Fragging the Founders
Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News is getting slammed for a comment on a Web site where he talks about stories in the news cycle. The topic is the suggestion that Iran's president-elect was one of the 1979 hostage-takers.
Now, as I read that, it doesn't say Williams said that about the founders. His "us" could be construed to mean "we who said the founders could be called terrorists," or to mean "we who were in the meeting." I'll leave it to him to try to step back out of that minefield.
There's so much wrong with the suggestion that the Founding Fathers were the moral equivalent of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. It's an idea so mind-bogglingly stupid that, I venture to say, only a TV news executive could have thought of it. Or a documentary film producer. Williams' tossed-off quip recalls Michael Moore taunt that the Iraqi "insurgents" are not terrorists, but "minutemen."
The indigenous revolt against the superpower army from abroad faces the same range of challenges, the same tactical choices. The insurgents inevitably will make some of the same choices, in any generation. Every war has frayed edges, and individual units under pressure may degenerate into armed gangs. You can find them in the American Revolution. But in my study of it, they occur most often among the Loyalist regiments that rode with the Redcoats, such as the notorious troops of "Bloody Tarleton.
Williams isn't writing about irregular troops, however. He's talking about the American leadership. He (or whoever at NBC advocated this nauseous moral equivalency) should take some time while sitting under the hair dryer to read David Hackett Fischer's "Washington's Crossing," and learn what made the American Revolution so different -- so exceptional, to use the damned word.
Fischer's concluding chapter explains why:
It had been a year of disasters. The British routed the Continental army from Long Island, then captured New York City along with many prisoners. The redcoats next pushed George Washington back through New Jersey, waging an increasingly savage campaign not just against the Continental army but against the whole "Levelling, underbred, Artfull, Race of people" they found in America.
Yet early in 1777, John Adams wrote to his wife, "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this -- Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."
What they fought for colored how they fought. And here, too, the comparison with modern Iraq is instructive. The American revolutionaries had woven into their flag not just stars and stripes, but ideals of liberty, whether it was the learned political theorizing of Madison, the commercial common sense of Franklin, the town meeting democracy of New England soldiers, or the stoic self-discipline of Washington. Educated or ignorant, they built their cause around this quality, learned from their experiences as British citizens, and it informed their decisions on the battlefield.
There were no Geneva Conventions in the mid-18th century, but every soldier and officer understood the customs of war, which were binding on their sense of honor as warriors. A wounded or cornered enemy could ask "quarter" from the other side, and there were standards for accepting it, or rejecting it. Plundering was universal, but if a house was occupied, and the owners did not resist, the proper plunderer always left the family enough to live on, and he did not take personal items.
There was no international bureaucracy to threaten a violator with a lengthy trial in the Hague, of course, but his own officers could order him summarily shot, which does count as a sort of deterrent. Or the bad behavior could invite like reprisals from the other side. Officers of the two armies in the Revolution traded hot charges across the lines when the system broke down.
Americans, unlike the British, generally extended the right of quarter to their enemies, even as the Americans reacted with indignation as British slaughter of wounded and helpless Continental soldiers. After the Battle of Princeton, Washington put a trusted officer in charge of the 211 captured privates with these instructions: "Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren. ... Provide everything necessary for them on the road." Hessian prisoners were so well treated that, once they had got over the shock of it, they could be sent from one holding place to the next without an armed escort. After the war, almost a quarter of the Hessians remained in America. Their names still dot the phone book in Chester County, Pa., when I grew up there.
Any large army is going to have in its ranks men whose better natures will unhinge in the stress of war. Horror and brutality will happen every time an army marches to battle, as sure as innocent civilians will be killed. If you can't accept that, better to be a thoroughgoing pacifist. At least it's an honest position. Better than pretending you didn't know. The job of a nation and its leaders, military and civilian, is to ensure the horrors are as few as possible, and the war crimes are exceptions.
The fact that there were many exceptions to the American ideal of 1776 -- especially in the case of loyalist legions and runaway slaves -- does not change the essential fact that the American leaders attempted not just to win, but to fight a war they could look back on with pride, and that would be a fitting birth to the nation they sought to make. And they largely succeeded. "The moral choices in the War of Independence," Fischer writes, "enlarged the meaning of the American Revolution."
The Islamist terrorists, too, have their ideals: a terrorized and repressed people, rule by the gun and the knife, Ba'athist fascism and Islamist fanaticism. They, too, make their moral choices based on their ideals. Does anyone, even Michael Moore, imagine that their "victory," should that nightmare come, would be followed by a replay of Philadelphia, 1787?
As Fischer writes in his concluding paragraph:
[... continued here ...]
It is a story that will be at or near the top of our broadcast and certainly made for a robust debate in our afternoon editorial meeting, when several of us raised the point (I'll leave it to others to decide germaneness) that several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time by the Crown in England.
Now, as I read that, it doesn't say Williams said that about the founders. His "us" could be construed to mean "we who said the founders could be called terrorists," or to mean "we who were in the meeting." I'll leave it to him to try to step back out of that minefield.
There's so much wrong with the suggestion that the Founding Fathers were the moral equivalent of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. It's an idea so mind-bogglingly stupid that, I venture to say, only a TV news executive could have thought of it. Or a documentary film producer. Williams' tossed-off quip recalls Michael Moore taunt that the Iraqi "insurgents" are not terrorists, but "minutemen."
