Home » Politics & Society » Conservative Politics » Why America Slept

Why America Slept

© Frank Monaldo

President John F. Kennedy's senior thesis at Harvard University eventually grew into the short book Why England Slept. It explained how the enormous human losses of World War I cemented the minds of many in England, especially in the intellectual classes, into a hard pacifism of denial. English leadership slept while the German military under the Nazis grew well past that necessary for defense. Even when slightly awakened by the German threat against Czechoslovakia, it was possible to accept verbal assurances from the Nazis, declare ``peace in our time,'' and fall once again into a blithe slumber until crisis made sleep impossible.

Using that situation as a metaphor for our current one, Gerald Posner's Why America Slept explores how it was possible for America to largely ignore the grave and gathering threat of Muslim extremism. Like the English exhausted after World War I, the West and particularly the United States, after the end of the 50-year Cold War felt entitled to pull away from international matters.

Posner's tale takes us through the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. When Ronald Reagan withdrew troops from Lebanon after over 200 American marines were killed by a suicide bomber, anti-Western forces in the Middle East began to believe that America was a paper tiger, a degenerate colossus unwilling to act even in its own self interest. This notion was amplified during the Clinton Administration that was unwilling to take meaningful forceful action when a former American president was targeted for assassination, when American soldiers where ambushed during a humanitarian mission in Somalia, and when 17 sailors on the US Navy's Cole were killed by a explosives-laden small craft.

Some of the reluctance to deal with Islamic extremism was a consequence of genuine efforts by the Clinton Administration to break the impasse between Palestinians and Israelis. As former Clinton political advisor Dick Morris explained, "In Bill Clinton's epoch, terror was primarily a criminal justice problem which must not be allowed to get in the way of the 'real' foreign policy issues." According to Posner, "Clinton rejected efforts to name Hamas as a terror organization for fear it might upset" Middle East negotiations. Vice President Al Gore led a commission on aviation safety and security that recommended dozens of changes, while Clinton "made no effort to implement any of the suggestions, considering them too disruptive to travel."

The copyright of the article Why America Slept in Conservative Politics is owned by Frank Monaldo. Permission to republish Why America Slept in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.