Own
Goals and Compromise American Style
The United
States is a great nation, but it is not perfect. It has accomplished many great deeds
along with its share of disasters.
We are fast approaching the fifty year anniversary of one
of America’s biggest own goals, the overthrow and murder of South
Vietnam’s President Nho Dinh
Diem, on November 1, 1963. This
coup, in which President Kennedy and United States Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge
played major roles, accomplished one of the major goals of the North
Vietnamese, our enemy in a war the US had been pursuing for a decade. This weakened the South Vietnamese
government to the point where American military intervention was required to
stave off defeat for a decade.
Similarly, George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and
overthrow Saddam Hussein was another own goal. Getting rid of Hussein was one of the
major war aims of the Iranians in the eight year long Iran – Iraq War of
1980 – 1988. Like Diem,
Hussein had been our ally.
Both the
overthrow of Diem and the ousting of Hussein were policies determined, not by
military necessity or self-defense, but by domestic political considerations:
Kennedy’s need not to be seen as a supporter of a Catholic military
dictatorship in a predominantly Buddhist nation; and George Bush’s desire
to pander to domestic supporters of Israel, to strike back at Hussein for
humiliating his father by remaining in power after Operation Desert Storm, and
his need to conceal his own illegitimacy, ignorance, and incompetence through a
war of choice against an almost helpless developing nation. When foreign policy becomes the tool of
domestic partisan politics, disaster is close at hand.
Just as overthrowing Diem strengthened the North
Vietnamese, getting rid of Hussein immeasurably strengthened Iran. Obama’s
refusal and inability to try and rectify Bush’s mistake by military means
in Syria has moved the conflict from the military to the economic sphere; just
in time for the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to set up a
punt that will result in a spectacular own goal.
The United
States Constitution was created primarily because the United States was not
paying its debts. Now, the
Republican majority in the house is threatening non-payment of debts as a
pressure tool in a domestic political dispute. Can any objective observer doubt that
disaster would result? This is the
Republicans holding their breath until they get their way.
Threatening the destruction of the government and nation
for domestic political purposes has never been in the American tradition. When the Constitution was being debated,
abolitionists had to swallow, not only the continued importation of slaves for
twenty years, but the enumeration of slaves as three-fifths of a person
(although they could not vote) which actually increased the power of the slave
holders. The north swallowed these
indignities in the name of national unity; because everyone understood that
united we stand, divided we fall.
This unity was born out of common military service in opposition to
Britain.
In exchange,
the commercial interests demanded a system of sound money and taxation, viewed
as a potential tool of oppression by the farmers, north and south. But the biggest conflict was over
enumerating personal rights in the Constitution. The big debate was over whether to
ratify the constitution without these rights, and then amend the constitution
after ratification; or whether to prevent ratification until the desired rights
were included.
In
short, the debate over ratification of the constitution was the same, almost
identical, to the current debate over reopening the government and raising the
debt ceiling. During the debate
over the Constitution, many people proposed a term limit for the president and
a religious test for holding public office. The Republican majority in the House
today holds the same basic positions as those who opposed the Constitution 225
years ago: that the United States should be a religious state (anti-abortion,
pro-Israeli annexation of illegally occupied and conquered lands, marriage
between a man and woman only, anti-homosexual) and against a strong taxing
power of the federal government.
Next
Wednesday, the voters of New Jersey will head to the polls to pick a new United
States Senator. The contest is
between Cory Booker, Democratic Mayor of Newark, the state’s largest
city, who basically supports President Obama’s
agenda and is opposed to the government shutdown; and Steve Lonegan,
the former Mayor of Bogota, who totally embraces the Republican House agenda
and is urging the House majority to hang tough and not reopen the government
until New Jersey has voted.
This is the only plank in Lonegan’s
platform with which I agree. Let
the voters of New Jersey decide whether or not to have an open government, the
implementation of Obamacare and, if the Affordable
Health Care Act has problems, to solve them with the government functioning and
its bills paid, like the first ten amendments were added to the Constitution,
rather than prevent the ratification of the constitution until all objections
were satisfied or whether to shut down the government unless the Affordable
Health Care Act is repealed.
But given the corruption of the two-party system, there is no
way the people in Washington will allow these problems to be decided by the
voters of New Jersey, or anywhere.
This conflict
and the tactics used by the Republican majority of the House point to an
unfortunate truth: there are no permanent victories in politics. These conflicts, these so-called life
and death issues (with the exception of war which really is a life and death
issue for many, many people) are just a momentary failure of perspective.
If the Affordable Health Care Act is so terrible, it
should be allowed to go into effect, then the problems will emerge and then the
law can either be fixed or repealed, as the Catastrophic Health Care Bill of 25
years ago was repealed. The
insistence on threatening the survival of the country over a domestic political
issue is a failure of perspective.
People are mortal, we all come to an end eventually; but hopefully, the
United States is eternal and its better values triumphant.
The Marshall
Plan, and the aid to Greece and Turkey Act, was passed by a Republican Congress
under a Democratic president. When
Congress was filled with veterans from World War II, individual members, even
from different parties, could work together in the name of peace because they
had seen the slaughter of war first hand and watched their friends die.
The ideologues in the Republican caucus of the House are
primarily men born in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s who were
never subject to the draft and who never spent two seconds doing anything for
anyone other than themselves. They
are war mongers who kept themselves out of harms way. Are they capable of scoring a
spectacular own goal for the United States? You bet.
But I don’t think they
will. Rather settle and live to
fight another day, than let the voters in New Jersey have the final say. So, the problem should be solved before next
Wednesday. Q.E.D.
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