When the trend for many college age students is to protest ... a local ends up writing this as an editorial for the local University paper:
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Americans 'stand up to bullies' no matter how big [/size]
by Jason Rhode
April 14, 2003
The Europeans love to call us "cowboys." How very, very right they are.
I was not surprised when Saddam Hussein's statue came down with a pleasant thud. Nor when I saw our soldiers fishing in the man-made lakes of Hussein's villas. How could anyone be?
Anyone who wanted to know what the future held from Sept. 11, 2001 onward, our enemies in particular, could have just watched our movies, most specifically "Casablanca" and our Westerns. All you need to learn about the American character is right there. Same themes.
The hero isn't a glorious warrior or the scion of some great house. He's usually a loner who doesn't trust big causes, who's just trying to move on, who wants to be damn well left alone.
"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people, and I expect the same from them." (John Wayne, "The Shootist")
This fits perfectly with the American character. That is, we are first and foremost individuals; we can't be rounded up for fights unless we go ourselves. We can't be forced; we have to choose.
Watch "High Noon." Gary Cooper is a small-town sheriff. He has to face a band of killers arriving on the train that day but can't find a posse to back him up. In the end, he's left alone. The cowardly townspeople ask him, "For what? For a tin star? That's nothing."
To which Cooper replies: "I've got to, that's the whole thing." Damn straight.
Three things are remarkable: First, he doesn't flee. Second, he doesn't bully others into joining him against their will. Third, when the work is finished, Cooper feels free enough to toss away the star and say, "To hell with this."
Most of the history of the world is made up of ordinary people suffering the whims of fools, kings, corrupt bureaucrats, rampaging nobles, rapacious priests and thugs of every sort. America is based on the premise of "enough is enough."
We are a people built to stand up to bullies. We don't like them.
The final-straw moment is an American classic: when the ordinary person, who just wanted to be left alone to be able to pursue life, liberty and happiness, can't take the world's interference in their affairs any longer. Can't suffer fools.
"Casablanca" is like this. Rick (Humphrey Bogart), a club owner, wears his jaded cynicism like a suit. He was hurt badly by love, so he turns his back to the world: "I stick my neck out for nobody." As the movie progresses, his old self fights its way out - acting like a man who talks nihilism but deep down still believes.
When a German officer conversationally asks Rick if he could see the Germans invading New York, Rick laconically replies, "There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try to invade." By the end, he's ready to fight again.
This happens time after time. In "The Outlaw Josey Wales," it's a Confederate farmer who picks up his weapon after his family's killed; in "Unforgiven," it's an ex-killer turned homesteader turned hired-gun again, and in "Shane," one of the best, it's a skilled gunman who's retired from fighting and absolutely refuses to act until the very last minute.
It's almost disturbing how stoic the protagonist can be in the face of evil. But the second half is apocalyptic.
When the storm does finally break, when the hero decides to beat the plowshare back into a sword, there is something part noble, part animal in their response. Once the gun is picked up again, it's never put down until the job is done.
In "Tombstone," Wyatt Earp keeps refusing the job of lawman as a band of thieves and killers run wild. Then his brother is killed. He is filled with a rage so incredible as to shout to one member of the Cowboys gang, "You tell him I'm coming! And hell's coming with me!"
If bin Laden and Hussein really wanted a fright, they could have watched the greatest Western of them all, John Ford's "The Searchers." John Wayne is the man who just keeps on coming. His character is a portrait of a stark, obsessed loner who is driven to pursue a tribe of Comanches for five years after they kidnap his niece.
So vast is his desire for revenge that he shoots the eyes out of a dead Comanche warrior out of spite. No wonder we spent so much time pulling down bad sculpture and running over billboards in Baghdad.
He simply refuses to stop, even when it becomes clear that it'd be better for all involved.
If I were planning an attack on Americans, I would pay close attention to one scene where Wayne talks about Comanche chasing a thing "'till he thinks he's chased it enough. Then he quits. Same way when he runs. Seems like he never learns there's such a thing as a critter that'll just keep comin' on. So we'll find 'em in the end, I promise you. We'll find 'em. Just as sure as a turnin' of the earth."
Hussein's fate was sealed a long time ago. His statue was guaranteed to fall as the World Trade Centers did. In a column last year, I quoted Wayne (again) from "The Great Conqueror:" "Yer beautiful in your wrath." That's what I thought when I saw our forces grind the Iraqi regime to dust, topple Hussein's images, bomb his palaces, smash the Republican guard.
We are both awesome and terrifying in our reply. Didn't our enemies realize what kind of people we are? Didn't they realize whom they were dealing with? Did they understand what they would awaken?
Churchill, who was half-American, saw our character clearly. Right after Pearl Harbor, he wrote: "So we had won after all - Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder."
He went on: "Silly people, and there were many, not only in enemy countries, might discount the force of the United States. Some said they were soft, others that they would never be united. But I had studied the American Civil War, fought out to the last desperate inch. Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful."
We know our own history. Why should anyone be surprised that Baghdad is in our hands or that Jessica Lynch fought like a cornered wolf?
The wars we now fight aren't just against one organization, al-Qaida. They're a statement against a certain kind of belief. Whatever you want to call the disorder that makes the Middle East a home for dictators, theocracies and jihad has to be eliminated and wiped out eternally.
Stop before the work is done? That'll be the day.
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