russian relations is also a key point, as we had already sabotaged that relationship long before Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2014. If we had behaved better 10-15 years earlier, then we might have been in a better position to stop them in 2014.
The lies from government are bad enough, but when coupled with incompetence and continuous failure, then it starts to get really noticed and internalized within the public mindset - even if the media don't really want to talk about it and the rhetoric goes off-balance and off the deep end, which leads us to the election of 2016.
Concurrently, anger over growing inequality between rich and poor, the failure to govern, the rise of populism and the emergence of extremism on both ends of the political spectrum helped Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. As president and after, Trump turned the Republican Party into the party of Trump. Conspiracy theories abounded from pizza parlors becoming fronts for child pornography to Trump winning the 2020 election.
The upshot is that today, the political divisions in America have become practically irreversible. Congress’s inability to pass sensible laws and even a budget is unconscionable. One presidential candidate has been charged with 91 indictments and the other is seen as too old and feeble to govern. These are symptoms of why America has become broken. And the $34 trillion debt brings adds new meaning to being broke.
What to do? Unless the political center takes hold in both parties and restrains the excesses of the left and the right, the nation’s course is tragically predictable. What is needed is for a few good men and women to come to the aid of their country. Until then, worry.
After a half-century of mendacious incompetence and utter failure from our political leadership, it doesn't seem too surprising that eventually Americans would elect someone is the physical embodiment of mendacious incompetence and utter failure - and yet, nobody cares anymore. Even those who hate Trump with every fiber of their being, they show zero willingness to critically examine the decades leading up to Trump. They seem to believe that America was absolutely perfect prior to 2016 and that "it's all Trump!" and that "Trump ruined everything!" That sounds to me like some people are too embarrassed to admit to their own failures and instead are looking for someone else to blame.
Perhaps there's some truth to the idea that "confession is good for the soul." If America has been broken by a questionable past, as the writer here suggests, then perhaps it's time to reveal that past - lay it bare for all the world to see. The government should release every classified document or any other materials which they don't want anyone to know about. Open Area 51 and turn it into a national park. Full disclosure, full transparency, and full confession. An Executive Order from the President is all that it would take, so if Biden does something like that, it might boost his popularity immensely.