-Caveat Lector-
>From www.notforpublication.com/case.html
> NOT for Publication
>
> The Case of the Missing Campaign Issue
>
> Who purloined debate about this nation's vital interests?
>
> By John L. Perry
>
>
>
>
>
> Posted August 17, 1999
>
> From the presidential campaign so far, you would conclude this
> nation's vital interests were contained within a cookie-cutter
> outline of the United States map.
>
> If American foreign policy collapses and the nation is sucked
> into a major war that its military is ill-equipped and its people
> are unprepared to wage, then all the tempting sugarplums of tax
> cuts and new spending, Social Security and Medicare fixes go up
> in the smoke of irrelevancy.
>
> It is always foreign policy the preservation of vital national
> interests that determines what kind of domestic policies any
> country can afford.
>
> But you'd never guess it to listen to this presidential campaign.
>
>
> In previous elections of a president, there were genuine debates
> over foreign policy. American voters, not to mention allied and
> adversarial governments abroad, knew good and well where the U.S.
> stood in the world.
>
> They knew with certainty what America perceived its vital
> interests to be and what it could be relied upon to do to
> protect them.
>
> National self-interest was an understood fact of life, not
> something of which to be ashamed.
>
> A nation's vital interests including its legitimate right to
> protect them were something the U.S. accorded even its
> super-power rival, the Soviet Union.
>
> That mutual understanding, plus the power and resolve to back it
> up, enabled the two nuclear-age titans to co-exist on the same
> small planet.
>
> Now, no one knows where anyone stands and worse, what anyone
> may do about it.
>
> Is there anyone, from Henry Kissinger to an average American to
> the ruling clique in the People's Republic of China, who can
> honestly profess to know what the U.S. now defines as its vital
> national interests or what it is prepared to do to protect them?
>
> Does anyone, including the candidates themselves, know what those
> seeking the presidency believe the nation's vital interests are
> or what, if elected, they would do to protect them?
>
> Just about every other subject under the sun has been injected
> into this present campaign for the White House:
>
> Who has raised the most money to get elected not even who
> contributed it and what the candidates may have promised in
> return?
>
> Who has inhaled or ingested or injected what and when?
>
> Who has done what, with what and with whom?
>
> Who promises to collect how much in taxes from whom to spend on
> which government programs to subsidize whom for not doing what?
>
> Who will use how much government to do what to keep whom from
> doing what for themselves?
>
> Who will agree to transfer which constitutional rights from
> whom to the federal government on the theory that government
> knows best what should be done or thinks it can do it better?
>
> Who will do the most to insinuate government-approved
> philosophy or religion into public schools or private
> institutions?
>
> The one thing that clearly only the government can do, and the
> president is constitutionally mandated to do, is ominously
> missing from this presidential campaign.
>
> Whatever became of a campaign discussion about the nation's vital
> interests and what the new president is prepared to do to defend
> them?
>
> Who purloined that issue from this campaign?
>
> The mainstream news media, that's who.
>
> But wait, apologists for the press would contend, if the
> candidates aren't talking about foreign policy don't blame the
> press. It's just reporting what the candidates say.
>
> Baloney!
>
> If the candidates are making vital national interests a campaign
> issue, the news media are doing a splendid job of filtering it
> out from what they feed the American people. To the extent that
> may be going on, then the press is at fault.
>
> But concede that, except for an occasional peep out of Elizabeth
> Dole, who says she's ready to fight to defend Taiwan against
> China, the candidates are mostly mute on foreign policy.
>
> Is that the news media's fault?
>
> Absolutely!
>
> The job of journalists genuine journalists is not just to
> dog-trot along behind presidential candidates, jotting down their
> pearls of wisdom like recording secretaries, although that's a
> part of it.
>
> Genuine journalists have a responsibility also to raise the
> critical campaign issues with the candidates, to compel the
> office-seekers if necessary to face up to those issues and to
> reveal their positions, or lack of positions.
>
> That kind of journalism is simply not being practiced this time
> around. Mainstream news media have become too mesmerized by their
> fixation on celebrityhood and superficiality, too overcome by the
> fumes of their own self-congratulatory exhaust.
