War is bad, and everybody wants peace. Well, almost everybody. There are, we must admit, people who want to wipe out their neighbors, dominate the planet, or take possession of high-end real estate. But setting these exceptions aside, most of us would like to believe that no serious wars will occur in the foreseeable future; for as all children know, there is a Peace Fairy, who inspires many high officials of the U.S. government.
The Peace Fairy is a cousin of the Tooth Fairy. He attaches to people of childish political disposition who entertain utopian notions. The British essayist and biographer, Thomas Carlyle, referred to such people in a book titled Characteristics. He said that their "generous Affections have become well-nigh paralytic," being subject to "the reign of Sentimentality." They are also quite arrogant, believing themselves morally superior. According to Carlyle, "the luxury of doing good; charity, love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness and all manner of godlike magnanimity -- are everywhere insisted on, and pressingly inculcated in speech and writing, in prose and verse...."
Thursday morning President Barack Obama spoke before the United Nations. His listeners got to see his "generous Affections" under "the reign of Sentimentality." The President's faith in the Peace Fairy was almost as touching as his concern for the global economy. We are told that Obama's primary focus is to rescue the global economy from "potential catastrophe." This can be done by spending enormous sums of money which must be borrowed (see also, the Money Fairy). Since Obama blames Wall Street for the global recession, the best solution is for the U.S. president to make good on other people's losses, even taking responsibility for Third World countries. As crazy as it sounds, that is what Obama believes. How one man can assume such responsibility is unclear. But the President's god-like pose with regard to the global economic crisis is nothing when compared to his "charity, love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness and all manner of god-like magnanimity" in the cause of world peace.
The President's speech touched on the idea of "a world without nuclear weapons." He spoke of joining with Russia to "sign the most comprehensive arms control agreement in decades." He further boasted, "We have reduced the role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy." If only the Iranians and the Chinese would take a similar path. But no matter, President Obama believes in the Peace Fairy:."As part of our efforts on non-proliferation [of nuclear weapons]," he explained, "I offered the Islamic Republic of Iran an extended hand last year...." As if in response, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking from the same podium a short while after President Obama, suggested that "some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the [9/11] attack." Ahmadinejad further suggested the attacks were orchestrated to reverse a "declining American economy and ... to save the Zionist regime." The U.S. delegation walked out of the hall during Ahmadinejad's speech, along with representatives from Britain, Sweden, Australia, Belgium, Uruguay and Spain." President Obama had already left the United Nations by this time, but later reacted with surprise at the Iranian's "outrageous and offensive" comments. This, of course, is one of the men that Obama wants to make peace with.
According to President Obama, Iran has "failed" to demonstrate peaceful intentions with regard to its nuclear program. So how is this problem going to be resolved? The door remains open for diplomacy, says President Obama, "but the Iranian government must demonstrate a clear and credible commitment, and confirm to the world the peaceful intent of its nuclear program." But the Iranian government is never going to do this, and the President should have no illusions. Even so, he believes in the Peace Fairy; and rather than effectively reducing the nuclear arsenals of others, the President is determined to reduce America's nuclear arsenal (for he has all but admitted that the Russians are going to cheat on the new treaty). It is ridiculous beyond words to have this statesman-child, standing before the United Nations, lecturing representatives from dozens of criminal regimes on the politically correct path to peace. That dreamt of utopia, that magical land where everything wrong has suddenly been "righted," where the hen cuddles with the weasel and the lion lies down with the lamb, is not attainable. It does not exist. To expect the violent psychopaths of yesteryear to transform themselves into peacemakers is a sign of political immaturity. Here, in the supposed Age of Science, our politics has degenerated to a form of pandering in which the panderer no longer recognizes the falsity of his own empty promises, but believes that his own good intentions are all-in-all sufficient. Here, in this dreamt up utopia, there is no struggle for food, no animosity of man against man, no bigotry or religious fanaticism. Victory for all mankind is automatically guaranteed by "the forces of history," or the "dialectics of matter," or by the "science of socialism."
