A Nation Like No Other (24 page)

Americans, however, did not stand idly by as our security, prestige, and the cause of liberty eroded. A passionate, conservative activist movement soon gave voice to the millions of Americans who were concerned about our waning influence in the world. Citizen activists joined military and congressional leaders to sound the alarm that Soviet intentions were not as innocuous as Carter and his officials were making them out to be. One notable group, the Committee on the Present Danger, brought together high-profile Democrats and Republicans who supported a stronger commitment to fighting Communism. They would find a spokesman in America's next president.

Ronald Reagan denounced Jimmy Carter's naïve and dangerous world view in his July 1980 acceptance speech for the Republican nomination:

Candidate Reagan then issued a resounding call for a policy of peace through strength:

After taking office in 1981, Reagan asserted the moral will to defend our way of life and devised a comprehensive approach to reverse the string of American setbacks. First, his administration ramped up a defense buildup that the Carter administration had belatedly initiated after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, increasing spending on both conventional and nuclear weapons and forging closer ties with our traditional NATO allies. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP increased from 4.7 percent in 1979 to 6.2 percent in 1986. In dollar terms, this was a rise from $116.3 billion in 1979 to $273.4 billion in 1986.
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Reagan's defense buildup was accompanied by a crucial moral offensive. The president was unafraid to call evil by its name or to point out the moral failures of Soviet Communism. In March 1983, in a speech to Protestant ministers, he cautioned anyone who was tempted to draw moral equivalency between freedom and Communism:

Consistent with his military and moral strategies, Reagan announced just two weeks later a dramatic initiative that would replace the theory that had governed U.S.-Soviet relations since the 1950s.

According to “Mutual Assured Destruction,” or MAD, a nuclear attack by one of the superpowers on the other would provoke nuclear retaliation, assuring the widespread destruction of both countries. This “balance of terror,” it was held, kept both sides safe from nuclear war—neither side would start a war because neither side could win.

While MAD may have provided effective deterrence, Reagan believed the doctrine was morally flawed. Repulsed by the thought that American citizens were living without a defense against nuclear missiles, he believed it was a moral imperative for him to find a way to defend America against incoming nuclear missiles.

In March 1983, Reagan announced plans for his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a ground, air, and space-based weapons program designed to shoot incoming ballistic missiles out of the air. Derisively referring to SDI as “Star Wars,” critics at home derided the plan as implausible. But Soviet leaders viewed SDI as a strategic threat that they could not match or counteract. As a result, they undertook an intensive propaganda campaign, including copious personal insults against Reagan and claims that SDI would enable him to launch a nuclear attack against the Soviet
Union.
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Their aim was to gin up international pressure for the president to abandon SDI.

Ignoring liberals' jeremiads that Reagan's firm policies would result in nuclear war, American citizens knew, by the eve of his landslide reelection in 1984, that the president's comprehensive strategy was working. America was far stronger than it had been in 1980 and had gained substantial leverage in its negotiations with the Soviets. In an October 20, 1984 address to the nation, Reagan touted the effectiveness of his “peace through strength” strategy:

America's strengthened position was evident in Reagan's summits with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, beginning with the Reykjavik summit of October 1986, where Gorbachev offered unprecedented concessions. However, concerned by the advantage America would reap from SDI, Gorbachev pressed for restrictions on the program. When Reagan refused, their preliminary agreement to eliminate all U.S. and Soviet offensive ballistic missiles collapsed.

Reagan's own account of that moment is poignant and indeed a profile in courage. Gorbachev offered nearly complete disarmament of ground-based missiles, a political coup for Reagan in the face of progressive critics, but the caveat was that America must remain defenseless against nuclear attack. The temptation to accept the deal was great, but Reagan had the courage to refuse, knowing that the concession would be just that—a concession, a temporary win with the potential of disaster at some future date.

But the Soviets soon softened their position on SDI, allowing both sides a year later to sign the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement, which eliminated intermediate range ballistic missiles in Europe. Facing economic decline and an eroding international position, with their very legitimacy facing constant American challenges, the Soviets and their East European satellite governments found it increasingly difficult to control their own restive people. Two years later the Berlin Wall fell, and two years after that the Soviet Union dissolved.