The indigenous revolt against the superpower army from abroad faces the same range of challenges, the same tactical choices. The insurgents inevitably will make some of the same choices, in any generation. Every war has frayed edges, and individual units under pressure may degenerate into armed gangs. You can find them in the American Revolution. But in my study of it, they occur most often among the Loyalist regiments that rode with the Redcoats, such as the notorious troops of "Bloody Tarleton.
Williams isn't writing about irregular troops, however. He's talking about the American leadership. He (or whoever at NBC advocated this nauseous moral equivalency) should take some time while sitting under the hair dryer to read David Hackett Fischer's "Washington's Crossing," and learn what made the American Revolution so different -- so exceptional, to use the damned word.
Fischer's concluding chapter explains why:
In 1776, American leaders believed that it was not enough to win the war. They also had to win in a way that was consistent with the values of their society and the principles of their cause. One of their greatest achievements in the winter campaign of 1776-77 was to manage the war in a manner that was true to the expanding humanitarian ideals of the American Revolution. ... In Congress and the army, American leaders resolved that the War of Independence would be conducted with a respect for human rights, even of the enemy. This idea grew stronger during the campaign of 1776-77, not weaker as is commonly the case in war.
It had been a year of disasters. The British routed the Continental army from Long Island, then captured New York City along with many prisoners. The redcoats next pushed George Washington back through New Jersey, waging an increasingly savage campaign not just against the Continental army but against the whole "Levelling, underbred, Artfull, Race of people" they found in America.
Yet early in 1777, John Adams wrote to his wife, "I know of no policy, God is my witness, but this -- Piety, Humanity and Honesty are the best Policy. Blasphemy, Cruelty and Villainy have prevailed and may again. But they won't prevail against America, in this Contest, because I find the more of them are employed, the less they succeed."
What they fought for colored how they fought. And here, too, the comparison with modern Iraq is instructive. The American revolutionaries had woven into their flag not just stars and stripes, but ideals of liberty, whether it was the learned political theorizing of Madison, the commercial common sense of Franklin, the town meeting democracy of New England soldiers, or the stoic self-discipline of Washington. Educated or ignorant, they built their cause around this quality, learned from their experiences as British citizens, and it informed their decisions on the battlefield.
Not all American leaders agreed. Others in Adams's generation believed, as do many in our own time, that America should serve its own national self-interest, defined in terms of wealth and power, and seek it by any means. But most men of the American Enlightenment shared John Adams's way of thinking. In the critical period of 1776 and 1777, leaders of both the Continental army and the Congress adopted the policy of humanity. That choice was reinforced when they learned that some British leaders decided to act differently. Every report of wounded soldiers refused quarter, of starving captives mistreated in the prison hulks at New York, and of the plunder and rapine in New Jersey persuaded leaders in Congress and the army to go a different way, as an act of principle and enlightened self-interest.
There were no Geneva Conventions in the mid-18th century, but every soldier and officer understood the customs of war, which were binding on their sense of honor as warriors. A wounded or cornered enemy could ask "quarter" from the other side, and there were standards for accepting it, or rejecting it. Plundering was universal, but if a house was occupied, and the owners did not resist, the proper plunderer always left the family enough to live on, and he did not take personal items.
There was no international bureaucracy to threaten a violator with a lengthy trial in the Hague, of course, but his own officers could order him summarily shot, which does count as a sort of deterrent. Or the bad behavior could invite like reprisals from the other side. Officers of the two armies in the Revolution traded hot charges across the lines when the system broke down.
Americans, unlike the British, generally extended the right of quarter to their enemies, even as the Americans reacted with indignation as British slaughter of wounded and helpless Continental soldiers. After the Battle of Princeton, Washington put a trusted officer in charge of the 211 captured privates with these instructions: "Treat them with humanity, and Let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren. ... Provide everything necessary for them on the road." Hessian prisoners were so well treated that, once they had got over the shock of it, they could be sent from one holding place to the next without an armed escort. After the war, almost a quarter of the Hessians remained in America. Their names still dot the phone book in Chester County, Pa., when I grew up there.
Any large army is going to have in its ranks men whose better natures will unhinge in the stress of war. Horror and brutality will happen every time an army marches to battle, as sure as innocent civilians will be killed. If you can't accept that, better to be a thoroughgoing pacifist. At least it's an honest position. Better than pretending you didn't know. The job of a nation and its leaders, military and civilian, is to ensure the horrors are as few as possible, and the war crimes are exceptions.
The fact that there were many exceptions to the American ideal of 1776 -- especially in the case of loyalist legions and runaway slaves -- does not change the essential fact that the American leaders attempted not just to win, but to fight a war they could look back on with pride, and that would be a fitting birth to the nation they sought to make. And they largely succeeded. "The moral choices in the War of Independence," Fischer writes, "enlarged the meaning of the American Revolution."
The Islamist terrorists, too, have their ideals: a terrorized and repressed people, rule by the gun and the knife, Ba'athist fascism and Islamist fanaticism. They, too, make their moral choices based on their ideals. Does anyone, even Michael Moore, imagine that their "victory," should that nightmare come, would be followed by a replay of Philadelphia, 1787?
As Fischer writes in his concluding paragraph:
[American soldiers and civilians in 1776] set a high example, and we have much to learn from them. Much recent historical writing has served us ill in that respect. In the late twentieth century, too many scholars tried to make the American past into a record of crime and folly. Too many writers have told us that we are captives of our darker selves and helpless victims of our history. It isn't so, and never was. The story of Washington's Crossing tells us that Americans in an earlier generation were capable of acting in a higher spirit -- and so are we.
[... continued here ...]
Labels: American Revolution, Brian Williams, Founders, George Washington, terrorism
