The Grand Illusion
As a member of the so-called Silent Generation – not that friends or family would ever call me silent – I’ve occasionally been called “set in my ways” (i.e., old and stubborn), but there’s a reason for that. After you’ve been around a while, you tend to get irascible when you watch the younger generations make the same mistakes their parents and grandparents did. Especially when those mistakes cost billions of dollars and get thousands or tens of thousands of people get killed.
We had a Civil War, once upon a time, and over 600,000 young men were killed, because it was not only a civil war, but a culture war. One culture thought people were not born equal and that those born white were superior; the other culture believed that people were created equal. The “equal creation” culture won the shooting war, but they’re still fighting the guerilla tactics of the white nationalists over a hundred-fifty years later. And this is in a theoretically democratic culture.
Then there were the two world wars, in the first of which a bloc of countries that believed in authoritarian rule took on a group of nations that, in general, did not. The second world war followed the same general pattern, as did the Korean War.
All that, while real to me, is ancient history to virtually all Americans.
More recent history, if still ancient to the younger generations, includes the Vietnam War, in which we sided, in fact, with an abusive colonial-derived authoritarian regime against a popular and also abusive but local communist uprising.
Then came the Middle East mélange, a series of conflicts where the United States attempted so-called nation building as an alternative to abusive sectarian/authoritarian regimes in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, once more, Iran.
And somehow, everyone is surprised, again, that the truly abused peoples in these lands really don’t want to “fight to the death” against their home-grown abusers. They’ll accept them, if reluctantly, in a way that they won’t accept foreign (to them) western democratic systems. And, in a way, they’re right to reject our style of governing for their cultures.
After all, we’re still fighting guerilla actions here at home resulting from a conflict that theoretically ended over a hundred and fifty years ago.
How many kids in the USA know 1492, 1776, 1861, and 1941 better than they know some athlete’s jersey number? How many know their own country’s history some tv show’s story line?
And will they ever realize what their ignorance is costing all of us? Because until they do, they won’t have any incentive to change it.
> won the shooting war, but…
Yes. Glad to hear that stated directly.
I might add that much of the bigotry and prejudice was purposeful political fabrication, wilfully crafted. Some might find the history book “White Trash” instructive.
Some years back when the war in Afghanistan was active (and my son was there) I met a Pakistani in the gym who had an interesting take on the “hearts and minds” approach.
We do not want Western democracy, we want a benign warlord
“…abusive sectarian/authoritarian regimes in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan”… and Israel, where anyone who is not the right type of Jew is a second-class citizen, at best. I have totally lost any respect for ANY of them.
My take is that we should build a wall around around the whole region, and remove it only when we no longer hear bullets flying. Or use Torquemada’s solution.
Sorry, I have been reading too many news reports.
“Then came the Middle East mélange, a series of conflicts where the United States attempted so-called nation building as an alternative to abusive sectarian/authoritarian regimes in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now, once more, Iran.
And somehow, everyone is surprised, again, that the truly abused peoples in these lands really don’t want to “fight to the death” against their home-grown abusers. They’ll accept them, if reluctantly, in a way that they won’t accept foreign (to them) western democratic systems. And, in a way, they’re right to reject our style of governing for their cultures.”
I don’t strongly object to what form of government they prefer, so long as it is not hostile beyond its borders to those who are not (recently, not looking back over generations of back and forth grievances) first hostile to it – and preferably does not kill of lots of its own citizens, either. As an example, the PRC so far hasn’t much crossed the first line directly, but what it’s done to its Uighur among others isn’t excusable.
Few other than the Swiss and the US founders (who looked back to Greek democracy and the Roman Republic, for all their faults) have a long enough tradition of democracy to strongly desire it. A lot of Europeans still think more like subjects than citizens even if nearly all their remaining monarchies are symbolic. Only now it’s the EU bureaucracy rather than a monarch that they tolerate.
But there have been relatively benevolent non-democracies, too. The Mongol Empire (certainly authoritarian!) had at one time been credited with enforcing its own laws to the degree that a virgin carrying gold alone would arrive safe and unmolested.
The Iranians since their revolution kill their own in large numbers and export violence via proxies beyond their borders, as just one very problematic example.
IMO western democracy IS better than everything else. But the existence of tolerable alternatives does not imply that ALL alternatives should be tolerated. At some point, reasonable reluctance to impose very specific ideology or morality can be exaggerated into a level of relativism that leads to chaos or worse.
Systemic evil must not be tolerated. We shouldn’t be quick to declare evil, but SOME objective standard must exist.
Forever wars are a mistake, being un-winnable and gaining little worth the cost. But that doesn’t mean always waiting until one is first attacked.
I think you mistyped this line, it should read:
The Americans since their revolution kill their own in large numbers and export violence via proxies beyond their borders, as just one very problematic example.
Only now it’s the EU bureaucracy rather than a monarch that they tolerate.
EU bureaucracy provides a common currency, a lack of borders between neighbours, investment in strategic transport links, historical and cultural sites, and reliable food out of season. It has nothing to do with the day to day of how people live their lives, that’s all managed by their own governments. It has a fraction of the involvement in lives that the US Federal government has, but then again I think you railed against them too.
We were certainly hard on those pre-European persons in the Americas (the Spanish were arguably worse), but that’s almost always the fate of those being colonized onto. A large portion of their losses were diseases they hadn’t been exposed to. Occasionally that was weaponized, but most of the deaths were not due to that. Given the relative capabilities, the colonizers were NOT going to simply go home, and conflict could hardly be avoided.
The Good Guys (TM) won the Civil War, at considerable cost to both sides. Not that long after, the Bad Guys acted to diminish and delay what improvements it could have caused. Still, we get better, if two steps forward and one back.
Some of our wars have been quite avoidable. But we can’t help but have worldwide interests (with coastlines on both major oceans). A portion of them are IMO justifiable, although it’s really in hindsight that one could say whether or not any particular one was. Events happening now could end well or badly or in a slightly different standoff; but it may take months or longer to find out which. But not decades.
LEM has set Politico cartoonist of:
https://www.politico.com/cartoons/2026/04/03/matt-wuerker-cartoons-april-2026-00859067?slide=0