A Lesson From Rome: You Cannot Welcome Armed, Unassimilated Enemies and Expect to Survive

In the Louvre there’s a famous painting by the French Artist Jacques-Louis David depicting the Intervention of the Sabine Women. In it the Sabine men, whose daughters were stolen by and then married to Romans in the mid-8^th century BC, returned to avenge Roman treachery and retrieve their offspring.  The scene depicts a woman standing between the belligerents, imploring them to cease fighting:  "If you are weary of these ties of kindred, these marriage-bonds, then turn your anger upon us; it is we who are the cause of the war, it is we who have wounded and slain our husbands and fathers. Better for us to perish rather than live without one or the other of you, as widows or as orphans."

The men stopped fighting and eventually the Sabines became Roman citizens. This strategy of conquest and integration would characterize Rome for much of the next 1100 years. Other than perhaps Egypt, most conquered lands became essentially Roman. This is demonstrated by the extensive Roman ruins found in places like Britain, Portugal, Algeria, Turkey and more.  Although most would never become Roman citizens, their lives would have had similar characteristics throughout the Empire. What’s more, when armies would attack Rome, when they were defeated, which they almost always were, the Romans would sell the women and children (who sometimes traveled with armies) into slavery and the men, if not sold into slavery, would be conscripted into the Legions, but sent to regions far from their native lands.

The result of this was that for most of its history Rome faced relatively few consequential internal rebellions beyond civil wars between rival generals. With the 4^th century AD however, that would change. As the Huns moved east from the steppes they began attacking various tribes who would then plead with Rome for asylum. Sometimes willingly and sometimes not, the Romans allowed the Goths, Vandals and others to move into the Empire. But what was different now was that rather than breaking up these foreign powers and disbursing their members throughout the Empire, the Romans allowed them to settle intact on Roman lands. Armed groups living in their own communities, separate from the Romans and maintaining their cultures with no assimilation demanded.  This would be a recipe for disaster and Rome, which, having lasted for more than a millennium, was gone within a century. 

The leaders of the United States and the EU should have paid a little closer attention in history class because they’re mimicking the Roman Empire of the mid-4^th century…

In both places politicians have either tolerated or encouraged an open border for much of the last quarter century with the result being that the United States today houses upwards of 30 million illegal aliens while in Europe the number may be half that.

In both cases, most of the immigrants crossing the borders come from countries with far higher crime rates, far lower income levels and much different cultures.  In the United States illegal immigrants largely come from Mexico and Latin America while in Europe they come from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries in Asia and Africa. 

As immigrants have often done throughout history, when they move to a new place they seek out brethren from their home countries or people which whom they share customs or languages.  Indeed, that’s exactly what the Italians in New York did at the turn of the century. 

The difference here however is that when the Italians moved to New York or the Irish moved to Boston, their goal was to integrate and become Americans. Today’s immigrants to the United States don’t seem to have that same desire.  They may want to become citizens so they can stay permanently, but that doesn’t mean they want to be American.  Indeed, half of American Hispanics are from Mexico and a significant portion of them believe that America’s Southwest is stolen land that rightfully should be returned to Mexico.  At the same time, most of Europe’s newly arrived are from Islamic nations and their allegiance is to Islam, not their new homes.

That’s a problem because successful societies are built around core, fundamental values that are shared by the overwhelming majority of the population. Ideas such as free speech and freedom of religion, individual rights and private property – to various degrees, while they were not always core tenants of western civilization, are so today, or at least were until quite recently.  Without those shared fundamental notions it’s difficult for western nations to function properly. 

It's one thing for a nation to have competing powers within the existing framework, think Democrats and Republicans, but it’s another thing all together if the competing power wants to split off a quarter of the nation or wants to impose Sharia law. 

Recent events have demonstrated exactly how deep the problems are. Across Europe over the last two years there have been giant pro Hamas demonstrations, some of which devolved into violence.  Across the United States Donald Trump’s attempt to begin to ramp up deportations has been met with violence against ICE agents and in California, it devolved into riots with law enforcement members being pelted with rocks, bottles and various incendiaries while cars were set afire, stores looted and the LAPD headquarters attacked.

