OurFuture.org Blogs: ronr327

Has Jacob Weisberg Discovered the Rosetta Stone for the Iraq War?

ronr327 — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:17:57 -0400

In ‘The Bush Tragedy’ Weisberg propounds a logically coherent, if altogether chilling, unfolding of the Iraq War story. At its center is a literally paranoid Dick Cheney and a coterie of acolytes drunk on the same Kool Aid. They believed all that WMD, operational Al Qaeda contacts, we will be greeted as liberators stuff, and, sealed away in their own world, would entertain only confirmatory evidence, dismissing anything else pretty nearly apriori. Consideration of alternative courses of action were likewise dismissed in cavalier fashion. Add to that, with an America threatened by Acts of War, Cheney’s well documented fixation with the ‘Unitary Executive’, wherein the Constitution is understood to devolve all power and prerogatives relating to the President’s war authority upon the executive branch without exception, up to and including control of any and all flows of information. Finally, into the mix falls a psychologically flawed President, without a capacity to critically reflect upon either himself or the world around him, and a Dick Cheney who understands just how to exploit the situation.

It is almost as if three hermetic seals fall into place. The Unitary Executive, which seals the White House from all examination - let alone the normal checks and balances; an undying Hobbesian Cold War ideological intoxication holding sway inside the bubble, and a critically limited President, rendered psychologically susceptible to certain possibilities which open in the post 9/11 world, folded under the wing of a man who understands the situation and is willing and able to exploit it.

Warning: Change Election Being Hijacked!

ronr327 — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 09:53:01 -0400

For a long time, more or less two thirds of the American people indicated they believe the country is on the wrong course and needs to change direction. Nearly every poll has highlighted change as the electorate's principle concern. For the matter to now begin to turn on the question of whether or not we might elect a woman or a black man betrays the this well expressed concern, and the country's interests.

No one proposes that electing a black man will solve the problems of the economy, the Iraq War, and the leadership role America should pursue in the world after 9/11 - let alone the finding the right direction for the country. Nor is anyone proposing electing a woman President would accomplish those ends. Electing some particular woman, or some particular black man, perhaps, but that is another question.

So who is skewing the matter in the direction of race and gender?

Who would benefit?

Clearly the Republicans. A choice between a woman and John McCain, or between a black man and John McCain drains attention away from the real issues of concern. You can bet, in many and various ways the right wing media machine will echo with increasing force such attempts to reorient the debate. And of course our Main Stream Media will be all too easily suckered into aiding and abetting this ‘game’, not least because it fits in so readily with their flogging of the horse race aspect of elections.

In 1960 Kennedy famously offerd: I am not the Catholic candidate for President, I am a candidate for President who happens to be Catholic. So now Hillary Clinton must not be the woman candidate for President of the United States, but a candidate for President of the United States who happens to be a woman, and Barack Obama must not become the black candidate for President, but a candidate for President who happens to be black To turn the debate on the point of race or gender turns it away from the question of the where the country is going and how it is to get there. The REAL concern of the electorate at this moment.

OF NO little CONSEQUENCE?

ronr327 — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 23:11:49 -0500

David Ignatius is more or less considered be centrist, establishment sort, not associated with partisan extremes has this in a Washington Post OpEd: The Fading Jihadists.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR200802...

I have recently circulated the idea that Osama bin Laden has won the ‘Iraq round’ of the confrontation with Radical Islam. No one of note disagrees that the appeal of Radical Islam within the Arab/Muslim world, or, indeed within the Muslim world as a whole, has grown relatively greater since our 2003 invasion of Iraq. Since eliminating that appeal is the decisive key to the overall problem posed by the jihadists, we have lost valuable ground to Osama bin Laden. However, as presented in Igantius’ column, it is Sageman’s thesis that the ability of Al Qaeda to exploit the advantage Bush et al has handed to them has been seriously compromised – be it noted through efforts that had little or nothing with the Iraq War.

It has long been my expressed opinion that our foes were best described as a rag tag collection of fanatics who had nothing to offer their people beyond pyrotechnic nihilism and stagnation in a life closed to all the opportunities open to people in the modern world. Sageman suggests that the ‘rag tag’ descriptor is more apt than ever. It has also been my oft expressed opinion that the greatest hope Al Qaeda has is to ignite a far larger conflagration in their world in hopes they can ride that to some position of greater influence – although, given the nature of such a strategy, just how that might work out cannot be known. Sageman now suggests that the Arab/Muslim world is beginning to realize both the ‘dead end’ and sheer reckless, craziness of Al Qaeda and its thinking.

