In the Arena

by Pete Hegseth

  That said, attempting to impose democracy militarily across the entire Middle East is a bad idea, a waste of resources, and chock-full of unintended consequences. Often America pours mountains of humanitarian aid into vulnerable countries, without the necessary military component, hoping democracy will take root; instead the situation only gets more violent, more chaotic, and full of corruption. Ultimately, sustainable “Iraqracies”—no matter where in the world—require the capability for some level of sustainable shift in underlying societal preferences and opportunities combined with the will of America to shepherd that shift. Teddy believed others should “receive liberty,” and so do I; in addition to ruthlessly hunting and killing our enemies, the challenge of the twenty-first century is finding the realistic opportunities for freedom promotion without blindly charging (or tepidly applying) American power in the service of unwinnable quagmires. This also means publicly and actively supporting freedom dissidents in all corners of the world. Doing this requires also remembering another Teddy Roosevelt maxim, delivered in March 1910 before the General Assembly of Cairo University in Egypt: “The training of a nation to fit itself successfully to fulfill the duties of self-government is a matter, not of a decade or two, but of generations.” The balance between seeing the possible and knowing the limitations is the gray area freedom’s statesmen must navigate in the twenty-first century.

  8. Strategic victory matters, and is attainable. After bad outcomes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere, some on the left and the right have taken soft solace in the argument that “winning” wars is an outdated adage. Modern, asymmetric wars have followed a familiar pattern: an overwhelming tactical battlefield victory, followed by a drawn-out insurgency and eventual strategic defeat. Iraq—as a result of the surge—is the only place where strategic victory was truly in our grasp. Strategic victories—especially if they take many years in an aggressive counterinsurgency fight, as in Iraq—really matter and have lasting consequences. Likewise, stepping back and realizing that a war is strategically unwinnable, as in a place like Afghanistan, helps guide how much additional American investment should be made. Calling for strategic victory does not mean clinging to failing efforts, but instead identifying which efforts—and when—merit the long-term American effort needed to win. Obtaining strategic victory requires applying the level of resources needed to match the threat—at home and abroad. It also means committing to conditions-based withdrawal instead of timeline-based withdrawal, not an easy task for a country wedded to a four-year political cycle. Finally, retreating—rather than winning—almost always creates more collateral damage (that is, civilian casualties) than if America had stuck around, stuck with the fight, and aggressively killed the enemy in pursuit of tactical and strategic victory. Civilians are unfortunately going to die in war, but in the face of cowardly enemies and in the pursuit of American security, those deaths often bring about a future where far more lives are saved and many more people prosper.

  • • •

  Applying these principles will require a level of commitment America cannot currently muster, let alone stomach. Some of the specific policies I recommend later in the book may make people uneasy, mostly because most Americans have no idea how dangerous the world really has become, and how alone America really is. I also have no illusions about how wide the gap is between what I assert in these pages and where the appetite of the American people, especially young people, currently lies. An aggressive, assertive, and confident American foreign policy is not possible without the allegiance of good—and unapologetically patriotic—citizens. The extent to which the twenty-first century is an American century has as much to do with the education of American middle school students as it does with the number of American aircraft carriers; both are ultimately necessary, but the latter will not be sustainable without the former.

  The other potential impetus for an assertive and muscular U.S. foreign policy would be something nobody wants: a large-scale direct attack on American citizens in our homeland. I believe a strong and aggressive American posture—fighting them “over there”—is best served to prevent such an attack; this fact is what makes the past seven years of American retreat and disengagement from the world so dangerous. Even though our FBI has done yeoman’s work countering the homegrown terrorism threat, America’s “coexist” posture has only increased the likelihood of more attacks—either directly or through the use of so-called lone wolves. (I hate the term lone wolf—since jihadists who decide to attack us internally are neither alone, nor wolves. They are motivated by fellow Islamists abroad who actively recruit them, and they are cowardly sheep—not brave wolves.)

  Under President Obama we have “unclenched our fist” and instead of reaching out in good faith, our enemies have taken full advantage of our weakened posture. While the Islamic State circulates images of horrific torture on social media, our State Department creates hokey “Think Again, Turn Away” social media accounts (yes, they actually named it that) that—I guarantee—are not reaching impressionable young Muslims. While the Iranian regime chants “Death to America,” our president botches negotiations that actually ensure their path to a nuclear bomb, while freeing up billions of frozen assets for use as terror funds. And while the world gets more dangerous, our military has been hollowed out—physically and psychologically.

