The Nanny State is like a very big yellow school bus. A bus complete with monitors inside to assure the children stay seated. Refrain from noise. Don't fight. Or litter. Or show affection.
The big yellow school bus of the Nanny State secures, protects, holds harmless all within. It is safety and security beyond all else.
War is everything the Nanny State is not. War is noisy. War is dirty. War destroys. Worst of all, war kills. The food upon which war, all war great and small, feeds is human life. War exists so that humans may be maimed, devastated, killed.
War and the Nanny State are mutually exclusive. That is a no-brainer. But, even Nanny States must from time to time find it necessary to wage war. What happens then? What happens when the culture of safety, security, and sanctity comes into contact with the realities of war.
The experiences of the UK give some guidance as that country is the prototype, the paradigm of the Nanny State. In its jealous protection of the life and limb of every resident of Great Britain, the government has deployed CCTV cameras beyond count, put into place the most intrusive legislation imaginable, hectored its citizens, sought to outlaw, ban, prohibit, forbid, behaviors thought to be damaging to the individual. Far more even than Canada, let alone the US, the UK has bent every effort to hold its citizens harmless from all the perils of life, including those of the self-inflicted variety.
Nonetheless, the Nanny State of Britain did go to war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Ruing the decision to join the Bush/Cheney sponsored Great Adventure in Regime Change, the British withdrew from Iraq as quickly as they could without fatally impairing the Anglo-American "special relationship." The British Army, Royal Marines, and RAF remain in Afghanistan to the present day.
But the troops do not remain without causing distress among the folks back home. When the aggregate British combat fatalities edged above the century mark a few weeks back, there were more than a few moans in the land once led by Winston Churchill to the effect that enough is enough, bring the troops home.
The new coalition government is holding firm even though internal divisions in the senior ministers over when and how to conduct disengagement have been visible. This "steady-on, lads," position may exist right now, but that is no guarantee it will last long.
Now, let's step back in time. Say about thirty years. Back to the days of the "Iron Lady," PM Margaret Thatcher. Back to the months of the Falkland Islands War. The Argentinian invasion resulted in a war which was long on preliminaries and rather short in combat days. Still, the bill presented to the British public was 255 men killed in action or died of wounds.
That's right, more than double the butcher's bill for eight plus years in Afghanistan.
The British public cheered itself hoarse. Applause for the war, the troops, and Maggie Thatcher was universal. The dead were mourned. They were honored for their "sacrifice." Life went on. There was no gnashing of teeth, no wringing of hands over the horrible cost in British lives--not even on the Left of British politics, the customary home of such melodramatics.
But, wait, the Geek can hear you object. "The Falkland Islands War was short. It was justified by the unprovoked aggression of the Argies. The goal was easy to articulate and understand. And, the victory was complete as well as obvious."
All quite true, bucko. The Geek would add, "All the troops were volunteers. The British had abandoned National Service years earlier."
So, we can go back further in time. Back to a war which was long, a war that lasted half again as long as the current fracas in Afghanistan has. Back to a war fought for hazy purposes of state policy, policy which was not well articulated to the public or necessarily approved of by those who did understand the reasons. A war which was fought in part by British draftees.
The war was the Malayan Emergency. It lasted from 1948-1960 although the majority of the British fighting and dying occurred in the first three years. The war was one of pure counter-insurgency in which the opponent was the Chinese minority fueled by the success of the Chinese Communists back home.
The British lost some 550 men in combat. This was a smaller number than the aggregate of the Malayan and Commonwealth forces, but was still significant considering that the war was poorly understood, had no sharp goal, did not result in a clear cut victory, and was automatically opposed by the Communist Party and others of the far Left back in Blighty.
Both Conservative and Labor governments continued the war. There was little if any real opposition. No marches. No demonstrations. No decrying or defeatism in the press. And, precious little hand-wringing or brow-beating over the deaths of service personnel including National Servicemen.
It is easy to account for the difference in attitude between that which prevailed during either the Falkland Islands War or the Malayan Emergency and that which exists and is growing today. The difference is the emergence, the conquest as it were, of the Nanny State.
The British public has been so indoctrinated in the safety, security, and sanctity of life above all else values of the Nanny State that the idea, let alone the reality, of men dying for obscure purposes of state in faraway places of no real concern to the average person is utter anathema. This attitude, this consequence of acculturation, is having real political and diplomatic consequences. More importantly, the longer the mentality of the Nanny State persists, the more the British government will find itself disallowed from using force in support of policy.
Inevitably, this will mean that British influence on the global stage will decrease. Carrots alone will not suffice when a state must deal with the asses of the world. Even when the carrots are reinforced by non-violent means of coercion, by economic sanctions for example, the results are unlikely to be satisfactory.
There is a lesson here for the US. We are well on our way down the primrose path to the perdition of the Nanny State. Our reasons and motives may be different, but the consequences are the same--an undue focus on the limited goals of safety, security, and sanctity of life. While these three are nice, even important, if they are allowed to become the end all and be all of our collective existence as a people and a polity, the end result will be toothlessness in the face of threats.
The lacking of political will to use force in support of policy is a form of ultimate unilateral disarmament. It assures that no matter how advanced and impressive our munitions of war, our machines of war might be, they are of no real world utility. Neither will it matter how large and fine looking our soldiers, sailors, airmen might be, the reality is that they will be mere decorations without usefulness.
It is political will, the willingness of a nation to risk its own at war, to accept casualties, accept deaths that gives a country the ultimate force of diplomacy--the will to use armed force when there is no other alternative. The Nanny State understanding of life precludes the willful placing of citizens in danger. It also militates against the killing of others, the killing even of those who would do us direct and real harm.
To put the sharpest point on the reality of the Nanny State, the more we accept the dictates of the Nanny State, the more impotent the US becomes as a global or even regional actor. The fear of death and killing engendered by the mindset of the Nanny State condemns a nation to the bottom of the world's diplomatic heap.
England is already headed to the bottom at flank speed. For us the question is simple. Do we want to go there as well?
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