War and Peace: Strength vs. Weakness

And so, we continue to lose courageous young men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. More and more Americans are questioning the wisdom of this seeming waste of human life--and I have become one of them. We entered into both of these wars with good reason and good intentions, but no clear endgame. What, exactly, are we trying to accomplish at this point? Democracy--freedom--is a noble cause, but our narrow American interpretation of what that means, exactly, has caused us, once again, to run aground in our attempts to establish freedom in other countries. We assume that there is no such thing as a democracy within a theocracy, and that therefore we cannot allow these nations to establish theocratic governments. To my way of thinking, as long as said theocracy is not a threat to our safety, live and let live. My goodness, who do we think we are, anyway? We have made a return to imperialistic thinking, and we really need to get over it.

I sound like a liberal, don't I? Well, I'm not one--far from it--but this seems to just be common sense. If we are going to go around the world freeing people, then by all means let them be free from us, too. After 234 years, our own republic continues to strive and to stumble and to make mistakes. That is the nature of freedom, so let's allow other countries the same privilege.

In the meantime, while we fumble around in Iraq and Afghanistan, the sabers of Iran and North Korea are rattling more loudly every day. Am I the only one who hears them? Here's what I don't get: While we continue to waste time, resources, and precious, precious lives in countries we should be out of by now, we are playing wimpy mind games with nations that could be an actual threat. Our genius of a President wishes to "engage" with these countries by using diplomacy and the help of the U.N. Because that has always worked so well before, right? Is he kidding?

There are two things he seems to be missing here. One of them is a grasp of world history. Historically, appeasement has never, ever worked with despots, especially not the genuinely crazy ones (which is most of them, I guess). Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain before Churchill, negotiated the ceding of the Sudetenland to Germany in an attempt to satisfy Hitler. It was lost on him, apparently, that what Hitler wanted was access to the rest of Europe. He invaded Poland soon after, and few people were actually shocked, I imagine. Concessions to dictators don't work any better than giving in to the tantrum of a willful child. You may have temporary peace, but eventually you'll get another tantrum. We all tend to repeat the behaviors that work for us.

Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan knew a little something about peace through strength. Question Roosevelt's motivations all you want (yes, I know, he was an imperialist who wanted to protect American business interests abroad, etc.), but that Great White Fleet made a statement nobody could miss, and nobody messed with us as long as our leadership was walking softly and wielding a big, I-dare-you stick. Reagan simply realized that the Cold War needed to end and he ended it with a show of strength that was as much economic as it was military. These same principles work on the schoolyard bully or workplace harasser, and everybody knows it, or at least they should.

The other thing that seems to be lost on our current leadership is the simple fact that these despots are not normal people. They are crazy. They will not respond to negotiation, they will continue to increase their power in secret, and so forth, because they are insane. These are not countries who care about the United Nations' opinion of them, or their sanctions, either. For crying out loud, Iran hangs teenagers publicly because they are political dissenters. North Korea imprisons foreigners just for being in the country. Do these sound like regimes that give two hoots because the U.N. disapproves of their human rights violations? I don't think so.

So let's do our best to extract ourselves from the mire of Iraq and Afghanistan without looking too weak and foolish to the rest of the world, and concentrate on actual threats to world safety and stability. Let's re-grow our collective spine and stop worrying about whether the E.U. approves of us or the Middle East loves us to pieces, and start commanding some doggone respect, why not? We do not need to be buddies with the rest of the world, we need to be strong and fearsome. If we really do want peace, let's take a lesson from actual history instead of Pixie Hollow Fairyland, and get back to what works--standing strong and not taking any crap from anybody. Then we can all sleep peacefully at night, and the world really will be a better place.