A Fix for America

A Fix for America

by

Don L Clark, 2009

Published by Don L Clark at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Don L Clark

Discover other titles by Don L Clark at Smashwords.com:

Magy la Magnifica

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Introduction

If you think the USA is a better nation today than it was in the 1950s do not bother to read on. But if, on the other hand, you are disturbed about the current state of our government and society, about how we are governed, work, play and lead others, then continue. For I shall elaborate on what I believe is wrong with us today and then chapter by chapter suggest how we, the citizens of the USA, could fix those problems and return to the course set by Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt (FDR), Johnson and other great leaders who rose from our ranks and by their actions and ideas improved both this country and the world.

But first a bit about me, about my background and how I came to the viewpoints I hold today. I like to think of myself as a rather average American blessed by the opportunity to have seen much of the rest of the world and to have worked close to the decision making center of this land. I served more than twenty years in the US Air Force with the last several years of that challenging experience spent in the halls of the Pentagon where I frequently worked within the National Security Council apparatus dealing with strategic international issues.

I’m also somewhat of a political junkie who taught college level students about how this nation actually makes (in contrast to the theory) its domestic and international decisions. Additionally, for a couple of years I wrote a weekly newspaper column (Hither & Yon, which was occasionally excerpted by Voice of America) focusing on our national and international actions, both the successes and failures.

I am also a confirmed globalist. By that I mean I believe that today all of us on this planet live in an era in which individual nations are more affected by what happens in the rest of the world than ever before, and that we (all the citizens of this world) face many problems that can be resolved successfully only via international cooperation rather than unilateral national action.

The reality of the world we live in today is quite different from what it was at the time of our nation’s birth. Most of our forefathers wanted us to stake out a new course for humankind, but they did not want us to become entangled with the rest of the world and thereby get caught up in what they considered to be its negatives. That isolationist viewpoint is; however, in my view outdated and even dangerous in the current times.

More than a decade ago I wrote a textbook for use in a basic course on International Relations and entitled it Macro-Family Studies (MFS) in order to emphasize that the most important problems of the time could only be resolved via international cooperation rather than individual national decision making. Back then I was primarily referring to concerns such as global poverty, the AIDS pandemic, global warming and of course international security. I now firmly believe the more recent 21st Century problems of so called global terrorism, genocide, human rights violations, and ever worsening global climate change make that requirement for global cooperation even more relevant than it was when I wrote MFS.

In my military career I lived in Russia as a military attaché when it was called the USSR and our Cold War rival, in Turkey where I was exposed to some of the enigmas of the Middle East and the world of Islam, and in post World War II Japan where I learned a bit about the cultural differences between East and West. I was introduced to the amazing field of Electronic Intelligence collection in Turkey, while in Japan I was shocked to learn how a nation we had once defeated, indeed even dropped atomic bombs on, could somehow still generally admire us. And in Russia I learned how backward it was in comparison with us and how misguided much of our information about that nation was

I worked on several very important international security problems that were addressed by multinational negotiations: The Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks (MBFR), the Law of the Sea Conference (LOS), the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and the Chemical and Biological Weapons (CW & BW) talks.

I have given many lectures before both informed and general audiences about the trends I see in the international arena. I also wrote a fiction novel (as well as numerous other published fiction works) entitled Commander AND Chief about a Native-American U.S. president and how he (think me) chose to lead America and deal differently with the 21st Century global scene than our current leaders (applies to GW Bush years) have.

I consider myself to be more liberal than conservative but probably also more reformist than liberal. What’s a reformist you may well ask? Well, I once edited a newsletter entitled the Double Eagle in which I divided the American political scene into four major political groups. I labeled the first of those groups the Traditionalists: (those who think our nation reached its peak development roughly in the1920s through the 80s and should either continue or return to that kind of governance and culture scene today.

The second major political grouping I named the Reformists: those who believe that although America is a good nation, perhaps even the best in the world, it could be even better via reforms that would help it reach its peak potential.

The third group, a smaller one, I labeled the Left: what Bill O’Reilly calls the far Left or Socialist Secular Progressives. And the fourth grouping I labeled the Right (like the Left it is a smaller group than the first two but with this one composed of our most conservative brethren. This would include Libertarians, constitutional Party members, arch-conservatives, etc.)