Of course, demonstrations and riots happen in any country, but when they are symbols of a bigger fissure that’s a problem. 

In both cases these illegals and their predecessors, many of whom have been legalized, seek to fundamentally change the nature of the countries they now call home. Of course invaders always want to change the nature of the place they invade, just as the Romans did as they were growing their empire.  The difference is when the Romans invaded a new land the people already there usually fought them to maintain their culture. They usually lost, but at least they had enough pride in their culture to fight for it. What we see across the west today is just the opposite.  From Sweden to the UK to Spain and the US, leaders have for years worshiped at the altar of guilt and sought to repent by welcoming millions from cultures far different than their own.  Most of these leaders have been under the delusion that if they welcome these invaders with open arms, give them shelter, food, phones and more that they’ll somehow respect the culture of their new homes and assimilate accordingly. 

Not only did they not do so, but rather many attacked the very people and culture that welcomed them. From skyrocketing rapes and bombings in Sweden to knife crime and rape rings in the UK to drug dealing and taking over apartment complexes in Denver, these illegals have made it perfectly clear that they see their new homes not as refuges from some dysfunctional dystopia, but rather as fertile ground to be exploited. They have no intention of assimilating, and in reality, who can blame them?  If a nation doesn’t care enough about its citizens and its culture to protect them, why should anyone else? 

Here in America we finally have a leader who understands the danger and is doing something about it.  If the leaders of Europe don’t follow Donald Trump’s lead soon they may find that it’s too late.    

 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

First published on June 11, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/06/learn_from_the_romans_you_cannot_welcome_armed_unassimilated_enemies.html

Taking Back September 11th and Taking Back The Republic

I was not, obviously, alive in 1776 when the United States was born.  I couldn’t be there when the 2^nd Continental Congress was writing the Constitution.  I wasn’t part of the Union fighting to free the slaves or the troops who landed on the beaches of Normandy.  Nor was I a fireman running into the towers on September 11 or a soldier in Afghanistan routing out the people responsible for it.  But I’m here now.

There’s no way I’ll be able to accomplish in my life anything on the scale of greatness achieved by those men.  But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try.  Just because one can’t aspire to be a saint doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t seek to do good works. 

We’re just a couple of weeks away from the 20^th anniversary of the September 11 attacks that changed the course of our history.  America in 2021 is seemingly a universe away from America in 2001.  In almost every way, the country is far worse off.  Americans are divided like never before.  The basic notion of the United States as a positive force in the world, a fundamentally good, if flawed, nation is under attack in our schools on our airwaves and tellingly, in our military.  Our borders are nonexistent – unless you’re Cuban – allowing literally millions of people a year to simply walk into our country unfettered. Fundamental tenants of American life, free speech, freedom of religion, private property, and the notion of innocent until proven guilty are evaporating right in front of us.

And then of course there’s Afghanistan.  On the international stage we are watching the real time collapse of American prestige, honor, influence and power.  Joe Biden and his woke cabal have turned a debatable policy of leaving Afghanistan into a military, humanitarian and political disaster of epic proportions.  Somehow, they have figured out how to not only abandon Afghanistan, but do so while providing the Taliban with potentially thousands of American hostages, betraying tens of thousands of Afghans who helped us over the last two decades and provide the enemy with tens of billions of dollars of American military equipment, ammunition and buildings. 

In a word, America circa 2021 is in decline.  And the pace of her collapse is quickening.  Things have been coming apart for a while but started in earnest when the media turned on George Bush after the war in Iraq, picked up steam with Barack Obama and the fiction that opposition equaled racism, and came to a head with the hatred of Donald Trump and reached its peak with the theft of the 2020 election. 

As a result of all of this, the United States are not so united.  The country is coming apart at the seams and the only way to keep it together is to once again give Americans confidence that their legal votes count, that their voices count and that the man or woman governing the country was legitimately elected.  Citizens who feel like their government is corrupt look for extra legal ways to solve problems, they evade taxes and regulations and eventually establish their own shadow forms of government and coercion. (See Mexico just across the nonexistent border) In the simplest form, a nation where the citizens feel like the government is corrupt will find that those citizens don’t obey laws unless there’s a gun pointed at their heads, and in the case of the United States, with a citizenry built on two centuries of freedom and liberty, that is going to take a lot of guns. 