Time, it would appear, is on our side, just as it turned out to be in the Cold War.

'The Surge Is Working': Flip Side

ronr327 — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 23:41:10 -0500

I have proposed [on opendemocracy.net] that to take ‘the surge is working’ at the ‘rose colored glasses, ‘count your chicken’s before they’re hatched’ face value huckstered to us by the administration, its right wing coterie and John McCain(!) was all too likely to be naïve, and dangerously so.

In this light, please consider: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080225_the_calm_before_the_conflag... from Chris Hedges.

It sets out exactly what I proposed as a likely and significant reality lurking beneath the blue skies, pretty balloons, straight on to morning, we’re winning in Iraq screed the right wing echo chamber, and John McCain(!) have been so insistently urging upon us.

Now I don’t propose this confirms I have been right, but it strongly suggests my caution on the dangerous naïveté we may be courting WAS correct.

I do not endorse all that Hedges proposes, but if his numbers are anywhere near correct, and Petraeus is unaware of them, it would betoken a failure of epic proportions. If he is aware of them – and he has not, and neither he nor the administration has as yet – communicated to the American people the danger they portend, it would be an almost equal failure [there IS another word I could select].

One number Hedges cites is:

"The Sunni Arabs, who make up about 40 percent of Iraq’s population, held most positions of power under Saddam Hussein."

This flies in the face of the almost universal understanding that the breakdown is 20 % Sunni, 20% Kurd, and 60% Shia. However, it of real consequence that the Sunnis (or more particularly the broad mass of the Sunni population) believed they constituted better than 50% of the population of Iraq. The import being that the armies of young men they are amassing will believe that ,and will be further encouraged to fight thereby. Trouble!

Another place where I would take exception to Hedges:

The U.S. doled out funds and weapons to tribal groups in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty, but when the payments and weapons shipments ceased, the tribal groups headed back into the embrace of the Taliban."

No, they went back to their ages old internecine struggle for power and pelf, whose dysfunctions initially opened the door to the Taliban.

In closing, it should be noted how this definitively undercuts John McCain’s utterly simplistic and oft repeated, idea that Iraq will fall into the hands of Al Qaeda if we ‘fail’ in Iraq. How does anyone, observing armies of well armed Sunni, Shia and Kurd propose they will give up their country and its oil wealth to a small foreign collection of fanatics who are of no use to any of them? It is lunacy!

Change

ronr327 — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 23:41:30 -0500

This has been called a ‘Change’ election.

One problem with calling for change is crystallized in Hillary’s sarcastic moment:

www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/24/hillary-clinton-mocks-bar_n_88194.html - 147k -

Any reply to this should encompass:

Change, and especially great change, is difficult because it will almost certainly be opposed, and vigorously opposed.

We all understand this.

But change is difficult not only because it will be opposed, but because change itself is difficult. Even for those who believe passionately in it. For it requires us to think new thoughts, and to break new ground, and to place ourselves in unfamiliar places.

In this moment the American people appear to believe deeply that we need change, and someone who calls us to this moment by reminding us that we have done this before, by encouraging in us the confidence we can succeed, by calling us to once again become creatures of our hopes and not our fears is performing an inestimable service.

But, in a democracy, it is not the ‘leader’ alone who is critical; it is, it must be, ultimately, we ourselves who matter. It will almost certainly be from the wealth of our thoughts and talents and abilities that we will discover what is needed, and then find the will and the wisdom to implement it.

That is Obama’s message in this moment.

In the whole of his writing, indeed in the whole of the American cannon, Lincoln’s message to Congress 1862 is perhaps the single document most pregnant with meaning for the American Experiment. Its conclusion specifically addresses change and its difficulties: . .The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . ‘we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country . . . . We - even we here - hold the power and bear the responsibility.