The disappearance of the Soviet Union was the end result of a comprehensive and morality-based strategy to promote freedom around the world. Reagan was assisted in this effort by two other world leaders who were committed to the cause of individual dignity and freedom: Pope John Paul II and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Their “triple alliance” combined the strength of America, a renewed vigor from England, and the profound moral convictions of a pope who had survived the tyranny of both Nazism and Communism. These three historic figures confronted Communism without fear or hesitation, harboring no doubts about the righteousness of their cause. They saw no need to flatter Communist leaders or give credence to their grievances against the West. As a result of their unflinching stand for freedom, tens of millions of people have been liberated from their captive governments and have assumed their rightful place in the free world.

The lessons of the Cold War are clear: America is strong and successful when it speaks the truth about our enemies instead of indulging them.
America is the world's foremost advocate of freedom, and it needs to assume the responsibilities that role entails. When we shirk those responsibilities and act like any other nation, the world becomes less free and more dangerous.

The Obama administration, however, has not learned this lesson. Although in the last decade nearly every major terrorist attack or attempted terrorist attack against Americans was carried out by radical Islamists, our current leaders and many of our political elites cannot tell the truth about our enemies or even properly name them—radical Islamist terrorists are referred to by the ridiculous euphemism “violent extremists.” Naturally, if you are so paralyzed by political correctness that you can't even name your enemies, it becomes impossible to devise a comprehensive strategy to defeat them.

This moral obtuseness was shockingly displayed in the government's response to the Fort Hood massacre. After radical Islamist Nidal Malik Hasan murdered thirteen people in a terrorist attack on Fort Hood, Obama's Department of Defense investigated the killings and published a report that failed even once to mention radical Islamism as a cause of Hasan's rampage—in fact, the report did not even state Hasan's name. Apparently, our government found it irrelevant that Hasan was a fairly open Islamist who had corresponded with al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and had shouted “Allahu Akbar” during his killing spree. A Senate investigative committee later denounced the Department of Defense for actively covering up Hasan's obvious Islamist tendencies, and for using vague euphemisms instead of calling our enemies by their rightful name. Ultimately, the committee found that simply recognizing Islamism as a threat and calling it such could have prevented the attack.
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We also saw a lack of moral clarity in the heated objections to the March 2011 congressional hearings on Islamist radicalization. In the days leading up to the hearing, its sponsor, Congressman Peter King (R-NY), was widely lambasted in the media as a bigot and a modern day Joe McCarthy—simply for his willingness to discuss and investigate radical Islam. Accusing King of “singling out” Muslims, some insisted his hearings should cover other kinds of extremists, such as neo-Nazis.
King replied during the hearing that he merely sought to investigate the biggest threat to our safety. He argued, “There is no equivalency of the threat between al Qaeda and neo-Nazis, environmental extremists, or other isolated madmen.”
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Ignoring this undeniable truth, the Left fights tooth-and-nail against any attempt to have an open, honest discussion about the threat of Islamist terrorism. Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson even speculated that King's hearings could
increase
the likelihood of a terrorist attack, exclaiming, “I cannot help but wonder how propaganda about this hearing … will be used to inspire a new generation of suicide bombers.”
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Cowed silence may be the politically correct response to the outrages of radical Islamists, but it's hardly a sound basis for developing a strategy to defend ourselves against them.

The Obama administration could have adopted the Reagan model of peace through strength in order to counter the growing threat of radical Islamism. The president could have spent his first two years in office crafting a comprehensive, innovative plan to isolate, discredit, and defeat those who promote the radical Islamist ideology.

Unfortunately, he opted for an incoherent course whose primary objective seems to be currying favor with foreign governments, particularly hostile ones, by scaling back America's role in the world. With his frequent apologies to foreign audiences for what he perceives to be America's past sins, his demonstrative bowing to foreign leaders, and his indulgence of our enemies' grievances, Obama has willfully sought to undo America's dominance in world affairs.

We saw this inclination early in his presidency. In June 2009, police forces of Iran's clerical dictatorship savagely suppressed a huge opposition movement that had formed to protest the sham reelection of the regime's “president,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When the protests first
began on June 13, Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, issued a near-farcical statement that serves as a timeless example of moral equivocation and the abdication of American leadership. Instead of clearly condemning the mullahs' theft of the election, Gibbs declared, “Like the rest of the world, we were impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians. We continue to monitor the entire situation closely, including reports of irregularities.”
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