INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

“Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue?” --George Washington

“We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.” --Dwight D. Eisenhower (1961)

Only yesterday, it seems, the United States was viewed by most of its citizens, and by peoples throughout the world, as a great liberator. With the defeat of the Axis powers just a few years behind him, a confident President Eisenhower announced the start of America’s next mission—a march to bring the blessings of democracy to all the world, a “crusade for democracy.”

“What you resist you become—unless you win,” the renegade libertarian philosopher-scientist L. Ron Hubbard once said. Well … apparently we didn’t win. A recent poll conducted by the BBC in some forty countries indicates that a great many people on our planet view the United States as the principal threat to world peace. In a fifty-year period, we’ve devolved from liberator to the world’s foremost imperialistic ogre!

What went wrong?

One: We, the People allowed ourselves to be caught up in the post-World War Two hoopla concerning America’s new role as “leader of the Free World” and powerhouse crusader for democracy. I liked Ike. I still like him. But I see the crusader policy goal he articulated as unfortunate, as it provided a pretext for the global conquest plans of the very complex he warned against—the “military-industrial complex.”

All but forgotten was the wise counsel of President Washington, who told us that the key to national success (and security) is minding our own business. Do not become “entangled” in the affairs of other nations, he said. Today, we are the most entangled nation on Earth!—and our neo-con leaders, mouthing the rhetoric of Eisenhower, are intent on entangling us even further. For an interesting article on the American crusade for democracy prior to Ike, read James Bovard’s Killing in the Name of Democracy. [1]

By the way, the least entangled of the major powers, Japan and China, are the ones that seem to be doing really well these days.  Next > 1 2 3 4 5