All Honorable Men

ronr327 — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 14:20:21 -0500

I have written often about my perplexity concerning this administration and its courses. The most recent attempt , ‘Bush Who’, was mostly concerned with the President himself. It does not satisfy on the larger question of nearly inexplicable courses pursued by a whole administration. I find it possible, however, to propose something far more cynical and profoundly disturbing which does cohere. In the end, it ascends into a truly frightening empyrean.

To do this, we must go back to the University of Chicago and a Professor of Philosophy and the Classics who taught there from the late 40’s until the late 60s, Leo Strauss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss

In this, I first want to emphasize that I am by no means sure Strauss himself actually bears much real responsibility for what I am about to outline. His principle obsession(?) in these matters appears to have been a then widely expressed concern that democracies were liable to fecklessness. That is to say they would be slow and reluctant to defend themselves against threat (as witness the 30s experience with Fascism). Of course, why this should obsess intellectuals of Strauss’ era is all too obvious, but the associated anxieties can legitimately be extended to any era, time and place. In particular, although a clear a war for survival – WWII (after Pearl Harbor) – seems overwhelmingly likely to trigger an appropriate response (however dangerously belated it might be), what might happen when clearly vital interests (oil?) are in placed in jeopardy. Will democracies take the ‘necessary’ actions?

The unstated assumption would be that such will likely involve military aggression. THAT comes up against the consistent observation that modern democracies don’t fight wars. The reason for this is generally left to float out there as, more or less, ‘ a given’. In fact ‘the reason’ can be simply stated: modern democracies are prosperous, and their people understand better things to do with their lives than to go out there and get shot for strategic control of some ‘vital interest’. Find some other way! Cutting some deal or innovating are far more likely than not to be preferred to war - and democratically enjoined.

WAR!?! THAT’S ME! THAT’S MY KIDS!

The thinking which has been associated with Strauss centers on a Platonic formulation. The demos ultimately cannot be trusted. It is fickle, insufficiently reflective, and too ready to indulge irresponsibility. The responsible wise men of the society, its leaders, must exercise their powers to redeem such unfortunate situations as will, from time to time, arise. They are enjoined to do this by employing all their political skills, explicitly to include the telling of ‘noble lies’. That is to say, engaging the demos with such representations of things as will persuade it to do the difficult things that must be done. The wise men ‘know best’ and pursue ‘higher truth’.

Suppose then a group of ‘patriots’ who believe deeply in America. An America not simply of the blood or soil, but as an ideal of freedom and liberty, a beacon, a shining city on a hill, Lincoln’s ‘Last Best Hope of Earth’. An America to whom the opportunity has fallen to lead the world, in the world’s own best interest, to a promised land. It would be criminal to fail this responsibility. But, these patriots clearly see, as just suggested, an inconstant, often heedless American body politic, easily diverted and too often ‘not up to the task’.

What to do?

The Project for a New American Century was formed in the 1990’s as think tank like effort to consider America’s future on the world stage.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

Ultimately PNAC offered a blue print: Rebuilding America’s Defenses.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

PNAC became an explicit continuation of a group under Wolfowitz in the Bush I administration that (with Cheney’s blessing) set up to strategize outside the box. What they came up with was issued as ‘Plan B’. It proposed an American leadership whose proper objective would be to make and keep America paramount, the only power able to truly shape things, and that compromising allies - who might not ‘go along’ with America’s vision - as well as opposing our foes might be contemplated. When Plan B went public, George H W Bush was appalled, publicly condemned it, and had it both withdrawn and specifically rejected by those associated with it.

Perhaps the two most signature items in Rebuilding America’s Defenses are an injunction that our military must be prepared to fight multiple simultaneous major theatre wars, and a lamentation that it might take ‘another Pearl Harbor’; to allow us to ‘go there’.

Then comes 9/11.

By some chance, by some quirk of fate, (or by the hand of God?), a number of these ‘patriots’ find themselves uniquely positioned to play the role of Platonic wise men. How can they not seize the opportunity?

What would they do?

First find a ‘causus belli’. Initially very easy: Afghanistan. But they cannot succeed too well. A palpable blow must be struck, but not in any way conclusive. A longer term objective, more involving, more deeply engaging is needed. Saddam Hussein and Iraq are by far the most likely target. And beyond this a ‘Great Enemy’ must found. And it is! Radical Islam: especially in its conjunction with modern technology. [From the National Security Strategy of 2002: “The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology.” An almost infinitely inflatable bogeyman is realized, inspiring fear and outrage. Kept alive in the public imagination, enlivened as it will be by the all too real trauma of 9/11, we arrive at something which conspires to keep us creatures of our fears. A ‘permanent’ injunction to make the hard choices, and bear the difficult burdens necessary to keep America strong and dominant.

