Sleeping giant (5th excerpt from Mark Steyn's 'America Alone')

This is the fifth of five excerpts from
America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it, by Mark Steyn.
Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. Copyright © 2006 by Mark Steyn.

Excerpts 1-3 are posted on FreeRepublic here.
Excerpt 4, "Franchising terror, mosque by mosque", is posted on FreeRepublic here.

Sleeping giant (part V)
The United States has the most powerful army on the planet.
But without the stomach for war, what good is it?

Mark Steyn, National Post
Published: Saturday, November 18, 2006

In late September 2001, Maulana Inyadullah was holed up in Peshawar awaiting the call to arms against the Great Satan and offered this pithy soundbite to David Blair of Britain's Daily Telegraph: "The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death."

Compare Mr. Inyadullah with the acclaimed London novelist Margaret Drabble, also speaking in the Daily Telegraph, just after the Iraq war. She feels the same way, at least about carbonated beverages: "I detest Coca-Cola, I detest burgers, I detest sentimental and violent Hollywood movies that tell lies about history. I detest American imperialism, American infantilism and American triumphalism about victories it didn't even win."

Look at Ms. Drabble's list of grievances. If you lived in Poland in the 1930s, you weren't worried about the Soviets' taste in soft drinks or sentimental Third Reich movies. America is the most benign hegemon in history: It's the world's first non-imperial superpower and, at the dawn of the American moment, it chose to set itself up as a kind of geopolitical sugar daddy. By picking up the tab for Europe's defense, it hoped to prevent those countries lapsing into traditional power rivalries. Nice idea. But it also absolved them of the traditional responsibilities of nationhood, turning the alliance into a dysfunctional sitcom family, with one grown-up presiding over a brood of whiny teenagers. America's preference for diluting its power within the UN and other organs of an embryo world government has not won it friends. All dominant powers are hated -- Britain was, and Rome -- but they're usually hated for the right reasons. America is hated for every reason. The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lap-dancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too godless, America is George Orwell's Room 101: whatever your bugbear you will find it therein; whatever you're against, America is the prime example of it.

That's one reason why its disparagers have embraced environmentalism. If Washington were a conventional great power, the intellectual class would be arguing that the United States is a threat to France or India or Gabon or some such. But because it's so obviously not that kind of power the world has had to concoct a thesis that the hyperpower is a threat not merely to this or that rinky-dink nation state but to the entire planet, if not the entire galaxy. "We are," warns Al Gore portentously, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe."

Think globally, act lunarly. The "balance of energy" between Earth and "the rest of the universe"? You wouldn't happen to have the statistical evidence for that, would you? Universal "balance of energy" graphs for 1940 and 1873? Heigh-ho. America is a threat not because of conventional great-power designs, but because -- even scarier -- of its "consumption," its way of life. Those Drabble-detested Cokes and burgers are straining the Earth in ways that straightforward genocidal conquerors like Hitler and Stalin could only have dreamed of. The construct of this fantasy is very revealing about how unthreatening America is.

But others cast the hyperpower's geniality in a different light. Visitors to America often remark on that popular T-shirt slogan usually found below a bold Stars and Stripes: "These Colours Don't Run." To non-Americans, it can seem a trifle touchy. But for a quarter century the presumption of the country's enemies was that those colours did run -- they ran from Vietnam, they ran from the downed choppers in the Iranian desert, they ran from Somalia. Even the successful campaigns -- the inconclusively concluded 1991 Gulf War and the air-only 1999 Kosovo war -- seemed manifestly designed to avoid putting those colours in the position of having to run. As Osama saw it, those colours ran from the African embassy bombings and the Khobar towers, just as Zarqawi figured those colours would run from the Sunni Triangle. Being seen not to run -- or, if you prefer, being seen to show "resolve" -- should be the indispensable objective of U.S. foreign policy. Were these colours to run from Iraq, it would be the end of the American era -- for why would Russia, China or even Belgium ever again take seriously a superpower that runs screaming for home at the first pinprick?

