War-Weariness As an Excuse

The Weekly Standard ^ | Mar 24, 2014 | William Kristol

[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?

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Kristol shames Americans for not being enthused about more war. Far be it that the Old World see to its own balance of power without the usual contribution of dead Americans. After all, we have plenty of blood and money. And if we run short of Americans, we can always import more from Mexico.

[ifinnegan]

You’re a liberal, aren’t you?

You sound like it.

[cripplecreek]

All I know is the next GOP candidate may as well stay home if they don’t show a little Reaganesque restraint when speaking of war.

Americans are tired of it.

[dforest]

War weary? If you call sending troops into battles for muslims who want to kill and subjugate us, or europeans who would rather spend on their socialism and expect Americans to secure their neat little socialist democracies with their lives while having their hands tied behind their backs in order to please the enemy. Sick of it, Billy.

War weary? Dead Americans who lost their lives for a cause that ends in surrender over and over again. Yeah, Bill, we are tired of that.

Any country that elects an ignorant clown for President has no moral authority. The ignorant clown only cares about the politics of it all and has no problem with troops dying as long as his butt lickin’ media spins and hides his deception and responsibility.

Damn right Bill, we are sick of it. And I don’t care if you try to shame people because it is you who should be ashamed.

Now go sit down and shut up.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Before Woodrow Wilson and FDR, conservatives once cared about conserving American lives, money, traditions and domestic freedoms.

[dforest]

You know, that was another reason I believe Reagan became so popular. He did use restraint, unlike a Bill Kristol candidate like Warmonger McCain.

[allendale]

History will show that Putin deployed his army. Obama responded with his clown parade.

[cripplecreek]

And we came out of the Reagan era stronger for it.

[goldstategop]

We’re tired of being the world’s policeman - as for the West, our message is unequivocal - our allies need to stop being freeloaders and defend themselves. They’re rich enough to afford it.

As for Crimea, we don’t have any vital interests there. This is a majority Russian region and since they freely voted to return to Russia - we have no reason to be involved there, period. Other people’s lives are none of our business just as our lives are none of their business.

[dforest]

I used to be embarrassed when Jimmah Carter was President. I had no idea how embarrassing and shameful a President could really be.

Why push a war when we have a clown who is crapping on the troops and their families daily? Makes me ill. All the sacrifice is being done by the people the clown is destroying.

If Billy wants O to send over his homo regiment, be my guest.

[dforest]

Exactly!

[ilgipper]

That’s correct. Repairing a weakened military is not the same as war-hungry. Whoever the candidate is, they need to campaign on fixing a weakened military but also be clear that the best tool to avoid war is a strong foreign policy backed by a military at the ready. Reagan had it right, as he usually did.

[Soul of the South]

I’m much more concerned about the millions who are crossing out southern border every year than I am about the Russians invading Crimea or the Ukraine. The Founding Father’s warned us about getting involved in foreign adventures. It seems to me as though the first responsibility of a government is protect its own borders, not securing the borders of other nations or using its army as a mercenary force for other nations (i.e. the Saudi’s).

[ifinnegan]

Reagan didn’t cut military spending.

I see this is the nutsy propagandist brigade thread.

[dforest]

Amen, I totally agree.

[cripplecreek]

I didn’t say Reagan cut military spending.

He just didn’t send American troops to die at the slightest provocation whether real or imagined.

[nathanbedford]

Ronald Reagan ran against both Democratic dovishness and Republican détente.

Reagan also won the Cold War as Bill Kristol points out but he did so without engaging in conventional war and with minimal loss of life. His one excursion into peacekeeping, in Lebanon, ended in disaster which caused him quickly to repent of such adventures.

The point is that the strategy of involving us in Iraq and Afghanistan was a failed strategy but Reagan's strategy was a successful strategy. George Bush's strategy impoverished the nation, weakened us militarily, aroused Islam against us, failed ultimately to make America safer from terrorist strikes, and left us weaker economically, diplomatically, and, worse, morally. Our moral decline put Obama in the White House and the decline accelerated and became ubiquitous.

When you can convince thinking conservatives that the way to stop 19 fanatics with box cutters from flying an airplane into American buildings is to invade and occupy two nations, you will have come up with an explanation I have not yet heard.

For the record, I have long ago publicly admitted my initial support for the war in Iraq from which I have obviously repented. I am not an isolationist, I do not oppose war when waged the national interest upon sound strategy. Bill Kristol's article is nothing but a disguised plea to keep America defending Israel. As Mark Levin would say in a different context:

There I have said it.

[nathanbedford]

Correction: Reagan, also of course, invaded Grenada.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

It was acceptable to support a war-devastated world in the special case of the Cold War, it’s quite another situation to condemn our nation to slow death by playing world policemen. History teaches that no nation, no matter how powerful, long survives a unilateral attempt to impose a universal peace.

[dforest]

Nothing wrong with having a strong military. Most of us support that. But war should not be something that we use to answer every problem. And we really don’t need to be the people that fight everyone else’s wars.

Quit using the propaganda excuse. Lots of people on this site are sick of sending troops to fight others wars.