Know Thine Enemy
Andrew E. Busch says in NRO that the proper test of a nation is not in its friends, but in its enemies:
As we prepare to pay our respects to those who have fallen in the foreign wars of the United States, it is useful to recall that they fell, uniformly, at the hand of tyrants, thugs, and usurpers.Who has the United States counted as its enemies? A British monarch who systematically sought to deprive Americans of their natural rights, including consent of the governed. The Barbary Coast pirates. A Mexican dictator, Santa Anna, whose destruction of the free Mexican Constitution of 1824 provoked the Texan revolution, which itself ultimately led through a chain of events to the war of 1846-48. A decrepit Spanish empire that held Cuba and the Philippines through sheer brutality. The forces of German/Austrian militarism in Europe. Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo. The Soviet dictatorship in the Cold War. Kim Il-Sung, and Mao Tse-Tung in Korea. The forces of Leninist terror from Vietnam to Central America to Grenada. The Khmer Rouge. Muammar Qaddafi and the Ayatollah Khomeini. The ethnic cleansers of Greater Serbia. The Taliban. Saddam Hussein, once to free Kuwait and once to free Iraq itself.