From CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Iraq will have a new transitional government with full sovereign powers by the end of June 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council said Saturday, and will have a constitution and a permanent, democratically elected government by the end of 2005.

My first reaction: sha-WHAT?

On reconsideration: shaaaa-WHAT?

OK, time to calm myself down. There really isn’t enough information there for me to start testing Dean banners on the site yet.

But the first sniff certaily does sound like a big departure from “we’re done when we’re done,” which I’ve argued is the right approach. If so, it’s a diplomatic disaster unparallelled during my lifetime. If we didn’t have the bottom to do this, we should have stayed home.

We’ll know more next week. But it sure could make my decision about who I’ll vote for in ’04 much, much simpler.

I’m busy all day today, but two things you ought to go take a look at while I’m gone.

Den Beste makes my point about what happens if we don’t succeed in tempering Islamist rage – and it isn’t pretty for the Middle East. He seems to suggest that total war is new (it isn’t – think Troy), but he makes good points, and in case anyone wonders what I’m so damn afraid of, he nails it.

Julian Sanchez demonstrates once again that libertarians seem to have spent waaay too much time in logic class and not enough studying history or political theory, as he backhands Rob Lyman’s post below. I’m out till this afternoon, but watch this space for a fisking.

As agreed, Calpundit and I will have a back and forth on the six points I raised in my post a week or so ago, plus the thorny issue of internationalization. Buckle up…

First, we’re not going anywhere in Afghanistan or Iraq until we’re done. Afghanistan will not turn into Vermont any time soon, but we will make sure that the power of the warlords is checked, and that it doesn’t collapse again. Iraq could be the leader of the Middle east, and we intend to help build it into that;

My comments from this post.

The essence of war is a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other. War is fundamentally an interactive social process. Clausewitz called it a Zweikampf (literally a “twostruggle”) and suggested the image of a pair of wrestlers locked in a hold, each exerting force and counterforce to try to throw the other. War is thus a process of continuous mutual adaptation, of give and take, move and countermove. It is critical to keep in mind that the enemy is not an inanimate object to be acted upon but an independent and animate force with its own objectives and plans. While we try to impose our will on the enemy, he resists us and seeks to impose his own will on us. Appreciating this dynamic interplay between opposing human wills is essential to understanding the fundamental nature of war.

USMC Warfighting Manual MCDP-1 (.pdf)

In any negotiation, there are two ideal positions: 1) “I don’t care,” in which you challenge the other side to get you to engage in a negotiation at all; and 2) “No matter what it takes,” in which you make it clear that no matter what the other side does, you have the will and means to escalate further and prevail.

Looking at the war with Islamism that’s taking place primarily in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s clear that option 1) isn’t available to us (it really hasn’t been since 9/11).

Our objective needs to be to break the effective will to fight of the opposition. This isn’t about the will of the hundred thousand or so fanatics who will fight the West to the death; it’s about the more-rational millions who are on the verge of tipping over toward that position, and who are inclined to do so because they think they will win.

We brought 9/11 on, in part, by showing irresolution in the face of earlier attacks. (We also brought it on with a hamhanded and shortsighted foreign policy as relates to the Middle East and Arab world, but that’s a subject for another, longer blog post). Osama Bin Laden genuinely believed that the U.S. would withdraw – as we did from Lebanon and Somalia – if we were bloodied.

Their perception is based on two simple facts; most of us don’t like to kill other people, and most of us really, really don’t like it when ours get killed.

Our goal, I believe, is as much to correct those misapprehensions as to physically disrupt the infrastructure that supports the Islamist movement. This presents some significant dangers. As long as I’ve been quoting Schaar in support of my views, let me quote him challenging them (from his essay ‘The American Amnesia’):

Action taken for psychological objectives (e.g. credibility) inherently contains an element of theatricality, and can easily slide into pure theater. Policymakers come to think of action – even military action – in theatrical terms and lose sight of the real costs. Policymakers’ and spectators’ sense of reality become attenuated. Even death becomes unreal. Image and substance become independent of each other.

Public policy becomes public relations.

