IRAQ: Strategy -

One year later, America waits. As I write this in mid-July, intelligence sources say that the level of Al Qaeda activity is as high as -- or higher than -- it was prior to September 11. People at the top of America's national-security complex assume that another attack is inevitable. The only questions are when and by what means.

The "hope" is that it will "only" be a department-store suicide bomber or a truck bomb at some chemical plant. But policy makers are planning for the worst. Their assessments are based on intelligence-gathering capabilities that are much better and vastly more expansive than they were just one year ago.

In the political realm, the key dynamic is not the action, but the reaction. What happens when and if the next strike occurs? What forces will be unleashed? How will the strategic terrain be altered in the aftermath?

The short answer is that in the event of a second strike, once again the management of national-security policy will be be driven by America's most influential -- and least understood -- wartime constituency. The historian and foreign-policy analyst Walter Russell Mead ( whose excellent book Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World [Knopf, 2001] discusses these issues ) calls this constituency the Jacksonians, after President Andrew Jackson, the Indian-fighting populist whose ferocity in defense of American honor was legendary.

You know the Jacksonians. They live in the "red counties," own guns, drink Budweiser, smoke ( or used to smoke ) Marlboros, and watch NASCAR on TV. They shop at Wal-Mart, and they made Rush Limbaugh the most-listened-to radio talk-show host in the history of the medium. They're Christians, and they believe in the terrible swift sword of righteousness.

Jacksonians live in places like Tyler, Texas and East Carolina, along the Panhandle of Florida, and north of Eight Mile Road in Detroit. They think that Wall Street is a den of thieves. They elected George W. Bush in 2000. They impeached Bill Clinton in 1999. They elected Ronald Reagan in 1980 because they believed that Jimmy Carter had allowed America to be humiliated by mullahs in Iran. They supported the war in Vietnam and threw Lyndon B. Johnson out of office ( and Hubert Humphrey as well ), giving 57% of the vote in 1968 to Richard Nixon and George Wallace.

They rallied to John F. Kennedy in 1962 when he faced down the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis and elected Dwight D. Eisenhower twice to wage the Cold War. When they perceived that the Cold War was being lost during the latter years of the Truman administration, they supported the movement known as McCarthyism to crack heads at the State and Defense Departments. When riled, they have always been America's most potent political force.

Today, they remain by far the most important political constituency within the Republican party. No Republican can govern without them. To date, they have given President Bush their almost-unanimous support. But that support will dissipate the moment they think that the prosecution of the War on Terror is circumscribed by concerns unrelated to American honor.

Jacksonians believe that the only acceptable outcome in war is the enemy's unconditional surrender. They are willing to fight and to sacrifice to achieve that outcome. They do not believe in limited war. They like to close the deal. And they do so without mercy. When their country is challenged, they expect their leaders to fight with every available weapon. And should they perceive that this expectation is not being met, they will demand that it be done.

Mead says that another terrorist attack "could rouse one of the great storms of Jacksonian war fever that periodically change both American and world history. And if so, some of President Bush's most demanding challenges will come from the tensions between the kind of war Americans instinctively want to fight and the kind of war forced on us by international realities."

The war that Americans "instinctively want to fight," of course, is Fred Ikle's war. Jacksonians want to annihilate Al Qaeda and anyone or any state that gives it safe haven. They don't care about the diplomatic niceties. They don't care what the Europeans think. When, in a speech to the graduating class at West Point, the president endorsed preemptive military action against terrorists and states that enabled terrorism, he was telling the Jacksonians that he was one of them. The implications could be worried about after the fact. Doing it was what mattered.

Doing it is no easy task. The world does not work the way that Jacksonians believe it should. Diplomatic niceties do matter. Strategic alliances are important. World opinion cannot be ignored. But in the event of a second attack, Jacksonians will expect their president -- the one they elected -- to do what they view as necessary to defend American honor and prestige. And what they will view as necessary is total war.

