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Bernard Rapoport is a member
of the Board of Contributors,
Central Texans who write columns regularly for the
Tribune-Herald. He is
chairman emeritus and founder of American Income Life
Insurance Co Also he is
past president of the Board of Trustees for the University
of Texas, creator and director of the Bernard and Audre
Rapoport Foundation (which give funds to improve education,
health, culture and citizenship for America and the world),
and a dear friend of peace. His ideas have been sought by
American presidents, foreign ambassadors and statesmen, and
leaders of industry and finance. He is a man of great wisdom
and a lover of peace.
Who
makes war decisions?
It's scary that too
often we don't have the will to
know
that which is harmful as relates to
going
to war.
We need to question how
much power the military has
On Page 3A of the Jan. 27 Trib was an article of
three paragraphs. Headline: "Pentagon
given authority to fund foreign militaries.”
I didn't think much about it. I was, however,
in the middle of Sumner Welles' The Time
for Decision,
published in 1944.
The book by the former secretary of state
during World War II, a diplomat for several
decades, is most illuminating, particularly
this passage on Page 342 about a one-time
military power:
"Throughout the past one hundred years,
whether the rallying point for German patriotism was the
venerable figure of William
I, Bismarck, the superficial and spectacular
William II, the Marshal President Hindenburg,
or, in most recent times,
Hitler himself, public opinion
in this country has always
been prone to take the figurehead
as the reality.
"It has overlooked the fact that German policy during
the past 80 years has been
inspired and directed, not by
the Chief of State, but by the
German General Staff.
"It is this living, continuing, destructive
force that must be extirpated if the German
people are ever to make a constructive contribution to the
stability of Europe, and if any organized international
society is to be able
to safeguard the security of free peoples in the years to
come."
Upon reading this, I went back and reread
the article from the Trib. I found it difficult to
believe that the Congress would vote to transfer
responsibilities of the State Department to
the military.
It brought to mind President Eisenhower's most prescient
warning about the control exerted
by the military-industrial complex.
Well, I certainly don't have any inside information.
I reflect about Welles' book as to why Germany had been
involved in so many wars. And then I ponder our involvement
in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and a few others,
It's time for us to consider who is really
making the decisions about
making war. The Constitution of our forefathers says war is
up to
the president to propose and
up to Congress to enact. To get us to that point, the
president's most important information must come from
the State Department; to be
sure that what is perceived
is in fact reality. We certainly
didn't have the facts when
we went into Iraq.
After we have trustworthy facts, after diplomacy
has failed, after the case for war has
won the day, the military would take over. That's not the
way we do it today.
One of the things that concern me is that too many of us
do not have a sense of outrage
at injustice. It's scary that too often we don't
have the will to know that which is harmful as relates to
going to war. A hundred years ago Max
Weber forecast a society in
which those in power would
manipulate the masses as if
they were nothing but a herd
of sheep.
Maybe we're not at that
point, though I admit we're not as far away from it as we
ought to be. After all, we are fighting a war predicated on
false assumptions.
The United Nations would not give its approval,
but our "German staff' wasn't going
to be governed by the facts. Rather, it was
governed by the belief that there was no other
solution but war.
We live in a world in which we seem to have
lost the capacity for outrage at the most outrageous
things.
It's really scary that too often we don't have the will to
want to know, especially when in
fact we can know. But we need to know. We need to know so
we can avoid Weber's premonition about becoming
become a nation of sheep.
Rapoport sees peace thinking being a collective
decision-making process, not the decision of a few from the
top down. He believes passionately in the democratic
processes for decision making. Peace then is a collective
agreement, a covenant, a pact of the many.
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