Henri Reynard Speaks Out

Naiveté versus Cynicism

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It would be cynical of me to suggest that I like any of our current political leadership, either Republican or Democratic. It would be naive of me to believe that I could change their lack of qualities that provide clear and honest leadership into the qualities that I wish they had. Only by fooling myself can I believe that these people aren't in the process of demolishing the foundations of what so many generations sacrificed to build here. A nation of men and women who revere freedom, live hard working creative lives and pass on to the next generation more than they received from their past generation. We are the nation that should be building humanities' bridge to the stars. Instead we are building an empire that will bankrupt the next generation rather than pay our own costs of wars and other ventures our leaders tell us we need in order to survive.

Empires are built on slaughter, plunder and rape; that is the coin with which the armies of empires are paid. The use of excessive force is not prohibited but demanded if subjugation of other nations and cultures is our goal. A curious combination of naiveté and cynicism is permeating our political life here in America as we prepare for a war that seems as ill defined and baseless as any we have fought before. It is naïve to believe that we are doing this to free the poor Iraqi people from the clutches of a sadistic monster. First of all he is, by and large our own monster. Secondly any regime installed by us in Baghdad will have such a baptism of blood as to be impossible to see in the light of mercy. Third, it will maintain control by suppression of opposition or Iraq will soon fall out of our control.

It is both appallingly cynical to approach this war as if it were not at all about oil and appallingly naïve at the same time to deny that oil is our main reason for being in that part of the world at all. The last great wars were fought about who would derive economic power from the oil that drives the machines of war. It is the same oil that we are importing at increasingly great economic and social costs today that decided the outcome of WWII. Oil used on the battlefields of WWI finally broke the stalemate that marked that ugly confrontation between cultures. Most of the oil that is left on this planet that is recoverable at current prices lies under that area of the world. Our economy would come to a screeching halt without that oil, as would the economies of all industrialized nations. Geopolitics is about oil and has been about oil since humanity began to become dependent on this liquid fuel for transportation and heat about a century ago.

If we build an empire it will be because we lack the will and the imagination to replace oil in the economic fabric of our lives with any of the other options that beckon today. We can clearly build houses, housing my daughter would caution me, that is far more efficient in the use of heating and cooling than the housing we build today. We can also build a transportation system and fuel it with totally renewable energy supplies if we have the will to accomplish that feat. We need to wean ourselves from the oil wells of the world in order to create a real new world order. Not as the imperial power that keeps the oil flowing, but as the Yankee tinker who sells technical solutions that encourage freedom and democracy. Not as the cynically naïve bombastic bombers of Baghdad, but as the true liberators of the human spirit that so many of us have been in past generations.

Have we lost that spirit in this generation, after the fight that divided us over a war that was less about oil and more about fear of Communism? Where is Communism as a threat today? Is this a war about fear of terrorism? Well then it is as ill conceived, as was Vietnam. The power of the Soviet Union to demolish us with the push of a button existed then. Saddam is not a credible threat on anything like that scale, now or ever. This war will create a backlash far more dangerous to us than any amount of weapons material in the hands of a dictator.

We are already facing substantial hatred of the USA in every nation in that part of the world. We need to think carefully about options before we commit ourselves to a cynical and naive war that is and is not about oil. We are clearly beyond the stage of thought at this point and I am disgusted and appalled with the qualities of the leaders that this generation sends to Washington. They are both disgustingly naïve and appallingly cynical if they believe that this war will make us more secure. If we are the only empire in this world today, blink and opposition will arise, out of old Europe or New China, or perhaps elsewhere. War will never make us safe. We need to become the Yankee tinker once again if we are to save this nation for our children and grandchildren. We must become the liberators of the human spirit if the world is to willingly follow our lead. I don't see that spirit in Washington today, just cynicism and naiveté as far as the eye can see.