NOTE: In commemoration of our nation's 230th birthday, I am reprinting here a creative writing piece I published a few months ago. It still seems appropriate. Happy Fourth of July! - PI was recently reading an article by Victor Davis Hanson,
Has Ahmadinejad Miscalculated?, regarding the ongoing pot-banging by the Iranian ayatollahs’ current political stooge, Iranian President Ahmadinejad. We offer our congratulations to the Iranians for their recent nuclear achievements. We’re glad that you’ve joined the 20th Century now that we are in the 21st, and that you’ve been able to replicate the accomplishments of an American generation that has largely passed into history. We must note, however, that you were only able to reach this goal by using American methods and using our own technology. At best, the rest of the world can only imitate America.
I’ve always appreciated Hanson’s understanding of ancient and modern warfare. But what struck me was something he said towards the end of the piece. He wrote:
Ever since September 11, the subtext of this war could be summed up as something like, “Suburban Jason, with his iPod, godlessness, and earring, loves to live too much to die, while Ali, raised as the 11th son of an impoverished but devout street-sweeper in Damascus, loves death too much to live.” The Iranians, like bin Laden, promulgate this mythical antithesis, which, like all caricatures, has elements of truth in it. But what the Iranians, like the al Qaedists, do not fully fathom, is that Jason, upon concluding that he would lose not only his iPod and earring, but his entire family and suburb as well, is capable of conjuring up things far more frightening than anything in the 8th-century brain of Mr. Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately, the barbarity of the nightmares at Antietam, Verdun, Dresden, and Hiroshima prove that well enough.
In these few sentences Hanson captures the essence of the American national ethos. Americans are by nature decadent, rebellious, brash and reckless – we always have been. But history has recorded time and again that when America has been threatened and attacked, from the deepest recesses of the American heartland rises a fierce response prepared to let slip the dogs of war to hound its enemies into submission or oblivion.
This national spirit is something we need to remind ourselves of occasionally; and quite honestly, it is something we have tucked away like an old nostalgic remembrance that we only bring out on flag-waving occasions, like during the Gulf War or after the 9/11 attacks. We live in a troubled time when patriotism is mocked more than celebrated; vices are indulged and virtues are forgotten; heroism and sacrifice replaced with self-interest and inaction. That notwithstanding, the national ethos that Hanson identifies still is in the lifeblood pumped by the heart of America. It is woven into the very fabric of American life itself; it is in our civic institutions; it is in our politics; it resides in its people. The fire of the American spirit can be doused, but never extinguished.
The sense of steely determination in the face of terrible odds and fierce enemies has been in the American bloodline since the beginning. In the dark days when General George Washington and his men were struggling for survival, Thomas Paine would write these stirring words of encouragement in
The Crisis:
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.
These are indeed the times that try men’s souls. Our faith in America’s founding spirit is waning. Critics from all sides express their doubts in loud, whining tones and wring their hands in self-imposed grief at the present state of affairs, all while America’s men and women in uniform live day-to-day in harm’s way in the furthest reaches of the globe to extend freedom to peoples who not long ago were (and some who still are) our enemies. These critics are the summertime soldiers and the sunshine patriots of our day.
Yet it is the weary and wounded men at arms fighting for their lives from disease and the cold that would gamble America’s future on crossing the icy Delaware just days after Paine’s words were first published and capture the Hessian garrison at Trenton, reversing the trend of constant defeat and forced retreat for the embattled colonial troops. George Washington, the Father of our Country, understood the value of risking all to take the battle to our enemies. In the years that followed, America’s hard-won victories and tragic defeats that followed in the War for Independence would eventually win our nation’s freedom. And when the final victory at Yorktown was secured, no one begrudged the summertime soldiers and sunshine patriots from celebrating as well. Even so, few could name any of those colonial naysayers today. America loves the winner.
It isn’t unusual for Americans to lose their way, though Providence has a way of forcing events upon us to remind us of who we are as Americans. These events are the adrenaline that gets the heart pumping our lifeblood to the body politic once again.
As I’ve thought about Hanson’s essay over the past few weeks I have been reminded of two historical incidents (though there are many to choose from) that I think captures the two-sided nature of the American national spirit.
The date of the first event is September 13, 1814. It is an event that we commemorate every time that we sing our national anthem. However, many Americans forget the circumstances surrounding the British assault on Fort McHenry in the misnamed War of 1812. Just weeks before the attack on Baltimore, the British had sailed up the Potomac and put Washington D.C. to the torch, forcing President James Madison and his Cabinet to flee for their lives. The burning of Washington in August 1814 was a demonstration of British military power intended to show America’s military impotency. The British quickly sailed to capture the strategic port of Baltimore to issue the coup de grace and bring America to its knees and back under the dominion of the British crown.
