O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [53]
“Is there a way that a military officer may recuse himself?”
“No,” Zach answered firmly. “You are officers of the Constitution. You must carry out the nation’s policies and the law whether you agree or not . . . with the following caveat. If an order is so heinous and against every moral fiber of your being to obey, then you must get out. We hope we will never again find that conscientious objectors outnumber officers of the Constitution.”
Jesus, let me think about that, Richard Maple thought. How cleverly the Marine had laid out a controversial thesis. It was becoming heady stuff and the lad was right about one thing. Thank God the navy was not involved with the Indians.
“. . . Back to the Civil War, which was our national crossroads. We came out of the war with an obsolete navy ranked fifteenth in the world, behind Austria. During your fathers’ generation, wind-driven sailing ships had been vanishing, giving way to powerful vessels of iron, fired by steam. In this period, our factories belched in prosperity, our agricultural abundance became the envy of the world, and our natural resources seemed bottomless. But we have become the victims of our own greatness . . .
“By design or otherwise, a great nation must engage in international trade and commerce. A two-ocean nation must have a two-ocean navy, respected in every port of call . . .
“Let’s have a go at this map and focus on the gigantic landmass and geographic location of America. Our size plus our inevitable growth has made us into a world power. Nearly seventy years ago, President Monroe understood that our future included becoming the dominant nation of the hemisphere. The new American navy will carry out the vision of the Monroe Doctrine. What gives us this right? Our hemisphere was colonized and looted by European powers which still control parts of it . . .
“Coming up on history’s calendar will be the collapse of the nefarious and corrupt Spanish empire. Unless we have the will and power to impose the Monroe Doctrine, the Europeans will attempt to rush in to fill the vacuum left by this colllapse. We will accept no more expansion in our hemisphere. Hands off. That is the name of the game.”
This was digested as Zach went over the British, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Swedish, and Danish incursions and possessions.
“Outside of this hemisphere, there exist choke points where a navy is the vital player. What are some of them?”
“Gibraltar,” a midshipman called out.
“Suez.”
“Aden.”
“Dardanelles.”
“Correct,” Zach went on, “but we have the choke point to end all choke points.” His pointer touched Central America.
“The Isthmus of Panama,” he said, “is the most important piece of land for the future commerce and defense of this nation. The isthmus is this thirty-mile strip of land dividing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and it is the possession of Colombia. The French have gone belly-up attempting to build a canal across the isthmus. We feel that America must step in and try. If there is to be a canal, it must be under our control.”
“Mr. O’Hara, doesn’t that come directly under the Monroe Doctrine?”
“We believe it does. In your fourth binder, there are papers detailing our case. I think that the most compelling justification is that for an American ship to go from the East Coast to the West Coast, it must make a fearsome voyage of up to fifteen thousand miles around Cape Horn, a passage known as sailing from hell. The canal would be a priority for our national self-interest.”
“But, sir, would that not make us an imperialistic nation?”
“Well, let’s see,” Zach answered. “Colombia owns the isthmus, but Colombia is unable to govern itself. That becomes a threat to our future.”
He pointed out a number of military and political arguments regarding spheres of influence.
“Democracies, of a kind similar to our own, are going to be very, very slow to emerge from Spanish