8 October 2007

 

I am listening to one of the courses from The Teaching Company these days, this one The Wisdom of History by Prof. J. Rufus Fears, David Ross Boyd Professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma.  He is absolutely the best speaker, professor, I have ever heard, both brilliant and eloquent.  One of the points he keeps making, and making, and making, is that the rise and fall of nations and empires very often hinges on the decisions, or indecisions, of one man (or woman), that history is not made by grand sweeping social forces and so forth, so much as by the influence and force of character of specific individuals.

 

A President Hillary Clinton (or Barack Obama, or John Edwards, or Ron Paul), hostile to the use of America's force, for ideological reasons, and hostile to the idea of American exceptionalism and American imperialism, the projection of power, is, to my thinking, very likely, if not certain, to do grave and irreparable harm to the future of the United States and to the future of free societies around the world.

 

At best ambivalent about America's destiny to be the beacon of liberty on the hill, shining the light of liberty on the world, and ambivalent (at best) about using the combined moral, economic, political, and military forces of America to carry out that mission, I fear any Democrat government at this juncture in history will dissipate America's momentum in a morass of multiculturalism and moral equivalence, in approval-seeking from foreign governments that share little or nothing of America's ideals, in moral and political timidity and myopia, much as the Chamberlain government once did in England.

 

The failure of Neville Chamberlain and other European leaders in the late 1930s, and of the US also, to oppose Hitler, politically and if necessarily militarily by a smaller pre-emptive war, could have averted, avoided entirely, WWII, which devastated the economies of Europe and Asia and killed somewhere between 50 million and 100 million people, nobody will ever know for sure.  Hitler could have been stopped when he was weak, at a enormously smaller cost than it took to defeat him when he was strong.

 

The old axiom, A stitch in time saves nine, applies at the geopolitical level, too.  A credible threat of war against Germany in 1938, 1939, a mobilization of French and English forces on the continent, a build up of American forces, would almost certainly prevented WWII, by far the most destructive war in history, to date.

 

England barely survived the failure of its 1930s leadership, rescued from abject defeat and unconditional surrender only by the force of the personality of Winston Churchill, and later, FDR.  But the economic cost, and the bloodletting, spelled the end of the British Empire as it had been for the previous two centuries.  While England survived WWII with its sovereignty intact, it would never recover its pre-war power, momentum, stature.  It is, today, a ghost of its former imperial self.

 

As Jed Babbin says, this is 1937, again.  Bush is trying to do what Chamberlain failed to do - pre-empt a bigger war with a smaller one.  And Iraq is just the beginning, not the end, unless by achieving a decisive outcome in Iraq the momentum of Jihadism can be blunted, discouraged from further adventures.  If the Jihad movement emerges from the Iraq war with its operational capability and morale intact, the battle will not end, it will only move to other battlegrounds, in Israel, in Africa, in Europe, perhaps in America.  There will be war with Jihad until Jihad is defeated, or until Jihad triumphs.

 

If the Jihad movement sees an isolationist, pacifist, Democrat government elected, the Jihad will immediately understand that its ambitions for the ME, Africa, Europe, will not be opposed by American Democrats committed to bringing the troops home and avoiding foreign entanglements, just as in 1975 North Vietnam saw that the US no longer had the will to defend South Vietnam from invasion, and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fell, with the stench of killing fields.  It will, indeed, be Vietnam all over again.

 

This will be the equivalent, roughly, of England and America declaring their neutrality in 1939, and standing by while Hitler conquered all of Europe, the ME, and Africa, and brought Russia down, while Japan, not making the fatal error of Pearl Harbor, secured its grip on Asia,  leaving England and America isolated in a Nazi / Bushido world.

 

If America draws back into itself, like a turtle, now, its fate will be that predicted by Mark Steyn in America Alone.  America, politically and economically isolated in a world dominated by the politics of Jihadism, Islam, Sharia.  In time, Jihadism will become the dominant political force in Europe, and in England, France, and Germany, as well as Russia and Iran and Pakistan, it will have nuclear weapons.

