Posted on 03/18/2014 4:40:40 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Are Americans today war-weary? Sure. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been frustrating and tiring. Are Americans today unusually war-weary? No. They were wearier after the much larger and even more frustrating conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. And even though the two world wars of the last century had more satisfactory outcomes, their magnitude was such that they couldn’t help but induce a significant sense of war-weariness. And history shows that they did.
So American war-weariness isn’t new. Using it as an excuse to avoid maintaining our defenses or shouldering our responsibilities isn’t new, either. But that doesn’t make it admirable.
The March 5 Wall Street Journal featured a letter from Heidi Szrom of Valparaiso, Indiana. She was responding to an earlier letter defending President Obama’s foreign policies against a powerful critique in the Journal by the historian Niall Ferguson (“America’s Global Retreat”). The first letter writer noted Ferguson’s statement that more people may have died violent deaths in the Greater Middle East in the Obama years than under Bush, but excused Obama:
True, but it is also equally certain that fewer Americans have died violent deaths in the Greater Middle East during this presidency than during the previous one, and this is what matters more now to a war-weary American public.
To which Ms. Szrom responded:
According to pundits, the president and letter writers, America is “war weary.” Every time I hear this, I wonder: Did you serve? Did you volunteer to fight oppression in foreign lands? Did your son or brother or husband? If so, then I understand and sympathize with your complaint . . . unlike most of those who utter this shopworn phrase.
Perhaps the country’s weariness stems from a reluctance to face unpleasant truths—one of which is that power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. . . . History tells us it will only be a temporary reprieve. Our current defense cuts ensure that we will be woefully unprepared to face the next test. We are so weary that we are falling asleep.
Well said. If only Republican elected officials were half as clear-minded and nearly as courageous as Ms. Szrom in taking on the claim that we all need to defer to, to bow down to, our own war-weariness. In fact, the idol of war-weariness can be challenged. A war-weary public can be awakened and rallied. Indeed, events are right now doing the awakening. All that’s needed is the rallying. And the turnaround can be fast. Only 5 years after the end of the Vietnam war, and 15 years after our involvement there began in a big way, Ronald Reagan ran against both Democratic dovishness and Republican détente. He proposed confronting the Soviet Union and rebuilding our military. It was said that the country was too war-weary, that it was too soon after Vietnam, for Reagan’s stern and challenging message. Yet Reagan won the election in 1980. And by 1990 an awakened America had won the Cold War.
The next president will be elected in 2016, 15 years after 9/11 and 5 years after our abandonment of Iraq and the beginning of the drawdown in Afghanistan. Pundits will say that it would be politically foolish to try to awaken Americans rather than cater to their alleged war-weariness. We can’t prove them wrong. Perhaps it would be easier for a Republican to win in 2016 running after the fashion of Warren Gamaliel Harding in 1920 rather than that of Ronald Wilson Reagan in 1980.
But what would such a victory be worth? The term “war-weary” (actually “war-wearied”) may have first appeared in Shakespeare. In Henry VI, Part 1 (Act IV, Scene 4), the Earl of Somerset, for reasons of domestic political calculation, resists the entreaty of Sir William Lucy to go to the aid of his fellow English lord, “the over-daring Talbot,”
Who, ring’d about with bold adversity,
Cries out for noble York and Somerset,
To beat assailing death from his weak legions:
And whiles the honourable captain there
Drops bloody sweat from his war-wearied limbs,
And, in advantage lingering, looks for rescue,
You, his false hopes, the trust of England’s honour,
Keep off aloof with worthless emulation.
Somerset fails to rescue Talbot, but grandly states,
If he be dead, brave Talbot, then adieu!
To which Lucy replies,
His fame lives in the world, his shame in you.
Can Republicans do no better than shamefully to emulate Somerset and Obama (“I assure you nobody ends up being more war-weary than me”)? Will no brave leader step forward to honorably awaken us from our unworthy sleep?
Cutting military and defense spending, being pushed and achieved by Obama and Dems, is what this article is about, arguing against it.
You say that like it's not in our (perceived) interest to keep Israel from defending herself.
Israel's targeting of key Muslim sites (think Aswan Dam) is the worst kept secret in Geopolitics.
"So American war-weariness isn’t new. Using it as an excuse to avoid maintaining our defenses or shouldering our responsibilities isn’t new, either. But that doesn’t make it admirable."
I make no claim regarding your personal preference. I'm just pointing out your leaders are not willing to deal with the consequences of Israel defending herself.
Secret code speech, eh?
I know your secret code.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-17/why-liberals-kill/full/
Though liberals are routinely chastised for their “secular relativism,” as Bill O’Reilly puts it, American statesmen who waged the largest wars were driven by the Christian doctrine of “good works,” often enunciated in Obama’s speeches as the duty to be “our brother’s keeper.”
What should be even more troubling to those who call themselves progressives but oppose the current wars: Obama's motivations for pursuing them are rooted in the central tenet of progressivism, enunciated by his idols, that the American national government is responsible for the reform and uplift of those "we" deem to be living below "our" standards, and that "they" must be protected from their oppressors. Obama's role models followed the logic of that moral calling to the ends of the earth.
