(written
and posted 6 March 2003)
On
July 10, 1981, Ken Rex McElroy was shot dead in broad daylight. To this day, the shooter is still
unknown. What makes this shooting so
intriguing is where it occurred—on the main street of the small town of
Skidmore, Missouri, while scores of Skidmore residents watched. Yet, despite all of the eyewitnesses, not
one signal person can identify the perpetrator.
How is it that a town can watch someone get shot in broad daylight and yet no one can identify the gunman? I think with the notable exception of McElroy’s family, there isn’t a Skidmore resident who thinks that McElroy’s death was a bad thing. I had a roommate in college who grew up not to far from Skidmore who told me that the McElroys were the meanest, most ornery people around; the type of people who would blow your head off at a moment’s notice. Ken McElroy was a bully, and he terrorized the area for years. Amazingly, there was nothing the law could do about him, as no one was willing to file a complaint for fear of retribution. Finally, enough was enough for those being terrorized, who banded together to take the bully out. Scores of men with guns surrounded poor Ken on that fateful afternoon, any one of which could have fired the bullet that was Ken’s undoing. The world will never know.
The United States is fast becoming the Ken McElroy of the world. If we don’t get what we want, we result to threats and strong-arm tactics. However, like poor Ken, eventually those nations who we have been bullying will eventually rise up together to take us out, and will not blink an eye in the process. Surely Schrader jests, you say—we are not a bully; we are kind and benevolent. We are only doing what we need to do to protect ourselves. But are we?
Rewind to the 1930s. Germany says that it wants the Rhineland or else it will take it by force, although it really did not want war; Chamberlain, trying to avert conflict, says okay. After all, Europe was not even twenty years removed from its bloodiest conflict of the many on its soil in the past one hundred years, and the memories of the death and destruction that the Great War wrought were still vividly fresh in the collective European consciousness. Besides, the Germans did have a valid point – without the economic wealth of the Rhineland, the German economy could never recover, and it would devolve into a welfare state draining resources from the other European states. I don’t think a single person would argue either in the 1930s or today that an economically strong Germany is a must for European security, as the acquisition of wealth has been the motivation for aggression since the beginning of civilization.
As we all know, it didn’t stop there. Next came Czechoslovakia and its sizable German minority. The German government justifiably argued that it needed to take control of Czechoslovakia to ensure that the German minority was not oppressed by the Czechs and Slovaks, and it would do it by force if it had to, although it really didn’t want war. As this argument does tend to have some moral validity to it (with Europe’s history of minority oppression), Chamberlain again capitulated to preserve peace. Then came Austria. And on and on and on. It wasn’t until the outright invasion of an independent sovereign nation (Poland) by the Germans that the world realized what had been happening and joined together in a long and painful struggle to put the Germans back in their place.
We need to look closely at what happened prior to World War II as the exact same things are happening right now. Of course, the hawks will tell you that Iraq is Germany and that anyone who opposes war with Iraq are Chamberlain-esque appeasers. However, this view is trying to fit the proverbial square peg in the round hole – the analogies don’t quite fit. The appropriate analogy is one that most of us do not want to think about. Unfortunately, the facts are the facts.
In the past several months, here is the basic dialogue that has transpired:
“You must allow weapons inspectors, or else we will have to use force, which we don’t really want to do because we are peace-loving people. That is all we want.”
“Okay, we will allow weapons inspectors.”
“You must allow unfettered access to your scientists or else we will have to use force. That is all we want. We are a peace loving people and don’t like the prospect of war.”
“Okay, we will allow unfettered access to our scientists.”
“We want you to destroy your missiles or else.”
“Okay, we will destroy our missiles.”
Who exactly are the Germans again? Who is Chamberlain?
Let’s go back to the 1930s. Why did Germany invade Poland? The Germans tried to extort some concessions out of Poland. (Basically, the Germans wanted Poland’s resources and wealth.) The Poles refused to be bullied. The Germans whipped up public support against Poland by accusing the Poles of being an unfriendly government who was working to undermine the German state. “It is necessary to invade Poland to ensure the security of the German state.” To help legitimize its actions, the German government enlisted the help of another whose security was also threatened by the Poles, the Soviet Union. The rest, as they say, is history – Poland was carved up between the two powers, and the world was plunged into the bloodiest of wars.