Don't take Osama's, or Saddam's, or Mullah Omar's, or the Chinese politburo's word for it. Consider those nations who (a) regard themselves as broadly well-disposed toward America and (b) share the view that Islamism represents a critical global security threat, yet (c) have concluded that the United States lacks the will to get the job done. You hear such worries routinely expressed by the political class in India, Singapore and other emerging nations. The British historian Niall Ferguson talks about "the clay feet of the colossus." Admiral Yamamoto's "sleeping giant" has become harder to rouse -- the La-Z-Boy recliner's a lot more comfortable and pampering than the old rocker on the porch. In Vietnam, it took 50,000 deaths to drive the giant away; maybe in the Middle East, it will only take 5,000. And maybe in the next war the giant will give up after 500, or 50, or not bother at all. Our enemies have made a bet -- that the West in general and the United States in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span. America has the advantage of the most powerful army on the face of the planet, but she doesn't have the stomach for war, so it's no advantage at all. After all, if you were a typical viewer of CNN International, what would have made the biggest impression on you since Sept. 11? That America has the best, biggest and most technologically advanced military on the planet? Or that the minute you send it anywhere hysterical congressmen are shrieking that we need an "exit strategy"? The corpulent snorer in the La-Z-Boy recliner may have a beautifully waxed Ferrari in the garage, but he hates having to take it out on the potholed roads. Still, it looks mighty nice parked in the driveway when he washes it.

From America Alone: The End of the World as We Know it, by Mark Steyn.
Published by Regnery Publishing, Inc. Copyright (Copyright) 2006 by Mark Steyn.

"Our enemies have made a bet -- that the West in general and the United States in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span.

And sadly, the odds are in their favor."

I'm not so sure. At the time of the founding the fathers debated the Rattlesnake as the national symbol (see for example the First Navy Ensign). The idea to be conveyed was "slow to get into a fight, slow to get out of a fight."

Just look at WWII. The US was strongly pacifist right up to Pearl Harbor. But in the end the American people cheered the bomber crews who systematically destroyed the population centers of Germany and Japan.

Don't count the American people out. Despite 9/11 the American people still do not fear or despise the Islamic Radicals. But once they do, their vengance will no no bound.

That America has the best, biggest and most technologically advanced military on the planet? Or that the minute you send it anywhere hysterical congressmen are shrieking that we need an "exit strategy"? The corpulent snorer in the La-Z-Boy recliner may have a beautifully waxed Ferrari in the garage, but he hates having to take it out on the potholed roads. Still, it looks mighty nice parked in the driveway when he washes it.

Unfortunately, Jon Cary speaks for many in this country when he compares our "beautifully waxed Ferrari" military to uneducated incompetents.

Unfortunately, on 11/7/2006, Americans---including those conservatives who stayed home---voted to cut and run.

"We are," warns Al Gore portentously, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe."

You can't reason with people like this. They have some form of madness that is destructive to civilization. They are a modern version of locusts, some plague sent to punish or destroy a nation.

There was a time when we could trust our children with rifles. Now we can't even trust our adults with children. People like that facilitated and encouraged that massive change in our culture.

Our enemies have made a bet -- that the West in general and the United States in particular are soft and decadent and have no attention span. America has the advantage of the most powerful army on the face of the planet, but she doesn't have the stomach for war, so it's no advantage at all.

Bingo. I realized that the "New World Order" had arrived when Truman fired General MaCarthur for trying to win the Korean War-- and the subsequent Cold War. Pressure from the United Nations, designed by Communists to create a global "socialist" government, has turned us into the Paper Tiger the Chinese know us to be. Our people are willing to fight but not our "leaders." On one side nationalistic wars are seen as "bad for business;" on the other they're seen as "bad for the advance of world socialism."

They did that. But things have changed since then. Individually, our men and women in uniform today match up equally with their predecessors. As a society and a nation, I'm not sure we're in the same league as the one that fought on with a determination and doggedness to beat the Nazis and militarists of Imperial Japan, in spite of year after year of slogging and four hundred thousand KIAs. The fifth column is getting all giddy at the prospect of passing the 3,000 KIA mark in Iraq. As tragic as that is, we lost that many on D-Day alone, over 5,000 in three days at Iwo Jima. But the press didn't fight us then, they were with us.

We're also as a nation still paying the price for the 1960s/Vietnam debacle. It was primarily during that era that we went from a people who viewed service and sacrifice as a national obligation to one where such was to be avoided. In WWII, we were a people united in purpose and focused on achieving a national goal. That has lapsed into an attitude of self-indulgence, decadence, and the perception that the country and our fellow citizens are there to serve us, rather than the other way around.

And no, I don't know what it will take to turn it around. I thought 9/11 might do it, but as we've seen the memory of that tragedy has been a fleeting one. We can't seem to get up the gumption to even rebuild what we lost. The place is still a hole in the ground. And any mention of that day is often greeted with derision and a sickly whining about your "exploiting" that day for political gain. This from a country that had "Remember Pearl Harbor" as a rallying cry. Very, very sad.

It does not appear to me that any of the repubs, including tongue tied Bush, has made what to me is the most obvious point.

