PART V - THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING
December 8, 2008
I’d love to have been in Panama City last week to watch the irony of Russian sailors waving to Chinese workers as the Russian battle cruiser Peter the Great came through the last lock in the Panama Canal and anchored in what used to be a United States naval base. We saw pictures of the warship on television news Sunday, December 7th, but no commentator mentioned the irony of its presence in our old base in Panama on Sunday, December 7th.
I wonder where the Russian boat went when it entered the Pacific Ocean? Perhaps it’s sailing across to Pearl Harbor to check out our naval base there, or to see if our nation was honoring the dead sailors who died on another Sunday in December back in 1941? If they did, they were thinking a lot more about history than most of us.
What is it about popular notions of education in America that treat history as if it were nothing but memorizing dates? Think back for a moment to any U.S. President who had, or has, a real sense of history. The first one I come to is Ronald Reagan. Jimmy Carter who acted in Panama like he’d never read a history book might have thrust it upon Reagan. [Carter’s novels show the same myopia.] Next after a gap or two would have to be Teddy Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Looking forward, Barack Obama is a student of Lincoln, and that gives me hope for the future. Because what our leaders don’t know about history can really hurt us, and those that don’t even know what they don’t know are a serious liability.
Meanwhile, we seem to look at each day as if it has no precedent. This lack of knowing where we are in time has always cost nations and governments dearly. Two things about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor have relevance today. It brought us out of the Great Depression, because we had to rebuild an infrastructure in order to survive, and it woke up the American people to the reality of having enemies who would like us dead as the attack on 9/11 has awoken some. Do we need another blast to wake us up to what’s going on in the world? Or are the visions of Russian sailors and Chinese engineers in the Panama Canal, Russian and Chinese Presidents having tea with Fidel Castro in Havana, and Russian war games in the Caribbean, enough? That was last week in the Caribbean.
This week Vladimir Putin is quoted by the AP as saying Russia has no need “right now” for a naval base in Venezuela or Cuba [emphasis added]. Can you read between the lines, President elect Obama? There’s only one place in the Caribbean suitable for such a base and it’s not in Venezuela. It’s our remaining naval base . . . the one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the future is now.
There’s a readable biography of Theodore Roosevelt by Nathan Miller in the bookstores. You know Teddy . . . he’s one of the faces on Mount Rushmore, the one who built and leased for us the Panama Canal, and took Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines from Spain. Have someone give you a copy for Christmas. Better yet, have them send a copy to Hillary Clinton. Not everything Teddy did was good measure for today’s world, but knowing about it is.
Jay Lillie
December 8, 2008
February 13th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
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