This is the plan that America’s enemies had in mind.
But the British miscalculated. They didn’t underestimate the number of men or firepower of the American troops huddled inside Fort McHenry; it was the spirit and resolve of the American forces that the British misjudged.
The British landed a large force at North Point and advanced within sight of the city of Baltimore. The British command intended to sail their fleet up to Fort McHenry and literally pull out their big guns and pound the American forces into submission and surrender and press in to take the rest of the town. On the morning of September 13, 1814, the British Navy began the most intense bombardment ever unleashed in the history of human warfare up to that time against the huddled defenders of Fort McHenry – a bombardment that would continue through the day and well into the night.
Francis Scott Key was an accidental observer to these events. He and a friend had approached the British under a flag of truce to secure the release of an elderly doctor that had been captured and accused of giving aid to some British deserters. As they negotiated with British officials for their friend’s release they became privy to the battle plans of the British and were held onboard one of the ships as a precaution until the British had secured their victory. Even though Key would only observe the bombardment from a ship distant from the battle, the rockets, bombs and flares of the ferocious attack on the American defenders could clearly be seen from miles away.
Using their superior long-range cannons, the British fleet attacked Fort McHenry beyond the effective range of the American guns. The only American weapon was courage and resolve as the massive bombardment continued. When the shelling stopped at 1 a.m., the dark prevented any view of the American battlement. Key and the other American observers down river would have to wait until morning to see who had won the victory. Those hours of waiting must have tried their souls. They surely must have thought that the awesome firepower of the British fleet had prevailed against the outmanned and outgunned Americans. But the darkness held out the possibility of hope. Maybe the men at Fort McHenry had been able to withstand the British fury.
When dawn finally came, what a sight Francis Scott Key would see: the Americans inside Fort McHenry had taken down their standard storm flag and raised a new massive flag in its place, telling the world of the American ability to withstand the mightiest blow that its enemies could strike and that England’s best was still not enough to prevail. Even though the British had just burned our public buildings in Washington to the ground, the commander at Fort McHenry had the larger flag prepared in anticipation of an American victory. This sign of the triumph of the American spirit was Key's inspiration as he sat down to pen those immortal words familiar to every American heart.
Raising that flag – that Star-Spangled Banner we can still see today at the Smithsonian Museum – was a haughty gesture, but one completely in line with the American national spirit. It was like General Patton pissing in the Rhine as he and the crusading American forces were storming into Germany on the verge of crushing our Axis enemies. On that day in Baltimore Harbor, America had taken the most savage beating ever unleashed in the history of warfare from the greatest military power in the world –
and won. How utterly American.
We should remember that at the time of the siege of Fort McHenry, the British had Napoleon imprisoned on Elba, and that a year later after his escape they would finally vanquish Bonaparte at Waterloo. The great Napoleon was defeated; America was victorious. American courage and resolve alone had won the victory that brave day on the Chesapeake. This is what our national anthem means when we sing,
“O say can you see by the dawn’s early light…”.
Yet it means even more than that. When we sing that immortal refrain,
“O say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave,” we should remember what that Key’s question is rhetorical: he urges us to recall that, yes, the flag still waves and Americans remain free and brave. It means you can burn down our Capitol and White House and send our elected officials fleeing, but the American spirit will allow us to take your best shot and overcome. As long as Americans remain on the field of battle, the American spirit will remain. Through the darkness we remember, just like Francis Scott Key, that hope remains for America, because our most potent weapon has always been Americans themselves.
I think it’s for this reason that Americans love a good fight. Raising the Star-Spangled Banner that day recalled the spirit of Leonidas and the Spartans at Thermopylae responding to the Persian King Xerxes demands to lay down their arms, telling the innumerable Persian foe that faced them, “MOLON LABE”
(“Come and get them!”) Americans have been known to scour the world looking to join the other’s fights when we didn’t have our own to occupy us. We think of Davy Crockett and his Tennessee Volunteers arriving at the Alamo spoiling for a fight. And when all looked hopeless, Crockett, the Volunteers and the rest of the men of the Alamo didn’t flee. They had the American spirit. They knew that there are things more valuable than life and leisure; and that death and defeat could not measure up to disgrace and dishonor by abandoning hope in the face of our enemies.
This is the testimony of the Americans who died at the Alamo. And the Marines at Wake Island. And the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 on 9/11. They weren’t fighting to beat the odds; they were fighting because they refused to abandon the American spirit. At certain times in our history, all Americans have had left to fight with is their refusal – telling our enemies in desperate hours and deadly circumstances that they would not go gently into that good night. And laying down their lives, they knew there was hope because Americans remained. Their respective sacrifices were not the abandonment of hope, but the preservation of it. Those American heroes believed that the battle would be won and invested their lives in that hope. Through the darkness and doubt, hope remains for America.
