Getting ready for another battle

THEY'RE not there yet, but they soon will be. They're already marshalling their forces, holding meetings out of the sight of cameras and the reach of microphones to plan their war strategy.

Not the Bush administration and the military but the "blame America first crowd.''

The Baltimore newspaper "Afro-American'' has fired an early shot. The words of a recent editorial sounded sympathetic to critiques of America by the Taliban: "Statements from religious leaders...were both religious in nature and reflecting what African-Americans have been saying since slavery: America does not play fair.''

We can anticipate much more of this as naysayers and enemies of America's promise seek to undermine our resolve and unity. It has always been this way, starting with those who refused to sail with Columbus because they feared the world was flat and they would fall off the edge. It continued with those who feared war more than they loved freedom and thought the Colonies should cut a deal with the British rather than fight for independence.

In the last century, isolationists believed America had no business rescuing others from Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Hirohito. In fact, all had their defenders inside America, including aviator Charles Lindburgh, Walter Duranty of the New York Times, journalist Anna Louise Strong and various clergy who bore more allegiance to Earth than Heaven and were of use to neither.

We have heard such carping for too long. Environmentalists blame American corporations and consumers for dirty air and water and "global warming.'' The Third World blames the first because we have found the road to prosperity and they can't come up with enough coins to pay the toll. That's not our fault. It's their fault because they have chosen, or refused to overthrow, the wrong system of government, an oppressive religion, an unworkable economic system. Rather than emulate our success, they seek to drag us down to their level of failure. Rather than acknowledge their own shortcomings, they blame America in order to shift the responsibility.

The dividers and deriders say if I make $100 and you make only $50, then I owe you $25 just to make things fair. Those who built and sustained America would reply, "Here's how I made more than you, now go and do likewise.'' Today, the hate America crowd would call such an attitude "arrogant'' and "greedy.''

Many clergy in this country once were fellow travelers with communism. They found it attractive because it supposedly spread the wealth around. What it spread around was mutual poverty and oppression.

Why are some people so embarrassed about America? Why do they use the freedoms their predecessors fought and died for to run her down? America has done so much (ital) for (end ital) them. What did America do (ital) to (end ital) them that made them so angry? In fact, whatever wounds they have are mostly self-inflicted, because if you can't make it here you can't make it anywhere.

We've taken in the poor and huddled masses and let them breathe free but too many have said that's not enough. We've rebuilt the nations of former enemies. It's too little for some. Though not perfect, the civil rights we offer to our citizens of every racial and ideological background are better than in any other country, including every Islamic one. But for some it's not enough. We offer more help for the poor who wish to better their lives than probably any nation on earth, but we also demand responsibility and for that we are called insensitive and cruel.

It's long past time to stop apologizing for America. If things are so bad, let our detractors find or create a better country.

Some words from another time are worth considering: "We have certain standards of life that we believe are best for us. We do not ask other nations to discard theirs but we do wish to preserve ours...We reflect on no one in wanting immigrants who will be assimilated into our ways of thinking and living.'' -- Calvin Coolidge, newspaper column, Dec. 13, 1930

Too many native-born Americans, and some immigrants, do not feel that way -- to their shame and, increasingly, to our peril.

http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/opin...5_peaceop.shtml

Peace movement blames America

Wednesday, September 26, 2001

By MARC BERLEY PROFESSOR

Just as America must fight a "new kind of war," so it must deal with a new kind of peace movement, one that blames American foreign policy for the recent terrorist attack.

Blame the hateful mass murderers seeking martyrdom in their radical holy war against America? Not the new peace movement -- it's a part of a global war against America.

Those who opposed U.S. military action in the past questioned the right of America to protect its interests in other countries.

That questioning centered on two issues: the definition of American interests and our right to impose our interests on others. These have always been reasonable questions, whatever one's view in particular cases.

The new peace movement has nothing to do with reasonable questions. "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" So asks Susan Sontag in The New Yorker.

Never before have so many Americans been killed on American soil. But the new self-proclaimed peaceniks are anti-American cultural warriors willing to sink to unimaginable moral equivalencies.

Whereas the old peace movement questioned America's right to kill people in other countries when no attack on American soil had occurred, the new peace movement defends the brutal killing of thousands of Americans on the grounds that America got what it had coming.</p.

The new peace movement doubtless recalls the old. The latter began with communist sympathizers who excused the Soviet Union its innumerable crimes against humanity, seeing capitalism as the world's great evil. Having adjusted to the end of the Cold War, the new peace movement hates America for being the world's sole remaining superpower. And it wants that power eviscerated.

Unmoved to anger against the perpetrators of the atrocious violence of September 11th, the new peaceniks merely heat up their longstanding anger against America.

Deplorably, they turn the death of thousands of innocent lives into an opportunity to point a cold ideological finger at America.

In its extremism, the new peace movement has something in common with Jerry Falwell: the refusal to blame those responsible for the September 11th atrocity, choosing instead to blame America.

Falwell blames America for harboring heretics. The peaceniks blame America for harboring Americans. Put the two together and you get the holy war of Osama bin Laden, the jihad declared against the U.S. by the Taliban.

So far the percentage of Americans who blame America is small. But those who do blame America congregate in places that shape the future of American culture: our nation's college and university campuses.

Anyone who thought that the loss of more than 6,000 lives on American soil might have led to unanimous patriotic compassion even at America's campuses was too hopeful. The Sontag sentiment is highly audible on campus.

The day after the September 11th attack, one of my Columbia students voiced this representative reaction: "I hope it will cause America to examine its foreign policy decisions."

Like the old one, the new peace movement is rooted in our universities. Thus, it is ruled by political correctness, which, after expunging America's virtues and exaggerating its crimes, credits America's most vicious enemies with political and moral validity.

As part of its anti-American campaign, political correctness teaches young Americans to identify their country as a global oppressor and to regard the rest of the world as blameless victims.

It not only urges identification with such victims but also encourages students to see themselves as victims too.

Thus they can simultaneously identify with the victims of the September 11th attack and blame the oppressive U.S.

Off campus, Americans are united, and their present unity is a beauty to behold. A New York Times/CBS poll shows 85 percent supporting military action against whoever is responsible for the recent attacks.

But once America starts fighting, opposition will grow. The same poll shows there is already less support for a protracted war than for a short one. And this "new kind of war" is likely to be a very long one.

If we are to win this long war against terrorism, the next generation will have to be another great generation. Lines at recruitment offices for America's armed forces suggest it just might be exactly that.

But courageous, patriotic young Americans will find their peers using the cloak of a new "peace" movement to make a war against them.

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