All Hail, Geezer!
It has always been the old men who send the young off to war.
They pump them full of hatred for an unfamiliar enemy, fuel their addiction to a love of country that blinds them to reality, and arm them with a cause they perceive as a holy crusade in the pursuit of justice.
And, although this may be a bit of a generalization, it is the young ones who managed to avoid going to war that grow old and repeat the process with a different enemy, a new generation of young people, but using the same methods.
As so we find our commander in chief, the quintessential poster boy for avoiding combat, crafting a policy that is the antithesis of what millions in the country fought for in World War II.
We lost more than 400,000 American lives in a cause to prevent countries from using force to subvert, subject, or subdue other countries absent a world-wide consensus of the need.
We wrote, promoted, and signed the United Nations charter so that one country or group of countries cannot use power against others without facing the rest of the world standing in their way.
The system is not perfect, it is fraught with problems, but it is better than unilateral actions taken by would-be dictators or those with delusions of some perceived grievance against sovereignty.
We always tried to act in a manner that supported the spirit of that agreement. We made mistakes but corrected them and learned from them. We did not use force unless force was used against us.
How things have changed.
We are led by a Nero-like megalomaniac whose self-delusions and warped concept of American greatness has infected the minds of his followers.
They suffer blindness when it comes to his actions and the cost to this nation.
They are like the cheering Nazis applauding Hitler’s restoration of their standing in the world unable to see the coming disaster soon to befall them.
Today Venezuela, tomorrow Greenland. Where next we should ask? Where does it end?
If we would fight to the death to protect our own rights of sovereignty from foreign aggression, why should we expect others to surrender to ours?
By what right is our country’s security more important than the people of Greenland or any other targets of this President?
If Greenland is critical to our security, then wouldn’t we strive to be good allies, not potential invaders?
We formed NATO as a bulwark against the Communist dominated Eastern Europe. The core element is an agreement that an attack on one nation was an attack on all of us.
Now, we may find ourselves engaging in aggression against a NATO ally (Denmark) and pitting ourselves against the other NATO members’ obligations to come to their defense.
How does this make America great again? It doesn’t.
It does make us just another country that finds itself in a seemingly unchallengeable position of power being led by a delusional Caesar. What he, and all those other despots who came before him, fails to see is that not one of those empires survived.
But we truly have an opportunity to alter the seemingly inalterable path of history. But that window is closing quickly. These next three years will determine if we right the course of our errant national policy or turn out to be the last Americans.
Hail, Geezer, destroyer of Pax Americae!
(Author’s note: I must acknowledge and thank my friend, Jane Auger, for the “Hail, Geezer” line. Well crafted and on the money.)