  But I still have hope. The idea of America is what stirred in the hearts of thousands of Americans who volunteered to serve after 9/11, just like it stirred in my soul when, in 2005, I volunteered to leave my job on Wall Street to lead an infantry platoon in Iraq. And, once there, the idea traveled with me. In addition to my black frame with Teddy Roosevelt’s quote, I had a sheet of paper stapled above my dusty workstation in Iraq that simply read, “They want to believe . . .” My experience on the ground during hundreds of interactions with Iraqis of all backgrounds, locations, and religious affiliations demonstrated that the idea of America—as distant as it may be to some—lingers in the hopes of those we interact with. People who encounter Americans across the globe have seen the movies and the television shows and heard the apocryphal stories. They want to believe that America is a beacon of opportunity, lined with golden streets and perpetual peace. They want to believe we can offer them a better life, right where they live. They want to believe that the reason we send our men to foreign lands is to liberate, not to subjugate. The problem comes when, eventually, we fail to meet the expectations of local populations—either not quickly or not holistically enough. But, even when we do fall short, the hope still lingers, and creates opportunities for partnerships that no other country in the world could facilitate.

  Little Omar wanted to believe. When we eventually asked him why he flipped so enthusiastically to our side, he simply said, “How could I not work with people who came across the ocean to help save and rebuild my city?” While most of the leadership of the insurgency in Samarra, Iraq, was composed of dedicated jihadists, many of their foot soldiers were impressionable youth—swept up by Islamist rhetoric and lacking an alternative belief system. When confronted by the possibility of America—up close and personal, in Little Omar’s case—they will consider, and fight for, an alternative. (Drones can’t do this, by the way; and neither can diplomats in guarded compounds.) Little Omar did not want a job; he wanted a future. He wanted to believe. As I wrote in my journal at the time,

  This fact gives me hope. It’s not like he [Little Omar] quit being a Muslim, quite to the contrary. He is still enrolled in an Islamic school and had finals last week. But he has seen the human side, that killing innocents is wrong. If Omar can turn—and not forsake his beliefs—then there is hope. Islam has its problems, but it is not necessarily destined to violence. It may be prone to violence, but it is not destined. And if we engage each other, meet each other, learn from each other, hope and understanding can occur. In fact, we can fight together to defeat extremism and violence.

  The last sentence is most important, and the precursor to the rest. We must fight
together—something Little Omar dedicated his life to, and is remembered in death for. On June 15, 2006, Little Omar sent me the following poem in a text message: “Salam Allah [God greets you], to people who my heart likes their mention, when they are far from me, they are in my heart, may the Most Merciful [Allah] guard them.” A prayer asking Allah to guard us—the outsiders, the supposed infidels. The next morning, he was found shot in the head, just outside the city. An Al Qaeda cell murdered Little Omar—driving him out to the desert and shooting him in the back of the head. Delivering the $2,500 condolence payment to his humble and timid father was excruciating, especially while Little Omar’s father talked about all the good things his son had said about the Americans and the courage of Mr. Assad. Little Omar is gone, but his life and death perpetually remind me of three powerful realities: people all around the world want to believe in America, good people of different backgrounds fighting together can accomplish big things, and our enemy is utterly ruthless and unrelenting.

  As Teddy Roosevelt said, “there is little place in active life for the timid good man. . . . The good citizen in a republic must first of all be able to hold his own. He is no good citizen unless he has the ability which will make him work hard and which at need will make him fight hard.” The world today requires America to fight hard, both abroad and at home, to shore up our values and ultimately maintain and project our power. Recent wars have given Americans pause; but recent stumbles cannot cause Americans to lose sight of the fact that in the long run “others receiving liberty” is ultimately a good thing, one that will increase the cause of peace around the world. Either America will lead the free world—with her good citizens and good patriots getting in the arena—or we will watch from the sidelines as the world slowly (or quickly!) falls into the hands of theocrats, authoritarians, and bureaucrats. And then freedom slips away. Making the twenty-first century an American century will require the continued defense—and carefully waged promotion—of freedom, free markets, and free peoples. History suggests there is simply no viable alternative.

  PART III

  The Power of Looking Ahead | The Future of Our Republic

  SEVEN

  Equal of Opportunity: Revitalizing the American Dream

  We are bound in honor to strive to bring ever nearer the day when, as far is humanly possible, we shall be able to realize the ideal that each man shall have an equal opportunity to show the stuff that is in him by the way in which he renders service. There should, so far as possible, be equal of opportunity to render service; but just so long as there is inequality of service there should and must be inequality of reward.

  —TEDDY ROOSEVELT, 1910

  The erosion of equal opportunity is among the greatest threats to our exceptionalism as a nation. But it also provides us with an exciting and historic opportunity: to help more people than ever achieve the American Dream . . . upward mobility and equal opportunity is not a partisan issue, it is our unifying American principle.

  —SENATOR MARCO RUBIO, ADDRESS ON FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WAR ON POVERTY, JANUARY 8, 2014

  On a beautiful fall afternoon in October, a citizen of rural Illinois took to a modest speaker’s platform in the small farming town of Alton, Illinois. It was October 15, 1858, and citizen Abraham Lincoln was running for the U.S. Senate against incumbent senator Stephen Douglas. The spirited campaign featured a series of seven lengthy debates across the state. Known famously as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates—or “the Great Debates of 1858”—they centered on the most contentious topic of the day: slavery and its future in America, especially in new territories. The debates also served as a preview of the 1860 presidential election, a contest that would also feature Lincoln and Douglas in large part because, like Roosevelt’s speech in France, newspaper coverage of their debates was ubiquitous—with major newspapers across the United States reprinting the debates in full. Over the course of two months, the two men eloquently defended their positions—wrestling over central questions of personhood, citizenship, state sovereignty, fundamental rights, democracy, and equality.

