THE ROAD TO 911

[Part of Constituting America’s 90 Day Study - Days that Shaped America]

For those old enough to remember, September 11, 2001, 9:03 a.m. is burned into our collective memory.  It was at that moment that United Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. 

Everyone was watching.  American Airlines Flight 11 had crashed into the North Tower seventeen minutes earlier.  For those few moments there was uncertainty whether the first crash was a tragic accident.  Then, on live television, the South Tower fire ball vividly announced to the world that America was under attack.

The nightmare continued.  As horrifying images of people trapped in the burning towers riveted the nation, news broke at 9:37 a.m. that American Flight 77 had ploughed into the Pentagon.

For the first time since the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Americans were collectively experiencing full scale carnage from a coordinated attack on their soil.

The horror continued as the twin towers collapsed, sending clouds of debris throughout lower Manhattan and igniting fires in adjoining buildings.  Questions filled the minds of government officials and every citizen:  How many more planes?  What were their targets? How many have died?  Who is doing this to us?

At 10:03 a.m., word came that United Flight 93 had crashed into a Pennsylvania field.  Speculation exploded as to what happened.  Later investigations revealed that Flight 93 passengers, alerted by cell phone calls of the earlier attacks, revolted causing the plane to crash.  Their heroism prevented this final hijacked plane from destroying the U.S. Capitol Building.

The final accounting was devastating: 2,977 killed and over 25,000 injured.  The death toll continues to climb to this day as first responders and building survivors perish from respiratory conditions caused by inhaling the chemical-laden smoke.  It was the deadliest terrorist attack in human history.

How this happened, why this happened, and what happened next compounds the tragedy.

Nineteen terrorists, most from Saudi Arabia, were part a radical Islamic terrorist organization called al-Qaeda “the Base”.  This was the name given the training camp for the radical Islamicists who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani, was the primary organizer of the attack. Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi, was the leader and financier. Their plan was based upon an earlier failed effort in the Philippines.  It was mapped out in late 1998.  Bin Laden personally recruited the team, drawn from experienced terrorists.  They insinuated themselves into the U.S., with several attending pilot training classes.  Five-man teams would board the four planes, overpower the pilots, and fly them as bombs into significant buildings. 

They banked on plane crews and passengers responding to decades of “normal” hijackings.  They would assume the plane would be commandeered, flown to a new location, demands would be made, and everyone would live.  This explains the passivity on the first three planes.  Flight 93 was different, because it was delayed in its departure, allowing time for passengers to learn about the fate of the other planes.  Last minute problems also reduced the Flight 93 hijacker team to only four.

The driving force behind the attack was Wahhabism, a highly strict, anti-Western version of Sunni Islam.  

The Saudi Royal Family owes its rise to power to Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792).  He envisioned a “pure” form of Islam that purged most worldly practices (heresies), oppressed women, and endorsed violence against nonbelievers (infidels), including Muslims who differed with his sect.  This extremely conservative and violent form of Islam might have died out in the sands of central Arabia were in not for a timely alliance with a local tribal leader, Muhammad bin Saud.

The House of Saud was just another minor tribe, until the two Muhammads realized the power of merging Sunni fanaticism with armed warriors.  Wahhab’s daughter married Saud’s son, merging their two blood lines to this day.  The House of Saud and its warriors rapidly expanded throughout the Arabia Peninsul fueled by Wahhabi fanaticism.  These various conflicts always included destruction of holy sites of rival sects and tribes.  While done in the name of “purification”, the result was erasing the physical touchstones of rival cultures and governments.

In the early 20^th Century, Saudi leader, ibn Saud, expertly exploited the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and alliances with European Powers, to consolidate his permanent hold over the Arabian Peninsula.  Control of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest sites, gave the House of Saud the power to promote Wahhabism as the dominant interpretation of Sunni Islam.  This included internally contradictory components of calling for eradicating infidels while growing rich from Christian consumption of oil and pursuing lavish hedonism when not in public view.

In the mid-1970s Saudi Arabia used the flood of oil revenue to become the “McDonalds of Madrassas”.  Religious schools and new Mosques popped up throughout Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.  This building boom had nothing to do with education and everything to do with spreading the cult of Wahhabism.  Pakistan became a major hub for turning Wahhabi madrassas graduates into dedicated terrorists.

Wahhabism may have remained a violent, dangerous, but diffused movement, except it found fertile soil in Afghanistan. 

