Responding to these calls from above, Wilsonians tend to neglect mundane details about feasibility. Wilson had no patience with the idea of limits, and neither do his disciples. Thus Bush asserts that there is nothing a righteous America acting in pursuit of a righteous cause cannot accomplish. One will search Bush's speech in vain for any doubts regarding American omnipotence.
It was Bush channeling Wilson that landed us in Iraq. Even today, many Americans agree with the president's view of the U.S. invasion as an act of liberation, although many others view the war as patently misguided and morally unjustifiable. What can hardly be denied is that it has exacted enormous, unsustainable costs. Put bluntly, we don't have enough soldiers, enough money or enough friends to persist in this crusade, much less to implement the Bush Doctrine elsewhere to bring freedom and democracy to the entire Mideast.
This is where the tradition of George Washington comes in. As even a glance at the first president's Farewell Address affirms, Washington was anything but an isolationist. He was instead the founding father of American realism, a school of thought based on a lively appreciation for the limits of power and for the fragility of the American experiment in republican government. Washington did not counsel his countrymen to turn away from the world but to approach it warily and without illusions, choosing "war or peace, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel."
The Wilsonian tradition, emphasizing universal values, is an authentic expression of the American purpose. So too is the tradition of Washington, emphasizing freedom of action. There is no easy way of reconciling these two views. Yet in the tension between them may lie our best hope of navigating safely through a perilous world.
Can America be America absent Wilsonian ideals? Perhaps not. But an America intoxicated with its self-assigned mission of salvation while disregarding prudential considerations will court exhaustion, both moral and material. Our present circumstances may not dictate a full retreat. But they do require a revived appreciation of what we can and cannot do. Contriving phony charges of isolationism to dodge tough, practical questions is not only dishonest, it is reckless and irresponsible.
