Foreign policy is not a winning campaign issue, but does that
mean those who would be president should eschew it? Did not
Aristotle say that the statesman’s duty is to teach? If it is true
that we are engaged since 2001 in a global war, should we not be
talking about it? Abraham Lincoln did not avoid the war when he ran
for re-election in 1864 — in fact, it was practically all he
talked about. The economy was booming — in the North — and he
could have sought to avoid the unpleasant events of the recent four
years and campaigned on a feel-good theme. But what is the use of
even trying for some weak sarcasm with the kind of campaigns we now
endure?
To be fair: at least no one denies we are in a war, though some
(Ron Paul) may deny we have reason to be in one and others
(Kucinich, but he dropped out) think the war is our fault.
I know it is a cheap shot to say this, but it is a fact that I
taught high school at a place called Lackey High School in Charles
County, Maryland, last year and out of the 120 juniors whom I saw
daily none knew that their school was named for a naval officer of
the Mahan generation, for whom the projection of American power
around the world was both an obligation and an opportunity, for us
as Americans and for the rest of the world as well. Half these kids
were “honors” students (a concept neither the school nor the county
seemed to view as being incompatible with the kinds of sins —
cheating, plagiarism — for which Capt. Lackey would have summarily
dismissed them), and they could not locate on a map the countries
where we are sacrificing blood and treasure in defense of
civilization. But then, most of them could not locate England on a
map — or even Antietam, just a few miles away, or Gettysburg.
I think it is the schools’ fault, yes, filled as they are with
half-literate educrats intent on the measly rewards of their
pretend-jobs, but I also think it is the parents’ fault, the
semi-educated mentally stunted parents of Maryland who could not
tell you which Mary their state is named for, and it is certainly
our politicians’ fault, unwilling and unable to address in a
serious way the serious international issues of our times. If even
during a presidential campaign we cannot get the kind of solemn and
high minded, and I do not mean humorless, discussion of a world
very much rife with evil forces bent on our destruction, then how
can we blame rural high schoolers for being historical and
political illiterates? Apart from the fact that they are
semi-literate anyway and in general — which is a different matter
and underscores another enigma, namely why no candidates are
calling for the abolition of the Department of Education, whose
institutional history coincides exactly with the precipitous
decline of American public schools — why should they take an
interest in international politics when no one in the adult world
does? The closest thing we get to a discussion of foreign policy on
the Republican side is the no-you-can’t-yes-you-can embarrassment
of two grown men arguing about what qualities they need to be
commander-in-chief. On the Democratic side the argument is who was
mistaken earlier on the central issue confronting the
democracies.
Barack Obama evidently thinks he can ride Democratic Party
blame-America-firstism to the nomination, so he is emphasizing his
early opposition to the intervention in Iraq. Fair enough, if that
is his line, but not once does he bother to explain just what Iraq
is, just what our conundrums there are, just what
we should do, in that hard land, if war is not the
answer.
This unwillingness to try even to define for his fellow
Americans a sense of the kind of world we live in did not prevent
Sen. Obama from injecting himself into Kenyan politics
about six months ago, by openly coming out in support of the
“Orange” candidate Raila Odinga. No one stateside paid attention —
Obama was physically in Kenya when he made his gesture, a political
intrusion in another country’s politics that I believe is
unprecedented in the annals of senatorial foreign-junketing — but
it meant a lot over there. Odinga, the scion of an extreme-left
Kenyan political dynasty which like much of the rest of the global
anti-American left “understands” Islamist grievances, claimed Obama
as a cousin and waved the endorsement.
Today Kenya is sliding toward civil war, as Odinga’s Luo tribe
(to which Obama, by way of his father, belongs) declares itself
robbed of the presidency and sends thugs on the warpath against
sitting president Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribesmen, who retaliate in
kind.
Does it matter? Does it matter if, in nearby Zimbabwe, a
megalomaniacal relic of the anti-colonial movement destroys one of
Africa’s most viable countries? Does it matter if Somalia, also
nearby, is torn by clan war and Islamist infiltration? Or if, a
little further away, the Darfur disaster, spilling over into Chad,
turns that dry country into one wet with blood?
It does. This is not, however, the place to explain why. It is
the place to complain that there are no candidates for president
this year who seem to be even aware that the mischief running
across Africa will touch us all, and painfully. Not only we hear
not a squeak on Africa, but not a single presidential candidate
sees fit to mention in speech nor debate that Hugo Chavez, caudillo
of nearby Venezuela, made a speech last Christmas that would have
been published in Der Sturmer.
But then I wonder if any of the candidates, any more than the
miseducated children of Maryland’s Charles County, recognize that
newspaper’s name.
