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Wednesday, Oct 8, 2008
With the war on terrorism expanding, Salon talks to a group of average Americans about the U.S. military's role in the world today.
Jan 31, 2002 | You already know, if you want to know, what the pundits have to say about the war on terrorism, whether the United States should expand the battlefront to other countries and to what extent America should engage in nation-building in Afghanistan and elsewhere. And polls will tell you that Americans overwhelmingly support the war in Afghanistan, and are in favor of extending it to other countries by slightly smaller but still substantial majorities.
But as the Bush administration sets its sights on other military targets -- including the regimes of Iraq, Iran and North Korea that the president directly threatened in his State of the Union speech -- Salon has ventured behind the poll numbers and TV sound bites to talk directly with Americans about the role that the world's only superpower should play today. It's a question that has not been seriously debated in the public arena since the end of the Cold War. "In a generation you don't have that many wars, generally, maybe one big one and several little ones, so each generation comes to the question for the first time in its own experience," says historian Walter Russell Mead, author of "Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World."
Though we tried to speak to a wide range of people across the country, the 20 or so we talked to in depth were not chosen scientifically. We might have picked by accident a group of the most anomalous, iconoclastic Americans ever assembled. We don't think so, but even if we did, we found their comments interesting, and perhaps a good place to begin the public exploration of America's place in the world.
Mead breaks this discussion into the following questions, which our eclectic group wrestled with in one way or another: "What kind of world are we trying to create? Are we defensively trying to basically just keep the world from screwing us up at home? Are we actively trying to turn the world into a society of law-abiding democracies? Are we trying to do what countries have always done, which is establish our own power, and extend our own power? Are we trying to create the conditions for economic prosperity in the United States? Or abroad? Are we trying to build a law-based international order?"
Our reporters took to the streets in New York, St. Louis and the San Francisco Bay Area in search of concerned citizens. We also contacted people in other parts of the country by phone and e-mail. While the opinions of those we talked with generally mirrored the results of recent polls, there was a complexity to their views of American global power that no survey statistics can capture.
"Unfortunately, I guess I just pick and choose," said Brad Deck, 66, a retired data coordinator in Kansas City, Mo., when asked under what circumstances he backs the use of U.S. military force. Deck, who spent six years in the Navy, voted for Al Gore in 2000, but said he supports the president now: "I'm backing President Bush in doing in the next few years whatever we need to do to make it absolutely, terribly unprofitable to support terrorism."
Deck said he would continue to support Bush if the president sends military forces against Iraq, Iran or North Korea, even though the American public has not been fully informed about the threats to U.S. security posed by these regimes. "I am behind it, and I don't know how much we need to know about it," he said. "I trust [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld. It sounds funny, being a Democrat, but I do. I don't think the American people need to know every little thing about everything. I think we elect people and we need to trust them. As far as I'm concerned, I've got enough information, which is not much, for him [Bush] to go ahead and talk to those countries, and get mean with them if he needs to."
But while Deck agrees that Iraq, Iran and North Korea are security threats to the U.S., he shies from making broad statements about when and where American troops should intervene. "It's a case by case thing, because sometimes I just really disagree with" U.S. military involvement, he said. "When countries have revolutions and civil wars -- as we ourselves did -- I'm not so sure. I certainly don't like genocide, and I guess ... boy, that's a really hard question for me, and it's one I've thought about a lot over the years. I guess it sounds wishy-washy, but sometimes I kind of agree with it and sometimes I definitely don't."
Nick Lilavois, a 34-year-old graphic artist and corporate trainer in Orlando, Fla., said he too was "split" on the military role the United States should play in the world. Describing himself as liberal on social issues and moderate on economic ones, Lilavois said that with no world government, "it is impossible for a [global] policeman to exist. Because of that, the United States is more like a benevolent vigilante," which makes him nervous. On the other hand: "We are in a global marketplace, so just about any action in any nation has impact on us or our allies in some way, so we should have the right to protect those interests."
Turning specifically to the war on terrorism, Lilavois backs the attack on al-Qaida and the Taliban -- "we were of course completely justified in retaliating" -- but has doubts about Bush's plan to make it a global war. "The problem with a war on terrorism is that there is no clear-cut definition of the word 'terrorism.' It is a decree that is just asking to swing out of control. He might as well claim it's a war against all bad guys," he said.
Aundre Cross, a retired welding inspector in Andalusia, Ala., has no such doubts about pursuing terrorists to the far corners of the world -- putting him, according to a Gallup poll this month, in the majority of Americans, with 77 percent backing military action in Iraq, 71 percent in Iran and 62 percent in Somalia. "Anywhere there's terrorists, we ought to be blastin' their ass," said Cross, a 67-year-old Republican. "I think we ought to go after 'em and nail their carcass to the wall."
Conservatives weren't the only interventionists. "Everything's a sacrifice," said Lenox Forbes, 42, a Brooklyn jewelry maker from Trinidad who describes himself as "more liberal." "If you can avoid the conflict, avoid it, but if you can't, you have to do what you have to do. If we have the will and the way, it's a responsibility."
David Lundahl, a 42-year-old firefighter in Casper, Wyo., who recently retired from the National Guard, agrees the United States should take an activist role on the world stage. "We should be the world's policeman because of precedents set in the past. It's what we've always been," he said. "When other countries have fractured and started fighting each other, we've gone in to stop the killing."
Lundahl backs U.S. military intervention, even when there is no immediate threat. "Because of the recent tragic events, it has hit home to the citizens of the USA that any terrorism, in any country, is a threat to us. We should take steps to eradicate these threats and protect our country and fellow citizens." Does this mean he thinks the U.S. should be prepared to go to war in Iraq, Iran and North Korea? "Yes, because of the past relationship with these countries, I feel that all three countries are threats to the U.S. in varying degrees."
But others felt that the United States needs to be more discriminating when it comes to using its military resources. Robert Turner, a 45-year-old auto mechanic in San Bruno, Calif., said he is wary of the U.S. playing "world cop. We should fight only when it's in our interest, economically or militarily. When people are killing their own people they should take care of it themselves. We spend millions and millions of dollars every year helping other countries, but no one ever helps us."
The general reluctance we found to support use of the U.S. military for humanitarian purposes corroborates historian Mead's theory that most Americans fall into a category he calls "Jacksonian," after the populist, war-hero president. "Jacksonians would say, basically, you should not be going to war for these sort of secondary questions," Mead said. "It's not worth the life of an American soldier to have free elections in Haiti, or, for that matter, to protect corporate interests in El Salvador, or whatever it might be. But if you do send troops, then you should use force in such a way as to crush the enemy as quickly as possible and as totally as possible with the lowest possible level of U.S. casualties."
Mary Roby, a 48-year-old Baltimore Democrat who works for the nonprofit City Parks Alliance, goes so far as to call herself an isolationist. "I feel like we can't be the protector of the entire world and freedom everywhere," she said. "We certainly have our own problems here that we don't spend enough attention on." Roby believes the U.S. should be reluctant to intervene even in genocidal emergencies. "I almost feel like we should stand aside. In the United States we have a lot of genocide going on in our cities -- what's happening in Baltimore with young black guys shooting each other, and in other cities, like Detroit. I mean, why not dispatch the military there to sort that out? I guess I wouldn't be absolutely opposed to it, but it's back to that role of protecting the world. You know, bad things are going to happen, and I'm not sure that we can send our military around the world to save everybody."
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