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to Afghanistan was murdered and
the U.S. embassy in lran was
stormed precisely mirrored the
White House mood and its deficien–
cies."
Viewing America's crumbling
world position, the
Wal/ Street Jour–
nal
in an editorial urged the Admin–
istration to "show sorne backbone
somewhere," adding that "in the
world of geopolitics, if you lose in one
place you will be tested in another.
If
you lose successively you will be
tested in more ways.
If
you start not
even to put up a fight, everyone will
start to bully you."
Fatal Sickness
l t is doubtful that, given America's
current mood, the nation will ever
recover from what sorne have called
its case of " term1nal timidity."
The reaction to the turmoil in
lran, which led to the Shah's ouster,
is a case in point. As the situation
deteriorated, Mr. Carter ordered the
carrier Constellation to sail from the
Philippines to the Persian Gulf; three
days later he changed signals and
ordered the vessel into port at Singa–
pare.
America's fatal sickness could be
summed up in a three-word diagno–
sis: "no more Vietnams." The Viet–
nam experience shattered American
self-confidence- the "pride of your
power" (Leviticus 26: 19) . Nearly
every foreign policy gauntlet thrown
down by the shrewd strategists in the
Kremlin since then has been side–
stepped out of fear of getting in–
volved in "another Vietnam."
"The Administration's response to
the multiplying challenges and disor–
ders abroad," reports George F. Will
in the March 19, 1979 issue of
News–
week,
"has been a litany of things it
will not do: interventions it will not
contemplate, bases it will not seek,
weapons it wi ll not build. Its policy
has been symbolized by two aircraft
carriers, the one Carter vetoed and
the one he changed his mind about
sending toward the Persian
Gulf. ...
"Unreciprocated concessions in di–
plomacy, unilateral restraint in pre–
paredness, willfully sanguine assess–
ments of Soviet acts ... and reliance
on gestures, all tbese have acceler-
The
PLAIN TRUTH May 1979
ated the decline of confidence in
America's ability to influence
events."
A Two-Decade Sllde
President Carter, as public opinion
polls show, has suffered a great deal
because of America's string of for–
eign policy setbacks. But no single
person or cause is to blame. "Rome
wasn' t built in a day," laments news
analyst William Rusher, "and the
current image of the United States as
a paper tiger is the product of nearly
two decades of craven bipartisan
kowtowing to 'world opinion.' "
A case in point is the decision to
relinquish control over the U.S.-built
and operated Panama Canal. At–
tempting to appease world and Latín
American public opinion, Washing–
ton caved in to what amounted to
blackmail, roughly summed up as:
"Give us the waterway
O(
we'll dy–
namite the locks." Washington 's
magnanimous decision was supposed
to usher in a new era of harmonious
relations in the hemisphere.
"Somebody must have forgotten to
tell that to Prcsident López Portillo
of Mexico," adds Rusher. "1 repeat:
There is no point in getting mad at
López Portillo about this. He correct–
ly perceived the true meaning of the
canal giveaway, and he has every
reason to keep right on giving Uncle
Sam the caveman treatment until
and unless it stops working....
"The architects of our present low
estate respond by caricaturing the
point. Anybody who warns that a
great nation can
ill
afford to allow
itself to be pushed a round by midgets
is depicted as a hairy bully deter–
mined to force America to maintain
a 'macho' posture beyond its power
and contrary to its real interests."
The word "macho" has become an
epithet among politically involved
young Americans who use it to decry
almost any show or threat of show of
force, regardless of the provocation .
The young leaders of today, products
of the Vietnam-traumatized '60s
generation, have one thing much in
common, accordi ng to observer
Georgie Ann Geyer: "a consuming
guilt, a view of America as an evil
giant that must be leveled down, a
provincial attitude toward the rest of
the world, a lack of any sense of
history and a horror of deal ing frorn
a position of power."
This hesitation to act when action
is called for is producing a very dan–
gerous world, one in which the Soviet
Union and its proxy ·forces, the Cu–
bans, the East Germans and others,
are emboldened to take chances with
little fear of retaliation.
"Today we see the world order
coming unglued," editorialized the
Wa/1 Street Journal
on February 21,
1979. "The last time that happened
[in the 1930s] the result was world
war....
" Meanwhile, American influence
fades. We ... demonstrate that we
no longer have the power or will to
defend our own embassies. This is not
good for us, not good for our friends,
not good for the people of the
world ....
"The spiral into disorder can be
averted only if the U.S. starts to as–
sert itself once again. This does not
mean sending the Ma rines to settle
every quarrel in the world. lt
means ... asserting our rights un–
apologetically and keeping our prom–
ises to allies."
Fallure of Leadership
America's accelerating erosion of
power and influence- and the effect
this has had on both the economic
and military structure of the entire
free world-was detailed graphically
in a special 30-page section of the
March 12, 1979 issue of
Business
Week.
The theme of this special re–
port was summed up by the director
of an American bank in London who
said: "The most talked-about subject
in the world is the erosion of Ameri–
can power."
The blunt
Business Week
account
pulled no punches whatsoever. It said
the United States clearly faces a
"crisis of the decay of power" and
that this crisis is so pervasive that
"there appears to be a failure of lead–
ership at the core."
As in other analyses, the
Business
Week
staffers traced the decline back
over twenty years. Specifically, they
said: "The beginning of the decline
goes back to 1956, when the British
and French captured the Suez Canal
to protect the passage of oil through
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