TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012891/0128640.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.5 KB | 136 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 100

How the War Can Change America


By Charles Krauthammer


    In the great debate leading up to the gulf war, the real
issue was whether this fight was about Kuwait or about Iraq.
For those who opposed the war, it was about Kuwait -- and
restoring the Emir to his throne, as many Senators argued, is
not exactly the stuff that moral crusades are made of. For
those prepared to risk war, the real issue at stake was Iraq.
It was not that one small innocent country had been violated
but that one large criminal country was on the march and had
to be stopped.

    That is how the issue looked until Jan. 16. But war is an
exercise in surprise, and the real surprise of this one may be
that it was not about Kuwait, not about Iraq, not even about
the future of the Middle East, however much all of these will
be shaped by the outcome. It may turn out to have been a war
about America.

    Except for revolution, nothing changes a country more than
war. Indeed, the very definition of a people often revolves
around a reference to war. We speak of the antebellum South,
prewar Germany, post-Vietnam America. If the war in the gulf
ends the way it began -- with a dazzling display of American
technological superiority, individual grit and, most
unexpectedly for Saddam, national resolve -- we will no longer
speak of post-Vietnam America. A new, post-gulf America will
emerge, its self-image, sense of history, even its political
discourse transformed.

    The most extreme example of such a transformative war is the
Six-Day War. It changed Israel from a weak, marginal refuge for
refugees, clinging to the shores of the Mediterranean, to the
very symbol of self-reliance, power and valor. (An image
subsequently transformed, of course, by ensuing violent
upheavals, namely the Yom Kippur War, Lebanon and the
intifadeh.) It is too early to assume that America will enjoy
a similar triumph in the gulf war. But if this war should
conclude half as decisively as the Six-Day War, America will not
be the same.

    The cliche that generals are always fighting the last war
is far less true than the notion that a nation is always
reliving it. Great wars define the psyche and sensibilities of
a people for decades -- until the next one rewrites memories
and reshapes character. The legacy of World War I defined the
Western peoples for 20 years. The sense of order, optimism and
patriotism that marked the Edwardian age died in the trenches
of Verdun. In their place arose the pacifism, the nihilism, the
psychic cubism of the '20s and '30s.

    These were in turn overthrown by World War II, which, in
America in particular, produced a hunger for normalcy in
domestic life and a self-confident sense of mission (captured
by J.F.K.'s "We shall bear any burden" Inaugural Address) in
international life. The long twilight struggle of the cold war
could have been sustained only by a people that had lived
through World War II.

    Then came Vietnam. The residue of World War II was Bretton
Woods, NATO, the free world. All that is left of Vietnam is the
Vietnam Memorial. The confidence in America's right and trust
in America's power that were the legacy of World War II
collapsed in the face of ambiguity and defeat in Vietnam.
Vietnam became a metaphor for futility, a symptom of the
corrosion and corruption of the American dream. The notion of
American decline, prefigured in Jimmy Carter's idea of national
limits, could exist only in a people still demoralized by
defeat in Vietnam.

    Vietnam was not just a feeling. It became an argument. It
became the touchstone of every subsequent national debate:
Lebanon, Panama and, most recently, the gulf. The subtext of
every debate became, Is this or is this not another Vietnam?
Indeed, in order to take the country with him into the gulf,
President Bush had to promise explicitly that "this will not
be another Vietnam." If the gulf war turns out well, such
assurances will no longer be necessary. Vietnam will be retired
as the defining American experience of this age.

    What is at stake in the gulf war is the Vietnam legacy,
whether it should be seen as a historical aberration or the
historical norm. In Vietnam, was America defeated by a
constellation of contingencies, or was character destiny? Did
it succumb to an unfavorable local topography (that neutralized
American technological superiority), a misapprehension of the
enemy and an undermining cultural revolution at home? Or did
it succumb to itself, to overweening ambition and moral
blindness, to a refusal to acknowledge its own mortality and
limits?

    For 20 years this debate has been replayed endlessly, often
in microcosm. Take the most recent gulf debate about America's
forte, air power. In Congress one heard time and again that air
power cannot win wars: Vietnam proved that. Did it, or did it
prove that air power cannot win wars in dense jungle against
irregular units on bicycles? In the next such debate about the
adequacy of air power, the "lessons of the gulf" will be the
new reference point.

    The larger question, of course, is the adequacy -- moral,
material and martial -- of America. A month ago, conventional
wisdom had the U.S. being overtaken as a great power by Japan.
Perhaps. But is making a superior Walkman a better index of
technological sophistication than making laser bombs that enter
hangars through the front door? Is a nation's ability to make
VCRs a better index of power than the ability to defeat
aggression?

    A post-gulf America might see its economic problems in
perspective: not as a metaphor for corruption and decline, not
as an indictment of a society's health and vitality, not as a
crisis of the soul but simply as economic problems -- a product
of mistaken policies and misaligned resources. A post-gulf
America might even see itself in perspective: as the planet's
dominant power, afflicted with problems but able nonetheless,
by prodigious acts of will, to turn history.

    Of course, if the war turns out badly, this new American
self-image will turn into a desert mirage. And a historic
opportunity for the self-transformation of America will have
been missed. Even if the war does turn out well, the postwar
euphoria will eventually fade too. But it will leave something
behind: a renewed America, self-confident and assured. That was
the legacy of the last good war, World War II, a legacy lost
in the jungles of Vietnam.