Otherwise we'll just atrophy and become powerless
What we as Americans need right now is a real enemy. Not some cult of personality with fanatics scattered all over the place. That's not an enemy we can unite against, they're too hard to pin down and define. The reason the War on Terror is faring so poorly in the eyes of the public isn't because of liberal media bias, or democrats laying blame, or republicans failing to pitch it to the public. Nope, the War on Terror is failing because we can't point to a map and say where it is, we can't hold up a nation of people, or even a political party or a religion and go "It's them!" What we have are fanatics trying to sell what they're doing as the mission of their faith, but they occupy such an insanely small minority within it, we can't hold the group as a whole responsible (and to attempt to do so is a gross injustice). At the start, we had Afghanistan, and we had clear proof connecting the 9/11 attacks to their government. It was an act of war that could not reasonably be denied. We went in, and we swept the opposition. Now we're in an occupation situation as we try to get a new government shored up.
Now we're in Iraq, and despite any intelligence that may or may not exist giving credence to the idea that this is now the forefront of "The War On Terror", the public grows skeptical. And when public support for any foreign action wanes, things get dicey. It's become harder and harder to try and drum up support for this war, for the simple reason that it does not in any way shape or form fit the mental model we've spent centuries developing. There is no central government to target, no clearly defined borders or area of conflict. We can't even clearly define an ideology that we're up against (blind hatred doesn't count... even the Nazis had a formulated ideology and a process they followed). There is no clear line deliniating the start of the conflict (9/11 was in reality the moment it became a part of our daily lives, not when it started), and no set goal or end to it. When do we declare victory? Who do we negotiate with? Where are the battlefields? What are we fighting against anyway? Our survival as an independent nation isn't in question. We can't define the threat.
As a people, Americans like to have a plan. We want to go in to achieve Objectives X, Y and Z in opposition to Group A trying to achieve their own objectives. We like to think we're doing it to save someone, prevent injustice etc. We want to know where the fight is, who's fighting it, and what it means to win and when everyone comes home. What we have now is a hodgepodge of confusion. The best we can come up with are the following:
Who? Osama Bin Laden and his Band of Merry Men
Where? Um, somewhere in the Middle East... maybe into Asia, and parts of Europe and Africa if we think they're hiding there.
What? Islamic Fanatics
When? Who knows? A patrol in Iraq could be ambushed right this moment, or a car bomb could go off in Smallville, North Dakota tomorrow. We don't know really when it started, just when it escalated, and we're not sure it'll end.
Why? Dunno really. They just hate us for whatever reason.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us in a quagmire of doubt and confusion. Americans operate in two modes really: Overzealous Competition and Fat Dumb & Happy.
When we have a threat/enemy, we are the most energetic to mobilize our resources and collective imagination to achieve things that seemed impossible just a short while ago. Nothing can stop the American War Machine when it goes on march. We have the money, the industry and brilliance to do just about anything we want. We have a near infinite source of national pride and patriotism that goes dormant until threatened. Sure we may have a lot of “America Sucks!†people right now, but the day a foreign power declares war on us or attacks us (like N. Korea just might one day) many of those voices will fall silent. When we go to war, we shatter the secrets of the atom, and we break the unbreachable barrier of space in our drive for victory. We thrive on threat and competition. Give us a good opponent, and we'll go above and beyond ourselves to beat them. The better the opponent, the closer the race, and the longer our brilliance shines. The Cold War saw just that. We accomplished more feats of scientific wizardry in our race to beat the Russians at everything in a few short decades than we have in the past centuries combined.
When we are at peace, we settle in for a rest. We're happy with whatever happens, just so long as it doesn't disrupt our happy quiet. The status quo becomes the new cause to fight for, because obviously, we're where we are now, in this moment of peace because of the exact things we're doing right now. Change up the routine, disrupt things too much and it'll all crumble around us.
