Tuesday, December 12, 2017

No such Thing as Jacksonian America

The human predisposition to believe in a power outside the self and outside the ordinary, leads some people to identify with and draw strength from such power, however mythical it may be.

To satisfy that craving, individuals of the cultures that had a glorious ancient past, tend to create myths rooted in the reality of their past achievements. As to individuals of the cultures that live in the glorious present, they tend to create myths rooted in the fiction of larger than life figures that lived in the recent past. Aside from Ronald Reagan who is almost universally accepted among Americans to have been a towering figure, there are people who try to make Henry Jackson a towering figure, and create a myth around what they believe was his approach to foreign policy.

Henry Jackson was a Democratic Congressman and Senator who ran to be president of the United States but never made it. He was so ambitious he could not help but be opportunistic, jumping on every occasion to advance his career. One opportunity he thought could do him a great deal of good was the falling out that happened between the Jews who wanted to populate Israel with new immigrants, and the Soviet Union that had a large number of potential Jewish immigrants, but would not allow them to leave the country.

Thus, while the Jews were chanting: “Let my people go,” Henry Jackson that had Jews on his staff – later identified to have been neocon material – began to espouse a philosophy that combined the support for Israel's agenda and hatred for the Soviet Union. In this sense, Henry Jackson and his staff were the spiritual fathers of what later came to be known as neoconservatism (neocon) despite the fact that the credit is given to Irving Kristol who actually converted from liberalism to conservatism, and said so in writing.

However, to this day, the reality remains that America never developed a grass-root neocon following despite the fact that Jewish neocons infiltrated and took over most of the nation's think tanks and media outlets. Thus, the Jacksonian approach to foreign policy never took hold in mainstream America. This is why a Henry Jackson Society developed in England but not in America where no one came forward to fund it.

A further discrediting of the neocon movement happened in America among the Jews who did not want to be identified with the pro-Israel foreign policies that cost America tens of thousands of lives and trillions of wasted dollars. For this reason, the diehard neocons came up with a new strategy to assure their survival. They circled around the young veterans of America's recent wars and convinced them that Henry Jackson had the right idea when he advocated a strong defense. To make their point, they demagogued the renewed phenomenon of Russian expansionism and the rising Muslim challenge.

Senator Tom Cotton, a veteran of the Iraq war, is one that embraced this idea. A column was written about him and printed in the Wall Street Journal. It came under the title: “A Foreign Policy for 'Jacksonian America'” and the subtitle: “Sen. Tom Cotton has a worldview––even a doctrine––that is hawkish and realistic, though tinged with idealism.” Authored by Jason Willick, the column was published in the Journal on December 9, 2017.

Reading the column, it becomes clear that neither Willick nor Cotton have any idea what the Jacksonian Philosophy of foreign policy looked like, or where to find Jacksonian America today or in the past. That's because there isn't one now, and there never was one. Those on the Henry Jackson staff that shaped the neocon philosophy––which Jackson himself never fully embraced––were none other than Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. They ended on the staff of Dick Cheney in the George W. Bush Administration after spending a decade organizing the scheme that launched the war that destroyed Iraq and now the Levant. If Cotton or Willick had any inkling regarding that history, they would not have produced the following passage:

“He [Cotton] believes that the lack of an organizing principle for using American power created a divide between the foreign policy elites and what Cotton calls Jacksonian America––heartland voters … Foreign policy must command popular support, says he … Without the support of Jacksonian America, the people who are going to cash checks written by elites in New York and Washington, no foreign policy can be successful”.

Anyone that believes heartland voters in America will support foreign wars because New York and Washington elites will write checks to advertise them, need to have their heads examined. If they can be cured, they’ll have to begin their history lesson by reading all about Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.