By the time the condition passes and a semblance of health is restored, recollection of what occurred during the illness tends to be hazy. What happened? How'd we get here? Most Americans prefer not to know. No sense dwelling on what's behind us. Feeling much better now! Thanks!
The 1960s brought another bout (and so yet more disappointment). An overwhelming urge to pay any price, bear any burden landed Americans in Vietnam. The fall of Saigon in 1975 seemed, for a brief interval, to inoculate the body politic against any further recurrence. Yet the salutary effects of this "Vietnam syndrome" proved fleeting. By the time the Cold War ended, Americans were running another temperature, their self-regard reaching impressive new heights. Out of Washington came all sorts of embarrassing gibberish about permanent global supremacy and history's purpose finding fulfillment in the American way of life.
In Washington, it's no longer considered a sin to question American omnipotence. Take the case of Robert Gates. The outgoing secretary of defense may well be the one senior US official of the past decade to leave office with his reputation not only intact, but actually enhanced. (Note to President Obama: think about naming an aircraft carrier after the guy). Yet along with restoring a modicum of competence and accountability to the Pentagon, the Gates legacy is likely to be found in his willingness — however belated — to acknowledge the limits of American power.
No one can charge Gates with being an isolationist or a national security wimp. Neither is he a "declinist." So when he says anyone proposing another major land war in the Greater Middle East should "have his head examined"— citing the authority of Douglas MacArthur, no less — people take notice. Or more recently there was this: "I've got a military that's exhausted," Gates remarked, in one of those statements of the obvious too seldom heard from on high. "Let's just finish the wars we're in and keep focused on that instead of signing up for other wars of choice." Someone should etch that into the outer walls of the Pentagon's E-ring.
A half-dozen years ago, "wars of choice" were all the rage in Washington. No more. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Or consider the officer corps. There is no "military mind," but there are plenty of minds in the military and some numbers of them are changing.
Evidence suggests that the officer corps itself is rethinking the role of military power. Consider, for example, "Mr. Y," author of A National Strategic Narrative, published this spring to considerable acclaim by the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars. The actual authors of this report are two military professionals, one a navy captain, the other a Marine colonel.
And finally, by gum, there is the United States Congress. Just when that body appeared to have entered a permanent vegetative state, a flickering of intelligent life has made its reappearance. Perhaps more remarkably still, the signs are evident on both sides of the aisle as Democrats and Republicans alike — albeit for different reasons — are raising serious questions about the nation's propensity for multiple, open-ended wars.
Given what polls indicate is a growing public unhappiness over the Afghan War, speaking out against that war these days doesn't exactly require political courage. Still, the possibility of our legislators reasserting a role in deciding whether or not a war actually serves the national interest — rather than simply rubberstamping appropriations and slinking away — now presents itself. God bless the United States Congress.
At the first signs of self-restraint, you can always count on the likes of Senator John McCain or the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal to decry (in McCain's words) an "isolationist-withdrawal-lack-of-knowledge-of-history attitude" hell-bent on pulling up the drawbridge and having Americans turn their backs on the world. In such quarters, fever is a permanent condition and it's always 104 and rising. Yet it is a measure of just how quickly things are changing that McCain himself, once deemed a source of straight talk, now comes across as a mere crank.