Joe Epstein on Tocqueville

"One of the reasons that people in a democracy do not become enthusiastic about wars is that they do not feel truly implicated in them. Especially is this so when the wars are not strictly defensive and when they are fought exclusively by a professional army. The last war that commanded full national allegiance was World War II, and my guess--not having the perspicuity of Tocqueville--is that, owing to the draft, most people in the country had relatives and friends fighting in that war. Small flags with gold stars hung in the windows of families who lost husbands and sons, and the sight of them brought a national resolution not to make those deaths pointless. The country was united because the responsibility for fighting was spread throughout the population.
Nice though it would be to think that the people of the U.S. were behind World War II because they wanted to save the Jews, or loathed Hitler's doctrines, my guess (again) is that this wasn't the central reason for being ready to accept sacrifices because of this war. Without Pearl Harbor--without, that is, America's having been invaded, however peripherally, by a government--American entry into the war would most likely never have come about. Wars are most easily sold--as the Bush administration is attempting to do in Iraq--as defensive: We must get them before they get us. Wars of ideas, of clashing ideals, do not go down well in democracies, which may well be a criticism of democratic citizens.
The thought of the U.S. fighting a Thirty Years War or engaging in something akin to the Peloponnesian War (which lasted 27 years) is unthinkable. These were wars fought by aristocrats, not democrats, who want chiefly to get on with their pleasurable lives. A miserably difficult war against a fanatical enemy with no conclusion in obvious sight has nothing to do with pleasure. A hard sell, this war, and Tocqueville would have bet the chateau against the American people finally buying it. For once it would be nice to see him proved hopelessly wrong."