A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
On the podcast tomorrow, Rob and I will be talking tomorrow with Bing West, a soldier's soldier and a journalist's journalist. A Marine, Col. West served in Vietnam, writing a book about his experiences, The Village, that remains on the commandant's list of recommended books four decades later. An
assistant secretary of defense during the Reagan administration, Col. West has reported extensively on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, always writing from the point of the view of the man who does the fighting, the American grunt.
On the podcast we'll be discussing Col. West's latest book, The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan. The book is fascinating--Col. West traveled to Afghanistan eight times--but I was struck by a single sentence. Just one. A simple, declarative statement that seems obvious the moment you read, but that says--well, in a way it says everything.
America is the last Western nation standing that fights for what it believes.
Wow. That sentence just sort of detonates, doesn't it?
Join us for the podcast tomorrow--we should have it up by the afternoon. And in the meantime? Read that sentence over a couple of times.
The United States of America, still the exceptional nation.
- Comment (13)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (4)
Comments :
Nov '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
Reminds me of the lines from President Reagan's A Time for Choosing speech: "If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth."
Jul '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
Peter, thanks so much to you, Rob and Diane for arranging Colonel West's appearance. I am so looking forward to the podcast.
Bing West is a stalwart hero of the kind only America could produce.
Edited on Mar 30, 2011 at 11:01pmOct '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
Bing West certainly knows how to turn a phrase. Consider this excerpt from his previous book, The Strongest Tribe:
Oct '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
That makes me think of what happened with Spain when the train bombings influenced the elections and force the people to try to appease the jihadists. It was such a striking contrast with an American response to an attack.
Aug '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
Exactly right. I've lived in many European countries, and we're the last country on the planet capable of defending and preserving the Judeo-Christian ethos; the foundation of all human rights and liberties.
Consider that the Charter of the United Nations spells out these ideals, and all the nations of the world have signed on to the Charter. Hypocrisy and betrayal are barely strong enough words to use for what has happened to us.
Dec '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
It's a great sentence. But is it true?
Our beliefs are so fickle that any fight stands a chance of being abandoned in the middle.
Maybe my beliefs don't. Maybe your beliefs don't either, but in aggregate, what America believes is as volatile as nitrates.
Jun '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
I was thinking the same thing. As much as I desperately want it to be true - and I do think there is sufficient evidence to suggest that it may very well be in some ways - the fragility of that ideal is frightenly real. When the progressive impulse is to remove and expunge the patriotic pulse from America's young, pushing their notion of the greater good at the expense of liberty, the result is to eat away at the ideal Col. West's sentence suggests.
We may be the last bulwark of Western Civilization. But are we (as a nation) fighting because we still believe in those principal ideas, or are we simply fighting?
Mar '11
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
America may be the last Western nation standing that fights for what it believes, but only when there is a consensus that is shared by the people and the President. Sadly, many of our once-communal values are not as broadly shared as they were. And we’re hampered further by a president who is strangely disconnected from the historic virtues many, if not most, of his fellow citizens still cherish. It’s hard to fight for your beliefs. It’s impossible if you don’t know what you believe in.
Jan '11
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
I don't see that sentence as a description, but as a challenge.
We ought to fight for what we believe, because it will extinguish unless we do. I recall the biblical story where Jesus says that not everyone who says "Lord, Lord" will be saved, only those who actually do the will of the Lord. In the same way, not everyone who says, "Freedom! Justice!" will deserve it.
Aug '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
Peter Robinson: America is the last Western nation standing that fights for what it believes.
Wow. That sentence just sort of detonates, doesn't it?
I don't get it.
Now, I think that Libya is a mistake, but it strikes me as an idealistic mistake. Moreover, it was France and Britain's mistake before it was our mistake. So how can you tell me that France and Britain aren't standing and fighting for what they believe? Similarly, what about Canada, which has a military organized almost entirely around humanitarian peace-keeping missions? How about Australia, a country that has been with us in basically every war for the last 100 years?
Sure, these countries aren't as gung ho as the US of A, but they aren't completely cynical realpolitik weasels either.
Aug '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
If what we believe in is bleeding ourselves dry and mortgaging the future of our children to pay for dubious foreign entanglements to "make the work safe for democracy" and to subsidize our own luxuriant lifestyles, then that statement is probably true.
Dec '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
Our luxuriant lifestyles are not America. Americans, whether as soldiers or diplomats fighting in negotiations, do not fight for luxuriant lifestyles. In my experience, neither soldiers nor diplomats accustomed to luxuriant lifestyles fight, except amongst themselves.
I fight on the environmental front, because I have seen the environmental front, outside of American protection. My father was a diplomat that fought up from deseperate poverty and fought desperate poverty. One of my uncles was a war hero that I had never heard about, never reallly understood, that also grew out of desperate poverty.
When I attended that uncle's funeral in a tiny chapel, up in New Jersey, the somber proceedings were disturbed by loud noises from outside, then the doors burst open and an Air Force honor guard marched in.
It was...disruptive. These youngsters marched in, took over the proceedings in the quiet chapel, and thunderously folded a flag for the widow of the departed that had been well into his eighties.
Sure, we had all known our family member, but as a lighthearted person that, in my case always accused me of having been ruined by attending a university.
(continued)
Dec '10
Re: A Single Sentence From Col. Bing West
The chapel fell silent under the interruption and the Honor Guard folded the flag for my aunt. The service eventually ended and I sought out the soldiers, under a tree in full uniforms on a hot day, to thank them.
The Captain in charge and I talked and she asked me if I knew about my uncle, when he had been a POW. I said I did, we all knew he had been a POW. But we didn't. The reason she had been sent there was that he had been a POW four times, after getting shot down. Four times he had been shot down over enemy lines, captured, escaped, walked his way back to American lines then climbed back into a plane.
That was a determined person that was beyond adolescent bravado, that fought for what he believed in. He also never made it past Lt. Colonel, in the Air Force, even though he was in from early WW II through the 1970s; no college, you know.
I fight lonely, meaningless, environmental battles as possibly the only conservative biologist and I win if I have a customer that wants to fight. We must fight for what we believe.