The American spirit allows us to see our most prominent commercial and military buildings destroyed in acts of terror, killing thousands on our own soil on 9/11. And yet in ninety days our enemies that attacked us were forced to hide and fight in caves in the most remote point on the planet trying to survive the American fury. They had taken their shot at us and won a symbolic victory. But they miscalculated about the mettle of the American spirit, and most of them have paid with their lives, thanks be to God. That spirit of taking the best shot America’s enemies can deliver is what inspired the men at Fort McHenry: burn down our Capital if you can, because in short order we will chase you into the sea and out of America forever. You may give us your best shot but we will unleash the furies of Hell against you in due course.
America’s battles have been won because there is a parallel element to the American spirit. This added element to our national character is what brought to mind the second event that I recalled after reading Hanson’s essay. The date I have in mind is April 18, 1942. Just months before the worldwide furies of nationalism and fascism set their sights on America with the intention of taking her down and neutralizing her to end any opposition to their plans of worldwide domination.
The Japanese Empire struck their first blow on December 7, 1941 by raiding Pearl Harbor. Almost 2,500 American servicemen and civilians were killed that day, along with the destruction of most of our Pacific fleet. Almost sixty-five years later, the USS Arizona still lies in Pearl Harbor as a tomb for her crew. But our three Pacific aircraft carriers survived, and so did the American spirit. Through the darkness, hope remained.
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the assault and led the Japanese forces in the Pearl Harbor attack, was aware of this. Even as his planes returned hailing their decisive victory, Yamamoto warned his staff,
"I fear that we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve." As a shrewd commander, he knew the character of his American adversary. Yamamoto knew more about the American spirit than many Americans themselves that dark day. Events like these force us to remember who we are and what we represent to the world.
The attack on Pearl Harbor brought to Americans clarity of vision by exposing the degree of threat posed by their enemies. Much like Hanson observes, it wasn’t just America’s international interests that were being attacked by the fascists Axis Powers – it was the way of American life itself that the enemy was determined to destroy. And Americans from every corner of the country and every walk of life rose to fight America’s battle on behalf of the free world. It was not America’s martial might that was released against our enemies; it was the American spirit itself. The country’s resources and industry were dedicated to retaking the initiative from our enemies, and this is precisely what Yamamoto rightly feared. Within months, the engines of American industry were put to the war effort and millions of American warriors were flung to the farthest reaches of the globe to defeat our enemies. Having taken their best shot against America, Yamamoto knew even then at the beginning of the conflict that the American spirit would prevail.
Still bruised and broken from the Pearl Harbor attack, America’s leaders drew deep from the well of our national spirit and approved a plan to take the battle to our enemies and to demonstrate the American resolve to win the war that had been thrust upon us. Less than a month after the attack, a cavalier Army Air Corps Lt. Colonel, Jimmy Doolittle, formulated a strategy to attack the Japanese homeland. The plan, however, was risky and would require that American technology and the flight crews themselves would be pushed to their very limits and beyond. The mission could easily end in total failure and death for all the personnel participating in the raid. One of the three aircraft carriers that had avoided destruction on December 7th would also be put in jeopardy. The B-25s that were used had never been launched from an aircraft carrier, and there was no margin for error as the planes took off. The risks were enormous, but it would be a perfect opportunity to demonstrate to our enemies and to ourselves the American national spirit. In a decision that reflects what is best and true about the American national spirit, just like George Washington crossing the Delaware, they took the gamble.
The stakes were raised even higher on April 18, 1942 when the carrier bearing Doolittle's sixteen B-25B bombers was spotted by a Japanese ship. One day and 200 miles away from their scheduled launching point, Doolittle decided to launch the attack. Flying 650 miles in single-file formation at wave top altitude, the American bombers reached the Japanese coast. In broad daylight, Americans were able to bomb the Japanese cities of Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, Nagoya and the imperial city of Tokyo.
To any other country, such a raid would have been seen as foolish, unnecessarily risky and a likely failure. But as American bombs rained down on the Japanese that day, just weeks after suffering a stinging defeat at Pearl Harbor, America was delivering an unmistakable message to its enemies: we will bring the war home to you.
That’s the American way.Bombing Tokyo wasn’t a symbolic victory for America; it was a foretaste for the Japanese people of the fury that was to follow. Jimmy Doolittle and his raiders weren’t out to inflict revenge; they came as harbingers of reckoning. Taking the battle to our enemies is what Americans do. While the French national motto since the time of Napoleon has been,
“Je me rends” (I surrender), the American national motto since our struggle for first freedom and independence has been,
“Don’t Tread On Me!” The Japanese Empire learned first-hand that attacking America has fatal consequences. Strike us and we will apply our greatest minds to find ways to unlock even nature’s deepest secrets, as we did with the atomic bomb, to rain fire and death upon you.
