The Fourth of July

The 21st JINSA Flag and General Officers Trip to Israel returned Tuesday. Some of the results and the lessons learned will come to you over the next few weeks, including our revised opinion of the utility of the Security Fence. But that is for later.

The 21st JINSA Flag and General Officers Trip to Israel returned Tuesday. Some of the results and the lessons learned will come to you over the next few weeks, including our revised opinion of the utility of the Security Fence. But that is for later.

This is the time to focus on the United States, our freedoms and the exercise of American power to ensure our own security and the liberation of others. It has always seemed important that “American” is one of the few nationalities one can adopt; try to become French or Chinese or Russian and the difference between this nation and most others becomes apparent. Americanism is grounded in political philosophy, not race, territory, religion or ethnicity. It has something to do with devotion to tolerance, civil rights, political and economic freedom, the rule of law and the ability to advance beyond the circumstances of one’s birth. And it is protected by military forces that have never been a threat to the citizens and the liberty they defend.

This leads to the question, “Is it transferable?” Is there something unique about our national experiment that cannot be taught or given elsewhere? Why do so many people come here from disparate, despotic lands, with no experience in democratic systems or participatory government become perfectly good small-d democrats in America? And why don’t their relatives, still in other places, create democratic systems there? Why are other armies so often aggressors against their own people, not protectors of them? The questions have philosophical roots, but are intensely practical.

We have liberated Iraq, freeing 25 million people from horrors rivaling those of Stalin. We have liberated Afghanistan. We have set in front of the Palestinians the possibility not only of statehood, but of freedom. Will any of those become democratic in the sense that Americans understand it? Or any other sense? Can we ask them to?

If not, American forces are in for a long and ugly program in Iraq and Afghanistan, and American diplomacy is in for a long and ugly siege in the PA and maybe elsewhere. The potential dispatch of American troops to Liberia will be an exercise in futility if it isn’t possible for people with different philosophies, ethnicities and religions to live together in security with each other and with their armies. Or if we can’t figure out how to teach what we have painfully learned.

We don’t have the answer, although American optimism suggests one. So, as we celebrate the 4th, it is useful to remember that America was also built from different philosophies, ethnicities and religions. We proclaimed ourselves a nation in 1776, but 227 years and one horrendous Civil War later we are still working out the kinks. We should hope not to spend 227 years in Iraq or anywhere else, but to think that American democracy is easily exportable to anyone is naive in the extreme.

As you fly the flag and grill the steaks, spend a few minutes appreciating all we have and the American forces that help to ensure it, and hope that their travails in foreign lands will help to bring similar freedoms to others.