I believe that all four of these political groups still exist, and that each of them has rational arguments for the policies they promote as well as reasonable disagreements with the policies the others advocate. But I firmly believe that all of them, to some degree, and the smallest of them (the far Left and Right) to some considerable degree, have lost (or nearly so) their ability to see merit in the views held by any of the others. I believe the major reason for that polarization is that each of these politicized groups primarily focuses on a jaded perception of the other groups’ intentions rather than to the practical pros and cons of their touted solutions.

By that I mean, for example, that when the Reformists suggest something, such as a national health care program to cover all of America’s health needs, their opponents, the Right, as well as a substantial percentage of the Traditionalists, choose not to debate what a national health care program might or might not do for the nation’s overall health but instead react based on their perception of the intentions of the proposal. They tend to ignore things like whether or not the proposed program will improve the nation’s life longevity, infant mortality or quality of life but instead concentrate on what they perceive to be the proposal’s hidden, yet real (to them) purpose: to make the public beholden to or dependent on the political party (the Democrats) or worse to socialize America.

On the other hand when discussing the call for national health care, the Left and many of the Traditionalists tend to ignore or down play the reality that the current American system produces excellent doctors and nurses, debatably the best in the world, who provide an excellent health care system making some of the best medical technology (MRI and CAT scan machines and their like) available to most and certainly to all who can afford it.

That system does, however, in my mind have some serious shortcomings. It is the most expensive in the world on both a total and a per capita basis, is for some reason not readily available to roughly 45 million of our citizens (those uncovered by a health care policy), and has not produced the healthy society one would expect.

For example, the USA fails to rank in the top twenty globally in infant mortality, life expectancy, treatment availability or even satisfaction with the medical system; all powerful indicators of a nation’s health care effectiveness. In fact the only statistic in which America achieves the number one status it thinks it should rank in almost every worthy category is the aforementioned cost per person or total cost of health care.

As a result of this emphasis on perceived intentions rather than results, we end up with a national debate not on the merits of a national health care system versus the one now in place, but instead a debate about which political party is trying to mislead the public and/or to seduce them into becoming its dedicated followers. The Traditionalists and Right label whatever plan the other side proposes as socialist and an attempt to destroy the capitalist system while the Reformists and the Left assert that the conservatives are in the pocket of the health care industries and happy with a status quo that provides excellent medical care all right but only to the wealthy.

Both of our major political parties today are guilty of this discussion of intentions rather than the merits of their rivals’ proposals, even though we all intuitively understand that no one can divine another’s intentions with any real accuracy. Indeed, even if a group proclaims their intentions, we cannot know if they are telling us the truth. However, we can evaluate the merits of a proposal relatively easily and figure out its costs, benefits, dangers, gains, etc. even if we might honestly disagree on what those outcomes might be.

In order for me to accomplish my goal of describing how we might put America back on track, I shall have to discuss both the international (my major interest) and the domestic scenes. As I do so please understand that one of my firmest beliefs is that in today’s world those two venues (the domestic and the international) are inexorably intertwined; that what we do domestically affects what we do internationally and vice versa, and that indeed international actions and reactions may in the long run have greater consequences for us than the domestic ones. However, for the sake of a focused discourse, I shall describe the problems and proposed solutions separately and only in the end attempt to tie them together coherently.

In the following chapters I will discuss solutions for the below listed issues that divide and sometimes bewilder our national psyche:

Part One

Foreign Affairs: America and the World

Chapter One

The USA’s Global Perception

In the last few years the USA has precipitously fallen from its status of being one of, if not the most, admired nation in this world to almost the most reviled. I believe the George W. Bush administration was the major cause of that plummet in respect and admiration.

The plunge began when the Bush administration gave the impression early on in its inception that it had a negative attitude towards almost anything requiring international cooperation. For example, while all of our natural and long time allies were rallying behind the idea of a global warming danger and a treaty to deal with it, President Bush and team brushed off the Kyoto Treaty and the problem as if it dealt with the nonsensical. His administration then showed similar disdain for the previously established treaty against Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Systems, which prohibited both the US and Russia from building a national missile defense.

Indeed, this new century’s Bush administration seemed to exhibit disdain for international cooperation in dealing with almost anything. President GW Bush even denigrated the idea of an International Criminal Court, and when it appeared headed for establishment in spite of our opposition, he not only demanded a special exemption for the US but pressured countries of all sizes and persuasions to support said exemption or pay a dear price.

He derided the idea of nation building, as it was being done in Kosovo and elsewhere at the time of his election, and was often sarcastic about much of Western