American Inconstancy

I think I'm going to try and turn this post into an essay at some point when I can squeeze more time out my average day. 

The concept of American inconstancy, or American fickleness with regards to our politics, isn't anything new and has been remarked on by far better men that me.  However, since we are still engaged in the War on Terror (and will be so for as long as Bush sits in the Oval Office, he's assured us), the issue needs to be revisited at length.  This is one of the many things I believe Norman Podhoretz has achieved with the essay he wrote for Commentary Magazine (subsequently posted at the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, here).  Note: this is a 19-page essay, not a quick-read, so print it out and go someplace quiet for an hour or so.

If you read this blog, you already know that I am a "neoconservative" at least concerning foreign policy, but actually in many other areas as well.  Although I dislike the label, it is useful in describing my point of view to others.  But beneath labels and beneath rhetoric, I am essentially a one-issue voter:  I care about winning the war on terror.  In my mind, all other political considerations (yes, including immigration and even judges) must take a backseat, since all are predicated on our ability to maintain our own security.  It's very simple: if we fail in this, the other issues won't matter.

I heard an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show yesterday with GEN John Abizaid, and he made a remark which I took to be an indirect rebuke of everything written recently with the pens of men like George Will and William F. Buckley:  he said he noticed during his trips to the United States from his base in Qatar that the country didn't seem to be very cognizant that there was a war going on.  There was no broad kind of awareness of the war that he could easily pick up from random television viewing or newspaper-browsing.

I'm sad to say that I agree with him.  It is something that has bothered me for quite some time.  However, I am not content with the pat response to this phenomenon found on so many radio talk shows or conservative opinion pieces: namely that this is the result of the Bush administration not making the case to the public.   Sorry, but I'm not buying that.  That smacks, to me, of an all-too typical American cop-out, and one that conservatives in particular should be wary of: after all, we are the ones who continually remind other Americans that we should behave as grown-ups and that being an American is "advanced citizenship."  To turn and claim that it is up to our president to hold our hands and remind us daily of how dire the consequences of losing this war really are, strikes me as petulant and childish.  We are responsible for our destiny as a nation folks -- not George W. Bush, not Donald Rumsfeld, and not GEN John Abizaid.  They work for us, not the other way round.  Hearing Abizaid's remark made me feel genuinely ashamed to be a conservative.

Inconstancy -- reflected in our apathy toward the war and our mindless obsession with trivialities -- seems to me a relatively new phenomenon.  I don't believe the citizens of this country had such problems during WWII.  I am, of course, too young to be able to say that I know this from my own experience, but judging from the photos and stories and films from that era, the war was never far from the minds of people at home.  On the contrary, many of them felt a kinship with the GI "over there," because they worked in a factory building planes or bombs or ships -- or else did their duty by buying war bonds, etc.  No one was holding their hands.  It didn't require daily or even weekly press conferences by the president to keep the American war machine humming (although there were plenty of them, the populace didn't need them to stay focused).

So what is different?  And can it ever change?  Will this or any future generation of Americans ever again be willing to unite together and stick through tough times until the war is won?  Have we forever lost our ability to absorb the sacrifices necessary in any conflict, much less one so dire as the survival of western civilization itself?  Will it take a nuclear weapon being detonated in a metropolitan American city?  Would even that horror wake us from our slumber, or would we turn our rhetorical guns on ourselves even more fiercely than we already do?  Are the Mullahs and the Imams right about us, after all?  Are we the weak horse?  Will they find to be true what Imperial Japan found to be a lie 50 years ago ... that we were a "paper tiger?"

It's easy for pundits like George Will and W.F. Buckley to take shots at Bush.  They sit in the cheap seats.  They don't have 3,000 Americans (and getting close to 3,000 soldiers) on their conscience.  They don't have to understand the complexities of developing and implementing policy in the Middle East (although they evidently think they do).  They are free to imagine Bush is a fool or is surrounded by them, and to say as much to their hundreds of thousands of readers -- but they don't have to make the decisions or deal with the consequences.  They don't have to constantly readjust their rhetoric in order to maintain influence with a Congress and Senate-full of similarly-pressured men and women also trying to stay alive politically.

And so the betrayal -- yes, betrayal -- of Bush by Mr. Will and his ilk has become a cause for celebration for the enemies of freedom both here and abroad.  Small men with pens once again bite at the heels of their betters, as they have so often in the past: from Abraham Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan.  And each passing generation they gain more influence while possessing less of a sense of responsibility.

I wish I had an answer, but I don't.

Comments

[Duckwriter]

Wow Morlock - how does it feel to be a walking caricature of an irrational liberal unable to face reality?

What's scary is that they let people like you hold positions of responsiblity within the DNC. I'd say we're all pretty-much doomed.

[morlock]

Advanced citizenship is indeed the norm, not least in sophistication of a message saturated population at judging mass media manipulation, e.g. "war on terror" as a Reichstag fire.

When we saw a third tower fall just like frequently viewed condemned Vegas casinos undergoing controlled demoliton, though WTC 7 was never struck by jetliner or explosion, we knew exactly what we were seeing, one more genocidal circus act for the sake of pork barrel procurement's aggrandizement.

That you parrot the oligarchy's duplicitous message of fear speaks ill of your citizenship's acuity, hence degree of advancement.

Lock step patriotism is treason toward democracy.

When a military procurement dole hound like Abizaid bemoans U.S. citizenry's obliviousness to conflict for the sake of corporate welfare, he is no different than a multigeneration welfare mother lamenting societal indifference toward the bastard infant wailing at her empty dugs.

Because unregulated National Security agency controlled judiciary & law enforcement will not consistently prosecute, we, the U.S. citizenry, cannot stop the power whores who beg money from master criminals to purchase election results so they can curry pimps' favor by aiding their constant raids on the public treasury, lest we be convicted of sedition or abetting terrorism by rerouting our funds to contrary purpose.

But we can preserve remnants of our shredded dignity by withholding our attention from, and thereby allegiance to, liberty's prostitution by dynastic death merchants.

[Tym]

If we were at war with an actual state and its respective military instead of a shadowy organization that never enters an actual field of battle to conduct warfare in the classical sense, you would find the country mobilized and highly aware of its mission. As it is, it is a 'war' conducted miles from America and seen on TV screens and thus, can be relegated to a fantasy world that happens 'over there.' That's why this is why the language of 'war' is not working properly and why indeed, we are probably losing. But since there is no definition of victory from the Whitehouse, we cannot know what victory is supposed to look like.

[daniel F. Swann]

What specifically is it about George Will that causes him to be viewed as a Conservative? Of all the Conservative Columnists, he is the only one I never read. I determined long ago that he is a snob filled with visions of his own importance.