Heather Cox Richardson:

From CAFE and the Vox media Podcast Network, this is Now & Then. I’m Heather Cox Richardson.

Joanne Freeman:

And I’m Joanne Freeman. Today, we want to talk to you about something that is certainly in the news a lot right now. Part of what we want to talk about relates to the fact that it’s being discussed in a lot of different ways with a lot of different kinds of logic. And there isn’t a lot of processing going on. There’s a lot of charges going on. And that’s the issue of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan.

There’s all kinds of discussion about why we were there. Should we have been there? Why we’re withdrawing? Should we be withdrawing? Is the withdrawal an absolute catastrophe or is it not? Is partisan politics entirely shaping this narrative or is it not? There’s a lot of complexity and a lot of confusion, to be frank, about what it means that the United States is pulling out of Afghanistan.

And when Heather and I thought about that this week and talk to each other about the deeper context of this, one of the things that we came up with, one of the things that intrigued us, was how the United States positions itself as a democracy when it involves itself in wars, and what does that mean when America enters wars? And what does that mean when America leaves wars or concludes war?

So, in other words, the United States as a democracy or as a democratic government is a government of consent. So, what happens when a government of consent involves itself in a war of force? How do democracies deal with that inherent contradiction? What stories do they tell about who they are, what they’re doing, what understandings do they have about why they’re doing what they’re doing? And what can that tell us from past examples about what’s going on now in Afghanistan?

Heather Cox Richardson:

And one of the things that was fun about doing the prep for today is that we sat down and we began to make a list of how America had left certain wars. And it was a great deal of fun, but it was as much work as our Supreme Court episode in that, I think we wrote down every single war America has ever been involved in, and I think we actually got as far as into the eristic war at one point.

Joanne Freeman:

We kind of gave up after a while.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And then we realized it was really interesting and make a great book, but it actually was not going to be fitting into any kind of 30 to 40-minute podcast. So, what we did is we narrowed down certain wars and the way we think about wars. And what they said was that it looked like there was a pattern to the way America goes to war and the way America thinks about how a democracy should go to war.

And of course, we have to start with the obvious place, because when you think about why we go to war and how we think about war, the obvious word that jumps out, at least to an historian is the War of 1812.

Joanne Freeman:

There is a lot of, I don’t want to say confusion, but many different explanations for why the United States went to war in 1812. It’s not, I mean, in a way to sort of give away the ending, there’s not a clear narrative, there’s not a clear reason for why that war happened, not only at the time, but even so now to historians.

So, some people say that it had something to do with, and it did have something to do with this, the British impressing American seamen at sea that basically British ships would stop American ships at sea and take American sailors and claim that they were deserted British sailors and seize them.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So, I always thought the War of 1812 was about Britain wanting to recapture the American ports that it had lost in the American Revolutionary War. And they were simply pulled up to Canada and biding their time to wait for the Americans to tear themselves apart.

Joanne Freeman:

Well, and also, I mean, throw into the mix, so we have impressing sailors. We have the British and ports. We have just western territories and the fact that the British were routinely supplying Native Americans out there. So, there were still some conflict about the United States and Americans who wanted to push west and displace Native Americans and the British, who were still out there having some kind of influence.

There’s the question, larger question of expansion, and we’ll come to this in a moment. There’s the question of Canada. This to me is a wonderful longstanding goofy thing about the United States, early United States is the assumption on the part of Americans that Canada is just waiting to be freed from evil British rule and then they would become American.

And that happens during the revolution and it reemerges here again during the War of 1812, not necessarily a cause of the war. But once the war starts, people very obviously start saying, “Hey, you know what, Canada, this could be the moment to push the British off of North America. This could be a moment to get Canada which really wants to be with us. It’ll only be a matter of marching.”

So, that’s a whole bunch of reasons that feed into this war, add on to that the simple idea of national honor. Because there is an American ship, the USS Chesapeake, that it stopped by the British HMS Leopard, supposedly, for impressing soldiers, but there ends up being a short battle and the Chesapeake surrenders. And that has to do with American honor, too.

So, just in my explanation, which I tried to put together there, and three or four minutes, you can see how there’s not one clear message about the reason why the War of 1812 starts.

Heather Cox Richardson:

We have lots of reasons to go into the War of 1812.

Joanne Freeman:

But not one clear narrative of why we need a war.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So, you have to tell that story you were telling me about the president not knowing how to fight a democratic war either?

Joanne Freeman:

So, at that particular moment, the United States as a democratic republic and a new one that at this point isn’t 20 years old yet, has a weak Army, a weak Navy. The officer corps of that weak Army and Navy are largely people who are left over from the American Revolution. So, they’re elderly.

