Reflections on American Wars: Revolutionary to Iraq The DC Guy October 31, 2006

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"War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means." - Karl von Clausewitz

As the 2006 election season winds down, I've found myself reading more and more critiques of the Iraq War. The war itself is still the subject of intense, highly divisive and bitter debate. The President is routinely called a liar, the government "broken" and "inept" because of the errors that were made in the prosecution of the war, and no one can argue that the #1 issue that is driving the midterm elections is the war in Iraq.

According to the critics, President Bush is to blame for the polarization of the American electorate into pro-war and anti-war factions. The press often laments how divided we are as a people today, and I've seen various pundits - from both the left and right - complain about how disunited those of us in the United States are about the war. Remember how united the country was behind Roosevelt and our boys back in World War II? What happened to America? Have we lost the will to fight?

Nary a week goes by without someone asking a question along those lines.

And everytime I hear this, I can't help but shake my head in wonder. There seems to be a commonly accepted belief about American wars that with the exceptions of Vietnam and Iraq, the American people always "rally around the flag" and get behind their leaders whenever America commits her troops to battle. The myth of American unity in times of war is so firmly entrenched in our national psyche that its hard for the average American to recall, or to even accept, that the divisiveness and disunity we see today in regards to the war in Iraq is not only normal, its healthy. It's what keeps our democracy honest, and ensures we'll never join Britain, Germany, Rome and Persia on the list of fallen empires.

With the possible exception of World War II, every single war in American history - from the Revolution to Iraq - has been bitterly polarizing to an extent that makes what we're seeing today look tame by comparison. The claims made against President Bush today - that he engineered the war in Iraq to get rich, that he lied and manufactured evidence to 'mislead us into war' are nothing new, and not even that slanderous compared to what has been said about other American presidents and their justification for war.

The American Revolution

The American Revolution itself was not as black and white as we are often led to believe. Over fifty-thousand colonials fought with the British against the revolutionaries during that war. Loyalist pockets were found in nearly every single American colony, with New York City being the capital of anti-revolutionary fervor in the Colonies. Even after the convention that drafted the Declaration of Independence, up until the very last day there were calls for rapprochement with George III.

The War of 1812

The War of 1812 threatened to tear the infant Republic to pieces. The war was driven by Henry Clay and a group of anti-British Congressmen dubbed the "War Hawks", and supported by President James Madison. Commonly referred to at the time as "Mr. Madison's War", the United States wasn't prepared when it began, and this fact resulted in the forced resignation of Secretary of War William Eustis. His successor, John Armstrong, faired little better, being forced to resign following the debacle of the invasion of Canada and the burning of Washington. At the time, the federal government was forced to rely upon the militias of the several states to populate the army, and New England refused to provide them. Not only did New England refuse, they threatened to secede over the war, a division that the British exploited. The fledling Federalist Party, the party of Adams, and Hamilton, was destroyed by their efforts to oppose the war.

The Mexican War

The Mexican War was bitterly opposed in Congress, despite only 16 members of the whig Party willing to vote against the final resolution that authorized it. Congress went so far as to pass a resolution at its conclusion that declared the Mexican War both "unnecessary" and "unconstitutional". President Polk was accused of starting the war as a shameless land grab, enabling America to steal Texas and California from the weakened and barely stable Mexican government, which had barely won their independence from spain.

"All this shows that the President is, in no ways, satisfied with his own positions. First he takes up one, and in attempting to argue us into it, he argues himself out of it; then seizes another, and goes through the same process; and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off. His mind, tasked beyond it's power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature, on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it can settle down, and be at ease...Again, it is a singular omission in this message, that it, no where intimates when the President expects the war to terminate..."

This quote could easily have been lifted from the Congressional Record of House and Senate debates on Iraq. But it was actually given by future president Abraham Lincoln on the floor of the House of Representatives on January 12, 1848.

Lincoln went so far as to accuse Polk of lying to the American people in his justification for the war. Lincoln drafted what are commonly referred to as the "Spot Resolutions", that demanded proof from the President that even a single 'spot' of American blood was shed on American soil before we declared war.

The Civil War

The Civil War was obviously the most polarizing of any in American history, but what is so interesting is the viciousness with which Lincoln was treated. Not only were his policies excoriated - by the Democrats as being draconian and unconstitutional and by the Republicans as being too lenient and too slow to move on slavery - but he was personally attacked. He was routinely referred to as the "ape" in the White House, jokes made about his background as a country lawyer, ridiculed for being a "bumpkin" and not up to the task of prosecuting the war.

