Not long ago, I used this space to ask if the Arab Spring was like 2009 (the failed Twitter Revolution in Iran), 1989 (the democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe) or 1979 (the Islamist revolution in Iran). Like others, I believed the end of Mubarak’s autocratic rule was something to celebrate, but I worried that what ultimately replaces Mubarak may not be worth celebrating. And sadly, a year later, elements of the Arab Spring are starting to resemble 1979, as evidenced by the brewing hostage crisis in Egypt.

Nineteen American citizens working for well-known and well-established nonprofit groups are being held on trumped-up charges that they tried to destabilize Egypt. Their offices were raided in late December, some are holed up in the U.S. embassy and all of them have been barred from flying out of Egypt. As Time magazine notes, December is significant. December is when Congress passed a number of conditions for aid to the Egyptian military, including proving a “commitment to Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, progress toward democratic reforms, and the protection of free expression, association and religion.” Not only are the last two of those conditions not being met by Egypt, but Time adds that Cairo’s case against the Americans is “propagated by the military-led regime.”

That’s also an important part of the story. To its credit, the Egyptian military played a key role in persuading Mubarak to cede power, and in preventing Egypt from careening into chaos. The Egyptian military is now trying to serve as something of a referee/power broker/king-maker. Up until this crisis, Washington recognized that while having the Egyptian military in charge is not ideal, it may be necessary to hold the political pieces together in Egypt. But if this is how the “responsible” parties in post-Mubarak Egypt are going to treat Americans, then it’s time to reevaluate everything about this interests-based relationship. Hopefully, Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey is conveying that very message in his talks in Cairo.

The clear, unambiguous and indeed private message should be threefold:

• The U.S. aid spigot—an average of $2 billion per year since 1979—will be shut off if these hostages aren’t freed and if post-Mubarak Egypt continues to resemble post-Shah Iran. As Time puts it, “if Egypt’s generals get away with the NGO crackdown and the political humiliation of its biggest foreign benefactor, it’s going to set a dangerous precedent for other regimes testing the waters of democracy.”

• The United States is prepared to radically rethink its security posture and force structure in the region. There are many other countries in the region that will take U.S. aid dollars and assist the U.S. in protecting its strategic interests.

• U.S. force will be employed if American interests or citizens are again threatened. Washington cannot allow another far-off revolution to hold America hostage.

Floating a trial balloon for the White House, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced last week that the Obama administration is planning to speed up its withdrawal timetable in Afghanistan. “By mid- to the latter part of 2013, we’ll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise and assist role,” Panetta said. That would be a year earlier than what the Obama administration had initially proposed.

This should come as no surprise. In fact, it’s exactly what President Obama has been pushing for, itching for, advocating, from the very beginning of his administration.

Recall that in 2009, after a lengthy re-review of his own policy, the president concluded that “it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan,” before promising that “after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.”

That announcement raised red flags for many observers.

First, the notion that “our vital national interest” somehow has an expiration date was nothing short of bizarre.

Second, the much-ballyhooed surge of 30,000 troops was less than what the generals asked for—Gen. Stanley McChrystal wanted 40,000—and arguably never had the full impact it was designed to have. In fact, the White House was trying to get the military to accede to a faster draw-down—and arguably shorter withdrawal timetable—last July.

As Defense News reported at the time, then-Defense Secretary Gates was “sparring at a distance with White House aides who are pushing for a faster draw-down of the 100,000-strong U.S. force.” Indeed, after the killing of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, the president declared that “it’s now time for us to recognize that we’ve accomplished a big chunk of our mission and that it’s time for Afghans to take more responsibility.” He then ordered the withdrawal of 33,000 troops by summer 2012. Again, the military advocated a more modest reduction of between 5,000 and 10,000 troops.

Third, letting the Taliban know when the U.S. military would end its offensive only made the mission harder—and the Taliban less open to some sort of settlement.

That helps explain why a leaked U.S. military report, based on interviews of Taliban prisoners, concludes that:

“Taliban commanders, along with rank and file members, increasingly believe their control of Afghanistan is inevitable. Though the Taliban suffered severely in 2011, its strength, motivation, funding and tactical proficiency remains intact…they see little hope for a negotiated peace. Despite numerous tactical setbacks, surrender is far from their collective mindset.”

Regrettably, it seems the very opposite mindset is at work in Washington.

To be sure, the American people and their military should not be expected to sacrifice more for Afghanistan than the Afghan people are themselves willing to sacrifice. Moreover, it is the president’s responsibility to determine and then to do what is in America’s national interest—not what is in Hamid Karzai’s interest. In other words, sometimes the wisest, most just, most appropriate decision a president can make is to pull back and turn away.

President Obama’s pals in the media are at it again, this time cheering Team Obama’s command of the latest technology. One outlet is entranced by the Obama campaign’s use of Google+ to conduct “the first completely digital interview from the White House.” A mobile technology news site declares that “President Obama’s decision to use Google+” and “embrace of social media…enhances his reputation as a tech-savvy commander-in-chief.” Another media outlet gushes that the Obama campaign represents “the first national political adoption” of mobile credit card readers. Yet another marvels at how “President Obama has Twittered, Googled and Facebooked millions of American voters.” Fast Company expects Team Obama “to storm into new digital territory in the upcoming race,” thanks to the Obama campaign’s hiring of “uber-hipster and tech rebel Harper Reed as the organization’s chief technology officer.” Calling Obama “the Google-style candidate,” The Financial Times adds, with a sense of fait accompli, “Mr. Obama’s campaign Facebook page already has 24m friends.” Translation: Why even bother trying to challenge our tech-savvy, with-it, and above-all, hip commander-in-chief?

This all calls to mind some of the nonsense said early in the Age of Obama.

A Computer Weekly column, for instance, praised “Obama’s technology presidency,” declared the new president a “technology-savvy leader” and applauded Obama for “leadership by example” in the area of information technology.

Perhaps worst of all was a piece penned by Anna Quindlen mocking John McCain because he “doesn’t text-message or have a BlackBerry or use e-mail.” The next president of the United States needs to be a “techie,” she declared, because “Americans cannot afford” a president who is “out of it”—and because America’s national security depends on it. “If Osama bin Laden beat us with a laptop,” Quindlen queried, “shouldn’t we at least have a president who is reasonably conversant with one?”

The short answer was then—and remains today: “Not necessarily.” Being a “techie” is not a prerequisite for being president.

By Quindlen’s logic—and the logic of her media brethren who confuse technological acumen with governing competence—presidents should have a working knowledge of everything that the U.S. government and its enemies use to pursue their respective objectives, as well as everything average Americans use in their daily lives. Of course, we know that’s not possible or necessary.

