The fact that the European nations, more accustomed to the tragic vicissitudes of history, still have a measure of misgiving about our (America's) leadership in the world community is due to the fear that our "technocratic" tendency to equate master of nature with the master of history could tempt us to lose patience with the tortuous course of history. We might be driven to hysteria by its inevitable frustrations. We might be tempted to bring the whole of modern history to a tragic conclusion by one final and mighty effort to overcome its frustrations. The political term for such an effort is "preventive war."
Reinhold Neihbuhr wrote those words in 1952.
While Neihbuhr was writing in the context of the Cold War, and fearful of a massive European conflagration, of a preventive war launched at the Soviet Union, it was not until after that threat passed that the United States was lead by men impatient enough to try to rush to the end of modern history.
The Bush Administration, frustrated and driven to hysteria, has embarked on an effort to fast forward history to the conclusion where democracy reigns in the Middle East. There is no guarantee that this is the conclusion that will be reached, or that it ever would have been reached with time. Yet because this administration has concluded that it is master of everything else, and enamored with its technical skill, it believed that the world would bend to its will. Nature and time do not bend that easily.
For if we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would only be the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.
Hatred and vainglory are clearly the causes of blindness of our current leadership. The let what they wanted to believe blind them to reality. When reality was forced on them, they ignored it and led this country deeper into shadow and struggle. Were it not for the egos of the men and women in charge of our foreign policy and armed forces, then clear eyed decisions could have been made.
We have to live with the consequences of the actions by people who are in a hurry to see the end of history, because they believe they will come out on top. It is now our responsibility to see the "hazards of the struggle" and act in accordance with nature and history to find a way out.