Have you seen the Sorcerer’s Apprentice sequence from Fantasia? Where the sorcerer leaves Mickey Mouse in charge of the castle and Mickey bewitches a broom into doing his work for him? The broom then gets out of control so he chops it to bits and is suddenly confronted by hundreds of brooms. That’s the world we live in.
Despite how good an opening that would be for me to spew forth thoughts on immigration, that’s not what’s on my mind tonight. No, my mind is on our ten year nap. The one that started in ‘91 when, like Mickey, we thought our work had been handled. The Cold War ended, freedom reigned supreme, no problem if we just just took a short rest. What could go wrong?
Ten years later the rising tide finally reached us and we woke. 9/11 wasn’t the beginning of a new world. It was a wake up call. Problem is some of us went back to sleep or at best are still groggy. The rest? They’re the ones in power, but they went too far in the other direction. Chugged a whole pot of coffee and have had the shakes ever since.
See, prior to ‘91 we had the two big powers and just about everyone else had chosen sides (or been forced onto one). Then the other side evaporated. We had a chance then. We could have said to all those little hangers on, “Look, the whole communist/totalitarian idea? It doesn’t work. Time to give it up and come on over to our side.” Instead we patted ourselves on the back and started debating state sponsored daycare. It’s understandable. We’d blown our money and were tired of the constant tension.
It was a mistake though. While we had only really had to deal with the threat of actual fighting for a decade and a half and hadn’t had to deal with any military action on our own soil for much longer, all the small countries where the “War” part of the Cold War had happened suddenly found themselves with no battles to fight. They had the materiel and the training, but no use for it. Nor was there any other work for them to do. We had been able to justify paying them to keep the communists from taking over because our country, not to mention the future of the world, was at stake. Why pay a guy to herd sheep though when we could use that money to put a computer in every classroom?
So they started fighting amongst themselves. Sure we’d put our foot down now and then, but for the most part, “You’re free now. Go do whatever y’all want. We’ll be over here trying to speed up this internet thing so we can see what porn’s out there so we can ban it.” Some came to see our laid back attitude as weakness or, at the other extreme, a lack of humanitarian concern for their poverty. Others just decided to use us as a scapegoat, redirecting the anger of their followers or subjects onto us. Regardless of the cause, the effect was the same, a bubbling brew of animosity which we ignored until it eventually spilled out and burned us.
Now I’m not saying that we should have done back in ‘91 what we have now done in Iraq. I’m also not saying we shouldn’t have (and I’m also not saying our attention then should have been limited to Iraq). I’m saying that we should have given the countries that had chosen totalitarianism, both those that had been on our side and those who had sided with the Soviets, a new choice. Embrace freedom or else. The “else”, in my opinion, would have been a choice for us and those countries standing beside us on this side of the line. Attack or contain. If containment, check back later and see if they’ve changed their mind. If not, we choose again, attack or contain.
It wouldn’t have been easy. It might not have worked. 9/11 might have still happened and possibly even sooner. We would have been awake though. We wouldn’t have turned out the lights on so much of the world so that we could catch a bit of shut eye. As such, we wouldn’t be constantly confronted by fear, fear of what is out there in the dark, fear of what might even be lurking under our own bed. We also wouldn’t find ourselves being lead about by those who woke up first by shoving a hypodermic needle of caffeine into their spinal column.
Those of us not fully awake, who don’t fully recognize how much picking up we still have left from half a century of antagonism, need to finally wake up. Those who are overly jittery and see danger in even the smallest shadow, need a good slap to calm them down. The rest of us who are awake, aware, and not afraid, who see that the road is long and don’t want to walk it, but know we must, need to stop stretching and just get to it.