It was officially called the State of the Union Address, but what President Obama actually delivered on Tuesday night was a campaign speech targeted directly at his base. The message went something like this: “Unions, environmentalists, teachers, Hispanic immigrants, women, I’m your president…I’m your candidate.”

Consider the code words and messages sprinkled throughout the speech.

The president began with a shameless signal to the Code Pink crowd and anti-war left—the folks who fueled his rise and run for the White House. “For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq,” he declared, sidestepping the unraveling situation that has emerged as a result. And he went on: “We’ve begun to wind down the war in Afghanistan. Ten thousand of our troops have come home. Twenty-three thousand more will leave by the end of this summer.” Again, never mind what is left behind.

For Big Labor, he boasted about his efforts to get “workers and automakers to settle their differences” and get a government-owned, union-run General Motors “back on top as the world’s number one automaker.”

He gratuitously mentioned a “unionized plant in Milwaukee” and cited key union cities in key states for good measure: “Detroit and Toledo and Chicago…Cleveland and Pittsburgh.”

For the teachers’ unions, he lamented how “tight budgets have forced states to lay off thousands of teachers” and called on Congress to give states “the resources to keep good teachers on the job.” Drifting into meaningless platitudes, he promised that in exchange he would support programs to “replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.”

While on the subject of meaningless platitudes, the president boasted that “there are fewer illegal crossings than when I took office.” The reason for that, of course, is that he’s presiding over the worst economy in four decades. In other words, there are no jobs to entice immigrants to cross America’s southern border—legally or illegally. (See Mitch Daniels’ sparkling rebuttal for more on why.)

But the president’s main message on immigration was for the amnesty lobby: “Hundreds of thousands of talented, hardworking students in this country face another challenge: The fact that they aren’t yet American citizens. Many were brought here as small children, are American through and through, yet they live every day with the threat of deportation,” he chided. “Let’s at least agree to stop expelling responsible young people,” who, it pays to recall, are not responsible enough to legalize their status.

Worried about aggravating Iran, the United States has announced that it is postponing missile-defense drills with Israel. Dubbed “Austere Challenge 12,” the exercises had been planned for months and were intended to send a clear message that the United States and Israel were prepared to protect themselves from Iran’s mushrooming missile threat. In fact, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last month pointed to the exercises as evidence of America’s “unshakable” commitment to Israel. Now that the exercises have been delayed, the mullahs are getting a very different message.

A U.S. European Command official assures us that “It is not unusual for such exercises to be postponed,” which is true. But timing is everything when dealing with aggressors. Washington’s intentions are good—to avert an accidental war—but the perception in Tehran is that Washington blinked. That means the mullahs won this round. And as with all aggressors, that emboldens them and encourages them to push harder, to take more risks and to make dangerous miscalculations that invite the very thing Washington is trying to avoid.

One recalls how the Carter administration reacted to Moammar Qaddafi’s unilateral claim over the Gulf of Sidra, a huge chunk of the Mediterranean Sea universally considered as international waters. Anyone who crossed Qaddafi’s so-called “line of death” in the Gulf of Sidra would face military attack. President Carter canceled annual freedom-of-navigation naval exercises in and around the Gulf of Sidra to avoid confrontation and to keep things calm in the region.

But the message Qaddafi heard was that America was weak, and so he pushed and miscalculated. U.S. intelligence soon unearthed evidence that Libyan agents were planning to hit Marine One with a heat-seeking missile; Libya was caught red-handed sending tons of military hardware to communist forces in Nicaragua; and Qaddafi’s army of terrorists was at work all around the globe.

Vowing to enforce the principle of freedom of the seas, President Reagan ordered the U.S. Sixth Fleet to resume its exercises. When the exercises began in the autumn of 1981, Qaddafi lived up to his word and sent several warplanes into international airspace to enforce his line of death. Authorized, in Reagan’s words, to pursue attacking Libyan warplanes “all the way into the hangar,” U.S. F-14s responded with deadly force and made it clear to Qaddafi that there would be no payoff for recklessly disregarding international norms—only costs. “We sent a message to Qaddafi,” Reagan said. “We weren’t going to allow him to declare squatter’s rights over a huge area of the Mediterranean in defiance of international law.”

The moral of the story is that in international relations, every action and non-action sends a message. The postponement of Austere Challenge 12 sends the wrong message. Just when the pressure was building on the mullahs—on the economic front, in the Strait of Hormuz, vis-à-vis European energy imports, at the IAEA—Washington put Austere Challenge 12 on hold and relieved the pressure.

It’s important to note that these U.S.-Israel exercises were wholly defensive. As The Washington Post reports, they were “designed to test multiple Israeli and U.S. air defense systems against incoming missiles and rockets.”

Think about that. These weren’t provocative naval maneuvers off Iran’s coast or massive air exercises feigning attacks across the skies of the Middle East. These were missile-defense exercises designed to test U.S.-Israeli forces in deflecting inbound missile threats.

Defense is the operative word here. To cut through all the relativistic confusion, consider this everyday example: Which one of the following would you call provocative—a cop strapping on a bullet-proof vest or a gunman loading his weapon?

Declaring that the U.S. military and the nation it defends are at a “moment of transition,” President Barack Obama has unveiled a dramatic scaling-back of the military’s role, reach and resources—complete with troop reductions, force redeployments and a promise to refocus on economic challenges. Or as he indelicately put it last year, “time to focus on nation-building at home.” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta calls it a “strategic turning point.” Indeed it is. We are left to wonder just what the United States is turning toward—or into.

In his remarks at the Pentagon last week, Obama called America “the greatest force for freedom and security that the world has ever known.” He’s right about that, but what he doesn’t seem to understand—as evidenced by his sweeping strategic review and retrenchment—is that being a global force for freedom and security is not preordained or written in the stars. Rather, it is a role that requires treasure and effort and sacrifice.

The American people may be ready to give up this thankless job, but that seems doubtful. At the very least, the president needs to make sure they understand what these changes will mean. As Robert Gates warned before he left the Pentagon, perhaps aware of what Obama was planning:

If we are going to reduce the resources and the size of the U.S. military…people need to make conscious choices about what the implications are for the security of the country, as well as for the variety of military operations we have around the world, if lower priority missions are scaled back or eliminated…The tough choices ahead are really about the kind of role the American people—accustomed to unquestioned military dominance for the past two decades—want their country to play in the world.

In other words, there’s a price to maintaining a peerless power-projecting military, but there’s also a price to not doing so.

