Honoring a national hero, Part 1.

Andrew Bacevich, from Boston University, speaks a panel discussion at the 2012 Current Strategy Forum at the U.S. Naval War College focusing on global trends and the implications they have on national policy and maritime forces. File is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: U.S. Naval War College.

by Kathleen Malley-Morrison

What a stinking mess this election year has been!  People on all sides fed up with governmental corruption, enraged by an economic system that seems biased against them, terrified by the threats personified by groups labeled as terrorists, longing for past days when they felt they had at least some control over their lives and their futures, and looking for someone, anyone, who can get them out of this mess and back to “normal.”

And for some of us there is the dismay that Bernie Sanders–our beacon of hope, our image of progressive values, our embodiment of a more genuine democracy—was cheated out of the chance to become our leader.  But he is not the national hero who is my focus today.

My national hero of the day is Andrew Bacevich, a retired career officer of the U.S. Army, a man of enormous courage who has been speaking out against American militarism for decades.   Bacevich has just published a brilliant article on the decay of American democracy, which should be required reading for all.

The main questions Bacevich proposes are:

“How did the party of Eisenhower, an architect of victory in World War II, choose as its nominee a narcissistic TV celebrity who, with each successive Tweet and verbal outburst, offers further evidence that he is totally unequipped for high office? …. Similarly, how did the party of Adlai Stevenson, but also of Stevenson’s hero Franklin Roosevelt, select as its candidate someone so widely disliked and mistrusted even by many of her fellow Democrats?”

Bacevich’s analysis of the characters, strategies, and flaws of both Clinton and Trump are chillingly convincing and well worth reading; however, he warns us:

“But let’s not just blame the candidates.  Trump and Clinton are also the product of circumstances that neither created.  As candidates, they are merely exploiting a situation — one relying on intuition and vast stores of brashness, the other putting to work skills gained during a life spent studying how to acquire and employ power.  The success both have achieved in securing the nominations of their parties is evidence of far more fundamental forces at work.”

In my next post, I will share his views on those forces.