Wise Words Forgotten

Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in a sermon “Can we win the war without losing America” delivered May 20, 1917 at Carnegie Hall wrote:

We have gone into the war not because of the Lusitania nor yet because of the Sussex, nor in truth because of any single ferocity of under-sea warfare, but because these and similar things represent a type of national mind or rather of governmental theory which will either subdue and conquer the world or be overcome by it…

In a sense, it is true that we fare forth into the world of war on behalf of the American ideal. But we war not in order to impose the American ideal–for that were after the more Germanico–but to save the peoples of the earth from the abhorrent necessity of yielding to the attempt of a masterful sovereignty to impose its will and even its way upon their national existence….

May we not put the matter in the simplest terms? We fare forth to shield the souls of nations from destruction by a brutalizing sovereignty.

Stephen Wise went on to discuss the things that America needed to safeguard as it waged the war including freedom of speech and the protection of workers, especially keeping children safe from exploitation by industry. However, the beginning of the speech quoted above is one of the best explanations of American involvement in foreign conflicts that I have yet seen and applies to this day. We do not go to war because of single attacks, but in order to “save the peoples of the earth from the abhorrent necessity of yielding to the attempt of a masterful sovereignty to impose its will and even its way upon their national existence.” Could there be a better explanation of our role in the fight against Radical Islam and our presence in the Middle East? In the fight against Soviet Era Communism? In fighting against the Fascism of Nazi Germany?

Yet Wise himself neglected this concept before the second World War, refusing to support acting upon it until it was far too late. To “save the peoples of the earth from the abhorrent necessity of yielding to the attempt of a masterful sovereignty to impose its will and even its way upon their national existence” is exactly the necessary role of America in the modern world, has been for over 100 years, and acting upon that necessity is the only thing preventing another world war. Failure to realize that fact, one could argue, led directly to World War II. The failure to realize it at the end of the 20th Century led to the rise of a new “brutal sovereignty” seeking to “impose its will and even its way” and even resulted  in our suffering new “Lusitanias,” including the attacks of September 11, 2001.