Posted by
KsReaganite on Sunday, June 14, 2009 9:05:54 PM
An enemy who openly shows his weakness, or is perceived thereof, is a dishonorable enemy. That is a thread of thought that has been true in the Middle East for millennia and more. The constant badgering of Israel by the Obama administration and the mealy mouthed response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions portray an America that would rather sue its enemies in a court of law than confront them on the field of battle. Whether the friends of Israel in America were expecting anything different from an administration exclusively staffed by Ivy League litigators is worth wondering.
What is beyond wondering is that feminized politics and policy do not impress the very masculine approach to statecraft that is found in the cultures of Israel, the Arabs, the Persians, and the Pashtuns. When the most important policy debate in the US military is how to accommodate gays in the trenches and women in fighter planes, it is little wonder that our enemies do not take us or our purpose seriously. Frankly there are a few historians both in the Middle East and here who see in us a power that is reminiscent of the Roman Empire at its zenith where luxurious abstractness and moral ambivalence was seeped into the vitals of a military behemoth slowly, steadily, and, ultimately, fatally.
The debate we should be having is not how to provide for abortions in military hospitals but how to abort the deadly possibility of a nuclear armed Iran. The United States military is supposed to be a fighting force not a uniformed version of Westchester county suburban decadence run amok.