Herman Cain Will Never Get Serious Consideration from Blacks on Democratic Plantation

I am a proud graduate of Morehouse College. I am among a distinguished group of alumni who include Martin Luther King, Jr., Edwin Moses, Spike Lee, Samuel Jackson, Maynard Jackson and current Republican Presidential Candidate Herman Cain. It is unfortunately, most African Americans will not give Cain any objective consideration simply because he is a member of the Republican party. This confuses me and is also an issue of consternation when we look at the history of African Americans.

Cain, the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, once served as a Federal Reserve Bank chairman in Kansas City, takes heat from the Republicans establishment just as much as the general black community, including former Bush adviser Karl Rove and conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer who said his campaign was all about “entertainment.”

Although a long shot and the fact that many consider Barack Obama, America's first African American president, Cain if elected would be really the first black president into office. This is not about his skin color, but rather his experience. His experiences and history of a robbed heritage, more akin to most African Americans that that of President Obama. Obama can speak of his lineage to Kenya through his father and Ireland through his mother. Most African Americans cannot trace their family history to any specific person, time or place in Africa.
Cain, the son of a chauffeur and a domestic worker in Georgia, graduated from Morehouse College with a degree in mathematics, and he earned a master’s degree at Purdue before joining the Navy. His rise in the corporate world started first at Coca-Cola and then at the Pillsbury Company, where he was an executive overseeing Burger King and chief executive at Godfather’s Pizza.

At 65, Mr. Cain, platform will push for new energy policies to make the United States less dependent on foreign oil. In a recent interview he said, "My great, great grandparents were slaves, and now I'm running for president of the United States of America," he says later. "Is this a great country or what?" He also upset many Tea Party supporters when he stated that African Americans are too poor to tea party. “They can't afford to," Cain said. "So I think the first reason is economics. If you just look at the sheer economics of it. If you look at the typical income of a black family of four it's going to be lower than a non-black or white family of four," he explained.

Now I am a libertarian and see no big difference between democorats or republicans inside thebeltway. My reality is that Cain’s experiences is closer to mine than Obama. Most do not know that it was democrats that fought against integration, both in the North and South. That it were the "Democrat-controlled state legislatures in the South that placed the Confederate battle flag on their state capitol flags." That the democrats founded the KKK (the first Grand Wizard of KKK- Nathan Bedford Forrest was honored at Democratic National Convention of 1868) and the Council of Conservative Citizens. That no democrat voted for the 14th amendment and that then Senator John F. Kennedy – with an eye on the Democrat presidential nomination for 1960 – voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Cain has no chance because African American myopia will vote for anyone who is a democrat without out question. Sad fact is democrats are happy to see blacks ask the government to do for them because they will not have to and take the black vote for granted. The way I see it, democrats are like Church’s Fried Chicken and the Republicans are Ruth Crisp. Democrats will sell us foods that kill us and set up shop throughout our communities. We accept without question for that is reality on any plantation, democratic or republican.

Will Libya be America’s next Vietnam?

Not so long ago I remember comparing then President’s George W. Bush entry into Afghanistan as being another Vietnam. It had no direction and unfortunately under the current administration, although it has instruction, it still is going every which way but loose. Now I remember Vietnam, seeing news every day of mangled bodies of young American soldiers barely out of high school fighting in mangrove swamps and being carried out mortally wounded on large helicopters, just as I remember the day we watched the draft and saw the birthday of my uncle, October 28, the only male in my family, listed on the draft board on television. He was lucky, being the only male he was not taken in the draft.

The actions in Libya began at a certain start date, albeit Bush and Rice made new in roads in the earlier part of this decade that may have contributed to what Obama has implemented to date. Such was not true for Vietnam, seeing that the US entered that war incrementally, in a series of steps between 1950 and 1965. President Harry S. Truman, in May 1950, authorized economic and military aid to the French, who were fighting to retain control of their Indochina colony, which was comprised of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

But the Vietnamese Nationalist defeated French forces at Dienbienphu in 1954, which led the French to create a non-Communist entity south of that line. Since the United States refused to accept this, President Dwight D. Eisenhower went into nation building mode that became South Vietnam. Similar to what the US and NATO are doing with taking the sides of the rebels in Libya.

Although not on the record, like then, we and other nations have sent military advisers to help the country’s rebels. Thus far to date, the NATO no-fly zone has failed to both protect citizens and aid the rebels. Both, similar to our first entrance into Vietnam where we intervened in the middle of civil war. The reason we lost in Vietnam was due to not have lucid goals and objectives and a lack of confidence in our mission in southeastern Asia. The same can be asserted for the current Libya policy where we have no goal and worse, do not even know who we are supporting.

What is evident is eerily similar to 1961, when President John F. Kennedy secretly sent 400 Green Beret soldiers to teach the South Vietnamese how to fight against Communist guerrillas in South Vietnam. By the time of his death in November 1963, there were more 16,000 U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam.

The lesson that Obama and our politicians should take is that history is the best teacher. After Kennedy was killed and Lyndon Johnson began became President, the incessant bombing of North Vietnam increased and Johnson sent the Marines to South Vietnam in 1965. Although Johnson had intended to fight a limited war, he did not expected that the North Vietnamese would be able to hold out long against the American military.

To date our air campaign has had little effect against Moammar Khadafy. And if we make the mistake of assuming that airpower will get him out singularly, we are wrong and will be in line for a long term stalemate. It is just strange to that after all these years have passed since we first jumped into Vietnam, we have yet to figure out policy that match our political and military goals under such circumstances. Baffles the mind, doesn’t it?