Tens of millions of Americans are asking themselves “What can we do about this?” or “What the hell happened?” or “How the hell can we save this country?”

According to the traditional way things have always been done, nothing.  We could wait for 2022 and 2024 to go back to the polls and think “Maybe we’ll win!”  Don’t count on it.  Should we start a revolution or try to overthrow the government?  Umm… no.  Not only would such an effort be doomed to fail, but that would open a Pandora’s box of chaos from which I doubt we’d emerge as “One nation, under God” or as one nation at all.  But by the same token, by doing nothing America is rapidly becoming a fascist state run by tyrants of the far left.  So can anything be done?  I don’t know, but I’ve got a suggestion.

On the twentieth anniversary of September 11^th Americans should take back the date from the terrorists who put it on our calendar.  How? By making September 11 stand for something else.  Make September 11 the day Americans stood up and demanded their country back, stated that they would not accept their nation being stolen under the cover of night, that they would not accept that America has become a third world dictatorship where social media robber barons and corrupt officials manipulate the voting machines and install their leader of choice.  Make September 11, 2021 the modern equivalent of July 4, 1776 and declare that we will not be ruled by unjust leaders with no legitimate right to govern. 

How do patriots do that?  By showing up at the doorsteps of their state capitals on September 11^th and demanding that their legislatures lend their voices to the fight.  Those voices should demand that states with a margin of victory in the 2020 election below 3% audit those elections and decertify their electors in the event fraud is discovered.  That voice is not a request.  It’s a demand. 

Now of course the legislatures could refuse.  And even if they didn’t and made that demand, Congress could – and probably would – simply ignore them. And lastly, even if Congress were on board, the Supreme Court might insert itself into the mix and claim it’s unconstitutional.  We understand all of that, but none of that obviates the necessity of making a stand in the first place.  Remember, the Declaration of Independence was not the opening salvo of the conflict with England.

In 1768 there was the Massachusetts Circular Letter which declared The Townsend Act taxes were unconstitutional because Massachusetts was not represented in Parliament.  In response the British sent troops to restore “order” and the result was the Boston Massacre in 1770.  From there more taxes and more resistance, culminating in the Boston Tea Party in 1773.  This defiance brought about the Coercive Acts which sought to essentially turn Massachusetts into a police state governed by the Crown.  From there the table was set for Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress and eventually the Declaration of Independence.  All along the way the British had opportunities to avert losing what would turn out to be the golden goose, but at each step they failed to do so. Will the states, Congress and the Supreme Court make the same mistake?

The state legislatures, Congress and the Supreme Court may indeed fail the American people once again, but it is up to us to make them understand that we take our Constitution and our democratic Republic very seriously and will no longer let them obscure what happened in 2020.  September 11^th 2021 will be the first step in taking back the narrative, from the terrorists who struck at the heart of our nation 20 years ago and the country from the conspirators who struck at the heart of our Republic on the morning of November 4^th. 

None of this is intended to take away from the courage and valor of those who ran into buildings on that fateful day.  Absolutely not. Their courage and bravery stand as beacons through the dark and will for ages...

In the end we may not be able to achieve the greatness of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of D-Day or the men of NYFD, or the men and women who fought so bravely in Afghanistan, but we can certainly plant our flag and say “No more! We’re taking back September 11^th and taking back our Republic!”

The Lesson of Afghanistan is a Simple One, But Probably Not What You Think

 Joe Biden is being roasted for his indefensible handling of the Afghanistan exit.  As well he should be.  Indeed, his incompetence is so legion that he’s actually getting roasted by a media whose only job appears to be to prop up the Biden regime.  Both the New York Times and the Washington Post pilloried him while over at CNN: 'the debacle of defeat and chaotic retreat in Afghanistan' is a 'political disaster' for President Biden. The Wall Street Journal suggested his statement 'washing hands' of Afghanistan 'is one of most shameful in US history'. 

