Happy Independence Day. The other day, John McCain was asked by an ABC News correspondent what his Vietnam experience had to do with his qualifications for the presidency. He became visibly angry, but when he got around to answering the question, he said something close to, "I didn't realize what this country meant to me until I had it taken away."
Similarly, I think the most genuinely patriotic I ever felt was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It was the first time I'd been made to think, really think, about what this country means to me. Why do I love America? I have never been able to come up with a more honest answer than, "Because she is mine."
Why do you love America? If you don't love America, why not? Did you fall out of love? If so, what do you intend to do about it?
I'm grateful to God to be able to tell you today that my brother-in-law, Mike Leming, is on his way back to the United States after having served his tour of duty in Baghdad. For security reasons, I couldn't say where he was serving and what he was doing, and I'm still not sure I can do so, so I won't. Suffice it to say that one of the networks broadcast a report not long ago about the work he and his men were doing, and it was so dangerous it made my blood run cold. Seriously, I sat at my computer after having watched the report on the network website, knowing a close family member was being shot at by snipers, and all I could do was pray.
He comes home to his family in a few days with a Bronze Star medal for meritorious service pinned to his chest. We are all bursting with pride in him, in the troops he commanded, and in all our service men and women. On this day, give a thought and say a prayer for those patriots. AnotherBeliever, I'm thinking about you especially on this day.
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DavidTC,
That is a good deal different than an invasion and overthrow of a government.
Sure. But let's at least realize that humanitarian issues have been part of the United States of America's wars before the Iraq war.
Take the 2001-2002 Afghanistan war, for example. Years before the US got involved, many American feminists worried about the Taliban's treatment of women.
So, often humanitarian concerns are almost always woven into the national security issues. Hitler's Nazi Germany was a humanitarian nightmare as well as a national security issue for the US.
British "buzz" about Germany's brutality in Belgium during World War One was also part of an effort to get the US into World War One.
To ignore the humanitarian goals of many American wars is to put one's head in the sand.
DavidTC,
And need I mention that President Bush mentioned the human rights abuses of Saddam Hussain's regime in many of his speeches during the 2002-2003 period, including the September 2002 UN speech, the January 2003 state of the union speech and the March 2003 speech to the American Enterprise Institute.
Not only that, by November 2004, when WMD was not found in the quanties expected in Iraq, Bush still received more votes for President than any candidate for president in the history of the United States.
I think that many Americans were proud that we had toppled Saddam Hussain's regime; I certainly was and still am.
Rock, doing something to be proud of -- focusing here on your insistance concerning "humanitarian motivations" -- does not by itself justify an action. In the case of Taliban Afghanistan, a balancing factor was the US support of the Afghan insurgents fighting the Soviet army there. Good reasons often take a back seat to political expediency.
Nations go to war for practical reasons. Citizens require high ideals to voluntarily put their lives, and the lives of their children, at risk. I first read that in the writing of Robert Heinlein. I can't think of a war or similar action that is an exception to it. Look at every unpopular war, and I'd expect to find that the government has failed to sell the citizens on the high ideals it chose to use.
Nations go to war for practical reasons. Citizens require high ideals to voluntarily put their lives, and the lives of their children, at risk. I first read that in the writing of Robert Heinlein. I can't think of a war or similar action that is an exception to it. Look at every unpopular war, and I'd expect to find that the government has failed to sell the citizens on the high ideals it chose to use.
I can think of a few wars that were not presented as being for practical reasons. 'Practical' being defined either as 'national security' or 'imperialism/their land is rightfully ours'.
For example, the War of 1812 on the part of the British. The British caused that war because they wouldn't stop conscription American soldiers into the British navy for their war with France. They apparently failed to believe that America would actually go to war over that, and events spiraled out of control to the point of actual war between the US and Britain without any British politician ever standing up and saying that they needed to go to war with the US for any reason at all. (In fact, the US declaration of war on Britain probably came as a complete surprise to the average British citizen.)
These, in the long run, get regarded as the more stupid of wars. Vietnam may be regard as a pointless conflict, but at least that had a logical goal. The war of 1812 is just incomprehensibly stupid, cause the British kept poking America with a stick and then for some reason was honestly surprised when America punched them back, embroiling them in a war they couldn't possible fight at the same time they were fighting France.
Unfortunately for Rock, none of the examples of 'nonpractical wars' I can think of were for altruistic reasons. All of them were for 'honor' and the inability of a government or its people to back down or apologize when they either, accidentally or on purpose, pushed some other government too far, and thus ended up in a war they didn't actually want.
All other wars, all wars that a government willingly entered(1), have been presented to the population as being for 'national security' reasons, or, back when it was acceptable, empire building. Or 'recovering land that is rightfully ours', which is actually empire building but pretending to be national security.
1) By 'willingly', I'm including invasions there. The government usually doesn't get 'willingly' invaded, but I mean they're willingly fighting the invasion, if that makes sense.
David, I readily admit that there are individual "exceptions" to the Heinlein generalization. My intent in offering it here was as a contribution to the debate concerning the US, its invasion of Iraq, and the rhetoric to which we've been subjected since 2002.
Nor do I mean to imply that practical and ideal are mutually exclusive. I do mean to explicitly state that practical reasons are not sufficient to motivate the majority to enlist (or comply with conscription). Patriotism is an abstract construct, capable of material examples, but not a valid source of justification for those practical reasons. A patriot will give his life to repel invaders; he will not give his life because the oil companies will lose their global market share.
"National security" obtains a distinct, semantic boundary with leaders wanting to keep their positions of power and privilege while warning citizens that Evil Empire will make them into slaves. It's all in the rhetoric... and that's a very poor example here, since the US has never been invaded -- and, I would argue, has never been in danger of it -- in the sense that you and I are using the term.
BTW, there are some who reject the label of "war" on the military events of 1812. I abstain from any opinion, myself.
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