Epilogue

This American history textbook should end with the close of the 1995-96 term of the Supreme Court of the United States, July 1, 1996. It convenes again on the first Monday of October, 1996. The Court has had a long history, beginning with its first Chief Justice, John Jay, who took his oath of office on October 19, 1789. He had been nominated to the Court by George Washington, the nation's first president. Thus, the history appearing in this book covered a period of 207 years, not counting the period covered in Chapter Two, "In the Beginning." That chapter ended with the ratification of the Constitution by the thirteen original states in 1789 and the ratification of the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, in 1791. Since then, I have tried to treat certain events in our history as defining our present. These events include the Civil War and Reconstruction, the expansion to the west after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the Manifest Destiny of Theodore Roosevelt, World War I, the 1920s, the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the War in Vietnam and World War II. This war transformed the United States in ways that surface today, more often than not guided by decisions of the Supreme Court, and the pace of change has accelerated with the development of new technology and the growth of the Internet.

Since July 1, 1996 the Green Party has announced that nine states with 106 electoral college votes will offer citizens a choice in November. A year earlier, the Green Party had announced a draft of Nader. They should rethink this idea. No third party candidate has ever been elected in this century, and the only one who came close was George Wallace in 1968. Had he not run, Hubert Humphrey might have won. Instead, the voters got Richard Nixon in 1968 and Watergate in 1973. Nixon resigned in 1974, but not before he had nominated William Rehnquist as an associate justice. President Ford nominated Justice Stevens in 1975, and President Reagan nominated Justices Kennedy, O'Connor, and Scalia. Reagan also promoted Justice Rehnquist to be Chief Justice. President Bush nominated Justices Souter and Thomas, and President Clinton nominated Justices Ginsberg and Breyer. During the last two terms of the Supreme Court, Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg and Breyer have combined in dissenting to the judicial excesses of Rehnquist, Scalia, O'Connor, Kennedy, and Thomas. If Senator Dole defeats President Clinton, voters will blame Nader for the ego-fulfillment role he played. Voters may have a Republican in the White House, Republican control of the House, and a Supreme Court that has already moved far to the right. Nader will have a lot to answer to those who voted for Clinton despite his drawbacks.

Today, the United States is quite different from only four years ago. This is not offered as a criticism, only to note that programs offered as solutions in the past may no longer work without at least minor political surgery. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and his War on Poverty created solutions existing today. They include welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid. Other areas of concern to voters include crime, the environment, race relations, education, and job security. The need for change today has never been clearer, but the shape of that change will not fit the vessels of yesterday. A new class of people has emerged from the chaos, and its members belong to a new constituency that is the emerging new majority in American politics. They no longer see themselves as either Republican or Democrat; they will favor a solution that is more effective, more efficient, and less expensive than any partisan solution shaped by ideology. These people are the knowledge workers of the next century.

In that period of four years, Bill Clinton has identified a new class of worker, the knowledge workers. Whether he did so on his own or with the help of others is irrelevant. The knowledge workers are the people who use the personal computer to process and disseminate information, so that any business enterprise can adapt quickly to the rapidly changing marketplace. Most companies today share information via local and wide area networks. The Internet seems clearly an extension of these networks. In its Findings of Fact, the District Court in Philadelphia stated "Today [in 1996], over 9,400,000 host computers worldwide, of which approximately 60 percent [are] located in the United States, are estimated to be linked to the Internet. This count does not include the personal computers people use to access the Internet using modems. In all, reasonable estimates are that as many as 40 million people around the world can and do access the enormously flexible communication Internet medium. That figure is expected to grow to 200 million Internet users by the year 1999." American Civil Liberties Union et al v. Janet Reno, Attorney General of the United States et al, F. Supp. (EDPa 1996). Bill Clinton sees the Internet as what it has become; in a global, highly competitive economy, the Internet will be the communication medium of the entrepreneur with a global market. Growth has already occurred and will make the Internet a global highway. Telecommunications, Inc., Comcast, and Time Warner,Inc. will soon equip most of the nation's public schools with high-speed cable modems allowing students to access the Internet at previously unimagined speeds. Some fifteen cable companies have made this offer. So, within a very few years, the nation's 95,000 public schools may all access the Internet. Accurate information will be available, and students may confirm what the get by using the Internet to access their Congressional representatives in the House and Senate. Congress has been slow in recognizing cyberspace, but within two years, all members of Congress will be online sending information to their wired constitutents. And this information age concept depends on delivery of quality on a global scale at a price customers are willing to pay. In a political environment, the shape of change is often concealed behind the partisan maneuvers.