The people who are yelling the loudest about how bloody it is in Iraq, how we must bring our troops home, how it is not worth it, etc.,
have no skin in the game other than political.

The troops come home, visit their families, re-enlist and go right back because they believe in it.

The people talking cut and run or versions of it, have no skin in the game.

Why does anyone listen to them? Only because it is personal. They hate Bush. They hate Bush

They hate Bush.

That is all there is to it.

Get Bush. That is more important than keeping the Middle East from turning into Europe 1939, more important than our deserting countries who have allied themselves thus losing all credibility, more important that the hundreds of thousands that will die in retribution for supporting us.

We should listen to the soldiers and tell the Peloski's to sit down and shut up.

Don't get too depressed.

The MSM take (And what else have we heard for the past two weeks?) on this past election is just as skewed off into deep left field foul territory as anything else they've done for the past thirty years. Maybe worse, because they know that the MSM's on its last legs, as well as the socialists they love so much.

The dims now find themselves in the position of making policies that they have only had to talk about for the past twelve years actually HAPPEN, plus having to satisfy a very watchful (and, IMHO, skeptical) public that they've the faintest notion of how to do anything but campaign, talk, promise, complain and still more talk.

The MSM, OTOH, has shot the last of their credibility in the foot years ago and now is only operating on inertia and the ever-more-frayed patience of its investors. This election may not have been the complete end of them, but I'll be amazed if half of them are still in business under the same management and political slant in another two years.

To paraphrase, the fight goes to the most aggessive.

The aggression I see in the USA on the news media and in discussions with individuals, is aimed at one man, our President.

They are assuming he has dictatorial powers over most of the economy of the USA.

The center of the world economy has shifted to the Pacific region. The center of the Strategic Security of the World has shifted into Asia and embraces the hegemon of Iran.

Our Domestic Center is in Washington, but is Managed by a consortioum of influences from outside Washington.

The Democrats Understand full well that Europe is already being dissolved into Islam. How unusual that Europe would side with Iran et al against Israel.

My perception is probably skewed in a direction opposed by many others. But here it is.

As a Nation we are divided.

Half of us can't see what they are looking at.

The other half won't act in our defense for an extended period of time.

Therefore,I perceive we will become a Peaceful Nation as Europe is becoming. When islam takes over there is Peace, according to them.

The one-half of our nation that can't see will become victims again with no one or no place to run to.

I am not crying, I am clear eyed.

I see no grat desire to struggle against those that are working to destroy us. We just wonder why do they hate us.

Examine the instructions of Islam.
Read the speeches of the Imams.
Read the speeches of Arafat.
Listen to the President of Iran.
Listen to the leadership of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria.

Listen to our Congressmen and women.

The other side speaks to us preparing to destroy us.
Our "Leaders" say we need to "approach these nations in a more consiliatory fashion".

Now as an arm chair general, even I can see that the tactics used, guerilla, will obviously be successful against a Technological society with fragile infrastructure and will. We like to just go to work and then the soccer game or watch TV and not worry about the rest of the World.

They are waving their right hand in front of us and are reaching for our neck with their left.

We are easily Distracted.

I was born into a different USA. We don't have the same citizenry as used to live here.

In the 50's we wanted to produce products that would give us more leisure.

Then in the 70's and 80's we had the Leisure Class.

Now, we have a Leisure Nation, napping on the Titanic.

Don't count the American people out. Despite 9/11 the American people still do not fear or despise the Islamic Radicals. But once they do, their vengance will no no bound

I think you're right on here.

What I can't seem to get a grip on is why 9/11 wasn't enough. What will it take.?

If the MSM had actually showed the films of Americans jumping to their deaths it could have been different, I don't know.

"The MSM, OTOH, has shot the last of their credibility in the foot years ago and now is only operating on inertia and the ever-more-frayed patience of its investors. "

Great point. I mean, even as stupid as the Repubs are, one lesson they must take from the last election is that the MSM will distort everything to favor the Democrats (hype Foley, bury the Reid scandal, run macaca to death, etc.)

Now knowing that the media is completely corrupt, even the stupid party will adapt. And as readership plummets, perhaps the Dems are not the sure thing they think.

After all, if you were a typical viewer of CNN International, what would have made the biggest impression on you since Sept. 11? That America has the best, biggest and most technologically advanced military on the planet? Or that the minute you send it anywhere hysterical congressmen are shrieking that we need an "exit strategy"?

This book ought to be required reading for every Congresscritter - those who can read. Those who can't read should get the book on tape and listen to it.

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