Afghanistan was called the graveyard of empires as its rugged terrain and fierce tribal warriors thwarted potential conquerors for centuries.  In 1973, the last king of Afghanistan was deposed leading to years of instability.  In April 1978, the opposition Communist Party seized control in a bloody coup. The communist tried to brutally consolidate power, which ignited a civil war among factions supported by Pakistan, China, Islamists (known as the Mujahideen), and the Soviet Union.  Amidst the chaos, U.S. Ambassador Adolph Dubbs was killed on February 14, 1979.

On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, killing their ineffectual puppet President, and ultimately bringing over 100,000 military personnel into the country.  What followed was a vicious war between the Soviet military and various Afghan guerrilla factions.  Over 2 million Afghans died.

The Reagan Administration covertly supported the anti-Soviet Afghan insurgents, primarily aiding the secular pro-west Northern Alliance.  Arab nations supported the Mujahideen.  Bin Laden entered the insurgent caldera as a Mujahideen financier and fighter.  By 1988, the Soviets realized their occupation had failed.  They removed their troops, leaving behind another puppet government and Soviet trained military.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, Afghanistan was finally free.  Unfortunately, calls for reunifying the country by reestablishing the monarchy and strengthening regional leadership went unheeded.  Attempts at recreating the pre-invasion faction ravaged parliamentary system only led to new rounds of civil war. 

In September 1994, the weak U.S. response opened the door for the Taliban, graduates from Pakistan’s Wahhabi madrassas, to launch their crusade to take control of Afghanistan.  By 1998, the Taliban controlled 90% of the country. 

Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda warriors made Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan their new base of operations.  In exchange, Bin Laden helped the Taliban eliminate their remaining opponents.  This was accomplished on September 9, 2001, when suicide bombers disguised as a television camera crew blew-up Ahmad Shah Massoud, the charismatic, pro-west leader of the Northern Alliance.

Two days later, Bin Laden’s plan to establish al-Qaeda as the global leader of Islamic terrorism was implemented with hijacking four planes and turning them into guided bombs.

The 9-11 attacks, along with the earlier support against the Soviets in Afghanistan, was part of Bin Laden’s goal to lure infidel governments into “long wars of attrition in Muslim countries, attracting large numbers of jihadists who would never surrender”. He believed this would lead to economic collapse of the infidels, by "bleeding" them dry.  Bin Laden outlined his strategy of "bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy" in a 2004 tape released through Al Jazeera.

On September 14, amidst the World Trade Center rubble, President George W. Bush addressed those recovering bodies and extinguishing fires using a bullhorn:

“The nation stands with the good people of New York City and New Jersey and Connecticut as we mourn the loss of thousands of our citizens”

A rescue worker yelled, “I can't hear you!”

President Bush spontaneously responded: “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

Twenty-three days later, on October 7, 2001, American and British warplanes, supplemented by cruise missiles fired from naval vessels, began destroying Taliban operations in Afghanistan.

U.S. Special forces entered Afghanistan.  Working the Northern Alliance, they defeated major Taliban units. They occupied Kabul, the Afghan Capital on November 13, 2001.

On May 2, 2011, U.S. Special Forces raided an al-Qaeda compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, killing Osama bin Laden. 

REAGAN's REVOLUTION

[Part of Constituting America’s 90 Day Study - Days that Shaped America]

The election of Ronald Reagan on November 4, 1980 was one of the two most important elections of the 20^th Century.  It was a revolution in every way.

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) decisively defeated one term incumbent Herbert Hoover by 472-59 Electoral votes.  His election ushered in the era of aggressive liberalism, expanding the size of government, and establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.  Roosevelt’s inner circle, his “brain trust”, were dedicated leftists, several of whom conferred with Lenin and Stalin on policy issues prior to 1932.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan decisively defeated one term incumbent Jimmy Carter by 489-49 Electoral votes.  His election ended the liberal era, shrunk the size of government, and rebuilt America’s military, diplomatic, economic, and intelligence capabilities.  America reestablished its leadership in the world, ending the Soviet Empire, and the Soviet Union itself.

Reagan was a key leader in creating and promoting the conservative movement, whose policy and political operatives populated and guided his administration.  He was a true “thought leader” who defined American conservatism in the late 20^th Century.  Through his writings, speeches, and radio program, Reagan laid the groundwork, and shaped the mandate, for one of the most impactful Presidencies in American history.

The road from Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to Reagan’s Revolution began in 1940.