A war fought for symbolic ends is very difficult to explain and justify to the citizenry. Officials easily employ concealment and evasion, and retreat into isolation. Government and the public get out of touch with each other. Furthermore, when the symbolic end sought is an image of national toughness or determination, then any domestic opposition or criticism threatens that image, thereby threatening – in the eyes of the government – the national defense. Under these conditions, opponents at home seem more dangerous than the enemy abroad. Feeling beleaguered on all fronts, seeing enemies everywhere, officials fear loss of authority and strive for more and more power, even at the expense of constitutional processes. The government becomes enclosed in a private reality, and wrapped in a mood of paranoia and impotence. That was exactly the mentality of the Nixon Administration. And that mentality drove it to the near destruction of the Indochinese peninsula and the American constitutional order.

Schaar sums up what it is that I fear about this war; that it will become a war of theater rather than substance, and that – because our leaders are too weak or afraid to demand our commitment in it – that we will create a ‘shell’ of a war, using theater and image to replace substance. He also sums up the core position of many of the opponents of the war, as well.

The problem, of course, is that if you read the theorists (well summed up in the USMC manual), a substantial part of war is theater; it involves both the physical destruction of the enemy and their assets through violence, and the degradation of their ability to use them – through a number of means, including violence, misdirection, reduction in morale, etc. And I do believe there is a key difference between the war in Vietnam and this war: In Vietnam we were fighting our enemy (the Soviet/Chinese alliance) indirectly, through the Vietnamese. The war was as such purely theatrical, in that the resources at risk and expended far outweighed the possible gain (this isn’t a complete explanation of my position, but it’ll do as a placeholder). Suffice it to say we were fighting the shadow of our real enemy, not the enemy itself.

In fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, we are directly confronting two of the many faces of the Islamist movement. Arab Nationalism – one of the roots of the ‘Baath movement, and the reason why Iraq, Egypt, and Lybia briefly entertained the notion of uniting – was a secular attempt to restore Arab greatness and create a secular Caliphate. It is another face on the core desire that is expressed in terms of fundamentalist Islam by Qutb and Bin Laden.

And, simply, I’d rather convince an enemy not to fight than actually kill them (because I do in large measure subscribe to the facts about our Western society set out above).

Now in a real wrestling match, one isn’t going to win – impose one’s will on the opponent – simply by sitting on them. They will continue to fight, or simply wait until you get bored and get up, and then continue to fight. Particularly if you’re having a loud dialog about whether it’s worth it or not to fight with them in the first place; they will simply be more confident that in the face of resistance, or simple patience, you will give up and get up. Sadly, that path leads only to more fighting – because they aren’t defeated, they are simply at what they perceive to be a momentary disadvantage.

So you will get tired of the game, get up, and then they will attack again. You will sit on them again, and the whole process restarts. Much like our response to the escalation of Islamist rhetoric and action through the 80’s and 90’s.

The way to win is simply to sit on them and make it clear that you will sit on them until they have really and truly given up – until their will is broken to yours.

John McCain said it simply and well in his Nov. 5 speech to the CFR:

“Let there be no doubt: victory can be our only exit strategy. We are winning in Iraq – but we sow the seeds of our own failure by contemplating a premature military drawdown and tempering our ambitions to democratize Iraqi politics. Winning will take time. But as in other great strategic and moral struggles of our age, Americans have demonstrated the will to prevail when they understand what is at stake, for them and for the world.” [emphasis added]

Let me repeat it: “victory can be our only exit strategy.”

By taking this position, by making it clear that we will stay as long at it takes, spend the treasure and blood required to break the wave of Islamist rage, in my view we will reduce the amount of actual violence we will ultimately have to impose.

We have broken the bad governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. We are there, on the ground, and there we will stay until we have accomplished some basic goals.

What are these goals? Here is a rough first try:

First, until the overall level of violent Islamist rhetoric and action will have abated.

Second, until Iraq will have attained some level of stable civil society (note that I think Bush misspoke when he set democracy as the threshold; I’ve discussed it before, and I believe that simply establishing civil society – the primacy of law – is the necessary precondition to democracy, and that alone will be difficult).

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, I doubt that we’ll break the isolated, violent tribal culture. I do think that we can restrain it, and prevent it from being used as a base and recruiting ground for Islamists, and provide some skeletal level of civil society while reining in the tribal warlords who truly rule the country.

