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In the shadow of three Presidents : Comments
By Ciaran Ryan, published 9/5/2008In this US election cycle, the shadows of three past presidents - Reagan, Clinton and Bush - loom large.
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I hope you don’t mind, dear, but I am adding a commentary based on a question asked in the Guardian newspaper recently why American leaders have developed a ridiculous love of war, while Europeans are glad to have seen what they hope is the last of serious wars.
Something we don’t hope for, but a full-bodied occupation for a time might have made the Americans more humane.
In fact, most of the present Israeli Jews have experienced so much terror, it is a wonder they too seem so ready for war - which of course, only makes people like the Iranians more ready to attack them.
Maybe the possession of atomic weaponry as with both the US and Israel only makes national leaders more arrogant.
As the German philosopher Immanuel Kant proclaimed after becoming disappointed with Napoleon.
From this day on not one personage nor even one nation under God should ever be trusted to keep peace in this world.
Thus came the Kantian idea of Perpetual Peace represented by a chosen and elected federation of world nations of arranged equal power with multilateral leadership.
Certainly both the League of Nations and the later UN were based on the Kantian Formula, but the problem has never been solved of preventing the world’s strongest power taking over, as happened partly with Great Britain with the League’ and now America with the UN.
As Kant predicted so long ago, Danielle, one big power running the show, with just one in charge, can never be truly libertinian.