Chris Jepson: The chance for a better world

I recommend bodies hanging from a yardarm as the appropriate image, metaphorically speaking, of course, for holding leadership accountable for our ship of state. Imagine the United States as a vessel and all on board have a vested interest in a safe journey. But tragically, the ship’s captain and officers veer madly off course, severely jeopardizing the welfare of us all. Appropriately a public accounting is held and those at the helm who steered the ship into the roiling, deadly waters are held answerable and subsequently — in my universe — the culpable forever swing from the yardarms.

In 1710, German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz suggested that we live “in the best of all possible worlds.” Voltaire, of course, effectively shredded such nonsense in his classic “Candide.” Leibniz was attempting to explain God’s role in our lives, how to reconcile evil, etc. Today his ideas are not so much in fashion. But I regularly use “in the best of all possible worlds” to preface how we might approach solutions to the problems confronting us all. What would be the ideal?

In the best of all possible worlds our elected officials would be held accountable for their decisions. When egregiously wrong, when lives are tragically lost, when lives are horribly ruined, when the treasury is bankrupt, when the commonwealth is wretchedly compromised, when the promises of victory and success prove hallucinatory, as false as the reasons for war, bodies must hang from the yardarms. In the best of all possible worlds.

Last week in England, after seven years of investigation and review, the Chilcot Report was issued unequivocally damning British leadership in directing that nation into blindly, tragically supporting America’s completely unjustified, morally reprehensible Iraq war.

In the best of all possible worlds George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Republican neocons et al and all the spineless war-supporting Democrats would actually have not involved America in Iraq. The lies, falsehoods, exaggerations and misrepresentations promulgated by the Bush administration would have been publically called out and universally condemned, recognized for the irrational, war-mongering, imperialistic nonsense it was. Alas, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

In the best of all possible worlds, would 4,488 U.S. personnel have senselessly died, would 32,223 troops have been injured (not counting PTSD), would 655,000 (and counting) Iraqi civilians have died, would $1.7 trillion have been squandered on an immoral war, with a projected $7 trillion bill coming do over the next 40 years? Would ISIS be the threat it is today? America’s ill-conceived aggression is directly responsible for ISIS today. That is on all of us.

Who are the perpetrators of this American tragedy? Have they been held accountable? Why are they not hanging from the yardarms as examples of deceit and hubris and greed and gutless conformity? What specifically has America learned that, going forward, will guide future leadership to wisely avoid such imperialistic folly?

In the best of all possible worlds would America witness the ongoing, absurdly partisan Republican investigations of Hillary Clinton? Ooooooh! 110 top-secret emails “may” have been compromised. The horror! The horror! Yet thousands of dead U.S. servicemen, thousands-upon-thousands horribly wounded, trillions spent, trillions owed, over half-a-million dead civilians and ISIS created and none of that — none of it — warrants Republican congressional hearings? But Hillary Clinton’s role in Benghazi does?

With Republicans in control, what chance — really — for a better world?