I'm leaving Monday for a week in the Carolinas, and reckon it's as good a time as any to summarize how I see the American situation at the end of August in the neoconservative year of our Lord 2006.
On the devastating morning of the Wednesday after the Tuesday after the first Monday of November 2004, a friend of mine said, "Well, maybe it's a good thing Bush won. At least this way, the neoconservatives can't blame the Democrats for not being able to clean up after their fiascos." Yeah, I thought at the time. Without a congressional majority, John Kerry would have had a tough road to travel as he tried to pick up the pieces of young Mister Bush's Humpty Dumpty policies.
As we approach the 2006 congressional elections, the Democratic Party faces the same sort of challenge, except now the Cheney Chain Gang has had two additional years to louse things up. In 2004, our ship of state was stuck on shoal waters in the Arabian Gulf, and taking on water. Now it's bow down in quicksand. Afghanistan and Iraq are irreversible failures, made even worse by the punt-play end zone fumble of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict. China, Russia and Iran threaten to end the dominance of U.S. influence in Southwest Asia. The Euros are distancing themselves from us. Even with our British lapdog shies away from us.
The neoconservative dream of global domination through military force has burst like a confetti balloon. Despite its unmatched ability to prevail in symmetrical combat operations, America's "best trained, best equipped" military in history has been shown to be unable to defend the country against terrorist threats and ineffective at achieving America's strategic objectives overseas. Our growing national debt and trade deficit, along with the shrinking of the housing bubble, are driving us toward a potential Black Friday apocalypse. The American middle class is hanging on by virtue of credit cards and home equity, and the revered U.S. constitution is wrapped on a roll next to the commode in Dick Cheney's bathroom.
There is no such animal, vegetable or mineral as a quick solution to the burning bag of disasters the neoconservatives and their GOP liegemen have deposited on America's front porch. So don't get too excited or dismayed over the fact/perception that the Democrats don't have a coherent alternative vision to the Republicans' policies. America is in a decline. We're not ready to start building a new grand strategy, we're in a triage situation. To emerge as a credible power in the Next World Order, we need to stop as much of the bleeding as quickly and effectively as we can.
And the best way to do that is to clamp a tourniquet around the neck of the GOP come November.
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See you in a week. Don't let anything happen while I'm gone!
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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (Retired) writes from Virginia Beach, Virginia. Read his commentaries at ePluribus Media and Pen and Sword.
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