What Should Americans Die For?
“The American people are weary. They don’t want boots on the ground. I don’t want boots on the ground. The worst thing the United States could do right now is put boots on the ground in Syria.”
That was the leading Senate hawk favoring U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war. But by ruling out U.S. ground troops, John McCain was sending, perhaps unintentionally, another message: There is no vital U.S. interest in Syria’s civil war worth shedding the blood of American soldiers and Marines.
Thus does America’s premier hawk support the case made by think-tank scholars Owen Harries and Tom Switzer in their American Interest essay, “Leading from Behind: Third Time a Charm?”
There is in the U.S.A. today, they write, “a reluctance to commit American blood.”
A legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan “is an unwillingness of the American public to take casualties on behalf of less than truly vital challenges. … While such concerns may be admirable … they are incompatible with a superpower posture and pretensions to global leadership.”
You cannot be the “indispensable nation” if you reflexively recoil at putting “boots on the ground.”
“If a nation is not prepared to take casualties, it should not engage in the kind of policies likely to cause them. If it is not prepared to take casualties, it should resign itself to not having the kind of respect from others that a more resolute nation could expect.”
About the author’s premise, that Americans are reluctant to take casualties, is there any doubt?
To demonstrate this, we need only address a few questions.
Would we be willing to send another army of 170,000 to stop a Sunni-Shia war that might tear Iraq apart? Would the American people support sending 100,000 troops, again, to fight to keep Afghanistan from the clutches of the Taliban?
To ask these questions is to answer them.
Should Kim Jong Un attack across the DMZ with his million-man army and seize Seoul, would Barack Obama’s America, like Harry Truman’s America, send a third of a million U.S. soldiers and Marines to drive the North out? Or would we confine our support to the South, under our security treaty, to air, sea and missile strikes — from above and afar?
Under NATO, the United States is required to assist militarily any member nation that is a victim of aggression.
If Moscow occupied Estonia or Latvia in a dispute over mistreatment of its Russian minorities, would we declare war or send U.S. troops to fight Russians in the Baltic?
Would we fight the Chinese to defend the Senkakus?
“America no longer has the will, wallet or influence to impose an active and ambitious global leadership across the world,” Harries and Switzer contend. They cite Walter Lippmann, who wrote that a credible foreign policy “consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, a nation’s commitments and the nation’s power.
“Without the compelling principle that the nation must maintain its objectives and its power in equilibrium, it purposes within its means and its means equal to its purposes, its commitments related to its resources and its resources adequate to its commitments, it is impossible to think at all about foreign affairs.”
Though U.S. commitments are as great or greater than in 1991, the authors write, America is not so domineering as she was at the end of the Cold War, or when Bush 43 set out to “end tyranny in our world.”
“The dollar is weak. The debt mountain is of Himalayan proportions. Budget and trade deficits are alarming. Infrastructure is aging. The AAA bond credit rating is lost. Economic growth is exceptionally sluggish for a nation that is four years out of a recession. And where 20 years ago U.S. military power was universally considered awesome in its scope, today, after more than a decade of its active deployment, the world is much more aware of its limitations and costs. It is decidedly less impressed.”
Consider Syria, where the neocons and liberal interventionists are clamoring for U.S. military action, but “no boots on the ground.”
Is there really any vital U.S. interest at risk in whether the 40-year-old Assad dictatorship stands or falls?
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been calling for Assad’s ouster for two years and transships weapons to the rebels, has now seen his country stung by a terrorist attack.
But though he has a 400,000-man NATO-equipped army, three times Syria’s population, and a 550-mile border to attack across, Erdogan wants us, the “international community,” to bring Assad down.
But why is Assad our problem — and not Erdogan’s problem?
Harries and Switzer urge Obama to enunciate a new foreign policy that defines our true vital interests and brings U.S. war guarantees into balance with U.S. power — a policy where the first question U.S. leaders ask about a conflict or crisis abroad is not “how” but “why”?
Why, exactly, is this America’s problem?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM
Read more by Patrick J. Buchanan
- Outside Agitators – June 6th, 2013
- The Unraveling of Sykes-Picot – May 27th, 2013
- Who Are the War Criminals in Syria? – May 6th, 2013
- Their War, Not Ours – April 29th, 2013
- Is War With North Korea Inevitable? – April 4th, 2013
RickR30
May 16th, 2013 at 9:19 pm
A related question, what should Americans pay for? You can eliminate Assad these days, or anyone else, without boot on the ground. Just unleash a battalion of drones to wipe out entire neighborhoods and you can make all neocons' dreams come true. Does that mean we should? How much have Americans already wasted on drone development and manufacture and for what? As the greatest and most sterile ethnic cleansing tool?
Johnny in Wi.
May 16th, 2013 at 10:02 pm
I can't think of a war worth fighting for or worth one drop of blood of my family or friends. My old man used to say war is nothing but waste. Who in their right mind would be for it? All war could be avoided if we had sane and common sense leadership. The trouble is that we don't in the vast majority of cases.
Zephyr Global Report 5/17/2013 | Zephyr Global Report
May 16th, 2013 at 10:30 pm
[...] What Should Americans Die For? by Patrick J. Buchanan [...]
duglarri
May 16th, 2013 at 11:53 pm
It's worse than that. Is there any example to point to where "American boots on the ground" actually resulted in a situation that was actually better for America than what came before? It's arguable that in every case, there's a worse mess. Libya: no American ambassadors were getting gunned down there under Khadaffi. Afghanistan: there used to be no heroin production, and Americans were negotiating for a big oil pipeline that was blocked by the war. And Iraq: is the Persian Gulf more or less stable without Iraq to balance Iran, and with Iraq flying into pieces?
