The Cause Worth Dying For

I attend a church in rural Pennsylvania in which there has been a Sunday service every week since 1722. For many years in its history, there were enough parishioners to accommodate two or three services, but these days there is only one service, and we light a special candle next to the altar to commemorate the weeks when we have more than 100 in attendance. Most weeks, the candle does not glow.

“If there is anything worth remembering on Memorial Day it is that we should take war so seriously that we are unwilling to engage in it for any reason that is not existential to our survival as a country. “

Does that mean one does not take up arms until the Huns are at your border and invading you, after you’ve sat and watched them conquer whatever friendly nation you had?

That’s the problem with that position. If you fail to see your existential interest in a friend in need, your days could be numbered too.

There’s nothing wrong with a foreign policy based on national interest that seeks to prevents an imminent danger of national survival.

Having said that, getting involved in stupid wars is asinine. It takes wise leadership to distinguish between a stupid war and a necessary one - something that has been in short supply.

NO more American blood for “nation building”.

I have no problem with military action (i.e. war) when it is in our *real* interest - very serious real interest. AND there is a clearly defined exit plan in as short a time frame as possible.

We hit Afghanistan in retaliation for 9/11. We decimated the Taliban in 90 days - it was payback and a message to leave us alone. Then we should have gotten out. We’re done. If they want live in the stone age, then let them.

It’s time to consider going back to an enlightened version of fortress America.

“...There’s nothing wrong with a foreign policy based on national interest that seeks to prevents an imminent danger of national survival.
Having said that, getting involved in stupid wars is asinine...” [aquila48, post 5]

“...It’s time to consider going back to an enlightened version of fortress America...” [ChildOfThe60s, post 7]

The American distinction between “war” and “peace” is at once too extreme, and too simplistic. There has never been a time in history when “peace” meant no one was fighting. And “war” has often meant conflict for limited ends, using means short of total. Demanding total lack of violence at one end of the spectrum, and demanding total violence (with all attendant sacrifices implied) at the other, are demands impossible to satisfy.

Isolationism is unrealistic on a number of levels. We can fence ourselves in, but we cannot fence the rest of the world out. No nation that engages in trade can do so. It wsn’t true in 1790, and is still less true today.

No other nation will believe our good intentions: a maddening legacy of missionary movements that flowered and came to fruit in our past. Thinking along the lines of “too good to be true,” others (allies, adversaries, unaligned) suspect our motives. It bespeaks a form of moral hubris, perhaps megalomania: we believe ourselves to be so pure and transparent, so important in terms of our wonderfulness, that other nations will be dazzled, and follow our example, spontaneously. And we fancy ourselves so consequential that those other nations will heed our wishes. Meanwhile, if we neglect defenses (a depressingly common American tendency), they will get the idea they can treat us as they wish - regard us lightly and get away with it. And they’d be right.

But these considerations are minor, compared to two conceits that are quintessentially American:

First, the notion that “the nation’s sons” are the personal property of families, therefore families are entitled to an accounting in terms of national strategy, if troops are to go into action: the loss (or merely the risk) of any troops at all must be justified by an equally weighty and large-looming national need. This might be justified if there was still a draft, but any attempt to square the loss of a single individual from a family with the loss of that person (or a number of them) due to risks incurred in attaining national-level goals cannot be successfully balanced out. The idea that raw manpower is a useful military asset went by the board decades ago; attempts to justify a draft for that reason (or any other) is the same as attempting to justify chattel slavery. Once a “child” volunteers to serve, they’re not a child.

Second, asserting after the fact that a particular objective was too tough to attain, therefore we should never have tried to reach it in the first place, bespeaks a teenager’s understanding of reality. Morally obtuse, motivationally bankrupt, flippant in its disregard of consequences. Unworthy of citizens of the American nation.

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