They’re of course right.  This may be the most incompetent diplomatic / military exercise in American history… and it came straight from the Commander in Chief and his incompetent cabal of woke advisors. 

Given the tragedy unfolding today, one wonders if Americans will learn the real lesson of Afghanistan.  Sure, while one lesson would be to never put a senile incompetent leftist in the position of Commander in Chief, that’s not the real lesson to be learned…

American direct involvement in Afghanistan started out twenty years ago after the attacks of September 11^th.  It didn’t take long to discover that the Taliban had been giving Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda training bases and a home from which to attack the US.  George W. Bush sent troops in to rout them, which was largely accomplished within months.  But of course the troops didn’t come home. They stayed, with the ostensible mission of helping Afghanistan craft a nation that would no longer be a haven for terrorists, and a government unwilling to protect them.  We – Americans, not me personally as I did not serve during that time nor in that theater – built roads, schools, bases, buildings, shepherded the writing of a constitution, facilitated elections and helped form a government with all the trappings of legitimacy.  One of the most laudable efforts was help to give girls and women opportunities that they had essentially never seen in Afghanistan.

Of course, the Taliban, while defeated in terms of running the country, never quite went away.  They hid in the hills. They hid in Pakistan and actually took parts of it over.  They operated under the cover of night and gave a constant reminder that they were never far away, having been funded and shielded by the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service.  

All of this “progress” cost a great deal, both in terms of money and the lives of brave servicemen.  When all is said and done, the United States will have spent somewhere between $1 and $2 trillion seeking to build Afghanistan into a democracy with a functioning military and government.  At the same time, 2,500 American servicemembers lost their lives executing that mission. 

All for what?  Not much, apparently.  In just a number of days the Taliban took over the entire country.  The president fled. Americans were airlifted from the roof of the embassy.  Girls are now being stolen from their families to be given as wives to Taliban fighters.  Those who assisted the Americans and local police are being rounded up and killed.  The Afghan military has essentially evaporated, leaving the Taliban in possession of tens of billions of dollars of American supplied weapons and equipment.  Soon the Taliban will bring Afghanistan back to the 7^th century, from whence they came.  Sharia law.  Women in bondage. No freedom.  Economic backwater.

The lesson of Afghanistan is not that the United States couldn’t turn The Graveyard of Empires into a thriving democracy, such as our own. That was never in the cards.  The American colonies grew up as part of the British Empire and had been marching slowly towards a representative government with individual freedoms for centuries, culminating in the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution.  Of course neither of those was the final word and the United States has been evolving towards a More Perfect Union ever since. 

Afghanistan doesn’t have anything resembling the history we have.  Just the opposite.  The nation, to the degree that is actually a nation, exists largely on a map.  The people are far more tribal than they are Afghani, and most live lives like those their ancestors lived 1,000 years ago.  Nation building in Afghanistan was always likely to be a failure, whether the United States spent $2 trillion or $20. 

And therein lays the lesson of Afghanistan, through the words of Ronald Reagan.  “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

Americans live in the greatest nation in the history of man, one that took literally centuries to get where it is today.  It’s far from perfect of course, and it’s always evolving, but the fundamental principles of limited government, individual freedom and free markets have been guides the entire journey. But because it’s not perfect, the left wants to destroy it.  Tear down our Founding Fathers because they didn’t think about 21^st century mores when they were busy carving out a new nation.  Eliminate free speech because mean words offend vulnerable sensibilities.  Eliminate free markets because they do not provide for a perfectly equal distribution of wealth.  Divide the country by an endless array of hyphens so that professional victims can identify their “oppressors”. 

The freedom that Reagan spoke of, the prosperity the United States has created and the opportunities Americans enjoy are not predestined. They aren’t written into our DNA, not guaranteed by God and not irreversible.  Just as a generation of Afghanis who grew up in a relatively free nation are about to discover, what is here today is not guaranteed to still be here tomorrow.  History is important. Culture is important. Shared values are important.  Twenty years and $2 trillion dollars in Afghanistan prove that and demonstrate how quickly rights and freedoms can evaporate.  