You have a president who before all of this starts, Thomas Jefferson, isn’t really excited about the fact of going to war and tries to impose sanctions on the British through an embargo, through holding off trade by preventing the British from getting American raw materials for British industry.

So, there’s really not a lot in place for a war to move ahead, which partly affects the narrative here, which is because anyone who even thinks of war is necessary can’t say, “Yeah, go.” There’s not a lot of oomph for fuel for that kind of an urge. But yeah, the Americans at that time feel for any variety of reasons the need to fight. Jeffersonian Republicans feel that more than Federalists. It’s largely a partisan war.

But no one really absolutely knows for reasons of supply and for reasons of experience, how to go about doing what it is they’re doing and is this a war and when is it a war and should it be war? It’s a war that has a lot of inherent complications.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So, one of the things I do love about this war is that in the process of fighting it, there is what the declaration of war and the push to go to war there, it’s really led in the Congress by Henry Clay from Kentucky, one of the young Warhawks. They had this idea that they were sort of going to go out and fight against the British and they were going to cement American power. But crucially, to my mind, they don’t yet have a language to do that.

So, Thomas Jefferson writes a letter in which she says the acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, as you said, Joanne. And will give us the experience for the attack of Halifax, the next and the final expulsion of England from the American continent. Halifax once taken, every cock-boat of hers must return to England for repairs. Their fleet will annihilate our public force on the water, but our privateers will eat out the vitals of their commerce. Perhaps they will burn New York or Boston. If they do, we must burn the city of London.

I mean, is this incredibly grandiose, “We’re going to go ahead, we’re going to fight this war, it’s going to be incredibly easy.” So, how does it turn out?

Joanne Freeman:

Well, there is indeed a war. In 1814, it takes a turn for the worst because Napoleon is defeated. And that means that the British can focus their troops on what’s going on in North America. So, in 1814, they burned Washington, they burned the White House, they burned the capitol. The United States, in turn, repulses some British raids on Baltimore, in New York, that kind of ends most of the fighting in the north.

More fighting goes on in the south and in the west. Here we have Andrew Jackson swimming to the picture. There’s a battle at New Orleans, where he emerges as the grand hero. However, kind of in sync with everything else that’s strange about this war, that battle, news of that battle arise in the United States at roughly the same time as news of the Treaty of Ghent declaring peace. So, Jackson becomes the hero of New Orleans. And the war is basically declared over a largely inconsequential war. Now, of course, both sides claim victory, particularly the United States.

Heather Cox Richardson:

You’re killing me here because I love the War of 1812. And I can make a big case that it’s the most consequential war, but I’m going to give you that turf today, and we’ll have to revisit it sometime in the future. But what comes out of the war is not a clear narrative. Because by the end of the war, the country is bitterly divided over it, right?

Joanne Freeman:

Well, yes. Although what comes out of the war is one clear narrative that actually did not help with the war itself, but changes the Americans psyche afterwards. And that is a lot of Americans take that war to be a second war of independence. And it proves that the republic, to use Hollywood speak, has long legs, that the republic is going to survive, that it’s going to go on, that this really means something, even if it wasn’t a huge victory, even though there were some ways in which the United States gained from it.

There were commissions appointed to resolve some territory disputes. I should say and I haven’t said, and this might be where you were going, Heather, it was hugely consequential for Native Americans that it really either displaced or secured or almost guaranteed the displacement of Native Americans who had been siding with the British and who Americans considered to be in the way.

So, I say inconsequential to the United States government and to the United States, but not to Native Americans. But even so, the outcome is ultimately no big dramatic changes at that moment. There is still some division in the United States, but there’s a new kind of sense of swagger in the United States believing that “Hey, look, we survived two wars with Great Britain.” You can see it in cartoons at the time, political cartoons at the time.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So, what’s interesting is we’re talking about the War of 1812. It really strikes me even the two of us throwing ideas around. I assume you teach it as well. I’ve taught it for many years. And I read a lot about the War of 1812, I covered in my courses. And yet you and I just gave what was really a kaleidoscopic vision of what happened there, in part because there wasn’t a clear story.

And one of the things the reason I was just harping on Andrew Jackson and why I pulled that quote from Thomas Jefferson is because, as I say, one of the things that really impresses me about that statement by Thomas Jefferson is there’s no centerpiece to it. It’s kind of like, yeah, we’re going to go to Canada, and we’re great and all that, but it doesn’t have a person. It doesn’t have an image at the center of it.

So, in contrast to that or really almost growing out of that is the Spanish-American War, which is the next one we identified as being a crucially important war for the way America as a democracy demonstrates what that means on the world stage, and for setting one of the two major themes that we felt came out of democracy in the late 19th and early 20th century in terms of the way we approach foreign policy.