There are a lot of us Jacksonians around here!

Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World

Another link:

Walter Russell Mead


		Walter Russell Mead is Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. A contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times and a senior contributing editor of Worth magazine, he has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Harper’s, and Foreign Affairs. He is the author of Mortal Splendor: The American Empire in Transition. He lives in Jackson Heights, New York. Photo (c) Harry Heleotis


		From one of our leading experts on foreign policy, a full-scale reinterpretation of America’s dealings—from its earliest days—with the rest of the world. It is Walter Russell Mead’s thesis that the United States, by any standard, has had a more successful foreign policy than any of the other great powers that we have faced—and faced down. Beginning as an isolated string of settlements at the edge of the known world, this country—in two centuries—drove the French and the Spanish out of North America; forced Britain, then the world’s greatest empire, to respect American interests; dominated coalitions that defeated German and Japanese bids for world power; replaced the tottering British Empire with a more flexible and dynamic global system built on American power; triumphed in the Cold War; and exported its language, culture, currency, and political values throughout the world. Yet despite, and often because of, this success, both Americans and foreigners over the decades have routinely considered American foreign policy to be amateurish and blundering, a political backwater and an intellectual wasteland. Now, in this provocative study, Mead revisits our history to counter these appraisals. He attributes this unprecedented success (as well as recurring problems) to the interplay of four schools of thought, each with deep roots in domestic politics and each characterized by a central focus or concern, that have shaped our foreign policy debates since the American Revolution—the Hamiltonian: the protection of commerce; the Jef- fersonian: the maintenance of our democratic system; the Jacksonian: populist values and military might; and the Wilsonian: moral principle. And he delineates the ways in which they have continually, and for the most part beneficially, informed the intellectual and political bases of our success as a world power. These four schools, says Mead, are as vital today as they were two hundred years ago, and they can and should guide the nation through the challenges ahead. Special Providence is a brilliant analysis, certain to influence the way America thinks about its national past, its future, and the rest of the world. "Walter Russell Mead's Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World is a stunning achievement. At a time of crisis, Mead's book forces the reader to rethink the central ideas that have guided American foreign policy in the past and are likely to shape its future." --James Chace "Few people writing on U. S. foreign policy are as brilliant and original as Walter Russell Mead. In Special Providence he shatters old diplomatic theories and historical assumptions with a creative vengeance. The result is a brave, landmark study that cannot be ignored. --Douglas Brinkley "To understand U. S. foreign policy, it is necessary to understand the United States. Nobody understands either better than Walter Russell Mead. This book is destined to join the small list of classics that explain America to the world and to Americans themselves." --Michael E. Lind "In his ambitious and important new book, Walter Russell Mead offers a provocative and highly original way of looking at American foreign policy, one that moves far beyond the conventional wisdom of 'realists vs. idealists.' His insights linking the grand sweep of American history to our present world situation are particularly valuable. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in America's role in our increasingly complex world." --Richard C. Holbrooke "This ingenious and provocative account of American foreign policy's past is a splendid introduction to its future." --Michael Mandelbaum " This important book-high-spirited, eloquent, and imaginative-could well change the way we think about America's relations with the world." --Ronald Steel

Received this by E-Mail from a good friend!
Definitely a Jacksonian!
__________________________________________________________

Just had to share - we must remember.

I sat in a movie theater watching "Schindler's List," asked myself, "Why
didn't the Jews fight back?" Now I know why. I sat in a movie theater,
watching "Pearl Harbor" and asked myself, "Why weren't we prepared?" Now I
know why. Civilized people cannot fathom, much less predict, the actions of
evil people.

On September 11, dozens of capable airplane passengers allowed themselves to
be overpowered by a handful of poorly armed terrorists because they did not
comprehend the depth of hatred that motivated their captors.