FDR, at the height of his popularity, choose to run for an unprecedented third term.  Roosevelt steered ever more leftward, selecting Henry Wallace as his running mate.  Wallace would run as a socialist under the Progressive Party banner in 1948.  Republican Wendell Willkie was the first private sector businessman to become a major party’s nominee.  Willkie had mounted numerous legal challenges to Roosevelt’s regulatory overreach. While losing, Willkie’s legacy inspired a generation of economists and activists to unite against big government.

As the allied victory in World War II became inevitable, the Willkie activists, along with leading conservative economists from across the globe, established policy organizations (“think tanks”) and publications to formulate and communicate an alternative to Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Human Events, the premiere conservative newspaper began publishing in 1944. The Foundation for Economic Education was founded in 1946.

In 1947, conservative “free market”, anti-regulatory economists met at the Mont Pelerin resort at the base of Mont Perelin near Montreaux, Switzerland. The greatest conservative minds of the 20^th Century, including Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman, organized the “Mont Perelin Society” to counter the globalist economic policies arising from the Bretton Woods Conference.  The Bretton Woods economists had met at the Hotel Washington, at the base of Mount Washington in New Hampshire, to launch the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Conservative writer and thinker, William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review on November 19, 1955.   His publication, more than any other, would serve to define, refine and consolidate the modern Conservative Movement.

The most fundamental change was realigning conservatism with the international fight against the Soviet Union, which was leading global Communist expansion. Up until this period, American conservatives tended to be isolationist.  National Review’s array of columnists developed “Fusionism”, which provided the intellectual justification of conservatives being for limited government at home while aggressively fighting Communism abroad.  In 1958, the American Security Council was formed to focus the efforts of conservative national security experts on confronting the Soviets.

Conservative Fusionism was politically launched by Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) during the Republican Party Platform meetings for their 1960 National Convention.  Conservative forces prevailed. This laid the groundwork for Goldwater to run and win the Republican Party Presidential nomination in 1964.

The policy victories of Goldwater and Buckley inspired the formation of the Young Americans for Freedom, the major conservative youth movement.  Meeting at Buckley’s home in Sharon, Connecticut on September 11, 1960, the YAF manifesto became the Fusionist Canon. The conservative movement added additional policy centers, such as the Hudson Institute, founded on July 20, 1961.

Goldwater’s campaign was a historic departure from traditional Republican politics.  His plain-spoken assertion of limited government and aggressive action against the Soviets inspired many, but scared many more.  Kennedy’s assassination had catapulted Vice President Lyndon Johnson into the Presidency.  LBJ had a vision of an even larger Federal Government, designed to mold urban minorities into perpetually being beholding to Democrat politicians.  Goldwater’s alternative vision was trounced on election day, but the seeds for Reagan’s Conservative Revolution were sown.

Reagan was unique in American politics.  He was a pioneer in radio broadcasting and television.  His movie career made him famous and wealthy.  His tenure as President of the Screen Actors Guild thrust him into the headlines as Hollywood confronted domestic communism.

Reagan’s pivot to politics began when General Electric hired him to host their popular television show, General Electric Theater. His contract included touring GE plants to speak about patriotism, free market economics, and anti-communism. His new life within corporate American introduced him to a circle of conservative businessmen who would become known as his “Kitchen Cabinet”.

The Goldwater campaign reached out to Reagan to speak on behalf of their candidate on a television special during the last week of the campaign.  On October 27, 1964, Reagan drew upon his GE speeches to deliver “A Time for Choosing”.  His inspiring address became a political classic, which included lines that would become the core of “Reaganism”:

“The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So, we have come to a time for choosing ... You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream—the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order—or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.”

The Washington Post declared Reagan’s “Time for Choosing”: "the most successful national political debut since William Jennings Bryan electrified the 1896 Democratic convention with his Cross of Gold speech."  It immediately established Reagan as the heir to Goldwater’s movement.

The promise of Reagan fulfilling the Fusionist vision of Goldwater, Buckley, and a growing conservative movement inspired the formation of additional groups, such as the American Conservative Union in December 1964.

In 1966, Reagan trounced two-term Democrat incumbent Pat Brown to become Governor of California, winning by 57.5 percent.  Reagan’s two terms became the epicenter of successful conservative domestic policy attracting top policy and political operatives who would serve him throughout his Presidency.

Retiring after two terms, Reagan devoted fulltime to being the voice, brain, and face of the Conservative Movement.  This included a radio show that was followed by over 30 million listeners.

In 1976. the ineffectual moderate Republicanism of President Gerald Ford led Reagan to mount a challenge.  Reagan came close to the unprecedented unseating of his Party’s incumbent.  His concession speech on the last night of the Republican National Convention became another political classic.  It launched his successful march to the White House.