And the Spanish-American War, which America engages in in 1898 is a really specific kind of war. And it’s important to remember when you talk about the Spanish-American War, and people often put these two pieces together that there is the war in Cuba and there is the war in the Philippines, which are contemporaneous, but they’re on opposite sides of the war. And there are a different set of interests in America behind each of those. And the Philippine war is really a very, very different kind of war than the Cuban war that I’m going to talk about here. And it’s a real mistake to put those two things together.

So, what’s interesting about the Spanish-American War is that it really is in many ways a reflection of what’s happening domestically in America at the time. So, with the industrialization of the country in the 1880s and the 1890s, many Americans become very concerned, first of all, that the American government is about to be taken over by labor interest. So, they begin to be very nervous about communism, about socialism, about the idea that the American government is going to become sort of some big collective. At the same time, they worry that industrialization is pulling the rug out from under masculine values.

So, people like Theodore Roosevelt, who are trying to break their way into the political hierarchy in America, feel that the Republican Party, which is in charge of the country at the time, is becoming enthralled to business interests. It’s becoming effeminate. It’s ruining America and it’s taking it down a road that’s going to destroy the country because there aren’t going to be any men left.

Well, Roosevelt is very admiring of the western cowboy imagery that grows up in contrast to that whole eastern business communist kind of idea, the idea that there’s individuals out there in the west, working hard without asking anything from the government. It’s completely mythological.

But after his wife and mother die on the same day in 1884, February 14th, 1884, he picks up and he goes to his ranch in Dakota territory, and he begins to build his chops, not as sort of a dandy from the east with his little glasses, but rather as a western cowboy.

And one of the things that happens is those young men want to go ahead and take control of the Republican Party and move the country away from its increasing focus on industrialization on the wealth moving upward, but they can’t get a toehold. And what finally gives them away in is a humanitarian crisis in Cuba.

Okay, so what happens is Cuba is a colony of the Spanish Government at the time. And Cuba is experiencing a really horrific humanitarian crisis. In part, because there’s an attempt among the Cuban people to push off the Spanish colonizers. And the Spanish get frustrated by this and put in a new commander who wants to go ahead and break the back of the Cuban resistance once and for all.

So, he goes ahead, and he puts over the island what’s called a reconcentrado policy, which is essentially concentrating individuals into towns. And in the process of that, the argument is that you’re supposed to go into the towns, but if you don’t go into the towns, they’re going to assume you’re a rebel and hang you.

So, what this does is it concentrates people in the towns in Cuba, where there’s not adequate food or water or shelter, of course, or the conditions are very unsanitary. So, people in Cuba start to die in huge numbers. So, at the same time, as this is going on in 1896, 1897, the newspapers back in America grab hold of this idea and they construct a narrative.

Joanne Freeman:

And so, they create this narrative of atrocities in Cuba, that headline their newspapers. There are two leading editors in this period who are pushing along this line, this narrative. One of them is William Randolph Hearst, who is the editor of the New York Journal. Another is Joseph Pulitzer, who is the editor of the New York World.

They are among the people who begin a strain of journalism, or at least begins to be called in this period, yellow journalism, which means journalism that really isn’t grounded on legitimate, well-researched news, but really is grounded on eye-catching headlines. It’s really the 1890s when yellow journalism takes off, both of these newspapers, and particularly Hearst, really begin promoting this narrative of the cruelty and tyranny of what’s going on in Cuba, and that there must be a war for the sake of Cuba and to defeat the tyranny of Europe.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, Cuban women and children especially. And that’s one thing that the newspapers really hid on is the numbers of dead children and the abuses against women to the point that they actually send a reporter down to rescue a famous woman, Cuban revolutionary, and he writes a book about it. The newspapers run with it and he writes a book about it.

Well, Teddy Roosevelt at this time is a young, aspiring politician, and he’s the assistant secretary of war. And he has a number of good friends who are like him. People like Henry Cabot Lodge in Massachusetts, or Albert Beveridge in Indiana. People who think that in order to rejuvenate America, that they need to go into Cuba to rebuild masculinity and to rebuild American individualism and give it some real muscle.

And so, the president of the times man named William McKinley, and he has lived through the Civil War and he says, “I don’t want to go to war. I have seen …” This is a quote. “I have seen the bodies piled up and I do not want to see another.” That is see another war.

And McKinley, who is working with the business interests in America says, “I have no interest in going into this war.” And the younger guys are saying, “We have to. It’s important for us to rebuild America by going into this humanitarian war.”