Speaking of price tags, the reason the president unveiled his plan for a “leaner” military, at least ostensibly, is that Congress, concerned about unprecedented debt and deficits, mandated massive reductions in defense spending—some $500 billion in reductions as compared with what had been projected.

“Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow,” Obama explained, “but the fact of the matter is this:  It will still grow.” In other words, the president is saying defense spending will grow at a slower rate. That’s a fair point: Slower growth should not be considered a cut. But why don’t the president and his political brethren apply the same logic to social programs? If these aren’t really cuts the president is proposing for the Pentagon, then it’s not really a cut when a reform-minded congressman proposes to slow the rate of growth in, say, Medicare or Social Security or the EPA.

Of course, the reality is that the Armed Forces are not to blame for this budget-deficit mess. We could eliminate the entire defense budget—$662 billion this year—and turn the Pentagon into a mega-mall, and we would still face a budget deficit of $700 billion. (The current deficit is in the $1.3-trillion range.)

The heart of the problem is runaway spending on Social Security, Medicare, stimulus boondoggles and the like. Yet Social Security and other entitlements are simply not as important as national security. After all, our founding document calls on the government to “provide for the common defense” in the very first sentence; then grants Congress the power to declare war, “raise and support armies…provide and maintain a navy…make rules for calling forth the militia…provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia”; authorizes the president to serve as “commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states”; discusses war, treason and America’s enemies in Article III; and emphasizes the importance of a “well-regulated militia” to the “security of a free state” in the Bill of Rights. On the other hand, the Constitution says nothing about retirement pensions, stimulus programs or health care. The Founders understood that if their new government didn’t provide for the common defense, it wouldn’t be able to provide anything else—and the American people wouldn’t be able to live free, let alone pursue happiness.

But back to the president’s plan for a smaller military. Today’s U.S. military, as the president explained, has “decimated al Qaeda’s leadership…delivered justice to Osama bin Laden…put that terrorist network on the path to defeat…made important progress in Afghanistan…joined allies and partners to protect the Libyan people as they ended the regime of Muammar Qaddafi”—all while defending Europe and the Pacific and the homeland.

Tehran is making lots of noise about closing the Strait of Hormuz, boasting that it would be “easier than drinking a glass of water,” according to Iran’s naval chief, and warning U.S. aircraft carriers to steer clear of the vital waterway. The Iranians have punctuated their threats with missile tests, naval maneuvers and other provocative acts. What if the president responded by explaining that closure of the Strait of Hormuz “would constitute an illegal interference with navigation of the sea,” by making it unambiguously clear to Iran’s leaders that “we will protect our ships, and if they threaten us, they’ll pay a price,” and by deploying and even using military force to ensure that Tehran had “no illusions about the cost of irresponsible behavior”?

As a matter of fact, the president has already responded to Iranian provocations in this manner. Of course, the president who did so was Ronald Reagan.

It happened in 1987-88, after Iran launched cruise missiles at ships in the Persian Gulf, attacked unarmed oil tankers, laid mines that destroyed cargo ships, harassed U.S. warships and aircraft deployed to ensure freedom of the seas, and deployed ship-killing missiles on its side of the Strait of Hormuz.

After an Iranian mine ripped through a U.S. warship, Reagan had enough and ordered a series of punishing military responses against Iranian naval assets all across the lower half of the Persian Gulf. While most Americans forget this war on the Gulf, Tehran doesn’t. On a single day in 1988, the U.S. crippled Iran’s navy: U.S. helicopters disabled and then captured an Iranian ship; U.S. warships set Iranian oil platforms ablaze; and the U.S. armada eliminated six Iranian warships, effectively turning Iran’s military into a land-only force. Even the New York Times called it “The right response to Khomeini.”

Today, Tehran is even more capable of wreaking havoc in and around the Strait of Hormuz. Military analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Security and International Studies has noted that “Iran has given modernization of its naval forces high priority,” acquiring sophisticated anti-ship missiles from China and Ukraine, submarines from Russia, high-speed attack boats from France and an arsenal of some 2,000 mines. In Cordesman’s view, Iran may have the “potential capability to close the Gulf until U.S. naval and air power could clear the mines and destroy the missile launchers and submarines.”

Although now may not be the time for Reaganesque military action against Iran’s navy, it’s certainly the time for Reaganesque words from this president. All we’ve heard so far in response to Iran’s threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a brief but blunt warning from the U.S. Fifth Fleet that disruptions of the vital transit route “will not be tolerated.”

“North Korea as we know it is over,” according to Victor Cha, Asian affairs specialist to President George W. Bush from 2004 to 2007. “Whether it comes apart in the next few weeks or over several months, the regime will not be able to hold together after the untimely death of its leader, Kim Jong-il.”

For the sake of discussion, let’s stipulate that Cha is correct. If the Kim Dynasty’s days are indeed numbered, what will the end look like?

History offers some helpful, if not always uplifting, examples of how North Korea could collapse.

The ideal parallels—the economic liberalization of China and the bloodless reunification of East and West Germany—also seem the least likely.

The prospect of North Korea following China into quasi-capitalism seems remote, at least for now. This is a closed society, an economy smaller than virtually every state in the U.S., a country whose most lucrative exports are retrofitted Soviet-era missiles and counterfeit $100 bills, a place where citizens are required to donate food to the armed forces.

But as Ralph Cossa of the Center for Strategic and International Studies observes, “There appears to be some hope, primarily emanating from Beijing, that Kim Jong-un will take North Korea down the path of Chinese-style reform.”

One way, perhaps the only way, this could happen is if China decides to intervene directly in North Korea’s economic and political system. Given Beijing’s keen interest in preventing the sort of collapse in North Korea that would either a) invite intervention by South Korea and the U.S. on humanitarian or self-defense grounds or b) trigger a confrontation enfolding some of the most powerful militaries on earth, such interference by Beijing would not be unthinkable. Neither would it be unprecedented. In fact, it arguably would be akin to an economic version of China’s late-1950 invasion across the Yalu, which aimed to prevent a U.S. takeover of the North.

Cha notes that Beijing could, in effect, “adopt [North Korea] as a province” by offering massive aid and assistance packages conditioned on the younger Kim’s “promises of economic reform.” This could stave off the sort of dramatic, near-term change that so worries Beijing.

As to the German-reunification scenario, it pays to recall that North and South Koreans, quite unlike East and West Germans, fought each other in a brutal war, which means they bear scars and wounds that pre-unification Germans did not. Plus, for East Germans, there was no “Great Successor” to worship. By 1989, even the true believers understood that the communist state was dead. This is not the case in North Korea, where the people are completely isolated from the outside world—and totally controlled by a propaganda machine that deifies the regime. Witness the mass-mourning by the North Korean people—all for a brutal tyrant who starved them.

