Loss of Empire 0
I seldom agree with Jonathan Last, but I usually find his columns interesting and thought-provoking. In today’s local rag, he muses on Empire and the Loss of Fortitude. Among other things, he considers whether the end of the British Empire started, not in World War II, but in the Battle of the Somme in World War I.
It’s a stern tally, 3,732 dead – but what number would be acceptable? 2,000? 500? 40? As Leon de Winter recently observed, around 170,000 Americans died in traffic accidents during the last four years. It is strange that we shrug this loss off – no one is demanding we ban the automobile – yet the casualties in Iraq are used to argue that the project must be abandoned with no further consideration.
One of the many dispiriting exhibitions of the last four years has been the American public’s amnesia concerning the nature of war. Countries that shoulder the load of global leadership must, from time to time, fight wars, and wars are unpleasant things. Poor leaders, such as Gen. Haig (or Donald Rumsfeld), often make matters worse. And in wars soldiers die. The cost of Iraq has been great. But in the context of the rest of America’s wars, it has been, comparatively, less horrible.
There are honorable, perhaps persuasive, reasons to think our Iraq project wrong-headed, counterproductive, or even deeply, conceptually flawed. But if the public’s sole reason for turning on the war is the cost in lives – as much of the criticism suggests – then America has already fought its Somme, and our fortitude is on the wane.
Of course, what he leaves out in his musings is whether or not the dead die in a just war.
But we don’t have one of those going on right now, do we?
Well, maybe one, but it’s in Afghanistan, where First Son serves, not in Iraq, where our sons and daughters are being sacrificed for lies.