So, the tensions between Americans really and Cuba continued to escalate until the USS Maine explodes in Havana Harbor in, I believe, it’s February of 1898. And when that happens, we historians believe that it was probably an accident that probably there was a powder magazine that was stored next to inflammable substances. But the newspapers run with this. And they argued that Spain has attacked America. Remember the Maine to hell with Spain.

Joanne Freeman:

When I think of the Spanish-American War, even not as a historian, and I’ll bet many people out there listening right now, they might not know what remember the Maine refers to, but it’s one of those phrases that sort of rings throughout history, “Remember, the Maine.” And just the simple phrase itself in and of itself has that kind of belligerent, angry, we must go to war power behind it. So, here, even despite the fact that as you just said, Heather, that it’s probably an accident, it takes on this real power.

Heather Cox Richardson:

But so, what happens then is that McKinley wants to go ahead and actually have an investigation and the newspapers want no part of it. They believe or, they don’t really believe it, I think. They say that Spain is attacked America, although Spain had no interest in bringing America into that war. But McKinley asks for a declaration of war and Congress goes ahead and declares war against Spain.

And instantly, it becomes a very specific kind of war. It becomes what I’m going to call a cowboy war, quite literally. Jesse James’ brother Frank, actually offers to pull together a regiment of people to fight in that war. And Buffalo Bill actually writes an article that he titles, How I Could Drive Spaniards from Cuba with 30,000 Indian Braves. And Teddy Roosevelt holds together a regiment of people to fight in that war.

And he very deliberately argues that they are American individuals who are going to spread morality and capitalism, although that word isn’t really being bandied about yet, but that’s the idea, the economy, if you will, and democracy to be knighted regions. And the press so loves this idea that they dub his man, the Rough Riders. And the Rough Riders is taken explicitly from Buffalo Bill’s wild west show. So, you would literally have cowboys going in to bring morality and an American economy and democracy around the world.

Joanne Freeman:

What better way would there be to frame this as a war in the American tradition with American logic, having something inherently to do with what the United States should be doing than to use that cowboy image? And obviously, I think some of what you’re describing, Heather, correct me if I’m wrong, but some of that is strategic and some of that I think, is genuine and born of that moment.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, yes. But what’s really cool to me, and the reason I kept harping on Jefferson, Jefferson didn’t have a figure to be the heart of his, we’ll just go take it over. Teddy Roosevelt’s got the cowboy. And he goes ahead and he works with Frederick Remington, the great western artist, to go ahead and present this as a cowboy war.

Joanne Freeman:

On the front page of his newspaper, on the front page of the New York Journal.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And it gives us American image of we can go in, we can sort of rush in, accomplish humanity and democracy and economy, and then pull out and everybody’s going to live happily ever after. And that is actually pretty much, I mean, the Cuban War goes on in really interesting ways. But the way it gets portrayed in the newspapers is that America wins that war in a heartbeat. San Juan Hill, it’s actually Kettle Hill that so many of the images come from. And then largely, the war in Cuba in the newspapers, is this raging success.

Now, again, I made the distinction between that and the Philippine war. The Philippine war got very little press compared to the Cuban part of the war. Because the Philippine war, although again, it is against the Spanish Empire there originally, it quickly becomes a war against the Filipinos themselves. And it drags on for quite a long time. It becomes a war characterized by atrocities on both sides and a war that becomes what some historians have called America’s first Vietnam. But that doesn’t get wrapped up into that image the of American cowboy exporting democracy abroad.

Joanne Freeman:

And the press, as you just mentioned, Heather, plays a major role in framing and portraying that idea, that narrative, the signs of cruelty, and then the science of victory, to the point that William Randolph Hearst claims a week after the United States declared war on Spain on the front page of his newspaper, the headline is, How Do You Like the Journals War? Now, he’s exaggerating just a bit, but he’s making a very strong statement about the press and the power of the press in framing an understanding of what’s going on in such a way that in his mind, at least, it helped push the nation into warfare.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So, what’s interesting in this discussion of how a democracy goes to war is setting up that idea of the cowboy war, which is really explicit. Teddy Roosevelt then runs for office based on the image of the cowboy war to the point that most people think that they were actually horses with the Rough Riders in Cuba. They were not. The horses drowned when they tried to get them off the transports. The images that you see of horses are from when the Rough Riders were brought back to New York of Montauk, and they got horses there, and that’s where they held their rodeos and all that.

Joanne Freeman:

Well, to give people an excuse, though, there’s the word “riders.”

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yes, that’s true. But they actually weren’t riding. Although the reason we know that is there’s records, but also because Roosevelt takes reporters with him. He’s got reporters embedded in the Rough Riders, who go ahead and take a lot of photographs.