To the degree that pampered leftists who, in a global sense were born on third and think they hit a triple, want to change the rules of the game called America, change the dimensions of the playing field and change the players in the lineup, they’re playing with fire. They think they know where those changes will lead.  They’re wrong.  Free speech, and the respect for the free exercise of such, once gone are almost impossible to regain.  Private property, once taken, almost never makes it back into the hands of the rightful owners and with it goes free markets and prosperity.  Government programs, once launched almost never end, and edicts, once written are almost never rescinded.  A government unleashed from the constraint of the Bill of Rights will never find its way back into the cage.    

Some people know that reality while others clearly don’t.  Compare a 25 year old Afghani woman who is now facing home detention, a burqa for life and a husband she didn’t choose to a 25 year old American grad student standing in $300 sneakers holding a $1,000 phone and barking “F the police”.  One clearly understands what freedom is while the other wallows in his utopian fantasy utterly clueless of how the world actually works.  There’s a reason millions of people risk their lives every year to come to America or literally cling to the wing of a flying plane in order to escape Taliban Afghanistan.  It’s called reality. 

It would be nice if the left would learn the simple lesson of Afghanistan, that freedom is fleeting and must be prized and protected, but sadly they are unlikely to allow machinations in the real world intrude on their delusional fantasies.   

Quelle Surprise! Five years of Barack Obama undermining American influence in the world...

The American military is the most powerful in the world. Indeed, we spend more on defense than the rest of the world combined. As one might expect, that amount of military spending translates into a lot of influence around the world, far beyond the bases in Germany or the battlefields of Afghanistan. From leading NATO to acting as the last – and in reality the first – line of defense of nations such as Japan, South Korea, Kuwait and many others, the United States exercises more global power than any nation in history, even during times of peace.

What is unique about the United States however is the fact that as powerful as its military might is, that’s never been the sole source of American influence and indeed during most of the last century, the military was not even the most powerful element of that influence. Since the end of World War II, the two biggest drivers of American influence in the world have been economics and ideals.

The march of free markets around the world over the last 50 years has been largely been led by the United States. From a shining showcase of the prosperity free markets can achieve to the spread of specialization, the importation of products and the outsourcing of services, the economic power of the United States has inspired and lifted billions of people around the world out of poverty over the last half century.

At the same time, the ideals of American freedom and democracy have inspired the world for more than two centuries. From the American Revolution inspiring the French to the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor inspiring a papier-mâché version in Tiananmen Square to the rainbow of revolutions over the last twenty years, American ideals, despite their sometimes failed execution both at home and abroad, have inspired (and influenced) patriots and freedom loving people around the world for decades on end.

American prosperity, when combined with the ideals of freedom and democracy have done more to lift the spirits and life spans of more people across the planet than any military of any size could ever hope to accomplish. The military certainly helps spread those ideals however, whether it be helping rescue the world from two World Wars or American ships and planes delivering billions of dollars of water and foodstuffs to disaster zones or famine ravaged nations.

At the end of the day American influence is largely the source of three things: The prosperity created by free markets, the ideals of freedom and democracy, and military strength. Sometimes those drivers work together while at other times they work independently of one another. They manifest themselves in small ways such as providing disaster relief to Haiti, the Philippines or countless places in between and big ways such as political and or military support for allies or a burgeoning democracy. At the same time that influence has created a tapestry of relationships around the world from strong allies to bitter enemies. In an almost perfect example the old adage you get what you give, to the degree that America succeeds in cultivating allies and friends in the world, the more prosperity we enjoy and the fewer times our military is called upon to engage in actual shooting.

All of that may be changing because of Barack Obama. For five years while he was busy inflicting his fascist, redistributitive economic policies on the citizens of the United States, he has been diminishing American influence abroad at the same time. Time and again Obama has come down on the side of leftists and American enemies. The Iran “deal” is only the latest in a very long line.