As a side note: It's kind of funny really if you think about it; Conservatives of today tend to be the more hawkish of the two camps, advocating for military action, but want to defend the status quo as much as possible. Liberals, who tend to deplore war and the use of armies as tools of state, want the most to shake up the status quo. War is what shakes things up. WWI and WWII saw the barriers of gender and race shatter in many meaningful ways. Both wars saw social upheavals, caused great changes in how our world works. Conservatives advocate the greatest tool for change, which threatens their status quo, while Liberals most staunchly oppose it, and block their best chance to advance their causes.
The advance of technology slows to a crawl compared to what it was when last we were at war. There's no driver to do great things. There's no grand victory in doing the impossible, because there's no one there who may reach it before you do. With no competitor, you have the luxury of taking your time, playing it safe.
And that brings us back to today. We're at peace with the nations of the world. No country on the planet could hope to beat us in a straight-up fight. We're the economic and political kings of the planet. We are the leaders in technology, in science. We stand atop the mountain and proudly wear our crowns. It's been a long hard road to this point and we think we've earned a rest. So we back off social change. We step back our advancement of science. We last went to the moon in 1972, and we'll get back there again maybe by the year 2020. That's 48 years to do something we accomplished 6 separate times in just 3 years, when the technology was completely new, and the science unproven. We no longer want to take risks for fear of what the consequences may be. We've lost our sense of wonder and our drive to explore the unknowns of our world.
And then, we're told we're at war. With no formal declaration, no clear target, no clear goal or objective. We're caught between the indifference of peacetime and the mania of a nation at war. We've been without a real threat now for 17 years since the Berlin Wall fell and marked the end of the USSR. We like our peace sure, who doesn't like safety and calm? But as a nation we're built to compete, to excell. We're like a well-trained athlete, preparing for years for the Olymics. We win the gold, and then go home to sit on the couch and drink bear and eat chips. It's the ultimate anti-climax. We want to compete again. We want a real opponent. So we practically jump all over ourselves when one is sort of presented, as an overwhelming majority of Americans did after Sept. 11th. But now, we're caught in this limbo. Half on the couch, half ready to jump up and run a marathon. We remember the glory of years past. Of being the first people to fly, the first to cross the ocean in a plane, the first to split the atom, the first to go to the moon, the first to do many great and amazing things. We want to do that again, but we need the proveribal kick in the butt to get us moving. As a nation, we love war. Even those of us who protest our brains out against it, love it as it give those people something to protest about, which is all they really want anyway. War means crazy advancement. War means social change, which again despite those who are so against it, it gives them some issue of moral degredation to rail against, and that's what makes them most happy in the end. War means a chance to win... and we love winning. But we need a victory that means something, one that is satisfying. That's why Vietnam left such a bad taste in our mouth. Why the first Gulf War was nice, but didn't give us much to get motivated about. Why Afghanistan, while an act of war against us by a foreign power left us feeling unfulfilled (they barely were able to put up a fight) and why Iraq has us feeling tired and distracted. Now we're back to the War on Terror which doesn't fit the model of a war, but it looks like it might be a genuine challenge to fight, so we're ready to jump into it, we just don't know where to jump.
Today, we're poised and ready to tackle the first major power that threatens us. We want a fight. We're tired of these half-fights or police actions. We're tired of being yelled at by half the world for doing something, and then yelled at by the other half because we didn't do it exactly as they wanted us to. We're tired of the plodding pace of life, where nothing major happens. We lack a unifying purpose. What we need right now is for North Korea or Iran to throw down the gauntlet. We need China to start making moves that scare us into action. We need OPEC to form a military alliance. We need something to happen in the next few years that get us to mobilize as a nation before we forget how to. Before we fully fall into our blissful idleness and then it becomes too late to act if we need to. We're already dangerously dependent on foreign oil, on China for trade.
Science Fiction usually deals with this issue of complacancy by tossing in an alien or robot invasion. The concept though is the same, that we need conflict to advance, to achieve what we're capable of achieving. So instead of asking for the Terminator to come in and kill us off, or the Buggers to come in from space, I look to our terrestrial neighbors to provide us with the appropriate "inspiration" to reach and achieve.