Joanne Freeman:

Which says a lot, too.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah, exactly. And then, he very deliberately continues that process in New York and then of course, he becomes the cowboy, literally the cowboy president. The same guy he shook his fist at one point after McKinley is assassinated said, “I told McKinley, it was a mistake to nominate that wild man in Philadelphia. Now look, that damned cowboy is president of the United States.”

Joanne Freeman:

You know what’s remarkable? I know this is off topic, but I can’t help but say it, a person who when people say similar, almost identical things, I don’t use the phrase cowboy about becoming president is Andrew Jackson.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah. Well.

Joanne Freeman:

Look at what that guy did.

Heather Cox Richardson:

We’re going somewhere with this.

Joanne Freeman:

Exactly. I had to throw that in. But yeah, we are indeed moving in a direction.

Heather Cox Richardson:

But first, we’re going to take a detour, because that is not the way that America got into its most famous war, which is a completely different way of thinking about democracy and the road to war. And that, of course, is the way Franklin Delano Roosevelt enters America into World War II, which begins to happen, of course, earlier than I’m going to talk about, but really dramatically by January of 1941.

So, most people think about the entry into World War II as being about the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. But in fact, FDR really clears the way, really importantly, in January of that year, when he gives his state of the union address.

And in that state of the union address, a number of themes come through. And one of them is that a lot of Americans at the time are saying this isn’t our war over there in Europe. We don’t want to be part of that war. We’re going to stay isolated over here.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And as some people may have pointed out, that with the rise of the New Deal, with the enactment of the New Deal after 1933, a lot of Americans actually began to embrace right wing activism and even fascism in America. And FDR has got to work against that. But he gives this state of the union address on January 6th, 1941, in which he starts out by saying…

Franklin Roosevelt (archival):

In times like these it is immature, and incidentally, untrue, for anybody to brag that an unprepared America, single-handed, and with one hand tied behind its back, can hold off the whole world.

Heather Cox Richardson:

So, take that, Thomas Jefferson. And take that-

Joanne Freeman:

You’ve always find a way to swat at Jefferson, and lo and behold.

Heather Cox Richardson:

I was so good when we talked about him before though. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. I thought things, but didn’t say anything. But also take that, Teddy Roosevelt, who is of course related to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, although a member of a different political party.

First of all, he’s saying, forget the whole cowboy foreign policy. That just isn’t going to work here. Instead, we need to go forward into this crisis in the world, in liberal democracy in the world united. And he goes ahead and he says, “We are not going to be partisan about this.” And he goes out of his way to say, “In the recent national election, there was no substantial difference between the two great parties in respect to that idea. We didn’t fight about this at all. The American people did not take a stand on this.”

Joanne Freeman:

If I may, quote Jefferson.

Heather Cox Richardson:

The original partisan.

Joanne Freeman:

Well, indeed, but he takes off as claiming unity. We are all federalists, we are all republicans. So, again, that unity claim, people can’t see your face. But still, the claim of unity clearly has a long history, but it’s being used really effectively here at this particular moment by FDR.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, and he’s defining how a democracy should go to war. And what he says is, we must go ahead and defend democracy around the world or we are going to lose it at home. But rather than saying, we’re going to go all cowboy and just marching and start shooting people, he says to other countries…

Franklin Roosevelt (archival):

We Americans are vitally concerned in your defense of freedom. We are putting forth our energies, our resources and our organizing powers to give you the strength to regain and maintain a free world. We shall send you, in ever-increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. This is our purpose and our pledge.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And he goes and says that America is going to go ahead and prepare itself as well, but it’s also going to be part of this consensus. There’s going to be a consensus amongst our allies that this is what needs to happen in order to protect democracy around the world and democracy at home.

Joanne Freeman:

Think about the inherent linking in the statement that he’s making there, which is all over the place but not explicitly stated. And that is the linking of force and war with democracy and morality.

Joanne Freeman:

There’s one of his fireside chats that FDR gave in December of 1940. The title of it does the same thing but it doesn’t really bluntly. The title of that fireside chat was the Arsenal of Democracy, making a lot of the same claims that Americans need to, “Meet the threat to our democratic faith, that Americans need to be called forth to prepare to defend democracy.” And, again, may not seem to be our war, but it is a war that we are involved in. I just love the title, the Arsenal of Democracy, talk about an inherent contradiction, and yet, it’s very effective, and in what it’s stating in just a handful of words.

Heather Cox Richardson:

But even in his state of the union speech that next January, he talks about what democracy means. It isn’t just we’re going to go ahead and bring democracy, the way that Teddy Roosevelt talks about or take Canada the way certain other people talk about in 1812. He talks about the New Deal, and he says democracy means that everybody’s going to have opportunity. They’re going to get jobs. They’re going to get security. They’re going to get the end of special privilege for a few people. We’re going to have civil liberties. He actually defines what a democratic government looks like.