So tell those ‘Noble Lies’!

It must rip the heart out of any American to observe that nearly everything we (which is to say our ‘patriots’) have done finds a coherent explanation within this framework. The ‘failures’ aren’t failures at all. They offer excuses to continue on chosen courses. We didn’t want to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, barely three months after 9/11. How could the American public be persuaded on Iraq if Al Qaeda, who so hideously attacked us on 9/11, and to whom Saddam might give ‘those weapons’, was out of business, with its leader dead or facing international justice? Why concern yourself overly with taking maximal steps to prevent Al Qaeda from getting at least some of Saddam’s weaponry - some lesser stuff as we gather the bulk to justify our invasion? (Recall - all of the world’s security agencies knew Saddam had no nuclear capability.) How else could we have been so casual as we managed to secure NO Weapons of Mass Destruction? (If we hadn’t found any, then, at best, Osama could have found but little.) Ultimately, of course, everyone lucked out: there were no W.M.D.s. Then an insurgency in Iraq, along with other problematic situations in Middle East (IRAN!, Pakistan), works to our benefit, providing reasons for a continuing strong military presence in a vital, resource rich, region of the world. And, needless to say, violence and turmoil in the area constantly serves to refresh our fear of ‘the bogeyman’. Finally, why truly settle the Israeli Palestinian conflict, since the ability of such a solution to compromise the appeal of radical Islam – and diminish the ‘bogeyman’ - is all too manifest?

So, then, who are our ‘wise men’.

To begin with, let me say who I believe they are not, starting with the President himself. Neither I, nor, I expect, anyone, can see Bush even conceiving a permanent group of Platonic ‘wise men’, telling noble lies’ and guiding the country. However, for reasons I suggest in ‘Bush Who’, he proved to be highly susceptible, a ‘set up’, for their objectives after 9/11. And I believe he is knowingly and sincerely committed to the idea that, in the choices his administration has made since 9/11, he is pursuing some ‘higher truth’, or deeper reality, and that it is his job to ‘sell’ the choices made. And, of course, as President: HE IS RESPONSIBLE!

I would find it hard to believe any of our serving military are part of a group of self elected ‘wise men’. It is too contrary to American tradition, training and - far from least - the honor of our military. I must observe, however, that these same individuals are surely susceptible to injunctions to maintain high levels of American military strength.

I would find it hard to believe our judiciary would be involved – again too contrary to our history. But, as well, recent trends to the right have placed in highly consequential positions individuals who are manifestly likely to be more, rather than less, sympathetic to appeals in favor of greater governmental authority in national security matters. Exactly what our ‘wise men’ might hope for.

I do not believe Colin Powell to have been in on this at all, but Powell’s ‘good soldier’ orientation did not serve this country well in a critical moment. Nor do I believe Condoleeza Rice was in any way involved, although, like others I believe she proved all too persuadable.

So then, WHO?

At one point or other, and in critical positions all too often:

In Power – Cheney, to begin with, along with David Addison and I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby; then the Defense Department axis of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and including sometime national security gadfly and ‘advisor’ Richard Pearl. In Justice, John Woo must certainly be a possibility.

In Support - I deem likely to be ‘in’ with the idea of Platonic ‘wise men’

public intellectuals like Irving Kristal and his son William, Norman Podhoretz, and Charles Krauthammer.

Then in broader support, although unwitting, a truly massive operation consisting of right wing media, the money that finances both that media and various aggregations that provide ‘think tank’ underpinning for the directions our ‘wise men’ have charted, and finally a Republican Party all too mindlessly compliant, chiefly in what amounts to a devil’s bargain for holding on to political power, with all that power’s other uses.

NOW UNDERSTAND: I am not asserting that there really is an operative group of ‘wise men’, but that the operation of such offers the only (nearly?) coherent explanation for all that has happened. As one who made a career in science, which works to discover exactly such explanations, I am fully aware that the existence of a logical explanation in no way constitutes PROOF. Unfortunately the arrival of a logically coherent explanation comes with the proposal of a point of view I believe would revolt any American, explicitly including the gentlemen just proposed to have elected themselves as our ‘wise men’.