In 2009 Obama sided with leftist Honduran President Manuel Zelaya as he sought to defy the Honduran Constitution and run for reelection. Eventually Zelaya was forced into exile and as a result of his continued agitation for violence in the streets, Honduras has become one of the most dangerous nations in the world.

That same year Obama bowed to Vladimir Putin and threw American allies under the bus as he abandoned plans for a missile defense shield in Poland. 2009 also brought Iran’s Green Movement. When Iranian students took to the streets seeking to overthrow the avowed American enemy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Barack Obama ignored pleas for a public display of support, moral or otherwise. In contrast, when protesters – including the Muslim Brotherhood – called for the ouster of one of America’s strongest allies in the region, Hosni Mubarak, Obama quickly called for Mubarak to resign. Not surprisingly, less than two years later Egypt was in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 2011 President Obama helped unleash Hell when he sent American air forces to support the overthrow of an admittedly not nice guy, Muammar Gaddafi. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the chaos that was unleashed has turned Libya into an ungovernable mess where local private militias (some of whom are Al Qaeda) are far more powerful than the government itself. Indeed, according to the Cato Institute “Human rights conditions in post-intervention Libya... are considerably worse than in the decade preceding the war.” It was in the middle of this this ungovernable mess that an American Ambassador and three others were killed by Al Qaeda in 2012. 2011 was also the year he pulled the United States out of Iraq in the worst possible way, leaving the United States with virtually no influence in a country American troops had fighting and dying in for a decade.

Finally we find our feckless president in 2013 leading his march to diminish American power in the world. His first step was to undercut longtime ally Britain in their renewed dispute with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, unlike Ronald Reagan, who was a staunch supporter of the Brits during the Falkland War in 1982. His next step was to let Bashir Assad outwit him while simultaneously turning Vladimir Putin into a credible world leader. Obama accomplished this dual disaster as he blinked at actually doing anything about a chemical weapons red line he had offhandedly warned Assad not to cross. Next he betrayed staunch American allies Israel and Saudi Arabia when he proffered a nuclear agreement with Iran that John Bolton calls “Abject surrender by the United States”. Finally just last week, he essentially acquiesced to a Chinese power grab – and simultaneously undermined allies Japan and South Korea – as the US advised American airlines to comply with China’s demands for notification when they planned to fly over water and islands claimed by all three.

For five years we have seen that whatever the situation, Barack Obama consistently chooses decisions that will weaken American power and influence in the world. The history of an American superpower is not one that is without blemishes, but it has clearly been a force for good in the world. Can you imagine a 2013 where the dominant power for the previous century had been the Soviets or the Red Chinese or some incarnation of Al Qaeda? That ability to influence events and nations requires far more than just a powerful military. It requires a leader who recognizes that American influence has been a significant catalyst for the improvement of the condition of man around the world, and one who is willing to use that fact as his North Star when carrying out foreign policy. Barack Obama has consistently done just the opposite. From supporting leftists in Central America to betraying allies on practically every continent to fueling the replacement of imperfect dictators with whom we could work with Anti-American Islamists or even chaos, for five years he has chosen the path that leads to diminished American influence.

We’ve known from before the election that Barack Obama is no fan of the American Constitution or free markets. From his willingness to diminish America on the world stage at every turn it appears that it’s not just American institutions that Obama despises, but rather the idea of a strong America itself.

Cold War lessons never learned by Golfer in Chief Obama

In a nod to President Obama’s attempted pivot on Tuesday from Iraq to jobs, on this Labor Day I’d like to pivot from jobs to national defense.

I’m a child of the Cold War. Born in the 1965, I spent 12 of my first 24 years living outside the United States. My family spent five years in Naples, Italy, where both parents worked on a NATO base. We spent another five years living on the thorn in Fidel Castro’s side known as Guantanamo Bay. After school I spent two years in the Army stationed in what was at the time called West Germany. The Cold War just was. The Iron Curtain was the line of demarcation between freedom and oppression.