And then, the reason that people remember this speech is which is interesting, because to my mind, the other things he said, or at least as interesting as this, he defines four things that are in the interests of American foreign policy, that American foreign policy must take on and must defend.

So, these become America’s vital interests, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, so everybody should be able to worship God in his or her own way everywhere in the world, freedom from want, that is people should have a healthy life, and finally, freedom from fear, which means that you don’t have to worry about physical aggression against you or your country.

And those four freedoms become the underpinning for America’s justification for entry into World War II after December 7th. Because it’s interesting as in March, after he does this in March of 1941, he actually gets Congress to go ahead, and Congress had been very isolationist to go ahead and approve the Lend Lease Program, which gives him essentially unlimited power to go ahead and lend or lease material aid to people fighting against the expansion of Germany.

Joanne Freeman:

And it’s worth pointing out that freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear, if you’re going to be creating a war, grounded on a sense of consensus, you need to define the terms, the ideology, what it is the consensus is forming around? And that right there is a very clear, straightforward way of doing that precise thing.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Well, he goes on to create this sense of international cooperation based on these values. And he also brings it home. He talks about not having a partisan slant to this war, but he also goes ahead and talks about everybody getting behind the war, everybody planting victory gardens, for example.

Joanne Freeman:

A great example of what you’re talking about here, Heather, as far as all of these measures that people can take has to do with the purchase of savings bonds and stamps. Roosevelt gives a radio address about this topic in April of 1941. And he says that this idea is, “national, and it is homey at the same time,” which I kind of love. He says…

Franklin Roosevelt (archival):

In a larger sense, this first defense bond and these first defense stamps sold to the President constitute tangible evidence of a partnership, a partnership between all of the people and their government, entered into to safeguard and perpetuate all of those precious freedoms which government guarantees. In this time of national peril what we all must realize is that the United States government is you and I and all the other families next door all the way across the country and back again. It is one great partnership.

Joanne Freeman:

A few weeks later, Roosevelt goes on in that same vein. He says all Americans, all will have opportunities and responsibilities to fulfill. Defense today means more than merely fighting. It means morale, civilian as well as military. It means using every available resource. It means enlarging every useful plant. It means the use of a greater American common sense in discarding rumor and distorted statement. Imagine that. He certainly here again and again and again is driving home a sense of community, a sense of unity, a sense of an us, an American us.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Even though at the time, his opponents in the Republican Party were still fervently opposed to American entry into this war. And in fact, came to start the rumor later on that he had set up the bombing at Pearl Harbor in order to drag us into that war. That was very much part of the propaganda of the then that flank of the Republican Party. So, he’s giving this idea of consensus, democracy and consensus, in order to override what he goes on to call in that very quotation you just read, the racketeers and fifth columnists who are the incendiary bombs in this country of the moment.

So, we have in a way two very different visions of what it means to go into wars a democracy. You have the cowboy vision and then you have what I’ve been calling the James Bond vision, which is much more sort of high tech and I need helpers. I can’t do this all on my own.

Joanne Freeman:

Milling and dealing and negotiating and consensus. So, cowboy and consensus, I suppose you could say.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yeah. I like that, cowboy and consensus. So, then though, we have Afghanistan. And what’s interesting about Afghanistan, and we are talking about that in this context, is that it’s a war in which people today don’t seem to have the language to talk about it, which is weird itself since we’ve been there for 20 years. But it’s also an unusual war in that it starts in many ways as a consensus war and it flips to becoming a cowboy war.

So, if you remember in, how do you forget, right, in September of 2001, Al-Qaeda attacks America, killing thousands of Americans and also nationals of other countries. I mean, that’s a really important piece here, that it’s not just Americans who died at 9/11. It’s on our territory, but they’re not just American nationals. And what the Al-Qaeda terrorists are sheltered in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

So, immediately, there is a push amongst the Americans to go in and to weaken the Taliban in order to stop it from being able to shelter Al-Qaeda. And in the process, the Americans want to get the terrorists who have launched the attacks on America. And that’s precisely the grounds on which America goes into Afghanistan in October of 2001, when President George W. Bush gives the national announcement that we are going into Afghanistan. It’s really interesting because he begins by saying this is an international coalition to go in and remove the Taliban or weaken the Taliban enough that it can no longer protect Al-Qaeda.