Reagan’s 1980 campaign was now aided by a more organized, broad, and capable Conservative Movement. Reagan’s “California Reaganites” were linked to Washington, DC-based “Fusionists”, and conservative grassroots activists who were embedded in Republican Party units across America. The Heritage Foundation had become a major conservative policy center on February 16, 1973.  A new hub for conservative activists, The Conservative Caucus, came into existence in 1974.

Starting in 1978, Reagan’s inner circle, including his “Kitchen Cabinet”, worked seamlessly with this vast network of conservative groups: The Heritage Foundation, Kingston, Stanton, Library Court, Chesapeake Society, Monday Club, Conservative Caucus, American Legislative Exchange Council, Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress, the Eagle Forum, and many others.   They formed a unified and potent political movement that overwhelmed Republican moderates to win the nomination and then buried Jimmy Carter and the Democrat Party in November 1980.

After his landslide victory, which also swept in the first Republican Senate majority since 1956, Reaganites and Fusionists placed key operatives into Reagan’s transition.  They identified over 17,000 positions that affected Executive Branch operations.  A separate team identified the key positions in each cabinet department and major agency that had to be under Reagan’s control in the first weeks of his presidency.

On January 21, 1981, Reagan’s personnel team immediately removed every Carter political appointee.  These Democrat functionaries were walked out the door, identification badge taken, files sealed, and their security clearance terminated.  The Carter era’s impotent foreign policy and intrusive domestic policy ended completely and instantaneously.

Reagan went onto to lead one of the most successful Presidencies in American history. His vision of a “shining city on the hill” continues to inspire people around the world to seek better lives through freedom, open societies, and economic liberty. 

KILLING OUR PAST

Published on Newsmax.              #ALT-LEFT

America’s identity is in danger of being destroyed before our very eyes.

ALT-LEFT activists on the streets, in academia, the media, and government are wantonly assaulting the physical touch stones that support our nation’s civic culture.  There is no turning back from chaos if the connective fabric of our society vanishes.

America is unique.  It is a country based upon ideas - not geography, language, or tribe.  Our historic sites and markers ground us in who we are, and why we are. 

History is about collective memory and frames of reference.  Statues and historic sites are there to commemorate and remind, not to celebrate. Knowing and discussing our origin is fundamental to a civic culture where shared values hold us together.  Civil dialogue with those we disagree is the structure that allows our institutions, our communities, and ourselves to exist. 

Our Constitution is about forming “a more perfect union”.  This means America is always a work in progress.  The Constitution itself is the greatest “rules of engagement” for collective action that has ever been written.  Looking beyond ourselves reaffirms our nation and our individual and collective roles in it.

Recent actions erasing history are unraveling our civic fabric.  For one group to anoint itself as morally entitled to determine what should be saved and what should be destroyed is the very essence of tyranny and fanaticism.

Humans have attempted to alter collective memory since competing Pharaohs chiseled away Cartouches and defaced hieroglyphs.  Carthage was destroyed, Rome was sacked.  Mongol hordes obliterated cities along the Silk Road.  Islamic hordes burned the Library of Alexandria.  Vikings ravaged monasteries and burned centuries old manuscripts.  Cromwell’s Puritan army smashed stained glass windows in countless churches.

World history has been saved by those who transcended their immediate impulse for destruction.  Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella calmed their Christian fervor when they saw the wonder of the Alhambra.  Napoleon’s armies avoided destroying European cities and towns during nearly twenty years of war. 

The Twentieth Century saw a disturbing shift in how history was viewed.  The rise of Communism and Nazism led to intentionally obliterating history on a strategic scale.  Worse, the followers of these dogmas made fabricating history a priority.  Destroying reality and then faking an alternative became one of the greatest threats to civilization.  Cultural treasures were lost to the ages as the Nazi’s raped Europe, the Soviets raped Eastern Europe, and Mao’s minions unleashed their Cultural Revolution.

The 21^st Century brought a new wave of Islamic hordes whose primary mission is to destroy anything, and anyone, not sufficiently promoting their fanaticism.  From the Taliban blowing up thousand year old Buddhist statues, to ISIS smashing the Tomb of Abraham and leveling Palmyra, the erasure of irreplaceable historic sites and artifacts has known no bounds.

ALT-LEFT vandalism against statues they deem offensive is now threatening America.  The chorus of ALT-LEFT commentators from the media, academia, and politics has woven a tapestry of excuses justifying official and unofficial destruction and desecration. 

