Doug Mataconis, from Below the Beltway, points to this article in the Telegraph by Andrew Gimson: "Americans will die for liberty."
The highlight for me? This:
The Americans are prepared to use force in pursuit of what they regard as noble aims. It is yet another respect in which they are rather old-fashioned. They are patriots who venerate their nation and their flag.The idea has somehow gained currency in Britain that America is an essentially peaceful nation. Quite how this notion took root, I do not know. Perhaps we were unduly impressed by the protesters against the Vietnam war.
It is an idea that cannot survive a visit to the National Museum of American History in Washington, where one is informed that the "price of freedom" is over and over again paid in blood.
The Americans' tactics in Iraq, and their sanction for Israel's tactics in Lebanon, have given rise to astonishment and anger in Europe. It may well be that those tactics are counter-productive, and that the Americans and Israelis need to take a different approach to these ventures if they are ever to have any hope of winning hearts and minds.
But when the Americans speak of freedom, we should not imagine, in our cynical and worldly-wise way, that they are merely using that word as a cloak for realpolitik. They are not above realpolitik, but they also mean what they say.
These formidable people think freedom is so valuable that it is worth dying for. (emph. mine - Kat)
Yes. We do.
In spite of all those people wailing about "The children! Oh, the children!" most Americans - and I believe this with all my heart - really believe in right and wrong. And most Americans look at the atrocities of Islam and its nurturing of terrorism with hard, stern eyes - and hate it with all their hearts.
We are a free people - we owe allegience to no king, no tyrannical religion, to no other man. We owe fealty only to the ideals of our country as written in our Founding Documents. We love liberty with all our passionate, unruly, undisciplined hearts - and we love it so intensely and recklessly that we want everyone under oppression to have the opportunity to be the captains of their own lives, just like us.
And so we look with stern eyes at barbarity, lawlessness and cruelty... and pick up our rifles... and march to war.