These goals will require a certain level of commitment – of resources, cost, and most of all of lives disrupted, damaged, or lost. I will leave it to people who more than I do about the levels of forces required, but I will say that I seriously doubt that we have them today.

Making sure we have those forces – through alliances or through a commitment to expand our own military – is the necessary first step down this road. When Bush does that, I’ll have more confidence that he means what he says.

I had an “aha” moment about the chickenhawk debate this morning.

It wasn’t about the fact that it’s used as a slur, with the intent of shaming people into silencing debate (which I obviously think of as a bad thing). It was a moment in which the argument also illuminated what I have trouble supporting at the core of progressive values (and I’m not talking about self-righteousness).

Think of it in terms of a ‘community of interest groups,’ rather than ‘a community’ and find the parallel arguments:

* No one who could be and isn’t serving should speak out on Iraq;

* No one except women of child-bearing age should speak out on abortion;

* No one who isn’t poor should speak out on welfare;

* No one who isn’t in school should speak out on education;

* No one who isn’t (I can’t decide on this one between ‘a criminal’ and ‘a victim of crime’) should speak out on criminal justice.

It’s a fun game and all can play; add your own in the comments below.

And it’s horribly destructive, if you see the tie that connects us as Americans as the bonds of common obligation and ‘reverence’ that Schaar talks about below.

Just thinkin’…

You have to go over to Roger Simon’s to check out this thread (started by the snarky Tom Tomorrow cartoon at Salon on ‘Chickenhawks’).

I only have a limited amount of snark, so can’t see wasting it here, but I did want to make sure that no one got left out of the fun. I’m always being busted for talking about the ‘irrational left’ without pointing to any examples; so here’s one. Folks, click over and meet Matt:

As far as Saddam’s cruelty goes, it is greatly exaggerated. By world standards, particularly in the Middle East, he wasn’t that bad. As long as you didn’t oppose him politically you could pretty much carry on your regular life. I’m not defending him, mind you. I’m saying that he is no worse than your average dictator, and I don’t see the hawks clamoring to topple, say, the president of Uzbekistan, who boils his political opponents live. Saddam quashed a rebellion and killed a bunch of people in the process. As I said before, standard practice for a head of state. Try taking up arms against the government with a few thousand people and see if you don’t get killed and dumped in a mass grave.

To R.C. Dean: did you not see my other post on this “300,000” number? Saddam killed these people in an uprising that was egged on by our own President. So it seems a little strange to me to use that as evidence of Saddam’s cruelty. And are Iraqis more free today than they were under Saddam? I don’t know, let’s see. Saddam let them have weapons, Bremer won’t. Saddam didn’t send soldiers for sweeps through people’s houses to see if they had guns. In fact, if you didn’t challenge Saddam politically he pretty much left you alone. Citizens of other countries have worse deals. Oh, and you forgot to mention all the U.S. soldiers who died in this war, since we’re playing the “whose policy saves more lives” game.

Now I certainly don’t hold the Democratic nominees or progressives in general responsible for this fella. But since he and his buds are the ones Mr. and Mrs. America will see in the letters to the editor section, they tend to be the ones who public opinion coalesces around. And public opinion is not going to be kind.

As a counterpoint to both Mike and Tom T., I’ll offer a link to an article from back in the days when salon was inconoclastic and interesting. The money quote?

I wish I still believed, as I used to, that the United Nations was always the world’s best chance to avert bloodshed. I wish I could join, as I once would have, the placard-waving peace protesters outside the U.S. Consulate here in Sydney.

I wish I’d never seen the piece of ear nailed to the wall.

[corected doofus mistake in poster’s name.]

JK UPDATE: Fellow biker Mike Hendrix throws in an even more egregious quote from Democratic Underground (shooting fish in a barrel, that is), then adds a very interesting example of Republican Presidential nominee Dewey remaining close-mouthed about a major intelligence failure while running against FDR.

In my ill-tempered post responding to Matthew Yglesias, I made the statement that

…I think they opposed the war because they believe they can have the benefits of modern liberal society without getting their hands dirty. They value moral purity and self-satisfaction above everything else – with the possible exception of creature comfort.