Why were the Germans and Soviets so covetous of Poland? For the Germans, two things – retribution and wealth. After World War I, much of what had been Prussia, the unifiers of the German state in the 1870s, was given to the new Polish state. While Danzig (now Gdansk), the shipbuilding seaport, remained nominally German territory, all the lands around Danzig became Polish, and the Germans wanted them back. The splitting of Danzig from the rest of the German state was seen as a legacy of German humiliation.
Prior to the rise of Russia under Peter the Great, and prior to the existence of a unified German state, Poland was the greatest and wealthiest kingdom in eastern Europe. Polish cities became meccas for Jews, Gypsies, and others, who thrived under the Polish monarchs. Even after the final division of Poland between Russia and Prussia in the nineteenth century removed the Polish state from the face of the earth, the Polish cities continued to be among the wealthiest and most cultured in all of Europe. The acquisition of this wealth was a major reason for the German invasion.
For the Russians, participation in the German invasion and subsequent division of Poland was based in history and to need to reestablish Russian supremacy through empire. Prior to the tragedy that befell Nikolai and his family, the Russian Empire was arguably the greatest on Earth, stretching from Warsaw to Vladivastock. After the Russian Revolution, much of European Russia was transformed into the independent states of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland. Stalin was intent on the restoration of the Empire. (After all, it wasn’t fair that the Communists did not get to control as large of a nation as the tsars.) Thus, the Soviets were more than willing to go along with the Germans to invade and topple the Polish regime.
What does this history lesson have to do with the here and now? The parallels are quite disturbing. One third of all of the world’s oil, the twenty-first century’s gold, sits under two nations – Saudi Arabia and Iraq. At one time, Baghdad was the capital of one of the most wealthiest, civilized, and advanced monarchies of the past one thousand years, a nation that gave us algebra and our numerals; despite ceasing to exist as a nation for more than a century until after World War I, much of that wealth is intact. What is now Iraq was at one time part of the British Empire. Draw your own conclusions.
Those who do not respect history are doomed to repeat. Unfortunately, all the historical parallels indicate that we are walking down the path to our own destruction. Ken McElroy’s bullying was his doing in. The German belief in their own superiority, and the resulting arrogance, was their doing in.
Now, before you accuse me of being unpatriotic, let me just say that it does not matter how I, as an American, view my own country, because I am a firm believer in the American political system and rule of law. In other words, whether or not I think we are the greatest country in the world or Satan incarnate will not make a difference, as I will not ever advocate destroying the system that has made the country the greatest country on Earth; that is just flat out wrong. Besides, I am not a threat to the very existence of our country. In fact, no American should be criticized for whatever opinion one might have, because no one has advocated, or is advocating revolution. The threat to our very existence does not come within, but without.
If other peoples and nations view us as a bully, they will take what they believe to be the appropriate measures to take us out, regarding of what our opinion of ourselves is. If other nations feel that the United States has become the Third Reich of the twenty-first century, it doesn’t matter if it is true or not, because they will act on what they believe. Whether we like it or not, we are part of an international community, and how others view us will determine whether or not we live or die. Why do people want to get us? Because they think we are bullies and jerks. Are we? There may be a few ugly Americans out there, but the overwhelming majority of people are decent people who want nothing more than to enjoy their lives and families.
We need to take a good hard look at ourselves before we make any rash decisions that we may soon regret. We need to take a good hard look at our history books. We need to compare ourselves with nations of the past. If we are playing from a playbook that has been used before and resulted in catastrophe, we need to throw it out. We need to see if our actions reinforce the negative impressions that others have of us, and if they do, we need to do something different to show others that they are wrong.
The future is not set in concrete; the outcome can be changed. We do not have to come to the same unfortunate demise as those before us. Unfortunately, time is quickly running out. The concrete has been poured, and is beginning to harden.