A fool thinks himself to be
wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.
William
Shakespeare.
The Titanic was "unsinkable."
Sporting 52,310 tons, which by today's standards was not the largest of
ships. but by 1912 standards, was a leviathan, a iron riveted monster, with 16
water tight bulkheads and carrying lifeboats sufficient for 1,178 of its 2,234 passengers.
A North Atlantic Iceberg ripped a gash through five of the sixteen watertight
bulkheads, the unsinkable sinking inside of three hours,
resulting in 1500 dead.
World War I started with the assassination of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of Serbia, triggering a chain reaction of alliances causing the great
war, killing over nine million combatants and seven million civilians. Nations of sleepwalking leadership
plunged the world into not only that war, but also the Treaty of Versailles, setting
the stage for the rise of fascists and the Second World War, involving over 100
million people from over thirty countries and ultimately involving 50 to 85
million fatalities.
The Korean War, fought from 1950 to 1953, begun as a UN
"Police Action" ended in a stalemate, insuring the establishment of
what ultimately became a thriving democracy in the south and a totalitarian
dictatorship in the north. The war
was never ended with a peace treaty, but a semi-stable armistice for the last
60 years or so. Korea had been
occupied by imperial Japan since 1910 until the end of World War II. The Korean war cost 178,000 lives
including 37,000 American soldiers dead and 103,000 wounded. America feared the spread of
Communism and the result was favorable for the South. But the remnants of that war haunt us to this day, with a
ruthless dictator threatening to post missiles to San Francisco, among other
American cities.
The Viet Nam war started on a waterfall of misinformation,
including the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, based upon an erroneous report that
American ships were attacked first by North Vietnamese forces. 58,000 Americans died in the misguided
conflict, tearing our nation apart.
In fact we thought we were stopping the fall of Communist dominoes, but the
Vietnamese thought they were fighting a war of national liberation in a country
previously dominated by the Japanese, the French and the Americans, all of
which supported corrupt regimes.
In World War II to defeat Nazi Germany and Japan, we allied
our country with a totalitarian Stalin against a totalitarian Hitler, Mussolini
and Tojo, hoping to create a better world, a world free of dictators and
despots. Between Hitler and
Stalin, 50 million people were killed (by their hands alone.) At the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1993 Francis
Fukuyama wrote that History had ended, arguing that the advent of liberal
Western Democracy may signal "the endpoint of humanity’s sociocultural
evolution and heralding the final form of human government--liberal democracy."
The arc of history is long. The consequences of what is
happening in the Middle East are now in the hands of US President who
understands neither foreign policy nor history.
Despite the efforts of educated, sophisticated policymakers
such as George Kennan, Dean Acheson, FDR, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower,
subsequent presidents and leaders were perfectly capable of destroying the
building blocks of a world order of pax
Americana and the alliances that have essentially made the world a safer
place since the end of World War II. The United Nations, has nobly attempted to create a
better world, but has failed in many respects, including the inability to
foster world peace through its own devices. It must rely on the largesse of the member states, many of
which only look after their own
interests.
The collapse of the Soviet Union, Fukuyama thought, was the
end of history. It was to be the
rise of liberal democracies throughout the world. How wrong was Fukuyama? How difficult is it to predict the
future? Essentially the best of
leaders, with the noblest of intentions are winging it, but now we should all
be especially frightened. A
President caught in scandal, possible criminality, and obsessed with his own
narcissism faces uncertainties, befuddling the best of statesman.
This president knows all the answers. But is not a statesman.
When our founding fathers, James Madison and Alexander
Hamilton wrote the Constitution, they designed an elaborate system of
federalism dividing the powers, checks and balances among the states and the
three branches of government, decided that they did not want a king and
determined the term of office for the President as four years. They wrote a second amendment
guaranteeing a "well regulated militia" insuring the right to bear
arms (flintlock muskets, not AR 15s.)
They decided they did not want a parliamentary system nor a prime
minister. They provided a
provision for impeachment of the President for "high crimes and
misdemeanors." But they
did not provide for a vote of no confidence nor a special election to put in
place a new president for an administration gone haywire. Two presidents have
been impeached, but none ever convicted and removed. They provided an electoral college that misapportioned power
among the states, and allowed for the election of a minority vote getter.
This is the 21st century, not the 19th. It is time for a new
constitutional convention.