Welfare, for example, is a case in point. In 1995, Democrats led by Democratic Senators Barbara Mikulsi, Tom Daschle, and John Breaux presented a radical plan to the Senate in 1995 with the full support of Bill Clinton. The bill they introduced in 1995 actually abolished the AFDC program entirely. It went far beyond anything conservative Republicans had dared dream, by rejecting the idea of a two-year limitation on welfare in favor of an immediate obligation to work. Each applicant for welfare benefits had to look for a job. If an applicant could not find one, he or she had to sign a contract under which, in exchange for promising to take the first job offered, the recipient would be given a job placement voucher with which to get the kind of job counselling and training the applicant wanted. To ensure that work paid more than welfare, additional funds were added for child care, and Senator Breaux added a provision that required the states to maintain at least 80 percent of current welfare spending levels for the next five years.

Republican presidential politics interfered with Senate approval. Gramm criticized Dole for being soft on illegitimacy and conditioned his support on the adoption of amendments requiring states to adopt a family cap and deny benefits to any beneficiary under 18 who had a new illegitimate child. Dole went along, and Senator Domenici added that anyone who believed a family cap that might cost a mother something like $75 in monthly benefit s also "believed in the tooth fairy." In any case, teenage mothers were given a chance to live in "second chance homes" offering community of interest to these mothers. As amended, the bill passed the Senate by an 87 to 12 vote, but the conference committee killed it by cutting children's elligibility for aid. Two-thirds of all AFDC beneficiaries were children, and it was grossly unfair to penalize them for the fact their mothers were on welfare. And by penalizing the pregnant teenage mothers, the Christian Coalition argued that abortions would increase, a remedy Dole opposed in 1972 when he was elected senator from Kansas. However, it's no secret that the number of children born to single mothers now represents about 30 percent of all children born in the United States. The Republicans seem to prefer orphanages for some of these unwanted children, but these are hardly a satisfactory solution for the 21st century. Dickens condemned them in the 19th century.

Crime is often first on the list of voter concerns, and the voters want incarceration of criminals guilty of violent crimes. They fear the violence of crimes and the utter irrationality of murder, for example, and a criminal in jail cannot rape anyone. Republicans and a few Democrats have failed to distinguish between nonviolent and violent crimes. A politician soft on crime will probably lose the next election. Congress and the state legislatures should pay more attention to prevention of crime in general at the community level. Recently, the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica released the results of a two-year study of crime. It found that dollar-for-dollar, programs that encouraged high-risk young people to finish school and stay out of trouble prevented five times as many crimes as stiff sentencing laws imposed on repeat offenders with so-called "three-strikes-and-you're-out" laws. The Rand Corporation found several highly effective prevention programs. One of them provided cash and scholarships to keep students in high school. Participants earned money for extracurricular academic studies, community activities, and work. Over a four-year period, students could earn a maximum of $7,500 in stipends plus a matching amount in scholarship funds. These incentives increased graduation rates and college enrollment. As of 1996, this pilot project was funded by the Ford Foundation and the United States Department of Labor. Members of Congress are merely showboating for the political points earned by saying "I'm tougher on crime than my opponent." In fact, his opponent may well into a prevention program that would reduce the costs of crime and be more effective than stiff penalties. Alternative thinking is badly needed in the criminal justice system, as it moves into the information age. A new book by Morley Winograd and Dudley Buffa, Taking Control: Politics in the Information Age is recommended reading for those alternative thinkers.

The authors of this book, both experienced Democratic operatives, make a statement on page 111:

"Next to social security, Medicare is the most expensive entitlement program administered by the federal government." They're right, of course, a fact confirmed in June, 1996. In June, the trustees of the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund announced that, without more revenue or reduction in costs, Medicare would be bankrupt by the year 2001. The Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, Part A of Medicare, is financed by a 2.9 percent payroll tax divided equally between workers and their employers. Part B, which covers doctors' and other outpatients, is financed by in part by monthly insurance premiums but mostly by general revenue of the United States. The solvency of Part B is now in question. The latest figures on Part A show that expenditures are exceeding revenues to such an extent that the trust fund with a current surplus of $121 billion will be almost completely depleted in four years and run a deficit of $53 billion in the year 2001. The authors of Taking Control offer their own approach to dealing with Medicare. In the process, they have coined a new word, "chaord," which combines the seemingly opposite principles of chaos and order."

