{"id":3385,"date":"2014-05-27T22:53:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T19:53:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/?p=3385"},"modified":"2017-11-14T21:28:11","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:28:11","slug":"history-should-matter-ii-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/history-should-matter-ii-2\/","title":{"rendered":"History should matter II"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"President Barack Obama has come under increasing criticism for being weak, vacillating in the use of American power.\u00a0 The infamous \u201cred line\u201d drawn over Bashir al Assad\u2019s use of chemical weapons, along with allegations of failing to act more decisively in Syria and Ukraine and the infamous and seemingly toothless \u201cpivot to Asia\u201d are exhibits a, b and c in these allegations.\u00a0 Allies and partners around the world are described as alarmed over the seeming absence of U.S. leadership along with a rapid decline in the authority of and respect for America.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
But wait—-have we not been here before?\u00a0 Pick a year.\u00a0 1968 is a good choice.\u00a0 In late January, North Korea high-jacked USS Pueblo on the open seas, the first time a U.S. Navy ship was captured since the war of 1812.\u00a0 One week later, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive.\u00a0 Despite the destruction of the invading force, television icon Walter Cronkite would declare the war all but lost.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Amidst the riots over Vietnam, Johnson declared he would not seek his party\u2019s nomination for president.\u00a0 A week later in April, Martin Luther King was assassinated.\u00a0 The Secret Service declared Chicago to dangerous for Johnson to attend the Democratic convention that nominated Hubert Humphrey for president.\u00a0 And while other reasons for LBJ\u2019s absence were clear, riots broke out regardless that marred the convention.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Later that summer, Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union declared his doctrine and sent the Red Army into Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague Spring.\u00a0 America\u2019s reputation was in tatters.\u00a0 Red China as it was then called was flexing its muscles.\u00a0 And of course the march of the Soviet Union towards military superiority in nuclear and conventional arms over the west seemed inexorable.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Still, some believe today is unique and conditions far more dangerous and unstable than in the past accelerated by American weakness and lack of leadership. If 1968 is not to your liking, try 1973 (the October Yom Kippur War and the U.S. nuclear alert); 1974 and Nixon\u2019s resignation; 1982 and the crisis in Europe over Euromissiles; and the economic crises of 2007 and 2008 as other examples when conditions were not very healthy.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Too often, as Mark Twain observed in a different context, America has been counted out.\u00a0 But do not count on that.\u00a0 Yes, this column has been very critical of the Obama administration (as it had been of George W. Bush) both domestically and internationally.\u00a0 This White House is long on sweeping rhetoric and promises and too often absent when it comes to implementing policy or taking action, the Osama bin Laden mission withstanding.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The dismal roll-out of the Affordable Health Care Act and the absence of compelling narratives to explain to America publics policy choices for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, North Korea and Iran for example are inexplicable.\u00a0 Yet why do we tolerate North Korea with its boy leader as a nuclear weapons state while declaring Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons ambitions unacceptable?\u00a0 The White House has failed to articulate its positions.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Foreign friends and adversaries alike may gripe about the failure of U.S. leadership.\u00a0 But let us be very careful in responding to those charges as much as the \u201cloyal opposition\u201d would like to use them to discredit this administration and blacken the record of the leading Democratic contender for the nomination, Hillary Clinton.\u00a0 The Democrats did the same to George W. Bush and John McCain although, in fairness, the war in Iraq was the greatest blunder since the Cold War and two administrations have failed and will fail in Afghanistan.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The United States is the most powerful country in the world economically and militarily.\u00a0 Exercising power however is far more complicated. In the case of the military, it is impossible to defeat by force of arms alone an adversary that possesses no army, navy or air force without other tools of statecraft and economic development—tools that have yet to be perfected.\u00a0 And, as much of the danger stems from radical religious ideologies, mounting counter-campaigns to discredit and rebuke these perversions of Islam has proven beyond the reach of both Republican and Democratic administrations.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Too many crises today have no solution let alone a good one.\u00a0 As in Syria and elsewhere, the choices may be between worse, worst and \u201cworstest.\u201d\u00a0 That American politics has descended to the circles of Hell is not also helpful.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
No easy solution exists. A better explanation by the White House of its policy choices is crucial.\u00a0 And a better understanding of history can at least mitigate exaggerating every crisis as the worst in our lifetimes.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Barack Obama has come under increasing criticism for being weak, vacillating in the use of American power.\u00a0 The infamous \u201cred line\u201d drawn over Bashir al Assad\u2019s use of chemical weapons, along with allegations of failing to act more decisively in Syria and Ukraine and the infamous and seemingly toothless \u201cpivot to Asia\u201d are exhibits a, b and c in these allegations.\u00a0 Allies and partners around the world are described as alarmed over the seeming absence of U.S. leadership along with a rapid decline in the authority of and respect for America. \u00a0 But wait—-have we not been here before?\u00a0 Pick a year.\u00a0 1968 is a good choice.\u00a0 In late […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,76,86,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog-en","category-harlan-ullman-en","category-international-peace-security","category-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3386,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3385\/revisions\/3386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}