Two people recently wrote things that – to me – perfectly expressed this issue.Over at Crooked Timber, Daniel Davies has a post up about Remembrance Day:

On the 85th Armistice day, I remember with honour the memory of:

* Military casualties of the First World War
* Military casualties of the Second World War
* Casualties of conscripted labour in the Second World War (such as the “Bevin Boys” conscripted to work in coal mines in the UK, who had a casualty rate higher than most active service units)
* Casualties of the Second World War among the fire service, ARP, ambulance service and similar, many of whom were conscientious objectors to the war itself
* Military casualties of the Falklands War

In their own ways, all of these people gave their lives in protecting the lives and liberty of Britons, for which we owe them the most profound thanks.

I also remember with the deepest sympathy and pity the men and women of our armed forces who gave their lives in the other military operations which the United Kingdom has carried out in the last century. They died for the most part in the service of dishonourable missions which were forced on them by governments which we elected, so we bear them an equally heavy debt, though much less glorious and more shameful.

This is the nearest I can come to a pacifist’s response to this day; I long since gave up wearing a white poppy in remembrance of the conscientious objectors in my own family, simply because it caused so much offence. I wholeheartedly apologise for any offence caused by this statement, without withdrawing any of it.

And then a comment on Rob Lyman’s great post here on “Tribal Patriotism”, poster ‘Anonymous Coward 8’ wrote this:

…
This prompts a question: If I vote against someone who wins, am I blameless?

I voted against Clinton and I voted against Bush, and I think the war in Iraq weakens us with respect to terrorists (more cause for terrorists to attack the US, while wasting our strength disarming the disarmed). This administration seems uninterested in my opinion, or in the opinions of anyone outside of a very small circle, excluding the CIA, state department, hawkish bloggers, and conservative members of the military, legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government. If they want me to accept blame or responsibility for their actions, they’ll have to sell it a lot harder than as ‘patriotism’. Attacking Iraq seems like an act for the sake of action, or a diversion from the retribution against Al Qaida. It isn’t enough to be gifting freedom to the unfree while bartering away our bill of rights in the name of homeland security.

If you want me to share blame, you’ll have to share the planning and answer criticism. If not, it is your responsibility.

I think these two quotes perfectly embody one of the defects I see in liberalism today; the notion that one can, personally, have clean hands despite the acts of one’s people. You get to that position, I think, because you have a fundamentally cosmopolitan viewpoint – you are an individual whose connections are equally to all other individuals, and the connection you have to other Americans (or Britons) is really no stronger or less strong. The connection to the nation is therefore arbitrary and most of all, chosen, rather than accepted.

Schaar explicitly rejected this notion when he talked about patriotism:

“To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more accurately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence, which defines life by its debts; one is what one owes, what one acknowledges as a rightful debt or obligation. The patriot moves within that mentality.”

And I do too.

I wrote a long time ago that

Part of political adulthood is the maturity to realize that we are none of us innocents. The clothes we wear, money we have, jobs we go to are a result of a long, bloody and messy history.

I see my job as a liberal as making the future less bloody than the past.

But I accept the blood on my hands. I can’t enjoy the freedom and wealth of this society and somehow claim to be innocent. I don’t get to lecture people from a position of moral purity. No one spending U.S. dollars, or speaking with the freedom protected by U.S. laws gets to.

Both Davies and AC8 seem to think that they can.

They can’t. You don’t get to enjoy the material and political benefits without bearing the costs, and so somehow claim that one can be born into privilege and enjoy it without taking on its obligations is offensive.

And they shouldn’t if they want progressivism to succeed. It is exactly that position of obnoxious (and demonstrably false) moral superiority that violates Schaar’s (and my) prescription for an effective progressive movement. Remember?

“Finally, if political education is to effective it must grow from a spirit of humility on the part of the teachers, and they must overcome the tendencies toward self-righteousness and self-pity which set the tone of youth and student politics in the 1960’s. The teachers must acknowledge common origins and common burdens with the taught, stressing connection and membership, rather than distance and superiority. Only from these roots can trust and hopeful common action grow.”