In other words, North Koreans don’t appear to have the will or the wherewithal—or quite simply the strength, given a diet that relies on grass as a staple—to tear down the Kim Dynasty. So, a “Pyongyang Spring” seems unlikely. And even if there is some germ of a freedom movement in North Korea—some North Korean Havel ready to speak truth to power—it’s difficult to imagine the North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) remaining garrisoned like the armies of the Soviet bloc in 1989, 1990 and 1991, if the younger Kim ever calls for help. The NKPA is the most paranoid, propagandized and privileged part of North Korea. Why wouldn’t it try to sustain the regime? Why wouldn’t it turn against its own countrymen?

“The next president of the United States is not going to have to address the issue as to whether we went into Iraq or not,” Sen. John McCain explained in 2008. “The next president of the United States is going to have to decide how we leave, when we leave and what we leave behind.”

President Obama, as we now know, decided to leave Iraq rather abruptly—and to leave behind a fragile, unfinished country. As Iraq limps into the unknown, many dangers and questions await. Because U.S. troops are in Kuwait or back in the states, Iraq will face those dangers alone and Washington will have little say in how those questions are addressed.

The debates over whether President Bush should have launched the war and over how President Obama ended it will go on for many years. Perhaps someday a consensus will emerge. But perhaps it won’t. It pays to recall that 36 years after the fall of Saigon, Americans are still debating the war in Vietnam.

Suffice it to say here that President Bush, after receiving approval from the Senate (77-23) and the House (296-133), ordered U.S. forces to take down Saddam Hussein’s regime because September 11 changed the very DNA of U.S. national-security policy. “Any administration in such a crisis,” as historian John Lewis Gaddis concludes in Surprise, Security and the American Experience, “would have had to rethink what it thought it knew about security and hence strategy.” Was deterrence any longer possible? Was containment viable? Was giving repeat-offenders like Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt responsible?

One by one, the Bush administration—and large, bipartisan majorities in Congress—answered those questions. And the answer to each was “no,” which is why September 11 led first to Afghanistan and then to Baghdad. This is perhaps the most fundamental way that September 11 is linked to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq: The latter did not plan or hatch the former, but the former taught Washington a lesson about the danger of failing to confront threats before they are fully formed. In the same manner, the appeasement of Hitler at Munich at once had nothing and everything to do with how America responded to Stalin and his successors during the Cold War.

As for President Obama’s decision to let Iraq stand or fall on its own, it should come as no surprise. It pays to recall that the centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy—indeed the very fuel for his White House run—was always withdrawing from Iraq. If nothing else, he deserves credit for keeping his word.

Of course, when it comes to national security, inconsistency would be preferable to instability—especially in the Persian Gulf.

“Our forces are good,” according to Col. Salam Khaled of the Iraqi army, “but not to a sufficient degree that allows them to face external and internal challenges alone. The loyalty of forces is not to their homeland. The loyalty is to the political parties and to the sects.”

It’s interesting how those who rail against Wall Street greed—or the greed of the faceless, nameless “They”—usually overlook the greed of those on Main Street. President Obama is a case in point.

During his speech earlier this month, at a high school in rural Kansas, Obama inveighed against “the breathtaking greed of a few” who “plunged our economy and the world into a crisis from which we’re still fighting to recover.”

As Obama tells it, those greedy few sold mortgages “to people who couldn’t afford them, or even sometimes understand them.” Then, “banks and investors” pocketed “huge bonuses made with other people’s money on the line.”

All the while, those of us on Main Street—guileless and good and anything but greedy—relied on “credit cards and home equity loans” to get by. As a result, according to the president, “too many families found themselves racking up more and more debt.”

In short, Obama focuses his ire and wags his scolding finger at “banks and investors,” while giving the rest of us a pass.

To be sure, greed motivated the people who run the banks and mortgage houses and credit card companies—and still does. But didn’t greed also motivate those who bought houses and took on mortgages they “couldn’t afford”? Didn’t greed motivate some of those who used credit cards and home equity lines to live way beyond their means?

Indeed, Americans may deride deficit spending, but Washington is merely imitating us. Americans hold some $900 billion in credit-card debt, and according to the financial-data clearinghouse Bankrate, four out 10 American families spend more than they earn annually.

One contributing factor in this is greed, and it has nothing to do with Wall Street.

Likewise, we may say we oppose big government, but we are fond of particular government programs:

• The new healthcare law may be unpopular today. But in 2009, polls revealed that 75 percent of the country supported universal coverage.

• In 1997, 33 percent of undergraduates borrowed easy money through the federal student loan program. By 2007, that number was 42 percent. With the recent federal takeover of student loans, that percentage will explode.

• According to a federal report unearthed by The Atlantic, “The share of personal income that comes from government-transfer programs” has grown from 5.9 cents of every dollar in 1950 to 17.3 cents in 2009.

Forty percent of Republican voters say they are dissatisfied with the GOP presidential field. Perhaps the reason for this, as Ross Douthat observed in a recent piece, is that it’s difficult to imagine any of the current crop of candidates as the Republican nominee—perhaps aside from Mitt Romney. And yet many conservatives have concerns about Romney, who can’t seem to break 25 percent in the polls. Thus, a carousel of candidates has taken turns matching Romney’s poll numbers, each keeping pace with the former Massachusetts governor for a couple weeks before falling back in the pack. In Douthat’s estimation, the problem is that many of the contestants don’t come across as particularly presidential. Some lack eloquence. Others lack experience. Still others are so one-dimensional or issue-specific that the prospect that they could win the nomination and challenge Obama for the presidency is beyond remote. Douthat may be onto something.

Just compare the current GOP field—and their resumes—to that of past contested primaries.

The leading names in today’s field include Romney, whose resume is certainly of presidential caliber but whose record of “evolving” on key issues—health care and abortion top the list—is unsettling to GOP conservatives. There’s former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, whose big ideas triggered a political revolution in 1994 but whose personal baggage is unsettling to GOP evangelicals. There’s Herman Cain, a restaurant CEO with perhaps more personal baggage than Gingrich and far less political experience than any other candidate; in fact, Cain has never been elected to office, which is unsettling to GOP establishment types. At the other end of the spectrum is Jon Huntsman, who knows all about the world, has a weighty political resume, lacks any personal baggage but served as Barack Obama’s ambassador to China, which is beyond unsettling to the GOP’s base. There’s Rick Perry, a popular governor with lots of question marks about his discipline, capacity to wage and win a national campaign and ability to attract independents next fall, all of which is unsettling to the GOP’s anybody-but-Obama caucus. And then there’s Ron Paul, a maverick congressman who seems more eager to criticize his party than carry its standard in a general election, and Michele Bachmann, a three-term congresswoman.

