“A Far Deeper Malady”

Like many, the evening of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, after work I poured myself a drink and turned on the television. I watched the horrific pictures on the television, and I listened to the accounts of the madness that occurred that day.

Like many Americans I stared at the television in blurry amazement. I ingested a large quantity of alcohol. And I wondered why.

Often my thoughts drifted to a comment Dr. King had made forty years ago.

One year to the day before he was assassinated, Dr. King gave what I think is one of the greatest speeches in the history of our country. In the speech he articulated his reasons for taking a firm stand against the war in Vietnam. He did this before a group called the Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam. After listing many of the reasons why he opposed the war in Vietnam, King said, “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing clergy-and-laymen-concerned committees for the next generation.”

The slaughter that occurred at Virginia Tech shouts to us that the “far deeper malady” that King commented on continues to grow like a bouquet of cancers in the heart, mind, and soul of America.

The Murderer

The man who committed the Virginia Tech murders had a history of mental instability. He bought the guns he used legally. He bought the ammunition he used legally. He probably bought the magazines he needed to fire off so many rounds so quickly legally. He killed thirty-two people before he killed himself.

To me the atrocities that were committed at Virginia Tech provide a convincing argument for improved gun safety. At the very least we should close the loopholes in the current laws that allow people with a history of mental instability to purchase firearms. We should not allow people with a history of mental instability purchase ammunition. We should not sell hollow tipped bullets as easily as we sell cold medicine.

The guns that were used in the Columbine killings were purchased illegally. To me this suggests we should crack down on the illegal avenues used to sell and distribute weapons.

After the murder of President Kennedy there was an outcry for greater gun safety. Similar pleas were heard the weeks after Dr. King and Robert Kennedy were killed by the National Rifle Association. And for their undaunting work to fight off efforts to increase gun safety and reduce the number of deaths due to firearms in this country this week we award the idiot of the week honor to the National Rifle Association.

America remains a violent nation. Legislation that was promoted to increase gun safety falls short of its goals.

Politicians are fond of using phrases like “law and order” and “tough on crime.” Improved gun safety is popular with the police and most of the population. But it was clear from the statements politicians made this week that there will not be a huge push to improve gun safety laws. The US also refuses to crack down on the traffic in illegal guns.

The Facts Mam

This week one of the saner comments from America’s punditocracy was spoken by Mark Shields. On the NewsHour With Jim Lehrer Shields noted a statistic that we all should ponder. In World Wars I and II, in Vietnam, Korea, and the first Persian Gulf War, 659,763 Americans died. Between 1980 and 2004—that’s just 24 years—firearms in America killed more than twice that number—more than 1,427,000.

Shields provided one more statistic. Take the nations with the 26 best economies. Then count up the number of deaths due to firearms in all 26 countries. 83% of those who died because of firearms, died in America.

Iran: Past is Prologue

Americans are not just violent at home, our actions trigger violence abroad.

In 1953, the US backed a coup of Iran’s Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh. The coup was largely a response to Mossadegh nationalizing Iran’s lucrative petroleum industry.

Mossadegh’s actions were very popular in Iran. The US backed coup was successful. Mossadegh was ousted. Iran developed a west leaning and very autocratic and oppressive government. It was headed by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The US supported the Shah’s regime and western based oil firms operated in Iran. Dissent within Iran grew. The Shah’s government grew very unpopular. In 1979, the Shah left Iran. Soon his government collapsed.
It is to parody understatement to suggest that US efforts in Iran were not successful in the long term.

Some of the lessons from the US’s experience in Iran are obvious: they hate us there; they didn’t like us taking their oil; they certainly don’t like us having a great deal of influence in their country; much as we may love the short term profits foraging around a country in this region may yield, we weren’t very good at controlling events in Iran.

More US Adventurism

Nor did the US learn what it could have from the US debacle in Vietnam. In Vietnam the US fought a primarily political conflict in a largely military way. And it fought the military component miserably. It fought a mostly guerilla conflict with conventional means. It did not provide nearly enough troops to fight the war it hoped to win. It failed to train the native army. It failed to force the political system in South Vietnam to take strong measures to fight corruption.

While the US was conducting adventures in Iran and Vietnam, the institutions of the US failed. Neither retired senior military nor the active senior military addressed the errors that were being made. The US media basically cheered from the sidelines while these conflicts were initiated.

Then beginning in March 2003, G.W. Bush and the US repeated many of the same mistakes it had made in Iran and Vietnam—this time the US made the mistakes in Iraq. Since then over 3300 US soldiers have died, over 24,000 have been wounded. Over 60,000 Iraqis have died. And the US has spent over 418 billion dollars.

