And now one of our two major parties and (according to the polls) a majority of the American people want to pull out of Iraq, though we have suffered less than 4,000 military deaths there in more than four years of fighting. Does that sound like the attitude of a superpower?
A decent concern for battlefield deaths and other casualties is one of the proper marks of a democracy. But it is time to ask whether the people of the United States have any stomach for the kind of fortitude that is required of a nation that aspires to be a superpower.
I am beginning to suspect that they don't. To be sure, after we have suffered enough humiliating defeats at the hands of tin-pot dictators around the world who think they have our number, this country is probably still capable of reacting with fury and demolishing some major tormentor down the line who goads us beyond endurance. But we will pay a far heavier price for our forbearance than we would if we had consistently behaved as a superpower.
William Rusher
William Rusher is a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy and author of How to Win Arguments .
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