Some of those resumes are as thin as, well, the 2008 Democratic nominee’s resume—and some of those candidates are carrying enough baggage to sink any head-to-head matchup with the current president.

Now, consider the resumes of the main Republican candidates from previous years.

Another month, another incident with Pakistan. This time, it was a nighttime NATO airstrike against Pakistani border outposts that triggered the crisis. Pakistan says 25 of its soldiers were killed in the “unprovoked and indiscriminate” attack by NATO helicopters. NATO has issued apologies for the “tragic unintended incident.” But Islamabad has promised to retaliate for what it views as an act of aggression. In fact, the Pakistanis already have shut down the overland supply corridors that carry NATO war materiel into Afghanistan from Pakistani ports. In addition, Islamabad has demanded that the U.S. pull out of bases being used to conduct drone strikes.

To be sure, this could be what it appears on the surface: a friendly-fire mistake caused by the fog of war. There’s a reason the term was coined by the warriors of yesterday. Battle is chaos and confusion, especially at night.

Yet something tells me there’s more at play here than the fog of war.

As the Pakistani side rages about its innocent soldiers coming under attack while fighting our enemy, Afghan and NATO officials have made it clear that the helicopter strikes came in response to repeated fire from the Pakistani side of the border. More specifically, the fire came from “a Pakistan military outpost,” according to a Wall Street Journal report on the incident. That’s what triggered the NATO air attack, which, according to an Afghan official interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, “Pakistani officials were informed of…before it took place.”

This is nothing new. Pakistani forces have fired on U.S. and other NATO helicopters for years. Given that Taliban, Haqqani and al Qaeda forces have no helicopters, the Pakistanis cannot claim to be doing this by mistake.

Moreover, elements within the Pakistani security, military and intelligence apparatus—which helped create the Taliban in a short-sighted attempt to gain nominal control over Afghanistan—continue to support the Taliban and the Haqqani network. The Haqqani network, it pays to recall, has been involved in several terrorist attacks on civilians in Afghanistan (including the Kabul siege earlier this year) and in attacks on coalition troops.  In September, Adm. Mike Mullen called the Haqqani network “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI).”

Haqqani operatives in Afghanistan, “with ISI support,” in Mullen’s words, have planned and conducted truck bomb attacks on U.S. and NATO bases, assaults on the U.S. embassy and deadly attacks on commercial and government facilities in Kabul. The ISI-backed Haqqani network was responsible for the 2009 attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan, which killed seven CIA operatives. According to the International Herald Tribune, ISI’s “S Wing” is coordinating Taliban operations in southern Afghanistan.

“The support of terrorism is part of their national strategy,” Mullen bluntly said of the dysfunctional, duplicitous Pakistani security, military and intelligence apparatus.

It’s been building for a decade. President George W. Bush warned that “The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons.” President Barack Obama has expressed worries about “the continuing threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program.” In 2009, a high-level U.S. intelligence official concluded that Iran could have a nuclear bomb in 2011. And now, that moment—the one so many dreaded and predicted and feared—appears to be at hand. Specifically, the latest IAEA report expresses “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program,” concludes that Iran “has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device,” declares that there are “strong indicators of possible weapon development” and details a number of examples of overt and illegal efforts at weaponization, including: nuclear-bomb modeling, developing trigger devices and studying ways to fit nuclear payloads onto the Shahab-3 missile. As the Washington Post puts it, the IAEA has concluded that “Iran’s government has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon.”

This helps explain the rush of diplomatic and military activity swirling around the Middle East.

In diplomatic circles, the IAEA report has been called “a game changer” by British officials.

In Israel, recent weeks have seen a flurry of very-public, very-choreographed signals: long-range missile tests; air maneuvers in Italy featuring what one Israeli newspaper describes as “lengthy, long-distance mission exercises”; and streams of worrisome words.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns that “A nuclear Iran will be a dire threat to the Middle East and the entire world and…a direct and grave threat to us.”

There are suggestions by Defense Minister Ehud Barak that Israel has plans to strike Iran with or without U.S. support. It’s worth noting that Israel has taken unilateral preemptive action in self-defense many times: the 1967 war was a preemptive war; the strike on Iraq’s nuclear facilities at Osirak in 1981 was preemptive; the bombing raids on Syria’s nascent nuclear plant in 2007 were preemptive; and the mysterious Stuxnet cyber-attacks, purportedly carried out by a quiet coalition of American, Israeli and European intelligence agencies, were preemptive.

There are reports that Barak and Netanyahu are trying to win over a majority of the cabinet for a counter-proliferation strike. Barak has even discussed casualty figures, suggesting detailed war-gaming on Israel’s part.

President Shimon Peres speaks of a “ticking clock…there is not much time left.” The elder statesman says “Iran is nearing atomic weapons…What needs to be done must be done and there is a long list of options.”

Most of the options are military. The Guardian newspaper reports that “Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran.” Not known for hyperbole or military cheerleading, the left-leaning paper cites military sources who say the U.S. and U.K. are planning “targeted missile strikes at some key Iranian facilities.” Information leaked to the Guardian sketches the outlines of a series of counter-proliferation strikes “predominantly waged from the air, with some naval involvement, using missiles such as the Tomahawks [and] a small number of special forces.”

The Arab world, too, seems genuinely concerned about Iran.

When stories related to college athletics make their way to the front page of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, it’s seldom good news. And in the case of the Penn State scandal, which involves the most sordid and ugly reports of predatory child abuse and serial cowardice, it’s truly horrific, unspeakable news. The worst part, of course, is what happened to so many innocents and their families. Nearly as bad is what came to light in the state’s indictment, which makes clear that people in positions of respected authority—educators, administrators, coaches, self-styled leaders—allowed the predator to roam and hunt and destroy. If you think this language is too strong, read the information—much of which is not in dispute, even by those implicated—as outlined in the findings of fact. But only read this if you are ready to glimpse the most depraved, cowardly side of man.

That brings us to the dramatic decision by the Penn State Board of Trustees to dismiss the university’s president and head football coach, a decision that has drawn surprising criticism from some quarters. Simply put, it was the right thing to do. It didn’t heal the wounds or fix the damage caused by these crimes and subsequent cover-ups, but it did send a message that a regime stricken by moral failure and craven selfishness is over.

