Nov: 11: Veterans Day, Armistice Day, and National Education Day:
Shred the U.S. Constitution! That was the sentiment of government experts burdened with the secret job of America’s recovery had there been a catastrophic event during the Cold War. Mostly former U.S. government officials - these experienced individuals were driven by the possibility of a nuclear war and the hope of rebuilding our nation after it - or some other catastrophic event destroyed life as we know it.
Astonishingly they named the Declaration of Independence as the document worthy of protection.
It housed the fundamental principles essential for creating any sustainable human system of government dedicated to human freedom, the fundamental promise of America’s future.
Abraham Lincoln recognized as our nation was close to dissolving over slavery. The bloody civil war killed that followed killed more Americans than both world wars, North Korea, and Vietnam wars combined. Lincoln called the Declaration of Independence our “Apple of Gold” and our Constitution it’s “Frame of Silver”. Our pledge of “Liberty and justice for all” reflects the same. Having persistently failed this pledge Americans have been engaged in war after war, multiple proxy wars, an endless war against a tactic (terrorism) and now a cold war against ourselves deeply divided by mental constructs that appear incapable of coexisting. The sustainably of democracy itself is as much in question as our pandemic driven debt and our consumption driven destruction of our planets life support system.
Today, November 11th was originally celebrated as Armistice Day. The day that 'the War to end all Wars' abruptly ended (with 20 million dead). In light of Covid19 people should know that more US soldiers died from the so called "Spanish Flu" than from the war itself. Some historians believe that this disease prevented the US President from attending the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles thus setting the profoundly unjust conditions that led Hitler to power and the second World War II and approximately 50 million dead.
It wasn't until the Korean War that Congress changed the holiday to Veterans Day to honor only American veterans. The ideal of permanently ending war was largely lost to two prevailing but flawed passions; ‘peace through strength’ and ‘peace by disarmament’. Neither had a chance in hell of working given the fundamentally flawed global system of unenforceable international law. Flawed because it persisted in worshiping national sovereignty over the protection of fundamental human rights.
National sovereignty was a useful concept 400 years ago with the Treaty of Westphalia preventing the slaughter of lives within a states border. But it never stopped or even slowed the slaughter of millions in wars between nations. Without just and enforceable rules and regulations to hold governments accountable for their murderous actions inside or outside their borders, chaos increasingly continues to reign supreme to this day. And the lethal forces of poverty, economic disparities, political repression, and environmental destruction we are seeing a return of slaughter within nations between government and rebellious forces. Conditions made worse by Covid19's exposure of both our broken national and global systems of government.
Put simply, protecting national sovereignty remains the world’s highest priority instead of fighting Covid19 by providing and protecting fundamental human rights...like the right to primary healthcare services, clean water, sanitation, gainful employment, safe housing, and a basic education. And ‘we the people’ continue to accept this believing that closing borders will solve the problem.
Even after the horrors of World War II (50+ million war dead, Nazi genocide killing 6 million innocent people , and the creation of a new bomb that could vaporize 100,000 people in seconds) we prevented a profound effort to prevent future wars from being codified.
FDR’s wife Eleanor Roosevelt led the global effort intended to remedy the injustices that often lead to war. She drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was was unanimity’s approved on Dec. 10th, 1948 (exactly 72 years ago, 30 days from today). Unfortunately, the UN was never given the power to enforce it.
Within a few years the Cold War began and over the next four decades over 100 million innocent men, women, and mostly children died from easily preventable malnutrition and infectious diseases while hundreds of billions were spent on weapons to prevent war. Nuclear weapons may have prevented another hot world war but on Sept 11, 2001, 19 individuals armed with razor knives used our own passenger airliners as WMD. That crime against humanity sparked a global war that continues today costing Americans trillions, along with trillions more being spend in reaction to Covid19 which is now killing about 100 times more Americans a year than Al Quade has killed in 20 years.
And when today’s extremists acquire tactical efficiency in biological, chemical, nuclear, cyber or robotics technology millions of Americans will likely die. We must find another way of ensuring out security without losing our freedoms. And time is NOT on our side.
It should now be self-evident that the most powerful military in the world cannot stop the abuse of technology or protect the most powerful man in the US, our President. If a person, group or nation is determined to commit mass murder (some willing to die in the process) or a virus arrives accidently or intentionally...we are all at risk.
Fact is that global US military involvement since 9-11 has created more murderous extremist than existed before 9-11 and conditions that facilitated the spread of Covid19 and other destabilizing factors. And our most capable and honorable military force will not be able to stop a biological weapon from entering our nation or truck bombs from obliterating our public buildings. A cyber-attack or EMP event affecting our vulnerable infrastructure could also cause mass murder. A 2018 GAO study of our militaries most sophisticate weapons systems reported that 80 percent were hackable by relatively simple methods.
Security is increasingly an illusion. Even without President Trump's pre and post election antics our Constitution is incapable of protecting our freedoms, our lives, or our sustainable prosperity.
Any serious effort to detect and preempt a domestic attack will likely violate our 4th Amendment. And, with domestic ‘terrorism’ now increasing, this must be painfully clear. The freedom/security dilemma can only be resolved by looking beyond our individualistic culture. It will requires deeper thinking beyond our primal fears.
Educating ourselves about the evolution of weaponry and war itself would cause us to fundamentally change how we calculate the costs of war. It should no longer be calculated in terms of lost blood and treasure. We can now lose civilization as we know it. In reality, this has existed for decades. After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Albert Einstein was asked ‘which weapons would WW III be fought with?’ Einstein wisely answered that he didn’t know. But he was certain that “WW IV would be fought with sticks and stones.”
