zgram - 10/18/2001 - "Sobran: Retracing our Steps"

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

October 19, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I give you Joseph Sobran in "Retracing Our Steps:  Traditions as Ideals".
Magnifico!  The voice of sanity has been heard once again.  Few writers in
America have such a talent to find the right words for the right situation
and problem.

[START]

Retracing Our Steps

Traditions as ideals

by Joe Sobran

   Writing in VANITY FAIR, David Halberstam calls the 9/11 attack "a
turning point in American history" that will force Americans to review old
assumptions about the world. He is right -- but then he proceeds to repeat
the same old assumptions that made us vulnerable to the attack.

    Halberstam correctly notes, as others have, that we now face a new kind
of enemy -- one that is elusive, decentralized, hard to identify. He fails
to see that the modern centralized superpower has bred its nemesis -- not a
single rival superpower that can destroy it, but an alliance of malignant
Lilliputians who can harass and disrupt it indefinitely, making its life
miserable.

    According to Halberstam, 9/11 was, like Pearl Harbor, a salutary
wake-up call for a country that had lapsed into indifference to its
destined role as a global "colossus." He thinks it was regrettable that the
United States became so "isolationist" after World War I that it had to be
shocked into entering World War II. After "bingeing for a decade," as he
puts it, we have now been roused to battle again. We are ready for another
bout of heroic "internationalism." (The lessons of war seem to depend on
which war you choose to draw your lessons from. Halberstam was once a
leading critic of the Vietnam war.)

    The "isolationists" were Americans who saw the tragedy of U.S.
involvement in World War I -- which set the stage for Communism, Fascism,
Nazism, and an even worse war -- and didn't want to send their sons abroad
to die in another foreign conflict. The country was maneuvered into war
anyway, with disastrous results: World War II ended with a nuclear-armed
Soviet Union ruling Eastern Europe and capable of destroying the United
States. The story is grippingly told in Thomas Fleming's new book, THE NEW
DEALERS' WAR (Basic Books).

    In a word, the outcome of American participation in World War II was
even more terrible than the "isolationists" had foreseen or imagined. But
it resulted naturally from a series of wrong turns in American history.

    To liberals and some misguided conservatives, World War II remains the
Holy War. But the rest of us should -- no, *must* -- be willing to retrace
our steps and ask where we went wrong, before we make more terrible
mistakes.

    "Internationalism," as embodied by Woodrow Wilson and his even more
besotted disciple Franklin Roosevelt, meant the abandonment of limited
government and the cautious foreign policy urged by George Washington; it
meant precisely the network of "entangling alliances" that had brought on
World War I and its tragic aftermath. It turned every local conflict on
earth into a potential tripwire for wider war. And it converted the
original American republic, shielded from Old World strife by two oceans,
into a global empire.

    This role inevitably caused anti-American hatred to grow among many
nations around the world who, in the era of peaceful American neutrality
(smeared as "isolationism"), had barely heard of this country. No matter
what Wilsonian "ideals" were offered as justifications for this role, it
came down to projecting military force and threats of destruction. These
were not endearing.

    But in time the American empire overcame all its major enemies and
seemed to rule the world beyond challenge. The United States was
fantastically rich and powerful, to a degree never even approached by any
previous empire. It slept the night of September 10, 2001, seeming, and
feeling, invulnerable.

    The next morning America's self-image suffered the most dramatic
reversal in history. The cosmos seemed to have shaken. A few miserable
fanatics had found this country's weakness and struck it with all their
might.

    Not only did they wound us profoundly; they showed that an empire that
antagonizes too many people can never be secure. Among those it offends
there will always be ruthless zealots looking for ways to avenge
themselves. Even if the current lot can be destroyed, there will be others,
with new and ugly surprises. Conventional military dominance is useless
against enemies who don't seek conventional victory. Germ warfare is not
only a tactic but an apt metaphor for a decentralized foe: you can't bomb
germs.

    Our current condition is permanent -- as long as this country remains
an empire. The only way to escape it is to resume our original traditions.
No Middle Eastern terrorists disturbed Millard Fillmore's America.

    Our only "ideals" should be the traditions we've abandoned. Or have
those traditions become unthinkable?   

[END]

=====

Thought for the Day:

"The great change will be the perception that the US may get its own
medicine back."

(Letter to the Zundelsite)