by

John Wright

Recently my daughter and I discussed a variety of topics spanning immigration, terrorism, legal but unethical business practices and outsourcing of jobs to locations outside the USA. Her primary interest was on behalf of USA citizens having a secure and rewarding life. My comments addressed the reasons why our security and happiness have been compromised. She challenged me to tell her in a concrete and comprehensive manner what I would do to correct our present problems. Thus, I embark in this article on a voyage that will surely test my understanding of necessary actions. I approach this task with fear, as I suspect my "answers" will be controversial at least and likely cause me to depart from my ideals, to be practical.

Let me start with the idea that peace and prosperity exist only when all essential participants agree to follow one game plan. Internal or external strife brought about by those who are considered non-essential or of secondary importance can destroy the plan and its execution if they have power of any sort to demand consideration. Powerful people can also cause strife through unwitting greed that ultimately undermines their power. It is from that viewpoint I look at all human history as an individual struggle to be counted among the essential and powerful, and to maintain that position by using the labor and lives of the non-essential people in whatever manner appears appropriate at the time. Of course, we see where that approach has gotten us throughout history!

We do not have nor have we ever had a world evolution plan that considers all of us as fundamentally important or essential. Our entire history is one of conquest to take that which is deemed desirable at whatever cost to those who temporarily possess it. In short, we have no innate respect for human life or human happiness when those considerations are applied outside our nuclear group. The reason is that we believe life, the world, and all things in it, to be a zero-sum game.

For the first time in human history, we can see that expanding populations are indeed creating a zero-sum game, globally. Fundamental needs like desirable land and clean air are threatened, and we have nowhere to expand as we did in earlier centuries. Technology, travel and global commerce, not to mention television, have made the wealth of the few sickeningly obvious to the majority have-nots. We will either figure out how to bring them onboard or we will decide to destroy them, or else they will destroy us.

Consider that terrorism has been a reality for at least forty years, and that the sources of that terrorism are those who feel disenfranchised in either the Middle East or the Far East. Here-to-fore the terrorism was confined to those regions, but in the last twenty years the area of operations spanned Europe and is now in North America. What is happening is plain to see. The nations that feel economically downtrodden and dis-empowered to have manifest destiny within their regions have exported violence in the form of terrorism instead of waging conventional war.

Virtually all terrorism is of Islamic extremist origin, except in Ireland and Spain. I will not even consider whether the Islamic countries have good reason to feel wronged. I will only consider that their method of expressing contempt for the rest of us, terrorism, is not tolerable. Something definitive must be done to end that problem permanently.

In my book, Destiny, I presented a most challenging and rewarding potential future for Humanity. Those ideas are my true answer to Humanity and to my daughter, but her challenge to me is directed at the here and now. It seems that any would-be leader must deal real-time with current events. Thus, I look at our current problems far differently today than would a philosopher with no time constraints and a world at peace.

We have a killer or team of killers loose in the Washington, D.C. area, and the killings are seriously destabilizing that area. We have a belligerent country in the Middle East, Iraq, which we are prepared to invade to stave off potential future risk from any type of weapon of mass destruction. We now also have al-Qaida bombing a resort in Bali, and finally we have another belligerent, North Korea, with nuclear weapons. I believe that sums up our present list of problems, other than our poor economy. The Israelis have similar and more serious terrorist problems.

We have learned that diplomacy, as represented by UN efforts and our own envoys to the Middle East, has not been effective. We have no reason to believe that present UN deliberations re Iraq will be effective either. History has shown us during the last UN inspections in Iraq, that there is no firm resolve within the UN to demand compliance from Iraq. I thus see no path forward for the USA short of cessation of all interference in the Middle East and Far East, or, extreme military response, including North Korea.

The former course can be followed with the understanding that our role as world policeman is over, and with the understanding that our oil prices will rise and there will be wars that will redefine country boundaries in the Middle East and the Far East. We can no longer support Israel, Japan, Taiwan or South Korea militarily if we take the "hands off" approach. We can, however, resort to the latter course if any further terrorist activities occur here, including the killings in the Washington, D.C. area.

Taking the first course is a return to isolationism, which is in some ways attractive, e.g. keeping jobs at home. Unfortunately, isolationism in the absence of another world policeman will obviously lead to military opportunism in the ignored areas. It may also lead to us coming under direct attack at some future time, when expanded power excites leaders of overpopulated countries to consider our land.