Exponential advances in every technology now yields unprecedented killing capacity to almost anyone with a serious grudge and enough money to buy a car, truck or computer. The dual use nature of every technology means that any disarmament effort can easily be overcome with human creativity if the will is there to commit mass murder. Even without the Second Amendment. Take guns away and cars or trucks can be used to slaughter dozens. Timothy McVeigh demonstrated this 27 years ago in Oklahoma City with a driver’s license, a rental truck, fuel oil, fertilizer, some coper wire, and a timer.
The factor of ‘dual-use technology’ alone should fundamental shift our approach to war, peace, and security. Intentional mass murder is not the only, or even the greatest threat we face as Covid19 has demonstrated. Climate extremes, super volcanoes, asteroids, and now Artificial Intelligence are also inevitable threats to both our freedom and security.
For possible anwers. https://globalchallenges.org
Most discussions today about any national security threat the word ‘resilience' is stressed. Meaning we are unlikely to prevent them given limited government funds, the constraints of our Constitution, and the abhorrent dysfunction of our elected policy making bodies.
Those who study ‘war’ or ‘peace’ need to get schooled rapidly regarding the fundamental causes of both. Nothing less will end the inevitable budget breaking costs and accelerating trajectory of weapons or war. Too many “peace and justice” activist refuse to yield on their decades long ambition to cut military spending, stop arms sales, and their fetish for the ‘elimination of nuclear weapons’. And those who champion “peace through strength” need to realize that security is not a function of more and better weapons. Lasting security is a function of ‘Liberty and justice for all’. This is the prerequisite to improving any and every element of our human condition. It's common sense and even biblical in origin.
And, too many in our government are still clueless to our nation’s vulnerabilities and continue to pass laws that violate the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” so profoundly referenced in our Declaration of Independence.
In this context the education of all Americans is the most vital element essential to our national security. And unknown to most Americans this was the weighty conclusion of the last report offered by a bi-partisan Presidential Commission on National Security in the 21st Century. It was released just six months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. It considered a lack of education in the US as the second greatest threat to our nation, behind terrorism. The ignorance of tens of millions of our nation's voters is yet more evidence.
When we think about honoring veterans or celebrating this anniversary of the end of WW I (and the coming 72th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights December 10th) it would be good to remember why President Kennedy’s created the Peace Corps. He knew the foundation of peace. Since its creation over 220,000 Americans have served in it rising their lives in villages and hamlets around the world to bring education, health care, and farming to the poor. They deserved to be honored as much as military veterans. Many of which actually tried and died trying to perform such vital services while deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and throughout Africa.
Many rightfully debate the value of having our military do 'nation building'. And our best military leaders say if we don’t fund more humanitarian efforts we need to “buy more bullets”.
Fundamentally, ‘we the people’ need to urgently redefine what is meant by national security. And then invest heavily in how it will be achieved. We must use our Constitution to address the root causes of war, disease, genocide, hunger, poverty and other global injustices. We must put people first, not our national pride. That is the biblical concept that helped create our great nation. Failing it, we will fail to be great. Or even exist as a nation given the evolution of weaponry, war and the fragility of democracy.
The foundations of peace and security were recognized and articulated 40 years ago in a bipartisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger. “In the final analysis, unless Americans -- as citizens of an increasingly interdependent world -- place far higher priority on overcoming world hunger, its effects will no longer remain remote or unfamiliar. Nor can we wait until we reach the brink of the precipice; the major actions required do not lend themselves to crisis planning, patchwork management, or emergency financing... The hour is late. Age-old forces of poverty, disease, inequity, and hunger continue to challenge the world. Our humanity demands that we act upon these challenges now...”
The commission specifically warned that “The most potentially explosive force in the world today is the frustrated desire of poor people to attain a decent standard of living. The anger, despair and often hatred that result represent real and persistent threats to international order… Neither the cost to national security of allowing malnutrition to spread nor the gain to be derived by a genuine effort to resolve the problem can be predicted or measured in any precise, mathematical way. Nor can monetary value be placed on avoiding the chaos that will ensue unless the United States and the rest of the world begin to develop a common institutional framework for meeting such other critical global threats as the growing scarcity of fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources, environmental hazards, pollution of the seas, and international terrorism. Calculable or not, however, this combination of problems now threatens the national security of all countries just as surely as advancing armies or nuclear arsenals.”
The commission also stated “that promoting economic development in general, and overcoming hunger in particular, are tasks far more critical to the U.S. national security than most policymakers acknowledge or even believe. Since the advent of nuclear weapons most Americans have been conditioned to equate national security with the strength of strategic military forces. The Commission considers this prevailing belief to be a simplistic illusion. Armed might represents merely the physical aspect of national security. Military force is ultimately useless in the absence of the global security that only coordinated international progress toward social justice can bring.”
Today, the only thing (other than the 2nd coming of Christ) to comprehensively address global injustices is the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Achievable goals every nation agreed to in 2015. Funding them can be done without increasing any debt to any government. Doing so would actually save trillions of dollars and billions of lives. All that is missing the political will of your elected officials to make it happen.
Even if you never voted...the most important thing to do now as a citizen is to educate those in power on what our priorities should be. Their job is to represent you/us. They swore to protect the Constitution. But without putting the protection of human rights first...it cannot protect us. We must fulfill our individual and founders promise of liberty and justice for all. Right now, the best way of doing that is achieving the 17 SDGs.
See the web (of life).
Insist on justice for all (17 Sustainable Development Goals).
Or prepare for the catastrophic consequences (some are already here)