On September 11, thousands of innocent people were murdered because too many
Americans naively reject the reality that some nations are dedicated to the
dominance of others. Many political pundits, pacifists and media personnel
want us to forget the carnage. They say we must focus on the ! bravery of the
rescuers and ignore the cowardice of the killers. They implore us to
understand the motivation of the perpetrators. Major television stations
have announced they will assist the healing process by not replaying
devastating footage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers.

I will not be manipulated. I will not pretend to understand. I will not
forget.

I will not forget the liberal media who abused freedom of the press to kick
our country when it was vulnerable and hurting. I will not forget that CBS
anchor Dan Rather preceded President Bush's address to the nation with the
snide remark, "No matter how you feel about him, he is still our president."
I will not forget that ABC TV anchor Peter Jennings questioned President
Bush's motives for not returning immediately to Washington, DC and
commented, "We're all pretty skeptical and cynical about Washington." And I
will not fo! rget that ABC's Mark Halperin warned if reporters weren't
informed of every little detail of this war, they aren't "likely -- nor
should they be expected -- to show deference."

I will not isolate myself from my fellow Americans by pretending an attack
on the USS Cole in Yemen was not an attack on the United States of America.
I will not forget the Clinton administration equipped Islamic terrorists and
their supporters with the world's most sophisticated telecommunications
equipment and encryption technology, thereby compromising America's ability
to trace terrorist radio, cell phone, land lines, faxes and modem
communications. I will not be appeased with pointless, quick retaliatory
strikes like those perfected by the previous administration. I will not be
comforted by "feel-good, do nothing" regulations like the silly "Have your
bags been under your control?" question at the airport. I will not be influenced by so called,"antiwar demonstrators" who exploit the right of
expression to chant anti-American obscenities. I will not forget the moral
victory handed the North Vietnamese by American war protesters who reviled
and spat upon the returning
soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines. I will not be softened by the wishful
thinking of pacifists who chose reassurance over reality.

I will embrace the wise words of Prime Minister Tony Blair who told Labor
Party conference, "They have no moral inhibition on the slaughter of the
innocent. If they could have murdered not 7,000 but 70,000, does anyone
doubt they would have done so and rejoiced in it?

There is no compromise possible with such people, no meeting of minds, no
point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: defeat it or be
defeated by it. And defeat it we must!"

I will force myself to:

-hear the weeping
-fe! el the helplessness
-imagine the terror
-sense the panic
-smell the burning flesh
-experience the loss
-remember the hatred.

I sat in a movie theater, watching "Private Ryan" and asked myself, "Where
did they find the courage?" Now I know. We have no choice. Living without
liberty is not living.

Ed Evans, MGySgt., USMC (Ret.) Not as lean, Not as mean, But still a
Marine.

Keep this going until every living American has read it and memorized it so
we don't make the same mistake again.

Excellent!

It is so good that it should be posted as a Vanity with its own thread. Then we can bookmark it.

This part of the thread had a big impact with me.

On September 11, dozens of capable airplane passengers allowed themselves to be overpowered by a handful of poorly armed terrorists because they did not comprehend the depth of hatred that motivated their captors.

Our church had a memorial service a few days after the mass murder of our innocents on 9/11. After the service the women seem to gravitate to each other crying and sharing their feelings.

A group of men started to talk about it. All of us had been in the service with a vet from WWII, a couple from the Korean War, many of us during the cold war days, a couple of Nam Vets, and a couple of Desert Storm Vets.

The conversation went to how we could never allow the rabble to take over a jetliner and use it as a weapon to kill other innocents. We knew nothing of the "Lets Roll Heroes".

However, we decided that allowing the rabble to take over an airplane must never be tolerated again.

I'm sure that same conversation was held millions of times in America with the same outcome, We would never allow that to happen again!

Most Americans changed on 9/11 and have held firm in their resolve. Only the enemies, the liberals in America and Euro and the Islamakazi abettors don't realize how we have changed. That is their problem.

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