George W. Bush (archival):

We are joined in this operation by our staunch friend, Great Britain. Other close friends, including Canada, Australia, Germany, and France have pledged forces as the operation unfolds. More than 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and across Asia, have granted air transit or landing rights. Many more have shared intelligence.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Curiously, though, we do not in America, get permission from the United Nations to go ahead and use military force. They’re really quite vague on that. And the administration assumes it has the right to go into military force under one of the articles in the UN charter.

Joanne Freeman:

I just want to highlight here what you just said, Heather, which is think about a part for the United Nations, all of the ways in which Bush is reaching out and pointing to other nations as being involved in this conflict, which is framed in one way or another as an attack, a potential attack on the world. So, if you’re looking for a definition of a consensus war, this is framing the war at this point in precisely that way.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Exactly. And he actually says in that speech, of course, the operation was called Enduring Freedom. And he says, we defend not only our precious freedoms, without actually defining what those are, by the way, not only our precious freedoms, but also the freedom of people everywhere to live and raise their children free from fear.

So, in October of 2001, America begins to bomb the camps protecting Al-Qaeda, the Al-Qaeda training camps. And within a week, the Taliban offers to put Osama bin Laden, the terrorists behind the attacks, on trial. And the US government says, “Yeah, right. Not happening.” Within two weeks, the Taliban agrees to hand Osama bin Laden over to a third country for trial if the US will stop bombing. And once again, the US turns that down.

By December of 2001, the Taliban offers a full surrender. And the US turns that down. In part, because at that point, we don’t have access to Osama bin Laden, and we’re going to discover later on he’s in Pakistan.

But the point I wanted to make here is that in a way, this was going to be a consensus war. It was clearly defined. It looked like the Taliban was weakened enough that it wasn’t going to be able to protect Al-Qaeda any longer. The terrorists were on the run. And yet then, the mission changed. And the mission became what looks much more like a cowboy war with the idea that America was going to replace the coalition sort of shifting alliances and Afghanistan all together with a new democratic government. We were going to begin nation building, but there was never really a definition of what that was going to look like.

And then in 2002, a year after America goes to war in Afghanistan, we get the description of what is now called the Bush Doctrine, the idea that the US can go into countries preemptively to take out terrorists before they strike the United States. And that was what was known as the Bush Doctrine. And the following year, 2003, America invades Iraq to go ahead and stabilize as we argued that country as well as Afghanistan. So, we have about 8000 troops in Afghanistan in 2003, when we begin to divert our attention over to Iraq. And that’s how we get this sort of shifting, what are we doing here and then of course when-

Joanne Freeman:

But it’s worth noting, which you haven’t said explicitly, and I know that people listening right now, it’s echoing in their heads because of what we have been saying, that flip that you’re talking about, well, we can go and do what we need to do anywhere, I was going to say, that’s the cowboy flip, which sounds like a rodeo maneuver. But that is the transition from consensus to cowboy.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And that’s exactly the way it was even articulated at the time. That we were going to go in and we were going to be the good guys. But a lot of media at the time was like, “Yeah, we’re going to go bring democracy. We’re going to go in. We’re going to fix everything. We’re going to change the way that country was.” The kind of the same way that Teddy Roosevelt talked about.

And certainly, Rush Limbaugh gave that address one day on his show in which he talked about the American cowboy, that we were going to be cowboys, and we were white hats, and we were going to clean up everything that was happening in these countries that were harboring terrorists.

And that, I think, is where we end up now. We’ve talked about this before, of course, the war in Afghanistan goes on and Barack Obama tries simply to end the war in Afghanistan by throwing more and more troops at it. And he, in fact, manages to capture Osama bin Laden. And very shortly thereafter, declares that our mission in Afghanistan is over and that we’re going to get out. At the same time, he’s basically creating loopholes so that we can stay in Afghanistan.

And I’m not sure how much more we need to go into that because of course, most people now know how the Trump administration in February 2020 inks a deal with the Taliban cutting out the Afghan government when he promised that we would be out by May of 2021 if so long as they cease to kill American troops, how that really box Joe Biden into a corner. So, there’s this long history here.

But what’s really central there, I think, is the shift from the idea of war as consensus, as international consensus and as domestic consensus, and as a way to rebuild America along certain lines to becoming a war of we’re the cowboys, we’re going to go in, we’re going to change the world, come hell or high water, and we don’t really care what that looks like back at home. And now, as you and I were talking about before, Biden’s taking it back to consensus.

Joanne Freeman:

So, he’s not withdrawing entirely, but he is more in favor of using surgical strikes and finance and cyberattacks, and I suppose what you could call soft power to defend American interests rather than guns on the ground. So, he’s moving back more in a consensus, James Bond direction. But what you’re framing so wonderfully here, Heather, is the fact that there never was one narrative or one understanding or one clear statement about what was happening in Afghanistan. It shifts over time.