To be sure, the Trustees acted to protect the institution’s image and brand and future from further damage. This was not some noble act. Yet the Trustees deserve credit for stepping in to do what so many others failed to do. In taking this action, they also spared the university and its football team and the Big Ten athletic conference and the NCAA: Set alongside the sordid details in the findings of fact, the image of football coach Joe Paterno being carried off the field on national television, like some sort of hero, would only have added insult to the countless injuries. And the spectacle of Paterno facing the venom and vengeance of road crowds; the weeks of buildup before a likely Big Ten Championship game and Rose Bowl trip; and the hostile media exposure the frail and aging Paterno would endure would likely have spawned a range of ethical, legal and public-safety issues.

Speaking of the once-sainted coach, we are hearing much about how Paterno gave millions, built libraries and student centers, and selflessly gave to the university he loved. But the hard truth is that it was selfish and self-serving to shield the predator—and the untouchable football program—from the reach of law and justice. Even the coach’s announcement that he would retire at the end of the season was self-serving. It came as the Trustees were convening in emergency session, just hours before they would fire him. Some observers were saddened by the coach’s decision to quit, which carried the whiff of self-pity. In truth, it was a cynical attempt to maneuver and manipulate the situation—and as such, just an extension of what the coach and the program had done in relation to this situation for a decade, perhaps longer.

The Trustees saw through the diversion and relieved the coach of his duties, in effect codifying what had already been made manifest by the findings of fact: that the coach had lost all moral authority.

Those who hold themselves to a higher standard—those who allow others to elevate them onto pedestals—must be held to that higher standard.

The European Union, that fount of forward-looking innovations, has another great idea: hiring a “pirate cultural advisor” to assist EU naval forces operating off the Horn of Africa “with pirate cultural and religious advice and in particular to advise on pirate trends and weaknesses.”

You can’t make this stuff up, but what’s most disheartening about the EU’s politically-correct answer to piracy is that it’s representative of the West’s overall response to piracy in recent years.

• According to a Reuters report, the EU’s counter-piracy effort entails confiscating the pirates’ weapons and the ladders they use to board ships “and leaving them with only enough petrol to get back to shore.”

• The United States and its allies have formed ad hoc counter-piracy flotillas like Combined Task Force 151 that focus largely on escorting merchant ships, deterring pirate activity through shows of force, creating safe corridors and apprehending pirates. But some 90 percent of captured pirates are caught and then released.

• The television documentary “U.S. Navy: Pirate Hunters” captures the futility of the anti-piracy coalition’s constrictive rules of engagement—and the frustration it causes U.S. forces. Sailors aboard the USS Gettysburg jokingly call their ship “Hotel Gettysburg” due to the generous hospitality they offer captured Somali pirates, who are usually released. Regrettably, assault teams returning from intercepting pirate skiffs and boats have been conditioned to say things like, “We’ve got enough to prosecute them.”

• Of course, even when they make it to trial, the pirates turn the proceedings into a farce. After using RPGs to attack a Dutch-flagged cargo ship in 2009, Somali pirates were captured by Danish marines, taken to the Netherlands to stand trial and promptly claimed that the Dutch cargo ship had attacked them. The Somalis were found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison, but EU officials now worry about convicted pirates seeking asylum after serving out their sentences.

• A more common outcome when allied naval forces encounter pirates is temporary detention and release. Since January 2010, the NATO-EU piracy taskforce has set 1,500 captured pirates free.

This catch-and-release approach is the very definition of self-defeating, and it’s a far cry from how our forebears dealt with pirates.

Now, as in the past, pirates are anything but the fun-loving adventurers romanticized by Hollywood. To the contrary, they are stateless, lawless, codeless thugs. Our forebears labeled them “enemies of the human race” for good reason.

Citing a study commissioned by the shipping industry, Reuters reported earlier this year that “4,185 seafarers had faced a direct attack by pirates with firearms in the Indian Ocean or Gulf of Aden. At least 1,432 seafarers had their ships boarded. While some escaped capture by hiding in secure cabins until the pirates left, at least 1,090 were taken hostage, often for months.” Pirate brutalities include “deprivation of food and water, beating (often with the butt of a gun), shooting at hostages with water cannons, locking hostages in the ship’s freezer, tying hostages up on deck exposed to scorching sun, and hanging hostages by their feet submerged in the sea.”

Beyond the human costs, financial costs include lost cargo, damaged ships, delivery delays, ransom payments and increased insurance rates. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports that insurers are charging extra premiums of up to $20,000 per trip through the Gulf of Aden. To avoid the pirates and the insurance costs, some cargo lines are choosing alternate routes, increasing total distance traveled by as much as 38 percent. Other shippers are sending goods by air, which costs up to 10 times as much as seaborne transport. Add it all up, and the cost of piracy may be as high as $16 billion annually. These “piracy surcharges” are passed on to consumers.

In addition, piracy poses a real, albeit indirect, threat to national security. For example, 11 percent of global oil supplies travel through the Gulf of Aden. In 2008, pirates hijacked a Kenya-bound freighter loaded with T-72 battle tanks. In 2010, they captured a tanker carrying poisonous chemicals. The worrisome reality is this: Men willing to commit piracy have no qualms about selling their plunder to the highest bidder.

Our ancestors recognized this. Untainted by moral relativism, they never entertained the pathetic postmodern notion that pirates need to be understood—or the companion notion that all violence is somehow the same. Instead, they realized that the use of deadly force to protect innocents, uphold the law and maintain the order necessary for commerce served a greater good. We could learn from their example.

All great powers have had to deal with piracy. Rameses III, for instance, eliminated the pirate threat to Egypt some 3,000 years ago. “The Athenian navy,” as Angus Konstam observes in his book Piracy: The Complete History, “devoted much time and effort to clearing pirates from the Aegean.” When Rome emerged as the primary Mediterranean power, Konstam details how Pompey the Great employed a massive military force of 500 ships, 120,000 troops and “the equivalent today of half the U.S. budget and armed forces” to fight piracy. Pompey sank 500 pirate ships, razed 120 coastal bases and killed 10,000 pirates.

The Pentagon’s annual review of Beijing’s military power paints the picture of a nation eager to challenge the United States in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond, and Washington’s apparent willingness to try to balance the federal budget on the backs of the Armed Forces paints the picture of a nation that will be unprepared to meet that challenge.