The latter course can also be followed directly, in the belief that any further delay in asserting our supremacy will further weaken us. There will not be a better future time to decimate our enemies. One must kill while one still has the prerogative to do so definitively, completely and with no remorse. We last had that attitude when we bombed Japan. And let’s not play semantic games, the issue here is unquestioned global supremacy.

In a world that appears unable to work cooperatively through organizations like the UN, the future is either that of being the dominator or being the dominated. There is no middle ground and there is no historical precedent that shows any useful social evolution across the world, apart from our efforts to stimulate global trade instead of war. We are thus between a rock and a hard place, for if we allow the Middle East and the Far East to evolve without our control they will surely bring the entire world into war through economic and military aggression.

One formal warning might be given sequentially to Iraq and then North Korea, that provides them 30 days for complete capitulation, after which mass destruction is guaranteed by conventional or nuclear means if they fail to capitulate. It is that course which, if successful, will lead to the nuclear disarmament of India and Pakistan, and any other nation with dreams of nuclear weapons. Overall, what we want is global disarmament of all types for all small or less powerful nations.

No matter what I want, it is clear that diplomacy does not work unless we have guns and bombs behind it. We must either become the rulers of the Middle East and Far East or abandon those areas. There is no practical middle course. We have futzed around with communism in the Far East for over fifty years and we have nothing reliable to show for our efforts. We have futzed around with Middle East tensions for forty years and also have nothing to show for our efforts.

Which will it be? I favor the extreme military solution because it will abort future problems that will definitely result if we abandon the Middle-East and the Far-East, by allowing both regions to have their own "manifest destiny," which will one day include us losing our wealth and our land. I believe we should enlist British and Israeli military support openly and Russian military support clandestinely, for the Russians have much to gain by weakening their eastern neighbors. Frankly, no other country matters in a military sense. Millions of opposing ground troops mean nothing opposite a series of well-targeted massive nuclear explosions, and lets be honest, dead is dead no matter how it is achieved. Nuclear destruction is no less moral than a bullet or a conventional bomb, provided a "clean" bomb is used.

Neither the Russians nor we have destroyed any nuclear product that was once contained within ballistic missiles. We have that and more product available now for conversion to use in conventional bombs or missiles. The sheer quantity of product is more than sufficient to bring ten or more large countries to their knees, quickly. Moreover, we hide the fact of our own laser-based missile defense that protects us from ballistic missiles.

War in Afghanistan made clear the fact that we are not going to commit ground troops to fight an extended conventional war. The bulk of any future conflict approach will be through bombs and missiles that will pulverize any enemy capability to wage war. Any nation stupid enough to gather a large force of soldiers or military hardware in one area will simply lose them via nuclear annihilation.

What a hell of an answer to give to my daughter! Would I actually do what I proposed above if I were King? Am I not a pacifist? The sad truth is that one becomes a dead pacifist when facing others who covet land and other wealth and who are also powerful. I have always held a pacifist position up to the point where I am directly attacked. That has now happened both with 9/11 and with the other killings. Shall I wait for terrorists to poison a reservoir and kill fifty thousand of us? I am now ready to burn the olive branch and bring on the arrows. Even the great ideas in Destiny cannot succeed in a world chronically at war, so I reluctantly must put my normal pacifism aside.

Perhaps a lesson taught to one country, Iraq, will be enough. If so, we will be fortunate, for our word will be seen globally as the only law. If not, we are really in for a decade or more of mass killing to achieve unquestioned global supremacy. We may not win, but that risk is the price to pay for a nation that would prevail over all other belligerent nations, i.e., those who have chosen to ignore the UN concept. We can be a world policeman if we so choose. Alas, we will lack the good sense to leave once we conquer any regime … we will strangle in our occupation efforts.

Above all else, I believe an honest, formal warning is mandatory, complete with detailed description of what we will do and when we will do it if any aspect of our demands is left unmet. This means unconditional surrender to our will and our control of future events. This means we have the full intention to use conventional or nuclear weapons as necessary to complete our plan. It also means that if we go to war, we will intern all likely ethnic groups within the USA, as we did to the Japanese during WWII, to reduce the probability and number of occurrences of internal sabotage.

As for the killer(s) in the Washington, D.C. area, everyone makes a mistake sooner or later. The killer(s) will be caught, either through personal carelessness or random discovery. I will simply promise the killer(s) now on national television that we will succeed and that he/they will be kept alive to be tortured and then killed. The killer(s) is/are the lowest form of intelligent animals as he/they willfully hurt the innocent. He/they deserve no compassion.