  In Alton that day, before an assembled crowd of more than six thousand voters, citizen Lincoln made his closing argument on equality:

  I think the authors of the Declaration of Independence intended to include all men, but they did not mean to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all men were equal in color, size, intellect, moral development or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what they did consider all men created equal—equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This they said, and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were actually enjoying that equality, or yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society which should be familiar to all—constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people, everywhere.

  Fifty-two years later, citizen Teddy Roosevelt spoke the very same words standing on an ornate stage in front of a much different audience. Repeating the words of Lincoln to his French audience at the Sorbonne, it was the only quotation Roosevelt used during his ninety-minute “Citizenship in a Republic” speech. This is certainly no coincidence.

  Roosevelt revered Lincoln, in much the same way conservatives today hold up Ronald Reagan and seek to continue his legacy. Roosevelt sought to continue the Lincolnian legacy, believing they shared a similar vigor for truth, courage, and action. At his inauguration Roosevelt wore a ring that contained a lock of Lincoln’s hair. Roosevelt invoked Lincoln often as president and later wrote a biography of the sixteenth president in 1909—just one year before his speech at the Sorbonne (this could have been why he used this quote in his speech). By historical happenstance, a six-year-old Teddy Roosevelt was even present for President Lincoln’s funeral, with a rare photograph showing him peering out of his family’s Broadway Avenue home in New York City as Lincoln’s casket passed below. Side by side on Mount Rushmore, history remembers them together alongside two of America’s greatest founders. They were, in many ways, kindred spirits.

  Having hammered home the centrality of “good citizens” to a great republic in the core of his speech, Roosevelt used Lincoln’s historic words to pivot to the most important “public good” he believed those good citizens should advance: the continuous pursuit of “equality of opportunity” for everyone. In making this point, Roosevelt points to Lincoln, who, as he always did, pointed to the Declaration of Independence, which powerfully states:

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

  Even if it was unequally applied at the time, the word equal is arguably the most important word in the Declaration’s preamble. Lincoln clarifies: “[The founders] did not mean to assert . . . that all were actually enjoying that equality, or . . . that they were about to confer it immediately upon them.” Lincoln’s point, echoed by Roosevelt throughout the speech, is that equality is never truly equal and never truly attainable; but must always be held up for pursuit—“looked to . . . [and] labored for” in every way. Many basic elements of the Declaration’s endowed equality took far too long to take hold, but the pursuit has been constant ever since—from the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, to the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Dream” in 1963. Equal freedom, equal treatment, and equal justice are founding promises of America—even if, at times, they have been a long time coming.

  From Lincoln to Roosevelt and beyond, this elevation of “equality” is a defining characteristic of both the republ
ican and Republican tradition. Republican Abraham Lincoln led a war to emancipate enslaved black Americans; Republicans in Congress led the charge for women’s suffrage and Republican legislatures across the country ratified it (eight of nine Democratic legislatures voted against ratification); a Republican president and Republican-controlled Congress granted citizenship to Native Americans; and it was Republicans in Congress who overcame a Democratic filibuster to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In each case, the republican activists who championed these social movements—and the Republicans who advanced and voted for their codification—appealed directly to the Declaration of Independence’s basic and unalienable rights endowed equally by a Creator, not a government. Each case was a fulfillment of America’s founding premise, not a rejection or transformation of it. America’s founders understood that republican government exists to secure these rights, not bestow them.

  By modern standards, these beliefs—among others related to liberty, role of government, and free enterprise—could only place America’s founding republicans in league with modern conservative Republicans. The founders had plenty of disagreements among themselves—some violently so!—but it’s hard to dispute that even those disagreements fall within the conservative end of today’s political spectrum. This is not intended to be a partisan statement—I’m not writing a Republican book for Republicans, nor am I looking to parse out the differences between 1776-era Federalists, Anti-Federalists, or Democratic-Republicans (the prescient name of the party formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1792). Instead, comparing the principles of our founders to the principles of modern-day conservative Republicans is meant to clarify where, more or less, the small-r republican ideals of our founding in 1776 still live more than two hundred years later: ideas of individual liberty, limited government, religious faith, free enterprise, and equal opportunity. These founding ideals—later codified by the Constitution and Bill of Rights—are what make America, by definition, exceptional. America is not exceptional because we are proud, powerful, or rich. America is exceptional because of the principles upon which she was founded—principles that, at the time of our founding, were considered unfeasible by the rest of the known political world.