According to the Pentagon report, “by the latter half of the current decade, China will likely be able to project and sustain a modest-sized force, perhaps several battalions of ground forces or a naval flotilla of up to a dozen ships, in low-intensity operations far from China. This evolution will lay the foundation for a force able to accomplish a broader set of regional and global objectives.” In conjunction with its buildup of these ground, sea and air assets, Beijing is building aerospace and cyberspace capabilities to wage—or at least to threaten—asymmetrical war against the United States.

In short, in the span of a decade or so, China’s military has evolved from a 1960s-vintage territorial army barely able to defend its coastal areas into an increasingly high-tech, power-projecting force with global reach and global ambitions.

DoD estimates China’s “total military-related spending for 2010 was over $160 billion.” With those financial resources, “China is developing measures to deter or counter third-party intervention, including by the United States.” Among China’s growing arsenal of anti-access weapons are anti-ship missiles with a range exceeding 1,500 km, upgraded B-6 bombers armed with a new long-range cruise missile, an emerging aircraft-carrier capability, and 75 surface combatants, more than 60 submarines and 85 missile-equipped small boats. All of these are aimed at dissuading the United States from getting involved in areas of interest to China—and ultimately chasing the United States out of the Asia-Pacific region.

Although the DoD reports that “China has settled eleven land disputes with six of its neighbors since 1998,” it adds that China has “maritime boundary disputes with Japan, and throughout the South China Sea with Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, and Taiwan.” These disputes are highlighted by almost-weekly headlines detailing Chinese bullying on the high seas.

Adm. Robert Willard, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, adds that “the scope and pace of…modernization without clarity on China’s ultimate goals remains troubling. For example, China continues to accelerate its offensive air and missile developments without corresponding public clarification about how these forces will be utilized. Of particular concern is the expanding inventory of ballistic and cruise missiles (which include anti-ship capability) and the development of modern, fourth- and fifth-generation stealthy combat aircraft.”

What would you call a country that employs terrorism as part of its foreign policy, that allows its intelligence agencies to coordinate attacks on U.S. forces, that purposely outs CIA agents operating in its territory, that provides support to groups that wage bloody attacks on its neighbors, that participates and even bankrolls attacks on U.S. embassies and U.S. bases, that allows its army to ambush U.S. troops, that cedes its territory to America’s enemies, that knowingly, even willfully, provides safe haven to the most-wanted, most-notorious terrorist in history?

Most people would call that country an enemy, and they would be right. This enemy regime is better known as Pakistan, and it receives some $2 billion in American aid annually.

For a while, in the early days of the post-9/11 campaign against terror, Pakistan changed its ways and behaved like an ally. It wasn’t easy. After all, Islamabad had helped spawn the Taliban in Afghanistan. But an enraged superpower can be very persuasive. Hours after the 9/11 attacks, Washington warned Pakistan to get on board, get out of the way or “be prepared to be bombed…be prepared to go back to the Stone Age.”

The government of Pervez Musharraf got the message and sided with the United States—for a while.

Then came phase two of Pakistan’s post-9/11 relationship with the United States. This second phase—call it the “frenemy phase”—was marked by cooperation in some areas and duplicity in others. For instance, hundreds of Pakistani troops died fighting the Taliban and its al Qaeda partners, and a high percentage of NATO’s equipment in Afghanistan was carried into the landlocked country via Pakistan. But all the while, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) was hatching plots against the post-Taliban government of Afghanistan, arming people who wanted to kill American troops, and providing training to groups with designs on destabilizing India and Afghanistan.

In this frenemy phase, Pakistan was not a black-and-white problem, but rather a gray area.

If the frenemy phase of the relationship didn’t end on May 1—when SEAL Team 6 found Osama bin Laden “hiding” in a mansion just outside Pakistan’s capital, in a city that serves as host to the Pakistani military academy—then it certainly is over now.

Today, we know that “with ISI support,” in the words of Adm. Michael Mullen, Haqqani operatives in Afghanistan have planned and conducted truck bomb attacks on U.S. and NATO bases, assaults on the U.S. embassy, and deadly attacks on commercial and government facilities in Kabul. The ISI-backed Haqqani network is responsible for the 2009 attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan, which killed seven CIA operatives. According to The International Herald Tribune, ISI’s “S Wing” is helping coordinate Taliban operations in southern Afghanistan.
In other words, Pakistan has now come full circle. It supported terrorist groups in Afghanistan before 9/11 in pursuit of its own craven interests, and it has returned to what it knows best.

Presidential candidate Ron Paul is an ardent defender of liberty and thoroughly consistent when it comes to individual freedom. That wins him lots of support among libertarians, but it doesn’t make him right on all the issues. In fact, the positions he has taken in recent debates on a range of issues related to defense and national security sound jarringly similar to the blame-America nonsense of the left-wing fringe. Here are just a few examples.

Asked in an August debate about Iran going nuclear, the congressman challenged us to put ourselves in Iran’s shoes: “Think of how many nuclear weapons surround Iran. The Chinese are there. The Indians are there.  The Pakistanis are there. The Israelis are there. The United States is there…Why wouldn’t it be natural that they might want a weapon? Internationally, they’d be given more respect.”

When former senator Rick Santorum pushed back, citing Iran’s 1979 assault on the U.S. embassy, Paul went even further, seemingly channeling some left-wing poli-sci professor: “We’ve been at war in Iran for a lot longer than ‘79. We started it in 1953 when we sent in a coup, installed the shah, and the reaction, the blowback came in 1979.  It’s been going on and on because we just plain don’t mind our own business. That’s our problem.”

There it is. It all comes back to us. We’re to blame for Iran’s nuclear ambitions and Iran’s radicalism.

Asked in a June debate about the Afghanistan mission, Paul said he would bring the troops “home as quickly as possible. And I would get them out of Iraq as well. And I wouldn’t start a war in Libya. I’d quit bombing Yemen. And I’d quit bombing Pakistan…Our national security is not enhanced by our presence over there. We have no purpose there. We should learn the lessons of history.”

History is full of lessons, of course. One lesson, as Paul suggests, is that foreign intervention is fraught with risks and can have unintended consequences for the intervening country. But another lesson of history is that there are unintended consequences and risks to isolation.

American presidents and the American people have rejected the siren song of isolation since World War II because of, well, World War II. A consensus emerged after the war that the world could do more harm to America if America remained uninvolved and uninterested, that America could do more good in the world as a leader than as a passive observer, and that engagement in the world benefited America.

To be sure, there have been mistakes and missteps, costs and consequences, to American engagement in the world. But by and large, engagement has served American interests.