America’s Civil War was complex and controversial in its genesis, conduct, and aftermath.  Our Civil War tore apart families, friends, communities, and the nation.  It killed 2.5 percent of the U.S. population and impacted all who lived during the war. Its ramifications ripple through America to this day.  The nuances of 21^st Century American voting patterns, politics, law, culture, and language are better understood, the more one delves into Civil War history. 

Arrogance and ignorance are fueling the current wave of mayhem.  The ALT-LEFT’s clarion call for ridding America of racist Southern symbols becomes indecipherable babble when people torch a bust of Abraham Lincoln, spray paint the Lincoln Memorial, attack a Joan of Arc statue, and deface statues of Catholic Saints. 

There is clearly more going on. 

Fanaticism is all about intolerance and silencing opponents.  It is all about indoctrination and erasing individualism.  Fanatics are not satisfied until they completely destroy independent thought.  Their dream is a “hive mind” - thinking and acting as one.  Like Bumble bees, ALT-LEFT, Islamic Terrorists, and Communists want to anoint one leader who is all powerful, surrounded by blind devotion.  Their goal is the end of civilization, the end of humankind as we know it. 

The ALT-LEFT, and its supporters, have this bigger goal in mind. 

George Orwell, a Socialist who grew to understand the threat of tyranny, sent us a timeless warning: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

[Scot Faulkner advises corporations and governments on how to save billions of dollars by achieving dramatic and sustainable cost reductions while improving operational and service excellence. He served as the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives.  He also served on the White House Staff, and as an Executive Branch Appointee.]

smf53@aol.com  304-716-6235

TODAY’S MASTERS OF DECEIT

Published in Newsmax

The thundering chorus of alarm over the neophytes who attempted clumsy networking pales in comparison with decades of Left-wing Democrat collusion with Russia.  The so-called “Progressives” in politics and the press aided and abetted America’s enemies for generations.  Their current cacophony of indignation is just another round of deceit. 

For a hundred years, these newly minted anti-Russians among Congress and the media were actively pro-Russia, pro-Bolshevik, and pro-Soviet Union, the Russia Putin served and was shaped by. 

Let’s review actual Russian collusion.

President Woodrow Wilson bungled the U.S. response to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, paving the way for decades of terror and the Cold War.  One reason may be that his Russia Advisor was John Christian Bullitt.  Bullitt was a close associate of the famous communist author John Reed.  In fact, Bullitt married Louise Bryant, Reed’s widow.  He tried to convince Wilson to recognize Lenin‘s regime within months of the Bolshevik Revolution.  He later went onto to serve as Franklin Roosevelt’s (FDR) Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

In 1921, leading liberal Democrat thinkers met with Lenin in Moscow to learn about his New Economic Policy and assess its adaptability for America.  This group went on to be the highly feted “Brain Trust” that formed FDR’s inner policy circle and launched the New Deal.  One of Roosevelt’s first acts was to open diplomatic relations with the USSR and name Bullitt as the first U.S. Ambassador.

Ambassador Joseph Davies followed Bullitt in Moscow.  He did everything he could to cover-up Stalin’s great purges and the gulags.  He is best known for his official declaration, “Communism holds no serious threat to the United States.”  His book and subsequent movie “Mission to Moscow” remains the purest example of Stalin worship.  He ended his diplomatic career as an advisor to Truman at the Potsdam Conference, which sealed the fate of Eastern Europe within the Soviet “sphere of influence”.

Davies’ pro-Stalin efforts were supported by Alger Hiss.  Starting in 1936, Hiss advised Cordell Hull, FDR’s Secretary of State, and rose in influence until he was FDR’s key Russian advisor at the Yalta Conference.  The Yalta Conference was noteworthy for the tilt of FDR toward Stalin and away from Churchill.  In 1948, Hiss was unmasked as a Soviet Agent.  To this day, many liberals defend Hiss and deny the mountain of evidence against him.

President Truman is idolized as the President who stood-up to Communism.  Yet his team mishandled the rise of Mao and the Communists in China, losing China in 1949.  Worse, they deprived South Korea of tanks and artillery in the hopes of not “provoking” North Korea.  On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded anyway.  The lack of tanks and artillery allowed Chinese and Russian backed North Korean forces to capture Seoul, the Capital of South Korea, in three days.  In less than two months North Korea nearly drove anticommunist forces off the Korean Peninsula and into the sea at Pusan.

