Like most warmongering
fanatics, Clifford D. May had only one argument and one message to give: Arm
America beyond its needs, keep the pressure on its potential rivals, and when
you see them prepare to respond to your provocations, engage them kinetically.
There was a time when such
advice resonated with a large number of laymen and elites. Consequently, the
warmongers could bask in the heyday of their accomplishment, believing they had
the whole world in their hands. They thought no one was there who could
challenge them, but got surprised when things began to change. It is that two
factors started to stir: the audience of laymen and elites was changing, and
the war mongers’ message was beginning to sound obsolete to the old audiences
as well as the new ones.
Refusing to accept the
bankruptcy of their old message, and incapable of formulating a new one, the
warmongers of America decided to maintain their embrace of the old message; one
that has died and began to decompose. You can see how that thing looks and
smells when you read the article that came under the title: “Learning lessons
from World War II and the Cold War,” and the subtitle: “In the struggle against
totalitarians and tyrants, there are no permanent victories.” It was written by
Clifford D. May and published on July 7, 2020 in The Washington Times.
To repeat the old argument and
make it sound viable for the changing times, Clifford May has played a
magician's shell game with the different kinds of wars that America has waged
after the Second World War. Switching from the hot wars to the cold wars to the
wars on terror, Clifford May confuses his readers by treating them as if they
were interchangeable. The following is a compilation of how he says America
should deal with its potential enemies:
“That moment ended
on Sept. 11, 2001. China's rulers have been aggressing. Cuba remains hostile.
Iran's rulers promised to slow but not end their nuclear weapons program. North
Korea has developed nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisticated missiles.
Might we agree on the purpose of preventing our adversaries from building the
world of our nightmares? The primary requirement for achieving that goal:
maintaining and enhancing America's deterrent capabilities. If our enemies
believe we have the means to cause them serious pain in response to injuries
they inflict, those who are rational will be cautious; those who are
irrational, only force can keep them at bay. Despite these ground truths, we
have been allowing America's military superiority to erode”.
And so, if you ask: American
superiority to whom or to what? You'll have to answer that even without
addition to its military capabilities, America is already infinitely more
powerful than the terrorists and Cuba and Iran and North Korea put together or
taken separately. Clifford May did not mention Russia but did say that China's
rulers have been aggressing. And that's another kettle of fish.
So then, did Clifford May mean
to say that America should arm itself and start a Cold War with China? If
that's his intention, he should have revealed it at the start of the
discussion. He should have explained why it would be in the interest of America
and the world that a declining power should confront a rising power that did
nothing as ugly as falsely accuse tiny Iraq of developing Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD), and bombing that country into the “Stone Age”. It wasn’t
China who did that.
Come to think of it, the
accusation against Iraq was leveled by none other than Clifford May and his
coreligionists. It also happened that the Jews were the ones who took charge of
the war that turned out to be America's biggest mistake, and executed the
battles to a disastrous ending. With a record like this, there remains one
question to ask: Have these people gone so mad after all these years, as to
incite America to try its luck one more time, going against China this time?
No one in his right mind would
fail to see that if Iraq has been America's biggest mistake, China will be
America's last and fatal mistake. In fact, there is unanimity within the ranks
of the American military that after Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, it
behooves America never again to engage in a “war of choice” anywhere in the
world.