Dire Consequences

by Sam Huntington

What I find amazing, in spite of all the complaining “we the people” do about the state of our nation, of our politics, is that no one other than ourselves created our present-day problems. For people that regard themselves well educated or reasonably well informed, we have certainly made a mess of a once great country. It is a trend that has gotten worse over the past 100 years.

Have we always been politically naïve? Yes — and increases in population compounds this problem. In the year of my birth, the US population was 130 million; less than a quarter of those were squawking for entitlements. Now our population is approaching three times that number, with two-thirds of the people demanding their fair share of other people’s money.



The American people have never learned that voting decisions have dire consequences; nor is this always a matter of who we choose as president. Presidents appoint others to advise them. Too many poorly selected administrations have produced a lackluster country.

Here, let me offer two examples. In the first half of 1950, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung (grandfather to the present nitwit) made several trips to Moscow in an attempt to garner Soviet support for his plan to invade South Korea. Ultimately, the Russians gave their support.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, President Harry Truman amazingly ordered Defense Secretary Louis Johnson to gut the military, even while devising his so-called domino theory.  Concurrently, Secretary of State Dean Acheson “mistakenly’ omitted the Korean Peninsula from Truman’s Strategic Asian Defense Plan. This omission gave a green light to Kim Il-sung to invade South Korea.

Oops.

America went to war. In order to lessen the impact of his incompetence, Truman decided to call it a “police action.” It was a war. It resulted in the death of an estimated 1.2 million people with no clear victory to the Americans.

As the Korean War was getting off to its rocky start, Truman ordered Rear Admiral James H. Doyle to fly to Vietnam and meet with French authorities there. He wanted a clear assessment of French capabilities to hold Vietnam against communist aggression. Protecting dominos was the thrust of Truman’s cold war doctrine.

Upon arrival in Vietnam, Admiral Doyle met with the French Commander in Chief, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. The general was perfectly candid with Doyle. He told the admiral, “Everyone opposes us here: the communists, the non-communists, and the peasants in the villages. They don’t want any foreigners here. Given this reality, there is no way we can win against the Viet Minh.”

And of course, General de Tassigny was correct. In 1954, with the help of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, the Viet Minh crushed the French at Dien Bien Phu.

By this time, Eisenhower had become president, and he appointed John Foster Dulles as his Secretary of State. Dulles was no diplomat. While at the Geneva Convention in 1954, Foster refused to shake hands with China’s representative, Chou En-lai. Mr. Chou would answer this insult in a few more years.

By 1961, John Kennedy had already suffered three significant setbacks: the Bay of Pigs Invasion in Cuba, construction of the Berlin Wall, and he was forced to accept a negotiated settlement with the communist Pathet Lao movement. Kennedy was nothing if not inept.

While committed to the defense of Vietnam (in keeping with the Truman Doctrine), John Kennedy didn’t know whom he could trust there. He sent Vice President Johnson to Vietnam to assess the new South Vietnamese president, Ngo Dinh Diem. In Johnson’s view, Diem was the “Winston Churchill” of the Orient and Kennedy decided to give him his full support.

It wasn’t long before Kennedy realized that President Diem was no more than a thug ... uncannily similar to Johnson himself. Diem did more to advance the communist cause than even Ho Chi Minh. Ultimately, Kennedy ordered Diem’s assassination — just days before his own untimely demise.

Johnson’s two primary advisors were Dean Rusk and Dean Acheson. In spite of General de Tassigny’s warning about Vietnam, Johnson concocted the story of a North Vietnamese attack on American ships of war operating in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. Such an attack never took place, but it gave Johnson his war.  And who was the behind-the-scenes master strategist for the opposing side of this conflict?  Chou En-lai.

Dire consequences: an estimated 1.4 million people died in the Vietnam War, and the United States was strategically defeated in the Far East.

Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson did not achieve the presidency through Immaculate Conception. The American people placed them in office, and they in turn selected their advisors and counselors. The price Americans paid for their uninformed folly was the loss of sons, husbands, and sweethearts … and a cultural upheaval with consequences to the present day.

History is illuminating to those who bother to study it. The brutal truth is that America’s foreign policy has been inept for far too long. It is not a failing of one party. No one can imagine there is any substantial difference between Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Younger, or Barack Obama. They are all uninspiring. They all pose a clear and present danger to the interests of the American people. And so we might wonder why we keep electing morons to the presidency …

It would appear that we face two problems. In the first, we must confront the fact that our citizens are poorly educated and lack even a basic understanding of the issues that confront our nation, whether domestic or foreign policy. They have consistently demonstrated a penchant for making poor (and costly) choices.

“The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and, however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true to fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right.” — Alexander Hamilton

In the second, we are offered essentially two choices in the general election. We can choose dummy, or dummier. Not a single individual in the most recent Republican primary was qualified to serve as president. We can say with certitude that whenever the entire field of candidates consists of idiots, an idiot will be finally elected.

The previous twelve years must illustrate that we continue to live in a dangerous world. By selecting unqualified leaders, and they in turn inept advisors, we the people are making the world even more dangerous. How many tens of thousands have died needlessly in the Middle East? We cannot place the blame at the feet of our leaders: we elected them.

Today, we remain poised on the brink of conflict: North Korea, Syria, Egypt, Gaza, and Iran. No one is demonstrating a grasp of statesmanship. Not Obama; not any of his advisors, and no one in Congress.

Why are we blustering back and forth with Kim Jong-un? This young man is no more than an unsophisticated little twerp, confined to a rather miniscule section of the Korean Peninsula. Let him parade around his “cold war era” toys. None of those weapons would last more than five minutes in an open exchange with the United States. No one knows this better than Kim Jong-un.

My concern isn’t North Korea. My concern is that we have too many fools working inside the Washington beltway, elected by pathetically ill-informed citizens. Can we maintain the Republic under such circumstances? I think not.  But really, is this the best we can do?