IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray
September 10, 2013
# 159
“Missing Mantra”
No, a mantra is not a pet, nor is it a new fashion. It is an oft-used expression that can become passé because nobody pays any attention to it. To put it in fable form, it is akin to “crying wolf”. Too many repetitions render it moot.
Transparency comes to mind. Just how many times have you heard that term in the last five years? Probably more than you would have liked, if I judge the situation correctly.
Other than Saran wrap (or some competitor’s product), the only transparency I have witnessed is the complete lack of ability on the part of the federal government at the administrative level to explain anything they have done. The reason could be that what they have done is highly suspect.
Let me try to understand why we (as a nation) would stand by for years as more than 100,000 people were killed by bombs, rockets, bullets, and beatings yet come forward when less than 2,000 were killed by chemical weapons. I am not equating anything but the outcome. Dead is dead. How a leader accomplishes those deaths does not make them irrelevant.
Genocide is not new. Ask those in Cambodia. Ask those who turned aside in Germany during World War II as the stench from concentration camps hung over the countryside. Ask the people of Africa who escaped the machete attacks on innocent people.
We seem “hell bent” to go after forces in a civil war because of 2,000 Syrian deaths. Yet, at the same time, we can claim no arrests or punishment for those who murdered four Americans in Benghazi.
There is always a call for the building of flags in New York to do something. So — yet again — we see what I call the “Untied Nations” appointing representatives of countries with long histories of human rights abuses to the Security Council. Some security, huh?
United it is not. Untied and unviable it is.
It seems to me that there is another “take” on transparency. It seems to me that transparent is precisely what this administration illustrates. No, not the transparency that allows anyone to see what the government is doing, but another type. What I see is that this administration and staff are just about as transparent as it gets. You can — literally — see right through them. The talking heads may give administration motives a pass, but there is nothing positive for the United States whatever action or actions are taken in Syria.
From the “get go” when this president apologized for America in Egypt, the whole pace of our diminishment has only increased. Present lack of leadership has led to these results: (1) America a diminished military power due to “sequestration” and systematic reductions in our military personnel and equipment. (2) America less a superpower. (3) America now a shadow of the economic engine that led the world. (4) America still dependent on foreign oil despite sitting on huge reserves at home.
If this is by design, then surely those in charge must be pleased with their successes. No matter how this Middle East problem will sort out, Russia has never been a friend to America. To see Putin take center stage and credit for the bungling of a lack of leadership here on the home front should make anyone cringe. Egad!
And so, where are we? We are not at a crossroads. We are well past that. Remember elections of 2002 and 2008? Each of those was a crossroads. Inattention on the part of the voting public and a want for government largesse gave us what we have today. Much to the chagrin on the generation motivated to work, far too many of us believe that there is — and should be — a free lunch.
The void in Washington, D.C. shocks those who believe in the America of the past and warns of what may come if the electorate fails to see the threat posed by a lack of leadership.
And is there an American mantra? I guess the current White House would put it in tow words. “Trust us.” Try again, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I remember a more important phrase: peace through strength. We see none of the first and little of the second. Weakness, in the words of Donald Rumsfeld, is “provocative.” Think about it.