Listen to those words, folks, because we on the left haven’t shown those things, and we’re getting our heads handed to us as a consequence.

A little over a week ago, I wrote a series of suggested position statements for Democratic hawks.

Kevin Drum and I agreed to have an interblog discussion, which I hope will widen to other blogs; we’ll have a back-and-forth on these and see where we agree, where we disagree, and possibly lay out some ground to all stand on together.

Here’s what I wrote:

First, we’re not going anywhere in Afghanistan or Iraq until we’re done. Afghanistan will not turn into Vermont any time soon, but we will make sure that the power of the warlords is checked, and that it doesn’t collapse again. Iraq could be the leader of the Middle east, and we intend to help build it into that;

Second, we’re too dependent on ME oil. We’re going to do something about it, both by pushing conservation, expanding alternative energy, and expanding exploration. We’re going to build the damn windmills off of Cape Cod;

Third, we’re going to stop Israel from building new settlements and push them to dismantle existing illegal ones;

Fourth, we’re going to work to expand the ground-fighting capabilities of our military by adding at least one division to the Army, and looking carefully at the allocation of all our assets to make sure that we have the resources to deal with the kind of wars that we are going to realistically face;

Fifth, we’re going to sit with the Arab countries we are supporting and make it clear that they cannot buy internal stability by fomenting hate against Jews and the West and still expect our financial and military support. We will also talk about what kinds of support would be forthcoming if they did stop;

Sixth, we’re going to develop security mechanisms based on the theory that fine-grained systems that bring information and communications to the existing public safety community, as well as the public at large are better than huge, centralized bureaucratic solutions;

He suggested – and I completely agree – that we add “internationalism” to the list.

So I’ll add a seventh position as soon as I can come up with one. I’ve been thinking about this issue for about a month and I just keep getting a headache; I’m trying to contain two beliefs that appear contradictory.

First, that we really do need help on a number of levels – intelligence and law enforcement data needs to be pooled; we need explicit cooperation in monitoring the international traffic in weapons and cash; and, bluntly, we don’t have and won’t soon have the manpower to deal with all the issues that we’re facing.

Second, our traditional allies don’t necessarily have parallel interests with us in this (or, more accurately, they don’t perceive that they have parallel interests). This means it won’t be easy to both do the things which we believe we need to do and to get help from other countries in doing it.

So then here’s the question – how do we re-align our interests? In part, I think we don’t, and that some of our alliances forged in the Cold War are dead letters today, and that we simply need to politely acknowledge that and then make new alliances to replace them. And in part, I think that we have to work very damn hard to get what support we can in this arena.

I do think that what I hear from the mainstream Democratic candidates on this is largely piffle and wishful thinking (and yes, I know I need to explain this).

The ShrinkLits version is this: To hand Iraqi reconstruction and the conduct of the war over to NATO, or god-forbid, the U.N. is going to be a disaster. The leading NATO countries didn’t want to go, and they certainly won’t want to stay long enough to effect the kind of change we’re discussing. The U.N. … well, just forget the U.N. for now. I’m working on a post about it in my odd moments.

So on one hand, we need help, and on the other, we’re unlikely to get it. Like I said, I keep getting a headache. But now that I’m publicly committed to taking some kind of position, I’ll just get a big bottle of Excedrin and some tea, sit down, and think it through.

And meanwhile, I’ll get something up tomorrow on Point One above.

Arthur Silber is a Los Angeles-area blogger who is hitting some hard times because of the transit strike. While I don’t see eye-to-eye with him on many things, I know that I’ve had hard times in my life, and people have stepped up and helped me through. I can’t do less.

He says he needs a thousand or so (more like two, from reading it) to get his car running again, so along with a number of other bloggers, I’m running his PayPal button, and asking my regular readers to click through and donate a few bucks (or more). A number of L.A. based bloggers and I may also use this as an excuse to get together and in so doing raise some more funds for him, if they’re needed.

…over at Armed Liberal. Here’s what I wrote in ‘I Started To Write About Veteran’s Day…‘:

…and to thank the veterans alive and dead for protecting me and mine.

And worried that what I wrote kept coming out sounding either too qualified or would be interpreted as being too nationalistic.