The “bring the troops home” trope always sounds appealing. But we’ve put it into practice before, and the results are often disastrous: We brought the troops home in 1919, focused on ourselves, took care of America and assiduously tried to stay out of the world’s way.  Then Chamberlain gave us Munich; Hitler gave us another European war; and Japan gave us Pearl Harbor. We began bringing the troops home in 1945. Then Stalin gobbled up half of Europe, destabilized Turkey and Greece, and armed Kim Il-Sung in preparation for his invasion of South Korea.

By the way, the United States didn’t start the war in Libya. And whether or not the critics like it, America does have a purpose in the Middle East: fighting people, organizations and states that want to kill Americans. The targets of U.S. strikes in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia are people plotting to kill Americans in Detroit and Dallas and D.C.

It’s worth noting here that the notion that we lived in blissful, peaceful isolation before the 20th century—implicit in Paul’s foreign-policy vision—does not jibe with American history. Jefferson, after all, raised a fleet and sent it halfway around the world to wage war on America’s enemies—in the first decade of the 1800s. The Congressional Research Service lists more than 100 instances of U.S. military intervention overseas before the 20th century. “Between 1800 and 1934,” as Max Boot observes, “U.S. Marines staged 180 landings abroad.”

But back to Rep. Paul: When asked in the September 7 debate about privatization, Paul started back down the blame-America path. “Just remember, 9/11 came about because there was too much government. Government was more or less in charge. They told the pilots they couldn’t have guns, and they were told never to resist. They set up the stage for all this.”

It gets better—or worse.

The 9/11 anniversary obliges us to consider the changes that have been thrust upon us since that terrible Tuesday morning. Most pixels, ink and airtime are being devoted to how 9/11 and its consequences affected our greatest city, our politics and freedoms, our international standing and self-perception, our view of the world—and understandably so. But 9/11 also left a lasting mark on the everyday stuff of Americana, especially television and movies.

Not only did 9/11 make those distracting news-tickers a permanent part of our TV screens, it also spawned and/or propelled an entire genre of TV shows and films centered around global terrorism.

“The Unit,” “24,” “Threat Matrix” and “E Ring” all focused expressly on counterterrorism—some more effectively and convincingly than others. Likewise, the 9/11 attacks heavily influenced the plotlines and story arcs of “The West Wing,” “CSI: New York” and “Rescue Me.” The glimpse at the apocalyptic that 9/11 gave us opened a window for programs such as “Jericho” to explore not just an assault on America, but a collapse of America.

At the other end of the spectrum, the short-lived sitcom “Arrested Development” used the war in Iraq as foil for several episodes, while the prime-time cartoon “American Dad” took cheap shots at the embattled CIA.

Several films wrestled with 9/11 and its consequences. A slew of war movies and counterterrorism movies—among them, “Body of Lies,” “The Hurt Locker,” “Jarhead,” “Rendition” and “Brothers”—dealt with the high costs and hard choices of what one historian has aptly called “the wars of 9/11.”

Likewise, the latest adaptation of the Batman franchise—with its terrorist villains, unappreciated hero, complicated moral dilemmas and grim remedies—seems a thinly-veiled parable for the post-9/11 world.

Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” stitched together facts, half-truths, opinions and conjecture to convince viewers that the Bush administration ginned up a post-9/11 panic to torch the Constitution. Given that Moore’s man in the White House is relying on military commissions set up by the Bush administration, has kept in place or expanded Bush’s post-9/11 intelligence orders, continues to employ Bush’s indefinite detention orders and has extended the hated PATRIOT Act, we can only wonder why Moore hasn’t yet produced a sequel. (Of course, we know the answer.)

For my money, there are four 9/11-related films that stand out from the rest.

Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” is solid. The film’s depiction of the hell that 9/11’s first-responders went through is as close to terrorism’s consequences as anyone would ever want to get. The heroism of everyday people, the triumph of the human spirit and the American spirit, the average American’s willingness to serve and help, and the amazing power of faith and family to sustain us, are conveyed in a bruising, exhausting but ultimately uplifting two hours.

Set in the 1970s, Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” uses Israel’s relentless hunt for those who perpetrated the terror attacks on the Israeli Olympic team in 1972 as something of a parable for America’s response to 9/11, offering a thinly veiled critique of a vengeance-focused policy.

At the conclusion of the film, after eliminating nearly a dozen people connected to the Munich attacks, the leader of the Israeli kill team has second thoughts and challenges his erstwhile boss. Meeting in a Manhattan park, they engage in a heated argument about justice and vengeance, murder and killing.

“Did we accomplish anything at all?” the assassin asks, pointing out that everyone he has killed has been replaced by another terrorist. “There’s no peace at the end of this,” he says, sliding into the violence-begets-violence trope.

Goshen College’s decision to ban “The Star Spangled Banner” from on-campus sporting events has generated all kinds of attention for the tiny Mennonite school in rural Indiana. The Sacramento Bee, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post and NBC are among the media outlets that picked up the story of how Goshen, with its pacifist roots, decided to replace the National Anthem with “America the Beautiful” because the National Anthem, in the school’s view, promotes war and is thus “inconsistent” with the school’s values. A statement from the school explains that the board wanted an alternative that “resonates with Goshen College’s core values and respects the views of diverse constituencies.” “Mennonites,” adds one Goshen student, “appreciate America but also don’t want to have that violence.”

As a matter of fact, “The Star Spangled Banner” is not about violence or promoting war. It’s actually about freedom and peace. All you have to do is read Francis Scott Key’s poem to understand that our National Anthem’s true meaning is nothing for a Christian or any person of faith to be embarrassed by—and certainly nothing that deserves to be banned.

“Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?”

Key is asking if the flag is still flying—and more specifically, if his country is still free. After all, America, his homeland, was under attack. He saw Washington set ablaze. He saw “the bombs bursting in air.” And when he learns that “our flag” is “still there,” he is overjoyed, as the stanzas that follow reveal.

“Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, in full glory reflected now shines in the stream: ‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

Then, as Key—described by the National Park Service as “a deeply religious man” who was active in the Episcopal Church—grasps the full scope of what has transpired at Ft. McHenry, he turns the poem into a prayer of thanksgiving.

“Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause is just. And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’”

Although we don’t usually sing these parts of the poem, that’s what our National Anthem is about. To be sure, Key penned it after a battle. And we can gather from context that, unlike many pacifists, he didn’t view war as the enemy. But neither was he glorifying war or violence. In fact, he was celebrating his freedom and his country’s independence from an enemy that brought “the havoc of war” to America’s shores.

In other words, it may not mean much to those who confuse moral relativism for wisdom, but freedom isn’t preserved by protest marches and teach-ins. It’s preserved by warriors. And as Francis Scott Key knew firsthand, America’s warriors are not enemies of peace.