THE AMERICA-HATERS WHO WANT AMERICA TO LOSE

TNR's Lawrence Kaplan put forth a wonderful piece, back in fall 2003, on the willingness of the American people to endure military casualties in the pursuit of victory. It is a commonplace that this willingness is shallow in the post-Second World War era: Americans simply do not wish to suffer, and do not have the senses of patriotism, pride, and honor that buffered such suffering for earlier generations. It is true, I think, that these qualities are less evident now than they were in the past. The ability of a society to see through grinding conflicts like the Philippines Insurrection or the Boer War augers well for its future, lest it lose the mere capacity to conquer, and be susceptible to humiliation by any small power with no advantage save mental fortitude. It is indeed difficult to imagine now the methods that transformed the Philippines for us, and South Africa for the British, from bitter foe to steadfast friend being applied in Iraq. Would that they were. But patriotism, pride, and honor are nonetheless still present in the American character. It is the American political class that lacks them in corresponding measure.

Kaplan's essay, reprinted here, invokes two military debacles of the recent past: Beirut in 1983, and Mogadishu in 1993. Each featured a shocking toll of Americans killed in spectacular fashion, and each saw a swift American withdrawal thereafter. The respective retreats were justified by the political leadership on the grounds that the American people had thereby turned against the mission. Kaplan demolishes this rationale, noting that in each case, American popular support for decisive action rose in the aftermath of the respective tragedies, collapsing only after the political leadership decided to withdraw. This pattern is shown to hold true even against the mythos of Vietnam: Americans turned away from that cause not because of the toll in young men, but because they lost their belief in the political leadership's will or ability to win.

The present war in Iraq is no different. Americans voted against the Republicans last week in large part because of their disgust with its course and conduct. They have every right to be appalled -- the war has indeed been mismanaged from the beginning, and the political party responsible for that must pay a price. But they did not vote for defeat. The flameout of antiwar left-wing darling Ned Lamont in solidly blue Connecticut is evidence enough for that. Americans wanted Republicans out of power, and that is not synonymous with -- nor a metaphor for -- Americans out of Iraq.

Pitiably, the Democrats who benefitted from voter discontent are now empowered to misinterpret it to their own disadvantage and dishonor. Last March, I wrote on the Democratic ploy of the "Fighting Dems" -- Democratic veterans put forth to mislead voters about that party's competence and grasp in military affairs. I noted that most of these veterans did not believe in a retreat from Iraq; and I noted that the Democratic party at large surely did. Now that the Democrats have the Congress, they are showing their true colors: stories from the New York Times and Reuters tell us that they are pressing for a retreat from the battlefield under the euphemism of "redeployment." Instead of using their newfound power to seek ways to win, they will use it to seek ways to run. This is entirely unsurprising. Given the opportunity to take a bad situation and transform it into outright defeat, they are seizing it with both hands.

There is a silver lining from a partisan standpoint: Republicans, having tarnished their national-security credentials over the past six years, may burnish them by reminding Americans of the Democrats' propensity for doing far worse. But one would rather have the country do well, even at the expense of partisan advantage. The wish for wartime victory is, of course, a basic desire of the patriot of any party. It is a wish that the Democrats at large do not have, and its absence tells us all we need to know about them and theirs. A pity that those who will suffer the most will not be them, but the foreign lands and peoples whom we may shortly abandon.

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ELSEWHERE

How "sweatshops" help the poor: "One of the oldest myths about capitalism is the notion that factories that offer the poor higher wages to lure them off the streets (and away from lives of begging, stealing, prostitution, or worse) or away fom back-breaking farm labor somehow impoverishes and exploits them. They are said to work in 'sweatshops' for 'subsistence wages.' That was the claim made by socialists and unionists in the early days of the industrial revolution, and it is still made today by the same category of malcontents -- usually by people who have never themselves performed manual labor and experienced breaking a sweat while working."

Can one respect the police? "It began with the Orange County ordinance authorizing police to stop teens from smoking in public places. One of my children asked me, who are these people to tell them whether they may smoke? Isn't that the job of parents? Don't the cops have kidnappers, rapists, murderers, and robbers to deal with? Is it really their role in our lives to order us to stop smoking? I really couldn't argue with the logic here. It isn't the proper task of the police to tell us whether to smoke cigarettes or dope or whatever, for that matter. The police of a free society are supposed to be peace officers, not parents or nannies or even schoolmarms. I did mention that what the police do is follow orders given to them by the politicians and bureaucrats but my kids reminded me that this is the excuse German soldiers used when they were asked about enforcing the tyrannical rules of the Nazis."

Boston voting reform? "Secretary of State William F. Galvin declared yesterday that he will seize control of the Boston Election Department because the city has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to conduct fair and smooth elections. The extraordinary move followed reports that the city ran out of ballots Tuesday at about 30 precincts in Mattapan, Dorchester, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, and East Boston, heavily minority areas where voters turned out in droves to support Deval L. Patrick for governor. City officials acknowledged they have a policy of distributing only enough ballots for 50 percent of registered voters at each polling place and then delivering more ballots from City Hall as they are needed."

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and EYE ON BRITAIN. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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