And I realized something about my own thinking, a basic principle I’ll set out as a guiding point for the Democrats and the Left in general as they try and figure out the next act in this drama we are in.

First, you have to love America.

This isn’t a perfect country. I think it’s the best county; I’ve debated this with commenters before, and I’ll point out that while people worldwide tend to vote with their feet, there may be other (economic) attractions that pull them. But there are virtues here which far outweigh any sins. And I’ll start with the virtue of hope.

The hope of the immigrants, abandoning their farms and security for a new place here.

The hope of the settlers, walking across Death Valley, burying their dead as they went.

The hope of the ‘folks’ who moved to California after the war.

The hope of the two Latino kids doing their Computer Science homework at Starbucks.

I love this country, my country, my people. And those who attack her…from guerilla cells, boardrooms, or their comfy chairs in expensive restaurants… better watch out.

I don’t get a clear sense that my fellow liberals feel the same way. And if so, why should ‘the folks’ follow them? Why are we worthy of the support of a nation that we don’t support? So let me suggest an axiom for the New Model Democrats:

America is a great goddamn country, and we’re going to both defend it from those who attack it and fight to make it better.

And for everyone who is going to comment and remind me that ‘all liberals already do that’ … no they don’t. Not when the chancellor has to intervene at U.C. Berkeley to get ‘permission’ for American flags to be flown and red-white-and-blue ribbons to be worn. Not when the strongest voices in liberalism give only lip service to responding to an attack on our own soil.

Loving this country isn’t the same thing as jingoism; it isn’t the same thing as imperialism; it isn’t the same thing as blind support of the worst traits of our government or our people.

It starts with recognizing the best traits, and there are a hell of a lot of them. They were worth defending in my father’s time, and they are worth defending today.

So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you.

It’s been a year since I wrote that, and a lot has happened, close to me and far away. We’ve gone to war, and are facing a difficult, bloody, and uncertain time, brought even closer to me by the fact that my oldest son has committed to join the military.

Many of my liberal friends took me to task for writing the piece above, feeling that I had ignored their real and deeply felt patriotism. I think in many cases it’s true, but I also think that in the cosmopolitanism at the core of contemporary liberal thought is the germ of something that finds patriotism atavistic, that sees it as of a piece with extreme nationalism, and that hopes that it can gently be put out to pasture.

I’ve talked a bit about what patriotism isn’t:

I’ll define patriotism as “love of country”. Both the parents above (all three of them, actually) claim to “love” their children. But to blindly smile and clean up when your child smashes plates on the floor is not an act of love. And blindly smiling and waving flags when your country does something wrong is not an act of patriotism.

But…there is a point where criticism, even offered in the guise of love, moves past the point of correction and to the point of destruction. It’s a subtle line, but it exists. And my friend (who is less of a friend because I can’t begin to deal with her fundamentally abusive parenting) is destroying her child. And there are liberals who have adopted an uncritically critical view of America. Who believe it to have been founded in genocide and theft, made wealthy on slave labor and mercantilist expropriation, to be a destroyer of minorities, women, the environment and ultimately they argue, itself.

I’m sorry but their profession of love for America is as hollow to me as that mother’s profession of love for her son. Are those things true? As facts, they are an incomplete account of this country’s history. As a worldview, they are destructive and self-consuming.

I believe that a clear rediscovery of liberal patriotism – the reconnection between progressive politics and a love of the American ideal – is the key to rebuilding a liberalism that can both serve American interests and compete effectively with corporate conservatism.

I’ve referenced my old professor John Schaar’s great essay ‘The Case for Patriotism’ before. It’s available (excerpted) here, and I want to use it to talk a bit about what I mean by patriotism. When I knew him, Schaar was a true New Leftie; he stood far to my left on a number of issues. But he was also a true patriot, and he had a unique and useful vision of American patriotism that I want to talk about here:

“Patriotism is unwelcome in many quarters of the land today, and unknown in many others. There is virtually no thoughtful discussion of the subject, for the word has settled, in most people’s minds, deep into a brackish pond of sentiment where thought cannot reach. Politicians and members of patriotic associations praise it, of course, but official and professional patriotism too often sounds like nationalism, patriotism’s bloody brother. On the other hand, patriotism has a bad name among many thoughtful people, who see it as a horror at worst, a vestigial passion largely confined to the thoughtless at best: as enlightenment advances, patriotism recedes. The intellectuals are virtually required to repudiate it as a condition of class membership. The radical and dropout young loathe it. Most troublesome of all, for one who would make the argument I intend to make, is the face that both the groups that hate and those that glorify patriotism largely agree that it and nationalism are the same thing. I hope to show that they are different things–related, but separable.

