REMEMBER?
In 1941, when our nation experienced a surprise attack on our Pearl Harbor
Installations in Hawaii, President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked for and got a Declaration of
War from Congress. With that Declaration much that has “always” been considered
basic to or way of government changed.
Now, in 2002, we have been the victims of another surprise attack which took
thousands of lives at two locations - at the World Trade Center Towers in New York City
and at the Pentagon Building in northern Virginia. This attack - on September 11, 2001,too,
came from the air in the form of hi-jacked commercial airliners loaded with jet fuel and
piloted by members of suicide teams trained by El Quida located mainly in Afghanistan...
but not by a specific nation, as such. No declaration of war has been issued now at
almost six months after the two disasters.
This, in effect, means that President George W. Bush does not have the same,
special powers granted to FDR in 1941.
There is a special breed of politician and a corresponding group of egg-headed
critics in the private area, who rejoice in this sort of thing and make it their prime, lifework
to “defend the Constitution of this Great Nation” by publicly demeaning everything
President Bush might even consider doing to protect our country from this world-wide
menace of such a strange configuration as we have ever faced. Bush has made it very
plain that this is an unusual type of war , one which is totally different for any we have
been engaged within the past and that tactics to gain victory must also be different, as
well. Very often the critics fail to hear this view at all. War is war to them, it seems,
regardless of reality.
We are a “democracy” they are muttering now but the term has meanings for
them that the avenge American citizen does not see as being so absolute. President
Roosevelt infringed on the idea of habeas corpus when he decreed that all
Japanese-Americans be interred in prison camps until the war was over. He, no doubt,
cited the fact that when the Civil War got underway President Abraham Lincoln had
done him one better - the made the rule of habeas corpus illegal for all. When that
happens critics start using the word “dictatorship” without realizing they are contributing
to just that sort of impasse by refusing to accept the rule of duty elected officials.
There can be little doubt but that the French Revolution serves as a good example
of a proper American-style revolution gone wrong. We have been exceptionally fortunate
in this country in that, as we have adapted some of the socialist-oriented legislation of the
WWII emergency times to our normal, democraticlly-oiented peace time living, we have
been able to avoid excess. We accomplished much simply by using different terminology.
Instead of having a compulsory national insurance program, we have a Social Security
System. Most people do not even realize they pay a compulsory insurance premium - mine
happens to be in the $60.00 range each month, automatically and quietly removed from
my monthly Social Security “earnings”. The majority of recipients of Medicare think of it as
a “free” handout thing and do not realize they pay a monthly premium just as they would
to a privately-owned insurance underwriter. Those who are still working and not
“drawing” Social Security are unaware, for the most part, that they will someday be
buying such a health insurance “policy” and be charged a monthly fee - as a mandatory
exaction.
A person who has been, or is on any form of the welfare state relief program comes
to view the national entity in a different light than that in which he saw it before he or she
“benefited” from the system; started “drawing on their lifetime savings” as many would
put it.
We must keep these rather subtle changes in mind when we get involved in
fighting a “war” in any part of the world today. In order to exercise the need forcefulness
will be required. We are going to have to make sure we are strong at home - in all ways -
not just in superior armaments. Right now we are bickering about combining a hundred
government, often conflicting agencies, into one Cabinet level position. We are dwelling
on minor points and ignoring major ones, it seems, in favor of “political correctness”
We could well be writing our own ticket to Hell by failing to face up to realities and
pretending “things a pretty much the same as they have always been.” They are not.
A.L.M. June 2, 2002 [c781wds)