And to me, one of the striking things about what’s going on now in, I suppose the American sort of ethos and how Americans are thinking about the war, talking about the war in the present, otherwise, is that there still is no clear narrative, no clear understanding, lots of blame, lots of accusations, lots of looking all the way back to other points in the war when things were quite different and transposing things onto the present in an attempt to gain meaning. But a lot of what we’re seeing right now, I think, is the lack of that kind of a framing understanding of why we went in, what happened over time with that purpose and where we are now.

And so, the partisanship of this moment and the change the fact that we’re at this moment of great social change, which is driving a lot of people, I think, to focus on, wanting to bolster things like masculinity to confront the fear of change all that we’re in this moment, when we don’t have a clear understanding of what’s going on. The press is not stepping forward in a clear way to say, “Here’s what happened, here’s where we are.” Basically, Americans are grasping at narratives.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And all of this comes back to what is a vital American interest. And I think that we are having a hard time right now defining what is a vital American interest in the sense that in a way, you could define the early year in Afghanistan in a very certain way. We’re going to weaken the Taliban. We’re going to get the terrorists and then we’re going to get out.

And that, interestingly enough, I just want to throw in here, even that had his cowboy elements in the sense that Bush talked a lot about having international support, because I think he knew that would encourage people to get behind the war. And yet, in fact, a lot of that international support was constructed, and it was kind of weaselly. And at the same time, of course, it was a really interesting decision to send in troops, when in fact, the bombing had been as very successful as it had been.

And so, one of the things that FDR recognized was the incredible importance of having a mission statement, but also protecting democracy at home. So, when today people talk about the vital national interests at stake in Afghanistan, of course, Biden said we didn’t have a vital national interest at stake there. And many people are now saying, “Well, we shouldn’t have gone out the way we did.” It’s an interesting moment.

Joanne Freeman:

But you’ve just highlighted a major gap, which is, if you’re stating that the United States has no vital national interests to be protected in Afghanistan, you’re talking about blood that was spilled and money that was spent. And you’re basically saying in the here and now at least, there’s no reason for us to have done those things.

Now, I know that you and I already have talked about the many reasons in the past that people gave, but I think an understanding of war to say, you know what, we don’t have any interest there, let’s withdraw, I think that’s a problem. I think that presents a problematic narrative or understanding of what went on. I think that leaves a gap and it creates something of a crisis in understanding and processing and owning that war.

Heather Cox Richardson:

Yes. But, you had a but, I get one now, too. If you think about the use of soldiers as a way for diplomats to buy time to find solutions, to me, there’s your answer. But you can see why people are uncomfortable now saying, “Oh, we should have pulled out back in 2002. We should have pulled out back in 2003.” Very hard to leave a war as you know. Much easier to get into a war than to get out of a war.

But in terms of vital national interests, Biden really is going out on a limb to try and redefine what are American international interests as well as domestic interests. And when he talks about is pretty much the same thing that FDR talked about, that in order to protect democracy, the answer is not to go ride out and start shooting, the answer is to protect democracy at home and to support the same values the democracy has at home overseas.

So, again, protect jobs, protect human rights, protect civil rights, protect infrastructure, protect the climate, protect all those things that are so vital to our democracy at home, as well as making sure you can protect them overseas through cybersecurity, through drone strikes if you must, through especially finances, which he is focusing on, the James Bond vision rather than the cowboy vision.

Joanne Freeman:

But here’s the thing, we are indeed at a moment of crisis in democracy in the United States and indeed, around the world. Democracy is struggling, is threatened. So, we are at a moment when that message of defending democracy has a lot of resonance to it. The question is, how much residence does it have? Will it play to the American people and to the world and what will be the ultimate result?

I think we’re at a moment when many aspects of democracy are being questioned in ways that they haven’t been for quite some time if ever before. So, grounding a message on defending democracy around the world is strong, is necessary and potentially can be problematic.

Heather Cox Richardson:

And Joanne, like you say, so much of defining that war, defining any war in America is about how we talk about it, how we make sense of it. And recognizing that there is the cowboy sort of war, the Teddy Roosevelt kind of war, the Andrew Jackson kind of war, I hate to say it the Thomas Jefferson kind of war is it plays really well, it’s a great story. You got Teddy Roosevelt and San Juan Hill and all the horses that weren’t there.

But the enduring change and the engagement in protecting democracy around the world really takes consensus and to recognize the differences between those two approaches to war and how it affects our standing overseas as a democracy.

Joanne Freeman:

It takes a shared understanding. We can use the word “unity” again, in the United States and around the world that, that story that you’ve just described of defending democracy has resonance and power.