The exposure of Hiss was the first of many actions taken by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).  Truman denounced it.  Liberals to this day assert HUAC ushered in the darkest days of America and dismiss its investigations as witch hunts. HUAC was abolished in 1975, after the Democrat post-Watergate landslide. 

Secret Soviet intelligence documents, known as the Venona Papers, surfaced in the 1990s.  In 2000, former Intelligence Committee investigator, Herb Romerstein, published the translated papers, which revealed Soviet agents in the State Department and Hollywood (1943-1980), vindicating HUAC’s work.

The Venona Papers, and other intelligence disclosures, ultimately proved Russian collusion with the “New Left” in the 1960s and with John Kerry’s antiwar activities in the 1970s. 

Defectors and additional documents also outlined how the unilateral Cold War capitulations of the Carter Administration were guided by an array of Russian agents. In particular, the National Security staff of Zbigniew Brzezinski was known for its overly cozy interactions with America’s foes.  This social and professional collusion led to ten significant security breaches including exposing Trigon, America’s highest placed agent in the Kremlin.

Reagan’s White House staff and Bill Casey’s newly invigorated CIA eradicated the Russian and Cuban agents, and their associated “agents of influence”. This cleared the way for America to finally go on the offensive and destroy the Soviet Empire.

Today’s apocalyptic rhetoric about Trump and the Russians takes Left-wing hypocrisy into yet another round of deceit.

Americans should call for a day of reckoning for Trump’s holier than thou detractors.

[Scot Faulkner led the legislative team for Rep. John Ashbrook (R-OH), ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.  He served as the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives.  He also served on the White House Staff, and in Executive Appointments, during the Reagan Administration.

Currently, Faulkner helps private corporations by flattening organizations; achieving dramatic and sustainable cost reductions while improving operational and service excellence.]

Behind the Curve - Part 1

Our modern world obsesses on the 24-36 hour news cycle. Soundbites and factoids are kings. While this makes for exciting entertainment, it diminishes any sense of perspective or reflection. The result is a fixation on what is considered urgent instead of what is really important.

We are in the midst of two major historic waves. One began in 1914, the other in the 1970s (to be discussed in a future blog). Historians a hundred years from now will look back at these waves with some perspective. Unfortunately, most commentators and political leaders are completely missing these waves - to the detriment of our future.

World War I erased four great dynasties and empires from the map. A framework for governance (most would say domination) that stretched back over four hundred years was torn apart during a four-year orgy of bloodshed. The casualties were: the Austrian Empire under the Habsburgs (1452-1918), Germany under the Habsburgs (1438-1918), Russia under the Czars (1547-1917), and the Ottoman Empire (1299-1923). We are still grappling with the power vacuum left by their demise.

World War II was triggered by the dictatorships that arose to fill the gaps left in Austria, Germany and Russia (Nazism and Communism). This, in turn, weakened two additional European powers and led to a global decolonization, England (1538-1965), and France (1605-1962). The Cold War (1945-1989) was fought mainly because the Communist dictators of Russia (then known as the Soviet Union or USSR) wanted to control strategic resources and lines of communication among these newly independent states in order to achieve world domination. The Soviet-led Warsaw Pact faced-off against the US-led NATO alliance over control of the lands occupied by the former German and Austrian empires.

The fundamental flaws in communism and totalitarianism won democracy and independence for most of Central and Eastern Europe. However, a totalitarian Russia still threatens its neighbors and is showing a renewed thirst for global dominance.

The fall of the Ottoman Empire unleashed forces that have only recently become a factor on the world stage. The winning powers of World War I established dominance over the former Ottoman lands. Unfortunately, there were more cartographers than anthropologists in the room when the Middle East map was drawn. Just like with the imperial division of Africa in the 19th Century, the post World War I shaping of colonies and protectorates left bitter tribal and sectarian rivals within artificial borders. The result was a unleashing of violence and internal strife that plague the Middle East to this day.

Colonialism only occasionally incubates viable leaders. Therefore, the delayed independence for the nations of the Middle East became rich soil for the growth of radical Islam and its extremist proponents. Deep-seated hatreds for Jews and western colonial administrations fermented ill-fated Arab embraces of first Nazism and then Communism. The West’s love of Middle East petroleum bridged these ideological gaps with commerce, but the animosity lingers.

Historical waves, like tsunamis, cannot readily be seen until they break upon an unsuspecting shore. The current challenges with Russia and the Middle East are part of this historic pattern. This means there are no quick fixes, and that most “current wisdom” solutions are flawed because few see things from a long-term perspective.