Friday, August 3, 2012

Beautiful For Spacious Skies


“Throughout our history…our power has brought justice where there was tyranny, peace where there was conflict, and hope where there was affliction and despair…Our country is the greatest force for good the world has ever known.”   

These words were spoken recently by Mitt Romney. Barack Obama said something of the same nature the previous day, less hyperbolic and less illustrative of the point I’d like to make which is; if you include only the italicized words you have an accurate description of what could rightly have been said on August 14, l945, VJ Day, about the good that American power had brought in the preceding five years

But five years does not a history make. There are more than two hundred others for which we are accountable. Of the three benefits of “our power” that Romney cited, let’s take a pass on “hope where there was affliction and despair.” This is too hard to measure and depends greatly on who’s answering the questions. But we can get a much better handle on “justice where there was tyranny” and “peace where there was conflict.”

Did we replace conflict with peace in Vietnam? I guess you could say we did just that, but not exactly as intended. We did it by getting out. Whatever one thinks of Saddam Hussein it’s hard to argue that there’s less conflict and more peace in Iraq today than before we replaced a dictatorship with “democracy.” I doubt that the people of Chile, the Philippines or Iran, as well as most historians, consider our active support of Pinochet, Ferdinand Marcos and the Shah as replacing tyranny with justice.

Showman that he is Romney saved the piece de resistance of his ode for the last sentence. “Our country is the greatest force for good the world has ever known.” Wow! That man sure can cover a lot of territory.


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