I am, in general, a resolute foe of conscious conspiracy theories. Unconscious ones, conspiracies of commonly held self-interest, even self-delusion, I deem far more likely. But what I have proposed here is explicitly a conscious one. Nevertheless, I find it not unreasonable to suppose a group of ‘super-patriots’, convinced of the nation’s need, persuaded of their own unimpeachable honor, and the virtue of their ultimate aims, who could accept Strauss’ arguments for Platonic ‘wise men’ and the telling of ‘Noble Lies’.

If the attendant circumstances were not so grave, it would qualify as farce.

To conclude. if there is a conscious conspiracy, it is treason pure and simple. But setting that aside, I believe these people have broken American law and betrayed such sacred trusts that President George W Bush and Vice President Richard B.

Cheney should be impeached and removed from office. Our history cries out for it.

My personal conviction runs deeper. I believe it would be just if President George W. Bush,Vice President Richard B. Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were arraigned, indicted, tried and a verdict reached for Criminal Incompetence and Criminal Negligence over the Iraq War. Guilty or not guilty, I would be content. If the verdict were guilty and punishment imposed, I believe justice would have been served. If that punishment were death, I would believe justice had been served. I am appalled that I should think this last, but I do. And I am saddened well beyond words.

‘. . . we, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility’ - Abraham Lincoln, message to the Congress 1863.

All Honorable Men!

Right On Day 1

ronr327 — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:36:11 -0500

Twice on Iraq Barack Obama has summed up things with a simple precise phrase.

Before the war he said he was not opposed all wars, he was opposed to dumb wars. It drew our attention to the core of the matter. What made this war, at this time, in this way THE way to proceed after 9/11, and against Islamic Radicalism.

The wisdom to act is not wisdom in the actions chosen.

With respect to where we are now, Obama has said we need to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. Again right to the heart of the matter. We cannot leave Iraq spiral down into a catastrophic failed state.

Success in leaving behind an even tenuously stable state is the only ‘victory’ we can achieve now. Osama bin Laden has already won the Iraq round in our confrontation with Radical Islam The relative appeal of the jihadist agenda has grown in the Arab/Muslim world since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The debate isn’t over whether to achieve a stable Iraq, it is over how best to do it.

Framing the debate around the level of American troops in Iraq at some given time is something the administration’s supporters are all too eager to do. The administration’s critics understand we have long needed to significantly widen an essentially military commitment to meaningfully include political, economic and diplomatic initiatives. Senator Obama has indicated he means to do just that. In the process, applying pressure on Iraq’s factions to politically reconcile by drawing down our troop levels is one legitimate avenue to be explored.

But the bottom line remains as Obama has framed it: we need to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in.

Two ‘spot on’ insights, ‘spot on’ in their placing in time as well.

And we can elect this guy President!

Do we want to go with someone who has been so sharply and unerringly right, or someone who saw less clearly (Hillary Clinton), or with little clarity at all, who has more or less been in the corner of an administration that has been virtually without any clarity at all: John McCain.

Why should we now have confidence in the judgment going forward of a John McCain? Why should we apriori accord him credibility, and deny it to Barack Obama (on the basis of ‘experience’ no less!), when Obama’s clear and timely insights have been so pointedly right? If Obama has chosen (and he is far from alone in this) to champion a far broader and encompassing reconstruction of our effort in the confrontation with Radical Islam, why should we not accord what he proposes respect and careful consideration.

Most (all?) of what we have heard from McCain emphasizes an essentially military engagement – albeit one which now encompasses a broad counter insurgency strategy – as opposed to merely more troops on the ground, or what McCain seemed to be proposing for most of time he was fitfully in opposition to Bush’s course in Iraq.

In 2004, McCain had a real opportunity to change the administration’s course. Instead he backed Bush wholeheartedly while still entertaining, he would have us believe, a conviction things were seriously wrong with Bush’s efforts. Does anyone really propose McCain believed his Senate colleague, John Kerry, who had elected to go to war for his country in Vietnam, served, was wounded, and decorated for his service, would ‘cut and run’ in a matter so clearly of great consequence? Does anyone believe McCain could have seen so great a gulf between the two, that he had no choice but to uncritically support, and not substantively challenge, Bush on policies McCain believed were so very wrong? He might have had a real effect, but chose not to act. Wisdom? Judgment? Experience?