>
> They have become one smug Insiders Club, either fawning to be
> accepted as part of the political establishment or content to be
> manipulated as recipients of leaked dirt.
>
> The hard work of genuine journalism holds no attraction for the
> sycophantic scribes and owl-entrails interpreters who are
> obsessed with their next appearance on some television opinion
> "show."
>
> Maybe it's just as well they aren't asking candidates about
> foreign policy. So many of them seem to be baseline ignorant on
> the subject, obvious strangers even to pronouncing gazetteers,
> not to mention complex geopolitical issues.
>
> If they don't understand how their own society and government
> function, how can they possibly be expected to grasp the economic
> and strategic machinations behind the superficialities they toss
> around, such as "New World Order" and "Third Way"?
>
> Crying out to be proposed, debated and understood in this
> presidential campaign are questions such as these that the press
> should be putting to the candidates:
>
> What are the most vital U.S. national interests in what order
> of importance, and why?
>
> Are the Chinese commercial companies fronts for the Communist
> Chinese government that are acquiring property at control
> points on both the Pacific and Caribbean entrances to the Panama
> Canal threats to vital U.S. national interests?
>
> What will you do to guarantee free transit of U.S. ships
> through the Panama Canal so that the U.S. may maintain its
> present two-coast, transcontinental economy and defense?
>
> Are nuclear missiles on Chinese submarines within range of
> American cities a threat to vital U.S. national interests?
>
> Is a free and independent Japan a vital U.S. national interest
> in the Pacific region?
>
> Would you construe an attack by North Korea or China upon South
> Korea as a threat to Japan and against the vital national
> interests of the U.S.?
>
> How about a Chinese blockade of, or attack upon, Taiwan?
>
> Or any of the Republic of China's outlying islands?
>
> Should the U.S. go to war to defend Pakistan from India?
>
> Or India from Pakistan?
>
> What if China should intervene in an India-Pakistan war?
>
> Can you define the vital U.S. national interests in the Middle
> East, as affected by Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan
> and Egypt, and why?
>
> Under what conditions would the U.S. go to war there to protect
> those interests?
>
> What are the vital U.S. national interests in the Persian Gulf
> region, regarding Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the
> United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yeman, and why?
>
> When is U.S. military force required there?
>
> What are the "lines in the sand" in the Balkans insofar as
> vital U.S. interests are concerned?
>
> Under what conditions would you resort to using the North
> Atlantic Treaty Organization to protect which vital U.S. national
> interests?
>
> Will you act independently of the United Nations if necessary
> to protect vital U.S. national interests?
>
> On which of those vital national interests will you as
> president lead this nation to war to defend, if necessary?
>
> What are you prepared to do short of war to keep those vital
> national interests safe?
>
> What nations present the greatest potential threats to those
> vital national interests?
>
> What message do you want to send to the leaders of those
> nations to keep them from making the mistake of infringing upon
> these vital U.S. national interests?
>
> Should the U.S. be prepared to wage more than one war at the
> same time in defense of those vital national interests?
>
> Under what conditions, and where, would you resort to nuclear
> warfare?
>
> Does the U.S. today have the military forces required to defend
> all of its vital national interests?
>
> If it does not, what do you propose to do about it?
>
> Where do you rank the duty of the president to defend this
> nation's vital interests at the very top, somewhere near the
> top, at the bottom, somewhere in between?
>
> Will you ever lead this nation to war without first obtaining a
> declaration of war by Congress, as required by the Constitution?
>
> Those questions might do for openers.
>
> If the news-media representatives would do their job and ask
> them, that might just possibly give back to the American people
> the kind of campaign debate they are entitled to have.
>
> It would go a long way toward letting the nations of the world,
> friendly or not, know where both they and the U.S. stand.
>
> Don't count on it happening, not with the caliber of alleged
> journalists running around today, sticking microphones in
> candidates faces and parroting, "Your thoughts! Quickly now!"
>
> WHO WROTE this article?
>
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