Opponents of patriotism might agree that if the two could be separated then patriotism would look fairly attractive. But the opinion is widespread, almost atmospheric, that the separation is impossible, that with the triumph of the nation-state nation. Nationalism has indelibly stained patriotism: the two are warp and woof. The argument against patriotism goes on to say that, psychologically considered, patriot and nationalist are the same: both are characterized by exaggerated love for one’s own collectivity combined with more or less contempt and hostility toward outsiders. In addition, advanced political opinion holds that positive, new ideas and forces–e.g., internationalism, universalism; humanism, economic interdependence, socialist solidarity–are healthier bonds of unity, and more to be encouraged than the ties of patriotism. These are genuine objections, and they are held by many thoughtful people.”

I think that Schaar exactly targets the weaknesses of patriotism that I criticize above; on one hand, those who embrace it would use it as a basis for blind love of one’s collectivity combined with equally blind contempt for others’. On the other, having ‘moved past’ patriotism is almost a core requirement for inclusion in the modern, NPR-driven thinking class here in the U.S. as well as abroad. The EU, for instance, is explicitly trying to break down old patriotisms into a new, unified, one.

Why is patriotism important? Is it because a love of place matters? Schaar talks about love of one’s home or one’s city as the two forms of traditional patriotism, and he also talks about why patriotism matters to me:

“To be a patriot is to have a patrimony; or, perhaps more accurately, the patriot is one who is grateful for a legacy and recognizes that the legacy makes him a debtor. There is a whole way of being in the world, captured best by the word reverence, which defines life by its debts; one is what one owes, what one acknowledges as a rightful debt or obligation. The patriot moves within that mentality. The gift of land, people, language, gods memories, and customs, which is the patrimony of the patriot, defines what he or she is. Patrimony is mixed with person; the two are barely separable. The very tone and rhythm of a life, the shapes of perception, the texture of its homes and fears come from membership in a territorially rooted group. The conscious patriot is one who feels deeply indebted for these gifts, grateful to the people and places through which they come, and determined to defend the legacy against enemies and pass it unspoiled to those who will come after.

But such primary experiences are nearly inaccessible to us. We are not taught to define our lives by our debts and legacies, but by our rights and opportunities. Robert Frost’s stark line, “This land was ours, before we were the land’s.” condenses the whole story of American patriotism. We do not and cannot love the land the way the Greek and Navaho loved theirs. The graves of some of our ancestors are here, to be sure, but most of us would be hard pressed to find them: name and locate the graves of your great-grandparents.”

Despite our disconnection from our ancestry and ancestral places, Schaar and I believe that we can be ‘reverent’ as Americans. How? He tells us:

“But if instinctive patriotism and the patriotism of the city cannot be ours, what can be? Is there a type of patriotism peculiarly American: if so, is it anything more than patriotism’s violent relative nationalism?

Abraham Lincoln, the supreme authority on this subject, thought there was a patriotism unique to America. Americans, a motley gathering of various races and cultures, were bonded together not by blood or religion, not by tradition or territory, not by the calls and traditions of a city, but by a political idea. We are a nation formed by a covenant, by dedication to a set of principles, and by an exchange of promises to uphold and advance certain commitments among ourselves and throughout the world. Those principles and commitments are the core of American identity, the soul of the body politic. They make the American nation unique, and uniquely valuable among and to the other nations. But the other side of this conception contains a warning very like the warnings spoken by the prophets to Israel: if we fail in our promises to each other, and lose the principles of the covenant, then we lose everything, for they are we.” [emphasis added]

We are American patriots because we have consciously decided to share the principles that make America – the principles most essentially set out in our founding documents, and over time spread within America to those who had been excluded at the founding. It is our devotion to liberty and our self-conception as citizens that makes us Americans, not an accident of birth or race.