The Cold War was called the Cold War because it was, well… cold. Not in the anti-global warming sense, but cold as opposed to hot, where bullets fly and lifeless bodies lay strewn on across the battlefields that make up the front lines. As uncomfortable as friction zones like Korea and Vietnam were, they were a far cry from the 16 million killed in World War I and 60 million in WWII. The Cold War stayed cold because everyone knew there were severe consequences for turning it hot. Those sentiments held for both conventional war – with over a quarter of a million American troops stationed in Germany alone, and unconventional – with the well understood doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. As distressing as the visions that inspired “duck and cover” were, they were far better than the actual loss of millions of lives.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a President Obama who spent 20 years in Jeremiah Wright’s church and somehow never picked up that the pastor was an America hating racist, similarly spent his life under the umbrella of security provided by a stalwart American foreign policy yet never understood its most basic lessons. This lack of understanding is clearly demonstrated by his oft stated determination to pull American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan according to an arbitrary calendar on his desk.

The fact that the world has existed in relative peace, absent a significant hot war with major players directly confronting one another for 65 years is a monument to the lessons learned between 1918 and 1939. After WWI Woodrow Wilson put his faith in his Fourteen Points and the League of Nations to maintain the peace and America returned to isolation. Hitler’s 1938 designs on the Sudetenland and Chamberlain’s “Peace for Our Time” demonstrated Wilson’s folly.

Seeking to avoid Wilson’s mistakes, Truman initially left hundreds of thousands of troops in Japan and Germany to keep the vanquished from somehow reassembling their war machines and starting WWIII. Soon it became clear however that the primary threat did not come from vanquished enemies but from our erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union. The result was that the American presence in both countries morphed from an occupying force to one of mutual defense. Ostensibly that defense protected those countries from an invasion. What it did somewhat more subtly was just important; it acted as a midwife to their nascent democracies.

By making it clear whenever necessary that the United States was willing to go to the mattresses to protect its interests and its friends, we were able to avoid the horrors of the first half of the 20th century. Simultaneously, by providing the people of Germany and Japan with the stability to develop their democratic institutions the United States was able to midwife two former enemies into two of the most robust and dynamic economies (and trading partners) in the world. In the end everyone won.

The success of this model did not always play out on the same timetable: In the Philippines and South Korea democracy took much longer to develop. Nor were the lessons always heeded: We abandoned Vietnam (and later the South Vietnamese government when Congress balked at support), let Afghanistan become a vacuum after the Soviets departed, and left an armed Saddam in power after the first Gulf War.

The lessons of the Cold War success are lost on President Obama. By continuously signaling his plan to pull American troops out according to his arbitrary deadline he is killing two birds with one stone. On the one hand, he is telling the people of Afghanistan and Iraq that they had better get this democracy thing right – now – because soon they are going to be on their own. This is a monumental error. Democracy is a difficult form of government even in the best of circumstances and only more so with a violent enemy within who has no compunction about slaughtering innocent civilians by the thousands. Four years after the end of the Revolutionary War the United States had a true government in name only. The Constitution was written and ratified in 1787 and it was the child of accomplished patriots such as James Madison, Benjamin Franklin George Mason, John Hancock, John Adams and of course George Washington. Without them who knows what might have become of those 13 states. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan has such men of skill and stature.

At the same time he is warning the Iraqis and Afghanistanis that they had better get things right, President Obama is signaling to the Taliban and insurgents across the middle east that if they lay low and bide their time they will soon have a clear field for launching their assaults on these precarious democracies. Like a burglar who waits for the security guard to make his nightly rounds before stealing a coveted masterpiece, the terrorists who seek to take over Iraq and Afghanistan understand their chances of success are far greater if the Americans are gone. As such, given President Obama’s promised timelines, they know they can simply husband their resources to strike when the Americans are gone. From any terrorist’s perspective, that is a far different playing field than one where they knew the Americans were focused on victory rather than the calendar.

At the risk of interrupting a Labor Day golf vacation I might suggest President Obama also start doing a little Cold War research to find out what it takes to be victorious in wars not fought within ivory towers. A good place might William Manchester’s American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 – 1964. Not only did McArthur say “In war there is no substitute for Victory” but he was also the man who set the foundations for a non aggressive, economically successful and democratically stable Japan. It even comes in a paperback, just the right size for a golf bag pocket...