Iraq is in the middle of a civil war. At its best, the Iraqi government is only moderately effective. The Iraqi army is riddled with incompetence. The Iraqi police force is an absurd, corrupt, and very unfunny joke. The entire region is agitated. “Debacle” seems too kind a word to describe the US experience in Iraq.

The High Price of False Honor

The end the US achieved in Vietnam in 1973 was very similar to an end the US could have in achieved in Vietnam four years before. During that period over 34,000 US and over 100,000 Vietnamese soldiers were killed; a million Vietnamese and 100,000 Cambodians were killed; over 100,000 US troops and a million Vietnamese were wounded; about 150,000 children were made orphans and 60, 000 women were made widows.

The people of the US were told that the war was being continued so that the US could achieve “peace with honor.” The agreement that ended the war brought neither peace nor honor. Soon the North controlled the South. And because the peace agreement did not hold, any honor the US achieved was counterfeit.

Clearly honor, even the synthetic variety, is expensive.

Oil Again

Since the thirties oil has been a national security issue. Since the thirties, foresightful leaders should have recognized this and taken reasonable steps to address this vulnerability. Very few did. For decades our leaders should have been saying, Let’s try something else to address the oil shortage (hint, conservation, alternative fuels, alternative energy sources). For decades our leaders didn’t do this.

Commonalities

You don’t need to be an expert to realize that in the last decades the US has done some pretty stupid stuff. You don’t need to be brilliant to realize that unless we begin to repair our ways, most of these problems will get worse. The longer we wait to address them, the costlier the solution to all of these problems will be.

There are some commonalities.

Certainly in all the situations that I have mentioned, when events were unfolding, Americans did not seek out nor were they given much of the truth about what was really happening. In most of these situations, when some of the truth was exposed, plenty went to great lengths to deny it. Remember the hue and cry when the phrase global warming was first used? Some will remember the shrieks of laughter that followed President Carter’s comment in April 1977 that the struggle to gain energy independence created the “moral equivalent of war.”

Special interests have done what special interests often try to do—skew policies to what is best in their narrow perception of a short-term future—and damn the consequences for everyone else.

Greed, apathy, denial, selfishness, and other usual suspects circulated wildly as these problems exploded.

Detours

Whenever someone tries to address a problem, there almost always are many who seek to detour the solution. There are plenty of ways to avoid addressing the maladies before us.

A few of the more obvious diversions:

Many will talk and talk (and talk) about how complicated it is to solve many of these problems.
There no doubt are some kind and well-intentioned people who would like to talk and talk (and talk) about diagnosing the problem. (My guess is that if the malady were reduced to one ailment, and if that ailment bit us on the nose, too many of us would deny the bite and its source.)

Finger pointers have plenty of places to point.

Some will simply suggest our leaders let us down. We certainly elected the leaders who have let us down. As a people we certainly have, for the most part, sat idly by while the Americans one another at home and committed violent absurdities abroad.

And it is very easy to quibble with the list I have created. Every special interest group in the country has its own list of issues to champion. Certainly the long and largely silly debate by those who suggest global warming is a hoax is another example of this far deeper malady. Other examples are easy to identify: our reluctance to clean up the mess that exists in so many of our schools, our reluctance to repair a health care system that has huge and obvious flaws, our reluctance to reduce the deficit, our reluctance to fix a the system we use to nominate presidential candidates from a political party—the current incarnation seems to have been cobbled together by the village idiot and a lobbyist for the television networks.

There’s plenty more.

We’re reluctant to educate our population to eat better and exercise more. We’re reluctant to encourage many Americans take the steps needed to get their personal finances in order. We’re reluctant to reduce the slaughter on our roads by providing incentives for safer cars. We’re reluctant to do the research necessary to determine why so many children now have attention deficit and other disorders. We seem to have little desire to change our prisons from crime colleges many are now and do the hard work needed to make jails and prisons institutions that improve the moral fiber of the inhabitants. The list could go on and on.

Clearly

There’s violence in the heart of America. There’s fear and hate in its soul. America and Americans often refuse to learn from mistakes or seek out the truth in a time of crisis. And there’s blood on its hands. We’re going to become even more ill, or we’re going to have to take serious measures to address these problems.

When he spoke at Riverside in April of 1967, Dr. King said, “Somehow this madness must cease.”

We can continue to do little to address the issues that sicken our world and pollute our souls.

Or, for each of the issues, we can do something, learn from it, and improve our response.