Systems, even those as complex as health care, can be made orderly when they repeat themselves in recognizable and measurable patterns that oscillate between equilibrium and disequilibrium. A system in disequilibrium is said to be on the edge of chaos. A failure to change this state will eventually lead to the disintegration of the system. Part A of Medicare is a perfect example, but it cannot be allowed to disintegrate; too much is at stake. Without funds, most hospitals in the United States would close. Chaos.

A chaordic system is one that exists between regulatory rigidity and flexibility. It concentrates on the rules governing the relationships among its parts; in the process, it creates coherent patterns that often resemble the fractal shapes of the new science of chaos. The end product is a system rigid enough to permit efficiency and fluid enough to permit effectiveness. The Clinton health care proposals in 1994 ended in defeat. There were at least three reasons for its defeat. In 1965, when Medicare was first enacted by Congress, it created a constituency, those over 65, more powerful than any other single constituency in the country. It even created a national organization_the American Association for Retired People (AARP)_that watched Medicare and reacted quickly to any threat to its existence. The medically indigent got Medicaid, and it, too, had powerful friends that established the legal parameters within which Medicaid operated. Congress had forgotten to establish principles, so eventually both programs began to spin out of control.

Universal coverage was the first such principle, and the second was a rule prohibiting denial of coverage because of a preexisting medical condition. The third principle was one that made making all coverage portable; a change in employment had no effect on coverage. Furthermore, Congress did not repeal Section 106 of the Internal Revenue Code. It provided that no employer-paid health insurance was treated as taxable income to the employees who had no incentive to moderate his or her demand for services. As the cost of health care began to explode, money that would otherwise have been available for wage increases was used to pay rising insurance premiums.

In a new, chaordic health care system, an insurance company would probably become the payer of last resort, eliminating the existing incentive to exclude claims and deny coverage. The insurance company would be liable only for the portion of the medical bill not paid by the patient because of a deductible. The authors of Taking Control have a better idea; health insurance policies must become life insurance policies. Whatever is not spent on health care may be converted to and paid as a life insurance. Patient and payer both have an incentive to lower costs. Furthermore, patient and payer want the same thing_the best possible health care at the lowest price and for the longest period of time. The authors of Taking Control offer several other fields where chaos theory may produce solutions. However, this theory may not be able to deal with what is likely to be a major campaign issue, wages for workers sufficient to give them a decent a standard of living. Politics must focus on the economic condition of working people.

The new national organization, Campaign for America's Future, plans to spark a national debate that its founders say is long overdue. On July 17, 1996 they wrote in a position paper that "the measure of the economy is whether it works for working people. It is not sufficient for the wealthy to prosper, speculators to strike it rich, corporations to profit, if working people are not sharing fully in the rewards produced by their labor and productivity." The debate over a minimum wage of $5.15 an hour by 1997 is only the beginning. When fully effective in 1997, this wage will provide $9,888 per year, not enough to live on.

In almost all presidential elections of this century , the outcome has been decided on domestic issues. Roosevelt won in 1932 because the country was sinking into the Great Depressiion. George Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. There was a deep recession and Bush failed to recognize it. With this election of 1996, the outcome will probably be dermined on the basis of of economic and wage policies with a touch of foreign policy issues. It is scheduled for November 5, 1996. Voters have had little exposure to foreign policy with the exceptions of the Dayton Agreement. It was designed to settle issues in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia, once a part of Yugoslavia. More recently Iraq's Saddam Hussein chose sides between warring Kurdish factions. President Clinton chose to "punish" Hussein for violating various Security Council resolutions. After authorizing the use of aircraft and missiles, Clinton deployed 5,000 American troops to Kuwait to remind Hussein he could expect retaliation if he continued on his aggressive path. Actually, the outcome was rather simple. The United States extended the "no fly" zones within Iraq. Hussein has now agreed not to launch surface-to-air missiles (SAMS) against American jets patrolling these zones. Hussein probably has other plans, but the American public cannot expect Iraqi disclosure of these plans until after the action planned has actually happened. In the midst of this volatile exchange between the United States and Iraq, Republicans have apparently decided to bring foreign policy into the campaign as an issue.