Right on Day 1?

With Barack Obama, we have substantive evidence that, in the moment itself, there is reason to have confidence that he will be: Right on Day 1.

Reflections (with notes) on Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton

ronr327 — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:37:17 -0500

In political matters, as in many others, we tell ourselves stories about who we are, where we are going, and what we are about. When we grow tired of a story, or sense that a new one is needed, we go looking. These moments define periods of flux where change is both welcomed and a source of anxiety.

The late 1950’s and early 1960’s presented us with such a moment. We understood, at some deeper level, that the world had not only changed, but defined itself anew [1]. Yet there was, at a conscious level, no attendant framing story to articulate what was little more than a growing awareness.

On to the stage stepped John Kennedy. With his youth, wit, energy, vigor and intellect, he inspired us to believe we would forge a ‘new story’ to orient ourselves and move us successfully through the second half of the 20th century.

When he was killed, it all went away.

The only ones left standing were old politicians and their old politics. And they led us back to the past. It could be no other way. It was all they knew, and lacking both Kennedy’s sense the country was looking for something new, and our deeper longing for it, it was all they could do. [2]

So now, after 9/11, a new reality has shaped itself. So now an old politics, riddled with old contentions, holds our politics and politicians in thrall.

And onto the stage Barack Obama strides, calling for change. Young, vigorous, with a clear and penetrating intellect, he urges us to embrace a moment of flux, to stand forth once again as creatures of our hopes, to have the confidence we will discover a new story to orient ourselves, and our allies around the world, in constructive and purposeful endeavor.

It is in this that Obama’s great appeal resides. He is telling us: Have confidence in yourselves; working together we can do this. We’ve changed in the past and emerged all the stronger for it. We can, and must, shake off the miasma of fear the current administration has worked so hard to trap us in. Break free, and this free people can and will discover successful new stances and new strategies. [3]

‘. . . we, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility - Abraham Lincoln, message to the Congress 1863.

Hillary Clinton is everything her advocates say she is: deeply committed, highly talented, and an extremely well prepared individual, but by her life and her history, she is tied to the past. She has strategies, plans, and proposals all lined up and ready to go. The very concrete nature of all of that is ineluctably tied to past experiences and trials, and consequently cannot help but gravitate around an old politics. All of these proposals are eminently worthy of consideration, and I am confident any Democratic administration would be eager to pursue them.

However, through no fault of her own, she is also tied to the past by forces beyond her control. In a concerted, persistent, and virulent effort, the conservative right set out to bring down the Clinton Presidency in flames from day one. And it did not hesitate to go beyond the President, but eagerly sought out anything and everything it could bring to bear, ultimately trashing and demonizing both Bill and Hillary. The ‘polarization’ with which the Clintons (and now especially Hillary) are charged is largely the creation of that right wing effort. Nevertheless, ‘that ‘stuff’ is out there, and will surely be brought to bear in the coming election campaign - and after, as she would try to govern and bring her agenda into being. This reality cannot be brushed aside in choosing the Democratic nominee.

So, do we now want someone, however well intentioned and well prepared, but tied to a more concrete and fixed vision, or someone who inspires us with confidence we can ride the flux: We can, we must, do this ‘new thing’?

[1] Emerging from the Second World War as by far the least damaged and most powerful nation in the world, we proceeded through 15 years of peace and prosperity; assumed, by default, the leadership of a world wide alliance dedicated to containing a vast totalitarian threat, establishing and maintaining, in the process, an enormous and unprecedented peacetime defense establishment. Yet, by 1960 we sensed burgeoning new energies, and felt ourselves capable of more.

[2] Arguably, the great youth unrest of the later 60’s reflected the perception on the part of the young that there was nothing out there which explained or rendered purposeful the altered world they saw all about them. They ‘tuned in’, ‘turned on’, and ‘dropped out’.

[3] The ultimate strength of a Democracy may well lie in a permanent capacity for renewal, for new energies and ideas to well up from the broad base on which it resides.