 

And that is the fate Hillary is likely to bring.  Is there a Churchill waiting in the wings, somewhere, to salvage survival from defeat?  Maybe, maybe not, but even if there is, America's moral and geopolitical dominance and momentum could be broken by just four years of an anti-defense, anti-war Democrat government, so thoroughly that it might never, never, recover.

 

I can see that Vladimir Putin, for his own ambitions, is betting on this.  Russia's continuing support of Iran signals Putin's calculation that America will lose its will to defend its own national and international interests, and Iran and the Jihad movement will ultimately emerge the victors.  Putin wants to come out on the winning end of the game.  And so Russia arms Iran.

 

If America's will falters, a Russian-Iranian Axis will arise, perhaps very quickly, that could force America to make whatever concessions the Russian-Iranian axis demands, or commit to a much larger war than we have now, perhaps a nuclear war in which there could be no victors, only survivors.  Within years, not decades, very possibly within the first term of the next president.

 

I fear that this election will have enormous, and permanent, consequences for the future of America, and of the world, precisely because the allegedly leading Democrats appear to have no concept at all of what is at stake.  They appear to think only of tomorrow, and not of the day after tomorrow, only of the next election, and not of the decade after the next election, only of gaining power, not of the century after the next election.  If they were statesmen, and stateswomen, they would be asking, What will America's place in the world be, what will the world be like, in 2017, in 2107?  But, so far as I can tell, they are not, and they do not.

 

If Hillary Clinton (or Barack Obama, or John Edwards, or Ron Paul) is the next president, and the decision is made to lose, or surrender, or tacitly concede, the war with Jihadism, to "redeploy" and bring the troops home, the concerns of our social conservatives about gay marriage and abortion will soon pale into the dust of triviality and irrelevance, in comparison with the issues of geopolitical survival that will emerge.

 

Wherever a great power falters, whenever a power vacuum occurs, there are others, Iran, Russia, China, Al Qaeda, anxious to take the place of the fallen empire, and, in this case, it will be the place of an empire that has just committed geopolitical suicide, America.

 

If America elects a Democrat government next year, with bullet proof majorities in Congress and Hillary in the White House, it will be the beginning of the end of America as a superpower, and social conservatives' hopes for restrictions on abortion and gay marriage will fly out the window, gone with the winds of a liberal government, perhaps forever.  Gone, too, will be America's credibility as a paladin of liberty and civilization, its torch handed by America's Democrats to the religious totalitarianism of Jihadism.

 

And what of America's military, today the best in the world, as those of Alexander and Sparta once were?  An army follows a leader into battle, a leader who can inspire a soldier to risk, and sometimes give, his blood, his life, for a cause greater than himself, to volunteer his life for the safety and freedom of his friends, family, country.  No soldier, no army, can be inspired by a leader who disdains it, and we have heard the disdain of Hillary Clinton, of Barack Obama, of John Edwards, for America's soldiers, and for their mission.  A Commander in Chief who embraces defeat cannot lead an army to victory.  A President who disdains the office of Commander in Chief and embraces defeat, can only lead an army to defeat.

 

An America led by an anti-war, pacifist, isolationist, defeatist President will have a devastating effect on military morale, recruiting, and re-enlistment, and the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard, after four years under a Democrat President who disdains its role and mission, cannot sustain the morale and capability that it has today.  None of the anti-war, pacifist, isolationist, defeatist Democrat candidates for president, can inspire America's soldiers to carry out a mission which she, or he, the President, believes is wrong, without merit, without justification, a mistake.  What soldier will fight for a Commander in Chief who believes that soldier's mission is wrong, and that he (or she) should surrender, and withdraw?  What will President Hillary Clinton do for the morale of the armed forces?  Or President Barack Obama?  Or President John Edwards?  Or President Ron Paul?  I believe the long-term effect on America's military capability and morale would be a disaster from which America might never fully recover, as England has never fully recovered from its failure to prevent WWII, when it could.

 

The fates of nations sometimes hang on the decisions of one man, or one woman, in a position of power.  I hope that next year America elects a President, a Commander In Chief, who will make the right decisions, for the future of liberty in America, for the future of liberty and civilization in the world.