In July, 1996 Senator Bob Dole, once a Republican power in the Senate, resigned to run for president of the United States. After Dole resigned, Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi was elected as Senate Majority Leader. On September 11, Candidate Dole reasserted his influence with Lott and other Republicans, persuading them to shelve the Chemical Weapons Convention then before the Senate for ratification as a treaty. Two-thirds of those voting are constitutionally required to ratify a treaty that has been signed by 160 nations and ratified by 63. More formally entitled the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and the Destruction, this convention is a vitally important international treaty. By shelving it, he overlooked the fact that it had been negotiated by Presidents Reagan and Bush and was opened for ratification in Paris on January 13, 1993. Neither Iraq nor Iran had either signed or ratified this convention by September 16, 1996, but Candidate Dole mentioned only that the verification of compliance was not 100 percent and that it involved "intrusive paperwork." According to an editorial in the New York Times, "American military leaders, responsible political leaders of both parties, and the American chemical industry all [favored] the treaty."

While the treaty may still be ratified in 1997, it may not enter into force without ratification of 65 nations. The history of chemical weapons began in 1675 when France and Germany agreed not to use poison bullets, and in 1899, the Hague Convention of that year prohibited the use of arms or material to cause unnecessary suffering, such as poison-filled projectiles. However, the first known use of poison gas took place in 1915, when the German army carried out a massive attack at Ypräs, Belgium during World War I. Chemical weapons caused 91,000 fatalities during this war, 1,500 American soldiers. Outrage at the effects of chemical weapons, led in 1925 to the signing of the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and Bacteriological Methods of Warfare. Many states, including the United States signed this Protocol but reserved the right to retaliate in kind if used by non-signatories. In 1971, the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament completed its work on the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological and Toxin Weapons. This convention was opened for signature in 1972 and entered into force in 1975.

However, soon after this convention went into effect, Iran alleged that Iraq was using chemical weapons in its war against Iran in 1980. In March, 1984 the Secretary General of the United Nations set up an expert team to investigate the allegations. The team travelled to Iran and visited some of the affected areas as well as a medical ward in Teheran. Samples taken from unexploded Iraqi aerial bombs were shown to contain mustard gas, and some were found to contain a lethal nerve gas, tabun. Thus, from 1984, to 1988, the expert team and others proved use of chemical weapons by Iraq, including a large-scale aerial and artillery attack against civilian targets in 1987 and another large-scale Iraqi attack against Halabja in Iran. The Iraq-Iran War ended in 1989 with inclusive results, and Saddam Hussein began analyzing what he might obtain by attacking Kuwait which he did on August 2, 1990. Iraqi troops overwhelmed Kuwait rapidly, and Hussein announced that Kuwait had become Iraq's nineteenth province. Allegedly pursuant to United Nations Security Council, President George Bush deployed American troops to Saudi Arabia with the objective of ousting Iraqi troops from Kuwait. American troops were equipped with gas masks and chemical decontamination facilities against the possibility that Saddam might use chemical weapons, including nerve gas against the coalition forces assembled to oust the Iraqi Republican Guard from Kuwait.

On February 28, 1991 President Bush prematurely declared victory for the coalition and announced a cease fire, noting that Kuwait City had been liberated with the defeat of Iraq's Republican Guard, Hussein's crack troops. There was a major deceit in this press statement from Bush. The aircraft, tanks, armored personnel, and artillery used by retreating Iraqi troops all survived and turned up later. Hussein used them to attack the Shia Muslims south and north of Baghdad. Most of these weapons were shipped to Iraq under export permits issued by the Bush Department of Commerce. Five years later, Saddam Hussein, who, by this time, had rebuilt Iraqi command, control and communication facilities seriously damaged by coalition aircraft, launched an attack against a dissident Kurdish faction in Erbil, the capitol of the autonomous Kurdish government. It was to be the destination of shipments of humanitarian aid to the Kurds from the West. President Clinton ordered air and missile strikes against key Iraqi facilities in what should now be described as Bush's Unfinished Business. Clinton also directed that F-117 Stealth aircraft and 5,000 American troops be deployed to enforce the expanded "no fly zone" within Iraq. Saddam Hussein almost certainly has concealed supplies of chemical weapons, and this possibility needs to be considered within the context of Dole's sabotage of the Chemical Weapons Convention, not because Dole has sided with Hussein, but because he seems incapable of understanding the policy implications of what he did with Republican support.

Since the Gulf War, which ended in 1991, Americans have discovered the Middle East is a jungle. Yet, despite all the harsh rhetoric, U.S. leaders are almost happy to see Saddam Hussein stay on. As one analyst, Professor Adid Daweesha, who teaches Middle East History at George Mason University, puts it, "There are two main interests that Saddam serves as long as he remains in power. First of all he and Iraq will always be the other pole to confront Iran. In other words, the United States policy does not like to see Iran, which after all, is our other enemy, have a free-wheeling hold on the area. And American foreign policy has always been to balance the power of Iran with Iraq and vice versa, and that would be the best way to safeguard the safety of the oil lanes and secondly, of our allies in the area and to have stability for Saudi Arabia....."

