Unified National Will as an Instrument of National Power

[Around Midnight]

Marc’s (above) comments are interesting and I found a lot to think about in his thoughts. For now I would like to focus on his statement:

“Of probably greater concern, at least to me, is that we are not really operating in a global situation where "national will" is the determining factor. While it is important, what needs to really be considered is ‘trans-national will’.”

I think this is a miss-reading of the American experience. Gen Maxwell Taylor’s words in his book “Swords and Ploughshares” have profound meaning for me:

"One thing is sure: the international challenge tends to merge more and more with the domestic challenge until the two become virtually indistinguishable. The threats from both sources are directed to the same sources of national power which provide strength both for our national security and our domestic welfare. It is clear, I believe, that we cannot overcome abroad and fail at home, or succeed at home and succumb abroad. To progress toward the goals of our security and welfare we must advance concurrently on both foreign and domestic fronts by means of integrated national power responsive to a unified national will."

I am proposing that a positive relationship between foreign policy and a unified national will are absolutely required in times of intense and/or sustained US combat operations overseas. There can be no redemptive US participation in Marc’s so called “trans-national will” when it involves combat or war…, if there is not a supportive national will to do so. The national endurance of the military and the economic, political, industrial and cultural strength of American is powerfully mobilized with the onset of the commitment of the People. Not only that, the ability for the nation to sustain combat causalities is dependent on the people’s commitment to the mission and objectives of the war or combat operations.

As I have written before, the war in Iraq does not have the commitment of the American People. More than 64% of the American people are opposed to the war (CNN Poll Oct. 13-15, 2006). We are a divided nation and the grim arithmetic of war keeps adding up it’s horrific toll of suffering. Bruce Catton (“America Goes To War; An Introduction to the Civil War and It’s meaning to Americans Today;” p. 32) describes a similar situation at the beginning of the Civil War. In 1861 there existed the

“…possibility that the two political parties (Republicans and Democrats) in the North would eventually line up, as a war party and a peace party. If the war was to be won, the administration had to win and hold the support of a great many people besides those who had voted for it in 1860… Mr. Lincoln met the problem at the very beginning, and met it in the traditional American way – the way of ward and courthouse politics. That is, he gave to various important people, including the leaders of the political opposition a piece of the job.”

Lincoln understood the importance of a unified national will and he invoked it through the appointment of generals and civilian leaders (including the Vice President), in whom the constituencies of a highly divergent America believed in. Any plan for the US war in Iraq that is not supported by an unified national will is a plan for failure. Can this administration and can our system of Government do what Lincoln was able to do? Is this nation doomed to be hijacked by the Executive Branch's loyalty to it’s minority base? Our government should take a page from Lincoln and mobilize a unified national will. As Catton wrote (“America Goes to War;” p. 47):

“Often enough, the political system by which our democracy works brings out, or seems to bring out, the worst in people; the saving grace is that in times of crises it also brings out the best, and the best is pretty good.”

Now is the time for a unified national will.