He was accused of micromanagement, especially during the search for a commander of the Army of the Potomac with the willingness to fight, and while much has been made of the former army Generals who have spoken out against the war in Iraq today, Lincoln faced George McLellan, a man he chose to lead the Union Army, as his opponent in the 1864 presidential election, and who ran on a platform of ending the war quickly and making peace with the South. Riots against the draft in New York City and elsewhere killed dozens of people and the war ended with Lincoln assassinated by a Southern sympathizer.

The Spanish-American War

The Spanish-American War was more popular, but arguably less legitimate than its predecessors, with the familiar hindsight charges of exaggeration and falsification of the grounds for the war emerging again.

The theme of Americans being "mislead into war" is nothing new. Unlike today, however, the American people weren't so cynical, and they ate up the exaggerations and propaganda printed by the Hearst and Pulitzer publishing empires about Spanish atrocities in Cuba, and the deliberate sinking of the USS Maine, which is still the subject of considerable debate, but was more likely caused by a coal bunker fire that caused an explosion in the forward powder magazine than by a mine.

President McKinley and Speaker of the House Thomas Reed did their best to avert a war, but public pressure from Democrats and Republican war hawks like Theodore Roosevelt forced their hand.

World War I

World War I was yet another example of divisiveness. Although the war started in 1913, American popular opinion was heavily in favor of neutrality. Former President Theodore Roosevelt was extremely critical of President Woodrow Wilson's handling of the numerous crises that eventually led to American intervention, going so far as to call him a "coward" for not taking stronger action against Germany attacks on American shipping. The US House of Representatives approved the declaration of war by a 373-50 vote, and the Senate approved with an 82-6 vote, hardly unanimous.

The Korean War

The Korean War, coming so closely on the heels of World War II was one of the most unpopular wars in American history. Unlike World War II, we hadn't been attacked by the North Koreans and the justification for the war was harder to accept.

Despite having won World War II less then four years before and ongoing tensions with the Soviet Union, America was completely unready for another major conflict. The readiness issue resulted in the forced resignation of Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and propelled Lyndon Johnson into the national limelight for the first time. Truman's firing of MacArthur cemented his unpopularity, which had be rising throughout his second term.

Harry Truman was reviled by Congress and the American people, recording some of the lowest Presidential approval ratings in American history - he hit 22% at one point, the lowest rating ever recorded for a sitting President. Even Nixon didn't go that low. And although Truman was technically eligible to run for again (the 22nd amendment was passed during his presidency and he was grandfathered in under its terms), he was so damaged by the mismanagement of the Korean War and his firing of MacArthur that after he was defeated in the 1952 New Hampshire Presidential primary by Estes Kefauver he chose not to run again. Truman backed Adlai Stevenson, who eventually lost to Dwight Eisenhower.

Charges of unconstitutional usurpation of authority, an unwillingness to confront communist infiltration of the government and his shielding of communist 'friends' surrounded Truman, and it wasn't until his death during the turbulance of the Vietnam and Watergate eras that he was given credit for his successes.

The Vietnam War

The disunity during the Vietnam was is still present today as part of our modern political memory, but when you look back on the length of the war, its causes, its questionable flashpoint with the Tonkin Gulf incident and the failures of the Johnson Administration, its easy to draw modern parallels to Iraq.

World War II

The only outlier in this discussion is World War II. Unlike nearly every single major war in American history, World War II was generally supported by the American people, even with mounting casualties and frequent defeats during its early days. There was relatively little complaint from the American people when the Marshall Plan dumped the modern equivalent of over a hundred billion dollars into the rebuilding of Europe after the war, but much of that was part of the plan - the Truman administration didn't really publicisize it.

Roosevelt, like all war time Presidents, was indeed a polarizing figure, but even the most ardent critic must admit that he was the right man in the right place at the right time. And, at its heart, there could be no question of the legitimacy of the war.

Reflections

When von Clauswitz wrote that war was merely a continuation of politics by other means, he could have easily been talking about any of the many wars in American history. The polarization and apparent disunity in the American people over the Iraq War is nothing new and its not the harbinger of the end of American democracy.

We haven't "lost our will to fight". War is one of the most serious and sobering steps any country can take to defend or advance its interests and it shouldn't be taken lightly. While I would argue that some of the tin-foil-hat theories that abound regarding the war are unnecessary and unhelpful, at the end of the day it is in the best interests of all of us that we have a healthy debate whenever American military power is used.

Throughout our history, war has almost always brought controversy and an inflammation of our national politics. Presidencies have been made and broken, political parties founded or dissolved, and the character of our nation marked indellably. Whether or not you agree or disagree with the President's decision to go to war in Iraq, how the war has been waged, or what our current strategy should be, it seems clear that these arguments are fundamentally a part of what it means to be an American.

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