As a true believer, the President spoke of his pledge "to support the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security...." Obama said it was cynical to imagine that Jews and Arabs are too distrustful and too divided internally to forge a lasting peace. According to the President, "Some say ... peace is simply not possible."But, he says, peace must be possible. To the contrary, history teaches that there will be no peace. Common sense tells us the same thing. The Arabs are not reconciled to Israel's existence, even now. As Yaacov Lozowick observed in his book, Right to Exist:
All the Arabic readers I have tell me unanimously that while some Palestinians grudgingly accept that Israel may be here to stay, none of them acknowledge the right of the Jews to be here. Hence, should Israel ever lose her overwhelming military and economic superiority, her very existence will come into question. The late Faisal Husseini ... repeatedly said -- in Arabic -- that making peace with Israel would be merely a stage in the conflict, which would continue by other means.
How can there be an agreement when the Arab side refuses to acknowledge the right of a Jewish nation-state to exist? The Arabs have refused to make peace, noted Lozowick, because of their belief that Judaism is a religion, not a nationality, and therefore the Jews do not need or deserve their own state. On this central point, the most avid peace-makers on the both sides cannot agree. According to Lozowick, "there is nothing left to strive for." President Obama's striving, therefore, is due to his belief in the Treaty Fairy. If Obama leaves good intentions under his pillow the Peace Fairy will deliver up a treaty, signed by the region's chief warmongers and killers. The same type of agreement is supposed to protect us, as well, from a future nuclear war, by removing all nuclear weapons from the earth. It is as if the entire history of mankind, heretofore, was unknown; as if we have learned nothing about ourselves as a species; namely, that mankind easily becomes intoxicated by hatred, which leads to open warfare.
The father of history, a Greek writer named Herodotus, gave us a chronicle of serial murders, massacres and wars. And little has changed since the fifth and sixth centuries B.C. The political despots of antiquity were no different than the despots of today: bloody, cruel, and treacherous. Hitler and Pol Pot were not aberrations. They were part of a long line of killers stretching back to Cyrus the Great. Most Middle East leaders today are no different than those described by Herodotus. But here is an admission that President Obama would dismiss as "cynical." The tragic view of the world, which is the adult view, has no place in the childish mind of a utopian dreamer.
History is merely an account of the way people actually behave. It is not a tale for children. It is strictly for adults. Consider three historical samples: (1) The Roman dictator Sulla, in the act of reinstating the Roman Republic, stacked a large number of decapitated heads on his porch; (2) Julius Caesar cut off the hands of thousands who took up arms against him in Gaul; (3) President Harry S. Truman dropped two atomic bombs on innocent women and children in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Does the reader imagine that we are done with war because we are somehow better than the people living in the age of Sulla or Caesar, or Harry S. Truman? The concern that I have tried to communicate, again and again, has to do with the realization of who man is and what kind of weapons he now has at his disposal. As for massacring innocents, the Americans are not the worst of modern offenders; certainly not worse than the Russians or Chinese. And that is reason for concern as well, if you noticed the ongoing modernization of Russian and Chinese nuclear forces (while U.S. forces are in decline). The best solution, under the circumstances, is to maintain the balance of power (i.e., the nuclear balance). But we have lost interest in doing this, so that our survival is no longer assured. When Russia and China realize they can wage nuclear war against the United States without fear of retaliation, then America will cease to exist. The disappearance of America from history is difficult for Americans to imagine, but it is undoubtedly the direction in which we are headed. The children among us deny all of this. Theirs is a politics of denial. And it seems that these children are now in charge, making policy.
America has become a political Disneyland where fantasy has completely taken the place of reality in terms of (1) deficit spending; (2) "free trade"; (3) government protection for bad investments; (4) open borders; (5) arms control policy (6) the raising of children; (7) the collapse of public education; (8) immigration policy; (9) and tax policy. Even more ominous, we find in our midst a rising tide of misfits, defectives, and slackers. The appearance of such people has been made possible by a massive capitalist machine, which has blessed us with an overabundance of goods and services. Now the machine is blamed by our own president, who seeks universal peace and an economic fix for every country on earth. And he blames Wall Street, the heart of the capitalist machine, for damaging the global economy. Therefore, as he reaches for his utopia, he will cook the goose that lays the golden eggs. Imagine then what will become of this aforementioned mass of unsustainable humanity that has grown up around us.
Perhaps the Free Food Fairy will save us, along with the Money Fairy and the Freebie Fairy.
Thomas Carlyle says of our utopian dreamer, "The barrenest of all mortals is the Sentimentalist. Granting even that he were sincere, and did not wilfully deceive us ... what good is in him? Does he not lie there as a perpetual lesson of despair?"