My neighbors to the south are a couple born in Iran. My neighbors to the north were born in Mexico. And each of them is absolutely and completely American.

Our patriotism is an inclusive one, which does not define us as a ‘people’ by where we live or the ancestral symbols that we worship (that’s part of why I can be tolerant of those who fly the Confederate Flag), but by the principles to which we adhere.

Our patriotism is hopeful, because it is tied to the future – but it must also be reverent in tying us to our past. That is a patriotism we can define, and defend. Schaar talks about what Lincoln once said:

“One more statement, this time from the young Lincoln. Again the occasion is significant. Lincoln had just been elected to the Illinois legislature, and he accepted an invitation to address the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield: an occasion of beginning, then, like the speech in Independence Hall. Lincoln chose as his theme, “the perpetuation of our political institutions.”

He opened the discourse by reminding his listeners that the men of the Revolution had fought to found a polity dedicated to liberty and self-government. Those principles were safe while the founders lived for they knew the price that had been paid for them. The scenes and memories of the struggle were visible to their eyes and lively to their memories. Many individuals and families treasured and retold the stories of sacrifice and danger. But now these scenes are distant. We who came after the struggle and had no part in it cannot see it in the scars on our bodies, cannot even relive it through the eyes and voices of the actors. Being distant, we easily forget why those others fought and died, and we cannot justly value the gift they gave to us. Our forgetting opens the path to talented persons of great ambition who, if they cannot gain fame by preserving the principles of the founding, will gain fame by wrecking them. Only if the founding principles are kept alive and pure in the minds and hearts of the citizenry shall we be safe from perverted ambition–or, indeed, safe from ourselves. We must, then, see as the chief task of political life the task of political education: inculcate respect or valid laws as a “political religion”; retell on every possible occasion the story of the struggle; teach tirelessly the principles of the founding. The only guardian of the compact is an informed citizenry, and the first task of leadership is the formation of such a citizenry.

This is a conception of patriotic devotion that fits a nation large and heterogeneous as our own. It sets a mission and provides a standard of judgment. It tells us when we are acting just- and it does not confuse martial fervor with dedication to country. Lincoln also reminded us that the covenant is not a static legacy, a gift outright, but a burden and a promise. The nation consists only in repeated acts of remembrance and renewal of the covenant through changing circumstances. Patriotism here is more than a frame of mind. It is also activity guided by and directed toward the mission established in the founding covenant. This conception of political membership also decisively transcends the parochial and primitive fraternities of blood and race, for it calls kin all who accept the authority of the covenant. And finally, this covenanted patriotism assigns America a teaching mission among the nations, rather than a superiority over a hostility toward them. This patriotism is compatible with the most generous humanism.”

Defined. Defended. As it should be.

We don’t need to battle the forces of the Islamists because they are Muslim, or because they are foreign. We need to battle them because they explicitly intend to attack the foundation of what makes us Americans, and because they mean to take the things which others in the world want to learn from America – liberty, justice, equality – and smash them. We need to battle them in the arena of politics and ideas most of all. But the space for that battle must be created on the ground, through a contest of will and weapons.

Which brings me back to Veteran’s Day this Tuesday, and my appreciation for the men and women who have, are, and will defend our covenant, our American ideal. I said it last year, and I’ll say it every year from now on:

So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you.

— UPDATES —

* Guest blogger Rob Lyman follows up with The Moral Duty of Tribal Patriotism, exploring the meaning and scope of the duty we have as citizens to ensure each other’s safety and security.

* Armed Liberal’s Selectve Service post picks up on one of the responses to Rob’s essay, and on a blog post on Crooked Timber. He sees them as excellent examples of an ‘opt-out’ mentality that seeks the benefits of modern liberal society without getting its hands dirty, and values moral purity and self-satisfaction above all.

There’s a great discussion on Democratic politics and strategy started by Chris Bowers going on over at the Daily Kos. I don’t at all agree with his prescription, and will get a post together on it, but I think he’s asking all the right questions.