Columnist George Will's warfare state bugle
Pronounces the United States confronts greater foreign danger than the Cuban Missile Crisis
Columnist George Will has defected from the Constitution’s foreign policy of invincible self-defense to bugle for a warfare state.
In today’s Washington Post, Will preposterously asserts that right now the United States is more endangered than during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis! Really? America is the only country in the world that does not confront an existential threat. For more than at least 30 years, no American has gone to bed fearing a foreign invasion. We are the strongest military power in the history of the world by orders of magnitude featuring more than 800 military bases abroad, special forces everywhere, and a nuclear arsenal and military budget that dwarfs all others.
So what has provoked Will’s hysteria? He is terrified that China, Russia, and North Korea possess a tiny fraction of the nuclear weapons we possess; and, they may be soon joined by Iran. They have never used nuclear weapons, but we have twice at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in atomic attacks the General Eisenhower and Admiral Leahy deplored as militarily unnecessary to save even one American soldier’s life.
Will implies or insinuates that Western civilization will die if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, echoing British Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s preposterous claim in 1956 that if Egypt’s military dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser was not destroyed for nationalizing the Suez Canal every free nation would be imperiled. History has not treated the Prime Minister’s ominous prediction kindly. Time will also discredit Will’s fear-inducing polemic.
Will substantiates the insight of Hitler’s Deputy Herman Goering before the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal: “Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."