- There is an American Empire, but we should dump it, because
we Americans are woefully incompetent when it comes to maintaining empires.
-
- One mistake that seems to be a permanent feature of our
foreign policy is mirror-imaging. So many American politicians, most of
them poorly educated and ignorant of other people and their cultures, tend
to think other people are just like us. A great many are not.
-
- Lyndon Johnson failed in Vietnam because he thought he
could treat the Vietnamese the same way he treated members of the U.S.
House and Senate. Johnson always used a stick and a carrot. Vote with me,
and you'll get pork-barrel rewards; vote against me, and I'll find a way
to punish you. That worked with American politicians, most of whom are
nothing more than officeholders with "for sale or rent" signs
on their foreheads.
-
- Johnson told the North Vietnamese, make peace, and I'll
give you billions of dollars in American aid; don't make peace, and I'll
bomb you. Unfortunately for Johnson, the North Vietnamese, whatever their
other faults, were not for sale, nor were they willing to succumb to threats.
They wanted to unify their country, and they were willing to fight as long
as necessary to achieve that. As it turned out, we were not willing to
fight as long as necessary to prevent it. So, despite billions of dollars,
despite 57,000 dead, despite a quarter of a million wounded, Vietnam is
today a unified communist country.
-
- President George W. Bush has offered a $25 million reward
for Osama bin Laden. He thought, apparently, that like most Americans,
the Afghans and Pakistanis were for sale. Despite Afghanistan being one
of the poorest countries in the world, the American millions have not produced
a single traitor willing to rat out bin Laden.
-
- Let's face it - we have become a secular and materialistic
society. The two kinds of people we have real trouble believing actually
exist are people of true religious faith and people to whom honor means
more than money.
-
- Years ago, an understandably irate chiropractor said
of medical doctors, "If they can't drug it or cut it, they don't know
what the hell to do." Similarly, if we can't bribe with our dollars
or intimidate with our bombs, we don't know what to do. That disqualifies
us to run an empire, so we ought to cut our losses and go back to being
a republic.
-
- Now, returning to our republican roots doesn't mean we
try to live in splendid isolation. Not at all. It just means that we stop
trying to run other people's countries and concentrate on running our own.
We can have trade relations with the whole world - cultural exchanges,
tourism, the whole ball of friendly wax. We just make sure the CIA and
the military don't do any dirty work inside other people's countries, such
as interfering in their elections or overthrowing their governments. And
we don't take sides in other countries' wars and feuds. Armed neutrality
should be our position.
-
- That, to me, would be the best of all possible worlds
for Americans. This is not pie in the sky. It was once American policy,
and the United States was widely loved and respected during that period
of time. Now, with our troops in more than 100 foreign countries, we are
widely disliked, if not hated and feared.
-
- The cluster blunders in Iraq and Vietnam, not to mention
many smaller cluster blunders we have made around the world, should convince
any reasonable person that we Americans are simply not competent imperialists.
We don't know much about other people; we resist learning other languages;
we love our own country so much we are frankly not very interested in the
rest of the world. We have all the qualifications to be a mind-our-own-business
republic, and none of the qualifications to be a world empire.
-
- We should start bringing our troops home from the far-flung
corners of the world, establish a sensible self-defense posture and use
the billions of dollars we would save to tackle all the really serious
domestic problems we have.
-
- Unfortunately, for that to happen you'd probably have
to elect Pat Buchanan or me as president, and neither one of us is running.
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- © 2004 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.
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- http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040728/index.php
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