by Tim Moore

 

Last week a former Navy classmate at Defense Language Institute sent me some inspiring photographs of two Nimitz Class Carriers berthed side-by-side at Pearl Harbor; the super-power capital ships of today's American Navy. Regardless of your point of view these carriers and the men and women who populate them are awe-inspiring. Yet the world has changed and the state of war is another matter; complicated and non linear. Ours is no longer a time such as when Delcasse', Salisbury, or Churchill guided their nations through the earlier years of the 20th century when time ran longer, and events so measured that even war clouds gathered with a kind of baroque majesty.
 
Over the years we had hoped to get it right...to succeed where others failed as the country's leadership archived lessons-learned from earlier wars, up through Vietnam and on to the Gulf campaigns. Without bias toward dove or hawk, as we view our current war aimed at power-hungry fanatics playing chicken, some ask if it's a "war" at all. The table stakes unequivocally proclaim that it is; begging for an alliance between isolationists and traditionalists. Can we, do we memorialize the country's role over the last century? The image seems to be fading like a photograph on a sun-drenched shelf.
 
Exhibit one: when in England at a very prestigious conference, Condi Rice was asked by the Arch Bishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were as simple as "empire building?" Her response was to the point. "Over the years the United States has sent many of its men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we ever asked for in return was enough to bury those who could not come home."
 
Exhibit two: at another conference in France a large number of international engineers were assembling, including French and American delegates. During a break, one of the French engineers button-holed a small group in the back of the room remarking, "Have you heard the latest stunt from the American military? The president is apparently sending an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims. What does the Navy intend to do, bomb them?"
 
A Boeing engineer entered the circle and resolutely replied, "Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear-powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities. They also have cafeterias with the capacity to serve 4,000 people. Our carriers can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water a day and carry dozens of helicopters for use in transporting the injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?" 
 
Are we after all trapped in history, midpoint between a past that seemed dire and cause-worthy, and a future that doesn't care? As we smile ruefully at some of our missteps and policies of the past, for all our ham-handed faults we're still endowed with the power and good intention of American will. It's ours' to lose.
 
High on a seldom visited knoll in Southeast Asia rests a monument that reads:
 
             When you go home remember us to them and say,
             For your tomorrow, we gave our today.