And though liberals are routinely chastised for their "secular relativism," as Bill O'Reilly puts it, liberal statesmen who waged the largest wars were driven by the Christian doctrine of "good works," often enunciated in Obama's speeches as the duty to be "our brother's keeper." Whereas the traditional conservative notion of Christian communal obligation is limited to one’s family or nation, Obama’s political ancestors extended it to the world.
Both Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson declared that God had given American leaders—"Christ's Army," according to Wilson—the divine duty to "improve" the backward peoples of America and the world. Roosevelt and Wilson used that rationale to establish modern progressivism and American imperialism, both of which were part of what Roosevelt called "the long struggle for the uplift of humanity." They argued that greater government intervention, through social welfare and regulatory programs at home and military incursions abroad, would remake American slums and all the countries of the world into the Puritan ideal of a "city on a hill."
ONWARD CHRISTIAN KRISTOLS...
I'm damn tired of the perfumed princes in the Pentagon putting our service members in greater danger with their politically correct rules of engagement.
The whole damn chain of command is populated with nothing but REMFs looking for their next promotion.
I cannot, in good conscience, recommend serving in the military as long as the current regime is in control.
32 years ago, my German neighbors pleaded with me to vote for Carter. Their media had them convinced that Reagan would start WWIII. As I was in my 4th year in country, my German was quite good, and I spent many nights educating those who frequented the neighborhood gasthaus.
The point I drove home was that a strong America is good for the entire world. It resonated with them on Inauguration Day when the hostages were released.
Shortly after, I was invited to sit at the stammtische, a table reserved for family and close friends of the family. I'll never forget that honor.
We won the Cold War with a tremendous expenditure of blood and money. We don’t owe the world a thing. I don’t think caring primarily about the USA and its future well-being makes one an anti-Semite.
I too have repented bitterly. I should have known. The big guys were telling us the Iraquis would love us, but they did not. James Baker said, “Nobody asks me anymore why we didn’t go on to Baghdad.” (Desert Storm)
The US has strayed far from its founding principles since TR and Wilson and their worldview took root.
Let us not forget, no battle plan, however brilliantly conceived, survives contact with the State Department.
The only way to get Israel to subscribe to our post WWll, “nuanced” version of winning military conflict is to play sugar daddy to them.
Otherwise, they would kick the crap out of many whose crap we would prefer remain internal.
And the rub is, they’d be doing it under a legitimate claim of self-defense.
Furthermore, the private ties between Israel and The United States preclude any kind of psyops campaign to sway American public opinion against Israel in any substantive way.
Since 97.9% of us have not done JACK SH*** when it comes to fighting this war, where do we get off being “war weary”?
I’m willing to buy that from a Marine who’s done four tours in Afghanistan. Not from a thirtysomething housewife who sits around watching CNN all day.
There is another explanation which I recite but do not endorse to the effect that until Obama American policy towards Israel has been shaped by domestic politics much like America's policy toward Great Britain we shaped by Irish immigration. Do you accept this explanation?
Whether you accept it or not, what do you have to say about the motivation for Obama abandoning Israel? Is it because he is simply pro-Islam? Does he really believe that building a few buildings on disputed territory threatens peace if the Palestinians have even a modicum of goodwill? Is there another explanation, for example, the left sees Muslim expansion as the wave of the future to which they want to be allied to bring America down and open the way for oneworldism at which point the left will turn on Islam?
In other words, before Obama what was the motivation for our policy and under Obama what is the present motivation for his policy?
I would welcome your thoughts.
And just what has Israel got to do with Russia vs. Ukraine? The last I heard most Jews (and I assume most Israelis) didn't really like the Ukraine, especially the new government.
But more importantly, just what is wrong with supporting Israel? We used to support Nationalist China, South Korea, South Vietnam, West Germany, and the Contras. And there was a time when even palaeoconservatives demanded US support for Rhodesia and South Africa. So what's the deal? What makes Israel different from all these other countries? And what makes Arab/moslem Communists any better than any other kind of Communist?
It couldn't be that little thing about being "outside western civilization," could it? Just what is "western civilization" anyway? I don't know if you've noticed, but unlike north and south (which are absolute), east and west are purely relative.
Are the chrstian Ethiopians, Assyrians, and Armenians also "outside western civilization?"
If Israel and Israelis are so alien to "western civilization," perhaps "western civilization" should remove the Hebrew Bible from its holy book and replace it with the stories of Roland, El Cid, and George Washington. Because right now, pal, the west's holy book says Israel is a very special place and Israelis are very special people.
There are some FReepers, possibly libertarians, who want the military slashed, but most of us believe in a strong military. You have a strong military in order to AVOID conflict, not to send it all over the globe as Team America World Police. It’s strong so you don’t have to use it, and you only use it when you must, like when national survival is at stake. You hope that never happens, but you carry the “big stick” so you can also annihilate an enemy if absolutely necessary...in self defense.
So, I think you’re right. Reagan did an outstanding job of rebuilding the military and restoring American pride, but he didn’t use his powerful military much. There was no reason to, because the strongest kid on the block gets to pick his battles. It’s funny, BTW, that Democrats always accuse Republicans of being warmongers, but the biggest so-called warmonger of them all, Ronald Reagan, used the military quite sparingly.
Especially to parents who've seen their sons and daughters come home maimed or in a casket. And for what? They still hate us.
Ukraine wanted to be part of The European Union. Let them come to their defense.
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