Would invading Syria and ousting Assad make things better for America- or worse, by virtually guaranteeing that the next government of Syria is led by Al Nusra- Al Queda, in fact?
I agree entirely with Mr. Buchanan, that this is not America's problem. But even more than not being America's problem, there's no historical precedent, and no reason to believe, that intervention would result in anything but making a very bad problem very much worse.
Not only is it not America's problem, but like many world problems, it's not a problem that America can fix. We can only make it worse.
Rosemary Molloy
May 17th, 2013 at 3:02 am
It's disgusting to read essays like tis. The emphasis–unexpressed, but obvious in every line–is that AMERICAN lives are the most important, most valuable, most irreplaceable and that the human beings we've been systematically slaughtering for years are just collateral damage. These are nameless, faceless poor people who don't have a prayer of escaping the hell we visit on them, but if you ever bring this up in polite conversation, you get a blank stare and the strong impression that you need to brush up on your manners. Oh, well, it's hopeless, I'm afraid, ever to penetrate the miles-thick coating of ice on our hearts and our souls. We count, others don't.
KDH
May 17th, 2013 at 5:50 am
This is a repeated theme of Pat's, "what are we willing to die for?" I want him and others to start asking; what are we willing to kill for? Increasingly our military is killing people across the globe with drones. All from the safely and comfort of home. Kill a family, go home for dinner, kiss the kids goodnight. This is done in our name. I want no part of it. It is simple sanctioned murder. There is no honor, no bravery, no sacrifice, nothing but cold cowardly murder.
Rosemary Molloy
May 17th, 2013 at 6:56 am
Yes, KDH, yes.
curmudgeonvt
May 17th, 2013 at 7:09 am
Buchanan is basically saying, as he has been for years, that these internecine battles in other lands are not the business of the US. As you state, the attitude of US policy has been one of arrogance and exceptionalism. Buchanan is advocating that the US stop interfering in the affairs of of other countries – most of all not investing our own people in someone else's causes.
The US gains no advantage nor respect by attempting to police the world. Buchanan is sometimes justifiably accused of advocating an isolationist international policy but his main point of these foreign wars, civil or not, are not in the interest of the US. And that is something I can agree with wholeheartedly.
It is unfortunate that the damage that has been done, to others as well as ourselves cannot be undone. Payment will come due…and it won't be pretty nor bloodless. I pity the generations to come who will be asked to make payment.
RickR30
May 17th, 2013 at 7:25 am
Well put. The answer is that America is willing to kill for any reason, which is to say, for no reason, which is exactly what is going on. America is out there killing simply because it can, and because it gets away with it. The neocon foreign policy is one of the worldwide battlefield as a jungle, global darwinism. America is the most powerful, the way to exert and exhibit power ("leadership") is by killing folks all over the world, and see who has the guts to say or do something about it. America is the inner city gangster killer writ large.
charles caruso
May 17th, 2013 at 8:56 am
Looking at the chaos in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, we should realize that a dictator
who knows what he's doing is better than the current lunatic violence in those three countries.
None of this madness happened under Saddam and Qadaffi.
We've gotten along with multiple dictators in the past – but they didnt have OIL.
WashingtonDC Goddamn
May 17th, 2013 at 9:07 am
I think that Buchanan is disgusted that the interventionist American leaders are sacrificing American lives to wreck the lands of those nameless, faceless people. Buchanan has been consistently non-interventionist. He understands blowback.
The icy coating is found on the hearts of the warmongers Washington.
guy
May 17th, 2013 at 10:39 am
Somebody cued Anthony Bourdaine to go to Libya, to write a story of their new found freedom, and of course the food, which is most likely the same food they were eating before we dropped bombs on them.
Outsider
May 17th, 2013 at 11:44 am
It breaks my heart to hear and read about all the death, destruction, and bombing still going on in Iraq today. Saddam may have been a very bad autocrat, but at least he kept a lid on all the Sunni/Shite violence that is out of control today. Although the US is no longer actively fighting there, the continuing bloodshed remains on the hands of Bush/Cheney. In a just world, they would have been tried for war crimes. Why can't war lovers like McCain and the neocons see the obvious?
Sam
May 17th, 2013 at 3:45 pm
Working together with Al Quaida can never be a good idea.
james
May 18th, 2013 at 11:04 am
Good article this time Pat. But let me put in my 2 cents in this matter:
Across the ME all the regimes and people are anti American exactly for the same reason those 2 idiots are pushing for; killing of their brothers and sisters en mass by the mighty USA. Please never forget the main reason in my opinion and the opinion of billions of people across the world for this, it is a certain shitty little country carved out on the bodies of innocents last century. the following slogan rings truer now than any other time in history; No Israel, no problem. Funny how America never had enemies there before 1948.
The sigle most toxic slogan these people pushed after 9/11 was "they hate us for our freedoms". Unfortunately this is still being milked until now to justify more war on the same people. They hate America all right but for other reasons.
musings
May 21st, 2013 at 6:49 am
As I see today, Daghestan, specifically the town where the brothers went to elementary school once upon a time, has erupted in terror attacks. In Moscow, Putin declares they have iced some Russian converts to Islam who were planning an event. My prediction that setting the semi-autonomous region of Chechnya on fire was the goal of the Marathon bombing is coming true. After all, Russia should have more trouble supplying Tehran through the Caspian if the ports in Chechnya are harder to use for them. I always saw the bombing as the opening gambit in a war with Russia over their alliance with Iran. It's a stick to beat them with – the Chechens. This is already happening in Syria. Why the bombing? An introduction to the tactics of the Chechens for the USA audience, so that we understand they are mighty terrorists capable of cowing Russia, so that it won't be such trouble for us when we go into Iran.
Chechens have become a meme. Those unfortunate enough to be in the US have complained of harassment recently. You bet. Another sting? Who knows?