The making of a hawk

Jacksonians also believe in all-out war once the firing begins, and they have low regard for international law and organizations, particularly ones that limit U.S. action. "Jacksonians believe that there is an honor code in international life, as there was in clan warfare in the borderlands of England, and those who live by the code will be treated under it," writes Mead. "But those who violate the code, who commit terrorist acts against innocent civilians in peacetime for example, forfeit its protection and deserve no more consideration than rats."

This would account for the daisy-cutter firepower directed at al-Qaida's caves and the high popularity of the Bush administration's military tribunals for captured terrorists. Author Michael Lind has argued that Jacksonianism is the most popular political philosophy among the American public at large, much stronger among ordinary Americans than it is among the elite, and he is certainly right. Mead, in fact, contends that the first President Bush lost his job when he stopped being a Jacksonian in his war against Saddam and declared victory without finishing the job, out of Hamiltonian deference to our Saudi oil suppliers (who feared an unstable, and perhaps even worse, democratic government in neighboring Baghdad) -- one more indication to Jacksonian voters that Bush was more concerned with his new world order than with average Americans.

Though my family roots are in this Scotch-Irish culture, I fell out with this tradition over Vietnam. I don't believe that an American citizen has a moral duty to fight every war its government declares if it goes deeply against his conscience -- but he should be prepared to pay the price with a prison sentence if it comes to that. I also parted company with the Jacksonians on the Balkans war, which they saw as irrelevant to American interests, an example of Wilsonian do-gooderism gone amuck. We've come together again on Afghanistan and al-Qaida. But, as Mead points out, Wilsonian support for wars doesn't count as much as that of Jacksonians in the American political spectrum. It's the martial energy of the Jacksonians that political leaders need to enlist to successfully prosecute wars: "Every American school needs Jacksonians to get what it wants. If the American people had exhibited the fighting qualities of, say, the French, in World War II, neither Hamiltonians, Jeffersonians or Wilsonians would have had much to do with shaping postwar international order."

Jacksonians have greater moral authority when it comes to making momentous war decisions because they and their children do the preponderance of fighting and dying. But this is not the way it should be. Placing the burden of military service on a warrior subculture is an unjust division of labor that, as Powell has argued, should be repellent to our democracy. This is why I have come to believe we need to bring back the military draft, stripped of the loopholes for "fortunate sons" that made a mockery of it during the Vietnam War. World War II ennobled America, not just because it was a righteous cause, but because it was fought by a democratic cross section of the country, from hillbillies to Hollywood stars, like bomber pilot Jimmy Stewart.

This brings us back to a question I raised earlier, one that is particularly painful for me as the father of two sons. If commentators -- or any citizens -- call for American troops to go to war, I think they must be willing to enlist themselves or if they're too old for duty, be willing to picture their own sons or daughters in uniform. My boys are years away from fighting age, but as long as America serves its current global role, I know there will be wars awaiting them when their time comes. I don't think they should automatically enlist, regardless of the nature of the war. I've talked to my oldest son about Vietnam and why I opposed the war, and I hope he will deeply search his own conscience before he makes up his mind. I don't believe in "my country, right or wrong." But if the cause is compelling and just, I also hope he does the right thing and serves his country.

When my sons crumple in pain on the playing field, my heart loses its rhythm until I see they're all right. When they're sick and their breathing grows clotted at night, I sleep my own restless vigil. Both are prone to florid nosebleeds, and I can't even stand to see this blood pour from them. How could I ever agree to put their lives at risk, these two young souls whose destruction would mean the end of the most precious part of my life? How could any war be worth the life of your son -- or your neighbor's? If you're debating the merits of a war in your head, and you don't get to this question, you haven't gone far enough.

Shortly before he released the patriotic "Let's Roll," Neil Young appeared in the somber, candlelit telethon "America: Tribute to Heroes." The song he chose to sing that evening was the peace anthem "Imagine," in which John Lennon urges us to think of a world where "there's no countries/It isn't hard to do/Nothing to kill and die for/and no religion too." So clearly old Neil is wrestling with a lot of conflicting feelings these days too.

The song has always moved me, and Young's high, plaintive voice after all the nationalistic and religious killing and dying going on, made it seem particularly sad. But the fact is I can't imagine life without my country. My sense of myself, what I believe in, is so wrapped up with being an American that I can't disentwine them. Maybe that's a failure of imagination; maybe John's world is a higher one that future generations will someday inhabit, "and the world will live as one." But all it took for me was one look at the burning New York skyline to know that America was worth fighting and dying for.

Jacksonians conjure their own images when they think of America, some of which I share (Fourth of July barbecues, Saturday night high school football games, the flag snapping in the breeze) and some of which I don't (gun shows, SUVs lumbering through traffic, the smug look on Bill O'Reilly's mug). But I always swell with pride when my eyes fill up with the urban panoramas of great American cities, like New York or my own San Francisco. These jostling streets of polyglot races and creeds and fashion statements, of naked ambition and soaring dreams -- what historian Ann Douglas hailed as "mongrel Manhattan" -- are democracy's greatest advertisement for itself. And they're why New York's highest towers became a target for the most atavistic forces at work in the world today. Yes, the Jeffersonians have a point -- global powers like America, with military, diplomatic and corporate outposts from Mecca to Timbuktu, inevitably invite resentment and hostility. But the terrorists striking at New York and Washington were not just making a political statement, they were making a cultural one. The World Trade Centers truly were the world -- just recall all the seven-continent faces of the people who worked there as they appeared in the New York Times obituary pages. The worldliness of American democracy -- its openness to every type of human aspiration, even fundamentalism -- is an affront to those who think better in caves.

Next page: Our way of life can be extinguished more easily than we thought