On September 15, Professor Daweesha was interviewed by Daniel Zwerdling on National Public Radio. What follows is part of the interview.

Daniel Zwerdling: In other words, as long as Saddam Hussein Hussein is in power, he will check Iran and we will not have as much to do.

Professor Daweesha: Because if he goes out of power_let's say he's toppled or there is a coup against him_there is no guarantee that Iraq will continue as a state as it is now. In fact, there is just as good a chance of Iraq collapsing into three small statelets, one in the south for the Shiites, one in the center for the Sunnis, and one in the north for the Kurds. If that happens, then Iran, without any doubt, will become the dominant power in the Gulf, and that is something which does not coincide with the strategic interests of the United States in the area..

Daniel Zwerdling: OK. And the second policy interest it serves.

Professor Daweesha: The second policy that we have is that as long as Saddam Hussein is there, he continues to be a threat to the countries of the Gulf, particularly, Saudi Arabia. And if that is the case, then they [the Saudis] will always have to come to us for protection. Protection has its price. We give protection, but we also get a price out of the Saudis, and the main price we get is stability of oil prices. We insure that we will not have a 1973 oil hike again as long as Saudi Arabia knows it depends on us for protection. And secondly, as long as Hussein is a threat, they will always need military hardware, and much of the military hardware is going to come from the United States.....

Daniel Zwerdling: And because oil prices would come down, because there would be more oil on the market.

Professor Daweesha: Absolutely.

Daniel Zwerdling: And that would hurt the Saudis who are big producers?

Professor Daweesha: Exactly, and it will create a lot of turmoil within OPEC and within the entire [world] oil market. I think more importantly is that if Saddam Hussein goes, there is a very good possibility that_that a democratic regime might come and that in itself_if you think of Iraq as being one of the most important Arab countries in the Gulf, if you have a vibrant democracy in Iraq, that in itself will probably be the most potent danger to the Saudi regime....

Daniel Zwerdling: So what are Americans supposed to make of all this? As we hear what you're telling us about having Saddam in power actually serves our interest in many ways, yet, on the other hand we see these military actions and all this saber rattling against Saddam Hussein, what's going on here? What is America trying to achieve?

Professor Daweesha: Well, the United States is doing what any other superpower has been doing for centuries. The American public and people ought to realize the world out there is a jungle, and there is no such thing as right and wrong. There is a very large gray area [within which] we have massive interests, and these interests are sometimes contradictory.....

The interview took place during the popular NPR segment of All Things Considered. However, the program ran out of time. Thus, it did not mention either the covert activities of the CIA and its plans to topple Saddam Hussein. So far as is known, all CIA operations against Saddam have all been disasters. Nor has the public ever been told of operations against Iran, or even if there are any. Ever since 1979, Iran, with the fall of the Shah then, has been ruled, by a collection of irrational mullahs who still refer to America as "The Great Satan." Even worse, Iran seems to have financed the training of terrorists in Syria. These terrorists have then been launched against the United States. Some authorities have even claimed Syrian-trained and Iran-financed terrorists were responsible for the World Trade Center bombing of almost three years ago, in which a number of Americans were killed and many wounded. If President Clinton somehow managed to topple the mullah's regime in Iran, he might be able to restore a minium dose of democracy to a nation whose people deserve better than their religious leaders have provided. Teheran is also thought to have financed the training of terrorists from Afghanistan with help from former East German experts. Were the United States to restore a measure of democracy to Iran, Israel would become a primary beneficiary, but only if Syrian President Hafez al-Assad shut down the Iran-financed terrorist training camps in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. A major task, it might even encourage Syria and Israel to discuss the future of the Golan Heights annexed by Israel in 1981 eight years after Israel occupied this strategic area used by Syria to attack Israel in 1973.

Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said his government will never give up the Golan Heights. Accordingly, the peace process has stalled insofar as Syria is concerned. The Clinton Administration has so far failed to enlist Assad, despite some fifteen visits to Damauscus by Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and Secretary of State James Baker serving under former President George Bush. However, Assad might agree to consider closing the terrorist camps in exchange for financial help to rebuild Syria's deteriorating infrastructure with better schools, roads, housing, office buildings and light industry needed to launch Syria into the 21st century.



The earth




All contents © 1996 William M. Brinton
All photographs © Archive Photos, New York
All film © Archive Film, New York