It’s a good thing that America is still around.
That assertion could be a tough sell to many among the cultural elite of America and Europe, but it’s something most of us accept without much reservation. Simply put, the world is a better place with America in a position of global power.
If nothing else, Independence Day is a celebration of what America stands for and the happy fact that we’re still around, standing up for the things we famously stand for: America is still about freedom and opportunity, here and abroad; our free market enables economic success unparalleled in the world; and, despite the frantic efforts of the ACLU and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, we’re still one nation under God. These are all noble ideals and the world is better to have an America that bothers defending them.
But that’s the point: The ideals are only noble so long as they’re worthy of being defended. It’s great that you believe in freedom of the market and freedom of religion and speech. But it takes more than a cutesy bumper-sticker to protect those freedoms. As it turns out, arms aren’t just for hugging.
Serious countries don’t subsist for long on sweet-sounding slogans. It takes a fighting spirit and a willingness to defend a nation in existential crisis.
In 1777, British general William Howe led his redcoats in taking control of the fledgling American capital of Philadelphia, forcing the new Congress to relocate to York, Pa. Crushed and demoralized, George Washington led the revolutionary soldiers to Valley Forge, where they braved a brutally cold Pennsylvania winter.
Republicanism was derided by the fancy- pants leaders in Europe as myopic, the war seemed too difficult and too costly, and many initial war supporters backed out as political pressure mounted for a “peaceful conclusion” (read: surrender). Thinking about that puts me in a time warp. Add the Air Force, the Internet, and a baseball team in Denver and it begins to sound a lot like America today and the ongoing war on terror. (OK, maybe scratch the baseball-team part.)
It is, however, different in one crucial way: You never would have seen an intellectual like Thomas Paine rolling into town with a “Co-exist” sticker on his donkey’s left buttocks and an “Arms are for hugging” sticker on the right. Paine understood that achieving the lofty ideals of self-governance and republicanism would require sacrifice and toughness. He movingly noted how, “When my country, into which I had just set my foot, was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir.”
Today we’re lacking that passion. Shouldn’t defense of American ideals be every bit as stirring today as it was in 1776?
Maybe American ideals just aren’t seen as being at risk. The usual argument in favor of a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq goes something like this: Just as the war won’t help us, quitting won’t hurt us. But there is something narrow and naïve about that assumption. A loss to al-Qaeda in Iraq is a loss to al-Qaeda everywhere. Our credibility and future lie in balance – and the truth is that we cannot succeed in Afghanistan or Iran or anywhere else if we can’t succeed in Iraq. Iraq is the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
From our vantage point, the violence in Gaza, Hezbollah’s rockets into Israel and a burning mosque in Ramadi are disparate events only tied together by proximity. But what we don’t see is the realignment of power in the region that hinges a lot less on whether you are Sunni or Shiite, Arab or Persian, Iraqi or Pakistani than whether or not you’re Muslim – or, more accurately, a Muslim who has pledged his life in fighting the Great Satan. The Jihadist ideology has grown to encompass unlikely allies, and it is this ideology and the proponents thereof that we are up against in Iraq.
Your neighbor may be perfectly content in seeing this one through with a witty bumper sticker on his Saab. But for America and its national ethos – formed in 1776 to remain the global standard – it will take a whole lot more than stickers.
Chris Rawlings (christopher.rawlings @colorado.edu) is a 2007 graduate of the University of Colorado-Boulder.
