War-Weariness As an Excuse - By William (Bill) Kristol

[DonViejo]

MAR 24, 2014, VOL. 19, NO. 27 • BY WILLIAM KRISTOL

Are Americans today war-weary? Sure. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have been frustrating and tiring. Are Americans today unusually war-weary? No. They were wearier after the much larger and even more frustrating conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. And even though the two world wars of the last century had more satisfactory outcomes, their magnitude was such that they couldn’t help but induce a significant sense of war-weariness. And history shows that they did.

So American war-weariness isn’t new. Using it as an excuse to avoid maintaining our defenses or shouldering our responsibilities isn’t new, either. But that doesn’t make it admirable.

The March 5 Wall Street Journal featured a letter from Heidi Szrom of Valparaiso, Indiana. She was responding to an earlier letter defending President Obama’s foreign policies against a powerful critique in the Journal by the historian Niall Ferguson (“America’s Global Retreat”). The first letter writer noted Ferguson’s statement that more people may have died violent deaths in the Greater Middle East in the Obama years than under Bush, but excused Obama:

True, but it is also equally certain that fewer Americans have died violent deaths in the Greater Middle East during this presidency than during the previous one, and this is what matters more now to a war-weary American public.

To which Ms. Szrom responded:

According to pundits, the president and letter writers, America is “war weary.” Every time I hear this, I wonder: Did you serve? Did you volunteer to fight oppression in foreign lands? Did your son or brother or husband? If so, then I understand and sympathize with your complaint .  .  . unlike most of those who utter this shopworn phrase. Perhaps the country’s weariness stems from a reluctance to face unpleasant truths—one of which is that power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. .  .  . History tells us it will only be a temporary reprieve. Our current defense cuts ensure that we will be woefully unprepared to face the next test. We are so weary that we are falling asleep.

Well said. If only Republican elected officials were half as clear-minded and nearly as courageous as Ms. Szrom in taking on the claim that we all need to defer to, to bow down to, our own war-weariness. In fact, the idol of war-weariness can be challenged. A war-weary public can be awakened and rallied. Indeed, events are right now doing the awakening. All that’s needed is the rallying. And the turnaround can be fast. Only 5 years after the end of the Vietnam war, and 15 years after our involvement there began in a big way, Ronald Reagan ran against both Democratic dovishness and Republican détente. He proposed confronting the Soviet Union and rebuilding our military. It was said that the country was too war-weary, that it was too soon after Vietnam, for Reagan’s stern and challenging message. Yet Reagan won the election in 1980. And by 1990 an awakened America had won the Cold War.

The next president will be elected in 2016, 15 years after 9/11 and 5 years after our abandonment of Iraq and the beginning of the drawdown in Afghanistan. Pundits will say that it would be politically foolish to try to awaken Americans rather than cater to their alleged war-weariness. We can’t prove them wrong. Perhaps it would be easier for a Republican to win in 2016 running after the fashion of Warren Gamaliel Harding in 1920 rather than that of Ronald Wilson Reagan in 1980.

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http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/war-weariness-excuse_784895.html#

[JHB]

1. Be quiet, Billy, the adults are talking.

War-weariness is what happens to people who actually have to live with war's costs.

You're not one of those people. You haven't faced getting shot at or blown up, you haven't lost loved ones killed by those things, nor have you had to struggle with wounds caused by them.

You weren't even willing to raise taxes to pay for those wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unlike all the people who put you in front of cameras every week, some of us haven't forgotten that you're always wrong. Just shut the fuck up you sexagenarian mouthy little boy.

[BeyondGeography]

2. Lies so easy...Maliki (thankfully) told us to leave

Re. the "abandonment" of Iraq. That should have told him something but no...

[DonViejo]

3. That's the standard neocon party line...

"we (Obama) abandoned Iraq," a variation to an ages old GOP line; "who lost China?" (Democrats, of course) and, "who lost Korea?" (Democrats again, of course). Cheney used the "abandonment" line a few years back.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. It goes right back to post WWI Germany.

The right studies hard and learns the lessons history teaches about how to use the last failure to fuel the next rise to power.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. It is hard to even start a response to an essay that contains the phrase "abandonment of Iraq".

If these shits weren't one bad election away from complete control of the federal government I'd laugh at this nonsense.

I'm not laughing.

[DonViejo]

8. It's actually two elections away from total control,...

the 2014 and 2016 election, no? Right now the neocon intelligentsia is "think tanking" and sending up trial balloons, e.g. Kristol's column, on how to go to war with Russia, Syria and the Buddha only knows what other countries. If the 'pukes take over Congress, the think tanks will strategize a war in the hopes the 2016 election will give them full and total control of the government, aka "WAR!"

[Warren Stupidity]

10. 2016 would be the one bad election I meant.

They can't gain control in 2014, they can in 2016.

[WinkyDink]

6. The bravest animal is the Chicken-Hawk.

[tanyev]

7. Answer the question, Bill. Did you volunteer to fight? Did any of your children or their spouses?

[bemildred]

9. Don't worry Bill, we're invincible. nt

[TwilightGardener]

11. Billy Kristol says, "All those wars, and I'm not one bit tired! I fought them

from my office, with my mind-powers and my laptop! "