This post discusses war and lesser conflict as an exercise in national reidentification by contrast with that of the perceived characteristics of the opponent. Our current conflict is against an emeny so ephermeral that we cannot "reidentify" and therefore may have an incoherent national character and therefore and incoherent response.
It seems to me that the major conflicts America has dealt with in its history have caused it to mirror its enemies. Not in the sense that we become the
real monsters (which is a terrible
Ick thought and untrue.) America is still the world's most profound moral force judged by the historical standards of America - which is how we judge anything. For more on this, look for a review of
Work of Nations I'm cooking up.
But just that the fault lines that we discover are the ones that we use to define ourselves.
So a quick run-through. . .
Americans vs. Native Americans
Americans saw Native Americans as savages and responded with more force than would normally be seen in white-on-white conflict.
The Revolutionary War
Americans were upset about the unfair taxation by a distant bicameral legislature acting on their behalf. When the state militias failed the colonies, the national force became more and more important. After the war, they immediately tried to annex their own colonies and after several years of trouble, promptly convened their own bicameral legislature with the power to tax.
War of 1812
Upset with mercantilist policies of both England and France, Thomas Jefferson signs the Embargo Act. That will teach them to shut off trade!
The Civil War
Abraham Lincoln famously suspended habeus corpus and would later impose martial law. The Confederacy threatened to split the union in two and Lincoln's response was to undermine the values that made the union worth preserving.
Spanish-American War
Working alongside the freedom fighters of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines to fight the imperial Spanish, America became closest to a continental empire yet.
World War II - Europe & Cold War
The fight against totalitarianism in Germany, Italy, Russia, and others was mimicked by the heavy-handed corporate subsidies of "Dr. Win the War" and socialism-lite of the New Deal.
World War II - Japan
Fighting the "inhuman yellow menace," American soldiers mercilessly killed Japanese prisoners and collected their body parts as souvenirs. For more information see War Without Mercy as recommended by Tom Childers.
Capitalism - Japan
If you remember the early 90's you remember EVERYONE wanted to be like Japan. There was something about the way they did business that we were not doing business.
Which brings us to. . .
Ideological struggles - The Cold War and the War Against Terrorism
Most other wars featured America pitted against a specific economic system - slavery, imperialism, taxation - or a specific political race - Japanese, Native Americans. Sometimes wisely and sometimes unwisely.
But the struggle against Communism and against terrorists is one much bigger and broader than racial difference (interesting how Sudanese, Chechnyans, and Bosnian Muslims rarely fit the profile of an "Islamofascist" to those that try to use the term.)
And it is/was much bigger than economics. It is seriously about a "way of life" and even more seriously about the prospect of living in the future. Russia's atomic weapons and the threat of weapons of mass destruction are much bigger than a nation's cut of the car manufacturing industry or tea trade. This much is obvious.
But the redefinition by contrast also becomes more pervasive. The addition of the phrase "under God" as a contrast to the lifeless atheism of Mother Russia is symptomatic of a larger cultural movement toward religion. Similarly, conservative Hoover-like thinkers began rewriting America's past and future using red-baiting and in response to Soviet collectivism. Socialism was seen by HG Wells and George Orwell as roughly the same, but Wells never had to live his life opposed by Communism.
Now the vague roundabout point is that America is slowly reorganizing itself as "against" "terrorism." And we don't know what that means. Or rather, it varies from individual to individual. Some people wrongly believe America is the root cause of the terrorism and there are a scattered minority of genuine blame-America-firsters hanging around. They are fewer than the right would have you believe.
There are also fellows who try their darnedest to follow the president's talking points. They believe that you can generally hate all things Arab or Islamic, starting with Iraq and waiting for final pacification. . . and waiting. . . and waiting. . .
But I've seen a lot of liberals flip out over the redefinition of the conflict. For one thing, we have this habit of perpetuating the sense that there are devious tactics by shadowy evil tactioners working against us. If you're not concerned about the learned helplessness that this - in conjunction with defeats - creates, then you should be concerned about the fact that people outside our base probably find it boring and annoying.
Instead of worrying about this or that insignificant electoral potential gain or loss as relates to sloganeering and redefinition, we should work harder to define the enemy. This is the first time that we have fought a nationless, apolitical (antipolitical!?) system. The first time that we have fought a tactic rather than a tactician. And it leaves the body politic unclear of the shape it should take. It is in our definition of our enemy that we will find the muscle definition to defeat them.