The Doolittle Raid is a consummate example of the second element of the American spirit. Yes, Americans can take the worse blows that our enemies have to offer, just like we did at Fort McHenry. It is something we remember and celebrate. But our enemies who dare to tread on us should remember that in the end, we will bring the battle home to you.
And Americans never forget their blood-debt. Yamamoto found this out himself on April 18, 1943, one year after Doolittle’s Raid, when a squadron of American P-38s flew 430 miles under radio silence and caught up with his aircraft, shooting it down and killing Yamamoto.
This was the message we delivered to the world after 9/11 when we forcibly deposed the Taliban Islamic theocracy in Afghanistan and Saddam’s Baathist thugocracy in Iraq. Our enemies should recall that what the Soviet Union was not able to accomplish in ten years in Afghanistan, the United States of America pulled off in the matter of weeks. In Iraq, our military strategists developed and our soldiers executed a plan that left the largest Arab army in the world no other option than to go home rather than fight the invading American foe in open battle. It seems they learned from our American military’s last visit to the region. For that reason alone it was appropriate for President Bush and the entire country to greet the returning sailors of the USS Abraham Lincoln and the soldiers who fought their way to Baghdad with the words,
“Mission Accomplished!”Yes, some of America’s fighting men and women lost their lives in the rush to Baghdad and Kabul. Some are still the targets and victims of terrorists and cowardly murderers today. Flag-draped coffins are the awful price we pay for our freedoms, but it has always been a price that Americans have been willing to pay. Each one of our war dead is an irreplaceable loss; but they are not irreplaceable because they were young or left families behind. They were irreplaceable because they were Americans willing to fight America’s battles. What better memorial to the American spirit do we have than these men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to take the battle to our enemies?
As we are in a period of doubt regarding the progress of the Global War on Terror, we would do well to remember that America has always been plagued by cranks and cowards – those faithless souls whose iniquity in not losing faith in America, but losing faith in themselves as Americans. Regardless, we should never lose our faith. Even when Congress was considering the recognition of
The Star-Spangled Banner in the early 20th Century, there were voices calling our great national anthem a “hymn of hate”. The summer soldiers and the sunshine patriots are always with us, whether they are retired armchair generals or craven moonbat politicians, singing their siren songs enticing us to crash upon the rocks of self-doubt, retreat and inaction. For our own sake, we should stay the course and steer clear of those waters.
America’s enemies should not take any comfort at what the cranks and cowards have to say. Islamists should remember the fate of their predecessors, the Fascists and the Communists, who were swept up into the waste bin of history by Americans. The sunshine patriots could be heard back then, too. And Iranians should remember that no matter how far they develop their nuclear capability that we have some old scores to settle with them as well. Jimmy Carter is no longer President and Iran has a blood debt still left to pay from attacks on Americans from Beirut to the Khobar Towers – and America has every intention of collecting on that debt. We always remember the wounds inflicted by our enemies and will repay at the hour of our own choosing.
The American spirit resides deep within our national soul: moral reckoning is our inspiration and war is in our life-blood. Americans should not ever doubt that the rest of the world marvels at our restraint, even though our enemies mistake our restraint for weakness – a mistake they make at their own peril. It is an everlasting testament to the rightness of America’s cause that at the height of our military power at the end of World War Two in sole possession of the most awesome weapon of destruction ever created by mankind that Americans didn’t blink when we disbanded our armies and sent the American legions home to live and work in peace. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell has said, when America has fought its wars on foreign soil, all America has ever asked for is enough land to bury our dead. The long list of countries that have had their freedom secured through American military might over the past two centuries should shame our loudest international critics and quiet our domestic sunshine patriots. Honest historians will never chronicle the story of an American Empire.
We must keep in our hearts daily the American soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen living in harm’s way all over the world. They fly the skies in Afghanistan; they patrol the deadly streets of Iraq; they keep in the peace in the Balkans; they sail the Taiwan Straits; they man the line along the 38th Parallel on the Korean Peninsula. America doesn’t have the largest army in the world or the largest navy. From the beginning America has known that it is not strength of arms alone that will secure victory; the America warrior and the heart that beats within him is why we will win the war against terror. And the American warrior is guided by the American national spirit. In war, America is protecting of the innocent; generous to our friends and allies; and merciless to our enemies, yet magnanimous in victory.
For two-hundred and thirty years, this has been the essence of the American national spirit and the heart of American war policy: we will take your best shot and we will bring the battle home to you. And America never forgets its blood-debt. As long as there are Americans left to fight our battles, our enemies should tremble in fear. I thank Victor Davis Hanson for reminding me of it. In this time of uncertainty and doubt about the progress of the Global War on Terror, it is something that both we and our enemies would do well to remember.
