On ISIS and the Cowardly College of Communist Containment
Read Time:3 Minute, 12 Second
President Truman’s Secretary of State, as the Cold War began in the middle of the century, was Dean Acheson. Like everyone, Acheson was surprised at the tactics of the Soviet Union after World War II ended. Expanding into buffer countries, taking them over, was out of the norm, at least what had been normal up to that point.
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Acheson presided over a debate within the State Department. The prevailing sentiment following the war was, in a couple of words, never again. Never again to genocide. Never again to appeasement. Those lessons were pressed into American consciousness.
But so was the possibility of nuclear war. The issue among policy makers became one of alternatives. How could we escape war that could come from confrontation. How could we prevent war that could come from a lack of response?
Acheson’s group came up with a plausible answer. Strength was to be used to threaten, but also to lift up. Strong arming the Soviet menace while pulling up allies required different expressions of the same resolve.
Acheson’s group called it containment. The combination of cautious brinkmanship and economic aid followed a strategic theory. If the Soviet Union could be constrained, kept within boundaries, the entire empire would eventually fall victim to its own contradictions.
Conservatives were outraged at the moral ambiguity. That rage mingled with opportunism as a Senator from California attacked Dean Acheson in personal terms. Senator Richard Nixon went after Democrats running for an assortment of offices using the same alliteration. Each was a quisling, “holding a Ph.D. from Dean Acheson’s Cowardly College of Communist Containment.”
The cowardly containment rhetoric was more than bluster. It was the clarion call of true believers. We were at war, and there ought to be no limits. Conservatives were angry beyond words at the rejection of emotional impulse. The substitution of thoughtful strategy was infuriating.
Turning away from intellect during crisis is a predictable emotional response. But acting on rage can have unintended results.
As was the case back then, Conservatives today have much to be angry about.
The United States insists that substantial continuation of aid to Iraq depends on changes in Iraq’s treatment of its people. Otherwise, weapons will continue to fall into the hands of murderous ISIS militants.
Military aid to rebels in Syria is restricted to weapons that cannot be later used against the United States or our allies, until a clear division develops between those fighting an oppressive regime and terrorist militants who join them.
I was thinking of the days of Nixon’s cowardly containment verbiage as I read a joint statement from Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Their demand for massive arms to Iraq and to the Syrian resistance contained some of the same desperate fist clenching anger.
A policy of containment will not work against ISIS.
We need to get beyond a policy of half measures.
… none of this should be contingent on the formation of a new government in Baghdad.
The tone is familiar. We need to do something decisive, massive, and we need to do it now.
In fact, we don’t need to do something. We need to do the right thing. We don’t need to make a move, we need to make the smart move. We don’t need to act now, unless now is the right moment.
The visceral reaction often expressed is, at its heart, emotional. We should recognize and understand that. But we should also understand, and we should reject, the true nature of that central demand.
Just as their forefathers did two thirds of a century ago, true believers reject thought itself.
This article is a collaboration between MadMikesAmerica and FairandUnbalanced.com.
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The only problem with containment is that it only works well on rational people who feel that they have something to lose if they die. Leaders of the Islamic religions have convinced their people that they have nothing to live for if they do not die for their religious beliefs, thus containment may be a waste of time on them.
Personally I think we should round them up, put them in a field and bomb the bastards!!!
very thoughtful, entirely laughable in the eyes of the likes of mcCain/graham. i’m reminded of kennedy and the cuban missile crisis.
when that happened i was the dependent child of an army sergeant living in west germany. dad was “on alert” and we were listening on afn radio for evacuation plans. even as a 12 year old i knew what folly that was; if war came we were dead…period.
it was later i learned that virtually all of president kennedy’s advisors were hell bent for leather…they believed that all that discussion and thoughtfulness was a bunch of malarkey…they thought kennedy was weak, pretty much a fool…he had no idea how to deal with those godless commies. we needed to bomb them now and ask questions later.
in retrospect, myself and several hundreds of millions of other human beings ought to be pretty grateful for that weak, foolish president. if not for him we would not be here today, listening to the real fools dribble on about dropping bombs all over the place and spreading out a few more billions of dollars in lethal ordinance over the burning middle east.
I lived in West Germany when I was in the Army Penny.
Interesting that you should mentioned that brief period of time pj. I was among the lucky Marines that were sent to Cuba for the real deal. Not having a radio or TV we knew nothing of what was going on. We were watching a bay and a fence line with instructions to kill anything that moved on the other side. People today do not even realize how close we came to not having a world anymore. But, as you say, the strength of Kennedy was in not having to fire a shot. “The greatest part of about war is never having one. The only way not to have one is to be prepared to have one.” SSGT T. Williams, U.S. Marine Corps, Parris Island Training Base, July 31, 1961.
bill. in my life i have never considered the marines at gitmo during that time. you must have been frightened to death. ignorance, being the better part of bliss, though, you were probably lucky to not have been getting any outside information: that would have been really terrifying!
knowing what we know now and didn’t know then…that they had tactical nukes on the island, at least you wouldn’t have suffered long.
Yes, the idea of not going off half cocked with rage seems to be a very difficult idea for some of these warmongers to grasp! I agree:
“In fact, we don’t need to do something. We need to do the right thing. We don’t need to make a move, we need to make the smart move. We don’t need to act now, unless now is the right moment.”
Indeed, we can’t go off half cocked and expect anything to conclude properly or completely!