National Character

As the failing reconstruction of Iraq has staggered on, a number of mainly conservative writers have decided to blame the American people rather than the Bush Administration’s poor strategy for the losss of public support. They see people’s ebbing support for the effort and declare that Americans are soft, decadent and stupid - unwilling to accept casualties and unable to remain focused on a threat or stay the course for any long and difficult struggle. Americans can support quick, low cost successes such as the first war in Iraq, the argument goes, but some profound weakness in the national character causes us to lack what it takes for a long, hard struggle. I believe this is dangerous and insulting nonsense, and that the people saying it should be ashamed. The danger is that some of our enemies might believe it and act on it. The insult is obvious.
Last month my wife and I walked the battlefield at Antietam Creek where in one day in 1862 over twenty thousand Americans were killed or wounded. We also visited Shiloh where thousands more fell over two days in the same year in a war that was to go on for three more years on our own soil before slavery was ended and the Union restored. In my father’s youth, Americans endured Pearl Harbor, the terrible defeat at Bataan, and staggering early losses in the North Atlantic, accepted the casualties they had to take for nearly four years and conquered powerful and tyrannical enemies completely. Then for over forty years Americans fought and won a long, difficult struggle against other tyrants, tyrants equipped with weapons which could have killed millions of us in an afternoon.
It is not casualties and risk that Americans cannot stomach. It is pointless casualties and risk with no valid purpose. It is not that Americans cannot commit to a long struggle. It is that they will not commit to a struggle without a defined and worthwhile goal. Americans’ reluctance to support an effort in Iraq that makes no sense to them is not a sign of any flaw but rather of two virtues in the national character – good practical sense and skepticism of rulers.